by Jim Butcher
“Remember the guys from the airport a few years back?”
“Yeah. Killed the old Okinawan guy in the chapel. He died real bad.”
I smiled faintly. “I think he’d probably argue the point, if he could.”
She shrugged and said, tone quietly flat, “It was a mess.”
“The guys behind it are back. They’ve abducted Marcone.”
Murphy frowned, her eyes distant for a moment, calculating. “They’re grabbing his business?”
“Or forcing him onto their team,” I said. “I’m not sure yet. We’re working on it.”
“We?”
“You remember Michael?” I asked.
“Charity’s husband?”
“Yeah.”
“I remember that at the airport we found a couple of men with no tongues and fake identification. They’d been killed with long blades. Swords, if you can believe that in this day and age. It was messy, Harry.” She put her hands flat on the table and leaned toward me. “I don’t like messy.”
“I’m all kinds of sorry about that, Murph,” I said. It’s possible that a grain or two of sarcasm was showing in my reply. “I’ll be sure to ask them to put on the kid gloves. If I survive asking the question, I’ll let you know what they say.”
Murphy regarded me calmly. “They’re back, then?”
I nodded. “Only this time they brought more friends to the party.”
She nodded. “Where are they?”
“No, Murph.”
“Where are they, Harry?” Murph asked, her voice hard. “If they’re that dangerous, I’m not waiting for them to choose their ground so that we have to rush into a hostile situation in response to them. We’ll go after them right now, before they have a chance to hurt anyone else.”
“It’d be a slaughter, Murphy.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. You’d be surprised what kinds of resources the department has gotten its hands on, what with the whole War on Terror.”
“Right. And you’re going to tell your bosses what?”
“That the same terrorists who attacked the airport and murdered a woman in the marina are in the city, planning another operation. That the only way to ensure the safety of its citizens is to preemptively assault them. Then show up with SWAT, SI, every cop in town, anyone we can get from the Bureau, and all the military backup available on short notice.”
I sat back in my chair at that, startled at Murphy’s tone—and at the possibilities.
Hell. The kind of firepower she was talking about might give even the Denarians pause. And given the current climate, terrorist plot was all but synonymous with respond with overwhelming force. Oh, sure, most modern weaponry was far less effective on supernatural targets than anyone without knowledge of them would expect—but even reduced to the effectiveness of bee stings, enough bee stings can be just as deadly as a knife in the heart.
Humanity, at large, enjoys a dichotomous role in supernatural politics. On the one hand they are sneered at and held in contempt for being patently unable to come to grips with reality, to the point where the supernatural world hardly needed to bother to hide from them. Given half a chance, the average human being would rationalize the most bizarre of encounters down to “unusual but explainable” events. They are referred to as herd animals by a lot of the things that prey on them, and often toyed with and tormented.
On the other hand, no one wants to get them stirred up, either. Humanity, when frightened and angry, is a force even the supernatural world does not wish to reckon with. The torches and pitchforks are just as deadly, in their numbers and their simple rage, as they ever were—and it was my opinion that most of the supernatural crowd had very little appreciation for just how destructive and dangerous mankind had grown in the past century.
Which is why I found myself sorely tempted to let the Denarians get a big old faceful of angry cop. Five or six rifles like Gard’s might not kill Mantis Girl—but if you followed them up with thirty or forty pairs of stompy combat boots for all the little bugs, Little Miss Clamphands could go down for the count.
Of course, all that was predicated on the idea that the humans involved a) knew what they were up against and b) took it seriously and worked together tightly enough to get the job done. Murphy and the guys in SI might have a pretty good grasp of the situation, but the others wouldn’t. They’d be expecting a soldier movie, but they’d be getting something out of a horror flick instead. I didn’t for one second believe that Murphy or Stallings or anyone else in Chicago could make everyone involved listen to them once they started talking about demons and monsters.
I rubbed at my head again, thinking of Sanya. Maybe we could try to explain it in more palatable terms. Instead of “shapeshifting demons” we could tell them that the terrorists were in possession (ha-ha, get it?) of “experimental genetically engineered biomimetic armored suits.” Maybe that would give them the framework they needed to get the job done.
And maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe they’d run into something out of a nightmare and start screaming in fear. Coordination and control would go right out the window, especially if the Denarians had anyone with enough magical juice to start blowing out technology. Then would come the panic and slaughter and terror.
“It’s an idea,” I said to Murphy. “Maybe even a workable idea. But I don’t think its time has come. At least, not yet.”
Her eyes flashed very blue. “And you’re the one who decides.”
I took another sip of beer and set the bottle down again, deliberately. “Apparently.”
“Says who?” Murphy demanded.
I leaned back in my chair. “In the first place,” I said quietly, “even if you brought in all that firepower, the best you could hope for is a hideously bloody, costly victory. In the second place, there’s a chance that I can resolve this whole thing through Council channels—or at least make sure that when the fur starts flying, we’re not in the middle of the bloody town.”
“But you—”
“And in the third place,” I continued, “I don’t know where they are.”
Murphy narrowed her eyes, and then some of the tension abruptly left her features. “You’re telling me the truth.”
“Usually do,” I said. “I could probably track them down, given a day or so. But it might not come to that.”
She studied my face for a moment. “But you don’t think that talk will stop them from whatever they’re doing here.”
“Not a chance in hell. But hopefully I’ll talk them out of the woodwork to someplace a little more out of the way.”
“What if someone gets hurt while you’re scheming?” she asked. “Those encounters people were having last night are getting attention. No one’s been hurt so far, but that could change. I’m not prepared to tolerate that.”
“Those were something else,” I said tiredly. “Something I don’t think will be a threat to the public.” I told her about Summer’s hitters.
She drank the rest of her beer in a single tip, then sighed. “Nothing’s ever simple with you.”
I shrugged modestly.
“Here’s the problem, Harry,” she said quietly. “Last time these maniacs were around, there were bodies. And there were reports. Several witnesses gave a fairly good description of you.”
“And nothing came of it,” I said.
“Nothing came of it because I was in charge of the investigation,” Murphy corrected me, her tone slightly sharpening. “The case was never closed. And if similar events bring it up again, there’s no way I can protect you.”
“Stallings wouldn’t…?”
“John would probably try,” Murphy said. “But Rudolph’s been ladder climbing over in Internal Affairs, and if he gets an opening he’ll start screaming about it and the case will get kicked up the line and out of SI’s control.”
I frowned at that, turning my bottle around slowly in my fingers. “Well,” I said, “that could complicate things.”
Murphy rolled her eyes. “Yo
u think? Dammit, Harry. A long time ago I agreed with you that there were some things that it was better the department didn’t get involved in. I promised not to go blowing whistles and raising alarms every time things got spooky.” She leaned forward slightly, her eyes intent. “But I’m a cop, Harry. Before everything else. My job is to defend and protect the people of this city.”
“And what do you think I’m doing?”
“The best you know how,” she said without heat. “I know your heart is in the right place. But you can be as sincere as hell and still be wrong.” She paused to let that sink in. “And if you’re wrong it could cost lives. Lives I’m sworn to protect.”
I said nothing.
“You asked me to respect your limits and I have,” she said quietly. “I expect you to return the favor. If for one second I think that letting you handle this is going to cost innocent lives, I’m not going to stand quietly in the wings. I’m going in and bringing everything I can get my hands on with me. And if I do that, I expect your complete support.”
“And you’re the one who gets to decide when that is?” I demanded.
She faced me without flinching, not a millimeter. “Apparently.”
I leaned back in my seat and sipped beer with my eyes closed.
Murphy didn’t know everything that was at stake here. More than anyone else on the force, sure, but she was operating under only partial knowledge. If she made the wrong call, she could really screw things up beyond all ability to conceive.
She’d probably had that same exact thought about me, and on more than one occasion.
I’d asked Murphy for a lot when I’d asked her to trust me.
How could I not return the favor and still call myself her friend?
Simple.
I couldn’t.
Hell, if she decided to go in, she’d do it with or without me. In that circumstance my presence could mean the difference between a bloody victory and a disaster, and…
And I suddenly felt a lot more empathy for Michael’s confusion.
I opened my eyes again and said quietly, “You decide to bring CPD in, you’ll have my cooperation. But you’ve got to believe me: This isn’t the time for that kind of solution.”
She ran her thumb over a scar in the wooden table. “What if that building had been full of people, Harry? Families. These Denarians could have killed hundreds.”
“Give me time,” I said.
She put her hands on the table’s edge and rose, facing me with those same neutral eyes again. As she started to speak I got a twisty feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I wish I could,” she said, “but—”
The door to the pub slammed open hard enough to strain its hinges and leave marks against the old wooden wall.
A…thing…came through the door. It was hard for me to tell what it was at first. Imagine a big man trying to squeeze into a doghouse. He has to crouch down and go in sideways, one shoulder at a time, moving very carefully to avoid harming himself on the door frame. That’s what this huge, grey-furred thing looked like. But with horns and cloven hooves.
The enormous gruff—several feet taller than any ogre or troll I’d ever seen—squeezed all the way through the door and then rose to a crouch. His head, shoulders, and the top part of his back pressed against the ceiling. Hunched awkwardly, he slowly scanned the room, his golden eyes gleaming around their rectangular pupils. Each knuckle of his closed fists was the size of a freaking cantaloupe, and a heavy, pungent animal scent filled the air.
Thanks to the snow, the pub wasn’t crowded—just a few regulars, plus Murphy and me. But even so, this wasn’t something you saw every day, and the room went totally still.
The gruff ’s gaze settled on me.
Then he duckwalked toward my table. Mac raced for the switch that turned off the fans, but the first couple of spinning blades the gruff passed struck sharply against his curling horns—and shattered. He did not so much as blink. He stopped beside my table and surveyed Murphy, then turned his huge, heavy gaze to me.
“Wizard,” he rumbled in a voice so deep that I could feel it better than I could hear it. “I have come hence to speak to thee about mine younger brothers.” The gruff ’s huge eyes narrowed, and its knuckles creaked like shipping hawsers as its fists tightened. “And the harms thou hast wrought upon them.”
Chapter Seventeen
I picked up my staff and rose to face the enormous gruff.
Murphy watched me with very, very wide eyes.
“This is neutral ground,” I said quietly.
“Aye,” the gruff agreed. “The Accords alone keep thy neck unbroken, thy skull uncracked.”
“Or your enormous ass uncooked,” I replied, staring up and setting my jaw. “Don’t start thinking it would be easy, Tiny.”
“Mayhap, and mayhap not,” the gruff rumbled. “’Tis a question answered only by the field.”
I breathed as shallowly as I could. The huge gruff didn’t smell bad, precisely—but he sure as hell smelled a lot. “Speak.”
“We find ourselves at odds, friend of Winter,” the gruff rumbled.
“Friend of Summer, too,” I said. “They gave me jewelry and everything.”
“Aye,” the huge gruff said. “You have done good service to my Court, if not to my Queen. I am surprised, then, at your use of the bane ’pon two of my younger kin.”
“The bane?” Murphy said quietly.
“Iron,” I clarified. I turned back to the gruff. “They were trying to kill me. I wanted to survive.”
“No friend of either Court would so employ the bane, wizard,” the gruff growled. “Did you not know this? It is more than a mere weapon, and the pain it causes more than simple discomfort. It is a poison, body and spirit, that you have used ’pon us.”
I glared at the big idiot. “They were trying to kill me,” I repeated, only more slowly, you know, so it would be all insulting. “I wanted to survive.”
The gruff narrowed its eyes. “Then you intend to continue as you have begun?”
“I intend to survive,” I replied. “I didn’t ask for this fight. I didn’t begin it.”
“Thou’rt fated to die in any case, mortal, soon or late. Why not face it with honor and make thy passing more peaceful thereby?”
“Peaceful?” I asked, barely containing a laugh. “If I go down fighting, Tiny, I plan for it to be about as unpeaceful as things get.” I jabbed a finger at him. “I’ve got nothing against you and your brothers, Tiny, except that you keep trying to freaking kill me. Back off, and it won’t have to get any uglier than it already has.”
The gruff growled. It sounded like a dump truck grinding its gears. “That I will not do. I will serve my Queen.”
“Then don’t expect anything but more of the same from me,” I replied.
“You would behave this way in the service of Winter?” the gruff demanded, incredulous. “You, who struck the heart of Arctis Tor? What hold has the Dark Queen ’pon you, mortal?”
“Sorry, Tiny, but you aren’t nearly as special as you think you are. This is pretty much the way I behave every time someone tries to whack me.” I gestured at him with my staff. “So if you came here to try to talk me into lying down and dying, you can leave the way you came in. And if you’re the one coming after me next, you’d better have more brains than your brothers did, or I’m going to leave you as a great big pile of cold cuts and spare ribs.”
The gruff growled again and gave me a stiff nod. “Then come out. And let us settle this.”
Uh. Uh-oh.
Showing bravado to the bad guys—or the not-so-bad guys, as the case may be—is a given, a part of the territory. But I’d never taken on anything with the sheer mass of Tiny the gruff, and I really didn’t think I’d care to try my hand against him without one hell of a lot of preparation first. I also had to remember that big didn’t necessarily equal stupid, not given the circles he apparently moved in.
In fact, most of the higher reaches of the Summer Court knew a formidable am
ount of countermagic. If Tiny here had half the ability I’d seen demonstrated in the past, I would be in real trouble in a straight fight. All he had to do was stand outside and wait. Mac’s place had only the one door.
Worse, Thomas and Molly were waiting outside in Thomas’s barge, and they would be sure to join in. I wasn’t sure what could happen at that point. Leaving totally aside the fact that we’d be brawling in the middle of Chicago in broad daylight, I had to think that the gruff might have backup waiting nearby to intervene if anyone outside the business of the Courts of Winter and Summer tried to interfere. Molly was of limited capability in a fight, and Thomas tended to believe that the best way to approach any given combat was with a maximum of power, speed, and aggressive ferocity.
Things could get really messy, really fast.
I was trying to think of a way of getting out of this without getting anyone killed when Murphy put her gun on the table and said in a very clear, loud, challenging tone, “I don’t think so.”
The gruff turned to stare at her in surprise.
So did Mac.
So did everyone else there.
Heck, so did I.
Murphy stood straight up and turned to face the enormous gruff with her feet spread. “I will not let this challenge to my authority pass.”
The gruff tilted its head to one side. Its horns dug furrows in the wooden ceiling.
Mac winced.
“Lady?” it rumbled.
“Do you know who I am?” Murphy asked.
“A lady knight, a shield bearer of this mortal demesne,” the gruff replied. “An…officer of the law, or so I believe it is called.”
“That’s right,” she said calmly.
“I make no challenge to your authority, Dame…”
“Murphy,” she said.
“Dame Murphy,” rumbled the gruff.
“But you do,” Murphy said. “You have threatened one I am sworn to protect.”
The gruff blinked—a considerable gesture on his scale—and glanced at me. “This wizard?”
“Yes,” Murphy said. “He is a citizen of Chicago, and I am sworn to protect and defend him against those who would harm him.”
