The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9)

by Charles Stross

Camp Tolkien is two-thirds empty right now, most of the invading alfär expeditionary force having been forcibly bound to the Will of the Black Pharaoh and sent to Aleppo, where they are bloodily crushing the Caliphate. What’s left are not so much the dregs of the Host of Air and Darkness as an unstable explosive precipitate.

Damn it, I hope I don’t have to kill her, I tell myself, knowing that she’s probably thinking the same about me. The worst curse you can inflict on a monster is an excess of empathy.