by Butcher, Jim
“If you don’t feed soon, you’re going to lose control of the Hunger,” she said.
Thomas looked away from her. He turned up the television.
She moved one long, lovely leg and, with the toe of her pump, flicked off the main switch of the power strip the television was plugged into. It turned off, and the apartment was abruptly silent.
“You think you’re going to hurt my feelings if you take a lover, even though I’ve given you my blessing. You are irrational. And at this point, I’m not sure you’re capable of thinking clearly about the consequences of your actions.”
“I don’t need you telling me how to deal with the Hunger,” Thomas said in a low voice. He looked at her, and though he was at least a little angry, there was an aching, naked hunger in his gaze as his eyes traveled over her. “Why are you torturing me like this?”
“Because I’m tired of the way you’ve been torturing yourself since Harry died,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault. And it hurts too much to watch you do this every day.”
“He was on my boat,” Thomas said. “If he hadn’t been there—”
“He’d have died somewhere else,” Justine said firmly. “He made enemies, Thomas. And he knew that. You knew that.”
“I should have been with him,” Thomas said. “I might have done something. Seen something.”
“And you might not have,” Justine replied. She shook her head. “No. It’s time, my love, to stop indulging your guilt this way.” Her lips quirked. “It’s just so . . . very emo. And I think we’ve had enough of that.”
Thomas blinked.
Justine walked over to him. I swear, her walk would have been enough to try the chaste thoughts of a saint. Even Uriel seemed to appreciate it. With that same slow, gentle sensuality, she bent over—itself quite a lovely sight—and took the bottle from Thomas. Then she walked back across the room and put it on a shelf.
“Love. I am going to put an end to this Hunger strike of yours tonight.”
Thomas’s eyes were growing paler by the heartbeat, but he frowned. “Love . . . you know that I can’t. . . .”
Justine arched a dark eyebrow at him. “You can’t . . . ?”
He ground his teeth. “Touch you. Have you. The protection of being united with someone who loves you will burn me—even though I was the one who gave it to you.”
“Thomas,” Justine said, “you are a dear, dear man. But there is a way around that, you know. A rather straightforward method for removing the protection of having had sex with you, my love.”
A key slipped into the apartment’s door, and another young woman entered. She had dark-shaded skin, and there was an exotic, reddish sheen to her straight black hair. Her dark chocolate eyes were huge and sultry, and she wore a black trench coat and black heels—and, it turned out, when the trench coat fell to the floor, that was the extent of her wardrobe.
“This is Mara,” Justine said, extending a hand, and the girl crossed the room to slide her arms around Justine. Justine gave Mara’s lips an almost sisterly kiss and then turned to Thomas, her eyes smoldering. “Now, love. I’m going to have her—without deeply committed love, perhaps, but with considerable affection and healthy desire. And after that, you’re going to be able to have me. And you will. And things will be much better.”
My brother’s eyes gleamed bright silver.
“Repeat,” Justine murmured, her lips caressing the words, “as necessary.”
I felt my cheeks heat up and coughed. Then I turned to Uriel and said, “Under the circumstances . . .”
The archangel looked amused at my discomfort. “Yes?”
I glanced at the girls, who were kissing again, and sighed. “Yeah, uh. I think my brother’s going to be fine.”
“Then you’re ready?” Uriel asked.
I looked at him and smiled faintly.
“I wondered when we’d get around to that,” he said, and once more extended his hand.
This time, we appeared in front of a Chicago home. There were a couple of ancient oak trees in the yard. The house was a white Colonial number with a white picket fence out front, and evidence of children in the form of several snowmen that were slowly sagging to their deaths in the warm evening air.
There were silent forms standing outside the house, men in dark suits and long coats. One stood beside the front door. One stood at each corner of the house, on the roof, as calmly as if they hadn’t had their feet planted on an icy surface inches from a potentially fatal fall. Two more stood at the corners of the property in the front yard, and a couple of steps and a lean to one side showed me at least one more in the backyard, at the back corner of the property.
“More guardian angels,” I said.
“Michael Carpenter has more than earned them,” Uriel said, his voice warm. “As has his family.”
I looked sharply at Uriel. “She’s . . . she’s here?”
“Forthill wanted to find the safest home in which he could possibly place your daughter, Dresden,” Uriel said. “All in all, I don’t think he could have done much better.”
I swallowed. “She’s . . . I mean, she’s . . . ?”
“Cared for,” Uriel said. “Loved, of course. Do you think Michael and Charity would do less for your child, when you have so often saved their children?”
I blinked some tears out of my eyes. Stupid eyes. “No. No, of course not.” I swallowed and tried to make my voice sound normal. “I want to see her.”
“This isn’t a hostage negotiation, Dresden,” Uriel murmured, but he was smiling. He walked up to the house and exchanged nods with the guardian angel at the door. We passed through it, ghost style, though it wouldn’t have been possible for actual ghosts. The Carpenters had a threshold more solid and extensive than the Great Wall of China. I would not be in the least surprised if you could see it from space.
We walked through my friend’s silent, sleeping house. The Carpenters were early to bed, early to rise types. Inexplicable, but I suppose nobody’s perfect. Uriel led me upstairs, past two more guardian angels, and into one of the upstairs bedrooms—one that had, once upon a time, been Charity’s sewing room and spare bedroom. Hapless wizards had been known to find rest there once in a while.
We went through the door and were greeted by a low, warning rumble. A great mound of shaggy fur, lying beside the room’s single, twin bed, rose to its feet.
“Mouse,” I said, and dropped to my knees.
I wept openly as my dog all but bounced at me. He was obviously joyous and just as obviously trying to mute his delight—but his tail thumped loudly against everything in the room, and puppyish sounds of pleasure came from his throat as he slobbered on my face, giving me kisses.
I sank my fingers into his fur and found it warm and solid and real, and I scratched him and hugged him and told him what a good dog he was.
Uriel stood over us, smiling down, but said nothing.
“Missed you, too, boy,” I said. “Just . . . kind of stopping by to say good-bye.”
Mouse’s tail stopped wagging. His big, doggy eyes regarded me very seriously, and then glanced at Uriel.
“What has begun must finish, little brother,” Uriel said. “Your task here is not yet over.”
Mouse regarded the archangel for a moment and then huffed out a breath in a huge sigh and leaned against me.
I scratched him some more and hugged him—and looked past him, to where my daughter slept.
Maggie Dresden was a dark-haired, dark-eyed child, which had been all but inevitable given her parents’ coloring. Her skin tone was a bit darker than mine, which I thought looked healthier than my skin ever had. I got kind of pasty, what with all the time in my lab and reading and running around after dark. Her features were . . . well, perfect. Beautiful. The first time I’d seen her in the flesh, despite everything else that was going on at the time, somewhere under the surface I had been shocked by how gorgeous she was. She was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen, like, in the movies or anywhere
.
But I guess maybe all parents see that when they look at their kids. It isn’t rational. That doesn’t make it any less true.
She slept with the boneless relaxation of the very young, her arms carelessly thrown over her head. She wore one of Molly’s old T-shirts as pajamas. It had an old, worn, iron-on decal of R2-D2 on it, with the caption BEEP BEEP DE DEEP KERWOOO under it.
I knelt down by her, stroking Mouse’s fur, but when I tried to touch her hand, mine passed through hers, immaterial. I leaned my head against Mouse’s big, solid skull, and sighed.
“She’ll have a good life here,” I said quietly. “People who care about her. Who love kids.”
“Yes,” Uriel said.
Mouse’s tail thumped several more times.
“Yeah, buddy. And she’ll have you.” I glanced up at Uriel. “For how long? I mean, most dogs . . .”
“Temple dogs have been known to live for centuries,” he replied. “Your friend is more than capable of protecting her for a lifetime—even a wizard’s lifetime, if need be.”
That made me feel a little better. I knew what it was like to grow up without my birth parents around, and what a terrible loss it was not to have that sense of secure continuation most of the other kids around me had. Maggie had lost her foster parents, and then her birth mother, and then her biological father. She had another foster home now—but she would always have Mouse.
“Hell,” I said to Mouse, “for all I know, you’ll be smarter than I would have been about dealing with her, anyway.”
Mouse snorted, grinning a doggy grin. He couldn’t speak, but I could effortlessly imagine his response—of course he’d be smarter than I was. That particular bar hadn’t been set very high.
“Take care of her, buddy,” I said to Mouse, and gave his shoulders a couple of firm pats with my fists. “I know you’ll take good care of her.”
Mouse sat up away from me, his expression attentive and serious, and then, very deliberately, offered me his paw.
I shook hands with him gravely, and then rose to face the archangel.
“All right,” I said quietly. “I’m ready.”
Chapter Fifty-one
Uriel extended his hand again, and I took it.
The Carpenters’ house faded from around us and we reappeared in the world of empty white light. There was one difference this time. Two glass doors stood in front of us. One of them led to an office building—in fact, I recognized it as the interior of Captain Jack’s department in Chicago Between. I saw Carmichael go by the door, consulting a notepad and fishing in his pocket for his car keys.
The other door led only to darkness. That was the uncertain future. It was What Came Next.
“I can hardly remember the last time I spent this much time with one particular mortal,” Uriel said thoughtfully. “I wish I had time to do it more often.”
I looked at him for a long moment and said, “I don’t understand.”
He laughed. It was a sound that seethed with warmth and life.
I found myself smiling and joined him. “I don’t understand what your game is in all of this.”
“Game?”
I shrugged. “Your people conned me into taking a pretty horrible risk with my soul. I guess. If that’s what you call this.” I waved a hand. “And you’ve got plausible deniability—I know, I know—or maybe you really are sincere and Captain Murphy threw a curveball past all of us. Either way . . . it doesn’t make sense.”
“Why not?” Uriel asked.
“Because it doesn’t have anything to do with balancing the scales of one of the Fallen lying to me,” I said. “You haven’t done any fortunecookie whispers into my head, have you?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
“Well, that’s what I mean,” I said. “The scale still isn’t balanced. And I don’t think you send people back just for kicks.”
Uriel regarded me pleasantly. He said nothing.
“So you did it for a reason. Something you couldn’t have gotten with your seven whispered words.”
“Perhaps it was to balance the situation with Molly,” he said.
I snorted. “Yeah. I bet all the time you go around solving your problems one by one, in neat little rows. I bet you never, ever try to hit two birds with one stone.”
Uriel regarded me pleasantly. He said nothing.
“I’m headed for the great beyond, and you still won’t give me a straight answer?” I demanded, smiling.
Uriel regarded me pleasantly. He said nothing. A lot.
I laughed again. “Tell you what, big guy. Just tell me something. Something useful. I’ll be happy with whatever I get.”
He pursed his lips and thought about it for a moment. Then he said, “No matter where you go, there you are.”
I blinked. “Goodness,” I said. “Buckaroo Banzai?”
“Confucius,” he said.
“Wow. How very fortune cookie of you.” I gave him a half smile and offered him my hand. “But despite your cryptic ways, I’m sure of one thing now that I wasn’t before.”
“Oh?”
“Souls,” I said. “I mean, you always wonder if they’re real. Even if you believe in them, you still have to wonder: Is my existence just this body? Is there really something more? Do I really have a soul?”
Uriel’s smile blossomed again. “You’ve got it backward, Harry,” he said. “You are a soul. You have a body.”
I blinked at that. It was something to think about. “Mr. Sunshine, it has been a dubious and confusing pleasure.”
“Harry,” he said, shaking my hand. “I feel the same way.”
I released his hand, nodded, and squared my shoulders.
Then, moving briskly, lest my resolve waver, I opened the black door and stepped through.
Given the way my life has typically progressed, I probably should have guessed that What Came Next was pain.
A whole lot of pain.
I tried to take a breath, and a searing burst of agony radiated out from my chest. I held off on the next breath for as long as I could, but eventually I couldn’t put it off anymore, and again fire spread across my chest.
I repeated that cycle for several moments, my entire reality consumed by the simple struggle to breathe and to avoid the pain. I was on the losing side of things, and if the pain didn’t exactly lessen, it did, eventually, become more bearable.
“Good,” whispered a dry, rasping voice. “Very good.”
I felt the rest of my body next. I was lying on something cool and contoured. It wasn’t precisely comfortable, but it wasn’t a torment, either. I clenched my fingers, but something was wrong with them. They barely moved. It was as though someone had replaced my bones and flesh with lead weights, heavy and inert, and my tendons and muscles were too weak to break the inertia. But I felt cool, damp earth crumbling beneath my fingertips.
“Doesn’t seem to bode well,” I mumbled. My tongue didn’t work right. My lips didn’t, either. The words came out a slushy mumble.
“Excellent,” rasped the voice. “I told you he had strength enough.”
My thoughts resonated abruptly with another voice, one that had no point of contact with my ears: WE WILL SEE.
What had my godmother said at my grave? That it was all about respect and . . .
. . . and proxies.
“The eyes,” rasped the voice. “Open your eyes, mortal.”
My eyelids were in the same condition as everything else. They didn’t want to move. But I made them. I realized that they felt cooler than the rest of my skin, as if someone had recently wiped them with a damp washcloth.
I opened them and cried out weakly at the intensity of the light.
I waited for a moment, then tried again. Then again. On the four or five hundredth try, I was finally able to see.
I was in a cave, lit by wan, onion-colored light. I could see a roof of rock and earth, with roots of trees as thick as my waist trailing through here and there. Water dripped down from overhead
, all around me. I could hear it. Some dropped onto my lips, and I licked at it. It tasted sweet, sweeter than double-thick cherry syrup, and I shivered in pleasure this time.
I was starving.
I looked around me slowly. It made my head feel like it was about to fly apart every time I twitched it, but I persevered. I was, so far as I could tell, naked. I was lying on fine, soft earth that had somehow been contoured to the shape of my body. There were pine needles—soft ones—spread about beneath me in lieu of a blanket, their scent sharp and fresh.
There was a dull throb coming from my arms, and I looked down to see . . .
There were . . . roots or vines or something, growing into me. They wrapped around my wrists and penetrated the skin there, structures that were plantlike but pale and spongy-looking. I could barely make out some kind of fluid flowing through the tendrils and presumably into my body. I wanted to scream and thrash my arms, but it just seemed like too much work. A moment later, my leaden thoughts notified me that the vines looked something like . . . an intravenous fluid line. An IV.
What the hell kind of Hell was this supposed to be?
I realized that something rounded and unyielding was supporting my head. I twitched and moved myself enough to look up, and realized that my head was being held in someone’s lap.
“Ah,” whispered the voice. “Now you begin to understand.”
I looked up still farther . . . and found myself staring into the face of Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, the veritable mother of wicked faeries herself.
Mab looked . . . not cadaverous. It wasn’t a word that applied. Her skin seemed stretched tight over her bones, her face distorted to inhuman proportions. Her emerald green eyes were inhumanly huge in that sunken face, her teeth unnaturally sharp. She brushed a hand over one of my cheeks, and her fingers looked too long, her nails grown out like claws. Her arms looked like nothing but bone and sinew with skin stretched over them, and her elbows were somehow too large, too swollen, to look even remotely human. Mab didn’t look like a cadaver. She looked like some kind of nearly starved insect, a praying mantis smiling down at its first meal in weeks.