Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

I almost laughed. What I needed to survive this lunatic was something I had never had much of: faith, I had to believe that some other factor would intervene. I had no other option.

But that didn't mean I couldn't try to help intervention along. The longer I kept breathing, the more likely it was that someone would happen across the scene-maybe even someone who could help. Maybe even someone like my friend Michael.

I had to keep Cassius talking.

"What happened to you?" I asked him a moment later, opening my eyes. I'd read somewhere that people love to talk about themselves. "The last time I saw you, you could have passed for forty."

Cassius stared at me for a moment more, and then leaned his bat on the floor. "It was the result of losing my coin to you and your friends," he said, voice creaking. "While I held my coin, Saluriel prevented age from ravaging my body. Now nature is collecting her due from me. Plus interest." He waved his stiff-fingered right hand, wrinkled, spotted, swollen with what looked like bad arthritis. "If she has her way, I will be dead within the year."

"Why?" I asked him. "Isn't your new demon stopping the clock for you?"

His eyes narrowed, unsteady and cold. "I have no Denarius now," he said, his voice low and very polite. "When I eventually left the hospital and rejoined Nicodemus, he had no coin being held as a spare." Mad fire flickered through his gaze. "You see, he'd given it to you."

I swallowed. "That's what you were looking for, outside my apartment. You wanted the Denarius."

"Lasciel wouldn't be my first choice, but I must be content with what is available."

"Uh- huh. So where's Nicodemus? He's helping you, I take it."

Cassius's eyes closed almost all the way. "Nicodemus cast me out. He said that if I was too much a fool to keep possession of my coin that I deserved whatever befell me."

"What a guy."

Cassius shrugged. "He is a man of power, with no tolerance for fools. Once you are dead and Lasciel's coin is mine, he will take me back."

"You sound pretty confident there," I said.

"Is there some reason I should not be?" He moved stiffly over to his duffel bag. "You should make this simpler for both of us. I'm willing to make you an offer. Give it to me now, and I will make your death quick."

"I don't have it," I told him.

He let out a rough cackle. "There are only so many places one can hide it," he said. "If you are holding it as part of you, enough pain will make you drop it." He drew out a slender little coping saw from the bag and set it on the floor. "I once knew a man who swallowed his Denarius, and would swallow it again when it came through."

"Yuck," I said.

Cassius put a standard-head screwdriver down next to the saw. "And one who cut himself open and placed the coin in his abdominal cavity." He drew a vicious-looking hooked linoleum knife from the bag and held it thoughtfully. "If you tell me, I'll take your throat."

"And if I don't?" I asked.

He pared a yellowed fingernail with the knife. "I go on a treasure hunt."

I studied him for a minute, then said, "I don't have it with me. That's the truth. I bound Lasciel and buried the coin."

He let out a snarl and snatched at my left hand. He tore my glove from it, and then twisted my hand to show me my own horribly scarred palm, and the name-sigil of the demon Lasciel upon it, the only skin that wasn't layered in scar tissue. "You have it," he spat. "And it is mine."

I took a deep breath and tried to embrace an optimistic conviction in the moral rectitude of my cause; to think positive.

Hey, hideous torture would draw things out. It wasn't the way I would have chosen to stall Cassius, but again, I wasn't spoiled for choice.

"I'm telling you the truth," I said. "Besides, you wouldn't have made it quick, even if I did give it to you."

He smiled. It looked grandfatherly. "Probably," he agreed. He reached into the duffel bag again and pulled out a three-foot length of heavy chain, the kind they used to use for bicycle locks. He held it in one hand while he moved my wrists, lifting them so that I lay flat on my back, my arms outstretched over my head. "I'm a winner either way."

I wasn't strong enough to move them. The damned manacles made me weaker than a newborn kitten.

"Surrender your coin," Cassius said pleasantly. Then he gave me a hard kick in the ribs.

It drove the breath from me and hurt like hell. I managed to choke out the words, "Don't have it."

"Surrender your coin," he said again. And this time he swung the chain and lashed it down hard over my stomach. My duster was open and the chain tore through my shirt and ripped at the flesh of my belly. My vision went red with a sudden haze of agony. "I d-d-don't..." I began.

"Surrender your coin," he purred. And he hit me again with the chain.

Rinse and repeat. I don't know how many times.

An eternity later, Cassius touched his tongue to some of the blood on the chain and regarded me thoughtfully. "I hope you aren't too impatient for me to get the bat," he said. "You see, my balance is quite unsteady these days. I'm told it's a result of all the damage to my knees and ankles."

I lay there hurting. My belly and chest were on fire. Blood from one of the snakebites had trickled into my left eye, and had crusted my eyelashes together so that I couldn't open it again.

"You see, I've only got this one good hand to swing the bat with. My other was badly broken by multiple blunt-impact traumas. One-handed, I'm afraid it's difficult to aim properly or judge the power of my swing."

I tried to look around me, but I couldn't get my right eye to move properly.

"As a result," Cassius continued, "once I start paying you back for what you did to me, I'm afraid it's quite likely that I might hit you too hard and too many times. And I want to savor this."

Where was Michael? Where was... anyone?

Cassius leaned down and said, "And when I start, Dresden, I want to be free to indulge myself. To really let go and live the moment. I'm sure you understand."

No one is coming to save you, Harry.

I rasped, "I told you."

He paused, eyebrows lifted, and rolled a hand. "Pray continue."

"Told you," I said, and it was marred with a groan. "Told you if I ever saw you again I would kill you."

He let out a low, amused little chuckle and put the chain down.

He picked up the linoleum knife. Then he knelt stiffly down beside me, and calmly cut my shirt open and spread it and my duster away from my abdomen. "I remember," he said. "One should never make promises one cannot keep."