by Jim Butcher
“That’s new,” I commented.
He winked at me, and we checked our guns. My .44 revolver went back into my left-hand duster pocket, his back into its sheath.
“You sure you don’t want a grenade or two?” he asked.
“I’m not comfortable with hand grenades,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” he replied. “How about you, Molly?”
He turned back to the car, hand on one of his grenades.
The car was gone. The engine was still idling audibly.
Ramirez let out a whistle and waved his staff into the space it had occupied until it clinked against metal. “Hey, not a bad veil. Pretty damned good, in fact.”
“She’s got a gift,” I said.
Molly’s voice came from nearby. “Thanks.”
Ramirez gave the approximate space where my apprentice sat a big grin and a gallant, vaguely Spanish little bow.
Molly let out a suppressed giggle. The car’s engine cut out, and she said, “Go on. I’ve got to keep compensating for the dust you’re kicking up, and it’s a pain.”
“Eyes open,” I told her. “Use your head.”
“You too,” Molly said.
“Don’t tell him to start new things now,” Ramirez chided her. “You’ll just confuse him.”
“I’m getting dumber by the minute,” I confirmed. “Ask anybody.”
From the unseen car, Mouse snorted out a breath.
“See?” I said, and started walking toward the entrance to the estate.
Ramirez kept up, but only by taking a skipping step every several paces. My legs are lots longer than his.
After a hundred yards or so, he laughed. “All right, you made your point.”
I grunted and slowed marginally.
Ramirez looked back over his shoulder. “Think she’ll be all right?”
“Tough to sneak up on Mouse,” I said. “Even if they realize she’s there.”
“Pretty, a body like that, and talent, too.” Ramirez stared back thoughtfully. “She seeing anyone?”
“Not since she drilled holes in her last boyfriend’s psyche and drove him insane.”
Ramirez winced. “Right.”
We fell silent and walked up to the gates to the estate, getting our game faces on along the way. Ramirez’s natural expression was a cocksure smile, but when things got hairy, he went with a cool, arrogant look that left his eyes focused on nothing and everything at the same time. I really don’t care what my game face looks like. Mine is all internal.
I kept Anna’s face and her serious eyes in mind as I tromped up to the gothic gate made of simulated wrought iron, but heavy enough to stop a charging SUV. I struck it three times with my staff and planted its end firmly onto the ground.
The gate buzzed and began to open of its own accord. Halfway through, something near the hinges let out a whine and a puff of smoke, and it stopped moving.
“That you?” I asked him.
“I took out the lock too,” he replied quietly. “And the cameras that can see the gate. Just in case.”
Ramirez doesn’t have my raw power, but he uses what he has well. “Nice,” I told him. “Didn’t feel a thing.”
His grin flickered by. “De nada. I’m the best.”
I stepped through the gate, keeping a wary eye out. The night was all but complete, and the woods were lovely, dark and deep. Tires whispered on pavement. A light appeared in the trees ahead, and resolved into headlights. A full-fledged limousine, a white Rolls with silver accents, swept down the drive to the gate, and purred to a halt twenty feet in front of us.
Ramirez muttered under his breath, “You want I should—”
“Down, big fella,” I said. “Save ourselves the walk.”
“Bah,” he said. “Some of us are young and healthy.”
The driver door opened and a man got out. I recognized him as one of Lara’s personal bodyguards. He was a bit taller than average, leanly muscled, had a military haircut and sharp, wary eyes. He wore a sports jacket, khakis, and wasn’t working to hide the shoulder rig he wore under the coat. He took a look at us, then past us at the gate and the fence. Then he took a small radio from his pocket and started speaking into it.
“Dresden?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
“Ramirez?”
“The one and only,” Carlos told him.
“You’re armed,” he said.
“Heavily,” I replied.
He grimaced, nodded, and said, “Get in the car, please.”
“Why?” I asked him, oh so innocently.
Ramirez gave me a sharp look, but said nothing.
“I was told to collect you,” the bodyguard said.
“It isn’t far to the house,” I said. “We can walk.”
“Ms. Raith asked me to assure you that, on behalf of her father, you have her personal pledge of safe conduct, as stipulated in the Accords.”
“In that case,” I said, “Ms. Raith can come tell me that her personal self.”
“I’m sure she will be happy to,” the bodyguard said. “At the house, sir.”
I folded my arms and said, “If she’s too busy to move her pretty ass down here, why don’t you go ask her if we can’t come back tomorrow instead?”
There was a whirring sound, and one of the back windows of the Rolls slid down. I couldn’t see much of anyone inside, but I heard a velvet-soft woman’s laugh saunter out of the night. “You see, George. I told you.”
The bodyguard grimaced and looked around. “They’ve done something to the gate. It’s open. You’re exposed here, ma’am.”
“If assassination was their intention,” the woman replied, “believe me when I say that Dresden could already have done it, and I feel confident that his companion, Mr. Ramirez, could have managed the same.”
Ramirez stiffened a little and muttered between clenched teeth, “How does she know me?”
“Ain’t many people ride zombie dinosaurs and make regional commander in the Wardens before they turn twenty-five,” I replied. “Betcha she’s got files on most of the Wardens still alive.”
“And some of the trainees,” agreed the woman’s voice. “George, if you please.”
The bodyguard gave us a flat, measuring look, and then opened the door of the car, one hand resting quite openly on the butt of the pistol hanging under one arm.
The mistress of the White Court stepped forth from the Rolls-Royce.
Lara is…difficult to describe. I’d met her several times, and each meeting had carried a similar impact, a moment of stunned admiration and desire at her raw physical appeal that did not lessen with exposure. There was no one feature about her that I could have pointed out as particularly gorgeous. There was no one facet of her beauty that could be declared as utter perfection. Her appeal was something far greater than the sum of her parts, and none of those were less than heavenly.
Like Thomas, she had dark, idly curling hair so glossy that the highlights were very nearly a shade of blue. Her skin was one creamy, gently curving expanse of milk white perfection, and if there were moles or birthmarks anywhere on her body, I couldn’t see them. Her dark pink lips were a little large for her narrow-chinned face, but they didn’t detract—they only gave her a look of lush overindulgence, of deliberate and wicked sensuality.
It was her eyes, though, that were the real killers. They were large, oblique orbs of arsenic grey, highlighted with flecks of periwinkle blue. More important, they were very alive eyes, alert, aware of others, shining with intelligence and humor—so much so, in fact, that if you weren’t careful, you’d miss the smoldering, demonic fires of sensuality in them, of a steady, predatory hunger.
Beside me, Ramirez swallowed. I knew only because I could hear it. When Lara makes an entrance, no one looks away.
She wore a white silk business suit, its skirt less than an inch too short to be considered dignified business wear, the heels of her white shoes just a tiny bit too high for propriety. It made it difficult not t
o stare at her legs. A lot of women with her coloring couldn’t pull off a white outfit, but Lara made it look like a goddess’s toga.
She knew the effect she had when we looked at her, and her mouth curled into a satisfied little smile. She walked toward us slowly, one leg crossing the other at a deliberate pace, hips shifting slightly. The motion was…awfully pretty. Sheer, sensual femininity gathered around her in a silent, unseen thundercloud, so thick that it could drown a man if he wasn’t careful.
After all, she had drowned her father in it, hadn’t she.
All is not gold that glitters, and how well I knew it. As delicious as she looked, as pants-rendingly gorgeously as she moved, she was capital-D Dangerous. More, she was a vampire, a predator, one who fed on human beings to continue her very existence. Despite our past cooperation, I was still human, and she was still something that ate humans. If I acted like food, there would be an enormous part of her that wouldn’t care about politics or advantage. It would just want to eat me.
So I did my best to look bored as she approached and offered me her hand, palm down.
I took her cold (smooth, pretty, deliciously soft—dammit, Harry, ignore your penis before it gets you killed!) fingers in mine, bent over them in a little formal bow, and released them without kissing her hand. If I had, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t take a few nibbles, just to test out the texture as long as I was there.
As I rose, she met my eyes for a dangerous second and said, “Sure you don’t want a taste, Harry?”
A surge of raw lust that was—probably—not my own flickered through my body. I smiled at her, gave her a little bow of my head, and made a small effort of will. The runes and sigils on my staff erupted into smoldering orange Hellfire. “Be polite, Lara. It would be a shame to get cinders and ashes all over those shoes.”
She tilted her head back and let out a bubbling, throaty laugh, then touched the side of my face with one hand. “Subtle, as always,” she replied. She lowered her hand and ran her fingertips over the odd grey material of my Warden’s cloak. “You’ve developed…an eclectic taste in fashion.”
“It’s the same color,” I said, “on both sides.”
“Ah,” Lara said, and inclined her head slightly to me. “I’d hardly respect you otherwise, I suppose. Still, should you ever desire a new wardrobe…” She touched the fabric of my shirt lightly. “You would look marvelous in white silk.”
“Said the spider to the fly,” I replied. “Forget it.”
She smiled again, batted her lashes at me while my heart skipped a beat, and then slid on to Ramirez. She offered him her hand. “You must be Warden Ramirez.”
This is the part where I got nervous. Ramirez loved women. Ramirez never shut up about women. Well, he never shut up about anything in general, but he’d go on and on about various conquests and feats of sexual athleticism and—
“A virgin?” Lara blurted. Lara blurted. She turned her head to me, grey eyes several shades paler than they had been, and very wide. “Really, Harry, I’m not sure what to say. Is he a present?”
I folded my arms and regarded Lara steadily, but said nothing. This was Ramirez’s moment to make a first impression, and if he didn’t do it on his own, Lara would regard him as someone who couldn’t protect himself. It would probably mark him as a target.
Lara turned to walk a slow circle around Ramirez, inspecting him the way you might a flashy new sports car. She was of a height with him, but taller in the heels, and there was nothing but a languidly sensual confidence in the way she moved. “A handsome young bantam,” she murmured. She trailed a finger across the line of his shoulders as she moved behind him. “Strong. Young. A hero of the White Council, I’ve heard.” She paused to touch a fingertip to the back of his hand, and then shuddered. “And power, too.” Her eyes went a few shades brighter as she completed the tour. “My goodness. I’ve recently fed, and still…Perhaps you’d care to ride with me back to the estate, and let Dresden walk. I promise to entertain you until he arrives.”
I knew the look on Ramirez’s face. It was the look of a young man who wants nothing so badly as to discard the complex things in life, like civilization, social mores, clothing, and speech, and see what happened next.
Lara knew it, too. Her eyes glittered brightly, and her smile was serpentine, and she pressed closer.
But Ramirez apparently knew about glittery gold, too. I didn’t know he’d hidden a knife up his sleeve, but it appeared in his hand an instant before its tip pressed into the bottom of Lara’s throat.
“I,” he said very quietly, “am not food.” And he met her eyes.
I hadn’t seen a soulgaze from the outside before. It surprised me, how simple and brief it looked, when one wasn’t being shaken to the core by it. Both of them stared, eyes widening, and then shuddered. Lara took a small step back from Ramirez, her breathing slightly quickened. I noticed, because I’m a professional investigator. She could have been concealing a weapon in that décolletage.
“If you meant to dissuade me,” Lara said a moment later, “you haven’t.”
“Not you,” Ramirez replied, lowering the knife. His voice was rough. “It wasn’t to dissuade you.”
“Wise,” she murmured, “for one so young. I advise you, young wizard, not to hesitate so long to act, should another approach you as I did. A virgin is…extremely attractive to our kind. One such as you is rare, these days. Give a less restrained member of the court an opportunity as you did me, and they’ll throw themselves on you in dozens—which would reflect poorly on me.”
She turned back to me and said, “Wizards, you have my pledge of safe conduct.”
I inclined my head to her and said, “Thank you.”
“Then I will await your company in the car.”
I nodded my head to her, and Lara walked back to her bodyguard, who looked like he was fighting off a fit of apoplexy.
I turned and eyed Ramirez.
He turned bright red.
“Virgin?” I asked him.
He turned more red.
“Carlos?” I asked.
“She’s lying,” he snapped. “She’s evil. She’s really evil. And lying.”
I rubbed at my mouth to keep anyone from seeing me grin.
Hey. On nights like this, you take your laughs where you can get them.
“Okay,” I said. “Not important.”
“The hell it isn’t!” he spat. “She’s lying! I mean, I’m not…I’m…”
I nudged him with an elbow. “Focus, Galahad. We’ve got a job to do.”
He exhaled with a growl. “Right.”
“You saw what was inside her?” I asked.
He shuddered. “That pale thing. Her eyes…she was getting more turned on, and they kept looking more like its eyes.”
“Yep,” I said. “It’s a tip-off to how close they are to starting to take a bite of you. You handled it right.”
“You think so?”
I couldn’t resist jibing him, just a little. “Just think. If you’d messed it up,” I said, as Lara slid into the car one long, perfect leg at a time, “you’d be in the limo with Lara ripping your clothes off right now.”
Ramirez looked at the car and swallowed. “Um. Yeah. Close one.”
“I’ve met several of the White Court,” I said. “Lara’s probably the smartest. She’s the most civilized, progressive, adaptable. She’s definitely the most dangerous.”
“She didn’t look that tough,” Ramirez said, but he was frowning in thought as he said it.
“She’s dangerous in a different way than most,” I said. “But I think her word is good.”
“It is,” Ramirez said firmly. “I saw that much.”
“It’s one of the things that makes her dangerous,” I said, and headed for the limo. “Stay cool.”
We walked over and I leaned down to see Lara in the back of the limo, seated on one of the dogcart-style seats, all poise and beauty and gorgeous grey eyes. She smiled at me as I looked in, and crooked a finger.<
br />
“Step into my limo,” said the spider to the fly.
And we did.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The limo rolled right past the enormous stone house that was the château proper. It was bigger than a parking garage, and covered with cornices and turrets and gargoyles, like some kind of neo-Medieval castle.
“We’re, uh,” I noted, “not stopping at the house.”
“No,” Lara said from the seat facing us. Even in the dark, you could see the glow of her luminous skin. “The conclave is being held in the Deeps.” Her eyes glittered at me. “Less walking for everyone, that way.”
I gave her a small smile and said, “I like the house. The whole castle-look thing. It’s always nice to know you’re living somewhere that could withstand a besieging army of Bohemian mercenaries if it had to.”
“Or American wizards,” she replied smoothly.
I gave her what I hoped was a wolfish smile, folded my arms, and watched the house go by. We turned down a little gravel lane and drove another mile or so before the car slowed and came to a stop. Bodyguard George got out and opened the door for Lara, whose thigh brushed against mine as she got out, and whose perfume smelled good enough to scramble my brain for a good two or three seconds.
Both I and Ramirez sat still for a second.
“That,” I said, “is an awfully lovely woman. I thought I should let you know, kid, in case your inexperience had blinded you to the fact.”
“Lying,” Ramirez stated, blushing. “Evil.”
I snickered and slid out of the car to follow Lara—and the three more bodyguards waiting for her—into the woods beside the gravel lane.
The last time I’d found the entrance to the Deeps, I’d been stumbling through the woods, focused on a tracking spell and tripping over roots and hummocks in the old-growth forest.
This time, there was a lighted path, with a red carpet, no less, leading down between the trees. The lights were all of soft blues and greens, small lamps that, upon a closer glance, proved to be elegant little crystal cages containing tiny, humanoid forms with wings. Faeries, tiny pixies, each surrounded by its own sphere of light, trapped and miserable, crouched in the cages.