Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)

by Jim Butcher

“Sir Knight,” Kringle said, inclining his head slightly to me, “what game amuses you this fine, stormy evening?” I started loading shells from the ammo belt into the Winchester, until the rifle was full again. Then I levered a shell into the pipe, slipped a replacement into the tube, shut the breach with a snap, and felt a wolfish smile spreading my mouth. “Tonight?” I asked. I raised my voice to address them all. “Tonight we hunt Outsiders!” The bloodthirsty screech that went up from the Wild Hunt was deafening.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing at the sky. “A temporal pressure wave,” the Erlking said, his flaming eyes narrowed. “A wha’?” I asked. The Erlking looked at Kringle. “This is your area of expertise. Explain it.” “Someone is bending time against us,” Kringle said.

“Who could have done this?” I asked. “You have encountered this before, wizard,” Kringle said. “Can you not guess?”

I can't remember at all

“Harry!” Karrin snapped. I turned my eyes front and felt them widen. We had arrived at Demonreach—and the island was under attack.

I stared in shock. The recent rain meant that the island wasn’t likely to burst into flame anytime soon, but I had utterly underestimated the scope of tonight’s conflict, ye gods and little fishes. This wasn’t just a ritual spell. This was an all-out amphibious assault, my very own miniature war.

“We start this by sinking a barge,” I decided. Then I blinked and looked at the Erlking. “Can we sink a barge?” The shadow-masked Erlking tilted his head slightly to one side, his burning eyes narrowed. “Wizard, please.”

apart from Mother Winter, could touch. This wasn’t actually happening to me. It wasn’t real. The pain wasn’t real. The tree wasn’t real. The ice wasn’t real.

This was not how my life would end. This was not reality. I was Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council, Knight of Winter. I had faced demons and monsters, fought off fallen angels and werewolves, slugged it out with sorcerers and cults and freakish things that had no names. I had fought upon land and sea, in the skies above my city, in ancient ruins and in realms of the spirit most of humanity did not know existed. I bore scars that I’d earned in dozens of battles, made enemies out of nightmares, and laid low a dark empire for the sake of one little girl. And I would be damned if I was going to roll over for some punk Outsider and his psychic haymaker.

Sharkface had chosen a battle of the mind. So be it. My head, my rules. I lifted my right arm to the frozen sky and shouted, wordless and furious, and a bolt of scarlet lightning flashed from the seething skies. It smashed into my hand and then down into the earth. Frozen dirt sprayed everywhere, and when it had cleared, I stood holding an oaken quarterstaff carved with runes and sigils, as tall as my temple and as big around as my joined thumb and forefinger.

“Thrice I command thee!” I shouted, focusing my will, sending it coursing into my voice, which boomed out over the landscape. “Thrice I bid thee! By my name I command thee: Tell me who you are!” And then an enormous swirling form emerged from the clouds overhead—a face, but only in the broadest, roughest terms, like something a child would make from clay. Lightning burned far back in its eyes, and it spoke in the voice of gale winds. I AM GATEBREAKER, HARBINGER! I AM FEARGIVER, HOPESLAYER! I AM HE-WHO-WALKS-BEFORE! For a second, I just stood there, staring up at the sky, shocked. Hell’s bells. It worked.

Let lofty mountains fear the slow, constant assault of the waters. Let the valleys shudder at the pitiless advance of ice. Let continents drown beneath the dark and rising tide. But that grain of sand? It isn’t impressed. Let the tide roll in. The sand will still be there after it rolls out again. So I looked up at that face and I laughed. I laughed scorn and defiance at that vast, swirling power, and it didn’t just feel good. It felt right.

“Well-done, starborn!” “Uh,” I said. “Thank you?”

I shuddered at the utter absence in that voice. I wasn’t talking to Sith anymore. I was speaking with the adversary.

leapt down onto the back of the bike in a single smooth motion, which I felt was cool, and landed with way too much of my weight on my genitals, which I felt was not. “Go, go, go,” I gasped in a pained falsetto, and Murphy peeled away from the doomed ships.

Suddenly the Erlking wasn’t mounted on a horse, but on a freaking killer whale, its deadly-looking black-and-white coloration stark in the night. Behind him, the other steeds shifted, too, their riders screeching with excitement. The hounds changed as well. Their canine bodies compressed into the long, lean, powerful shape of large sharks.

“Whatever happened to Ia, Ia, Cthulu fhtagn?” I muttered. “No one has a sense of style anymore.”

For a second, I almost did it. There was so much on the line. But you can’t go around changing your definition of right and wrong (or smart and stupid) just because doing the wrong thing happens to be really convenient. Sometimes it isn’t easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn’t turn wrong into right or stupid into smart. I’d kinda gotten an object lesson in that. So I left that power alone.

A furious shriek ripped the air. Sharkface. I’d just pissed the Walker off big-time. It probably says something about my maturity level that it made me grin from ear to ear.

I had been warned not to use the power of the Well. But . . . What else did I have? I might have done something extra stupid at that moment if the air hadn’t suddenly filled with a massive sound. Two loud, horrible crunching sounds, followed by a single, short, sharp clap of thunder. It repeated the sequence, again and again. Crunch, crunch, crack. Crunch, crunch, crack. No, wait. I knew this song. It was more like: stomp, stomp, clap. Stomp, stomp, clap. What else did I have? I had friends.

“Singin’ we will, we will rock you!” The Halloween sky exploded with strobes of scarlet and blue light, laser streaks of white and viridian flickering everywhere, forming random, flickering impressions of objects and faces, filling the sky with light that pulsed in time with the music. And as it did, the Water Beetle, the entire goddamned ship, exploded out from under a veil that had rendered it and the water it had displaced and every noise it had made undetectable not only to me, but to a small army of otherworldly monstrosities and their big, bad Walker general, too.

Her face was contorted in a concentration so deep, it was practically dementia, her lips moving frantically, and she held a wand in either hand, moving them in entirely disconnected movements, as if directing two different orchestras through two different speed-metal medleys.

The reduced energy the ritual had been able to use, the framework that the ley line would have turned into a deadly construction, vanished, released into the night sky to be shaken to pieces by the music. We will, we will, rock you.

“Hey, Sharkface!” I shouted, stepping forward, gathering Winter and soulfire as I went. The furious Walker whirled back to me just in time to have the heavy, octagonal barrel of the Winchester slam through the ridge of bone that he had instead of front teeth, and drive all the way to the back of his mouth. “Get rocked,” I said, and pulled the trigger. Along with the .45-caliber bullet, I sent a column of pure energy and will surging down the barrel and into the Walker’s skull. His head exploded, literally exploded, into streamers and gobbets of black ichor. His cloak of rags went mad, throwing the headless body into the air and sending it thrashing through the shallow water like a half-squashed bug. Dark vapor began issuing from the frantically twitching body—then suddenly gathered into a single cloud, all in a rush, and shot away, emitting a furious and agonized and terrorized scream as it went, alien but unmistakable.

Whoever was up at the top of the hill had things ready to stop me from getting there. It didn’t work out well for them.

The hilltop had been closed in a circle of starlight.

“It had to be beautiful. It had to be made from beauty. There is too much ugly inside for it to be made of anything else.”

“You’re tired,” Molly said. “I’m fine.” “Your hands are shaking.” Were they? They were. “They are fine also.”

“Lily,” I said wearily. “Listen to me. We’ve both been set up by Maeve.” White fire stared at me. “The adversary,” I said. “It’s in her. It’s been in her for a long time. Think. It makes the things it takes act against their natures. And you know what it’s done for Maeve?” I leaned forward, holding my weary hands palms up. “It’s let her lie. She can lie her ass off and never blink an eye. Think. How much of your trust in her, of your awareness of what’s going on in the world is based on knowing that she can’t speak an untruth?”

Maeve was laughing again in the background, an Arkham Asylum kind of laugh that echoed across the bare, burned ground.

“Remember when Lily opened the door to Arctis Tor for us, back when?” “Sure.” “When we got inside, the Leanansidhe was popsicled in Mab’s garden,” I said. “Because something had invaded her and influenced her actions. Mab was in the middle of some kind of exorcism based on the model of an ice age.” “And?” “And what if this invader got into the water before Mab caught it?” I asked. “What if it got into Maeve?”

Bad things kept happening to me. It was high fucking time I started happening to them.

I bared my teeth and said, “Maeve . . .” “This is perfect,” she said. “In one night I’m going to unleash the Sleepers, slay a starborn, put an end to this troublesome mortal city, and begin a war between Summer and Winter. By the time the real assault on the Gates begins, Winter and Summer will be hunting one another in the night, and be so busy gouging out one another’s eyes that they’ll never see what is coming—all thanks to me. And you, of course. I couldn’t have done this at all without you.”

“Mud. You covered yourselves in mud.” “Everywhere,” she confirmed. “Nostrils, eyes, ears, everywhere the light could touch. We figured out that if you completely covered something, it could make it through that wall. God, I’m going to shower for a week.” Oh, that was clever.

But Molly was not visible. So. I might have been dealt a bad hand, but I still had a hole card out there somewhere.

Justine made a quiet sound and went to Mac’s side. Maeve’s eyes fastened on her. “And the vampire’s crumpet. Luscious little thing, aren’t you? And so close to Lady Raith. You and I are going to have a long talk after this, darling. I just know you’re going to start to see things my way.”

Is this when Justine got infected?

I looked back and forth between the two. “Hell’s bells, you’re identical twins.” “Not identical twins,” they both said at exactly the same time, in the exact same tone of outrage. They broke off to glare at each other.

“Do you think I did not know about all the time she has been spending with you? All the intimate talk, the activity together. Do you think I don’t know what it means? She’s doing with you what she always meant to do with you—using you as a spare. Preparing you as a vessel for the mantle. Preparing my replacement. As if I were a broken piece of a machine.” Sarissa looked pale and nodded slowly. “Maeve,” she said, her voice very soft. “You’re . . . you’re sick. You’ve got to know that.”

The Leanansidhe was sick and Mother helped her. But her power alone isn’t enough to heal you. You have to want it, Maeve. You have to want to be healed.”

“Oh, Maeve,” Sarissa said, her voice thick with compassion and something like resignation. “Where is she, Sarissa?” Maeve demanded. There were tears on her cheeks, freezing into little white streaks, forming white frost on her eyelashes. “Where is her love? Where is her fury? Where is her anything?”

Mab nodded her head slightly, and descended to the ground. From me, she turned to Demonreach. “I thank you for your patience and your assistance in this matter. You could have reacted differently but chose not to. I am aware of the decision. It will not be forgotten.” Demonreach bowed its head, barely, a gesture of acknowledgment, not cooperation or compliance.

Mab turned back to me and eyed me up and down. She quirked one eyebrow, very slightly, somehow conveying layers of disapproval toward multiple aspects of my appearance, conduct, and situation, and said, “Finally.” “There’s been a lot on my mind,” I replied. “It seems unlikely that your cares will lighten,” Queen Mab replied. “Improve your mind.”

“Envy! The great and mighty Mab, envious of her little girl. Because I have something you will never have, Mother.” “And what is that?” Mab asked. “Choice,” Maeve snarled. “Stop,” Mab snapped—but not in time. Maeve bent her elbow to point her little gun casually across her body and, without looking, put a bullet into Lily’s left temple.

Then, with a gathering shriek, the fire suddenly condensed into a form, the shape of something that looked like an eagle or a large hawk. Blinding light spread over the hilltop, and the hawk suddenly flashed from Lily’s fallen form. Directly into Sarissa.

“You do not understand what you have done,” Mab said quietly. “I know exactly what I have done,” Maeve snarled. “I have beaten you. This was never about the sleepers, or this accursed isle, or the lives of mortal insects. This was about beating you, you hidebound hag. About using your own games against you. Kill me now, and you risk destroying the balance of Winter and Summer forever, throwing all into chaos.” Sarissa lay on the ground, moaning. “And it was about taking her away from you,” Maeve gloated.

But there was none of that in her voice or face. Just . . . regret. And resolution. Mab knew something—something Maeve didn’t.

Without the Winter Lady’s power, your downfall is simply a matter of time—and not much of that. After this night, you will not see me again.” “Yes,” Mab said, though to which statement was unclear.

“To fulfill one’s purpose is not to be a slave, my daughter,” Mab said. “And you are not free, child, any more than a knife is free because it leaves its sheath and is thrust into a corpse.” “Choice is power,” Maeve spat in reply.

I understood what Mab knew that Maeve didn’t. Sarissa wasn’t the only Faerie vessel on the hilltop. She was simply the one Maeve had been meant to see. There was one other person there who had been spending time with a powerful fae. Who had a relationship with one that was deeper and more significant than a casual or formal acquaintance. Whose life had been methodically, deliberately, and covertly reshaped for the purpose. Who had been extensively prepared by one of the Sidhe.

Two shots rang out, almost simultaneously. Something hissed spitefully past my ear. A neat, round black hole appeared just to the side of Maeve’s nose, at the fine line of her cheekbone. Maeve blinked twice. Her face fell into what was almost precisely the same expression of confusion Lily’s had. A trickle of blood ran from the hole. And then she fell, like an icicle in a warm sunbeam.

“Dammit, no,” I whispered. Deep blue fire gathered over the fallen Winter Lady. It coalesced with an ugly howl into the outline of a serpent, which coiled and then lashed out in a strike that carried its blazing form fifteen feet, to the nearest corner of the ruined cottage . . . . . . where Molly, behind her veil, had been crouched and waiting for a chance to aid me.