The Ultimate Dresden Omnibus, 0-15

by Butcher, Jim

  “It’s about twelve hundred degrees,” I added. “It’ll melt sand into glass. It doesn’t do much for skin, either.”

  Molly lifted her left hand and stammered out a word, but her will fluttered and failed, amounting to nothing more than a handful of sparks.

  “Bad guys don’t give you this much time,” I spat.

  Molly hissed—give the kid credit, she didn’t let herself scream—and pressed herself as far as she could from the fire. She threw up an arm to shield her eyes.

  For a second, I felt a mad impulse to let the fire continue for just a second more. Nothing teaches like a burned hand, whispered a darker part of my self. I should know.

  But I closed my fingers, willed the ending of the spell, and the sphere vanished.

  Murphy, standing across the car, just stared at me.

  Molly lowered her hand, her arm moving in frightened little jerks. She sat there shivering and staring. Her tongue piercing rattled against her teeth.

  I looked at both of them and then shook my head. I got control of my rampaging temper. Then I leaned down and stuck my head in the car, looking Molly in the eyes.

  “We play for keeps, kid,” I said quietly. “I’ve told you before: Magic isn’t a solution to every problem. You still aren’t listening.”

  Molly’s eyes, frightened and angry, filled with tears. She turned her head away from me and said nothing. She tried not to make any noise, but it’s tough to keep a good poker face when a snarling madman nearly burns it off. There wasn’t any time to waste—but I gave the kid a few seconds of space while I tried to let my head cool off.

  The door to Marcone’s building opened. Hendricks came out.

  Marcone followed him a moment later. He surveyed the damage. Then he glanced at me. Marcone shook his head, took a cell phone from his suit pocket, and went back inside, while Hendricks kept me pinned down with his beady-eyed scowl.

  What I’d seen soulgazing Helen Beckitt was still glaringly fresh in my mind—just as it always would be. Marcone had looked a lot younger when he wore his hair longer, less neat, and dressed more casually. Or maybe he’d just looked younger before he’d seen Helen’s daughter die.

  The thought went utterly against the pressure of the rage inside me, and I grabbed hold of myself while I had the chance. I took a deep breath. I wouldn’t do anyone any good if I charged in full of outrage and absent of brains. I took another deep breath and turned to find Murphy on the move.

  She walked around the car and faced me squarely.

  “All done?” Murphy asked me, her voice pitched low. “You want to smoke a turkey or set fire to a playground or anything? You could terrorize a troop of Cub Scouts as an encore.”

  “And after that, I could tell you all about how to do your job, maybe,” I said, “right after we bury the people who get killed because we’re standing here instead of moving.”

  She narrowed her eyes. Neither one of us met each other’s gaze or moved an inch. It wasn’t a long standoff, but it was plenty hard.

  “Not now,” she said. “But later. We’ll talk. This isn’t finished.”

  I nodded. “Later.”

  We got in the Beetle and Murphy started it up and got moving. “Ask you questions as we go?”

  I calculated distances in my head. The communion spell with Elaine had been created to reach over a couple of yards at the most. It had mostly been used at, ahem, considerably shorter range than that. I could extend the range, I thought, to most of a mile—maybe. It wasn’t as simple as just pouring more power into the spell, but it was fairly simple. That gave me a couple of minutes to steady my breathing while Murphy drove. I could talk while that happened. It would, in fact, help me keep my mind off my fear for Elaine. Ah, reason, banisher of fear—or at least provider of a place to stick my head in the sand.

  “Go ahead,” I told her. I paid no attention to Molly, giving the kid time to think over the lesson and to get herself together. She didn’t like anyone to see her when she was upset.

  “Why do you think your ex is in danger?” Murphy asked. “Shouldn’t this Skavis just run off if it knows you’re onto it?”

  “If it was operating alone, sure,” I said. “That would be the smart thing. But it isn’t running off. It’s making a fight of it.”

  “So…what? It has help?”

  “It has rivals,” I said.

  “Yeah. Grey Cloak and Madrigal Raith.” Murphy shook her head. “But what does that mean?”

  “Think in terms of predators,” I said. “One predator has just gotten its teeth into something good to eat.”

  “Scavengers?” Murphy said. “They’re trying to take the prize from him?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s what they’re doing.”

  “You mean Elaine?” Murphy said.

  I shook my head. “No, no. More abstract. The Skavis is methodical. It’s killing women of magical talent. It doesn’t have to do that to live—it can eat any human being.”

  “Then why those targets?” Murphy asked.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Why them? This isn’t about food, Murph. I think the Skavis is making a play for power.”

  “Power?” Molly blurted from the backseat.

  I turned and gave her a glare that quelled her interest. She sank back into the seat. “Within the White Court,” I said. “This entire mess, start to finish, is about a power struggle within the White Court.”

  Murph was silent for a second, absorbing that. “Then…then this is a lot bigger than a few killings in a few towns.”

  “If I’m right,” I said, nodding. “Yeah.”

  “Go on.”

  “Okay. And remember as I go that White Court vamps don’t like their fights out in the open. They arrange things. They use cat’s-paws. They pull strings. Confrontation is for losers.”

  “Got it.”

  I nodded. “The White King is supporting peace talks between the Council and the Red Courts. I think the Skavis is trying to prove a point—that they don’t need peace talks. That they have us in a choke hold and all they have to do is hang on.”

  Murphy frowned at me, and then her eyes widened. “You told me once that magic is inherited. Mostly along family lines.”

  “Salic law,” I said. “Mostly through female lines. I got it from my mom.”

  Murphy nodded, her eyes going back to the road. “And they can start…what? Thinning the herd, I suppose, from their point of view. Killing those that have the potential to produce more wizards.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “One Skavis goes around to half a dozen cities in the most dangerous—to them—nation on the planet, doing it at will,” I said. “He proves how easy it is. He identifies and hunts down the best targets. He plants all kinds of distrust for the Council as he does it, making the potential prey distrust the only people who could help them.”

  “But what does he hope to accomplish?” Murphy said. “This is just one guy.”

  “Exactly what he wants them to say,” I said. “Look what just one vampire accomplished working alone. Look how easy it was. Raith is weak. Time to expand the operation now, while the Council is hurt, and screw talking peace with them. Change the guard. Let House Skavis take leadership.”

  “And Grey Cloak and Madrigal, seeing that he’s onto something good, try to swoop in at the last minute, shoulder the Skavis aside, and take credit for the plan in front of the whole Court,” Murphy finished.

  “Yeah. They sing the exact same tune, only they substitute Malvora for Skavis.” I shook my head. “The hell of it is, if Madrigal hadn’t had a personal beef with me I might not have gotten involved. I made him look really bad when he tried to auction me on eBay and instead I fed his djinn to the Scarecrow and made him run off like a girl.”

  “Like a what?” Murphy bridled.

  “Now is not the time to go all Susie Q. Anthony on me,” I said. “Madrigal’s wounded pride makes him leave clues to try to sucker me into the show. He figures Grey Cloak or our Skavis killer will hel
p him handle me. Except that they ran into another problem.”

  “Thomas,” Murphy said, her voice certain.

  “Thomas,” I said. “Snatching their targets out from under them.”

  “How’s he finding them?”

  “Same way they are,” I said. “He’s a vampire. He knows what resources they have and how they think. So much so, in fact, that he’s ruining the finale of the whole program for everyone involved.”

  Murphy nodded, getting it. “So Madrigal gets a gang of ghouls and tries to take out his own cousin. And finds you and Elaine there too.”

  “Right,” I said. “He’s already being a loser, but it’s still a sucker punch, and Madrigal figures, What the hell. If he gets away with it, he pulls off the plan and gets his mojo back from me.”

  “I still don’t get why Thomas didn’t say anything,” Murphy said. “To you, I mean. I never figured him for that kind of secrecy.”

  “That’s what tipped me off to the whole thing,” I said. “There just aren’t many things which could make Thomas do that. I think he was counting on it to tip me off, in fact.”

  Murphy shook her head. “A phone call would have been easier.”

  “Not if he’s being watched,” I said. “And not if he’s made a promise.”

  “Watched?” Murphy said. “By who?”

  “Someone who has more than one kind of leverage,” I said. “Someone who is his family, who is protecting the woman he loves, and who has the kind of resources it takes to watch him, and enough savvy to know if he’s lying.”

  “Lara Raith,” Murphy said.

  “Big sister is the one behind the peace movement,” I said. “Everyone thinks it’s Papa Raith, but he’s just her puppet now. Except that there aren’t many people who know that.”

  “If Raith’s authority is challenged openly by the Skavis,” Murphy said, putting things together, “it exposes the fact that he’s utterly powerless. Lara would have to fight openly.”

  “And the White Court vamp who is driven to that has already lost,” I said. “She can’t maintain her control over the Court if she’s revealed as the power behind the throne. Not only does she not have the raw strength she’d need to hold on to it, but the very fact that she was revealed would make her an incompetent manipulator and therefore automatically unsuitable in the eyes of the rest of the White Court.”

  Murphy chewed on her lip. “If Papa Raith falls, Lara falls. And if Lara falls…”

  “Justine goes with her,” I said, nodding. “She wouldn’t be able to protect her for Thomas anymore.”

  “Then why didn’t she just have Thomas go to you and ask for help?” Murphy said.

  “She can’t have it get out that she asked for help from the enemy team, Murph. Even among her own supporters, that could be a disaster. But remember that she knows how to pull strings. Maybe better than anyone operating right now. She wouldn’t be upset if I got involved and stomped all over agents of Skavis and Malvora.”

  Murphy snorted. “So she forbids Thomas from speaking to you about it.”

  “She’s too smart for that. Thomas gets stubborn about being given orders. She gets him to promise to keep quiet. But by doing that, she’s also done the one thing she knows will make him defiant to the spirit of the promise. So he’s made a promise and he can’t come out and talk to me, but he wants to get my attention.”

  “Ha,” Murphy said. “So he gets around it. He works sloppy, deliberately. He lets himself be seen repeatedly taking off with the women he was rounding up.”

  “And leaves a big old honking wall o’ clues in his apartment for me, knowing that when I get involved, I’m going to get curious about why he’s been seen with missing women and why he’s not talking to me. He can’t talk to me about it, but he leaves me a map.” I found my right foot tapping against an imaginary accelerator, my left against a nonexistent clutch.

  “Stop twitching,” Murphy said. The Beetle jolted over some railroad tracks, officially taking us to the wrong side. “I’m a better driver than you, anyway.”

  I scowled because it was true.

  “So right now,” Murphy said, “you think Priscilla is shilling for the Skavis agent.”

  “No. She is the Skavis agent.”

  “I thought you said it was a man,” Murphy said.

  “Strike you funny that Priscilla wears turtlenecks in the middle of a hot summer?”

  Murphy let out a word that should not be spoken before small children. “So if you’re right, he’s going to clip Elaine and all those moms.”

  “Kids too,” I said. “And anyone who gets in the way.”

  “Mouse,” Molly said, her voice worried.

  This time I didn’t yell her down. I was worried about him, too. “The Skavis knows that Mouse is special. He saw the demonstration. That’s been the only thing keeping him from acting sooner than he did. If the vampire started drawing upon his powers, Mouse would have sensed it and blown his cover. So Mouse is definitely going to be near the top of his list.”

  Murphy nodded. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Get us to the motel,” I said. We were getting close enough that I could start trying the spell. “I’m going to try to reach Elaine.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’ve got no use for anything that does what this thing does,” I said. “Do you?”

  Her blue eyes glittered as the car zipped through the illumination of a lonely streetlamp. “No.”

  “And as I recall, you are on vacation right now.”

  “And having fun, fun, fun,” she snarled.

  “Then we won’t worry too much about saving anything for later,” I said. I turned my head and said, “Molly.”

  The girl’s head whipped up almost audibly. “Um. What?”

  “Can you drive a stick?”

  She was silent for a second, then jerked her head in a nod.

  “Then when we get out, I want you to get behind the wheel and keep the engine running,” I said. “If you see anyone else coming, honk the horn. If you see a tall woman in a turtleneck sprinting away, I want you to drive the car over her.”

  “I…but…but…”

  “You wanted to help. You’re helping.” I turned back around. “Do it.”

  Her answer came back with the automatic speed of reflex. “Yes, sir.”

  “What about Grey Cloak and Madrigal?” Murphy asked me. “Even if we take out the Skavis, they’re waiting to jump in.”

  “One thing at a time,” I said. “Drive.”

  Then I closed my eyes, drew in my will, and hoped that I could call out to Elaine—and that she would be alive to hear me.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I closed my eyes and blocked out my senses, one by one. The smell of the car and Murphy’s deodorant went first. At least Molly had learned from experience and left off any overt fragrances when she tried to use the veil trick a second time. Sound went next. The Beetle’s old, laboring engine, the rattle of tires on bad spots of road, and the rush of wind all faded away. Chicago’s evening lights vanished from their irregular pressure on my closed eyelids. The sour taste of fear in my mouth simply became not, as I focused on the impromptu variation of the old, familiar spell.

  Elaine.

  I referred to the same base image I always had. Elaine in our first soulgaze, an image of a woman of power, grace, and oceans of cool nerve superimposed over the blushing image of a schoolgirl, naked for the first time with her first lover. I had known what she would grow into, even then, that she would transform the gawky limbs and awkward carriage and blushing cheeks into confidence and poise and beauty and wisdom. The wisdom, maybe, was still in process, as evidenced by her choice of first lovers, but even as an adult, I was hardly in a position to cast stones, as evidenced by my choice of pretty much everything.

  What we hadn’t known about, back then, was pain.

  Sure, we’d faced some things as children that a lot of kids don’t. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge i
n his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn’t learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you’re just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.

  Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There’s the little empty pain of leaving something behind—graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There’s the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn’t give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There’s the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

  And if you’re very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last—and yet will remain with you for life.

  Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it.

  Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

  Adding pain to that image of Elaine wasn’t a process of imagining horrors, fantasizing violence, speculating upon suffering. It was no different from an artist mixing in new color, adding emphasis and depth to the image that, while bright, was not true to itself or to life. So I took the girl I knew and added in the pains the woman I was reaching for had been forced to face. She’d stepped into a world she’d left behind for more than a decade, and found herself struggling to face life without relying upon anyone else. She’d always had me, and Justin—and when we’d gone away, she’d leaned upon a Sidhe woman named Aurora for help and support. When that had vanished, she had no one—I had given my love to someone else. Justin had been dead for years.