I let go of my Sight and went up the final flight of stairs, the ones that led from the junction room up to the street entrance—and found them stacked with Big Hoods. I blinked for a fraction of a second when I saw them. I’d practically forgotten the real-world thugs under the Corpsetaker’s control. All the power we’d been throwing around in the duel had been ghostly stuff. The Big Hoods had no practical way to be aware of it.
How odd must the past couple of minutes have been from their point of view? They’d have felt the wave of cold, seen candles burning suddenly low, and then heard lots of boards and candles and paints being smashed and clawed down, while the concrete and stone walls were raked by invisible talons and the candles were smacked up and down the halls and stairways.
There were at least a dozen of them on the stairs, and they had guns, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. For a second, I entertained notions of setting the Lecters on them, but I rejected the idea in a spasm of nausea. I’d seen what the killer spooks had done to the wolfwaffen. If I turned them loose, they’d deal with the Big Hoods the same way—and the Big Hoods, at the end of the day, were as much the Corpsetaker’s victims as her physical muscle—and once you turned loose a force that elemental, you almost had to expect collateral damage. I didn’t want any of it to splash onto Murphy and company.
“Okay,” I told the Lecters. “Go back downstairs and help Sir Stuart and his boys out against those lemurs. After that, defend Mort.” The Lecters’ only response was to vanish, presumably to the main chamber. Good. Mort had still been conscious the last time I’d seen him. He could tell them what to do if they needed any further direction.
Meanwhile, I’d do the only thing I could to take on the Big Hoods. I’d play superscout for Karrin’s team.
I vanished to outside the door to the stronghold and found several forms crouched there. Evening traffic was rumbling by on the bridge overhead, though the street running below it was deserted, and the space beneath the bridge was entirely shadowed. I ignored the darkness and saw Murphy next to the door, rummaging in a black nylon backpack. She was wearing her tactical outfit—black clothing and boots, and one of Charity Carpenter’s vests made of Kevlar and titanium. Over that was a tactical harness, and she had two handguns and her teeny assault rifle, a little Belgian gun called a P-90. It packed one hell of a punch for such a compact package—much like Murphy herself.
Next to her, against the wall, were three great, gaunt wolves—Will, Andi, and Marci, from the color of their fur. Next came Molly, in her rags and armor, sitting calmly against the wall with her legs crossed. Butters brought up the rear, dressed in dark colors, carrying his gym bag, and looking extremely nervous.
I went over to him and said, “Boo.”
The word emerged from the little radio in his pocket, and Butters jumped and said, “Meep.”
“Meep?” I said. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Butters muttered. “Keep your voice down. We’re sneaking up on someone here.”
“They already know you’re here,” I said. “There are about a dozen gunmen on the other side of that door.”
“Quiet!” Murphy hissed. “Dammit, Butters!”
Butters held up the radio. “Dresden says they’re right on the other side of the door.”
“Now he shows up,” Murphy muttered. “Not when we’re planning the entry. Give me the radio.”
Butters leaned across Molly and tossed the radio underhand. Molly just sat, smiling quietly. Murphy caught the radio. “So, what can you tell us—?” She hesitated, grimaced, and said, “I keep wanting to add the word
“Not really,” I said. “But we can do whatever makes you happy. Over.”
“No one likes a wiseass, Harry,” Murphy said.
“I always enjoy seeing you in gunmetal, Ms. Murphy,” I continued. “It brings out the blue in your eyes. Really makes them pop. Over.”
The wolves were all wagging their tails.
“Don’t make me bitch-slap you, Dresden,” Murphy growled. But her blue eyes were twinkling. “Tell me what you know.”
I gave her the brief on the interior of the hideout and what was waiting there.
“So you didn’t get this necromancer bitch,” she said.
“That’s one hell of a negative way to put it,” I replied, grinning. “Who’s a grumpy pants tonight? Over.”
Murphy rolled her eyes at Butters and said, in exactly the same tone, “So you didn’t get this necromancer bitch.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Pretty sure her ghost troops are done for, but I need to get back downstairs and see. Just wanted to give you the rundown. You remember how to get to the basement?”
“Down the stairs, through the hole in the wall, fifty feet down a hall that turns left, down more stairs.”
“Yeah, you got it,” I said.
“Uh,” Butters said. “Point of order? There’s a locked door and a bunch of guys with guns between here and there.”
Molly stood up. “They won’t have guns,” she said calmly.
Butters frowned. “Uh. Dresden just said . . .”
“I heard him,” Molly replied. “They’re going to empty their weapons at you the moment they see you in the doorway.”
“Okay. As plans go, I can’t be the only one who has a problem with that,” Butters said.
“Illusion?” I asked Molly.
She nodded.
Murphy frowned. “I don’t get it. Why that? Why not push them back with fire or make them all go to sleep or something?”
“Because this is the bad guys’ home,” I said. “They have a threshold.”
Molly nodded. “Any spell that goes through gets degraded down to nothing. I can’t push anything past the door. If I go in without being invited, I won’t have any magic to speak of. Without an invitation, Harry can’t cross the threshold at all.”
Murphy nodded. “So you’re going to give them a target at the door. Makes sense.” She frowned. “How were you going to get back in, Harry?”
I stood there for a second with my mouth open.
“Well, crap,” I muttered. “Over.”
Murphy snorted. “God, it really is you, isn’t it.” She turned back to her bag and took out a small black plastic hemisphere of what had to be explosives of some kind. She pressed it onto the door’s surface right next to its lock. “No problem. I’ll invite you in once the door’s down.”
“Doesn’t work like that,” I said. “Got to be an invitation from someone who lives there.”
Murphy scowled. “Nothing’s ever simple with you, Dresden.”
“Me? Since when have you been Polly Plastique?”
“Kincaid showed me how,” Murphy said without any emphasis. “And you know me, Dresden. I’ve always been a practical girl.” She pressed a little device with a couple of tines on it through a pair of matching holes in the bowl, turned a dial, and said, “Get clear. Setting for ten seconds. Whatever you’re going to do, Molly, have it ready.”
My apprentice nodded, and everyone but me and Murphy backed down the wall from the door.
I waited until they were done moving away before I said, “Murph, these gangers . . . They’re victims, too.”
She took a breath. Then she said, “Are they standing right by the door?”
“No. Five or six steps down.”
She nodded. “Then they won’t be in the direct line of the blast. This is a fairly small, shaped charge. With a little luck, no one will get hurt.”
“Luck,” I said.
She closed her eyes for a second. Then she said, “You can’t save everyone, Dresden. Right now, I’m concerned with the man these victims are torturing and holding prisoner. They’re still people. But they come right after him and everyone here on my worry list.”
I felt a little guilty for making an insinuation about Murphy’s priorities. Maybe it was too easy for me to talk. I
