Ghost Story

I never got a chance to find out. In the space of an instant, Sir Stuart crossed the lawn to the final lemur, only his rush ended not in front of his foe, but six feet past it. The lemur jerked in the twisting, surprised reaction I had just engaged in a moment before.

Then its head fell from its shoulders, hood and all, dissolving into flickering memory embers as it went. Its headless body went mad, somehow letting out a scream, thrashing and kicking and falling to the ground, where grey-and-white fire poured from its truncated neck.

A shout of triumph went up from the home’s defenders as they continued their own fight, and the suddenly listless wraiths began to be torn apart in earnest, the tide of battle shifting rapidly. Sir Stuart lifted his ax above his head in response and turned to almost casually step up behind a wraith and take its head from its shoulders with the ax.

Then, in the street, about ten feet behind him, a figure, one every bit as solid and real as Sir Stuart himself, appeared out of nowhere, a form shrouded in a nebulous grey cloak with eyes of green-white fire. It lifted what looked like a clawed hand, and sent a bolt of lightning sizzling into Sir Stuart’s back.

Sir Stuart cried out in sudden agony, his body tightening helplessly, muscles convulsing just as they would on an electrocuted human being. The bolt of lightning seemed to attach itself to his spine, then burned a line down to his right hip bone, burning and searing and blowing bits of the tattered, flaming substance of his ghostly flesh into the air.

“No!” I screamed, as he fell. I started running toward him.

The marine rolled when he hit the ground and came up with that ridiculously huge old horse pistol in his hand. He leveled it at the Grey Ghost and fired, and once again his gun sent out a plume of ethereal color and a tiny, bright sun of destruction.

But the cloudy grey figure lifted its hand, and the bullet bounced off the air in front of it smoothly, catching a luckless, wounded wraith who had been attempting to retreat. The wraith immediately dissolved as the first one had—and Sir Stuart stared up at the Grey Ghost with his mouth open in shock.

Magic. The Grey Ghost was using magic. Even as I ran forward, I could feel the humming energy of it in the air, smell it on the cold breeze coming off the lake. I didn’t move at ghostly superspeed. I mostly just ran across the hard ground, hurdled the little fence, went right through a car parked on the street (ow, grrrrrr!), and threw my best haymaker of a right cross at a point I nominated to be the Grey Ghost’s chin.

My fist connected with what felt like solid flesh, a refreshingly familiar smack- thump of impact that immediately flashed red pain through my wrist to the elbow. The Grey Ghost reeled, and I didn’t let up. I put a couple of left hooks into its midsection, gave it one hell of an uppercut with my right hand, and drove a hard reverse punch into its neck.

I am not a skilled martial artist. But I know a little, picked up in training with Murphy and some of the other SI cops over the years at Dough Joe’s Hurricane Gym. Real fighting is only slightly about form and technique. Mostly it’s about timing, and about being willing to hurt somebody. If you know more or less when to close the distance and throw the punch, you’re most of the way there. But having the right mind-set is even more important. All the technique in the world isn’t going to help you if you come to the fight without the will to wreak havoc on the other guy.

The Grey Ghost staggered back, and I kicked one leg out from under it as it went. It fell. I started kicking it as hard as I could, screaming, driving my toe into its ribs and back, then switching to move in and stomp at its head with the heel of my heavy hiking boot. I did not let up, not even for a second. If this thing could pull out more magic, it would deal with me as easily as it had Sir Stuart. So I focused on trying to crush the enemy’s skull and kept kicking.

“Help me!” snarled the Grey Ghost.

There was a flash of blue light, and what felt like a wrecking ball made from foam-rubber mattresses smashed into my chest. It threw me back completely through the car again (Hell’s bells, ow!) and I landed on my back with stars in front of my eyes, unable to remember how to inhale.

A nearby wraith turned its empty-eyed head toward me, and a surge of fear sent me scrambling to my feet. I got up in time to see the Grey Ghost rising as well, and those burning green-white eyes met mine.

In the air behind the ghost floated . . . a skull.

A skull with cold blue flames flickering in its empty eye sockets.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whispered. “Bob?”

“You!” the ghost hissed. Its hands formed into arching clawlike shapes, and it hissed in rage—and in fear.

Click-clack, went the hammer of Sir Stuart’s gun.

The Grey Ghost let out a scream of frustration and simply flew apart into thousands of tiny wisps of mist, taking the floating skull along with it. The wisps swarmed together into a vortex like a miniature tornado, and streaked down the road and out of sight, leaving a hundred voices screaming a hundred curses in its wake.

I looked around. The lasts of the wraiths were dying or had fled. The house’s defenders, most of them wounded and bleeding pale ectoplasm and flickering memory, were still in their positions. Sir Stuart was holding one hand to his side, and with the other held the pistol pointed at the empty air where the Grey Ghost had been.

“Ahhhh,” he said, sagging, once it became clear that the fight was over. “Bloody hell. That’s going to leave a mark.”

I moved to his side. “Are you okay, man?”

“Aye, lad. Aye. What the hell were you trying to do? Get yourself killed?”

I glowered at him and said, “You’re welcome. Glad I could help.”

“You nearly got yourself destroyed,” he replied. “Another second and that creature would have blasted you to bits.”

“Another second and you’d have put a bullet in its head,” I said.

Sir Stuart idly pointed the gun at me and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a flash of sparks as flint struck steel . . . and nothing happened.

“You were bluffing?” I asked.

“Aye,” Sir Stuart said. “’Tis a muzzle-loading pistol, boy. You have to reload them like a proper weapon.” Idly, he reached out a hand toward the last remnants of a deceased wraith, and flickers of light and memory flowed across the intervening space and into his fingertips. When he had it all back, Sir Stuart sighed and shook his head, seeming to recover a measure of strength. “Very well, then, lad. Help me up.”

I did so. Sir Stuart’s midsection on the right side was considerably more translucent than before, and he moved as if it pained him.

“When will they be back?” I asked him.

“Tomorrow night, by my reckoning,” he said. “With more. Last night they had four lemurs along. Tonight it was six. And that seventh . . .” He shook his head and started reloading the pistol from the powder horn he carried on a baldric at his side. “I knew something stronger had to be gathering all those shades together, but I never considered a sorcerer.” He finished reloading the weapon, put the ramrod back into its holder, and said, “Pass me my ax, boy.”

I got it for him and handed it over. He slipped its handle through a ring on his belt and nodded. “Thank you.”

A thumping sound made me turn my eyes back toward the house.

A man, burly, wearing a dark, hooded sweater and old jeans, was holding a long-handled crowbar in big, blocky hands. He shoved one hand into the space between the door and the frame, and with a practiced, powerful motion, popped the door from its frame and sent it swinging open.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Sir Stuart fired. So did the house’s spectral defenders. A hurricane of ghostly power hurtled down upon the man—and passed harmlessly through him. Hell, the guy looked like he hadn’t noticed anything at all.

“A mortal,” Sir Stuart breathed. He took a step forward, let out a sound of pain, and clutched at his side. His teeth were clenched, his jaw muscles standing out sharply. “Dresden,” he gasped. “I cannot stop a mortal man. There is nothing I can do.”

The hooded intruder took the crowbar into his left hand and drew a stubby revolver from his sweater with his right.