by Butcher, Jim
As dangerous as the world had been for wizards over the past few years, any of us would have been insane to take the chance that our talents, and thus our ability to defend ourselves, might be hampered, even if that reduction was relatively slight.
I squared my shoulders and nodded. “I swear, by my own power, that I will abide by those restrictions.”
Gard narrowed her eyes as I spoke, and when I finished she gave me a single nod. She reached into her pocket, moving very gingerly, and withdrew a single silver key. She held it out to me. “Union Station, locker two fourteen. Everything is labeled.”
I reached out to take the key, but Gard’s fingers tightened on it for a second. “Don’t let anything you care about stand directly in front of it when you open it.”
I arched an eyebrow at her as she released the key. “All right. Thank you.”
She gave me a quick, tight smile. “Stop wasting time here. Go.”
I frowned. “You’re that worried about your boss?”
“Not at all,” Gard said, closing her eyes and sagging wearily down on the cot. “I just don’t want to be in the vicinity the next time someone comes to kill you.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Murphy’s car looked like it might have been through a war zone, and there were odd-colored stains in the snow underneath it. As a result we’d taken Michael’s truck. I rode in the cab with Michael, while Mouse rode in the back. Yeah, I know, not safe, but the reality of the situation is that you don’t fit two people our size and a dog Mouse’s size into the cab of a pickup. There wouldn’t be any room left for oxygen.
Mouse didn’t seem to be the least bit distressed by the cold as we sallied forth to Union Station. He actually walked to the side of the truck and stuck his head out into the wind, tongue lolling happily. Not that there was a lot of wind to be had—Michael drove patiently and carefully in the bad weather.
After the third or fourth time we passed a car that had slid up onto a sidewalk or into a ditch, I stopped tapping my foot and mentally urging him to hurry. It would take a hell of a lot longer to walk to Union Station than it would to drive with what was obviously appropriate caution.
We didn’t talk on the way. Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t like Michael is a chatterbox or anything. It’s just that he usually has something to say. He invites me to go to church with him (which I don’t, unless something is chasing us) or has some kind of proud-papa talk regarding something one of his kids has done. We’ll talk about Molly’s progress, or weather, or sports, or something.
Not this time.
Maybe he wanted to focus his whole attention on the road, I told myself.
Yeah. That was probably it. It couldn’t have anything to do with me opening my big fat mouth too much, obviously.
A mound of plowed snow had collapsed at the entrance of the parking garage, but Michael just built up a little speed and rumbled over and through it, though it was mostly the momentum that got him inside.
The parking garage’s lights were out, and with all that piled snow around the first level, very little of the ambient snow-light got inside. Parking garages are kind of intimidating places even when you can see them. They’re even more intimidating when they’re entirely black, except for the none-too-expansive areas lit by the glare of headlights.
“Well,” I said, “at least there’s plenty of available spaces.”
Michael grunted. “Who wants to travel in weather like this?” He wheeled into the nearest open parking space and the truck jerked to a stop. He got out, fetched the heavy sports bag he used to carry Amoracchius in public, and slung the bag from his shoulder. I got out, and Mouse hopped out of the back to the ground. The truck creaked and rocked on its springs, relieved of the big dog’s weight. I clipped Mouse’s lead on him, and then tied on the little apron thing that declared him a service dog. It’s an out-and-out lie, but it makes moving around in public with him a lot easier.
Mouse gave the apron an approving glance, and waited patiently until his disguise was in place.
“Service dog?” Michael asked, his expression uncomfortable. He had a flashlight in his right hand, and he shone it at us for a moment before sweeping it around us, searching the shadows.
“I have a rare condition,” I said, scratching the big dog under the chin. “Can’t-get-a-date-itis. He’s supposed to be some kind of catalyst or conversation starter. Or failing that, a consolation prize. Anyway, he’s necessary.”
Mouse made a chuffing sound, and his tail thumped against my leg.
Michael sighed.
“You’re awfully persnickety about the law all of a sudden,” I said. “Especially considering that you’re toting a concealed weapon.”
“Please, Harry. I’m uncomfortable enough.”
“I won’t tell anyone about your Sword if you won’t tell anyone about my gun.”
Michael sighed and started walking. Mouse and I followed.
The parking garage proved to be very cold, very dark, very creepy, and empty of any threat. We crossed the half-buried street, Mouse leading the way through the snow.
“Snow’s coming down thicker again now that the sun’s down,” Michael noted.
“Mab’s doing, maybe,” I said. “If it is, Titania would be less able to oppose her power after the sun went down. Which is also when Titania’s agents would be able to move most freely through town.”
“But you aren’t certain it’s Mab’s doing?” Michael asked.
“Nope. Could just be Chicago. Which can be just as scary as Mab, some days.”
Michael chuckled and we went into Union Station. It doesn’t look like that scene in The Untouchables, if you were wondering. That was shot in this big room they rent out for well-to-do gatherings. The rest of the place doesn’t look like something that fits into the Roaring Twenties. It’s all modernized, and looks more or less like an airport.
Sorta depressing, really. I mean, of all the possible aesthetic choices out there, airports must generally rank in the top five or ten most bland. But I guess they’re cost-effective. That counts for more and more when it comes to beauty. Sure, all the marble and Corinthian columns and soaring spaces were beautiful, but where do they fall on a cost-assessment worksheet?
The ghost of style still haunts the bits of the original Union Station that have been permitted to stand, but, looking around the place, I couldn’t help but get the same feeling I had when I looked at the Coliseum in Rome, or the Parthenon in Athens—that once, it had been a place of splendor. Once. But a long, long time ago.
“Which way are the lockers?” Michael asked quietly.
I nodded toward the northeast end of the building and started walking. The ticketing counters were closed, except for one, whose clerk was probably in a back room somewhere. There weren’t a lot of people walking around. Late at night train stations in general don’t seem to explode with activity. Particularly not in weather like ours. One harried customer-service representative from Amtrak was dealing with a small knot of angry-looking travelers who had probably just been stranded in town by the storm. She was trying to get them a hotel. Good luck. The airport had been closed since yesterday, and the hotels would be doing a brisk business already.
“You know your way around the station,” Michael commented.
“Trains are faster than buses and safer than planes,” I said. “I took a plane to Portland once, and the pilot lost his radio and computer and so on. Had to land without instruments or communications. We were lucky it was a clear day.”
“Statistically, it’s still the safest—” he began.
“Not for wizards it isn’t,” I told him seriously. “I’ve had flights that went smoothly. A couple of them just had little problems. But after that trip to Portland…” I shook my head. “There were kids on that plane. I’m going to live a long time. I can take a little longer to get there. Hey, Joe,” I said to a silver-haired janitor, walking by with a wheeled cart of cleaning supplies.
“Harry,” Joe said, nodd
ing with a small smile as he passed by.
“I’ve been here a lot lately,” I said to Michael. “Traveling to support the Paranet, mostly. Plus Warden stuff.” I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t want the job, but I’ll be damned if I’ll do it half-assed.”
Michael looked back at the janitor thoughtfully for a moment, and then at me. “What’s that like?”
“Wardening?” I asked. I shrugged. “I’ve got four other Wardens who are, I guess, under my command.” I made air quotes around the word. “In Atlanta, Dallas, New York, and Boston. But I mostly just stay out of their way and let them do their jobs, give them help when they need it. They’re kids. Grew up hard in the war, though that didn’t give them brains enough to keep from looking up to me.”
Mouse suddenly stopped in his tracks.
Me too. I didn’t rubberneck around. Instead I focused on the dog.
Mouse’s ears twitched like individual radar dishes. His nose quivered. One paw came up off the ground, but the dog only looked around him uncertainly.
“Lassie would have smelled something,” I told him. “She would have given a clear, concise warning. One bark for gruffs, two barks for Nickelheads.”
Mouse gave me a reproachful glance, put his paw back down, and sneezed.
“He’s right,” Michael said quietly. “Something is watching us.”
“When isn’t it?” I muttered, glancing around. I didn’t see anything. My highly tuned investigative instincts didn’t see anything either. I hate feeling like Han Solo in a world of Jedi. “I’m supposed to be the Jedi,” I muttered aloud.
“What’s that?” Michael asked.
The station’s lights went out. All of them. At exactly the same time.
The emergency lights, which are supposed to come on instantly, didn’t.
Beside me Michael’s coat rustled and something clicked several times. Presumably he was trying his flashlight, and presumably it didn’t work.
That wasn’t good. Magic could interfere with the function of technology, but that was more of a Murphy effect: Things that naturally could go wrong tended to go wrong a lot more often. It didn’t behave in a predictable or uniform fashion. It didn’t shut down lights, emergency lights, and battery-powered flashlights all at the same time.
I didn’t know what could do that.
“Harry?” Michael asked.
Mouse pressed up against my leg, and I felt his warning growl vibrating through his chest.
“You said it, Chewie,” I told my dog. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Chapter Twenty-three
People started screaming.
I reached for the amulet around my neck and drew it forth as I directed an effort of will at it to call forth light in the darkness.
And nothing happened.
I’d have stared at my amulet if I could have seen it. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t working. I shook the necklace, cursed at it, and raised it again, forcing more of my will into the amulet.
It flickered with blue-white sparks for a moment, and that was it.
Mouse let out a louder snarl, the one I hear only when he’s identified a real threat. Something close. My heart jumped up hard enough to bounce off the roof of my mouth.
“I can’t call a light!” I said, my voice high and thin.
A zipper let out a high-pitched whine in the dark next to me, and steel rasped against steel, then rang like a gently struck bell. “Father,” Michael’s voice murmured gently, “we need Your help.”
White light exploded from the sword.
About a dozen things crouching within three or four yards of us started screaming.
I’d never seen anything like them before. They were maybe five feet tall, but squat and thick, with rubbery-looking muscle. They were built more or less along the lines of baboons, somewhere between pure quadruped and biped, with wicked-looking claws, long, ropy tails, and massive shoulders. Some of them carried crude-looking weapons: cudgels, stone-headed axes, and stone-bladed knives. Their heads were apelike and nearly skeletal, black skin stretched tight over muscle and bone. They had ugly, almost sharklike teeth, so oversized that you could see where they were cutting their own lips and—
And they didn’t have any eyes. Where their eyes should have been there was nothing but blank, sunken skin.
They screamed in agony as the light from Michael’s sword fell on them, reeling back as if burned by a sudden flame—and if the sudden, smoldering reek that filled the air was any indicator, they had been.
“Harry!” Michael cried.
I knew that tone of voice. I crouched as quickly as I could, as low as I could, and barely got out of the way before Amoracchius swept through the space where my head had been—
—and slammed into the leaping form of one of the creatures that had been about to land on my back.
The thing fell back away from me and landed on the floor, thrashing. Its blood erupted into blue-white fire as it spurted from the wound.
I snapped my head around to stare at Amoracchius. More blood sizzled on the blade of the sword like grease on a hot skillet.
Iron.
These things were faeries.
I’d never seen them face-to-face before, but I’d read descriptions of them—including when I had been boning up on my book learning to figure out the identity of the gruffs. Given that this beastie was a faerie, there was only one thing it could be.
“Hobs!” I screamed at Michael as I drew the gun from my coat pocket. “They’re hobs!”
After that I didn’t have time to talk. A couple of the hobs around us had recovered enough from the shock of sudden exposure to light to fling themselves forward. Mouse let out his deep-chested battle roar and collided with one of them in midair. They went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs and flashing teeth.
The next hob leapt over them at me, stone knife in its knobby hand. I slipped aside from the line of his jump and pistol-whipped him with the barrel of the heavy revolver. The steel smashed into the hob’s eyeless face, scorching flesh and shattering teeth. The hob screamed in pain as it flew by, crashing into one of its fellows.
“In nomine Dei!” Michael bellowed. I felt his shoulder blades hit mine, and the light from the great sword bobbed and flashed, followed by another scream from a hob’s throat.
The hob wrestling with Mouse slammed the huge dog to the floor and rose up above him, baring its fangs.
I took a step toward it, jammed the revolver into its face, screamed, “Get off my dog!” and started pulling the trigger. I wasn’t sure what hurt the hob more—the bullets or the muted flashes of light from the discharge. Either way it recoiled so hard that it flung itself completely off of Mouse, who came to his feet still full of fight. I grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back with me until I felt Michael at my back again.
The hobs withdrew to the shadows, but I could still hear them all around us. As bright as Michael’s sword was, I should have been able to see the ceiling far overhead, but it spread out for only twenty feet or so—far enough to keep the hobs from leaping onto us in a single bound, but not much more than that.
I could hear screams still, drifting through the interior of the station. I heard a gun go off, something smaller than my .44, the rapid shots of panic fire. Whoever was packing was presumably shooting blindly into the dark. Hell’s bells, this was going to turn into a real mess if I didn’t do something, and fast.
“We’ve got to get out of the open,” I said, thinking out loud. “Michael, head for the ticketing counter.”
“Can’t you clear the way?” Michael asked. “I can cover you.”
“I can’t see in this crap,” I said. “And there are other people in here. If I start tossing power around I could kill somebody.”
“Then stay close,” Michael said. He moved out at a stalk, sword held high over his head, ready to sweep down on top of anything stupid enough to come leaping at him. We went over two dead hobs, both of them covered in blue flames that gave off barely
any light but consumed the bodies with voracious rapidity. I heard a scuffle of claws on the floor and shouted a wordless cry.
Michael pivoted smoothly as a hob armed with a pair of stone axes rushed into the light of the holy sword. The dark faerie flung one of the axes at Michael on the way. My friend slapped it aside with a contemptuous flick of his sword, and met the hob with a horizontal slash that shattered its second ax and split open its torso all the way back to its crooked spine. The hob dropped, spewing flame, and Michael kicked its falling body back into its companions, scattering them for a moment and gaining us another twenty feet.
“Nice,” I said, keeping close, trying to watch the bobbing shadows all around us. “You been working out? You look good.”
Michael’s teeth flashed in a quick smile. “Wouldn’t speaking give these creatures a fine means of tar—” He broke off as Amoracchius flicked in front of my face, deflecting a tumbling stone knife. “Targeting us,” he continued.
Me and my big mouth. I shut up the rest of the way to the ticketing counter.
I led Michael around behind it and all but tripped over the form of a wounded man in a business suit. He let out a choked scream of pain and clutched at the bloodied cloth over his lower leg. There was the broken shard of a stone blade still protruding from the man’s leg.
“Harry,” Michael said, “keep moving. They’re gathering for a rush.”
“Okay,” I said. I knelt down by the wounded businessman and said, “Come on, buddy; this is no place to be sitting around.” I grabbed him underneath the arms and started backpedaling down the counter. “There’s a doorway back here somewhere, goes to the rear area.”