Brief Cases: The Dresden Files

by Jim Butcher

  “Auntie,” I breathed. “She tricked me.” Lea hadn’t sent me into the building to rescue Thomas—or at least not only for that. It was no freaking coincidence that she’d taught me how to specifically circumvent the magical security the svartalves were using, either. She’d had another purpose in bringing me here on this night.

  I replayed our conversation in my mind and snarled. Nothing she told me was a lie, and all of it had been tailored to make me reach the wrong conclusion—that Thomas had to be rescued and that I was the only one who would do it. I didn’t know why the Leanansidhe thought I needed to be where I was, but she sure as hell had made sure I would get there.

  “That conniving, double-speaking, treacherous bitch. When I catch up with her, I’m going to—”

  Andi let out a sudden, very low growl, and I shut up in the nick of time.

  The door from the upstairs opened, and that bastard Listen and several turtlenecks started walking down the hall toward us.

  Listen was a lean and fit-looking man of middling height. His hair was cropped military short, his skin was pale, and his dark eyes looked hard and intelligent. The werewolves and I had tried to bring him down half a dozen different times, but he always managed to either escape or turn the tables and make us run for our lives.

  Vicious bad guys are bad enough. Vicious, resourceful, ruthless, professional, smart bad guys are way worse. Listen was one of the latter, and I hated his fishy guts.

  He and his lackeys were dressed in the standard uniform of the Fomor servitors: black slacks, black shoes, and a black turtleneck sweater. The high neck of the sweater covered up the gills on both sides of their necks, so that they could pass as mortals. They weren’t, or at least they weren’t anymore. The Fomor had changed them, making them stronger, faster, and all but immune to pain. I’d never managed to set up a successful ambush before, and now one had fallen right into my lap. I absolutely ached to avenge the blood I’d washed from my body early that very day.

  But the servitors had weird minds, and they kept getting weirder. It was damned difficult to get into their heads the way I would need to do, and if that first attack failed in close quarters like these, that crew would tear Andi and me apart.

  So I ground my teeth. I put my hand on Andi’s neck and squeezed slightly as I crouched down beside her, focusing on the veil. I had to tamp down on the introspection suggestion: Listen had nearly killed me a few months before, when he noticed a similar enchantment altering the course of his thoughts. That had been damned scary, but I’d worked on it since then. I closed my eyes and spun the lightest, finest cobwebs of suggestion that my gifts could manage while simultaneously drawing the veil even tighter around us. The light in the hallway shrunk to almost nothing, and the air just over my skin became noticeably cooler.

  They came closer, Listen clearly in the lead, walking with swift and silent purpose. The son of a bitch passed within two feet of me. I could have reached out and touched him with my hand.

  None of them stopped.

  They went down the hall to room 8, and Listen pushed a key into a door. He opened it, and he and his buddies began to enter the room.

  This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. For all the horror the Fomor had brought to the world since the extinction of the Red Court, we still didn’t know why they did what they did. We didn’t know what they wanted, or how they thought their current actions would get it for them.

  So I moved in all the silence the past year had taught me the hard way, and stalked up to the line of servitors passing into the chamber. After a startled second, Andi joined me just as quietly. We barely slipped through the door before it shut.

  No one looked back at us as we passed into a palatial suite, furnished as lavishly as the rest of the building. In addition to the half dozen turtlenecks in Listen’s party, another five were standing around the room in a guard position, backs straight, their arms clasped behind them.

  “Where is he?” Listen asked a guard standing beside a door. The guard was the biggest turtleneck there, with a neck like a fireplug.

  “Inside,” the guard said.

  “It is nearly time,” Listen said. “Inform him.”

  “He left orders that he was not to be disturbed.”

  Listen seemed to consider that for a moment. Then he said, “A lack of punctuality will invalidate the treaty and make our mission impossible. Inform him.”

  The guard scowled. “The lord left orders that—”

  Listen’s upper body surged in a sudden motion, so fast that I could only see it as motion. The big guard let out a sudden hiss and a grunt, and blood abruptly fountained from his throat. He staggered a step, turned to Listen, and raised a hand.

  Then he shuddered and collapsed on the floor, blood pumping rapidly from a huge and jagged wound in his neck.

  Listen dropped a chunk of meat the size of a baseball from his bare, bloody fingers, and bent over to wipe them clean on the dead turtleneck’s sweater. The blood didn’t show against the black. He straightened up again and then knocked on the door.

  “My lord. It is nearly midnight.”

  He did it again exactly sixty seconds later.

  And he repeated it three more times before a slurred voice answered, “I left orders that I was not to be disturbed.”

  “Forgive me, my lord, but the time is upon us. If we do not act, our efforts are for nothing.”

  “It is not for you to presume what orders may or may not be ignored,” said the voice. “Execute the fool who allowed my sleep to be disturbed.”

  “It is already done, my lord.”

  There was a somewhat mollified grunt from the far side of the door, and a moment later it opened, and for the first time I saw one of the lords of the Fomor.

  He was a tall, extremely gaunt being, yet somehow not thin. His hands and feet were too large, and his stomach bulged as if it contained a basketball. His jowls were oversized as well, his jaws swollen as if he had the mumps. His lips were too wide, too thick, and too rubbery-looking. His hair was too flattened, too limp, like strands of seaweed just washed up onto shore, and on the whole he looked like some kind of gangling, poisonous frog. He was dressed only in a blanket draped across his shoulders. Ew.

  There were three women in the room behind him, naked and scattered and dead. Each had livid purple bruises around her throat and glassy, staring eyes.

  The turtlenecks all dropped to the floor in supplication as the Fomor entered, though Listen only genuflected upon one knee.

  “He is here?” asked the Fomor.

  “Yes, my lord,” Listen said, “along with both of his bodyguards.”

  The Fomor croaked out a little laugh and rubbed his splay-fingered hands together. “Mortal upstart. Calling himself a baron. He will pay for what he did to my brother.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “No one is allowed to murder my family but me.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  “Bring me the shell.”

  Listen bowed and nodded to three of the other turtlenecks. They hurried to another door and then emerged, carrying between them an oyster shell that must have weighed half a ton. The thing was monstrous and covered in a crust of coral or barnacles or whatever those things are that grow on the hulls of ships. It was probably seven feet across. The turtlenecks put it down on the floor in the middle of the room.

  The Fomor crossed to the shell, touched it with one hand, and murmured a word. Instantly, light blossomed all across its surface, curling and twisting in patterns or maybe letters I had never seen before. The Fomor stood over it for a time, one hand outstretched, bulbous eyes narrowed, saying something in a hissing, bubbling tongue.

  I didn’t know what he was doing, but he was moving a lot of energy around, whatever it was. I could feel it filling the air of the chamber, making it seem tighter and somehow harder to breathe.

  “My lord?” asked Listen abruptly. “What are you doing?”

  “Making a present for our new allies, of
course,” the Fomor said. “I can hardly annihilate the svartalves along with everyone else. Not yet.”

  “This is not according to the plans of the Empress.”

  “The Empress,” spat the Fomor, “told me that I ought not harm our new allies. She said nothing of the puling scum attending their festivities.”

  “The svartalves value their honor dearly,” Listen said. “You will shame them if their guests come to harm whilst under their hospitality, my lord. It could defeat the point of the alliance.”

  The Fomor spat. A glob of yellowy, mucuslike substance splattered the floor near Listen’s feet. It hissed and crackled against the marble floor. “Once the treaty is signed, it is done. My gift will be given to them in the moments after: I will spare their miserable lives. And if the rest of the scum turn against the svartalves, they will have no choice but to turn to us for our strength.” He smirked. “Fear not, Listen. I am not so foolish as to destroy one of the Empress’s special pets, even in an accident. You and your fellows will survive.”

  I suddenly recognized the tenor of energy building up in the giant shell on the floor and my heart just about stopped.

  Holy crap.

  Lord Froggy had himself a bomb.

  Like, right there.

  “My life belongs to my masters, to spend as they will, my lord,” Listen said. “Have you any other instruction?”

  “Seize whatever treasure you might from the dead before we depart.”

  Listen bowed his head. “How efficacious do you anticipate your gift to be?”

  “The one I made for the Red Court in the Congo was deadly enough,” Lord Froggy said, a smug tone in his voice.

  My heart pounded even harder. During its war with the White Council, the Red Court had used some kind of nerve gas on a hospital tending wounded wizards. The weapon had killed tens of thousands of people in a city far smaller and less crowded than Chicago.

  My bare feet felt tiny and cold.

  Lord Froggy grunted and fluttered his fingers, and the bombshell vanished, hidden by a veil as good as anything I could do. The Fomor lord abruptly lowered his hand, smiling. “Bring my robes.”

  The turtlenecks hurriedly dressed Lord Froggy in what might have been the tackiest robe in the history of robekind. Multiple colors wavered over it in patterns like the ripples on water, but seemed random, clashing with one another. It was beaded with pearls, some of them the size of big supermarket gumballs. They put a crownlike circlet on his head after that, and then Lord Froggy and company headed out the door.

  I crouched as far to the side as I could, almost under the minibar, with Andi huddling right beside me, holding my veil in tight. Lord Froggy blew right by me, with the turtlenecks walking in two columns behind him, their movements precise and uniform—until one of the last pair stopped, his hand holding the door open.

  It was Listen.

  His eyes swept the room slowly, and he frowned.

  “What is it?” asked the other turtleneck.

  “Do you smell something?” Listen asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Perfume.”

  Oh, crap.

  I closed my eyes and focused on my suggestion frantically, adding threads of anxiety to it, trying to keep it too fine for Listen to pick up on.

  After a moment, the other turtleneck said, “I’ve never really liked perfume. We should not be so far from the lord.”

  Listen hesitated a moment more before he nodded and began to leave.

  “Molly!” said Justine’s voice quite clearly from the crystal tucked into my dress. “Miss Gard freaked out about two minutes ago and all but carried Marcone out of here. Security is mobilizing.”

  Sometimes I think my life is all about bad timing.

  Listen whirled around toward us at once, but Andi was faster. She bounded from the floor into a ten-foot leap and slammed against the doorway, hammering it closed with the full weight of her body. In a flickering instant, she was a naked human girl again, straining against the door as she reached up and manually snapped its locks closed.

  I fished the crystal out of my dress and said, “There’s a bomb on the premises, down in the guest wing. I repeat, a bomb in the guest wing, in the Fomor ambassador’s quarters. Find Etri or one of the other svartalves and tell them that the Fomor are planning to murder the svartalves’ guests.”

  “Oh, my God,” Justine said.

  “Holy crap!” chimed in Butters.

  Something heavy and moving fast slammed into the door from the other side, and it jumped in its frame. Andi was actually knocked back off of it a few inches, and she reset herself, pressing her shoulder against it to reinforce it. “Molly!”

  This was another one of those situations in which panic can get you killed. So while I wanted to scream and run around in circles, what I did was close my eyes for a moment as I released the veil and took a slow, deep breath, ordering my thoughts.

  First: If Froggy and the turtlenecks managed to get back into the room, they’d kill us. There were already at least four dead bodies in the suite. Why not add two more? And, all things considered, they’d probably be able to do it. So priority one was to keep them out of the room, at least until the svartalves sorted things out.

  Second: the bomb. If that thing went off, and it was some kind of nerve agent like the Red Court used in Africa, the casualties could be in the hundreds of thousands, and would include Andi and Thomas and Justine—plus Butters and Marci, waiting outside in the car. The bomb had to be disarmed or moved to somewhere safe. Oh, and it would probably need to not be invisible for either of those things to happen.

  And three: Rescue Thomas. Can’t forget the mission, regardless of how complicated things got.

  The door boomed again.

  “Molly!” Andi screamed, her fear making her voice vibrant, piercing.

  “Dammit,” I growled. “What would Harry do?”

  If Harry were here, he would just hold the stupid door shut. His magic talents had been, like, superhero strong when it came to being able to deliver massive amounts of energy. I’m fairly sure he could have stopped a speeding locomotive. Or at least a speeding semitrailer. But my talents just didn’t run to the physical.

  Harry had once told me that when you had one problem, you had a problem. But when you had several problems, you might also have several solutions.

  I stood up and dropped my wands into my hands, gripping them hard. I faced the doorway and said, “Get ready.”

  Andi flashed me a glance. “For what?”

  “To open the door,” I said. “Then shut it behind me.”

  “What?”

  “Close your eyes. Go on three,” I said, and bent my knees slightly. “One!”

  The door rattled again.

  “Two!”

  “Are you insane?” Andi demanded.

  “Three!” I screamed, and sprinted for the door, lifting both wands.

  Andi squeezed her eyes shut and swung the door open, and I deployed the One-Woman Rave.

  Channeling the strength of my will, light and sound burst from the ends of the two wands. Not light like from a flashlight; more like the light of a small nuclear explosion. The sound wasn’t loud like a scream or a small explosion, or even the howl of a passing train. It was like standing on the deck of one of those old World War II battleships when they fired their big guns—a force that could stun a full-man and knock him on his ass.

  I charged ahead with a wall of sound and furious light leading the way, and burst into the hall among the scattered forms of the startled, dazed turtlenecks.

  And then I started playing nasty.

  A few seconds later, the scattered turtlenecks were all on their feet again, though they looked a little disoriented and were blinking. Down the hallway, one of the turtlenecks was helping Lord Froggy to his feet, his lank hair disheveled, his robes in disarray. His ugly face was contorted in fury. “What is happening here, Listen?” he demanded. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. I doubt his ears we
re working very well.

  “My lord,” Listen said, “I believe this is more of the work of the Ragged Lady.”

  “What!? Speak up, fool!”

  Listen’s cheek twitched once. Then he repeated himself in a shout.

  Froggy made a hissing sound. “Meddling bitch,” he snarled. “Break down that door and bring me her heart.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Listen said, and the turtlenecks grouped up around the door to room 8 again.

  They didn’t use any tools. They didn’t need any. They just started kicking the door, three of them at a time, working in unison, driving the heels of their shoes at the wood. In three kicks, cracks began to form and the door groaned. In five, it broke and swung in loosely on its hinges.

  “Kill her!” snarled Lord Froggy, pacing closer to the broken door. “Kill her!”

  All but two of the turtlenecks poured into the room.

  From behind my renewed veil, I figured the timing was about right to discontinue my illusion just as the door bounced back after they’d rushed through it. The silver numeral 8 hanging on the door blurred and melted back into a silver numeral 6.

  Lord Froggy’s eyes widened in sudden, startled realization.

  One of the turtlenecks flew back out the door to room 6 and smashed into the wall on the far side. He hit like a rag doll and flopped to the ground. There was a body-shaped outline in cracked marble and flecks of fresh blood left on the wall behind him.

  And from the other side of the broken door, Thomas Raith, vampire, said, “It’s Listen, right? Wow. Did you clowns ever pick the wrong room.”

  “We made a mistake,” Listen said.

  “Yes. Yes, you did.”

  And things started going crunch and thump in the room beyond.

  Lord Froggy hissed and swiveled his bulgy head around on his gangly neck. “Ragged bitch,” he hissed. “I know you are here.”

  This time, I knew exactly what Harry would do. I lifted my sonic wand and sent my voice down to the far end of the hall, behind him. “Hi there, Froggy. Is it as hard as it looks, holding up villain clichés, or does it come naturally to you?”