Chapter 16

Body Swap

It was a good thing Yoshimo had already ushered the kids up the stairs and out of the lobby when the ghosts came out of the floor, because they would not have stood a chance. Even those of us still on our feet barely managed to get ready in time.

Warden Kowalski had not been on his feet.

He turned into a cautionary tale about the hazards of a sedentary lifestyle.

My first priority was to make sure that Butters didn't get swarmed. He was stubbornly keeping up the beat, but his eyes were wide in terror.

Ramirez beat me to it. He was younger than I was, so faster, and there was an elegance to his way of casting that I lacked. He picked the ghosts off one by one with a flair that I was definitely taking notes on.

Which left me just enough time to draw a circle around Butters and close it.

'Are ghosts afraid of chalk?' Butters squeaked. As afraid as he clearly was, he still kept up the beat.

'It's a magic circle,' I said, casting a spell at a ghost that came a little too close for comfort. 'It keeps out ghosts.' Which was a bit short on detail and not entirely accurate, but I hardly had the time to go into the specifics while up to my ears in spectres. 'Stay there. Keep up the beat.' I pressed the piece of chalk into his hand and gave him a very brief instruction on how to create a ghost-free zone if he needed to do it himself.

With Butters as safe as he was going to be, I turned back to the fight. Bradamant and Irene were using the Language to try and clear the area around them, but with very limited effect. Their Library magic had been designed to change the physical world, and had little to no effect on the non-corporeal. The Wardens were more effective.

I remembered that I was now a Warden – and I had a cloak to prove it – so I joined the fray.

'Anything you can do?' I asked Kai. The lobby was too small to transform, so he put the sword he had liberated from Murphy's wall to good use.

'Only outside,' Kai said from between clenched teeth. 'This place is too small.'

I was pretty sure that Sue could deal with these ghosts as well, but I had parked my dinosaur outside. My girl was having the time of her life dealing with the ghosts before the door, but that didn't do us any good inside.

In many ways, fighting ghosts was harder than fighting zombies.

'There.' Thomas pointed.

The door to the lobby was made of glass, so we had a good view of what happened out there, and a pretty good view of the Corpsetaker making a beeline for my T-Rex.

And without her I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near the source of the action.

Luccio, on my other side, saw the danger too. 'Go, Warden Dresden. I'll be right behind you.'

There's a reason why splitting up in movies and books is usually a very bad idea. There is safety in numbers. The more spread out your group is, the easier it is for an enemy to pick you off one by one. You're more vulnerable if there's no one to watch your back.

It's not a better idea in real life, but when there are ghosts everywhere and a madwoman is after your zombie dinosaur, there's not always a lot of choice.

I dawdled too long with a particularly murderous spectre, so Luccio took point instead. Thomas, Irene, Kai and I followed in her wake, dodging and batting away the Corpsetaker's ghostly minions as we went. I directed some of my will to Sue to steer her away from the Corpsetaker. It was harder to do from a distance than it was when I touched her. Her old hunter instincts were awake now too; she'd had a taste of the hunt. I needed some more power to get her to do what I wanted her to do.

The Corpsetaker snarled. She seemed, if possible, even more unhinged than she had been when Irene had thrown most of the bookstore at her head. She had a sword in one hand and a small drum secured with multiple straps around her waist, on which she drummed the beat with her other hand.

Deal with the necromancer and you deal with the ghosts. I hadn't put that theory to the test, but it seemed the most direct way to handle this. But she hadn't become this powerful by twiddling her thumbs. And she had an entire army at her disposal.

'See to your dinosaur, Warden Dresden,' Luccio said. 'I shall deal with her.' Contempt dripped from the last word.

It seemed wiser not to argue.

Luccio had a lot more experience than I did, and it showed. She stalked at the Corpsetaker, sword in one hand, wielding magic with precise focus with the other. She cleared her path of ghosts almost scornfully, as if they were hardly worth her time and notice, especially not when there was a proper opponent to get her teeth into.

A swordfight ensued that would have looked pretty good in any action movie.

'Kai, go,' Irene said, which reminded me of the other part of the plan. We knew where Alberich was. With any luck he didn't know Kai was here yet.

With even more luck, he wouldn't know until it was too late to do anything about it.

Kai hesitated briefly, then nodded and turned to me. 'The storm?' he asked.

We were all soaking wet and on the fast track to pneumonia anyway. 'Flood the place.'

It would hamper what the Wardens and I could do, but Librarians weren't bothered about water, Thomas wasn't capable of magic anyway and Kai's powers were the source of all the water. That gave us the advantage.

And if my magic failed, I at least still had my gun.

Kai nodded and, once again, took his Draconic form. I had seen it a few times now, but it was awe-inspiring every time. His very presence demanded respect.

It certainly caught the Corpsetaker by surprise. The sight of the very large Dragon taking off from the middle of the lawn made her falter for just long enough. Luccio didn't miss the opportunity. She found her way under the Corpsetaker's defences and sank her sword into the Corpsetaker's guts. The Corpsetaker stared up in surprise for long moments.

Luccio twisted the blade and pulled it free. The Corpsetaker sank to the ground, hands clutching the wound. The expression on her face was pure disbelief. She must have thought she was invincible. For someone who played around with death as much as she did, she probably hadn't contemplated her own mortality a lot.

Luccio turned around and stalked back to us. 'Come,' she said. 'There's work to be done.'

I glanced back at the twitching Corpsetaker, whilst firing off another spell at a ghost. 'Shouldn't we…?' Something about this didn't seem right.

Luccio didn't even look behind her. 'She is finished.' She stalked away, back to the building, expecting us to follow without question.

Even with as limited as the visibility was, I could see Irene frown in sudden suspicion. 'Harry, the ghosts are still here.'

And now I knew what wasn't right. The ghosts were still swarming us. Sue still munched on them. They weren't interested in Luccio, who walked through them without being harmed.

'Look at her left hand,' Thomas said.

She was beating a steady tat-too against her leg.

And the Corpsetaker had a well-established reputation for body-hopping.

There was no time to think. 'Corpsetaker!' I shouted after her.

People respond when they hear their name called. It's almost instinctual.

The Corpsetaker turned.

Irene was already on it. 'Ground, hold the Corpsetaker. Sword, glow hot!'

Irene's commands distracted her just long enough for me to get my gun from my coat, aim it and fire it. I am not actually a bad shot and the bullet hit her right between the eyes. She hadn't seen it coming. She didn't have any time to prepare her death curse.

The ghosts dissipated as she fell.

Of course, she had worn Luccio's face. And I had just shot her in front of an audience behind a big glass door.

Morgan didn't give me the time to think through the implications. He burst out the door, bellowing like an angry bull, sending out a blast of energy that threw me back and against a tree, after which I didn't see anything that wasn't the entire galaxy wheeling around my head for a few seconds.

The next thing I saw clearly was Morgan's angry face only inches from mine. Which probably counts as cruel and unusual punishment.

I realised a little too late that I had said that out loud.

That realisation was immediately followed by a closer look at the galaxy and then, probably more worryingly, by an immediate lack of air. I tried to blink the stars away, while also trying to remember where my hands were, but it wasn't going very well for me.

Not until the pressure disappeared.

I stumbled forwards and drew in as much air as I could, which made me dizzy. If it hadn't been for someone holding me up, I would have fallen face first in the growing swamp at my feet. This time the stars went away when I blinked, but my head pounded viciously enough to make me nauseous.

When my vision cleared Morgan was on his back on the ground. Mouse sat on his chest, head low, growling, while Irene held one of Murphy's swords to his throat. The last thing I remembered was leaving Mouse to guard the children inside the building. And the last time I had seen that sword it had been in Kai's hand.

Clearly I had missed something.

'Don't move,' Irene said.

Morgan glowered, but he had a really close-up view of Mouse's teeth and he thought better of it. 'You are letting a murderer go free,' he bit out.

'I think I am preventing a murder,' Irene said coolly.

'He murdered the Captain,' Morgan snapped. 'He fraternises with vampires. He's a dangerous warlock!'

The fraternising vampire was the only thing standing between me and the ground, so there was absolutely no point denying that part. I would have denied the other accusations, but I was barely upright, and I was still trying to remember how to talk in the first place.

It would be very ironic to be killed by my own side after everything that happened. It also wouldn't be surprising.

'The Corpsetaker had taken Luccio's body,' Irene said slowly, as to a toddler. 'Think, please. The ghosts didn't disappear until Harry shot her. That doesn't make any sense if it was Captain Luccio, does it? She wasn't a necromancer.'

Morgan blinked, but that could just be to get the relentless rain out of his eyes.

I didn't think it would help. Morgan loved to bring criminals to justice, and it never occurred to him that I wasn't a criminal. All I had done was confirm his worst expectations. The only one who could change his mind was probably already dead from a sword to the gut. And not too far away the Advanced Necromancy Club was getting promoted to godhood while we were at each other's throats.

Morgan tried to buck Mouse off of him, but Mouse was an awful lot of dog, and about as easy to move as a boulder. Which was great now, but nowhere near as fun when he tried to sleep on my bed.

We were wasting time, locked in a stalemate. I was the only one who could come near necromancy ground zero, but my head pounded relentlessly and I wasn't sure I could so much as stand without help. Irene needed to deal with Alberich, but she was tied up restraining Morgan, who would be much more useful if he could actually help instead of needing to be held down.

Alberich broke the stalemate.

Visibility was poor – and mine poorer than most – but Thomas saw him, creeping up behind Irene. 'Irene, behind you!' He left me leaning against the tree and hurried to Irene's defence.

Irene didn't waste one moment. She took the sword from Morgan's neck and swung it behind her blindly. Alberich was forced to jump out of reach.

He wore the same body in which we had banished him in the sad remnants of Murphy's garden, but he looked different somehow, almost as if the body was fraying at the seams, like a piece of clothing that had almost been worn out. He couldn't have had this body long. I'd gone toe to toe with Alberich, and he was no novice when it came to magic. And most of that magic had felt very powerful. As well as deeply wrong.

I'd be surprised if a body could handle him for very long.

By the time he had recovered, Thomas was close enough to use his sword to swipe at Alberich again. Alberich batted him aside as if he it was nothing and made for Irene again. Now it was her turn to leap to the side to avoid being burnt to a crisp.

Morgan may want to kill me, but he was still a Warden and there was a threat right in front of him. He and Mouse must have come to some agreement, because they launched themselves at him at the same time.

And Alberich batted them away as easily as he had Thomas, like a cat playing with mice.

If he was here, then he must have his own necromantic field hanging around here somewhere, but I didn't see or hear his dead squad. With any luck they were still guarding the Darkhallow. Alberich didn't strike me as a team player, or even a minion commander. He was a loner. He fought alone.

I started to think that this might be his only weakness.

And if that wasn't all bad enough, Kai chose that exact moment to fulfil my wish to flood the place. Really flood the place. The rain intensified – and I didn't believe it could have got any worse – and the water around my feet rose. Fast. It sloshed around my ankles with every intention of reaching my knees as quickly as possible.

Hell's bells.

Kai must have been holding back last night.

It was at this moment that I realised that I still had a handy dinosaur lying around. Controlling Sue was infinitely harder now that she was fully awake and I'd had my bells rung one too many times, but Butters must still be keeping up the beat, because after an enormous exertion of will, I persuaded her to turn back and have a go at Alberich.

The ground shook under her paws.

Alberich glanced in the direction of the oncoming T-Rex and started cooking up something so foul that the air around him began to melt. The water around his feet steamed and bubbled.

'Water, bring down Alberich!' Irene commanded.

A command like that left a lot of room for interpretation. Waves rose and crashed over Alberich, while new currents dragged at his ankles and tried to pull him down. It didn't tip him over, but it did disrupt his working.

I was far enough away, but everyone else was swept off their feet. Thomas and Irene were flung back toward the building. Mouse did a doggy paddle in my direction and presented himself with wagging tail.

I scratched him behind the ears.

Sue charged in while Alberich was trying to recover and simply ran him over. She would have gobbled him up too, if I hadn't held her back. If she had tried to eat him, he might have disappeared again. We needed to keep him here, but I had no indication how far Kai was with his warding, and in the downpour, I couldn't see a lot anyway.

Something floated against my leg. I reached down and pulled Morgan to his feet. Being washed away had not improved his mood. 'Dresden.'

I grinned at him, though that was an effort. I almost told him that he could kill me later, but he would definitely take that as an open invitation. 'Not now,' I said instead. 'We need to stop Alberich leaving.'

He had done that twice before when the place he was became too hot to stand. Kai needed the time to ward the place. It was up to us to give him that time.

Morgan was enough of a professional to park his vendetta. 'How?' he demanded.

I pulled out the coil of barbed wire used to summon the Erlking. 'He's corrupted himself with Faerie power,' I explained. 'Iron should hold him. It worked earlier.'

If we could get it around him.

If we could keep it from getting washed away.

If I could still summon up enough strength to keep him in it.

Far too many ifs.

Morgan looked at me like I had gone mad. Which was a nice change from his normal scum-of-the-Earth look that he usually reserved for me.

'We don't have time for anything else,' I argued pre-emptively.

He communicated his agreement with a terse nod and a grunt. 'Distract him, Dresden.' He took the coil from me and disappeared into the rain.

I wasn't sure how much walking I could do, much less sloshing through the ankle-deep results of a torrential downpour, so I stayed where I was, gripped my staff and prepared to distract Alberich to within an inch of my life.

Shouting wouldn't do much good in all this noise, so I grabbed my staff and sent a short burst of fire at him to get his attention. He redirected it almost absent-mindedly, still keeping his eyes mostly on Sue. She kept him distracted enough that he didn't have the time to cook up something too nasty for reality to contain.

Sue barely needed direction. She growled and snapped her jaws at Alberich. His experience with angry dinosaurs was clearly limited.

If Morgan wanted to get the barbed wire around Alberich, he would need to be able to get close. Sue was currently in the way, and very happy to be there. A wily prey clearly appealed to her hunter instincts. She was like a cat playing with a very angry mouse who just didn't know when to give up.

Clearly she had never seen Tom and Jerry.

It took a tremendous effort of will to get her to cease and desist. She fought my will every inch of the way. Of course my focus was not exactly great – I kept having to blink away entire galaxies swimming into view – but I finally enticed Sue away with the promise of more zombies to play with.

She could be the entire vanguard.

Once she had Cowl's flunkies in view, she tore off in the right direction, leaving tiny maelstroms of water in her wake. In some areas the water was almost knee-high and the storm was showing no signs of letting up anytime soon. There was enough running water here to disrupt most magical workings. I could only hope that Cowl was having as much trouble as I was, because there was nothing I could do about him.

Nothing except send a dinosaur to harangue him, that was.

I had a very brief moment to see if I could spot any of my allies, but the relentless rain and the darkness made that very difficult. Dimly, I noticed someone in a cloak bending over the fallen Corpsetaker's body, the one that Luccio had been shoved into. Luccio's old body was nowhere to be seen, probably washed away. Kai was still off doing his thing somewhere.

It was Irene I was really after. Trapping Alberich meant nothing if she didn't deal the final blow. I finally caught sight of her near the building we'd come from, scrambling to her feet.

Good enough.

I cast an enchantment to amplify my voice – I would never be able to make myself heard over the storm otherwise – but even that little working was an uphill battle under the current circumstances. Throwing any major evocations around was going to be out of the question.

'Alberich!' I yelled. My spell made the sound reverberate off the walls. I may have overdone it a bit.

He would have had to be deaf to miss it. He turned around.

Alberich was close enough to see in enough detail to turn my stomach, bowels and knees to water. Just as well that I still had a convenient tree to lean against. I've seen a lot of nasties, most of whom were a lot stronger than I was. I've had a few glimpses of real unapologetic evil too.

Alberich was in Nicodemus's league, in both power and malice.

This confrontation was going to have a very negative effect on my life expectancy.

Not that there was a lot of choice. If I didn't follow my attention-seeking up with some serious attack, I might as well have a neon sign flashing DISTRACTION! over my head. Alberich wasn't stupid.

This would have been a lot easier if he was.

On the general principle of the thing I hurled fire in his direction, but it wasn't anything like as good as I'd cast before. Alberich was wise to my ways now; he had expected it. Worse, he learned from me. He cast a fireball – the show-off – at me and I was forced to take a very cold dive into the water to avoid being turned into a human torch.

The tree behind me didn't survive.

I had no notion of time, no notion of where anyone was. I wasn't even entirely sure where I was. The only thing I did know was that Alberich was far too close, and that he was very motivated.

I had to duck again before I even got entirely to my feet again, because another burst of fire sailed just inches over my head.

When I really got back upright again – more or less – I was a lot closer to Alberich than where I started. He caught my eye and smirked.

Hell's bells.

The air around him simmered and blurred. If the water bothered him, it didn't show at all. 'You don't like water a lot, do you?' he grinned. 'Why don't you drown in it?'

The ground beneath my feet became unstable, like mud, but worse. I was sinking into it, not fast, but little by little. I had nothing to hold on to. I cast a spell that should have propelled me upwards and out of the hole I was sinking into, but either the water was seriously disrupting my magic, or Alberich was a lot stronger than I thought.

And I was not underestimating him to begin with.

My efforts did wipe the grin off his face, and it slowed my progress downwards. He redoubled his efforts and now there was not just the sucking ground underneath my feet, but a heavy pressure on my head and shoulders forcing me down too. I grit my teeth and fought back with everything I had. That slowed the inevitable only a little.

If Morgan didn't hurry up he would have to dig me up later.

Now that I thought about it, that might be exactly what he was after.

I fought back harder. The prospect of painful death focuses the mind wonderfully.

Whatever I did, it was costing Alberich. His face twisted in effort. He looked like he might burst out of his skin, and I mean that literally. Whatever he was doing, it took a huge toll on his stolen skin. His hands and face were shedding little flakes and where they weren't shedding, they were straining and stretching, as if whatever was underneath was too big to be contained by it. The water at his feet bubbled and frothed, the air simmered.

I fought back with everything I had, but it wasn't enough. I had been afraid when I had gone up against Cowl, but it couldn't hold a candle to the fear I felt now. Because right now I was absolutely sure, beyond any doubt, that I. Was. Going. To. Die. My allies were nowhere near, and half of them believed I was a warlock anyway. Help was not going to come. Or, if it did come, it was going to be too late.

But I had told Butters that I was too stubborn to die, so I would give stubborn my very best try. It wasn't going to be enough, but it was all I had.

I didn't see anything beyond my struggle. The good thing was, Alberich wasn't either. So when the barbed wire circle was thrown over him like a lasso he never saw it coming until it was too late. The circle didn't go all the way to the ground – it bobbed on the water at about knee-height around him – but it was around him and he could not step over it or go under it.

He screamed in rage.

But the pressure on me was gone, and not a moment too soon. I was in the water nearly up to my neck, and in the ground to my hips. It was an enormous effort to drag myself out of the hole, but I got out.

'Stop dawdling, Dresden,' Morgan, for whom sympathy was something that sometimes happened to other people, snarled. 'Come help.'

This was probably not the time to remind him of the many benefits of the word please. I dragged myself over and poured my will and focus into containing the force of nature that was Alberich. He fought like a man possessed. He didn't have quite as much power to throw around as the Erlking, but it was far more than any mortal man should have had. Morgan and I had to really strain ourselves.

Then, over the endless rumbling of thunder I heard another sort of rumbling, that rose into the kind of roar that shook the world. Alberich abruptly fell silent, eyes widening in sudden realisation.

It was just as well that I hadn't actually cancelled the spell that made my voice sound like I was speaking through a microphone. 'Irene, NOW!'

Next time: more necromancers, more rain, more danger and a great big Dragon.

Just a quick note: some of you may have realised Christmas and New Year are both on Wednesday. I've got a pretty busy schedule around the holidays – for all the right reasons – so there will be a little change in updates. Next chapter will be posted on Sunday the 29th of December. Then normal updates will resume on Wednesday the 8th of January.

I'll be using the time for quality family time and getting to grips with the edits for the sequel, which I'll hope to start posting around mid-February (exact date follows later). But first I need to fix several typos, plot holes and awkward mistakes such as the case of Mouse, the magically teleporting dog.

Reviews would of course be very much appreciated.

Merry Christmas everyone!