SMALL FAVOR tdf-10

by Jim Butcher

  A decent person would have rejected her offer out of hand.

  I’m not always one of those.

  I could offer you some excuses, if you like. I could tell you that I was an orphan by the time I was six. I could tell you that the foster father who eventually raised me subjected me to more forms of psychological and physical abuse than you could shake a stick at. I could tell you that I’d been held in unjust suspicion for my entire adult life by the White Council, whose principles and ideals I’d done my best to uphold. Or maybe I could say that I’d seen too many good people get hurt, or that I’d looked upon a lot of nasty things with my indelible wizard’s Sight. I could tell you that I’d been caught and abused by the creatures of the night myself, and that I hadn’t ever really gotten over it. I could tell you that I hadn’t gotten laid in a really long time.

  And all of those things would be true.

  But the fact of the matter is that there’s simply a part of me that isn’t so nice. There’s a part of me that gets off on laying waste to my enemies with my power, that gets tired of taking undeserved abuse. There’s this little voice inside my head that sometimes wants to throw the rules away, stop trying to be responsible, and just take what I want.

  And for a minute, I wondered what it might be like to accept Mab’s offer. Life among the Sidhe would be…intense. In every sense a mortal could imagine. What would it be like to live in a house? Hell, probably a big house, if not a freaking castle. Money. Hot showers every day. Every meal a feast. I’d be able to afford whatever clothes I wanted, whatever cars I wanted. Maybe I could do some traveling, see places I’d always wanted to see. Hawaii. Italy. Australia. I could learn to sail, like I always wanted.

  Women, oh, yeah. Hot and cold running girls. Inhumanly beautiful, sensuous creatures like the one before me. The Winter Knight had status and power, and those are even more of an aphrodisiac to the fae than they are to us mortals.

  I could have…almost anything.

  All it would cost me was my soul.

  And no, I’m not talking about anything magical or metaphysical. I’m talking about the core of my identity, about what makes Harry Dresden who and what he is. If I lost those things, the things that define me, then what would be left?

  Just a heap of bodily processes-and regret.

  I knew that. But all the same, the touch of Mab’s chilled lips on my ear lingered on, sending slow, pleasant ripples of sensation through me when I breathed. It was enough to make me hesitate.

  “No, Mab,” I said finally. “I don’t want the job.”

  She studied my face with calm, heavy eyes. “Liar,” she said quietly. “You want it. I can see it in you.”

  I gritted my teeth. “The part of me that wants it doesn’t get a vote,” I said. “I’m not going to take the job. Period.”

  She tilted her head to one side and stared at me. “One day, wizard, you will kneel at my feet and ask me to bestow the mantle upon you.”

  “But not today.”

  “No,” Mab said. “Today you repay me a favor. Just as I said you would.”

  I didn’t want to think too hard about that, and I didn’t want to openly agree with her, either. So instead I nodded at the patch of ground where the sculptures had been. “Who took Marcone?”

  “I do not know. That is one reason I chose you, Emissary. You have a gift for finding what is lost.”

  “If you want me to do this for you, I’m going to need to ask you some questions,” I said.

  Mab glanced up, as if consulting the stars through the still-falling snow. “Time, time, time. Will there never be an end to it?” She shook her head. “Wizard child, the hour has nearly passed. I have duties upon which to attend-as do you. You should rise and leave this place immediately.”

  “Why?” I asked warily. I got to my feet.

  “Because when your little retainer warned you of danger, wizard child, he was not referring to me.”

  On the street outside the alley, the gale-force wind and the white wall of blowing snow both died away. On the other side of the street, two men in long coats and big Stetson hats stood facing the alley. I felt the sudden weight of their attention, and got the impression that they had been surprised to see me.

  I whirled to speak to Mab-only to find her gone. Grimalkin, too, both of them vanished without a trace or a whisper of power to betray it.

  I turned back to the street in time to see the two figures step off the sidewalk and begin moving toward me with long strides. They were both tall, nearly my own height, and thickly built. The snowfall hadn’t lightened, and the street was a smooth pane of unbroken snow.

  They were leaving cloven footprints on it.

  “Crap,” I spat, and fled back down the narrow, featureless alley.

  Chapter Seven

  A t this sign of retreat, the two men threw back their heads and let out shrill, bleating cries. Their hats fell off when they did, revealing the goatlike features and curling horns of gruffs. But they were bigger than the first attack team-bigger, stronger, and faster.

  And as they closed the distance on me, I noticed something else.

  Both of them had produced submachine guns from beneath their coats.

  “Oh, come on,” I complained as I ran. “That’s just not fair.”

  They started shooting at me, which was bad news. Wizard or not, a bullet through the head will splatter my brains just as randomly as the next guy’s. The really bad news was that they weren’t just spraying bullets everywhere. Even with an automatic weapon, it isn’t easy to hit a moving target, and the old “spray and pray” method of fire relied upon blind luck disguised as the law of averages: Shoot enough bullets and eventually you have to hit something. Do your shooting like that and sometimes you’ll hit the target, and sometimes you won’t.

  But the gruffs shot like professionals. They fired in short, burping little bursts, aimed fire, even if it suffered from the fact that they were moving while they did it.

  I felt something hit my back, just to the left of my spine, an impact that felt somewhat like getting slugged in the back by someone with a single knuckle extended. It was a sharp, unpleasant sensation, and the way my balance wavered was more due to the fact that it surprised and frightened me than to the actual force it imparted. I kept running, ducking my head down as far as I could, hunching up my shoulders. The defensive magics woven into my coat could evidently stop whatever rounds the gruffs were using, but that didn’t mean an unlucky ricochet couldn’t bounce some lead into me from the front or sides, around the coat-and getting shot in the lower legs, ankles, or feet would probably kill me as certainly as one through the head. It would just take a little more effort on the gruffs’ part to make it stick.

  It’s hard to think when someone’s trying to kill you. We human beings aren’t wired to be rational and creative when we know our lives are in danger of a swift and violent end. The body has definite ideas of which survival strategies it prefers to embrace, and those are generally limited to “rip threat to pieces” or “run like hell.” No thinking need be involved, as far as our instincts are concerned.

  Our instincts were a long time in the making, though, and the threats that can come after us now have outpaced them. You can’t outrun a bullet, and you don’t go hand-to-hand with a gunman unless you’re certain you are about to die anyway. Speed and mindless aggression weren’t going to keep me alive. I needed to figure a way out.

  I felt another bullet hit the lower part of my coat. It caught spell-strengthened leather and tugged it forward, just the way a thrown rock might have done. Admittedly, though, the rock wouldn’t have made that angry-hornet buzzing noise as it struck. I dumped a garbage can over behind me, hoping it might trip up the gruffs for a second and buy me a little time.

  Hey, you try coming up with a cogent, rational course of action when you’re running down a frozen alley with genuine fairy-tale creatures chasing you, spitting bullets at your back. It’s way harder than it looks.

  I didn’t
dare turn to face them. I could have raised a shield to stop the gunfire, but once I had stopped moving, I figured odds were fantastic that one of them would just hop over me like a Kung Fu Theater extra, and they’d come at me from two directions at once.

  In fact, if I were them, and had tracked me to that alley…

  The chattering gunfire from behind me ceased, and I realized what was happening.

  I raised my staff as I neared the far end of the alley, pointed it ahead of me, and screamed, “Forzare!”

  My timing wasn’t perfect. The unseen force I released from the end of the staff rushed out ahead of me, an invisible battering ram. It struck the third gruff just as the fae-thug stepped around the corner, a massive oak cudgel readied in his hands. The blast didn’t hit him squarely. It would have thrown him a goodly ways if it had. Instead it caught the right side of his body, ripping the cudgel away from him and sending the gruff into a drunken, spinning stagger.

  I don’t know much about goats, but I do know a little about horses, having taken care of my second mentor Ebenezar McCoy’s riding horses on his little farm in Missouri. Their feet are awfully vulnerable, especially considering how much weight they’re putting on such a relatively small area. Any one of a hundred little things can go wrong. One of them is the possibility that some of the surprisingly frail little bones just above the back of the hoof could be fractured or broken. A pastern or fetlock injury like that can lame a horse for weeks, even permanently.

  So as I passed the staggered gruff, I swung my heavy staff like a baseball bat, aiming at the back of one of his hooves. I felt the impact in my hands and heard a sharp crack. The gruff let out a high-pitched and utterly bestial scream of surprise and pain, and tumbled to the snow. I all but flew on by, lengthening my stride, crossing the street and heading for the nearest corner, before his buddies could get a clear shot at me.

  When you drive game, you’d damn well better be sure that the one you’re driving the prey toward is ready and able to handle it.

  I ducked around the next corner maybe half a second before the guns behind me coughed and burped again, chewing chips of brick from the wall. There was a steel door on the side of the building, an exit-only door with no handle on the outside. I couldn’t stay ahead of the gruffs for long. I took a chance, stopped, and pressed my hand against the door, hoping like hell it had a push-bar opening mechanism and not a dead bolt.

  Something went right. I felt the bar on the other side, reached out with my will and another murmur, “Forzare,” and directed the force against the other side of the door. It popped open. I went through and pulled it shut behind me.

  The building was dark, silent, and almost uncomfortably warm in contrast with the night outside. I leaned my head against the metal door for a second, panting. “Good door,” I wheezed. “Nice door. Nice, locked, hostile-to-faeries door.”

  My ear was in contact with the door, and it was the only reason I heard the movement immediately on its other side. Snow crunched quietly.

  I froze in place.

  I heard a scraping sound, and a snorted breath that sounded like something you’d hear from a horse. Then nothing.

  It took me maybe three seconds to realize that the gruff on the other side of the door was doing the same thing I was: listening to see if he could hear who was on the other side.

  It couldn’t have been more than six inches away.

  And I was standing there in complete darkness. If something went wrong and the gruff came in after me, I could forget running. I couldn’t see the floor, the walls, or any obstacles that might trip me up. Like stairs. Or a mound of rusty razor blades.

  I froze, not daring to move. Metal door or not, if the gruff had the right submachine gun and the right kind of ammunition, he could riddle me with holes right through the steel. There was no telling what other weapons he might be packing, either. I’d once seen a sobering demonstration of how to skewer someone on a sword from the other side of a metal door, and it hadn’t been pretty.

  So I stood very still and tried to think quietly.

  It was about then that I remembered one of those movies with the maniac in the ghost mask, where one of the kids in the opening segment leans against a bathroom stall, listening exactly the same way I was. The killer, in the neighboring stall, rams a knife into the victim’s ear.

  It was a panic-inducing thought, and suddenly I had to fight the urge to bolt. My ear began to itch furiously. If I hadn’t known that the gruffs were trying to flush me out like a rabbit from his briar patch, I might not have managed to keep my cool. It was a near thing, but I did it.

  A week and a half went by before I heard another exhalation from a larger-than-human chest, and a pair of quick, light crunches of cloven hooves on snow.

  I pushed away from the door as silently as I could, trembling with adrenaline, fatigue, and cold. I had to think ahead of these assholes if I wanted to get out in one piece. Inky, Binky, and Pinky knew I’d come in here, and they weren’t about to give up the chase. Right now one of them was watching the door I’d come in to make sure I didn’t backtrack. The other two were circling the building, looking for a way in.

  I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be hanging around when they found it.

  I drew off the pentacle amulet I wore around my neck, murmured, and made a tiny effort of will. The amulet began to glow with gentle blue light.

  I stood in a utility corridor of some kind. Bare concrete floor met unpainted drywall. There were a couple of doors on the right side of the hall, and another one at the far end. I checked them out. The first door opened into a room containing several commercial-grade heating and air-conditioning units, all hooked up to a ductwork octopus. No help there.

  The next room was padlocked shut. I felt a little bad for doing it, but I lifted my staff, took a moment to close my eyes and concentrate, and then sent another pulse of energy down the rune-carved length of wood, this time focused into a blade of pure force. It sliced through the hasp and bit into the heavy wood of the door behind it. The lock fell to the floor, its cleanly severed steel glowing dull orange at the edges.

  The room beyond was probably the workshop of the building’s handyman. It wasn’t large, but it was neatly organized. It held a woodworking bench, tools, and various supplies-lightbulbs, air filters for the units next door, replacement parts for doors, sinks, and toilets. I availed myself of a few things and dropped my last two twenties onto the workbench by way of apology. Then I stalked back out into the hallway and continued into the building.

  The next door was locked, too. I jimmied it open with the crowbar I’d taken from the tool room. It made some noise.

  A deep-throated bawl of animal sound came from the far side of the metal door. Something slammed against it, but not hard enough to bring it down, and the sound was followed by an immediate yowl of pain. I bared my teeth in a grin.

  The far side of the door opened onto the lobby of an office building, very sparse. A light was blinking on a panel with a keypad on it, next to the door I’d just forced open. Apparently I had triggered the building’s security system. That was fine by me. The nearest police station was only a little more than a block from here, and the lights and the appearance of mortal police officers would probably make the gruffs fade and wait for a better moment to settle my hash.

  But wait. If the building had a security system, I had to have tripped it when I came in the side door, and that had been a couple of minutes ago. Why hadn’t the cops shown up already?

  The weather, most likely. Travel would be slow. Lines would be down, causing all kinds of power and communication problems. There would be traffic accidents everywhere there was traffic, and in the wake of all the manpower diverted to Marcone’s wrecked building, the station would be overloaded with work, even this late at night. It might take several minutes longer than usual for the police to respond.

  A shadow moved outside the building’s front door, and one of the gruffs appeared there.

  I didn’
t have minutes.

  I was moving before I had consciously recognized the fact, running for the elevators. The steel security gate inside the door would prevent the gruff from crashing through the glass to come at me, but that didn’t stop the gruff from lifting its submachine gun and opening up on me.

  The gun sounded like heavy canvas ripping, only a thousand times louder. The window shattered and glass flew everywhere. Some of the bullets struck the security gate, throwing off sparks, most of them shattering, a couple bouncing wildly around the lobby. The rest came at me.

  I had my left hand stretched out toward the gruff as I ran, and my will was focused on the bracelet on my wrist. Made of a braid of many metals, the chain of the bracelet was hung with multiple charms in the shape of medieval shields. The power of my will rushed into the bracelet, focused by the enchantments I’d laid upon it when I had prepared it. My will coalesced into a concave dome of barely visible blue energy between me and the gruff, and bullets slammed against it, shattering in bursts of light that rippled over the surface of the energy shield like tiny waves in a still pond.

  All three of the elevator doors stood open, and I rushed into the nearest and rapidly hit the buttons for every floor up to the top of the building. Then I leapt out, repeated the process in the second elevator, and then jumped into the third and headed straight for the top. No sense in making it easy for the gruffs to follow me up, and even a moment’s delay might buy me the time I needed.

  The elevator doors closed-then buzzed and sprang open again.

  “Oh, come on!” I shouted, and hit the close-door button hard enough to hurt my thumb.

  I growled and watched as the elevator twitched closed again, and then once more sprang open, a sad little ding emerging from a half-functioning bell. I was jabbing the button like a lunatic when the gruffs demonstrated their opinion of mortal security systems.

  Sure, the touch of metal was anathema to the beings of Faerie. Sure, they couldn’t hammer their way through a metal door or bash through a heavy metal gate.