Small Favor

by Jim Butcher

Chapter 12~13

  Chapter Twelve

  M arcone's business interests were wide and varied. They had to be when you're laundering as much money as he was. He had restaurants, holding companies, import/export businesses, investment firms, financial businesses of every description-and construction companies.

  Sunset Point was one of those boils festering on the face of the planet: a subdivision. Located half an hour north of Chicago, it had once been a pleasant little wood of rolling hills around a single tiny river. The trees and hills had all been bulldozed flat, exposing naked earth to the sky. The little river had been choked into a sludgy trough. Underneath the blanket of snow the place looked as smooth and white and sterile as the inside of a new refrigerator.

  "Look at this," I said to Thomas. I gestured at the houses, each of them on a lot that exceeded the building's foundation by the width of a postage stamp. "People pay to live in places like this?"

  "You live in the basement of a boardinghouse," Thomas said.

  "I live in a big city, and I rent," I said. "Houses like these go for several hundred thousand dollars, if not more. It'll take thirty years to pay them off. "

  "They're nice houses," Thomas said.

  "They're nice cages," I responded. "No space around them. Nothing alive. Places like this turn a man into a gerbil. He comes home and scurries inside. Then he stays there until he's forced to go back out to the job he has to work so that he can make the mortgage payments on this gerbil habitat. "

  "And they're way nicer than your apartment," Thomas said.

  "Totally. "

  He brought the Hummer to a crunching halt in the snow, glaring through the windshield. "Damn snow. I'm only guessing where the streets are at this point. "

  "Just don't drive into what's going to be somebody's basement," I said. "We passed Twenty-third a minute ago. We must be close. "

  "Twenty-third Court, Place, Street, Terrace, or Avenue?" Thomas asked.

  "Circle. "

  "Damned cul-de-sacs. " He started forward again, driving slowly. "There," he said, nodding to the next sign that emerged from the haze. "That one?"

  "Yeah. " Next to the customized street sign was a standard road sign declaring Twenty-fourth Terrace a dead end.

  "Damned foreshadowing," I muttered.

  "What's that?"

  "Nothing. "

  We drove through the murky grey and white of a heavy snowfall, the light luminous, without source, reflected from billions of crystals of ice. The Hummer's engine was a barely audible purr. By comparison the crunch of its tires on snow was a dreadful racket. We rolled past half a dozen model houses, all of them lovely and empty, the snow piling up around windows that gaped like eye sockets in a half-buried skull.

  Something wasn't right. I couldn't have told you what, exactly, but I could feel it as plainly as I could feel the carved wood of the staff I gripped in my hands.

  We weren't alone.

  Thomas felt it too. Moving smoothly, he reached an arm behind the driver's seat and drew forth his sword belt. It bore an old U. S. Cavalry saber he'd carried on a number of dicey occasions, paired up with a more recent toy he'd become fond of, a bent-bladed knife called a kukri, like the one carried by the Ghurkas.

  "What is that?" he asked quietly.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, reaching out with my arcane senses, attempting to detect any energies that might be moving in around us. The falling snow muffled my magical perceptions every bit as much as it did my physical senses. "Not sure," I said quietly. "But whatever it is, it's a safe bet it knows we're here. "

  "How do you want to play it if the music starts?"

  "I've got nothing to prove," I said. "I say we run like little girls. "

  "Suits me. But don't let Murphy hear you talking like that. "

  "Yeah. She gets oversensitive about 'little. '"

  My shoulders tightened with the tension as Thomas drove forward slowly and carefully. He stopped the car beside the last house on the street. It had a finished look to it, the bushes of its landscaping poking up forlornly through the snow. There were curtains in the windows, and the faint marks of tire tracks, not quite full of new snowfall, led up the drive and to the closed garage.

  "Someone's behind that third window," Thomas said quietly. "I saw them move. "

  I hadn't seen anything, but then I wasn't a supernatural predator, complete with a bucketful of preternaturally sharp senses. I nodded to let him know that I'd heard him, and scanned the ground around the house. The snow was untouched. "We're the first visitors," I said. "We're probably making someone nervous. "

  "Gunman?"

  "Probably," I said. "That's what most of Marcone's people are used to. Come on. "

  "You don't want me to wait out here?"

  I shook my head. "There's something else out here. It might be nothing, but you're a sitting duck in the car. Maybe if you'd gotten the armored version. . . "

  "Nag, nag, nag," Thomas said.

  "Let's be calm and friendly," I said. I opened the door of the Hummer and stepped out into snow that came up over my knees. I made sure not to move too quickly, and kept my hands out in plain sight. On the other side of the Hummer Thomas mirrored me.

  "Hello, the house!" I called. "Anyone home?" My voice had that flat, heavy timbre you can only get when there's a lot of snow, almost like we were standing inside. "My name is Dresden. I'm here to talk. "

  Silence. The snow started soaking through my shoes and my jeans.

  Thomas whipped his head around toward the end of the little street, where the subdivision ended and the woods that were next in line for the bulldozers began. He stared intently for a moment.

  "It's in the trees," he reported quietly.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I hoped fervently that whatever was out there, it didn't have a gun. "I'm not here for trouble!" I called toward the house. I held up two fingers and said, "Scout's honor. "

  This time I saw the curtain twitch, and caught a faint stir of motion behind it. The inner door to the house opened and a man's voice said, "Come in. Hands where I can see them. "

  I nodded at Thomas. He lifted his hand, holding his car key, and pointed it at the Hummer. It clunked and chirped, its doors locking. He came around the car, sword belt hanging over his shoulder, while I broke trail to the front porch, struggling through the snow. I knocked as much of the powder as I could off my lower body, using it as an excuse to give me time to ready my shield bracelet. I didn't particularly want to step through a dark doorway, presenting a shooting-gallery profile to any gunman inside, without taking precautions. When I came in I held my shield before me, silent and invisible.

  "Stop there," growled a man's voice. "Staff down. Show your hands. "

  I leaned my staff against the wall and did so. I'd know those monosyllables anywhere. "Hi, Hendricks. "

  A massive man appeared from the dimness in the next room, holding a police-issue riot gun in hands that made it look like a child's toy. He was built like a bull, and you could apply thick and rocklike to just about everything in his anatomy, especially if you started with his skull. He came close enough to let me see his close-cropped red hair. "Dresden. Step aside. "

  I did, and the shotgun was trained on my brother. "You, vampire. Sword down. Fingers laced behind your head. "

  Thomas rolled his eyes and complied. "How come he doesn't have to put his hands behind his head?"

  "Wouldn't make any difference with him," Hendricks replied. Narrow, beady eyes swiveled like gun turrets back to me. "What do you want?"

  I wasn't sure I'd ever heard Hendricks speak a complete sentence, much less string phrases together. It was sort of disconcerting, the way it would be if Mister suddenly developed the capacity to open his own cans of cat food. It took me a second to get over the mental speed bump. "Uh," I said. "I want to. . . "

  I realized how lame this was going to sound. I gritted my teeth and said it
quickly. "I want to help your boss. "

  There was a clicking sound from the wall, the sound of an audio speaker popping to life. A woman's voice said, "Send the wizard up. "

  Hendricks growled. "You sure?"

  "Do it. The vampire stays downstairs. "

  Hendricks grunted and tilted his head to the right. "Through there and up the stairs, Dresden. Move it. "

  "Harry," Thomas said quietly.

  Hendricks brought his shotgun back up and covered Thomas. "Not you, prettyboy. You stay put. Or both of you get out. "

  "It's okay," I said quietly to my brother. "I feel better if someone I trust is watching the door anyway. Just in case someone else shows up. " I cast my eyes meaningfully in the direction of the woods where Thomas had said something lurked.

  He shook his head. "Whatever. " Then he leaned back against the wall, casual and relaxed, his hands behind his head as if they were there only to pillow his skull.

  I brushed past Hendricks. Without slowing down or looking behind me, I said, "Careful with that gun. He gets hurt and it's going to be bad for you, Hendricks. "

  Hendricks ignored me. I had a feeling it was his strongest conversational ploy.

  I went up the stairs, noting a couple of details as I went. First, that the carpet was even cheaper than mine, which made me feel more confident for some obscure reason.

  Second, that there were bloodstains on it. A lot of them.

  At the top of the stairs I found more bloodstains, including a long smear along one wall. I followed them down to one of three bedrooms on the upper level of the house. I paused and knocked on the door.

  "Come in, Dresden," said a woman's voice.

  I came in.

  Miss Gard lay in bed. It had been hauled over to the window so that she could see out of it. She had a heavy assault rifle of a design I didn't recognize next to her. The wooden handle of a double-headed battle-ax leaned against the bed, within reach of her hand. Gard was blond, tall, athletic, and while she wasn't precisely beautiful, she was a striking woman, with clean-cut features, icy blue eyes, and an athlete's build.

  She was also a mess of blood.

  She was soaked in it. So was the bed beneath her. Her shirt was open, revealing a black athletic bra and a long wound that ran the width of her stomach, just below her belly button. Slick grey-red ropy loops protruded slightly from the wound.

  My stomach twisted, and I looked away.

  "Goodness," Miss Gard said, her voice quiet and rough, her face pale. "You'd think you never saw anyone disemboweled before. "

  "Just relieved," I said. I forced myself to face her. "First time today I've run into someone who looks worse than me. "

  She showed me a weary smile for a moment.

  "You need a doctor," I said.

  She shook her head. "No. "

  "Yes," I said. "You do. I'm surprised you haven't bled to death already. Think of what it would cost Monoc Securities to replace you. "

  "They won't need to. I'll be fine. The company has a great health care package. " She picked up a small tube of what looked like heavy-duty modeling glue from the bed at her side. "This isn't the first time I've had my guts ripped out. It isn't fun, but I'll make it. "

  "Damn," I said, genuinely impressed. "Are they hiring?"

  The question won another faint smile. "You don't really fit the employee profile. "

  "I am tired of being kept down by the man," I said.

  Gard shook her head wearily. "How did you find us?"

  "Demeter," I said.

  She lifted a golden eyebrow. "I suppose that shouldn't surprise me. Though I've warned him. He's too trusting. "

  "Marcone? Is too trusting?" I widened my eyes at her. "Lady, that pretty much puts you in a paranoiac league of your own. "

  "It isn't paranoia-just practical experience. A safe house isn't safe if it isn't secret. " She reached down and pressed bloodied fingers against a loop of gore, gently kneading it back into the wound. She let out a hiss of pain as she did, but she didn't let a little thing like an exposed internal organ get in the way of conversation. "You threatened her?"

  "Uh. Mostly I told her I'd help Marcone. "

  She lifted the tube of airplane glue and smeared some of it onto either side of the wound, where she'd pushed her guts back in. She bled a little more. I noted that several inches of the wound had already been closed and sealed together.

  "You gave her your word?" Gard asked.

  "Uh, yeah, but-" I couldn't take it anymore. "Look, could you maybe not do that while we talk? It makes it sort of hard for me to focus on the conversation. "

  She pressed the edges of the wound together, letting out a breathy curse in a language I didn't know. "Did you know," she said, "that this kind of glue was originally developed as an emergency battlefield suture?"

  "Did you know that you're about to find out what I had for breakfast this morning?" I countered.

  "I don't know if it's true," she continued. "I saw it in a movie. With-dammit-with werewolves. " She exhaled and drew her hands slowly from the wound. Another two or three inches of puckered flesh were now closed together. Gard looked awful, her face grey and lined with pain.

  "Why, Dresden? Why are you looking for Marcone?"

  "The short version? It's my ass if I don't. "

  She squinted at me. "It's personal?"

  "Pretty much. I'll give you my word on it, if you like. "

  She shook her head. "It's not. . . your word that I doubt. That's. . . always been good. " She closed her eyes against the pain and panted for several seconds. "But I need something from you. "

  "What?"

  "The White Council," she rasped. "I want you to call upon the White Council to recover Marcone. "

  I blinked at her. "Uh. What?"

  She grimaced and began packing another couple inches of intestine back into her abdomen. "The Accords have been breached. A challenge must be lodged. An Emissary summoned. As a Warden"-she gasped for a moment, and then fumbled the glue into place-"you have the authority to call a challenge. "

  Her fingers slipped, and the wound sprang open again. She went white with pain.

  "Dammit, Sigrun," I said, more appalled at her pain than her condition, and moved to help her. "Get your hands out of the way. " When she did, I managed to close the wound a little more, giving the sharp-smelling glue a chance to bond the flesh closed.

  She made an effort to smile at me. "We. . . we worked well together at the beer festival. You're a professional. I respect that. "

  "I'll bet you say that to all the guys who glue your stomach back together. "

  "Call the Council," Gard said. "Lodge the challenge. "

  "I've got a better idea," I said. "Tell me where Marcone is, I'll go get him and bring him home, and this will all be over. "

  She started pushing the next bit back in, while I waited with the glue. "It isn't that simple. I don't know where he is. "

  I caught on. "But you do know who took him. "

  "Yes. Another signatory of the Accords, just as Marcone is now. I have no authority to challenge their actions. But you do. You may be able to force them into the light, bring the pressure of all the members of the Accords against them. "

  "Oh, sure," I said, laying out more glue. "The Council just loves it when one of their youngest members drags the entire organization into a fight that isn't their own. "

  "You would know, wouldn't you?" Gard rasped. "It's not as though it would be the first time. "

  I held the wound together, waiting on the glue. "I can't," I said quietly.

  She was breathing too quickly, too hard. I could barely keep the wound closed. "Whatever you. . . nggh. . . say. After all. . . it's your ass on the line. "

  I grimaced and withdrew my fingers slowly, making sure the wound stayed closed. We'd gotten the last few inches, and the opening no longer gaped. "Can't deny that," I said. Then I squinted at her. "Who is i
t?" I asked. "Which signatory of the Accords swiped Marcone?"

  "You've met them once already," Gard said.

  From downstairs Thomas suddenly shouted, "Harry!"

  I whirled toward the door in time for the window, behind me, to explode in a shower of glass. It jounced off my spell-layered leather duster, but I felt a pair of hot stings as bits of glass cut my neck and my ear. I tried to turn and had the impression of something coming at my face. I slapped it aside with my left hand even as I ducked, then hopped awkwardly back from the intruder.

  It landed in a crouch upon the bed, digging one foot into the helpless Gard's wounded belly, a creature barely more than the size of a child. It was red and black, vaguely humanoid in shape, but covered in an insect's chitin. Its eyes were too large for its head, multifaceted, and its arms ended in the serrated clamps of a preying mantis. Membranous wings fluttered at its back, a low and maddening buzzing.

  And that wasn't the scary part.

  Its eyes gleamed with an inner fire, an orange-red glow-and immediately above the first set of eyes another set, this one blazing with sickly green luminescence, blinked and focused independently of the first pair. A sigil of angelic script burned against the chitin of the insect-thing's forehead.

  I suddenly wished, very much, that my staff weren't twenty feet away and down a flight of stairs. It might as well have been on the moon, for all the good it was going to do me.

  No sooner had that thought come out than the Knight of the Blackened Denarius opened its insectoid maw, let out a brassy wail of rage, and bounded at my face.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A t one time in my life, a shapeshifted, demonically possessed maniac crashing through a window and trying to rip my face off would have come as an enormous and nasty surprise.

  But that time was pretty much in the past.

  I'd spent the last several years on the fringes of a supernatural war between the White Council of the wizards and the Vampire Courts. In the most recent years, I'd gotten more directly involved. Wizards who go to a fight without getting their act together tend not to come home. Worse, the people depending on them for protection wind up getting hurt.

  The second most important rule of combat wizardry is a simple one: Don't let them touch you.

  Whether you're talking about vampires or ogres or some other kind of monstrous nasty, most of them can do hideous things to you if they get close enough to touch-as even a lesser member of the gruff clan had demonstrated on my nose the night before.

  The prime rule of combat wizardry is simple too: Be prepared.

  Wizards can potentially wield tremendous power against just about anything that might come along-if we're ready to handle it. The problem is that the things that come after us know that too, so the favored tactic is the sudden ambush. Wizards might live a long time, but we aren't rend-proof. You've got to think ahead in order to have enough time to act when the heat is on.

  I'd made myself ready and taught young wizards with even less experience than me how to be ready too-for an occasion just such as this.

  The coil of steel chain in my coat pocket came out smoothly as I drew it, because I'd practiced the draw thousands of times, and I whipped one end at the mantis-thing's face.

  It was faster than me, of course. They usually are. Those two clamps seized the end of the chain. The mantis's jaws clamped down on it, and the creature ripped the chain from my hands with a wrench of its head and upper body, quicker than thought.

  That was a positive thing, really. The mantis hadn't had time to notice two important details about the chain: first, that the whole thing was coated in copper.

  Second, that a standard electrical plug was attached to the other end.

  I flipped my fingers at the nearest wall outlet and barked, "Galvineus!"

  The plug shot toward the outlet like a striking snake and slammed home.

  The lights flickered and went dim. The Denarian hopped abruptly into the air and then came down, thrashing and twitching madly. The electricity had forced the muscles in its jaws and clamps to contract, and it couldn't release the chain. Acrid smoke began to drift up from various points on its carapace.

  "Wizard!" Gard gasped. She gripped the wooden handle of her ax and tossed it weakly toward me. I heard shouting and the bellow of a shotgun coming from downstairs. It stayed in the background, unimportant information. Everything that mattered to me was nearly within an arm's length.

  The ax bounced and struck against my leg, but my duster prevented it from cutting into me. I picked up the ax-Christ, was it heavy-hauled off, and brought it straight down on the Denarian, as if I'd been splitting cordwood.

  The ax crunched home, sinking to the eye somewhere in the Denarian's thorax. The thing's convulsions ripped the weapon out of my hands-and the plug from the wall outlet.

  The mantis's head whipped toward me, and it screamed again. It ripped out the ax and came to its feet in the same instant.

  "Get clear!" Gard rasped.

  I did, diving to the side and going prone.

  The wounded woman emptied her assault rifle into the mantis in two or three seconds of howling thunder, shooting from the hip from about three feet away.

  Words cannot convey how messy that was. Suffice to say that it would probably cost more to remove the ichor stains than it would to strip and refinish the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

  Gard gasped, and the empty rifle slid from her fingers. She shuddered and pressed her hands to her belly.

  I moved to her side and picked her up, trying not to strain her stomach. She was heavy. Not like a sumo wrestler or anything, but she was six feet tall in her bare feet and had more than the usual amount of muscle. She felt at least as heavy as Thomas. I grunted with effort, got her settled, and started for the door.

  Gard let out a croaking little whimper, and more blood welled from her injury. Faint pangs of sympathetic pain flickered through my own belly. Her eyes had rolled back in her head. It had taken a lot to beat Gard's apparent pain threshold, but it looked like the visit from the Denarian-and the activity it had forced on her-had done it.

  The day just couldn't have gotten any more disturbing.

  Until the splattered mass that had been the Denarian started quivering and moving.

  "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" I shouted.

  Where there had been one big bug thing, now there were thousands of little mantislike creatures. They all began bounding toward the center of the room, piling up into two mounds that gradually began to take on the shape of insectoid legs.

  The shotgun downstairs roared again, and running footsteps approached.

  "Harry!" Thomas shouted. He appeared at the bottom of the stairs, sword in hand, just as I hurried out the door, still toting Gard.

  "We had company up here!" I called. I started down the stairs as quickly and carefully as I could.

  "I think there are three more of them down here," Thomas said, making way for me. He took note of Gard. "Holy crap. "

  A corpse lay on the floor of the entry hall. It was black and furry and big, and I couldn't tell much more about it than that. The top four-fifths of its head were gone and presumably accounted for the mess all over the opposite wall. Its guts were spilled out on either side of its body, steaming in the cold air drifting through the shattered front door. Hendricks crouched in the shadowed living room, covering the entryway with his shotgun.

  Something scraped over the floorboards of the ceiling above us.

  "What's that?" Thomas asked.

  "A giant preying mantis demon, dragging itself over the floor. "

  Thomas blinked at me.

  "That's just a guess," I said.

  Hendricks growled, "How is she?"

  "Not good," I said. "This is a bad spot to be in. No defenses here, not even a threshold to work with. We need to bail. "

  "Shouldn't move her," Hendricks said. "It could kil
l her. "

  "Not moving her will kill her," I countered. "Us too. "

  Hendricks stared at me, but he didn't argue.

  Thomas was already reaching into his pocket. He was tense, his eyes flicking restlessly, maybe in an attempt to track things that he could hear moving around outside. He dug out his key ring and held it with his teeth. Then he took his saber in one hand, that monster Desert Eagle in the other, and started humming "Froggy Went A-Courting" under his breath.

  Gard had slowly grown limp, and her head lolled bonelessly. I was having trouble keeping her steady. "Hendricks," I said, nodding at Gard.

  Without a word he set the shotgun aside and took the woman from me. I saw his eyes as he did, touched with worry and fear-and not for himself. He took her very gently, something I would never have imagined him doing, and growled, "How do I know you won't leave us behind? Let them rip us apart while you run?"

  "You don't," I said curtly, picking up my staff. "Stay if you want. These things will kill you both; I guarantee it. Or you take a chance with us. Your call. "

  Hendricks glared at me for a moment, but when he glanced down at the unconscious woman in his arms, the rocky scowl faded. He nodded once.

  "Harry?" Thomas asked. "How do you want to do this?"

  "We head straight for your oil tanker," I said. "Shortest route between two points and all. "

  "They'll have the door covered," Thomas said.

  "I hope so. "

  "Okay," he said, rolling his eyes. "As long as there's a plan. "

  Footsteps crossed the floor above us, and paused at the top of the stairs.

  Thomas's gun swiveled toward the stairs. I didn't turn. I covered the doorway.

  A voice like out-of-tune violin strings stroked by a rotting cobra hide drifted down the stairs. "Wizard. "

  "I hear you," I said.

  "This situation might be resolved without further conflict. Are you willing to parley?"

  "Why not," I answered. I didn't turn away from the door.

  "Have I your word of safe passage?"

  "You do. "

  "Then you have mine," the voice answered.

  "Whatever," I said. I lowered my voice to an almost subvocal whisper I was sure only Thomas could hear. "Watch them. They'll try something the second they get a chance. "

  "Why give them the opportunity?" Thomas murmured.

  "Because we might find out something important by talking. It's harder to question corpses. Switch with me. "

  We traded places, and I kept my staff pointed at the stairs as the mantis-thing came down them. It crouched on the topmost step it could occupy while still maintaining visual contact with the entry hall. It looked none the worse for wear for being blown to hamburger by Gard's rifle.

  It crouched, the motion eerie and alien, and tilted its head almost entirely to the horizontal, first one way, then the other, as it looked at us. Then its stomach heaved. For a second I thought it was throwing up, as a yellow-and-pink mucus began to emerge from its mouth. After a second, though, it lifted its clamplike claws and gripped its head, then peeled it back and away from the mucus, the motion disturbingly akin to someone donning a too-small turtleneck sweater. A human face emerged from the mucus and gunk, while the split carapace of the head flopped about on its chest and upper back.

  The Denarian looked like she was about fifteen years old, except for her hair, which was silvery grey, short, and plastered to her skull. She had huge and gorgeous green eyes, a heart-shaped face, and a delicate, pointy chin. Her skin was pale and clear, her cheekbones high, her features lovely and symmetrical. The second set of green eyes and the sigil of angelic script still glowed faintly on her forehead.

  She smiled slowly. "I wasn't expecting the chain. I thought fire and force were your weapons of choice. "

  "You were standing on top of someone I knew," I said. "I didn't feel like burning her or blasting her through the wall. "

  "Foolish," the girl murmured.

  "I'm still here. "

  "But so am I. "

  "You have five seconds to get to the fucking point," I said. "I'm not going to let you stall while your buddies get into position. "

  Mantis Girl narrowed her eyes. The eyes on her forehead narrowed as well. Tr§? creepy. She nodded at Hendricks and Gard. "My business is with them. Not you, O Warden of the White Council. Give them to me. You may leave in peace. Once they are dead, I will gather my compatriots and we will depart the city without harm to any innocents. "

  I grunted. "What if I need them alive?"

  "If you wish, I can wait until you have interrogated them. "

  "Yeah, that's what I want: you, standing around behind my back. "

  She lifted a talon. "I give you my solemn word. No harm will come to you or your companion. "

  "Tempting," I said.

  "Shall I add in material reward as well?" Mantis Girl asked. "I'll pay you two hundred thousand, in cash. "

  "Why on earth would you do that?"

  She shrugged a shoulder. "My quarrel is with the upstart Baron and his subjects-not the White Council. I would prefer to demonstrate my respect to your people, instead of causing an untoward altercation with them over the matter of your death. "

  "Uh-huh. "

  Her smile turned sharper. "If it pleases you, I might offer to entertain you, once business is done. "

  I let out a harsh burst of laughter. "Oh," I said, still chortling. "Oh, oh, oh. That's funny. "

  She blinked and stared at me, uncomprehending.

  The expression made me laugh even harder. "You. . . you want me to. . . I mean, Hell's bells, do you think I don't know what happens to a mantis's mate once the deed is done?"

  She bared her teeth in sudden anger. They were shiny and black.

  "You want me to trust you," I went on, still laughing, "and you think waving some bling and some booty at me is going to get it done? God, that's so cute I could just put you in my pocket. "

  "Do not deny me what is mine, wizard," she snarled. "I will have them. Make a pact with me. I will honor it. "

  "Yeah," I said. "I've seen the way you people honor your pacts. Let me make you a counteroffer. Give me Marcone, safe and whole, and get out of town, now, and I'll let you live. "

  "Suppose your offer appeals. Why should I believe you would allow us to leave in peace?"

  I gave her a faint smile and quietly paraphrased a dead friend. "Because I know what your word is worth, Denarian. And you know the worth of mine. "

  She stared at me for a moment. Then she said, "I will consult my companions and return in five minutes. "

  I bowed my head slightly to her. She returned the gesture and started up the stairs again.

  She vanished from sight. Glass broke somewhere upstairs.

  Then a red-and-black blur flashed down the stairs toward us, simultaneously with a chorus of hellish cries from outside.

  Treachery doesn't work so well when the other guy expects it, and I'd had the spell ready to go since the second she'd turned her back. Mantis Girl didn't get to the bottom of the stairs before I pointed my staff at her and snarled, "Forzare!"

  A hammer of pure kinetic energy slammed against her. She went flying back the way she'd come, and when she reached the top of the stairs she kept going, crashing through the wall of the house with a tremendous crunch.

  No time to lose. Something came charging through the doorway, to be met by Thomas's sword and pistol. I didn't get a good look at it, but got an impression of spiraling antlers and green scales. I drew in my will, pointed my staff at the front wall of the house and murmured, "Forzare," sending out a slow pulse of motion. I let it press up against the front wall of the house, and then fed more energy into it, hardening it into a single striking surface.

  Then I drew back and really let loose, roaring "Forzare!" at the top of my lungs. I unleashed everything I had into a blast of energy, which struck against the plate of force I
'd just created. There was an enormous sound of screaming wood and steel, and the entire front wall of the house blasted free from its frame.

  Demonic voices howled. I turned to find Thomas taking advantage of the distraction to whip his saber through scything arcs, rondello-style, cutting his opponent to ribbons. The Denarian bounded away, screaming in brassy pain.

  "Dammit!" Thomas screamed at me. "That's a brand-new car!"

  "Quit whining and go!" I shouted back, suiting words to action. The front wall of the house had come down like a tidal wave, shattering into a small ocean of rubble, covering the hood of the Hummer. Somewhere beneath the rubble I could hear the other Denarians trying to get free.

  We rushed for the Hummer and piled in. Thomas got it started just as Mantis Girl sailed down from overhead and landed on the hood of the Hummer, denting it in sharply.

  "God dammit!" Thomas snarled. He slapped the Hummer into reverse and started driving backward-while emptying his gun into Mantis Girl. Bursts of fluttering insect forms flew up from the gunshots instead of sprays of blood, but judging by the screaming it hurt her plenty. She tumbled back off the hood and vanished.

  Thomas manhandled the Hummer into a turn, and we left, heading back out into the heavy snowfall.

  We all rode in silence for several moments while our heart rates slowed and the terror-fueled adrenaline rush faded.

  Then Thomas said, "I don't think we learned much. "

  "The hell we didn't," I said.

  "Like what?"

  "We know that there are more than five Denarians in town. And we know that they're signatories of the Accords-who apparently object to Marcone's recent elevation. "

  Thomas grunted acknowledgment. "What now?"

  I shook my head wearily. That last spell had been a doozy. "Now? I think. . . " I turned my head and studied the unconscious Gard. "I think I'd better call the Council. "