Cold Days (The Dresden Files 14)

That got a reaction from everyone. The Redcap dropped into a crouch, hands up in a defensive posture. Several Sidhe took rapid steps back.

"Holy Mother of God," Murphy breathed.

Everyone's eyes were fixed on the grisly missile lying on the sidewalk, so their heads weren't directed toward the future, weren't able to see that the situation was about to change again.

"Hey," I said, in exactly the same tone. "Weren't there six of you guys a minute ago?"

Eyes swept back up in time to see the brush swaying where something had dragged the Sidhe from the opposite end of the line, on my right side, into the bushes, and more screams erupted, clawing at the rain-drizzled air.

"Sith," hissed one of the female Sidhe, her widened eyes darting everywhere, followed by the barrel of her composite-material pistol. "Cat Sith."

Her attention wasn't on me, and I took the opening. I slammed my will down through my numbed right arm, snarling, "Forzare!"

At the same instant, Thomas turned his gun on the Redcap and opened fire.

Invisible force hit the female Sidhe with more or less the same energy as a small car doing twenty-five or thirty. It should have been a lot more than that, and focused on a smaller area, but in my current condition it was everything I had thrown into the best single punch I could throw. She hadn't been able to counter the spell as it struck, and was flung back away from me. She bounced once in a bed of flowers, and then tumbled into the lake.

Meanwhile, the Redcap and the other Sidhe darted in every direction and blurred to near-invisibility behind their veils. Thomas might have hit one of them. It was hard to hear any sounds of impact or screams of pain over the thunder of the ridiculously large rounds used in his Desert Eagle. Other guns went off, too.

Adrenaline surged and I shoved myself to my feet, shouting, "Fall back!"

Something flashed by me, and then Cat Sith appeared from behind his own veil, leaping with all four paws extended, his claws unsheathed. He landed on what looked like empty air, and his legs moved in a blur of ripping, supernaturally powerful strikes. Blood fountained from the empty air, and Sith bounded away, vanishing again, as one of the Sidhe appeared in the space where Sith had been. The Sidhe's upper body was a mass of blood and shredded flesh, his expression shocked. He crumpled slowly to the ground, his eyes wide, as if trying to see through complete darkness. His hands clenched aimlessly a few times, and then he went still.

I turned to run and staggered woozily. Karrin saw it and darted in close to my side, preventing me from falling. She didn't see Ace, behind her, produce a small pistol and aim it at her back.

I shouted and lurched down on top of him. The gun went off once, and then I had his gun arm pinned to the ground beneath both of my forearms and the whole weight of my body. Ace cursed and swung a fist at me. I slammed my forehead into his nose a bunch of times. It took the fight out of him, and his head wobbled dazedly.

There was a high-pitched shriek and a tiny armored form covered in fishhooks hurtled into my face and neck. My injuries swelled into agony again as the damned little metal hooks pierced my skin. I got a quick glimpse of a miniature sword flashing toward my eye. I flinched in a big roll that took me off of Ace, flinging my head in a circle to counter the motion of the little sword with centrifugal force. It cut into my eyebrow and missed my eyeball, and a flood of scarlet blocked out half of my vision.

After that, things were fuzzy. I swatted at Captain Hook with my forearm, and on the third blow the barbed hooks tore free of my skin. A hand with the strength of a hydraulic crane gripped the back of my coat and dragged me to my feet, and then my brother was helping me move. I sensed Karrin on my blind side, shouting something to Thomas, and then the Desert Eagle started thundering on that side of my body.

A Sidhe exploded from the brush, visible and wounded, with Cat Sith in hot pursuit. The Sidhe leapt into the air, shimmered, and transformed into a hawk with golden brown feathers. Its wings beat twice, gaining maybe ten feet of altitude-until Cat Sith sailed through the air in a spectacular pounce, landed on the hawk's back, and they both plunged down into the waters of the lake.

After that, there was a lot of movement that hurt like hell, and I would have fallen a dozen times without my brother's support. Then I was being half thrown into the back of the Hummer, coming down on the custom leather seats hard, and too exhausted to do more than pull my feet in so that they wouldn't get slammed in the door. Both of the front doors opened and closed, and the engine, already running, roared to life, the acceleration pressing me back against the seat for a moment.

We drove for a few minutes before I was able to start sitting up. When I finally did, I found Thomas driving, with Karrin riding shotgun, holding Thomas's Desert Eagle in her hands and turned in the seat to steadily watch the road behind us.

My brother glanced up at me in the rearview mirror and winced. "You look awful."

I could see out of only one eye. I reached up to the other one with my hand and found blood smearing it shut and beginning to dry. I leaned to look in the rearview mirror. I had quite a bit of blood on that side of my head. The hooks had made some messy, if not large holes in my skin when they came out.

Karrin's eyes flicked toward me for just a second, and she might have gotten a little pale, but she didn't let any other emotion touch her face. "Looks like we're clear. No one back there."

Thomas grunted. "They can use magic, and Harry left a bunch of blood on the ground. If they want to follow us, they can."

"Dammit," Murphy breathed. "Castle?"

"And have Marcone's people cleaning the blood off him?" Thomas asked. "Fuck that."

"Amen," I agreed woozily.

"Where else, then?" Karrin asked. "Your apartment?"

Thomas shook his head emphatically. "Too many people will see us taking him in. They'll call the authorities. And Lara has eyes on the place. If I take a wounded wizard in there, she'd show up faster than Jimmy John's." He grunted in discomfort as the truck hit a bump in the road.

Karrin turned toward him and leaned over to examine him. "You're hit."

"Only one," Thomas said calmly. "If it was bad, I'd have bled out by now. Gut shot. Don't worry about it."

"Don't be an idiot," Karrin said. "You know how easy it is for these things to go septic? You've got to take care of this."

"Yeah, as soon as we stop somewhere."

"Molly's place," Karrin said. "It's under the aegis of Svartalfheim. No one's getting in there without a major assault."