by Jim Butcher
"Christ, Dresden. We don't have time to wander around the woods in the dark hoping to smell our way to the cave. Isn't there some way you could find it?"
"With magic? Iffy. I'm not sure what I would do to look for a cave."
Murphy frowned. "Then this is stupid," she said. "We'd be smarter to back off and come back with help and light. You could defend yourself against this curse, couldn't you?"
"Maybe," I said. "But that last one came in awfully strong and fast, and it changes everything. I can swing at a slow-pitch softball and hit it every time. Not even the best hitter can hit five hundred against major-league pitching."
"How did they do it?" she asked.
"Blood sacrifice," I said. "Has to be. Raith is involved with the ritual now." My voice twisted with bitter anger. "He's got experience using it. He's got Thomas now, which means he isn't going to target him with the curse. Raith's going to bleed him to help kill me. The only chance Thomas has is for me to stop the curse."
Murphy sucked in a breath. She hopped off the bike and drew her gun, holding it down by her leg. "Oh. You circle left and I'll circle right and we'll sniff for the cave, then."
"Argh, I'm an idiot," I said. I leaned my still-glowing staff against the bike and jerked the silver amulet off my neck. "My mother left this to me. Thomas has one like it. She had forged a link between them so that when one of us was touching both of them we got a… sort of a psychic voice mail."
"Meaning what?" Murphy asked.
I twisted the chain around the index finger of my burned hand, letting it dangle. "Meaning I can use that link to find the other amulet again."
"If he has it," Murphy said.
"He will," I said. "After last night, he won't take it off."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I know it," I said. I held my right hand palm up and tried to focus upon it. I found the link, the channel through which my mother's latent enchantment had contacted Thomas and me, and I poured some of my will into it, trying to spread it out. "Because I believe it."
The amulet quivered on its string and then leaned out toward the night to our left.
"Stay close," I said, and turned in that direction. "Okay, Murph?"
There was no answer.
My instincts clamored in alarm. I dropped my concentration and looked around, but Murphy was nowhere in sight.
Directly behind me there was a muffled sound, and I turned to find Lord Raith standing there with an arm around Murphy's neck, covering her mouth and with a knife pressed up hard against her ribs. He was wearing all black this time, and in the autumn moonlight he looked like little more than a shadow, a pale and grinning skull, and a very large knife.
"Good evening, Mister Dresden."
"Raith," I said.
"Put the staff down. Amulet too. And the bracelet." He pressed the knife and Murphy sucked in a sharp breath through her nose. "Now."
Dammit. I dropped the bracelet, the staff, and my amulet to the grass.
"Excellent," Raith said. "You were right about Thomas keeping his amulet with him. I found it around his neck when I was cutting his shirt off to have him chained down. I was fairly certain that you would judge such an obviously linked item to be too hazardous to employ in any location magic, but on the off chance I was wrong, I kept my own location spell going. I've been watching you since you arrived."
"You must feel smug and self-satisfied. Are you getting to a point?" I asked.
"Absolutely," he said. "Kneel and place your hands behind your back."
The remaining Bodyguard Barbie appeared. She had a set of prisoner's shackles.
"What if I don't?" I asked.
Raith shrugged and shoved an inch of knife between Murphy's ribs. She bucked in sudden, startled pain.
"Wait!" I said. "Wait, wait! I'm doing it."
I knelt, put my hands behind my back, and Bodyguard Barbie hooked steel links to my wrists and ankles.
"That's better," Raith said. "To your feet, wizard. I'm going to show you the Deeps."
"Kill me with that entropy curse from point-blank range, eh?" I said.
"Precisely," Raith responded.
"Gaining you what?" I asked.
"Immense personal satisfaction," he said.
"Funny," I said. "For a guy warded against magic, you seemed to want to get rid of my gear pretty bad."
"This is a new shirt," he said with a smile. "And besides, can't have you killing the help-or Thomas-to spite me."
"Funny," I said. "You seem to be a lot of talk and not much do. I've heard about all kinds of things you are capable of. Enslaving women you feed on. Killing with a kiss. Superhuman badassedness. But you aren't doing any of it."
Raith's mouth set into a snarl.
"The White Council has taken a few shots at you, but when they quit you didn't go gunning for anyone," I continued. "And hey, what with you being invincible and all, there's got to be a reason for that. You must have been approached by others. I bet you got some pretty juicy offers. And I just can't square that with someone who allows a tart like Trixie Vixen to snap at him over the phone like she did to you today."
Raith's white face went whiter with rage. "I would not say such things were I in your position, wizard."
"You're going to kill me anyway," I said. "Hell, you've pretty much got to. I mean, we're at war, after all, and there you are all immune to magic. Must be a lot of pressure from the Reds for the White Court to get off its ass and do something. Makes you wonder why you didn't just wham, kiss-of-death me back there. Maybe get it on tape or something so you could show it off. Or hell, why you haven't socked the kiss of death on Murphy there just to shut me up."
"Is that what you want to see, wizard?" Raith said, his tone threatening.
I smiled at Raith's threat, and said, my tone a schoolyard singsong, "Lord Raith and Murphy, sitting in a tree, not K-I-S-S-I-N-G."
Raith clutched harder at Murphy's throat, and she arched her back, gasping, "Dresden."
I subsided with the chant, but I didn't let up. "See, immune to getting hurt is one thing," I said. "But I'm thinking my mother's death curse hit you where it hurt-a while later. There's a parasite called a tick. Lives in the Ozarks. And it is nigh invulnerable," I said. "But it isn't unkillable. Hard to squash, sure. But it can still be pierced with the right weapon. Or it can be smothered." I smiled at Raith. "And it can starve."
He stood as still as a statue, staring at me. His grip on Murphy's throat slackened.
"That's why you've been old news," I said quietly. "Mom said she arranged it so that you would suffer. And since the night you killed her, you haven't been able to feed. Have you. Haven't been able to top off the tank of vampire superpower gas. So no kisses of death. No assaults on wizards. No direct assaults on Thomas when a couple of deathplots failed. You even had to have willing help for this operation, 'cause there was no more enslaving women to your will. Though I take it from Inari being alive that the plumbing works. And after that, I take it from the fact that you haven't raped her into psychic slavery that you can't do that part. Must have made things hard for you, huh, Raith. Did you get the double entendre there, man? Made things hard?"
"Insolent," Raith said at last. "Utterly insolent. You are like her."
I let out a breath. It had been only a strong theory until his reaction had confirmed it. "Yeah. Thought so. You've been nothing but talk since my mom got finished with you. Living for years, talking a good game and hoping that no one noticed what you weren't doing. Hoping no one figured out that one of your broodmares gelded you. Bet that was terrifying. Living like that."
"Perhaps," he said in a low murmur.
"They're going to figure it out," I said quietly. "This is a pointless exercise. It will cost you to kill us, and you aren't getting any more. Ever. You'd be smarter to cut your losses and start running."
Raith's cold face again lifted into a smile. "No, boy. You aren't the only one who worked out what your mother did to me. And how. So instead, you and
your brother are going to die tonight. Your deaths will end your mother's paltry little binding, along with her bloodline, of course." His eyes flashed to Murphy and he said with a slow smile, "And then perhaps something to eat. I am, after all, very hungry.
"You son of a bitch," I snarled.
Raith smiled at me again. Then told the Barbie, "Bring him."
And with that, Murphy still pinned on his knife-don't miss the symbolism there, Doc Freud-he led us through thirty yards of trees and down a rough slope into cold and darkness.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Lord Raith led us into the cave he called the Deeps, and the Bodyguard Barbie kept her gun on me while simultaneously remaining well out of easy reach. She wasn't any Trixie Vixen anyway. If I jumped her, she'd shoot me, and that would be that. Not that I could have done much jumping, what with the leg irons and all. I had trouble just shuffling along while ducking my head low enough to keep from bumping into rocky protrusions from the cave's roof.
"Murph?" I said. "How are you doing?"
"I'm feeling a little repressed," she responded. There was tight pain in her voice. "I'm fulfilling this hostage stereotype, and it's pissing me off."
"That's good," Raith said. He still had her by the neck, with the knife he held actually pressed a tiny bit into the wound he'd already given. "Defiance adds a great deal of enjoyment to feeding, Ms. Murphy." He put a contemptuous emphasis on the honorific. "It is, after all, a great deal more pleasurable to conquer than to rule. And defiant women can be conquered again and again before they break."
I ignored Raith. "How's your side?"
Murphy shot a glare over her shoulder at her captor. "A little prick like this? It's nothing."
In answer, Raith threw Murphy against the wall. She caught herself and turned, her hand blurring in a short, vicious strike.
Raith wasn't human. He caught her hand without so much as looking at it. He drove her hand and wrist back against the wall, and brought the bloodied tip of his knife sharply up under her chin. Her lip twisted into a defiant snarl and her knee lashed up as she kicked. Raith blocked it with a sweep of his thigh and pressed in close to her, all sinuous, serpentine speed and strength, until he was pressed to her front, his face to hers, raven-black hair mingling with her dark gold.
"Warrior women are all the same," Raith said, his eyes on Murphy's. His voice was low, slow, lilting. "You all know your way around struggling with other bodies. But you know little about the needs of your own."
Murphy stared at him, shoulders twitching, and her lips slowly parted.
"It's bound into you," Raith whispered. "Deeper than muscle and bone. The need. The only way to escape the blackness of death. You cannot deny it. Cannot escape it. In joy, in despair, in darkness, in pain, mortalkind still feels desire." His hand slid down from her wrist, his fingertips lightly brushing the thick veins. A soft sound escaped from Murphy's throat.
Raith smiled. "There. You already feel yourself weakening. I've taken thousands like you, lovely child. Taken them and broken them. There was nothing they could do. There is nothing you can do. You were made to feel desire. I was made to use it against you. It is the natural cycle. Life and death. Mating and death. Predator and prey."
Raith leaned closer with each word, and brushed his lips against Murphy's throat as he spoke. "Born mortal. Born weak. And easily taken."
Murphy's eyes went wide. Her body arched in shock. She let out a low, sobbing sound, as she tried and failed to hold back her voice.
Raith drew his head slowly back, smiling down at Murphy. "And that's only a taste, child. When you know what it is to be truly taken later this night, you will understand that your life ended the moment I wanted you." His hand moved, sudden and hard, digging his thumb against the wound in her ribs. Her face went white, and another, similar cry escaped her. She crumpled, and Raith let her fall to the ground. He stood over her for a moment, and then said, "We'll have days, little one. Weeks. You can spend them in agony or in bliss. The important thing to realize is that I'll be the one who decides which. You are no longer in command of your body. Nor your mind. You no longer have a choice in the matter."
Murphy gathered herself together and managed to lift her eyes again. They were defiant, and blurred with tears, but I could see the terror in them as well-and a sort of sickened, hideous desire. "You're a liar," she whispered. "I am my own."
Raith said, quietly, "I can always tell when a woman feels desire, Ms. Murphy. I can feel yours. Part of you is so tired of being disciplined. Tired of being afraid. Tired of denying yourself for the good of others." He knelt down, and Murphy's eyes shied away from his. "That part of you is what wanted to feel the pleasure I just gave. And it is that part of you that will grow as it feels more. The defiant young woman is already dead. She is simply too afraid to admit it."
He seized her hair and started dragging her, careless and hard. I saw her face for a second, confusion and fear and anger warring for control of her expression. But I knew she'd taken a wound far more grievous than any physical injury I'd seen her sustain. Raith had forced her to feel something, and there had been nothing she could do to stop him. She'd done her best to tear into him, and he had slapped her down like a child. It wasn't Murphy's fault that she'd lost that fight. It wasn't her fault that he'd forced sensation upon her. I mean, hell, he was the lord of the freaking nation of sexual predators, and even weakened and hampered by my mother's curse, he had been able to take apart Murphy's psychic and emotional defenses.
If he got the full measure of his powers back, what he would do to Murphy in retaliation for what my mother had done to him would be worse than death.
The damnedest thing was that there wasn't much I could do about it. Not because I was chained up, held at gunpoint, and probably going to die-though I had to admit, that might make things somewhat difficult-but because this wasn't a fight that someone else could win for Murphy. The real battle was inside of her-her strength of will against her own well-founded fears. Even if I did ride in on a white horse to save her, it would mean only that she would be forced to question her own strength and integrity thereafter, and that would be nothing more than a slow death of her self-reliance and strength of will.
It was something I could not save her from.
And I had asked her to face it.
Raith hauled on her hair as if it had been a dog's lead.
Murphy didn't fight back.
I clenched my hands into impotent fists. Murphy was in very real danger of dying that night, even if she kept on breathing and her heart kept on beating. But she would have to be the one to save herself.
The best thing I could do was nothing. The best thing I could say was nothing. I had some power, but it couldn't help Murphy now.
Hell's bells, irony blows.
Chapter Forty
I'd been in a few caves that were the headquarters for dark magic and those who trafficked in it. None of them had been warm. None of them had been pleasant. And none of them had been professionally decorated.
Until now.
After a long, precipitous slope into the earth, the Raith Deeps opened up into a cavern bigger than most Paris cathedrals. To a degree, it resembled one. Lights played in soft colors on the walls, mostly shifting rosy hues. The cave was of living rock, and the walls had all been shaped by water into nearly organic-looking curves and swirls. The floor sloped very slightly up, to where a shift in the rock gave rise to an enormous carved chair of pure, bone-white stone. The chair had been decorated with flares and flanges and every kind of carved frivolity you could imagine, so that it sat at the center of all the carving like a peacock poised in front of its tail. Water fell in a fine mist from overhead, and more lights played through it, broken by the droplets into myriad spectra. To the right hand of the throne was a smaller carved seat-almost a stool really, like the ones you'd imagine lions or seals perching on during circus performances. To the left was a jagged, broken gap in the rock, and behind the throne, where more of the mist fel
l, was simply darkness.
Though the stone was smooth, it undulated in regular, ripple-shaped rises toward the throne from where we entered the Deeps. Here and there along the rippled floor were groups of pillows and cushions, thick woven carpets, low, narrow tables set with wine and the kinds of finger foods that tended to get smeared about fairly easily.
"Well, it's subtle," I said to no one in particular. "But I like it. Sort of The King and I meets Harem Honeys and Seraglio Sluts II."
Raith strode past me and threw Murphy at a pile of pillows and cushions along one wall, the one farthest away from the entrance. She knew how to take a fall, and though the motion had been vicious and torn out some of her hair, she landed well, coming up to a shaky crouch. Bodyguard Barbie dragged my manacles and me over to the wall nearby and padlocked me to a steel ring in the wall. There was a whole row of such rings there. I tried to wiggle a little, testing the strength of the steel ring, but whoever built it knew what he was doing. No wiggle, no flexion of the ring where it joined the wall.
"Time?" Raith asked.
"Eleven- thirty-nine, my lord," the bodyguard reported.
"Ah, good. Still time." He walked over to a group of pillows in the far corner of the room, and I realized that they had been strewn around a little raised platform of stone. The platform was a circle perhaps ten feet across, and inside of it was a thaumaturgic triangle, an equilateral shape within the ring of the circle used in most ritual magic because it was easier for amateurs to draw a freaking triangle than a pentacle or a Star of Solomon. Thick incense wafted up from braziers around the circle, giving the cold air the sharp scent of cinnamon and some other, more acrid spice. "Wizard, I believe you have met my assistants."
Two women rose from the shadows within the circle and faced me. The first was Madge, Arturo's first wife, the disciplined businesswoman. She wore a white robe trimmed with scarlet cloth, and her hair was down. It made her look both younger and simultaneously lent her an overripe look, like fruit a day swollen and spoiled. Her eyes were no less calculating, but there was an edge of something there that I recognized-cruelty. The love of power, to the exclusion of the well-being of one's fellow beings.