by Jim Butcher
Murphy didn’t fight back.
I clenched my hands into impotent fists. Murphy was in very real danger of dying that night, even if she kept on breathing and her heart kept on beating. But she would have to be the one to save herself.
The best thing I could do was nothing. The best thing I could say was nothing. I had some power, but it couldn’t help Murphy now.
Hell’s bells, irony blows.
Chapter Forty
I’d been in a few caves that were the headquarters for dark magic and those who trafficked in it. None of them had been warm. None of them had been pleasant. And none of them had been professionally decorated.
Until now.
After a long, precipitous slope into the earth, the Raith Deeps opened up into a cavern bigger than most Paris cathedrals. To a degree, it resembled one. Lights played in soft colors on the walls, mostly shifting rosy hues. The cave was of living rock, and the walls had all been shaped by water into nearly organic-looking curves and swirls. The floor sloped very slightly up, to where a shift in the rock gave rise to an enormous carved chair of pure, bone-white stone. The chair had been decorated with flares and flanges and every kind of carved frivolity you could imagine, so that it sat at the center of all the carving like a peacock poised in front of its tail. Water fell in a fine mist from overhead, and more lights played through it, broken by the droplets into myriad spectra. To the right hand of the throne was a smaller carved seat—almost a stool really, like the ones you’d imagine lions or seals perching on during circus performances. To the left was a jagged, broken gap in the rock, and behind the throne, where more of the mist fell, was simply darkness.
Though the stone was smooth, it undulated in regular, ripple-shaped rises toward the throne from where we entered the Deeps. Here and there along the rippled floor were groups of pillows and cushions, thick woven carpets, low, narrow tables set with wine and the kinds of finger foods that tended to get smeared about fairly easily.
“Well, it’s subtle,” I said to no one in particular. “But I like it. Sort of The King and I meets Harem Honeys and Seraglio Sluts II.”
Raith strode past me and threw Murphy at a pile of pillows and cushions along one wall, the one farthest away from the entrance. She knew how to take a fall, and though the motion had been vicious and torn out some of her hair, she landed well, coming up to a shaky crouch. Bodyguard Barbie dragged my manacles and me over to the wall nearby and padlocked me to a steel ring in the wall. There was a whole row of such rings there. I tried to wiggle a little, testing the strength of the steel ring, but whoever built it knew what he was doing. No wiggle, no flexion of the ring where it joined the wall.
“Time?” Raith asked.
“Eleven-thirty-nine, my lord,” the bodyguard reported.
“Ah, good. Still time.” He walked over to a group of pillows in the far corner of the room, and I realized that they had been strewn around a little raised platform of stone. The platform was a circle perhaps ten feet across, and inside of it was a thaumaturgic triangle, an equilateral shape within the ring of the circle used in most ritual magic because it was easier for amateurs to draw a freaking triangle than a pentacle or a Star of Solomon. Thick incense wafted up from braziers around the circle, giving the cold air the sharp scent of cinnamon and some other, more acrid spice. “Wizard, I believe you have met my assistants.”
Two women rose from the shadows within the circle and faced me. The first was Madge, Arturo’s first wife, the disciplined businesswoman. She wore a white robe trimmed with scarlet cloth, and her hair was down. It made her look both younger and simultaneously lent her an overripe look, like fruit a day swollen and spoiled. Her eyes were no less calculating, but there was an edge of something there that I recognized—cruelty. The love of power, to the exclusion of the well-being of one’s fellow beings.
The second woman, of course, was Trixie Vixen. She looked awful and she didn’t get up. I could see the thick bandages over her wounded leg as she sat quietly on one hip, the silk of her own crimson-trimmed white robe spread out in such a way that it normally would have revealed enticing curves of calf and thigh. Her eyes had the heavy, flickering look of someone on far too many drugs, and used to it.
Thomas was chained to the floor in the center of the thaumaturgic triangle. He was naked, gagged, and his pale skin was covered with bruises and the stripes of being beaten with a slender cane. There was a low ridge of rock under his spine that arched his back off the floor, pinning his shoulders back and exposing his chest in such a fashion that he would be unable to move, even if someone should be leaning over him in order to cut out his heart.
“You’re missing one,” I said. “Where’s wifey number two?”
“Dear Lucille.” Raith sighed. “She was far too eager to please, and melodramatic about it to boot. I did not authorize her little attempt to poison you via blow dart, wizard, though I suppose I would not have been upset with her had she succeeded. But she was guiding the spell last night and had the incredibly bad taste to attempt to murder my daughter.” Raith sighed. “I very nearly felt obligated to you for saving her, Dresden. Lucille assured me that she had only the best of intentions and wanted to do all that she could to continue helping me.”
“So you sacrificed her for the curse this morning,” I spat.
“No, he didn’t,” Madge said in a quiet, rather chillingly conversational tone. “I did. The little bitch. I’d been dreaming about something like that for years. They’re wrong about revenge, you know. All the movies. I found it quite fulfilling and rewarding, from an emotional standpoint.”
“I helped,” Trixie protested. “I helped kill her.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You were right there holding a gun on me when Lucille died, you . . . you self-deluded, half-witted schlong-jockey.”
Trixie shrieked, lurched up, and started to throw herself at me. Madge and Raith caught her arms and let her thrash for a moment, until she was panting and drooping. They eased her back down. “Be still,” Raith said. “That’s quite enough from you.”
Trixie hit him with a sullen scowl. “You don’t tell me wh—”
Madge slapped her. Hard. One of her rings left a long line of fine red droplets on Trixie’s cheek. “Idiot,” she spat at Trixie. “If you’d told the police his name instead of forgetting it for your pills and needles, the wizard would be in a cell right now.”
“What the fuck does it matter?” Trixie snarled, not looking up. “He’s had it now. It didn’t make any difference.”
Madge tilted her head back and lifted her right hand, palm out and fingers spread, and said, “Orbius.”
There was a surge of power that grated against my wizard’s senses, and something wet and stinking that looked like a fusion of a fresh cow patty and a dew speckled cobweb came into being, slapping across Trixie’s face. She fell back, clawing at it with her painted fingernails and screaming. Whatever the stuff was, it stuck like superglue, and it rendered her screams all but inaudible.
I shot a hard glance at Madge. She had power. Not necessarily a lot of it, but she had it. No wonder she’d made sure her hands were full when she first met me. The touch of one practitioner’s hand against another’s was electric and unmistakable. She’d dodged me neatly, which meant . . .
“You knew I was getting involved,” I said.
“Of course,” Raith confirmed. He added a pinch of something to one of the braziers and picked up a carved box. He drew black candles from it and placed them at each tip of the triangle. “Drawing you into a position of vulnerability was one of the points of the entire exercise. It was time to have flights of angels sing my dear son to his rest, and you and he had become entirely too friendly. I had assumed he was feeding from you and had you under his influence, but after I listened to the security tape from the portrait gallery I was delighted. Both of Margaret’s sons. I finally will escape her ridiculous little binding, remove a troublesome thorn in my side—”
He kicked Thomas viciously i
n the ribs. Thomas jerked but made no sound, his eyes burning with impotent fury. Trixie Vixen fell over onto her side, back going into desperate arches.
“—slay the wizard that has a full quarter of the Red Court quaking in their fleshmasks, restore a rebellious employee to acceptable controls, and now, in addition to all of that, I have acquired someone with influence among the local authorities.” His eyes lingered on the subdued Murphy for a moment, growing shades more pale.
Murphy didn’t look up at him.
“Take off your shoes, little one,” Raith said.
“What?” Murphy whispered.
“Take them off. Now.”
She flinched at the harshness of his tone. She took her shoes off.
“Throw them over the edge. Socks too.”
Murphy obeyed Raith without lifting her eyes.
The incubus made a pleased sound. “Good, little one. You please me.” He walked in a circle around her as if she were a car he’d just purchased. “All in all, Dresden, a marked gain for the year. It bodes well for the future of House Raith, don’t you think?”
Trixie Vixen’s heels thumped on the floor.
Raith looked down at her and then at Madge. “Can you manage the ritual alone, dear?”
“Of course, my lord,” Madge said calmly. She struck a match and lit one of the candles.
“Well, then,” Raith said. He regarded Trixie with clinical detachment until her heels had stopped drumming on the stone floor. Then he seized her hair and dragged her to the left side of the enormous throne. She still moved weakly. He lifted her by the back of the neck and pitched her out into the darkness like a bag of garbage.
Trixie Vixen couldn’t scream as she fell to her death. But she tried.
I couldn’t stop myself from feeling protest and pain as I saw another human being killed. Even though I tried.
Raith dusted his hands against each another. “Where was I?”
“Taunting the wizard with how he has been manipulated from the beginning,” Madge said. “But I would suggest that you let me begin the conjuring at this point. The timing should be just about right.”
“Do it,” Raith said. He walked around the circle, examining it carefully, and then walked over to me.
Madge picked up a curved ritual knife and a silver bowl and stepped into the circle. She pricked her finger with the knife and smeared blood upon the circle, closing it behind her. Then she knelt at Thomas’s head, lifted her face with her eyes closed, and began a slow chant in a tongue whose words twisted and writhed through her lips.
Raith watched her for a long moment, and then his head abruptly snapped up toward the exit of the cave.
Bodyguard Barbie came to attention like a dog who has noticed its master taking a package of bacon out of the fridge.
“Sirens,” Raith said, his voice harsh.
“Police?” asked Barbie.
“Ambulance. What happened? Who called them?”
Barbie shook her head. Maybe the questions were too complex for her to handle.
“Gee, Raith,” I said. “I wonder why the EMTs have shown up. I wonder if the police are coming along, too. Don’t you wonder that?”
The lord of the White Court glared at me, then turned to walk toward the ridiculously elaborate throne. “I suppose it doesn’t matter one way or the other.”
“Probably not,” I agreed. “Unless Inari is involved.”
He stopped, frozen in his tracks.
“But what are the chances?” I asked. “I mean, I’m sure the odds are way against her being hurt. Riding a long way in the back of the ambulance with some young med tech. I’m sure daddy’s little girl is not going to vamp out for the very first time on an EMT or a doctor or a nurse or a cop, kill them in front of God and everybody, and start off her adult life with a trip to prison, where I’m sure lots of other unfortunate deaths would put her away for good.”
Raith didn’t turn. “What have you done to my child?”
“Did something happen to your child?” I asked. I probably said that in as insulting a fashion as I possibly could. “I hope everything is all right. But how will we know? You should just get on with the cursing, I guess.”
Raith turned to Madge and said, “Continue. I’ll be back in a moment.” Then to the bodyguard he said, “Keep your gun aimed at Dresden. Shoot him if he tries to escape.” The bodyguard drew her weapon. Raith turned and darted from the room, faster than humanly possible.
Madge continued her twisty chant.
“Heya, Thomas,” I said.
“Mmmph,” he said through the gag.
“I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Thomas lifted his head from the ground and blinked at me.
“Don’t space out on me, man. Stay with us here.”
He stared at me for a second more and then groaned and dropped his head back onto the ground. I wasn’t sure if that was an affirmative or not.
“Murph?” I called.
She looked up at me, then down again.
“Murph, don’t fall apart on me. He’s the bad guy and he’s way sexy while he does it. That’s his bag. He’s supposed to be able to get to you.”
“I couldn’t stop him,” she said in a numb voice.
“That’s okay.”
“I couldn’t stop myself either.” She met my eyes for a second and then slumped to the floor. “Leave me alone, Mister Dresden.”
“Right,” I muttered. I focused on the bodyguard. “Hey there. Look, uh. I don’t know your name. . . .”
She just stared at me down the length of her gun.
“Yeah, okay, that’s hostile,” I said. “But look, you’re a person. You’re human. I’m human. We should be working together here against the vampires, right?”
Nothing. I get more conversation from Mister.
“Hey!” I shouted. “You! You demented U.S. Army surplus blow-up doll! I’m talking to you. So say something!”
She didn’t, but her eyes glittered with annoyance, the first emotion I’d seen there. What can I say, inspiring anger is my gift. I have a responsibility to use it wisely.
“Excuse me!” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Did you hear me, bitch? At this rate I’m gonna have to blow you up too, just like I did the Bodyguard Kens and your twin.”
Now real fury filled her eyes. She cocked her gun and opened her mouth as if she were going to actually speak to me, but I never got to hear what she was going to say.
Murphy made a soundless, barefooted run, leapt, and drove a flying side kick into the back of Bodyguard Barbie’s neck. Whiplash was far too mild a word to describe what happened to the woman’s head. Whiplash happens in friendly, healthy things like automobile accidents. Murphy meant the kick to be lethal, and that made it worse than just about any car wreck.
There was a crackling sound and Barbie dropped to the floor. The gun never went off.
Murphy knelt and searched the woman, taking her gun, a couple of extra clips, a knife, and a set of keys. She stood up and started trying keys on my manacles.
I looked up and watched Madge as she did. The sorceress remained on her knees in the circle, her chant flowing smoothly from her mouth in an unbroken stream. The ritual required it. Had she broken her chant, shouted a warning to the bodyguard, or moved outside the circle it would have disrupted the ritual—and that kind of thing can draw some awfully lethal feedback for showing disrespect to whatever power is behind the ritual. She was at least as trapped as I was.
“Took you long enough,” I said to Murphy. “I was going to run out of actual sentences and just start screaming incoherently.”
“That’s what happens when your vocabulary count is lower than your bowling average.”
“Me not like woman with smart mouth,” I said. “Woman shut smart mouth and get me free or no wild monkey love for you.” She found the right key and got the shackles off me. My wrists and ankles ached. “You had me scared,” I said. “Until you called me Mister Dresden, I almost believed he’d gotten t
o you.”
Murphy bit her lip. “Between you and me, I’m not sure he didn’t.” She shivered. “I wasn’t doing much acting, Harry. You made a good call. He underestimated me. But it was too close. Let’s leave.”
“Steady. Just a little longer.”
Murphy frowned, but she didn’t run. “You want me to keep Madge covered? What if she does that magic-superglop thing on our faces too?”
I shook my head. “She can’t. Not until the ritual is complete.”
“Why not?”
“Because if she makes a mistake in the ritual there’s going to be some backlash. Maybe it wouldn’t touch us, or maybe it would—but it sure as hell would kill everyone in the circle.”
“Thomas,” Murphy breathed.
“Yeah.”
“Can we mess up the rite?”
“Could. But to quote Kincaid, thus kablowie, thus death. If we interrupt the ritual or if she screws it up, things go south.”
“But if we don’t stop her, she kills Thomas.”
“Well. Yeah.”
“Then what do we do?” Murphy asked.
“We jump Raith,” I said, and nodded back to the wall where she had crouched. “Get back to where he threw you. When he comes in again, we take him down and trade him for Thomas.”
“Won’t breaking the circle screw up the ritual?” Murphy asked.
“Not the outer circle,” I said. “The circle is mostly there to help her have the juice for the ritual. Madge’s got some talent. And a survival instinct. She can hold it together if we break it.”
Murphy’s eyes widened. “But breaking the triangle. That will screw up the ritual.”
I regarded Madge steadily and said, loud enough to be sure she heard, “Yep. And kill her. But we aren’t going to break the triangle yet.”
“Why not?” Murphy demanded.
“Because we’re going to offer Madge a chance to survive the evening. By letting her kill Raith in Thomas’s place and let the curse go to waste. So long as someone dies on schedule, whatever is behind the ritual shouldn’t mind.” I walked over to stand directly outside the circle. “Otherwise, all I have to do is kick one of these candles over or smudge the lines of the triangle then back up to watch her die. And I think Madge is a survivor. She walks, Thomas is fine, and Raith isn’t giving anyone any more trouble.”
