by Jim Butcher
He flinched as my gaze fell on him.
Butters got what was happening. Somewhere in the distance, I heard him say, in a warning tone. “Harry. Harry, what are you doing?”
Rudolph began taking terrified steps back. He pointed the gun at me and I couldn’t have cared less. “Wait. Wait. I didn’t mean . . .”
I rose.
“Harry, no!” Butters said sharply.
Rudolph turned and ran.
That made things simple.
I took off after my prey.
Chapter
Twenty-three
Hate is comforting.
Hate is pure.
There aren’t any questions, any worries about right and wrong, any quibbles about your motivations or goals. There are no doubts.
Hate is serene.
Rudolph ran. I pursued. And when I caught him, I would kill him. Horribly.
Nothing else entered into it.
I’ll give the guy this much credit: He could move. He’d always been careful about his looks, and evidently that meant a lot of cardio as well as expensive suits. He ran well.
But he didn’t have my focus, my clarity, and he hadn’t been running himself half to death every morning for months and months. He was human. He felt pain. It was an enormous disadvantage.
I gained.
He made funny sounds as he ran. Little gasps and whimpers. He was terrified. He should have been. In a city of monsters, he’d just pissed off one of the worst.
He took a right turn into a little loading area behind a building, tried a door, and found it locked. Obviously. Everyone who wasn’t running was forting up. There were more monsters than unlocked doors in Chicago that night. I don’t know what he was thinking.
He turned from the door, desperate, lifted his gun, and started shooting at me as fast as he could pull the trigger.
I raised my shield and slowed to a walk. Some of the shots went wide. Some bounced off the shield. None of them threatened me.
“You can’t!” Rudolph screamed. He fumbled at his armpit and withdrew another magazine. “You can’t!”
Before he could reload, I just walked forward into him, holding up the shield, and smashed him back against the steel door behind him.
Then I set my legs against the ground and started pushing.
Rudolph made a short, high-pitched sound of pain. The shield caught the barrel of his gun and forced it one way, his wrist another. The idiot still had his finger locked on the trigger. I heard the finger break.
“Dresden, no!” Rudolph screamed.
I pushed harder. Fire might have been good, but my damned arm would make it difficult. This felt better. Felt right. I thought about saying something about grinding his bones to make my bread, but I didn’t feel like conversation at that moment. Besides. Why waste breath on a corpse?
We were in pandemonium.
No one was going to ask any questions about one more body.
I pushed harder. Rudolph tried to scream again. There wasn’t enough room between my shield and the metal door for his lungs to expand all the way, so it came out breathy and weak. His eyes were wide and terrified, I noted, but that was to be expected. He was dying, after all.
The sour scent of urine filled the air.
I took note of it and adjusted my feet slightly so that I could lean in harder.
He went for his phone, of all the stupid things. His goddamned phone. As if anything there would do him any good. As if it would function and let him call for help. As if it would arrive in time to do him any good.
The phone fell from his fingers as he tried to gasp for breath.
I saw it on his face when he realized what was going to happen. When the panic took him, and the tears. When his hope faltered and died.
It made me feel something hot and sweet deep in my guts.
You killed her.
Feel what I feel, you bastard.
My teeth were bared. I felt sick, and hollow, and strong.
I pushed harder.
I heard a bone break. I didn’t care where it might have been. I just liked the sound and wanted to hear more of it.
“Bozhe moi,” came a sudden, startled voice from somewhere behind me. “Dresden. What is the meaning of this?”
“Fuck off, Sanya,” I snarled. “Won’t be a minute.”
Rudolph made a gurgling sound.
“Dresden,” Sanya said. His deep voice was troubled, which stood to reason. He didn’t have much clarity, like I did. “He is no threat to you. Stop this.”
“He killed Murphy,” I said. My voice sounded calm. “I’m going to balance those scales real quick. Then we’ll get to work.”
“No,” Sanya said. “That is not your place.”
I heard the steel in his voice.
I turned my head slowly and looked at him.
The Knight of Hope drew Esperacchius from his side. The saber gleamed with a harsh, threatening light in the dimness of the alleyway.
“Let him go,” Sanya said. “You are killing a man. If he has done wrong, he will face justice. But not like this.”
“Just a second,” I said, as if I was putting together a sandwich.
Sanya’s expression was strange. I couldn’t track what it was. But I knew it wasn’t appropriate to the situation. He stalked closer, moving well. Very well. He was a more worthy opponent. “Harry Dresden. I will not ask again.”
Something disturbed the purity of my hatred then. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it pissed me off.
What had been a profoundly pure experience had been disrupted. This creature, this Rudolph, didn’t deserve even the death I was about to give him. He couldn’t even die properly, forcing me to work for it. He was beyond contempt.
“Walk away, Sanya,” I said shortly. “This is happening.”
Sanya wouldn’t walk away. That wasn’t the Knight’s style. He wasn’t going to let me finish my business. I would have to reason with him.
Sanya closed his eyes for a second, as if in pain.
Which, come on. That was just stupid.
I dropped the shield, whipped toward him, and kicked him in the balls.
I was fast and strong. But Sanya had been fighting for his life against various bad guys for a while now and wasn’t going to be taken down by a sucker punch. He managed to move his hips at the last second, taking some of the impact out of the kick. So instead of dropping him to the ground, the blow knocked him back and staggered him, but he kept his feet.
I gave Sanya no time to recover. I followed up, inside the reach of Esperacchius, getting my left forearm across his right, driving his arm back and up and not letting it come back down. He was big and strong. I was bigger, stronger. I crowded him against a wall, drove my knee up into his belly, once, twice, hard enough to break boards.
Then the Russian’s head snapped forward into my face. There was a burst of static pain in the general area of my head, and then I was on my way back across the alley. My shoulders hit the wall, hard. There was a crackling noise, a flash of heat in my shoulder—and then I could move my right arm readily again.
Sanya had driven a fist like a sledgehammer twice into my belly by the time I caught his blow with my right forearm before a third could land. I stomped down as hard as I could on one of his feet, with mixed results—the Russian had worn steel-toed work boots. He staggered a little, then threw a knee at my groin. I blocked it with one thigh, the one I’d hurt earlier, and the world narrowed to a tunnel for a second before I twisted my head to one side, found his ear, and bit down as hard as I could.
Sanya screamed and his weight shifted back.
I used that change of weight, set my legs, and drove him across the alleyway with the full power of my body and the strength of the Winter Knight. He hit the wall with a vicious impact. I felt it drive the air from h
is lungs, and I let out a shout of triumph as he bounced off, stunned for maybe all of a second.
I hit him, hard, three times in that second, driving my fist into the side of his neck, into the base of his jaw under the ear, and into his temple, wham, wham, wham.
The Sword fell out of his hand.
The Russian toppled. He hit the ground stunned, making gagging sounds.
“Self-righteous loudmouth,” I snarled down at him. “This is no concern of yours.”
The hate was calling me. I had no time for further distractions, as satisfying as they might have been.
I spat the taste of blood out of my mouth and turned back to Rudolph.
He was on the ground, curled into a ball, gasping with pain, making choking sounds. He’d lost control of his bowels as well, and the stench made me want to tear his arms and legs off, one at a time.
But he wasn’t alone.
Waldo Butters had taken a knee beside him.
The little Knight faced me. He stood up, slowly. I could see that he was shaking, trembling in every limb. His face was pale. The white cloak with its red cross was stained with blood and worse, dirty from the chaos it had been through.
But it fit him.
“Harry,” he said. “I can’t let you.”
“You saw what he did,” I said. My voice sounded like my throat was full of rubble and broken glass. “What he did to her.”
“You have lost it, man,” Butters said. His voice was pleading. “Harry, I can’t let you.”
“You’d protect that thing?” I snarled.
“He’s not the one I’m trying to protect,” he snapped back. Something hard came into his eyes, and the trembling vanished. He rose, the broken hilt of Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith, in his hands. “I’m trying to protect my friend.”
Again, my clarity was broken. Again, I felt the rage surge through me. I didn’t even bother with the words to a spell. Let it burn. I lifted my hand, and with it my rage, drew upon the wild power in the air, and ripped lightning from nowhere and nothing, sending a thunderbolt at Rudolph with an incoherent scream of rage.
Sudden white light flared, blinding. The confines of the alley were filled with voices louder than thunder, an angry chorus singing a warning note. From the broken hilt of the Sword of Faith came a blaze of light that intercepted that thunderbolt and sent it crashing into the wall above and behind Rudolph.
Which was a fine trick. But I knew the Sword’s secret. I wouldn’t have to incapacitate Butters to get him out of the way.
I strode forward, winding up with my left hand.
“Harry,” Butters said, tears in his eyes. “Don’t.”
I lashed out backhanded, striking at Butters’s face.
He held up the very nonphysical Sword in a parry.
. . .
And my world became pain.
. . .
There was no warning, no anything. The second my arm touched the plane of the blade of light, everything shifted. The power of the mantle wrapped around me vanished like mist before the morning sun. Every injury, every hurt, every ache and scratch and bruise and strain, all came crashing onto me at once. I staggered, my limbs weak, as if I had suddenly gained several hundred pounds.
I felt Rudolph. Felt his terror. His agony. His confusion. His humiliation. His remorse. His sick self-hatred. I felt them all as if they were my own. I saw myself through Rudolph’s eyes, huge and vicious and deadly, implacable as an avalanche.
And Murphy.
Oh God. Oh God, Karrin.
My clarity withered before that light, before the star-bright blaze of pain in my left arm. I had to shield my eyes against the light of the Sword with my right hand, though the mere movement caused me pain enough to threaten the contents of my stomach.
The stench of my own charred flesh filled my nose, somehow laced with the scent of sulfur, brimstone. There was a blazon of blackened flesh along my left forearm, starting just above my shield bracelet and running to my elbow, straight as a ruler.
I fell to my knees.
I dropped to my right elbow, cradling the burned flesh against me.
The scream of pure pain that came out of me wasn’t loud. It was hardly human.
And in its wake, I broke.
I sobbed.
While Sir Waldo, the Knight of Faith, stood over me with that blazing Sword, between me and Rudolph’s curled, helpless form.
“I’m here, Harry,” Butters said, his voice thick with tears. “Harry, I’m here.”
The light dimmed and went out, and I felt him crouch in front of me, felt his arms go around me. “I’m here, man. I’m here.”
Oh, Hell’s bells. Oh God.
What had I done?
I had almost . . .
If not for Butters and Sanya . . .
Murph would have been so ashamed. So terrified for me.
Oh God, Murph.
I leaned against him, sobbing, unable to control myself. Though he was only a little guy, he was wiry and tough. He didn’t waver. Not even when my whole weight leaned against him.
“He took her,” I heard myself say, the words barely understandable. “He took her from me.”
Butters’s arms tightened on me. “He took her from all of us,” he said. “And he’ll answer for it before the law, Harry. But it can’t happen like this. You can’t let it happen like this.” He abruptly hauled me upright to face him, and his expression was intent, hard, though tears ran down his cheeks. “We need you. You, the good man. I can’t let you hurt that man. Too many of us need him. Your daughter needs him.”
It was that last phrase that did it. It hit me like a bucket of cold water.
Maggie.
Despite all the pain, despite the tears, my loss, I could see her there, in my mind’s eye. I could imagine her, awake in bed at Michael’s place, as safe as anywhere in this town, but too wise to believe that everything was all right, holding on to Mouse and waiting in silence to understand events that were well beyond her ability to change.
Oh God. What had I almost done to her?
Everything hurt.
But there was enough left of me to feel shame.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Butters, I’m sorry.”
His face twisted with empathy, and his tears fell harder.
“Sanya,” I choked.
“Am all right,” I heard a groggy voice say from down the alley. “Bozhe moi, you fight dirty.” I felt a large hand come down on my shoulder. “Like a Russian.”
“Sanya’s here, too. He’ll be okay,” Butters said.
I teetered forward abruptly, unable to stay upright.
My friends caught me.
They held me.
“I’m here, Harry,” Butters kept saying. “I’m here.”
“She’s gone,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I’m here.”
And for a time, there was nothing else to be done.
I wept.
And the city burned.
Chapter
Twenty-four
Sanya and his people had gotten their act together pretty quick. They’d come in numbers, down three parallel streets, the one we’d been on and the street on either side of it. They’d gone with a simple tactic—advancing in a line and shooting anything that didn’t look human with lots and lots of slugs and buckshot.
Those largest Huntsmen were a big job—but many hands make light work. The way Sanya told it, the first one to come roaring out of the haze had been scary—but he and his appointed uniformed officer had managed to stand and shoot, and enough of the volunteers had stood with them to bring it down before it could complete its charge. And after that, after they saw with their own eyes that the enemy could bleed and die, things changed. The volunteers just stalked forward, killing Huntsmen, whose spea
rs, while terrifying and destructive, really weren’t up to exchanging fire with pump-action guns while outnumbered five or six to one.
The enemy and creatures of Winter alike gave way before that kind of pressure, much to their mutual dismay. The humans that those beings would normally consider their prey had opened their eyes and armed themselves and were willing to fight. For now, the volunteers outnumbered the foe, and the Fomor fell back, ceding the area to the Scattergun Brigade.
I don’t know how long I was out of the fight. Butters told me later it had been only a few minutes. All I know is that after a time, the physical pain began to recede, and I felt the Winter mantle settle around me again.
Sanya had broken my nose for me, I realized. Not that I hadn’t earned considerably worse. Sobbing hysterically with a broken nose isn’t real dignified. Or practical, for activities like breathing. It took me half a minute of coughing and spitting to get things cleared up. By the time I had, and had swiped at my eyes with a cleanish portion of my coat’s sleeves, the burn of my broken nose and the aches and pains had once more faded beneath the staticky curtain of the Winter mantle.
Except for the burn on my arm.
That one hurt. Period.
I’d dealt with burns before. This one wasn’t the worst I’d ever gotten. Even so, it throbbed and pulsed and made me feel a little queasy and shaky.
And it made me feel . . . human.
I’m not saying pain is what defines us as human beings. But it is, in many ways, what unites us. We all recognize other people in pain. Damned near all of us are moved to do something about it when we see it. It’s our common enemy, though it isn’t, really, an enemy. Pain is, at least when our bodies are working properly, a teacher. A really tough, really strict, and perfectly fair teacher.
I didn’t enjoy the steady, throbbing pain coming from the burn the holy Sword had given me.
But I did find it immensely reassuring.
The pain on the inside of me was something else entirely.
Carefully, I put that aside. I didn’t try to bury it or freeze it. I just set it in a different room of my mental house and swung the door mostly shut.