by Jim Butcher
I felt a little sick to my stomach.
“If you like, you might consider it an act of mercy,” she said. “Accept my offer, and I will forgive your debt to me and answer all your questions freely.”
I shuddered. Mab’s last Knight had been an abusive, psychotic, drug-addicted, murdering rapist. I was never clear on whether he got the job because of those qualities or whether they had been instilled in him on the job. Either way, the title of Winter Knight was a permanent gig. If I accepted Mab’s offer, I’d be doing it for life—though there would, of course, be no promises as to how long that life would be.
“I told you once before,” I said, “that I’m not interested.”
“Things have changed, wizard,” Mab said. “You know the kind of power you face in Kemmler’s heirs. As the Winter Knight, you would have strength far outweighing even your own considerable gifts. You would have the wherewithal to face your foes, rather than slinking through the night gathering up whispers to use against them.”
“No.” I paused and then said, “And no means no.”
Mab shrugged one shoulder, a liquid motion that drew my eyes toward the curves of her breasts within the silken gown. “You disappoint me, child. But I can wait. I can wait until the sun burns cold.”
Thunder rumbled over the lake. Off in the southwest, lightning leapt from cloud to cloud.
Mab turned her head to watch. “Interesting.”
“Uh. What’s interesting?”
“Powers at work, preparing the way.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“That you have little time,” Mab said. She turned to face me again. “I must do what I might to preserve your life. Know this, mortal: Should Kemmler’s heirs acquire the knowledge bound within the Word, they will be in a position to gather up such power as the world has not seen in many thousands of years.”
“What? How?”
“Kemmler was”—Mab’s eyes grew distant, as if in memory—“a madman. A monster. But brilliant. He learned how to bind to his will not only dead flesh, but shades—to rend them asunder and devour them to feed his own power. It was the secret of the strength that allowed him to defy all the White Council together.”
I added two and two and got four. “The heirs want to call up the ancient spirits,” I breathed. “And then devour them for power.”
Mab’s deep-green eyes almost seemed to glow with intensity. “Kemmler himself attempted it, but the Council struck him down before he could finish.”
I swallowed. “What happens if one of his heirs is able to do it?”
“The heir would gain power such as has not been wielded by mortal hands in the memory of your race,” Mab said.
“The Darkhallow,” I said. I rubbed at my eyes. “That’s what it is. A ritual, tomorrow night. Halloween. They all want to be the one to make themselves into a junior-league god.”
“Power is ever sweet, is it not?”
I thought about it some more. I had to worry about more than just Kemmler’s cronies. Mavra wanted the Word, too. Hell’s bells. If Mavra succeeded in making herself into some kind of dark goddess, there wasn’t a chance in hell that she wouldn’t obliterate me at the first opportunity. “Can they do it without the Word?”
Mab’s mouth curled up in a slow smile. “If they could, why would they seek it so desperately?” The wind began to stir again, and the lake began to resume its ebb and flow. “Beware, wizard. You are engaged in a most deadly game. I should be disappointed were I deprived of your service.”
“Then get used to it,” I said. “I’m never going to be your knight.”
Mab tilted back her head and let out that nerve-searing laughter again. “I have time,” she said. “And you mortals find life to be very sweet. Two favors you yet owe me, and make no mistake, I will collect. One day you will kneel at my feet.”
The lake suddenly surged, dark waters whirling up in a snake-quick spiral, forming a waterspout that stretched from the lake’s surface up out of sight into the darkness above me. The wind howled, driving my balance to one side, so that my wounded leg buckled and I fell to one knee.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the gale was gone. The lake was calm again. The wind sighed mournfully through tree branches sparsely covered in dead leaves. There was no sign of Mab.
I grimaced and struggled to my feet. I glanced back at Mouse, who was sitting on the shore, watching me with worried doggy eyes.
“She always has to have the last word,” I told him.
Mouse padded over to me, and I scratched his ears a couple of times while he snuffled at me. He looked warily out at the lake.
“One problem at a time,” I told him. “We’ll handle Mab later. Somehow.”
I walked back to the Beetle more slowly than ever, and Mouse stayed within a step or two the entire time. The adrenaline faded and left me wearier than ever. I had to fight to stay awake all the way back to my place. A thin, cold, drizzling rain began to fall.
I had just gotten home and out of the car when Mouse let out a warning snarl. I spun and wavered, then planted my staff hard on the ground to keep from falling over.
Out of the darkness and rain, a dozen or more people suddenly loomed into view. All of them walked toward me, steady and unhurried.
And all of them marched in step with one another.
In the distance I heard the low, rumbling thunder of a drum played on a big bass stereo.
Behind the first group came another. And behind them another. By then I could see the eyes of the nearest—empty, staring eyes in sunken, deathly faces.
My heart lurched in sudden terror as the zombies closed in on me.
I shambled down my stairs and tripped, stumbling against my door. I fumbled at my keys, frantically taking down my wards so that my own security spells didn’t kill me on my way in. Mouse stayed at my back, continuous snarls bubbling from between his bared teeth.
“Thomas!” I screamed. “Thomas, open the door!”
I heard a noise, close, and spun around.
Mindless faces appeared at the top of the stairs leading down to my apartment door, and Grevane’s killing machines leapt down them, straight at me.
Chapter
Twenty-two
Mouse leapt into the air as the lead zombie flung itself at me, and met it with an ugly sound of impact. The dog and the animate corpse dropped onto the stairs. The zombie swung an arm at Mouse, but the dog rolled, taking the blow on one slab of a shoulder, his snarl sharpening at the impact. The dog surged against the zombie’s legs and got his teeth into the corpse’s face. He shook his head violently, while the zombie stumbled and reeled under the ferocity of the attack.
The second zombie bypassed the struggling pair, reaching out for me. I barely had time to brandish my staff at the creature and snarl, “Forzare!”
Unseen force struck the zombie like an ocean wave, flinging it back up the stairs and out of sight.
Mouse let out a shrieking sound of pain, ripped his fangs once more at the zombie’s face, and pushed away from it. The zombie’s face had been crushed and torn until it was unrecognizable. Both eyes had been torn out, and the undead thing flailed around wildly, striking blindly with heavy sweeps of its arms. Mouse leaned heavily against me, one paw held lifted from the ground, snarling.
Three more zombies were already most of the way down the stairs, and there was no time to do anything but try my staff again. I raised it, but the nearest zombie was faster than I had guessed, and he batted the wood out of my hand. It smacked against the concrete wall of the stairwell and rebounded onto the blinded zombie, out of my reach. The zombie snatched at my arm and I barely avoided it.
The door opened at my back and Thomas called, “Down!”
I dropped to the ground and did my best to haul Mouse down with me. There was a roar of thunder, and the leading zombie’s head vanished into a spray of ugly, rotten gore. The remainder of the being thrashed for a second and then fell drunkenly to one side, collapsing int
o immobility.
Thomas stood in the doorway, dressed only in a pair of blue jeans. He held the sawed-off shotgun against his shoulder, and his eyes blazed with a cold silver fury. He worked the pump on the gun and fired it three times more, destroying or driving back my nearest attackers for a moment. Then he seized the collar of my duster and dragged me forcibly into the apartment. Mouse came with us, and Thomas slammed the door shut.
“Get the locks,” I told him. He started shoving the door’s two heavy security bolts shut, while I crawled to the door, laid my hands against it, and with a whisper of will rearmed the wards that protected the apartment. The air hummed with a low buzz as the wards snapped back up into place.
Silence fell over the apartment.
“Okay,” I said, panting. “That’s it. Safe at home.” I looked around the apartment and spotted Butters hovering near the fireplace, poker in hand. “You okay, man?”
“I guess so,” Butters said. He looked a little wild around the eyes. “Are they gone?”
“If they aren’t yet, they will be. We’re safe.”
“Are you sure?”
“Definitely,” I said. “There’s no way they’re going to get in here.”
The words were hardly off my lips when there was a thunder crack of sound and a heavy thump that knocked scores of books off my bookshelves and sent us all staggering around like the cast of the original Star Trek.
“What was that?” Butters screamed.
“The wards,” Thomas snapped.
“No,” I said. “I mean, come on. Walking right into those wards is suicide.”
There was another clap of thunder, and the apartment shook again. A flash of bright blue light bathed the outside of the boardinghouse, and even reflected through the sunken windows near my apartment’s ceiling, it was painfully bright.
“Can’t commit suicide if you’re already dead,” Thomas said. “How many of those things were out there?”
“Uh, I’m not sure,” I said. “A lot?”
Thomas swallowed, got the box of shells off the mantel, and started loading them into the shotgun. “What happens if he just keeps throwing zombies at the wards?”
“I didn’t build them to keep up a continuous discharge,” I said. There was another roaring sound and another flash of light, but this time there was barely a tremor on the floor. “They’re going to fade and collapse.”
“How long?” Thomas asked.
There was a crackling buzz from outside, too slow, this time, to be heard only as a roar of noise. Blue-white light flickered dimly. “Not long. Dammit.”
“Oh, God,” Butters said. “Oh, God, oh, God. What happens when the wards are gone?”
I grunted. “The door is made of steel. It will take them some time to get through it. And after that, there’s the threshold. That should stop them, or at least slow them down.” I raked my fingers over my hair. “We’ve got to come up with something, fast.”
“What about the extra defenses?” Thomas asked.
“They’re standing right outside,” I said.
“Hence the need for extra defenses,” Thomas snapped. He pumped a round into the shotgun’s chamber and slipped another into the extra slot in its clip.
“Those defenses are meant to stop a magical assault,” I said. “Not physical entry.”
“Will they keep the zombies out?” Butters asked.
“Yes. But they’ll also keep us in.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Butters asked.
“Nothing,” I said, “until Grevane sets the building on fire. Once they go up, I can’t take them down again. We’ll be trapped.” I ground my teeth. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“But the zombies are out there!” Butters said.
“I’m not the only one who lives here,” I said. “If he burns down the house to get to me, people will die. Thomas, get dressed and get your shoes on. Butters, there’s a ladder under that Navajo rug there. I want you to take a candle and go down it. There’s a black nylon backpack on a table, and a white skull on a wooden shelf. Put the skull in the backpack and bring it to me.”
“What?” Butters said.
“Do it!” I snapped.
Butters scurried over to the Navajo rug, found the trapdoor down to my lab, and grabbed a candle. He disappeared down the ladder.
Thomas put the shotgun down and opened his trunk. It didn’t take him long to get dressed in socks, black combat boots, a white T-shirt, a black leather jacket. Maybe it was part of his supernatural sex-vampire powers—dressing quickly for a hasty getaway.
“You see?” he said while he dressed. “About Butters.”
“Shut up, Thomas,” I said.
“What is the plan?” he said.
I limped over to the phone and put it to my ear. Nothing.
“They cut the phone.”
“We can’t call for help,” Thomas said.
“Right. Only thing we can do is smash our way out to the car.”
Thomas nodded his head with a jerk. “How you want to do it?”
“What do you think?”
“Big old wall of fire would do it. Cover our left flank and keep the bad guys off of us. I’ll take the right flank and shoot anything that moves.”
Fire magic. A sudden memory of my burned hand flashed through my head so intensely that I felt actual, physical pain in the nerve endings that had been destroyed. I thought about what I would need to do to manage the wall Thomas had suggested, and at the mere thought my stomach twisted in revulsion—and worse, with doubt.
For magic to work, you have to believe in it. You have to believe that you can and should perform whatever action you had in mind, or you get zippo. As my hand burned with phantom agony, I realized something I had not admitted, not even to myself.
I wasn’t sure I could use fire magic again.
Ever.
And if I tried it and failed, it would only make it more difficult to focus my will on it again in the future, each failure building a wall that would only grow more difficult to breach. My belief in my powers might never recover.
I looked down at my maimed hand, and for just a second I actually saw the blackened, cracked flesh, my fingers swollen, the whole of it seeping blood and fluid. The second passed, and there was only my hand in its leather glove again, and I knew that beneath the glove it was scarred in various shades of white and red and pink.
I wasn’t ready. God, even to save lives that included my own, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to call up fire again. I stood there feeling helpless and angry and afraid and stupid—and most of all, ashamed.
I shook my head at Thomas and avoided meeting his eyes while I gave him an excuse. “I’m all but done,” I said quietly. “I’ve got to save whatever I have left to block Grevane if he throws power at us directly. I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to do.”
He searched my expression for a second, frowning. Then he shrugged into the jacket, his face grim. He seized the saber in its scabbard and buckled it on with a worn leather belt. He settled it at his hip and picked up the shotgun again. “Guess it’s up to me, then.”
I nodded.
“I’m not sure how hard I’ll be able to push,” he said quietly.
“You handled Black Court vampires pretty well last year,” I said.
“I’d been feeding on Justine every day,” he said. “I had a lot to draw on. Now…” He shook his head. “Now I’m not sure.”
“We aren’t exactly overstaffed here, Thomas.”
He closed his eyes for a second, and then nodded. “Right.”
“Here’s the plan. We get to the Beetle. We drive away.”
“And then what? Where do we go after that?” he asked.
“You don’t see me nitpicking your plans, do you?”
There was a sudden, heavy thump against the steel security door. It rattled in its frame. Bits of dust descended from my ceiling. Then another. And another. Grevane had thrown enough zombies at the wards to wear
them out.
Thomas grimaced and looked at my leg. “Can you get up the stairs on your own?”
“I’ll make it,” I said.
Butters came panting up the stepladder from the lab, his face pale. He wore my nylon pack, and I could see Bob the skull making one side of it bulge a little.
“Gun,” I said to Thomas, and he handed me the shotgun. “Right. Here’s how it works. We open the door.” I gestured with the shotgun. “I sweep it clear enough to get Thomas clear of the doorway. Then Thomas goes in front. Butters, I’m going to hand you the shotgun.”
“I don’t like guns,” Butters said.
“You don’t have to like it,” I said. “You just have to carry it. With my leg hurt, I can’t get up the stairs without using my staff.”
The steel door rattled again, the pace of the blows against it increasing.
“Butters,” I snapped. “Butters, you’ve got to take the gun when I hand it to you and follow Thomas. All right?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Once we get up the stairs, Thomas runs interference while I start the car. Butters, you’ll get in the backseat. Thomas gets in and then we leave.”
“Um,” Butters said, “Grevane trashed my car so I couldn’t get away, remember? What if he’s done the same thing to yours?”
I stared at Butters for a second and tried not to show him how much that worried me.
“Butters,” Thomas said quietly, “if we stay here we’re going to die.”
“But if they’ve destroyed the car—” Butters began.
“We’ll die,” Thomas said. “But we don’t have a choice. Whether or not they’ve destroyed it, our only chance of getting out of this alive is to get to the Beetle and hope it runs.”
The little guy got even paler, and then abruptly doubled over and staggered over to the wall beneath one of my high windows. He threw up. He straightened after a minute and leaned back against the wall, shaking. “I hate this,” he whispered, and wiped his mouth. “I hate this. I want to go home. I want to wake up.”
“Get it together, Butters,” I said, my voice tight. “This isn’t helping.”
He let out a wild laugh. “Nothing I can do would help, Harry.”