The Ultimate Dresden Omnibus, 0-15

Home > Other > The Ultimate Dresden Omnibus, 0-15 > Page 536
The Ultimate Dresden Omnibus, 0-15 Page 536

by Butcher, Jim


  “Oh,” I said, and if my speech was halting, at least it sounded almost human. “That kind of Hell.”

  Mab tilted back her head and cackled. It was a dull, brittle sound, like the edge of a rusted knife. “No,” she said. “Alas, no, my knight. No, you have not escaped. I have far too much work for your hand to allow that. Not yet.”

  I stared at her dully, which was probably the only way I was capable of staring at the moment. Then I croaked, “I’m . . . alive?”

  Her smile widened even more. “And well, my dear knight.”

  I grunted. It was all the enthusiasm I could summon. “Yay?”

  “It makes me feel like singing,” Mab’s voice grated from between sharp teeth. “Welcome back, O my knight, to the green lands of the living.”

  ENOUGH, said that enormous thought-voice, the same one from the graveyard, but less mind annihilating. THE FOOLISH GAMBLE IS CONCLUDED. HIS PHYSICAL NEEDS MUST BE MET.

  “I know what I am doing,” Mab purred. Or it would have been a purr, if cats had been made from steel wool. “Fear not, ancient thing. Your custodian lives.”

  I turned my head slowly the other way. After a subjective century, I was able to see the other figure in the cave.

  It was enormous, a being that had to crouch not to bump its head on the ceiling. It was, more or less, human in form—but I could see little of that form. It was almost entirely concealed in a vast cloak of dark green, with shadows hiding whatever lay beneath it. The cloak’s hood covered its head, but I could see tiny green fires, like small, flickering clouds of fireflies, burning within the hood’s shadowed depth.

  Demonreach. The genius loci of the intensely weird, unmapped island in the middle of Lake Michigan. We’d . . . sort of had an arrangement, made a couple of years back. And I was beginning to think that maybe I hadn’t fully understood the extent of that arrangement.

  “I’m . . . on the island?” I rasped.

  YOU ARE HERE.

  “Long have this old thing and I labored to keep your form alive, my knight,” Mab said. “Long have we kept flesh and bone and blood knit together and stirring, waiting for your spirit’s return.”

  MAB GAVE YOU BREATH. HERE PROVIDED NOURISHMENT. THE PARASITE MAINTAINED THE FLOW OF BLOOD.

  Parasite? What?

  I’d already had a really, really long day.

  “But . . . I got shot,” I mumbled.

  “My knight,” Mab hissed, the statement one of possession. “Your broken body fell from your ship into cold and darkness—and they are my domain.”

  THE COLD QUEEN BROUGHT YOU TO HERE, Demonreach emitted. My head was starting to ache, hearing his psychic voice. YOUR PHSYICAL VESSEL WAS PRESERVED.

  “And now here you are,” Mab murmured. “Oh, the Quiet One angered us, sending your essence out unprotected. Had he been incorrect, I would have been robbed of my knight, and the old monster of his custodian.”

  OUR INTERESTS COINCIDED.

  I blinked slowly, and again my lagging brain started catching up to me.

  Mab had me.

  I hadn’t escaped her. I hadn’t escaped what she could make me become.

  Oh, God.

  And all the people who’d gotten hurt, helping me . . . They’d done it for nothing.

  “Told me . . . I was dead,” I muttered.

  “Dead is a grey word,” Mab hissed. “Mortals fear it, and so they wish it to be black—and they have but few words to contain its reality. It escapes from such constraints. Death is a spectrum, not a line. And you, my knight, had not yet vanished into the utter darkness.”

  I licked at my lips again. “Guess . . . you’re kind of upset with me. . . .”

  “You attempted to cheat the Queen of Air and Darkness,” Mab hissed. “You practiced a vile, wicked deception upon me, my knight.” Her inhuman eyes glittered. “I expected no less of you. Were you not strong enough to cast such defiance into my teeth, you would be useless to my purposes.” Her smile widened. “To our purposes now.”

  The very ground seemed to quiver, to let out an unthinkably low, deep, angry growl.

  Mab’s eyes snapped to Demonreach. “I have his oath, ancient one. What he has given is mine by right, and you may not gainsay it. He is mine to shape as I please.”

  “Dammit,” I said tiredly. “Dammit.”

  And a voice—a very calm, very gentle, very rational voice whispered in my ear, “Lies. Mab cannot change who you are.”

  I struggled and twitched my fingers. “Five,” I muttered, “Six. Seven. Heh.” I couldn’t help it. I laughed again. It hurt like hell and it felt wonderful. “Heh. Heh.”

  Mab had gone very still. She stared at me with wide eyes, her alien face void of expression.

  “No,” I said then, weakly. “No. Maybe I’m your knight. But I’m not yours.”

  Emerald fire flickered in her eyes, cold and angry. “What?”

  “You can’t make me your monster,” I slurred. “Doesn’t work. And you know it.”

  Mab’s eyes grew colder, more distant. “Oh?”

  “You can make me do things,” I said. “You can mess with my head. But all that makes me is a thug.” The effort of so many words cost me. I had to take a moment to rest before I continued. “You wanted a thug; you get that from anywhere. Lloyd Slate was a thug. Plenty where he came from.”

  Demonreach’s burning eyes flickered, and a sense of something like cold satisfaction came from the cloaked giant.

  “Said it yourself: need someone like me.” I met Mab’s eyes with mine and curled my upper lip into a sneer. “Go on. Try to change me. The second you do, the second I think you’ve played with my head or altered my memory, the first time you compel me to do something, I’ll do the one thing you can’t have in your new knight.” I lifted my head a little, and I knew that I must have looked a little crazy as I spoke. “I’ll do it. I’ll follow your command. And I will do nothing else. I’ll make every task you command one you must personally oversee. I’ll have the initiative of a garden statue. And do you know what that will give you, my queen?”

  Her eyes burned. “What?”

  I felt my own smile widen. “A mediocre knight,” I said. “And mediocrity, my queen, is a terrible, terrible fate.”

  Her voice came forth from lips so cold that frost began forming on them. The next drop of water to fall on me thumped gently, a tiny piece of sleet. “Do you think I cannot punish you for such defiance? Do you think I cannot visit such horrors upon those you love as to create legends that last a thousand years?”

  I didn’t flinch. “I think you’ve got too much on your plate already,” I spat back. “I think you don’t have the time or the energy to spare to fight your own knight anymore. I think you need me, or you wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of keeping me alive for this long, of taxing your strength this much to get it done. You need me. Or else why are you here? In Chicago? In May?”

  Again, the inhuman eyes raked at mine. But when she spoke, her voice was very, very soft and far more terrible than a moment before. “I am not some mortal merchant to be bargained with. I am not some petty president to be argued with. I am Mab.”

  “You are Mab,” I said. “And I owe you a debt for preserving my life. For giving me the power I needed to save my daughter’s life. Don’t think that I have forgotten that.”

  The faerie’s expression finally changed. She frowned and tilted her head slightly, as if puzzled. “Then why this defiance? When you know I will take vengeance for it?”

  “Because my soul is my own,” I said quietly. “You cannot steal it from me. You cannot change it. You cannot buy it. I am mine, Mab. I have fought long and hard against horrors even you would respect. I have been beaten, but I have not yielded. I’m not going to start yielding now. If I did, I wouldn’t be the weapon you need.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “I will be the Winter Knight,” I told her. “I will be the most terrifying Knight the Sidhe Courts have ever known. I will send your enemies down in defeat and make
your power grow.” I smiled again. “But I do it my way. On my terms. When you give me the task, I’ll decide how it gets done—and you’ll stay out of the way and let me work. And that’s how it’s going to be.”

  After a long silent moment, she said, “You dare give commands to me, mortal?”

  “I can’t control you,” I said. “I know that. But I can control me. And I’ve just told you the only way you get what you want out of me.” I shrugged a little. “Up to you, my queen. But think about whether you want another thug to command or an ally to respect. Otherwise, you might as well start cutting on me right here, right now, and get yourself somebody with less backbone.”

  The Queen of Air and Darkness stared down at me for silent moments. Then she said, “You will never be my ally. Not in your heart.”

  “Probably not,” I said. “But I can follow the example of my godmother. I can be a trusted enemy. I can work with you.”

  Mab’s pale white eyebrows lifted and her eyes gleamed. “I will never trust you, wizard.” And then she rose abruptly and let my head fall back to the earth. She walked away, her silken gown hanging limply upon her insect-thin frame. “Prepare yourself.”

  Demonreach stirred. The pale tendrils and roots began withdrawing themselves from my arms, leaving small, bleeding holes behind.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For the journey to my court, Sir Knight.” She paused and looked over one shoulder at me, green eyes bright and cold. “There is much work to do be done.”

  Click here for more books by this author

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, August 2011

  Copyright © Jim Butcher, 2011

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-47617-8

  Set in Janson Text

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or thirdparty Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Air, for introducing me to Mab by onion-colored light

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Author’s Note

  ALSO BY JIM BUTCHER

  EVEN HAND

  by JIM BUTCHER

  A successful murder is like a successful restaurant: ninety percent of it is about location, location, location.

  Three men in black hoods knelt on the waterfront warehouse floor, their wrists and ankles trussed with heavy plastic quick-ties. There were few lights.

  They knelt over a large, faded stain on the concrete floor, left behind by the hypocritical y named White Council of Wizards during their last execution.

  I nodded to Hendricks, who took the hood off the first man, then stood clear. The man was young and good-looking. He wore an expensive yet ill-fitting suit and even more expensive yet tasteless jewelry.

  “Where are you from?” I asked him.

  He sneered at me. “What’s it to y—”

  I shot him in the head as soon as I heard the bravado in his voice. The body fell heavily to the floor.

  The other two jumped and cursed, their voices angry and terrified.

  I took the hood off the second man. His suit was a close cousin of the dead man’s, and I thought I recognized its cut. “Boston?” I asked him.

  “You can’t do this to us,” he said, more angry than frightened. “Do you know who we are?”

  Once I heard the nasal quality of the word “are,” I shot him.

  I took off the third man’s hood. He screamed and fell away from me. “Boston,” I said, nodding, and put the barrel of my .45 against the third man’s forehead. He stared at me, showing the whites of his eyes. “You know who I am. I run drugs in Chicago. I run the numbers, the books. I run the whores. It’s my town. Do you understand?”

  His body jittered in what might have been a nod. His lips formed the word “yes,” though no sound came out.

  “I’m
glad you can answer a simple question,” I told him, and lowered the gun. “I want you to tell Mr. Morelli that I won’t be this lenient the next time his people try to clip the edges of my territory.” I looked at Hendricks. “Put the three of them in a sealed trailer and rail-freight them back to Boston, care of Mr.

  Morelli.”

  Hendricks was a large, trustworthy man, his red hair cropped in a crew cut. He twitched his chin in the slight motion that he used for a nod when he disapproved of my actions but intended to obey me anyway.

  Hendricks and the cleaners on my staff would handle the matter from here.

  I passed him the gun and the gloves on my hands. Both would see the bottom of Lake Michigan before I was halfway home, along with the two slugs the cleaners would remove from the site. When they were done, there would be nothing left of the two dead men but a slight variation on the outline of the stain in the old warehouse floor, where no one would look twice in any case.

  Location, location, location.

  Obviously, I am not Harry Dresden. My name is something I rarely trouble to remember, but for most of my adult life, I have been called John Marcone.

  I am a professional monster.

  It sounds pretentious. After all, I’m not a flesh-devouring ghoul, hiding behind a human mask until it is time to gorge. I’m no vampire, to drain the blood or soul from my victim, no ogre, no demon, no cursed beast from the spirit world dwelling amid the unsuspecting sheep of humanity. I’m not even possessed of the mystic abilities of a mortal wizard.

  But they will never be what I am. One and all, those beings were born to be what they are.

  I made a choice.

  I walked outside of the warehouse and was met by my consultant, Gard—a tall blond woman without makeup whose eyes continual y swept her surroundings. She fell into step beside me as we walked to the car. “Two?”

 

‹ Prev