Dead Beat (40 page)

Chapter Forty-one

A gunshot rang out. Morgan jerked at the hips, suddenly thrown off balance. He spun gracelessly and fell to the ground.

I stared at him in shock.

Morgan let out a snarl, fixed his eyes on me, and lifted his right hand, deep and terrifying power gathering in it.

"Morgan!" snapped a woman's voice. That voice rang with authority and confidence, with command. The speaker damned well
knew
that when she gave an order that it would be obeyed, and imbued the command with a power that had nothing to do with magic. "Stand down!"

Morgan froze for an instant and glanced over his shoulder.

Ramirez stood twenty feet away, his pistol smoking in his hand. The other arm was supporting the weight of the girl I had known as the Corpsetaker. The girl's face was as pale as death, and she could not possibly have been standing on her own, but though her features were exactly the same as when Corpsetaker had been in the body, she did not look like the same person. Her eyes were narrowed and hard, and her expression was filled with a stern, almost regal confidence.

"You heard me," the girl snapped. "Stand
down
!"

"Who are you?" Morgan asked.

"Morgan," Ramirez said. "Dresden was telling the truth. This is Captain Luccio."

"No," Morgan said, shaking his head, but his voice lacked his usual absolute conviction. "No, it's a lie."

"It's no lie," Ramirez said. "I soulgazed her. It's the captain."

Morgan's lips worked soundlessly, but he didn't release the strike he held ready in his hand.

"Morgan," the girl said, quietly this time. "It's all right. Stand down."

"You aren't the captain," Morgan mumbled. "You can't be. It's a trick."

The girl, Luccio, abruptly put on a lopsided smile. "Donald," she said. "Dear idiot. I'm the one who trained you. I am fairly certain that you do not know as much as I do about who I am." Luccio lifted her arm and showed Morgan the silver rapier she'd carried before. She took it in her hand and whipped it in a circle, eliciting a steady, humming power, as I'd felt before. "There. Could another so employ my own blade?"

Morgan stared at her for a moment. Then his hand dropped, suddenly limp, the power he'd held draining away.

My heart started beating again, and I leaned heavily against Sue's flank.

Ramirez holstered his gun and helped the new Luccio over to Morgan's side, then lowered her gently to the ground beside him.

"You're hurt," Morgan said. His own face had gone white with pain. "How bad is it?"

Luccio tried a small smile. "I'm afraid I aimed too well. The wound has done for me. It may take some time, that's all."

"My God," Morgan said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I saw Dresden shoot you and… while you were bleeding. Needed help."

Luccio raised a weak hand. "No time," she said gently.

Ramirez had bent over Morgan, meanwhile, and was examining the gunshot wound. The bullet had caught Morgan in the back of one leg, and it looked messy. "Dammit," Ramirez said. "It hit his knee. It's shattered." He placed his fingers lightly over Morgan's knee, and the older Warden abruptly twisted in pain, his face gone bloodless. "He can't walk."

Luccio nodded. "Then it's up to you." She looked over at me. "And you, Warden Dresden."

"What about Kowalski?" I said.

Ramirez paled. He glanced back at the apartment building and shook his head. "He was sitting on the floor when the specters rose out of it. He never had a chance."

"No time," Luccio said weakly. "You must go."

Butters came marching over to us, drum still beating, his face pale. "Okay," he said. "I'm ready. Let's do it."

"Not you, Butters," I said. "Sue just needs to be able to hear the drum. She'll hear it over there just as well as if you were on her back. I want you to stay here."

"But—"

"I can't afford to spare effort to protect you," I told him. "And I don't want to leave the wounded here alone. Just keep the drum beating."

"But I want to go with you. I want to help. I'm not afraid to"—he swallowed, face pale—"die fighting beside you."

"Look at it this way," I said. "If we blow it, you get to die anyhow."

Butters stared at me for a second, and then said, "Gee. Now I feel better."

"I believe that there's a cloud for every silver lining," I said. "Come on, Ramirez."

Ramirez's grin returned. "Everyone else who lets me ride on their dinosaur calls me Carlos."

I climbed back up into the first saddle, and Ramirez settled into the second.

"God be with you, Harry," Butters said, marching in place on the ground, his face worried.

Given whom I had chosen as my ally, I sort of doubted that if God went with me it would be to assist me. "I'll take whatever help I can get," I said aloud, and laid my hand on Sue's hide. She lurched up from her crouch, and I turned her toward the site of the vortex.

"You're hurt," Ramirez said. He kept his voice pitched very low.

"I can't feel it," I said. "I'll worry about the rest if there's a later. You've got great timing, by the way. Thank you."

"
De nada
," he said. "I was right behind Morgan. I heard you trying to talk to him about Luccio."

"You believed me?" I started Sue forward. It would take her several steps to pick up speed.

Rodriguez sighed. "I've heard a lot about you. Watched you at that Council meeting. My gut says you're okay. It was worth checking out."

"And you soulgazed her. That was some fast thinking. And good shooting."

"I'm brilliant as well as skilled," he said modestly. "It's a great burden, all of that on top of my angelic good looks. But I try to soldier on as best I can."

I let out a short, rough laugh. "I see. I hope I won't embarrass you, then."

"Did I not mention my nearly godlike sense of tolerance and forgiveness?" Sue gathered speed and I turned her down the street. "Hey," he said. "The bad guys are back that way."

"I know," I said. "But they're expecting an attack from that direction. I'm going to circle the block, try to come in behind them."

"Is there time?"

"My baby can move," I told him. Sue broke into her run, and the ride smoothed out.

Ramirez let out a whoop of pure enjoyment. "Now this is cool," he said. "I can't even imagine how complicated this must have been."

"Wasn't complicated," I told him.

"Oh. So summoning up dinosaurs is actually very easy, is it?"

I snorted. "Any other night, any other place, I don't think I could have done it. But it wasn't complicated, either. Lifting up an engine block isn't complicated. It's just a lot of work."

Ramirez was silent for a moment. "I'm impressed," he said.

I didn't know Ramirez very well, but my sense of him told me that those were words he was not in the habit of uttering. "When you do something stupid and die, it's pathetic," I said. "When you do something stupid and survive it, then you get to call it impressive or heroic."

He let out a rueful chuckle. "What we're doing right now…" he said. His voice softened and lost its edge of brash arrogance. "It's pathetic. Isn't it?"

"Probably," I said.

"On the other hand," he said, recovering. "If we survive it, we're heroes. Medals. Girls. Endorsements. Cars. Maybe they put us on a cereal box."

"Seems the least they could do," I said.

"So we've got two of them left to take down. Who do we hit first?"

"Grevane," I said. "If he's holding a bunch of zombies as guard dogs, he isn't going to have a lot of attention to spare for defensive spells, or for throwing anything else at us. We hit him fast, hopefully put him down before he can try anything. He handled a chain like he knew how to use it when I saw him fight Corpsetaker."

"Ugh," Ramirez said. "Nasty. Anyone who knows their way around a kusari is a tough customer."

"Yeah. So we shoot him."

"Damn right, we shoot him," Ramirez said. "This is why so many of the younger members of the Council like the way you do things, Dresden."

I blinked. "They do?"

"Oh, hell, yes," Ramirez said. "A lot of them were apprentices when you were first tried after Justin DuMorne's death, like me. A lot of them are still apprentices. But there are people who think a lot of what you've done."

"Like you?"

"I would have done a lot of those things," he said. "Only with a lot more style than you."

I snorted. "Second one we'll hit calls himself Cowl. He's good. I've never seen a wizard stronger than he is, and that includes Ebenezar McCoy."

"A lot of guys who hit hard have a glass jaw. Bet he's all offense."

I shook my head. "No. He's just as good at protecting himself. I nipped a car over on top of him and it barely slowed him down."

Ramirez frowned and nodded. "How do we take him down then?"

I shook my head. "Haven't thought of anything good. Hit him with everything and hope something gets through. And if that wasn't enough, he's got an apprentice with him, called Kumori, who seems personally loyal. She's probably strong enough to be on the Council herself."

"Damn," Ramirez said quietly. "She pretty?"

"She keeps her face covered," I said. "No idea."

"If she was pretty, I'd just turn on the Ramirez charm and have her eating out of my hand," he said. "But I can't take chances with that kind of power if I'm not sure she's pretty. Used recklessly, it could endanger innocent bystanders or land me in bed with an ugly girl."

"Can't have that," I said, turning Sue around another corner. I checked the vortex. The slender, spinning psuedo-tornado was more than halfway to the ground.

"All right then," Ramirez said. "Once we're past Grevane, I'll take on the apprentice. You go for Cowl."

I glanced back at him with an arched eyebrow.

"If we ignore Kumori she'll be free to take us both out. One of us has to counter her. You're stronger than me," he said, his tone matter-of-fact. "Don't get me wrong. I'm so damned good that I make it look easy, but I'm not stupid. You have the best shot at taking Cowl down. If I can drop the apprentice, I'll help. Sound like a plan?"

"Sounds like a plan," I said. "I just wish it sounded like a winning plan."

"You got a better idea?" Ramirez asked me cheerfully.

"No," I said, and I turned Sue down the street that would hopefully let us attack the necromancers from the rear.

"Well, then," he said, his smile ferocious. "Shut up and dance."

Chapter Forty-two

The campus of the college consisted of only a few buildings—a couple of dorms, a couple of buildings with classrooms, the Mitchell Museum, and an administrative office. The area between them was a nicely kept lawn, too small to look like a park, but larger than you'd want to mow every week. At the center of the area, directly in front of the museum, picnic tables had been overturned onto their sides around a large circle open to the skies above. I slowed Sue's steps for a moment, to try to get some kind of idea of what we had to contend with.

Standing in silent ranks around that circle were Grevane's style of undead—very solid, very physical, though there were relatively few of them in the half-rotted or desiccated condition of the corpses that had attacked my place. These undead looked like they might still have been saved by a snappy EMT. They all looked like Native American tribesmen, just as Corpsetaker's specters had, though the styles of clothing and weaponry were slightly different.

One other thing was different, too: These undead radiated a kind of hideous, ephemeral cold, and their skin almost seemed to glow with its own pale, horrible light. I could sense the raw power that lay within them, even from a hundred yards away. These undead were different from those that had attacked the Wardens, as different as an old pickup truck was from a modern battle tank. These zombies would not be so easily destroyed as those others, and were likely to be far stronger, far faster.

They stood in ranks around the inner circle, facing outward, but they ranked thicker between the circle and the last location of the Wardens than on the side nearest us. I had managed to outflank the thinking of whoever had those undead in position, and the thought cheered me somewhat. Spirits and specters and formless masses of luminescent light darted and flowed around the circle like strands of kelp and bits of algae caught in a whirlpool. They were all the same unpleasant colors as the lightning in the storm, and even as I watched their numbers visibly grew. Sue paced a restless step forward, and I felt a horrible sensation of cold on the skin of my face and forehead, as if the hovering vortex above was casting out some kind of perverted inversion of sunlight. I crouched a little lower on Sue's back and the feeling faded.

Lightning flashes from different directions cast a web of shadows over the whole place, trees and buildings collaborating with the storm to conceal much of the open circle continually clothed in shifting blocks and threads of darkness. I could see that there was
someone
within the circle of picnic tables, but not who, and I couldn't even be sure of how many.

"That," I said in a low voice, "is a lot of badass zombies."

"And ghosts," Ramirez said.

"And ghosts."

"Look at it this way," he said. "With that many of them, how can we miss?"

"Yeah," I said. "Cool."

I didn't want to do it. I wanted to go find myself a hole and crawl into it. But instead I put my hand on Sue's neck, drew her attention to the zombies, and willed her forward into battle.

Sue leapt forward and hit the nearest rank of zombies before any of them had the chance to notice her. She tore one apart with her vast jaws, smashed several others flat, crushed some with her flailing tail, and generally went to town. After her devastating initial charge, I heard a frantic man's voice shout from within the circle, and the zombies turned to attack.

The zombies whipped out bows and spears and clubs, or else tore at Sue with their bare hands. It wasn't pretty. Arrows streaked through the air with unnatural speed, and when they struck the Tyrannosaur's hide they sounded almost like gunshots. One zombie rammed a spear cleanly through the massive muscle of Sue's right thigh. A swinging club shattered several of her teeth, and even as I watched, an unarmed zombie leapt up onto her flank, got a hold of the heavy extension cord that held the saddles in place, then drove his fist into her flesh up to the elbow, and started raking out gobbets of tissue by the handful.

I brought up the sparkling blue cloud of my shield bracelet in time to intercept an arrow, and others smashed against it with the force of bullets even as I held it in place. Without being told, I felt Ramirez turn to our right, his own left hand extended, and a concave disk of green light expanded weblike from his outstretched fingertips, covering that flank from still more of them.

But as vicious and as strong and as swift and deadly as the zombies were, they couldn't hold a candle to Sue.

The injuries that might have terrified a living beast only infuriated her, and as that rage swelled, her own grey-and-black hide gained a silvery sheen of power. She roared so loudly that my chest and belly shook and my ears screamed with pain. She caught one zombie in her jaws and flung it away. It sailed up over the nearest five-story building and out of sight in the darkness and rain. When she stomped down with her foot, she shattered the concrete of a walkway and drove a footprint more than a foot deep into the earth around it. The zombie assault turned into one enormous exercise in suicidal tactics, for whenever one of the undead warriors managed to get through to harm Sue, the Tyrannosaur not only crushed the unlife out of them, but grew that much more angry and powerful and unstoppable.

It was like riding a carnivorous earthquake.

"Look!" Ramirez screamed. "Look there!"

I followed his nod and spotted Grevane in the circle in his trench coat and fedora. The necromancer was keeping a steady beat on a drum hung from his belt, and he gripped a staff of gnarled, twisted black wood with the other. He stared at us, his face twisted in hatred, and his eyes glittered with insane malice.

I willed Sue to head for the circle, but the Tyrannosaur's will was suddenly no longer pliable or easily led. The blood rage and fury of battle had overloaded what little mind she actually possessed, and now she was nothing but several rampaging tons of killing machine.

"Hurry!" Ramirez shouted.

"She's not listening!" I told him. I applied my will even more forcefully, but it was like one man struggling to hold back a bulldozer. I gritted my teeth, desperately trying to figure a way to get Sue where I wanted her, and hit on one idea. Instead of trying to stop her battle rage, I encouraged it, and then I pointed her at the zombies nearer to the circle.

Sue responded with bloodlust and glee, swerving to charge toward the zombies nearest the circle, crushing and rekilling them as she went.

"We have to jump!" I shouted.

"Wahoo!" Ramirez cried, his smile blazing white.

Sue pursued a dodging zombie to within ten feet of one of the fallen picnic tables, and I let out a scream of fear and excitement as I jumped. It was like falling from a little bit higher than a second-story window, but I managed to land feet-first and well enough to absorb most of the shock of impact, though the flash of pain told me that my knees and ankles were going to be sore for days.

I rose and lifted my shield at once, in time to intercept the deadly flash of Grevane's whirling chain.

"Fool," he snarled. "You should have joined me when you had the chance." His eyes flicked up and glittered. I followed the line of his gaze. The vortex wasn't more than ten feet from the ground.

"You can't draw it in if I'm standing right here," I shouted back, retreating and circling to get into the circle of picnic tables. When I did, that horrible, sickly sense of cold faded. This near, the vortex wasn't drawing the life off of me. It was the eye of the metaphysical hurricane. "One distraction and the backlash will kill you. It's
over
."

"It is
not
over!" he howled, and the chain whipped out again, striking my shield. "It is
mine!
My birthright! I was his favored child!"

I barely heard a footstep behind me, and whirled in time to lift my shield against another zombie with a spear. The weapon shattered against my upraised shield, but even as it did, I felt a burning impact as Grevane's chain wrapped around my wounded leg and jerked hard. My balance went out from under me, and I fell to the ground.

Grevane's zombie piled onto my back and started
biting
me. I felt hot, horrible pain on my trapezius muscles left of my neck, even through my cloak and spellworked duster. The zombie let out a vicious cry and let go, then went for the unprotected nape of my neck. I struggled to throw it off of me, to get away, but my battered body was weakened and it was incredibly strong.

"Die!" Grevane screamed, wild laughter in his unsteady voice. "Die, die, die—"

His howls broke off into a single quiet, choking noise, and the zombie on my back abruptly froze.

I struggled out from under it in time to see Grevane standing a few feet away, the chain discarded upon the ground, his hand held to his neck. Blood, black in the night, sprayed from between his fingers. His expression became enraged and he turned toward me, extending a hand to the zombie near me. The zombie turned, once more with purpose.

But then Grevane's expression became puzzled. His eyes rolled back in his head, and I saw the long, straight, smooth cut that had opened his neck from one side to the other, cutting all the way to his spine.

Ramirez stepped into my line of vision, his silver sword in hand and coated with blood. In his other hand he held his pistol. Without hesitation or hurry, he raised the gun and aimed at Grevane's head from five feet away.

Then he executed the stunned necromancer.

The body went loose, fell, and lay there in the grass and rain, one leg twitching.

Around us, the zombies had suddenly lost their vibrant animation, and most of them simply stood passively still, staring at nothing. Tyrannosaur Sue couldn't have cared less, and carried on with her killing spree.

Ramirez came to me and helped me to my feet. "Sorry it took me so long. I had to dodge some bad guys."

"You got here," I said, panting.

He nodded once, grimacing. "Couldn't shoot with you that close, in this light. Had to do it the old-fashioned way. You were one hell of a good distraction, though."

"You did fine," I said. I could feel hot wetness trickling down my back. "Thank God he was insane."

"How's that?" Ramirez asked.

"At the end there. You'd opened his throat but he still thought he could keep going. He tried to hang on to his control of the zombies. It was like he didn't think death counted when it came to him."

"And that's lucky why?"

"He refused to believe he was dying," I said. "No death curse."

Ramirez nodded. "Yeah, you're right. Lucky us."

Then a man's voice said, "I don't know if I'd say
that
, gentlemen."

I whirled as one of the passive zombies still standing nearby turned, lifting its spear—and then shimmered into the form of Cowl. He lifted one hand from the folds of his dark cloak, and there was no warning surge of gathering power when a wave of vicious force flickered out from his palm and took Ramirez full in the chest.

The young Warden hadn't been ready for it. The magical blow lifted him from his feet and threw him backward like a rag doll. He hit the ground twenty feet later, limbs already flopping limply, and lay there without moving.

"No!" I shouted, and I whirled on Cowl, Hellfire erupting from the runes of my staff. I lifted the staff, snarled, "
Forzare
!" and sent a lance of vicious energy at the dark figure.

Cowl swiftly crossed his hands at the wrists, forming an X shape with his arms, aligning defensive energy before him—but he hadn't been quite swift enough, or else he hadn't reckoned on how much energy he had to deal with. The lash of raw, scarlet force hammered him hard on the right side of his body, spinning him around and stealing his balance. He stumbled in a corkscrewing motion, and went to the ground.

I drew back the staff for another blow—but then someone pressed against my back, fingers tightened in my hair, and I felt the cold, deadly edge of a knife at my throat.

"Don't move," Kumori's quiet voice said. She was stretched out quite a bit to be pulling my hair and holding the knife, but she'd done it right. There was no way I could try to escape her without her opening an artery. I ground my teeth, my power still ready to lash out again, and debated doing exactly that. Kumori would probably kill me, but it might be worth it to finish Cowl.

I looked up at the writhing vortex. Its tip was now barely above the height of my own head.

Cowl recovered his feet by slow degrees, shaken more than hurt, and anger radiated from him in nearly palpable waves. "Idiot," he said, voice harsh. "You have lost. Can you not see? This game is over."

"Don't do this," I growled. "It isn't worth it. You're going to kill thousands of innocent people."

Cowl's hood tilted up toward the descending vortex, and he marched over the grass until he stood directly beneath it. "Keep him still," he snapped to Kumori.

"Yes, lord," Kumori replied. The steel at my throat never wavered.

Cowl's hand dipped into a pouch at his side, and came out holding Bob the skull. The lights in the skull's eye sockets burned a cold shade of blue and violet.

"There, spirit," Cowl said, holding the skull up to see the vortex. "Do you see it?"

"Of course," said the skull, his voice just as cold and empty. "It is precisely as the master described. Proceed." The eye lights swiveled and came to rest on me. "Ah. The White Council's black sheep. I recommend that you kill him immediately."

"No," Kumori said firmly. "His death curse could destroy the working."

"I know that," the skull replied, his voice contemptuous. "But if he lives when Cowl draws down the power he might disrupt it. Kill him now."

"Silence, spirit," Cowl said in a harsh voice. "You are not the master here. Challenge me again at your own peril."

The skull's eye sockets burned colder yet, but he said nothing.

I swallowed. Bob… wasn't Bob anymore. I'd known that he was bound and beholden to whoever possessed the skull he resided within, and that their personality would strongly influence his own—but I'd never really imagined what that might be like. Bob wasn't precisely a friend to me but… I was used to him. In a way he was family, the mouthy, annoying, irritable cousin who was always insulting you but who was definitely at Thanksgiving dinner. I had never considered the possibility that one day he might be something else.