Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17)

by Jim Butcher

I felt myself getting more tense. You couldn’t have fear spreading like this without building up considerable psychological pressure. Sooner or later, that pressure was going to cause something to burst. They say civilization is a thin veneer over barbarism. Chicago stood waiting for the first tearing sound.

I eyed her armor. “What happened to all the barbed fishhooks that were welded on yours?” She sniffed and gave me a haughty, disgusted look. “The general kept cutting himself. Because he knew I would be honor bound to nurse him back to health after. It was necessary.” “Toot and Lacuna, sitting in a tree,” I chanted, grinning. “K-I-S-S—” The tip of Lacuna’s lance landed firmly in the space between my two front teeth. “Attempt to complete that enchantment, wizard,” she said, “and I will ram this lance through your uvula.”

There was a flare of light so intense that I staggered and fell, dropping to a knee and barely staggering up again before the Sidhe warriors behind me trampled me to death. There’s a reason he fell became synonymous for he died. Losing your feet on a battlefield is an all-but-certain death sentence.

“Death isn’t when your body stops working. It’s when there’s no more future. When you can’t see past right now, because you stopped believing in tomorrow.”

“She showed Mab the movie.” I tried to imagine Mab watching a Disney movie. She did not like Disney—not the company, and not the man. Disney had, in Mab’s opinion, done too much damage to the old faerie tales by sanding off all the unpleasant bits. According to Mab, it had weakened humanity in the face of supernatural forces, when they found out that the actual wicked Fae were nothing like Disney promised. Trying to imagine her watching musical numbers made my brain hurt.