world that I had seen before, it was instead a bridge made of frayed and straining ropes that looked like it might fall apart the instant it was used.
“Bob, you tricky little bastard,” I murmured admiringly. My former lab assistant had been lying his socks off earlier. Bob wasn’t planning on closing the Way behind us—because he had already rigged it to collapse as soon as we went through. His verbal explanation to me had been meant for Evil Bob’s ear holes. If Evil Bob thought we were dependent on Bob to shut the door behind us, then he would have no reason to hurry after us. And if Bob had told me the real deal out loud, Evil Bob could have simply rushed to the Way ahead of us and collapsed it himself, leaving us totally shut out.
Bob was really playing with fire. If he’d taken time to sabotage the Way before he came to back me up, it meant that he had left me to face the wolfwaffen and their boss and gambled that I’d be able to hold my own until he circled back to me. On this side of things, his ploy to keep Evil Bob’s attention meant that Evil Bob was free to focus entirely on tearing him apart, confident that he could always come charging at our backs as soon as he finished off my Bob.
More concrete shattered, somewhere back toward the beach. Bits of small debris, most of it no larger than my fist, came raining down among the trees a moment later.
“Okay, kids. Gather round and listen up.” I shook my head and addressed the huddled shades. “When we go through,” I said, “we’ll be right in the middle of them. Sir Stuart, I want you and your men to rush any lemurs or wraiths that are near us. Don’t hesitate; just hit them and get them out of my way.” I eyed the Lecter Specters. “The rest of you follow me. We’re going to destroy the physical representations for the wards.”
The little girl ghost looked up at me and scowled, as if I’d just told her she had to eat a hated vegetable.
“How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” I told her seriously. “We’re going to destroy the wards. Once that is done, you guys can join the rest of the shades in taking down the Corpsetaker and her crew. Okay? Everyone got it?”
Silent stares.
“Okay, good. I guess.” I turned to the Way and took a deep breath. “This worked out reasonably well last time, right? Right. So here we go.” I hesitated. Then I said, “Hang on one second. There’s one more thing I want everyone to do . . . .”
I went through the Way and felt it falling apart under the pressure of our collective spiritual weight. It was an odd sensation, falling against the back of my neck like ice-cold cobwebs. I didn’t let my fear push me into hurrying. I kept my steps steady until I walked onto the floor of the underground chamber where I’d seen Morty and the Corpsetaker the night before.
I had time for a quick-flash impression. The pit had been filled with wraiths once more, swirling around in a humanoid stew. Mort hung above the pit again, in considerably worse repair than the last time I’d seen him. His shirt was gone. His torso and arms were covered in welts and bruises. He had spots of raw skin that had been burned, maybe with electricity, if the jumper cables and car battery sitting on the ground nearby were any indication. Several of them were on his bald scalp. Someone among the Big Hood lunatics was familiar with the concept of electroshock therapy? That one sure was a stretch.
The Corpsetaker stood in the air above the pit, hissing words into Morty’s ear. Mort’s head was moving back and forth in a feeble negative. He was weeping, his body twitching and jerking in obvious agony. His lips were puffy and swollen, probably the result of getting hit in the mouth repeatedly. I don’t think he could focus his eyes—but he kept doggedly shaking his head.
Again, the hooded lemurs were gathered around, but instead of playing cards, this time they all stood in an outward-facing circle around the pit, as if guarding against an attack.
Pity for them that the back door from the Nevernever was
Now, I’m not arrogant enough to think that I was the first guy to lead a company of ghosts into an assault. Granted, I don’t think it happens every day or anything, but it’s a big world and it’s been spinning for a long time. I’m sure someone did it long before I was born, maybe pitting the ancestral spirits of one tribe against those of another.
I’m not the first person to assault an enemy fortress from the Nevernever side, either. It happened several times to either side in the war with the Red Court. It’s a fairly standard tactical maneuver. It requires a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to pull off, as Evil Bob had demonstrated with his Normandy defenses.
But I am dead certain—
The spooks all stood in the same space I did, which felt weird as hell—but I hadn’t wanted to take a chance with the rickety Way collapsing and leaving some of the squad behind. When I shouted, they all did, too—and I got a whole hell of a lot more than I bargained for.
The sound that came out of all those spirit throats, including mine, seemed to feed upon itself, wavelengths building and building like seas before a rising storm. Our voices weren’t additive, bunched so closely like that, but multiplicative. When we shouted, the sound went out in a wave that was almost tangible. It hit the backs of the gathered lemurs and bumped them forward half a step. It slammed into the walls of the underground chamber and brought dust and mold cascading down.
And Mort’s eyes snapped open in sudden, startled shock.
“Get ’em!” I howled.
The dead protectors of Chicago’s resident ectomancer let out a bloodcurdling chorus of battle cries and blurred toward the foe.
You hear a lot of stories of honor and chivalry from soldiers. Most people assume that such tales apply primarily to men who lived centuries ago. But let me tell you something: People are people, no matter which century they live in. Soldiers tend to be very practical and they don’t want to die. I think you’d find military men in any century you cared to name who would be perfectly okay with the notion of shooting the enemy in the back if it meant they were more likely to go home in one piece. Sir Stuart’s guardians were, for the most part, soldiers.
Spectral guns blazed. Immaterial knives, hatchets, and arrows flew. Ectoplasm splashed in buckets.
Half the lemurs got torn to shreds of flickering newsreel imagery before I was finished shouting the command to attack, much less before they could recover from the stunning force of our combined voices.
The Corpsetaker shrieked something in a voice that scraped across my head like the tines of a rusty rake, and I twisted aside on instinct. One of the Lecters took the hit, and a gaping hole the size of a bowling ball appeared in the center of his chest.
“With me!” I shouted. I vanished and reappeared at the bottom of the staircase that led down to the chamber. A streamer of urine yellow lightning erupted from the Corpsetaker’s outstretched hand, but I’d had my shield bracelet at the ready, and I deflected the strike into a small knot of stunned enemy lemurs. When it hit them, there was a hideous, explosive cascade of fire and havoc, and they were torn to shreds as if they’d been made of cheesecloth.
Holy crap.
Either one of those spells would have done the same to me if I’d been a quarter second slower. Dead or alive, Kemmler’s disciples did
The Lecter Specters appeared in a cloud around me, even as I sent a slug of pure force out of the end of my staff, forcing the Corpsetaker to employ her own magical counter, her wrists crossed in front of her body. The energy of my strike splashed off an unseen surface a few inches in front of her hands, and gobbets of pale green light splattered out from the impact.
“Dresden!” screamed Mort. He stared at me—or, more accurately, at the Lecters all around me—with an expression of something very like terror. “What have you done? What have you
“Come on!” I shouted, and vanished from the bottom of the stairs to the top, just as the Corpsetaker appeared halfway up the stairway and sent another torrent of ruinous energy down toward the position the Lecters and I had just vacated.
At the top of the stairs, the tunnel was like I remembered it—decorated in miniature shrines with very real
