by Butcher, Jim
“Um, right,” I said. “Why did you touch my head like that? What were you looking for?”
“A disease,” she replied. “A parasite. A poison.”
“Could you repeat that answer, only without the poetry?”
Lily faced me squarely, her lovely face intent. “Sir Knight, you must have seen it. You must have seen the contagion spreading. It has been before your eyes for years.”
“I haven’t seen . . .” Then I paused. My head started adding things together. “You . . . you aren’t talking about a physical disease, are you?”
“Of course not,” Lily said. “It is a kind of spiritual malady. A mental plague. An infection slowly spreading across the earth.”
“And . . . this plague. What does it do?” I asked.
“It changes that which ought not change,” she said quietly. “It destroys a father’s love for his family by twisting it into maniacal ambition. It distorts and corrupts the good intentions of agents of mortal law into violence and death. It erodes the sensible fear that keeps a weakly talented sorcerer from reaching out for more power, no matter how terrible the cost.”
I felt my head rock back as if she’d slammed a croquet mallet into it, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach again.
“Victor Sells the Shadowman,” I whispered. “Agent Denton and the Hexenwolves. Leonid Kravos the Nightmare. My first three major cases.”
“Yes,” Lily whispered. “Each of them was tainted by the contagion. It destroyed them.”
I put a hand on the rail and leaned against it. “Fourth case. Aurora. A champion of peace and healing who set out to send the natural world into havoc.”
Lily’s eyes glistened with tears. “I saw what it did to her,” she said. “I didn’t know what was happening to my friend, but I saw it changing her. Twisting her day by day. I loved Aurora like a sister, Sir Knight. But in the end, even I could see what she had become.” Tears fell, and she made no effort to wipe them away. “I saw. I knew. In the end, you may have killed her, Harry. But you also did her a kindness.”
I shook my head. “I . . . I don’t understand why you didn’t want to tell me about it.”
“No one who knows of this speaks of it,” Lily said.
“Why not?”
“Don’t you see?” Lily said. “What if you had been tainted as well? And I revealed to you that I recognized what was happening?”
I kicked my brain into gear and thought. “Uh . . . then . . .” I felt sick. “You’d be a threat. I’d have to kill you to keep you quiet. Or make you the next recruit.”
“Exactly,” Lily said.
“But why suspect me of being tainted . . . ?” I heard my own voice trail off as I realized the only thing that could have moved Lily against me so strongly.
“Be at ease,” Lily said, and beckoned.
And freaking Maeve, the Winter Lady, strolled onto the far end of the bridge and sauntered toward us. She was dressed in leather pants of dark purple and a periwinkle sweater whose sleeves fell past the ends of her fingers, and her mouth was curled into a tiny, wicked smirk. “Hey, there, big guy,” she purred. “Lily give you the skinny?”
“Not yet,” Lily said. “Maeve, this isn’t the sort of thing one should simply ram down another’s throat.”
“Of course it is,” Maeve said, her smile widening.
“Maeve—” Lily began.
Maeve did a little pirouette that wound up with her toes practically touching mine as she smiled up at me, her too-sharp teeth very white. “Do you have a camera? I want someone to get a picture.”
“Oh, dear,” Lily said.
Maeve leaned in close, her smile widening. “Mab,” she breathed, “my mother, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and your liege . . .” She leaned closer and whispered, “Mab has been tainted and has gone utterly mad.”
My spine turned to brittle ice. “What?”
Lily looked up at me with a sad, sober expression.
Maeve let out a peal of giggles. “It’s true,” she said. “She means to destroy the mortal world, wizard, and to do it this very night—to unleash chaos and havoc that have not been known since the fall of Atlantis. And make no mistake, she will destroy it.”
Lily nodded, her eyes pained. “Unless,” she began. “Unless . . .”
I finished the thought Lily obviously did not want to complete. “Unless,” I whispered, “someone destroys her first.”
Chapter
Twenty-five
This day had begun so simply: I’d nearly been killed at my birthday party and Mab had ordered me to kill an immortal. I’d survived the first, and if I’d had the good sense to shut up and do the second without asking questions, I might be somewhere reading a nice book or something, and waiting out the clock until it was Maeve-whacking time.
Instead I had this.
“I love watching him think,” Maeve told Lily. “You can almost hear that poor little hamster running and running on its wheel.”
“You clubbed him over the head with it,” Lily said. “What did you expect?”
“Oh, this,” Maeve said, her eyes sparkling. “Wizards are always so sure of themselves. I love seeing them off balance. This one in particular.”
“Why me?” I said. I wasn’t really participating in their conversation.
“You did kill my cousin, wizard,” Maeve said. “Aurora was a prissy little bint, but she was family. It makes me happy when you suffer.”
I glowered at Maeve and said, “One of these days, you and I are going to disagree.” I turned to Lily. “You say Mab wants to hold an Armageddon-thon, fine. How is she going to do it?”
“We aren’t completely certain,” Lily said, her eyes earnest.
“It’s something to do with that island,” Maeve said carelessly.
Gulp.
Wrecking someone’s powerful and deadly ritual wasn’t such a scary concept. I’d done that before, more than once. But somehow, knowing that it was Mab’s ritual I was supposed to derail made this situation a whole lot worse. I’d Seen Mab before, with the unadulterated perception of my Sight, and I remembered the kind of might she wielded with absolute clarity. Mab had the kind of power you had to describe using exponents. I felt like a man with a shovel and a couple of gunnysacks who has just been told to stop an oncoming tsunami.
And Mab knew the place. She’d taken care of me for months there. She knew Demonreach’s strengths, its defenses, and its potential. Hell, I’d been her ticket through the door—in fact, I was the only one who could have gotten her onto that island.
“You know,” I said aloud, “it’s just possible that I made a mistake in taking Mab’s deal.”
The two Ladies gave me level gazes. Neither of them said, “Obviously,” but it hung on the spell-muffled air nonetheless.
Then I had a thought. Cat Sith had lied to me very effectively only moments ago, because I assumed reasonable things and he allowed me to charge off down that line of thinking. This was no time to make a rookie mistake like that.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to do something I know you both hate. I’m going to get direct. And I’m going to get direct answers from you, answers that convince me that you aren’t trying to hide anything from me and aren’t trying to mislead me. I know you both have to speak the truth. So give me simple, declarative answers, or I assume you’re scheming and walk away right now.”
That made Lily press her lips together and fold her arms. Her gaze turned reproachful. Maeve rolled her eyes, casually gave me the finger, and said, “Wizards are such weasels.”
“Deal with it,” I said. “Lily. Are you sure that this contagion you speak of is real, and works the way you say it does?”
Lily looked like opening her mouth exposed her taste buds to something foul, but she answered, “Absolutely.”
“Are you sure Mab has been . . . been infected?”
“I am all but certain,” Lily said. “But I have not examined her for myself.”
“I have,” Maeve said calmly. “While you and m
y people were putting on such a garish distraction at that dreary little celebration of your birth, Sir Knight.” She stretched and yawned, making sure to pull her sweater tight against her chest. “That was the purpose of it, after all.”
I scowled. “You examined Mab?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure she’s infected?” I asked.
For just a fraction of a second, Maeve’s smug exterior changed, becoming graver, more somber. In that instant, she and Lily looked as though they might have been fraternal twins. “With absolute certainty.”
“And you’re sure she means to attack the mortal world as you’ve described?”
That serious version of Maeve met my eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Think, wizard. Remember your godmother, bound in ice at Arctis Tor. That was when my mother trapped her and spread the contagion into her. Think of the creatures of Faerie Wyld who have been behaving irregularly and unpredictably. Think of the strange conduct of some of the Houses of the White Court, changing their diets after centuries of stasis. Think of the Fomor, active and aggressive again for the first time in millennia.” She stepped up close to me. “None of these things is coincidence. It spreads, a force that will upend the world and all of us with it. And what has happened until now is nothing compared to what will come if Mab is not stopped before the sun rises once more.”
Maeve stepped back from me, watching me, her exotic eyes opaque.
Silence fell within the little privacy spell.
Well, crap.
That was pretty much that.
Neither of the Ladies could speak a direct lie. I hadn’t left them any room to dance around the truth. They were serious. I guess it was possible that they might have been mistaken, but they were damned well sincere.
“Neither of us can stop her,” Lily said into that silence. “Even working together, we do not have anything like the power needed to overcome Mab’s defenses, and she would never lower her guard for either of us.”
“But for you,” Maeve said.
“Her knight,” Lily said, “her champion.”
“She might not be quite so guarded,” Maeve said, her eyes shining fever-bright. “You have power enough to smite her, if you strike when she is unprepared.”
“What?” I blurted.
“What we ask you is not fair,” Lily said. “We know tha . . .” She glanced at Maeve. “Well. I know that. But we have no other options.”
“Uh, yes, you do,” I said. “What about Titania? The Queen of Summer is an equal opposite, isn’t she? Mab’s mirror?”
The two Ladies exchanged a guarded look.
“Out with it,” I said. “We’re way past word games here.”
Lily nodded. “She . . . refuses to act. I do not know why.”
“Because she’s terrified she’ll be infected, too, obviously,” Maeve snapped.
“Guys,” I said. “I have seen what Mab is. Even if I catch her off guard, I don’t have the kind of clout it takes to drop someone in her league.”
Lily blinked at me several times. “But . . . but you do. You have Winter.”
“Which is meaningful because . . . ?”
“Because she is Winter,” Maeve said. “The Winter within you is Mab and she is it. The one thing you can never protect yourself against is yourself. You of all people should know this, wizard.”
I shuddered. I did.
“The Winter Knight is a useful weapon,” Maeve said. “But it has ever been one with two edges. Mab stands no mightier than any of the Sidhe against your hand, Sir Knight.”
I narrowed my eyes at Maeve. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Why in the hell should I think you’re trying to help me? Since when have you cared about the mortal world, Maeve?”
Her smile widened. “Since I realized that should my mother fall, I will have a very large and very exclusive chair to sit upon back at Arctis Tor, wizard. Do not think for a moment that I do it from the kindness of my heart. I want the throne.”
Now, that was a scary thought. Mab was a force of nature, sure, but she also acted a lot like one. She rarely took things personally, she didn’t play favorites, and she was generally speaking equally dangerous to everyone. Maeve, though. That bitch was just not right. The thought of her with Mab’s mantle of power was something terrifying to anyone with half a brain—especially the guy who would be her personal champion.
“I don’t dig the idea of serving you, Maeve,” I said.
At that, the lazy sex-kitten look came back into her eyes. “I haven’t yet begun to persuade you, wizard. But be assured that I would never, ever throw away a tool so useful as you would be, should you succeed.”
“Even if it might slice into you next?” I asked.
Maeve laughed. “Oh, I am going to love playing games with you, Sir Knight. But first things first. You have no choice but to act. If you do not, millions of your fellow mortals will perish. In the end, you will act to protect them. That is what you are.”
“Lady Maeve has a point,” Lily said, with evident reluctance. “There is very little time. I understand your trepidation about the consequences of Mab’s . . . passing . . . but we have little choice. She is simply too dangerous to be allowed to continue.”
I made a low growling sound. “This is insane.”
“Fun,” Maeve said, her nose wrinkling, “isn’t it?”
I eyed both of them. “What are you holding back from me?”
Lily twitched again, and looked displeased at the question. “No one must realize that you know of the contagion,” she said. “You cannot know which of your allies or associates it has already taken. If you demonstrate awareness, anyone infected will either remove you or infect you.”
“Anything else?” I asked her.
“I will speak to Fix,” Lily said. “Otherwise, no.”
I nodded at her. Then I eyed Maeve. “What about you? Holding anything back?”
“I want to take you to my bower, wizard,” Maeve said, and licked her lips. “I want to do things to you that give you such pleasure your brain bleeds.”
“Uh,” I said.
Her foxlike smile sharpened. “Also,” she said, “my people are about to attempt to kill you.”
Lily’s eyes snapped toward Maeve, widening.
“I promised him nothing,” Maeve said with a sniff. “And there are appearances to keep up, after all. I am certain my mother has eyes watching his every move. He can hardly meet peaceably with me without making her suspicious.”
“Ah,” Lily said, nodding. “Oh, dear.”
Maeve leaned toward me, taking a confidential tone. “They don’t know of the contagion either, wizard. So their attempts will be quite sincere. I advise you to resist. Strenuously.”
Seven figures stepped around a corner of the garden on the far side of the bridge and began striding purposefully toward our little gathering. Sidhe. The Redcap strode along in the center.
“Hell’s bells,” I snarled, taking an involuntary step back. “Right here? Now? You could have given me a couple of minutes to get clear, dammit.”
“And what fun would that be?” Maeve asked, pushing out her lower lip in a pout. “I am who I am, too. I love violence. I love treachery. I love your pain—and the best part, the part I love most, is that I am doing it for your own good.” Her eyes gleamed white all the way around her irises. “This is me being one of the good guys.”
“I’m so sorry, Harry,” Lily said. “I didn’t want this. I think you should go. . . .” She turned aside to Maeve. “So that the Winter Lady can introduce me to her vassals. This is the first time we’ve met.”
Maeve blinked, and her expression darkened into a scowl. “Oh. Oh, you prissy bint.”
Lily said, with utmost sincerity, “I regret that this inconveniences your enjoyment, Lady, but protocol is quite clear.”
Maeve stomped one foot on the bridge, scowled at me, and then seized Lily by the wrist. She started dragging the Summer Lady toward her oncoming entourage.
Lily ga
ve me a quick wink, the expression as pleasant as the warmth from a cup of hot chocolate, and I started backing off. Once I was off the bridge, I turned and began to run. There was no telling how long Lily’s tactic would stall the Redcap and his buddies, and I wanted to be in the truck and gone before introductions were made.
That plan was going pretty well, right up until I passed a huge wall of thick evergreen plants of some kind. Then something small and blurry shot out of the brush about half a step ahead of me. I got a flash impression of Captain Hook in his miniature armor, trailing some kind of heavy cord, and then my feet were tangled in it and down I went.
I tried to be cool and roll into the fall and come back up on my feet, but that works a lot better when you don’t have one of your legs abruptly jerked out from beneath you. So mostly I hit the ground in a clumsy sprawl, then slid several feet forward on the damp concrete with my weight on my chest and my cheek.
Ow.
I got back onto my feet, moving as fast as I could. I didn’t feel like getting stabbed with more of those steel nails, and my eyes went up to the open sky, scanning quickly for any incoming hostile Little Folk as I got moving again.
So I wasn’t as ready as I should have been when a man in biker leathers emerged from the brush at my side and slammed a baseball bat into the base of my skull. My legs turned to jelly and I went down hard, landing on my chin.
I sort of flopped over onto my back, dazed, lifting my hands in a vague and useless defensive gesture. I took the tip of a motorcycle boot directly to the testicles, and my whole world went bright with confusion and pain.
“Yeah,” snarled the man. He was of medium height, and had curly dark hair and a short goatee. “That’s right, bitch. Who’s crawling on the ground now?”
Asking the question seemed to infuriate him. He slammed a kick into my ribs, then another right into the breadbasket, and I curled around myself gasping.
I had to move. The Redcap was coming. I hadn’t made any noise to tip Thomas off that I was in trouble—but even as heavily boosted as I was, it wasn’t enough to instantly overcome the stunning pain of those blows. Shots like that mess around with your nervous system, disrupting the machinery that sends signals around your body. I wasn’t going anywhere for a few more seconds.