Changes df-12

by Jim Butcher

  The last, a large steel vault door, was labeled, STORAGE. A concrete loading dock with its edges painted in yellow and black caution stripes stretched before us, doubtless at just the right height to make use of the large transport van parked nearby.

  Oh, and there were two guards standing in front of the vault door with some hostile-looking black shotguns.

  Susan didn’t hesitate. She blurred forward with nearly supernatural speed, and one of the guards was down before he realized he was in a fight. The other had already spun toward me with his weapon and opened fire. In his rush to shoot, he hadn’t aimed. People make a big thing about shotguns hitting absolutely everything you point them at, but it ain’t so. It still takes considerable skill to use a shotgun well under pressure, and in his panic the guard didn’t have it. Pellets buzzed around me like angry wasps as I took three swift steps to my left and threw myself through the open barracks door, carrying me out of his line of fire.

  From outside, there was a crack of something hard, maybe the butt of a gun hitting a skull, and Susan said, “Clear.”

  I came out of the emptied barracks nonchalantly. The two guards lay unconscious at Susan’s feet. “God, I’m good,” I said.

  Susan nodded, and tossed both guns away from the unconscious men. “Best distraction ever.”

  I went to her and eyed the door. “How we getting through that?”

  “We aren’t,” she said. She produced a small kit of locksmith tools and went to the administration door, ignoring the vault completely. “We don’t need their treasures. We just need the receipts.”

  I’d learned a little bit about how to tickle a lock, but Susan had obviously learned more. Enough so that she took one look at the lock, pulled a lock gun from her kit, and went through it damned near as fast as if she’d had a key. She swung the door open and said, “Wait here. And don’t break anything.”

  I put my hands behind my back and tried to look righteous. A smile lit her face, fast and fierce, and she vanished into the office.

  I walked over to the barracks. My guns had been riding with the rest of my contraband when it got buried in Lea’s garden, and I didn’t like going unarmed on general principles. Magic is pretty damned cool when things get rowdy, but there are times when there’s no replacing a firearm. They are excellent, if specialized, tools.

  Two seconds of looking around showed me a couple of possibilities, and I picked up a big semiautomatic and a couple of loaded clips. I tucked them into a pocket of the duster. Then I picked up the assault rifle from its rack and found that two spare magazines were being held in this socklike device that went over the rifle’s stock.

  Rifles weren’t my forte, but I knew enough to check the chamber and see that no round was in it. I made sure the safety was on and slung the assault rifle over my shoulder on its nylon-weave strap. Then I went back over to administration and waited outside.

  Susan was cursing in streaks of blue and purple and vermilion inside. She appeared a moment later and spat, “Nothing. Someone was here first. They erased everything related to the shipment less than three hours ago.”

  “What about the paper copy?” I asked.

  “Harry,” Susan said. “Have you ever heard of the paperless office?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s like Bigfoot. Someone says he knows someone who saw him, but you don’t ever actually see him yourself.” I paused. “Though I suppose I actually have seen Bigfoot, and he seems like a decent guy, but the metaphor still stands. Remember who owns this place. You think someone like the duchess is a computer whiz? Trust me. You get to be over a couple of hundred years old, you get copies of everything in triplicate.”

  Susan arched an eyebrow and nodded. “Okay. Come on, then.”

  We went in and ransacked the office. There were plenty of files, but we had the identification number of the shipment of magical artifacts (000937, if it matters), and it was possible to flick through them very rapidly. We came up all zeroes, again. Whoever had covered up the back trail had done it well.

  “Dammit,” Susan said quietly. Her voice shook.

  “Easy,” I said. “Easy. We aren’t out of options yet.”

  “This was the only lead we had,” she said.

  I touched her arm briefly and said, “Trust me.”

  She smiled at me a little. I could see the strain in her eyes.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before the cavalry arrives. Oh, here.” I passed her the assault rifle.

  “That’s thoughtful of you,” she said, smiling more widely. Her hands went over the weapon, checking the chamber as I had, only a lot more smoothly and quickly. “I didn’t get you anything.”

  I turned and eyed the moving van, then went back to its cargo doors. “Here. Open this door for me?”

  She got out her tools and did it in less time than it took to say it.

  There were several long boxes in the van, standing vertically, and I realized after a moment that they were garment boxes. I opened one up and . . .

  And found a long, mantled cloak made from some kind of white and green feathers, hanging from a little crossbar in the top of the garment box. It was heavy, easily weighing more than fifty pounds. I found a stick studded with chips of razor-sharp obsidian in there, too, its handle carved with pictographs. I couldn’t read this particular form of writing very well, but I recognized it—and recognized that it was no ancient artifact, either. It had been carved in the past few decades.

  “This is Mayan ceremonial costume,” I murmured, frowning. “Why is it loaded up on the next truck out . . . ?”

  The answer jumped at me. I turned to Susan and we traded a look that conveyed her comprehension as well. She went to the front of the van and popped it open. She started grabbing things, shoving them into a nylon gym bag that she had apparently found in the truck.

  “What did you get?” I asked.

  “Later, no time,” she said.

  We hurried back up the ramp to Martin.

  The big door looked like it was having a tug-of-war with itself. It would shudder and groan and try to rise, and then Martin would do something with a pair of wires in the dismantled control panel and it would slam down again. I saw guards trying to stick their guns beneath the door for a quick shot, but they wound up being driven back by Martin’s silenced pistol.

  “Finally,” Martin said as we came up to him. “They’re about to get through.”

  “Damn,” I said. “I figured they’d be firefighting longer than that.” I looked around the barren tunnel. I was tired and shaking. If I were fresh, I would have no trouble with the idea of slugging it out with a bunch of guys with machine guns—provided they were all in front of me. But I was tired, and then some. The slightest wavering in concentration, and a shield would become porous and flexible. I’d be likely to take a bunch of bullets. The duster might handle most of them, but not forever, and I wasn’t wearing it over my head.

  “Plan B,” I said. “Okay, right. We need a plan B. If we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.”

  Susan let out a puff of laughter, and then I turned to her, my eyes alight.

  “We have a great big truck,” Susan said.

  “Then why didn’t you list that among our assets?” I said, in a bad British accent. “Go!”

  Susan vanished back down the tunnel, moving scary-fast.

  “Martin,” I said. “Get behind me!”

  He did, as I lifted my left arm and brought up a purely physical shield, and within five or six seconds, the door had lifted two feet off the ground and a couple of prone shooters opened up on the first thing they saw—me.

  I held the shield against the bullets as the door continued to rise, and they exploded into concentric circles of light spread across the front of the shield’s otherwise invisible surface. The strain of holding the shield grew as more of the guards opened fire. I saw one poor fellow take a ricochet in the belly and go down, but I didn’t have the time or the attention to spare to feel so
rry for him. I ground my teeth and hung on to the shield as the guards kept a constant pressure on it.

  Then there was a roar of large engines and Susan drove the cargo truck forward like some kind of berserk bison, charging the group of guards blocking the road out.

  Men screamed and sprinted, trying to avoid the truck. They made it. I didn’t need Martin to tell me to move, as the truck slammed into a turn, throwing its rear end in a deadly, skidding arch. We both sprinted for it in the confusion and flung ourselves up into the cargo compartment, which Susan had thoughtfully left open.

  One of the more alert guards tried the same trick, but Martin saw him coming, aimed the little pistol, and shot him in the leg. The man screamed and fell down as the truck picked up speed. Susan stomped the pedal flat, and metal and razor wire screamed as she drove through a section of the fencing and out onto the open valley floor. She immediately turned it toward our escape point, and the truck began to bounce and rattle as it raced away from the facility.

  After that, it was simple.

  We went back to our ascension point, drank our watered-down flying potions, and bounded up the rocky face of the valley wall like mountain goats. Or possibly squirrels. Either way, it made the eighty-degree incline feel about as difficult to handle as a long stairway.

  “Harry,” Susan said, panting, as we reached the top. “Would you burn that truck for me?”

  “My pleasure,” I said, and dealt with the cargo truck the same way I had the cars in the parking lot. Thirty seconds later, it huffed out its own explosion, and Susan stood there nodding.

  “Okay,” she said. “Good. Hopefully that makes it harder for them to do whatever they’re going to do.”

  “What did you find?” Martin asked.

  “Mayan ceremonial gear,” I said. “Not focus items, but the other stuff. The props. They were on the truck to be shipped out next.”

  Susan rustled in the nylon bag and held up a sheet of paper. “Bill of lading,” she said. “Shipment number 000938. The next outgoing package after the original shipment, and it was initiated two days after the focus items went out.”

  Martin narrowed his eyes, thinking. “If it was going to the same place as the first shipment . . .”

  “It means that we can make a pretty good guess that wherever it’s going, it’s within two days’ drive,” I said. “That gives the vampires time enough to get the first shipment, realize that some things got left out, and call in a second shipment to bring in the missing articles.”

  Martin nodded. “So? Where are they?”

  Susan was going through the contents of the bag she’d appropriated. “Mexico,” she said. She held up a U.S. passport, presumably falsified, since most people don’t tote their passports around in manila envelopes, along with a wallet full of new-looking Mexican cash. “They were planning on taking those cloaks and things to Mexico.”

  I grunted and started walking back to the Way. Martin and Susan fell in behind me.

  “Harry? Will destroying that gear ruin what they’re doing?”

  “It’ll inconvenience them,” I said quietly. “Not much more than that.

  The actual magic doesn’t need the costumes. It’s the people performing it who need them. So any replacement sixty-pound cloak of parrot feathers will do—and if they want it badly enough, they can do the ritual even without replacing them.”

  “They’ll know who was here,” Martin said. “Too many men saw us. Interior cameras might have gotten something, too.”

  “Good,” I said. “I want them to know. I want them to know that their safe places aren’t safe.”

  Susan made a growling sound that seemed to indicate agreement.

  Even Martin’s mouth turned up into a chilly little smile. “So other than somewhat discomfiting the sleep of some of the Red Court, what did we actually accomplish here?”

  “We know where they’re going to do their ritual,” Susan said.

  I nodded. “Mexico.”

  “Well,” Martin said. “I suppose it’s a start.”

  Chapter 18

  Mrs. Spunkelcrief was a fantastic landlady. She lived on the ground floor of the old house. She rarely left her home, was mostly deaf, and generally didn’t poke her nose into my business as long as my rent check came in—which it pretty much always did, these days, on time or a bit early.

  A small army of crazy-strong zombies had assaulted my home without waking her up, probably because they’d had the grace to do it after her bedtime, which was just after sundown. But I guess the visit from the cops and the FBI had been even louder than that, because as Molly pulled the Blue Beetle into the little gravel parking lot, I saw her coming up the stairs from my apartment, one at a time, leaning heavily on her cane. She wore a soft blue nightgown and a shawl to ward against the October chill in the night, and her bright blue eyes flicked around alertly.

  “There you are,” she said irritably. “I’ve been calling your house all evening, Harry.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. S,” I said. “I’ve been out.”

  I don’t think she could make out the words very well, but she wasn’t stupid. “Obviously you’ve been out,” she said. “What happened to your nice new door? It’s wide-open! If we get another one of those freak thunderstorms, the rain will pour right in and we’ll have mold climbing up the walls before you can say Jack Robinson.”

  I spread my hands and talked as loudly as I could without actually shouting. “There was a mix-up with the police.”

  “No,” she said, “the lease is quite clear. You are responsible for any damages inflicted on the apartment while you are a tenant.”

  I sighed and nodded. “I’ll fix it tomorrow.”

  “Oh, not so much sorrow as surprise, Harry. You’re a good boy, generally.” She peered from me to Molly, Susan, and Martin. “Most of the time. And you help out so when the weather is bad.”

  I smiled at her in what I hoped was an apologetic fashion. “I’ll take care of the door, ma’am.”

  “Good,” she said. “I thought you would. I’ll come check in a few days.” Mouse emerged from the darkness, not even breathing very hard from running to keep up with the Beetle. He immediately went over to Mrs. Spunkelcrief, sat, and offered her his right paw to shake. She was so tiny and the dog so large that she hardly had to bend down to grip his paw. She beamed broadly at Mouse, shook, and then patted his head fondly. “You can tell a lot about a man from how he treats his dog,” she said.

  Mouse walked over to me, sat down panting happily, and leaned his shoulders against my hip affectionately, all but knocking me down.

  Mrs. Spunkelcrief nodded, satisfied, and turned to walk away. Then she paused, muttered something to herself, and turned back around again. She dug into her robe’s pocket and produced a white envelope. “I almost forgot. This was lying on your stairs, boy.”

  I took it from her with a polite nod. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Welcome.” She shivered and wrapped her shawl a little more tightly around her. “What is the world coming to? People breaking down doors.”

  I shot a glance at Molly, who nodded and immediately went to Mrs. Spunkelcrief’s side, offering an arm for support. My landlady beamed up at her, saying, “Bless you, child. My cane arm got tired on the way down.” Molly began helping her back up the little ramp to her apartment’s front door.

  Mouse immediately went to the bottom of the stairs, his nose questing. Then he turned back to me, tail fanning the air gently. No surprises lurked in my apartment. I went on down into it, waving the candles and fireplace to life with a murmur and a gesture, tearing open the envelope as I went to the fireplace to open it.

  Inside was a piece of folded paper and another, smaller envelope, upon which was written, in Luccio’s flowing writing, READ ME FIRST. I did:

  If you are receiving this letter, it is because someone has rendered me unable to contact you. You must presume that I have been taken out of play entirely.

  The bearer of this note is the person I t
rust the most among every Warden stationed at Edinburgh. I cannot know the particulars of my neutralization, but you can trust his description implicitly, and I have found his judgment to be uncommonly sound in subjective matters.

  Good luck, Harry.

  -A-

  I stared at the note for a moment. Then I unfolded the second piece of paper, very slowly. This one was written in blocky letters so precise that they almost resembled a printed font, rather than handwriting:

  Hullo, Dresden.

  Luccio wnted me to bring this note to you in the event something happened to her. No idea what her note says, but I’m to give you whatever information I can.

  I’m afraid it isn’t good news. The Council seems to have gone quite mad.

  After your appearance at Cristos’s grandstand, a number of ugly things happened. Several young Wardens were caught debating amongst themselves about whether or not they should simply destroy the duchess in Edinburgh to ensure that the war continued—after all, they reasoned, the vampires wouldn’t be suing for peace if they could still fight. On Cristos’s orders, they were arrested and detained by older members of the Council, none of whom were Wardens, in order to Prevent Them from Destabilizing Diplomatic Deliberations.

  Ramirez heard about what had happened and I suspect you can guess that his Spanish-by-way-of-America reaction was more passionate than rational. He and a few friends, only one of whom had any real intelligence, hammered their way into the wing where the Wardens were being detained—at which point every single one of them (except for the genius, naturally) was captured and similarly imprisoned.

  It’s quiet desperation here. No one can seem to locate anyone on the Senior Council except Cristos, who is quite busily trying to Save Us from Ourselves by sucking up to Duchess Arianna. The Wardens’ chain of command is a smashing disaster at the moment. Captain Luccio went to Cristos to demand the release of her people and is, at this time, missing, as are perhaps forty percent of the seniormost Wardens.

  She asked me to tell you, Dresden, that you should not return to Edinburgh under any circumstances until the Senior Council sorts this mess out. She isn’t sure what would happen to you.