Butcher, Jim

Battle Ground

p.3 – " ‘…Mortals versus the supernatural world gets bad, Murph. Ugly. For all of us.’ "
p.21 – “They were showing the flag for civilization and law, reassuring people that there were still boundaries that would be defended.”
p.28 – “I held up a finder. ‘You can run, and they’ll chase you.’ I held up another. ‘You can hide, and they’ll hunt you.’ I clenched my hand into a fist. ‘Or you can fight. Because they are coming to kill you.’ "
p.30 – “I shook myself. I was terrified for them, for the people who were my friends– but if I stood there feeling terrified and sick and worried and helpless to protect them, I wasn’t going to do them any good.”
p.33 – “The eyes, they say, are the windows to the soul. They’re right. How long it takes to trigger the soulgaze varies, but it seems to work faster for people in heightened states of emotion…”
p.35 – “No, I said back to the voice in my thoughts. Killing your way to answers is never as simple as it seems. The best way to survive is to keep it simple. I didn’t bother trying to argue right and wrong. Those are concepts beyond the scope of that kind of magical construct.”
p.38 – “The only mirrors we have are other people.”
p.46 – " ‘You can’t just go straight up against a mind like that. Not when she’s wearing Titanic bronze.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘The stuff… it affects Creation on a fundamental level,’ he said. ‘As long as it has enough will behind it, the physical world is going to have a very limited effect on her.’ I squinted at the old man. ‘So as long as she thinks she’s invincible, she is?’ The old man lifted his eyebrows. ‘Haven’t ever heard it summed up that way before. But yes, that’s accurate enough for our purposes.’ "
p.48 – “Mab gave me a look with something in it that was almost like pity. Or possibly contempt. ‘As if you could restrain yourself any more ably than he could.’ She shook her head. ‘Be comforted, my Knight: I chose you for times precisely such as these, when an elemental of destruction is what is most needed.’ "
p.53 – “Doesn’t matter where you go in the world– if you’re good at your job, people who are good enough at theirs to see it will respect you for it.”
pp.61-62 – " ‘How many feet higher do the letters need to be in order to spell it out for you, wizard?’ the Redcap asked, amused. ‘Best you learn to read the subtext, if you wish to continue in this business. Besides. It’s not as if Mab can just hand the Wild Hunt to a mortal to play with.’ He shook his head. ‘Strife between queens is a terrible thing for the rest of us. Each can lay commands upon us that we cannot refuse. If one is to hold to one’s loyalties, it requires a great deal of careful negotiation of circumstance and conversation to function at all.’ "
p.63 – “Part of what keeps your brain insulated from damage is ‘wrapping’ the concept of a given spell in verbalized phonemes– and it’s got to be done in a language that you’re not really familiar with, if it’s going to do you any good. It provides a kind of insulation for your mind and thoughts. You can do magic without using words all you like– but it has consequences that begin with twitches and disorientation and eventually result in violent seizures and death. No wizard with an ounce of sense makes a practice of doing his magic silently.”
p.70 – " ‘When a group comes together around something they love,’ I said, ‘it changes things. It changes how they see one another. It becomes a community. Something greater than the sum of its parts.’ "
p.70 – “Mab’s eyebrows went up in comprehension. ‘Ah. You found a weakness in their psychology and manipulated it. You provided them with a resource and incurred their debt.’ ‘I made them see themselves differently.’ "
p.73 – " ‘Do you remember the hardest lesson of power?’ ‘Knowing when not to use it?’
p.74 – " ‘Seeing you like this, all the time. In the worst of the cross fire. It was like this with your mother. Getting more and more isolated from other wizards.’ He glowered at Lara and Mab. ‘Getting caught up with a bad crowd. And I didn’t know what the hell to do. What to say to her. Either.’ He coughed and blinked his eyes. ‘Dammit, Hoss. You keep getting hurt. And I can’t stop it.’ "
pp.74-75 – “His jaw muscles tensed and relaxed several times. ‘There’s falling from grace,’ he said, finally. ‘And there’s being pushed. And you’re standing pretty far ou on a ledge, Hoss.’ ‘My choice,’ I said. ‘Eyes open.’ The old man snorted. ‘Aye. Don’t mean I got to like it.’ ‘Neither do I,’ I said candidly. ‘But it’s what I’ve got.’ "
p.76 – “I shrugged. ‘Ivy… she’s on our side. On the side of people. On a fundamental level.’ ‘How do you figure?’ ‘She’s made to record adn preserve knowledge,’ I said. ‘No people, no knowledge. Nothing to record and preserve, and no reason to record or preserve it. Her existential purpose requires… us.’ "
p.79 – “Marcone took up his suit jacket and shrugged into it. He adjusted it until the cloth fell without revealing the guns. ‘Do you know the difference between courage and foolhardiness, Dresden?’ ‘Any insurance adjuster would say no.’ He waved a hand at my banter, as though that was all the acknowledgment it deserved. ‘Hindsight,’ he said. ‘Until the extended consequences of any action are known, it is both courageous and foolish. And neither.’ "
pp.79-80 – " ‘I have no intention of dying tonight, Dresden,’ Marcone said. ‘Nor of losing what I have fought to claim. I am a survivor. As, improbably, are you.’ He nodded to me politely and spoke in a very quiet, reasonable tone that was all the more chilling for the absolute granite rumbling beneath the surface. ‘I only wish you to be aware that I mean to continue as I have begun. After tonight, I will still be here– and you, by God, will show respect.’ "
p.99 – " ‘How many can we fit in there, do you think?’ River Shoulders asked me. ‘Well. We aren’t exactly worrying about fire codes right now,’ I said. ‘Maybe three or four hundred if we pack them in?’ ‘How many people, in this city?’ ‘Eight million, all told,’ I said heavily. ‘Give or take.’ ‘Not much difference,’ he said. I pointed at a couple of half-dressed parents with half a dozen kids in various stages of pajamas hurrying inside the squatting stone solidity of the castle. ‘Makes a pretty big difference to them.’ The Sasquatch flashed a sudden, very wide, very white grin.”
p.102 – " ‘So,’ I clarified, finding myself grinning irrationally, ‘we’re going to charge into the meat grinder as fast as we can to force her to hit us as hard as she can, and then hope that we can punch her lights out before the army gets here and starts killing everybody in sight.’ ‘We…’ Ebenezar sighed. ‘Aye, fair enough.’ "
p.102 – " ‘Well,’ I said to River Shoulders. ‘Shall we?’ My grandfather lifted his eyebrows. ‘Sure,’ River Shoulders said, and climbed to his feet, lightly for all his enormity. ‘Be good fun. Bigfoot versus oktokongs.’ ‘What?’ asked Cristos, his handsome face confused. ‘You heard him,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’ "
p.106 – “The old man scowled furiously for maybe half a minute. I let him think. It’s important to think when things are going crazy, if you want to take the smartest action to get them sane again.”
p.106 – “Ebenezar waved a grumpy had at the raven. ‘Fine. Take the Indian, too. Silence that drum.’ He put a hand on my arm and met my eyes. ‘Hoss. Do not pull your punches tonight.’ ‘That’s always been my biggest problem,’ I said, spreading my hands. ‘All this restraint.’ "
p.110 – “Warden fire teams work much like any soldiers. Any one of us can put out enough firepower to kill every one of us if we’re careless or stupid, and working together means developing trust and respect in one another’s skills.”
p.118 – “Something ugly flickered in that smile for a few beats. Then Drakul shook his head. ‘I would tell you to ask of your own White Council what they aren’t telling you, what they bred you for, and what they expect you to do.’ He considered. ‘Well. Except that it seems unlikely you’ll have the chance on this side of the veil, I’m afraid.’ "
p.119 – " ‘I’ll be open with you, starborn. At this point of conversations like this one, I often offer the dark gift of immortality to someone in your position. It’s occasionally a way to obtain a useful tool, but mostly I just want to see how they react. One sees people for who they truly are when they face death… but, honestly, five minutes of you in my life has been quite enough. You’ve no… gravitas. No decorum. No style at all.’ "
p.131 – " ‘I’m a wizard, Hoss. Which means I’m arrogant.’ He smiled a little. ‘But not that arrogant. That’s how big this is, boy. I, a senior wizard of the White Council, don’t think I’m smart enough to make this call alone.’ "
p.136 – " ‘Lamar,’ I said. ‘Long time no see.’ ‘That’s because I don’t want nothing to do with you and your weird shit, Dresden,’ Lamar said. Lamar is one of the more sensible people I’ve ever met. “Then what are you doing here?’ I asked. Lamar shrugged. ‘What I do.’ He pulled back an eyelid on the girl, checked her pulse with a stethoscope, and rummaged in a medical kit beside him.”
p.154 – " ‘Just curious. How long did you stay at Mac’s?’ I asked. ‘Long enough to get everyone organized,’ she said. ‘There’s no point discussing things with you once you get all chivalrous.’ "
p.154 – “It was just for a moment, and for that moment I let myself feel. Intense relief at seeing her well. Intense fear at knowing that she was in danger. And pain. Loss. Terror. Confusion. Bewilderment. For a moment, I struggled against the sense that what was happening, all around me, could not be happening, could not be real. But it was real. Karrin found my hand and squeezed, hard.”
p.160 – “Pandemonium means ’the place where all demons dwell.’ And the demons were out tonight.”
p.161 – “A lot of civilians, hard-faced and armed and determined, standing shoulder to shoulder with officers: the fighters. Veterans. Bikers. Parents. There were fewer people on the street now– those who could flee had already done so. Those who remained were the invalids, those determined to fight– and the dead.”
p.162 – “Winter called to me, the whole time. the cold would numb pain, swallow my sickness, leave everything calm and sharp-edged and rational and clear. I could lean into that power. Forget this pain, at least for a time. But somewhere deep down inside my guts, there emerged a solid unalterable realization of truth: Some things should hurt. Some things should leave you with scars. Some things should haunt your nightmares. Some things should be burned into memory. Because that was the only way to make sure that they would be fought. It was the only way to face them. It was the only way to cast down the future agents of death and havoc before they could bring things to this. The words never again mean more to some people than others.”
p.162 – “And wrath gathered around us. I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense. Wrath became something real, a tangible presence in the air, as real and as observable as music, as the sharp, clean scent of ozone. The men and women we passed looked up us and knew that we were on the way to deliver retribution upon those who had come to our city. And those who felt it followed.”