"That's it," I growled. I shook the water from my eyes and clutched at the saddlehorn to keep my balance. "It's starting."
"What a mess," Butters said. He glanced behind us, at the broken brick and debris and wreckage of the museum's front doors. "Is she all right?"
"One way to find out," I growled. "Hah, mule!"
I laid my left hand on the rough, pebbled skin of my steed and willed it forward. The saddle lurched, and I clutched hard with my other hand to stay on.
The first few steps were the worst. The saddle sat at a sharp incline not too unlike that on a rearing horse. But as my mount gathered speed, the length of her body tilted forward, until her spine was almost parallel with the ground.
I didn't know this before, but as it turns out, Tyrannosaurs can really really haul ass. haul ass.
She might have been as long as a city bus, but Sue, despite her weight, moved with power and grace. As I'd called forth energy-charged ectoplasm to clothe the ancient bones, they had become covered in sheets of muscle and a hide of heavy, surprisingly supple quasi-flesh. She was dark grey, and there was a ripple pattern of black along her head, back, and flanks, almost like that of a jaguar. And once I had shaped the vessel, I had reached out and found the ancient spirit of the predator that had animated it in life.
Animals might not have the potential power of human remains. But the older the remains, the more magic can be drawn to fill them-and Sue was sixty-five million million years old. years old.
She had power. She had power in spades.
I had rigged the saddles to straddle her spine, just at the bend where neck joined body. I'd had to improvise to get them around her, using the long extension cords to tie them into place, and it had been ticklish as hell to get Butters on board without his losing the beat and destroying my control of the dinozombie. But Butters had pulled through.
Sue bellowed out a basso shriek that rattled nearby buildings and broke a few windows as she hurtled forward down the streets of the city. The blinding rain and savage storm had left the streets all but deserted, but even so, there were earthquakes less noticeable than a freaking Tyrannosaur. The streets literally shook under her feet. In fact, we left acres of strained, cracked asphalt behind us.
Here's something else I bet you didn't know about Tyrannosaurs: they don't corner well. The first time I tried to take a left, Sue swung wide, the enormous momentum of her body simply too much for even her muscles to lightly command. She swung up onto the sidewalk, crushed three parked cars under her feet, knocked over two light poles, kicked a compact car end over end to land on its roof, and broke every window on the first two floors of the building beside us as her tail lashed back and forth in an effort to counterbalance her body.
"Oh, my God!" Butters screamed. He kept hanging on to me with his arms, stabbing his legs out alternately to either side in order to operate the bass drum strapped on his back.
"They're probably insured!" I shouted. Thank God the streets weren't crowded that night. I made a note to be sure to have Sue slow down a little before we turned again, and kept the focus of my will on her, her attention on the task at hand.
Just before we turned onto Lake Shore Drive we hit a National Guard checkpoint. There were a couple of army Hummers there, their headlights casting useless cones of light into the night and storm, wooden roadblocks, and two luckless GIs in rain ponchos. As Sue bore down on them, the two men stared, their faces white. One of them simply dropped his assault rifle from numb hands.
"Get out of the way, fools!" I screamed.
The two men dove for cover. Sue's foot crashed down onto the hood of one Hummer, crushing it to the asphalt, and then we were past the checkpoint and pounding our way down the street toward Evanston.
"Heh," I said, looking back over my shoulder. "I'd love to hear how they explain that that to their CO." to their CO."
"You crushed crushed that truck!" Butters shouted. "You're like a human wrecking ball!" There was a thoughtful pause, and then he said, "Hey, are we going anywhere near my boss's place? Because he just won't shut up about his new Jaguar." that truck!" Butters shouted. "You're like a human wrecking ball!" There was a thoughtful pause, and then he said, "Hey, are we going anywhere near my boss's place? Because he just won't shut up about his new Jaguar."
"Maybe later. For now, look sharp," I told him. "She's a lot faster than I thought. We'll be there in just a minute." I ducked under the corner of a billboard as Sue went by it. "Whatever you do, keep that drumbeat going. Do you understand?"
"Right," Butters said. "If I stop, no more dinosaur."
"No," I called back. "If you stop, the dinosaur does whatever the hell it wants to."
Shouts rose up from a side street where a couple more guardsmen saw us go by. Sue turned her head toward them and let out another challenging bellow that broke more windows and startled the guardsmen so much that they fell down. I felt a surge of simple, enormous hunger run through the beast I'd called up, as though the ancient animus I'd summoned from the spirit world was beginning to remember the finer things in life. I touched Sue's neck again, sending a surge of my will down into her, jerking her head back around with a rumbling cough of protest.
My ears rang in the wake of that vast sound, and I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Butters was okay. His face was pale.
"If this thing gets loose," he said. "That would be bad."
"Which is why you shouldn't stop the drum," I told him. If Sue went wild, I could scarcely imagine the potential carnage she could inflict. I mean, good grief. Look at all the senseless victims in Jurassic Park II Jurassic Park II.
We hit Evanston, the first suburb of Chicago proper, which is mainly separated from Chicago by the presence of trees on the streets and a few more homes than high-rises. But given that it's only a block or two away from the heart of Second City, the addition of trees and homes made it feel more like a park nestled down at the feet of the city.
I guided Sue into a gentler left turn onto Sheridan, slowing down enough to be sure that we wouldn't swerve off the street. As Sue headed in, I was suddenly struck with the realization of how fragile those homes seemed. Good Lord, another driving accident like the one back in town would result in a home being crushed, and not just some dents and broken windows. We would be moving among precisely the people I was trying to protect-families, homes with children and parents and pets and grandparents. Decent folks, for the most part, who just wanted to make their homes peaceful and secure and go about their lives.
Of course, if I didn't hurry up and stop the Darkhallow, every house I was now passing would be filled with its dead.
I checked the sky during the next long flicker of lightning and didn't like what I saw. The clouds were spinning faster, more broadly, and unnatural colors and striations had appeared in their formation. And we were almost under its center.
I guided Sue down another side street, and that's when I felt the cloud of power gathering before me. It swirled and writhed against my wizard's senses, sending tingling shafts of heat and cold and other, less recognizable sensations running through me. I shuddered at the disorienting strength of it.
There was magic being wrought ahead. A lot of it.
"There!" Butters shouted, pointing. "Down that way, that whole block is the campus!"
Lightning flashed again as I turned Sue down the street, and it was over the dinosaur's broad head that I saw Wardens battling for their lives in the street ahead.
They were in trouble. Luccio had them moving in a tight group around a cluster of...Hell's bells, around a group of children in colorful Halloween costumes. Morgan was at the head of the group, Luccio brought up the rear, and Yoshimo, Kowalski, and Ramirez were on the flanks.
Even as I watched, I saw dozens of rotting forms lurch out of the shadows ahead of them and charge. More came running in behind them, letting out wails of mad anger.
Luccio whirled to deal with them. And dear God, I suddenly saw the difference between a strong but somewhat clumsy young wizard and a master of the magic of battle.
Fire lashed from her left hand-not a gout of flame like I could call up, but a slender needle needle of fire so bright that it hurt the eyes to see. She swept it in an arc at thigh level, and every one of the zombies coming behind went tumbling to the ground amidst crackling sounds of shattering muscle and singeing meat. Another wave surged up behind the first. Luccio caught one of them in a grip of invisible power and hurled the undead into the ones behind, sending more of them to the ground, but a pair of the zombies got through. of fire so bright that it hurt the eyes to see. She swept it in an arc at thigh level, and every one of the zombies coming behind went tumbling to the ground amidst crackling sounds of shattering muscle and singeing meat. Another wave surged up behind the first. Luccio caught one of them in a grip of invisible power and hurled the undead into the ones behind, sending more of them to the ground, but a pair of the zombies got through.
Luccio ducked the grasping arms of the first, caught the thing by a wrist, and sent it stumbling aside with a twist of her body that reminded me of one of Murphy's moves. The second zombie drove a hammer-heavy blow at her head, but that slender blade she wore at her side swept up out of its scabbard and took off its arm at the elbow. Another move brought a chiming surge of some power I could feel even from half a block away singing through the silver steel of her sword, and she flicked it lightly at the zombie's head. The blade touched, there was a flash of light, and the zombie abruptly fell limp to the ground, the magic that had animated it disrupted and gone.
In less than five seconds, Luccio had simply wiped out thirty undead, and it hadn't even been a contest.
I guess you don't get to be commander of the Wardens by collecting bottle caps, either.
My eyes flickered back to the front of the group, where Morgan met the shock of another wave. His style was rougher and more brutal than Luccio's, but he got similar results. A heavy stomp of his foot sent a ripple through the earth that knocked undead to the ground like bowling pins. A gesture of his hand and wrist and a cry of effort drew grasping waves of concrete and earth up to clamp down on the fallen zombies. He closed his fist, and the earth tightened, drawing back down into the ground, cutting and tearing its way through undead flesh and ripping the zombies to shreds. One of the creatures was still mobile, and with a look of contemptuous impatience on his face, Morgan drew the broadsword at his hip-the one used for executions of wizards guilty of breaking one of the Laws of Magic-paused a beat to get the timing right, and then swung, once, twice, snicker-snack, snicker-snack, and the zombie fell apart into a number of wriggling bits. and the zombie fell apart into a number of wriggling bits.
Several others got through here and there. Kowalski hammered one to the ground with unseen force, while beside him Yoshimo twisted a hand and the branches of a nearby tree reached down of their own accord, wrapped around the undead's throat, and hauled it up off the ground. Ramirez, a fighter's grin on his face, lashed out with some kind of bright green energy I had never seen before, and the zombie nearest him simply fell apart into what looked like grains of sand. As an afterthought, he drew his sidearm as a second creature charged him, and calmly put two rounds into its head from less than ten feet away. He must have been loaded up with hollow points or something, because the creature's head exploded like rotten fruit and the rest fell twitching to the ground.
None of the zombies got within ten feet of the terrified children.
More of them materialized out of the rain and the night, but Luccio and the Wardens kept moving steadily forward, burning and crushing and slicing and dicing their way across the street, furiously determined to get the children clear.
Which is probably why they didn't see the sucker punch coming.
Out of nowhere there was the roar of an engine, and an old Chrysler shot forward along the street. The driver pulled it into a sharp left turn as it got close to the Wardens and their charges, and the wet rain turned it into a broadside slide. The car swept forward like an enormous broom of iron and steel, and none of the Wardens were looking that way.
I cried out to Sue and hung on to the saddlehorn.
The car slid, sending out a bow wave of sheeting water from the wet street.
Ramirez's head snapped around toward the car and he shrieked a warning. But it was too late to get out of the way. The group was still under attack, and the mindless creations that assaulted them cared nothing for self-preservation. They would continue the fight, and even if the Wardens could have run from the car, they would never survive being mobbed by the undead in the chaos. In a flash of insight, I realized that these were the same tactics Grevane had used at my apartment-ruthlessly sacrificing minions in order to defeat the enemy.
Everyone else's head turned toward the oncoming car.
The muscles of Sue's legs tensed, and the saddle lurched.
One of the little girls screamed.
And then the Tyrannosaur came down from the leap that had carried her over the besieged Wardens. Sue landed with one clawed foot on the street, and the other came down squarely on the Caddy's hood, like a falcon descending upon a rabbit. There was an enormous sound of shrieking metal and breaking glass, and the saddle lurched wildly again.
I leaned over to see what had happened. The car's hood and engine block had been compacted into a two-foot-thick section of twisted metal. Even as I looked, Sue leaned over the car in a curiously birdlike movement, opened her enormous jaws, and ripped the roof off.
Inside was Li Xian, dressed in a black shirt and trousers. The ghoul's forehead had a nasty gash in it, and green-black blood had sheeted over one side of his face. His eyes were blank and a little vague, and I figured he'd clipped his head on the steering wheel or window when Sue brought his sliding car to an abrupt halt.
Li Xian shook his head and then started to scramble out of the car. Sue roared again, and the sound must have terrified Li Xian, because all of his limbs jerked in spasm and he fell on his face to the street. Sue leaned down again, her jaws gaping, but the ghoul rolled under the car to get away from them. So Sue kicked the car, and sent it tumbling end over end three or four times down the street.
The ghoul let out a scream and stared up at Sue in naked terror, covering his head with his arms.
Sue ate him. Snap. Gulp. No more ghoul.
"What's with that?" Butters screamed, his voice high and frightened. "Just covering his head with his arms? Didn't he see the lawyer in the movie?"
"Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them," I replied, turning Sue around. "Hang on!"
I rode the dinosaur into the stream of zombies following in the Wardens' wake and let her go to town. Sue chomped and stomped and smacked zombies fifty feet through the air with swinging blows of her snout. Her tail batted one particularly vile-looking zombie into the brick wall of the nearest building, and the zombie hit so hard and so squishily that it just stuck to the wall like a refrigerator magnet, arms and legs spread in a sprawl.
In a couple of minutes there wasn't much in the way of zombies to keep on demolishing, so I swung Sue around to pace after the Wardens. They had gotten clear of the street while I covered their retreat, and I saw Warden Luccio at the door of the nearest building, waving the last two children and Ramirez through the door while she watched out behind.
I guided Sue up to the building, and had her settle down to the ground. "Come on. But keep the drum going," I told Butters.
We slid out of our saddles and ran a couple of steps through the heavy rain to where Luccio stood at the door.
"Hey, there," I said. "Sorry I'm late."
Luccio stared at me for a moment and then at the dinosaur. Her eyes held a mixture of wonder, anger, gratitude, and revulsion. "I...Dio, Dresden. What have you done?" Dresden. What have you done?"
"It isn't a mortal," I said. "It's an animal. You know the laws are there to protect our fellow wizards and mortals."
"It's..." She looked like she might throw up. "It's necromancy, necromancy," she said.
"It's necessary," I said, and my voice sounded harsh. I hooked a thumb up. "You've seen the vortex forming?"
"Yes. What is it?"
"Dark power. Kemmler's people are going to call it down and devour it along with all the shades they could get to show up, and if they go through with it and turn one of themselves into a god..."
Luccio's eyes widened as she figured it out and caught on. "There will be a vacuum," she said. "It will draw in magic to replace it. It will draw in life. life."
"Right," I said. "And they're going to be over there, directly under the vortex," I said. "But if anyone tries to go in without a field of necromantic energy around them, the vortex will suck them dry before they get there. We need to get in there to stop them. That's why I borrowed Tiny, here. So don't give me any crap about the Laws of Magic, or at least wait for later, because there are too many lives at stake."
Anger flickered over her face and she opened her mouth. Then she frowned and closed it again. "Where did you get this information?"
"Kemmler's book," I said.
"You found it?"
I grimaced. "Briefly. Grevane jumped me and took it."
Butters looked back and forth between us, marching in place to make the polka suit's drumbeat.
Luccio blinked at him, took a deep breath, then said, "And who is this?"
"The drummer I needed to pull this off," I told her. "And a good friend. He saved my life tonight. Butters, this is Ms. Luccio. Captain, this is Butters."
Luccio gave Butters a courtly little bow, and he ducked his head sheepishly in reply.
"Where did you find those kids?" I asked.
She grimaced. "This building is an apartment complex. We got here just as the first of the undead arose. One of the parents was screaming about the children being at some sort of Halloween party in a building on campus. We were too late to save the women taking care of them, but at least we got the children out."
I chewed on my lip, studying the Warden. "You had evil wizards to gun down. And you stopped to get some kids out of the line of fire? I figured Wardens would have melted the bad guys first, tried to get the civilians clear later."
She lifted her chin and regarded me with an arched brow. "Is that how you think of us?"
"Yes," I said.
She frowned, and looked down at the hilt of her sword. "Dresden...the Wardens are not, as a rule, concerned with compassion or empathy. But they were children. children. I am not proud of my every act as a Warden. But I would sooner hurl myself to the demons than leave a child to die." I am not proud of my every act as a Warden. But I would sooner hurl myself to the demons than leave a child to die."
I frowned at her. "You would," I said thoughtfully. "Wouldn't you?"
She smiled a little, her iron-grey hair plastered to her head with the rain, and it made many wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. "Not all of us share Morgan's attitudes. But even he would never have turned aside from children in danger. He is an enormous ass at times. But a brilliant soldier. And beneath all his flaws, a decent man."
The door to the building slammed open and Morgan came through, sword gripped in both hands. "I told you," he said viciously to Luccio. "I told told you he would turn on us. This latest violation of the laws only proves what I've said all along...." Hisvoice trailed off slowly as he caught me from the corner of his eye and turned to see me standing there, and Sue crouched a couple of yards behind me. you he would turn on us. This latest violation of the laws only proves what I've said all along...." Hisvoice trailed off slowly as he caught me from the corner of his eye and turned to see me standing there, and Sue crouched a couple of yards behind me.
"Yeah," I told Luccio, and my voice was the only dry thing about me. "I see what you mean."
"Morgan, he found the book." She looked at me. "Tell him."
I relayed everything I had learned to Morgan. He glowered at me with enormous suspicion, but by the time I got to the part where thousands of people would die if we failed to stop the spell, his face became drawn with anxiety and then hardened with determination. He listened without interrupting.
"We need to get to the center of the spell," I finished. "Attack them just as they try to draw it down."
"It's impossible," Morgan said. "I got close enough to see them when we went in for the children. They're in a little patch of grass and picnic tables between the buildings. There are several hundred animated corpses in our way."
"As it happens," I said, jerking my head at Sue, "I brought an animated corpse countermeasure along with me tonight. I'll get us through."
Morgan stared at me for a second and then nodded, the idea clearly gathering momentum in his thoughts. "Yes, then. We try to hit them as they complete the spell. That gives them the most time to backstab one another, and if we disrupt a working that powerful, the backlash will probably kill them."
"Agreed," Luccio said. "How's Yoshimo?"
"Ramirez says her thigh is broken," Morgan growled. "She's not in danger but she won't be doing any more fighting tonight."