Elaine Lilian Mallory.
And the image came to life.
Elaine's face bowed forward, her hair falling around it, not quite hiding the expression of bone-deep weariness and despair.
Elaine, I whispered to her. Can you hear me?
Her thoughts came to me in an echoing blur, like when they want to confuse you at the movies and they muck around with a voice-over… believe I could make a difference. One person doesn't. One person can't ever make a difference. Not in the real world. God, what arrogance. And they paid for it.
I put more will into my thoughts. Elaine !
She glanced up for a moment, looking dully around the room. The image of her was filling in, slowly. She was in well-lit room without many features. Most of it seemed to be white. Then her head bowed again.
Trusting me to keep them safe. I might as well pull the trigger myself. Too cowardly for that, though. I just sit here. Set things up so that I don't have to fail. I don't have to try. I don't have to worry about being nothing. All I have to do is sit.
I didn't like the sound of that at all. Within the senseless vaults of my mind, I screamed, Elaine!
She looked up again, blinking her eyes slowly. Her mouth began moving in time with her audible thoughts. "Don't know what I thought I could do. One woman. One woman who spent her whole life running away. Being broken. I would have served them better to end it before I ever left, rather than dragging them down with me."
Her lips stopped moving, but, very faintly, I heard her thoughts call, Harry?
And suddenly I could hear a difference in the other thoughts.
"Just sit," she mumbled. "Almost over now. I won't be useless anymore. Just sit and wait and I won't have to hurt anymore. Won't fail anyone else. It will all be over and I can rest."
It didn't sound like Elaine's voice. There were subtle differences. It sounded… like someone doing an impersonation. It was close, but it wasn't her. There were too many small inconsistencies.
Then I got it.
That was the Skavis, whispering thoughts of despair and grief into her mind, just as the Raiths would whisper of lust and need.
She was under attack.
Elaine Lilian Mallory! I called, and in my head, my voice rumbled like thunder. I am Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, and I bid thee hear me! Hear my voice, Elaine!
There was a shocked silence, and then Elaine's thought-voice said, more clearly, Harry?
And her lips moved, and the not-Elaine voice said, "What the hell?"
Elaine's eyes snapped to mine, suddenly meeting them, and the room around her clarified into crystalline relief.
She was in the bathroom of the hotel, in the tub, naked in the bath.
The air was thick with steam. She was bleeding from a broad cut across one wrist. The water was red. Her face was god-awful pale, but her eyes weren't fogged over and hazed out. Not yet.
Elaine! I thundered. You are under a psychic attack! Priscilla is the Skavis!
Elaine's eyes widened.
Someone slapped me hard on the face and screamed, "Harry!"
The world flew sideways and expanded in a rush of motion and sound as my denied senses came crashing back in upon me. The Beetle was sitting sideways across several parking spaces in the motel's little lot, both doors open, and Murphy, gun in one hand, had a hold of my duster with the other and was shaking me hard. "Harry! Get up!"
"Oh," I said. "We're here."
I stumbled out of the car, getting my bearings. Behind me, Molly scrambled behind the wheel.
"Well?" Murphy demanded. "Did you get through?"
I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could, every light in sight suddenly went dim. I don't mean they went out. They didn't They just… dwindled, the way a lantern's flame does if you close off the glass. Or, I thought, struck with a sudden impression, the way a fire might dim if something nearby had just drawn the air away. Something big enough to dim nearby flame as it inhaled.
Something big taking a deep breath.
And then a voice that rang with silvery rage rolled through the air, kicking up a layer of dust from the ground in a broad wave in the wake of its passing as it rang out in an echoing clarion call, "FUL-MINARIS!"
There was a flash of green-white light so bright that it came to my reawakened senses as a physical pain, a roar of sound loud enough to drown out a spring break band, and the entire front wall of the first-floor hotel room we'd rented earlier that day was blown off the freaking building and into the street.
I had my shield up overhead before the debris started raining down, protecting Murphy, me, the windshield of the Beetle, and the girl staring wide-eyed through it. I squinted through the flying bits of building and furniture and rock, and a second later managed to spot a broken human form lying with its head in the street, its feet still up on the curb. Priscilla's turtleneck was on fire, and her hair stood straight out and was blackened and burned off within three or four inches of her skull. She ripped the turtleneck away in a kind of wobbly, disoriented panic—and revealed a bra and falsies. Those got ripped off too, and what was left, while slender and hairless, was also obviously the upper torso of a very pale, rather effeminate-looking man.
There was motion in the gaping maw of ruin that had been Elaine's hotel room, and a woman appeared in it. She was dressed in the cheap plastic curtain that had been hanging over the tub. She had a thick-linked chain wrapped tightly around her left arm a couple of inches above her bloodied, slashed wrist, tied in an improvised tourniquet. She was quite dry, and her hair floated out and around her head, crackling with little flashes of static electricity as she moved. She slid herself slowly, carefully across the debris-strewn floor, and she held a short length of carved wood that looked like nothing so much as an enormous thorn of some kind in her right hand, its sharp tip pointing at the man in the parking lot. Tiny slivers of green lightning danced around its tip, occasionally flickering out to touch upon nearby objects with snapping, popping sounds as she passed.
Elaine kept that deadly little wand pointed at the Skavis, eyes narrowed, and said, her voice rough and raw, "Who's useless now, bitch?"
I just stared at Elaine for a long minute. Then I traded a glance with Murphy, who looked just as startled and impressed as I felt. "Murph," I said, "I think I got through."
The Skavis agent came to his feet and bounded at us, quick as thinking.
I raised my staff and unleashed a burst of raw force. He might be strong as hell, but once off the ground, with nothing to push against, he was just mass times acceleration. The blow from the staff swatted him out of the air to the concrete not far from the Beetle. I immediately used another blow to throw him back across the parking lot, creating clear space around him.
"Thank you, Harry," Elaine said, her rough voice prim. Then she lifted the wand and snapped, "Fulminaris!"
There was another blinding flash of light, another crack of homemade thunder, and a green-white globe of light enclosed the vampire. There was a scream, and then his limp form fell to the concrete, one shoulder and most of his chest blackened. It smelled disturbingly like burned bacon.
Elaine lifted her chin, eyes glittering. She lowered the wand, and as she did, the lights came back up to full strength. She nodded once. Then she slipped and staggered to one side.
"Watch him!" I barked to Molly, pointing at the fallen vampire.
Murphy and I reached Elaine at about the same time, and we tried to catch her before she dropped. We succeeded in easing her down to the debris-littered concrete.