Cold Days df-14

by Jim Butcher

  Ice formed around my hand and spread into a circle several feet wide in the first instant, conducted more easily through the mud than through the water. I poured more effort in, and the circle widened, more ice forming, spreading out. I kept up the cold, and the water touching the bottom began to freeze as well.

  My heart began to beat harder, and there was a roaring sound in my ears. I didn’t give up, sending more and more cold into the lake around me, building up layer after layer of ice across the entire bottom of the lake beneath the collapsed warehouse. At sixty seconds, the ice was three feet deep, and forming around my arm and shoulder. At ninety seconds, it had engulfed my head and upper body, and had to have been five or six feet deep. And when my internal count reached a hundred and ten, the entire mass of ice tore loose from the lake’s bottom with a groan and began to rise.

  I never let up on it, building it into a miniature iceberg, and the steel beams and walls of the warehouse moaned and squealed as the ice began to lift them free. I felt it when my feet came out of the water, though most of the rest of me was still stuck in the ice. I tore and twisted and seemed to know exactly where to apply pressure and torque without being told. The ice crackled away and I slipped out of it with a minimum of fuss. When I pulled my head out (go ahead; make a joke), I was sitting in dim light atop a sheet of ice floating several inches out of the waters of the lake.

  I was still in the rear section of the warehouse. The back door was open, straight above my head, and was letting in most of the light. The broken ends of the room, the floor, and the two walls had been embedded in ice, but crookedly. The ragged edge of the ceiling was a couple of feet out of the water.

  Several very startled-looking people and one fur-plastered dog were shivering on the ice. I took a quick head count. Everyone was there.

  I sagged down onto the ice in relief, fatigue making my body feel like it weighed an extra ton, and just lay there for a moment as the wreckage bobbed gently in the water. After a few seconds, I became aware of eyes on me, and I looked up.

  My friends were all sitting or kneeling on the ice, damp and shivering, and staring at me with wide eyes. Molly’s eyes were bright and intense, the expression on her face unreadable. Justine’s mouth hung slightly open, and her big dark eyes looked afraid. Butters stared first at me and then down at the ice, his eyes flicking around, the wheels clearly churning in his head as he calculated how much ice there was and how much energy it would have taken to freeze it. Mac regarded me impassively, still supporting the dazed Andi.

  Sweetly curved Andi was the most vulnerable. If I could isolate her from the herd, things could get interesting. I’d just saved her life, after all. She owed me. I could think of a few ways that she could express her gratitude.

  I pushed the predator thought out of my head and took a deep breath. When I exhaled, it condensed into a thick, foggy vapor, more so than it ever would have naturally, even on the coldest days. I looked down at my hands and they were covered in frost, and my fingertips and nails were turning blue. I put a hand to my face and had to brush away a thin layer of frost.

  Hell’s bells. What did I look like, to make my friends stare at me like that?

  Time for mirrors later.

  I stood up, my feet sure even on the wet ice, and found the nearest point of the shoreline. I extended a hand, murmured, “Infriga,” and froze a ten-foot-long bridge from my improvised iceberg to land.

  “Come on,” I said, as I started walking toward the shore. My voice sounded strange, rough. “We don’t have much time.”

  * * *

  The sun had slipped below the cloud cover, and the sky was a bank of hot coals, slowly burning down toward ember and ash when we got back to Molly’s apartment.

  Thomas and Karrin were waiting outside. The two of them were leaning against the wall near the security checkpoint. Thomas had a tall coffee cup in one hand and a bagel in the other. Karrin was staring down at a smartphone, her thumbs flicking over its surface.

  Thomas took note of the car as it pulled up, and nudged Karrin. She looked up, then did a double take at the Munstermobile. She rolled her eyes, then apparently turned the phone off and slipped it into a case on her belt.

  I stopped the car and rolled down the window.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Karrin said, eyeing the car. “This?”

  “I think it’s a company car,” I said.

  Karrin leaned down and looked at everyone in the back. “What happened?”

  “Inside—I’ll explain.”

  We got parked and everyone made their way to Molly’s place, some of them more slowly than others.

  “You’re limping,” Thomas noted, walking beside me. “And bleeding.”

  “No, I’m . . .” I began. Then I sighed. “Yeah. Redcap shot me with some kind of dinky dart. Maybe poisoned. Or something.”

  Thomas made a low growling sound in his chest. “I’m just about done with that clown.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Molly opened the door, and the moment I stepped in, Lacuna came zipping over to me. The little armored faerie hovered in the air near my face, her dark hair flying wildly in the turbulence of her own beating wings. “You can’t do it!” she cried. “You can’t just give them all that pizza! Do you have any idea how much harm you’re doing? Can I please fight now?”

  “Whoa,” I said, leaning back and holding up my hands.

  “Hey, shortcake,” my brother snapped. “Back off.”

  “You aren’t important,” Lacuna declared to Thomas, evidently dismissing him entirely as she turned back to me. “I wrote down everything just like you said and now they’re going to get that awful pizza all over themselves without the least regard for properly protecting themselves, and I’m going to fight them for the pizza!”

  “In the first place, that is not a fight you are going to win,” I said, “and in the second place—they found something?”

  “And I wrote it down like you said and now I want to duel them!”

  “No duels!” I said, and headed for the dining table. Sure enough, Lacuna had drawn precise little Xs at all of the sites marked on the map. Most of them had been done with a green pen, but two locations were marked in red. One of them was next to one of the primary sites I’d marked earlier, on this side of the lake, north of town. The next was at one of the secondary sites, a little farther inland and on the far side of the lake.

  “Lacuna, were they sure that ritual preparation was under way at both of these locations?”

  “And the others were clear,” the little faerie replied impatiently. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Crap,” I muttered. “Molly, time?”

  “Twenty-five minutes to sundown, more or less,” she replied. She came to the table with a first-aid kit in her hands. “Waldo, can you take a look at this?”

  “The minute I’m sure Andi isn’t bleeding into her brain,” Butters snapped.

  “I’ve already sent for an ambulance,” Molly said back in a calm, iron tone that sounded creepily like her mother. “Andi will die with all of the rest of us if Harry doesn’t stop things from going boom, so get over here and see to him.”

  Butters turned toward Molly with absolute murder in his eyes. But then he looked at me, and back to the dazed Andi in her chair. Mac was supporting her. The bartender looked up at Butters and nodded.

  “I hate this,” Butters said, his voice boiling with anger. But he came over to the table, grabbed the kit, and said, “Try to hold still, Harry.”

  I planted my foot and kept standing still as he started cutting away my jeans at the knee. “Okay,” I said. Karrin was already standing beside me, and Thomas joined us across the table. “What’s the word from Marcone’s Vikings?”

  “Strike team standing by,” Murphy said, “waiting for my word.”

  I grunted. “Thomas?”

  “Lara’s team is ready, too,” he said.

  “Butters, what do we have from the Paranet?”

  “Dammit, Dr
esden, I’m a medical examiner, not an intelligence analyst.” He gave the little wound a prod with something and a white-hot needle went up my leg to the hip.

  “Nngh,” I said. “Nothing?”

  He took a wipe to the wound, and that didn’t feel very good either. “About half a dozen sightings of the Little Folk all over.”

  “Aren’t those yours?” Murphy asked.

  “Some, probably,” I said. “But I think they’re the rest of Ace’s crew.”

  Murphy grunted. “I thought the prisoner wouldn’t tell you anything about him.”

  I shrugged. “I figure it was Ace who threw the explosives at the Munstermobile last night, when the Little Folk jumped me afterward. He showed up right when Lacuna ambushed me at the Botanic Gardens. Then when I go to get my friends back from his dad, something else blows up.”

  “He’s learned to play with explosives,” Karrin said.

  “Yeah, but you’ve barely seen this guy,” Thomas said.

  “It makes sense,” I said. “Especially if he’s playing smart—which he is, just by rounding up a group of the Little Folk as allies. He knows he couldn’t handle a straight fight—so he’s kept his distance. We’ve barely seen him, and he’s nearly killed me three times in the past sixteen hours.”

  “Hngh,” Thomas said.

  “What’s he got against you?” Molly asked.

  “He was part of Lily and Fix’s crew, back when they were all just folks,” I said. “They were friends with Aurora and the last Summer Knight. When Mab hired me to find Ronald Reuel’s killer, Ace pitched in with this ghoul hitter and the Winter Knight to stop me. Betrayed his friends. Billy and his crew almost killed him, but I let him skate.”

  “And he hates you for it?” Molly asked.

  “I killed Aurora,” I said. “His friend Meryl died in that same fight. And you can be damned sure that Lily and Fix haven’t wanted anything to do with him since. So from where he’s standing, I killed one of his friends, got another one killed in battle, and took the ones who were left alive away from him. Then I beat him up in front of his dad. Guy’s got a forest of bones to pick with me.”

  “Cheery image,” Thomas said.

  I grunted. “What about your nutjob, Butters. What’s his name?”

  “Gary.”

  “Gary turn up anything else?”

  “About twenty updates in all capital letters about boats, boats, boats.”

  I thought about that one for a moment.

  Then I said, “Hah.”

  “We have to move, Harry,” Karrin said.

  I grunted. “Gard still have her chopper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right,” I said. I thumped my finger on the site on the far side of Lake Michigan. “Lacuna, what’s the word on this one?”

  The little faerie was still flitting about in the air around the table, fairly bursting with impatience. “It’s behind big stone walls on a human’s private land, right where I marked it!”

  I nodded. “Vikings get that site then. Get them moving.”

  “Right,” Murphy said, and headed for the door, reaching for her phone on the way.

  Thomas frowned. “We’re going to depend on Lara’s people to back us up?”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “No offense, but I don’t trust your sister. Send her crew to the second site.”

  “This is damned odd,” Butters muttered.

  I looked down at him. “What?”

  “The bleeding won’t stop,” he said. “It’s not really all that dangerous in a wound this small, but it isn’t clotting up. It’s like some kind of anticoagulant was introduced. Do you still have the dart?”

  “Dart,” I said. I patted my pockets. “I guess not. It was in my hand when the warehouse dropped into the water.”

  “Bah,” Butters said. “Inflammation in the skin around it. This hurt?”

  He poked me. It did. I told him so.

  “Huh,” he said. “I can’t be sure without tests but . . . I think this might be some kind of allergic reaction.”

  “How?” I asked. “I’m not allergic to anything.”

  “I’m just saying what it looks like on your skin,” Butters said. “The trickle factor seems to imply some kind of toxin, though. You need a hospital, tests.”

  “Later,” I said. “Just get it wrapped up and keep it from running down my leg.”

  Butters nodded.

  “So,” Thomas asked, “if Lara’s crew has one site and Marcone’s the other, which one are we going to?”

  “Neither.”

  “What?”

  “We’re not going to either one.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because all day long,” I said, “I’ve been moving in straight lines and it’s gotten me nothing but grief.” I pointed at the locations marked on the map. “See those? Those are the perfectly rational places for our bad guy to make something happen.”

  Thomas rubbed at his chin and narrowed his eyes. “They’re a distraction?”

  “It’s how the Sidhe think. How they move. How they are. They put pressure on you, get you to look over there, and then kapow. Sucker punch.”

  “What if they’re expecting you to expect that?” Thomas asked.

  “Gah,” I said, waving my hands on either side of my head as if brushing away wasps. “Stop it. If I’m wrong, we’ve got professional badasses to cover it. But I’m not wrong.”

  “Didn’t you say that they required a ley line site to perform a ritual that big?” Butters asked. He had taped a pad over the little injury and was securing it with a roll of gauze.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And the Little Folk cleared all of them but those two?”

  “No,” I said. “They cleared almost all of them. There was one place the Little Folk couldn’t check.”

  Thomas’s eyes widened as he got it. “Boats,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Boats.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Thomas rose, glancing around the room, and said in a quiet voice, “She needs fuel. And I’d better talk to Lara about the second site.” But his eyes had drifted over to where Justine now sat by the fire, basking in warmth after our icy dunk and staring at it with a peaceful expression on her lovely face.

  “Get moving,” I said. I lowered my voice. “You taking her with you?”

  “You kidding? Bad guys have been all over us today. That creep took her right off the street in front of our apartment. I’m not letting her out of my sight.”

  “Look, if you leave her here, the building has security that—”

  “So does my building, and Cat Sith breezed right past all of it when he came in,” Thomas said. “I’m not letting her out of my sight until this thing is settled.”

  I grimaced, but nodded. “All right. Go. We’ll be right behind you.”

  My brother arched an eyebrow. “All of you?”

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “Did you talk to her?” Thomas asked.

  I gave him a steady look and said, “No. Maggie was out trick-or-treating.”

  “Right. She’s what? Nine years old? She might as well have vanished into the Bermuda triangle. How could you possibly be expected to find her? Magic?” He gave me a sour look. “What about the other one?”

  He meant Karrin. “We’ve both been kinda busy. Maybe later.”

  “Later. Bad habit to get into,” Thomas said. “Life’s too short.”

  “It almost sounded like you were attempting to enlighten me about bad habits.”

  “The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” he said, and turned for the door.

  At the exact moment he moved, even though she was not looking at him, and though he said nothing to her, Justine rose from her seat by the fire and started toward the door. The pair of them met halfway there and she slipped herself beneath his arm and up close to him in a motion of familiar, unconscious intimacy. They left together.

  My brother the vampire, whose kiss was a slow dea
th sentence, had a stable and loving relationship with a girl who was crazy about him. By contrast, I could barely talk to a woman, at least about anything pertaining to a relationship. Given that my only long-term girlfriends had faked their own death, died, and broken free of enslaving enchantments to end the relationship, the empirical evidence seemed to indicate that he knew something I didn’t.

  Keep your life tonight, Harry. Complicate it tomorrow.

  Murphy came back in with a pair of EMTs I recognized, Lamar and Simmons. They got Andi loaded up onto a stretcher, and Lamar blinked when he saw me. He didn’t look as young as he had the last time I’d seen him—a few threads of silver in his hair stood out starkly against his dark hair and skin.

  “Dresden,” he said. “That you?”

  “Mostly.”

  “I heard you were dead.”

  “Close. It didn’t take.”

  He shook his head and helped his partner secure Andi to the stretcher. They picked up the stretcher and toted her outside, with Butters hurrying along beside them, his hand on Andi’s arm.

  Once they were gone, I stood in the room with the grasshopper, Karrin, and Mac. Mouse dozed on the floor near the door, but his ears twitched now and then and I doubted he was missing anything.

  “Molly,” I said. “Would you ask Sarissa to join us, please?”

  She went off to her room, and returned a moment later with Sarissa. The slender, beautiful woman came into the room silently, and didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. Hers were focused in the middle distance, as she tried to keep track of everyone in the room through peripheral vision.

  “All right,” I said. “Things are about to hit the fan. They’re confusing as hell and I’m getting tired of feeling like I have no idea what’s going on. There are some unknown quantities here, and some of you aren’t telling me everything, but there isn’t enough time to pry it all out of each of you.” I pointed a finger at Sarissa. “Maybe you really are everything you say you are. Maybe not. But I figure there’re about two chances in three that you’re playing me somehow, and I think you’re way too good at backstabbing to leave you standing around behind me.”

  “Everything I’ve told you—” Sarissa began.