wills vs ortega

The Archive nodded. "Gentlemen. Present your right hands, please."
Ortega lifted his right arm, palm faced toward me. I mirrored him. The Archive gestured, and the mordite sphere floated up until it hovered precisely halfway between Ortega and me. Tension gathered against my palm, an invisible and silent pressure. It felt vaguely like holding my hand against a recirculating outlet in a swimming pool-it was a tenuous thing, that felt like it might easily slide to one side.
If it did, I'd get to see the mordite up close and personal. My heart skittered over a couple of beats, and I took a deep breath, trying to focus and ready myself. If I was Ortega, I'd want to open up with everything I had in the first heartbeat of the contest and end it almost before it began. I took a couple of deep breaths and narrowed my focus, my thoughts, until the pressure against my hand and the deadly darkness a few feet away from it were all that existed.
"Begin," said the Archive. She backed quickly toward home plate.
Ortega let out a shout, a battle cry, his body dipping slightly, hips twisting, shoving his hand forward like a man trying to close a vault door with one arm. His will flooded toward me, wild and strong, and the pressure of it drove me back onto my heels. The mordite sphere zipped across three of the four feet between it and me.
Ortega's will was strong. Really, really strong. I tried to divert it, to overcome it and stop the sphere. For a panicked second I had nothing. The sphere kept drifting closer to me. A foot. Ten inches. Six inches. Small tendrils of inky darkness drifted out from the cloud around the mordite, reaching out blindly toward my fingers.
I gritted my teeth, hardened my will, and stopped the thing five inches from my hand. I tried to mount up some momentum of my own, but Ortega held strong against me.
"Don't draw this out, boy," Ortega said through clenched teeth. "Your death will save lives. Even if you kill me, my vassals at Casaverde are sworn to hunt you down. You and everyone you know and love."
The sphere came a bit closer. "You said you wouldn't harm them if I agreed to the duel," I growled.
"I lied," Ortega said. "I came here to kill you and end this war. Anything else is immaterial."
"You bastard."
"Stop fighting it, Dresden. Make it painless for yourself. If you kill me, they will be executed. By surrendering, you preserve them. Your Miss Rodriguez. The policewoman. The investigator you apprenticed under. The owner of that bar. The Knight and his family. The old man in the Ozarks. The wolf-children at the university. All of them."
I snarled, "Buddy, you just said the wrong thing."
I let the anger Ortega's words had ignited flood down through my arm. A cloud of scarlet sparks erupted against the mordite sphere, and it started creeping the other way.
Ortega's face became strained, his breathing heavier. He didn't waste any effort on words now. His eyes darkened until they were entirely black and inhuman. There were ripples, here and there, under the surface of his skin-the flesh mask that contained the vaguely batlike monster those of the Red Court really were. The monstrous Ortega, the true Ortega, stirred underneath the false human shell. And he was afraid.
The sphere crept closer. Ortega renewed his efforts with another war cry. But the sphere made it to the midway point, and got closer to him.
"Fool," Ortega said in a gasp.
"Murderer," I said, and shoved the sphere another foot closer to him.
His jaw clenched harder, the muscles in his face bulging. "You'll destroy us all."
"Starting with you." The sphere darted a little nearer.
"You are a selfish, self-righteous madman."
"You murder and enslave children," I said. I shoved the mordite sphere to within a foot of him. "You threaten the people I love." I shoved it closer still. "How does it feel, Ortega. Being too weak to protect yourself. How does it feel to know you are about to die?"
In answer, a slow smile crept over his face. His shoulders moved a little, and I saw that one of his arms hung limply at his side, like an empty sleeve. A small bulge appeared just to one side of his stomach, like a gun being held in an overcoat pocket.
I stared at it in shock. He'd pulled his real arm out of the flesh mask. He was holding a gun on me.
"How does it feel?" Ortega asked, voice very quiet. "Why don't you tell me?"

Death Masks Chapter 29, Page 262-265


"You can't," I said. I shot a glance toward home plate, but the Archive apparently hadn't noticed anything amiss. My will wavered, and the mordite sphere bobbed back and forth. "They'll hear the shot. They'll kill you."
"Quite possibly," he agreed. "As I said, I am prepared to accept that."
His words chilled me, and the mordite sphere darted at my head. I caught it a couple of feet from me and held it, but just barely.
"I told you, Dresden. There's only one way this can end. I would have preferred an honorable demise for you, but any death will do."
I stared at the hidden gun.
A dot of bright scarlet light appeared on Ortega's chest, and tracked slowly up.
My expression must have changed, because Ortega glanced down too. The bright pinpoint of the laser sight settled over his heart and became still.
Ortega's eyes widened and his expression twisted into fury.
A lot of things happened at once.
There was a hissing sound, a thump, and a big section of Ortega's chest dented in. Scarlet sprayed out behind him. An instant later, a booming sound much deeper than the crack of a rifle echoed around the stadium.
Ortega let out a screech that went off the high end of the scale. Fire erupted from the hidden gun, burning through Ortega's flesh mask and shirt to reveal the muzzle of a small-caliber revolver clenched in an inhuman black hand. The bullet Ortega had taken had half twisted him, and he missed. I thought hanging around to let him try again was a bad idea, so I threw myself to one side and gave the mordite sphere another shove.
Ortega dodged the mordite, and even wounded, he was fast. A bright red dot appeared on his thigh for half a second, and with another hiss-thump-boom, the unseen gunman hit him again. I heard the bones of Ortega's leg break.

Death Masks Chapter 30, Page 266