by Jim Butcher
Twenty-two
We gathered at the conference table again, and Anna Valmont slid into the seat beside me.
“Hey,” I said. “How goes the grease job?”
She eyed me and smiled faintly. “I am, in this crew, what is known as a grease man. A grease man is the person who can get you into someplace you otherwise couldn’t get into by yourself.” Her voice turned wry. “A grease job is something else.”
“Right,” I said, narrowing my eyes, nodding. “Got it. So how goes the man greasing?”
Valmont let out a shallow chuckle. “Got to admit, I wouldn’t mind being the first to take on one of those Fernucci monsters and win.”
“Can you?”
She nodded slowly. “I think it’s possible.”
Grey sauntered in, looking exactly as he had that morning, and sat down at the table.
“Order, please,” Nicodemus said, as Grey sat down next to Deirdre. “We’ll make this quick and then break for a meal, if that’s all right with everyone.”
“All right with me,” Ascher drawled. She looked sweatier and more smudged than she had a few hours before, but her expression was unmistakably smug. “I’m ravenous.”
“I know just what you mean,” Nicodemus said. “Deirdre?”
Once more, Deirdre circled the table with folders that were labeled simply GOAL.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said. “Does this master plan of yours come with health coverage?”
“Dresden,” Nicodemus said.
“Because that kind of thing is getting to be more and more important. I mean, I know the government probably means well and all, but those people, honestly.”
Nicodemus eyed me.
“Life insurance seems like something that would be worthwhile, too.” I looked up at Ascher and winked. “Maybe we should strike until we get a whole-life policy.”
Ascher flashed me a quick grin and said, “I’ve always thought that insurance was more or less betting against myself.”
“Nah,” Binder said. “In my experience, you’re just playing the odds.”
“Children,” Nicodemus said with a sigh, “shall we focus on the matter at hand?”
“But I haven’t even had the chance to dip Deirdre’s pigtails in my inkwell,” I said.
Deirdre glowered at me, her eyes glinting.
“Fine,” I said, and subsided.
“Each of you,” Nicodemus said, “brings something to the table that we need in order to reach our final destination. The manor of the Lord of the Underworld, Vault Seven.”
“You mean Ha—”
“Shall we not speak his name for the next twenty-four hours or so, please, Mr. Dresden?” Nicodemus said in a pained tone. “Unless you prefer him to be ready and waiting for all of us, including yourself? Granted, the likelihood of him taking notice of any one of us, in particular, is vanishing small, but it seems prudent to take a few simple steps.”
“Whatever,” I said. I thought he was being pretty fussy. What with books and movies using him as a character, and mythology courses being taught all over the world, I figured Hades got to hear his name spoken in one form or another tens if not hundreds of thousands of times every day.
Each utterance of a powerful supernatural being’s name is . . . kind of like sending him a page, a ping for his attention. If I could have a phone that survived longer than an hour, and it tried to get my attention ten thousand times a day, I’d throw the damned thing into a hole. The big supernatural beings, especially the very humanlike Greek gods, probably reacted in much the same way. Odds were good that I could sit chatting for an hour or two and mention his name several times, yet he wouldn’t even notice my relative handful of pings among all the others. It took a deliberate and rhythmic repetition, usually at least three times, to really get a signal through the noise.
But on the other hand . . . there was always the chance that Hades just might feel my utterance of his name and randomly decide to take a moment to pay attention. That probably wouldn’t be good. So despite giving Nicodemus lip, I shut up.
“Once we gain entry to the Underworld vault . . . ,” Nicodemus began.
I held up my hand and said, “Question?”
Nicodemus’s left eye began to twitch.
I didn’t wait for him to respond. “You’re planning on just jumping straight to the vault? Hell, not even Hercules could do that. It was kind of a journey to get in. There was a bit with a dog and everything. Do you really think we’re going to just hop right past all of the defenses around the realm of the king of the Underworld?”
That got everyone’s attention, even Grey’s. They all looked at Nicodemus, interested in the answer.
“Yes,” Nicodemus said in a flat tone.
“Oh,” I said. “Just like that, eh?”
“Once we’re inside the vault,” Nicodemus said, as if my question was not interesting enough to waste more time on, “there will be three gates between us and our goal. The Gate of Fire, the Gate of Ice, and the Gate of Blood.”
“Fun,” I said.
“Obviously,” Nicodemus said, “Ascher was chosen for her capability with fire. As the Winter Knight, you, Dresden, will obviously handle the Gate of Ice.”
“Right,” I said. “Obviously. What about the Gate of Blood?”
Nicodemus smiled pleasantly.
Of course. Old Nick had probably spilled more blood than the rest of us in the room together, if you didn’t count Deirdre. “Exactly what does each of these gates entail?”
“If I knew that,” Nicodemus said, “I’d not have bothered recruiting experts. Each of us will take point on our specific gate, with the rest of the team backing whatever play they decide is important. Once we’re through, we’ll be in the vault. It’s quite large. You’ll have a few minutes to gather whatever it is you feel you need to take with you. After that time, I’m leaving. Anyone who lags behind is on his or her own.”
I held up my hand again, and didn’t bother waiting for a response. “What are you after?”
“Excuse me?” Nicodemus asked.
“You,” I said. “Vault Seven is awfully specific. And you don’t care much about money. So I have to wonder what’s in there that you are so interested in.”
“That’s hardly your concern,” Nicodemus said.
I snorted. “The hell it isn’t. We’re all sticking our necks out—and if things don’t go well, we might have an angry god on our tails. I want to know what’s worth that, other than the twenty million. After all, a lot of things could go wrong. Maybe you wind up dead, purely by someone else’s hand on the way in—maybe I want to grab that whatsit for myself.”
There was a mutter of agreement from Binder, and nods from Karrin and Valmont. Even Ascher looked curious. Grey pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“Should I fall, the rest of you will already be dead,” Nicodemus said calmly.
“Indulge me,” I said. “This deal is already starting to stink. A reasonable person might walk based purely on what happened today.”
That brought a low round of mutters, and Valmont asked, “What happened today?”
I told her about Tessa and her ghouls and Deirdre and Harvey. That made Valmont’s lips compress into a line. She knew better than most what was left when a Denarian tore into a mortal, and two out of three possible suspects were Knights of the Coin.
“That has no bearing on our mission,” Nicodemus said.
“The hell it doesn’t,” I said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but the last thing we need is his crazy ex jumping into things on some kind of vengeance kick.”
“It’s not about that,” Nicodemus said.
“Then what is it about?” I asked. “I dealt with the White Council my whole life, so I’m used to being treated like a mushroom—”
“Eh?” Ascher asked.
“Kept in the dark and fed bullshit,” Binder reported calmly.
“Ah.”
“—but this is going beyond the pale, even for m
e. You ask us to trust you about the plan to get into what should be an impenetrable vault. You ask us to trust you that our share will be waiting next to whatever it is you want. You ask us to trust you and believe that Tessa isn’t on some kind of jihad that will get us all killed, but won’t tell us what it is about.” I looked around the table at my criminal confederates. “Trust is kind of a two-way street, Nicodemus. It’s time to give something.”
“Or you’ll do what, precisely?”
“Or maybe we’ll all walk away from a bunch of empty promises without a sliver of proof to back them up,” I said.
Nicodemus narrowed his eyes. “Dresden and his woman are obviously in accord,” he said.
Karrin scowled.
Nicodemus ignored her. “What about the rest of you?”
“What he said,” Valmont said quietly.
Ascher folded her arms, frowning.
Binder sighed. “Twenty. Million. Quid. Think, girl.”
“We can’t spend it if we’re dead from sticking our heads into a hole and getting them whacked off,” Ascher said firmly.
Nicodemus nodded. “Grey?”
Grey tented his fingertips in front of his lips for a moment and then said, “The personal aspect of this interference troubles me. A job of this sort requires pure professionalism. Detachment.”
Binder made a nonverbal sound of agreement with Grey’s statements.
“I will not walk away from a job once I’ve agreed to it—you know how I operate, Nicodemus,” Grey continued. “But I would sympathize if another professional of less ability and less rigid standards did so.”
Nicodemus regarded Grey thoughtfully for a moment. “Your professional recommendation?”
“The wizard has a point,” Grey said. “He is an annoying, headstrong ass, but he isn’t stupid. It would not be foolish for you to invest some measure of trust to balance what you ask for.”
Nicodemus mused over that for a moment and then nodded his head. “One ought not hire an expert and then ignore his opinion,” he said. Then he turned to the rest of us. “Vault Seven contains, in addition to a standard division of gold and jewels, a number of Western religious icons. It is my intention to retrieve a cup from the vault.”
“A wha’?” Binder asked.
“A cup,” Nicodemus replied.
“All this,” Binder said, “for a cup.”
Nicodemus nodded. “A simple ceramic cup, something like a teacup, but lacking any handle. Quite old.”
My mouth fell open and I made a choking sound at approximately the same time.
Grey pursed his lips and let out a slow whistle.
“Wait,” Ascher said. “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Karrin said quietly.
Nicodemus made a face in her direction. “Miss Murphy, please.”
She gave Nicodemus a small, unpleasant smile.
Binder clued in a second later. “The bloody Holy Grail? Is he bloody kidding?”
Valmont turned to me, frowning. “That’s real?”
“It’s real,” I said. “But it was lost more than a thousand years ago.”
“Not lost,” Nicodemus corrected me calmly. “It was collected.”
“The cup that caught the blood of Christ,” Grey mused. He eyed Nicodemus. “Now, what possible use could you have for that old thing?”
“Sentimental value,” Nicodemus said with a guileless smile, and straightened the skinny strands of his grey tie. “I’m something of a collector of such artifacts myself.”
The tie wasn’t a tie, unless you meant it in a very literal sense. It was a length of simple old rope, tied into the Noose—the one that Judas used to hang himself after betraying Christ, if I understood it correctly. It made Nicodemus all but unkillable. I didn’t know if anyone else in the world knew what I knew: that the Noose didn’t protect him from itself. I’d nearly strangled him with it the last time we’d crossed trails—hence his roughened voice.
Grey didn’t look like he believed Nicodemus’s answer, but that hadn’t stopped him from being satisfied with it. He looked around the room and said, “There. You know more than you did. Is it enough?”
“Tessa,” I said. “What’s her beef with you going after the Grail?”
“She wants it for herself, of course,” Nicodemus said. “I’ll deal with Tessa before we launch. It won’t become an issue for the job. You have my personal guarantee.”
Grey spread his hands. “There,” he said. “That’s good enough for me. Binder?”
The stocky little guy screwed up his eyes in thought and nodded slowly. “Ash?”
“All right,” Ascher said. “Sure. That’s enough for me, for now.”
“But . . . ,” I began.
Ascher rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t be such a whiny little . . .” She turned to Binder. “Git?”
“Git,” he confirmed.
“Don’t be such a whiny little git, Dresden,” Ascher said. “I’m hungry.”
The more I could force Nicodemus to bend, the more of his authority would drain away from him. The more someone else defended him, the more he would stockpile. Time to try another angle. “And you aren’t the only thing in here that is,” I said to Ascher, and pointed at the goat pen. “Before I go anywhere else, I want to know what’s been picking off the livestock.”
“Ah,” Nicodemus said. “That.”
“Yeah, that.”
“Does it matter?”
I glowered at him. “It kind of does,” I said. Then, thoughtfully, I raised my voice to carry a little farther. “Whatever big, ugly, stinking, stupid thing you’ve got hanging around in here with us probably doesn’t deserve to be in this company. Given our goal, I don’t see the point in taking along a mindless mound of muscle.”
Grey winced.
I felt it almost at once. The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly started trying to crawl up onto my scalp. Part of me kicked into a genuine watery-bellied fear reaction, something purely instinctive, a message from my primitive hindbrain: A large predator was staring at me with intent.
“Yeah, got your attention now,” I muttered under my breath. I raised my voice to address Nicodemus. “Point is, Grey’s right. It’s time to share some details. So who is the last guy on the crew?”
“I certainly never meant to frighten anyone,” Nicodemus said. “But I suppose I don’t have the same point of view as you children. I can understand your apprehension.”
Bull. He’d known exactly what he was doing, setting out the goats and letting us get the idea in our heads. From the start, he wanted us to know that he had something big and bad and dangerous hiding in reserve.
“If you don’t mind,” Nicodemus said to the room at large, “I think introductions are in order.”
The nape of my neck was trying to slither away and find a good place to hide when the smell hit me first. It was thick and pungent, bestial—the smell of a large animal in the immediate proximity. A few seconds later, the goats started panicking in their pen, running back and forth and bleating to one another in terror.
“What the hell,” Valmont breathed, looking around uneasily.
I didn’t join her in rubbernecking. I was extending my awareness, my wizard’s senses, searching for the subtle vibration of magical energies at work in the air. I’d never been able to throw up a magical veil so good that it could mask odor, but just because I couldn’t do it didn’t mean that it was impossible. The one huge weakness of veiling magic was that it was still magic. If your senses were sharp, and you were reasonably sure a veil was present, you could find that source of magical energy if you looked hard enough.
I found it after a moment’s intense concentration—about ten feet directly behind me.
I turned kind of casually in my chair, folded my arms, fixed my gaze on the empty space where I’d felt the energy coming from and waited, trying to look bored.
It faded into sight, slowly, an utterly motionless figure.
It was human in general shape, but only generally. Muscle covered it in ropy layers and in densities that were too oddly proportioned to be human—so much muscle that you could see its outlines through a thick layer of greyish, straggly hair that covered its body. It was well over nine feet tall. Massive shoulders sloped up to a tree-trunk-sized neck, and its head was shaped strangely as well, sloping up more sharply than a human skull, with a wide forehead and a brow ridge like a mountain crag. Eyes glittered way back in the shadows beneath that brow, glinting like an assassin’s knives from a cave’s mouth. Its features were heavy and brutish, its hands and feet absolutely enormous—and I had met the creature’s like before.
“Stars and stones,” I breathed.
That massive brow gathered, lowered. For a second, I thought there had been distant thunder outside, and then I realized that the nearly subsonic rumbling sound was coming from the thing’s chest.
It was growling.
At me.
I swallowed.
“This,” Nicodemus said into the startled silence, “is the Genoskwa. He, of course, knows you all, having been the first to arrive.”
“Big one, isn’t he,” Binder said, in a very mild voice. “What’s his job?”
“I share Dresden’s concerns about the availability of our target’s vault,” Nicodemus said. “There have, in the past, been rather epic guardians protecting the ways in and out of this particular domain. The Genoskwa has consented to join us in order to serve as a counterweight, should any such protection arise.”
“An ogre?” Ascher asked.
“Not an ogre,” I replied immediately. “He’s one of the Forest People.”
The Genoskwa’s growl might have gotten a little louder. It was so deep that I had a hard time knowing for sure.
“What’s the difference?” Ascher asked.
“I once saw one of the Forest People take on about twenty ghouls in a fair fight,” I said. “It wasn’t even close. If he’d been playing for keeps, none of them would have survived.”
The Genoskwa snorted a breath out through his nose. The sound was . . . simply vile with rage, with broiled, congealed hate.
I held out both of my hands palms up. I’d rarely seen the kind of power that River Shoulders, the Forest Person I’d met several times before, had displayed, physically and otherwise, and it seemed like a really fantastic idea to mend some fences if possible. “Sorry about what I said earlier. I figured Nicodemus had a troll stashed around here or something. Didn’t realize it was one of the Forest People. I’ve done a little business with River Shoulders in the past. Maybe you’ve heard of—”