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I dragged myself over to kneel in front of the children, facing down the hallway. I lifted my left hand, and stared at it in shock for a second. I always thought I looked good in red and black, but as a rule I preferred that to be my clothes. Not my limbs. My hand was a blackened, twisted claw of badly cooked meat, burned dark wherever it wasn't bloodred. My silver shield bracelet dangled beneath it, the charm-shields heat-warped, gleaming and bright.
I raised my other hand to signal Murphy, but then I heard a scream from down the hall, snarling and vicious and hardly human. The smoke swirled and cleared for a second, and I saw Kincaid, dragging one leg, his back against the wall. He had one hand clenched hard to his leg, and a gun in the other. He shot at a target I couldn't see until the gun started clicking.
"Now, Murphy!" I shouted. My voice thundered down the hall. "Kincaid! Bolshevik Muppet!"
The mercenary's head whipped around toward me. He moved like hamstrung lightning, swift and lurching and grotesque. He dropped the gun, released his leg, and threw himself straight at me with his three unwounded limbs.
Again I raised my shield, and prayed that the mine's infrared trip wire functioned.
Time slowed.
Kincaid flung himself through the doorway.
The mine beeped. There was a sharp, snapping click of metal.
Kincaid tumbled past me. I leaned aside to let him, and at the same instant brought every scrap of strength I had left to bear on the shield.
Lumpy metal spheres, maybe twenty or thirty of them, flew out into the air. I had angled my shield in a simple inclined plane, its base at the closet's doorway, its summit at the back wall of the closet, about four feet off the ground. Several of the spheres hit the shield, but the slope of it sent them rebounding out into the hall.
The submunitions exploded in a ripple of thunder and light. Steel balls flew in deadly sprays, rattling off stone walls and tearing into flesh with savage efficiency. The sloped shield flared into azure incandescence, energy from the shrapnel being absorbed and shed as flashbulb-bright bursts of light. The sound was indescribable, almost loud enough to kill all on its own.
And then it was over.
Silence fell, broken only by the crackling of flames. Nothing moved but drifting smoke.
Murphy, Kincaid, the captive children, and I were all huddled together in an unorganized pile of frightened humanity. We all sat there stunned for a moment. Then I said, "Come on. We have to get moving before the fire spreads." My voice sounded raw. "Let's get these kids out. I might be able to break these chains."
Kincaid reached up without speaking and took a key down from a high hook on the opposite wall. He settled back down to sit leaning against it, and tossed me the key.
"Or we could do that," I said, and passed the key to Murphy. She started unlocking them. I was too tired to move. My hand didn't hurt, which was a very bad sign, I knew. But I was too tired to care. I just sat there and stared at Kincaid.
He had his hand clamped down on his leg again. He was bleeding from it. There was more blood on his belly, on one hand, and his face was positively smothered with it, as if he'd been bobbing for apples in a slaughterhouse.
"You're hurt," I said.
"Yep," he replied. "Dog."
"I saw you go down."
"It got nasty," he confirmed.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I lived."
"Your chest is bleeding," I said. "And there's blood on your hand."
"I know that."
"And your face is drenched in it."
He lifted an eyebrow and touched his free hand to his chin, then looked at the blood. "Oh. That isn't mine." He started fumbling at his belt.
I got enough energy together to go to him and help. He pulled a roll of black duct tape from a pouch on his belt and with sharp, jerking motions we wound the tape tightly around his wounded leg several times, layering the wound in adhesive, literally taping it closed. He used about a third of the roll, then grunted and tore it off. Then he said, "You're going to lose that hand."
"I was sending it back to the kitchen anyway. I ordered it medium well."
Kincaid stared at me for a second and then started letting out soft, wobbly-sounding laughter, as if it were something he didn't have a lot of practice at. He stood up, wheezing soft laughter, drew another gun and his own machete from his belt, and said, "Get them out. I'm going to dismember whatever is left."
"Groovy," I said.
"All that trouble we went to, and you just blew the place up. We could have done this to begin with, Dresden."
Murphy got the kids loose and they started getting away from the wall. One of them, a girl no more than five years old, just collapsed against me crying. I held on to her for a moment, letting her cry, and said, "No, we couldn't have."
