Proven Guilty df-8

by Jim Butcher

  She smiled, pleased. “Very good.”

  “I don’t want it,” I said.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because a freaking fallen angel is offering it, that’s why ever not. You’re poison, lady. Don’t think I don’t know it.”

  She lifted a long-fingered hand to me, palm out. “I ask only that you hear me out. If what I offer is not to your liking, I will of course support your efforts to form an alternate plan.”

  I upgraded the glower to a glare. She regarded me in perfect calm.

  Dammit. The best way to keep yourself from doing something grossly self-destructive and stupid is to avoid the temptation to do it. For example, it is far easier to fend off inappropriate amorous desires if one runs screaming from the room every time a pretty girl comes in. Which sounds silly, I know, but the same principle applies to everything else.

  If I let her talk to me, Lasciel would propose something calm and sane and reasonable and effective. It would require a small price of me, if nothing else by making me a tiny bit more dependent upon her advice and assistance. Whatever happened, she’d gain another smidgen of influence over me.

  Baby steps on the highway to hell. Lasciel was an immortal. She could afford patience, whereas I could not afford temptation.

  It came down to this: If I didn’t hear her out and didn’t get out of this mess, Rawlins’s blood would be on my hands. And whoever was behind the slaughter around the convention might well keep right on escalating. More people could die.

  Oh. And I’d wind up enjoying some kind of Torquemada-esque vacation with whichever fiend had the most money and the least lag.

  When a concept like that is an afterthought, you know things are bad.

  Lasciel watched me with patient blue eyes.

  “All right,” I told her. “Let’s hear it.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  We plotted, the fallen angel and me. It went fast. It turns out that holding an all-mental conversation gets things done at the literal speed of thought, without all those clunky phonemes to get in the way.

  Barely a minute had passed when I opened my eyes and said very quietly to Rawlins, “You’re right. They’ll kill you. We have to get out of here.”

  The cop gave me a pained grimace and nodded. “How?”

  I struggled and sat up. I rolled my shoulders a little, trying to get some blood flowing through my arms, which had been manacled together underneath me. I tested the chain. It had been slipped through an inverted U-bolt in the concrete floor. The links rattled metallically as they slid back and forth.

  I checked Crane at the noise. The man kept speaking intently into his cell phone, and took no apparent notice of the movement.

  “I’m going to slip one of these manacles off my wrist,” I told him. I nodded at a discarded old rolling tool cabinet. “There should be something in there I can use. I’ll cut us both out.”

  Rawlins shook his head. “Those two going to stand there watching while we do all that?”

  “I’ll do it fast,” I said.

  “Then what?”

  “I kill the lights and we get out.”

  “Door is chained shut,” Rawlins said.

  “Let me worry about that.”

  Rawlins squinted. He looked very tired. “Why not,” he said, nodding. “Why not.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and began to concentrate.

  “Hey,” Rawlins said. “How you going to slip your cuffs?”

  “Ever heard about yogis, out east?”

  “Yogi Berra,” he said at once. “And Yogi Bear.”

  “Not those yogis. As in snake charmers.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “They spend a lifetime learning to control their body. They can do some fairly amazing stuff.”

  Rawlins nodded. “Like fold themselves up into a gym bag and sit inside it at the bottom of a pool for half an hour.”

  “Right,” I said. I followed Lasciel’s instructions, sinking into deeper and deeper focus. “Some of them can collapse the bones in their hands. Use their muscles and tendons to alter tensions. Change the shape.” I focused on my left hand, and for a moment was a bit grateful that it was already so badly maimed and mostly numb. What I was about to do, even with Lasciel’s instruction, was going to hurt like hell. “Keep an eye out and be ready.”

  He nodded, holding still and not turning his head toward either Crane or Glau.

  I dismissed him, the warehouse, my headache, and everything else that wasn’t my hand from my perceptions. I had the general idea of what was supposed to happen, but I didn’t have any practical, second-to-second knowledge of it. It was a terribly odd sensation, as though I were a skilled pianist whose fingers had suddenly forgotten their familiarity with the keys.

  Not too quickly, murmured Lasciel’s voice in my head. Your muscles and joints have not been conditioned to this. There was an odd sensation in my thoughts, somehow similar to abruptly remembering how to tie a knot that had once been thoughtlessly familiar. Like this, Lasciel’s presence whispered, and that same familiarity suddenly thrummed down my arm.

  I flexed my thumb, made a rippling motion of my fingers, and tightened every muscle in my hand in a sudden clench. I dislocated my thumb with a sickly little crackle of damaged flesh.

  For a second, I thought the pain would drop me unconscious.

  No, Lasciel’s voice said. You must control this. You must escape.

  I know, I snarled back at her in my mind. Apparently nerve damage from burns doesn’t stop you from feeling it when someone pulls your fingers out of their sockets.

  Someone? Lasciel said. You did it to yourself, my host.

  Would you back off and give me room to work?

  That’s ridiculous, Lasciel replied. But the sense of her presence abruptly retreated.

  I took deep, quiet breaths, and twisted my left hand. My flesh screamed protest, but I only embraced the pain and continued to move, slow and steady. I got the fingers of my right hand to lightly grasp the manacle on my left wrist, and began to draw my hand steadily against the cold, binding circle of metal. My hand folded in a way that was utterly alien in sensation, and the screaming pain of it stole my breath.

  But it slipped an inch beneath the metal cuff.

  I twisted my hand again, in exactly the same motion, never letting up the pressure, working to encompass the pain as something to aid me, rather than distract.

  I slipped an inch closer to freeing my hand. The pain became more and more intense despite my efforts to divert it, like an afternoon sun that burns brightly into your eyes even though they’re closed. Only a moment more. I only needed to remain silent and focused for a few more seconds.

  I bore the pain. I kept up the pressure, and abruptly I felt the cold metal of the cuff flick over the outside of my thumb, one of the few spots on my fingers where much tactile sensation remained. My hand came free, and I clutched tightly to the empty cuff with my right hand, to keep it from rattling.

  I opened my eyes and glanced around the garage. Crane paced back and forth in conversation on his phone. I waited until his back was mostly turned to move. Then I rose and slipped the chain through the U-bolt on the floor, until the circle of the cuff pressed against the bolt. I was still tethered by a chain perhaps a foot long, but I moved as silently as I could and reached out with my throbbing left hand for the wheeled tool cabinet.

  I had trouble getting my fingers to cooperate, but I slipped the cabinet open. The tools inside it had been there for a long time-several years, at least. They were spotted with rust. I could only see about half the cabinet from where I crouched, and there wasn’t anything there that could help me. I hated to do it, but I felt around the unseen portion of the cabinet with my clumsy fingers. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to feel a tool even if my fingers found it, and even more frightened by the knowledge that I might knock something over and draw attention.

  My hand shook, but I felt through the cabinet as quickly
and lightly as I could, starting at the top and moving down.

  On the floor of the cabinet, I felt an object, the handle of some kind of tool. I drew it out as quietly as I could, and found myself holding a hacksaw. My heart leapt with excitement.

  I returned to more or less my original position, with my captors seemingly none the wiser, and took a grip on the saw. My distorted thumb hurt abominably, so I took the hacksaw in my right hand, took a deep breath, and then began slicing at the chain link immediately below the empty manacle.

  I could only cut in strokes eight or nine inches long because of the chain still attached to my right wrist, and it made a low, buzzing racket that could not be mistaken for anything but a saw. I was sure I would not have time to cut myself free-but the heavy-duty steel of the hacksaw’s blade ripped into the silvery metal chain as if it were made of pine. Three, four, five strokes of the hacksaw and the link parted. I jerked hard with my right hand and the chain slid through the U-bolt, the broken link snapping as the cuffs struck the bolt.

  I rose, free.

  Crane let out a sudden, startled sound, dropped his cell phone, and went for his gun. There was no time to free Rawlins, so I tossed him the hacksaw and then threw myself to one side as Crane let off a shot. Sparks leapt up from the rolling cabinet’s surface, and a rush of adrenaline made the pains of my body vanish. I kept my head down as low as I could and scurried to one side, attempting to put the bulk of an old, rusted pickup truck between Crane and me. I reached for my magic, but the cuff still attached to my arm reacted with that same burst of agony, splintering my concentration.

  I caught a glimpse of movement. Crane circled to one side, looking for a clear line of fire. I maneuvered like a squirrel, keeping the truck between us and crouching low to deny him a clean shot. I went for the passenger door, hoping to find something, anything I could use to defend myself in the truck.

  Locked.

  “Glau!” Crane shouted. His second shot shattered the truck’s passenger window, the bullet passing within a few inches of my head.

  I reached up, unlocked the truck’s door, and swung it open. The cab was cluttered with empty cigarette packs, discarded fast-food wrappers, crushed beer cans, a heavy-duty claw hammer, and three or four glass beer bottles.

  Perfect.

  I clutched the hammer’s wrapped steel handle in my teeth, scooped up the bottles, and threw one at the far side of the garage. It shattered loudly. I rose at once, another bottle ready, and hurled it with as much force as I could.

  The first bottle had caused Crane to snap his head to one side, looking for the source of the sound. He looked away from me for only a second, but it was distraction enough to allow me to throw.

  The bottle tumbled end over end and smashed into the work lamp with a crash of breaking glass. Sparks showered up in a brief cloud of electric outrage, and then heavy darkness slammed down upon us.

  Now, I thought to Lasciel.

  Darkness vanished, replaced with lines and planes of silver light that outlined the garage, the truck, the tool cabinets and workbenches, as well as the doors and windows and the bolt on the wall where Rawlins was chained.

  I was not actually seeing the garage, of course, for there was no physical light for my eyes to see. Instead, I was looking at an illusion.

  The portion of Lasciel in my head was capable of creating illusory sensations of almost any kind, though if I suspected any tampering I could defend myself against it easily enough. This illusion, however, was not meant to deceive. She’d placed it there to help me, gleaning the precise dimensions and arrangements of the garage from my own senses and projecting them to my eyes to enable me to move in the dark.

  It wasn’t a perfect illusion, of course. It was merely a model. It didn’t keep track of animate objects, and if anything moved around I wouldn’t know it until I’d knocked myself unconscious on it-but I wouldn’t need it for long. I ran for Rawlins.

  “Glau!” Crane screamed, no more than ten or twelve feet away. “Cover the door!”

  I flung the third bottle to the floor at my feet. It was an exceedingly odd sensation, for the bottle was outlined in silver light until it left my hand. It vanished into the darkness, and shattered on the floor near me.

  There was a moment of frozen silence, broken only by the rasp of a hacksaw against Rawlins’s cuffs. Crane took a couple of steps toward me, then hesitated, and though I could not see him, I could sense the hesitation. Then he moved again, away from me, probably assuming I was attempting another distraction. My lips stretched into a wolfish smile, and I padded to Rawlins, my steps sure and steady even in the total darkness.

  I reached the bolt on the steel beam, and found Rawlins standing beneath it, breathing hard, sawing as fast as he could. He jumped when I touched his shoulder, but I took the hammer in hand and whispered, “It’s Harry. Get your head down.”

  He did. I looked up at the silvery illusion of the bolt, steadied my breathing, and drew the hammer back very slowly, focusing upon that movement and nothing else. Then I hissed out a breath and struck at the bolt with every ounce of force I could physically muster.

  I’m not a weightlifter, but no one’s ever accused me of being a sissy, either. More importantly, years and years of my metaphysical studies and practice had given me considerable skill at focus and concentration. The hammer struck the bolt that held the other ring of Rawlins’s cuffs. Sparks flew. The bolt, as rusted and ruined as the rest of the building, snapped.

  Rawlins dragged me to the ground a heartbeat before Crane’s pistol thundered again from the far side of the garage. A bullet caromed off the metal beam with an ugly, high-pitched whine.

  “Come on,” I hissed. I seized Rawlins’s shirt. He grunted and stumbled blindly after me, trying to be quiet, but given his injuries there was only so much he could do. Speed would have to serve where stealth was not available. I hauled him directly across the garage floor, skipping around a mechanic’s pit and several stacks of old tires.

  “Where are we going?” Rawlins gasped. “Where is the door?”

  “We aren’t taking the door,” I whispered-which was true. I wasn’t sure that we’d have a way out of the garage, but we certainly wouldn’t leave via the door.

  The Full Moon Garage had been abandoned since the disappearance of its previous owners, a gang of lycanthropes with a notable lack of common sense when it came to choosing enemies. It wasn’t as big a coincidence as it seemed, that Crane was using the same building. It was old, abandoned, had no windows, was close to the convention center, and easy to get in and out of. More to the point, it had been a place where fairly horrible things happened, and the ugly energy of them still lingered in the air. I wasn’t sure what Crane and Glau were, exactly, but a place like this would feel comfortable and familiar to many denizens of the dark side.

  I’d been held captive in the building before and my means of egress was still there-a hole beneath the edge of the cheap corrugated metal wall, dug down into the earth and out into the gravel parking lot by a pack of wolves. I got to the wall and knelt down to check Lasciel’s mental model against the reality it represented. The hole was still there. If anything, the years had worn it even deeper and wider.

  I shoved Rawlins’s hands down to let him feel it. “Go,” I whispered. “Under the wall and out.”

  He grunted assent and started hauling himself through it. Rawlins was built a lot heavier than me, but he fit through the time-widened hole. I crouched down to follow him, but heard running footsteps just behind me.

  I ducked to one side, my eyes now adjusting enough to let me see faint, ambient city light trickling through the hole. I saw a vague shape in the darkness, and then saw Glau’s hands seize Rawlins’s wounded foot. Rawlins screamed.

  I lunged forward and smashed the claw hammer down onto Glau’s forearm. It hit with brutal force and a sound of breaking bone.

  Glau let out a wild, falsetto, ululating scream, like that of some kind of primitive warrior. The hammer jerked out of my
hands. I heard a whirr in the air, and ducked in time to avoid Glau returning the favor. I twisted, swinging the chain still attached to the remaining manacle along at what I estimated to be Glau’s eye level. The chain hit. He let out another shrieking cry, falling backward.

  I dove for the hole and wriggled through it like a greased weasel. Crane’s gun went off again, punching a hole in the wall ten feet away. Running footsteps retreated, and metal clinked. I heard myself whimpering, and had a flashback to any number of nightmares where I could not move swiftly enough to escape the danger. Any second I expected to take a bullet, or for Glau to lay into me with the hammer or his sharklike teeth.

  Rawlins grabbed my wrist and pulled me through. I got to my feet, looking around the little gravel lot wildly for the nearest cover-several stacks of old tires. I didn’t have to point at it for Rawlins to get the idea. We ran for it. Rawlins’s wounded leg almost gave out, and I slowed to help him, looking back for our pursuers.

  Glau wriggled out of the hole just as we had, rose to a crouch, and threw the claw hammer. It tumbled end over end, flying as swiftly as a major-league fastball, and hit me in the ass.

  A shock went through me on impact, and my balance wavered as half of my lower body went numb. I tried to clutch at Rawlins for balance, but the hand I’d distorted wasn’t strong enough to hold, and the force of the blow threw me down to the gravel. The impact tore open all the defenses I’d rallied against my body’s various pains, and for a second I could barely move, much less flee.

  Glau drew a long, curved blade from his belt, something vaguely Arabic in origin. He bounded after us. It was hopeless, but Rawlins and I tried to run anyway.

  There were a couple of light footsteps, a blurring figure running far too swiftly to be human, and Crane kicked my functional leg out from underneath me. I dropped. He delivered a vicious blow to Rawlins’s belly. The cop went down, too.

  Crane, his face pale and furious, snarled, “I warned you to behave, wizard.” He lifted the gun and pointed it at Rawlins’s head. “You’ve just killed this man.”