Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files

by Jim Butcher

“Bunch.”

  He nodded.

  “What have I asked you for in return?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Ever.”

  He nodded again. “That’s right.”

  We sat in silence for a long time.

  Finally, I said, very quietly, “I don’t know if I’m one of the good guys anymore.”

  I swallowed.

  He listened.

  “How can I be,” I asked, “after what I’ve done?”

  “What have you done?” he asked.

  It took me another minute to answer. “You know about Mab. What I am now. The deal I made.”

  “I also know that you did so intending to use that power to save your daughter’s life.”

  “You don’t know about Susan,” I said. I met his eyes. “I killed her, Michael.”

  I don’t know what I looked like—but tears suddenly stood out in his eyes. “Oh, Harry.” He looked down. “She turned, didn’t she? What happened?”

  “That son of a bitch, Martin,” I said. “He . . . he set her up. Sold out the family that had Maggie. I think he did it to set me on a collision course with the Red King, maybe hoping to focus the White Council on the war effort a little harder. But he had inside knowledge of the Reds, too. He’d worked for them. Was some kind of double agent, or triple agent—I don’t know. I don’t think he was running a grand scheme to get to one specific moment . . . but he saw his chance. The Red King was getting set to kill Maggie as part of a ritual bloodline curse. The curse was meant to kill me and . . . other people, up my family tree.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows.

  “But the ritual was all loaded up and Martin saw a chance to wipe out the whole Red Court. All of them. He popped Susan in the face with the knowledge of his treachery and she just snapped . . .” I shuddered, remembering it. “I saw it coming. Saw what he was doing. Maybe I could have stopped it—I don’t know—but . . . I didn’t. And she killed him. Tore his throat out. And . . . she started to change and . . .”

  “And you finished the ritual,” he said quietly. “You killed her. You killed them all.”

  “The youngest vampire in the whole world,” I said. “Brand-new. And they all originated from a single point—the Red King, I guess. Their own curse got every one of them. The whole family.”

  “Every Red Court vampire,” Michael said gently, “was a killer. Every one of them, at one point, chose to take someone’s life to slake their thirst. That’s what turned them. That choice.”

  “I’m not shedding tears over the Red Court,” I said, contempt in my voice. “The fallout from taking them all out at once . . . I don’t know. Maybe I’d wish I could have done it differently. With more planning.”

  “One doesn’t destroy an empire built on pain and terror neatly,” Michael said, “if history is to be any indicator.”

  I smiled bleakly. “It was a little hectic at the time,” I said. “I just wanted to save Maggie.”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “After she started to turn . . . how did you subdue Susan?”

  I sat for a time, trying to remember the moment less clearly.

  “You didn’t,” he said gently, “did you?”

  “She . . . she was turning. But she understood what was happening.”

  “She sacrificed herself,” Michael said.

  “She allowed me to sacrifice her,” I snarled, with sudden, boiling fury. “There’s a difference.”

  “Yes,” Michael said quietly. “There’s a cost for you in that. A burden to be carried.”

  “I kissed her,” I said. “And then I cut her throat.”

  The silence after I said that was profound.

  Michael got up and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Harry,” he said quietly, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you were faced with those awful choices.”

  “I never meant . . .” I swallowed. “I never meant for all those things to happen. For Susan to get hurt. For Mab’s deal to stick. I never meant to keep it.”

  Real pain touched his eyes. “Ah,” he said quietly. “I’d . . . wondered. About the after.”

  “That was me,” I said. “I arranged it. I thought . . . if I was gone before Mab had a chance to change me, it would be all right.”

  “You thought . . .” Michael took a slow breath and sat down again. “You thought that if you died, it would be all right?”

  “Compared to me becoming Mab’s psychotic monster?” I asked. “Compared to letting the Reds kill my daughter and my grandfather? Yeah. I regarded that as a win.”

  Michael put his face in his hands for a moment. He shook his head. Then he lifted his face and looked up at his ceiling, his expression a mixture of sadness and frustration and pain.

  “And now I’ve got this thing inside me,” I said. “And it pushes me, Michael. It pushes and pushes and pushes me to . . . do things.”

  He eyed me.

  “And right now . . . Hell’s bells, right now, Mab has me working with Nicodemus Archleone. If I don’t, there’s this thing in my head that’s going to come popping out of it, kill me, and then go after Maggie.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Nicodemus. He’s robbing a vault somewhere and Mab expects me to pay off a debt she owes him. He’s formed his own Evil League of Evil to get it done—and I’m a member. And to make it worse, I dragged Murphy into it with me, and I’m not even telling her everything. Because I can’t.”

  Michael shook his head slowly.

  “I look around me, man . . . I’m trying to do what I’ve always done, to protect people, to keep them safe from the monsters—only I’m pretty sure I’m one of them. I can’t figure out where I could have . . . what else I might have done . . .” I swallowed. “I’m lost. I know every step I took to get here, and I’m still lost.”

  “Harry . . .”

  “And my friends,” I said. “Even Thomas . . . I was stuck out on that island of the damned for a year. A year, Michael, and they only showed up a handful of times. Just Murphy and Thomas, maybe half a dozen times in more than a year. It’s just a goddamned boat ride away, forty minutes. People drive farther than that to go to the movies. They know what I’m turning into. They don’t want to watch it happening to me.”

  “Harry,” Michael said in a low, soft voice. “You . . . you are . . .”

  “A fool,” I said quietly. “A monster. Damned.”

  “. . . so arrogant,” Michael breathed.

  I blinked.

  “I mean, I was accustomed to a certain degree of hubris from you, but . . . this is stunning. Even on your scale.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Arrogant,” he repeated, enunciating. “To a degree I can scarcely believe.”

  I just stared at him for a moment.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you were expecting me to share words of wisdom with you, maybe say something to you about God and your soul and forgiveness and redemption. And all those things are good things that need to be said in the right time, but . . . honestly, Harry. I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t point out to you that you are behaving like an amazingly pigheaded idiot.”

  “I am?” I asked, a little blankly.

  He stared at me for a second, anger and pain on his face—and then they vanished, and he smiled, his eyes flickering as merrily as a Christmas Eve fire. I suddenly realized where Molly got her smile. Something very like laughter bubbled just under the surface of his words. “Yes, Harry. You idiot. You are.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  He eyed our beers, which were empty. That tends to happen with Mac’s microbrews. He went to the fridge and opened another pair of bottles with the power of Thor, and put one of them in front of me. We clinked and drinked.

  “Harry,” he said, after a meditative moment, “are you perfect?”

  “No,” I said.

  He nodded. “Omniscient?”

  I snorted. “No.”
<
br />   “Can you go into the past, change things that have already happened?”

  “Theoretically?” I asked.

  He gave me a level stare.

  “I hear that sometimes, some things can be done. But apparently it’s tricky as hell. And I’ve got no idea how,” I said.

  “So can you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “In other words,” he said, “despite all the things you know, and all the incredible things you can do . . . you’re only human.”

  I frowned at him and swigged beer.

  “Then why,” Michael asked, “are you expecting perfection out of yourself? Do you really think you’re that much better than the rest of us? That your powers make you a higher quality of human being? That your knowledge places you on a higher plane than everyone else on this world?”

  I eyed the beer and felt . . . embarrassed.

  “That’s arrogance, Harry,” he said gently. “On a level so deep you don’t even realize it exists. And do you know why it’s there?”

  “No?” I asked.

  He smiled again. “Because you have set a higher standard for yourself. You think that because you have more power than others, you have to do more with it.”

  “To whom much is given, much is required,” I said, without look- ing up.

  He barked out a short laugh. “For someone who repeatedly tells me he has no faith, you have a surprising capacity to quote scripture. And that’s just my point.”

  I eyed him. “What?”

  “You wouldn’t be twisting yourself into knots like this, Harry, if you didn’t care.”

  “So?”

  “Monsters don’t care,” Michael said. “The damned don’t care, Harry. The only way to go beyond redemption is to choose to take yourself there. The only way to do it is to stop caring.”

  My view of the kitchen blurred out. “You think?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Michael said. “I think that you aren’t perfect. And that means that sometimes you make bad choices. But . . . honestly, I don’t know if I would have done any differently, if it had been one of my children at risk.”

  “Not you,” I said quietly. “You wouldn’t have done what I did.”

  “I couldn’t have done what you did,” Michael said simply. “And I haven’t had to be standing in your shoes to make those same choices.” He tilted his beer slightly toward the ceiling. “Thank you, God. So if you’ve come here for judgment, Harry, you won’t find any from me. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve failed. I’m human.”

  “But these mistakes,” I said, “could change me. I could wind up like these people around Nicodemus.”

  Michael snorted. “No, you won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I know you, Harry Dresden,” Michael said. “You are pathologically incapable of knowing when to quit. You don’t surrender. And I don’t believe for a second that you actually intend to help Nicodemus do whatever it is he’s doing.”

  I felt a smile tug at one corner of my mouth.

  “Hah,” Michael said, sitting back in his chair. He swallowed some more beer. “I thought so.”

  “It’s tricky,” I said. “I’ve got to help him get whatever he’s after. Technically.”

  Michael wrinkled his nose. “Faeries. I never understood why they’re such lawyers about everything.”

  “I’m the Winter Knight,” I said, “and I don’t get it either.”

  “I find that oddly reassuring,” Michael said.

  I barked out a short laugh. “Yeah. Maybe so.”

  His face grew more serious. “Nicodemus knows treachery like fish know water,” he said. “He surely knows the direction of your intent. He’s smart, Harry. He’s got centuries of survival behind him.”

  “True,” I said. “On the other hand, I’m not exactly a useless cream puff.”

  His eyes glinted. “Also true,” he said.

  “And Murphy’s there,” I said.

  “Good,” Michael said, rapping the bottle on the table for emphasis. “That woman’s got brains and heart.”

  I chewed on my lip and looked up at him. “But . . . Michael, she wasn’t . . . for the past year . . .”

  He sighed and shook his head. “Harry . . . do you know what that island is like, for the rest of us?”

  I shook my head.

  “The last time I was there, I was shot twice,” he said. “I was in intensive care for a month. I was in bed for four months. I didn’t walk again for nearly a year. There was permanent damage to my hip and lower back, and physically, it was the single most extended, horribly painful, grindingly humiliating experience of my life.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And,” he said, “when I have nightmares of it, you know what I dream about?”

  “What?”

  “The island,” Michael said. “The . . . presence of it. The malevolence there.” He shuddered.

  Michael, Knight of the Cross, who had faced deadly spirits and demons and monsters without flinching, shivered in fear.

  “That place is horrible,” he said quietly. “The effect it has . . . It’s obvious that it doesn’t even touch you. But I don’t know if I could go back there again, by choice.”

  I blinked.

  “But I know Molly went back there. And you tell me Karrin did, too. And Thomas. Many times.” He shook his head. “That’s . . . astounding to me, Harry.”

  “They . . . they never said anything,” I said. “I mean, they never spent the night, either, but . . .”

  “Of course they didn’t,” he said. “You already beat yourself up for enough things that aren’t your fault. People who care don’t want to add to that.” He paused, and then added gently, “But you assumed it was about you.”

  I finished the beer and sighed. “Arrogance,” I said. “I feel stupid.”

  “Good,” Michael said. “It’s good for everyone to feel that way sometimes. It helps remind you how much you still have to learn.”

  What he said about the island tracked. I remembered my first moments there, how unsettling it was. I had talent and training in defending myself against psychic assault, and I’d shielded against it on pure reflex, shedding the worst that it could have done to me. Wizard. And not long after that, I’d taken on Demonreach in a ritual challenge that had left me the Warden of the place, and exempt from its malice.

  Thomas hadn’t had the kind of training, the kind of defenses I did. Molly, who was more sensitive than me to that kind of energy, must have found it agonizing. And Karrin, who had been assaulted psychically before . . . damn.

  They’d all picked up more scars for me, on my behalf, without a word of complaint—and I’d been upset because they hadn’t been willing to take more.

  Michael was right.

  I’d gotten completely focused on myself.

  “It occurs to me,” I said, “if I wasn’t being the Winter Knight . . . Mab would have picked another thug.” Mab had even told me who she would have gone after—my brother, Thomas. I shuddered to think what might have happened, if the temptations of Winter had been added to those he already bore. “Someone else would be bearing this burden. Maybe someone it would have destroyed by now.”

  “It occurred to you just now?” Michael asked. “I thought of it about five seconds after I heard about it.”

  I laughed and it felt really good to do it.

  “There,” Michael said, nodding.

  “Thank you.”

  I meant it for a lot of things. Michael got it. He inclined his head to me. “There is, of course, an elephant in the room, of which we have not spoken.”

  Of course there was.

  Maggie.

  “I don’t want to make her into a target again,” I said.

  Michael sighed patiently. “Harry,” he said, as if speaking to a rather slow child, “I’m not sure if you noticed this. But things did not turn out well for the last monster who raised his hand against your child. Or any of his friends. Or associates. Or
anyone who worked for him. Or for most of the people he knew.”

  I blinked.

  “Whether or not that was your intention,” Michael said, “you did establish a rather effective precedental message to the various predators, should they ever learn of her relationship to you.”

  “Do you think Nicodemus would hesitate?” I asked. “Even for a second?”

  “To take her from this house?” Michael asked. He smiled. “I’d love to see him try it.”

  I lifted my eyebrows.

  “A dozen angels protect this house, still,” Michael said. “Part of my retirement package.”

  “She’s not always in the house,” I said.

  “And when she isn’t, Mouse is with her,” he said. “We got him attached to her as a medical assist dog. He prevents her from having panic attacks.”

  I made a choking sound, imagining Mouse in a grade school. “By making everyone else around her panic instead?”

  “He’s a perfect gentleman,” Michael said, amused. “The children love him. The teachers let the best students play with him on recess.”

  I imagined my enormous moose of a dog on a playground, trotting around after Maggie and other kids, with that dopey doggy grin on his face, cheerfully going along with whatever the kids seemed to have planned, moving with tremendous care around them, and shamelessly cadging tummy rubs whenever possible.

  “That’s kind of awesome,” I said.

  “Children frequently are,” Michael said.

  I chewed on my lip some more. “What if . . . Michael, she was there. She was in the temple when . . .” I looked up. “What if she remembers what I did?”

  “She doesn’t remember any of it,” Michael said.

  “Now,” I said. “Stuff like that . . . it has a way of popping up again.”

  “If it does,” he said, “don’t you think she deserves to know the truth? All of it? When she’s ready?”

  I looked away. “The things I do . . . I don’t want any of it to splash on her.”

  “I didn’t want it to touch my children, either,” Michael said. “Mostly, it didn’t. And I don’t regret my choices. I did everything in my power to protect them. I’m content with that.”

  “My boss has a few differences in policy compared to yours.”

  “Heh. True, that.”

  “I need to get moving,” I said. “Seriously. I’m on the clock.”