Small Favor (The Dresden Files #10)

Small Favor (The Dresden Files #10) Page 11

Chapter Twenty-five

A nybody with an ounce of sense knows that fighting someone with a significant advantage in size, weight, and reach is difficult. If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is a dubious proposition, at best.

If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you've left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Road-kill 101. Or possibly in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

My body was already in motion, apparently having decided that waiting on my brain to work things through was counterproductive to survival. It was thinking that the cat-and-mouse analogy was a pretty good one. While I was nimbler and could accelerate more swiftly than the huge gruff, he could build up more speed on a straightaway. Physically speaking, I had almost no chance of seriously harming him, while even a love tap from him would probably collapse my rib cage-another similarity.

Jerry wins on television, but in real life Tom would rarely end up with the short end of the stick. I don't remember Mister ever coming home nursing mouse-inflicted wounds. For that matter, he hardly ever came home from one of his rambles hungry. Playing cat and mouse is generally only fun for the cat.

My body, meanwhile, had flung itself to one side, forcing Tiny to turn as he pursued me, limiting his speed and buying me a precious second or three-time enough for me to sprint toward a section of floor marked off by a pair of yellow caution signs, where Joe the janitor had been waxing the floor. I crossed the wet, slick floor at a sprint and prayed that I wouldn't trip. If I went down it would take only one stomp of one of those enormous hooves to slice me in half.

Footgear like that isn't so hot for slippery terrain, though. As soon as I crossed to the other side of the waxed floor I juked left as sharply as I could, changing direction. Tiny tried to compensate and his legs went out from under him.

That isn't a big deal, by itself. Sometimes when you run something happens and you trip and you fall down. You get a skinned knee or two, maybe scuff up your hands, and very rarely you'll do something worse, like sprain an ankle.

But that's at human mass. Increase the mass to Tiny's size, and a fall becomes another animal entirely, especially if there's a lot of velocity involved. That's one reason why elephants don't ever actually run-they aren't capable of it, of lifting their weight from the ground in a full running stride. If they fell at their size, the damage could be extreme, and evidently nature had selected out all those elephant wind sprinters. That much weight moving at that much speed carries a tremendous amount of energy-enough to easily snap bones, to drive objects deep into flesh, to scrape the ground hard enough to strip a body to the bone.

Tiny must have weighed twice what an elephant does. Five tons of flesh and bone came down all along one side of his body and landed hard-then slid, carrying so much momentum that Tiny more resembled a freight train than any kind of living being. He slid across the floor and slammed into the wall of a rental car kiosk, shattering it to splinters-and went right on through it, hardly even slowing down.

Tiny dug at the floor with the yellow nails of one huge hand, but they didn't do anything but peel up curls of wax as he went sliding past me.

I slammed on the brakes and tried to judge where Tiny looked like he'd coast to a halt. Then I drew in my will.

It was difficult as hell in the falling water, but I didn't need a lot of it. When it comes to intentionally screwing up technology, I've always had a gift.

I focused on the lights above the entire section of the station Tiny slid into, lifted my right hand, and snarled, "Hexus!" Some of them actually exploded in showers of golden sparks. Some of them let out little puffs of smoke-but every single one of them went out.

Michael had advanced down the concourse far behind me, and the light of Amoracchius was now shielded by the station's interior walls. When I took out the electric lights, it created a genuine swath of heavy shadows.

The sudden island of darkness drew hobs like corpses draw flies: burned, terrified, furious hobs whose tidbit-filled night on the town had suddenly turned into a nightmare. They didn't have eyes, but they found their way to the dark easily enough, and I saw more than a dozen rush in, one of them passing within a couple of feet of me without ever slowing down or taking note of my presence.

Tiny started bellowing a second later, his huge voice blending with the vengeful howls of angry hobs.

"Ain't so big now," I panted, "are you?"

But as it turned out, Tiny was just as big.

A crushed hob flew out of the shadows and splattered the floor maybe twenty feet away. I don't mean that he was just rag-doll limp. He was crushed, crushed like a beer can, where Tiny's huge fist had simply seized the hob, squeezed it hard enough to empty it of various internal liquids, and then thrown it away.

Light flashed in the shadows, a long streak of sparks, like flint drawn along a long, long strip of steel, and suddenly low blue flames surrounded the blade of Tiny's sword. They were guttering, barely able to stay alight beneath the falling water, but they cast enough light to let me see what was happening.

The hobs had gone mad with hate.

It had been inevitable, I suppose. The minions of Winter and those of Summer do not play well with one another, and the denizens of Faerie do not behave like human beings. Their natures are far more primal, more immutable. They are what they are. Predators are swift to attack prey that has fallen and is vulnerable. Winter fae hate the champions of Summer. The hobs were both.

Several of them threw themselves at Tiny's head, while the others just started hacking with their crude weapons or biting with their sharklike teeth. Tiny's armor served him well in that mess, defending the most critical areas, and as hobs went for his throat the gruff started throwing his head back and forth. I thought it was panic for a second, until he slammed one of his horns into a hob with such power that it broke the wicked faerie's skull. His sword slewed back and forth in two quick, precise motions, and half a dozen hobs fell, dead and burning.

The others let out shrieks of terror and bounded away, their hatred insufficient to the task of withstanding the fallen gruff. Tiny rolled to his knees and began to push himself up, and though his expression was contorted with pain his inhuman eyes swept around until they spotted me.

Oh, crap.

I didn't wait for him to get up and kill me. I ran.

Of all the times to do without my jacket and staff. For crying out loud, what had I been thinking? That I had Summer so thoroughly outwitted that I wouldn't need them? That life just hadn't been challenging enough until now? Stupid, Harry. Stupid, stupid. I swore that if I lived through this, I'd make up dummy copies of my gear for when I needed Thomas to play stalking horse.

The ground started shaking as Tiny took up the chase behind me.

My options were limited. To my right was the exterior wall of the building, and I couldn't go outside into the deepening snow. My imagination treated me to a dandy image of me floundering in hip-deep snow while Tiny, with his far greater height and mass, cruised effortlessly up behind me and beer-canned me. Ahead of me was an empty hallway leading to another wall, and on my left were nothing but rows and rows of...storage lockers.

I fumbled in my pocket again as I ran through the water sheeting the floor, and started trying to get a look at the numbers on the lockers. I spotted the one corresponding to Gard's key, and I skidded to a halt on the watery floor. I jammed the key in the lock frantically as Tiny, running with a limp but still running, closed the last dozen yards between us.

I had to time it perfectly. I raised my right hand, aimed at the hoof on his wounded leg, and waited for all of his weight to come forward onto it before triggering every energy ring on my right hand, unleashing a rushing column of force that hit him with the power of a speeding car.

The gruff 's hoof went out from under him again on the wet floor, and he pitched forward with a roar of frustration. He dropped his blade and reached for me with both hands as he fell.

I waited until the last second to jump back, ripping open the door to Gard's locker as I went.

I could only describe what happened next as a bolt of lightning. It wasn't lightning-not really. Real lightning did not have the raw, savage intensity of this...thing, and I realized with a startled flash of insight that this energy, whatever it was, was alive. White-hot power tinged with flashes of scarlet streaked out of the locker like a hundred hyperkinetic serpents, zigzagging with impossible speed. That living lightning ripped into Tiny, cutting through his crystalline armor as if it had been made of soft wax. It burned and slashed and pounded the flesh beneath in a long line from Tiny's shoulder to his lower leg, letting out a screaming buzz of sound unlike anything I had ever heard before.

In the last fraction of a second before it vanished, the energy snapped back and forth like the tip of a whip, and Tiny's left leg came off at the knee.

The gruff screamed. Whatever that thing had been, it had taken the fight out of Tiny.

Hell's bells.

I stared at the maimed Summer champion and then at the open, innocent-looking locker. Then I walked slowly forward.

Tiny had only one eye open, and it didn't look like it would focus on anything. His breathing was rough, quick, and ragged, which translated into a seething, oat-scented breeze anywhere within ten or fifteen feet of his head.

Tiny blinked his other eye open, and though they still wouldn't focus he let out a weak-sounding grunt. "Mortal," he rasped, "I am bested." One of his ears flicked once and he exhaled in a sigh. "Finish it."

I walked past the fallen gruff without stopping, noting as I did that the stroke of energy that had severed his leg had cauterized it shut, too. He wasn't going to bleed to death.

I peered cautiously into the locker.

It was empty except for a single, flat wooden box about the size of a big backgammon kit. The back wall of the locker sported something else-the blackened outline of some sort of rune. It wasn't the first time I'd seen Gard employing some kind of rune-based magic, but I'd be damned if I knew how it was done. I reached out with my wizard's senses cautiously, but felt nothing. Whatever energy had been stored there was gone now.

What the hell? I reached in and grabbed the box. Nothing ripped me into quivering shreds.

I scowled suspiciously and slowly withdrew the box, but nothing else happened. Evidently Gard had considered her security measures to be adequate for dealing with a thief. Or a dinosaur. Whichever.

Once I had the case, I turned back to the gruff.

"Mortal," Tiny wheezed, "finish it."

"I try not to kill anything unless it's absolutely necessary," I replied, "and I've got no need to kill you today. This wasn't a personal matter. It's done. That's the end of it."

The gruff focused his eyes and just stared at me for a startled moment. "Mercy? From a Winterbound?"

"I'm not bound," I snapped. "This is purely temp work." I squinted around. "I think the hobs have mostly cleared out. Can you leave on your own, or do you need me to send for someone?"

The gruff shuddered and shook his huge head. "Not necessary. I will go." He spread the fingers of one hand on the ground and started sinking into it as if it were quicksand. As portals to Faerie went, that was a new one for me.

"This is a onetime offer," I told him just before he was completely gone. "Don't come back."

"I shan't," he rumbled, his eyes sagging closed in weariness. "But mark you this, wizard."

I frowned at him. "What?"

"My elder brother," he growled, "is going to kill thee."

Then Tiny sank into the floor and was gone.

"Another one?" I demanded of the floor. "You've got to be kidding me!"

I leaned against the lockers, banging my head gently against the steel for a moment. Then I pushed myself back onto my feet and started jogging back toward where I had parted with Michael. Just because the hobs were gone from this part of the station didn't mean that there wasn't still a fight going on. Michael might need my help.

I picked up the trail of body parts again, though by this time most of them were mounds of dark powder, like charcoal dust, pounded to a gooey paste by the building's sprinklers. The patches of gunk got thicker as I continued in the direction I thought Michael had gone.

I followed the trail to the base of a ridiculously broad flight of stone stairs-the one that actually had been in The Untouchables. The parts were still recognizable as parts here. These hobs hadn't been dead for long. They lay in a carpet of motionless, burning corpses on the stairs. Judging by the way they'd fallen they had been facing up the stairs when they died.

Several fallen hobs bore wounds that indicated that Michael had hewed his way through them from behind. White knight he might be, but once that sword comes out, Michael puts his game face on, and he plays as hard as almost anyone I've ever seen.

Not that I could blame him. Not all the remains I'd passed had been those of hobs.

Three security guards were down, one maybe ten feet from the stairs, the other two on the stairway itself. They had fallen separately in the darkness.

I'd passed several other bloodstains that had almost certainly been fatal to their donors, unless the falling water had made them look more extensive than they actually were. I'd never encountered hobs face-to-face before, but I knew enough about them to hope that whoever had spilled that blood was dead.

Hobs had a habit of hauling victims back into their lightless tunnels.

I shuddered. I'd give the troubleshooters from Summer that much: All the gruffs wanted to do was kill me, clean, and that would be the end of it. I'd been carried into the darkness by monsters before. It isn't something I'd wish on anyone. Ever.

You don't really live through it, even if you survive. It changes you.

I pushed away bad memories and tried to ignore them while I thought. Some of the hobs had obviously taken their victims and run. According to the books it was their modus operandi. Though this entire attack seemed to indicate a higher level of organization than the average rampage, obviously whoever was behind it wasn't in complete control. Faeries share one universal trait-their essential natures are actively contrary, and they are notoriously difficult to command.

The hobs on the stairs were different from the ones I'd had to contend with at the front of the station. These all bore more advanced cutlery, probably made of bronze, and wore armor made of some kind of hide. To be clustered this thickly on the stairs, they had to have been at least a little organized, fighting in ranks, too.

Something had compelled these hobs to attack in unison. Hell, if the numbers of fallen hobs in front of me were any indication, the gang that came after Michael and me were probably stragglers who had gone haring off on their own, looking for a little carryout to take home.

So what had been the purpose of the attack? What the hell had drawn them all to the stairway?

Whatever was at the top, obviously.

Above me the light of the holy Sword flickered and began to fade. I chugged up the stairs as it did, still holding my fingers up to shield my eyes until the light dwindled, and caught up to Michael. He was breathing hard, Sword still raised over his head in a high guard and ready to come sweeping down. I noted, idly, that the stench of stagnant water had vanished, replaced by the quiet, strong scent of roses. I lifted my face again and felt cool, clean, rose-scented water fall on my face. Falling through the light of the holy Sword had improved it, it would seem.

The last hob to fall, a big brute the size of a freaking mountain gorilla, lay motionless near Michael's feet. What was left of a bronze shield and sword lay in neatly sliced fragments around the body. Its blood spread sluggishly down the stairs, coated with blue-white flame as its body was slowly consumed by more of the same.

"Everybody can relax," I panted as I caught up to Michael. "I'm here."

Michael greeted me with a nod and a quick smile. "Are you all right?"

"Not bad," I said, barely resisting the temptation to turn the second word into a barnyard sound. "Sorry I wasn't much use to you once you waded in."

"It couldn't have happened without your help," Michael said seriously. "Thank you."

"De nada," I replied.

I went up the last few stairs and got a look at what the hobs had been after.

Children.

There must have been thirty kids around ten years old up at the top of the stairs, all of them in school uniforms, all of them huddled together in a corner, all of them frightened, most of them crying. There was one dazed-looking woman in a blazer that matched those of the children, together with two women dressed in the casual uniforms of Amtrak stewards.

"A train had just arrived," I murmured to Michael as I realized what had happened. "It must have gotten in through the weather somehow. That's why the hobs were here now."

Michael flicked Amoracchius to one side, shaking off a small cloud of fine black powder from the blade as he did. Then he put the weapon away. "It should be safe now, everyone," he said, his voice calm. "The authorities should be here any minute." He added in a quieter tone, "We should probably go."

"Not yet," I said quietly. I walked into the Great Hall far enough to see the area behind the first of the row of Corinthian pillars that lined the walls.

Three people stood there.

The first was a man, of a height with Michael, but built more leanly, more dangerously. He had hair of dark gold that fell to his shoulders, and the shadow of a beard resulting from several days without shaving. He wore a casual, dark-blue sports suit over a white T-shirt, and he held the bronze sword of a hob, stained with their dark blood, in either hand. He regarded me with the calm, remote eyes of a great cat, and he showed me some of his teeth when he saw me. His name was Kincaid, and he was a professional assassin.

Next to him was a young woman with long, curling brown hair and flashing dark eyes. Her jeans were tight enough to show off some nice curves, but not too tight to move in, and she held a slender rod maybe five feet long in one hand, carved with runes and sigils not too unlike mine. Captain Luccio had a long plastic tube hanging from a strap over one of her shoulders, its top dangling loose. Odds were good her silver sword was still stowed inside it. I knew that when she smiled, she had killer dimples-but from the expression on her face I wasn't going to be exposed to that hazard anytime soon. Her features were hard and guarded, though they did not entirely hide a fierce rage. I hoped it was reserved for the attacking hobs and not for me. The captain was not someone I wanted angry at me.

Standing between and slightly behind the two adults was a girl not much older than all the other children who had taken refuge in the Hall. She'd grown more than a foot since the last time I'd seen her, about five years ago. She still looked like a neatly dressed, perfectly groomed child-except for her eyes. Her eyes were creepily out of place in that innocent face, heavy with knowledge and all the burdens that come with it.

The Archive put a hand on Kincaid's elbow, and the hired killer lowered his swords. The girl stepped forward and said, "Hello, Mister Dresden."

"Hello, Ivy," I responded, nodding politely.

"If these creatures were under your command," the little girl said in a level tone, "I'm going to execute you."

She didn't make it a threat. There wasn't enough interest in her voice for it to be that. The Archive just stated it as a simple and undeniable fact.

The scary part was that if she decided to kill me, there'd be little I could do about it. The child wasn't simply a child. She was the Archive, the embodied memory of humanity, a living repository of the knowledge of mankind. When she was six or seven I'd seen her kill a dozen of the most dangerous warriors of the Red Court. It took her about as much effort as it takes me to open the wrapper on a stack of crackers. The Archive was Power with a capital P, and operated on an entirely different level than I did.

"Of course they weren't under his command," Luccio said. She glanced at me and arched an eyebrow. "How could you even suspect such a thing?"

"I find it unlikely that an attack of this magnitude could be anything but a deliberate attempt to abduct or assassinate me. Mab and Titania have involved themselves in this business," the Archive said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Mister Dresden is currently Winter's Emissary in this affair-and need I remind you that hobs are beholden to Winter-to Mab?"

She hadn't needed to remind me, though I'd been putting that thought off for a while. The fact that the hobs were Mab's subjects meant that matters were even murkier than I thought, and that now was probably a reasonably good time to start panicking.

But first things first: Prevent the scary little girl from killing me.

"I have no idea who was ordering these things around," I said quietly.

The Archive stared at me for an endless second. Then that ancient, implacable gaze moved to Michael. "Sir Knight," she said, her tone polite. "Will you vouch for this man?"

Maybe it was just my imagination that it took Michael a second longer to answer than he might have done in the past. "Of course."

She stared at him as well, and then nodded her head. "Mister Dresden, you remember my bodyguard, Kincaid."

"Yeah," I said. My voice didn't exactly bubble with enthusiasm. "Hi, tough guy. What brings you to Chicago?"

Kincaid showed me even more teeth. "The midget," he said. "I hate the snow. If it was up to me, I'd much rather be somewhere warm. Say, Hawaii, for example."

"I am not a midget," the Archive said in a firmly disapproving tone. "I am in the seventy-fourth percentile for height for my age. And stop trying to provoke him."

"The midget's no fun," Kincaid explained. "I tried to get her to join the Girl Scouts, but she wasn't having any of it."

"If I want to glue macaroni to a paper plate, I can do that at home," said the Archive. "It's hours past my bedtime, and I have no desire to entangle ourselves with the local authorities. We should leave." She frowned at Kincaid. "Obviously our movements have been tracked. Our quarters here are probably compromised." She turned her eyes back to me. "I formally request the hospitality of the White Council until such time as I can establish secure lodgings."

"Uh," I said.

Luccio made a quick motion with one hand, urging me to accept.

"Of course," I said, nodding at the Archive.

"Excellent," the Archive said. She turned to Kincaid. "I'm soaked. My coat and a change of clothes are in my bag on the train. I'll need them."

Kincaid gave me a skeptical glance but, tellingly, he didn't argue with the Archive. Instead he vanished quickly down the stairs.

The Archive turned to me. "Statistically speaking, the emergency services of this city should begin to arrive in another three minutes, given the weather and the condition of the roads. It would be best for all of us if we were gone by then."

"Couldn't agree more," I said. I grimaced. "Whoever did this is taking awful chances, moving this publically."

The Archive's not-quite-human gaze bored into me for a moment. Then she said, "Matters may be quite a bit worse than that. I'm afraid our troubles are just beginning."

Chapter Twenty-six

M ichael stopped in his tracks when he saw the gaping hole Tiny the gruff had left in the east wall of Union Station. "Merciful God," he breathed. "Harry, what happened?"

"Little problem," I said.

"You didn't say anything to me."

"You looked busy," I told him, "and you already had a couple of hundred bad guys to handle." I nodded at the hole. "I only had the one."

Michael shook his head bemusedly, and I saw Luccio look at the hole with something like mild alarm.

"Did you get it?" Michael asked.

Luccio cocked her head at Michael when he spoke, and then looked sharply at me.

I gave Michael a level look and said, "Obviously." Then I turned on my heel and whistled sharply. "Mouse!"

My dog, soggy but still enthusiastic, came bounding toward us over the water-coated marble floors. He slid to a stop, throwing up a little wave that splashed over my feet as he did. The Archive peered intently at Mouse as he arrived, and took a step toward him-but was prevented from going farther by Kincaid's hand, which came to rest on her slender shoulder.

Michael frowned at the girl and then at the dog. "This," he said, "brings up a problem."

There was only so much room in the cab of Michael's truck.

All of us were soaking wet, and there was no time to get dry before the authorities arrived. I didn't think it completely fair that I got a number of less than friendly looks on the walk to the garage, after I explained that it had been me who set off the sprinkler system, but at least no one could claim that I hadn't been willing to suffer the consequences right along with them.

The Archive might have been a creepy Billy Mumy-in-The Twilight Zone kind of child, but she was still a child. By general acclamation she was in the cab. Michael had to drive.

"I'm not letting her sit in there alone," Kincaid stated.

"Oh, come on," I said. "He's a Knight of the freaking Cross. He isn't going to hurt her."

"Irrelevant," Kincaid said. "What about when someone starts shooting at her on the way there? Is he going to throw his body in front of her to keep her from harm?"

"I-" Michael began.

"You're damned right he will," I growled.

"Harry," Michael said, his tone placating, "I'd be glad to protect the child. But it would be somewhat problematic to do that and drive at the same time."

Mouse let out a low, distressed sound, which drew my attention to the fact that the Archive had fallen uncharacteristically silent. She was standing beside Kincaid, shuddering, her eyes rolling back in her head.

"Dammit," I said. "Get her into the truck. Go, Kincaid, Michael."

Kincaid scooped her up at once, and he and Michael got into the cab of the truck.

"I-is y-your h-house far from here, Warden?" Luccio asked me.

She didn't look good. Well, she looked good given the circumstances. But she also looked soaked and half-frozen already, kneeling to hug Mouse, ostensibly rubbing his fur to help dry it and fluff it out. I'd seen Luccio in action, as captain of the Wardens of the White Council, and I had formed my opinion of her accordingly. When I looked at the woman who'd faced Kemmler's disciples without batting an eye, whom I'd once seen stand in the open under fire from automatic weapons to protect the apprentices under her care, I tended to forget that she was about five-foot-four and might have checked in at a hundred and thirty or forty pounds soaking wet.

Which she was.

In the middle of a blizzard.

"It isn't far," I said. Then I went up to the door beside Kincaid and said, "Put the kid on your lap."

"She wears the seat belt," Kincaid said. "She's in danger enough from exposure already."

"Luccio doesn't weigh much more than Ivy does," I said in a flat tone. "She's in almost as much danger as the kid. So you're holding Ivy on your lap and letting my captain ride in the cab, like a gentleman."

Kincaid gave me a level look, his pale eyes cold. "Or what?"

"I'm armed," I said. "You're not."

He looked at me levelly, then at my hands. One of them was in my coat pocket. Then he said, "You think I believe that you'd kill me?"

"If you try to make me choose between you and Luccio," I said, with a brittle smile, "I'm pretty sure whom I'm going to bid aloha."

His teeth flashed in a sudden, wolfish smile. And he moved over, drawing the freezing child onto his lap.

By the time I got back to Luccio she was upright only because Mouse sat placidly in the cold, supporting her. She mumbled some kind of protest in a faint, commanding tone, but since she said it in Italian I declared her brain frozen and assumed command of the local Warden detachment, which was handy, since it consisted of only me anyway. I bundled her into the truck's cab and got her buckled in beside Kincaid. He helped with it-my fingers were too cold and stiff to manage very quickly.

"Harry," Michael said. He reached back, drew a rolled-up thermal blanket from behind the truck's front seat, and tossed it to me. I caught it and nodded my thanks with the cold already starting to chew at my belly.

That left me and Mouse in the back of the truck, both of us soaking wet, in the middle of winter, in the middle of a blizzard. The cold moved from my belly to my chest, and I curled up into a ball because I didn't have much choice in the matter. Magic wasn't an option. My palm-sized ball of flame wouldn't get along well with the back of a moving truck, especially given how much I was already shaking. I wanted to get warm, not set myself on fire.

"S-s-s-sometimes ch-ch-ch-chivalry s-s-s-sucks," I growled to Mouse, teeth chattering.

My dog, whose thick winter coat wasn't much good after it had gotten a good soaking, leaned against me as hard as I leaned against him, underneath the rough blanket, while the cab of the truck heated up nicely, its windows fogging. I felt like a Dickens character. I thought about explaining that to Mouse, just to occupy my thoughts, but he was suffering enough without being forced to endure Dickens, even by proxy. So we made the trip in miserable, companionable silence. There might have been emergency lights going by us. I was too busy enjoying the involuntary rhythmic contractions of every muscle cell in my freaking body to notice.

Thirty seconds into the trip I was fairly certain that I was going to black out and wake up five hundred years in the future, but as it turned out I had to endure only a miserable twenty minutes or so before Michael pulled up outside my apartment.

Both vehicle doors opened to the weary but authoritative ring of Luccio's voice. "Get him to the door while he can still let us in through his wards."

"I'm fine," I said, rising. Only it came out sounding more like, "Mmmmnnngh," and when I tried to stand up I all but fell out of the truck. Michael caught me, and Kincaid moved quickly to help him lift me to the ground.

I dimly felt one of Kincaid's hands enter my jacket pocket and turn it out empty. "Son of a bitch," he said, grinning. "I knew it."

Luccio emerged from the truck's cab, carrying the entirely limp form of the Archive draped over one hip. The girl's arms and legs flopped loosely, her mouth hung open in sleep, and her cheeks were bright pink. "Get up, Dresden," she stated. Her voice was firm, but though warmed by the trip, she was still nearly as damp as she had been at the station, and I saw her buckle as the cold sank its teeth into her. "Hurry."

I moved my feet in a vague shuffle, and remembered somewhere that when you walked, you moved them alternately. This improved our progress considerably. We reached a door, and someone said something about dangerous wards.

No kidding, I thought. I've got some wards on my place that'll fry you to greasy spots on the concrete. But you should see the ones Gard can do.

Luccio snapped something to me about the wards, and I thought she looked cold. I had a fire at my place, which she could probably use. I opened the door for her, the way you're supposed to for a lady, but the damned thing was stuck until Michael shoved it open with his shoulder and muttered something disparaging about amateur work.

Then everything got sort of muddled, and my arms and legs hurt a lot.

I ended up thinking: Man, my couch feels nice.

Mouse snuffled at my face and then all but squashed me as he laid his head and most of his upper body across mine. I thought about chewing him out for it, but opted for sleep on my wonderful couch instead.

Blackness ensued.

I woke up to a room illuminated only by the light from my fireplace. I was toasty, though my fingers and toes throbbed uncomfortably. There was a gentle weight pressing down on me that proved to be virtually every blanket I owned. The deep, slow, steady sound of my dog's breathing whispered from the rug in front of the couch, and one of my hands was lying on the rough, warm, dry fur of Mouse's back.

Water trickled nearby.

Luccio sat on a footstool in front of the fire, facing the flames. My teapot hung on its latch over the fire. A basin of steaming water sat upon the hearth. As I watched, she dipped a cloth in the hot water and slid it over her shoulder and down the length of one arm, her face in profile to me. Her eyes were closed in an expression of simple pleasure. The light of the fire made lovely, exquisitely feminine shadows along the slender lines of her naked back, down to the waist of her jeans as she moved, muscles shifting beneath soft skin that shimmered golden like the firelight for a second after the warm cloth glided over it, leaving little wisps of vapor in its wake.

Something else had never really occurred to me before, either.

Luccio was beautiful.

Oh, she wasn't cover-girl pretty, though I suspected that with the right preparation she'd be damned close. Her features were appealing, particularly around her little Cupid's bow of a mouth, framed by its dimples, contrasted with a rather squared-off chin that stopped half an eyelash shy of masculinity. She had dark eyes that flashed when she was angry or amused, and her medium-brown hair was long, curling, and lustrous. She obviously took really good care of it-but there was too much strength in that face for her to be conventionally pretty.

Beauty runs deeper than that.

There was an inexpressible quality of femininity about her that appealed to me tremendously-some critical mixture of gentle curves, quiet grace, and supple strength that I had only that second realized happened to reside in the same place as the head of the Wardens. Maybe more important, I knew the quality of the person under the skin. I'd known Luccio for years, been in more than one tight spot with her, and found her to be one of the only veteran Wardens whom I both liked and respected.

She shook her hair to the other side of her back and washed the other shoulder and arm just as slowly, and just as evidently taking pleasure in doing so.

It had been a while since I'd seen a woman's naked back and shoulders. It had been considerably rarer than my views of the various nightmares my job kept exposing me to. I guess even among all the nightmares, sooner or later you'll get lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a beautiful dream. And despite the trouble I was in, for just that moment there, under all those blankets, I looked at something beautiful. It made me wish I had the talent to capture the sight with charcoal or inks or oils-but that had never been my gift. All I could do was soak up that simple sight: beautiful woman bathing in firelight.

I didn't actually notice when Luccio paused and turned her head to face me. I just noticed, suddenly, that she was returning my gaze, her dark eyes steady. I swallowed. I wasn't sure what I had been expecting. Sudden outrage, maybe, or a biting remark, or at least a blush. Luccio didn't do any of that. She just returned my stare, calm and poised and lovely as you please, one arm folded across her breasts while the other dipped the cloth into the steaming basin again.

"Sorry," I said finally, lowering my eyes. I was probably blushing. Dammit. Maybe I could pass it off as mild frostbite, heroically suffered on her behalf.

She let out a quiet little murmur of sound that was too relaxed to be a chuckle. "Did it displease you?"

"No," I said, at once. "God, no, nothing like that."

"Then why apologize?" she said.

"I, uh..." I coughed. "I just figured that a girl who came of age during the reign of Queen Victoria would be a little more conservative."

Luccio let out a wicked little laugh that time. "Victoria was British," she said. "I'm Italian."

"Bit of a difference, then?" I asked.

"Just a little," she replied. "When I was young, I posed for a number of painters and sculptors, you know." She tilted her head back and washed her throat as she spoke. "Mmm. Though that was in my original body, of course."

Right. The one that had been stolen by an insane necromancer, leaving Luccio's mind permanently trapped in a loaner. A really young, fit, lovely loaner. "I don't see how the one you're in now could possibly come up short by comparison."

She opened her eyes and flashed me a smile that was entirely too pleased and girlish. "Thank you. But I would not have you misunderstanding me. I'd avail myself of your shower, after being soaked in that foul soup, but the Archive is on your bed, and Kincaid has closed the door. He's resting too, and I'd rather not have him go for my throat before he wakes. And you were asleep, so..." She gave a little shrug of her shoulders.

It did really interesting things to the shadows the fire cast upon her skin, and I was suddenly glad of all the blankets piled on me.

"Are you feeling all right?" Luccio asked me.

"I'll live," I said.

"It was gallant of you to face down Kincaid like that."

"No problem. He's an ass."

"A very dangerous one," Luccio said. "I wouldn't have traveled with him if I had not seen him pass through the security checkpoint in Boston." She rose, dropped the washcloth in the basin, and pulled her shirt on, giving me a rather intriguing view of her back and waist silhouetted against the firelight.

I sighed. Moment over. Back to business.

"What were you doing traveling with them?" I asked.

"Bringing them here for the parley," she replied.

"Parley?"

"The Archive contacted Nicodemus Archleone regarding our accusations. He agreed to meet with us here, in Chicago, to discuss the matter. You are the initiating party in this instance, and I am here to serve as your second."

I blinked at her. "You? My second?"

She turned to face me as she finished buttoning her shirt and smiled faintly. "Duty before ego. Relatively few of the Wardens with sufficient seasoning for the role were willing. I thought it might be best if you worked with me instead of Morgan."

"That's why they pay you the big bucks, Cap. That keen interpersonal insight."

"That and because I'm quite good at killing things," Luccio said, nodding. She turned to the fireplace and took Gard's little wooden box off the mantel. "Dresden..."

"Hell's bells," I breathed, sitting up. "Captain, that thing is dangerous. Put it down." I snapped out that last in a tone of pure authority, one I'd gotten used to when working with Molly and various folks I'd met through the Paranet.

She froze in her tracks and arched an eyebrow at me, but only for a split second. Then she smoothly replaced the box and stepped away from it. "I see. You were holding it when we dragged you in here. You wouldn't let it go, in fact."

"Well," I said, "no."

"Which, I take it, explains what you were doing at the station."

"Well," I said, "yes."

"Quite a coincidence," she said.

I shook my head. "In my experience, when there's a Knight of the Cross around, there's no such thing as coincidence."

She frowned at that. "It's been a very long time since I've been to confession. Nearly a century, in fact. I'm not aware that the Almighty owes me any favors."

"Mysterious ways," I said smugly.

She laughed. "I take it they've used that line on you before?"

"Constantly," I said.

"A good man," she said. "You're lucky to have him as a friend."

I frowned and said quietly, "Yeah. I am." I shook my head. "When's the parley?"

"Noon, tomorrow." She nodded at the mantel. "Can you tell me what's in there?"

"Options," I said. "If the parley fails."

"Out with it, Dresden," she said.

I shook my head.

She put a fist on one hip. "Why not?"

"Gave my word."

She considered that for a moment. Then she nodded once and said, "As you wish. Get some more rest. You'll need it." Then she prowled over to my love seat, sank wearily down into it, and, without another word, curled up under a blanket. She was apparently asleep seconds later.

I thought about getting up and checking out Gard's case, maybe calling Michael and Murphy, but the weariness that suddenly settled on my limbs made all of that sound impossibly difficult. So I settled in a little more comfortably and found sleep coming swiftly to me as well.

The last thing I noticed, before I dropped off, was that under all the blankets I was entirely undressed.

And I was clean.