Skin Game

by Jim Butcher

  Steel rang on steel again, and I heard workboots pound the marble, coming near me. Michael shouted, “Omnia vincit amor!” and the blinding white fire of Amoracchius shattered the darkness around me as if it had been a dry and dusty eggshell.

  My vision returned. Nicodemus was coming along in Michael’s wake, blade in hand, but as Anduriel was shattered, he screamed and staggered, falling to one knee and only managed that because he threw out his left arm to support himself.

  Not far away, the Genoskwa was rising from where he had fallen. The hailstone I’d conjured had apparently knocked him backward over the marble block in the center of the stage, and one side of his rib cage looked distorted. The creature crouched on three limbs, his leg dragging, and bared his teeth at me in a silent snarl, yellowed tusks showing.

  “Enough, Nicodemus!” Michael thundered, and his voice rang from the marble and the riches of the vault. “Enough!”

  The sheer volume and force in his voice staggered me. I found myself standing back to back with him so that I could keep the Genoskwa in sight.

  “Has today not been enough for you?” Michael said, his voice dropping to something almost like a plea. “In the name of God, man, have your eyes not yet been opened?”

  “Michael,” I growled, low, between clenched teeth. “What are you doing?”

  “My job,” he answered me, just as quietly. “Nicodemus Archleone,” he said, his tone gentle, directed back toward the fallen Denarian. “Look at yourself. Look at your fury. Look at your pain. Look where they have led you, man. Your own child.”

  From where he had fallen, Nicodemus looked up at Michael, and I saw something I had never seen on his face before.

  Weariness. Strain. Uncertainty.

  “This is what it has taken, Nicodemus,” Michael said quietly. “This journey into the darkness of greed and ambition. You stand amongst untold, unimaginable wealth, and you have lost the only thing that really matters because of them. Because of the lies and the schemes of the Fallen.”

  Nicodemus did not move.

  Neither did the Genoskwa. But I gathered another hailstone-cannonball onto the end of my staff, just to be sure I was ready if he did.

  Michael lowered his sword, the wrathful fire of Amoracchius becoming something less fierce, less hot. “It is not too late. Don’t you see what has happened here? What has been arranged, all the pieces that have been moved to bring you to the only place where your eyes might be opened. Where you might have a chance—perhaps your very last chance—to turn aside from the path you have walked for so long. A path that has caused you and those close to you and the world around you nothing but heartache and misery.”

  “Is that what you believe this is?” Nicodemus said in a wooden, uninflected tone. “My chance at redemption?”

  “It isn’t a matter of belief,” Michael said. “I need look no further than the evidence of my eyes and mind. It’s why I took up the Sword in the first place. To save you, and those like you, who have been used by the Fallen. It’s why I have been given the grace to take up arms again, this very night—in time to offer you a chance.”

  “For forgiveness?” Nicodemus spat.

  “For hope,” Michael said. “For a new beginning. For peace.” He swallowed and said, “I can’t imagine anything happening to my daughter. No father should have to see his child die.” Michael’s voice stayed steady, quiet, and sincere. “As different as we are, as much separated in time and faith, you are still a human being. You are still my brother. And I am very sorry for your pain. Please. Let me help you.”

  Nicodemus shuddered and dropped his eyes.

  I blinked several times.

  And for a second, I thought Michael was going to pull it off.

  Then Nicodemus shook his head and let out a low and quiet laugh. He stood up again, and as he did, his shadow seemed to accrete beneath him, gathering darkness from all around the room and drawing it into a nebulous pool at his feet.

  “Choirboy,” he said, contempt in his tone. “You think you know about commitment. About faith. But yours is as a child’s daydream beside mine.”

  “Don’t do this,” Michael said, his tone almost pleading. “Please don’t let them win.”

  “Let them win?” Nicodemus said. “I do not dance to the Fallen’s tune, Knight. We may move together, but I play the music. I set the beat. For nearly two thousand years have I followed my path, through every treacherous bend and twist, through every temptation to turn aside, and after centuries of effort and study and planning and victory, they follow my leadership. Not the other way around. Turn aside from my path? I have blazed it through ages of humanity, through centuries of war and plague and madness and havoc and devotion. I am my path, and it is me. There is no turning aside.”

  The shadow at his feet seemed to darken as he spoke, to throb in time with his voice, and I shuddered at the sight, at the pride in his bearing, the clarity in his eyes, and the absolute, serene certainty in his voice.

  Lucifer must have looked exactly like that, right before things went to Hell.

  I was still standing back to back with Michael, and I felt his shoulders slump in disappointment. But there was nothing of remorse or weakness in his voice as his sword swept back up to guard position. “Despite all you have given in their service, you stand alone before Amoracchius now. I am truly sorry for your soul, brother—but this time, you will answer for what you have done.”

  “Alone,” Nicodemus all but purred. “Do you think I am alone?”

  He gave us his hungry shark-smile, and my stomach went into free fall.

  Behind the stone block the Genoskwa smiled as well, and that would have been a hideous thing to see if a second set of glowing green eyes hadn’t opened above the cavernous gleam of the Genoskwa’s beady orbs, along with a faintly glowing, swirling sigil in the center of his forehead—and made the sight truly nightmarish. Even as I watched, curling ram’s horns erupted from the Genoskwa’s skull, and the already enormous creature began to swell, growing in mass, his patchy fur thickening, an extra set of limbs swelling out from his sides. Within a heartbeat or three, the shape of a creature like some enormous bear of a forgotten epoch, except for the extra legs, eyes, and the horns, stood where the Genoskwa had been. Tons of it.

  “Ursiel,” I breathed. A Fallen angel so powerful that it had taken all three Knights of the Cross together to take him out the last time he’d appeared. And this time he wasn’t powered by the skinny husk of an insane gold miner, either. “Oh, crap.”

  “It gets better,” said another voice.

  I looked past where Ursiel and the Genoskwa stood, to find Hannah Ascher mounting the steps to the top of the stage. She’d shed her packs, and walking with a lazy, deliberate sensuality, she stretched her arms overhead as she reached the stage, and her clothing just . . . dissolved, like so much smoke, into a clinging, purplish mist that drifted around her in spiraling tendrils—not so much for modesty as for accent, yet for the most part, covering her most delicate parts with the same coyness as a fan dancer’s feathers. She smiled, slowly, and a second set of glowing purple eyes opened above her own, as a glowing sigil, vaguely suggestive of an hourglass appeared on her forehead.

  I knew the symbol.

  It had been etched in my flesh for years.

  “Lasciel,” I whispered.

  “Hello, lover,” said a throaty, playful voice that was not quite Hannah Ascher’s own. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

  I leaned my head back to Michael a little and said, “You and I definitely need to have a talk with the Church about what the word ‘safekeeping’ means.”

  Michael glanced at me with a faint frown, to let me know that this was not the time.

  Lasciel laughed, musically, the sound of it pure pleasure on the ears. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “Did you really think that it’s possible to pick up corruption in a nic
e clean handkerchief and lock it away in a box? No, of course not. Forces such as we cannot be contained by mortals, my lover. We are a part of you all.”

  Michael leaned his head back a little toward me and asked, “Lover?”

  I twitched one shoulder in answer and said, “It’s complicated.”

  “Oh dear.”

  I turned to Lasciel and said, “Hey, Hannah. Take it from someone who knows. You really don’t want to be doing what you’re doing.”

  Ascher’s human eyes narrowed. “Oh, sure,” she said, in her own voice. “Because the high road is just so awesome. Wardens of the White Council have been trying to kill me for most of my adult life because when I was seventeen years old I defended myself against three men who tried to rape me.”

  “I’m not defending them,” I said. “But you killed people with magic, Hannah. You broke the First Law.”

  “Like you haven’t,” she snarled. “You hypocrite.”

  “Hey, whoa,” I said. “Hold on there. Me and Lasciel have some history, but even if we’ve been on different sides of the law, you and I don’t have a personal quarrel.”

  “The hell we don’t,” she said. “After a few years on the run, I got in with the Fellowship of St. Giles. You remember them, right? Bunch of folks who fought the Red Court? They gave me training, safe places to live. Hell, I lived on the beach in Belize for six years. I had a life. Friends. I even fought the good fight.”

  “Yay?” I said, trying not to sound as baffled as I felt. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Everything!” she screamed, and the purple mist around her was suddenly suffused with sullen, glowing flame.

  I swallowed, despite myself.

  “When you destroyed the Red Court, you killed most of the Fellowship with it. All the half vampires more than a few decades old just withered away in front of our eyes. People who had given me trust. Respect. My friends.” She shook her head. “And, you arrogant son of a bitch, I’ll bet you never gave them a thought before you did it, did you?”

  “If I’d known it was going to happen,” I said, “I’d have done it anyway.” Because if I hadn’t, Maggie wouldn’t have survived the night.

  “The world fell apart after that,” Ascher spat. “The finances, the coordination, the communication. I was on the street. If Binder hadn’t found me . . .” She shook her head.

  “Yeah, Binder and his Rule Number One,” I said. “He doesn’t know about what you’ve done, does he?”

  She narrowed her eyes and her voice became a degree hotter. “Nicodemus and Lasciel and the other Denarians have treated me with respect,” she said. “They’ve talked to me. Trusted me. Worked with me. Made me rich. When one side treats you like a sad freak and a hunted animal and the other treats you like an equal, it gets really easy to decide where you stand.”

  Hard to argue with that. But I tried. “Doesn’t mean you have to run everything exactly the way he wants you to do it,” I said.

  She let out a harsh laugh. “But I do want to do it,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to it. Every time you looked at me, flirted with me, spoke with me.”

  “As have I,” said Lasciel’s voice, from the same mouth. “No one’s ever turned me down before, Harry. Not once. And to think that I liked you.”

  “We wouldn’t have worked out, babe,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not. In any case, be assured that I may have one of the few accurate perspectives in the universe when I say that ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.’”

  Ah. So that’s what my subconscious had been trying to warn me about. That Lasciel was right there in front of me, and itching for payback.

  “Meaning what?” I asked her.

  “Meaning that since a whisper in your ear that should have killed you seems to have failed, I intend to skip the subtlety, rip your head apart, and collect our child. She’s far too valuable a resource to be allowed to die with you.”

  My eyes widened. “You, uh, you know about that.”

  “Child?” Michael said, baffled.

  “Complicated,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Well. At least now I knew which side Ascher was taking.

  “I’d tell you to give me the knife, Dresden,” Nicodemus said, still smiling. “But unlike your friend, I don’t do second chances. And you won’t have any need for it in a moment.”

  Ursiel made a sound that I normally only associate with tractor-trailer rigs, and which might have been a hungry growl. Then he stepped over the four-foot block with no particular difficulty and padded in near silence to my left. Lasciel took up station a bit to my right, with Nicodemus making the third point of a lopsided triangle surrounding us.

  This day was going bad a little more rapidly than I had anticipated. It had, in fact, sprayed gravel on the windshield of my worst-case scenario as it went rocketing past.

  And then footsteps sounded, and Grey sauntered into the amphitheater, casually carrying Anna Valmont’s pack over one shoulder.

  There was blood on it, and on Grey’s fingers.

  “Ah, Grey,” Nicodemus said. He was enjoying getting a little of his own back after the theater I’d thrown into his face. “And?”

  “Valmont’s dead, as ordered,” Grey said calmly. He surveyed the scene on the stage as he approached, his eyes lingering on Lasciel appreciatively. “We about done here?”

  “A few final details to tie up,” Nicodemus said. “Have you considered my offer?”

  “The Coin thing?” Grey asked. He shrugged and glanced at Lasciel again. “It’s got possibilities. I’ve got questions. Let’s finish the job and talk about them over dinner.”

  “Excellent,” Nicodemus said. “Would you mind?”

  I tracked Grey, staring hard at him as he took up position at the fourth corner of the square centered on me and Michael, watching him as he set the pack of diamonds and artifacts to one side and cracked his knuckles, smiling.

  “I never pretended to be anything but a villain,” he said to me, as if baffled by my glare. “Should have seen this one coming, wizard.”

  “You really killed her?” I asked.

  “No particular reason not to. It was quick.”

  “You are a treacherous son of a bitch,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes. “Maybe you should have been the one to hire me, then.”

  His response made me grind my teeth.

  There weren’t going to be any temptations offered this time, no bargains to think twice about, and no cavalry was about to ride over the horizon. Nicodemus meant to kill us.

  Michael and I could not win this fight.

  I heard him take a deep breath and murmur a low, steady prayer. He set his feet and raised his sword to the high guard.

  I gripped my staff mostly in my right hand, holding it across my body with a few fingers of my damaged left arm, and called forth my will and Winter, readying for a hopeless battle.

  Lasciel turned her hands palms up, and searing points of violet light appeared in them. Waves of heat shimmered around Hannah Ascher’s body.

  Anduriel seethed up around Nicodemus like a dark cloak made from a breaking wave, foaming around the slender man as he raised his sword and started forward.

  Ursiel let out a subsonic rumble that shook my chest, and the Genoskwa’s beady eyes stared hate from the face of the prehistoric demon-bear.

  Grey tensed and crouched slightly, his bland features relaxed and amused.

  And I stopped being able to fight back the maniac’s grin that had been struggling to get loose as I played my hole card and said, “Game over, man. Game over.”

  Forty-four

  A good con doesn’t just happen.

  It’s all about the setup.

  Let’s rewind.

  Set the
Wayback Machine for three mornings ago, just after walking out of that first meeting with Nicodemus and Deirdre at the Hard Rock, while riding away in the limo with Mab.

  I told her who I wanted to see.

  For a moment, she didn’t react. Her eyes were locked somewhere beyond the roof of the limo, her head tracking slowly, as if she could still see Nicodemus and Deirdre in their suite. There was no expression on her face, absolutely none—but the interior of the car had dropped several degrees in temperature, purely from the intensity of whatever she wasn’t showing.

  “You grow in wisdom, my Knight,” she said a moment later, turning her head back to face the front. “Slowly, perhaps, but you grow. He is the logical person to consult in this matter. I have already arranged a meeting.”

  “Oh,” I said, and idly fingered the earring, unused to the sensation of something metallic there. “Good.”

  “Stop playing with that,” Mab said. “The less attention you draw to it, the better.”

  I scowled and futzed with it a little more, just to show her that I could, but she was right. As things stood, it might be seen as a simple fashion statement. If Nicodemus realized that by taking the earring away, he could all but incapacitate me, things could go downhill rapidly once we finally came to grips.

  So I dropped my hands and schooled myself mentally the rest of the way to the meeting, focusing on accepting the new sensation and dismissing it from my thoughts entirely.

  I started playing with it again as the limo stopped, and Mab sighed.

  McAnally’s pub is the best of the watering holes in Chicago that serve the supernatural community. It’s a basement bar, like Cheers, but there the resemblance ends. It’s all decorated in stained and polished wood, with clunky electric ceiling fans from the thirties whirling lazily overhead. The ceiling isn’t very high, so they whirl away just a few inches over my head, and I remind myself not to do the bunny hop every time I come through the door.