by Jim Butcher
I lowered my brother to the ground. He groaned as I settled him down. The grey in his eyes had faded again, as his Hunger apparently renewed its assault on his life force. He had slowly begun to show signs of helpless agony as whatever palliative energy Lara had given him began to fade.
“Hey, man,” I said. “Can you hear me?”
He might have focused his eyes on me for a second. Only sounds of pain came out of his mouth.
“Look,” I said quietly. I drew a pocketknife I’d stuffed in my suit pants before leaving and used the needle point to pink the pad of flesh between thumb and forefinger. After a second, droplets of blood welled up, and I smeared the blade of the pocketknife over them, staining its length with a shade of scarlet just a little too pale to be human. “I can keep your demon from hurting you. Keep you alive. But going in will be rough.”
One of his ruined hands landed on my arm. He squeezed weakly. It was barely there, but it was there. He’d heard me.
“Part of the process of being taken into the cells is …” I took a deep breath. “You suffer the pain you’ve inflicted on others,” I said. “It was meant to get through to the most alien of beings, why they were being imprisoned. It’s not fair. It’s not meant for people. It could hurt you. But if I don’t do it, you’re going to die.”
My brother forced his eyes open and tried to find me. “J … J …”
“Justine,” I said. “I know. I’m on it.”
He sobbed. That was all he had left in him.
I stood away from him, leaving him within the light of the crystal. Alfred loomed over Thomas. “YOU HAVE THE CAGE. YOU HAVE THE BLOOD. DRAW THE CIRCLE AND SPEAK THE WORDS, WARDEN.”
My instincts twitched. I looked back over my shoulder.
Freydis stood at the very edge of the dock, staring up the slope at me. Even as I watched, she turned and rushed back to the ship, leaping up onto the deck and vanishing into the hold.
There wasn’t much time. My brother was fading, being devoured by his own demon.
I rose and drew in my will, while I used my staff to gouge a circle into the earth around my brother. Once that was done, I bent over, touched the little trench with my fingers, and raised the circle by unleashing a tiny amount of energy into it. It snapped up in an invisible screen around my fallen brother and began to gather and focus magical energy.
Then I raised the pocketknife overhead in one hand.
“Bound be Thomas Raith,” I hissed. I felt resistance against my will begin to rise, the reluctance of this world to open a passage to another. “Bound be my wounded brother,” I growled, forcing my will into my voice, making it ring from the stones and trees and water. “Fallen warrior, father-to-be, I name him bound, consigned to thee.”
I heard a brief cry from behind me.
I released my will with the third repetition of the binding.
And Demonreach went to work.
I didn’t have the kind of power it would have taken to do what the genius loci did. The energy I’d had to pour into the incantation had simply been to release a portion of the spirit’s power—like turning the key in an enormous, stiff, stubborn lock. Demonreach was not meant to be used by the weak-minded or the uncertain, and the effort it had taken to set it into motion was not one I would care to repeat on a regular basis for exercise.
The crystal flared with light. It bathed Thomas so brightly that I could see his bones through his skin.
And then my poor, battered brother began to scream. It was a thin, shrieking sound, a sound that embraced more emotion, more agony, than his broken body could possibly bear. It ripped at me, that sound, causing me pain that the Winter mantle could do absolutely nothing about. I had just condemned my brother to a punishment that I would have been terrified to face myself.
Thomas screamed and screamed, and the vast form of the genius loci towered over him, bending down.
And then the screams ended.
The light vanished.
I stood alone on the cold stones.
Where my wounded brother had been, there was nothing but a very faintly glowing cloud of green mist, dispersing rapidly, sinking into the stone and earth of Demonreach.
I sagged, dropping down to one knee and bracing my arms on the ground.
Stars and stones.
What I had just done … there had been no choice, especially not now.
But my brother.
I heard a single low cry, raw and ugly with pain.
I turned to see Lara land on the dock and rush toward me, a pale blur of supernatural speed, something that gleamed and caught the moonlight in her hand.
Chapter
Thirty-five
Lara Raith didn’t like to fight—it was what made her such a deadly opponent when she had to do it. Once the knives were out, she didn’t let pride come into it at all. If she decided to kill you, it was going to happen as quickly and efficiently as she could arrange, and that would be that.
I had personally seen her walk through a battlefield full of ancient foes armed with nothing but a pair of long knives. She hadn’t just beaten them—she’d made it look easy. She was older than my brother, and she’d taught him to fight. Thomas had walked into a svartalf fortress and damn near assassinated its chief executive, through all the security, all by himself. Lara was faster than my brother, stronger than him, and more experienced.
And now she was coming for me.
I got it. I mean, this was the only place on the planet I was sure Thomas would be safe, but if she’d known the details she’d have fought me on it, and there just hadn’t been time. For all she knew, I’d just disintegrated her brother. If I’d been in Lara’s shoes, I’d have been freaking out, too.
She probably didn’t realize she’d chosen her ground even more poorly than my brother had.
Demonreach had been constructed by Merlin. The Merlin, the original, Camelot and Excalibur, that Merlin. He’d broken at least one of the Laws of Magic to build the place, romping about through time in order to lay a foundation strong enough to bear the supernatural weight of the prison. As a result, the island absolutely seethed with power—and if one knew the layout of the defenses, and the painstaking geomancy that had gone into laying all that energy into usable patterns, it was possible to use that energy at almost no cost to one’s own store of personal power.
Behind Lara, Freydis and her shotgun vaulted off the ship and onto the shore, the Valkyrie following her boss into battle.
Except it wasn’t a battle.
It wasn’t even close.
I made a gesture, hissed part of a word, and the soft ground beneath Lara’s feet abruptly gave way and then snapped back, sending her into a sprawl in the air. She hit the ground, and the brush and grass of the island wrapped her swiftly and completely.
I made a swatting gesture with my right hand, sent out a mental command to utilize some of the waiting energy of the island, and a hickory tree that towered above the landing site abruptly swept down like an angry giant and slammed an enormous branch into the ground a few feet in front of Freydis. The impact knocked the Valkyrie from her feet—and at a second gesture the tree hit her hard enough to send her flying back into the water of the lake.
I turned back to find Lara tearing her way wildly out of the grass and brush, and I had to lift both hands and expend a mild effort of will to have the ground simply swallow her to the neck.
Lara struggled briefly, savagely, and silently, her silver eyes bright. It took her about half as long as it would have taken me to realize the hopelessness of her position. The struggle ceased then, and she went cold and so still that her head might have been something severed from a statue rather than part of an actual near-human being. Only her eyes moved, tracking me. There was nothing playful in her expression now. It was like looking at the eyes of a big cat. An angry one.
“That wasn’t necessary,” I said, turning to track Freydis’s progress in the water. My intellectus was a little fuzzier out there, like peering through smudged gl
ass, which was probably the penalty for my merely human brain struggling to be aware of the constant shifting of every individual molecule of water in the area.
I found Freydis just as she kicked off the bottom of the lake, churning the water into swirling helixes with the power of her limbs as she stroked for the surface, and flew out of it with enough momentum to clear the railing of the Water Beetle—and collide with Murphy on the deck.
“No!” I shouted, and with an effort of will and another flick of my wrists, a pair of trees bent and reached for the ship, wood straining, limbs creaking with threat.
Freydis was fast as hell—and Murphy didn’t even try to fight her. The Valkyrie got behind Murphy, close, one hand on her waist and another on her throat. I knew how strong she was—she could just rake a pound of meat out of Murphy’s neck with a flick of her wrist. Freydis’s eyes were bright and cold. “Back off!” she screamed.
The power of Demonreach was vast and terrible—and not much good for surgery. The only chance I’d have would be something that killed Freydis so fast that she didn’t have time to react, and the Valkyrie was damned quick. I’d be aiming trees (for God’s sake, I should have practiced smashing things with trees) at targets on a floating, bobbing platform, and an inch’s difference in any direction could mean Murphy’s life or death.
So I backed off, the trees groaning threateningly as they retreated.
“Trade time, seidrmadr,” Freydis called to me. “Yours for mine.”
“Why should I?” I called back.
Freydis tightened her hand, and I saw Murphy tense up with pain.
“This is not the fight that is destined to be her last,” the Valkyrie called. “Unless you make me kill her.”
Murphy simply lifted her arms. There were a couple of clinking sounds, and a pair of metal bits flew up from her hands and arched out to either side of the Water Beetle, landing in the water with little splashes.
They were little metal handles. Soldiers called them spoons.
Murphy was holding a live grenade to either side of their heads.
Freydis’s eyes went very wide.
“Frags,” Murphy said calmly. “Your move, bitch.”
There was an instant of frozen silence.
“Gods, that’s hot,” Freydis said, and blurred as she dove over the railing, hitting the water like a thrown spear.
Murphy turned and pitched the grenades over the far side of the Water Beetle. She had to lob one of them underhand, with her wounded arm. They hit the drink maybe seven or eight yards out, and a couple of seconds later they went off with a roar of displaced liquid that sent a geyser of water twenty feet in the air.
I ignored that. The frags were no danger to anything when they were surrounded by that much water, and instead I tracked the evasive Valkyrie, until I found her.
I raised my voice and called out to where Freydis had tried to swim silently back to shore in the shadows and shelter of some huge old shaggy willows. She came out of the water and picked up a rock and was about to start through the trees and rocks on a least-time course for the back of my skull.
“Hey, Red!” I called. “Your client is fine, there’s no reason to fight me, and if you make me spend what’s left of my money on weregild for your boss, I’m going to be really annoyed.”
Freydis paused in the darkness in confusion. I didn’t blame her. There was no way I could have seen her from where I was standing, no way I could have heard her stealthy movements. But while I stood on Demonreach, I was as aware of the island as of my own body. I could have chucked a rock, bounced it off a couple of trees, and landed it right on the Valkyrie’s head.
Sometimes actions speak louder than words. I lifted a hand and willed the earth of the island to cooperate. Freydis found herself sunk to her waist in the ground in the space of a heartbeat. I heard her let out a short choked sound.
“See?” I called to her. “This is … just a terrible idea. Just awful. For you, I mean. Maybe we can talk instead.”
Freydis’s voice came out a little breathless. “Lara?”
I looked at Lara and made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Come on.”
“I’m alive,” Lara called back to her. Then she looked at me and said evenly. “You traitor.”
“Hey,” I said, lifting an annoyed finger. “I’m not the one who came running at you with a knife.”
“What did you do to him?” Lara asked, her voice cold and measured.
I’d heard the tone before. Back when I’d had to put the fear of, well, me, into a vampire named Bianca. We’d sort of been amicable opponents up until that point. Things changed when I’d made her feel helpless. Things had gotten a little complicated.
And I’d just repeated history.
Only Lara was smarter and stronger and a great deal more dangerous than Bianca had ever thought about being.
This was one of those situations where it would maybe be wise to use my words.
I walked over to Lara and settled down on my haunches next to her. “I did exactly what I said I would do,” I said. “He’s safe. Locator spells won’t be able to lock onto him here. His demon can’t hurt him. The svartalves can’t get to him. We did it.”
“I want to see him,” Lara hissed. “I want to talk to him.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “You can’t,” I said. I frowned and reached for my intellectus of the island.
I felt what my brother felt. Which was not much. There was distant pain, but mostly he had simply sunk into an exhausted stupor. His mind had been overwhelmed by physical stimuli. Now he sought blessed shelter in oblivion. “He’s … unconscious.”
She stared at the middle distance, refusing to look up at me. “Unconscious?”
“He’s locked in one of the cells,” I said. “He’s safe. But he’s stuck, too. And right now he’s exhausted. Resting.”
“You never said anything about locking him in a cell.”
“I said he’d have to stay here.”
Lara let out a small bitter laugh. “You did. And you kept your word. To think I believed you’d come into Mab’s service as a result of misfortune rather than aptitude.”
I winced at that one.
Ow.
“You’ve made your point, I believe, Dresden,” Lara said somewhat stiffly. “The current balance of power does not favor me. Is it really necessary to keep me in this … position?”
“Are you done with the knife play?” I asked.
“I am ready to negotiate rationally,” she said.
I gave her a professionally suspicious look.
Her poker face was much better than mine.
“Fine,” I said. I stepped back and gestured.
The ground just sort of slid away from her, bringing her back to her feet without any effort needed on her part. As her right hand came free, she lifted a small practical knife that she’d been hiding … somewhere. She put it back into the sheath she held in the other hand and then tossed the knife down onto the ground between us.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I’d appreciate it if we could deal frankly with one another at this point.”
“Sure,” I said.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“For what?”
“Don’t be coy, Dresden,” Lara said. “You hold my brother’s life in your hand now. What is your price?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Wait—you think that … Wow.”
She tilted her head.
“Lara, look,” I said. “I’m slowly growing more aware of things, but … you’re giving me too much of what you probably think is credit. I don’t play the game like that.”
“A cursory review of your defeated foes begs to differ, wizard.”
“I’ll play hardball,” I acknowledged. “But I play it clean. Or at least, I don’t sell my own damned brother up the river for gain.”
“You’re not that much of an idealist, Dresden,” Lara said with a faint hard smile on her mouth. “At the end of the day, you’ll commit
genocide if you think it’s the proper thing to do.”
“You’re goddamned right I will,” I said, because the empirical evidence was pretty tough to dispute. “But if I was as hard-core as you think I am, you wouldn’t be walking off this island with your own mind. And maybe not at all.”
Lara narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean by that?”
I threw up my hands. “Hell’s bells, Lara. Look, if I wanted to do something bad to you, I could right now. You’re standing in the wrong place, I have the advantage, and if I wanted to wreak some manner of skullduggery upon you, you aren’t in a position to stop me from doing it.”
Words could not be more rigid than the ones she spoke. “I am aware.”
“No!” I said. “That’s not … Augh! Look, I’m not saying that because I’m trying to leverage you. I’m pointing out that I can do it, but I’m not going to because it’s just … dickish. And I try to avoid acting like that whenever I can.”
Lara frowned. “What?”
“Look, I know you play the game real hard,” I said. “That’s in your nature. But you also understand family.”
She tilted her head, frowning. “What do you mean by that?”
“That Thomas is my family, too,” I said. “I won’t do anything to knowingly harm him. Um, again. And if he needs me, I’ll be there for him.”
“And,” Lara murmured thoughtfully, “I suppose if anything happens to you, terrible things happen to my brother.”
“Not terrible,” I said. “ Just … nothing.” Unless the next Warden decided to free him. I hadn’t yet finished reviewing the inmates of the island. The filing system of the island, such as it was, was a psychic one. Reviewing the inmates meant reviewing the inmates. The first half dozen or so had left me with nightmares for a couple of weeks, and there’s only so much masochism I can keep all to myself.
“He’s trapped there forever,” Lara said.
“No. He’s safe there until we can find a way to cure him,” I said.
She regarded me with flat eyes. “And as a happy side effect, if I wish to protect his life, now I must invest resources in protecting yours.”
That hadn’t been what I’d been planning at all.