Building Faith

By Ellf

What is Known 23

Disclaimer: Jim Butcher owns the Dresden Files, any other works of fiction mentioned are not owned by me.

Everything was on fire, and it was mostly my fault.

Okay, to be perfectly accurate, not everything was ablaze. The warehouse exterior walls appeared to be made of some sort of metal siding and were fire retardant; the stone floors of the warehouse hadn't caught fire, and the humans in the room seemed more or less… well, they weren't dead, anyway. Thank God. The flames generated by my spell, which admittedly were more than I was expecting, had ignited the gas fumes in the air, and from there, the fire traveled to most of the flammable items in the warehouse. The wooden rafters burned hot, and the drywall and stucco had ignited as well. The heat the flames put out was tremendous, almost as if the flames were right near my skin.

Oh God, my jacket was on fire! I quickly removed the jacket, tossed it to the ground near me and backed away. Oh, neat. I could move again. All it took was the loss of my jacket and the burning of so much… well, everything that could burn. It didn't look like anything structural was actually on fire, but the flames were still more than that spell should have been able to put out. Maybe I overcharged it somehow.

Damn. I really liked that jacket too.

"Faiiiiiiiiii!" Cecelia growled out. Did I piss her off? That didn't quite sound like her pissed off voice. She sounded more worried than anything else. "What have you done?"

"Magic, duh," I said. I looked over to my sister, and she must have decided to take advantage of the fire herself to get free. She slammed her forehead into Glenn's chin while driving her foot down onto Jason's right. The pain she must have caused them had them pulling their hands away, and Molly quickly joined my side, as I turned to try and spot a way out.

"Stupid bitch! You'll ruin everything!" Esmeralda Batiste's voice came from near one of the blazes, and as my eyes adjusted, I could see the vampire. Her flesh mask had seen better days, exposing half her true bat-like face. She still held the bound body of Cecelia's mother, but… that… Gah. Blood dripped down from the remains of Mrs. Saratoga's neck. "I'll kill you! I'll kill all three of you!"

"She means we will," Esteban's voice purred out of a fully exposed vampire perched on a pillar below one of the unburning metal rafters. Lord, that was disgusting. His fangs dripped with saliva and his solid black orbs stared at us.

I glanced from them to Glenn and Jason, who started toward us, after shaking away their pain. Great. Mind controlled friends to our back, and vampires to our front. Cecelia to our left, walking to the circle.

"No! Don't kill them! They're my friends, and they're as much a part of this as I am!" Cecelia called out to the Eebs.

"Just do your ritual, girl! That was the deal!" Esteban called from his perch, above the peak of the burning flame. "These friends of yours don't deserve it!"

Drew groaned, pushing himself off the ground between Molly and the other two boys. His attention instantly was drawn to the Eebs. "What the… what the hell are those things?"

"Vampires." I pulled out my crucifix from within my blouse, and I looked toward the exits. Bits of burning rafter had fallen across each one. Damn. I really hadn't meant for the fire to be as big as it was. Luckily the structure seemed to be holding.

"Why is everything on fire?" Drew asked, seemingly accepting the vampire thing in stride. The Eebs were stalking toward us, and as I glanced back, I could see Glenn and Jason doing the same.

"Someone objected to Cecelia's plans," Molly said, pulling out her own crucifix. "Drew, are you okay?"

"Bit woozy." He shook his head. "But I think I can get out of here."

"Might not be an option," I said. "If it was, they'd be coming a lot faster than this."

The vampires were definitely approaching, but I couldn't for the life of me tell why they weren't coming faster. Why were we being given time to prepare? Did they seriously want to listen to Cecelia that much?

"—'t kill them! That's an order, damnit! They're my friends. You can have all the prey in the world you want, but not them!" The noise from the flames had died down a bit so I could hear Cecelia's begging.

Esmeralda responded simply by tossing Ms. Saratoga's corpse into the center of the circle. "Don't presume to order us, girl! Do your ritual! If you complete it before we kill them, they'll be immortal, won't they?"

Cecelia nodded.

I turned to Drew. "Keep Glenn and Jace busy if you can."

"Why, what are you going to do?" Drew asked.

I looked to Molly, and she nodded. We locked eyes and joined hands before turning toward the vampires. "We're going to keep us alive. As long as it takes. If you can snap them out of it, go after Cecelia."

There had to be alternate routes out, non-obvious ones, but we couldn't explore those with the building still burning. Hell, we'd taken too much time already, but it looked like this building was built with the memory of the Great Chicago Fire in mind. Whatever anti-fire measures the building had, they hadn't kicked in yet, and the gas lines were still pumping, so the flames at the end were just hovering there.

We gripped our crucifixes tightly. "We believe in One God, the Father Almighty."

Esteban snarled, as he approached, getting closer to us, but we were sure this would work. It had worked the other night, and we knew our faith was high enough. We weren't about to start spouting Latin like Daddy, but we believed.

Meanwhile, the fire spell had another effect. The candles in the circle burned hot, and the circle itself started glowing, even as we continued our prayer. In the middle of the circle was Cecelia, book open, chanting, and there was nothing we could do about it. Not if we wanted to keep the vampires from reaching us.

We held up our crucifixes as they started to burn with a brilliant light that clearly wasn't a reflection of the flames. Our prayer continued, but the vampires charged. The light grew stronger when Esmeralda charged us.

She bounced… off of something. It wasn't a shield spell, God knows we couldn't possibly generate one of those, but whatever it was, it removed the rest of her flesh mask, leaving the sickly dark-skinned bat beneath completely exposed.

"We told you before. The power of Christ compels you! Back the fuck off, bitch!"

We continued to hold our crucifixes, taking steps toward the vampires. Maybe we could drive them back. Maybe we could send them into the flames, and they'd die from that. That would be wonderful. Of course, they weren't Black Court, so there was the chance they could get through if they went the right way. We really didn't have much that we could do other than hold them off. We weren't so sure if we could keep them held off until morning. If they were Black Court, we could probably just use the faith magic to destroy them, but they were Reds.

Of course, Cecelia still performed the ritual, even as we had to focus on the Eebs. As much as we wanted to stop our friend, we weren't exactly in a situation that we could do anything beyond what we were. God, we hoped that something happened soon that could help us. We could only do so much. We weren't Harry Dresden. We didn't have his raw power. We did, however, have faith, and that we could use.

"KEEPERS OF THE VEIL! I ORDER THEE TO PART! OPEN THE WAY!" The ritual had English in it? We wavered slightly as the ground beneath us shook.

Esteban tried to take advantage of this, but his wife quickly pushed him out of the way of a falling pillar. Oh, God… what was happening? Was the fire worse? Where the hell… Where the hell had the walls gone?

"THY DEMESNE IS HERE! BRING THY POWER UPON ME AND MINE! COME! COME!"

Wait, was that the sky we were under? Where were all of the buildings? Where the fuck was the roof? Where were we?

Gah! What the hell was this feeling? It was foreign, but it was magic. The flames of the candles burned brighter, each candle somehow seeming simultaneously more and less real the more we looked at it. The walls of the warehouse had fallen away, and the pillars and roof. The landscape around us burned with fire. Burning forest and underbrush, trees with leaves of flame… Not trees with leaves on fire. The leaves were made of fire.

"What… where?"

The Eebs took advantage of our confusion and charged at us, batting us backward in the same direction. We flew over Glenn, Jason, and Drew, who was holding his own against the other two. Glenn's surprise attack must have been a fluke. Drew couldn't try to catch us with Jason and Glenn still fighting him. At least he looked like he could handle it.

We slammed into the ground a few feet behind them, stopping short of the fire-leaved trees. The landing hurt, but we still held our crucifixes. All we needed to do was push our faith into them more, and… watch as a shimmering rip in reality appeared in the air.

"Ladies, I believe that you requested backup?" A ridiculously sexy baritone voice asked, belonging to an even more ridiculously sexy man in a Buffy t-shirt and some tight jeans that emphasized just the right aspects of his… Okay, we needed to focus on the positives. Thomas Raith had arrived, carrying the kukris we'd used last night. Grins plastered themselves on our faces. We had a chance now. We had a chance.