by Jim Butcher
I stumbled forward and grabbed the line, wrapping it around my right arm. That was pretty much all I had enough energy left to do. Murphy began hauling it in, and started yelling for Thomas to help her.
“Cover me!” Thomas yelled.
He came down from the wheelhouse pirate style, just jumping down, all graceful and stylish despite the roll of the ship, despite the ice and the cold. Murphy, her feet planted, secured to the railing, shifted her grip and produced the little assault weapon she’d had on a strap around her back—the P-90 Kincaid had given her as a gift. She raised it to her shoulder, sighted through the scope at one of the oncoming rafts, and started calmly squeezing out rounds, one and two at a time. Fam. Famfam. Fam. Famfam. Fam. Fam.
One of the rafts foundered. Maybe she’d struck whoever was steering it and caused him to misguide it. Maybe the lake had simply swamped it. I don’t know. But a second raft immediately turned to start picking up men who had spilled into the water from the first. Murphy turned her gun onto the remaining raft.
Thomas started hauling me out of the water by the line around my arm, just pulling me up arm over arm as if I’d been a child and not an adult a hundred pounds heavier than he was. He doesn’t even work out.
I was tired enough that I just let him do it. As a result I had enough spare attention to notice when my feet cleared the water, and Deirdre surged out of the blackness and seized my ankles.
“Kill you!” she snarled. “Kill you for what you did to him!”
“Holy crap!” Thomas yelled.
“Ack!” I agreed.
Most of those deadly strands of her hair were thrust into the stone reef below, holding her down, but a few that were free whipped wildly at Thomas. He ducked aside with a yell, barely managing to hold on to the line.
It felt like she was going to pull my legs off at the ankles. I screamed and kicked at her as best I could, but my legs were so numb that I could barely move them, much less shake her off. Thomas had all that he could do to simply hold on to the line and prevent those bladed strands from severing it.
“Karrin!” he screamed.
Murphy swung her legs up over the railing of the ship, still attached to it by the line fastened to her harness. Then she swung herself out into empty air above the water until she hung alongside me.
Then she aimed the P-90 down at Deirdre and flicked the selector to full automatic.
But before she could pull the trigger, Deirdre hissed, and a flickering blade swept up and struck Murphy across the face. She screamed and recoiled as the blade continued, an S-shaped cut that missed Murphy’s throat by a finger’s breadth and sliced through the strap that held the P-90 on her body. The weapon tumbled into the water.
“Bitch!” Murphy snarled, one side of her face a sheet of blood. She tried to reach for her pistol—in its shoulder holster, beneath her harness, beneath her coat. It might as well have been on the surface of the moon.
“Murph!” I said. I twisted my shoulders and thrust the end of Fidelacchius to within reach of her hand.
Murphy’s fingers closed on the hilt of the holy blade.
She drew it maybe an inch from the scabbard.
White light blinded me. Blinded Deirdre. Blinded Murphy. Blinded Thomas. Blinded everyone.
“No!” Deirdre screamed, utter despair and terror in her voice. “No, no, no!”
The pressure on my ankles vanished, and I heard the Denarian splash into the water.
Murphy released the hilt of the sword. The light died. It took maybe half a minute before I could see anything else. Thomas recovered faster, of course, and by that time he had us both back onto the deck of the Water Beetle. There was no evidence of Deirdre anywhere, and the two boatloads of soldier boys were hightailing it away as fast as they could go.
Murphy, bleeding from a cut running parallel to her right eyebrow all the way into her hairline, was staring in shock at me and at the sword. “What the fuck was that?”
I slipped the sword off my shoulder. I felt really tired. I hurt everywhere. “Offhand,” I mumbled, “I’d say it was a job offer.”
“We’ve got to move before we get carried onto the reef,” Thomas muttered. He hurried off, pirate style. He looked good doing it. Of course. He doesn’t even moisturize.
Murphy stared at the sword for a second more. Then she looked at me, and her bloody face went tight with concern. “Jesus, Harry.” She moved to the side of my wounded leg and helped support my weight as I hobbled into the ship’s cabin. “Come on. Let’s get you warmed up.”
“Well?” I asked her as she helped me. “How ’bout it? I got this sword that needs somebody to use it.”
She sat me down on one of the bench seats in the ship’s cabin. She looked at the sword for a moment, seriously. Then she shook her head and said quietly, “I’ve got a job.”
I smiled faintly and closed my eyes. “I thought you’d say that.”
“Shut up, Harry.”
“Okay,” I said.
And I did. For hours. It was glorious.
Chapter Forty-six
I woke up covered in a couple of heavy down comforters and innumerable blankets, and it was morning. The bench seat on the Water Beetle had been folded out into a reasonably comfortable cot. A kerosene heater was burning on the other side of the cabin. It wasn’t exactly toasty, but it made the cabin warm enough to steam up the windows.
I came to slowly, aching in every joint, muscle and limb. The after-action hangover was every bit as bad as I had anticipated. I tried to remind myself that this was a deliriously joyous problem to deal with, all things considered. I wasn’t being a very good sport about it, though. I growled and complained bitterly, and eventually worked up enough nerve to sit up and get out from under the covers. I went to the tiny bathroom—though on a boat, I guess it’s called a “head” for some stupid reason—and by the time I zombie-shuffled out, Thomas had come down from the deck and slipped inside. He was putting a cell phone back into his jacket pocket, and his expression was serious.
“Harry,” he said. “How you doing?”
I suggested what he could do with his reproductive organs.
He arched an eyebrow at me. “Better than I’d expected.”
I grunted. Then I added, “Thank you.”
He snorted. That was all. “Come on. I’ve got coffee for you in the car.”
“I’m leaving everything to you in my will,” I said.
“Cool. Next time I’ll leave you in the water.”
I pulled my coat on with a groan. “Almost wish you had. Coin? Sword?”
“Safe, stowed below. You want them?”
I shook my head. “Keep them here for now.”
I followed him out to the truck, gimping on my bad knee. I noted that someone had, at some point in the evening, cleaned me up a bit and put new bandages on my leg, and on a number of scrapes and contusions I didn’t even remember getting. I was wearing fresh clothing, too. Thomas. He didn’t say anything about it, and neither did I. It’s a brother thing.
We got into the battered Hummer, and I seized a paper cup of coffee waiting for me next to a brown paper bag. I grabbed the coffee, dumped in a lot of sugar and creamer, stirred it for about a quarter turn of the stick, and started sipping. Then I checked out the bag. Doughnut. I assaulted it.
Thomas began to start the car but froze in place and blinked at the doughnut. “Hey,” he said. “Where the hell did that come from?”
I took another bite. Cake doughnut. White frosting. Sprinkles. Still warm. And I had hot coffee to go with it. Pure heaven. I gave my brother a cryptic look and just took another bite.
“Christ,” he muttered, starting the truck. “You don’t even explain the little things, do you?”
“It’s like a drug,” I said, through a mouthful of fattening goodness.
I enjoyed the doughnut while I could, letting it fully occupy all my senses. After I’d finished it, and the coffee started kicking in, I realized why I’d indulged myself so completely: I
t was likely to be the last bit of pleasure I was going to feel for a while.
Thomas hadn’t said a damned thing about where we were going—or how anyone was doing after the events of the night before.
The Stroger building, the new hospital that has replaced the old Cook County complex as Chicago’s nerve center of medicine, is only a few yards away from the old clump of buildings. It looks kind of like a castle. If you scrunch up your eyes a little, you can almost imagine its features as medieval ramparts and towers and crenellation, standing like some ancient mountain bastion, determined to defend the citizens of Chicago against the plagues and evils of the world.
Provided they have enough medical coverage, of course.
I finished the coffee and thought to myself that I might have been feeling a little pessimistic.
Thomas led me up to intensive care. He stopped in the hallway outside. “Luccio’s coordinating the information, so I don’t have many details. But Molly’s in there. She’ll have the rest of them for you.”
“What do you know?” I asked him.
“Michael’s in bad shape,” he said. “Still in surgery, last I heard. They’re waiting for him up here. I guess the bullets all came up from underneath him, and that armor he was wearing actually kept one of them in. Bounced around inside him like a BB inside a tin can.”
I winced.
“They said he only got hit by two or three rounds,” Thomas continued. “But that it was more or less a miracle that he survived it at all. They don’t know if he’s going to make it. Sanya didn’t go into anything more specific than that.”
I closed my eyes.
“Look,” Thomas said. “I’m not exactly welcome around here right now. But I’ll stay if you need me to.”
Thomas wasn’t telling me the whole truth. My brother wasn’t comfortable in hospitals, and I was pretty sure I’d figured out why: They were full of the sick, the injured, and the elderly—i.e., the kind of herd animals that predators’ instincts told them were weakest, and the easiest targets. My brother didn’t like being reminded about that part of his nature. He might hate that it happened, but his instincts would react regardless of what he wanted or didn’t want. It would be torture for him to hang around here.
“No,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
He frowned at me. “All right,” he said after a moment. “You’ve got my number. Call me; I’ll give you a ride home.”
“Thanks.”
He put a hand on my arm for a second, then turned, hunched his shoulders, bowed his head so that his hair fell to hide most of his face, and walked quickly away.
I went on into the intensive care ward and found the waiting area.
Molly was sitting inside, next to Charity. Mother and daughter sat side by side, holding hands. They looked strained and weary. Charity was wearing jeans and one of Michael’s flannel shirts. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she didn’t have any makeup on. She’d been pulled from her bed in the middle of the night to rush to the hospital. Her eyes were focused into the distance and blank.
Small wonder. This was her greatest nightmare come to life.
They looked up as I came in, and their expressions were exactly the same: neutral, distant, numb.
“Harry,” Molly said, her voice hollow, ghostly.
“Hey, kid,” I said.
It took Charity a moment to react to my arrival. She focused her eyes on the far wall, blinked them a couple of times, and then focused them on me. She nodded and didn’t speak.
“I, uh,” I said quietly.
Molly raised her hand to stop me from speaking. I shut up.
“Okay,” she said. “Uh, let me think.” She closed her eyes, frowning in concentration, and started ticking off one finger with each sentence. “Luccio says that the Archive is stable but unconscious. She’s at Murphy’s house and needs to talk to you. Murphy says to tell you her face will be fine. Sanya says that he needs to talk to you alone, and as soon as possible, at St. Mary’s.”
I waved a hand at all of that. “I’ll take care of it later. How’s your dad?”
“Severe trauma to his liver,” Charity said, her voice toneless. “One of his kidneys was damaged too badly to be saved. One of his lungs collapsed. There’s damage to his spine. One of his ribs was fractured into multiple pieces. His pelvis was broken in two places. His jaw was shattered. Subdural hematoma. There was trauma all through one ocular cavity. They aren’t sure if he’ll lose the eye or not. There might also be brain damage. They don’t know yet.” Her eyes overflowed and focused into the distance again. “There was trauma to his heart. Fragments of broken bone in it. From his ribs.” She shuddered and closed her eyes. “His heart. They hurt his heart.”
Molly sat back down beside her mother and put her arm around Charity’s shoulders. Charity leaned against her, eyes still spilling tears, but she never made a sound.
I’m not a Knight.
I’m not a hero, either.
Heroes keep their promises.
“Molly,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
She looked up at me, and her lip started quivering. She shook her head and said, “Oh, Harry.”
“I’ll go,” I said.
Charity’s face snapped up and she said, her voice suddenly very clear and distinct, “No.”
Molly blinked at her mother.
Charity stood up, her face blotched with tears, creased with strain, her eyes sunken with fatigue and worry. She stared at me for a long moment and then said, “Families stay, Harry.” She lifted her chin, sudden and fierce pride briefly driving out the grief in her eyes. “He would stay for you.”
My vision got a little blurry, and I sat down in the nearest chair. Probably just a reaction to all the strain of the past couple of days.
“Yeah,” I said, my throat thick. “He would.”
I called everyone on the list Molly had quoted me and told them they could wait to see me until we knew about Michael. Except for Murph, they all got upset about that. I told them they could go to hell and hung up on them.
Then I settled in with Molly and Charity and waited.
Hospital waits are bad ones. The fact that they happen to pretty much all of us, sooner or later, doesn’t make them any less hideous. They’re always just a little bit too cold. It always smells just a little bit too sharp and clean. It’s always quiet, so quiet that you can hear the fluorescent lights—another constant, those lights—humming. Pretty much everyone else there is in the same bad predicament you are, and there isn’t much in the way of cheerful conversation.
And there’s always a clock in sight. The clock has superpowers. It always seems to move too slowly. Look up at it and it will tell you the time. Look up an hour and a half later, and it will tell you two minutes have gone by. Yet it somehow simultaneously has the ability to remind you of how short life is, to make you acutely aware of how little time someone you love might have remaining to them.
The day crawled by. A doctor came to see Charity twice, to tell her that things were still bad, and that they were still working. The second visit came around suppertime, and the doc suggested that she get some food if she could, that they should know something more definite after the next procedure, in three or four hours.
He asked if Charity knew whether or not Michael had agreed to be an organ donor. Just in case, he said. They hadn’t been able to find his driver’s license. I could tell that Charity wanted to tell the doctor where he could shove his question and just how far it could go, but she told him what Michael would have told him—yes, of course he had. The doctor thanked her and left.
I walked down the cafeteria with Charity and Molly, but I didn’t feel like eating or having food urged upon me. I figured that Charity probably had a critical back pressure of mothering built up after this much time away from her kids. On the way, I claimed that I needed to stretch my legs, which was the truth. Sometimes when there’s too much going on in my head, it helps to walk around a bit.
So I
walked down hallways, going nowhere in particular, just being careful not to pass too near any equipment that might be busy keeping someone alive at the moment.
I wound up sitting down in the hospital chapel.
It was the usual for such a place; quiet, subdued colors and lights, bench seating with an aisle in the middle, and a podium up at the front—the standard layout for the services of any number of faiths. Maybe it leaned a little harder toward Catholicism than most, but that might have been only natural. The Jesuits actually had a chaplaincy in residence, and held Mass there regularly.
It was quiet, which was the important thing. I sank onto a pew, aching, and closed my eyes.
Lots of details chased their way around my head. Michael had come in with gunshot wounds. The cops were going to ask lots of questions about that. Depending on the circumstances of the helicopter’s return to Chicago, that could get really complicated, really fast. On the other hand, given the depth of Marcone’s involvement, the problems might just vanish. He had his fingers in so many pies in Chicago’s city government that he could probably have any inquiry quashed if he really wanted it done.
Given what he’d been saved from, it would be consistent with his character for Marcone to repay the people who bailed him out with whatever aid he could render in turn. It irked me that Marcone could ever be in a position to offer significant aid to Michael, regardless of the circumstances.
Of course, for that to happen, Michael would first need to survive.
My thoughts kept coming full circle back to that.
Would he be in danger right now if I hadn’t insisted that he put on that harness? If I hadn’t shoved him onto that rope ahead of me, would he still be up there under the knife, dying? Could I really have been that arrogant to assume, based on one glance at Gard’s face, that I not only knew the future, but had the wisdom and the right to decide what that future should be?
Maybe it should be me up there. I didn’t have a wife and a family waiting for me to come home.
I’d expected Charity to scream and throw things at me. Maybe I’d even wanted that. Because while I intellectually understood that I’d had no way of knowing what was going to happen, and that I’d only been trying to protect my friend, a big part of me couldn’t help but feel that I deserved Charity’s fury. After all, it reasoned, I had gotten her husband killed as surely as if I’d murdered him myself.