I tilted my head and frowned. She was right. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more this felt like a turf war. “Oh. Oh, I get it. Luther was one of Marcone’s soldiers.”
“So loyal he went to prison for ten years rather than inform on Marcone,” Tania confirmed. “Or maybe just smart enough to know what would happen to him if he did. He went straight after he got out, but …”
“When he got in trouble, Marcone stood up for one of his own,” I said. “He pulled strings to get me on the jury.”
“Luther was getting nailed to a wall,” Tania said. “Marcone controls crime, but Lara has a lot of say over the law these days. I suppose he thought someone like you might be the only chance Luther had. Gutsy of him, to try to make a cat’s-paw of Harry Dresden. I hear you don’t like that.”
Dammit. Marcone had put me where there’d been a guy getting fast-tracked to an unjust sentence and known damned well how I would react. He could have asked me for help, but I’d have told him to take a flying … leap. And he’d have known that. So he set it up without me knowing.
Or hell. He and Mab had been in cahoots lately. Maybe he’d asked her to arrange it. This had her fingerprints all over it.
“Tania,” I said. “It’s hard for me to tell with vampires, but I’m guessing you’re pretty new to this work.”
She winked at me. “Let’s just say that I’m old enough to know better and young enough not to care.” She picked up a drink from the table. “This one is over, Dresden. You can’t do anything here. You can’t produce evidence in the trial—not as a juror. You can’t get to Luther to tell him you found the little girl—and even if you could, you aren’t taking her away from us. Not until it’s too late. The girl is the only evidence that Black wasn’t a poor victim, and I have her. This one is done. Marcone lost the round. I win.” She winked at me. “What does Marcone mean to you? You don’t owe him anything. Why not sit down, have a drink, help me celebrate?”
I stared at Tania for a minute. “No,” I said quietly. “You just don’t get it. This isn’t about Lara and Marcone anymore. It’s not even really about Luther.” Then I looked at the little girl. “Honey,” I asked, making sure my voice was a lot gentler. “Do you want to go home?”
She looked at me. She was cute enough for a kid her age, with caramel skin and big green eyes. She nodded very hesitantly, flinching as if she thought Tania might hit her.
“Okay,” I said.
Tania was staring at me as though she couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. But her voice was harder when she said, “Gentlemen? The wizard doesn’t like the carrots. It’s time for the stick.”
To my right, from behind the bar, another four men rose. They were holding short-barreled shotguns. To my left, from the bathrooms, another four thugs appeared, clutching various long guns.
“I’ll count to three,” Tania said. “Boys, when I get to three, kill him.”
Crap. They were flanking me. My shield was excellent, but it was not omnidirectional. No matter which way I turned it, one or more groups of thugs would have a shot at my unprotected back.
“One,” Tania said, smiling. “Two.”
“Comic book, huh?” I said. “Have it your way.”
“Three,” she chirped.
Guns swiveled to me. A dozen men took aim.
“Hexus!” I snarled, unleashing a wave of disruptive energy.
And every light in the place blew out in a shower of sparks, plunging the club into darkness.
Guns started going off, but only from the most confident or stupid gunmen, so I wasn’t cut to ribbons. I was already moving. Hitting a moving target isn’t easy, not even when it’s fairly close. Hitting one in the dark is even harder. Hitting one moving in sporadic flashes of light is harder yet.
I got lucky, or none of them did—however you want to think of it—and I got to the thugs beside Tania in one piece.
One of them got off a shot at the sound, but I caught the round on my shield, and the resulting shower of sparks showed the men on my flanks that I was among their compatriots, and no one shot at my back. I knew Lara hired almost exclusively from former military, mostly Marines. Men like that don’t shoot their buddies.
I dropped the shield and threw a punch at the guy in front of me. Ever since I’d started working for the Queen of Air and Darkness, I’d been stronger than the average wizard. Or the average champion weight lifter, for that matter, and I knew how to throw a punch. I connected with the man’s jaw, hard, and shouted, “BAM!” as I did.
The thug reeled back, his legs going wobbly and useless as he ragdolled to the floor. I threw a stomping kick toward the belly of the guy next to him, shouting, “POW!” I hit him in the dark, somewhere more or less near his belly. His gun went off randomly as he was lifted off the floor and thrown ten feet back into a wall. He was trying to scream, breathlessly. I winced. I hadn’t meant to hit him there, but those are the breaks.
I raised my shield again and dropped, just as the bad guys with shotguns realized that I didn’t have any of their buddies standing near me. I trusted the shield and turned my face away from the blinding shower of green-gold sparks it sent flying up as buckshot hammered into it. The copper band got hot on my wrist, even as I flung my right hand out toward the group of goons by the bathroom and shouted, “Forzare!”
Raw telekinetic force hit three of them—one was the guy from the street, who again impressed me with his smarts by diving to one side, out of the wave of energy. As shotguns pounded my shield, he slid to a stop with an automatic braced in both hands, took a breath, and aimed carefully, only moving his finger to the trigger after he had his sights lined up on me.
Crap. To steal from Brust, no matter how turbo-charged the wizard, someone with brains, guts, and a .45 can seriously cramp his style.
Fortunately, I wasn’t in this fight alone.
I’d been counting on Will to join in at the right moment, and he didn’t let me down. Two hundred pounds of grey-brown timber wolf (wearing a service dog cape) hit the Smart Gunman at a full sprint, bowling him over. A flash of white fangs sent the gun flying.
Total elapsed time since I’d killed the lights? Maybe three and a half seconds.
Will threw himself into the guys I’d knocked around by the bathrooms, and I turned to discover that I’d been right about Tania. She was new to this kind of game. She’d been sitting there with a stunned look on her face at the abruptness of the violence.
I flung myself into the booth with her, getting as close as I could, wrapping my left arm around her neck hard enough to pull her head in against my body and still have my shield ready to stop more gunfire. But the Smart Gunman screamed, “Check fire! Check fire!” the second I did.
The shooting stopped. There was an abrupt silence in the club, which was filled with the sharp scent of gunpowder.
For a second, I felt a cool, sweet sensation flooding into me. I realized that Tania had slipped a hand beneath my shirt and was running her fingertips over my stomach.
If anyone ever tells you that being fed on by a vampire of the White Court is not a big deal, they’re lying. It’s Ecstasy and heroin and sex and chocolate all rolled into one, and that’s just the foreplay.
So I stopped her by tightening my grip on her until it threatened to break her neck. Tania let out a little yelp and whipped her hand away from my skin.
I met the wide eyes of the little girl and said, “Hold on, honey. I’m going to take you home in just a second.”
“You can’t!” Tania said.
I scowled and flicked her skull with the forefinger of my free hand in annoyance. “Wow, you’re new at this,” I said, panting. Five seconds of combat is enough cardio to last a while. “How old are you, kid?”
“I’m twenty,” she said, her teeth clenched with discomfort, “and I am not a child.”
“Twenty,” I said. “No wonder Lara sent a babysitter along with you.”