Lasciel squared her shoulders and straightened. "You're right," she said. "It is is my choice. Listen to me." She leaned closer, her eyes intent. "Vittorio has been given power. That is how he can do this. He is possessed." my choice. Listen to me." She leaned closer, her eyes intent. "Vittorio has been given power. That is how he can do this. He is possessed."
I wished I could have raised my eyebrows. Possessed by what?
"An Outsider," Lasciel said. "I have felt such a presence before. This attack is drawn directly from the mind of the Outsider."
Gosh, that was interesting. Not relevant, but interesting.
"It is is relevant," Lasciel said, "because of the circumstances of your birth-because of relevant," Lasciel said, "because of the circumstances of your birth-because of why why you were born, Harry. Your mother found the strength to escape Lord Raith for a you were born, Harry. Your mother found the strength to escape Lord Raith for a reason reason."
What the hell was she talking about?
Thud-thump: 1:26. 1:26.
"There was a complex confluence of events, of energies, of circumstances that would have given a child born under them the potential to wield power over Outsiders."
Which didn't make any sense. Outsiders were all but immune to magic. It took power garnered only from centuries of study and practice, wielded by the most powerful wizards on the planet, even to slow them down.
"Strange, then, don't you think, that you defeated one when you were sixteen years old?"
What? Since when? The only serious victory I'd had over a spiritual entity when I was that young had been when my old master had sent an assassin demon after me. It hadn't turned out the way DuMorne had been hoping.
Lasciel leaned closer. "He Who Walks Behind is is an Outsider, Harry. A terrible creature, the most potent of the Walkers, a powerful knight among their ruling entities. But when he came for you, you overthrew him." an Outsider, Harry. A terrible creature, the most potent of the Walkers, a powerful knight among their ruling entities. But when he came for you, you overthrew him."
True. I had. It was all still a little blurry, but I remembered the end of the fight well enough. Lots and lots of kaboom, and then no more demon. And there was a burning building.
Thud-thump: 1:25. 1:25.
"Listen," Lasciel said, giving my head a little shake. "You have the potential to hold great power over them. You may be able to escape the power now held over you. If you are sure it is what you want, I can give you an opportunity to defy Malvora's sending. But you'll have to hurry. I don't know how long it will take to throw it off, and they are almost upon you."
After which, we were going to have a long talk about my mother and these Outsiders and their relation to the Black Court and exactly what the hell was going on.
Lasciel-Lash, rather-nodded once and said, "I will tell you all that I can, Harry."
Then she rose and stepped past me and toward the oncoming ghouls and Vitto Malvora. Her clothes made a slow, soft rustle as she stepped away from me, and Marcone's stopwatch went thud- thud- Tick, tick, tick...
For just a second, no more than a heartbeat or two, I remained impaled on that horrible pike of psychic anguish. Then an odd sensation fell over me, and I don't know precisely how to describe it, except to say that it felt like stepping from brutal, burning sunlight into a sudden, deep shadow. Then that horrible pain eased-not much, but enough to let me suddenly move my arms and my head, enough to know that I could act.
So I froze in place.
"Mine!" howled a voice, so distorted with lust and violence that it sounded like nothing human. "She is mine!"
Footsteps came closer, thump-drag, thump-drag thump-drag, thump-drag. I saw Vittorio's horribly burned leg go by in my peripheral vision. The sensation of shade began to fade at the edges, with the power of Vittorio's spell returning by slow degrees, like sunlight beginning to burn its way through a sheet of frosted glass.
"Little Raith bitch," Vittorio snarled. "What I do to you will make your father's blood run cold."
There was the sound of a heavy blow. I twitched my head a tiny bit to one side to get a look at what was around me.
A lot of really huge ghouls, that was what, apparently no less fierce for being battered and torn by the battle. Vittorio stood over Lara, his face pale, his leg horribly burned. He had his right hand held out, the hand that projects energy, fingers spread, and I could still feel the terrible power radiating from them. He was maintaining the pressure of the spell that held everyone down, then-and I could see, from the reaction of the ghouls around him, that they were feeling the bite of the spell, too. It seemed only to make them flinch and cower a little, rather than incapacitating them entirely. Maybe they were more used to feeling such things.
He kicked Lara in the ribs, twice more, heavy and ugly kicks that cracked bones. Lara let out little sounds of pain, and I think it was that, more than anything, that let me push the paralyzing awl of hostile magic completely away from my mind. I moved one hand, and that slowly. From the lack of outcry, I took it that no one noticed.
"We'll put a pin in this, for now, little Raith bitch." He whirled toward my brother. "I had intended to find you, you know, Thomas," Vittorio continued. "An outcast like you, I assumed, might be inclined to throw in his lot with someone with a more equitable vision for the future. But you're like some sad dog, too ugly to be allowed into the house, but faithfully defending the master that holds him in contempt. Your end isn't going to be pretty, either." He started to turn toward me, smiling. "But first, we start with the busybody wizard." He finished the turn, saying, "Burns hurt, Dresden. Have I mentioned how much I hate being exposed to fire?"
No sense in wasting perfectly good irony. I waited until he said fire fire to spin and pull the trigger on Marcone's shotgun. to spin and pull the trigger on Marcone's shotgun.
The weapon bucked hard-I hadn't had time to brace it properly-and slammed into my shoulder with bruising force only partly attenuated by my duster. The blast pretty well removed Vittorio's right hand at the middle of his forearm.
The way I hear it, amputation is bad for your concentration. It certainly wasn't good for Vittorio's, and you can't hold up the pressure on a spell like he'd been using without concentration. There was a sudden surge of particularly intense discomfort through the spell as Vittorio's physical trauma sent a flare of energy through it, like feedback on an enormous speaker. The ghouls howled in agonized reaction to the surge of discord, and it gave me a second or so to act.
I lashed out with both legs and got Vittorio in one of his knees-the one that wasn't all burned. A kick to the knees doesn't bother a vampire from the Red Court-their actual knees are all backward anyway. A Black Court vampire wouldn't have been anything but annoyed at having a hand blown off with a shotgun.
Vitto wasn't either.
When he wasn't drawing upon the power gained from his Hunger, he was pretty much human. And while I'm a wizard and all, I'm also a fairly big guy. Tall and skinny, sure, but when you get tall enough, even skinny guys are pretty darned heavy, and I've got strong legs. His knee bent in backward and he fell with a scream.
Before he could recover, I was up on one knee with the shotgun's stock against my shoulder and its long barrel against Vittorio's nose. "Back off!" I shouted. I was going for cool and strong, but my voice came out sounding angry and not overly burdened with sanity. "Tell them to back off! Now!"
Vittorio's face was twisted with surprise and pain. He blinked at the shotgun, then at me, and then at the stump of his right hand.
I couldn't hear or see the stopwatch anymore, but my head provided the sound effect. Tickticktickticktick. Tickticktickticktick. How much time was left? Less than sixty seconds? How much time was left? Less than sixty seconds?
Around me, the ghouls, recovered from their moment of pain, began to let out a steady, low growl, like the rumbling engines of several dozen motorcycles. I kept my eyes focused on their boss. If I took a moment to get a good look at all the bits of feral anatomy around me that might start ripping into my flesh at any second, I would probably cry. That would be unmanly.
"B-back!" Vittorio stammered. Then he said something in a language that sounded vaguely familiar, but that I didn't understand. He repeated it in a half scream, and the ghouls edged a couple of inches away from us.
Ticktickticktick.
"This is what happens," I told Vittorio. "I take my people. I go through the gate. I close it. You get to live." I leaned into the shotgun a little, making him flinch. "Or we can all go down together. I'm feeling ambivalent toward which way we go, so I'll leave it up to you."
He licked his lips. "Y-you're bluffing. Pull that trigger, and the ghouls will kill everyone. You won't l-let them die for the pleasure of killing me."
"It's been a long day. I'm tired. Not thinking real clearly. And the way I see it, you got me pretty much dead to rights here, Vitto." I narrowed my eyes and spoke very quietly. "Do you really think I'll let myself go down without taking you with me?"
He stared at me for a long moment, and licked his lips.
"G-go," he said, then. "Go."
"Thomas!" I shouted. "Wakey, wakey! Now is not the time to lie down and die."
I heard my brother groan. "Harry?"
"Lara, can you hear me?"
"Quite," she said. Thomas's older sister was already on her feet, from the sound, and her voice was coming from close behind me.
"Thomas, get Marcone and get him through the gate." I gave Vittorio a fierce glare. "Don't move. Don't even twitch."
Vittorio, his face in agony, held up his left hand, fingers spread. He was bleeding, a lot, and started shivering. There wasn't any fight left in his face. He'd hit me with his best shot, and I'd apparently shrugged it off. I think it had scared the hell out of him. Losing his hand hadn't helped his morale any, either. "Don't shoot," he said. "Just...d-don't shoot." He shot a glance around at the ghouls and said, "L-let them go."
I heard Marcone let out a groan, and Thomas grunted with effort. "Okay," Thomas said from behind me. "I'm through."
I kept the gun on Vittorio and stood up, trying not to let the barrel waver. How many seconds did I have left? Thirty? Twenty? I've heard about people who can keep track of wild situations like this while keeping a steady count, but apparently I wasn't one of them. I took a step back, and felt Lara's back pressing against mine. From the corner of my eye, I could see that the ghouls had spread out all around us. If she hadn't been there, one of them could have blindsided me without any trouble the second I was a couple of feet away from Vittorio. Gulp.
I took a step back, forcing myself to move smoothly, steadily, when my instincts were screaming at me to run.
"Three more steps," Lara told me in a whisper. "A little more to your left."
I corrected the direction of my next step, trusting her word. One step more, and I could hear winter wind sighing behind me. Silver moonlight shone on the barrel of the shotgun.
And then I found out whether or not Cowl was actually there.
There was a surge of power, an abrasive scream against my arcane senses, and the offspring of a comet and a pterodactyl came hurtling out of the darkness at the far end of the cavern. My eyes had adjusted enough to see a dim oval of reddish light that outlined a heavily cloaked figure-Cowl, standing in his own gate.
"Master!" Vittorio cried, his voice slurred.
"Look out!" I screamed, and thrashed behind me with my arm as I ducked and lurched to one side, trying to sweep Lara out of the flying thing's path as I did. It missed us by inches, but we got out of the way.
Cowl's leathery, rasping voice hissed something in a slithering tongue, and a second surge of power lashed invisibly across the cavern-not at us, but at my gate gate.
And as quickly as that, my gate began to close, the opening sewing itself shut like a Ziploc bag-starting with the end closest to me.
Tickticktickticktick.
The gate was closing far more quickly than I could have gotten up and moved. I wasn't getting out. But Lara might.
"Lara!" I shouted. "Go!"
Something with the strength of a freight train and the speed of an Indy car seized my duster and hauled on it so hard that it wrenched my neck and nearly dislocated my arms.
"Dresden!" called Marcone's voice from the closing gate. "Nineteen!"
I hurtled through the air. Looking wildly around showed me that Lara had seized me and leaped for the far end of the collapsing gate.
"Eighteen!" came Marcone's shout.
Lara and I flew through empty and unremarkable air.
The gate had closed.
We missed it.
Chapter Forty-Two
The only light was the dim scarlet glow from Cowl's gate, and everything had become blood and shadows. The eyes of dozens of ghouls burned like nearly dead coals as they turned toward us, reflecting that lurid luminescence.
"Lara," I hissed. "This cavern goes up in seventeen seconds, and there are ghouls in the tunnel out."
"Empty night," Lara swore. Her voice was thready with pain and fear. "What can I do?"
Good question. There had to be...Wait. There might be a way to survive this. I was too tired to work any magic, but...
"You can trust me," I said. "That's what you can do."
She turned her pale, beautiful, gore-smattered face to me. "Done."
"Get us to the tunnel's mouth."
"But if there are ghouls there already-"
"Hey!" I said. "Tick, tick!"
Before I'd gotten to the end of the first tick, tick, Lara had seized me again and hauled us across the floor to the mouth of the tunnel. Behind me, Cowl was shouting something, and so was Vittorio, and the ghouls set up a howl and were running after us. Only one of the ghouls was close enough to get in the way, but Lara's wicked little wavy-bladed sword ripped straight across its eyes and left the monster momentarily stunned with pain. Lara had seized me again and hauled us across the floor to the mouth of the tunnel. Behind me, Cowl was shouting something, and so was Vittorio, and the ghouls set up a howl and were running after us. Only one of the ghouls was close enough to get in the way, but Lara's wicked little wavy-bladed sword ripped straight across its eyes and left the monster momentarily stunned with pain.
Lara dumped me at the mouth of the tunnel, and I took a couple of steps back in, checking the smooth tunnel walls as I shook out my shield bracelet. That demonic flying thing of Cowl's banked around for another pass.
"What now?" Lara demanded. The ghouls were coming. They were nowhere near as fast as Lara had been, but they weren't far away.
I took a deep breath. "Now," I said. "Kiss me. I know it seems weir-"
Lara let out a single, ravenous snarl and was abruptly pressed up against me, arms sliding around my waist with sinuous, serpentine power. Her mouth met mine and...
...ohmygod.
Lara had once boasted that she could do more to me in an hour than a mortal woman could in a week. But it ain't boasting if it's true. The first, searing second of that kiss was indescribably intense. It wasn't simply the texture of her lips. It was how she moved them, and the simple, naked hunger hunger beneath every quiver of her mouth. I knew she was a monster, and I knew she would enslave and kill me if she could, but she beneath every quiver of her mouth. I knew she was a monster, and I knew she would enslave and kill me if she could, but she wanted wanted me with a passion so pure and focused that it was intoxicating. That succubus kiss was a lie, but it made me feel, within that single moment, strong and masculine and powerful. It made me feel that I was attractive enough, strong enough, me with a passion so pure and focused that it was intoxicating. That succubus kiss was a lie, but it made me feel, within that single moment, strong and masculine and powerful. It made me feel that I was attractive enough, strong enough, worthy worthy enough to deserve that kind of desire. enough to deserve that kind of desire.
And it made me feel lust, a primal need for sex so raw, so scorching, that I felt sure that if I didn't find expression for that need-here and now now-that I would surely go insane. The fires that surged up in me weren't limited to my loins. It was simply too hot, too intense for that, and my whole body felt suddenly aflame with need. Every inch of me was suddenly supernaturally aware of Lara, in all her blood-soaked sensuality, in all her wanton desirability, pressed against me, the mostly transparent white silk of her gown doing less to conceal her nudity than the black blood of her foes.
Now, my body screamed at me. my body screamed at me. Take her. Now. Fuck the stopwatch and the bombs and the monsters. Forget everything and feel her and nothing else. Take her. Now. Fuck the stopwatch and the bombs and the monsters. Forget everything and feel her and nothing else.
It was a close thing, but I held back enough to keep from forgetting the danger. The lust nearly killed me-but lust is an emotion, too.
I embraced that lust, allowed it to enfold me, and returned the kiss with nearly total abandon. I slid my right hand around the succubus's waist, and down, pulling her hips hard against me, feeling the amazing strength and elasticity and rondure of her body on mine.
With my left hand, I extended the shield bracelet toward the cavern, the bombs, the onrushing ghouls-and I fed that tidal force of lust through it, building up the energy I would need, some part of me shaping and directing it even as the rest of me concentrated on the mind-consuming pleasure of that single kiss.
The clocks stopped ticking.
The explosives went off.
Cleverness, determination, treachery, ruthlessness, courage, and skill took a leave of absence, while physics took over the show.