Of course, that concern abruptly dwindled to a secondary issue as I realized what Butters had commanded the spirit to do.

Orange firelight-sparks suddenly erupted from the eyes of the enormous bronze lion. Then, moving exactly as if it had been a living beast, the thing turned its head toward me, crouched, and let out an enormous and authentically leonine roar.

“Oh, crap,” I said.

“Hold them off!” Butters shouted.

The lion roared again.

“Dammit, Butters,” I snarled under my breath, “I’m helping!”

And then several tons of living bronze predator, guided by the intelligence and will of the most powerful spirit of intellect I had ever encountered, flung itself directly at my head.

Twenty-eight

It had been a good long while since I’d had a freaking lion coming at me, and at the time it had been one of the genuine flesh-and-blood variety, from the zoo. I’d never had something made entirely of metal try to kill me before, unless you counted the instruments of the occasional would-be vehicular homicide that came my way, and never both at the same time—so actually that made this a first.

And that’s important in a job. Fresh challenges. What would I do without them?

Without the Winter mantle on my side, I think Bob might have taken my head off of my shoulders. But instead, I ducked, fast enough and low enough to avoid the enormous paw that flashed toward me in anticipation of the move, and Bob flew over me, crashing into a pair of Binder’s suits with juggernaut enthusiasm. They went flying like ninepins, and the bronze lion whirled toward me, far too fast for something so massive, and crouched to leap at me again.

And one of the lion’s golden orange glowing eyes, the one away from the street, shivered down in the barest little wink imaginable.

Bob got it.

My former lab assistant thundered, “Die, traitor!” and then roared again.

“Watch out, he’s loose!” I screamed to a nearby suit, reeling back toward him and fighting to keep the sudden grin off my face. “He’ll tear us all apart!”

“Rargh!” Bob screamed and came rushing at me again.

I flung myself to one side at the last second, when the suit wouldn’t see Bob coming until it was too late. The bronze lion smashed into the suit, sending it tumbling in a whirl of broken limbs, to smash into the side of the Art Institute. It exploded into gelatinous clear goo, its physical vessel simply too mangled to enable the spirit Binder had summoned to continue animating it, and the lion let out a roar of triumph, and turned toward the next nearest suits.

“I’ll get him!” I shouted. I pointed my staff at Bob and snarled, “Fuego!” A blast of pure fire erupted from the staff, missed the rampaging lion statue by inches, and took a pair of suits full-on, setting them ablaze and causing them to issue weird howls of frustration and rage as it began to consume their physical forms.

Furious, theburning suits flung themselves at Bob, and the hunting-pack mentality of the demons prompted the others to leap at the rampaging statue as well. Bob roared, his eyelights blazing merrily, and started batting them around like Mister playing with multiple catnip lures on a string.

I hopped back from the immediate vicinity of the havoc and looked around wildly for Butters. I checked his last direction but saw nothing—except an empty plastic sports-drink bottle rolling slowly down the sidewalk, pushed by the mild wind coming in from the north, exactly like the kind I used to store a potion in when I made one.

Butters was in the wind. Hell, maybe literally. It had been a long time since I’d brewed that escape potion that had saved me from a toad demon, but if I’d had a twenty, I’d have bet it against a piece of bubble gum that Butters had duplicated my old formula and used it to pull a quick vanishing act in the confusion.

Because confusion there was: The explosions and roaring and noise had done exactly what I had hoped they would, and attracted attention. Though the muffling effect of the weather had dulled the sounds, and though it was well after business hours, that didn’t mean that the area around us was wholly empty of life. Lights had begun to flick on. Faces had begun to appear at windows in nearby buildings.

One of the cardinal points of common sense, in the supernatural world, is that you don’t get yourself involved with mortal authorities. The average individual mortal (or twenty) might not be a match for a real supernatural predator. I’m pretty sure the serious bad guys, like the hulking, hairy one standing in the shadows across the street from the Art Institute, could take on a riot’s worth of mortals without hesitation, and expect victory. But in a city like Chicago, starting a rumble with humanity wouldn’t mean fighting a score of mortals, or a couple of hundred. It would mean thousands, and more important, it would mean tangling with those who had the training and equipment to be a genuine threat.

People had actually begun to appear on the street, from inside the café and a nearby sandwich shop. Cell phones were coming out. And Chicago PD had maybe half a dozen stations within a mile of where I stood.

“What are you waiting for?” I shouted toward the Genoskwa, and pointed at the animated statue. “Lend a hand, big guy!”

The Genoskwa glowered at me for a second, and then at the rampaging Bob. There was a flash of ugly yellow tusks, a glitter of malicious and angry eyes, and then the creature faded from sight, turning as it vanished, and starting up the street in the direction Butters had last been going.

Worse, there was a sound of rushing wind overhead, and something dark and swift passed between me and some of the higher lights in the area, sending a multitude of wavering, flickering shadows across the street. I squinted up into the rain and mist, and saw nothing but a large, winged form, moving fast, in the same direction.