living body. But . . .” He glanced up at me, inviting me to finish the thought.
I blinked twice, mind racing, and said, “Machines. We can work with machines.”
Sir Stuart nodded. “As long as they are in motion. And there is an enormous amount of energy and motion passing through a nonliving, mechanical engine.”
Without another word, he paced forward, through the back wall of the cab, sat on the passenger’s seat, and leaned to his left. I couldn’t see what he was doing, so I dropped to all fours, took a deep breath, and stuck my face through the roof of the cab. It tingled and hurt, but I had literally spent a lifetime learning to cope with pain. I pushed it to the back of my mind, gritted my teeth, and watched.
Sir Stuart had pushed his hand into the steering wheel of the truck. He pushed the other forward, leaning partly through the dashboard to do it, and waited patiently, watching the road ahead of us. It didn’t take long for the truck to hit a hummock in the ice coating the streets, and the truck bounced, shocks squealing. Just as it did, the shade’s eyes fluttered closed, and he gave a peculiar jerking twist of his arm.
The truck’s air bag exploded out of the steering wheel.
It struck the driver, smacking him back into the driver’s seat, and the man panicked. His arms tightened in surprise as he was hit, and he turned the steering wheel several degrees to one side. Then he broke the cardinal rule of driving on ice and stomped his foot on the brake.
The slight turn and the sudden braking motion put the car into a slide. The driver was trying to push the air bag out of his face, and he didn’t compensate and turn into the slide. The slide became a spin.
Sir Stuart watched in satisfaction, looked up at me, and said, “Not much different from spooking a horse, really.”
The gunmen in the back were screaming in confusion as the car spun through three ponderous circles, somehow putting forth the illusion of grace. They bounced off the snow piled high on one side of the street, and then slid into an intersection, up over a sidewalk, and through the front windows of a small grocery store. The sounds of shattering glass and brick, screaming metal crumpling through its zones, and cracking snow and ice were shockingly loud.
The steadily ringing bell of the store’s security alarm sounded like my old Mickey Mouse alarm clock, in comparison.
The gunmen sat there doing nothing for a moment, clearly stunned, but then they began cursing and scrambling to get gone before the cops showed up.
Sir Stuart vanished and reappeared across the street. I made the same effort of will I had while jumping to the truck, reaching back for that memory once more. Again I flew apart and came back together, reappearing standing next to Sir Stuart, facing a brick wall.
“Next time turn around on the way,” he advised.
I snorted and looked back at the gunmen. “What about them?”
“What about them?”
“Can’t we . . . I don’t know, possess them and make them bang their heads into a wall or something?”
Sir Stuart barked out a harsh laugh. “We cannot enter unless the mortal is willing. That is the purview of demons, not shades.”
I scowled. “So . . . what? We stand here and watch them walk?”
He shrugged. “I’m not willing to leave Mortimer alone for so much time. You may also wish to consider, Dresden, that dawn is not far away. It will destroy you if you are not within a sanctum such as Mortimer’s residence.”
I frowned, looking up at the sky. City light had wiped away all but the brightest stars, but the sky to the east held only a hint of blue, low on the horizon. Dawn was hard on spirits and shades and magical spells alike. Not because one is inherently good and one inherently evil, but because dawn is a time of new beginnings, and the light of a new day tends to sweep away the supernatural litter from the day before. For spirit beings to survive sunrise, they had to be in a protected place—a sanctum. My trusty lab assistant, Bob, had a sanctum; in his case, a specially enchanted skull designed to protect him from dawn and daylight and to provide a home. A plain old threshold wouldn’t get it done, although my old apartment had probably qualified as a sanctum, given how many layers and layers of defense I’d put up around it.
But I didn’t have either of those things anymore.
“Go back to Mort,” I said. “It was fun playing
Sir Stuart frowned at me and said, “The dawn is not something to take chances with, man. I strongly advise against your doing so.”
“So noted,” I said, “but the only real weapon I have against them is knowledge. Someone needs to get it, and I’m the only one who isn’t susceptible to lead poisoning. I’m the logical choice.”
“Assume you get the information and manage to survive the dawn,” the shade said. “Then what will you do?”
“I give it to Murphy, who uses it to rip the bad guys’ tongues out through their belly buttons.”
Sir Stuart blinked. “That . . . is certainly a vivid image.”
“It’s a gift,” I said modestly.
He shook his head and sighed. “I admire your spirit, man, but this is foolish.”
“Yeah. But I’ve gotta be me,” I said.
Sir Stuart put both hands behind his back and tapped a toe on the ground a few times. Then he gave me a resigned nod. “Good hunting,” he said. “If you have a problem with wraiths again, vanish. They won’t be able to keep up.”
“Thank you,” I said, and offered him my hand.
We traded grips, and he turned on a heel and started marching back toward Murphy’s place.
I watched him for a moment, then turned around and hurried after the snow-blurred forms of the gunmen, wondering exactly how much time I had left before the sunrise obliterated me.
Chapter Thirteen
The bad guys started hoofing it, and I followed them.
“Over here,” said one of them. He was youthfully scrawny, his skin bronze enough to look Native American, though his tangled red hair and pug nose argued otherwise. His eyes were an odd shade of brown, so light as to be nearly golden.
“What, Fitz?” one of the other gunmen said.
“Shut up,” Fitz said. “Give me your piece.”
The other handed over his gun, and Fitz promptly removed the magazine, ejected a round from the chamber, and pitched it into the snowbank, along with the weapon he was carrying.
“What the fuck?” said the disarmed gunman, and struck Fitz lightly in the chest.
Fitz slammed a fist into the other man’s face with speed and violence enough to impress even me—and I’ve seen some fast things in action. The other gunman went to his ass in the snow and sat there, hands lifted to cradle his freshly broken nose.
“No time for stupid,” Fitz said. “Everyone, give me your guns. Or do you want to explain to
The others didn’t look happy about it, but they passed over the weapons. Fitz unloaded them and threw them all into the snowbank. Then, at his direction, they started patting snow into the hole the weapons had made, concealing them.
“Stupid, man,” said one of the young men. “One of those wolves gets on our trail, we got nothing to defend ourselves.”
“One of the wolves follows us back, we’ll have the Rag Lady on our asses, and guns will be useless,” Fitz snapped. “Pack it in tighter. Smooth it.” Then he turned to the man he’d struck and piled some of the fresher snow into the man’s hands. “Put that on your nose. Stop it from bleeding. You don’t want to leave any blood behind if you
