by Butcher, Jim
I turned to Michael and said, “Do you really think that thing is going to start sipping of the milk of human kindness?”
“No,” Michael said. “But that doesn’t change my purpose. He has surrendered his coin, and the influence of it. The rest is not for Sanya or me to decide. It is Cassius’s choice.”
“You’ve seen these things,” I snarled, stalking over to face Michael. “I’ve seen the corpses they’ve left. They would have killed me, Susan, you—hell, all of us—without blinking an eye. God only knows what they have in mind with that curse they’re putting together.”
“All power has its limits, Harry.” He shook his head. “This is the limit of mine.”
Without really thinking about it, I shoved his shoulder. “They might already have killed Shiro. And you’re going to let this bastard walk?”
Michael caught my arm in one hand and twisted. Michael is strong. I had to rise up onto my toes to relieve the pressure he put on my elbow, and he shoved me back from him, his eyes hard and cold and angry as hell.
“I know that,” he said in that same deadly quiet voice. “I know they’ve hurt him. That they’re going to kill him. Just as Shiro knew that Nicodemus would betray his promise to set you free. It’s one of the things that makes us different than they are, Harry. The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs.” He looked at Cassius, and the Denarian flinched away from the silent flame in Michael’s expression. “It is not for me to judge his soul. No matter how much I might want to.”
“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “No wonder Nicodemus has killed so many Knights, if you’re all as idiotic as this.”
“Harry—” Michael began.
I interrupted him. “Look at him, Michael. He isn’t a victim. He’s a freaking collaborator. That poor bastard Rasmussen might have been dragooned into working with the Denarians, but Cassius does it because he wants to do it.”
“There’s no way for you to be sure of that, Harry,” Sanya said.
“Why are you giving him a fair chance? Which of them has ever turned away from their coins?”
Sanya put his dark hand on my shoulder and said, “I did.”
I looked back at him, frowning.
“I was of their number,” Sanya said. “I was less experienced. Foolish. Proud. I did not set out to be a monster, but that much power corrupts. Shiro faced the Fallen I had allowed in. He exposed its lies. And I made a better choice.”
“Traitor,” said Cassius, his voice cold. “We handed you the world. Power. Glory. Everything you could have wanted.”
Sanya faced the man and said, “What I wanted you could never give me. I had to find it for myself.” He extended a hand. “Cassius, you can leave them just as I did. Help us, please. And let us help you.”
Cassius leaned back, as though Sanya’s hand might burn him, and hissed, “I will eat your eyes.”
“We can’t leave him here,” I said. “He’ll shoot us in the back. He’ll try to kill us.”
“Maybe,” Michael said quietly, and didn’t move.
I wanted to be angry with Sanya and Michael. But I couldn’t. I’m only human. I’d flirted with dark powers before. Made stupid deals. Bad choices. I’d been given a chance to work free of them, or I’d have been dead long ago.
I understood what Michael and Sanya were saying and doing. I understood why. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t really gainsay it without making a hypocrite of myself. There but for the lack of a demon-infested coin went I.
Cassius started wheezing and laughing his dry, contemptuous laugh. “Run along,” he said. “Run along. I’ll think over your words. Reexamine my life. Walk the straight and narrow.”
“Let’s go,” Michael said quietly.
“We can’t leave him,” I insisted.
“The police aren’t going to have anything on him, Harry. We’re not going to kill him. We’re finished here. Have faith. We’ll find an answer somehow.”
Cassius laughed at Michael’s back as he walked out. Sanya followed him, lingering to look back over his shoulder at me.
“Fools,” Cassius murmured, rising. “Weak fools.”
I picked up the bat again and turned to the door. “You’re wrong,” I said to Cassius.
“Weak,” Cassius repeated. “The old man was screaming after only an hour, you know. Nicodemus started with his back. Lashed him with chains. Then Deirdre played with him.”
I gave Cassius a hard look over my shoulder.
He was sneering, lip lifted from his teeth. “Deirdre likes to break fingers and toes. I wish I’d been able to stay longer. I only got to pull out his toenails.” His smile widened, eyes gleaming. “The woman, the Fellowship woman. She is yours?”
I felt my lip lift away from my teeth.
Cassius’s eyes gleamed. “She bled prettily, didn’t she? The next time I catch her, you won’t be there to disrupt my conjuration. I’ll let the snakes eat her. Bite by bite.”
I stared at him.
Cassius smiled again. “But there is mercy for me, is there not? Forgiveness. Indeed, God is great.”
I turned away from him again and said, very quietly, “People like you always mistake compassion for weakness. Michael and Sanya aren’t weak. Fortunately for you, they’re good men.”
Cassius laughed at me.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m not.”
I spun around, swinging the bat as hard as I could, and broke Cassius’s right kneecap.
He screamed in shock and sudden surprise, and went down. Odd crackling sounds came from the joint.
I swung again and broke his right ankle.
Cassius screamed.
I broke his left knee for him too. And his left ankle. He was thrashing around and screaming a lot, so it took me maybe a dozen swings.
“Stop!” he managed to gasp. “Stop, stop, stop!”
I kicked him in the mouth to shut him up, stomped his right forearm to the floor, and crushed his hand with another half dozen swings.
I pinned his left arm down the same way, and put the bat on my shoulder. “Listen to me, you worthless piece of shit. You aren’t a victim. You chose to be one of them. You’ve been serving dark forces your whole life. Freddie Mercury would say Beelzebub has a devil put aside for you.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” He gasped. “You can’t…you won’t…”
I leaned down and twisted his false priest’s collar, half choking him. “The Knights are good men. I’m not. And I won’t lose a second’s sleep over killing you.” I shook him with each word, hard enough to rattle his bloodied teeth. “Where. Is. Nicodemus.”
Cassius broke, sobbing. His bladder had let go at some point, and the room smelled like urine. He choked and spat out blood and a broken tooth. “I’ll tell.” He gasped. “Please, don’t.”
I let his collar go and straightened. “Where?”
“I don’t know,” he said, cowering away from my eyes. “He didn’t tell me. Meeting him tonight. Was going to meet him tonight. Eight.”
“Meet him where?”
“Airport,” Cassius said. He started throwing up. I kept his arm pinned, so it mostly went all over himself. “I don’t know exactly where.”
“What is he doing?”
“The curse. He’s going to unleash the curse. Use the Shroud. The old man’s blood. He has to be moving when he completes the ritual.”
“Why?”
“Curse is a contagion. He has to spread it as far as he can. More exposure to it. Make himself stronger. A-apocalypse.”
I took my foot off of his arm and smashed the motel’s phone to pieces with the bat. I found his cell phone and crushed it, too. Then I reached into my pocket and dropped a quarter on the floor near him. “There’s a pay phone on the other side of the parking lot, past a patch of broken glass. You’d better get yourself an ambulance.” I turned and walked to the door without looking back. “If I see you again—e
ver—I’ll kill you.”
Michael and Sanya waited for me outside the door. Sanya’s face held a certain amount of satisfaction. Michael’s expression was grave, worried, his eyes on mine.
“It had to be done,” I said to Michael. My voice sounded cold. “He’s alive. It’s more than he deserves.”
“Perhaps,” Michael said. “But what you did, Harry. It was wrong.”
A part of me felt sick. Another part felt satisfied. I wasn’t sure which of them was bigger. “You heard what he said about Shiro. About Susan.”
Michael’s eyes darkened, and he nodded. “It doesn’t make it right.”
“No. It doesn’t.” I met his eyes. “Think God’ll forgive me?”
Michael was quiet for a moment, and then his expression softened. He clasped my shoulder and said, “God is always merciful.”
“What you did for him was actually quite generous,” Sanya said philosophically. “Relatively speaking. He might be hurt, but he is, after all, alive. He’ll have a nice, long while to reconsider his choices.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I’m a giver. Did it for his own good.”
Sanya nodded gravely. “Good intentions.”
Michael nodded. “Who are we to judge you?” His eyes flashed, and he asked Sanya, “Did you see the snake’s face, right when Harry turned with the bat?”
Sanya smiled and started whistling as we walked through the parking lot.
We piled into the truck. “Drop me off at my place,” I said. “I need to pick up a couple things. Make some phone calls.”
“The duel?” Michael asked. “Harry, are you sure you don’t want me to—”
“Leave it to me,” I said. “You’ve already got something on your plate. I can handle things. I’ll meet you at the airport afterward and help you find Shiro.”
“If you live,” Sanya said.
“Yes. Thank you, Comrade Obvious.”
The Russian grinned. “Was that a quarter you gave Cassius?”
“Yeah.”
“For the phone?”
“Yeah.”
Michael noted, “Phone calls cost more than that now.”
I slouched back and allowed myself a small smile. “Yeah. I know.”
Sanya and Michael burst out laughing. Michael pounded on the steering wheel.
I didn’t join them, but I enjoyed their laughter while I could. The February sun was already sinking fast toward the horizon.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Back at my apartment, I called Murphy on her personal cell phone. I used simple sentences and told her everything.
“Dear God,” Murphy said. Can I summarize or what? “They can infect the city with this curse thing?”
“Looks like,” I said.
“How can I help?”
“We’ve got to keep them from getting it into the air. They won’t be on public transportation. Find out if any chartered planes are taking off between seven and eight-thirty. Helicopters too.”
“Hang on,” Murphy said. I heard computer keys clicking, Murphy saying something to someone, a police radio. A moment later she said, voice tense, “There’s trouble.”
“Yeah?”
“There are a pair of detectives heading out to arrest you. Looks like Homicide wants you for questioning. There’s no warrant listed.”
“Crap.” I took a deep breath. “Rudolph?”
“Brownnosing rat,” Murphy muttered. “Harry, they’re almost to your place. You’ve only got a few minutes.”
“Can you decoy them? Get some manpower to the airport?”
“I don’t know,” Murphy said. “I’m supposed to be a mile from this case. And it isn’t as though I can announce that terrorists are about to use a biological weapon on the city.”
“Use Rudolph,” I said. “Tell him off the record that I said the Shroud is leaving town on a chartered flight from the airport. Let him take the heat for it if they don’t find anything.”
Murphy let out a harsh little laugh. “There are times when you can be a clever man, Harry. It takes me by surprise.”
“Why, thank you.”
“What else can I do?”
I told her.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. We may need the manpower, and SI is out of this one.”
“Just when I had hope for your intelligence, too.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Yeah. Can’t promise anything, but I’ll do it. Get moving. They’re less than five minutes away.”
“Gone. Thank you, Murph.”
I hung up the phone, opened my closet, and dug into a couple of old cardboard boxes I kept at the back until I found my old canvas duster. It was battered and torn in a couple of places, but it was clean. It didn’t have the same reassuring weight as the leather duster, but it did more to hide my gun than my jacket. And it made me look cool. Well, maybe cooler, anyway.
I grabbed my things, locked up my place behind me, and got into Martin’s rental car. Martin wasn’t in it. Susan sat behind the wheel. “Hurry,” I said. She nodded and pulled out.
A few minutes later, no one had pulled us over. “I take it Martin isn’t helping.”
Susan shook her head. “No. He said he had other duties that took precedence. He said that I did, too.”
“What did you say?”
“That he was a narrow-minded, hidebound, anachronistic, egotistical bastard.”
“No wonder he likes you.”
Susan smiled a little and said, “The Fellowship is his life. He serves a cause.”
“What is it to you?” I asked.
Susan remained silent for a long time as we drove across town. “How did it go?”
“We caught the impostor. He told us where the bad guys would be later tonight.”
“What did you do with him?”
I told her.
She looked at me for a while and then said, “Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“It’s done.”
“But are you all right?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m glad you didn’t see it.”
Susan asked, “Oh? Why?”
“You’re a girl. Beating up bad guys is a boy thing.”
“Chauvinist pig,” Susan said.
“Yeah. I get it from Murphy. She’s a bad influence.”
We hit the first traffic sign directing us toward the stadium, and Susan asked, “Do you really think you can win?”
“Yeah. Hell, Ortega is only the third or fourth most disturbing thing I’ve tangled with today.”
“But even if you do win, what does it change?”
“Me getting killed now. That way, I get to be killed later tonight instead.”
Susan laughed. There was nothing happy in it. “You don’t deserve a life like this.”
I squinted my eyes and made my voice gravelly. “Deserve’s got nothin’—”
“So help me God, if you quote Clint Eastwood at me, I’m wrapping this car around a telephone pole.”
“Do you feel lucky, punk?” I smiled and turned my left hand palm up.
I felt her hand settle lightly on mine a moment later, and she said, “A girl’s got to draw the line somewhere.”
We rode the rest of the way to the stadium in silence, holding hands.
I hadn’t ever been to Wrigley when it was empty. That wasn’t really the point of a stadium. You went there to be among about a bajillion people and see something happen. This time, with acres and acres of unoccupied asphalt, the stadium at its center looked huge and somehow more skeletal than when it was filled with vehicles and cheering thousands. The wind sighed through the stadium, gusting, whistling, and moaning. Twilight had fallen, and the unlit street lamps cast spidery shadows over the lots. Darkness gaped in the arches and doorways of the stadium, empty as the eyes of a skull.
“Thank God that isn’t too creepy or anything,” I muttered.
“What now?” Susan aske
d.
Another car pulled in behind us. I recognized it from McAnnally’s the night before. The car pulled up maybe fifty feet away and rolled to a stop. Ortega got out, and leaned down to say something to the driver, a man with a dark complexion and amber-tone glasses. There were two more men in the backseat, though I couldn’t see much of them. I was betting they were all Red Court.
“Let’s not look scared,” I said, and got out of the car.
I didn’t look at Ortega, but drew out my staff with me, planted it on the ground, and stared at the stadium. The wind caught my coat, and blew it back enough to show the gun on my hip now and again. I’d traded in my sweats for dark jeans and a black silk shirt. The Mongols or somebody wore silk shirts because they would catch arrows as they entered wounds, and enable them to pull barbed arrowheads out without ripping their innards apart. I wasn’t planning on getting shot with barbed arrows, but weirder things have happened.
Susan got out and walked up to stand beside me. She stared at the stadium too, and the wind blew her hair back the same way it did my coat. “Very nice,” she murmured, hardly moving her mouth. “That’s a good look on you. Ortega’s driver is about to wet his pants.”
“You say the nicest things to me.”
We just stood there for a couple of minutes, until I heard a deep, rhythmic rumbling—one of those annoyingly loud bass stereos in some moron’s car. The rumbling got louder; then there was a squealing of tires taking a tight turn, and Thomas pulled into the lot in a different white sports car than I’d seen him in the night before. The music got louder as he sped across the lot and parked his car diagonally across the lines I’d unconsciously respected when I’d parked. He killed the stereo and got out, a small cloud of smoke emerging with him. It wasn’t cigarette smoke.
“Paolo!” Thomas caroled. He wore tight blue jeans and a black T-shirt with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer logo. The laces to one of his combat boots were untied, and he carried a bottle of scotch in his hand. He pulled from it cheerfully and wove a drunken line to Ortega. Thomas offered out the bottle, his balance wobbling. “Have a swig?”