The dark shape, indistinct in the heavy shadows, moved and came closer, until it looked like . . . something that was not quite human. Its shoulders were too wide, its stance too crooked, and it walked with a slow, limping gait, drag-thump, drag-thump. It was covered with what appeared to be a voluminous dark cloak—oh, and it was eleven or twelve feet tall.

Yikes.

Green eyes the same color as the bolt of unnatural lightning burned inside the darkness of the cloak’s hood. They faced me and flashed brighter, once, and a gust of wind washed down onto me, almost taking me from my feet.

I gritted my teeth against it and endured, until a moment later it died away.

I looked at the dark shape for a moment, and then nodded. “Right,” I said. “I get you.” I reached for my will, infused it with a meager portion of soulfire, and hurled my right hand forward, calling, “Ventas servitas!”

Wind festooned with ribbons of silver light rushed from my outstretched hand, crashing into the figure. It didn’t move the thing—the entity was far too massive for that—but the wind cast the grey cloak back as sharply as a ship’s flag caught in a gale, making the fabric snap and pop.

My evocation died away, and the entity’s cloak settled down again. Once more, its eyes flashed, and the earth beneath my feet and slightly behind me erupted, solid rock splitting and cracking. Sharp shards flew up from the supernatural impact, and I instantly felt half a dozen hot, stinging cuts on my legs and back.

“Ow,” I muttered. “At least they weren’t in any tender spots, I guess.” Then again I summoned my will and soulfire, this time focusing on the earth near the entity.

“Geodas!” I shouted, and the earth beneath the entity twisted and screamed, suddenly opening into a sinkhole.

The entity never moved. It just stood there on empty air, as if I hadn’t literally pulled the ground out from under it.

The entity’s eyes kindled to life again, but this time I had anticipated it. Flame gathered before it in a lance and rushed toward me, leaving a coating of sudden frost and ice on the ground beneath it as it came. But my own will had reached down into the ground below me, and found the water from the stream that fed the cottage’s little well. I drew it up through the cracks the entity had created in the rock, taking advantage of the work it had done, with a shout of, “Aquilevitas!” A curtain of water rose up to meet the onrushing flame, and they consumed one another, leaving only darkness and a cloud of steam.

I lifted a hand and my soulfire-enhanced will and shouted, “Fuego!” A column of silver-and-blue flame as thick as my chest roared across the ground and struck the entity hard in the center of its mass.

It rocked back at the impact. Not much. Maybe half an inch, though that column of fire would have blown apart a brick wall. But Ihad moved it that half an inch. There was no doubt about that.

Weariness was slowly seeping into my limbs as the entity stared at me. I forced myself to stand straight and face the being without blinking—and without looking weak.

“You want to keep it up?” I asked it aloud. “I could do this all night.”

The entity stared at me. Then it walked closer.

Drag-thump. Drag-thump.

I was not at all scared. Even a little. The only reason my mouth was so dry was all that fire that had been flying around.

It stopped five feet away, towering over me.

And I realized that it was waiting.

It was waiting for me to act.

My heart pounded harder as I bowed my head respectfully. I don’t know why I said what I did, exactly. I just know that my instincts screamed at me that it was the right thing to say, my voice infused with my will.

“I am Harry Dresden, and I give thee a name, honored spirit. From this day on, be thou called Demonreach.”

Its eyes flashed, burning more brightly, sending out tendrils and streams of greenish fire in a nimbus around its head.

Then Demonreach mirrored my gesture, bowing its own head in reply. When it looked up, its head turned briefly toward the cottage. Then the wind rose again, and darkness fluttered over the hilltop.

When it passed, I was alone, the hilltop empty of entity and animal alike. I was also freezing.

I staggered toward my clothes and gathered them up, shaking so hard that I thought I might just collapse on the ground. As I rose with my gear in my arms, I saw a light flickering in the cottage.

I frowned and shambled over to it. The door, like the windows, had long since rotted away, and there was very little roof to speak of—but the cottage did have one thing in it that still functioned.

A fireplace.

A neat stack of fallen wood was burning in the fireplace, putting off a cheery warmth, its golden flames edged with flickers of green at their very edges.

I blinked at the fire for a moment, and then made my way over to it, reveling in the warmth as I dressed again. I glanced up, searching for that alien presence. I found it immediately, still there, still alien, still dangerous, though it no longer seemed determined to drive me away.

I slid will into my voice as I said, simply, “Thank you.”

The gentle wind that sighed through the trees of Demonreach may have been a reply.

Or maybe not.

Chapter Thirty-seven

I didn’t return to the dock by the same route I’d taken to the tower. There was a much shorter, easier way, down what looked like a sheer rock wall. It proved to have an ancient narrow gully worn into the stone, almost completely hidden by brush. The gully’s floor had a thin layer of silt in it, leaving little room for plants to grow, and was as easy to traverse as a sidewalk, even in the dark. Following it brought me back to the island’s shoreline in half the time it had taken to go up.

I didn’t wonder how I’d known about the path until I stepped out of the woods and saw the dock again. I hadn’t been that way before. I hadn’t known it existed. Yet when I decided to take that trail, the knowledge had come to me as completely and immediately as if I had lived there for years: pure information.

I paused and looked around me. I knew not to walk directly to the dock from where I stood. There was a large hornet’s nest in the earth at the base of a fallen tree, and I would risk arousing their anger if I accidentally crushed it while walking by. I also knew that a grumpy old skunk was trundling its way back to its den, thirty yards in the other direction, and that it would happily douse me with musk if I came anywhere close.

I glanced over my shoulder, back toward the tower, casting out my supernatural senses. The island’s awareness continued being that same constant presence I’d felt ever since leaving the tower. I considered going back, taking the old stairs this time, to see what would happen, and immediately I understood that there was a cottonmouth that made its home in a large crack on the twenty-sixth step. If I delayed the trip until later in the morning, the snake would be out on the stones, sun-bathing to build up its body heat for the day.

The dawn was approaching, and the sky had begun to lighten from black to blue. I could see the tower standing, lonely and wounded, but unbowed, a black shape against the sky. Demonreach began to awaken to the first trills of songbirds.

I walked down to the dock, thoughtfully, and walked out to where the Water Beetle was moored. “Molly,” I called.

Feet pounded on the deck, and Molly burst up out of the ship’s cabin. She flew across the distance between us, and nearly tackled me into the water on the far side of the dock with the enthusiasm of her hug. Molly, the daughter of two ferocious warriors, was no wilting violet. My ribs creaked.