by Jim Butcher
She hadn't. Now I was sure of it.
If Helen hadn't led the Ordo on a merry chase around town, drawing them out into vulnerability for the Skavis hunting them, someone else had.
Priscilla.
She'd been the one receiving all the calls, reporting all the "conversations" with Helen. That meant that she'd been working with the killer, drawing out Anna and the others on his behalf, isolating one of the women from the safety of the group so that he could take them alone.
And then I jerked my head up, my eyes wide.
Fact ten: In the middle of a Chicago summer, Priscilla, none too pretty a woman, had been wearing nothing but turtlenecks.
Priscilla hadn't been working with the Skavis.
Priscilla was the Skavis.
And I had left her holed up in safety with Olivia and Abby and all those women and children.
Predators. The White Court were predators. The Skavis had to know that I was closing in, and that it would not be long before I either caught up to Helen and got the real story or else figured it out on my own. Fight-or-flight instincts must have come down on the former.
I'd been sent after Helen on purpose. The Skavis had meant to send me haring off after her, leaving him alone with all those targets.
No. I hadn't left him alone with the women he'd been tracking. They were no threat to him. The Skavis had decided to fight. He had isolated a target, all right, just as he had while hunting helpless women—one who would present a deadly danger to him, should she ever learn his true identity. One who would be distinctly vulnerable, provided he could approach her while camouflaged.
"Oh, God," I heard myself say. "Elaine."
Chapter Thirty
Murphy came out of the building about ten seconds after I did. "Thomas answered his phone, said he was on the way. He sounded kind of out of it, though. I called both rooms, but the call went straight to the hotel's voice mail," she reported, slipping her cell phone away as she approached me.
"Does it do that by itself?"
"No. You have to call the desk and ask for it."
"Dammit," I said, and tossed her my keys. "The Skavis thought of that already. Drive."
Murphy blinked at me, but turned to the Beetle at once. "Why?"
"I'm going to try to reach Elaine my way," I said. I hurried around my car to the passenger seat and jerked open the door. "Get us there as fast as you can."
"Magic on the road? Won't that kill the car?"
"This car? Probably not," I said. "I hope not." I threw my staff in the backseat.
"Ow!" shrieked a voice.
Murphy's gun came out every bit as fast as I raised my blasting rod, its tip glowing with a scarlet incandescence.
"Don't shoot, don't shoot!" squeaked the voice, considerably more panicked. There was a flickering, and then Molly appeared in my backseat, legs curled up against her chest, her eyes wide, her face very pale.
"Molly!" I shouted. "Dammit, what do you think you're doing?"
"I came to help. I was good enough to track down your car, wasn't I?"
"I told you to stay home!"
"Because of the stupid bracelet?" she demanded. "That has got to be the lamest scam ever. Yoda never gave anybody a bracelet that—"
I whirled in pure frustration and snarled, "Fuego!"
My raw anxiety and rage lashed from the tip of my blasting rod in a lance of blinding scarlet fire. It blasted into a metal trash can in front of Marcone's building and… well, it would be bragging to say that it vaporized the trash can. Even I would have trouble with that. It did, however, slag the thing into a shower of molten metal as it gouged a two-foot-deep, coffin-length furrow in the concrete of the sidewalk behind it. Chunks of heated concrete and globs of molten metal hit the building's exterior, cracking several thick panes of glass, pocking stone walls, and leaving several wooden planters on fire. The concussion rattled every window within a hundred yards, and shattered the casing of the nearest streetlight, so that it cast out fractured illumination. Half a dozen car alarms went off.
I turned back to Molly and found her staring at me with her mouth open until my shadow, cast by the rising fires and crippled streetlight, fell across her. My voice came out in a growl. "I. Am not. Yoda."
I stripped the glove off my left hand and held it up, my fingers spread. It didn't look as horrific as it used to, but it was plenty ugly enough to make an impression on a nineteen-year-old girl. "This isn't a goddamn movie, Molly. Screw up here and you don't vanish and leave an empty cloak. You don't get frozen in carbonite. And you should damned well know that by now."
She looked shocked. I'll curse from time to time, but I don't generally indulge in blasphemy—at least, not around Michael or his family. I don't think God is terribly threatened by my occasional slip of the tongue, but I owe enough to Michael to respect his wishes regarding that particular shade of profanity. Mostly.
Hell, the whole practice of invective was developed to add extra emphasis when the mere meaning of words alone just wasn't enough. And I was feeling plenty emphatic.
Snarling, I cupped my left hand, focused my ongoing anger, and a sudden sphere of light and heat blossomed to life. It wasn't big—about the diameter of a dime. But it was as bright as a tiny sun.
"Harry," Murphy said. Her voice was a little shaky. "We don't have time for this."
"You think you're ready?" I told Molly. "Show me."
I blew on the sphere and it wafted out of my hand and glided smoothly into the open door of the Beetle and toward Molly's face.
"Wh-what?" she said.
"Stop it," I said, my voice cold. "If you can."
She swallowed and raised a hand. I saw her try to control her breathing and focus her will, her lips blurring over the steps I'd taught her.
The sphere drifted closer.
"Better hurry," I added. I did nothing to hide the anger or the taint of derision in my voice.
Beads of sweat broke out on her skin. The sphere slowed, but it had not stopped.
"It's about twelve hundred degrees," I added. "It'll melt sand into glass. It doesn't do much for skin, either."
Molly lifted her left hand and stammered out a word, but her will fluttered and failed, amounting to nothing more than a handful of sparks.
"Bad guys don't give you this much time," I spat.
Molly hissed—give the kid credit, she didn't let herself scream—and pressed herself as far as she could from the fire. She threw up an arm to shield her eyes.
For a second, I felt a mad impulse to let the fire continue for just a second more. Nothing teaches like a burned hand, whispered a darker part of my self. I should know.
But I closed my fingers, willed the ending of the spell, and the sphere vanished.
Murphy, standing across the car, just stared at me.
Molly lowered her hand, her arm moving in frightened little jerks. She sat there shivering and staring. Her tongue piercing rattled against her teeth.
I looked at both of them and then shook my head. I got control of my rampaging temper. Then I leaned down and stuck my head in the car, looking Molly in the eyes.
"We play for keeps, kid," I said quietly. "I've told you before: Magic isn't a solution to every problem. You still aren't listening."
Molly's eyes, frightened and angry, filled with tears. She turned her head away from me and said nothing. She tried not to make any noise, but it's tough to keep a good poker face when a snarling madman nearly burns it off. There wasn't any time to waste—but I gave the kid a few seconds of space while I tried to let my head cool off.
The door to Marcone's building opened. Hendricks came out.
Marcone followed him a moment later. He surveyed the damage. Then he glanced at me. Marcone shook his head, took a cell phone from his suit pocket, and went back inside, while Hendricks kept me pinned down with his beady-eyed scowl.
What I'd seen soulgazing Helen Beckitt was still glaringly fresh in my mind—just as it always would be. Marcone had looked a lot youn
ger when he wore his hair longer, less neat, and dressed more casually. Or maybe he'd just looked younger before he'd seen Helen's daughter die.
The thought went utterly against the pressure of the rage inside me, and I grabbed hold of myself while I had the chance. I took a deep breath. I wouldn't do anyone any good if I charged in full of outrage and absent of brains. I took another deep breath and turned to find Murphy on the move.
She walked around the car and faced me squarely.
"All done?" Murphy asked me, her voice pitched low. "You want to smoke a turkey or set fire to a playground or anything? You could terrorize a troop of Cub Scouts as an encore."
"And after that, I could tell you all about how to do your job, maybe," I said, "right after we bury the people who get killed because we're standing here instead of moving."
She narrowed her eyes. Neither one of us met each other's gaze or moved an inch. It wasn't a long standoff, but it was plenty hard.
"Not now," she said. "But later. We'll talk. This isn't finished."
I nodded. "Later."
We got in the Beetle and Murphy started it up and got moving. "Ask you questions as we go?"
I calculated distances in my head. The communion spell with Elaine had been created to reach over a couple of yards at the most. It had mostly been used at, ahem, considerably shorter range than that. I could extend the range, I thought, to most of a mile—maybe. It wasn't as simple as just pouring more power into the spell, but it was fairly simple. That gave me a couple of minutes to steady my breathing while Murphy drove. I could talk while that happened. It would, in fact, help me keep my mind off my fear for Elaine. Ah, reason, banisher of fear—or at least provider of a place to stick my head in the sand.
"Go ahead," I told her. I paid no attention to Molly, giving the kid time to think over the lesson and to get herself together. She didn't like anyone to see her when she was upset.
"Why do you think your ex is in danger?" Murphy asked. "Shouldn't this Skavis just run off if it knows you're onto it?"
"If it was operating alone, sure," I said. "That would be the smart thing. But it isn't running off. It's making a fight of it."
"So… what? It has help?"
"It has rivals," I said.
"Yeah. Grey Cloak and Madrigal Raith." Murphy shook her head. "But what does that mean?"
"Think in terms of predators," I said. "One predator has just gotten its teeth into something good to eat."
"Scavengers?" Murphy said. "They're trying to take the prize from him?"
"Yeah," I said. "I think that's what they're doing."
"You mean Elaine?" Murphy said.
I shook my head. "No, no. More abstract. The Skavis is methodical. It's killing women of magical talent. It doesn't have to do that to live—it can eat any human being."
"Then why those targets?" Murphy asked.
"Exactly," I said. "Why them? This isn't about food, Murph. I think the Skavis is making a play for power."
"Power?" Molly blurted from the backseat.
I turned and gave her a glare that quelled her interest. She sank back into the seat. "Within the White Court," I said. "This entire mess, start to finish, is about a power struggle within the White Court."
Murph was silent for a second, absorbing that. "Then… then this is a lot bigger than a few killings in a few towns."
"If I'm right," I said, nodding. "Yeah."
"Go on."
"Okay. And remember as I go that White Court vamps don't like their fights out in the open. They arrange things. They use cat's-paws. They pull strings. Confrontation is for losers."
"Got it."
I nodded. "The White King is supporting peace talks between the Council and the Red Courts. I think the Skavis is trying to prove a point—that they don't need peace talks. That they have us in a choke hold and all they have to do is hang on."
Murphy frowned at me, and then her eyes widened. "You told me once that magic is inherited. Mostly along family lines."
"Salic law," I said. "Mostly through female lines. I got it from my mom."
Murphy nodded, her eyes going back to the road. "And they can start… what? Thinning the herd, I suppose, from their point of view. Killing those that have the potential to produce more wizards."
"Yeah," I said. "One Skavis goes around to half a dozen cities in the most dangerous—to them—nation on the planet, doing it at will," I said. "He proves how easy it is. He identifies and hunts down the best targets. He plants all kinds of distrust for the Council as he does it, making the potential prey distrust the only people who could help them."
"But what does he hope to accomplish?" Murphy said. "This is just one guy."
"Exactly what he wants them to say," I said. "Look what just one vampire accomplished working alone. Look how easy it was. Raith is weak. Time to expand the operation now, while the Council is hurt, and screw talking peace with them. Change the guard. Let House Skavis take leadership."
"And Grey Cloak and Madrigal, seeing that he's onto something good, try to swoop in at the last minute, shoulder the Skavis aside, and take credit for the plan in front of the whole Court," Murphy finished.
"Yeah. They sing the exact same tune, only they substitute Malvora for Skavis." I shook my head. "The hell of it is, if Madrigal hadn't had a personal beef with me I might not have gotten involved. I made him look really bad when he tried to auction me on eBay and instead I fed his djinn to the Scarecrow and made him run off like a girl."
"Like a what?" Murphy bridled.
"Now is not the time to go all Susie Q. Anthony on me," I said. "Madrigal's wounded pride makes him leave clues to try to sucker me into the show. He figures Grey Cloak or our Skavis killer will help him handle me. Except that they ran into another problem."
"Thomas," Murphy said, her voice certain.
"Thomas," I said. "Snatching their targets out from under them."
"How's he finding them?"
"Same way they are," I said. "He's a vampire. He knows what resources they have and how they think. So much so, in fact, that he's ruining the finale of the whole program for everyone involved."
Murphy nodded, getting it. "So Madrigal gets a gang of ghouls and tries to take out his own cousin. And finds you and Elaine there too."
"Right," I said. "He's already being a loser, but it's still a sucker punch, and Madrigal figures, What the hell. If he gets away with it, he pulls off the plan and gets his mojo back from me."
"I still don't get why Thomas didn't say anything," Murphy said. "To you, I mean. I never figured him for that kind of secrecy."
"That's what tipped me off to the whole thing," I said. "There just aren't many things which could make Thomas do that. I think he was counting on it to tip me off, in fact."
Murphy shook her head. "A phone call would have been easier."
"Not if he's being watched," I said. "And not if he's made a promise."
"Watched?" Murphy said. "By who?"
"Someone who has more than one kind of leverage," I said. "Someone who is his family, who is protecting the woman he loves, and who has the kind of resources it takes to watch him, and enough savvy to know if he's lying."
"Lara Raith," Murphy said.
"Big sister is the one behind the peace movement," I said. "Everyone thinks it's Papa Raith, but he's just her puppet now. Except that there aren't many people who know that."
"If Raith's authority is challenged openly by the Skavis," Murphy said, putting things together, "it exposes the fact that he's utterly powerless. Lara would have to fight openly."
"And the White Court vamp who is driven to that has already lost," I said. "She can't maintain her control over the Court if she's revealed as the power behind the throne. Not only does she not have the raw strength she'd need to hold on to it, but the very fact that she was revealed would make her an incompetent manipulator and therefore automatically unsuitable in the eyes of the rest of the White Court."
Murphy chewed on her lip. "If Papa Rait
h falls, Lara falls. And if Lara falls…"
"Justine goes with her," I said, nodding. "She wouldn't be able to protect her for Thomas anymore."
"Then why didn't she just have Thomas go to you and ask for help? " Murphy said.
"She can't have it get out that she asked for help from the enemy team, Murph. Even among her own supporters, that could be a disaster. But remember that she knows how to pull strings. Maybe better than anyone operating right now. She wouldn't be upset if I got involved and stomped all over agents of Skavis and Malvora."
Murphy snorted. "So she forbids Thomas from speaking to you about it."
"She's too smart for that. Thomas gets stubborn about being given orders. She gets him to promise to keep quiet. But by doing that, she's also done the one thing she knows will make him defiant to the spirit of the promise. So he's made a promise and he can't come out and talk to me, but he wants to get my attention."
"Ha," Murphy said. "So he gets around it. He works sloppy, deliberately. He lets himself be seen repeatedly taking off with the women he was rounding up."
"And leaves a big old honking wall o' clues in his apartment for me, knowing that when I get involved, I'm going to get curious about why he's been seen with missing women and why he's not talking to me. He can't talk to me about it, but he leaves me a map." I found my right foot tapping against an imaginary accelerator, my left against a nonexistent clutch.
"Stop twitching," Murphy said. The Beetle jolted over some railroad tracks, officially taking us to the wrong side. "I'm a better driver than you, anyway."
I scowled because it was true.
"So right now," Murphy said, "you think Priscilla is shilling for the Skavis agent."
"No. She is the Skavis agent."
"I thought you said it was a man," Murphy said.
"Strike you funny that Priscilla wears turtlenecks in the middle of a hot summer?"
Murphy let out a word that should not be spoken before small children. "So if you're right, he's going to clip Elaine and all those moms."
"Kids too," I said. "And anyone who gets in the way."
"Mouse," Molly said, her voice worried.
This time I didn't yell her down. I was worried about him, too. "The Skavis knows that Mouse is special. He saw the demonstration. That's been the only thing keeping him from acting sooner than he did. If the vampire started drawing upon his powers, Mouse would have sensed it and blown his cover. So Mouse is definitely going to be near the top of his list."
