by Jim Butcher
"Bastard," I growled. "That pigheaded, bigoted, self-righteous bastard."
I needed to cool off, and the shower seemed as good a place as any. I got under the cold water and tried to wash off the sweat and fear of the past day. I half expected the water to burst into steam on contact with my skin, but instead I was able to let the anger slip away while focusing on the old shower routine—water, soap, rinse, shampoo, rinse. By the time I finished and stepped out shivering, I felt almost completely nonpsychotic.
I had no idea how to contact Ebenezar. If he was under Warden security, and I’m sure he and the rest of the Senior Council were, there would be no easy way. The best magical countermeasures in the world would create a maze of misleading results for any spell or supernatural being that tried to find him.
For a moment, I debated asking Murphy for help. The Council tended to overlook any method that didn’t involve the use of one kind of spell or another. Murphy’s contacts in the force might be able to find them by purely old-fashioned methods. I decided against it. Even if Murphy traced the phone number down, Ebenezar might not be at it, and if I showed up there trying to get past the Wardens to get to him, it would be just the excuse Morgan needed to chop my head off.
I mussed up my hair with the towel and threw it on my narrow bed. Fine. I would do it without the Council’s help.
I dressed again, putting on a pair of jeans and a white dress shirt still hanging in my closet. I rolled the sleeves up over my elbows. My sneakers were covered in muck, so I dragged my cowboy boots out of the closet and put them on. What the hell. Putting on the boots. Maybe it would do some good.
I got out my big sports bag, the kind you haul hockey gear around in. Into it went my blasting rod, my staff, and my sword cane, along with a backpack stocked with some candles, matches, a cup, a knife, a cardboard cylinder of salt, a canteen of blessed water, and various other bits of magical equipment I could use as needed. I threw in a box of old iron nails and a solid-steel Craftsman claw hammer with a black rubber grip, and put a couple of pieces of chalk in my pocket.
Then I slid the bag over my shoulder, went into the living room, and wrought the spell that would lead me to one of the very few only people who might help.
Half an hour later, I paid the cabbie and walked into one of the hotels surrounding O’Hare International Airport. The subtle tug of the spell led me to the hotel’s restaurant, open for breakfast and half full of mostly business types. I found Elaine at a corner table, a couple of buffet plates scattered with the remains of her breakfast. Her rich brown hair had been pulled back into a tight braid and coiled at the base of her neck. Her face looked pale, tired, with deep circles under her eyes. She was sipping coffee and reading a paperback novel. She wore a different pair of jeans, these a lot looser, and a billowy white shirt open over a dark tank top. She stiffened a beat after my eyes landed on her, and looked up warily.
I walked to her table, pulled out the chair next to her, and sat down. "Morning."
She watched me, her expression opaque. "Harry. How did you find me?"
"I got to thinking that same thing last night," I said. "How did you find me, that is. And I realized that you hadn’t found me—you’d found my car. You were inside it and nearly unconscious when I got back to it. So I looked around the car." I pulled the cap to a tire’s air valve out of my pocket and showed it to her. "And I found that one of these was missing. I figured you were probably the one who took it, and used it to home in on the Blue Beetle. So I took one of its mates from the other tires and used it to home in on the missing one."
"You named your car after a superhero on the Electric Company?" Elaine reached into a brown leather purse on the chair beside her and drew out an identical valve cap. "Clever."
I looked at the purse. What looked like airline tickets was sticking out of it. "You’re running."
"You are a veritable wizard of the obvious, Harry." She started to shrug, and her face became ashen, her expression twisting with pain. She took a slow breath and then resumed the motion with her unwounded shoulder. "I feel well motivated to run."
"Do you really think a plane ticket will get you away from the Queens?"
"It will get me away from ground zero. That’s enough. There’s no way to find out who did it in time—and I don’t feel like running up against another assassin. I barely got away from the first one."
I shook my head. "We’re close," I said. "We have to be. They took a shot at me last night too. And I think I know who did both."
She looked up at me, sharply. "You do?"
I picked up a crust of toast she’d discarded, mopped it through some leftover eggs, and ate it. "Yeah. But you probably have to catch a flight."
Elaine rolled her eyes. "Tell you what. You stay here and feel smug. I’ll get another plate and be back when you’re done." She got up, rather stiffly, and walked over to the buffet. She loaded her plate up with eggs and bacon and sausage mixed in with some French toast, and came back to the table. My mouth watered.
She pushed the plate at me. "Eat."
I did, but between bites I asked, "Can you tell me what happened to you?"
She shook her head. "Not much to tell. I spoke with Mab and then with Maeve. I was on my way back to my hotel and someone jumped me in the parking lot. I was able to slip most of his first strike and called up enough fire to drive him away. Then I found your car."
"Why did you come to me?" I asked.
"Because I didn’t know who did it, Harry. And I don’t trust anyone else in this town."
My throat got a little tight. I borrowed her coffee to wash down the bacon. "It was Lloyd Slate."
Elaine’s eyes widened. "The Winter Knight. How do you know?"
"While I was with Maeve, he came in carrying a knife in a box, and he’d been burned. It was coated in dried blood. Maeve was pretty furious that it wasn’t any good to her."
Lines appeared between her eyebrows. "Slate … he was fetching my blood for her so that she could work a spell on me." She tried to cover it, but I saw her shiver. "He probably tailed me out of that party. Thank the stars I used fire."
I nodded. "Yeah. Dried out the blood, made it useless for whatever she wanted." I shoveled down some more food. "Then last night I got jumped by a hired gun and a couple of faerie beasties." I gave her the summary of the attack at Wal-Mart, leaving Murphy out of it.
"Maeve," Elaine said.
"It’s about all I’ve got," I said. "It doesn’t fit her very well, but—"
"Of course it fits her," Elaine said absently. "Don’t tell me you fell for that psychotic dilettante nymphomaniac act she put on."
I blinked and then said through a mouthful of French toast, "No. ’Course not."
"She’s smart, Harry. She’s playing on your expectations."
I chewed the next bite more slowly. "It’s a good theory. But that’s all it is. We need to know more."
Elaine frowned at me. "You mean you want to talk to the Mothers."
I nodded. "I figure they might let a few things slip about how things work. But I don’t know how to get there. I thought you might be able to ask someone in Summer."
She closed her paperback. "No."
"No, they won’t help?"
"No, I’m not going to see the Mothers. Harry, it’s insane. They’re too strong. They could kill you—worse than kill you—with a stray thought."
"At this point I’m already in over my head. It doesn’t matter how deep the water gets from here." I grimaced. "Besides, I don’t really have a choice."
"You’re wrong," she said with quiet emphasis. "You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to play their game. Leave."
"Like you are?"
"Like I am," Elaine said. "You can’t stop what’s been set in motion, Harry, but you can kill yourself trying. It’s probably what Mab wanted to begin with."
"No. I can stop it."
She gave me a small smile. "Because you’re in the right? Harry, it doesn’t work like that."
"Don’t I know it. But that’s not why I think so."
"Then why?"
"You don’t try to kill someone who isn’t a threat to you. They took shots at both of us. They must think we can stop them."
"They, them," Elaine said. "Even if we are close, we don’t know who ’they’ is."
"That’s why we talk to the Mothers," I told her. "They’re the strongest of the Queens. They know the most. If we’re smart, and lucky, we can get information from them."
Elaine reached up to tug at her braid, her expression uncertain. "Harry, look. I’m not … I don’t want to …" She closed her eyes for a moment and then said in a voice, pained, "Please, don’t ask me to do this."
"You don’t have to go," I said. "Just find me the way to them. Just try."
"You don’t understand the kind of trouble you’re asking for," she said.
I looked down at my empty plate and said quietly, "Yeah. I do. I hate it, Elaine, and I’m afraid, and I must be half insane not to just dig myself a hole and pull it in after me. But I understand." I reached across the table and put my hand over hers. Her skin was soft, warm, and she shivered at the touch. "Please."
Her hand turned up, fingers curling briefly against mine. My turn to shiver. Elaine sighed. "You’re an imbecile, Harry. You’re such a fool."
"I guess some things don’t change."
She let out a subdued laugh before withdrawing her hand and standing. "I’ve got a favor left to me. I’ll call it in. Wait here."
Five minutes later, she was back. "All right. Outside."
I stood. "Thank you, Elaine. You going to make your plane?"
She opened her purse and tossed the airline tickets onto the table along with a pair of twenties. "I guess not." Then she took a couple of other items out of the purse: a slave-ring of ivory carved in the shape of a ring of oak leaves and attached to a similar bracelet by a silver chain. An earring fashioned of what might have been copper and a teardrop-shaped black stone. Then an anklet dangling with bangles shaped like bird wings. She put them all on, then looked at my gym bag. "Still going with the phallic foci, eh? Staff and rod?"
"They make me feel all manly."
Her mouth twitched, and she started for the exit. I followed her and found myself opening doors for her out of habit. She didn’t seem to be too horribly upset by it.
Outside, cars pulled up into a circle drive at the front of the hotel, airport shuttles disgorging and swallowing travelers, taxis picking up men and women in business suits. Elaine slipped the strap of her purse over her good shoulder and stood there quietly.
Maybe thirty seconds later, I heard the clopping of hooves on blacktop. A carriage rolled into sight, drawn by a pair of horses. One of them was the blue-white color of a drowned corpse, and its breath steamed in the air. The other was grass-green, its mane sown with wildflowers. The carriage itself looked like something from Victorian London, all dark wood and brass filigree—and no one was driving it. The horses came to a halt directly before us and stood there, stamping their feet and tossing their manes. The door to the carriage swung open in silence. No one was inside.
I took a surreptitious look around me. None of the straights seemed to have noticed the carriage or the unworldly horses pulling it. A taxi heading for the space the carriage occupied abruptly veered to one side and found another spot. I made an effort and could sense the whisper of enchantment around the carriage, subtle and strong, probably encouraging the straights not to notice it.
"I guess this is our ride," I said.
"You think?" Elaine flipped her braid back over one shoulder and climbed in. "This will take us there, but we won’t have any protection on the other side. Just remember, Harry, I told you this was a bad idea."
"Preemptive I-told-you-sos," I said. "Now I’ve seen everything."
Chapter Twenty-five
The carriage took off so smoothly that I almost didn’t feel it. I leaned over the window and twitched the shade aside. We pulled away from the hotel and into traffic with no one the wiser, cars giving us a wide berth even while not noting us. That was one hell of a veil. The carriage didn’t jounce at all, and after about a minute wisps of mist began to brush up against the windows. Not long after, the mists blocked out the view of the city entirely. The street sounds faded, and all that was left was silver-grey mist and the clop of horse hooves.
The carriage stopped perhaps five minutes later, and the door swung open. I opened my gym bag and took out my rod and staff. I slipped the sword cane through my belt and drew out my amulet to lie openly on my chest. Elaine did the same with hers. Then we got out of the carriage.
I took a slow look at my surroundings. We stood on some kind of spongy grass, on a low, rolling hill surrounded by other low, rolling hills. The mist lay over the land like a crippled storm cloud, sluggish and thick in some places, thinner in others. The landscape was dotted with the occasional tree, boles thick and twisted, branches scrawny and long. A tattered-looking raven crouched on a nearby branch, its bead-black eyes gleaming.
"Cheery," Elaine said.
"Yeah. Very Baskerville." The carriage started up again, and I looked back to see it vanishing into the mist. "Okay. Where to now?"
At my words the raven let out a croaking caw. It shook itself, bits of moldy feather drifting down, and then beat its wings a few times and settled on another branch, almost out of sight.
"Harry," Elaine said.
"Yeah?"
"If you make any corny joke using the word 'nevermore,' I’m going to punch you. Do you understand me?"
"Never more," I confirmed. Elaine rolled her eyes. Then we both started off after the raven.
It led us through the cloudy landscape, flitting silently from tree to tree. We trudged behind it until more trees began to rise in the mist ahead of us, thickening. The ground grew softer, the air more wet, cloying. The raven let out another caw, then vanished into the trees and out of sight.
I peered after it and said, "Do you see a light back there in the trees?"
"Yes. This must be the place."
"Fine." I started forward. Elaine caught my wrist and said in a sharp and warning tone, "Harry."
She nodded toward a thick patch of shadows where two trees had fallen against one another. I had just begun to pick out a shape when it moved and came forward, close enough that I could make it out clearly.
The unicorn looked like a Budweiser horse, one of the huge draft beasts used for heavy labor. It had to have been eighteen hands high, maybe more. It had a broad chest, four heavy hooves, forward-pricked ears, and a long equine face.
That was where its resemblance to a Clydesdale ended.
It didn’t have a coat. It just had a smooth and slick-looking carapace, all chitinous scales and plates, mixing colors of dark green and midnight black. Its hooves were cloven and stained with old blood. One spiraling horn rose from its forehead, at least three feet long and wickedly pointed. The spirals were serrated on the edges, some of them covered with rust-brown stains. A pair of curling horns, like those of a bighorn sheep, curved around the sides of its head from the base of the horn. It didn’t have any eyes—just smooth, leathery chitin where they should have been. It tossed its head, and a mane of rotted cobwebs danced around its neck and forelegs, long and tattered as a burial shroud.
A large moth fluttered through the mist near the unicorn. The beast whirled, impossibly nimble, and lunged. Its spiral skewered the moth, and with a savage shake of its head, the unicorn threw the moth to the earth and pulverized the ground it landed on with sledgehammer blows of the blades of its hooves. It snorted after that, and then turned to pace silently back into the mist-covered trees.
Elaine’s eyes widened and she looked at me.
I glanced at her. "Unicorns," I said. "Very dangerous. You go first."
She arched an eyebrow.
"Maybe not," I relented. "A guardian?"
"Obviously," Elaine said. "How do we get past it?"
"Blow it up?"
"Tempting," Elaine said. "But I don’t think it will make much of an impression on the Mothers if we kill their watchdog. A veil?"
I shook my head. "I don’t think unicorns rely on the normal senses. If I remember right, they sense thoughts."
"In that case it shouldn’t notice you."
"Hah," I said in a monotone. "Hah-hah, ho-ho, oh my ribs. I have a better plan. I go through while you distract it."
"With what? I’m fresh out of virginity. And that thing doesn’t look much like the unicorns I saw in Summer. It’s a lot less … prancy."
"With thoughts," I said. "They sense thoughts, and they’re attracted to purity. Your concentration was always better than mine. Theoretically, if you can keep an image in your head, it should focus on it and not you."
"Think of a wonderful thought. Great plan, Peter Pan."
"You have a better one?"
Elaine shook her head. "Okay. I’ll try to lead him down there." She gestured down the line of trees. "Once I do, get moving."
I nodded, and Elaine closed her eyes for a moment before her features smoothed over into relaxation. She started forward and into the trees, walking at a slow and measured pace.
The unicorn appeared again, ten feet in front of Elaine. The beast snorted and pawed at the earth and reared up on its hind legs, tossing its mane. Then it started forward at a slow and cautious walk.
Elaine held out her hand to it. It let out a gurgling whicker and nuzzled her palm. Still moving with dreamlike slowness, Elaine turned and began walking down the length of the lines of trees. The unicorn followed a pace or two behind her, the tip of its horn bobbing several inches above Elaine’s right shoulder.
They’d gone several paces before I saw that the plan wasn’t working. The unicorn’s body language changed. Its ears flattened back to its skull, and its feet shifted restlessly before it finally rose up on its hind hooves, preparing to lunge, with the deadly horn centered on Elaine’s back.
There wasn’t time to shout a warning. I lifted my blasting rod in my right hand, summoned the force of my will, and pushed it through the focus with a shout of "Fuego!"
