That was probably a very smart idea. The gate was six feet away from me. We could pull up stakes, hop through, and close it behind us. Gates to the spirit world paid absolutely no attention to trivial things like geography—they obeyed laws of imagination, intention, patterned thought. Even if Cowl was back there, he wouldn't be able to open a gate to the same place as mine, because he didn't think like me, feel like me, or share my intent and purpose.
Seeing fallout from the war with the Red Court had convinced me that running when you didn't have to fight was a really great idea. In fact, the Merlin had written a letter to the Wardens directing them to do so, rather than lose even more of our dwindling combat resources. If we hung around much longer, no one was getting out of this abattoir.
Thomas's sword came down on a thrashing ghoul, and he shouted, with desperation bordering on madness, "Justine!" He spun to me. "Harry, help me!"
Leaving was smart.
But my brother wasn't leaving. Not without the girl.
So I wasn't leaving without her, either.
Come to think of it, there were a whole lot of people who didn't need to be here. And, in point of fact, there were some damned compelling reasons to take them with us when we went. Those reasons didn't make it any less dangerous, and they sure as hell didn't make the idea any less scary, but that didn't stop them from existing.
Without Lara's peace initiative (fronted by her puppet father), the White Court would pitch in more heavily with the Reds than they already had. If I didn't get Lara and her puppet out, what was already a grim war with the vampires would quite possibly become an impossible one. That was a damned good reason to stay.
But it wasn't the one that kept me there.
I saw another ghoul tear into a helpless, unresisting thrall, closed my eyes for a second, and realized that if I did nothing to save as many as I could, I would never leave this cavern. Oh, sure, I might get out alive. But I'd be back here every time I closed my eyes.
"Dresden!" Marcone shouted. "I agreed to an extraction. Not to a war."
"A war's all we've got!" I shouted back. "We've got to get Raith out of this in one piece, or the whole thing was for nothing and no one pays you off!"
"No one will pay me off if I'm dead, either," Marcone said.
I snarled and stepped closer, getting into Marcone's face.
Hendricks rolled a half a step toward me and growled.
Murphy seized the huge man by one enormous paw, did something that involved his wrist and his index finger, and with a grunt Hendricks dropped to one knee while Murphy held one of his arms out straight behind him and angled painfully upward. "Take it easy, big guy," she said. "Someone might get hurt."
"Don't move," Marcone snarled—to his men, not to me. His eyes never wavered from mine. "Yes, Dresden?"
"I could tell you to do it or I'd strand you all in the Nevernever on the way home," I said quietly. "I could tell you to help me or I'd close the gate, and we'd all die here. I could even tell you to do it or I'd burn you to ashes where you stand. But I won't tell you that."
Marcone narrowed his eyes. "No?"
"No. Threats won't deter you. We both know that. I can't force you to do anything, and we both know that, too." I jerked my head at the cavern. "People are dying, John. Help me save them. God, please help me."
Marcone's head rocked back as if I'd slapped him. After a second he asked, "Who do you think I am, wizard?"
"Someone who can help them," I said. "Maybe the only one."
He stared at me with empty, opaque eyes.
Then he said, very quietly, "Yes."
I felt a fierce smile stretch my mouth and turned to Ramirez at once. "Stay here with these guys and hold the gate."
"Who are these people?" Ramirez said.
"Later!" I whirled back to Marcone. "Ramirez is with the Council, like me. Keep him covered and hold the gate."
Marcone pointed at several of the men. "You, you, you. Guard this man and hold the gate." He pointed out several more. "You, you, you, you, you, start rounding up anyone close enough to us to get to without undue risk and help them through."
Men leaped to obey, and I felt impressed. I'd never seen Marcone quite like this before: animated, decisive, and totally confident despite the nightmare all around. There was a power to it, something that brought order to the terrifying chaos around us.
I could see why men followed him, how he had conquered the underworld of Chicago.
One of the hired guns cut loose with a burst of fire, still shockingly loud enough to make me flinch. "You know what else?" I asked Marcone. "I don't really need this cave. Neither do you."
Marcone narrowed his eyes at me, then nodded once, and said something over his shoulder to one of the hired guns. "Dresden, I would appreciate it if you would ask the sergeant to release my employee."
"Murph," I complained, "can't you pick on someone your own size?" I took a second to admire Hendricks's expression, but said, "We need him with his arm still attached."
Murphy eased up on the pressure and then released Hendricks's arm. The big man eyed Murphy, rubbing his arm, but regained his feet and his enormous machine gun.
"Harry," Thomas said, voice tight. "We need to move."
"Yeah," I said. "Thomas, Murphy, and…" We needed mass. "Hendricks, with me."
Hendricks checked that with Marcone, who nodded.
"Follow me," I told them. "Stay—What are you doing, Marcone?"
Marcone had accepted a weapon from one of his gunmen, a deadly little MAC-10 that could spew out about a berjillion bullets in a second or two. He checked it and clipped a strap hanging from it to a ring on his weapon harness. "I'm going with you. And you don't have enough time to waste any more of it arguing with me about it."
Dammit. He was right.
"Fine. Follow my lead and stay close. We're going to go round up Lord Raith and get him and everyone else we can out of here before—"
Marcone abruptly raised his shotgun and put a blast through one of the nearer fallen ghouls that had begun to move. It thrashed, and he put a second shell into it. The ghoul stopped moving.
That was when I noticed that the black ichor that spewed from the ghouls was on the ground…
… and it was moving.
By itself.
The black fluid rolled and ran like liquid mercury, gathering together in little droplets, then larger gobs. Those, in turn, ran over the floor—uphill, in some cases—back toward broken ghoul bodies. As I watched, bits of missing flesh ripped from the ghouls began to fill in again as the ichor returned to their bodies. The one Thomas had beheaded actually came crawling back over the floor, having regained some of the use of its legs. It was holding its head up against the stump of its neck with its one arm, and the ichor was flowing from both the severed head and the stump, merging, reattaching it. I saw the ghoul's jaws suddenly stretch, its eyes blink and then focus.
On me.
Holy crap.
Time. We didn't have much time. If even the gutted and mangled ghouls could get back up again, there was no way the vampires were winning this one. The best they could hope for was to run—and when more vamps ran, more ghouls would be free to overwhelm us. Or possibly they'd do something even more disgusting than they already had, and we'd all puke ourselves to death.
"This just can't get much more disturbing," I muttered. "Follow me."
I gripped my staff in both hands and charged ahead, into the mass of maddened vampires and ghouls, to save one monster from another.
Chapter Forty
I sprinted toward the little knot of struggling vampires around the White King, while dozens of uber-ghouls ripped into the leading families of the White Court. I slipped on some slimy ichor, but didn't fall on my ass. For me, that's actually pretty good.