by Jim Butcher
Dammit. Marcone had put me where there’d been a guy getting fast-tracked to an unjust sentence and known damned well how I would react. He could have asked me for help, but I’d have told him to take a flying … leap. And he’d have known that. So he set it up without me knowing.
Or hell. He and Mab had been in cahoots lately. Maybe he’d asked her to arrange it. This had her fingerprints all over it.
“Tania,” I said. “It’s hard for me to tell with vampires, but I’m guessing you’re pretty new to this work.”
She winked at me. “Let’s just say that I’m old enough to know better and young enough not to care.” She picked up a drink from the table. “This one is over, Dresden. You can’t do anything here. You can’t produce evidence in the trial—not as a juror. You can’t get to Luther to tell him you found the little girl—and even if you could, you aren’t taking her away from us. Not until it’s too late. The girl is the only evidence that Black wasn’t a poor victim, and I have her. This one is done. Marcone lost the round. I win.” She winked at me. “What does Marcone mean to you? You don’t owe him anything. Why not sit down, have a drink, help me celebrate?”
I stared at Tania for a minute. “No,” I said quietly. “You just don’t get it. This isn’t about Lara and Marcone anymore. It’s not even really about Luther.” Then I looked at the little girl. “Honey,” I asked, making sure my voice was a lot gentler. “Do you want to go home?”
She looked at me. She was cute enough for a kid her age, with caramel skin and big green eyes. She nodded very hesitantly, flinching as if she thought Tania might hit her.
“Okay,” I said.
Tania was staring at me as though she couldn’t quite grasp what was happening. But her voice was harder when she said, “Gentlemen? The wizard doesn’t like the carrots. It’s time for the stick.”
To my right, from behind the bar, another four men rose. They were holding short-barreled shotguns. To my left, from the bathrooms, another four thugs appeared, clutching various long guns.
“I’ll count to three,” Tania said. “Boys, when I get to three, kill him.”
Crap. They were flanking me. My shield was excellent, but it was not omnidirectional. No matter which way I turned it, one or more groups of thugs would have a shot at my unprotected back.
“One,” Tania said, smiling. “Two.”
“Comic book, huh?” I said. “Have it your way.”
“Three,” she chirped.
Guns swiveled to me. A dozen men took aim.
“Hexus!” I snarled, unleashing a wave of disruptive energy.
And every light in the place blew out in a shower of sparks, plunging the club into darkness.
Guns started going off, but only from the most confident or stupid gunmen, so I wasn’t cut to ribbons. I was already moving. Hitting a moving target isn’t easy, not even when it’s fairly close. Hitting one in the dark is even harder. Hitting one moving in sporadic flashes of light is harder yet.
I got lucky, or none of them did—however you want to think of it—and I got to the thugs beside Tania in one piece.
One of them got off a shot at the sound, but I caught the round on my shield, and the resulting shower of sparks showed the men on my flanks that I was among their compatriots, and no one shot at my back. I knew Lara hired almost exclusively from former military, mostly Marines. Men like that don’t shoot their buddies.
I dropped the shield and threw a punch at the guy in front of me. Ever since I’d started working for the Queen of Air and Darkness, I’d been stronger than the average wizard. Or the average champion weight lifter, for that matter, and I knew how to throw a punch. I connected with the man’s jaw, hard, and shouted, “BAM!” as I did.
The thug reeled back, his legs going wobbly and useless as he ragdolled to the floor. I threw a stomping kick toward the belly of the guy next to him, shouting, “POW!” I hit him in the dark, somewhere more or less near his belly. His gun went off randomly as he was lifted off the floor and thrown ten feet back into a wall. He was trying to scream, breathlessly. I winced. I hadn’t meant to hit him there, but those are the breaks.
I raised my shield again and dropped, just as the bad guys with shotguns realized that I didn’t have any of their buddies standing near me. I trusted the shield and turned my face away from the blinding shower of green-gold sparks it sent flying up as buckshot hammered into it. The copper band got hot on my wrist, even as I flung my right hand out toward the group of goons by the bathroom and shouted, “Forzare!”
Raw telekinetic force hit three of them—one was the guy from the street, who again impressed me with his smarts by diving to one side, out of the wave of energy. As shotguns pounded my shield, he slid to a stop with an automatic braced in both hands, took a breath, and aimed carefully, only moving his finger to the trigger after he had his sights lined up on me.
Crap. To steal from Brust, no matter how turbo-charged the wizard, someone with brains, guts, and a .45 can seriously cramp his style.
Fortunately, I wasn’t in this fight alone.
I’d been counting on Will to join in at the right moment, and he didn’t let me down. Two hundred pounds of grey-brown timber wolf (wearing a service dog cape) hit the Smart Gunman at a full sprint, bowling him over. A flash of white fangs sent the gun flying.
Total elapsed time since I’d killed the lights? Maybe three and a half seconds.
Will threw himself into the guys I’d knocked around by the bathrooms, and I turned to discover that I’d been right about Tania. She was new to this kind of game. She’d been sitting there with a stunned look on her face at the abruptness of the violence.
I flung myself into the booth with her, getting as close as I could, wrapping my left arm around her neck hard enough to pull her head in against my body and still have my shield ready to stop more gunfire. But the Smart Gunman screamed, “Check fire! Check fire!” the second I did.
The shooting stopped. There was an abrupt silence in the club, which was filled with the sharp scent of gunpowder.
For a second, I felt a cool, sweet sensation flooding into me. I realized that Tania had slipped a hand beneath my shirt and was running her fingertips over my stomach.
If anyone ever tells you that being fed on by a vampire of the White Court is not a big deal, they’re lying. It’s Ecstasy and heroin and sex and chocolate all rolled into one, and that’s just the foreplay.
So I stopped her by tightening my grip on her until it threatened to break her neck. Tania let out a little yelp and whipped her hand away from my skin.
I met the wide eyes of the little girl and said, “Hold on, honey. I’m going to take you home in just a second.”
“You can’t!” Tania said.
I scowled and flicked her skull with the forefinger of my free hand in annoyance. “Wow, you’re new at this,” I said, panting. Five seconds of combat is enough cardio to last a while. “How old are you, kid?”
“I’m twenty,” she said, her teeth clenched with discomfort, “and I am not a child.”
“Twenty,” I said. “No wonder Lara sent a babysitter along with you.”
Just then, the room flooded with green chemical light. I eyed the Smart Gunman, who had just fired up a chemical glow stick from a pocket. I nodded at him, holding it a moment, and said, “I’m Dresden.”
He pushed himself up from the floor with his left arm, holding his right in close to his side. It bore long lacerations, and the blood looked black in the green light. He nodded back to me and said, warily, “Riley.”
I twisted my upper body just enough to drag Tania around a little. She let out a squeaking sound. “Can you see the score here, Riley?”
He studied the room, wincing, and said, “Yeah. How you want to play it?”
“Guns down,” I said. “Me, the wolf, the girl, and Miss Raith here will walk out. No one comes after us. Once we’re on the street, I’ll let her go.”
He stared at me, and I could see the wheels turning. I didn’t
like that. The guy had been too capable to give him time to work something out.
“You boys just gave me a twenty-one-gun salute, and the front door to the club was broken open, Riley,” I said. “Police response time around here is about four minutes. How long do you think it will take someone to call it in?”
Riley grimaced. “Give me your word.”
“You have it,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. He looked around the room and said, “Stand down. We’re going to let them leave.”
“Damn you, Riley!” Tania snarled.
I pressed the still uncomfortably hot copper bracelet against her ear, and she yipped. “Come on, Miss Raith,” I said. I stood up, keeping her head locked in my arm. She could have made a fight of it. White Court vampires can be unbelievably strong, if only in bursts. She didn’t seem up for a physical fight, but I wasn’t taking chances. I moved carefully and kept my balance, ready to move instantly if she tried anything.
“Come on, honey,” I said to the little girl. I extended my free hand to her. “I’m going to take you home.”
She stood up and reluctantly took my hand.
Will padded out of the shadows to walk on the other side of the girl, his teeth bared. On a wolf, that is an absolutely terrifying expression.
As I went by Riley, I asked, “Lara giving Tania here a lesson?”
“Something like that,” he said. “You hurt her, things will have to get ugly.”
“I get it,” I said. “You’d have had me if I hadn’t cheated.”
“You aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough,” he replied. “Another time, maybe.”
“I hope not,” I told him sincerely.
And I walked out with a vampire in a headlock and a little girl overlapped in the protective shadows of a wizard and a werewolf, while Lara Raith’s soldiers looked on.
“YOUR HONOR,” THE foreman of the jury said to the judge. She paused to turn to me and give me a deadly glare. “After two days of deliberation, the jury has been unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the case.”
Luther, lonely at his table, blinked and sat up straighter, his eyes opening wider.
The assistant DA made an almost identical expression. Beside him, Tania sat staring stonily forward, with her hair combed over her singed ear.
The judge eyed the jury box with weary resignation, and her gaze settled on me.
“What?” I said, and folded my arms. “I believed him.”
She rubbed at her eyes with one hand and said something beneath her breath. I listened closely, which is much closer than most people can, and thought I heard her mutter, “Goddamned supernatural assholes …”
She lifted her eyes again and spoke in that rote-repetition voice. “That being the case, I have no choice but to declare a mistrial. Mr. Tremont, the prosecution’s office will need to notify me about whether the people mean to continue pursuing this case against the defendant.”
I eyed Tania, smiling.
If the White Court tried to push this trial again, I could produce the girl, Maria, as a witness. Maria was currently being watched by a number of werewolves and wasn’t going to go anywhere. If they continued pushing Luther, I could drag their ugliness out into the light—and if there was anything the White Court hated, it was looking ugly.
Tania gave me a sulking glance. Then she muttered something to Tremont, who blinked at her. They had a brief, heated discussion conducted entirely in whispers. Then Tremont looked back up at them. “Ah, Your Honor. The state would like to drop all charges.”
“It would?” the judge asked. Then she rolled her eyes and said, “Of course it would. All right, people. Justice is served; court is adjourned.” She banged her gavel down halfheartedly and rose. We all stood up as she left the courtroom, and then we began filing out.
Luther sat there dazed as the bailiff approached and removed his handcuffs. Then he was buried by a pair of quietly squealing children who piled onto him, and were shortly joined by a woman with tears in her eyes. I heard him start laughing as he hugged them.
I left, because there was something in my eyes.
Outside, in the parking lot, someone approached me and I felt a tug at my sleeve. It took me a second to recognize the judge in her civilian clothes—a plain pair of slacks and a white shirt.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Someone found the girl.”
“The girl from what’s-his-name’s testimony?” I asked, guilelessly.
“And if the girl had gotten up in front of everyone and answered questions, it would have made things awkward for whoever was behind Black. Am I right?”
I scratched at my nose with one finger and said, “Maybe.”
She snorted and turned to walk away. “Worst jurist ever.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She stopped and looked at me over her shoulder with a faint smile. “You’re welcome.”
I hung around long enough to see Luther, a free man, leaving the building with his family.
Maybe Will had been right.
Justice served.
Day One
Butters
My name is Waldo Butters, and I am a Jedi Knight, like my father before me.
Okay, so that isn’t exactly, technically, in a completely legal sense true. I mean, my dad was actually a podiatrist. But I’m as close to the real deal as anyone is likely to ever see in this world. I’m an actual Knight, anyway. Or, at least, I was training to be one, when on a Thursday morning I first heard the Call.
Only I didn’t hear it, exactly, technically, in a completely legal sense. … Look, maybe I should just tell the story.
OF ALL THE training Michael Carpenter had me doing, the cardio part was what I liked best. Then again, my main Pandora station plays only polka music, so what the heck do I know?
I ran along through the early-dawn light in Bucktown while the city began to wake up. The training belt around my waist tugged at my balance constantly and unpredictably. It was hooked to a bungee cord attaching me to Michael’s bicycle, being pulled along behind me as I ran. Michael would swerve and brake randomly. Sometimes he’d hold the brake for several strides, and I’d have to shift to much more powerful strides to keep moving. It was demanding work. Constantly being forced to alter my balance meant that I could never fall into a nice, efficient rhythm and I had to pay attention to every single step.
The first several weeks, that had been a problem, but I was getting used to it now. Or, rather, I was getting used to it until I saw something impossible, forgot to pay attention, got pulled off-balance by my bungee cord, and crashed into a plastic recycling bin waiting by the side of the street.
Michael immediately came to a stop, swinging his stiff leg out like an improvised kickstand. He was action-hero-sized, moving toward his late fifties, and had his walking cane strapped to the backpack he wore. “Waldo?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
I stumbled upright again, panting. “I, uh.” I peered down the street. “I’m not really sure.”
Michael looked in the same direction I was, frowning. He pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“You don’t see that, do you?” I asked.
“See what?”
I squinted. Took off my glasses. Cleaned them on a corner of my shirt that wasn’t covered in sweat. Put them back on and checked again. It was still there. “If you could see it, you wouldn’t have to ask that.”
He nodded seriously. “Tell me what you see.”
“That homeless guy on the bench?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I took a breath and said, “There’s a big yellow exclamation point floating over his head.” After a brief pause, I added, “I’m not crazy. My mother had me tested.”
Michael sat back a little on the bike’s seat and rubbed at his beard pensively. He missed the reference. “Hmmm. Odd. Does that bring anything to mind for you, personally?”
I snorted. “Yeah, it’s what every NPC in every MMORPG ever looks like when they have a quest to
give you.”
“There were a great many letters in that, and not much that I understood,” he said soberly.
“Video games,” I clarified. “When a game character has a quest for you, that’s how the game shows you where the quest begins. A big floaty exclamation point over their heads. You go talk to them and that’s how the quest starts.”
Michael barked out a laugh and gave the sky a small smile and a shake of his head. “Well, then, Sir Waldo. You’ve just had your first Call.”
“My what, now?”
“Your first Call to a quest, I suppose.”
I blinked. “Uriel talks to the Knights through video-game symbolism?”
“As far as I know, Uriel talks in person. The Call comes from higher up.”
“What?” I asked. “You mean, like … God? God speaks video game?”
“When the Almighty speaks to men, He always does it in voices they can understand,” Michael said. “When I felt the Call, it was always a still, small voice that would come to me when I was in prayer or otherwise quiet. Sometimes I’d have a very strong impression of a name or a face, and a direction that I needed to go.” He nodded toward the transient. “Apparently, you have been Called to help that man.”
“Put like that, it does seem to be fairly obvious.” I swallowed. “Um. I know we’ve been training pretty hard, but … am I really ready for this?”
He reached into the backpack, withdrew an old leather messenger bag from it, and offered it to me. “Let’s find out.”
I swallowed. Then I nodded and slung the bag over one shoulder. I reached into it and patted the old, worn wooden handle inside, and then walked over to the sleeping man. He wore an army-surplus field jacket and old Desert Storm–style khaki BDUs, and he had a beard that birds could have nested in. There wasn’t much grey in it, but his skin was weathered enough to make it difficult to guess his age. Forty?
By the time I got within five feet of him, I could see that something was wrong. There was a lot of vomit on the slatted bench by the man’s head and the ground beneath. One of his eyes was half open, dilated, and his breath rasped in and out.