Death Masks

The sphere crept closer. Ortega renewed his efforts with another war cry. But the sphere made it to the midway point, and got closer to him.

"Fool," Ortega said in a gasp.

"Murderer," I said, and shoved the sphere another foot closer to him.

His jaw clenched harder, the muscles in his face bulging. "You’ll destroy us all."

"Starting with you." The sphere darted a little nearer.

"You are a selfish, self-righteous madman."

"You murder and enslave children," I said. I shoved the mordite sphere to within a foot of him. "You threaten the people I love." I shoved it closer still. "How does it feel, Ortega. Being too weak to protect yourself. How does it feel to know you are about to die?"

In answer, a slow smile crept over his face. His shoulders moved a little, and I saw that one of his arms hung limply at his side, like an empty sleeve. A small bulge appeared just to one side of his stomach, like a gun being held in an overcoat pocket.

I stared at it in shock. He’d pulled his real arm out of the flesh mask. He was holding a gun on me.

"How does it feel?" Ortega asked, voice very quiet. "Why don’t you tell me?"

Chapter Thirty

"You can’t," I said. I shot a glance toward home plate, but the Archive apparently hadn’t noticed anything amiss. My will wavered, and the mordite sphere bobbed back and forth. "They’ll hear the shot. They’ll kill you."

"Quite possibly," he agreed. "As I said, I am prepared to accept that."

His words chilled me, and the mordite sphere darted at my head. I caught it a couple of feet from me and held it, but just barely.

"I told you, Dresden. There’s only one way this can end. I would have preferred an honorable demise for you, but any death will do."

I stared at the hidden gun.

A dot of bright scarlet light appeared on Ortega’s chest, and tracked slowly up.

My expression must have changed, because Ortega glanced down too. The bright pinpoint of the laser sight settled over his heart and became still.

Ortega’s eyes widened and his expression twisted into fury.

A lot of things happened at once.

There was a hissing sound, a thump, and a big section of Ortega’s chest dented in. Scarlet sprayed out behind him. An instant later, a booming sound much deeper than the crack of a rifle echoed around the stadium.

Ortega let out a screech that went off the high end of the scale. Fire erupted from the hidden gun, burning through Ortega’s flesh mask and shirt to reveal the muzzle of a small-caliber revolver clenched in an inhuman black hand. The bullet Ortega had taken had half twisted him, and he missed. I thought hanging around to let him try again was a bad idea, so I threw myself to one side and gave the mordite sphere another shove.

Ortega dodged the mordite, and even wounded, he was fast. A bright red dot appeared on his thigh for half a second, and with another hiss-thump-boom, the unseen gunman hit him again. I heard the bones of Ortega’s leg break.

Susan threw my staff and rod to me and leapt for Ortega, grabbing his free arm and twisting as if to throw him. Instead, the vampire writhed weirdly, and she wound up tearing the flesh mask from him, peeling it away like a banana skin to reveal the slime-slick, flabby-bodied creature beneath it-the true Ortega. He still held the gun though, and he turned to shoot at me again.

I screamed, "Ventas servitas!" at the top of my lungs, throwing my will at dirt of the pitcher’s mound. It whirled up into a miniature cyclone of fine brown soil, forcing the vampire to turn its head and shield its eyes. The second shot went wild as well, and I scrambled to get my blasting rod.

The flying dirt slowed her down, but Susan still went for Ortega’s gun hand. It was a mistake. Even with only one leg to support him, Ortega screeched again, twisted, and flung Susan from the pitcher’s mound into the third row of seats behind first base. She hit with bone-breaking force and dropped out of sight.

Sudden screeches filled the air, and I looked up to see as many as a dozen of the Red Court, revealed in their true forms, coming into the stadium. Some climbed over the walls, some jumped in from the upper levels, and some came bursting out of private boxes in showers of exploding glass.

I spun toward Ortega, lifting my blasting rod, rammed my will through it, and shouted, "Fuego!" A jet of flame as thick as my arm roared at him, but one of the incoming vampires hit him at the shoulder, dragging him out of the line of fire. The newcomer was set alight though, greasy skin going up like a bonfire, and it screamed hideously as it burned.

I sensed movement behind me, and turned to find Kincaid dashing across the ground. He scooped up the Archive and raced for one of the dugouts. One of the Red Court vamps got in his way. Kincaid’s arm blurred, a semiautomatic appearing in it, and without missing a step he put two shots neatly between the vampire’s eyes. The vampire started to fall, and as he went by it, Kincaid pumped another half dozen shots into its belly, which erupted in a messy shower of scarlet, and left the vampire screaming and thrashing weakly on the ground.

"Harry, look out!" Thomas screamed.

I didn’t look out. I figured on the worst and leapt forward. I heard a vampire hiss as it missed me, and it came rushing up behind me. I turned and unleashed another gout of fire from my blasting rod, but missed. The vampire closed on me, spraying venomous saliva into my face.

I’d been hit with vampire venom before, and the stuff worked fast, particularly in large amounts. But I’d taken the potion to block it, and all this did was make me itch. I used the time while the vampire sprayed me to prepare another blast, and unleashed the strike with the rod pressed against the vamp’s flabby body. It scorched a wound in the vampire’s belly the size of my fist and blew a two-foot hole in the creature’s back. The vampire went into weak spasms, and I kicked it off me, rising.

Seven or eight vampires were within fifty feet of me, and coming fast. Thomas sprinted toward me, a knife gleaming in his hand, and hit one of the vamps from behind. He cut open the vampire’s belly with a single slice, and the creature collapsed to the ground. "Harry, get out!"

"No!" I shouted. "Get Susan out of here!"

Thomas gritted his teeth, but changed course. He leapt up onto the first-base dugout and hopped neatly over the rail into the stands.

No help there, and there wasn’t time to look for options. I crouched and concentrated, chanting, "Defendre, defendre," in a steady litany. It was difficult to do without my shield bracelet to focus it, but I brought up all the defensive energy I could manage in a dome around me.

The vampires hit it, slamming against it in mindless, shrieking rage. Any one of them could have flipped my car over lengthwise with only a little effort. Their blows against the shield could have crushed concrete within seconds, and I knew I was not going to be able to hold the defense in place for long. Once it went down, they were going to literally tear me limb from limb. I gave the shield my all, and felt them slowly breaking it down.