by Jim Butcher
I turned the doorknob slowly, keeping my body as far to one side as possible. Then I pushed in gently, and the door swung open by an inch or three. When nothing exploded or burst into wails of alarm, I eased up next to it and peeked into the building.
It was like looking into another world.
Green and blue light crawled and slithered up the walls and over the warehouse's interior, eerie and subtly unsettling, each color moving in waves of differing widths and speeds. The strange scent of water and fish was strong inside. There were things on the wall-growths was all I could call them. Ugly patches of some kind of lumpy, rough substance I didn't recognize were clumped all around the walls and ceiling of the warehouse in roughly circular patches about six feet across.
Cages were scattered all around the floor-a bunch of five-foot cubes made of heavy steel grid. People were locked up in several of them, the doors held shut by heavy chains. Most of them just sat, staring at nothing, or lay upon their sides doing the same thing, completely motionless. That wasn't normal. Even someone who was drugged but conscious would show a little more animation than that. This meant magic was involved, some kind of invasive mental stuff, and a little voice in my head started screaming.
I've been subjected to that kind of invasion, more than once.
It's bad.
My legs felt weak. My hands shook. The rippling colors of light on the walls became something sinister, disorienting, the beginnings of another attack on my mind. Jesus Christ, I wanted to turn around and scurry away, as swiftly and as meekly as possible. In fact, I tried to. My legs quivered as if preparing to move, but the motion drew my gaze across another row of cages, and I saw Georgia.
She was naked, kneeling, her hands wrapped gently around her swelling stomach, cradling her unborn child. Her head was bowed in a posture of meekness, and her sleek shoulders and neck were relaxed. But I saw her eyes, open and staring at the bottom of the cage, and I saw the defiance flickering in them.
Whatever held the others held Georgia as well-but she evidently had not been subdued as readily as they had. She was still fighting them.
Something deep inside me, something hard and fierce and furious, locked my legs into place. I stared at Georgia, and I knew I couldn't run. I remembered that Will and Marcy were in there, waiting for me to announce that the moment was right to change form and fight. I remembered that nearly all of those people in the cages were young, even younger than the werewolves-including the youngest of all, in Georgia's cage.
I remembered blood splattered on the weathered cabin of a boat-and that there was no one but me coming to help those kids.
The fear changed form on me. It disguised itself as reason. Don't go in, it told me. Know your limits. Send for help.
But the only serious help I could get would be SI-and they would be putting their own careers, as well as their lives, on the line if they came to my aid. I could send for the regular police, drop in an anonymous call, but in this part of town it might take half an hour for them to show up. Even when they did arrive, they'd be lambs to the slaughter. Most of the force had no idea what really went on in the city's darkest shadows.
You could go get the Sword, said my fear. You know where it is. You know how strong it makes you.
Not many people could honestly say they'd wielded a magic sword against the forces of darkness, but I'm one of them. Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith, lay waiting for the hand of someone worthy to wield it against the powers of darkness. In the final battle with the Red Court, that hand had been mine. In the darkest moment of that fight, when all seemed lost, it had been my hand upon Fidelacchius that had tipped the balance, enabling Dresden to prevail. And I had felt a Power greater than I supporting me, guiding my movements, and, for a single, swift moment, entering into me and making use of my lips and tongue to pronounce sentence upon the murderous creatures surrounding us.
I could go for the Sword. Odds were it would be of some help.
But I knew that if I did, I would have taken the easy path. I would have turned away from a source of terror for the most excellent, rational of reasons. And the next time I faced the same kind of fear, it would be a little easier to turn away, a little easier to find good reasons not to act.
The Sword was a source of incredible power-but it was nothing but cool, motionless steel without the hand that could grip it, the muscles that would move it, the eyes and the mind that would guide it. Without them, the Sword was nothing.
I stopped and stared down at my shaking hand. Without my hand, my mind, my will, the Sword was nothing. And if that was true, then it must also be true that my hand was what mattered. That it had been my hand, my will that had made the difference.
And my hand was right here. In fact, I had two of them.
My breathing steadied and slowed. Sword or no Sword, I had sworn to serve and protect the people of this city. And if I turned away from that oath now, if I gave in to my fear, even for the most seductively logical of reasons, then I had no right to take up the Sword of Faith in any case.
My hands stopped shaking and my breathing slowed and steadied, bringing the terror under control. I whispered a quick, almost entirely mental prayer to St. Jude, the patron of lost causes and policemen. It sounded something like, "OhGodohGodohGod. Help."
I nudged the door open a few more inches, then slid into the warehouse, moving with as much speed and silence as I possessed, my gun at the level and ready. I MOVED DOWN the length of the warehouse, mostly hidden behind a shelving unit more than twenty feet high. It was stacked with pallets, loading gear, storage bins, and the occasional barrel or box of unknown provenance. The shifting, constantly wavering light made an excellent cover for motion, and I timed my steps to move in rhythm with the dancing illumination.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and it felt like every inch of my skin was covered in gooseflesh. I'd been in the presence of dangerous magic often enough to know the feeling of dark power in motion. It had been like this at Chichen Itza, and in the waters off the island of Demonreach, and in the Raith Deeps, and at Arctis Tor, and in the nest of Black Court vampires, and at…
You get the point. This wasn't my first rodeo.
The most important thing would be to take out Nothing's presumptive boss, and fast-preferably before anyone knew I was here at all. The warehouse reeked of magic, and if a mortal goes into a fair fight against a wizard, the mortal loses. Period. They have power that is literally almost unimaginable, and if the bad guy got a chance to defend himself, the only uncertainty remaining would be how much creativity he put into killing me.
At the end of the shelving unit, there was a rolling ladder, one made to run all the way up and down the shelves and provide easy access. The warehouse was darker up near the ceiling than at floor level. I didn't even slow down. I went up the ladder to the top of the shelving unit and froze in place, getting a good, clear look at the enemy for the first time.
There were half a dozen of them including Nothing, and they all shopped at the same store. Their outfits were conspicuous due to their uniformity, though some instinct made me think that they had been intended as disguises-that individuality, as a concept, wasn't of any particular concern to Nothing and his crew. Nothing was, by far, the largest of the men, though none of them looked like featherweights.
They were loading cages into a railroad cargo container, a fairly common sight on large ships, some of which could carry hundreds of the metal boxes. The cages had been sized to stack exactly into the railroad car, two across and three high, with no consideration whatsoever for the human cargo. There were no blankets, no pads-nothing but metal cages and vulnerable skin.
I spotted Andi's cage, not far from Georgia's. The redheaded girl had evidently lacked some critical capacity to resist whatever had been done to her. She lay on her back, staring blankly up at the roof of her cage. The werewolf girl was a bombshell. Even lying in completely passive relaxation, her curves beckoned the eye-but the hollow despair of her expression was haunting.
/> Nothing was standing over Will and Marcy, who lay limp and motionless on the floor at his feet. A couple of turtlenecks were hauling an empty cage toward them. "How long will it take?" he was asking a third man.
"Without knowing the exact drug, several hours," the man replied. His voice was plainly human, and sounded nothing like whoever it was I'd spoken to on the phone. "Perhaps more."
Nothing frowned. "Can you make a determination of their viability by dawn?"
"If I am able to isolate the substance that incapacitated them before then," he said. "I have no means of determining how many attempts will be required. It will take as long as it takes."
"He will not be pleased," Nothing said.
The man bowed his head. "My life for the master. I will do all in my power to serve him. Should he be disappointed in me, it is meet for him to take my life."
Nothing nodded. "Be about it."
The man turned and walked quickly away, holding two small vials of rich red blood in his hand-samples from Will and Marcy, I assumed.
By then, the empty cage had arrived. Nothing picked up Marcy and lifted her toward the waiting cage. I bit down on a curse. If I let him imprison her, a full third of my team would be neutralized, as helpless as the prisoners who had already been taken. But if I started the music early, I risked throwing away my sucker punch. Nothing's master might show up at any time.
On the other hand, Nothing seemed to be large and in charge. Perhaps the hissing person I'd spoken to on the phone had left matters in Nothing's shovellike hands. Or perhaps I'd read the situation incorrectly. What if one of the other turtlenecks had been the first speaker, and Nothing was really the boss?
I made up my mind and settled the P-90's crosshair onto Nothing's head, a little below the tip of his nose. The weapon was set for automatic fire, and while I could control the weapon fairly well, especially when it was loaded with subsonic rounds, the recoil would tend to carry the weapon's muzzle higher after the first shot.
Against anything human, more than one round to the head would be overkill: When the merely mortal goes up against the supernatural, there's no such thing as overkill.
I snuggled the gun in close and tight, took a deep breath in, let it halfway out, held it, and began to slowly squeeze the weapon's trigger.
The instant before the trigger would have broken, there was a shimmering in the air and a man stepped out of it, appearing as if from nowhere.
I backed off the tension on my finger, feeling my heart surge with unspent adrenaline.
The man was of medium height, with sallow skin and greasy, straight black hair that hung past his shoulders. His lips were very thick and his mouth very wide, almost to the point of deformity. His large eyes were dark and watery and bulging, his nose sunken, as small as any I had ever seen. He was soaking wet and naked, his limbs scrawny and long, his hands very, very wide. Except for the hair, I couldn't help but compare him to a frog-a sullen, vicious frog.
The man let out a sound somewhat like a muffled belch, then vomited water onto the floor. Flaps of skin at his neck flared in and out, spewing smaller sprays of water several times, until he drew in a breath through his mouth, evidently filling his lungs with air.
All of the turtlenecks turned to face the creature and fell to their knees, including Nothing, who calmly set Marcy aside and went into a full kowtow, his palms flat on the floor, his forehead pressed down onto his knuckles.
"Sssssso," he hissed, "did the inssssolent creature deliver our prizesss?"
I recognized the voice from the telephone.
"Yes, my lord," rumbled Nothing. "As promised and in plenty of time to move."
"Did you sssstrike the bitch down?"
Nothing rocked back and then bowed again, somehow giving the impression that he was doing it more deeply. "She was clever enough to build safeguards into the meeting. I could not do so without attracting attention."
Frogface hissed. "I will sssettle with the mortal another time," he said. "Sssuch insssolence cannot be countenanced."
"No, my lord."
"Bring the new acquisitionsss. I will bind them."
"They have been given drugs, my lord. The binding could damage them."
Without looking particularly excited about it, Frogface kicked Nothing in the armpit. The blow was a more powerful one than Frogface's frame would suggest he was capable of giving. It flung Nothing from his hands and knees and onto his side by main force.
"Bring them."
"I obey," wheezed Nothing. He rose unsteadily and went to pick up Will. He dropped the young werewolf onto the floor beside Marcy.
"Sssuch disgusssting thingsss, mortalsss," Frogface murmured. His eyes lifted to Georgia in her cage. "She hasss not yet capitulated."
"No, my lord," Nothing muttered.
"Interesssting," Frogface said, and a leer spread over his broad mouth. "When we arrive, transport her to my chambers. We will sssee what is left of her ssstrength when the ssspawn is taken from her womb."
Jesus, men can be assholes. Even when they're barely human. Frogface was officially elected.
Georgia shuddered. She lifted her head, very slowly, as if it had been held down with vast weights-and the glare she turned on Frogface was nothing less than murderous.
Frogface chuckled at the expression and turned to face Will and Marcy. He dipped his fingers into a pouch that hung around his neck, almost invisible against his leathery skin, and withdrew what looked like a small seashell from it. He leered at the motionless Marcy and said, "Firssst, the female."
He closed his eyes and made a low sound in his throat, then began chanting words that bubbled and gobbled out from between his rubbery lips.
Now I've got you, I thought to myself, and sighted the gun on Frogface's rubbery lips. I didn't have Dresden's knowledge of magic, but I knew any wizard was vulnerable when they began working forces, the way Frogface was doing. The concentration needed was intense. If I'd understood Dresden correctly, it would mean that Frogface would have to be focusing his entire attention on his spell-leaving nothing remaining for defending his sallow hide.
The air began to shimmer around Frogface's hands, and fine, slithering tendrils emerged from the brightly colored shell and began to drift down toward Marcy, a cloud of tendrils as fine as a cobweb.
Certain now of my target, I breathed, held it, and squeezed the trigger.
Say what you like about the Belgians. They can make some fine weaponry.
The silenced P-90 barely whispered when the burst of automatic fire erupted from the end of the suppressor. There was no flash, no thunder-just a soft, wheezing sound and the click of the gun's action cycling. Thanks to the subsonic ammunition, the discharge itself actually made less noise than the rounds striking Frogface's skull.
There were several wet, loud cracking sounds, and every one of the rounds I'd fired struck home. One round would have been messy enough. When half a dozen of them hit, Frogface's head quite literally exploded, shattered to pulp and shards of bone by the bullets' impact, and two-thirds of his skull, from the upper lip on up, simply vanished into green-blooded spray.
There was a flash of angry red light from the seashell. Frogface let out a high-pitched, tinny scream, and the near-headless body began to topple, thrashing wildly.
The turtlenecks all came to their feet, looking around in wide-eyed confusion. My weapon had given them absolutely no clue as to where the attack had come from. I sighted in on Nothing, but from my angle, any rounds that went through him would threaten Will and a caged prisoner, beyond him.
I shifted targets, settling the red crosshairs on another turtleneck standing just past Will. I squeezed off another whispering burst of a half-dozen or so rounds, and the creature's neck exploded into a cloud of scarlet gore the consistency of mucus. It went limp, settling to the floor like a deflating balloon.
Nothing's pale-eyed gaze snapped over toward me, and I saw his gaze track the fall of brass bullet casings from where they bounced off the floor back
up to my position on the shelves.
He let out an enraged sound, pulled a short tube from his pocket, and pointed it at me. I moved, sliding back down the ladder to the floor, hardly moving more slowly than if I'd fallen. There was a high-pitched whistle, and something that looked like a small, spiny sea urchin flew past me, just over my head, close enough for the wind of its passage to stir dark-dyed hairs. It slammed into the wall behind me and remained there, quivering, as its spines punched through the metal siding and stuck. Drops of yellow-green liquid fell from the tips of some of the spines, and began smoking and eating small holes in the concrete floor.
Yikes.
Throaty popping, clicking sounds from several sources filled the air, an exchange of what could only be language. I ran for the far end of the shelving unit as the dark forms of the turtlenecks started moving toward me. I caught glimpses of them between the boxes and containers stacked on the lowest shelf, running with the lithe, floating agility of professional athletes.
I ran past a clump of the growth on the wall, a little lower than most, and as I approached, it suddenly fluoresced with bioluminescent color. On sheer instinct, I threw myself flat to the concrete floor and slid past on my belly as the lumpy growths began hissing, and jets of mist, the same color as the fluid covering the urchin spines, began to spray forth at random. The smell was hideous, and I scrambled back to my feet and kept running down the aisle, staying as far from the wall as I could.
If I'd been half a step slower, I would have died. There was a great crash, and Nothing smashed through the lowest level of the shelving unit, thrusting aside a steel drum and a wooden crate the size of a coffin as if they'd been made of Styrofoam. His fingers missed grabbing onto me by inches.
A second turtleneck beat me to the end of the shelf. I opened up with the P-90, praying that a ricochet wouldn't kill one of the prisoners, but my target moved with the speed of a striking serpent, bounding forward to plant a foot against the steel wall of the warehouse, six feet off the ground. Using only a single leg, he kicked off into a back-flip that carried him back past the end of the shelf and out of my line of fire.