Skin Game (18 page)

“If you don’t mind,” Nicodemus said to the room at large, “I think introductions are in order.”

The nape of my neck was trying to slither away and find a good place to hide when the smell hit me first. It was thick and pungent, bestial—the smell of a large animal in the immediate proximity. A few seconds later, the goats started panicking in their pen, running back and forth and bleating to one another in terror.

“What the hell,” Valmont breathed, looking around uneasily.

I didn’t join her in rubbernecking. I was extending my awareness, my wizard’s senses, searching for the subtle vibration of magical energies at work in the air. I’d never been able to throw up a magical veil so good that it could mask odor, but just because I couldn’t do it didn’t mean that it was impossible. The one huge weakness of veiling magic was that it was still
magic
. If your senses were sharp, and you were reasonably sure a veil was present, you could find that source of magical energy if you looked hard enough.

I found it after a moment’s intense concentration—about ten feet directly behind me.

I turned kind of casually in my chair, folded my arms, fixed my gaze on the empty space where I’d felt the energy coming from and waited, trying to look bored.

It faded into sight, slowly, an utterly motionless figure. It was human in general shape, but only generally. Muscle covered it in ropy layers and in densities that were too oddly proportioned to be human—so much muscle that you could see its outlines through a thick layer of greyish, straggly hair that covered its body. It was well over nine feet tall. Massive shoulders sloped up to a tree-trunk-sized neck, and its head was shaped strangely as well, sloping up more sharply than a human skull, with a wide forehead and a brow ridge like a mountain crag. Eyes glittered way back in the shadows beneath that brow, glinting like an assassin’s knives from a cave’s mouth. Its features were heavy and brutish, its hands and feet absolutely enormous—and I had met the creature’s like before.

“Stars and stones,” I breathed.

That massive brow gathered, lowered. For a second, I thought there had been distant thunder outside, and then I realized that the nearly subsonic rumbling sound was coming from the thing’s chest.

It was growling.

At me.

I swallowed.

“This,” Nicodemus said into the startled silence, “is the Genoskwa. He, of course, knows you all, having been the first to arrive.”

“Big one, isn’t he,” Binder said, in a very mild voice. “What’s his job?”

“I share Dresden’s concerns about the availability of our target’s vault,” Nicodemus said. “There have, in the past, been rather epic guardians protecting the ways in and out of this particular domain. The Genoskwa has consented to join us in order to serve as a counterweight, should any such protection arise.”

“An ogre?” Ascher asked.

“Not an ogre,” I replied immediately. “He’s one of the Forest People.”

The Genoskwa’s growl might have gotten a little louder. It was so deep that I had a hard time knowing for sure.

“What’s the difference?” Ascher asked.

“I once saw one of the Forest People take on about twenty ghouls in a fair fight,” I said. “It wasn’t even close. If he’d been playing for keeps, none of them would have survived.”

The Genoskwa snorted a breath out through his nose. The sound was . . . simply
vile
with rage, with broiled, congealed hate.

I held out both of my hands palms up. I’d rarely seen the kind of power that River Shoulders, the Forest Person I’d met several times before, had displayed, physically and otherwise, and it seemed like a really fantastic idea to mend some fences if possible. “Sorry about what I said earlier. I figured Nicodemus had a troll stashed around here or something. Didn’t realize it was one of the Forest People. I’ve done a little business with River Shoulders in the past. Maybe you’ve heard of—”

I don’t even know what happened. I assume the Genoskwa closed the distance and hit me. One minute I was trying to establish some kind of rapport, and the next I was about a dozen feet in the air, flying across the factory floor, tumbling. I saw the conference table, the windows, the ceiling—and Jordan’s incredulous face staring down at me from a catwalk, and then I hit the brick wall and light briefly filled my skull. I mean, I didn’t even notice when I fell and hit the floor—or maybe I just can’t remember that part.

I do remember that I came up fighting. The Genoskwa walked over the conference table—he just
stepped over it
—and covered the distance to me in catlike silence, in three great strides, moving as lightly as a dancer despite the fact that he had to weigh in at well over eight hundred pounds.

I threw a blast of Winter at him, only to see him make a contemptuous gesture and spit a slavering, snarling word. The ice that should have entombed him just . . . drained away into the floor beneath him, grounding out my magic as effectively as a lightning rod diverts the power of a thunderbolt.

I had about half of a second to realize that my best shot had bounced off him with somewhat less effect than I would have had if I’d slugged him with a foam rubber pillow, and then he hit me again.

Aerial cartwheels. Another flash of impact against a wall. Before I
could fall, he had closed the distance again—and his enormous hands drove a rusty old nail into my left pectoral muscle.

Once the steel nail had broken the surface of my skin, my contact with the mantle of the Winter Knight shattered, and I was just plain old vanilla me again.

And that meant pain.

A whole lot of pain.

The mantle had suppressed the pain of my broken arm, among other things, but once it was taken out of the circuit, all of that agony came rushing into my brain at the same time, an overload of torturous sensation. I screamed and thrashed, grabbing the Genoskwa’s wrist with both hands, trying to force his arm and the nail he still held away from me. I might as well have been trying to push over a building. I couldn’t so much as make him acknowledge my effort with a wobble, much less move him.

He leaned down, huge and grey and horrible-smelling, and pushed his ugly mug right up into mine, breathing hard through his mouth. His breath smelled like blood and rotten meat. His voice came out in a surprisingly smooth, mellow basso.

“Consider this a friendly warning,” he said, his accent harsh, somehow bitter. “I am not one of the whimpering Forest People. Speak of me and that flower-chewing groundhog lover River Shoulders in the same breath again, and I will devour your offal while you watch.”

“Frmph,” I said. The room was spinning like some kind of wacky animated drunk scene. “Glkngh.”

The nail evidently robbed some of the power from Mab’s earring, too. Someone drove a railroad spike into each temple, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe.

The Genoskwa stepped back from me abruptly, as though I was something unworthy of his attention. He faced the rest of the room, while I clawed desperately at the nail sticking out of my chest.

“You,” he said to the people seated at the table. “Do what Nicodemus says, when he says. Or I will twist off your head.” He flexed his huge hands, and I suddenly noticed that they were tipped in ugly-looking, dirty claws. “Been here most of two days, and none of you ever saw me.
Followed some of you all over this town last night. None of you saw me. You don’t do your job now, no place you run will keep you from me.”

Those at the table stared at him, stunned and silent, and I realized that my plan for stealing Nicodemus’s thunder and destabilizing his authority over the crew had just gone down in flames.

The Genoskwa was apparently satisfied with his entrance. He strode to the pen and, as if it had been an appetizer at a sports bar and not a nimble animal trying desperately to avoid its fate, he plucked up a goat, broke its neck using only one hand, and vanished again, gone more suddenly than he had appeared.

Karrin was at my side a second later, grabbing the nail with her small, strong hands—but the pain was just too damned much. I was fading.

“Well,” I dimly heard Nicodemus say, “that’s dinner.”

Going, going.

Gone.

I
hadn’t been to this place in a very long time.

It was a flat, empty floor in some vast, open, and unlit space that nonetheless somehow didn’t echo with its emptiness, as if there were no walls from which sounds could reflect. I stood in a circle of light, though I couldn’t quite make out the source of illumination above me.

It was the first time, though, that I’d ever been standing there alone.

“Hey!” I called out into the empty space. “It’s not like my own subconscious can up and disappear, you know! If you’ve got something you want to say, hurry it up! I’m busy!”

“Yeah, yeah,” called a voice from the darkness. “I’m coming. Keep your pants on.”

There were shuffling footsteps, and then . . . I appeared.

Well, it wasn’t me, exactly. It was my double, though, a mental image of myself that had appeared a few times in the past, and that I would probably avoid mentioning to any mental health professionals who had signed mandatory reporting clauses. Call him my subconscious, my id, the voice of my inner jerkface, whatever. He was a part of me that didn’t surface much.

He was dressed in black. A tailored black shirt, black pants, expensive black shoes. He had a goatee, too.

Look, I never said my inner self was hideously complex.

In addition to his usual outfit, he also wore a pin on his left breast—a snowflake, wrought from silver with such complexity and detail that one
could see the crystalline shapes of its surface. Whoa. I wasn’t sure exactly what the hell
that
meant, but given how my day was going, I was reasonably sure it was nothing good.

There was someone with him.

It was a smallish figure, covered in what looked like a black blanket of soft wool. It moved slowly, hunched, as if in terrible pain, leaning hard against my double’s supporting arms.

“Uh,” I said. “What?”

My double sneered at me. “Why is it that you’ve never got the least goddamned clue what’s happening inside your own head. Have you ever noticed this trend? Doesn’t it bug you sometimes?”

“I try not to overthink it,” I said.

He snorted. “Hell’s bells,
that’s
true. We have to talk.”

“Why can’t you just send dreams like everyone else’s subconscious?”

“I’ve been trying,” he said, and shifted into a voice that sounded suspiciously like Bullwinkle the cartoon moose. “But somebody’s been busy not overthinking it.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Oh, wait. That . . . that dream with Murphy? That was you?”

“All the dreams are me, blockhead,” my double said. “And I swear, dude, you have got to be the most repressed human being on the face of the planet.”

“What? Maybe you didn’t notice, but I’m not exactly bending over backwards for anybody?”

“Not oppressed, moron.
Re
pressed. As in sexually. What is
wrong
with you?”

I blinked, offended. “What?”

“You were doing okay with Susan,” he said. “And Anastasia . . . Wow, there’s really something to be said for experience.”

I felt myself blushing and reminded myself that I was talking to me. “So?”

“And what about all the things you missed, dummy?” he asked. “You had the shadow of a freaking angel who could have shown you any sensual experience you could possibly have
imagined
, but did you take her up on it? No. Mab’s been
throwing
girls at you. You could literally make one
phone call and have half a dozen supernaturally hot Sidhe girls playing rodeo with you anytime you wanted, and instead you’re playing hopscotch over the cages of has-been demons. Hell, Hannah Ascher would have gotten busy with you if you wanted.”

“It’s Parkour,” I said defensively. “And just because I don’t go to bed with everything with a vagina doesn’t mean I’m repressed. I don’t want it to be just sex.”

“Why
not
?” my double said, exasperated. “Go forth and freaking multiply! Drink from the cup of life! Carpe femme! For the love of God, get
laid
.”

I sighed. Right. Id me didn’t have to be concerned with long-term consequences. He was my instinctive, primitive self, driven by my most primal impulses. I wondered, briefly, if
id
and
idiot
came from the same root.

“You wouldn’t get it,” I said. “It’s got to be more than just physical attraction. There’s got to be respect and affection.”

“Sure,” he said, his tone absolutely acidic. “Then how come you haven’t banged Murphy yet?”

“Because,” I said, growing flustered, “we aren’t . . . We haven’t gotten to . . . There’s been a lot of . . . Look, fuck off.”

“Hah,” my double said. “You’re obviously terrified of getting close to someone. Afraid you’ll get hurt and rejected. Again.”

“No I’m not,” I said.

“Oh, please,” he said. “I’ve got a direct line to your hindbrain. I’ve got your fears on Blu-Ray.” He rolled his eyes. “Like
she
isn’t feeling exactly the same thing?”

“Murphy isn’t afraid of anything,” I said.

“Two ex-husbands, and the last one married her little sister. He might as well have sent her a card that said, ‘I’d like you, only you’re too successful. And old.’ And you’re a freaking wizard who is going to live for centuries. Of course she’s freaking out about the idea of getting involved with you.”

I frowned at that. “I . . . You really think so?”

“No, dolt.
You
really think so.”

I snorted. “Okay, guy, if you’re so smart. What do I do?”

“If having something real is so important to you, man up and go
get
her,” my id said. “You could both be dead tomorrow. You’re heading for the realm of freaking
death
, for crying out loud. What the hell are you waiting for?”

“Uh,” I said.

“Let me answer that for you,” he said. “Molly.”

I blinked. “Uh, no. Molly’s a freaking kid.”

“She
was
a freaking kid,” my double said. “She’s heading for her late twenties, in case you forgot how to count. She’s not all that much younger than you, and the proportional distance is only shrinking. And you like her, and you trust her, and the two of you have a ton in common. Go get laid
there
.”

“Dude, no,” I said. “That is not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“It would be a serious violation of trust.”

“Because she’s your apprentice?” he asked. “No, she isn’t. Not anymore. Hell’s bells, man, she’s practically your boss when you get right down to it. At the very least, she got promoted past you.”

“I am not having this conversation,” I said.

“Repression
and
denial,” my double said acerbically. “Get thee to a therapist.”

The figure next to him made a soft sound.

“Right,” the double said. “We don’t have much time. Murphy’s pulling the nail out.”

“Time for
what
?” I asked. “And who
is
that?”

“Seriously?” he asked. “You aren’t going to use your intuition even a little, huh?”

I scowled at him and at the other figure and then my eyes widened. “Wait . . . Is that . . . is that the
parasite
?”

The shrouded figure shuddered and let out a pained groan.

“No,” my double said. “It’s the being that Mab and that stupid Alfred have been
calling
a parasite.”

I blinked several times. “What?”

“Look, man,” my double said. “You’ve got to work this out. Think, okay. I can’t just
talk
to you. This near-dream stuff is my best, but you’ve got to meet me halfway.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Wait. You’re saying that the parasite isn’t actually a parasite. But that means . . .”

“The wheel is turning,” my double said, in the tone of a reporter covering a sports event. “The fat, lazy old hamster looks like he’s almost forgotten how to make it go, but he’s sort of moving it now. Bits of rust are falling off. The cobwebs are slowly parting.”

“Screw you,” I said, annoyed. “It’s not like you’ve showed up with a ton to say ever since . . .” I trailed off and fell entirely silent for a long moment.

“Ah,” he said, and pointed a finger at me, bouncing up onto his toes. “Ah hah! Ah hah, hah, hah, the light begins to dawn!”

“Ever since I touched Lasciel’s Coin,” I breathed quietly.

“Follow that,” my double urged me. “What happened next?”

“Touching the Coin put an imprint of Lasciel in my head,” I said. “Like a footprint in clay, the same shape as the original. She tried to tempt me into accepting the true Lasciel into my head along with her, but I turned her down.”

My double rolled his wrist in a “keep it moving” gesture. “And then?”

“And then the imprint started to change,” I said. “Lasciel was immutable, but the imprint was made of me. A shape in the clay. As the clay changed, so did the imprint.”

“And?”

“And I gave her a name,” I said. “I called her Lash. She became an independent psychic entity in her own right. And we kind of got along until . . .” I swallowed. “Until there was a psychic attack. A bad one. She threw herself in the way of it. It destroyed her.”

“Yeah,” my double said quietly. “But . . . look, what she did was an act of love. And you were about as intimate with her as it gets, sharing the same mental space. I mean, it’s funny, you get twitchy when you start considering
living
with a woman, but having one literally inside your head was not an issue.”

“What do you mean?”

“Christ, you’re supposed to be the intellect here,” my double said.
“Think
.
”
He stared at me for a long moment, visibly willing me to understand.

My stomach fell into some unimaginable abyss at the same time my jaw dropped open. “No,” I said. “That isn’t . . . that’s not possible.”

“When a mommy and a daddy love each other
very much
,” my double said, as if speaking to a small child, “and they live together and hug and kiss and get intimate with each other . . .”

“I’m . . .” I felt a little ill. “You’re saying . . . I’m
pregnant
?”

My double threw up his arms. “
Finally
, he gets it.”

In years and years and years of experience as a wizard, I’d dealt with concepts, formulae, and mental models that ranged from bizarre to downright insanity-inducing. None of them had, in any way whatsoever, ever prepared my head to wrap around this. At all. Ever. “How is that . . . That isn’t even . . . What the
hell
, man?” I demanded.

“A spiritual entity,” my double said calmly. “Born of you and Lash. When she sacrificed herself for you, it was an act of selfless love—and love is fundamentally a force of creation. It stands to reason, then, that an act of love is fundamentally an act of creation. You remember it, right? After she died? When you could still play the music she’d given to you, even though she was gone? You could hear the echoes of her voice?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling dazed.

“That was because a part of her remained,” my double said. “Made of her—and made of you.”

And very gently, he drew back the black blanket.

She looked like a child maybe twelve years old, in the last few weeks of true childhood before the sudden surge of hormones brought on the chain of rapid changes that lead into adolescence. Her hair was dark, like mine, but her eyes were a crystalline blue-green, the way Lash’s had often appeared. Her features were faintly familiar, and I realized in a surge of instinct that her face had been constructed from those of people in my life. She had the square, balanced chin of Karrin Murphy, the rounded cheeks of Ivy the Archive, and Susan Rodriguez’s jawline. Her nose had come from my first love, Elaine Mallory, her hair from my first apprentice, Kim Delaney. I knew because they were
my
memories, right there in front of me.

Her eyes were fluttering uncertainly, and she was shivering so hard
that she could barely stand. There was frost forming on her eyelashes, and even as I watched it started spreading over her cheeks.

“She’s a spiritual entity,” I breathed. “Oh, my God. She’s a spirit of
intellect
.”

“What happens when mortals get it on with spirits,” my double confirmed, though now without heat.

“But Mab said she was a parasite,” I said.

“Lot of people make jokes, refer to fetuses like that,” he said.

“Mab called her a monster. Said she would hurt those closest to me.”

“She’s a spirit of intellect, just like Bob,” my double said. “Born of the spirit of a fallen freaking angel and the mind of one of the most potent wizards on the White Council. She’s going to be born with knowledge, and with power, and be absolutely innocent of what to do with them. A lot of people would call that monstrous.”

“Argh,” I said, and clutched at my head. I got it now. Mab hadn’t been lying. Not precisely. Hell, she’d as much as told me that the parasite was made of my essence. My soul. My . . . me-ness. Spirits of intellect had to grow, and my head was a limited space. This one had been filling it up for years, slowly expanding, putting more psychic and psychological pressure on me—reflected in the growing intensity of my migraines over that time.

If I’d realized what was happening, I could have done something sooner, and probably a lot more simply. Now . . . I was overdue and it was looking like this was going to be a very, very rough delivery. And if I didn’t have help, I’d be in much the same shape as a woman giving birth alone and encountering complications. Odds were good that my head wouldn’t be able to stand the pressure of such a being abruptly parting ways with me, fighting its way out of a space that had become too small, in sheer instinct for its own survival. It could drive me insane, or kill me outright.

If that happened, it would leave the newly born spirit of intellect alone and bewildered in a world it didn’t understand, but about which it had lots and lots of data. Spirits like Bob liked to pretend they were all about rationality, but they had emotions, attachments. The new spirit
would want to connect. And it would try to do so with the people who mattered most to me.

I shuddered, imagining little Maggie suddenly gaining a very, very seriously dangerous imaginary friend.