She and Sanya went back-to-back, cutting down jaguar warriors with methodical efficiency for several seconds, as more and more of the enemy swarmed toward them. I kept slapping them away—not able to do any real harm, but preventing them from focusing overwhelming numbers on Murph and Sanya—but I could feel the fatigue setting in now. I couldn’t keep this up forever.
There were quick footsteps beside me, and then Molly pressed her back to mine. “You take that side!” she said. “I’ll take this one!”
DJ Molly C lifted both of her wands and turned the battle chaos to eleven.
Color and light and screaming sound erupted from those two little wands. Bands of light and darkness flowed around and over the oncoming jaguar warriors, fluttering images of bright sunshine intertwining with other images of yawning pits suddenly gaping before the feet of the attackers. Bursts of sound, shrieks and clashes and booms, and high-pitched noises like feedback on steroids sent the hyperkeen senses of full vampires into overload, literally forcing them back onto the weapons of those coming behind them.
Vampires staggered through the handiwork of the One-woman Rave, not stopped but slowed and stunned by the incredible field of sound and light.
“I love a good party,” Thomas shouted merrily, and he began to dance along the edges of Molly’s dance floor, his falcata whipping into the limbs and necks of the jaguar warriors as they wobbled forward, struck down before they could recover. I didn’t think anyone could have moved fast enough to catch them, but my brother evidently didn’t agree. He struck down the foe as they came for us, and he threw in a few dance moves along the way. The part he borrowed from break dancing, where a wave traveled up one arm and down the other, was particularly effective, aesthetically, when it was bracketed by his falcata beheading one vamp and his automatic blowing apart the skull of another.
The pressure of numbers increased, and Thomas started moving more swiftly, more desperately—until Mouse leapt in to help plug the leak in the dam of confusion that held the full power of the Red Court at bay.
I had my own side of the store to mind. Again I reached into the well of cold, ready power, and with a word blanketed the field before me in smooth, slick ice. Howling wind rose to greet any foe who stepped out onto the ice, forcing them to work around to the killing machine that was Sanya and Murphy, or else circle around to attempt an approach through Molly’s murderous light and sound show.
Someone touched my arm and I nearly roasted him without looking.
Martin flinched, as though he’d had a dodge ready to go if I had something for him. “Dresden!” he called. “Look!”
I looked. Up on the little temple at the end of the ball court, the Lords of Outer Night and the Red King were standing in a circle, and they were all gathering magical power—probably from one of the bloody ley lines, to boot. Whatever they were going to do, I had a bad feeling that I was reaching the very end of my bag of tricks.
I heard booted feet and saw the mortal security guards lining up along the sides of the stadium, rifles at the ready. When they were in position they would open fire, and the simple fact was that if they piled enough rounds into us, we would go down.
Who was I kidding?
I couldn’t keep the field of ice and wind together for very long. And I knew Molly couldn’t maintain her Rave at that intensity for long, either. Dozens of jaguar warriors had fallen, but that meant little. Their numbers had not been diminished by any significant measure.
We could fight as hard as we wanted—but despite everything, in the end it was going to be futile. We were never getting out of that stadium.
But we had to try.
“Lea!” I screamed.
“Yes, child?” she asked, her tone pleasant and conversational. I could still hear her perfectly clearly. Neat trick.
“The king and his jokers are about to hit us with something big.”
“Oh, my, yes,” the Leanansidhe said, looking skyward dreamily.
“So do something!” I howled at her.
“I already am,” she assured me.
She removed a small emerald from a pocket of her gown and flung it skyward. It sparkled and flashed, and flew up out of the light of torches and swords, and vanished into the night. A few seconds later, it exploded in a cloud of merry green sparks.
“There. That place will do,” she said, clapping her hands and bouncing up and down on her toes. “Now we shall see a real dance.”
Green lightning split the sky, erupting with such a burst of thunder that the ground shook. Instead of fading, though, the thunder grew louder as more and more strokes of lightning flared out from the area of sky where Lea’s gem had exploded into light.
Then a sheet of a dozen separate green bolts of lightning fell all at the same time onto the ground of the ball court twenty yards away, blowing smoking craters in the ground.
It took my dazzled eyes a few seconds to recover from that, and when they did, my heart almost stopped.
Standing on the ball court were twelve figures.
Twelve people in shapeless grey robes. Grey cloaks. Grey hoods.
And every single one of them held a wizard’s staff in one hand.
The Grey Council.
The Grey Council!
The nearest figure was considerably shorter than me and stout, but he stood with his feet planted as if he intended to move the world. He lifted his staff, smote it on the ground, then boomed, “Remember Archangel!” He spoke a single, resonating word as he thrust the tip of the implement at the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night.
The second floor of the stadium-temple where they stood . . . simply exploded. A force hit the ancient structure like an enormous bulldozer blade rushing forward at Mach 2. It smashed into the temple. Stone screamed. The Red King, the Lords of Outer Night, and several thousand tons of the temple’s structure went flying back through the air with enough violent energy to send a shock wave rebounding from the point of impact.
The massive display of force brought a second of stunned silence to the field—and I was just as slack-jawed as anyone.
Then I threw back my head and let out a primal scream of triumph and glee. The Grey Council had come.
We were not alone.
The echo of my scream seemed to be a signal, sending the rest of us back to fighting for our lives. I blew a few more vampires away from my friends, and then sensed a rush of supernatural energy coming at me. I turned and caught a tide of ruinous Red power upon my shield, and hurled a blast of flame back at a Red Court noble in massive amounts of jewelry. Others in their ranks began to open up on the newly arrived Grey Council, who responded in kind, and the air was filled with a savage crisscross of exchanged energies.
The stocky figure in grey stumped up to me and said casually, “How you doing, Hoss?”
I felt my face stretch into a fierce grin, but I answered him just as casually. “Sort of wish I’d brought a staff with me. Other than that . . . can’t complain.”
From within his hood, Ebenezar grunted. “Nice outfit.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I liked your ride. Good mileage?”
“As long as there’s some carpet to scuff your feet on,” he said, and tossed me his staff. “Here.”
I felt the energies moving through the implement at once. It was a better-made staff than mine, but Ebenezar had been the one to teach me how they were made, and both staves I had used over the years had been carved from branches of the lightning-struck oak in the front yard of his little farm in the Ozarks. I could make use of this staff almost as well as if it were my own.
“What about you?” I asked him. “Don’t you want it?”
He batted a precisely aimed thrown ax from the air with a flick of his hand and a word of power, and drawled, “I got another one.”