The Ultimate Dresden Omnibus, 0-15

by Butcher, Jim

  I shook my head, trying to tear away from painful clarity of my Sight. I heard a footstep nearby. Still stunned, I looked behind me.

  For just a second I saw something standing there. Something enormous, malformed, something silent and merciless and deadly. It had to crouch to keep from brushing the ceiling with the horns curling away from its head, and batlike wings spread from its shoulders to fall around it and behind it, to drag along the floor, and I thought I saw some kind of hideous double image lurking behind it like the corpse-specter of Death himself.

  Then the second was past, I pushed my Sight away, and Kincaid stood frowning down at me. “I said, are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, just clipped me.”

  Kincaid offered me his hand.

  I didn’t take it. I pushed myself to my feet instead.

  His expression became opaque. It had an alien quality to it that made it more frightening than when it had been merely unreadable. He stepped over to the body of the middle-aged man in the blue oxford shirt, and jerked his spear out of the corpse. It was wet with blood all the way to the cross-brace.

  I shuddered, but asked Murphy, “You okay?”

  She still gripped the riot gun as she stood over the body, keeping her eyes on the five people remaining. There was a bloody, pulpy mess where the first shot had ripped open the man’s leg, but it hadn’t even slowed him down. It was messier where Murphy’s second shot had torn into his head. Not that he would have been any better off if she’d hit him in the chest. People don’t survive direct hits from shotguns delivered from a couple of steps away.

  “Murph?” I asked.

  “Fine,” she said. Some of the Renfield’s blood had sprayed onto her cheek, beading into red droplets below her distant eyes. “I’m fine. What now?”

  Kincaid stepped up beside Murphy and put his hand on the end of the riot gun’s barrel. He pushed gently, and she shot him a look before taking a steadying breath and lowering the weapon.

  Kincaid nodded at the remaining thralls. “I’ll get these five out and meet you at the stairs. Don’t go down without me.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We won’t.”

  He prodded the five thralls into motion and herded them out of the building. I oriented myself on the room’s doors, remembering Bob’s handy-dandy map, and headed for the door that led down to the basement. Murphy walked beside me. She said nothing, but fed two more shells into the riot gun. She reached for the doorknob.

  I put mine there first. “Hold it, Murph,” I said. “Let me check it for surprises.”

  She looked at me for a second and then nodded.

  I closed my eyes and laid my hand on the door, gently pushing my awareness through the door, feeling silently for patterns of energy that might indicate magical wards like the ones protecting my apartment. My magical awareness was akin to the Sight, just as my sense of touch was akin to my sense of sight. It cost me less than opening the Sight, and was infinitely more gentle to my psyche.

  I felt nothing, no waiting wards or prereadied traps of Mavra’s deadly black magic. Generally speaking, the bad guys weren’t terribly interested in learning defensive magic when they could be out blowing things up instead, but I was determined not to get sucker punched on something that basic.

  “He was already gone,” I told Murphy.

  She said nothing.

  “I saw him, Murph. I Saw him. There wasn’t anything left inside him. He was . . . less than an animal. There was nothing else you could have done.”

  She spoke very quietly. “Shut the fuck up, Harry.”

  I did. I finished my check, felt around for the presence of any supernatural entities that might be right on the other side of the door, and Listened, to boot. Nothing. When I opened my eyes again, Kincaid was standing there with Murphy. I hadn’t heard his approach. “Clear?” he asked.

  I nodded. “The door isn’t warded. I don’t think there’s anything waiting on the other side, but I can’t be sure.”

  Kincaid grunted, glanced at Murphy, then leaned back and kicked the door open.

  Murphy blinked at me. Kincaid was a big guy, sure, but it’s tough to kick doors down on the first try. I’d seen men batter one with those same vicious kicks for fifteen minutes before the door gave way. Maybe he’d just gotten lucky.

  Yeah, I believed that. The image of that enormous, demonic thing that had crouched in the mercenary’s place loomed with a terrible clarity in my head.

  Kincaid landed on balance, lifted the spear, and pointed the head and its attached flashlight down the closed, narrow stairway.

  There was only silence.

  And then the sound of a soft, mocking laugh from somewhere in the darkness below us.

  Hell’s bells. The back of my neck crawled up my scalp and into one ear.

  “Form up,” I murmured, because it sounded more military and tougher than saying, “You guys go first.” Kincaid nodded and took a step down. Murphy readied the riot gun again and pressed in behind him. I picked up my air-powered popgun and followed her.

  “Where are they keeping the hostages again?” Murphy asked.

  “In a closet at the bottom of the stairs, on the right.”

  “That was hours ago,” Kincaid said quietly. “They could be anywhere now. Once we go down there, there’s no room for playing around.”

  “The hostages are our first concern.”

  “Screw that. That’s exactly why the vamps took hostages in the first place,” Kincaid said. “If you let them dictate your tactics, they’re going to use it to kill you.”

  “That isn’t your concern,” I said.

  Kincaid’s voice became quieter and harder. “It is when I’m standing this close to you. They might get me instead.”

  “That’s why you get the big bucks.”

  He shook his head. “We don’t even know if they’re alive. Look, this is a basement. All we have to do is roll down the grenades and then go mop up whatever is left afterward. We’re underground. The collateral damage will be minimal.”

  “That’s not good enough,” I said. “We save the hostages first. Once they’re clear, then we take care of business with Mavra.”

  Kincaid glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes narrow and cold. Defiance and contempt rang in every word. “It might be a little harder to rescue them if we’re dead.”

  Murphy put the mouth of the riot gun against Kincaid’s spine and said, “How good is that armor?”

  Sometimes Murphy has a way with words.

  We were all quiet for a couple of seconds. Then I said, “We might get killed trying to save the hostages. We will get killed if we don’t stick together. Do the math, Kincaid. Or break your agreement and get out.”

  He stared at Murphy for a second and then relented, turning back to face the stairway. “Fine,” he said. “We do it your way. It’s amateur night.”

  We started down the first flight of stairs together, while whatever waited in the darkness below us laughed again.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The basement in the shelter was unusually deep, especially for Chicago. The stairs went down about ten feet, and were only about two and a half feet wide. My imagination treated me to a brief vision of some grinning Renfield with a machine gun popping around the corner already shooting, bullets tearing all three of us to shreds in the space of a heartbeat. My stomach writhed in pure nervous fear, and I forced myself to put it aside and focus on my surroundings.

  The walls had been mortared and painted white, but cracks and mineral stains from damp spots all but concealed the original color. At the bottom of the stairs was a landing maybe three feet square, and then a second set of stairs led farther down, the air getting more cramped and colder as they went.

  The stale air smelled like mildew and rot. Our breathing and our movements sounded incredibly loud in the otherwise oppressive silence that followed, and I found myself pointing the paintball gun forward, over Murphy’s head and Kincaid’s shoulder, so that
I could start shooting as soon as something bounded into view. For all the good it was likely to do. Against any normal thug, the weapon would do little but make them damp. Or vaguely aromatic.

  The stairway ended at a half-open old door.

  Kincaid nudged it slowly open with his spear, already crouched.

  Murphy aimed her gun at the black doorway.

  Me too. The end of my stupid paintball gun quivered involuntarily.

  Nothing happened.

  Silence reigned.

  “Dammit,” I muttered. “I don’t have the nerves for this crap.”

  “Want me to find you a Valium?” Kincaid asked.

  “Kiss my ass,” I said.

  He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a couple of plastic tubes. He bent them sharply, shook them up, and they began to shine with chemical light. He edged up to the doorway and flicked one to the left, the other to the right, bouncing them off the walls so that he wouldn’t expose himself to anyone in the hall beyond. Then he waited a beat and leaned out, peeking around. “Nothing moving,” he reported. “No lights. But it looks like that map was pretty good. Hall on my right goes about ten feet, then ends at the door to that closet. Open hall on my left, twenty feet long, and opens into a room.”

  “Closet first,” I said.

  “Cover me.”

  Kincaid flowed down the last couple of stairs and through the door. Murphy kept within a foot of his back. Kincaid peeled off to the right. Murphy dropped into a crouch, shotgun aimed down the green-lit hall to the left. I wasn’t as smooth, but I went after Kincaid, paintballs and staff ready.

  The closet door was only five feet high and opened out, toward the hall. Kincaid listened at the door, then leaned aside to let me touch it first. I couldn’t feel any enchantments on it, and nodded to him. He shifted his grip on the spear so that he’d be ready to drive the tip of it into anything that came at him from the closet, and drew the door open.

  The light from his spear flickered around a dank little chamber that was too big to be a proper closet and too small to be a room. Patches of moisture and mildew blotted the damp stone walls, and the smell of unwashed bodies and waste rolled out of the door.

  Half a dozen children, none of them older than nine or ten, huddled against the back wall of the closet. They were dressed in castoff clothing, most of it far too big, and they wore steel cuffs on their hands. The cuffs, in turn, were locked to a larger chain attached to a heavy steel ring bolted into the floor. The children reacted in silent terror, flinching away from the doorway and from the light.

  Children.

  Someone was going to regret this. If I had to take this building, hell, this block apart with nothing but raw will and my bare hands, someone was going to pay. Even the monsters should draw a line somewhere.

  Then again, I guess that’s why they call them monsters.

  “Son of a bitch,” I snarled, and ducked my head to step into the room.

  Kincaid abruptly threw his weight against me, shoving me aside from the door. “No,” he growled.

  “Dammit, get out of my way,” I said.

  “It’s a trap, Dresden,” Kincaid said. “There’s a trip wire. Go through that door and you’ll kill all of us.”

  Murphy checked over her shoulder and returned to watching the darkness for trouble.

  I frowned at Kincaid and picked up the plastic light stick, holding it out. “I don’t see a wire.”

  “Not a literal wire,” Kincaid. “It’s a net of infrared beams.”

  “Infrared? How did you—”

  “Dammit, Dresden, if you want to know about me, wait for the autobiography like everyone else.”

  He was right. It was a little late to be worrying about Kincaid’s background now. “Hey, kids,” I said. “Everybody stay really still and keep back, okay? We’re going to get you out of here.” I lowered my voice and said to Kincaid, “How do we get them out of there?”

  “Not sure we can,” Kincaid said. “The beam is rigged up to an antipersonnel mine.”

  “Well,” I said. “Can’t we just . . . can’t you put a weight on a land mine and leave it there? So long as the weight holds the trigger down, it doesn’t explode, right?”

  “Right,” Kincaid said. “But that’s assuming we’ve gone back in time to World War Two.” He shook his head. “Modern mines are pretty good at killing people, Dresden. This one’s British, pretty recent.”

  “How can you tell?”

  He tapped his nose. “The Brits use a different chemical priming charge than most. It’s probably a bouncer, very nasty.”

  “Bouncer?”

  “Yeah. If something interrupts the beam, the charge activates. Several individual submunitions get blown up into the air, or sideways, or however they want to set it up, in a pattern. Then they explode maybe five or six feet in the air. Sends a couple of thousand steel balls out in a big cloud. Kills everything in thirty, maybe forty meters if you’re in the open, maybe a lot farther in a tight space like this. If it was me, I’d have set the charges up to get thrown straight down this hall. All these stone walls, the shrapnel would shred everything real good.”

  “I could hex down whatever is sending the beam,” I said.

  “Thus interrupting it,” Kincaid said. “Thus kablowie. Thus death.”

  “Dammit.” I swallowed and took a step back from the doorway, hoping the presence of my magic wouldn’t screw up the device in a moment of monumentally bad timing. “I can shield us, if it’s all coming in from one direction.”

  Kincaid arched an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn. But it won’t help those kids much. They’re over there.”

  I scowled ferociously. “How do we disarm the device?”

  “You still don’t want the Bolshevik Muppet solution, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then someone has to crawl in there without setting it off, find the explosive, disable it and unhook it from the sensors.”

  “Right,” I said. “Do it.”

  Kincaid nodded. “Can’t.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He nodded at the doorway. “There are three beams set up in an asymmetrical crisscross over the doorway. There isn’t enough room for me to get through the open spaces.”

  “I’m thinner than you,” I said.

  “Yeah, but longer and a hell of a lot gawkier. And I know what happens to tech when nervous wizards get close.”

  “Someone has to do it,” I said. “Someone small enough to . . .”

  We both looked down the hall at Murphy.

  Murphy didn’t look away from her vigil, and said, “How do I disarm it?”

  “I’ll talk you through,” Kincaid said. “Dresden, better take her gun and cover us.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m in charge here. Kincaid, talk her through it. Murphy, give me your gun so I can cover you.”

  I tied the handle of the paintball gun into my coat where my blasting rod usually went. I winked at Murphy, who saw the gesture and did not respond to it. She just passed me the gun and turned her baseball cap around. Then she walked down the hall, slipping out of her coat and gun belt on the way.

  “Better lose the Kevlar too,” Kincaid said. “I can pass it to you. Bottom left corner looks like the best bet. Stay as flat as you can and as much to the left as you can. I think you can get in.”

  “You think?” I asked. “What if you’re wrong?”

  He gave me an annoyed look. “You don’t see me telling you how to watch that goddamned doorway in case all the vampires show up at any second to kill us, do you?” Kincaid asked.

  I was going to scowl at him, but he had a point. I scowled at the darkness instead, gripping Murphy’s gun. I fumbled for a second, because the riot gun must have been some kind of military-issue, and it took me a second to find the safety. I flicked it to reveal the red dot. Or at least I was thought it was red. The green chemical ligh
t made it look black.

  “Stop,” Kincaid said in a calm voice. “Unclench.”

  “Unclench what?” Murphy demanded.

  “Unclench your ass.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re going to trip the beam. You need another quarter inch. Relax.”

  “I am relaxed,” Murphy growled.

  “Oh,” Kincaid said. “Damn, great ass then. Take off your pants.”

  I winced and checked over my shoulder. Murphy was stretched out on the floor on her belly, her cheek on the cold floor, arms stretched above her. The small of her back was in the doorway. She managed to move her head just enough to eye Kincaid. “Once again?”

  “Take off your pants,” Kincaid said, smiling. “Think of the children.”

  She muttered something to herself and moved her arms, shifting slightly.

  “No good,” Kincaid said. “You’re moving too far.”

  “Okay, genius,” Murphy said. “What do I do?”

  “Hold still,” Kincaid said. “I’ll do it.”

  There was silence for a second. Murphy hissed out a breath. Or maybe it was more of a gasp.

  “I don’t bite,” he said. “Be still. I want to live through this.”

  “Okay,” Murphy said in a small voice a moment later.

  I scowled hard at the darkness and felt myself getting irrationally angry, and fast. I glanced back again. Murphy wriggled forward, all the way through the doorway. Her legs were pale, pretty, and strong. And I had to admit that Kincaid was completely correct about her posterior.

  Kincaid was bracing her legs, hands on her calves and sliding down as she moved forward, helping her to keep them from accidentally moving too far. Or at least that damn well better have been what he was doing, because if it wasn’t I would be forced to kill him.

  I shook my head and returned to my vigil. Get a grip, Harry, I thought to myself. It isn’t like you and Murphy are an item. She isn’t something you own. She’s her own person. She does what she wants with who she wants. You’re not even involved with her. You’ve got no say in it.