Death Masks df-5

by Jim Butcher

  Susan had changed in the last year. Or maybe she hadn't. She had always been good at what she did. She'd just altered her focus to something other than reporting. She could take on demonic murderers in hand-to-hand combat now, rip home appliances from the wall and throw them with one hand, and use grenades in the dark. If she said she could jump out of a speeding car and keep us both from dying, I believed her. What the hell, I thought. It wasn't like I hadn't done this before-albeit at a fifth the speed.

  But there was something deeper than that, something darker that Susan's vulpine smile had stirred inside of me. Some wild, reckless, primal piece of me had always loved the danger, the adrenaline, had always loved testing myself against the various and sundry would-be lethalities that crossed my paths. There was an ecstasy in the knife edge of the struggle, a vital energy that couldn't be found anywhere else, and part of me (a stupid, insane, but undeniably powerful part) missed it when it was gone.

  That wildness rose up in me, and gave me a smile that matched Susan's.

  I took her hand, and a second later we leapt from the car. I heard myself laughing like a madman as we did.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  As we went out the door, Susan pulled me hard against her. On general policy, I approved. She got one arm around the back of my head, shielding the base of my skull and the top of my neck. We hit the ground with Susan on the bottom, bounced up a bit, rolling, and hit the ground again. The impacts were jolting, but I was on the bottom only once. The rest of the time, the impact was something I felt only through my contact with Susan.

  We wound up on the tiny patch of grass two doors down from my boardinghouse, in front of some cheap converted apartments. Several seconds later, the two pursuing cars went roaring by after Martin and his rented sedan. I kept my head down until they had passed, and then looked at Susan.

  I was on top. Susan panted quietly beneath me. One of her legs was bent at the knee, half holding my thigh between hers. Her dark eyes glittered, and I felt her hips twitch in the kind of motion that brought a number of evenings (and mornings, and afternoons, and late nights) to mind.

  I wanted to kiss her. A lot. I held off. "You all right?" I asked.

  "You never complained," she answered. Her voice was a little breathless. "Nothing too bad. You? Anything hurt?"

  "My ego," I said. "You're embarrassing me with the superstrength and whatnot." I rose, took her hand, and drew her to her feet. "How's a guy supposed to assert his masculinity?"

  "You're a big boy. You'll think of something."

  I looked around and nodded. "I think we'd better get off the street, pronto."

  "Is running and hiding assertively masculine?" We started for my apartment.

  "The part where we don't die is."

  She nodded. "That's practical, but I'm not sure it's masculine."

  "Shut up."

  "There you go," Susan said.

  We went only a couple of steps before I felt the spell coming. It started as a low shiver on the back of my neck, and my eyes twitched almost of their own accord up to the roof of the apartment house we were walking by. I saw a couple of bricks from one of the chimneys fall free of their mortar. I grabbed Susan's collar and sidestepped, pulling her with me. The bricks shattered into shards and red powder on the sidewalk a step from Susan's feet.

  Susan tensed and looked up. "What was that?"

  "An entropy curse," I muttered.

  "A what?"

  I looked around, struggling to sense where the next surge of magic might come from. "Sort of a bad-luck spell. A really, really bad-luck spell. Preferred magic for getting rid of someone who annoys you."

  "Who is doing it?"

  "My guess? Snakeboy. He seems to have some talent, and he could have gotten some of my blood to target me with." I felt another gathering surge of energy to my right, and my eyes went to the power lines running overhead. "Oh, hell. Run."

  Susan and I broke into a sprint. As we did, I heard one of the power lines snap, cables squealing. The longer end of loose cable flew toward us, trailing a cloud of blue and white sparks. It hit the ground somewhere behind us.

  My clothes hadn't yet dried out from Nicodemus's guest accommodations. If it had been raining, the downed power line might have killed me. As it was, I felt a vibrating, clenching tingle wash over my legs. I almost fell, but managed to get a few more paces away from the sputtering line and regained control of my legs.

  I felt another magical strike building, bringing a gust of wind with it, but before I could zero in on it Susan shouldered me to one side. I fell to the ground just as I heard a loud cracking sound. A branch as thick as my thigh slammed to the ground. I looked up to see a strip of bare white bark showing along the trunk of the old tree behind my boardinghouse.

  Susan helped drag me to my feet and we ran the rest of the way to my apartment door. Even as we did, I felt another strike building, stronger than the last. I fumbled open the lock while thunder rumbled through the predawn grey, and we got inside.

  I could still feel the curse growing and reaching for me. It was a strong one, and I wasn't sure that either my apartment's threshold or my standard wards would be able to keep it out. I slammed the door closed behind me, locked it. The room fell into darkness as I reached for the basket beside the door. There was a waxy lump the size of my fist in it, and I lifted it and slammed it hard against the door, across the crack between the door and the jamb. I found the wick standing out from the wax, focused on it, and drew in my will. I murmured, "Flickum bicus," and released the magic, and the wick suddenly glowed with a pure white flame.

  Around the room at precisely the same moment, two dozen other candles of white and butter-colored wax also lit with a gentle flicker of white fire. As they did, I felt a sudden thrum of my own magic, prepared months before, raise into a rampart around my home. The curse pulsed again, somewhere outside, and hammered against the barrier, but my protection held. The malevolent energy shattered against it.

  "Boo- ya, snakeboy," I muttered, letting out a tense breath. "Stick that in your scaly ass and smoke it."

  "The action-hero one-liner doesn't count if you mix metaphors," Susan said, panting.

  "Looks like no Harry Dresden action figures for me," I answered.

  "Did you get him?"

  "Slammed the door on his curse," I answered. "We should be safe for a while."

  Susan looked around her at all the lit candles, getting her breath back. I saw her expression soften, and turn a little sad. We'd eaten a lot of dinners here, by candlelight. We'd done a lot of things that way. I studied her features while she stood lost in thought. The tattoos changed her, I decided. They changed the proportions and lines of her face. They lent her features a sort of exotic remoteness, an alien beauty.

  "Thirsty?" I asked. She shot me a look with a hint of frustration in it. I lifted my hands. "Sorry. I didn't think."

  She nodded, turning a little away from me. "I know. Sorry."

  "Coke?"

  "Yeah."

  I limped to the icebox, which was going to need more ice before long. I didn't have the leftover energy to freeze the water again by magic. I grabbed two cans of Coca-Cola, opened them both, and took one to Susan. She took a long guzzle and I joined her.

  "You're limping," she said when she was done.

  I looked down at my feet. "Only one shoe. It makes me lopsided."

  "You're hurt," she said. Her eyes were fastened on my leg. "Bleeding."

  "It isn't too bad. I'll clean it up in a minute."

  Susan's eyes never wavered, but they got darker. Her voice grew quieter. "Do you need help?"

  I turned a bit warily so that she couldn't see the injured leg. She shivered and made an evident effort to look away. The tattoos on her face were lighter now-not fainter, but changing in colors. "I'm sorry. Harry, I'm sorry, but I'd better go."

  "You can't," I said.

  Her voice remained very quiet, very toneless. "You don't get it. I'll explain everything to you in a litt
le while. I promise. But I have to leave."

  I cleared my throat. "Um. No, you don't get it. You can't. Cannot. Literally."

  "What?"

  "The defenses I put up have two sides and they don't have an off switch. We literally, physically can't leave until they go down."

  Susan looked up at me and then folded her arms, staring at her Coke can. "Crud," she said. "How long?"

  I shook my head. "I built them to run for about eight hours. Sunrise is going to degrade it a little though. Maybe four hours, five at the most."

  "Five hours," she said under her breath. "Oh, God."

  "What's wrong?"

  She waved a hand vaguely. "I've been - been using some of the power. To be faster. Stronger. If I'm calm, it doesn't get stirred up. But I haven't been calm. It's built up inside of me. Water on a dam. It wants to break free, to get loose."

  I licked my lips. If Susan lost control of herself, there was no place to run. "What can I do to help?"

  She shook her head, refusing to look up at me. "I don't know. Let me have some quiet. Try to relax." Something cold and hungry flickered in her eyes. "Get your leg cleaned up. I can smell it. It's - distracting."

  "See if you can build the fire," I said, and slipped into my room, closing the door behind me. I went into the bathroom and closed that door too. My first-aid kit had its own spot on one of the shelves. I downed a couple of Tylenol, slipped out of the remains of my rented tux, and cleaned up the cut on my leg. It was a shallow cut, but a good four inches long, and it had bled messily. I used disinfectant soap with cold water to wash it out, then slathered it in an antibacterial gel before laying several plastic bandages over the injury, to hold it closed. It didn't hurt. Or at least I didn't pick it out from the background of aches and pains my body was telling me about.

  Shivering again, I climbed into some sweats, a T-shirt, and a flannel bathrobe. I looked around in my closet, at a couple of the other things I'd made for a rainy day. I took one of the potions I'd brewed, the ones to counter the venom of the Red Court, and put it in my pocket. I missed my shield bracelet.

  I opened the door to the living room and Susan was standing six inches away, her eyes black with no white to them, the designs on her skin flushed a dark maroon.

  "I can still smell your blood," she whispered. "I think you need to find a way to hold me back, Harry. And you need to do it now."

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I didn't have much left in me in the way of magic. I wouldn't until I got a chance to rest and recuperate from what Nicodemus had done to me. I might have been able to manage a spell that would hold a normal person, but not a hungry vampire. And that was what Susan was. She'd gained strength in more senses than the merely physical, and that never happened without granting a certain amount of magical defense, even if in nothing but the naked will to fight. Snakeboy's serpent-cloud had been one of the nastier spells I'd seen, and it had only slowed Susan down.

  If she came at me, and it looked like she might, I wouldn't be able to stop her.

  My motto, after the past couple of years, was to be prepared. I had something that I knew could restrain her-assuming I could get past her and to the drawer where I kept it.

  "Susan," I said quietly. "Susan, I need you to stay with me. Talk to me."

  "Don't want to talk," she said. Her eyelids lowered and she inhaled slowly. "I don't want it to smell so good. Your blood. Your fear. But it does."

  "The Fellowship," I said. I struggled to rein in my emotions. For her sake, I couldn't afford to feel afraid. I edged a little toward her. "Let's sit down. You can tell me about the Fellowship."

  For a second, I thought she wouldn't give way, but she did. "Fellowship," she said. "The Fellowship of Saint Giles."

  "Saint Giles," I said. "The patron of lepers."

  "And other outcasts. Like me. They're all like me."

  "You mean infected?"

  "Infected. Half-turned. Half-human. Half-dead. There are a lot of ways to say it."

  "Uh- huh," I said. "So what's their deal?"

  "The Fellowship tries to help people the Red Court has harmed. Work against the Red Court. Expose them whenever they can."

  "Find a cure?"

  "There is no cure."

  I put my hand on her arm and guided her toward my couch. She moved with a dreamy deliberation. "So the tattoos are what? Your membership card?"

  "A binding," she said. "A spell cut into my skin. To help me hold the darkness inside. To warn me when it is rising."

  "What do you mean, warn you?"

  She looked down at her design-covered hand, then showed it to me. The tattoos there and on her face were slowly growing brighter, and had turned a shade of medium scarlet. "To warn me when I'm about to lose control. Red, red, red. Danger, danger, danger."

  The first night she'd arrived, when she'd been tussling with something outside, she'd stayed in the shadows for the first several moments inside, her face turned away. She'd been hiding the tattoos. "Here," I said quietly. "Sit down."

  She sat on the couch and met my eyes. "Harry," she whispered. "It hurts. It hurts to fight it. I'm tired of holding on. I don't know how long I can."

  I knelt down to be on eye level with her. "Do you trust me?"

  "With my heart. With my life."

  "Close your eyes," I said.

  She did.

  I got up and walked slowly to the kitchen drawer. I didn't move quickly. You don't move quickly away from something that is thinking about making you food. It sets them off. Whatever had been placed inside her was growing-I could feel that, see it, hear it in her voice.

  I was in danger. But it didn't matter, because so was she.

  I usually keep a gun in the kitchen drawer. At the time, I had a gun and a short length of silver-and-white rope in there. I picked up the rope and walked back over to her.

  "Susan," I said quietly. "Give me your hands."

  She opened her eyes and looked at the soft, fine rope. "That won't hold me."

  "I made it in case an ogre I pissed off came visiting. Give me your hands."

  She was silent for a moment. Then she shrugged out of her jacket, and held her hands out, wrists up.

  I tossed the rope at her and whispered, "Manacus."

  I'd enchanted the rope six months before, but I'd done it right. It took barely a whisper of power to set the rope into motion. It whipped into the air, silver threads flashing, and bound itself around her wrists in neat loops.

  Susan reacted instantly, going completely tense. I saw her set herself and strain against the ropes. I waited, watching for a full half a minute before she started shaking and stopped trying to break them. She let out a shaking breath, her head bowed, hair fallen around her face. I started to move toward her, when she stood up, legs spread enough to brace herself firmly, and tried again, lifting her arms.

  I licked my lips, watching. I didn't think she'd break the ropes, but I'd underestimated people before. Her face, her too-black eyes scared me. She strained against the ropes again, the movement drawing her shirt up, showing me her smooth brown stomach, the winding swirls and barbs of her tattoo red and stark against her skin. There were dark bruises over her ribs, and patches of skin that had been scraped raw. She hadn't come away from our tumble from Martin's car without being hurt, after all.

  After a minute more, she hissed out a breath and sat down, hair a tumbled mess around her face. I could feel her eyes on me more than I could actually see them. They didn't feel like Susan's eyes anymore. The tattoos stood out against her skin, red as blood. I backed off, again deliberately, calmly, and got the first aid kit out of the bathroom.

  When I came back out, she flung herself at me in blinding speed and utter silence. I'd been expecting as much, and snapped, "Forzare!"

  The silver rope flashed with a glitter of blue light and darted toward the ceiling. Her wrists went with it and she was pulled completely from the floor. Her feet swung up, and she twisted, again in silence, fighting the bonds on her. She did
n't get free, and I let her swing there until her legs had settled again, her toes barely touching the floor.

  She let out a quiet sob and whispered, "I'm sorry. Harry, I can't stop it."

  "It's okay. I've got you." I stepped closer to examine the injuries on her midsection and winced. "God. You got torn up."

  "I hate this. I'm so sorry."

  It hurt me to hear her voice. There was enough pain in it for both of us. "Shhhh," I said. "Let me take care of you."

  She fell quiet then, though I could sense flashes of that feral hunger in her. I got a bowl of water, a cloth, and set to cleaning up the scrapes as best I could. She quivered once in a while. Once she let out a pained groan. The bruises went all the way up her back, and she had another patch of abraded skin on her neck. I put my hand on her head and pushed forward. She bowed her head and let it hang forward while I tended to the wound.

  While I did, the quality of the tension changed. I could smell her hair, her skin, their scent like candle smoke and cinnamon. I became suddenly, intensely aware of the curve of her back, her hips. She leaned back a little toward me, bringing her body into contact with mine, the heat of her something that could have singed me. Her breathing changed, growing faster, heavier. She turned her head, enough to look at me over her shoulder. Her eyes burned, and her tongue flickered over her lips.

  "Need you," she whispered.

  I swallowed. "Susan. I think maybe that-"

  "Don't think," she said. Her hips brushed against the front of my sweats, and I was abruptly so hard that it hurt. "Don't think. Touch me."

  Somewhere, I knew it wasn't the best of ideas. But I laid the fingers of one hand on the curve of her waist, wrapping them slowly to her heated skin. Soft smoothness caressed my hand. There was a pleasure in it, a primal, possessive pleasure in touching her. I ran my palm and spread fingers over her flank, her belly, in slow and light circles. She arched at the caress, her eyes closing, and whispered, "Yes," over and over again. "Yes."