Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

For about three seconds, I couldn’t think about anything but ending him. I’d have to make it fast, take him out before he could call up any of his buddies, something quick, like breaking his neck. Open the car door. Call up a flash of light as I got out, something to dazzle his newly unshaded eyes. A dozen sprinting steps to get to him, then grab him by the jaw and the back of the head and twist sharply up and to one side, then bring up a shield around myself in case his brain stayed alive long enough to drop a death curse on me.

“Harry,” Karrin said, quiet and sharp.

I realized that I was breathing hard and that my breath was pluming into frost on the exhale as the mantle of power of the Winter Knight had begun informing my instincts in accord with the primal desire to defend my territory against an intruder. The temperature in the car had dropped as if she’d turned the AC up full blast. Water was condensing into droplets on the windows.

I closed my eyes as the Winter rose up in me and I fought it down. I’d done it often enough over the past year on the island that it was almost routine. You can’t stave off the howling, primitive need for violence that came with the Winter mantle with the usual deep-breathing techniques. There was only one way that I’d found that worked. I had to assert my more rational mind. So I ran through my basic multiplication tables in my head, half a dozen mathematical theorems, which took several seconds, then hammered out ruthless logic against the need to murder Binder in the street.

“One, witnesses,” I muttered. “Even deserted, this is still Chicago, and there could be witnesses and that would get their attention. Two, Ascher’s out there, and if she takes his side, she could hit me from behind before I could defend myself. Three, if he’s savvy enough to avoid the grab, I’d be out there with two of them on either side of me.”

The Winter mantle snarled and spat its disappointment, somewhere in my chest, but it receded and flowed back out of my thoughts, leaving me feeling suddenly more tired and fragile than before—but my breathing and body temperature returned to normal.

I watched as Binder broke into a slow jog until he caught up with Ascher. The two spoke quietly to each other as they entered the old slaughterhouse.

“Four,” I said quietly, “killing people is wrong.”

I became conscious of Karrin’s eyes on me. I glanced at her face. Her expression was tough to read.

She put her hand on mine and said, “Harry? Are you all right?”

I didn’t move or respond.

“Mab,” Karrin said. “This is about Mab, isn’t it? This is what she’s done to you.”

“It’s Winter,” I said. “It’s power, but it’s . . . all primitive. Violent. It doesn’t think. It’s pure instinct, feeling, emotion. And when it’s inside you, if you let your emotions control you, it . . .”

“It makes you like Lloyd Slate,” Karrin said. “Or that bitch Maeve.”

I pulled my hand away from hers and said, “Like I said. This is not the time to get in touch with my feelings.”

She regarded me for several seconds before saying, “Well. That is all kinds of fucked-up.”

I huffed out half a breath in a little laugh, which threatened to bring some tears to my eyes, which made the recently roused Winter start stirring down inside me again.

I chanced a quick look at Karrin’s eyes and said, “I don’t want to be like this.”

“So get out of it,” she said.

“The only way out is feetfirst,” I said.

She shook her head. “I don’t believe that,” she said. “There’s always a way out. A way to make things better.”

Oh, man.

I wanted to believe that.

Outside, the sun set. Sunset isn’t just a star orbiting below the relative horizon of the planet. It’s a shift in supernatural energy. Don’t believe me? Go out far away from the lights of civilization sometime, and sit down, all by yourself, where there aren’t any buildings or cars or telephones or crowds of people. Go sit down, quietly, and wait for the light to fade. Feel the shadows lengthening. Feel the creatures that stay quiet during the day start to stir and come out. Feel that low instinct of nervous trepidation rising up in your gut. That’s how your body translates that energy to your senses. To a wizard like me, sundown is like a single beat on some unimaginably enormous drum.

Dark things come out at night.

And I didn’t have time, right now, to dither about where I had my feet planted. I had three days to screw over Nicodemus Archleone and his crew and get this thing out of my head, without getting myself or my friend killed while I did it. I had to stay focused on that.

There’d be time to worry about other things after.

“It’s time,” I said to Karrin, and opened the car door. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

Seven

We got out of Karrin’s little SUV and headed toward the creepy old slaughterhouse full of dangerous beings. Which . . . pretty much tells you what kind of day I was having, right there.

You know, sometimes it feels like I don’t have any other kind of day.

Like, ever.

On the other hand, I’m not sure what I would really do with any other kind of day. I mean, at some point in my life, I had to face it—I was pretty much equipped, by experience and inclination, for mayhem.

“Too bad,” Karrin mused.

“Too bad what?”

“We didn’t have time to get you an actual haircut,” she said. “Seriously, did you do it yourself? Maybe without a mirror?”

I put a hand up to my head self-consciously and said, “I had some help from the General. And, hey, I didn’t say anything about your man-shoes.”

“They’re steel-toed,” she said calmly. “In case I need to plant them in anyone’s ass as a result of him calling them man-shoes. And seriously, you let Toot help you with your hair?”

“Sure as hell wasn’t going to let Alfred try it. He’d probably scrape it off with a glacier or something.”

“Alfred?”

“Demonreach.”

Karrin shuddered. “That thing.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “Not exactly charming company, but not bad.”

“It’s a demon that drove an entire town full of people insane to keep them away.”

“And it could have done much, much worse,” I said. “It’s a big, ugly dog. A cop should know about those.”

“You’re glad it’s there when someone breaks into your house,” she said, “because then it can drive them so freaking crazy that the city erases all record of the incident.”

“Exactly. And then no one remembers your ugly man-shoes.”

By then, we’d reached the door. Both of us knew why we were giving each other a hard time. There was nothing mean-spirited in it.

We were both scared.

I would go through the door first. My spell-wrought black leather duster was better armor than the vest Karrin would be wearing beneath her coat. I gripped my new staff and readied my mind to throw up a shield if I needed one. We’d done this dance before: If something was ready to come at us, I’d hold it off, and she would start putting bullets in it.

Karrin folded her arms over her chest, which happened to put her hand near the butt of her gun, and nodded at me. I nodded back, made sure my duster was closed across my front, and opened the door.

Nothing came screaming out of the shadows at us. Nobody started shooting at us. So far, so good.

The door opened onto a long hallway with light at the far end, enough to let us walk by. The interior walls of the building were old and cracked and covered in decades of graffiti. The night had brought a cold wind off the lake and the building creaked and groaned. The air smelled like mildew and something else, something almost beneath the threshold of perception that set my teeth on edge—old, old death.

“These evil freaks,

” Karrin said. “They always pick the most charming places to hang out.”

“Dark energy here,” I said. “Keeps people from wandering in and randomly interfering. And it feels homey.”

“I know you haven’t burned down any buildings in a while,” she said, “but if you start feeling the need . . .”