Skin Game

by Jim Butcher

  “Perhaps,” he said, his eyes distant. “Or perhaps I’m the only one who isn’t.”

  Anna Valmont moved to my side and said quietly, “Look.”

  I looked.

  Deirdre’s corpse stirred.

  No, that wasn’t right. There was movement at the corpse, but the body wasn’t moving. Instead, a faint, silvery glow seemed to begin radiating from it. Then there was motion, and the glow coalesced into a humanoid shape, which after a moment refined itself into a translucent silvery shade in the shape of Deirdre. She sat up from the corpse, separating herself from it, and rose to her feet. She turned and paused, frowning down at the body, and then lifted her own hand and stared at it.

  Behind her, the same silvery glow that had surrounded the body began to suffuse the solid stone image of an archway carved in the next wall. It spread to the edges of the carving where a silvery translucent lever appeared, in the same place the lever had been on the previous two gates.

  Deirdre’s shade turned to look at her father. She smiled, sadly. Then she turned and drifted over to the lever. She wrapped ghostly hands around it and pulled it slowly down. The light in the stone intensified, becoming brighter and brighter, until there was a flash and it was gone, taking Deirdre’s shade and the stone alike with it, leaving an open archway in their place.

  Light poured from the archway.

  Golden light.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Nicodemus said, his voice calm, “we have done it.”

  Forty

  I just stood there for a moment, still stunned at what Nicodemus had done.

  I tried to think of what would have to happen to motivate me to do something like that to Maggie. And it just didn’t click. There was nothing, nothing on earth I wouldn’t do to protect my child.

  But you were willing to cut her mother’s throat, weren’t you? said a bitter little voice inside me. Are you any better?

  Yeah. I was better. What I’d done to Susan had been at least partly her choice, too, and we’d done it to save Maggie and by extension the tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of victims the Red Court would have claimed in the future.

  Nicodemus had consigned his daughter to death for what? A room welling up with a golden glow that . . .

  Okay.

  I’m not what most people think of as a greedy sort of guy, but . . .

  All of us rolled forward a few steps, toward that golden light. Even Michael.

  “That’s it,” Anna Valmont said quietly.

  Ascher swallowed, and let out a nervous little laugh. “What do you think is in there?”

  “Fortune and glory, kid,” I said. “Fortune and glory.”

  “Dresden, Ascher,” Nicodemus said. “Check the way in for any further magical defenses. Valmont, watch for mechanical booby traps. The Genoskwa will accompany you and intercede should any guardian appear.”

  “I thought once we were through the three gates, we were in the clear,” I said.

  “My specific information, beyond here, is limited to inventory,” Nicodemus said. “It is at this point that I had assumed the intervention of more mythic forces, if they were to be had.”

  “He’s right,” Valmont said. “You never assume you’re in the clear until you’ve gotten the goods, gotten away, and gotten liquid.”

  “Michael,” I said, “come with. Just in case there’s anything big, bad, and smelly that tries to kill me.”

  The Genoskwa let out an almost absentminded growl. His beady eyes gleamed reflected golden light.

  “Of course,” Michael said. He carried Amoracchius at port arms, across the front of his body, grasping the blade lightly in one gloved hand with the other on the handle, rather than sheathing it.

  “Grey,” Nicodemus said, “watch the rear. If you see anything coming, warn us.”

  “Going to be hard to collect my loot from out here,” Grey said.

  “I’ll spell you once I have the Grail.”

  Grey nodded, albeit reluctantly. “All right.”

  “Dresden,” Nicodemus said.

  I took point, with Ascher on my right hand and Valmont on my left. Michael and the Genoskwa followed, a pair of mismatched bookends, though I noted that the Genoskwa was not making threatening noises or gestures at the wielder of Amoracchius. The Swords have a way of inspiring that kind of wariness in true villains.

  I shook my head and focused on the task at hand, moving forward slowly, my magical senses extended, searching for any hint of wards, spells, or energies or entities unknown. Beside me, I could feel Ascher doing the same thing, though my sense of her was that she was tuned in on a slightly different bandwidth than I was, magically speaking. She was hunting for more subtle traps, illusions, psychic land mines. She wouldn’t be able to detect as many things as I would, but she would probably be better at spotting what she was looking for. Valmont had removed an old-style incandescent flashlight from her bag, one that was unlikely to fail in our presence unless some serious magical energy started flying. She shone it carefully, slowly on the ground and sweeping the walls ahead of us, watching for the shadows cast by trip wires, or pressure plates, or whatever other fiendish things she would probably know all about finding.

  We crossed to the arch, one slow step at a time, and then into the tunnel. I strained my senses to their utmost.

  Nothing.

  And then we were in Hades’ vault.

  . . . it . . .

  . . . uh . . .

  Imagine Smaug’s treasure hoard. Now imagine Smaug with crippling levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder and fanatic good taste.

  It’s a pale description, and in no way a substitute for seeing it in person, but it’s the best I can do, except to say that looking upon Hades’ treasure vault made me feel like a dirty, grubby rat who had gnawed his way into the pantry. And my heart lurched into thunder. And I’m reasonably certain the pupils of my eyes vanished, to be replaced by dollar signs.

  The light came primarily from the outstretched hands of two twenty-foot-tall golden statues in the center of the room. I found myself walking to one side, enough to see the details of each statue. Both consisted of the shapes of three women, standing back to back, in a triangle, their arms thrust outward and up, palms lifted to the ceiling. One of the women was an ancient crone. The next was a woman in the full bloom of her strength and maturity. The third was that of a young woman, recently matured out of childhood. The flames of one statue burned golden-green. The other statue’s flames were an icy green-blue.

  And just looking at that, my heart started beating faster all over again.

  Because I’d met every single one of them. I recognized their faces.

  “Is that Hecate?” Ascher murmured, staring up at the statues in awe. “The triple goddess of the crossroads, right?”

  I swallowed. “Uh. It . . . Yes, it might be.”

  And it might also be Grannies Summer and Winter, Mab, Titania, Sarissa, and Molly Carpenter. But I didn’t say anything about that.

  I pulled my eyes down from the statues and forced myself to look around the rest of the vault.

  The room was about the size of a football field. The walls were a parquet of platinum and gold triangles, stretching up out of sight overhead. The floor was a smooth surface of white marble shot through with veins of pure, gleaming silver. Corinthian columns supported rooftops straight from ancient Athens in scores of small, separate display areas around the vault. Some of them were raised as much as seven or eight feet off the floor, and had to be reached by stairs of more silver-shot marble. Others were sunken in descending rows in a curling bow that looked almost like a Greek amphitheater, if it had been built with box seating.

  I looked at the nearest . . . shrine. Or display case. Or whatever they were.

  The spaces between the columns had been filled with walls made from bricks of solid gold.
Those were just the backdrop. The backdrop.

  The nearest case was filled with paintings by Italian Renaissance masters, all working in the theme of divinity, showing images of saints and the Virgin and the Christ. Veneziano. Donatello. Botticelli. Raphael. Castagno. Michelangelo. Freaking da Vinci. Maybe fifty paintings in all, each displayed as meticulously as they might have been in the Louvre, in protected cases, with lights shining just so upon them from oddly shaped lanterns that might have been made from bronze and that put out no smoke whatsoever.

  Surrounding the paintings, framing them, was a variety of topiary shapes—except instead of being made from living plants, I saw, after several glances, that they’d been made from emeralds. I couldn’t tell how whatever craftsman had shaped them had done it. Hell, I could barely tell that they weren’t plants at all. A fountain poured water silently into a shining pool in the display’s center, but then I saw that it wasn’t water, but diamonds, tiny and shining, pouring out in streams that somehow gave the impression of liquid.

  That fountain could have filled every backpack we’d brought with us, plus all the improvised containers we could manufacture from our clothes. Never mind the emeralds. Never mind the tons of gold. Never mind the hundreds of millions of dollars in priceless art, paintings that had probably been written off as lost forever.

  That was only one of the displays. And, I realized, as I swept my eyes slowly around me, it was one of the more modest ones.

  “Okay,” Ascher breathed, her eyes wide. “I don’t know if I’m about to pass out or have an orgasm.”

  “Yeah,” I croaked. “Me too.”

  Valmont shook off the awe of the place first. She strode over to the diamond-fountain, unzipped her backpack, and held it beneath the spigot in a matter-of-fact gesture, filling it as if it were a bucket.

  “Seriously?” Ascher asked her. “You aren’t even going to shop?”

  “Highest value for the weight,” Valmont replied tightly. “And they’re small enough to move easily. There’s no point in taking something you can’t sell when you get it back home.”

  “But there’s so much,” Ascher breathed.

  “Ascher,” I said. After a couple of seconds, I said, louder, “Hannah.”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “Go tell Nicodemus that it looks clear. Let’s get our stuff and get gone.”

  “Right,” she said. “Right. Gone.” She turned and hurried from the room.

  I turned to Michael and the Genoskwa and said, “I’m going to do a quick circuit of the room with Valmont and check for anything else, just in case. Don’t wander anywhere until I give you the high sign.”

  Michael nodded slowly. There has never been a backpack made that was big enough for the Genoskwa. But he had several military-style duffel bags looped to a long piece of cargo strapping like you see used on diesel trailers on the highway.

  “Come on, Anna,” I said. “Let’s check for more booby traps.” I started walking. Valmont shouldered her pack and came after me. I lifted my staff as we went, pouring out more light, until Valmont had to squint against it, and we walked out of sight of the others. Our shadows faded to mere slips beneath the extreme illumination.

  “What’s with the light show?” she asked me.

  “Trust me,” I said quietly, and dropped my voice to a bare whisper, leaning down close to her ear. “When it starts, stay close to me. I’ll protect you.”

  Her eyes widened and she gave me a quick nod without saying anything back.

  I nodded my approval, then leaned my staff against another Corinthian column, putting enough effort of will into it to make the light continue issuing forth for a while. Then I put a finger against my lips, and beckoned Valmont to follow me.

  I cut immediately through the displays to get to the amphitheater, and descended into it, heading for the stage, at the feet of the two enormous statues.

  Valmont looked back at my brightly blazing staff in sudden understanding. Look, everybody, Dresden and Valmont are right there, see? Nowhere near the heart of the collection.

  The amphitheater stage, in stark contrast to every other display in the vault, had no overwhelming riches, fantastic jewels, or precious metals. It was stark and bare, with a single block of silver-veined marble rising about four feet off the stage floor in its center.

  And upon the marble sat five simple objects.

  An ancient wooden placard, its paint so faded that the symbols could not be recognized.

  A circlet woven from thorny branches.

  A clay cup.

  A folded cloth.

  A knife with a wooden handle and a leaf-shaped blade.

  Why take one priceless holy relic when you could take five of them?

  And I knew exactly what relic Nicodemus truly wanted.

  I turned to Anna and mouthed, “Check it.”

  She nodded and hunkered down to examine the block, moving cautiously around it. Meanwhile, I extended my senses toward them, feeling carefully for any enchantments that might be protecting them.

  That was a mistake. There weren’t any traps on the objects, but the collective aura of power around them seared my awareness as sharply as if I’d jammed a penny in an electrical outlet. I let out a hiss and leaned back, while my thoughts blazed with the energy focused upon those artifacts—a combined aura that made the thrumming power of a roused Amoracchius seem like a low-wattage lightbulb by comparison.

  “My God,” I breathed, before I could remember to remain silent. “These are weapons.” I looked slowly around me. “This isn’t a vault. It’s an armory.”

  Anna Valmont did not respond.

  In fact, she didn’t move at all.

  I stepped around the block and found her peering at its rear side, her expression focused in concentration. She was entirely frozen.

  I then realized that the quality of the light had changed, and I looked up at the flames in the outstretched hands of the two Hecate statues. The flames had ceased flickering. They hadn’t gone out—they’d simply frozen in place.

  The hairs on the back of my neck didn’t go up so much as they let out tiny, hirsute whimpers and started trembling as violently as the rest of me.

  “You are, of course, correct,” said a basso rumble of a voice from behind me. “This is an armory.”

  Slowly I turned.

  A man in an entirely black suit stood on the amphitheater stage behind me. He was seven feet tall if he was an inch, with the proportions of a professional athlete and the noble features of a warrior king. His hair was dark and swept back from his face in a mane that fell to the base of his neck. His beard was equally black, though marked at the chin with a single streak of silver. His eyes . . .

  I jerked my gaze away from those caverns of utter midnight before I could be drawn into them. My stomach twisted, and I suddenly had to fight not to throw up. Or fall down. Or start weeping.

  “Wh—” I stammered. “Wh—wh— Are, uh, y-y-you—”

  “In point of fact,” he said, “it is my armory, mortal.”

  “I can explain,” I blurted.

  But before I could try, Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, Greek god of death, seized the front of my duster, and a cloud of black fire engulfed me.

  Forty-one

  The black fire faded and left me standing half crouched down with my arms up around my head. It’s possible that I was making a panicked noise, which I strangled abruptly when I realized that the fire had neither burned nor consumed nor otherwise harmed me in any way at all.

  My heart beat very loudly in my ears, and I made myself control my breathing and stand up straight. The terror didn’t fade so much as drop to manageable levels. After all, if I wasn’t dead, it was because Hades didn’t want me dead.

  He did, however, apparently want to speak to me in a different room, because we were no longer in the vault.
>
  I stood in a chamber that might have belonged to a Spartan king. The furnishings were few, and simple, but they were exquisitely crafted of nothing but the finest materials. A wooden panel, stained with fine smoke and time, framed a fireplace, and was carved with images of the gods and goddesses of Greece scattered about the slopes of Mount Olympus. Two large chairs of deep, polished red wood and rich black leather sat before the fire, with a low wooden table between them, polished to the same gleaming, deep red finish. On the table was a ceramic bottle. A simple, empty wineglass sat next to it.

  I looked around the chamber. A bookcase stood against each wall, volumes neatly aligned, and the spines showed a dizzying variety of languages. There were no doors.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Hades sat in one of the chairs in front of the fire, holding a second wineglass in one negligent hand. His dark eyes gleamed as he stared at the flames. The light was better in here than it had been out in the vault. I could see several dozen tiny objects moving in a steady circular orbit around his head, maybe eight or ten inches out from his skull. Each looked like a small, dark mass of shadow, trailing little tendrils of black and deep purple smoke or mist and . . .

  Oh, Hell’s bells. It was mordite. A substance so deadly that if it simply touched anything alive, it would all but disintegrate it on the spot, devouring its life energy like a tiny black hole. Hades was wearing a crown made of it.

  On the floor next to Hades was a mass of fur and muscle. Lying flat on its belly, the beast’s shoulders still came up over the arms of the chair, and its canine paws would have left prints the size of dinner plates. One of its heads was panting, the way any dog might do during a dream. The other two heads were snoring slightly. The dog’s coat was sleek and black, except for a single blaze of silver-white fur that I could see on one side of its broad chest.

  “Sir Harry,” Hades rumbled. “Knight of Winter. Be welcome in my hall.”

  That made me blink. With that greeting, Hades had just offered me his hospitality. There are very few hard and fast rules in the supernatural world, but the roles of guest and host come very close to being holy concepts. It wasn’t unheard of for a guest to betray his host, or vice versa, but horrible fates tended to follow those who did, and anything that managed to survive violating that custom would have its name blackened irreversibly.