by Butcher, Jim
Lara struggled, but the haze of confusion over her eyes did not clear, and her motions had a dreamlike lack of coordination. Her face took on an expression of horror as both vampires leaned into her, their withered teeth settling onto her flesh. They bit her, and she bucked in terror and agony. There were ugly, slurping sounds beneath Lara Raith’s screams.
Which was what I’d been waiting for. Once they had bitten down, I gathered up momentum as quietly as I could, closed the last few yards in the springing strides I would have used on a fencing strip, and drove the six-inch heel of one of Lara’s black pumps as hard as I could into the space between the unwounded vampire’s shoulder blades. I had the heel of my hand and the full weight of my body behind the blow, and I hit square and hard, so that the heel drove into its back, just left of its spine, directly at the vampire’s withered heart.
I didn’t get the response I would have liked best. The vampire didn’t disintegrate or explode into dust. But it did convulse with a sudden scream, its body going into almost the same kind of spastic seizure the other one had displayed on having a turkey rammed through its chest. It staggered and fell to the ground, its dead face locked into a grimace of surprise and helpless pain.
One-ear was slow to react. By the time it tore its mouth from the gnawed and bleeding slope of Lara Raith’s left breast, I had my mother’s pentacle out and had focused all of my attention on it.
Now I’ve heard that the power of faith is simply another aspect of the magic I used all the time. I’ve also heard that it is a completely different kind of energy, totally unrelated to the living power I felt all around me. Certainly it garnered a very different reaction from various supernatural entities than my everyday wizardry did, so maybe they weren’t related at all.
But that didn’t matter. I wasn’t holding a crucifix in the thing’s face. I was holding the symbol of what I believed in. The five-pointed star of the pentacle represented the five forces of the universe, those of air, fire, water, earth, and of spiritual energy, laid into patterns of order and life and bound within a circle of human thought, human will. I believed that magic was fundamentally a force of life, of good, something meant to protect and preserve. I believed that those who wielded it therefore had a responsibility to use that power in the way it was meant to be used—and that was belief enough to tap into the vast power of faith, and to direct it against One-ear.
The pentacle burst into silver and blue light, a blaze as bright as an airborne flare. One-ear’s stretched facial skin began to peel away, and the thick fluids oozing from its ruined eye socket burst into silver flame. The vampire screamed and threw itself away from that silver fire. If he’d had a crony left, they could have come at me from opposite directions, so that the blazing light from the pentacle could sear only one. But he didn’t, and I followed after One-ear, keeping the pentacle held before me, my concentration locked upon it.
One-ear scrambled over the writhing vampire with the turkey-crushed chest, and the creature, maybe younger or more vulnerable than its leader, simply burst into flame as the pentacle glared down upon it. I had to skip back a step from that sudden heat, and the fallen vampire was consumed by blinding fire until nothing was left of it.
By the time my eyes had adjusted to the comparative darkness of the parking lot again, One-ear was nowhere to be seen. I checked over my shoulder and saw the transformed Lara Raith straddle the staked vampire, her eyes blazing silver and bright, her skin shining as Thomas’s had. She drove blows down at its face, crushing it with the first few, then driving into its skull with sickening squelching sounds during subsequent blows. She continued, screaming at the top of her lungs the whole while, until she’d crushed its face and moved onto its neck, beating it into shapeless pulp.
And then she tore the vampire’s head off its shoulders, killing it.
She rose slowly, pale eyes distant and inhuman. Her white skin was streaked with ichor of black, brown, and dark green, mingling with the pale, pinkish blood around her cuts and the bite wounds. Her dark hair had fallen from its mostly up style, and hung around her in a wild tangle. She looked terrified and furious and sexy as hell.
The succubus turned hungry eyes on me, and began a slow stalk forward. I let the gathered light ease out of my pentacle. It wouldn’t do me any good against Lara. “We have a truce,” I said. My voice sounded harsh, cold, though I hadn’t tried to make it that way. “Don’t make me destroy you too.”
She stopped in her stockinged tracks. Her expression flickered with uncertainty and fear, and she looked a hell of a lot shorter without the do-me pumps. She shuddered and folded her arms over her stomach, closing her eyes for a moment. The luminous, compelling glow faded from her skin, her features becoming less unreal, if no less lovely. When she opened her eyes again, they were almost human. “My family,” she said. “I have to get them out of here. Our truce stands. Will you help me?”
I looked at Inari, on the ground and paralyzed with pain. Thomas wasn’t moving. He might have been dead.
Lara took a deep breath and said, “Mister Dresden, I can’t protect them. I need your help to get them to safety. Please.”
The last word had cost her something. Somehow, I held back from agreeing to help her on pure reflex. That is a monumentally bad idea, Harry, I cautioned myself. I shoved the knee-jerk chivalry aside and scowled at Lara.
She stood facing me, her chin lifted proudly. Her injuries looked vicious, and she had to be in pain, but she refused to let it show on her face—except for one moment, when she glanced at Thomas and Inari, and her eyes suddenly glistened. The tears fell, but she did not allow herself to blink.
“Dammit.” I let out my breath in disgust at myself and said, “I’ll get my car.”
Chapter Eighteen
I debated talking to Arturo before I left but decided against it. Thomas and Inari were hurt, and the sooner they got medical care, the better. Additionally, One-ear the vampire had consciously gotten his own flunky immolated in order to escape. If he had some mystical method of communicating with Mama Mavra—or a cell phone—she might already be on the way with reinforcements.
One-ear was still pretty new to the vampire game, and his pair of followers had been virtual infants, and they had almost been more than all of us could handle. Mavra was in a different league entirely. She had been killing for centuries, and the near-extermination of the Black Court had meant that only the smartest, strongest, and most deadly of its members had survived. One-ear was dangerous enough, but if Mavra caught us in the open, she would take us apart.
So I ran to get the Blue Beetle from the row of parking spaces near the building Arturo was using. It was a quick run, a couple of plots up and one over from where Thomas and Inari lay. I slipped into the building. Only a couple of people saw me, and I ignored them as I ducked into the studio doors, seized my backpack, my coat, and the sleeping puppy, and fumbled in the coat until I found my car keys. I carried the whole kit and caboodle out to the car.
I coaxed the Beetle to life and tore down the gravel lanes with all the speed its little engine could manage. The Beetle’s single headlight glared over Lara, who had Thomas in a fireman’s carry. She’d taken off the short black robe and had tied it into an improvised sling for Inari, who stumbled along behind her older sister.
I opened the doors and helped her lower Thomas into the back of the Beetle. Lara stared for a second at my car’s interior. It didn’t look like she approved of the stripped and improvised quality of it. “There’s no seat in back,” she said.
“That’s why there’s a blanket,” I answered her. “Get in. How is he?”
“Alive, for now,” Lara said. “He’s breathing, but he’s emptied his reserves. He’ll need to refresh them.”
I paused and stared at her. “You mean he needs to feed on someone.”
Her eyes slid aside to Inari, but the girl had her hands full simply staying vertical through the pain, and probably wouldn’t have heard the space shuttle lifting off. Nonetheless, Lar
a lowered her voice. “Yes. Deeply.”
“Hell’s bells,” I said. I got the door for Inari and helped her into the passenger-side seat, buckled her in, and dropped the puppy in her lap. She clutched at him with her unwounded arm, whimpering.
I got the Beetle the hell away from the little industrial park. After several moments of hurried driving, I started to relax. I kept checking, but I saw no one following me. I played a few trail-shaking tricks, just in case, and finally felt able to speak. “I’ll get you to my place,” I told Lara.
“You can’t possibly think that the basement of a boardinghouse will be secure.”
“How do you know where I live?” I demanded.
“I’ve read the Court’s defensive assessment of your home,” she said with an absent wave of her hand.
Which was scary as hell, that someone had assessed my freaking apartment. But I wasn’t going to show her that. “It’s kept me alive pretty well. Once we get there we can fort up under my heavy defenses. We’ll be stuck inside, but safe until morning.”
“If you wish. But if he does not feed, Thomas will be dead within the hour.”
I spat an oath.
“Mavra knows where you live, in any case, Dresden. She will doubtless have some of her personnel waiting near your apartment.”
“True,” I said. “Where else could we go?”
“My family’s house.”
“You all live in Chicago?”
“Of course not,” Lara said, her voice tired. “But we keep houses in several cities around the world. Thomas has been in and out of Chicago for the past two or three years, between resort vacations. Justine is at the house, waiting for him.”
“Inari will need a doctor.”
“I have one,” she said. Then added, “On retainer.”
I stared at her in my rearview mirror for a moment (in which she appeared like anyone else) and then shrugged. “Which way?”
“North along the lake,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know the street names. Turn right at the light ahead.”
She gave directions and I followed them, and I reminded myself that it would be a bad habit to form. It took us better than half an hour to get up to one of the wealthy lakeside developments that just about any large body of water makes inevitable. I’d seen several such developments during the course of my investigations, but the area Lara directed me to was as elaborate and expensive-looking as any I had ever seen.
The house we finally pulled up to had multiple wings, multiple stories, and a couple of faux-castle turrets. It had cost someone eight digits, and could have doubled as the headquarters of the villain in a James Bond movie. Old timber had grown up around it, and was manicured into an idyllic forest of rolling, grass-green hummocks and beautiful, shapely trees wreathed in ivy and autumn leaves. Small lit pools were dotted here and there, each shrouded with its own low cloud of evening mist.
The drive rolled through Little Sherwood for better than half a mile, and I started feeling nervous. If anything tried to kill me, I was too far away from the road to run for help. Or even to scream for it. I shook my wrist to hear the jangle of the little silver shields on my bracelet, and made sure it was ready to go at an instant’s notice.
Lara’s pale grey eyes regarded me in the rearview mirror for a moment, and then she said, “Dresden, you and my brother have nothing further to fear from me this night. I will respect our truce, and extend guest rights to you while you are in my family’s home. And I do so swear it.”
I frowned and didn’t chance a look at her eyes, even in the mirror. I didn’t have to. There was something in her voice that I recognized. Call it the ring of truth.
The one advantage to dealing with supernatural foes was that the code of honor of the Old World was accepted and expected when we negotiated with one another. A sworn oath and the obligations of hospitality were more binding in those circles than the threat of physical force. What Lara had offered me meant that not only would she not attempt to do me harm—she would be obligated to protect me should anyone else attempt to do so. If she failed in her duties as a host, it would represent a major loss of face, should word of it get around.
But from what I’d gathered, Lara wasn’t the one making all the calls in the Raith household. If someone up the family food chain—for example, Daddy Raith—thought he could get away with it without word leaking out, he might decide to subtract me from the old equation of life. It was a real risk, and I didn’t want to take it.
The last vampire who had offered me the hospitality of her home, Bianca, had drugged me, nearly killed me, manipulated me into starting a war (which incidentally forced me into a stupidly dangerous investigation with the Queens of Faerie), and tried to feed me to her most recent vampire “recruit,” my former lover, Susan. There was no reason to think that Lara wasn’t capable of the same treachery.
Unfortunately, my back wasn’t exactly breaking under the weight of all my options. I had no idea of how to help Thomas, and my apartment was the only place in town I would be safe. If I cut and ran Thomas wouldn’t survive it. I didn’t have anything but a strong intuition that Lara would hold to the letter of our truce. Two seconds after it was over she’d finish what she started, sure, but in the meantime we might be okay.
A paranoid little voice inside reminded me that Lara seemed like she was more or less on the level, and that it should make me nervous. Their near-humanity was what made the White Court so dangerous. I’d never come close to thinking that maybe Bianca was an okay person underneath the blood-craving monster. I’d known that she wasn’t human, and I’d been wary every single time I’d interacted with her.
I didn’t get any more of a creature-feature vibe from Lara than I did from Thomas. But I had to figure they were cut from a similar mold. There would be lies under lies. I had to be paranoid, which in this instance was another word for smart. I couldn’t afford to extend Lara much trust if I wanted to avoid a rerun of the Harry Nearly Dies Because of His Stupid Chivalry Show.
I promised myself that the second anything got dicey I would blast my way out of that house through the nearest wall, incinerating first and asking questions later. It wouldn’t be the subtlest escape in the whole world, but I was pretty sure the Raiths could afford to repair the damages. I wondered if vampires had any trouble getting homeowner’s insurance.
I pulled the Blue Beetle around the circular drive in front of Château Raith. Its engine shuddered, coughed, and finally died before I could shut it down. A sidewalk swept between a pair of vicious-looking stone gargoyles four feet high, and led through a rose garden bedded with pure white gravel.
The rose vines were old ones, some of them as thick as my thumb. Their spreading tendrils twined all around the entirety of the garden and over the feet of the crouching gargoyles. The lighting was all arranged in soft blues and greens, and it made the roses on the vines look black. Thick leaves grew all over the vines, but here and there I could see the wicked needle tips of larger-than-average thorns. The air was filled with their light, heady scent.
“Help Inari,” Lara said. “I will carry Thomas.”
“Considering that you’re the one who shot him in the first place, I’ll carry Thomas,” I said. “You help Inari.”
Her lips compressed slightly, but she nodded. “As you wish.”
Damn straight, as I wish.
Lara leaned over to pull Inari from the car, but before she could touch the girl the notch-eared puppy sprang up out of his sleep, barking and snarling at Lara in squeaky fury. Lara jerked her hand back, brows lowering in consternation. “What’s wrong with your animal?”
I sighed and slid into my leather duster, then came around to the passenger door. “I keep telling everyone he’s not mine.” I scooped up the little psychopath and deposited him in one of my coat pockets. He scrambled around in there for a minute, and then he managed to poke his head out. The puppy kept his eyes on Lara and kept growling. “There. Now the beast cannot harm you.”
Lara g
ave me a cool look and coaxed Inari to her feet. Then she helped me draw Thomas out of the car as gently as possible. He was flaccid and cold, his eyes entirely white, but I could hear his labored breathing. Without knowing the extent of the injuries to his upper body, I didn’t dare risk a fireman’s carry, so I got an arm under his shoulder blades and hamstrings, and lifted him like a child. He was heavy. My shoulders screamed, and my ears started ringing with a quiet, shrill tone.
I felt dizzy for a second, and shrugged it off with an effort of will. I couldn’t afford to show any weakness now.
I followed Lara and Inari up the sidewalk to the house. Lara pushed a button on a small plastic panel beside the door and said, “Lara Raith.” There was a heavy metallic click-clack, and one of the doors drifted slowly in.
Just then the lights of another car swept across us. A white limo pulled in beside the Blue Beetle on the circular drive and came to a halt. A moment later a white sedan pulled in behind the limo.
The limo’s driver was woman over six feet tall wearing a grey uniform. Her hair was pulled back in a severe braid, and she wore dark red lipstick. A tall, strong-looking man in a grey silk suit got out on the passenger side of the limo. I caught sight of a shoulder rig while he was settling his jacket. His eyes swept around, taking in everything, including us at the door, the drive, the grounds, the trees, and the roof of the house. He was checking possible lines of fire. A bodyguard.
Simultaneously, another man and woman got out of the white sedan. At first I thought that they were the same two people. I blinked. The man looked the same, but the second woman was wearing a grey suit a lot like the one of the man with her. Then I got it—two sets of identical twins. They all looked wary, competent, and dangerous. They fanned out around the limo in silent coordination, like they’d done it a jillion times.
Then the driver opened the back door of the limo.
The air grew suddenly colder, as if the Almighty had flicked on the air-conditioning. A man slid out of the car. He was about six feet tall, dark of hair and pale of flesh. He was dressed in a white linen suit with a silver-grey silk shirt and Italian leather shoes. There was a scarlet gem of some kind fixed to his left earlobe, though his fine, straight hair hid it until a breeze briefly tossed the dark strands to one side. He had long, spatulate fingers, broad shoulders, the eyes of a drowsy jaguar, and he was better-looking than Thomas.