Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  “He’s not a grendelkin,” I muttered.

  She arched a brow at me.

  “You’ll have to trust me. The Forest People are different than the grendelkin.”

  “Big, hairy, strong, stinky … If it walks like a Grendel and talks like a—”

  “You and I,” I said, meeting the Valkyrie’s eyes, “are about to have a serious argument.”

  Freydis’s eyes flared with defiance—but she looked away first.

  “That’s River Shoulders. He’s okay. Tell your boss I said that.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

  “Because as long as he’s using a messenger, I will, too,” I said. “Not sure why he’s keeping his distance, but I’ll respect it. Could be he doesn’t want to look too chummy with me here. Point is, tell him that River Shoulders isn’t a grendelkin.”

  “He’s chatty enough to be one,” Freydis growled. The next turn let me see River Shoulders speaking earnestly—how else?—to Mab. Mab was listening to him with intense focus. How else? I saw her nod, speak a short phrase, and turn to continue toward her chair in her appointed camp. Molly was walking a step behind her and to her right. She paused to put a hand on River’s massive arm and say something that made him let out a rumbling chuckle. She beamed up at him, patted his arm again, and kept pace with Mab.

  “There,” Freydis said a moment later as the turn took Mab out of my sight. “She’s sitting.”

  I leaned down close to Freydis’s ear and said, “Well. I guess we should do it, then.”

  “Nothing personal, tiger,” she murmured back into mine.

  Then Freydis drew back, her face drawn up in an expression of outrage, and smacked me.

  Okay.

  Maybe that was understating it.

  The Valkyrie, who could potentially have lifted an entire automobile and chucked it a short distance, dealt me an open-hand blow to the cheekbone with the full power of her body. It was like taking a right cross from a professional slugger. If I hadn’t rolled with it, she’d have knocked my startled ass completely unconscious.

  The script called for me to grope her a bit as she pulled away from me, exactly the kind of behavior everyone expected from the Winter Knight, but my brains were so scrambled I could barely manage to make it look like a socially awkward hug she was avoiding. She stalked over to the White Court’s camp, straight up to Lara. The redhead looked fantastic and drew the attention of the room as she did it. She reported to Lara in low tones, thrusting a fingertip at me along the way, her expression going from outrage to strain to visible distress.

  Lara glared daggers at me from across the floor, sliding a supportive arm around Freydis’s shoulders. She guided the other woman across the room, pausing at the same doorway where I’d gotten some quiet space last night. She spoke to one of the caterers and then stepped through with Freydis.

  The room had gone quiet except for the musicians, and everyone was looking at me.

  “Sir Knight,” came Mab’s voice, very clearly and very calmly.

  That got everyone’s attention, though they mostly tried not to be obvious about it. Even Vadderung and Ferrovax broke their casual staring contest to regard what else was happening in the room.

  I could have sworn Mab’s gown was deep purple when she entered the hall a moment ago, but when I looked back up at her seat, the cloth had turned as dark as midnight, and streaks of black were flowing through her silver-white hair.

  We were about ten seconds into this heist and Mab was already halfway into her full form as judge, jury, and executioner of Winter. Perfect.

  I looked aside and found myself facing my grandfather. Ebenezar gave me a look that was as panicked as I’d ever seen him give. I wanted to reassure him, somehow, to throw a wink at him. But I didn’t want anyone to see that gesture, not with what was coming up. So instead, I gave him a small shrug, turned back to Mab, and bowed my head. Then I hurried over to her.

  “Sir Knight,” Mab said, her voice lowered to an intimate volume. “You have annoyed a valuable ally. Explain yourself.”

  “You don’t want me to,” I replied in a similar tone. “Look, I need to ask you for something I never really expected to want from you.”

  Mab arched a brow. “And that is?”

  “Your trust,” I said. “That I’m acting on your behalf.”

  Mab’s eyes widened slightly.

  “I need your assistance,” I said. “Look at the door Lara just left through, and then at me like you want to murder me.”

  “For that, I shall hardly need to invoke a dramatic muse,” Mab murmured. But she thrust her chin toward the door Lara had just departed through and then turned her wide dark eyes back to mine. “This is a public pantomime. You play for high stakes.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Do not bring me embarrassment with your failure.”

  “No, my queen,” I said, loud enough for the room to hear. I stepped back from her and bowed deeply at the waist, before putting on an expression that I assumed looked angry and chagrined, and hurrying after Lara.

  “What good is it going to do us to get into the gym?” Lara asked. “I’ve seen it. There’s no way down to the holding cell from there.”

  Murphy smirked. “Like I said. You visited the place a few times. I lived there. Especially in the gym.”

  One of Marcone’s people in the red jackets looked like he might disagree with me going up the stairs to the gym, but I pacified him with upraised hands and said, “I need to sort this out or my boss is gonna kill me. Just give me a minute.”

  It was one of the same guys from the night before. The guard looked from me over toward Marcone’s camp. Marcone didn’t look up from his conversation, but Hendricks, at his right hand, gave the guard a nod.

  The guard stepped back with a grimace and said, “Watch that Freydis, man. She’ll gut you as soon as look at you.”

  “Spoken like a three,” I said. He looked confused. I kept moving.

  I came up the stairs to the soft sounds of Freydis’s sobs. Lara was standing by the nearest corner of the boxing ring with her arms around the Valkyrie’s shoulders. I checked the stairs behind me to be sure that they were empty, closed the door, and said, “Clear.”

  “Od’s blood, I should have been an actress,” Freydis said in a pleased voice, standing clear of Lara.

  “Well. The Einherjaren weren’t buying it,” I said. “Everyone knows you’re up to something.”

  Lara smirked at me. Vampiric allure completely aside, the woman had a smirk that was to die for, and her little black dress was stylish and stunning. She flexed her hands like claws and said, “Getting my hooks into Mab’s Knight, of course.”

  “Obviously,” I said. I started for the back of the room, where the towels were stacked on a shelf, ready to be used. I shrugged out of my suit coat and vest as I went, and then out of the shoes, pants, and shirt, until I was left in just boxer briefs, an undershirt, and socks. It was necessary.

  “I still believe this is a serious breach of security planning,” Lara complained as she lifted her dress over her head and tossed it on a bench. She added her shoes, more carefully, and was wearing nothing else. Excellently. I averted my eyes.

  “You don’t know Einherjaren,” Freydis insisted in a firm tone. “Once they get it in their heads that something needs to be one way, that’s it. That’s how it needs to be.”

  Lara sounded as if she was speaking with her nose wrinkled up. “Still. An old privy shaft?”

  “Once they realized they could use it to drop their towels right next to the laundry room in the basement, instead of carrying them down in hampers, there was no stopping it,” Freydis said. “They just knocked holes in the wall with the dumbbells and started dropping towels down the shaft. Marcone had to give in with grace and installed dumbwaiter doors.”

  I went to said door, flipped a latch, and opened it. It rolled up smoothly to reveal a shaft that began overhead and led straight down into the darkness. It was not excessively large.

&n
bsp; There was an incredibly wonderful smell, flowers and cinnamon and something darker and sweeter, and then Lara was standing next to me, her bare shoulder against my elbow. My elbow approved, ecstatically—but Lara jumped and let out a little truncated sound of discomfort.

  She glanced down at her shoulder, where a patch the shape, I guess, of the end of my elbow was turning red, as though she’d brushed it against a hot pan.

  Vampires of the White Court had a severe allergy to sincere love, the way the Black Court doesn’t like sunbathing. Skin-to-skin contact with people who love and who are loved in return is hardest of all on the White Court.

  Which meant that …

  Oh.

  Well. I hadn’t been thinking about having that aura of protection around me when Karrin and I got busy, but it was nice to have it.

  And it was nice to know it was real. Very nice.

  “Ouch,” Lara said, her tone annoyed. Then she glanced up at me and her expression became suddenly pleased. “Oh. You and the policewoman? Congratulations, wizard.”

  “My relationships are none of your beeswax,” I responded in a grumpy tone.

  Lara nodded at the old privy shaft. “We’re both about to crawl down that together, so I’d say I have a minor need to know if I’m going to receive second- and third-degree burns for bumping into you.” She regarded the space gravely. “Small. Are you going to fit?”

  “Stop setting me up for dirty jokes,” I complained. “I’ll manage. Are you sure you can handle the guard?”

  Lara turned her head slightly toward me, her eyes down, and caught her lip between her teeth, before slowly looking up at me. Suddenly the light fled from the room, except where it touched the pale perfection of her skin.

  I just about started howling and pounding my chest, I suddenly wanted her so badly. It took me a good long breath to get control of myself and force myself to avert my eyes.

  “I’ll manage,” Lara murmured, and the painful pressure of my desire was abruptly mitigated.

  I gritted my teeth and said, through them, “I meant the details. Are you sure he isn’t going to see or hear anything else?”

  “Give me sixty seconds,” Lara said. “Once I get close enough, he’s not going to notice anything else, even if you walked by him playing a trumpet and pounding drums. And even if he noticed, he’d not remember it.”

  “Sixty seconds,” Freydis sighed. She was knotting towels together with mechanical precision. “Men.”

  Lara turned her eyes to Freydis, who suddenly caught her breath, her cheeks flushing with color.

  “Darling, this isn’t the same thing at all,” Lara purred. “It’s a pity your contract was so specific, or I’d demonstrate for you sometime.”

  Freydis let out a deep sigh and then went back to knotting towels without looking up.

  Lara gave me an impish smile, held out her hands, and said, “Help me up, Harry.”

  “You don’t need any help from me,” I said, a little thickly. Even when she wasn’t shining the come-hither flashlight right in my face, Lara Raith still left me feeling a little bit dazzled.

  The de facto monarch of the White Court responded with an amused laugh and entered the shaft like a diver, silently vanishing down into the darkness.

  “Sixty seconds,” I muttered. “Going to take me twice that just to climb down.”

  “Going to lose my mind on this damned job,” Freydis noted. “I’ll have the rope ready in five.”

  “Cover,” I said.

  “Oh, right.” She shook her head, dipped a hand into her dress, and took out a little wooden plaque. “If my head wasn’t attached. I’ve never worked for a client this distracting.”

  She picked up my suit coat and Lara’s dress and dropped them into the boxing ring. Then she touched the plaque to them, muttered something, and snapped the wood in her fingers. There was an eye-searing flash of light that left a Norse rune shaped like a lightning bolt burned on my retina in purple, and suddenly there I was, on top of Lara in the boxing ring, making out furiously.

  As illusions went, it was excellent. Just really … detailed. Maybe too much so. I turned away, a little embarrassed.

  “She likes you, you know,” Freydis said, watching the illusion with amusement.

  “From what I can tell, Lara mostly likes Lara,” I said.

  “Maybe. But she treats you differently than she does others.”

  I grunted and said, “Wonderful. Just the attention I need in my life.”

  And then I shoved my shoulders and head into a narrow, lightless, handleless stone shaft and started wriggling down it in my underwear.

  Chapter

  Twenty-six

  Going headfirst down a three-story shaft in complete darkness isn’t ever going to do well as a recreational business. I was completely reliant on keeping pressure against the walls to prevent me from falling. In that, the limited space was actually useful—it meant more of my body’s surface area could be pressed against the walls, and less strain being placed on any one spot.

  Unless the hand-cut stone shaft narrowed along the line and I got stuck, in which case I was just screwed. Or if it got a lot wider, in which case, also screwed. I might be kind of tough, but a three-story fall onto my head wasn’t going to end well.

  I started shimmying down. It was tough work, but I’d been doing a lot of cardio.

  Lara had evidently left the dumbwaiter door open behind her, because there was dim light coming through, showing me a lumpy mass of white towels at the bottom of the shaft, as well as the shape of the walls. Once I had an idea of distance, it was possible to move more quickly—I could just relax a little and half slide down.

  I paid with a little skin, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The stones of the castle were ancient. Time (and I didn’t want to think too closely about what else) had worn off many of the rough edges. As long as I didn’t start bleeding and making the walls slippery, I should be fine.

  Fine. I felt like a wad of paper trying not to be blown through a straw, but other than that, everything was super.

  I went down carefully, moving only one limb at a time, like the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Except that I couldn’t actually stick to walls. And if I slipped, I didn’t have any webbing to save myself with, and I’d fall and break my neck.

  “ ‘Friendly neighborhood Spider Man,’ ” I sang under my breath, and inched lower.

  My shoulders stuck.

  My heart started beating a lot faster.

  Not because I was scared or anything. This was just cardio.

  It’s not like I was experiencing claustrophobia. I was a wizard of the White Council. We don’t let our emotions control us.

  I forced myself to breathe slowly, to stop moving, to think. I was stuck because my muscles were contracted, holding me against the walls of the shaft. I had to relax. But if I relaxed, I would fall and die and that would be counterproductive, too. So the trick was going to be to relax part of me while keeping the rest of me tense.

  I stretched out an arm, trying to get my shoulders unsquared to the walls, but it didn’t work. I felt myself wedge in further, and my breathing increased. I strained harder and felt the pressure on my joints increase.

  “ ‘Can he swing, from a thread?’ ” I gasped.

  Wait.

  Stop, Harry. Think. Use your brain.

  “ ‘Take a look overhead,’ ” my brain kept on muttering.

  Right. Overhead.

  This was a Chinese finger-trap problem. The harder I tried to work directly against it, the more impossible it would be to escape it.

  So I tensed and pushed myself back, upward. It was difficult, but I’d been working out a lot of late. Fighting the Winter mantle’s pull had reaped me some physical benefits. I was able to back up several inches, readjust my shoulders, and slither past the close spot.

  “ ‘Hey there!’ ” I breathed, “ ‘There goes the Spider-Man.’ ”

  I kept going down, trying not to think of how hard i
t was to get my breath, or how I was trapped with my hands up over my head, and how if one of those giant spiders (they have those; I’ve seen them) started coming down the shaft after me, there wouldn’t be a damned thing I could do about it.

  Thanks, imagination. I didn’t have enough problems, so I really appreciate you making up another one just to keep me on my toes.

  I tried to keep my puffing as quiet as I could as I reached the bottom of the shaft and found a pile of sweaty towels and enough dim light to see them.

  Well. There wasn’t going to be a way to get out of this gracefully. I stuck my arms out through the door and started wiggling out after them, bending my neck to take my weight on my shoulders as I came out.

  I finally shimmied my head out of the bottom of the shaft and into a wall of absolute lust.

  Seriously. It was like suddenly being fifteen again, with my hormones exploding and me having no idea at all of how to deal with them. My skin turned hypersensitive, and I was suddenly, acutely aware of the sensation of stone against my back and legs, and that I’d gotten covered in dirt and dust on the way down. The pains of my body came rushing back onto me: soreness of muscle that should have been severely limiting my mobility, old injuries pounding with a steady ache, and the more recent damage to my hands throbbing insistently, all of which were normally muted by the Winter mantle.

  Evidently, when a powerful vampire of the White Court wants you to pay attention to how your body feels, you do it. Period.

  I turned my head and found my muscles responding only slowly, sluggishly.

  The shaft had come out into a dim hallway, with the only lighting coming from a lamp on a desk, placed across one side of the hallway next to a heavy plastic frame that looked like some kind of metal detector.

  One of the Einherjaren was standing in front of the desk. The man was at least as tall as me, only built with seventy or eighty more pounds of muscle, with a short buzz of black hair and a bristling black beard. He was standing in front of the desk, holding a heavy rifle, one of those ARs modified for anti-matériel rounds, at his shoulder, aiming down the barrel.

  But he didn’t matter.