by Jim Butcher
I loaded up on the gear, too—everything I’d brought with me that morning plus the Gatekeeper’s gifts and my home-defense cannon, a heavy-caliber, long-barreled, Dirty Harry Magnum. I debated carrying the gun on me and decided against it. I’d have to go through Chicago to get to whatever point would lead me to the Stone Table, and I didn’t need to get arrested for a concealed carry. I popped the gun, case and all, into my bag, and hoped I wouldn’t have to get to it in a hurry.
Billy and the werewolves arrived maybe ten minutes later, the minivan pulling up outside and beeping the horn. I checked the doctor bag, closed it, and went out to the van, my gym bag bumping against my side. The side door rolled open, and I stepped up to toss my gear in.
I hesitated upon seeing the van, packed shoulder to shoulder with young people. There were ten or eleven of them in there.
Billy leaned over from the driver’s seat and asked, "Problem?"
"I said only volunteers," I said. "I don’t know how much trouble we’re going into."
"Right," Billy said. "I told them that."
The kids in the van murmured their agreement.
I blew out my breath. "Okay, people. Same rules as last time. I’m calling the shots, and if I give you an order, you take it, no arguments. Deal?"
There was a round of solemn nods. I nodded in reply and peered to the back of the dim van, at a head of dull green hair. "Meryl? Is that you?"
The changeling girl gave me a solemn nod. "I want to help. So does Fix."
I caught a flash of white hair and dark, nervous eyes from beside Meryl. The little man lifted a hand and gave me a twitching wave.
"If you go along," I said, "same rules as everyone else. Otherwise you stay here."
"All right," Meryl said with a laconic nod.
"Yeah," Fix said. "Okay."
I looked around at all of them and grimaced. They looked so damned young. Or maybe it was just me feeling old. I reminded myself that Billy and the Alphas had already had their baptism by fire, and they’d had almost two years to hone their skills against some of the low-intensity riffraff of the Chicago underground scene. But I knew that they were getting in way over their heads on this one.
I needed them, and they’d volunteered. The trick was to make sure that I didn’t lead them to a horrible death.
"Okay," I said. "Let’s go."
Billy pushed open the passenger door, and Georgia moved back to the crowded rear seats. I got in beside Billy and asked, "Did you get them?"
Billy passed me a plastic bag from Wal-Mart. "Yeah, that’s why it took so long to get here. There was police tape all over and cops standing around."
"Thanks," I said. I tore open a package of orange plastic box knives and put them into the doctor’s valise, then snapped it closed again. Then I took the grey stone from my pocket, wrapped the thread it hung by around my hand, and held my hand out in front of me, palm down and level with my eyes. "Let’s go."
"Okay," Billy said, giving me a skeptical look. "Go where?"
The grey stone quivered and twitched. Then it swung very definitely to the east, drawing the string with it, so that it hung at a slight angle rather than straight down.
I pointed the way the stone leaned and said, "Thataway. Toward the lake."
"Got it," Billy said. He pulled the van onto the street. "So where are we heading?"
I grunted and stuck an index finger up.
"Up," Billy said, his voice skeptical. "We’re going up."
I watched the stone. It wobbled, and I focused on it as I might on my own amulet. It stabilized and leaned toward the lake without wavering or swaying on its string. "Up there," I clarified.
"Where up there?"
Lightning flashed and I pointed toward it. "There up there."
Billy glanced at someone in the back and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I hope you know a couple of streets I don’t, then." He drove for a while more, with me telling him to bear right or left. At a stoplight, the rain still pounding on the windshield, wipers flicking steadily, he asked, "So what’s the score?"
"Well-intentioned But Dangerously Insane Bad Guys are ahead coming down the stretch," I said. "The Faerie Courts are duking it out up there, and it’s probably going to be very hairy. The Summer Lady is our baddie, and the Winter Knight is her bitch. She has a magic hankie. She’s going to use it to change a statue into a girl and kill her on a big Flintstones table at midnight."
There were a couple of grunts as Meryl pushed her way toward the front of the van. "A girl? Lily?"
I glanced from the stone back to her and nodded. "We have to find Aurora and stop her. Save the girl."
"Or what happens?" Billy asked.
"Badness."
"Kaboom badness?"
I shook my head. "Mostly longer term than that."
"Like what?"
"How do you feel about ice ages?"
Billy whistled. "Uh. Do you mind if I ask a few questions?"
I kept my eyes on the chip of stone. "Go ahead."
"Right," Billy said. "As I understand it, Aurora is trying to tear apart both of the Faerie Courts, right?"
"Yeah."
"Why? I mean, why not shoot for just Winter so her side wins?"
"Because she can’t," I said. "She’s limited in her power. She knows she doesn’t have the strength it would take to force things on her own. The Queens and the Mothers could stop her easily. So she’s using the only method she has open to her."
"Screwing up the balance of power," Billy said. "But she’s doing it by giving a bunch of mojo to Winter?"
"Limits," I said. "She can’t move Winter’s power around at all, the way she can Summer’s. That’s why she had to kill her own Knight. She knew she could pour his power out into a vessel of her choosing."
"Lily," growled Meryl.
I glanced over my shoulder at her and nodded. "Someone who would trust her. Who wouldn’t be able to protect herself against Aurora’s enchantment."
"So why’d she turn the girl to stone?" Billy asked.
"It was her cover," I said. "The Queens could have found an active Knight. But once Lily was turned to stone, the Knight’s mantle was stuck in limbo. Aurora knew that everyone would suspect Mab of doing something clever and that Titania would be forced to prepare to fight. Mab would have to move in response, and the pair of them would create the battleground around the Stone Table."
"What’s the Table for?"
"Pouring power into one of the Courts," I said. "It belongs to Summer until midnight tonight. After that, any power that gets poured in goes to Winter."
"Which is where we’re going now," Billy said.
"Uh-huh," I said. "Turn left at that light."
Billy nodded. "So Aurora steals the power and hides it, which forces the Queens to bring out the battleground with the big table."
"Right. Now Aurora plans to take Lily there and use the Unraveling to free her of the stone curse she’s under. Then she kills her and touches off Faerie-geddon. She’s got to get to the table after midnight, but before Mab’s forces actually take the ground around it. That means she’s only got a small window of opportunity, and we need to stop her from using it."
"I still don’t get it," Billy said. "What the hell is she hoping to accomplish?"
"Probably she thinks she can ride out the big war. Then she’ll put it all together again from the ashes just the way she wants it."
"Thank God she’s not too arrogant or anything," Billy muttered. "It seems to me that Mab is going to be handed a huge advantage in this. Why didn’t Aurora just work together with Mab?"
"It probably never occurred to her to try it that way. She’s Summer. Mab is Winter. The two don’t work together."
"Small favors," Billy said. "So what do we do to help?"
"I’m going to have to move around through a battleground. I need muscle to do it. I don’t want to stop to fight. We just keep moving until I can get to the Stone Table and stop Aurora. And I want all of you changed before we
go up there. Faeries are vindictive as hell and you’re going to piss some of them off. Better if they never get to see your faces."
"Right," Billy said. "How many faeries are we talking about?"
I squinted up at a particularly violent burst of lightning. "All of them."
The stone the Gatekeeper had given me led us to the waterfront along Burnham Harbor. Billy parked the van on the street outside the wharves that had once been the lifeblood of the city and that still received an enormous amount of shipping every year. Halogen floodlights every couple of hundred feet made the docks into a silent still life behind a grid of chain-link fence.
I turned to the Alphas and said, "All right, folks. Before we go up, I’ve got to put some ointment on your eyes. It stinks, but it will keep you from being taken in by most faerie glamours."
"Me first," Billy said at once. I opened the little jar and smeared the dark ointment on under his eyes, little half-moons of dark, greasy brown. He checked his eyes in the mirror and said, "And I used to sneer at the football team."
"Get your game face on," I said. Billy slipped out of the car and pitched his sweats and T-shirt back in. I got out of the van and opened the side door. Billy, in his wolf-shape, came trotting around the side of the van and sat nearby as I smeared the greasy ointment on the eyes of all the Alphas.
It was a little unnerving, to me anyway. They were all naked as I did it, shimmering into wolf-form as soon as I had finished, and joining Billy outside. One of the girls, a redhead who had been daintily plump, now looked like something from a men’s magazine. She gave me a somewhat satisfied smile as I noticed, and the next, a petite girl with mousy brown hair and a long scar on her shoulder, held her dress against her front and confided, "She’s been impossible this year," as I smeared ointment on her.
Half a dozen young men and another half a dozen young women, all told, made for a lot of wolf. They waited patiently as I slapped the ointment on Fix, then Meryl, and finally myself. I used the very last of it, and blew out a deep breath. I put on my gun, on a hip rig instead of a shoulder holster, and hoped that the rain and my duster would conceal it from any passing observation. Then I drew my pentacle out to lie on my shirt, gathered up my staff and rod, slipping the latter through the straps on the doctor’s bag, and picked it up. I juggled things around for a moment, until I could get the grey stone on its thread out and into my hand, and thought that maybe Elaine had the right idea when it came to going with smaller magical foci.
I had just gotten out into the rain when the wolves all looked out into the night at once. One of them, I think Billy, let out a bark and they scattered, leaving me and Meryl and Fix standing there alone in the rain.
"W-what?" Fix stammered. "What happened? Where did they go?"
Meryl said, "They must have heard something." She reached back into the minivan and came out with a machete and a wood axe. Then she pulled out a heavy denim jacket that had been festooned in layers of what looked like silverware. It rattled as she put it on.
"No chain mail?" I asked.
Fix fussed with a fork that was sticking out too far and said in an apologetic tone, "Best I could do on short notice. It’s steel, though. So, you know, it will be harder for anything to bite her." He hopped back into the minivan and came out with a bulky toolbox that looked heavy as hell. The little guy lifted it to his shoulder as though he did it all the time and licked his lips. "What do we do?"
I checked the stone, which still pointed at the lake. "We move forward. If there’s something out there, Billy will let us know."
Fix gulped, his frizzy white hair slowly being plastered to his head by the rain. "Are you sure?"
"Stay close to me, Fix," Meryl said. "How are we going to go that way, Dresden? There’s a fence. Harbor security, too."
I had no idea, but I didn’t want to say that. I headed for the nearest gate instead. "Come on."
We got to the gate and found it open. A broken chain dangled from one edge. Part of the shattered link lay on the ground nearby. The ends had been twisted, not cut, and steam curled up from them in a little hissing cloud where raindrops touched.
"Broken," I said. "And not long ago. This rain would cool the metal down fast."
"Not by a faerie, either," Meryl said quietly. "They don’t like to come close to a fence like this."
"Silly," Fix sniffed. "A cheap set of bolt cutters would have been better than just breaking a perfectly good chain."
"Yeah, nasties can be irrational that way," I said. The stone continued to lean out toward the end of one of the long wharves thrusting into the lake. "Out that way."
We went through the gate and had gone maybe twenty feet before the halogen floodlights went out, leaving us in storm-drenched blackness.
I fumbled for my amulet with cold fingers, but Fix and Meryl both beat me to it. Fix’s toolbox thunked down, and a moment later he stood up with a heavy-duty flashlight. At almost the same time, there was a crackle of plastic, and Meryl shook the tube of a chemical light into eerie green luminescence.
A gunshot barked, sharp and loud, and Meryl jerked and staggered to one side. She looked down at blood spreading over her jeans, her expression one of startled shock.
"Down!" I said, and hit her at the waist, bearing her to the ground as the gun barked again. I grabbed at the glow stick and shoved it into my coat. "Put out those lights!"
Fix fumbled with the flashlight as another shot rang out, sending a sputter of sparks from his toolbox. Fix yelped and dropped the light. It rolled over to one side, slewing a cone of illumination out behind us.
The light spilled over the form of the Tigress, the ghoul assassin, not even bothering to try a human shape now. In her natural form, she was a hunch-shouldered, grey-skinned fiend, something blending the worst features of mankind, hyena, and baboon. Short, wiry red hairs prickled over her whole body. Her legs were stunted and strong, her arms too long, and her hands tipped in spurs of bone that replaced nails. Her hair hung about her head in a soggy, matted lump, and her eyes, furious as she came running forward, glared with malice. Pink and grey scars stood out against her skin, swollen areas where she’d healed all the damage Murphy had inflicted on her the night before. She flew toward us over the ground, running with all four limbs, mouth gaping wide.
She didn’t see the Alphas closing in behind her.
The first wolf, black grease still in half-circles under its eyes, hit her right leg, a quick snapping, jerking motion of its jaws. The ghoul shrieked in surprise and fell, tumbling. She regained her feet quickly and struck out at the wolf who had bloodied her, but the big grey beast rolled aside as a taller, tawnier wolf leapt over him. The second wolf took the ghoul’s other leg, bounding away when the ghoul turned on it, while a third wolf darted in at the Tigress’s back.
The ghoul screamed and tried to run again. The wolves didn’t let her. I watched as another wolf slammed into her, knocking her down. She rolled to her front, but she’d been hamstrung, and her legs were now useless weight. Claws flashed out and drew flecks of blood, but the wolf she’d hit scrambled onto her back, jaws closing in on the back of the ghoul’s neck. She let out a last frantic, gurgling scream.
Then the werewolves buried her in a tide of fur and flashing fangs. When they drew away half a minute later, I couldn’t have recognized the remains for what they were. My stomach curled up on itself, and I forced myself to look away before I started throwing up.
I grabbed Meryl underneath her arms and started tugging her toward the nearest warehouse. I snarled, "Help me," at Fix, and he pitched in, surprisingly strong.
"Oh, God," Fix whimpered. "Oh, God, Meryl, oh, God."
"It’s not bad," Meryl panted, as we dragged her around a corner of the building. "It isn’t too bad, Fix."
I got out the glow stick and checked. Her jeans were stained with blood, black in the green light, but not as badly as they should have been. I found a long tear along the fabric of one leg, and whistled, "Lucky," I said. "Grazed you. Doesn’t look
like it’s bleeding too bad." I poked at her leg. "Can you feel that?"
She winced.
"Good," I said. "Stay here. Fix, stay with her."
I left my bag there and unlimbered my gun. I kept it pointed at the ground and made sure my shield bracelet was ready to go, gathering energy into it in order to shield myself from any more rifle shots. I didn’t raise the gun to level. I didn’t want it to go off accidentally and bounce a bullet off my own shield and into my head.
As I stepped around the corner, I heard a short scream and then a series of sharp barks. One of the wolves appeared in the cone of Fix’s fallen light, picked it up in his mouth, and trotted toward me.
"All clear?" I asked.
The wolf ducked his head in a couple of quick nods and dropped the flashlight on my foot. I picked it up. The wolf barked again and started off toward the wharf. I frowned at him and said, "You want me to follow you?"
He rolled his eyes and nodded again.
I started off after him. "If it turns out that Timmy’s stuck down the well, I’m going home."
The wolf led me to the wharf the stone had pointed to, and there I found a young man in dark slacks and a white jacket on the ground in a circle of wolves. He held one bleeding hand against his belly and was panting. A rifle lay on the ground nearby, next to a broken pair of sunglasses. He looked up at me and grimaced, his face pale behind his goatee.
"Ace," I said. I shook my head. "You were the one who hired the ghoul."
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," he lied. "Get these things away from me, Dresden. Let me go."
"I’m running late, Ace, or I’d have the patience for more chitchat." I nodded at the nearest wolf and said, "Tear his nose off."
Ace screamed and fell back, covering his face with both arms. I winked at the wolf and stepped forward to stand over the changeling. "Or maybe his ears. Or toes. What do you think, Ace? What’s going to make you talk fastest? Or should I just try them all one at a time?"