Blood Rites df-6

by Jim Butcher

  "Clever," she said again. "Not only is my father drained of his reserves, he is unable to recover more." She lowered her eyelids, her eyes glittering like silver ice as she did. "Quite helpless, really."

  "And now you know it," I said.

  I gave Raith a very small smile.

  Raith's expression twisted into something somewhere between rage and horror. He took a step back from Lara, looking from her to me and back.

  Lara traced her fingers in light caresses over the sword at her hip. "You've made me the cat's-paw for you, Dresden. While making me think I had the advantage of you. You've played me at my own game, and ably. I thought you capable of nothing but overt action. Clearly I underestimated you."

  "Don't feel bad," I said. "I mean, I look so stupid."

  Lara smiled. "I have one question more," she said. "How did you know the curse left him unable to feed?"

  "I didn't," I said. "Not for certain. I just thought of the worst thing I could possibly do to him. And it wasn't killing. It was stealing. It was taking all of his power away. Leaving him to face all the enemies he'd made-with nothing. And I figured my mother might have had similar thoughts."

  Raith sneered at Lara. "You can't kill me," he said. "You know that the other Lords would never permit you to lead the Court. They follow me, little Lara. Not the office of the Lord of House Raith."

  "That's true, Father," Lara said. "But they don't know that you have been weakened, do they? That you have been made impotent. Nor will they know, when you continue to lead them as if nothing had changed."

  He lifted his chin in an arrogant sneer. "And why should I do that?"

  Silver light from Lara's eyes spread over her. It flowed down the length of her hair. It poured over her skin, flickered over her clothing, and dazzled the very air around her. She let her sword belt fall to the ground, and silver, hungry eyes fell upon Lord Raith.

  What she was doing was directed solely at him, but I was on the fringes of it. And I suddenly had pants five sizes too small. I felt the sudden, simple, delicious urge to go to her. Possibly on my knees. Possibly to stay that way.

  I panicked and took a step back, making an effort to shield my thoughts from Lara's seductive power, and it let me think almost clearly again.

  "Wizard," she said, "I suggest you take your friend from this place. And my brother, if he managed to survive the injury." Her skirt joined the belt, and I made damned sure I wasn't looking. "Father and I," Lara purred, "are going to renegotiate the terms of our relationship. It promises to be interesting. And you might not be able to tear yourselves away, once I begin."

  Raith took a step back from Lara, his eyes racked with fear. And with need. He'd totally forgotten me.

  I moved, and quickly. I was going to pick Murphy up, but I managed to get her moving again on her own, though she was still only half-conscious. The right side of her face was already purple with bruising. That gave me the chance to pick Thomas up. He wasn't as tall as me, but he had more muscle and was no featherweight. I huffed and puffed and got him into a fireman's carry, and heard him take a grating, rattling breath as I did.

  My brother wasn't dead.

  At least, not yet.

  I remember three more things from that night in the Deeps.

  First was Madge's body. As I turned to leave, it suddenly sat up. Spines protruded from its skin, along with rivulets of slow, dead blood. Its face was ravaged shapeless, but it formed up into the features of the demon called He Who Walks Behind, and its mouth spoke in a honey-smooth, honey-sweet, inhuman voice. "I am returned, mortal man," the demon said through Madge's dead lips. "And I remember thee. Thou and I, we have unfinished business between us."

  Then there was a bubbling hiss, and the corpse deflated like an empty balloon.

  The second thing I remember happened as I staggered toward the exit with Thomas and Murphy. Lara slid the white shirt from her shoulders to the floor and faced Raith, lovely as the daughter of Death himself, a literal irresistible force. Timeless. Pale. Implacable. I caught the faintest scent of her hair, the smell of wild jasmine, and nearly fell to my knees on the spot. I had to force myself to keep moving, to get Thomas and Murph out of the cave. I don't think any of us would have come out of it with our own minds if I hadn't.

  The last thing I remember was dropping to the ground on the grass outside the cave, holding Thomas. I could see his face in the starlight. There were tears in his eyes. He took a breath, but it was a broken one. His head and his neck hung at an impossible angle to his shoulders.

  "God," I whispered. "He should be dead already."

  His mouth moved in a little fluttering quiver. I don't know how I did it, but I understood that he'd tried to say, "Better this way."

  "Like hell it is," I said back. I felt incredibly tired.

  "Hurt you," he almost-whispered. "Maybe kill you. Like Justine. Brother. Don't want that."

  I blinked down at him.

  He didn't know.

  "Thomas," I said. "Justine is alive. She told us where you were tonight. She's still alive, you suicidal dolt."

  His eyes widened, and the pale radiance flooded through his skin in a startled wave. A moment later he drew in a ragged breath and coughed, thrashing weakly. He looked sunken-eyed and terrible. "Wh-what? She's what?"

  "Easy, easy, you're going to throw up or something," I said, holding him steady. "She's alive. Not… not good, really, but she's not dead. Not gone. You didn't kill her."

  Thomas blinked several times, and then seemed to lose consciousness. He lay there, breathing quietly, and his cheeks were tracked with the trails of luminous silver tears.

  My brother would be okay.

  But then a thought occurred to me, and I said, "Well, crap."

  "What?" asked Murphy, blearily. She blinked her eyes at me.

  I peered owlishly up at the night sky and wondered, "When is it going to be Tuesday in Switzerland?"

  Chapter Forty-two

  I woke up the next morning. More specifically, I woke up the next morning when the last stone on Ebenezar's painkilling bracelet crumbled into black dust, and my hand began reporting that it was currently dipped in molten lead.

  Which, as days go, was not one of my better starts. Then again, it wasn't the worst one, either.

  Normally I'd give you some story about how manly I was to immediately attain a state of wizardly detachment and ignore the pain. But the truth was that the only reason I didn't wake up screaming was that I was too out of breath to do it. I clenched my hand, still in dirty wrappings, to my chest and tried to remember how to walk to the freezer. Or to the nearest chopping block, one of the two.

  "Whoa, whoa," said a voice, and Thomas appeared, leaning over me. He looked rumpled and stylish, the bastard. "Sorry, Harry," he said. "It took me a while to get something for the pain. Thought I'd have gotten back hours ago." He pressed my shoulders to the bed and said, "Stay there. Think of… uh, pentangles or something, right? I'll get some water."

  He reappeared a minute later with a glass of water and a couple of blue pills. "Here, take them and give them about ten minutes. You won't feel a thing."

  He had to help me, but he was right. Ten minutes later I lay on my bed thinking that I should texture my ceiling with something. Something fuzzy and soft.

  I got up, dressed in my dark fatigue pants, and shambled out into my living room, slash kitchen, slash study, slash den. Thomas was in the kitchen, humming something to himself. He hummed on-key. I guess we hadn't gotten the same genes for music.

  I sat down on my couch and watched him bustle around-as much as you can bustle when you need to take only two steps to get clear from one side of the kitchen to the other. He was cooking eggs and bacon on my wood-burning stove. He knew jack about cooking over an actual fire, so the bacon was scorched and the eggs were runny, but it looked like he was amusing himself doing it, and he dumped burned bits, underdone bits, or bits he simply elected to discard on the floor at the foot of the stove. The puppy and the cat were bo
th there, with Mister eating anything he chose to and the puppy dutifully cleaning up whatever Mister judged unworthy of his advanced palate.

  "Heya, man," he said. "You aren't gonna feel hungry, but you should try to eat something, okay? Good for you and all that."

  "Okay," I said agreeably.

  He slapped the eggs and bacon more or less randomly onto a couple of plates, brought me one, and kept one for himself. We ate. It was awful, but my hand didn't hurt. You take what you can get in this life.

  "Harry," Thomas said after a moment.

  I looked up at him.

  He said, "You came to get me."

  "Yeah," I said.

  "You saved my life."

  I mused on it. "Yeah," I agreed a moment later. I kept eating.

  "Thank you."

  I shook my head. "Nothing."

  "No, it isn't," he said. "You risked yourself. You risked your friend Murphy, too."

  "Yeah," I said again. "Well. We're family, right?"

  "Too right we are," he said, a lopsided smile on his mouth. "Which is why I want to ask you a favor."

  "You want me to go back with you," I said. "Feel things out with Lara. Visit Justine. See which way the future lies."

  He blinked at me. "How did you know?"

  "I'd do it too."

  He nodded quietly. Then said, "You'll go?"

  "As long as we do it before Tuesday."

  Murphy came by on Monday, to report that the investigation had determined that Emma's shooting was a tragic accident. Since no prints had been found, and the eyewitness (and owner of the weapon) had vanished, I wasn't in any danger of catching a murder rap. It still looked as fishy as a tuna boat, and it wouldn't win me any new friends among the authorities, but at least I wouldn't be going to the pokey this time around.

  It was hard for me to concentrate on Murphy's words. Raith had partially dislocated her lower jaw, and the bruises looked like hell. Despite the happy blue pain pills, when I saw Murphy I actually heard myself growling in rage at her injury. Murphy didn't talk much more than business, but her look dared me to make some kind of chivalrous commentary. I didn't, and she didn't break my nose, by way of fair exchange.

  She took me to an expensive specialist her family doctor referred her to, who examined my hand, took a bunch of pictures, and wound up shaking his head. "I can't believe it hasn't started to mortify," he said. "Mister Dresden, it looks like you may get to keep your hand. There's even a small portion on your palm that didn't burn at all, which I have no explanation for whatsoever. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

  "That's working just fine, Doc," I mumbled. "Not that it's had much use lately."

  He gave me a brief smile. "More personal, I'm afraid. How good is your insurance?"

  "Um," I said. "Not so hot."

  "Then I'd like to give you a bit of advice, off the record. Your injury is almost miraculously fortunate, in terms of how unlikely it was that the limb would survive. But given the extent of the burns and the nerve damage, you might seriously consider amputation and the use of a prosthesis."

  "What?" I said. "Why?"

  The doctor shook his head. "We can prevent an infection from taking root and spreading until we can get you a graft to regenerate the epidermis-that's the main possible complication at this point. But in my professional judgment, you'll get more functionality out of an artificial hand than you ever again will from your own. Even with surgery and extensive therapy, which will cost you more than a pretty penny, and even if you continue to recover at the high end of the bell curve, it could be decades before you recover any use of the hand. In all probability, you will never recover any use of it at all."

  I stared at him for a long minute.

  "Mister Dresden?" he asked.

  "My hand," I responded, with all the composure of a three-year-old. I tried to smile at the doctor. "Look. Maybe my hand is all screwed up. But it's mine. So no bone saws."

  The doctor shook his head, but said, "I understand, son. Good luck to you." He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic ointment, a reference to a yet more expensive specialist just in case, and some pain medication. On the way back to my house, I asked Murphy to stop by the drugstore, where I got my prescriptions filled, and bought a bunch of clean bandages and a pair of leather gloves.

  "Well?" Murphy said. "Are you going to tell me what the doctor said?"

  I threw the right glove out the window, and Murphy arched an eyebrow at me.

  "When I get done with my mummy impersonation," I said, waving my freshly bandaged hand, "I want to have a choice between looks. Michael Jackson or Johnny Tremaine."

  She tried not to show it, but I saw her wince. I empathized. If I hadn't been on Thomas's groovy pain drugs, I may have started feeling bitter about the whole thing with my hand.

  Monday afternoon I got the Blue Beetle back from my mechanic, Mike, who is the automotive repair equivalent of Jesus Christ himself. Either that or Dr. Frankenstein. I drove the Beetle out to a hotel near the airport to meet with Arturo Genosa and the new Mrs. Genosa.

  "How's the married life, Joan?" I asked.

  Joan, dumpy and plain and glowing with happiness, leaned against Arturo with a small smile.

  Arturo grinned as well and confided, "I have never been married to a woman with such… creativity."

  Joan blushed scarlet.

  We had a nice breakfast, and Arturo presented me with my fee, in cash. "I hope that isn't inconvenient, Mr. Dresden," he said. "We didn't finish the film and the money is gone when I am forced to declare bankruptcy, but I wanted to be sure you received your pay."

  I shook my head and pushed the envelope back to him. "I didn't save your film. I didn't save Emma."

  "The film, bah. You risked your life to save Giselle's. And Jake as well. Emma…" His voice trailed off. He almost seemed to visibly age. "I understand that you may not be entirely free to speak, but I must know what happened to her."

  Joan's expression froze, and she gave me a pleading look.

  She didn't have to explain it to me. She knew or suspected the truth-that Tricia Scrump had been behind the killing. It would break Arturo's heart to hear it about a woman he had once, however ill-advisedly, loved.

  "I'm not sure," I lied. "I found Emma and Trixie like that. I thought I saw someone and ran off trying to catch the guy. But either he was faster than me or I'd been seeing things. We might never know."

  Arturo nodded at me. "You mustn't blame yourself. Nor must you refuse what you rightfully earned, Mister Dresden. I'm in your debt."

  I wanted to turn the money down, but damn, it was Monday. And Kincaid was Tuesday. I took the envelope.

  Jake Guffie appeared a moment later, dressed in a casual suit of pale cotton. He hadn't shaved, and there was a lot of grey in the scruff of his beard. He looked like he hadn't slept much, either, but he was trying to smile. "Arturo. Joan. Congratulations."

  "Thank you," Joan said.

  Jake joined us, and we had a nice breakfast. Then we walked with Joan and Arturo to their airport shuttle. Jake and I watched them go. He stared after them for a moment. He looked weary, but if it had bothered him to deceive Arturo about Trixie Vixen, he hadn't let it show.

  Jake turned to me and said, "I guess you weren't the killer. The police said the shooting was accidental. They pulled up Trixie's record and saw all her trips to rehab. Said that she had probably done something stupid while she was stoned."

  "Do you think that?" I asked.

  "No way, man. She did everything stupid. Stoned was just a coincidence."

  I shook my head. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to protect Emma."

  He nodded. "So am I, man. She was going to take her medication. Allergy medication. She didn't want to take it with tap water so she was going to the greenroom for a bottle of Evian. She was just standing in the wrong place. Hell of a thing."

  "I feel for her kids," I said. "I've done the orphan thing. It sucks."

  Jake nodded. "I don't know how they'll ge
t on without their mom," he said. "Not like I have much experience, either. But I can't be such a lousy father that they qualify as orphans."

  I blinked for a second and then said, "You wanted to settle down once, you said."

  "Yeah. But Emma decided she wouldn't have me."

  I nodded. "You going to keep acting?"

  "Oh, hell, no," he said. "Silverlight is gonna blacklist me like everyone else. And I can't do that and go to PTA and stuff. I got another job lined up."

  "Yeah?" I asked. "What?"

  "Dude, me and Bobby are gonna to start up a consulting business. Feng shui."

  I had no problem with that.

  Next I went with Thomas up to the Raith family homestead north of town. This time we went in the front doors. There were a new pair of bodyguards at the door. They weren't twins, and they didn't have that numb, mindlessly obedient glaze in their eyes. They had evidently been chosen for skill and experience. I was betting on former marines.

  "Welcome, Mister Raith," one of the guards said. "Your sister requests that you join her for breakfast in the east garden."

  They both stood there waiting to fall in around us, so it didn't exactly come off like an invitation, but from the attention, they might have been as concerned with protecting us as watching us. Thomas took the lead by half a step, and I fell in on his right. I was quite a bit taller than him, but his expression had taken on a confidence and sense of purpose I hadn't seen in him before, and our feet hit the floor in time with one another.

  The guards accompanied us out into a truly gorgeous terraced garden, a number drawn straight from the Italian Renaissance, with faux ruins, ancient statues of the gods, and a design overgrown enough to prevent seeing much at a time, the better to spend more time exploring. At the top of the highest terrace was a table made of fine metal wire twisted into looping designs, with matching chairs spread around it. A light breakfast was laid out on the table, heavier on the fruits and juices than was my habit. But then, my habit was usually to eat any leftovers from dinner for breakfast first.