Chapter 13

The Stormy Night

Irene could see the whole disaster unfold as in slow motion. She had remained in the doorway, as asked, cradling a cup of tea. There was nothing she could do for now, so she might as well drink something. There would likely not be time later.

It paid to be a pragmatist.

She was a bit surprised when Kai decided to help Harry with summoning one of the Fae at first, but it made sense when she thought about it a bit more. Kai had extended his Draconic protectiveness to Harry. Of course he wasn't going to let him attempt something so dangerous on his own.

The storm was too loud for Irene to hear the words, but she could see the effects. One moment there was nothing in the circle, the next a very tall figure stood within the confines. Irene had met some of the Fae, and most of them looked human, or humanish at least. To some extent they always tried to blend in.

The Erlking made no attempt at blending in.

He was a hunter. That was the archetype he'd taken on, and he embraced it. He was dressed in hunting leathers, wearing a helmet with horns poking out from the side. And he was easily eight feet tall, looming over even Harry. He faced his summoners down with glowing eyes.

Irene couldn't feel his power, but she could make an educated guess.

Butters, standing half beside her, made a startled noise. 'That's him?'

'That's him.' There was no one else it could be.

If Harry and Kai could hold him here, the fight would be half won already. A contest of wills was on-going, but the circle held.

'How do you do it?' Butters asked.

Irene frowned in confusion. 'How do I do what?'

'Be brave?' Butters grimaced. 'I know I am a coward, you know. And I don't really want to be. How am I…?' He hesitated.

'Not a coward?'

'Yes. That.'

Irene had to think about that. She didn't think of herself as particularly brave. She had a sense of duty. Some things simply had to be done, whether they were scary or not. A Librarian's missions frequently involved a degree of danger. It was part of the job. And since she had grown up as the child of two Librarians, she had never known any different.

'You keep your objectives in mind,' Irene said. 'That's what I do.'

Butters thought that through. 'I'm not sure that's helpful.'

'You need to find what's helpful for you,' Irene said harshly. 'You need to find something you care about more than your fear.'

Butters fell silent to ponder that and Irene turned her attention back to the circle. The silent contest had become not so silent. The Erlking lashed out against the restrictions imposed upon him. Harry and Kai resisted his efforts. And they were winning. The Erlking's screams were ones of impotent rage, not of near victory.

It fell apart in the space of ten seconds or less.

Irene glimpsed movement from the corner of her eyes. She blinked, but there was nothing there, not until suddenly some means of invisibility was thrown off to reveal a man underneath. Irene had never seen him before, but this was not the time to ponder that mystery, because the man raised a piece of lead piping like he meant business.

And Irene did not intend for this to turn into a game of Cluedo.

'Kai, watch out!' she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Kai was too focused on the goings-on in the circle to pay much attention to his surroundings, and Irene's warning came too late. The mystery attacker brought the pipe down hard on Kai's head and Kai crumbled to the ground.

The Erlking laughed in triumph as he broke the circle in a shower of golden light. The air was suddenly full of the barking and howling of dogs. A big black horse appeared out of nowhere in the yard.

The force of the breaking circle had made Harry stagger back, but he kept his eyes on the most immediate threat. He didn't even attempt to recapture the Erlking, although, to be fair to Harry, that might be impossible anyway.

The Erlking didn't stick around to find out. He leaped onto his horse, that only waited until he was in the saddle before taking off. The sound of horns and hounds died away with them. The whole disaster hadn't taken up more than half a minute.

At the most.

The Erlking may have escaped – a problem for another time – but the man who had all made it fall apart was still here.

'Lead piping, burn hot!' Irene screamed, trying to make her voice go over the noise of the storm. 'Wind, blow the one holding the lead piping away from the faerie circle!'

There was already more than enough wind to go around, so it was a fairly simple matter to redirect it where Irene wanted it to go. She could feel it obey her bidding.

It didn't make a blind bit of difference.

The piping glowed with heat, and the man did drop it. But the wind didn't touch him. It should have picked him up and thrown him against the fence, but it took down the fence and left the man.

The shivers going down Irene's spine had nothing to do with the temperature.

The man looked at her, and smiled. The flashing lightning illuminated his face just long enough for Irene to get a look at his eyes.

She felt chilled to the bone.

Alberich. She would know those eyes anywhere.

Harry struck while Alberich was still focused on her. The wind drowned out his voice, but the results were clear enough. Like Irene, he went for wind, but a little more dramatic. He conjured up a small tornado, that picked up Alberich and threw him into the remains of the fence.

There was no time to discuss strategy, only to act, so Irene acted. She ran out of the house and screamed at the top of her lungs: 'Ground, open up and swallow Alberich!' She didn't specify how deep it should open. Right now she really didn't care if the earth spit him out on the other side of the world, so long as he was out of here.

The ground shook as it opened up. Alberich sank into it up to his stolen ankles before he arrested his movement and actually levitated out. The air around him seemed to bubble and blur. Irene had never seen anyone do this before.

Harry hit him with a blast of energy that swatted him out of the air and back into the hole Irene had made. He followed that up with a column of dark fire that had been so effective during the first confrontation outside Bock Ordered Books, but Alberich was ready for it now. He conjured up a shield that angled the fire away from himself and in Irene's direction.

There was no time for the Language. There was only time to duck before she took a dose of friendly fire to the face. The heat passed barely a few inches over the top of her head.

She waited only long enough to make sure she didn't turn into a human torch if she lifted her head and then got back up again. She only had a second to throw herself out of the way again when another volley of magic headed in her direction. It burned a hole in the ground where it hit.

Harry was giving Alberich everything he had, which took Alberich's focus off Irene for a moment. This was just as well, because she had lost her orientation a bit. And her head hurt. She might have hit it when she went down.

The lightning illuminated the garden well enough to see what was going on, which was just about the only thing that was working in their favour. Kai was still on the ground near the circle, not moving at all. The circle itself was still intact. Only the occupant was gone.

A few feet away from her a serious magical duel was in progress, from which Irene learned two things. The first was that Alberich was a great deal more powerful than she had anticipated. The second was that she was very glad that Harry Dresden was on her side.

He was keeping up with Alberich, shielding or throwing off the spells hurled at him, and even getting in a few strikes of his own. The air around Alberich grew ever more unstable as he used all that chaotic power, but every time when it seemed that it would get out of control, a spell of Harry's broke Alberich's concentration and control before he could wreck reality itself.

Irene used the wall of the house to get back up. Her balance was a little wobbly, but this was hardly the time to sit back and watch the show. Harry was keeping Alberich occupied, but they needed to get the drop on him somehow.

'Coat, restrain Alberich!' she commanded. It had worked well enough on Kumori. 'Ground on which Alberich stands, open!'

For just a moment she thought it was working. Alberich was getting restrained by his coat and his feet sank into the ground, but even before she saw it, she knew it made no difference. Alberich drew so much power to himself that Irene gasped for air.

'Enough.' He didn't raise his voice, but Irene heard him so clearly that it was as if he was standing right next to her speaking the word directly into her ears. 'Ray, by my will and by your name, you are bound. You cannot move or speak.'

And just like that, she couldn't. It was as it had been in the British Library a few months ago. She was powerless. She couldn't move an inch. Her tongue and jaws had locked up, so that she couldn't get a word out if she wanted to.

And she desperately wanted to. Words were her best defence. They never let her down. Words were what got her out of tricky situations. And now they were beyond her reach and she was powerless.

We weren't winning. He was toying with us.

Alberich turned all his not inconsiderable power on Harry. He didn't have Harry's Name, not completely, Irene suspected, because he didn't do to Harry what he did to her. But he flung Harry's staff out of his hands across the yard. She could tell that this scared him. What seemed to scare him even more was that he was unable to move. The air around him began to simmer.

We are going to die here.

As fast as the tide of this battle had gone against them, it turned back in their favour just as fast. Just when Irene thought that it was hopeless and that she might just die in the backyard of a woman she'd never met, Alberich made a little noise and slumped to the ground.

Irene blinked.

Behind Alberich stood Butters, holding a rolling pin he must have found in the kitchen. 'Polka will never die!' he yelled in lieu of a battle cry. He brought the rolling pin down on the twitching form at his feet. 'Polka will never die!' And again. 'Polka! Will! Never! Die!'

By the end of that Alberich lay in an unmoving lump at his feet.

He must have been doing something right, because the power evaporated. Harry and Irene could both move again. Harry's first order of business was to retrieve his staff and keep it trained on Alberich.

'Oh,' said Butters, looking down at the results. 'Is he dead?'

We should be so lucky, Irene thought. 'I don't think he can be killed by something as mundane as a rolling pin,' is what she said. If Alberich was down, he wasn't going to be down for very long. She wanted to be out of here before he came round again.

Too late for that already. Alberich moved as quick as the lightning. He grabbed Butters's ankle and pulled. Butters went down with a yelp.

Harry threw a spell at Alberich that made him growl and let go. Irene was already pulling Butters away, for all the good that would do.

Alberich looked at her. 'You should have joined me when you had the chance, Ray.'

'No, thank you,' Irene said. 'I am not in the market for personal redefinition. Ground, hold Alberich!'

Again, the ground did as she told it to, but Alberich was too quick. With the kind of grin that would give Irene nightmares for weeks to come he levitated out of its reach again. Harry threw a spell at him, but he shielded against that too, grinning as if he was winning all the while. He said something Irene couldn't hear.

The lightning came down right on Harry.

And somehow he redirected it. Into Alberich.

That at last was something Alberich hadn't anticipated. The lightning struck. Irene smelled burnt hair and a few other things she couldn't name, but which were none of them very nice.

While she was still searching for the right words to turn that situation to their advantage, Mouse bounded out of the house and slammed his enormous mass into Alberich, who couldn't find his balance again and stumbled.

Into the faerie circle.

He must have felt it. He must have accrued enough Fae power to be susceptible to iron. Or he knew what these circles were used for. He tried to break out again.

And couldn't.

Irene had lost sight of Kai a while ago. Everyone had lost sight of Kai a while ago, including Alberich. He was still on the ground where he had fallen, but he was nowhere near as unconscious as everyone had thought, and now he was on his knees, with his hand on the barbed wire, grinning like he was winning.

Irene wasn't very knowledgeable about magic. She could plan for it if she believed she was going to run into it on a mission, but she had no magical skills of her own. Well, apart from the Language, and that was not exactly magic in the conventional sense. But it didn't take a genius to deduce that a circle used to summon something of faerie power could be used again to banish something of faerie power.

And Alberich had taken on a lot of that.

He screamed, and threw himself against the boundaries, but he couldn't get past. Kai held his ground. Harry knelt on the other side. He exchanged a look with Kai.

'Alberich, we banish thee!' they shouted in unison.

The air crackled with energy. It sparked around the edges of the circle. Irene pulled Butters with her to what she hoped was a safe distance. Mouse remained where he was, facing the circle, growling low in his throat.

Alberich screamed in rage again. The air inside the circle was bent and twisted, but where it ran up against the barbed wire, it halted. More than that, it recoiled and didn't come close again. Alberich howled as if burnt by it.

With something of a shock Irene realised that Alberich might be as allergic to iron as the Fae now. He has a weakness.

'Alberich, we banish thee!' Harry and Kai chanted again.

The hair of the back of her neck stood on end. She had goosebumps all over. The air was thick with magic and power.

And she had never been so close. It was scary. It was mesmerising.

Alberich howled in frustration. He threw power around like it was going out of fashion, but he couldn't get one spark over the boundary.

'Alberich, we banish thee!'

The end was very anticlimactic. There was no flash of light, no dramatic explosion. There was, in fact, a whole lot of nothing. One moment Alberich was there, shrieking and hurling abuse. The next he was gone. The circle was empty.

Well, except for the puddles forming inside, but that was less to do with magic and everything to do with the relentless downpour.

Despite the constantly rumbling thunder, it felt like it was suddenly too quiet.

They stumbled back inside. Mouse led the way, tongue hanging out, wagging his tail like he was congratulating himself on a job well done. Irene followed, supporting Kai, who hadn't entirely regained his equilibrium. Butters supported the much taller Harry, whose equilibrium had also not entirely recovered. It was a good thing they were already soaking wet, because when Mouse shook out his coat, they both got another shower for free.

They dripped all over the floor, but since they also tracked a lot of dirt and mud into the house, there was nothing they could really do to make it any cleaner anyway.

Irene helped Kai into a chair and then helped Butters, still clutching his rolling pin like a lifeline, help Harry into another. By the flickering candlelight neither of them looked very well. Kai had a growing bult on his temple. Harry's complexion wouldn't have been out of place on a three day old corpse.

'Is he gone?' Irene asked. 'Did we banish him?'

Kai shook his head. 'Temporarily.'

Harry had closed his eyes, but he wasn't asleep. 'We sent him back to the Nevernever. I think. I hope.'

'Out of the world, at least,' Kai agreed. 'But he's travelled between worlds before. He'll find a way to return.'

Which meant that they still had to banish him permanently. Whilst surrounded by bloodthirsty necromancers and their undead soldiers. In the midst of a deadly ritual. Being vastly outnumbered.

The odds of pulling that off and returning to the Library in triumph were not looking very good.

'And the Erlking?' Butters asked.

'Loose with the Wild Hunt.'

Irene had almost forgotten about the Erlking. If she wanted an illustration of how weird and terrifying her life was at the moment, then the fact that a rampaging Fae hunter of immense power was the least of her problems would do it. Alberich, the necromancers, their zombies and their rituals ranked just a bit higher at the minute.

'Will he come back?' Butters's voice rose on the last word.

'Not for you,' Harry promised, eyes still closed. 'He'll turn the Hunt on Kai and me if he can.' But Irene and Butters would be standing nearby. And somehow the Erlking didn't strike Irene as the kind of fellow who cared much about collateral damage.

So now what?

Thwarting the Erlking was their best bet at stopping the ritual. That clearly hadn't worked. So now what could they do?

It was in moments such as these that Irene realised that she was out of her depth. She could easily make herself at home in almost any world, provided she had a bit of a briefing. But her interactions in these worlds usually required only very surface level knowledge. She didn't have anywhere near enough knowledge to deal with a threat of this magnitude.

Why did I get involved in this again?

The Library-approved answer would be because this was how she got Die Lied der Erlking. That was how she justified her actions to her superiors.

Besides, Alberich was here, and he was the Library's problem. He was one of their own gone bad. They had a responsibility to contain the damage he wreaked. The only problem was that Irene didn't look forward to explaining to her superiors just how far she had become involved with this world in a very non-Library sanctioned way.

She looked forward to explaining why she had let Alberich acquire godhood status on her watch even less.

Butters poked at Kai's head and, after a brief examination, pronounced him fit for purpose. He only had a bump on his head that was rapidly taking on egg-sized proportions, but otherwise he was mostly fine.

Irene wasn't too sure the same could be said for Harry. Butters clearly thought the same thing, because he pursed his lips and prodded at his head. Harry, eyes still closed, didn't respond in any way.

'Is he alive?' Irene asked.

'Passed out,' Butters said grimly, still prodding away. 'I think he was knocked on the head again.'

Irene tried to remember, but between the flashing lightning, her own contributions and the dodging to avoid a face-full of fire, she couldn't remember that happening. It had been something of a day.

And it wasn't over yet.

'Is he in danger?' Kai asked. He had unearthed a towel from somewhere and had set himself the lengthy task of drying off the smaller cousin of a woolly mammoth. Mouse licked his face in gratitude.

'Of dying? No.' Butters grimaced. 'Not if he takes it easy. His body is one gigantic bruise, his head has been banged too many times and don't even ask me what kind of toll that amount of magic takes, but it can't be good.' He flapped his hands. 'You would be better off asking an actual doctor, which I. Am. Not.'

'You're better at it than we are,' Irene pointed out. Probably not exactly the ringing endorsement he was looking for. 'And good work with Alberich,' she said. 'That took courage.'

Butters looked away. 'Harry would have stepped in for me,' he said. 'He did step in for me.'

Irene understood about that.

At that moment Harry stirred. He still looked like death warmed over, but he grinned. 'I know where the Word of Kemmler is.'

Next time: Irene is bad for buildings. So is Harry. And Kai. There's going to be so much damage they could start their own demolition firm.

Reviews would be welcome and appreciated.