Skin Game (23 page)

Of course, that concern abruptly dwindled to a secondary issue as I realized what Butters had commanded the spirit to do.

Orange firelight-sparks suddenly erupted from the eyes of the enormous bronze lion. Then, moving exactly as if it had been a living beast, the thing turned its head toward me, crouched, and let out an enormous and authentically leonine roar.

“Oh, crap,” I said.

“Hold them off!” Butters shouted.

The lion roared again.

“Dammit, Butters,” I snarled under my breath, “I’m helping!”

And then several tons of living bronze predator, guided by the intelligence and will of the most powerful spirit of intellect I had ever encountered, flung itself directly at my head.

I
t had been a good long while since I’d had a freaking lion coming at me, and at the time it had been one of the genuine flesh-and-blood variety, from the zoo. I’d never had something made entirely of metal try to kill me before, unless you counted the instruments of the occasional would-be vehicular homicide that came my way, and never both at the same time—so actually that made this a first.

And that’s important in a job. Fresh challenges. What would I do without them?

Without the Winter mantle on my side, I think Bob might have taken my head off of my shoulders. But instead, I ducked, fast enough and low enough to avoid the enormous paw that flashed toward me in anticipation of the move, and Bob flew over me, crashing into a pair of Binder’s suits with juggernaut enthusiasm. They went flying like ninepins, and the bronze lion whirled toward me, far too fast for something so massive, and crouched to leap at me again.

And one of the lion’s golden orange glowing eyes, the one away from the street, shivered down in the barest little wink imaginable.

Bob
got it
.

My former lab assistant thundered, “Die, traitor!” and then roared again.

“Watch out, he’s loose!” I screamed to a nearby suit, reeling back toward him and fighting to keep the sudden grin off my face. “He’ll tear us all apart!”

“Rargh!” Bob screamed and came rushing at me again.

I flung myself to one side at the last second, when the suit wouldn’t see Bob coming until it was too late. The bronze lion smashed into the suit, sending it tumbling in a whirl of broken limbs, to smash into the side of the Art Institute. It exploded into gelatinous clear goo, its physical vessel simply too mangled to enable the spirit Binder had summoned to continue animating it, and the lion let out a roar of triumph, and turned toward the next nearest suits.

“I’ll get him!” I shouted. I pointed my staff at Bob and snarled,
“Fuego!”
A blast of pure fire erupted from the staff, missed the rampaging lion statue by inches, and took a pair of suits full-on, setting them ablaze and causing them to issue weird howls of frustration and rage as it began to consume their physical forms.

Furious, the burning suits flung themselves at Bob, and the hunting-pack mentality of the demons prompted the others to leap at the rampaging statue as well. Bob roared, his eyelights blazing merrily, and started batting them around like Mister playing with multiple catnip lures on a string.

I hopped back from the immediate vicinity of the havoc and looked around wildly for Butters. I checked his last direction but saw nothing—except an empty plastic sports-drink bottle rolling slowly down the sidewalk, pushed by the mild wind coming in from the north, exactly like the kind I used to store a potion in when I made one.

Butters was in the wind. Hell, maybe literally. It had been a long time since I’d brewed that escape potion that had saved me from a toad demon, but if I’d had a twenty, I’d have bet it against a piece of bubble gum that Butters had duplicated my old formula and used it to pull a quick vanishing act in the confusion.

Because confusion there was: The explosions and roaring and noise had done exactly what I had hoped they would, and attracted attention. Though the muffling effect of the weather had dulled the sounds, and though it was well after business hours, that didn’t mean that the area around us was wholly empty of life. Lights had begun to flick on. Faces had begun to appear at windows in nearby buildings.

One of the cardinal points of common sense, in the supernatural
world, is that you don’t get yourself involved with mortal authorities. The average individual mortal (or twenty) might not be a match for a real supernatural predator. I’m pretty sure the serious bad guys, like the hulking, hairy one standing in the shadows across the street from the Art Institute, could take on a riot’s worth of mortals without hesitation, and expect victory. But in a city like Chicago, starting a rumble with humanity wouldn’t mean fighting a score of mortals, or a couple of hundred. It would mean thousands, and more important, it would mean tangling with those who had the training and equipment to be a genuine threat.

People had actually begun to appear on the street, from inside the café and a nearby sandwich shop. Cell phones were coming out. And Chicago PD had maybe half a dozen stations within a mile of where I stood.

“What are you waiting for?” I shouted toward the Genoskwa, and pointed at the animated statue. “Lend a hand, big guy!”

The Genoskwa glowered at me for a second, and then at the rampaging Bob. There was a flash of ugly yellow tusks, a glitter of malicious and angry eyes, and then the creature faded from sight, turning as it vanished, and starting up the street in the direction Butters had last been going.

Worse, there was a sound of rushing wind overhead, and something dark and swift passed between me and some of the higher lights in the area, sending a multitude of wavering, flickering shadows across the street. I squinted up into the rain and mist, and saw nothing but a large, winged form, moving fast, in the same direction.

Well, crap.

Nicodemus and Anduriel had taken to the air. I had no doubt that the Genoskwa could track Butters as well as any hound, and that escape potion, if that’s what he’d used, would only transport him a relatively short distance, maybe a couple of blocks. It would be only a matter of time before Nicodemus spotted Butters or the Genoskwa picked up his trail—and he no longer had Bob to propel his skateboard or cover his back.

I ground my teeth, and Bob sent another one of Binder’s suits flying past me. I ducked absently. My instincts told me to get moving again, as
quickly as possible. I told them to shut the hell up. I could go sprinting off in some direction, but that was unlikely to result in accomplishing anything. I took a moment to lever the Winter mantle away from my thoughts, and found them clearer. The Winter Knight was not needed here.

I ran down the street to the discarded sports bottle and snagged it. Just as I did, one of those mini-SUVs sliced through the slush in the middle of the avenue, sliding only slightly to one side as it braked, and Karrin stuck her head out the window. “Get in!”

I ran for the vehicle as Karrin stared in fascination at the sight of more than a dozen suits swarming over the lion, struggling to overturn it, and the huge thing twisting and spinning like a dervish trying to keep them off, orange eyelights blazing.

“Huh,” Karrin said. “That’s new.”

I slammed the door shut and said, “It’s Bob. Butters let him off the chain.”

“Is that good?” she asked.

I stuffed my staff mostly into the back and fumbled with the bottle. “It’s exciting, anyway. Butters gave them the slip, but Nicodemus and the Genoskwa are on his trail.”

“Is our cover blown?”

“Not yet,” I said. “We’re still bad guys. At least, enough to satisfy Mab. You know how confusing fights can be.”

“Hah,” Karrin said. “What’s the plan?”

“Find Butters. Get me to somewhere I can step out of the rain and give me a second to get a tracking spell running.”

“No need,” she said and started driving. “I know where he’s going.”

I blinked. “Where?”

“You’re Butters. You know basically everything that’s been going on in Chicago for the past dozen years. You’ve got a bunch of demons and supernatural bad guys including the Knights of the Blackened Denarius after you,” she said. “Where would you go?”

I frowned, thinking. She was right about that. If Butters had been working that closely with Bob, he’d know pretty much anything the skull
did, and he’d recognize Deirdre and Nicodemus by name—hell, he must have, which probably explained his mistrust. I’d declined to tell him anything about what I’d gotten Karrin into, and he’d listened in on me spending a day with a bunch of super-criminals and sitting down at a table with Nicodemus Archleone.

And where in this city would be the best place to go if one wanted protection from Fallen angels?

“Hell’s bells,” I breathed. “He’s going to Michael’s.”

“Yeah,” Karrin said, real anger in her voice. “Dammit, he knows better.”

I blinked several times and then felt my jaw drop as a flash of intuition hit me. “The Swords are there, aren’t they? And Butters knows it.”

Her jaw tensed. She eyed me and gave me a single short nod. “I wanted one other person to know, in case something happened to me. My place isn’t secure enough, even with what the Paranetters can do. And I’m sure as hell not going to trust those things to Marcone’s people. Anything bad that tries to get into Michael’s place has got a world of hurt coming down. It was the best I could think of.”

“If they catch Butters before he gets there,” I said, “he’s dead. If you’re wrong about where he’s going, he’s dead.”

“And if we stop for a couple of minutes for you to get your mojo together, we might get there too late to do anything,” she said, and bit her lip. She was coaxing as much speed from the little truck as she could, in this weather, its all-wheel drive churning steadily. “What do you think we should do?”

This was my fault. If I’d brought Butters in, at least far enough to understand what was going on, he wouldn’t have gone poking around himself. But dammit, how could I have done it without . . .

Augh.

I hated this cards-close-to-the-chest thing.

I suck at cards. I’m more a Monopoly sort of guy.

“I hadn’t talked to Michael in years,” I said. “The first day I do, I set off a chain of events that has some heavyweight monsterage heading right for his house.”

“Yeah,” Karrin said, “I noticed that.”

“Maybe it isn’t a coincidence,” I said.

She arched one pale brow. “Faith, Harry? You?”

“Oh, blow me,” I said, scowling. “Drive.”

She bared her teeth in a fierce smile and said, “Buckle up.”

I did, as the fine, freezing rain began to turn to heavy sleet.

W
e were two blocks from Michael’s place, back in the residential neighborhoods, when a cab all but teleported out of the sleet, moving too fast. It rolled through a stop sign and forced Karrin to slam on the brakes and swerve to avoid a collision.

The little SUV did its best, but it slid on the sleet-slickened street, bounced over the curb, through a wooden privacy fence, and wound up with its front wheels in someone’s emptied pool.

Karrin slapped the vehicle into reverse and tried to pull out, but the rear tires spun uselessly on the ice. “Dammit!” she snarled. “Go. I’m right behind you!”

I grabbed my staff and leapt out into the sleet without hesitating, wrapping myself in Winter as I went running through the storm and into the hazy pseudo-darkness. I went straight for Michael’s place, sprinting down a sidewalk briefly, and then cutting through yards, bounding over fences and parked cars (Parkour!) as I went.

I got to the Carpenters’ home just as the cab that had caused our wreck slid to a gradual stop a few houses past Michael’s. Butters popped out of the back and threw several wadded bills at the driver, then put his head down and sprinted toward Michael’s house. He looked pale and shaky. I sympathized. That potion had left me feeling like I’d just ridden a couple of dozen roller coasters, all at once, with a bad hangover. He hadn’t run five steps before one of his feet went out from under him on the frozen, slippery sidewalk, and he went down hard. I heard his head
rap the concrete, and then felt a sympathetic pang at the explosion of air from his lungs as the fall knocked the wind out of him.

I didn’t slow down until I was close to Butters, sweeping my gaze around the neighborhood, and finding it quiet and still.

“Jesus!” Butters blurted out as I got close. He flinched away from me, raising one hand as if to ward off a blow, reaching for something inside his coat with the other.

“Hell’s bells, Butters,” I said on a note of complaint. “If I was going to hurt you, I’d have blasted you from way the hell over there.”

“You
tried
 . . . ,” he wheezed, hand still poised inside his coat. “Stay . . . back. I . . . mean it.”

“Hell’s bells, you are smarter than this.” I sighed and offered him my hand. “Come on. They’re bound to be right behind you. You can’t stay out here. Let me help you up.”

He stared up at me for a second, clearly a little dazed from the fall, and just as obviously terrified.

I made an impatient clucking sound and stepped forward.

Butters fumbled what looked like a glass Christmas ornament from his coat’s inner pocket and flicked it at me weakly.

Winter was still upon me. I bent my knees a little and caught it on the fly, careful not to break it. “Whoa,” I said. “Easy there, killer. I’d rather not have us both forget why we’re standing out here in the sleet.”

He stared up at me, struggling to draw a steady breath. “Harry . . .”

“Easy,” I said. “Here.” I passed the ornament back to him.

He blinked at me.

“Come on,” I said. I bent down, got a hand under his arm, and more or less hauled the little guy to his feet. He slipped again at once, and would have fallen if I hadn’t held him up. I steadied him, guiding his steps off the treacherous concrete and onto the grass in front of one of the houses. “There, easy. Come on, let’s get you out of the cold at least.”

He groaned and said, “Oh, God, Harry. You’re not . . . You haven’t . . .” We stumbled a few more steps and then he said, “I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said, looking around us warily. “Be inside.”

“How bad have I screwed things up?” he asked.

“We move fast enough, nothing that can’t be fixed,” I said. Impatient,
I ducked down enough to get a shoulder beneath his arm and more or less lifted him up, dragging him along with his feet barely touching the ground toward the Carpenters’ yard.

Twenty yards.

Ten.

Five.

The wind rushed. Something shaped like black sails billowed in the sleet, and then swirling shadow receded, and Nicodemus Archleone stood between us and safety, a slender-bladed sword held in his right hand, blade parallel with his leg. He faced me with a small smile.

Behind him, his shadow stretched out for twenty yards in every direction, writhing in slow waves.

I drew up short. Butters’s legs swung back and forth.

I took a step back and looked over my shoulder.

The Genoskwa blurred into vision through the thick sleet, maybe twenty feet back, staying in the shadows of a large pine tree, his enormous shaggy form blending into its darkness. I could see the gleam of his eyes, though.

“Ah, Dresden,” Nicodemus purred. “You caught him. And in the nick of time.”

I set Butters down warily, and kept him close to my side. The little guy didn’t move or speak, though I could feel him shuddering with sudden intelligent terror.

“The little doctor,” Nicodemus said. “Quite a resourceful rabbit, is he not?”

“He’s quick,” I said. “And not much of a threat. There’s no reason not to let him go.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Nicodemus said. “He’s heard entirely too much—and my files on him say that he’s been associated with Marcone’s Chicago Alliance. Only an idiot wouldn’t recognize a potentially lethal security leak.” He tilted his head to one side. “He dies.”

The Genoskwa let out a hungry, rumbling growl.

Butters stiffened. He did not look behind him. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to look back there either.

Nicodemus was enjoying this. “It seems, Dresden,” he said, “that it is time for you to make a choice. Shall I make it easier for you?”

“What’d you have in mind?” I asked.

“Practicality,” Nicodemus said. “Give him to me. I will take him from here. It will be quick and merciful.” His eyes shifted to Butters. “It’s nothing personal, young man. You became involved in something larger than you. That is the price you pay. But I’ve no grudge with you. You will simply stop.”

Butters made a quiet, terrified sound.

“Or,” Nicodemus said, “you can breach Mab’s given word, wizard.” He smiled. “In which case, well, I have no need of you.”

“Without me,” I said, “you’ll never get through the second gate.”

“Once I kill you,” Nicodemus said, “I’m quite certain Mab will loan me her next Knight or another servant as readily as she did you, if it means a chance to make good on her word. Choose.”

“I’m thinking about it,” I said.

Nicodemus opened one hand, a gracious gesture, inviting me to take my time.

Giving him Butters wasn’t on the table. Period. But fighting him did not seem like a good idea either. With Nicodemus on one side and the Genoskwa on the other, I did not like my chances at all. Even with the Winter Knight’s mantle, I didn’t know if I could have beaten either of these guys, let alone both of them at once.

If I gave him Butters, I might live. If I didn’t, both of us were going to die, right here next door to Michael’s house.

I was out of options.

“You take the guy behind us,” I muttered to Butters.

The little guy swallowed, and jerked his head in a tiny nod, gripping his Christmas ornament carefully.

Nicodemus nodded, his dark eyes glittering. The point of the slender sword swept up, lithe as a snake’s flickering tongue, and his shadow began to dance and waver in sudden agitation. The Genoskwa let out another rumbling growl and stepped forward. I gripped my staff, and Butters’s tremors abruptly stilled into an electrified tension.

And then Karrin stepped out of the sleet with her rocket launcher prepped and resting on her shoulder, aimed directly at Nicodemus.

“Hi,” she said. “I really don’t like you very much, Denarian.”

“Hah,” I said to Nicodemus. “Heh, heh.”

His eyes slid from me to Karrin and back. His smile widened. “Ms. Murphy,” he said. “You won’t shoot.”

“Why not?” Karrin asked brightly.

“Because it is obvious to me that you love him,” Nicodemus said. “That weapon will kill the wizard, as well as your friend the doctor, if you fire it. At that range, I’m not at all certain that you would survive the blast, either.”

Karrin seemed to regard that offering thoughtfully. Then she said, “You’re right,” and took several steps closer. “There. That should just about do it, don’t you think?”

Nicodemus narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

Karrin spoke in a very low, very calm voice. “People do crazy things for love. I’d rather kill us all and take you with us than let you harm him.” Her voice became a bit sharper, and she took another pair of quick strides nearer Nicodemus. “Take one step closer, Tall, Dark and Furry, and I blow us all to hell right now.”

I checked over my shoulder, to see the Genoskwa pause in the act of slipping a little closer. Its cavern-eyes glittered in silent rage.

Karrin took a couple of slow steps toward Nicodemus, her eyes strangely bright. “Crazy, crazy things. Don’t push me.”

Nicodemus’s smile turned into a smirk. “You proceed from a false assumption,” he said. “You assume that your toy can actually threaten me or my companion.”

Guy had a point, even if I didn’t want to admit it. With that Noose around his neck, I was pretty sure Nicodemus would smirk just as hard at a flamethrower, or a giant meat grinder, for that matter.

“Actually, you’re the one proceeding from a false assumption,” Karrin countered in that same deathly calm voice, a decidedly odd light in her eyes, still approaching. “You think I’m holding a rocket launcher.”

And with that she knocked some kind of concealed cap off the back of the rocket launcher’s tube, and from its length withdrew a sword.

Check that. She withdrew a Sword.

It was a Japanese-style katana blade, set into a wooden cane sheath, in the same style as that of the apocryphal Zatoichi. Even as the false rocket launcher casing fell to the ground, the Sword’s blade sprang free of its sheath, and as it did,
Fidelacchius
, the Sword of Faith, blazed with furious white light.

But more important, the
presence
of the Sword suddenly filled the night, a nearly subaudible thrumming like the after-vibration of a bass guitar string. It wasn’t something that could be heard, precisely, or seen, or felt on the skin—but its presence was absolute, unquestionable, filling the sleet-streaked air. It was power, bone-deep, earth solid, and terrible in its resolution.

I think it was that power that wiped the smirk from Nicodemus’s face.

His eyes widened in dismay. Even his shadow abruptly went statue-still.

Karrin’s bid to narrow the distance between them as she had been speaking meant that she was only a few strides away. She closed in, her feet sure, barely seeming to touch the icy ground, and he barely lifted his blade to a defensive counter in time. The swords met in a clash of steel and a blaze of furious light, and she carried her momentum into him with a full-body check against his center of gravity.

“Watch the big guy,” I hissed to Butters, and took a step toward Nicodemus and Karrin—then froze in place.

Nicodemus slipped on the treacherous ground as Karrin slammed into him, but he swept a leg back, dropped one knee to the ground, and prevented himself from falling. She pressed her advantage, their swords locked, each blade exerting lethal pressure against the other.

I didn’t dare intervene. The least slip or mistake in balance from either of them would mean that the two razor-sharp blades would slice like scalpels into unprotected flesh.

I watched them strain silently against each other, strength against strength. Karrin wasn’t relying on upper-body strength to get it done. Her arms were locked in tight against her body, her weight and her legs pressing forward against Nicodemus, and her two-handed grip on
Fidelacchius
gave her a significant leverage advantage against his one-handed
grip. The edge of her sword pressed closer to his face with each straining heartbeat, until a thin, bright ribbon of scarlet appeared on Nicodemus’s cheek.

He showed her his teeth, and the strain on his arm quivered through his entire body as he pushed the Sword back a precious half inch from his skin. “So,” he hissed, “the burnout thinks she has found her new calling.”

She didn’t say anything back. Karrin’s never been a big one for backtalking the bad guys without a damned good reason. It’s not her fault. She’s a practical soul. She took a slow, contained breath, and kept up the pressure, veering the blades, altering the direction slightly, so that the locked swords began a slow descent toward Nicodemus’s throat.

“And you think you deserve to join the ranks of real Knights of the Sword,” Nicodemus said, his voice smooth and confident. “You battered, scarred, broken thing. In my centuries I’ve learned exactly what is needed in a real Knight. You haven’t got what it takes. And you know that. Or you’d have taken up the Sword before now.”

Her eyes blazed, bright blue in her pale, frightened face, and she leaned forward, pressing the Sword closer to his neck, and the beating artery there. I’d seen how sharp the katana’s blade was. It would take a feather’s pressure and the movement of a blade of grass to open Nicodemus’s neck once that steel reached his skin.

“You’ve never done this before,” he said. “Been this close, this tense, this still—not in earnest. Do you know how many times I’ve talked to novices exactly like you, in situations almost exactly like this? I’ve forgotten more about real sword fighting than this pale modern world knows.”

Karrin ignored him. She shifted her hips the barest fraction, seeking a slightly different angle of pressure. The blazing Sword dipped another fraction of an inch closer.

“Dresden,” Nicodemus said, “I’m giving you ample chance to call off your dog before I put her down.” His eyes flicked to me. “End the little doctor and come back to headquarters. There’s no reason I should have to kill all three of you.”

I ground my teeth. Getting myself killed defending Butters was one thing. Taking Karrin with me was something else. But I knew her. I knew what choice she would make, without needing to talk to her about it.

Karrin didn’t let the monsters take her people, either.