by Jim Butcher
“For now,” I said. “He’s in cold storage until we can figure out a way to help him.”
“But . . . I can speak to him?”
I shook my head. “In theory. But he’s been through a lot. He might be recovering for a while.”
“But . . . I can be near him? See him?”
No reason she couldn’t see the crystal Alfred had put Thomas in if she was willing to walk the stairs. “Yes.”
Justine put her arms around my neck and gave me a gentle hug. It was a mark of how weary I was that the Winter mantle sent no surge of desire through me. Justine’s hugs are pretty distracting.
“Thank you, Harry. For saving him. For taking him there. It was a terrible risk. Lara might have killed you. The svartalves would be very angry at you if they knew.”
“He’s family,” I muttered wearily.
“Do . . .” She took a deep breath. “Do you know why? Why he tried to kill Etri?”
I shook my head.
“Was it me?” she asked, her voice sick. “Did someone use me against him?” Her hand went to her belly. “Use us against him?”
“He wasn’t in any shape to explain,” I said. “Maybe he’ll be able to share something with us when we get there.”
Justine bit her lip and bowed her head.
I patted her shoulder clumsily. “Look. I’m gonna close my eyes for a couple. Don’t let me sleep more than twenty minutes. Okay?”
“Of course,” Justine said. “Of course. Rest.”
She said something else, but I had already closed my eyes. I didn’t even bother to lie down first. I was sitting on a bench seat, one that would fold out into a bunk, but it seemed like too much work to do it. So I just let my head fall back against the wall, which on a boat is a bulkhead, and closed my eyes.
You don’t exactly sleep, in situations like that. You close your eyes and stop moving, and then a lot of complicated things happen in your brain.
Mine started replaying the tapes of the evening. Not in order. Not even a highlights reel. Just . . . random images of the past couple of days.
Murphy, gasping. Not in a bad way.
Murphy, at peace. In the worst way.
Maggie, her eyes worried.
I thought of Butters, tense and in pain—and victorious.
I thought of Chandler, just vanishing. Of Yoshimo and Wild Bill, maybe worse than dead.
I thought of the faintly surprised look on the dead face of glamour-Michael.
And my brother.
Thomas, telling me about his child.
Thomas, beaten so badly.
Thomas, struggling to speak.
I thought of my brother’s face, crushed and swollen out of shape.
Junghg. S’Jnngh.
He hadn’t been able to say, “Justine.”
Or maybe he hadn’t been trying to say it.
I thought of the island, disturbed at the great powers expended that night.
The last thing I needed was something slipping out of the prison during all the hubbub.
S’Jnngh, he’d told me.
Why had my brother gone after Etri?
S’Justine, he’d told me.
It’s Justine.
Hell’s bells.
It was Justine.
He’d told me.
My eyes opened suddenly, and too wide.
The cabin was empty.
I got up, slowly and carefully. And I walked very slowly and quietly out onto the deck of the Beetle. I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by. My eyes felt like there were a couple of ounces of sand rubbing around under each lid.
Justine was standing at the front of the ship, looking out into the darkness ahead of us. Toward the island.
She looked over her shoulder at me in the predawn darkness. She was just an outline.
“You’re sure the baby will be all right?” she asked me. “I’ve heard things about that place.”
“If you just dropped in, it would be kind of rough on you,” I said. “But you’re with me. Come in as an invited guest, you’ll be perfectly safe. And that’s what you are. I’m bringing you there myself.”
She gave me a smile that was both worried and relieved, and looked back out at the water.
For a second, I thought about picking up something I might whap her unconscious with, and then discarded the idea. After the night I’d had, I was too exhausted to make such a thing practical. And no matter what you saw in the movies, hitting people in the head was dangerous. I could kill Justine. So instead, I gathered the shreds of what was left of my will and prepared to use them.
“But that was the plan the whole time,” I told her. “Right?”
The figure at the front of the boat went completely still.
“See, there were just too many threads being pulled,” I said. “The attack on the Outer Gates especially. And the Titan herself . . . God, what a blunt instrument. What a big, loud distraction. So that you could get inside.”
Justine’s head turned to face me. The lightening sky was behind her. There was nothing to be seen of her expression but blackness.
I limped forward a couple of paces. Nothing specific was any worse than it had been an hour ago, but even the immunity of the Winter mantle had its limits. My joints felt like they’d been dipped in plaster and were slowly drying stiff.
“And every single living family member of mine, personally, was placed in danger. All of them. To make sure I had the maximum amount of personal worry to distract me.”
Justine has incredible cheekbones. They shifted, slightly altering her shadowy profile as she smiled.
“Something about Justine wasn’t . . . quite right, earlier, in the apartment,” I said. And I let my voice harden. “How long ago did you possess the girl?”
Justine was silent for a moment. Then she shook her head and said, “I think the problem is, you just don’t sound all that bright, wizard. Perhaps it’s skewing my expectations.”
She turned toward me, slim and graceful, steady on the deck.
I faced her and tried not to pitch over the rail as the Water Beetle bumped along the waves. It had been a long night. And I didn’t have much left, physically or otherwise.
“Tell me your name,” I said, and slid some of my will into my voice.
“You know who I am,” Justine purred in answer.
Then she reached out with one hand and ripped a four-foot section of the ship’s steel handrail off its metal struts.
I blinked wearily and fancied I could hear grains of sand pattering to the deck from my eyes. Now I knew what Ethniu had felt like at the end. “Humor me,” I said, with more of my will. “Tell me your name.”
Justine, or whatever being was driving Justine’s body around, turned toward me and began slow, stalking paces forward. It made some abortive, choking noises in its throat, and then said, the words drawn from it reluctantly, “It will do you no good once I’ve caved in your skull. Nemesis am I called.”
There. Bingo.
For years, shadowy forces had been driving events in Chicago and in the wider world. For years, I’d been picking up threads and finding them connected to others. For years, I’d been flailing around trying to get an idea of the forces that had been arrayed against me.
And tonight, one of the players was in the open.
Right there. Behind Justine’s eyes.
And I was going to get answers.
I didn’t have much left in me but pure, stiff-necked, muleheaded contrariness.
But even after the night I’d had, I still had plenty of it.
“I don’t care what they call you,” I spat. The effort of maintaining my will made it impossible to move my feet as the slender girl stalked forward with her steel bar. “Thrice I say and done. Tell me your name.”
The slender
figure froze in front of me, shuddering.
Then she exhaled in a slow, utterly sensual voice, “I am the doubt that wards away sleep. I am the flaw that corrupts, the infected wound, the false fork in the trail. I am the gnawer, the worm in the book, the maggot that burrows in the mind’s eye.”
She shuddered in bizarre ecstasy and panted, in a frantic whisper, “I am He Who Walks Beside.”
Hell’s bells.
A Walker.
And if I hadn’t twigged to its presence, I would have set it loose on Demonreach—the prison for the great nightmares of the world. Ethniu wasn’t the biggest thing in it—not by a long shot. And an Outsider with the power of a Walker, turned loose inside the island’s defenses, might well be able to destroy them and set loose every horror inside.
Hell. There’d have been an Ethniu for every city, if the place got emptied out.
The weight of my will, once finished forcing the information from the possessing being, flooded out of me and left me barely able to stand. I staggered back, away from the slender figure in front of me.
Justine, calmly, pursued.
“I hope it felt good to scratch that itch,” she purred. “This is the end of your story, starborn.”
“How long?” I asked. “How long have you been in Justine?”
Justine waved the steel bar in a vague gesture. “Mortal time is such a limited concept. A few years. Ever since she became close to Lara.”
I glowered at her. “You conceived my brother’s child intentionally.”
“Obviously,” Justine purred. “That ridiculous instinct, honestly. It is your kind’s greatest weakness. Once he understood that his mate and his offspring would die if he did not follow my instructions, well . . .” She shrugged.
“So you sent him at Etri. At the svartalves, someone almost everyone respects. Why? To shatter the Accords?”
“Apocalypse isn’t an event,” Nemesis murmured. “It is a frame of mind.”
I probably would have staggered anyway, but the phrase hit hard.
“This was less a plan than . . . an act of faith, I suppose you would say,” the Outsider continued through Justine’s lips.
“Faith?” I asked.
“In what is coming,” the Walker said. “The unraveling of all things into darkness and silence.”
“Empty Night,” I breathed.
“Empty Night,” the creature echoed, in the hushed tone of a holy phrase. “So we pressed the attacks at the Outer Gates. While I sowed havoc within the walls of reality. We loosed some of the primal forces of your own precious Creation against you. Undermined Mab, her people, the Accords, the delusion of order you force upon the universe with your useless presence.” She smiled, dropping lower, the motion feline, sensual, hypnotic. “You may have survived the day. But the deed is done. We are the tide. Infinite. Unrelenting. And one day, starborn, make no mistake, we will wipe away all that you know. All we need is a single opening.”
“Must suck,” I panted, “to get whipped by some stupid punk from Chicago. ’Cause it looks to me like I beat you.”
Something ugly went through her voice. “There was never a victory for you to gain,” Nemesis hissed. “The mortals have been given terror they have not known in centuries. There is nothing more that need be done. They are your death stroke. Now I need only wait.”
I finally reached the back of the boat and said, “Funny you should mention waiting.”
Justine tilted her head, too far, silent.
“You know how you don’t want to arrive on Demonreach, Walker?” The rear railing hit the backs of my thighs. “You don’t want to show up all on your lonesome. Alfred hates that. That would be like sprinting into a meat grinder.”
The gathering light showed me Justine’s face as her eyes widened and she whipped her head over her shoulder.
The black mass of Demonreach, backlit by the golden sky, loomed directly ahead of us, swiftly larger, as the boat chugged toward its shores.
Justine whirled back and lunged toward me. “No!”
I smirked at her, spread my arms, and fell over the back of the boat, into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan.
With the last shreds of my will, I called to Demonreach.
And the last thing I felt before things went black was green-gold light, and a huge stony hand clamping down on my shoulder, tearing me away from the Outsider’s desperate grasp.
Chapter
Thirty-six
Those next few days remain a montage in my head.
I woke up bumping along the surface of Lake Michigan in a rubber boat being run by Lara’s people. I vaguely remembered reaching shore and having Alfred store the Eye safely away. Demonreach had allowed Riley and two of his men to approach and pick me up off the shoreline, after throwing poor Freydis two hundred yards out into the lake. They’d found me unconscious with my legs still in the freezing water and were treating the Winter Knight for hypothermia. Which is a bit like fitting a polar bear for a fur coat—it doesn’t help the bear and it makes him sort of grumpy.
But they got me back to shore.
I remember insisting where Riley was to take me when we got there.
To her.
To her body, I mean.
Everything was chaos in Chicago, but it was the kind of chaos that people were more used to. There were soldiers and police everywhere. Emergency vehicles of all kinds were everywhere. The air was constantly full of the chop of helicopter blades.
If you knew what to look for, you could see signs of the presence of the Little Folk. They were everywhere in the wreckage, at the will of the Winter Lady, leaving enough signs and clues to lead rescuers to the wounded among the rubble—as they would later ensure the recovery of the dead. They wouldn’t find absolutely everyone, but you’d hear newscasters remarking on the unusual dedication and success of the search-and-rescue teams in Chicago for years after.
In the area around the Bean, the cops were see-through, to me anyway, members of Mab’s personal retinue underneath glamours that were more emotional than physical. When a Sidhe pretending to be a police officer spoke to you, you felt the authority more than you thought about it or saw it. In the chaotic aftermath of the battle, that was worth more than validated ID codes.
There, where Mab’s people had control, they had brought in as many EMTs as they could scrape together for the wounded, both of my volunteers and of Marcone’s.
For the first time in hours, thinking of my volunteers triggered no instant awareness of them. I poked around in my head with my wizard’s senses, a sensation sort of like trying to count your teeth with your tongue. I found nothing. The banner was gone.
I walked silently through the wounded. Those who had been dying mostly had.
I walked up to the Bean.
I stopped at the door and took a breath.
The fight was over. There was nothing left to distract me from this. And it was going to hurt.
I bent over and climbed into the structure and turned to face the improvised bier.
It was empty.
She was gone.
Where she had lain, there was a symbol scorched into the crates as if by a white-hot stylus. Three triangles, interlocking. The valknut. The knot of the fallen warriors. Symbol of Odin.
I stared at the empty crates. Her blood was still on them, drying black.
Something dark began to stir, down deep. Something angry.
“Nothing has changed,” said a soft, slightly slurred voice behind me. “She’s gone. She isn’t coming back.”
I turned and found Miss Gard sitting on a pile of crates. There was a bottle of whiskey in her hand. There were four empties at her feet. She looked like she’d been through almost as much as I had.
I closed my eyes for a second. I was bone tired. I felt the rage down there.
But this wasn’t the time.
Let the deep things stay deep.
“Hey, Siggy,” I said in a gentle voice.
“It’s the same,” Gard slurred. “Where Nathan died.” Her red eyes welled. “The damned knot. It’s part of our inventory system. A check mark. One Einherjar, picked up and in transit.”
“Nathan . . .” I said. Then it clicked. “Hendricks. Huh. He never looked like a Nathan.”
I slumped down onto the crate next to her.
She passed me the bottle. I probably should have been drinking water. It’s a far more adult drink than whiskey. But I took a solid pull and let it burn down.
“He hated that name,” she said. “His mother . . .” She shook her head. “Well. That doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
“Einherjar,” I said. “Murph didn’t ‘die well.’”
Gard’s eyes flashed. “She died slaying a Jotun,” she said roughly. “She did it to protect you. And she got results. She died a warrior’s death. One without personal glory. The one that happened because she was doing what was necessary.”
I tilted my head at her.
She waved a hand vaguely at her temple. “It’s a limited intellectus, of the honored dead, of their deeds. I know who she was now, Dresden. Don’t you dare cheapen her death by suggesting it was less than the culmination of a life of habitual valor.”
Well.
There wasn’t much I could say to that.
I leaned my head back against the crate behind me and began to weep steady tears that somehow didn’t affect my breathing at all. “Dying sucks more than not dying. She should have stayed put.”
“You’d be dead now if she had,” the Valkyrie said. “So would I. So would a lot of people. And the world would be in chaos.”
“Wait for it,” I said darkly. I drank some more and passed the bottle back. And I added, “I want you to tell him something for me.”
Gard looked at me, suddenly wary. “Before you speak, know this: The being you have dealt with is . . . only a facet of the being whose symbol that is. His guises are created to diminish him into something a mortal mind can readily accept. But though he may not have the strength he once did, that being is yet an elemental one. He does not accept insults or threats lightly.”