Death Masks

Then there was a roar, and a flash of brilliant light. A jet of fire streaked over me and took one of the vampires full-on in the head. It burst into flame, screaming and waving its too-thin arms, and went down onto the field, thrashing like a half-crushed bug. My shield collapsed, overloaded, and the bracelet began burning my wrist. I crouched lower.

Another jet of fire went by, incinerating the head of another vampire. All of them stopped, crouching, shrieking in confusion.

Kincaid stood outside the dugout and dropped a smoking shotgun to the ground. He reached into a golf bag next to him, smooth and professional, and drew out another double-barreled shotgun. One of the vampires leapt at him, but Kincaid was too fast. He pulled the trigger, and the shotgun roared. A jet of flame streaked out and went through the vampire, taking this one in the neck, and continuing to the right-field fence, where it blew a hole the size of my face in the wall. There was a sound behind him, and Kincaid spun to shoot the other barrel at a vampire bounding down through the stands above the third-base dugout. He put the shot right down the vampire’s throat, literally, and the creature went up in flames. Kincaid discarded that shotgun as well, and reached for the stock of another in his golf bag.

The other vampires leapt at Kincaid when he turned his back.

They got to deal with the Archive instead.

The child stepped out from behind the golf bag, the tenebrous mordite sphere floating between her hands. She released the sphere and made a single gesture.

The little cloud of darkness blurred toward the vampires and streaked into each in turn at the pace of a busy workman’s hammer, bang-bang-bang. When the mordite sphere struck them, there was a flash of cold purple light, a swell of darkness, and then the sphere passed on through. It left ash and black bones raining down behind it. I could barely follow the mordite sphere’s path, it moved so fast. One second the vampires were all there, and then they were simply gone. Black bones and grey ash littered the ground around me.

Silence fell, and the only thing I could hear was my own ragged breathing and the roaring of my own pulse in my ears. I looked around wildly, but I didn’t see Ortega anywhere. The two vampires who had been gutted writhed feebly on the ground. Kincaid drew the last shotgun from the golf bag, and with two more flaming blasts executed them both.

The mordite sphere glided gently back to rest between the Archive’s tiny hands, and she stood regarding me for a long and silent moment. There was nothing in her expression. Nothing in her eyes. Nothing. I felt the beginnings of a soulgaze and pulled my face away, fast.

"Who broke the sanctity of the duel first, Kincaid?" asked the Archive.

"Couldn’t tell," Kincaid answered. He wasn’t so much as breathing hard. "But Dresden was winning."

The Archive stood there a moment more, and then said, "Thank you for letting me pet your kitty, Mister Dresden. And thank you for my name."

That sounded frighteningly like a good-bye, but it was only polite to answer, "You’re welcome, Ivy."

The Archive nodded and said, "Kincaid. The box, please."

I looked up to watch Kincaid set the wooden box down on the ground. The Archive sent the mordite sphere gliding slowly down into it, and then closed the lid on the box. "These proceedings are concluded."

I looked around at the bones, dust, and smoldering vampire corpses. "You think?"

The Archive regarded me with neutral eyes and said, "Let’s go. It’s after my bedtime."

"I’m hungry," Kincaid said, shouldering his golf bag. "We’ll hit a drive-through. You can have the cookies."

"Cookies aren’t good for me," the Archive said, but she smiled.

Kincaid said, "Dresden, hand me that, will you?"

I looked numbly at the ground where he pointed. One of the shotguns was there. Its barrels were still smoking hot. I picked it up gingerly by the stock and passed it to Kincaid, who wrapped it with the other gun he’d used in some kind of silver-lined blanket. "What the hell are those things?" I asked.

"Incendiary rounds," he said. He passed my dropped staff over to me. "Work real well on the Reds, but they’re so hot they warp gun barrels. If you get unlucky, the second shot can blow back into your face, so you have to use throwaway guns."

I nodded thanks and took my staff. "Where can I get some?"

Kincaid grinned. "I know a guy. I’ll have him call you. See you, Dresden."

Kincaid and the Archive started out of the stadium. A thought finally made its way through the combat adrenaline and I broke into a sprint toward the first-base dugout. Thomas had simply hopped up onto it. I managed to flop and clamber my way up, then into the stands.

Thomas was already there, on the ground with Susan. He’d taken off her jacket and used it to elevate her feet slightly. It looked as if he’d tilted her head back a little to clear the airway. He looked up and said, "She’s unconscious, but she’s alive."

I crouched down too, and touched her throat, just to be certain. "How bad is she hurt?"

He shook his head. "No real way to tell."

"We have to get her to a hospital, then," I said, rising.

Thomas caught my arm. "You don’t want her waking up, injured and dazed, in a place packed to the roof with weakened prey."

"Then what the hell do we do?"

"Look, if she’s not dead, odds are she’ll recover." Thomas held up his hand and fished out a ballpoint pen from his pocket. He twisted it and said, "Clear." Then he twisted it again and put it back.

A moment later, Martin came rapidly down the aisle. He somehow made even that look boring, as if he were simply a man wanting to take his seat again before the opening pitch. It was especially impressive since he carried a huge rifle, a military sniper weapon with a telescopic sight and a laser attachment. He set the rifle aside and went over Susan for a moment, feeling here and there, before he said, "She’ll be sore."

"You?" I asked. "You were the gunman?"

"Obviously," Martin said. "Why do you think we were in Chicago to begin with?"

"Susan said she was getting her things."

He looked up at me skeptically. "You believed that? I would have thought you knew Susan well enough to know that material things don’t hold a lot of interest for her."

"I knew that," I said. "But she said -" I trailed off and shook my head.

Martin looked up and said, "We knew Ortega was coming to kill you. We knew that if he succeeded, he might be able to bring the war to a peaceful conclusion, only to begin it again twenty years from now, from a much stronger position. I was sent to make sure Ortega did not kill you, and to eliminate him if I could."