Death Masks df-5

by Jim Butcher

  "I think so. I've never actually seen it."

  "Seen what?" Thomas asked.

  Instead of answering, the Archive drew a small box out of her pocket. She opened the box and delicately plucked out an insect as long as her own fingers-a brown scorpion-by its tail. She looked around to make sure she had everyone's attention. She did. Then she dropped the scorpion into the box.

  There was an instant, immediate sound, somewhere between a wildcat's scream and the sizzle of bacon hitting a hot skillet. Something that looked vaguely like a cloud of ink in clear water floated up out of the box. It was about the size of a baby's head. Dozens of shadowy tendrils held the scorpion, drawing it up into the air along with the inky cloud. Dark violet flickers of flame played over the insect's shell for all of two or three seconds-and then it simply crumbled, carapace falling away in flakes and dust.

  The cloudy mass rose up to a height of about five feet, before the Archive murmured a word. It stopped in place, bobbing gently, holding there.

  "Damn," Thomas said, he took the earphones out. Music with many electric guitars sounded tinnily from them. "And this is what?"

  "Mordite," I said quietly. "Deathstone."

  "Yes," the Archive said.

  Ortega drew in a slow breath, and nodded in understanding.

  "Deathstone, huh?" Thomas said. "It sort of looks like someone spray-painted a soap bubble. And gave it tentacles."

  "It isn't a soap bubble," I said. "There's a solid piece inside. The energies it carries in it are what create that shroud effect around it."

  Thomas poked a finger at it. "What does it do?"

  I caught his wrist before he could touch it, and pushed his hand away. "It kills. Hence the name deathstone, you half-wit."

  "Oh," Thomas said, nodding with drunken sagacity. "It looked cool when it gacked that little thing, but so what? It's a bug zapper."

  "If you disrespect this thing it's going to get you killed," I said. "It would kill anything living exactly the same way. Anything. It's not from our world."

  "It's extraterrestrial?" asked Susan.

  "You do not understand, Miss Rodriguez," Ortega said quietly. "Mordite is not from this galaxy or this universe. It is not of our reality."

  I had reservations about Ortega's presence on the home-team roster, but I nodded. "It's from Outside. It's - congealed antilife. A chip of this stuff makes nuclear waste look like secondhand smoke. Being near it draws the life off you bit by bit. If you touch it, it kills you. Period."

  "Precisely," said the Archive. She stepped forward to look at both Ortega and me. "An enchantment binds the particle in place. It is also sensitive to applied will. The duelists will face each other, the mordite between them. Will it toward your opponent. He with the greatest force of will controls the mordite. The duel will end when it has devoured one of you."

  Gulp.

  The Archive continued. "Seconds will observe from first and third bases, facing their duelist's opponent. Mister Kincaid will ensure that no undue interference is perpetrated by either second. I have instructed him to do so with extreme prejudice."

  Thomas wobbled a little and eyed the Archive. "Eh?"

  The girl faced him and said, "He'll kill you if you interfere."

  "Oh," Thomas said cheerfully. "Gotcha, punkin."

  Ortega glared at Thomas and made a disgusted sound. Thomas found something else to look at and backed a prudent step away.

  "I will monitor both duelists to ensure that no energies are employed on their behalf. I, too, will resolve any infractions with extreme prejudice. Do you understand?"

  Ortega nodded. I said, "Yeah."

  "Are there any questions, gentlemen?" the Archive asked.

  I shook my head. Ortega did too.

  "Each of you may make a brief statement," said the Archive.

  Ortega drew a band of black and silver beads from his pocket. Without making an effort, I could feel the defensive energies bound up within them. He regarded me with casual mistrust as he bound the bracelet to his left side and said, "This can end in only one way."

  In answer, I fished one of the antivenom potions from my pocket, popped the top, and slugged it down. I burped and said, "Excuse me."

  "You've really got class, Dresden," Susan said.

  "Class oozes out my every orifice," I agreed. I passed her my staff and rod. "Hold these for me."

  "Seconds, please retire to your positions," said the Archive.

  Susan put her hand on my arm, fingers clenching tight for a second. I reached up and touched her hand. She let go and backed away to third base.

  Thomas offered to high-five Ortega. Ortega glared. Thomas smiled a Colgate smile and swaggered over to first base. He drew a silver flask of something from his hip pocket on the way, and took a sip.

  The Archive looked back and forth between me and Ortega. She was standing on the pitcher's mound, next to the floating glob of chilling energy, so she was a shade taller than Ortega and a shade shorter than me. Her face was solemn, even grim. It didn't sit well on a child who should have been getting up for school in the morning.

  "Are you both resolved to this duel?"

  "I am," Ortega said.

  "Uh- huh." I nodded.

  The Archive nodded. "Gentlemen. Present your right hands, please."

  Ortega lifted his right arm, palm faced toward me. I mirrored him. The Archive gestured, and the mordite sphere floated up until it hovered precisely halfway between Ortega and me. Tension gathered against my palm, an invisible and silent pressure. It felt vaguely like holding my hand against a recirculating outlet in a swimming pool-it was a tenuous thing, that felt like it might easily slide to one side.

  If it did, I'd get to see the mordite up close and personal. My heart skittered over a couple of beats, and I took a deep breath, trying to focus and ready myself. If I was Ortega, I'd want to open up with everything I had in the first heartbeat of the contest and end it almost before it began. I took a couple of deep breaths and narrowed my focus, my thoughts, until the pressure against my hand and the deadly darkness a few feet away from it were all that existed.

  "Begin," said the Archive. She backed quickly toward home plate.

  Ortega let out a shout, a battle cry, his body dipping slightly, hips twisting, shoving his hand forward like a man trying to close a vault door with one arm. His will flooded toward me, wild and strong, and the pressure of it drove me back onto my heels. The mordite sphere zipped across three of the four feet between it and me.

  Ortega's will was strong. Really, really strong. I tried to divert it, to overcome it and stop the sphere. For a panicked second I had nothing. The sphere kept drifting closer to me. A foot. Ten inches. Six inches. Small tendrils of inky darkness drifted out from the cloud around the mordite, reaching out blindly toward my fingers.

  I gritted my teeth, hardened my will, and stopped the thing five inches from my hand. I tried to mount up some momentum of my own, but Ortega held strong against me.

  "Don't draw this out, boy," Ortega said through clenched teeth. "Your death will save lives. Even if you kill me, my vassals at Casaverde are sworn to hunt you down. You and everyone you know and love."

  The sphere came a bit closer. "You said you wouldn't harm them if I agreed to the duel," I growled.

  "I lied," Ortega said. "I came here to kill you and end this war. Anything else is immaterial."

  "You bastard."

  "Stop fighting it, Dresden. Make it painless for yourself. If you kill me, they will be executed. By surrendering, you preserve them. Your Miss Rodriguez. The policewoman. The investigator you apprenticed under. The owner of that bar. The Knight and his family. The old man in the Ozarks. The wolf-children at the university. All of them."

  I snarled, "Buddy, you just said the wrong thing."

  I let the anger Ortega's words had ignited flood down through my arm. A cloud of scarlet sparks erupted against the mordite sphere, and it started creeping the other way.

  Ortega's face became strain
ed, his breathing heavier. He didn't waste any effort on words now. His eyes darkened until they were entirely black and inhuman. There were ripples, here and there, under the surface of his skin-the flesh mask that contained the vaguely batlike monster those of the Red Court really were. The monstrous Ortega, the true Ortega, stirred underneath the false human shell. And he was afraid.

  The sphere crept closer. Ortega renewed his efforts with another war cry. But the sphere made it to the midway point, and got closer to him.

  "Fool," Ortega said in a gasp.

  "Murderer," I said, and shoved the sphere another foot closer to him.

  His jaw clenched harder, the muscles in his face bulging. "You'll destroy us all."

  "Starting with you." The sphere darted a little nearer.

  "You are a selfish, self-righteous madman."

  "You murder and enslave children," I said. I shoved the mordite sphere to within a foot of him. "You threaten the people I love." I shoved it closer still. "How does it feel, Ortega. Being too weak to protect yourself. How does it feel to know you are about to die?"

  In answer, a slow smile crept over his face. His shoulders moved a little, and I saw that one of his arms hung limply at his side, like an empty sleeve. A small bulge appeared just to one side of his stomach, like a gun being held in an overcoat pocket.

  I stared at it in shock. He'd pulled his real arm out of the flesh mask. He was holding a gun on me.

  "How does it feel?" Ortega asked, voice very quiet. "Why don't you tell me?"

  Chapter Thirty

  "You can't," I said. I shot a glance toward home plate, but the Archive apparently hadn't noticed anything amiss. My will wavered, and the mordite sphere bobbed back and forth. "They'll hear the shot. They'll kill you."

  "Quite possibly," he agreed. "As I said, I am prepared to accept that."

  His words chilled me, and the mordite sphere darted at my head. I caught it a couple of feet from me and held it, but just barely.

  "I told you, Dresden. There's only one way this can end. I would have preferred an honorable demise for you, but any death will do."

  I stared at the hidden gun.

  A dot of bright scarlet light appeared on Ortega's chest, and tracked slowly up.

  My expression must have changed, because Ortega glanced down too. The bright pinpoint of the laser sight settled over his heart and became still.

  Ortega's eyes widened and his expression twisted into fury.

  A lot of things happened at once.

  There was a hissing sound, a thump, and a big section of Ortega's chest dented in. Scarlet sprayed out behind him. An instant later, a booming sound much deeper than the crack of a rifle echoed around the stadium.

  Ortega let out a screech that went off the high end of the scale. Fire erupted from the hidden gun, burning through Ortega's flesh mask and shirt to reveal the muzzle of a small-caliber revolver clenched in an inhuman black hand. The bullet Ortega had taken had half twisted him, and he missed. I thought hanging around to let him try again was a bad idea, so I threw myself to one side and gave the mordite sphere another shove.

  Ortega dodged the mordite, and even wounded, he was fast. A bright red dot appeared on his thigh for half a second, and with another hiss-thump-boom, the unseen gunman hit him again. I heard the bones of Ortega's leg break.

  Susan threw my staff and rod to me and leapt for Ortega, grabbing his free arm and twisting as if to throw him. Instead, the vampire writhed weirdly, and she wound up tearing the flesh mask from him, peeling it away like a banana skin to reveal the slime-slick, flabby-bodied creature beneath it-the true Ortega. He still held the gun though, and he turned to shoot at me again.

  I screamed, "Ventas servitas!" at the top of my lungs, throwing my will at dirt of the pitcher's mound. It whirled up into a miniature cyclone of fine brown soil, forcing the vampire to turn its head and shield its eyes. The second shot went wild as well, and I scrambled to get my blasting rod.

  The flying dirt slowed her down, but Susan still went for Ortega's gun hand. It was a mistake. Even with only one leg to support him, Ortega screeched again, twisted, and flung Susan from the pitcher's mound into the third row of seats behind first base. She hit with bone-breaking force and dropped out of sight.

  Sudden screeches filled the air, and I looked up to see as many as a dozen of the Red Court, revealed in their true forms, coming into the stadium. Some climbed over the walls, some jumped in from the upper levels, and some came bursting out of private boxes in showers of exploding glass.

  I spun toward Ortega, lifting my blasting rod, rammed my will through it, and shouted, "Fuego!" A jet of flame as thick as my arm roared at him, but one of the incoming vampires hit him at the shoulder, dragging him out of the line of fire. The newcomer was set alight though, greasy skin going up like a bonfire, and it screamed hideously as it burned.

  I sensed movement behind me, and turned to find Kincaid dashing across the ground. He scooped up the Archive and raced for one of the dugouts. One of the Red Court vamps got in his way. Kincaid's arm blurred, a semiautomatic appearing in it, and without missing a step he put two shots neatly between the vampire's eyes. The vampire started to fall, and as he went by it, Kincaid pumped another half dozen shots into its belly, which erupted in a messy shower of scarlet, and left the vampire screaming and thrashing weakly on the ground.

  "Harry, look out!" Thomas screamed.

  I didn't look out. I figured on the worst and leapt forward. I heard a vampire hiss as it missed me, and it came rushing up behind me. I turned and unleashed another gout of fire from my blasting rod, but missed. The vampire closed on me, spraying venomous saliva into my face.

  I'd been hit with vampire venom before, and the stuff worked fast, particularly in large amounts. But I'd taken the potion to block it, and all this did was make me itch. I used the time while the vampire sprayed me to prepare another blast, and unleashed the strike with the rod pressed against the vamp's flabby body. It scorched a wound in the vampire's belly the size of my fist and blew a two-foot hole in the creature's back. The vampire went into weak spasms, and I kicked it off me, rising.

  Seven or eight vampires were within fifty feet of me, and coming fast. Thomas sprinted toward me, a knife gleaming in his hand, and hit one of the vamps from behind. He cut open the vampire's belly with a single slice, and the creature collapsed to the ground. "Harry, get out!"

  "No!" I shouted. "Get Susan out of here!"

  Thomas gritted his teeth, but changed course. He leapt up onto the first-base dugout and hopped neatly over the rail into the stands.

  No help there, and there wasn't time to look for options. I crouched and concentrated, chanting, "Defendre, defendre," in a steady litany. It was difficult to do without my shield bracelet to focus it, but I brought up all the defensive energy I could manage in a dome around me.

  The vampires hit it, slamming against it in mindless, shrieking rage. Any one of them could have flipped my car over lengthwise with only a little effort. Their blows against the shield could have crushed concrete within seconds, and I knew I was not going to be able to hold the defense in place for long. Once it went down, they were going to literally tear me limb from limb. I gave the shield my all, and felt them slowly breaking it down.

  Then there was a roar, and a flash of brilliant light. A jet of fire streaked over me and took one of the vampires full-on in the head. It burst into flame, screaming and waving its too-thin arms, and went down onto the field, thrashing like a half-crushed bug. My shield collapsed, overloaded, and the bracelet began burning my wrist. I crouched lower.

  Another jet of fire went by, incinerating the head of another vampire. All of them stopped, crouching, shrieking in confusion.

  Kincaid stood outside the dugout and dropped a smoking shotgun to the ground. He reached into a golf bag next to him, smooth and professional, and drew out another double-barreled shotgun. One of the vampires leapt at him, but Kincaid was too fast. He pulled the trigger, and the shotgun roare
d. A jet of flame streaked out and went through the vampire, taking this one in the neck, and continuing to the right-field fence, where it blew a hole the size of my face in the wall. There was a sound behind him, and Kincaid spun to shoot the other barrel at a vampire bounding down through the stands above the third-base dugout. He put the shot right down the vampire's throat, literally, and the creature went up in flames. Kincaid discarded that shotgun as well, and reached for the stock of another in his golf bag.

  The other vampires leapt at Kincaid when he turned his back.

  They got to deal with the Archive instead.

  The child stepped out from behind the golf bag, the tenebrous mordite sphere floating between her hands. She released the sphere and made a single gesture.

  The little cloud of darkness blurred toward the vampires and streaked into each in turn at the pace of a busy workman's hammer, bang-bang-bang. When the mordite sphere struck them, there was a flash of cold purple light, a swell of darkness, and then the sphere passed on through. It left ash and black bones raining down behind it. I could barely follow the mordite sphere's path, it moved so fast. One second the vampires were all there, and then they were simply gone. Black bones and grey ash littered the ground around me.

  Silence fell, and the only thing I could hear was my own ragged breathing and the roaring of my own pulse in my ears. I looked around wildly, but I didn't see Ortega anywhere. The two vampires who had been gutted writhed feebly on the ground. Kincaid drew the last shotgun from the golf bag, and with two more flaming blasts executed them both.

  The mordite sphere glided gently back to rest between the Archive's tiny hands, and she stood regarding me for a long and silent moment. There was nothing in her expression. Nothing in her eyes. Nothing. I felt the beginnings of a soulgaze and pulled my face away, fast.

  "Who broke the sanctity of the duel first, Kincaid?" asked the Archive.

  "Couldn't tell," Kincaid answered. He wasn't so much as breathing hard. "But Dresden was winning."

  The Archive stood there a moment more, and then said, "Thank you for letting me pet your kitty, Mister Dresden. And thank you for my name."