by Jim Butcher
What the hell? I reached in and grabbed the box. Nothing ripped me into quivering shreds.
I scowled suspiciously and slowly withdrew the box, but nothing else happened. Evidently Gard had considered her security measures to be adequate for dealing with a thief. Or a dinosaur. Whichever.
Once I had the case, I turned back to the gruff.
“Mortal,” Tiny wheezed, “finish it.”
“I try not to kill anything unless it’s absolutely necessary,” I replied, “and I’ve got no need to kill you today. This wasn’t a personal matter. It’s done. That’s the end of it.”
The gruff focused his eyes and just stared at me for a startled moment. “Mercy? From a Winterbound?”
“I’m not bound,” I snapped. “This is purely temp work.” I squinted around. “I think the hobs have mostly cleared out. Can you leave on your own, or do you need me to send for someone?”
The gruff shuddered and shook his huge head. “Not necessary. I will go.” He spread the fingers of one hand on the ground and started sinking into it as if it were quicksand. As portals to Faerie went, that was a new one for me.
“This is a onetime offer,” I told him just before he was completely gone. “Don’t come back.”
“I shan’t,” he rumbled, his eyes sagging closed in weariness. “But mark you this, wizard.”
I frowned at him. “What?”
“My elder brother,” he growled, “is going to kill thee.”
Then Tiny sank into the floor and was gone.
“Another one?” I demanded of the floor. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
I leaned against the lockers, banging my head gently against the steel for a moment. Then I pushed myself back onto my feet and started jogging back toward where I had parted with Michael. Just because the hobs were gone from this part of the station didn’t mean that there wasn’t still a fight going on. Michael might need my help.
I picked up the trail of body parts again, though by this time most of them were mounds of dark powder, like charcoal dust, pounded to a gooey paste by the building’s sprinklers. The patches of gunk got thicker as I continued in the direction I thought Michael had gone.
I followed the trail to the base of a ridiculously broad flight of stone stairs-the one that actually had been in The Untouchables. The parts were still recognizable as parts here. These hobs hadn’t been dead for long. They lay in a carpet of motionless, burning corpses on the stairs. Judging by the way they’d fallen they had been facing up the stairs when they died.
Several fallen hobs bore wounds that indicated that Michael had hewed his way through them from behind. White knight he might be, but once that sword comes out, Michael puts his game face on, and he plays as hard as almost anyone I’ve ever seen.
Not that I could blame him. Not all the remains I’d passed had been those of hobs.
Three security guards were down, one maybe ten feet from the stairs, the other two on the stairway itself. They had fallen separately in the darkness.
I’d passed several other bloodstains that had almost certainly been fatal to their donors, unless the falling water had made them look more extensive than they actually were. I’d never encountered hobs face-to-face before, but I knew enough about them to hope that whoever had spilled that blood was dead.
Hobs had a habit of hauling victims back into their lightless tunnels.
I shuddered. I’d give the troubleshooters from Summer that much: All the gruffs wanted to do was kill me, clean, and that would be the end of it. I’d been carried into the darkness by monsters before. It isn’t something I’d wish on anyone. Ever.
You don’t really live through it, even if you survive. It changes you.
I pushed away bad memories and tried to ignore them while I thought. Some of the hobs had obviously taken their victims and run. According to the books it was their modus operandi. Though this entire attack seemed to indicate a higher level of organization than the average rampage, obviously whoever was behind it wasn’t in complete control. Faeries share one universal trait-their essential natures are actively contrary, and they are notoriously difficult to command.
The hobs on the stairs were different from the ones I’d had to contend with at the front of the station. These all bore more advanced cutlery, probably made of bronze, and wore armor made of some kind of hide. To be clustered this thickly on the stairs, they had to have been at least a little organized, fighting in ranks, too.
Something had compelled these hobs to attack in unison. Hell, if the numbers of fallen hobs in front of me were any indication, the gang that came after Michael and me were probably stragglers who had gone haring off on their own, looking for a little carryout to take home.
So what had been the purpose of the attack? What the hell had drawn them all to the stairway?
Whatever was at the top, obviously.
Above me the light of the holy Sword flickered and began to fade. I chugged up the stairs as it did, still holding my fingers up to shield my eyes until the light dwindled, and caught up to Michael. He was breathing hard, Sword still raised over his head in a high guard and ready to come sweeping down. I noted, idly, that the stench of stagnant water had vanished, replaced by the quiet, strong scent of roses. I lifted my face again and felt cool, clean, rose-scented water fall on my face. Falling through the light of the holy Sword had improved it, it would seem.
The last hob to fall, a big brute the size of a freaking mountain gorilla, lay motionless near Michael’s feet. What was left of a bronze shield and sword lay in neatly sliced fragments around the body. Its blood spread sluggishly down the stairs, coated with blue-white flame as its body was slowly consumed by more of the same.
“Everybody can relax,” I panted as I caught up to Michael. “I’m here.”
Michael greeted me with a nod and a quick smile. “Are you all right?”
“Not bad,” I said, barely resisting the temptation to turn the second word into a barnyard sound. “Sorry I wasn’t much use to you once you waded in.”
“It couldn’t have happened without your help,” Michael said seriously. “Thank you.”
“De nada,” I replied.
I went up the last few stairs and got a look at what the hobs had been after.
Children.
There must have been thirty kids around ten years old up at the top of the stairs, all of them in school uniforms, all of them huddled together in a corner, all of them frightened, most of them crying. There was one dazed-looking woman in a blazer that matched those of the children, together with two women dressed in the casual uniforms of Amtrak stewards.
“A train had just arrived,” I murmured to Michael as I realized what had happened. “It must have gotten in through the weather somehow. That’s why the hobs were here now.”
Michael flicked Amoracchius to one side, shaking off a small cloud of fine black powder from the blade as he did. Then he put the weapon away. “It should be safe now, everyone,” he said, his voice calm. “The authorities should be here any minute.” He added in a quieter tone, “We should probably go.”
“Not yet,” I said quietly. I walked into the Great Hall far enough to see the area behind the first of the row of Corinthian pillars that lined the walls.
Three people stood there.
The first was a man, of a height with Michael, but built more leanly, more dangerously. He had hair of dark gold that fell to his shoulders, and the shadow of a beard resulting from several days without shaving. He wore a casual, dark-blue sports suit over a white T-shirt, and he held the bronze sword of a hob, stained with their dark blood, in either hand. He regarded me with the calm, remote eyes of a great cat, and he showed me some of his teeth when he saw me. His name was Kincaid, and he was a professional assassin.
Next to him was a young woman with long, curling brown hair and flashing dark eyes. Her jeans were tight enough to show off some nice curves, but not too tight to move in, and she held a slender rod maybe five feet long in one ha
nd, carved with runes and sigils not too unlike mine. Captain Luccio had a long plastic tube hanging from a strap over one of her shoulders, its top dangling loose. Odds were good her silver sword was still stowed inside it. I knew that when she smiled, she had killer dimples-but from the expression on her face I wasn’t going to be exposed to that hazard anytime soon. Her features were hard and guarded, though they did not entirely hide a fierce rage. I hoped it was reserved for the attacking hobs and not for me. The captain was not someone I wanted angry at me.
Standing between and slightly behind the two adults was a girl not much older than all the other children who had taken refuge in the Hall. She’d grown more than a foot since the last time I’d seen her, about five years ago. She still looked like a neatly dressed, perfectly groomed child-except for her eyes. Her eyes were creepily out of place in that innocent face, heavy with knowledge and all the burdens that come with it.
The Archive put a hand on Kincaid’s elbow, and the hired killer lowered his swords. The girl stepped forward and said, “Hello, Mister Dresden.”
“Hello, Ivy,” I responded, nodding politely.
“If these creatures were under your command,” the little girl said in a level tone, “I’m going to execute you.”
She didn’t make it a threat. There wasn’t enough interest in her voice for it to be that. The Archive just stated it as a simple and undeniable fact.
The scary part was that if she decided to kill me, there’d be little I could do about it. The child wasn’t simply a child. She was the Archive, the embodied memory of humanity, a living repository of the knowledge of mankind. When she was six or seven I’d seen her kill a dozen of the most dangerous warriors of the Red Court. It took her about as much effort as it takes me to open the wrapper on a stack of crackers. The Archive was Power with a capital P, and operated on an entirely different level than I did.
“Of course they weren’t under his command,” Luccio said. She glanced at me and arched an eyebrow. “How could you even suspect such a thing?”
“I find it unlikely that an attack of this magnitude could be anything but a deliberate attempt to abduct or assassinate me. Mab and Titania have involved themselves in this business,” the Archive said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Mister Dresden is currently Winter’s Emissary in this affair-and need I remind you that hobs are beholden to Winter-to Mab?”
She hadn’t needed to remind me, though I’d been putting that thought off for a while. The fact that the hobs were Mab’s subjects meant that matters were even murkier than I thought, and that now was probably a reasonably good time to start panicking.
But first things first: Prevent the scary little girl from killing me.
“I have no idea who was ordering these things around,” I said quietly.
The Archive stared at me for an endless second. Then that ancient, implacable gaze moved to Michael. “Sir Knight,” she said, her tone polite. “Will you vouch for this man?”
Maybe it was just my imagination that it took Michael a second longer to answer than he might have done in the past. “Of course.”
She stared at him as well, and then nodded her head. “Mister Dresden, you remember my bodyguard, Kincaid.”
“Yeah,” I said. My voice didn’t exactly bubble with enthusiasm. “Hi, tough guy. What brings you to Chicago?”
Kincaid showed me even more teeth. “The midget,” he said. “I hate the snow. If it was up to me, I’d much rather be somewhere warm. Say, Hawaii, for example.”
“I am not a midget,” the Archive said in a firmly disapproving tone. “I am in the seventy-fourth percentile for height for my age. And stop trying to provoke him.”
“The midget’s no fun,” Kincaid explained. “I tried to get her to join the Girl Scouts, but she wasn’t having any of it.”
“If I want to glue macaroni to a paper plate, I can do that at home,” said the Archive. “It’s hours past my bedtime, and I have no desire to entangle ourselves with the local authorities. We should leave.” She frowned at Kincaid. “Obviously our movements have been tracked. Our quarters here are probably compromised.” She turned her eyes back to me. “I formally request the hospitality of the White Council until such time as I can establish secure lodgings.”
“Uh,” I said.
Luccio made a quick motion with one hand, urging me to accept.
“Of course,” I said, nodding at the Archive.
“Excellent,” the Archive said. She turned to Kincaid. “I’m soaked. My coat and a change of clothes are in my bag on the train. I’ll need them.”
Kincaid gave me a skeptical glance but, tellingly, he didn’t argue with the Archive. Instead he vanished quickly down the stairs.
The Archive turned to me. “Statistically speaking, the emergency services of this city should begin to arrive in another three minutes, given the weather and the condition of the roads. It would be best for all of us if we were gone by then.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” I said. I grimaced. “Whoever did this is taking awful chances, moving this publically.”
The Archive’s not-quite-human gaze bored into me for a moment. Then she said, “Matters may be quite a bit worse than that. I’m afraid our troubles are just beginning.”
Chapter Twenty-six
M ichael stopped in his tracks when he saw the gaping hole Tiny the gruff had left in the east wall of Union Station. “Merciful God,” he breathed. “Harry, what happened?”
“Little problem,” I said.
“You didn’t say anything to me.”
“You looked busy,” I told him, “and you already had a couple of hundred bad guys to handle.” I nodded at the hole. “I only had the one.”
Michael shook his head bemusedly, and I saw Luccio look at the hole with something like mild alarm.
“Did you get it?” Michael asked.
Luccio cocked her head at Michael when he spoke, and then looked sharply at me.
I gave Michael a level look and said, “Obviously.” Then I turned on my heel and whistled sharply. “Mouse!”
My dog, soggy but still enthusiastic, came bounding toward us over the water-coated marble floors. He slid to a stop, throwing up a little wave that splashed over my feet as he did. The Archive peered intently at Mouse as he arrived, and took a step toward him-but was prevented from going farther by Kincaid’s hand, which came to rest on her slender shoulder.
Michael frowned at the girl and then at the dog. “This,” he said, “brings up a problem.”
There was only so much room in the cab of Michael’s truck.
All of us were soaking wet, and there was no time to get dry before the authorities arrived. I didn’t think it completely fair that I got a number of less than friendly looks on the walk to the garage, after I explained that it had been me who set off the sprinkler system, but at least no one could claim that I hadn’t been willing to suffer the consequences right along with them.
The Archive might have been a creepy Billy Mumy-in-The Twilight Zone kind of child, but she was still a child. By general acclamation she was in the cab. Michael had to drive.
“I’m not letting her sit in there alone,” Kincaid stated.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “He’s a Knight of the freaking Cross. He isn’t going to hurt her.”
“Irrelevant,” Kincaid said. “What about when someone starts shooting at her on the way there? Is he going to throw his body in front of her to keep her from harm?”
“I-” Michael began.
“You’re damned right he will,” I growled.
“Harry,” Michael said, his tone placating, “I’d be glad to protect the child. But it would be somewhat problematic to do that and drive at the same time.”
Mouse let out a low, distressed sound, which drew my attention to the fact that the Archive had fallen uncharacteristically silent. She was standing beside Kincaid, shuddering, her eyes rolling back in her head.
“Dammit,” I said. “Get her into the truck. Go, Kincaid, Michael.”
Kincaid scooped her up at once, and he and Michael got into the cab of the truck.
“I-is y-your h-house far from here, Warden?” Luccio asked me.
She didn’t look good. Well, she looked good given the circumstances. But she also looked soaked and half-frozen already, kneeling to hug Mouse, ostensibly rubbing his fur to help dry it and fluff it out. I’d seen Luccio in action, as captain of the Wardens of the White Council, and I had formed my opinion of her accordingly. When I looked at the woman who’d faced Kemmler’s disciples without batting an eye, whom I’d once seen stand in the open under fire from automatic weapons to protect the apprentices under her care, I tended to forget that she was about five-foot-four and might have checked in at a hundred and thirty or forty pounds soaking wet.
Which she was.
In the middle of a blizzard.
“It isn’t far,” I said. Then I went up to the door beside Kincaid and said, “Put the kid on your lap.”
“She wears the seat belt,” Kincaid said. “She’s in danger enough from exposure already.”
“Luccio doesn’t weigh much more than Ivy does,” I said in a flat tone. “She’s in almost as much danger as the kid. So you’re holding Ivy on your lap and letting my captain ride in the cab, like a gentleman.”
Kincaid gave me a level look, his pale eyes cold. “Or what?”
“I’m armed,” I said. “You’re not.”
He looked at me levelly, then at my hands. One of them was in my coat pocket. Then he said, “You think I believe that you’d kill me?”
“If you try to make me choose between you and Luccio,” I said, with a brittle smile, “I’m pretty sure whom I’m going to bid aloha.”
His teeth flashed in a sudden, wolfish smile. And he moved over, drawing the freezing child onto his lap.
By the time I got back to Luccio she was upright only because Mouse sat placidly in the cold, supporting her. She mumbled some kind of protest in a faint, commanding tone, but since she said it in Italian I declared her brain frozen and assumed command of the local Warden detachment, which was handy, since it consisted of only me anyway. I bundled her into the truck’s cab and got her buckled in beside Kincaid. He helped with it-my fingers were too cold and stiff to manage very quickly.