The Dresden Files Collection 7-12

by Jim Butcher

  I paused and returned her look for a moment. “Aren’t you supposed to be embarrassed, apologize, and quietly leave?”

  Her smile widened lazily, and she shrugged a shoulder. “When I was a girl, perhaps. But even then I had difficulty forcing myself to act awkward when looking at something that pleased me.” She tilted her head and moved toward me. She reached out and rested her fingertips very lightly against a scar on my upper arm. She traced its outline and glanced up at me, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Bullet wound,” I said. “FBI werewolves.”

  She nodded. Then her fingers touched the hollow of my throat and slid slowly down over my chest and belly in a straight line. A shuddering sensation of heat fluttered through my skin in the wake of her fingertips. She looked up at me again.

  “Hook knife,” I said. “Sorcerer tried to filet me at the Field Museum.”

  Her touch trailed down my bare arms, lingering on my forearms, near my wrists, avoiding the red, scalded skin around my left wrist.

  “Thorn manacles,” I said. “From when Madrigal Raith tried to sell me on eBay.”

  She lifted my scarred left hand between hers, fingers stroking over the maimed flesh. These days I could move it pretty well, most of the time, and it didn’t look like some kind of hideous, half-melted wax image of a hand anymore, but it still wasn’t pretty. “A scourge of Black Court vampires had a Renfield that got creative. Had a homemade flamethrower.”

  She shook her head. “I know men centuries older than you who have not collected so many scars.”

  “Maybe they lived that long because they were smart enough not to get them,” I said.

  She flashed me that grin again. At close range it was devastating, and her eyes looked even darker.

  “Anastasia,” I said quietly, “in a few minutes we’re going to go do something that might get us killed.”

  “Yes, Harry. We are,” she said.

  I nodded. “But that’s not until a few minutes from now.”

  Her eyes smoldered. “No. No, it isn’t.”

  I lifted my still-tingling right hand to gently cup the line of her jaw, and leaned down to press my mouth to hers.

  She let out a quiet, satisfied little moan and melted against me, her body pressing full-length to mine, returning the kiss with slow, sensuous intensity. I felt her slide the fingers of one hand into my hair, while the nails of the other wandered randomly over my chest and arm, barely touching. It left a trail of fire in my flesh, and I found myself sinking the fingers of my right hand into the soft curls of her hair, drawing her more deeply into the kiss.

  I don’t know how long that went on, but it wound down deliciously. By the time she drew her mouth away from mine, both of us were breathing harder, and my heart was pounding out a rapid beat against my chest. And against my jeans.

  She didn’t open her eyes for five or ten seconds, and when she did, they were absolutely huge and molten with desire. Anastasia leaned her head back and arched in a slow stretch, letting out a long, low, pleased sigh.

  “You don’t mind?” I asked her.

  “Not at all.”

  “Good. I just…wanted to see what that was like. It’s been a long time since I kissed anyone. Almost forgot what it was like.”

  “You have no idea,” she murmured, “how long it has been since I’ve kissed a man. I wasn’t sure I remembered how.”

  I let out a quiet laugh.

  Her dimples returned. “Good,” she said, satisfaction in her tone. She looked me up and down, taking in the sights again. This time it didn’t make me feel self-conscious. “You have a good smile. You should show it more often.”

  “Once we’re done tonight,” I said, “maybe we could talk about that. Over dinner.”

  Her smile widened, and color touched her cheeks. “That would please me.”

  “Good,” I said. I arched an eyebrow at her. “I’ll put my shirt on now, if that’s all right.”

  Anastasia let out a merry laugh and stepped back from me, though she didn’t lift her fingertips from my skin until the distance forced her to do it. “Very well, Warden. As you were.”

  “Why, thank you, Captain.” I tugged the rest of my clothes back on. “What were you going to tell me?”

  “Hmmm?” she said. “Oh, ah, yes. Before I was so cleverly distracted. I think I know where the Denarians are holding the Archive.”

  I blinked. “You got through with a tracking spell?”

  She shook her head. “No, it failed miserably. So I was forced to resort to the use of my brain.” She opened a hard-sided leather case hanging from her sword belt. She withdrew a plastic tube from it, opened one end, and withdrew a roll of papers. She thumbed through them, found one, and put the rest back. She unfolded the paper into what looked like a map, and laid it out on the lid of the dryer.

  I leaned over to look at it. It was indeed a map, but instead of being marked with state lines, highways, and towns, it was dominated by natural features—most prominent of which was the outlines of the Great Lakes. Rivers, forests, and swamps figured prominently as well. Furthermore, a webwork of intersecting lines flowed over the map, marked in various colors of ink in several different thicknesses.

  Footsteps approached and Molly appeared, carrying a plastic laundry basket full of children’s clothing. She blinked when she saw us, but smiled and came over immediately. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a map,” I replied, like the knowledgeable mentor I was supposed to be.

  She snorted. “I can see that,” she said. “But a map of what?”

  Then I got it. “Ley lines,” I said, looking up at Luccio. “These are ley lines.”

  Molly pursed her lips and studied the paper. “Those are real?”

  “Yeah, we just haven’t covered them yet. They’re…well, think of them as underground pipelines. Only instead of flowing with water, they flow with magic. They run all over the world, usually running between hot spots of supernatural energy.”

  “Connect the dots with magic,” Molly said. “Cool.”

  “Exactly,” Luccio said. “The only method that would have a chance of restraining the Archive’s power would be the use of a greater circle—and one that uses an enormous amount of energy, at that.”

  I grunted acknowledgment. “It would have to be dead solid perfect, too, or she could break loose at the flaw.”

  “Correct.”

  “How much energy are we talking about?” I asked her.

  “You might be able to empower such a circle for half an hour or an hour, Dresden. I couldn’t have kept it up that long, even before my, ah”—she waved a hand down at herself—“accident.”

  “So it would take loads of power,” I mused. “So how are they powering it?”

  “That’s the real question,” she said. “After all, the Sign they raised at the Aquarium suggests that they have an ample supply.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I stated. “That was Hellfire.”

  Luccio pursed her lips. “You seem fairly certain of that.”

  “I seem completely certain of that,” I said. “It’s powerful as Hell, literally, but it isn’t stable. It fluctuates and stutters. That’s why they couldn’t keep the Sign up any longer than they did.”

  “To imprison the Archive, they would need a steady, flawless supply,” Luccio said. “A supply that big would also be able to support a very complex veil—one that could shield them from any tracking spell. In fact, it’s the only way they could establish a veil that impenetrable.”

  “Ley lines,” I breathed.

  “Ley lines,” she said with satisfaction.

  “I know of a couple around town, but I didn’t realize there were that many of the things,” I said.

  “The Great Lakes region is rife with them,” Luccio said. “It’s an energy nexus.”

  “So?” Molly asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, it’s one reason why so much supernatural activity tends to happen in this area,” I said. “Three times as m
any ships and planes have vanished in Lake Michigan as in the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “Wow,” Molly said. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Next summer I think I’ll stick to the pool.”

  Luccio started tracing various lines on the map with a fingertip. “The colors denote what manner of energy seems to be most prevalent in the line. Defensive energy here. Disruptive force here, restorative lines here and here, and so on. The thickness of the line indicates its relative potency.”

  “Right, right,” I said, growing excited. “So we’re looking for an energy source compatible with the use of a greater circle, and strong enough to keep a big one powered up and stable.”

  “And there are four locations that I think are most likely,” Luccio said. She pointed up toward the north end of Lake Michigan. “North and South Manitou islands both have heavy concentrations of dark energy running through them.”

  “There’s plenty of spook stories around them, too,” I said. “But that’s better than two hundred miles away. If I were Nicodemus, I wouldn’t want to risk moving her that far.”

  “Agreed. A third runs directly beneath the Field Museum.” She glanced up at me and arched an eyebrow as her voice turned dry. “But I think you’re already familiar with that one.”

  “I was going to put the dinosaur back,” I said. “But I was unconscious.”

  “Which brings us to number four,” Luccio said. Her fingertip came to rest on a cluster of tiny islands out in the center of the lake, northeast of the city, and the heavy, dark purple line running through it. “Here.”

  Molly leaned across me and frowned down at the map. “There aren’t any islands in that part of Lake Michigan. It’s all open water.”

  “Listens-to-Wind gave this map to me, Miss Carpenter,” Luccio said seriously. “He’s spent several centuries living in this general region.”

  I grunted. “I hear a lot of things. I think that there are some islands out there. They were used as bases for wilderness fighters in several wars. Bootleggers used them as a transfer point for running booze in from Canada, back in the Prohibition days. But there were always stories around them.”

  Molly frowned. “What kind of stories?”

  I shrugged. “The usual scary stuff. Hauntings. People driven insane by unknown forces. People dragged into the water by creatures unknown, or found slaughtered by weaponry several centuries out-of-date.”

  “Then why aren’t they on the maps and stuff?” Molly asked.

  “The islands are dangerous,” I said. “Long way from any help, and the lake can be awfully mean in the winter. There are stone reefs out there, too, that could gut a boat that came too close. Maybe someone down at city hall figured that the islands would prove less of a temptation to people if everyone thought they were just stories, and invested some effort in removing them from the public record.”

  “That wouldn’t be possible,” Molly said.

  “It might be,” Luccio responded. “The energies concentrated around those islands would tend to make people unconsciously avoid them. If one did not have a firm destination fixed in mind, the vast majority of people in the area would swing around the islands without ever realizing what they were doing.”

  I grunted. “And if there’s that much bad mojo spinning around out there, it would play merry hell with navigational gear. Twenty bucks says that the major flight lanes don’t come within five miles of the place.” I thumped my finger on the spot and nodded. “It feels right. She’s there.”

  “If she is,” Molly asked, “then what do we do about it?”

  Luccio tilted her head at me, frowning.

  “Captain, I assume you already contacted the Council about getting reinforcements?”

  “Yes,” she said. “They’ll be here as soon as possible—which is about nine hours from now.”

  “Not fast enough,” I said, and narrowed my eyes in thought. “So we call in some favors.”

  “Favors?” Luccio asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know a guy with a boat.”

  Chapter Forty

  I rushed around setting up details for the next half an hour. Everyone left to get into position except for me, Molly, and Kincaid. And Mouse.

  My dog was clearly upset that I wasn’t going to be bringing him along, and though he dutifully settled down on the floor near Molly’s feet, he looked absolutely miserable.

  “Sorry, boy,” I told him. “I want you here to help Molly and warn her about any danger.”

  He sighed.

  “I got along just fine without you for quite a while,” I told him. “Don’t you worry about me.”

  He rolled onto his back and gave me another pathetic look.

  “Hah. Just trying to cadge a tummy rub. I knew it.” I leaned down and obliged him.

  A minute later the back door opened, and Thomas came in. “Finally,” he said. “I’ve been sitting in my car so long, I think I left a dent in the seat.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ll live. What can I do to help?”

  “Get back in your car and give me a ride to my place.”

  Thomas gave me a level look. Then he muttered something under his breath, pulled his keys out of his pocket, and stalked back out into the snow.

  “You’re horrible,” Molly said, grinning.

  “What?” I said. “I’m expressing my brotherly affection.”

  I shrugged into my coat and picked up my staff. “Remember the plan?”

  “Man the phone,” Molly said, ticking off each point on her fingers. “Keep my eyes open. Make sure Mouse stays in the same room as me. Check on Kincaid every fifteen minutes.”

  At one time she would have been sullen about the prospect of being forced to sit at home when something exciting was under way—but she had grown up enough to realize just how dangerous things could be out there, and to respect her own limitations. Molly was extraordinarily sensitive when it came to the various energies of magic. It was one of the things that made her so good at psycho-mancy and neuromancy. It also meant that when violent personal or supernatural events started happening, she experienced them in such agonizing clarity that it would often incapacitate her altogether, at least for a few minutes. Combat magic was never going to be her strong suit, and in a real conflict she could prove to be a lethal liability to her own allies.

  But at least the kid knew it. She might not like it very much, but she’d applied herself diligently to finding other ways to help fight the good fight. I was proud of her.

  “And don’t forget your homework,” I said.

  She frowned. “I still don’t understand why you want to know about our family tree.”

  “Humor me, grasshopper. I’ll buy you a snow cone.”

  She glanced out the window at the world of white outside. “Goody.” She looked back at me and gave me a small, worried smile. “Be careful.”

  “Hey, there were almost twenty of these losers at the Shedd. Now we’re down to six.”

  “The six smartest, strongest, and oldest,” Molly said. “The ones who really matter.”

  “Thank you for your optimism,” I said, and turned to go. “Lock up behind me.”

  Molly bit her lip. “Harry?”

  I paused.

  Her voice was very small. “Look out for my dad. Okay?”

  I turned and met her eyes. I drew an X over my heart and nodded.

  She blinked her eyes quickly several times and gave me another smile. “All right.”

  “Lock the door,” I told her again, and trudged out into the snow. The lock clicked shut behind me, and Molly watched me slog through the snow to the street. Thomas’s military moving van came rumbling through the snow, tires crunching, and I got in.

  He turned the heater up a little while I stomped snow off of my shoes.

  “So,” he said, starting down the street. “What’s the plan?”

  I told him.

  “That is a bad plan,” he said.

  “There was
n’t time for a good one.”

  He grunted. “November is not a good time to be sailing on Lake Michigan, Harry.”

  “The aftermath of a nuclear holocaust isn’t a good time to be sailing there, either.”

  Thomas frowned. “You aren’t just running your mouth, here, are you? You’re serious?”

  “It’s a worst-case scenario,” I said. “But Nicodemus could do it, so we’ve got to proceed under the presumption that his intentions are in that category. The Denarians want to disrupt civilization, and with the Archive under their control, they could do it. Maybe they’d use biological or chemical weapons instead. Maybe they’d crash the world economy. Maybe they’d turn every program on television into one of those reality shows.”

  “That’s mostly done already, Harry.”

  “Oh. Well. I’ve got to believe that the world is worth saving anyway.” We traded forced grins. “Regardless of what they do, the potential for Really Bad Things is just too damned high to ignore, and we need all the help we can get.”

  “Even help from one of those dastardly White Court fiends?” Thomas asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Good. I was getting tired of dodging Luccio. There’s a limited amount of help I can give you if I have to stay out of sight all the time.”

  “It’s necessary. If the Council knew that you and I were related…”

  “I know, I know,” Thomas said, scowling. “Outcast leper unclean.”

  I sighed and shook my head. Given that the White Court’s modus operandi generally consisted of twisting people’s minds around in one of several ways, I didn’t dare let anyone on the Council know that Thomas was my friend, let alone my half brother. Everyone would immediately assume the worst—that the White Court had gotten to me and was controlling my head through Thomas. And even if I convinced them that it wasn’t the case, it would look suspicious as hell. The Council would demand I demonstrate loyalty, attempt to use Thomas as a spy against the White Court, and in general behave like the pompous, overbearing assholes that they are.

  It wasn’t easy for either of us to live with—but it wasn’t going to change, either.