by Jim Butcher
I went to the door and touched it lightly with my left hand. Elaine had spun another ward over the door, a subtle, solid crafting that would release enough kinetic energy to throw anyone who tried to open it a good ten or twelve feet away. It was perfect for a quick exit, if you were expecting trouble and ready for it when it arrived. Just wait for the bad guy to get bitch-slapped into the parking lot, then dash out the door and run off before he regained his feet.
I heard Elaine come out of the bathroom behind me. "What happened?" I asked.
"What do you remember?"
"Madrigal opened up with that assault rifle. Flash of light. Then I was in the water."
Elaine came to stand next to me and also glanced out. Her hand brushed mine when she lowered it from the blinds, and without even thinking about it, I twined my fingers in hers. It was an achingly familiar sensation, and another pang of half-remembered days long gone made my chest ache for a second.
Elaine shivered a little and closed her eyes. Her fingers tightened, very slightly, on mine. "We thought he'd killed you," she said. "You started to crouch down, and there were bullets shattering the ice all around you. You went into the water, and the vampire… Madrigal, did you say his name was? He ordered the ghouls in after you. I sent Olivia and the others to the shore, and Thomas and I went into the water to find you."
"Who hit me in the head?" I asked.
Elaine shrugged. "Either a bullet hit your coat after you crouched down, and then bounced off your thick skull without penetrating, or you slammed it against some of the shattered ice as you went under."
A bullet might have bounced off my head, thanks to the intervening fabric of my spell-covered coat. That was a sobering sort of thing to hear, even for me. "Thank you," I said. "For getting me out."
Elaine arched an eyebrow, then gave me a little roll of her eyes and said, "I was bored and didn't have anything better to do."
"I figured," I said. "Thomas?"
"He's all right. He had a car near the docks. I drove that clown car of yours, and we shoehorned everyone into them and got away clean. With any luck, Madrigal had a tougher time avoiding the cops than we did."
"Nah," I said, with total conviction. "Too easy. He got away. Where's Thomas?"
"Standing watch outside, he said." Elaine frowned. "He looked… very pale. He refused to stay in the room with his refugees. Or me, for that matter."
I grunted. Thomas had really put on his Supervamp cape back at the harbor. Under ordinary circumstances, he was surprisingly strong for a man of his size and build. But even unusually strong men don't go toe-to-toe with ghouls armed with nothing but a big stick and come away clean. Thomas could make himself stronger—a lot stronger—but not forever. The demon knit to my brother's soul could make him into a virtual godling, but it also increased his hunger for the life force of mortals, burning away whatever he had stored up in exchange for the improved performance.
After that fight, Thomas had to be hungry. So hungry that he didn't trust himself in a room with anyone he considered, well, edible. Which, in our escape party, had been everyone but me and the kids.
He must have been hurting.
"What about the Ordo?" I asked her quietly.
"I didn't want to go until I could be certain that I wouldn't lead anyone back to them. I called them every couple of hours to make sure they were all right. I should check in with them again."
She turned to the phone before she finished the sentence and dialed a number. I waited. She was silent. After a moment, she hung up the phone again.
"No answer," I said quietly.
"No," she said. She turned to the dresser, gathered up her length of chain, and threaded it through the loops of her jeans like a belt, fastening it with a slightly curved piece of dark wood bound with several bands of colored leather, which she slipped through two links.
I opened the door and stuck my head out into the twilight, looking around. I didn't see Thomas anywhere, so I let out a sharp, loud whistle, waved an arm around a little, and ducked back inside, closing the door again.
It didn't take long for Thomas's footsteps to reach the door.
"Harry," Elaine said, mildly alarmed. "The ward."
I held up a forefinger in a one-second kind of gesture, then folded my arms, stared at the door, and waited. The doorknob twitched; there was a heavy thud, a gasp of surprise, and a loud clatter of empty trash cans.
I opened the door and found my brother flat on his back in the parking lot, amidst a moderate amount of spilled garbage. He stared up at the sky for a moment, let out a long-suffering sigh, and then sat up, scowling at me.
"Oh, sorry about that," I said, with all the sincerity of a three-year-old claiming he didn't steal that cookie all over his face. "Maybe I should have told you about a potentially dangerous situation, huh? I mean, that would have been polite of me to warn you, right? And sensible. And intelligent. And respectful. And—"
"I get it, I get it," he growled. He got up and made a doomed effort to brush various bits of unsavory matter off his clothes. "Jesus Christ, Harry. There are days when you can be a total prick."
"Whereas you can apparently be a complete moron for weeks at a time!"
Elaine stepped up beside me and said, "I love to see a good testosterone-laden alpha-male dominance struggle as much as the next woman—but don't you think it would be smarter to do it where half of the city can't see us?"
I scowled at Elaine, but she had a point. I stepped out the door and offered Thomas my hand.
He glowered at me, then deliberately ran his hand through some of the muck and held it out to me without wiping it off. I rolled my eyes and pulled him to his feet, and then the three of us went back into the room.
Thomas leaned his back against the door, folded his arms, and kept his eyes on the floor while I went to the sink and washed off my hands. My coat hung on one of the wire hangers on the bar beside it, as did my shirt. My staff rested in a corner by the light switch, and my other gear was on the counter. I dried off my hands and started suiting up. "Okay, Thomas," I said. "Seriously. What's up with the secrecy? You should have contacted me."
"I couldn't," he said.
"Why not?"
"I promised someone I wouldn't."
I frowned at that, tugging the still-damn black leather glove onto my disfigured left hand, and tried to think. Thomas and I were brothers. He took that every bit as seriously as I did—but he took his promises seriously, too. If he'd made the promise, he had a good reason to do so.
"How much can you tell me?"
Elaine gave me a sharp glance.
"I've already said more than I should have," Thomas said.
"Don't be an idiot. We've obviously got a common enemy here."
Thomas grimaced, gave me a hesitant glance, and then said, "We've got several."
I traded a glance with Elaine, who glanced at Thomas, shrugged, and suggested, "Bruises fade?"
"No," I said. "If he isn't talking he has a good reason for it. Beating him up won't change that."
"Then we should stop wasting time here," Elaine said quietly.
Thomas looked back and forth between us. "What's wrong?"
"We've lost contact with the women Elaine is protecting," I said.
"Dammit." Thomas pushed his hand buck through his hair. "That means…"
I fastened the clasp on the new shield bracelet. "What?"
"Look. You already know Madrigal is around," Thomas said.
"And that he's always sucking up to House Malvora," I said. I frowned. "For the love of God, he's the Passenger." He's the one working with Grey Cloak the Malvora."
"I didn't say that," Thomas said quickly.
"You didn't have to," I growled. "He didn't just happen to show up for some payback while this other stuff was going on. And it all fits. Passenger was talking to Grey Cloak about having the resources to take me out. He obviously decided to take a whack at it with a bunch of ghouls and a machine gun."
"Sounds reaso
nable," Thomas said. "You already know that there's a Skavis around."
"Yes."
"Time to do some math then, Harry."
"Madrigal and Grey Cloak the Malvora," I murmured. "The genocidal odd couple. Neither of which is a Skavis."
Elaine drew in a sharp breath and said, at the same time I was thinking it, "It means that we aren't talking about one killer."
I completed the thought. "We're talking about three of them. Grey Cloak Malvora, Passenger Madrigal, and Serial Killer Skavis." I frowned at Thomas. "Wait. Are you saying that—"
My brother's expression became strained. "I'm not saying anything," he replied. "Those are all things you already know."
Elaine frowned. "You're trying to maintain deniability," she said. "Why?"
"So I can deny telling you anything, obviously," Thomas snarled, his eyes suddenly flickering several shades of grey lighter as he stared at Elaine.
Elaine drew in a sharp breath. Then she narrowed her eyes a little, unfastened the clasp on her chain, and said, "Stop it, vampire. Now."
Thomas's lips pulled back from his teeth, but he jerked his face away from her and closed his eyes.
I stepped between them as I shrugged into my leather duster. "Elaine, back off. The enemy of my enemy. Okay?"
"I don't like it," Elaine said. "You know what he is, Harry. How do you know you can trust him?"
"I've worked with him before," I said. "He's different."
"How? A lot of vampires feel remorse about their victims. It doesn't stop them from killing over and over. It's what they are."
"I've gazed him," I said quietly. "He's trying to rise above the killer inside him."
Elaine's brows knit into a frown at those words, and she gave me a slow and reluctant nod. "Aren't we all," she murmured. "I'm still not comfortable with the notion of him near my clients. And we need to get moving."
"Go ahead," Thomas said.
I didn't look at my brother, but I said, "You need to eat."
"Maybe later," Thomas said. "I can't leave the women and children unguarded."
I grabbed a pad of cheap paper with the hotel's logo and found a pencil in one of my pockets. I wrote a number on it and passed it to Thomas. "Call Murphy. You won't be able to protect anyone if you're too weak, and you might kill one of them if you lose control of the hunger."
Thomas's jaw tightened with frustration, but he took the offered piece of paper from my hand only a little more roughly than necessary.
Elaine studied him as she walked to the door with me. Then she said to him, "You're different from most of them, aren't you?"
"Probably just more deluded," Thomas replied. "Good luck, Harry."
"Yeah," I said, feeling awkward. "Look. After this is done… we have to talk."
"There's nothing to talk about," my brother said.
We left and I closed the door behind us.
We took the Blue Beetle back to the Amber Inn and went to Elaine's room. The lights were off. The room was empty.
There was a terrible sewer smell in the air.
"Dammit," Elaine whispered. She suddenly sagged and leaned against the doorway.
I stepped past her and turned on the light in the bathroom.
Anna Ash's corpse stood in the shower, body stiff, leaning away from the showerhead, but held in place by the electrical cord of a hair dryer, tied in a knot about the showerhead and another around her neck. There hadn't been room enough for her to suspend herself with her feet off the floor. Ugly, purple-black ligature marks showed on her neck around the cord.
It was obviously a suicide.
It obviously wasn't.
We were too late.
Chapter Twenty-Five
"We've got to call the cops on this one," I said quietly to Elaine.
"No," she replied. "They'll want to question us. It will take hours.”
"They'll want to question us a lot longer if someone else finds the body and they have to come looking for us."
"And while we're cooperating with the authorities, what happens to Abby, Helen, and Priscilla?" She stared at me. "For that matter, what happens to Mouse?"
That was a thought I'd been trying to avoid. If Mouse was alive and capable, there was no way he'd let any of the women be harmed. If someone had killed Anna when Mouse was near, it could have happened only over his dead body.
But there was no sign of him.
That could mean a lot of things. At worst it meant that he had been utterly disintegrated by whatever had come for the women. Not only was that assumption depressing as hell, it also didn't get me anywhere. A bad guy who could simply disintegrate anything that got in the way sure wouldn't be pussyfooting around the way these White Court yahoos had been.
Mouse wasn't here. There was no mess, no sign of a struggle, and believe you me, that dog can put up a struggle, as the vets found out when they misfiled his paperwork. They tried to neuter him instead of vaccinating him and getting his shoulder X-rayed where he'd bounced off of a moving minivan. I was lucky they were willing to let me pay the property damage and leave it at that.
It had to mean something else. Maybe my dog had left with the others, and Anna had remained behind, or gone back for something she forgot.
Or maybe Mouse had played on everyone's expectation that he was just a dog. He'd shown me that he was capable of that kind of subterfuge before, and it had been one of the first things that tipped me off to his distinctly superior-to-canine intellect. What if Mouse had played along and stayed close to the others?
Why would he do that, though?
Because Mouse knew I could find him. Unless the bad guys carried him off to the Nevernever itself, or put him behind a set of wards specifically designed to block such magic, my tracking spell could find him anywhere.
That was the path to take, even if Mouse didn't know anything was wrong. He would have stayed with any members of the Ordo that he could, and I had taken to planning ahead a little more than I used to do. I could use my shield bracelet to target the single small shield charm I'd hung from his collar for just such an emergency. Me and Foghorn Leghorn.
"Can you find the dog?" Elaine asked.
"Yeah. But we should try calling their homes before we go."
Elaine frowned. "You told them to stay here, or somewhere public."
"Odds are pretty good that they're scared. And when you're scared…"
"… you want to go home," Elaine finished.
"If they're there, it'll be the quickest way to get in touch. If not, it hasn't cost us more than a minute or two."
Elaine nodded. "Anna had all the numbers in a notebook in her purse." We turned up the purse after a brief search, but the notebook wasn't in it.
There wasn't anything for it but to make sure that Anna hadn't slipped it into a pocket before she died. I checked, and tried not to leave any prints almost as hard as I tried not to look at her dead, purpling face or glazed eyes. It hadn't been a clean death, and even though Anna hadn't been gone long enough to start decomposition, the smell was formidable. I tried to ignore it.
It was harder to ignore her face. The skin had the stiff, waxy look that dead bodies get. Worse, there was a distinct and unquantifiable quality of… absence. Anna Ash had been very much alive—fierce of will, protective, determined. I know plenty of wizards without the force of personality she had. She'd been the one thinking and acting when all of those around her were frightened. That takes a rare kind of courage.
None of which meant anything, since, despite my efforts, the killer had taken her anyway.
I shook my head and stepped away from the corpse, having turned up no notebook. Her willingness to face danger on behalf of her friends couldn't be allowed to vanish silently into the past. If some of those she sought to protect were still alive, then her own sacrifice and death could still mean something. I could be bitter about her death later. I would be doing a grave disservice to the woman if I let it do anything but make me more motivated to stop the killers before they had
finished their work.
I came face-to-face with Elaine, who stood in the doorway, staring at Anna's body. There was no expression on her face, absolutely none. Tears, though, had reddened her eyes and streaked over her cheeks and down her nose. Some women are pretty when they cry. Elaine gets all blotchy and runny-nosed, and it brought out the dark, tired circles beneath her eyes.
It didn't look pretty. It just looked like pain.
She spoke, and her voice came out rough and quavering. "I told her I would protect her."
"Sometimes you try," I said quietly. "Sometimes that's all you do, Try. That's how the game works."
"Game," she said. The single word was caustic enough to melt holes in the floor. "Has it ever happened to you? Someone who came to you for help was killed?"
I nodded. "Couple of times. First time was Kim Delaney. A girl I had trained to keep her talent under control. Maybe a little stronger than the women in the Ordo, but not much. She got involved in bad business. Over her head. I thought I could warn her off, that she would listen to me. I should have known better."
"What happened?"
I tilted my head back at the body behind me, without actually looking. "Something ate her. I go to her grave sometimes."
"Why?"
"To bring her some flowers and sweep off the leaves. To remind me of the stakes I play for. To remind me that nobody wins them all."
"And after?" Elaine asked me quietly. She hadn't looked away from the corpse. Not for a second. "What did you do to the thing that killed her?"
It was a complicated answer, but it wasn't what Elaine needed to hear right then. "I killed it."
She nodded again. "When we catch up to the Skavis, I want it."
I put a hand on her shoulder and said, very gently, "It won't make you feel any better."
She shook her head. "That's not why I want to do it. It was my job. I've got to finish my job. I owe her that much."
I didn't think Elaine herself thought the statement was untrue, but I'd gone through this kind of thing before, and it can unbalance your tires pretty damned quick. There was no point, though, in trying to discuss it with her rationally. Reason had left the building.