by Butcher, Jim
Lara let out a startled whuff as the equivalent force of a speeding car slammed into her, knocked her back, and flattened her against the mound of rubble still filling the hallway behind me.
The skinwalker’s mouth split into a leering smile of its own, and its bestial voice purred, “Break, little phage. Break.”
Lara gasped and lifted herself up with her arms. Her white eyes were fixed on the skinwalker, her lips twisted into a defiant snarl.
I stood there staring at the skinwalker. It was hard, and I had to use the wall to help me balance. Then I took a deep breath and stepped away from the wall, moving very carefully, until I stood between the skinwalker and Lara. I turned to face it squarely.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s have it.”
“Have what, pretender?” the skinwalker growled.
“You aren’t here to kill us,” I said. “You could have done it by now.”
“Oh, so true,” it murmured, its eyes dancing with malicious pleasure.
“You don’t have to gloat about it, prick,” I muttered under my breath. Then I addressed the skinwalker again. “You must want to talk. So why don’t you just say what you came to say?”
The skinwalker studied me, and idly nipped another finger from the unconscious vampire girl. It chewed slowly, with some truly unsettling snapping, popping sounds, and then swallowed. “You will trade with me.”
I frowned. “Trade?”
The skinwalker smiled again and tugged something from around its neck with one talon. Then it caught the object and tossed it to me. I caught it. It was a silver pentacle necklace, a twin to my own, if considerably less battered and worn.
It was Thomas’s necklace.
My belly went cold.
“Trade,” the skinwalker said. “Thomas of Raith. For the doomed warrior.”
I eyed the thing. So it wanted Morgan, too. “Suppose I tell you to fuck off.”
“I will no longer be in a playful mood,” it purred. “I will come for you. I will kill you. I will kill your blood, your friends, your beasts. I will kill the flowers in your home and the trees in your tiny fields. I will visit such death upon whatever is yours that your very name will be remembered only in curses and tales of terror.”
I believed the creature.
No reflexive comeback quip sprang from my lips. Given what I’d seen of the skinwalker’s power, I had to give that one a five-star rating on the threatometer.
“And to encourage you . . .” Its gaze shifted to Lara. “If the wizard does not obey, I will unmake you as well. I will do it every bit as easily as I have done today. And it will bring me intense pleasure to do so.”
Lara stared at the skinwalker with pure white eyes, her expression locked into a snarl of hate.
“Do you understand me, little phage? You and that rotting bag of flesh you’ve attached yourself to?”
“I understand,” Lara spat.
The skinwalker’s smile widened for an instant. “If the doomed warrior is not delivered to me by sundown tomorrow, I will begin my hunt.”
“It might take more time than that,” I said.
“For your sake, pretender, pray it does not.” It idly flung the unconscious vampire away from it, to land in a heap atop the other sister. “You may reach me through his speaking devices,” the skinwalker said.
Then it leapt lightly up through one of the holes in the ceiling, and was gone.
I slumped against the wall, almost falling.
“Thomas,” I whispered.
That nightmare had my brother.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Lara took charge of the aftermath. A dozen security guards were dead, another dozen maimed and crippled. The walls in the hallway where the guards had sprung their ambush were so covered in blood that it looked like they had been painted red. At least a dozen more personnel hadn’t been able to reach the battle before it was over, it had all happened so swiftly—which meant that there was someone available to help stabilize the wounded and clean up the bodies.
The skinwalker’s hex had effectively destroyed every radio and cell phone in the Château, but the land lines, based on much older, simpler technology, were still up. Lara called in a small army of other employees, including the medical staff that the Raiths kept on retainer.
I sat with my back against the wall while all this happened, a little apart from the activity. It seemed appropriate. My head hurt. When scratching an itch, I noticed that there was a wide stripe of mostly dried blood covering my left ear and spreading down my neck. Must have been a scalp wound. They bleed like crazy.
After some indeterminately fuzzy length of time, I looked up to see Lara supervising the movement of her two wounded relatives. The two vampires were liberally smeared with their own blood, and both were senseless. When they were carried off in stretchers, the medics began helping wounded security guards, and Lara walked over to me.
She knelt down in front of me, her pale grey eyes concealing whatever thought was behind them. “Can you stand, wizard?”
“Can,” I said. “Don’t want to.”
She lifted her chin slightly and looked down at me, one hand on her hip. “What have you gotten my little brother involved in?”
“Wish I knew,” I said. “I’m still trying to figure out where the bullets are coming from.”
She folded her arms. “The doomed warrior. The skinwalker meant the fugitive Warden, I presume.”
“It’s one way to interpret that.”
Lara studied me intently and suddenly smiled, showing neat white teeth. “You have him. He came to you for help.”
“Why the hell would you think that?” I asked.
“Because people in hopeless situations come to you for help on a regular basis. And you help them. It’s what you do.” She tapped her chin with one finger. “Now, to decide what is more advantageous. To play along with the skinwalker’s demands. Or to write Thomas off as a loss, take the Warden from you, and turn him into fresh political capital for those who are hunting him. There is a rather substantial reward for his capture or death.”
I eyed her dully. “You’re going to play along. You’re hoping that you’ll be able to act reluctant and get some concessions from me in exchange for your cooperation, but you’re going to give it to me anyway.”
“And why should I do that?” Lara asked.
“Because after the coup attempt in the Deeps, Thomas is a White Court celebrity. If you let some big bad shagnasty come along and kill him after it openly defies you in your own home, you look weak. We both know you can’t live with that.”
“And by giving in to his demands, I avoid the appearance of weakness?” she asked skeptically. “No, Dresden.”
“Damn right, no,” I said. “You’re going to play along, set Shagnasty up, and then take him out in the true, treacherous tradition of the White Court. You get Thomas back. You lay low a heavyweight. You gain status among your own folk.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, her expression giving me no hint to the direction of her thoughts. Then she said, “And when that is done, what if I should take the Warden and turn him over to the White Council myself? It would be a formidable bargaining chip to bring to the table with your folk in the future.”
“Sure it would. But you won’t do that.”
“Won’t I?” Lara asked. “What’s stopping me?”
“I am.”
“I always enjoy dealing with a man possessing a well-developed sense of self-worth.”
It was my turn to show my teeth in a smile. “Slugging matches aren’t your style, Lara. If you play this situation right, it will further your reputation and influence. Why jeopardize that by throwing down with me?”
“Mmmm,” she said, her eyes wandering over me. She idly smoothed her skirt with one hand, instantly drawing my eyes to the pale length of thigh showing through the torn seam. Trickles of blood from her wounds slithered lovingly over smooth flesh. “I wonder, occasionally, what it might be like to throw down with you
Dresden. To go to the mat. I wonder what might happen.”
I licked my lips and jerked my eyes away with an effort, incapable of speech.
“Do you know how to really control someone, Harry?” she asked, her voice a low purr.
I cleared my throat and rasped, “How?”
Her pale grey eyes were huge and deep. “Give them what they want. Give them what they need. Give them what no one else can give. If you can do that, they’ll come back to you again and again.” She leaned down close and whispered in my ear, “I know what I can give you, Harry. Shall I tell you?”
I swallowed and nodded, not daring to look at her.
“Surcease,” she breathed into my ear. “I can make it stop hurting, wizard. I can take away the pains of the body. Of the mind. Of the heart. For a little time, I could give you something no one else can—freedom from your burdens of responsibility and conscience.” She leaned even closer, until I could feel the coolness of the air around her lips. “Sweet Dresden. I could give you peace. Imagine closing your eyes with no worries, no pain, no fears, no regrets, no appetites, and no guilt. Only quiet and darkness and stillness and my flesh against yours.”
I shivered. I couldn’t stop myself.
“I can give you that,” Lara said, her lips slinking into a smile. “You wear your pain like a suit of armor. But one day, it will be too heavy to bear. And you’ll remember this moment. And you’ll know who can give you what you need.” She let out a small, sensual sigh. “I don’t require more food, Dresden. I have that in plenty. But a partner . . . You and I could do much together that we could not alone.”
“Sounds swell,” I croaked, barely able to get the words out. “Maybe we’ll start with getting Thomas back.”
She straightened her spine and leaned back from me, her beautiful pale face full of lust and hunger. She closed her eyes and stretched a little in place, the way cats sometimes will. It was a mind-numbing display of lithe femininity. She nodded slowly, then rose and regarded me with her usual cool detachment. “You’re right, of course. Business first. You want me to help you.”
“I want you to help yourself,” I said. “We’ve both got the same problem.”
“And that would be?” she asked.
“Traitors within the organization,” I said. “Inciting conflict and destabilizing the balance of power.”
She arched a raven black eyebrow. “The Warden is innocent?”
“Only if I can find the guy who set him up.”
“You think there’s a connection between your traitor and the skinwalker.”
“And another connection that led me here,” I said. “One of your folk paid that lawyer and rewired her head.”
Lara’s mouth twisted with distaste. “If that’s true, then someone was hideously gauche. One never leaves such obvious and overt blocks behind—and especially not in a contact only one layer removed. Such things call too much attention to themselves.”
“So,” I said. “A White Court vampire who is gauche, overt, impatient. Oh, and who did not show up to defend the homestead when the skinwalker broke in. And who Thomas recently beat and humiliated in public.”
“Madeline,” Lara murmured.
“Madeline,” I said. “I think whoever is pulling the strings on this operation is using her. I think we need to find her and follow the strings back to the puppeteer.”
“How?”
I reached into my duster pocket and took out the sheet of paper with Morgan’s supposed account on it, along with a photocopy of the huge deposit check. “Find out who set up this account. Find out where the money came from.” I passed her the pages. “After that, see if you can’t find some way to track down where Thomas’s cell phone is.”
“His cell phone?”
“Shagnasty said we could contact him by calling Thomas’s phones. Isn’t there some way that they can track where those things are?”
“It depends on a number of factors.”
“Well I’m betting the skinwalker doesn’t have a subscription to Popular Science. He’ll probably have some kind of countermeasure for a tracking spell, but he might not even realize that it’s possible to physically trace the phone.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” she said. One of the medics approached us and stood back respectfully. Lara turned to the young man. “Yes?”
He held up a clipboard. “The triage report you wanted.”
She held out her hand. He passed her the clipboard as if he didn’t want to move his feet too close to her. Lara scanned over the topmost page, and murmured, “Hennesy and Callo both have broken backs?”
“It’ll take an X-ray to confirm it,” the medic said nervously. “But from what I was told, the, uh, the attacker just broke them over his knee and threw them down. They’re paralyzed. Probably permanently.”
“And Wilson lost both eyes,” Lara murmured.
The medic avoided looking at her. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Very well,” Lara said. “Take Hennesy to Natalia’s chambers. Callo will go to Elisa.”
“Yes, ma’am. Should I send Wilson to the infirmary?”
Lara stared at him with absolutely no expression on her lovely face. Then she said, “No, Andrew. I’ll come for him in a moment.” She held out the clipboard, and the medic took it and hurried away.
I watched Lara for a moment and said, “You’re going to kill those men. When Elisa and Natalia wake up . . .”
“They will feed and their lives will be spared. Annoying as it may be to lose what I invested in those men, I can replace hired guns,” she said. “I cannot so easily replace members of my family and my House. As their leader, it is my responsibility to provide adequate care and sustenance in times of need—particularly when loyalty to the House is what created that need.”
“They’re your own men,” I said.
“That was before they became useless to the House,” she replied. “They know too much of our internal affairs to be allowed to leave. Lives must be lost if my kin are to survive their injuries. Rather than inflict that upon one who can still be of use to us, I preserve lives by seeing to it that these men serve us one last time.”
“Yeah. You’re a real humanitarian. A regular Mother Teresa.”
She turned that flat, empty gaze to me again. “At what point did you forget that I am a vampire, Dresden? A monster. A habitually neat, polite, civil, and efficient monster.” Her eyes drifted down the hallway, to where a well-muscled young man was being helped to sit down, while a medic secured bandages over his eyes. Lara stared intently at him, the color of her eyes lightening to silver, and her lips parted slightly. “I am what I am.”
I felt sick to my stomach. I pushed myself to my feet, and said, “So am I.”
She glanced obliquely at me. “Is that a threat, Dresden?”
I shook my head. “Just a fact. One day I’m going to take you down.”
Her eyes went back to the wounded man, her lips shifting to one side in a smirk. “One day,” she murmured. “But not today.”
“No. Not today.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you, wizard mine?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.
“I need a car.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
I sort of shambled up one floor and down a wing to the Château’s infirmary, escorted there by a guard who was being very careful not to limp on a wounded leg. The skinwalker had smacked my bean against hardwood and knocked something loose. I felt fairly confident that if I jumped up and down and wiggled my head, my brain would slosh squishily around the inside of my skull.
Not that I was going to be doing any of those things. Walking was hard enough.
In the infirmary, I found a white-coated young woman tending to the wounded. She moved with the brisk professional manner of a doctor, and was just finishing seeing to Justine’s injuries. The young woman was laid out on a bed, her midsection swathed in bandages, her eyes glazed with the d
istant, peaceful expression of someone on good drugs.
Anastasia sat on the bed next to Justine’s, her back straight, her expression calm. Her right arm was bound up close against her body in a black cloth sling. She came to her feet as I entered the room. She looked a little pale and shaky, but she stood without leaning on her slender wooden staff. “We’re leaving now?”
“Yeah,” I said. I moved to her side to support her. “You okay to walk?”
She leaned her staff toward me, stopping me from coming any closer, though she smiled slightly as she did. “I’ll bloody well walk out of here,” she said. And she said it in an atrocious Scottish accent.
I lifted both eyebrows at her in shock. “You told me you fell asleep during Highlander.”
Her dark eyes sparkled. “I always say that when I find myself at a vintage movie showing at a drive-in theater while in the company of a man two centuries younger than me.”
“And not because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings with your professional opinion of the swordsmanship on display?”
“Young men can be so delicate,” she said, her dimples making a brief appearance.
“We should get you to a hospital,” I said, nodding at her sling.
She shook her head. “The break is set back in place already. From here, all one can do is wear a sling and wait for it to stop hurting so badly.”
I grimaced. “I’ve got some meds at my place.”
She smiled again, but this time I could see how much she was straining to keep up appearances. “That would be lovely.”
“Harry,” said a soft voice.
I turned to face the wounded Justine, who looked at me with drowsy eyes. I turned to the bed and bent down to smile at her. “Hey there.”
“We heard that thing talking,” she said. All the hard consonants in her words had blurred, rounded edges. “We heard it talking to you and Lara.”
I glanced up at Anastasia, who gave me a short nod of her head.
“Yeah,” I said to Justine. I desperately did not want her to say anything she ought not to be saying. “I’ll take care of it.”