by Jim Butcher
I don’t even know what happened. I assume the Genoskwa closed the distance and hit me. One minute I was trying to establish some kind of rapport, and the next I was about a dozen feet in the air, flying across the factory floor, tumbling. I saw the conference table, the windows, the ceiling—and Jordan’s incredulous face staring down at me from a catwalk, and then I hit the brick wall and light briefly filled my skull. I mean, I didn’t even notice when I fell and hit the floor—or maybe I just can’t remember that part.
I do remember that I came up fighting. The Genoskwa walked over the conference table—he just stepped over it—and covered the distance to me in catlike silence, in three great strides, moving as lightly as a dancer despite the fact that he had to weigh in at well over eight hundred pounds.
I threw a blast of Winter at him, only to see him make a contemptuous gesture and spit a slavering, snarling word. The ice that should have entombed him just . . . drained away into the floor beneath him, grounding out my magic as effectively as a lightning rod diverts the power of a thunderbolt.
I had about half of a second to realize that my best shot had bounced off him with somewhat less effect than I would have had if I’d slugged him with a foam rubber pillow, and then he hit me again.
Aerial cartwheels. Another flash of impact against a wall. Before I could fall, he had closed the distance again—and his enormous hands drove a rusty old nail into my left pectoral muscle.
Once the steel nail had broken the surface of my skin, my contact with the mantle of the Winter Knight shattered, and I was just plain old vanilla me again.
And that meant pain.
A whole lot of pain.
The mantle had suppressed the pain of my broken arm, among other things, but once it was taken out of the circuit, all of that agony came rushing into my brain at the same time, an overload of torturous sensation. I screamed and thrashed, grabbing the Genoskwa’s wrist with both hands, trying to force his arm and the nail he still held away from me. I might as well have been trying to push over a building. I couldn’t so much as make him acknowledge my effort with a wobble, much less move him.
He leaned down, huge and grey and horrible-smelling, and pushed his ugly mug right up into mine, breathing hard through his mouth. His breath smelled like blood and rotten meat. His voice came out in a surprisingly smooth, mellow basso.
“Consider this a friendly warning,” he said, his accent harsh, somehow bitter. “I am not one of the whimpering Forest People. Speak of me and that flower-chewing groundhog lover River Shoulders in the same breath again, and I will devour your offal while you watch.”
“Frmph,” I said. The room was spinning like some kind of wacky animated drunk scene. “Glkngh.”
The nail evidently robbed some of the power from Mab’s earring, too. Someone drove a railroad spike into each temple, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
The Genoskwa stepped back from me abruptly, as though I was something unworthy of his attention. He faced the rest of the room, while I clawed desperately at the nail sticking out of my chest.
“You,” he said to the people seated at the table. “Do what Nicodemus says, when he says. Or I will twist off your head.” He flexed his huge hands, and I suddenly noticed that they were tipped in ugly-looking, dirty claws. “Been here most of two days, and none of you ever saw me. Followed some of you all over this town last night. None of you saw me. You don’t do your job now, no place you run will keep you from me.”
Those at the table stared at him, stunned and silent, and I realized that my plan for stealing Nicodemus’s thunder and destabilizing his authority over the crew had just gone down in flames.
The Genoskwa was apparently satisfied with his entrance. He strode to the pen and, as if it had been an appetizer at a sports bar and not a nimble animal trying desperately to avoid its fate, he plucked up a goat, broke its neck using only one hand, and vanished again, gone more suddenly than he had appeared.
Karrin was at my side a second later, grabbing the nail with her small, strong hands—but the pain was just too damned much. I was fading.
“Well,” I dimly heard Nicodemus say, “that’s dinner.”
Going, going.
Gone.
Twenty-three
I hadn’t been to this place in a very long time.
It was a flat, empty floor in some vast, open, and unlit space that nonetheless somehow didn’t echo with its emptiness, as if there were no walls from which sounds could reflect. I stood in a circle of light, though I couldn’t quite make out the source of illumination above me.
It was the first time, though, that I’d ever been standing there alone.
“Hey!” I called out into the empty space. “It’s not like my own subconscious can up and disappear, you know! If you’ve got something you want to say, hurry it up! I’m busy!”
“Yeah, yeah,” called a voice from the darkness. “I’m coming. Keep your pants on.”
There were shuffling footsteps, and then . . . I appeared.
Well, it wasn’t me, exactly. It was my double, though, a mental image of myself that had appeared a few times in the past, and that I would probably avoid mentioning to any mental health professionals who had signed mandatory reporting clauses. Call him my subconscious, my id, the voice of my inner jerkface, whatever. He was a part of me that didn’t surface much.
He was dressed in black. A tailored black shirt, black pants, expensive black shoes. He had a goatee, too.
Look, I never said my inner self was hideously complex.
In addition to his usual outfit, he also wore a pin on his left breast—a snowflake, wrought from silver with such complexity and detail that one could see the crystalline shapes of its surface. Whoa. I wasn’t sure exactly what the hell that meant, but given how my day was going, I was reasonably sure it was nothing good.
There was someone with him.
It was a smallish figure, covered in what looked like a black blanket of soft wool. It moved slowly, hunched, as if in terrible pain, leaning hard against my double’s supporting arms.
“Uh,” I said. “What?”
My double sneered at me. “Why is it that you’ve never got the least goddamned clue what’s happening inside your own head. Have you ever noticed this trend? Doesn’t it bug you sometimes?”
“I try not to overthink it,” I said.
He snorted. “Hell’s bells, that’s true. We have to talk.”
“Why can’t you just send dreams like everyone else’s subconscious?”
“I’ve been trying,” he said, and shifted into a voice that sounded suspiciously like Bullwinkle the cartoon moose. “But somebody’s been busy not overthinking it.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Oh, wait. That . . . that dream with Murphy? That was you?”
“All the dreams are me, blockhead,” my double said. “And I swear, dude, you have got to be the most repressed human being on the face of the planet.”
“What? Maybe you didn’t notice, but I’m not exactly bending over backwards for anybody?”
“Not oppressed, moron. Repressed. As in sexually. What is wrong with you?”
I blinked, offended. “What?”
“You were doing okay with Susan,” he said. “And Anastasia . . . Wow, there’s really something to be said for experience.”
I felt myself blushing and reminded myself that I was talking to me. “So?”
“And what about all the things you missed, dummy?” he asked. “You had the shadow of a freaking angel who could have shown you any sensual experience you could possibly have imagined, but did you take her up on it? No. Mab’s been throwing girls at you. You could literally make one phone call and have half a dozen supernaturally hot Sidhe girls playing rodeo with you anytime you wanted, and instead you’re playing hopscotch over the cages of has-been demons. Hell, Hannah Ascher would have gotten busy with you if you wanted.”
“It’s Parkour,” I said defensively. “And just because I don’t go to bed with everything with
a vagina doesn’t mean I’m repressed. I don’t want it to be just sex.”
“Why not?” my double said, exasperated. “Go forth and freaking multiply! Drink from the cup of life! Carpe femme! For the love of God, get laid.”
I sighed. Right. Id me didn’t have to be concerned with long-term consequences. He was my instinctive, primitive self, driven by my most primal impulses. I wondered, briefly, if id and idiot came from the same root.
“You wouldn’t get it,” I said. “It’s got to be more than just physical attraction. There’s got to be respect and affection.”
“Sure,” he said, his tone absolutely acidic. “Then how come you haven’t banged Murphy yet?”
“Because,” I said, growing flustered, “we aren’t . . . We haven’t gotten to . . . There’s been a lot of . . . Look, fuck off.”
“Hah,” my double said. “You’re obviously terrified of getting close to someone. Afraid you’ll get hurt and rejected. Again.”
“No I’m not,” I said.
“Oh, please,” he said. “I’ve got a direct line to your hindbrain. I’ve got your fears on Blu-Ray.” He rolled his eyes. “Like she isn’t feeling exactly the same thing?”
“Murphy isn’t afraid of anything,” I said.
“Two ex-husbands, and the last one married her little sister. He might as well have sent her a card that said, ‘I’d like you, only you’re too successful. And old.’ And you’re a freaking wizard who is going to live for centuries. Of course she’s freaking out about the idea of getting involved with you.”
I frowned at that. “I . . . You really think so?”
“No, dolt. You really think so.”
I snorted. “Okay, guy, if you’re so smart. What do I do?”
“If having something real is so important to you, man up and go get her,” my id said. “You could both be dead tomorrow. You’re heading for the realm of freaking death, for crying out loud. What the hell are you waiting for?”
“Uh,” I said.
“Let me answer that for you,” he said. “Molly.”
I blinked. “Uh, no. Molly’s a freaking kid.”
“She was a freaking kid,” my double said. “She’s heading for her late twenties, in case you forgot how to count. She’s not all that much younger than you, and the proportional distance is only shrinking. And you like her, and you trust her, and the two of you have a ton in common. Go get laid there.”
“Dude, no,” I said. “That is not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“It would be a serious violation of trust.”
“Because she’s your apprentice?” he asked. “No, she isn’t. Not anymore. Hell’s bells, man, she’s practically your boss when you get right down to it. At the very least, she got promoted past you.”
“I am not having this conversation,” I said.
“Repression and denial,” my double said acerbically. “Get thee to a therapist.”
The figure next to him made a soft sound.
“Right,” the double said. “We don’t have much time. Murphy’s pulling the nail out.”
“Time for what?” I asked. “And who is that?”
“Seriously?” he asked. “You aren’t going to use your intuition even a little, huh?”
I scowled at him and at the other figure and then my eyes widened. “Wait . . . Is that . . . is that the parasite?”
The shrouded figure shuddered and let out a pained groan.
“No,” my double said. “It’s the being that Mab and that stupid Alfred have been calling a parasite.”
I blinked several times. “What?”
“Look, man,” my double said. “You’ve got to work this out. Think, okay. I can’t just talk to you. This near-dream stuff is my best, but you’ve got to meet me halfway.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Wait. You’re saying that the parasite isn’t actually a parasite. But that means . . .”
“The wheel is turning,” my double said, in the tone of a reporter covering a sports event. “The fat, lazy old hamster looks like he’s almost forgotten how to make it go, but he’s sort of moving it now. Bits of rust are falling off. The cobwebs are slowly parting.”
“Screw you,” I said, annoyed. “It’s not like you’ve showed up with a ton to say ever since . . .” I trailed off and fell entirely silent for a long moment.
“Ah,” he said, and pointed a finger at me, bouncing up onto his toes. “Ah hah! Ah hah, hah, hah, the light begins to dawn!”
“Ever since I touched Lasciel’s Coin,” I breathed quietly.
“Follow that,” my double urged me. “What happened next?”
“Touching the Coin put an imprint of Lasciel in my head,” I said. “Like a footprint in clay, the same shape as the original. She tried to tempt me into accepting the true Lasciel into my head along with her, but I turned her down.”
My double rolled his wrist in a “keep it moving” gesture. “And then?”
“And then the imprint started to change,” I said. “Lasciel was immutable, but the imprint was made of me. A shape in the clay. As the clay changed, so did the imprint.”
“And?”
“And I gave her a name,” I said. “I called her Lash. She became an independent psychic entity in her own right. And we kind of got along until . . .” I swallowed. “Until there was a psychic attack. A bad one. She threw herself in the way of it. It destroyed her.”
“Yeah,” my double said quietly. “But . . . look, what she did was an act of love. And you were about as intimate with her as it gets, sharing the same mental space. I mean, it’s funny, you get twitchy when you start considering living with a woman, but having one literally inside your head was not an issue.”
“What do you mean?”
“Christ, you’re supposed to be the intellect here,” my double said. “Think.” He stared at me for a long moment, visibly willing me to understand.
My stomach fell into some unimaginable abyss at the same time my jaw dropped open. “No,” I said. “That isn’t . . . that’s not possible.”
“When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much,” my double said, as if speaking to a small child, “and they live together and hug and kiss and get intimate with each other . . .”
“I’m . . .” I felt a little ill. “You’re saying . . . I’m pregnant?”
My double threw up his arms. “Finally, he gets it.”
In years and years and years of experience as a wizard, I’d dealt with concepts, formulae, and mental models that ranged from bizarre to downright insanity-inducing. None of them had, in any way whatsoever, ever prepared my head to wrap around this. At all. Ever. “How is that . . . That isn’t even . . . What the hell, man?” I demanded.
“A spiritual entity,” my double said calmly. “Born of you and Lash. When she sacrificed herself for you, it was an act of selfless love—and love is fundamentally a force of creation. It stands to reason, then, that an act of love is fundamentally an act of creation. You remember it, right? After she died? When you could still play the music she’d given to you, even though she was gone? You could hear the echoes of her voice?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling dazed.
“That was because a part of her remained,” my double said. “Made of her—and made of you.”
And very gently, he drew back the black blanket.
She looked like a child maybe twelve years old, in the last few weeks of true childhood before the sudden surge of hormones brought on the chain of rapid changes that lead into adolescence. Her hair was dark, like mine, but her eyes were a crystalline blue-green, the way Lash’s had often appeared. Her features were faintly familiar, and I realized in a surge of instinct that her face had been constructed from those of people in my life. She had the square, balanced chin of Karrin Murphy, the rounded cheeks of Ivy the Archive, and Susan Rodriguez’s jawline. Her nose had come from my first love, Elaine Mallory, her hair from my first apprentice, Kim Delaney. I knew because they were my memories, right
there in front of me.
Her eyes were fluttering uncertainly, and she was shivering so hard that she could barely stand. There was frost forming on her eyelashes, and even as I watched it started spreading over her cheeks.
“She’s a spiritual entity,” I breathed. “Oh, my God. She’s a spirit of intellect.”
“What happens when mortals get it on with spirits,” my double confirmed, though now without heat.
“But Mab said she was a parasite,” I said.
“Lot of people make jokes, refer to fetuses like that,” he said.
“Mab called her a monster. Said she would hurt those closest to me.”
“She’s a spirit of intellect, just like Bob,” my double said. “Born of the spirit of a fallen freaking angel and the mind of one of the most potent wizards on the White Council. She’s going to be born with knowledge, and with power, and be absolutely innocent of what to do with them. A lot of people would call that monstrous.”
“Argh,” I said, and clutched at my head. I got it now. Mab hadn’t been lying. Not precisely. Hell, she’d as much as told me that the parasite was made of my essence. My soul. My . . . me-ness. Spirits of intellect had to grow, and my head was a limited space. This one had been filling it up for years, slowly expanding, putting more psychic and psychological pressure on me—reflected in the growing intensity of my migraines over that time.
If I’d realized what was happening, I could have done something sooner, and probably a lot more simply. Now . . . I was overdue and it was looking like this was going to be a very, very rough delivery. And if I didn’t have help, I’d be in much the same shape as a woman giving birth alone and encountering complications. Odds were good that my head wouldn’t be able to stand the pressure of such a being abruptly parting ways with me, fighting its way out of a space that had become too small, in sheer instinct for its own survival. It could drive me insane, or kill me outright.
