Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

“Dresden!” Valmont cried.

I spun to see her lurch and grab onto a heavy metal shelf of cleaning products. I’d lost hold of her at some point. No sooner had she grabbed on than one of her legs was jerked out from beneath her, and her hands were wrenched free of the shelf.

I snapped my arms out and caught her before she could be hauled out of the closet, becoming cognizant of a purple-grey tentacle wrapped around her ankle as I did. I went to the floor, lashing out with all the power of my legs, and sent the door swinging closed with vicious force, neatly severing the tip of the octokong’s tentacle.

There was a furious bellow from outside the door.

“Get behind me, get behind me!” I shouted at Valmont, keeping the door pressed shut with my legs. She scrambled over me in the darkness inside the closet, her limbs lean and solid beneath her disguise. A second later, there was a click, and light from a tiny flashlight flooded the room as she used it to start scanning the shelves.

I expected the octokong to come shoving against the door, but instead there were several smaller impacts, and then suddenly the door let out a shriek as it was simply torn into pieces and ripped away from me. I caught a flash of multiple tentacles holding various shattered pieces of the door, and then the octokong was coming through the doorway, low, propelled by still more tentacles and its apelike arms.

I let out a scream and kicked it in the chest with both feet, tagging it hard enough to draw a coughing roar of surprise from it and send its heavy torso tumbling back into the hallway—but its tentacles caught the doorframe with clearly supernatural power, arresting its momentum and beginning to send it hurtling back into me.

I lifted my hand and screamed, “Forzare!” A second wave of kinetic energy lashed through the air and caught the octokong, pressing outward, and for half a dozen seconds the strength of my will contended with all of those tentacles and arms.

The shield in the hallway had taken too much out of me. I could feel my will beginning to buckle, the spell begin to falter. The octokong pressed closer and closer to where I lay prostrate, my arm extended. Little stars gathered at the edges of my vision.

And then there was a shriek, a high-pitched howling sound that was absolutely industrial in its tone and intensity. There was a flash of light, blue-white and so bright that it made Valmont’s stun grenade look like a camera’s flashbulb by comparison, and the air itself was rent with a miniature thunderclap as a sphere of fire the size of my two fists appeared in the same space as the octokong’s skull.

It was there for a fraction of a second, pop, like a short-lived soap bubble.

And when it was gone . . . all that was left was blackened bone and a cloud of fine, fine black powder.

The octokong convulsed, all ten limbs writhing, but it didn’t last long. The headless corpse thrashed around for a moment, and the blackened remnants of the skull went rolling off of it, cracking and crumbling as it did.

Hannah Ascher appeared over the body, her party shoes held in one hand, her dark eyes blazing. “Dresden? You okay?”

I just stared at her for a second.

Hell’s bells.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Wizard of the White Council. But what I’d just witnessed was a display of precision and power so awesome that I would barely have believed it from a senior Council member, much less a freaking warlock younger than me. Fire’s a tricky, tricky magic to use. Call up enough power to do damage, and you have to fight to control it. The hotter you make it, the more it spreads out, consumes, destroys. This fire spell had been positively surgical.

I mean, I’m good with fire.

But Hannah Ascher was good with fire.

Ye gods, no wonder the Wardens hadn’t brought her in yet.

“Thanks,” I said, climbing to my feet. And then I reached out and shoved her away as the first octokong came swarming through the doorway behind her and pounced, tentacles flailing.

I had time to get my arms up and then the weight of the thing drove me flat to the floor. I tried to fight it, but there was nothing to fight—I was pinned beneath a fleshy web of tentacles that ripped and tore and bit at me through my clothes. I barely managed to wrench my head free of the slimy, stinking thing and get a breath, and because I did I was in time to see Anna Valmont step out of the cleaning closet and hurl a cup of some kind of powdered concentrate into the octokong’s eyes.

The thing shrieked in agony, pure agony, and half of its tentacles lifted off of me instantly in a vain attempt to protect its face and head. The beast writhed in torment, and I managed to get a leg into place to shove it off me. I pushed myself to my feet.

“Go!” I shouted at Ascher and Valmont. “Go, go, go!”

They didn’t need any more encouragement. We fled down the hallway, leaving the screaming octokong behind us, and all but flew down the stairs.

“There,” I snapped at Ascher on the way down. “We got her out and she’s helping. You happy?”

“Yeah, Dresden,” she said, her tone cross. “I’m happy. I’m thrilled. I’m freaking joyous. Now shut up and run.”

And I fled the hotel, blood oozing out to stain my shredded tux.

I didn’t mind so much.

I’d like to see Nicodemus try to get his deposit back on that.

Eleven

On the way down the stairs, Anna Valmont ditched her tunic and pants, and proved to be wearing a little party dress beneath. Once she’d kicked off her shoes and socks, she blended in with every other society girl fleeing the building. A small bag belted around her waist and concealed beneath the tunic became a clutch. She pulled her hair off, ditched the wig, and shook out shoulder-length dark blond hair from beneath it, fashionably tousled. She put on sunglasses, and appropriated Hannah Ascher’s heels. She hurried a little, caught up to the last group to head out in front of us, and blended in with them seamlessly. By the time we’d reached the ground floor, the shapeless, shorter, brunette hotel staffer had vanished, and a tall and lean blond woman in a black dress was tottering out of the building along with all the rest of them.

Valmont was no dummy. The Fomor servitors were waiting outside, in their caterer uniforms, scanning everyone leaving the building with their flat, somehow amphibian gazes.

“I’ll run interference. You get her to

the car,” I muttered to Ascher as we exited the building.

Then I pointed a finger at the nearest servitor and thundered, “You!”

The man turned his eyes to me. I felt the rest of them do the same. Good. The more of them that were looking at me, the fewer eyes there were to notice Valmont making good her escape. I stalked over to the servitor like a man spoiling for a fight. “What do you people think you’re doing? I mean, I’ve heard of getting your sushi fresh, but that’s just plain ridiculous.”

Fomor servitors were not known for their bantering skills. The man just stared at me and took an uneasy half step back.

“I’ve got half a mind to sue!” I shouted, waving an arm in a broad, drunken gesture. “Do you see the state of my tux? You’ve taken something from me tonight. My wardrobe’s peace of mind!”

By now, I was getting the attention of all kinds of people—evacuated guests, hotel staff, passersby on the sidewalk. There are a limited number of blood-covered economy-sized males ranting at the top of their lungs in a shredded tuxedo, even in Chicago. Sirens were wailing too, coming closer. Emergency services were en route. Motorcycle cops and prowl cars were already beginning to arrive, lickety-split here in the heart of the city.

I saw the servitor take note of the same thing. His weight shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

“Yeah,” I said in a lower, quieter voice. “I don’t know which of the Fomor you serve. But tell your boss that Harry Dresden is back, and he says to stay the hell out of Chicago. Otherwise, I’m going to knock his teeth out.” I paused. “Assuming, uh, he has teeth, I mean. But I’ll knock something out. Definitely. You tell him that.”