by Jim Butcher
Ascher looked like she nearly had a heart attack when Deirdre did that, and cast a glare up at the Denarian. But then she took the can and sprayed a layer of what looked like some kind of aerosolized plastic or rubber onto the floor. She laid it out in a large circle around her, overlapping the circle onto the wall and continuing it up to a few inches above her head. It was lopsided, but technically a circle didn’t have to be a perfect one to contain the magic. It was just a lot more efficient—not to mention professional—that way.
Ascher, who was looking damned appealing in her wet clothes (and dammit, how could I blame my reaction on the Winter mantle when it was being held at bay by iron?), went over the circle again, making sure the plastic spray was especially thick at the joints of the floor and wall. Then she nodded once, bent, and twisted her wrist so that a couple of drops of her blood fell from the manacles onto the circle. It snapped up into place at once, a screen of invisible energy, and she promptly unlocked her manacles and dropped them onto the floor at her feet. Then she narrowed her eyes, touched her finger to the wall inside the circle, and murmured a quiet word.
Light sprang out from her fingertip, sudden and fierce, and steam began to hiss up where droplets of water fell onto her hand or the wall. She began to move her fingertip slowly, and I watched as marble and the drywall and the concrete and metal beneath it began to crack and blacken and part. Glowing motes and sparks flew back from her, falling thickly on her hand and her arm, then blackening and dropping to the floor, burning holes in her sleeve but leaving her flesh, as far as I could see, untouched.
I lifted my eyebrows at that. I mean, I guess I could turn my finger into an arc welder, sure, but that wouldn’t mean that my entire hand wouldn’t burn to a crisp as I did it. That kind of inurement to the elements required an entirely different order and magnitude of talent—talent very few wizards, in my experience, possessed.
Man. When Ascher said she mostly worked with fire, she wasn’t kidding.
Binder and his troops came into the bank while she was working, and Binder immediately scouted out the place and started assigning groups to various defensive positions. As he did that, Anna Valmont slid silently across the floor until she stood near me. She looked at the thorn manacles on my wrist.
“I can’t stand to look at those things,” she said. “It must hurt.”
I bit down on a sharp reply. She wasn’t looking for that by standing near me. “Yeah, pretty much.”
She fiddled with her gear and licked her lips. “How long, do you think, before you can take them off?”
“No idea,” I said. “Depends on Ascher, I guess.”
There was a loud snapping sound and a squeal of parting metal from below, and Ascher half snarled, “That’s right, bitch,” and began putting her manacles back on in a businesslike fashion.
It had taken her less than three minutes to slice an opening large enough to admit a big guy into the reinforced wall.
She smeared the circle with her foot, and the excess energy of the spell dispersed into the air to be immediately smothered by the falling water. Then she put her hand on the cut section and began to push.
Grey slid in front of her and said, “Best let me go first, Miss Ascher.” He set his shoulders and almost casually shoved the cut section of wall down, and it fell through to the hallway beyond with a satisfying boom—and was instantly echoed by the hollow, coughing blast of a shotgun from the hallway beyond.
Grey was flung off of his feet to the ground, where he promptly became the origin point of a growing puddle of blood.
Ascher let out a choked sound and flattened herself desperately to the side of the opening, into the shelter of the unexposed side of the stairwell.
The shotgun boomed twice more, and then Deirdre was through the opening. The shotgun went off again, and then a man screamed.
Then silence.
I snarled wordlessly. I rushed down the stairs to check on Ascher, and then peered through the hole in the wall. Deirdre crouched beyond it, on all fours like a wary cat, her hair spread out around her and moving slowly, like strands of kelp in a gentle current. A fourth guard lay unmistakably dead on the floor in front of her, his shotgun still gripped loosely in his hand.
“Grey,” Nicodemus said, his voice tight.
Of course he was worried about Grey. Grey hadn’t done his job with the retina scanner yet.
Ascher was shaken but untouched. I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and turned to Grey, trying to remember what I knew about first aid and tourniquets.
I needn’t have bothered. Grey had already begun sitting up even before I turned around, and his hair was mussed. Other than that, and the bloodied clothing, he looked entirely healthy. His expression was annoyed. “Damn, that hurts.”
“Whiner,” I said. “One little load of buckshot to the chest.” I offered him my hand.
Grey stared blankly at my hand for a second, as if it had taken him a moment to remember what the gesture meant. Then he took it and I pulled him up to his feet. He wobbled once, and then shook his head and steadied.
“You okay?” I asked.
He gestured at all the blood on the floor. “Hit my heart. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“Man,” I said, impressed. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”
Grey showed me his teeth, then turned, poised and contained once more, and stalked through the doorway after Deirdre.
Hannah Ascher got slowly to her feet and stood staring down at the smeared puddle of blood on the floor. She swallowed and started back up the stairs.
I put out a hand and stopped her. “It’ll take the cops time to get here, but you probably don’t want to be standing around on the first floor when they do,” I said.
“Too right,” said Binder, coming up behind Valmont, still at the stairway’s top and nudging her down like a bulldog herding a hesitant child. “Bullets are no respecters of persons. Go on, girl. And Ash, love, don’t forget to fill my pack.”
Ascher had a couple of empty black backpacks slung over her shoulder. “I know, I know. The red ones.”
Nicodemus came to the top of the stairs, dragging the unconscious guard, and came down the steps, taking the guard along none too gently. Once he had the man to the bottom, he interlaced his handcuffs with those of the men already on the floor and cuffed him there.
“Well-done, Miss Ascher,” Nicodemus said. “We’ll secure the hallway and you can repeat your excellent performance on the second door. Miss Valmont, if you would accompany us, please—I’ll want you working on the main vault door the moment we have access to it.”
Anna Valmont tensed beside me, her fingers fretting over the surface of her tool roll, constantly wiping droplets of water away.
“Michael,” I said, “why don’t you go on in and make sure Valmont has everything she needs?”
Michael arched an eyebrow at me, but nodded, and came down the stairs to Anna Valmont’s side. He gave her an encouraging smile, which she returned hesitantly, and the two of them went on through in the wake of the others.
“Dresden,” Nicodemus said, his tone amused. “Surely you don’t think I’d do anything to the woman simply because her purpose had been served?”
“Not if you want that Way opened, you won’t,” I said.
Nicodemus smiled at me. He had buckled on a sword belt bearing the long blade he’d used earlier and a curved Bedouin dagger. “There, you see. You can learn to play the game after all.” He vanished through the security door. A moment later, a huge shadow moved through the narrow stairway. I never saw the Genoskwa go by, but I felt the brush of patchy fur against the skin of my right hand, smelled a faint reek of its odor in the air, and bits of ash and the scent of burned hair came from the edges of the torched opening as the huge beast squeezed through it.
“This stinks,” Binder said a moment later, his voice pitched low. “This stinks all to hell.”
“Hah,” I said. “Maybe it’s just the furball.”
He snorte
d, and we waited in silence for another three or four minutes, until Ascher reappeared, newly muddy with ashes and soot from burning through the second wall, wearing the manacles again. “That big thing creeps me out,” she said.
“Too right,” Binder said. “Gotta wonder what something like that wants with jewels, eh?”
He wasn’t wrong about that.
“You’re right,” I said. “It smells.”
Ascher traded a long look with Binder. “Should we leave?”
Binder grimaced. “And leave Old Nick unable to get through his fiery gate? He’d take that personal, I think. What is Uncle Binder’s Rule Number Two?”
“Keep your eyes on the money,” Ascher said.
“That’s right,” Binder said. “Don’t take things personal, don’t get emotional. We’re professionals, love. Do the job, get paid, get gone.”
“There could be more than money at stake here,” I said quietly.
“Nick and his cup?” Binder asked. “Been a lot of bad men and a lot of powerful artifacts since this ball started spinning. It’ll spin on.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. Nicodemus is connected like few others. What if I could make you an offer?”
“Cash?” Binder asked.
I grimaced. “Well. Not as such.”
He made a tsking sound and glanced at Ascher. “What’s Uncle Binder’s Rule Number One?”
“Money or nothing,” she said. “Anything else costs too much.”
He nodded. “So don’t offer me favors, wizard, or lenience from the White Council, or power from a Faerie Queen. Those things aren’t payment. They’re pretty, pretty things with strings attached, and sooner or later you’re all wrapped up like a bug in a web. Money or nothing.”
“What about freedom?” I asked him. “The cops are going to have this place surrounded by the time we get back. Do you think you’re going to fight your way out past an army of CPD?”
Binder let out a low belly laugh. “Look at you, Dresden. Damn, but you’re a Boy Scout. This is a mob bank, belongs to your local robber baron. Eight minutes since the silent alarm went off, and where are the sirens? Where are the uniforms?”
I grimaced. I’d noticed that, too.
“You really think the alarms call the gendarmes?” He shook his head. “Twenty to one, it’ll go to his people first. Then they can decide if they want to call in the coppers or handle the matter themselves.”
Yeah. Marcone’s people.
Gulp.
Binder busied himself making sure the groaning, stirring guards had been thoroughly disarmed and relieved of their handcuff keys. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, odds are good if this Marcone of yours is so savvy, someone will start playing circle games with me. I’ll need to be ready to counter them.” He pointed a finger at Ascher.
“For the hundredth time, the red ones,” Ascher said, quirking a slight smile.
“I’ll buy us a nice tropical island with a nice beach, and get you a new swimsuit,” he said, winking.
“You should be so lucky,” Ascher said back.
“I’ll hold the door for you lot. Don’t be too long.” Binder went up the stairs, his beady eyes sparkling, fairly bristling with energy.
“Huh,” I said.
“What?” Ascher asked.
“You and Binder . . . not a thing?”
Ascher’s mouth turned up bitterly at the corners. “Not for lack of trying.”
“Well,” I said, “kinda hard to blame him. You’re damned attractive.”
“Not him, trying,” she said. “Me. He’s turned me down.” She looked up the stairs for a moment and sighed. “Rule Number One. He’s not into entanglements.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to imagine Ascher coming on to Binder and getting turned down. Granted, I’d turned her down too. Which . . . now that I thought about it, just couldn’t have been awesome for her self-image.
Doesn’t matter how pretty you are. What’s important is how pretty you feel. No one feels pretty when they hear “no” often enough.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but you would not believe how many times I’ve had pretty girls who would have eaten me alive, like, literally, make a pass at me. Makes a guy a little tense about it.”
Ascher scratched at her nose with one finger, making the manacles jingle. She grimaced as the thorns dug at her wrists. “Wait a minute. You’re saying I’m too pretty to be attractive.”
“To a guy in my business, maybe,” I said. “Someone as alluring as you, there’s a high twitch factor. Binder strikes me as the type to have the same kind of wariness.”
Her voice turned thoughtful. “So if I’d been a little older and a little dumpier, maybe I’d have had some luck with you—like Murphy.”
I scowled. “Murphy’s made of muscle. You just can’t see it under the suit and the body armor,” I said. “And she hasn’t gotten lucky with me either.”
Ascher stared at me for a second and blinked slowly. “You’re . . . serious, aren’t you?”
“We’re complicated,” I said.
“Because you’re twitchy?”
“And she’s had a couple of divorces. And her ex-boyfriend kind of shot me.”
“What?”
“I asked him to,” I said hurriedly.
“What?”
My mouth just kept running. “Plus there was this whole initiation rite with Mab, except I think that only happened in my brain or something. Traumatic—like getting it on with a hurricane. I think it’s kind of put me off sex in general.”
Ascher stared at me for a second more, then shook her head and turned away. “Man,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Dresden, but thanks for turning me down. Kinda dodged a bullet on that one.”
“Hey,” I protested.
“Seriously,” she said. “Way too much drama there for anyone sane.”
“We’re not dramatic,” I said. “Just—”
“Complicated?” she asked. She shook her head. “It isn’t complicated. You just open up and let someone in. And whatever comes after that, you face it together.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“The hell it isn’t. You had a chance for that and you turned it down? You’re a fucking idiot. I’m not making the same mistake.”
Footsteps came from the hallway beyond the security door and Michael appeared, Amoracchius in hand. The Sword was glowing with a faint, angry light.
“Harry,” he said. “Trouble.”
“What’s happening?”
“Nicodemus is about to kill Anna Valmont.”
“And you’re here?”
“Four of them and one of me,” he said.
I got out the key to my manacles and made sure it was handy.
“Dresden,” Ascher said, her voice tense, “if you blow out the electronics, you’ll blow the whole job!”
“I love it when a posh bird talks dirty!” called Binder merrily, from upstairs.
I ground my teeth, took my staff in my right hand, and said to Michael, “Come on.”
And then I took off down the hallway.
Thirty-five
The hallway beyond the first security door ran for a bit less than a hundred feet, and I found the mental shields against my various pains fluttering as I put more demand on my body. I ground my teeth and got through it, while Michael moved with effortless, well, grace at my side, even steadying me once when I wobbled.
At the end of the hall was another security door with a hole scorched through the wall beside it—and again I was treated to the stench of burned Genoskwa hair.
I ducked and went through the hole with Michael right behind me, and found myself in a room that was walled on two sides with what at first glance looked like lockers and which I realized a second later were security-deposit boxes. Minimum security, I guessed, where people stored copies of their important paperwork and such, from the size of them.
The third wall was made of obdurate, unjointed steel, broken only by a lar
ge steel door with a relatively small, unobtrusive control panel in its center. The panel didn’t look like cutting-edge tech to me. It was simply a keypad, a large combination wheel, and a small LED display.
Anna Valmont stood in front of the control panel with her tool roll splayed out on the floor beside her feet, all her equipment at the ready. She had what looked like a small flashlight in her hand. She was facing not the door, but Nicodemus.
The leader of the Denarians stood off to one side, his little automatic in his hand, pointing it steadily at Valmont. Deirdre stood on his right, and Grey on his left. The Genoskwa was a giant blur against the wall behind them and a stench in the air.
“I still don’t see the problem,” Nicodemus said.
“The problem,” Valmont said, her eyes flicking nervously to me, “is that this isn’t the door from the plans you gave me.”
“My information sources are impeccable,” Nicodemus replied. “They assure me that the door I showed you was the one installed when the bank was built.”
“Obviously, they aren’t as smart as they think they are,” Valmont replied tartly. “Marcone must have had the door changed out secretly after it was installed.”
“Then open this door,” Nicodemus said, and gestured with the gun. “Now.”
“You don’t get it,” Valmont said. “With the blueprints and a day to plan, I might have been able to crack the door. Maybe. This one is another Fernucci, but it’s a custom job, and it could be designed completely differently. Not only that, but this door . . .”
A horrible instinct hit me. “Hell’s bells. It’s wired, isn’t it?”
Grey scowled at me. “How did you know that?”
Because my brother’s girlfriend had seen Marcone defending one of his strongholds with her own eyes a few years before, against an angry Fomor sorcerer. He’d had the place rigged with mines and defensive strong points and booby traps. Thomas had told me about it. But all I said to Grey was, “How? I’m a freaking wizard, that’s how.”