Cold Days (The Dresden Files 14)

(And I'd thrown him forty feet out with magic, once I got dry. Because come on, he's my brother. It was the only thing to do.)

The Water Beetle came drifting slowly into the dock, and bumped it gently. You had to be a little bit nimble to get over the side of the boat and onto the floating dock, but fortunately for me you didn't need to be a gymnast. We'd limned the outer boards of the floating dock in phosphorescent paint, and in the darkness it was a gently glowing, clearly visible outline. I hit the dock and secured the first line on the ring we'd installed, then walked down the dock and caught the second when Thomas threw it to me. Once the boat had been made fast, Thomas lowered the gangplank (a pirate's life for me!), and Molly padded down it. Thomas came last, buckling on his gun belt, which was currently hung with his ridiculously huge Desert Eagle, just in case we were attacked by a rabid Cape buffalo, and a big old bolo-style machete.

Watching him put the weapons on, I started to feel a little bit naked. I didn't have any of my usual gear, and I'd survived a bunch of nasty situations because I'd had it. I rubbed my hands against the thighs of my jeans, scowling, and tried not to think of how the only gear I had now consisted of a messenger bag and a talking skull.

Thomas noticed. "Oh. Hey, you need a piece, man?"

"They're just so fashionable," I said.

He slipped back aboard and came out with a freaking relic. He tossed it to me.

I caught it, frowning. It was a repeating rifle, a Winchester, complete with the large rounded hoop handle on the lever action. It was seriously heavy, with an octagonal barrel, walnut wood fixtures, and shining brass housing. Elkhorn sights. The gun had a certain comforting mass to it, and I felt like even if it ran out of ammunition, I would still be holding a seriously formidable club. Plus, whatever it was chambered in, a gun that heavy would hardly kick at all. It'd be more like handling a shotgun that pushed against your shoulder, rather than trying to jar it off.

"What am I?" I complained. "John Wayne?"

"You aren't that cool," Thomas said. "It's quick, easy to instinct-shoot, and good to way out past the effective range of a handgun. Lever action, it'll be reliable, keep working right through the apocalypse."

Which was a point in its favor, the way my life had been lately. "Rounds?"

"Traditional, forty-five Colt," he said. "Knock a big man down in one hit and keep him there. Catch."

He tossed me an ammo belt heavy with metallic shells that were nearly as big around as my thumb. I slung the belt across my chest, made sure the chamber was empty, but with a shell ready to be levered into it, and balanced the heavy gun up on one shoulder, keeping one hand on the stock.

Molly sighed. "Boys."

Thomas hooked a thumb back at the boat. "I got a machine gun you can have, Molly."

"Barbarian," she said.

"I don't rate a machine gun?" I asked.

"No, you don't," Thomas said, "because you can't shoot. I just gave you that to make you feel better."

"You ready?" I asked them.

Molly had her little wands out, one in each hand. Thomas swaggered down the gangplank and looked bored. I nodded at them, turned, and took several quick steps off the dock and onto the stony soil of the island.

My link with the island was an extremely solid and powerful bond-but it existed only when I was actually standing on it. Now that I was, knowledge flooded into me, through me, a wave of absolute information that should have inundated my senses and disoriented me entirely.

But it didn't.

That was the beauty of intellectus, pure universal knowledge. While I stood on the island, I understood it in a way that was breathtakingly simple to experience and understand, but practically impossible to explain properly. Knowledge of the island just flowed into me. I could tell you how many trees stood upon it (17,429), how many had been taken down by the summer's storms (seventy-nine), and how many of the apple trees currently bore fruit (twenty-two). I didn't have to focus on an idea, or wrest the knowledge from the island. I just thought about it and knew, the way I knew what my fingers were touching, the way I knew what scents belonged to what foods.

We were alone on the island. That much I knew. But I could also sense a profound unease in the place. Molly's description had been perfectly accurate. Something was wrong; some kind of horrible strain was upon the island, a pressure so pervasive that the trees themselves had begun to lean away from the island's heart, stretching their branches toward the waters of the lake. Without my heightened awareness of the island, I never would have been able to sense the shift of inches across thousands and thousands of branches, but it was real and it was there.

"We're clear," I said. "There's no one else out here."

"You're sure?" Thomas asked.

"I'm certain," I said. "But I'll stay alert. If I sense anyone showing up, I'll fire off a shot."

"Wait," Thomas said. "Where are you going?"

"Up the hill," I told him. "Uh . . . up to the tower, I think."

"Alone? You sure that's smart?" he asked.

Molly was standing at the end of the dock. She crouched down, reaching a hand out toward the dirt of the island. She brushed her fingers against it and then jerked them away with a shudder. "Ugh. Yes. We don't want to step off the dock. Not tonight."

I could hear Thomas's frown in his voice. "Island's got its panties in a bunch, eh?"

"I think something bad would happen to us if we tried to go with him," Molly said, her voice troubled. "Whatever's happening . . . Demonreach only wants Harry to see what's going on."

"Why doesn't it just marry him?" Thomas muttered under his breath.

"It sort of did," I said.

"My brother the . . . geosexual?"

I snorted. "Look, think of it as a business partner. And be glad it's on our side."

"It isn't on our side," Molly said quietly. "But . . . I think it might be on yours."

"Same thing," I said warningly, out at the island in general. "You hear that? They're my guests. Be nice."

The thrumming tension in the island didn't change. Not in the least. It went on with a kind of glacial inevitability that didn't give two shakes for the desires of one ephemeral little mortal, wizard or not. I got the feeling that nice simply wasn't in Demonreach's vocabulary. I'd probably have to be satisfied with it refraining from violence.

"We'll talk," I said to the island, trying to make it a threat.

Demonreach didn't care.