by Jim Butcher
He raised a gun, a military sidearm.
I kicked the door with both legs, as hard as I could.
The gun barked. Real guns don't sound like the guns in the movies. The sound is flatter, more mechanical. I couldn't see the flash, because I'd moved the door into the way. Bullets pounded the steel like hailstones on a tin roof.
Mouse slammed his shoulder against the door and rammed it closed.
I fumbled at the wards, babbling in panicked haste, and managed to restore them just in time to hear a loud popping sound, a cry, and a curse from the other side of the door. Then I reached up and snapped the dead bolt closed for good measure.
Then I fell back onto the floor of my apartment and watched the ceiling spin for a while.
In two or three minutes, maybe, I was feeling a little better. My head and shoulder hurt like hell, but I could breathe. I tried my arms and legs; three of them worked. I sat up. That worked, too, though it made my left shoulder hurt like more hell, and it was hard to see straight through the various pains.
I knew several techniques for reducing and ignoring pain, some of them almost too effective-but I couldn't really seem to line any of them up and get them working. My head hurt too much.
I needed help.
I half crawled to my phone and dialed a number. I mumbled to the other end of the phone, and then lay back on the floor again and felt terrible. Buzz must have fallen back by now, knowing that the sound of the shots could attract attention. Now that the sword was behind the protection of my wards, there was no reason for him to loiter around outside my apartment-I hoped.
The next thing I knew, Mouse was pawing at the door, making anxious sounds. I dragged myself over to it, disarmed the wards, and unlocked it.
"Are these shell casings on the ground? Is this blood?" sputtered a little man in pale blue hospital scrubs and a black denim jacket. He had a shock of black hair like a startled haystack, and black wire-rimmed spectacles. "Holy Hannah, Harry, what happened to you?"
I closed the wards and the door behind him. "Hi, Butters. I fell down."
"We've got to get you to a hospital," he said, turning to reach for my phone.
I slapped my hand weakly down onto it, to keep him from picking it up. "Can't. No hospitals."
"Harry, you know I'm not a doctor."
"Yes, you are. I saw your business card." The effort of vocalizing that many syllables hurt.
"I'm a medical examiner. I cut up dead people and tell you things about them. I don't do live patients."
"Hang around," I said. "It's early yet." Still too many syllables.
"Oh, this is a load of crap," he muttered. Then he shook his head and said, "I need some more light."
"Matches," I mumbled. "Mantel." Better.
He found the matches and started lighting candles. "Next, I'll be getting out a big jar of leeches."
He found the first aid kit under my kitchen sink, boiled some water, and came over to check me out. I sort of checked out for a few minutes. When I came back, he was fumbling with a pair of scissors and my duster.
"Hey!" I protested. "Lay off the coat!"
"You've dislocated your shoulder," he informed me, frowning without stopping his work with the scissors. "You don't want to wriggle it around trying to take your shirt off."
"That's not what I-"
The pin that held the two halves of the scissors together popped as Butters exerted more pressure on their handles, and the two halves fell apart. He blinked at them in shock.
"Told you," I muttered.
"Okay," he said. "I guess we do this the hard way."
I won't bore you with the details. Ten minutes later, my coat was off, my shoulder was back in its socket, and Butters was pretending that my screams during the two failed attempts to put it back hadn't bothered him. I went away again, and when I came back, Butters was pressing a cold Coke into my hand.
"Here," he said. "Drink something. Stay awake."
I drank. Actually, I guzzled. Somewhere in the middle, he passed me several ibuprofen tablets and told me to take them. I did.
I blinked blearily at him as he held up my coat. He turned it around to show me the back.
There was a hole in the leather mantle. I flipped it up. Beneath the hole, several ounces of metal were flattened against the second layer of spell-toughened leather, about three inches below the collar and a hair to the right of my spine.
That was chilling. Even through my best defenses, that was how close I'd come to death.
If Buzz had shot me six inches lower, only a single layer of leather would have been between the round and my hide. A few inches higher, and it would have taken me in the neck, with absolutely no protection. And if he'd waited a quarter of a second longer, until my foot had descended to the first step leading down to my door, he would have sprayed my brains all over the siding of the boardinghouse.
"You broke your nose again," Butters said. "That's where some of the blood came from. There was a laceration on your scalp, too, which accounts for the rest. I stitched it up. You're holding your neck rigid. Probably whiplash from where the round hit you. There are some minor burns on your left wrist, and I'm just about certain you've got a concussion."
"But other than that," I muttered, "I feel great."
"Don't joke, Harry," Butters said. "You should be under observation."
"Already am," I said. "Look where it got me."
He grimaced. "Doctors are required to report gunshot wounds to the police."
"Good thing I don't have any gunshot wounds, eh? I just fell down some stairs."
Butters shook his head again and turned toward the phone. "Give me a reason not to do it, or I call Murphy right now."
I grunted. Then I said, "I'm protecting something important. Someone else wants it. If the police get involved, this thing would probably get impounded as evidence. That's an unacceptable outcome, and it could get a lot of people hurt."
"Something important," Butters said. "Something like a magic sword?"
I scowled at him. "How do you know that?"
He nodded at my hand. "Because you won't let go of it."
I looked down to find the burn-scarred fingers of my left hand clutching Amoracchius's hilt in a white-knuckled grasp. "Oh," I said. "Yeah. Kind of a tip-off, isn't it?"
"Think you can let it go now?" Butters asked quietly.
"I'm trying," I said. "My hand's kind of locked up."
"Okay. Let's just go one finger at a time, then." Butters peeled my fingers off the sword, one at a time, until he had removed it from my grasp. My hand closed in on itself, tendons creaking, and I winced. It sort of hurt, but at the moment it was a really minor thing.
Butters set the sword aside and immediately took my left hand in his, massaging brusquely. "Murphy's going to be pissed if you don't call her."
"Murphy and I have disagreed before," I said.
Butters grimaced. "Okay. Can I help?"
"You are helping."
"Besides this," Butters said.
I looked at the little ME for a moment. Butters had been my unofficial doctor for a long time, never asking a thing in return. He'd waded into some serious trouble with me. Once, he'd saved my life. I trusted his discretion. I trusted him, generally.
So, as the blood started returning to my hand, I told him more or less everything about Buzz and the swords.
"So this guy, Buzz," Butters said. "He's just a guy."
"Let's don't forget," I said. "Despite all the nasties running around out there, it's just guys who dominate most of the planet."
"Yeah, but he's just a guy," Butters said. "How's that?"
I flexed my fingers, wincing a little. "It's good. Thanks."
He nodded and stood up. He went over to the kitchen and filled my dog's water bowl, then did the same for my cat, Mister. "My point is," he said, "that if this guy isn't a supermagical something, he had to find out about the swords like any other guy."
"Well," I said. "Yeah."
&nb
sp; Butters looked at me over his spectacles. "So," he said, "who knew you had the swords?"
"Plenty knew I had Shiro's sword," I said. "But this guy tried to get to me through Michael. And the only ones who knew about Amoracchius were me, a couple of archangels, Michael, Sanya, and…"
Butters tilted his head, looking at me, waiting.
"And the Church," I growled. ST. MARY OF the Angels is just about as big and impressive as churches get. In a city known for its architecture, St. Mary's more than holds its own. It takes up most of a city block. It's massive, stone, and as Gothic as black frosting on a birthday cake.
I'd watched my back all the way there and was sure no one was following me. I parked behind the church and marched up to the delivery door. Twenty seconds of pounding brought a tall, rather befuddled-looking old priest to the door.
"Yes?" he asked.
"I'm here to see Father Forthill," I said.
"Excuse me," he said.
"'S okay, Padre," I told him, clapping his shoulder and moving him aside less than gently. "I'll find him."
"Now, see here, young man-"
He might have said something else, but I didn't pay much attention. I walked past him, into the halls of the church, and headed for Forthill's room. I rapped twice on the door, opened it, and walked in on a priest in his underwear.
Father Forthill was a stocky man of medium height, with a fringe of white hair around his head, and his eyes were the color of robins' eggs. He wore boxers, a tank top, and black socks. A towel hung around his neck, and what hair he had left was wet and stuck to his head.
A lot of people would have reacted with outrage to my entrance. Forthill considered me gravely and said, "Ah. Hello, Harry."
I had come in with phasers set on snark, but even though I'm not particularly religious, I do have some sense of what is and isn't appropriate. Seeing a priest in his undies just isn't, especially when you've barged into his private chamber. "Uh," I said, deflating. "Oh."
Forthill shook his head, smiling. "Yes, priests bathe. We eat. We sleep. Occasionally, we even have to go to the bathroom."
"Yeah," I said. "Um. Yeah."
"I do rather need to get dressed," he said gently. "I'm saying Mass tonight."
"Mass?"
Forthill actually let out a short belly laugh. "Harry, you didn't think that I just sit around in this old barn awaiting my chance to make you sandwiches, bandage wounds, and offer advice?" He nodded to where a set of vestments was hung up on the wall. "On weeknights they let the junior varsity have the ball."
"We've got to talk," I said. "It's about the swords."
He nodded and gave me a quick smile. "Perhaps I'll put some pants on first?"
"Yeah," I said. "Sorry." I backed out of the room and shut the door.
The other priest showed up and gave me a gimlet eye a minute later, but Forthill arrived in time to rescue me, dressed in his usual black attire with a white collar. "It's all right, Paulo," he told the other priest. "I'll talk to him."
Father Paulo harrumphed and gave me another glare, but he turned and left.
"You look terrible," Forthill said. "What happened?"
I gave it to him unvarnished.
"Merciful God," he said when I'd finished. But it wasn't in an "Oh, no!" tone of voice. It was a slower, wearier inflection.
He knew what was going on.
"I can't protect the swords if I don't know what I'm dealing with," I said. "Talk to me, Anthony."
Forthill shook his head. "I can't."
"Don't give me that," I said with quiet heat. "I need to know."
"I'm sworn not to speak of it. To anyone. For any reason." He faced me, jaw outthrust. "I keep my promises."
"So you're just going to stand there," I snapped, "and do nothing."
"I didn't say that," Forthill replied. "I'll do what I can."
"Oh, sure," I said.
"I will," he said. "You have my word. You're going to have to trust me."
"That might come easier if you'd explain yourself."
His eyes narrowed. "Son, I'm not a fool. Don't tell me you've never been behind this particular eight ball before."
I looked for something appropriately sarcastic and edgy to say in response, but all I came up with was, "Touche."
He ran a hand over his mostly bald scalp, and I suddenly saw how much older Forthill looked than he had when I met him. His hair was even more sparse and brittle looking, his hands more weathered with time. "I'm sorry, Harry," he said, and he sounded sincere. "If I could… Is there anything else I could do for you?"
"You can hurry," I said quietly. "At the rate we're going, someone is going to get killed."
At the rate we'd been going, probably me. I APPROACHED THE park with intense caution. It took me more than half an hour to be reasonably sure that Buzz wasn't there, somewhere, lurking with another.50-caliber salutation for me. Of course, he could have been watching from the window of one of the nearby buildings-but none of them were hotels or apartments, and none of the pictures taken in the park had been shot from elevation. Besides, if I avoided every place where a maniac with a high-powered rifle might possibly shoot me, I'd live the rest of my life hiding under my bed.
Still, there was no harm in exercising caution. Rather than walking across the open ground of the park to the softball field, I took the circuitous route around the outside of the park-and heard quiet little sobs coming from the shade beneath the bleachers opposite the ones where I'd sat with Michael.
Slowing my steps as I approached, I peered under the bleachers.
A girl in shorts, sneakers, and a powder blue team jersey was huddled up with her arms wrapped around her knees, crying quietly. She had stringy red hair and was skinny, even for someone her age. It took me a minute to recognize her as Alicia's teammate, the second basem-person.
"Hey, there," I said quietly, trying to keep my voice gentle. "You all right?"
The girl looked up, her eyes wide, and immediately began wiping at her eyes and nose. "Oh. Oh, yes. I'm fine. I'm just fine, sir."
"Right, right. Next you'll tell me you've got allergies," I said.
She looked up at me with a shaky little smile, huffed out a breath in the ghost of a laugh-and it transformed into another sob on her. Her face twisted up into an agonized grimace. She shuddered and wept harder, bowing her head.
I can be such a sucker. I ducked down under the bleachers and sat down beside her, a couple of feet away. The girl cried for a couple more minutes, until she began quieting down.
"I know you," she said a minute later, between sniffles. "You were talking to Coach Carpenter yesterday. A-Alicia said you were a friend of the family."
"I'd like to think so," I agreed. "I'm Harry."
"Kelly," she said.
I nodded. "Shouldn't you be practicing with the team, Kelly?"
She shrugged her skinny shoulders. "It doesn't help."
"Help?"
"I'm hopeless," she said. "Whatever it is I'm doing, I just screw it up."
"Well, that's not true," I said with assurance. "Nobody can be bad at everything. There's no such thing as a perfect screwup."
"I am," she said. "We've only lost two games all year, and both of them were because I screwed up. We go to the finals next week, and everyone's counting on me, but I'm just going to let them down."
Hell's bells, what a ridiculously tiny problem. But it was obvious that it was real to Kelly, and that it meant the world to her. She was just a kid. It probably looked like a much larger issue from where she was standing.
"Pressure," I said. "Yeah, I get that."
She peered at me. "Do you?"
"Sure," I said. "You feel like people's lives depend on you, and that if you do the wrong thing, they're going to be horribly hurt-and it will be your fault."
"Yes," she said, sniffling. "And I've been trying so hard, but I just can't."
"Be perfect?" I asked. "No, of course not. But what choice do you have?"
She looked at
me uncertainly.
"Anything you do, you risk screwing up. You could do a bad job of crossing the street one day and get hit by a car."
"I probably could," she said darkly.
I held up my hand. "My point," I told her, "is that if you want to play it safe, you can stay at home and wrap yourself up in Bubble Wrap and never do anything."
"Maybe I should."
I snorted. "They still make you read Dickens in school? Great Expectations?"
"Yeah."
"You can stay at home and hide if you want-and wind up like Miss Havisham," I said. "Watching life through a window and obsessed with how things might have been."
"Dear God," she said. "You've just made Dickens relevant to my life."
"Weird, right?" I asked her, nodding.
Kelly let out a choking little laugh.
I pushed myself up and nodded to her. "I never saw you hiding over here, okay? I'm just gonna go do what I gotta do, and leave you to make the choice."
"Choice?"
"Sure. Do you want to put your cap back on and play? Or do you want to wind up an old maid wandering around your house in the rotting remains of a wedding dress and thirty yards of Bubble Wrap, plotting heartlessly against some kid named Pip?" I regarded her soberly. "There's really no middle ground."
"I'm pretty sure that's not right," she said.
"See there? I'm not much good at offering wise counsel, but that didn't stop me from trying." I winked at her and walked on, around behind the backstop to where Michael sat on the bleachers on the far side of the field.
Molly sat on a blanket underneath a tree maybe ten yards away, with earbuds trailing wires down into her shirt's front pocket, as if she were listening to a digital music player. It was an effort to blend into the background, I supposed, since she couldn't have been listening to one of those gizmos any more than I could have. She was wearing sunglasses, too, so I couldn't tell where her focus was, but I was sure she was being alert. She gave me the barest trace of a nod as I approached her father.
I sat down next to him and waited for it.
"Harry," Michael said, "you look awful."
