by Butcher, Jim
I felt a little bit sick. “Was he . . . ?”
Listens-to-Wind smiled faintly and shook his head. “Knocked senseless for a while, and wounded by blackberry thorns, though his armor protected him from the worst of it.”
I found myself barking out a short little laugh of relief. “That armor? You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “Worst thing hurt was his pride, I think.” His dark eyes sparkled. “Little guy like that, taking on something so far out of his weight class. That was a sight to see.”
Ebenezar snorted. “Yeah. Wonder where the pixie learned that.”
I felt my cheeks coloring. “I didn’t want to do it. I had to.”
“You picked a good fight,” Listens-to-Wind said. “Not a very smart fight. But that old ghost is as close to pure evil as you’ll ever see. Good man always stands against that.”
“You had it on the run,” I said. “You could have killed it.”
“Sure,” Listens-to-Wind said. “Would have been a chase, and then more fight. Might have taken hours. Would have made the old ghost desperate. It would have started using innocents as shields, obstacles, distractions.” The old medicine man shrugged. “Maybe I would have lost, too. And while it was going on, spiders would be eating fat old hill-billies and picking their fangs clean with their bones.”
Ebenezar snorted. “Never would have happened. I don’t much care for vampires, especially not those White Court weasels, but I’ll say this much for them. They can fight, when they have a mind to. After the first rush, those bugs were a lot more careful.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They didn’t have much of a spine when they tried to stop me on the trail to Edinburgh.”
Both of the old wizards traded a look, and then Injun Joe turned back to me. “You got jumped by spiders going through the Way?”
“Yeah,” I said. I thought about it and was surprised. Had it happened so recently? “Two days ago, when I came to Edinburgh. I told you about it. The killer must have had some kind of watch put on the Chicago end of the Way, to get them into position in time to intercept me.” I let out a weary little snigger.
“What’s so funny?” Ebenezar asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just appreciating irony and getting punchy. I guess he didn’t want me letting the Council know where Morgan was.”
“Sounds like a reasonable theory,” Injun Joe said. He looked at Ebenezar. “Got to be somebody at Edinburgh. Cuts the suspect pool down even more.”
Ebenezar grunted agreement. “But not much. We’re getting closer.” He exhaled. “But it won’t do Morgan any good.” He stood, and his knees popped a couple of times on the way. “All right, Hoss,” he said quietly. “I guess we can’t put this off any longer.”
I folded my arms and looked at Ebenezar evenly.
The old man’s face darkened. “Hoss,” he said quietly, “I hate this as much as you do. But as much as you don’t like it, as much as I don’t like it, Ancient Mai is right about this. The real killer will know that Morgan is innocent—but the other powers won’t. They’ll only see us doing business hard and quick, like always. Hell, it might even get the real killer enough confidence to slip up and make a mistake.”
“I told Morgan I’d help him,” I said. “And I will.”
“Son,” Injun Joe said quietly, “no one can help him now.”
I ground my teeth. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m not giving him to you. And I’ll fight you if you make me.”
Ebenezar looked at me and then shook his head, smiling sadly. “You couldn’t fight one of your little pixie friends right now, boy.”
I shrugged. “I’ll try. You can’t have him.”
“Harry,” said a quiet voice, weirdly mutated by the shield.
I looked up to see Morgan lying quietly on his pallet, his eyes open and focused on me. “It’s all right,” he said.
I blinked at him. “What?”
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I’ll go with them.” His eyes turned to Ebenezar. “I killed LaFortier. I deceived Dresden into believing my innocence. I’ll give you a deposition.”
“Morgan,” I said sharply, “what the hell are you doing?”
“My duty,” he replied. There was, I thought, a faint note of pride in his voice, absent since he had appeared at my door. “I’ve always known that it might call for me to give up my life to protect the Council. And so it has.”
I stared at the wounded man, my stomach churning. “Morgan . . .”
“You did your best,” Morgan said quietly. “Despite everything that has gone between us. You put yourself to the hazard again and again for my sake. It was a worthy effort. But it just wasn’t to be. No shame in that.” He closed his eyes again. “You’ll learn, if you live long enough. You never win them all.”
“Dammit,” I sighed. I tried to put my face in my hands and had to flinch back as my right cheek touched my skin and began to burn with pain. I still couldn’t see out of my right eye. “Dammit, after all this. Dammit.”
The fire popped and crackled and no one said anything.
“He’s in a lot of pain,” Listens-to-Wind said quietly, breaking the silence. “At least I can make him more comfortable. And you need some more attention, too.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Take the shield down. Please.”
I didn’t want to do it.
But this wasn’t about me.
I showed Molly how to lower the shield.
We got Morgan settled into a bunk on the Water Beetle and prepared to leave. Molly, troubled and worried about me, had volunteered to stay with Morgan. Listens-to-Wind had offered to show her something of what he did with healing magic. I grabbed some painkillers while we were there, and felt like I could at least walk far enough to find Will and Georgia.
Demonreach showed me where they were sleeping, and I led Ebenezar through the woods toward them.
“How did Injun Joe know about me claiming this place as a sanctum?” I asked.
“Messenger arrived from Rashid,” Ebenezar said. “He’s more familiar with what you can do with that kind of bond. So he went up to find you and get you to take those trees out from under the bugs.”
I shook my head. “I’ve never seen anyone do shapeshifting the way he did it.”
“Not many ever have,” Ebenezar said, with obvious pride in his old friend’s skills in his voice. After a moment, he said, “He’s offered to teach you some, if you want to learn.”
“With my luck? I’d shift into a duck or something, and not be able to come back out of it.”
He snorted quietly, and then said, “Not shifting. He knows more than any man alive about dealing with rage over injustice and being unfairly wronged. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s admirable that you have those kinds of feelings, and choose to do something about them. But they can do terrible things to a man, too.” His face was distant for a moment, his eyes focused elsewhere. “Terrible things. He’s been there. I think if you spent some time with him, you’d benefit by it.”
“Aren’t I a little old to be an apprentice?”
“Stop learning, start dying,” Ebenezar said, in the tone of a man quoting a bedrock-firm maxim. “You’re never too old to learn.”
“I’ve got responsibilities,” I said.
“I know.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He nodded. Then he paused for a moment, considering his next words. “There’s one thing about tonight that I can’t figure out, Hoss,” my old mentor said. “You went to all the trouble to get everyone here. To lure the killer here. I give you a perfect excuse to roam free behind the lines with no one looking over your shoulder so you can get the job done. But instead of slipping up through the weeds and taking down the killer—which would clear up this whole business—you go up the hill and throw down with something you know damn well you can’t beat.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
Ebenezar spread his hands. “Why?”
I walked for several tired, hea
vy steps before answering. “Thomas got into trouble helping me.”
“Thomas,” Ebenezar said. “The vampire.”
I shrugged.
“He was more important to you than stopping the possible fragmentation of the White Council.”
“The creature was heading straight for the cottage. My apprentice and my client were both there—and he had Thomas, too.”
Ebenezar muttered something to himself. “The girl had that crystal to protect herself with. Hell, son, if it went off as violently as you said it would, it might have killed the creature all by itself.” He shook his head. “Normally, I think you’ve got a pretty solid head on your shoulders, Hoss. But that was a bad call.”
“Maybe,” I said quietly.
“No maybe about it,” he replied firmly.
“He’s a friend.”
Ebenezar stopped in his tracks and faced me squarely. “He’s not your friend, Harry. You might be his, but he isn’t yours. He’s a vampire. When all’s said and done, he’d eat you if he was hungry enough. It’s what he is.” Ebenezar gestured at the woods around us. “Hell’s bells, boy. We found what was left of that Raith creature’s cousin, after the battle. And I figure you saw what it did to its own blood.”
“Yeah,” I said, subdued.
“And that was her own family.” He shook his head. “Friendship means nothing to those creatures. They’re so good at the lie that sometimes maybe they even believe it themselves—but in the end, you don’t make friends with food. I been around this world a while, Hoss, and let me tell you—it’s their nature. Sooner or later it wins out.”
“Thomas is different,” I said.
He eyed me. “Oh?” He shook his head and started walking again. “Why don’t you ask your apprentice exactly what made her drop the veil and use that shield, then?”
I started walking again.
I didn’t answer.
We got back into Chicago in the witching hour.
Ancient Mai and the Wardens were waiting at the dock, to escort Ebenezar, Injun Joe, and Morgan to Edinburgh—“in case of trouble.” They left within three minutes of me tying the Water Beetle to the dock.
I watched them go, and sipped water through a straw. Listens-to-Wind had cleaned my wounds and slapped several stitches onto my face, including a couple on my lower lip. He told me that I hadn’t lost the eye, and smeared the entire thing with a paste that looked like guano and smelled like honey. Then he’d made me a shoo-in for first place in the International Walking Wounded Idiot competition, by covering that side of my face and part of my scalp with another bandage that wrapped all the way around my head. Added to the one I needed for the damn lump the skinwalker had given me, I looked like the subject of recent brain surgery, only surlier.
Will and Georgia were sleeping it off under a spread sleeping bag on an inflatable mattress on the rear deck of the Water Beetle, when I walked down the dock, over to the parking lot, and up to a parked Mercedes.
Vince rolled down his window and squinted at me. “Did you curse everyone who desecrated your tomb, or just the English-speaking guys?”
“You just lost your tip,” I told him. “Did you get it?”
He passed me a manila envelope without comment. Then he leaned over and opened his passenger door, and Mouse hopped down from the passenger seat and came eagerly around the car to greet me, wagging his tail. I knelt down and gave the big beastie a hug.
“Your dog is weird,” Vince said.
Mouse was licking my face. “Yeah. Whatcha gonna do?”
Vince grinned, and for just a second, he didn’t look at all nondescript. He had the kind of smile that could change the climate of a room. I stood up and nodded to him. “You know where to send the bill.”
“Yep,” he said, and drove away.
I went back down to the boat and poured some Coke into the now-empty water bottle. I sipped at it carefully so that I wouldn’t break open one of the cuts and bleed some more. I was too tired to clean it up.
Molly fussed around the boat for a few minutes, making sure it was tied down, and then took two sets of spare shorts and T-shirts from the cabin’s tiny closet and left them where Georgia and Will would find them. She finally wound up sitting down on the other bunk across the cabin from me.
“The shield,” I said quietly. “When did you use it?”
She swallowed. “The skinw—the creature threw Thomas into the cabin and he . . .” She shuddered. “Harry. He’d changed. It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t him.” She licked her lips. “He sat up and started sniffing the air like . . . like a hungry wolf or something. Looking around for me. And his body was . . .” She blushed. “He was hard. And he did something and all of a sudden I wanted to just rip my clothes off. And I knew he wasn’t in control. And I knew he would kill me. But . . . I wanted to anyway. It was so intense. . . .”
“So you popped the shield.”
She swallowed and nodded. “I think if I’d waited much longer . . . I wouldn’t have been able to think of it.” She looked up at me and back down. “He was changed, Harry. It wasn’t him anymore.”
I left nothing behind. You don’t have words for the things I did to him.
Chapter Forty-seven
Morgan’s trial was held the next day, but since Scotland was six hours ahead of Chicago, I wound up getting about three hours’ worth of sleep sitting up in a chair. My head and face hurt too much when I lay all the way down.
When I got back to the apartment with Molly, Luccio was gone.
I had been pretty sure she would be.
I got up the next morning and took stock of myself in the mirror. What wasn’t under a white bandage was mostly bruised. That was probably the concussion grenade. I was lucky. If I’d have been standing where Lara had been when Binder’s grenade went off, the overpressure would probably have killed me. I was also lucky that we’d been outdoors, where there was nothing to contain and focus the blast. I didn’t feel lucky, but I was.
It could have been a fragmentation grenade spitting out a lethal cloud of shrapnel—though at least my duster would probably have offered me some protection from that. Against the blast wave of an explosion, it didn’t do jack. Having gained something like respect for Binder’s know-how, when it came to mayhem, I realized that he may have been thinking exactly that when he picked his gear for the evening.
I couldn’t shower without getting my stitches wet, so after changing my bandages, I took a birdbath in the sink. I wore a button-up shirt, since I would probably compress my brain if I tried to pull on a tee. I also grabbed my formal black Council robe with its blue stole and my Warden’s cape. I did my best to put my hair in order, though only about a third of it was showing. And I shaved.
“Wow,” Molly said as I emerged. “You’re taking this pretty seriously.” She was sitting in a chair near the fireplace, running her fingers lightly down Mister’s spine. She was one of the few people he deemed worthy to properly appreciate him in a tactile sense. Molly wore her brown apprentice’s robe, and if her hair was bright blue, at least she had it pulled back in a no-nonsense style. She never wore a lot of makeup, these days, but today she was wearing none at all. She had made the very wise realization that the less attention she attracted from the Council, the better off she would be.
“Yup. Cab here yet?”
She shook her head and rose, displacing Mister. He accepted the situation, despite the indignity. “Come on, Mouse,” she said. “We’ll give you a chance to go before we head out.”
The big dog happily followed her out the door.
I got on the phone and called Thomas’s apartment. There was no answer.
I tried Lara’s number, and Justine answered on the first ring. “Ms. Raith’s phone.”
“This is Harry Dresden,” I said.
“Hello, Mr. Dresden,” Justine replied, her tone businesslike and formal. She wasn’t alone. “How may I help you today?”
Now that the furor of the manhunt had blown over, my phone was probably
safe to talk on. But only probably. I emulated Justine’s vocal mannerisms. “I’m calling to inquire after the condition of Thomas.”
“He’s here,” Justine said. “He’s resting comfortably, now.”
I’d seen what terrible shape Thomas was in. If he was resting comfortably, it was because he had fed, deeply and intently, with instinctive obsession.
In all probability, my brother had killed someone.
“I hope he’ll recover quickly,” I said.
“His caretaker—”
That would be Justine.
“—is concerned about complications arising from his original condition.”
I was quiet for a moment. “How bad is it?”
The businesslike meter of her voice changed, filling with raw anxiety. “He’s under sedation. There was no choice.”
My knuckles creaked as they tightened on the earpiece of the phone.
I left nothing behind. You don’t have words for the things I did to him.
Chapter Forty-eight
The truly scary part wasn’t that I was standing five feet away from a cloud of weapons-grade deathstone that would rip the very life force out of everything it touched. It wasn’t that I had confronted someone who was probably a member of the Black Council, probably as deadly in a tussle as their members always seemed to be, and who was certainly fighting with his back to the wall and nothing to lose. It wasn’t even the fact that the lights had all gone out, and that a battle to the death was about to ensue.
The scary part was that I was standing in a relatively small, enclosed space with nearly six hundred wizards of the White Council, men and women with the primordial powers of the universe at their beck and call—and that for the most part, only the Wardens among them had much experience in controlling violent magic in combat conditions. It was like standing in an industrial propane plant with five hundred chain-smoking pyromaniacs double-jonesing for a hit: it would only take one dummy to kill us all, and we had four hundred and ninety-nine to spare.