Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

“And now I’ve got this thing inside me,” I said. “And it pushes me, Michael. It pushes and pushes and pushes me to . . . do things.”

He eyed me.

“And right now . . . Hell’s bells, right now, Mab has me working with Nicodemus Archleone. If I don’t, there’s this thing in my head that’s going to come popping out of it, kill me, and then go after Maggie.”

“What?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Nicodemus. He’s robbing a vault somewhere and Mab expects me to pay off a debt she owes him. He’s formed his own Evil League of Evil to get it done—and I’m a member. And to make it worse, I dragged Murphy into it with me, and I’m not even telling her everything. Because I can’t.”

Michael shook his head slowly.

“I look around me, man . . . I’m trying to do what I’ve always done, to protect people, to keep them safe from the monsters—only I’m pretty sure I’m one of them. I can’t figure out where I could have . . . what else I might have done . . .” I swallowed. “I’m lost. I know every step I took to get here, and I’m still lost.”

“Harry . . .”

“And my friends,” I said. “Even Thomas . . . I was stuck out on that island of the damned for a year. A year, Michael, and they only showed up a handful of times. Just Murphy and Thomas, maybe half a dozen times in more than a year. It’s just a goddamned boat ride away, forty minutes. People drive farther than that to go to the movies. They know what I’m turning into. They don’t want to watch it happening to me.”

“Harry,” Michael said in a low, soft voice. “You . . . you are . . .”

“A fool,” I said quietly. “A monster. Damned.”

“. . . so arrogant,” Michael breathed.

I blinked.

“I mean, I was accustomed to a certain degree of hubris from you, but . . . this is stunning. Even on your scale.”

“What?” I said.

“Arrogant,” he repeated, enunciating. “To a degree I can scarcely believe.”

I just stared at him for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you were expecting me to share words of wisdom with you, maybe say something to you about God and your soul and forgiveness and redemption. And all those things are good things that need to be said in the right time, but . . . honestly, Harry. I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t point out to you that you are behaving like an amazingly pigheaded idiot.”

“I am?” I asked, a little blankly.

He stared at me for a second, anger and pain on his face—and then they vanished, and he smiled, his eyes flickering as merrily as a Christmas Eve fire. I suddenly realized where Molly got her smile. Something very like laughter bubbled just under the surface of his words. “Yes, Harry. You idiot. You are.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

He eyed our beers, which were empty. That tends to happen with Mac’s microbrews. He went to the fridge and opened another pair of bottles with the power of Thor, and put one of them in front of me. We clinked and drinked.

“Harry,” he said, after a meditative moment, “are you perfect?”

“No,” I said.

He nodded. “Omniscient?”

I snorted. “No.”

“Can you go into the past, change things that have already happened?”

“Theoretically?” I asked.

He gave me a level stare.

“I hear that sometimes, some things can be done. But apparently it’s tricky as hell. And I’ve got no idea how,” I said.

“So can you?”

“No,” I said.

“In other words,” he said, “despite all the things you know, and all the incredible things you can do . . . you’re only human.”

I frowned at him and swigged beer.

“Then why,” Michael asked, “are you expecting perfection out of yourself? Do you really think you’re that much better than the rest of us? That your powers make you a higher quality of human being? That your knowledge places you on a higher plane than everyone else on this world?”

I eyed the beer and felt . . . embarrassed.

“That’s arrogance, Harry,” he said gently. “On a level so deep you don’t even realize it exists. And do you know why it’s there?”

“No?” I asked.

He smiled again. “Because you have set a higher standard for yourself. You think that because you have more power than others, you have to do more with it.”

“To whom much is given, much is required,” I said, without look- ing up.

He barked out a short laugh. “For someone who repeatedly tells me he has no faith, you have a surprising capacity to quote scripture. And that’s just my point.”

I eyed him. “What?”

“You wouldn’t be twisting yourself into knots like this, Harry, if you didn’t care.”

“So?”

“Monsters don’t care,” Michael said. “The damned don’t care, Harry. The only way to go beyond redemption is to choose to take yourself there. The only way to do it is to stop caring.”

My view of the kitchen blurred out. “You think?”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Michael said. “I think that you aren’t perfect. And that means that sometimes you make bad choices. But . . . honestly, I don’t know if I would have done any differently, if it had been one of my children at risk.”

“Not you,” I said quietly. “You wouldn’t have done what I did.”

“I couldn’t have done what you did,” Michael said simply. “And I haven’t had to be standing in your shoes to make those same choices.” He tilted his beer slightly toward the ceiling. “Thank you, God. So if you’ve come here for judgment, Harry, you won’t find any from me. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve failed. I’m human.”

“But these mistakes,” I said, “could change me. I could wind up like these people around Nicodemus.”

Michael snorted. “No, you won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I know you, Harry Dresden,” Michael said. “You are pathologically incapable of knowing when to quit. You don’t surrender. And I don’t believe for a second that you actually intend to help Nicodemus do whatever it is he’s doing.”

I felt a smile tug at one corner of my mouth.

“Hah,” Michael said, sitting back in his chair. He swallowed some more beer. “I thought so.”

“It’s tri

cky,” I said. “I’ve got to help him get whatever he’s after. Technically.”

Michael wrinkled his nose. “Faeries. I never understood why they’re such lawyers about everything.”

“I’m the Winter Knight,” I said, “and I don’t get it either.”

“I find that oddly reassuring,” Michael said.

I barked out a short laugh. “Yeah. Maybe so.”

His face grew more serious. “Nicodemus knows treachery like fish know water,” he said. “He surely knows the direction of your intent. He’s smart, Harry. He’s got centuries of survival behind him.”

“True,” I said. “On the other hand, I’m not exactly a useless cream puff.”

His eyes glinted. “Also true,” he said.

“And Murphy’s there,” I said.

“Good,” Michael said, rapping the bottle on the table for emphasis. “That woman’s got brains and heart.”

I chewed on my lip and looked up at him. “But . . . Michael, she wasn’t . . . for the past year . . .”

He sighed and shook his head. “Harry . . . do you know what that island is like, for the rest of us?”

I shook my head.

“The last time I was there, I was shot twice,” he said. “I was in intensive care for a month. I was in bed for four months. I didn’t walk again for nearly a year. There was permanent damage to my hip and lower back, and physically, it was the single most extended, horribly painful, grindingly humiliating experience of my life.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And,” he said, “when I have nightmares of it, you know what I dream about?”

“What?”

“The island,” Michael said. “The . . . presence of it. The malevolence there.” He shuddered.

Michael, Knight of the Cross, who had faced deadly spirits and demons and monsters without flinching, shivered in fear.

“That place is horrible,” he said quietly. “The effect it has . . . It’s obvious that it doesn’t even touch you. But I don’t know if I could go back there again, by choice.”

I blinked.

“But I know Molly went back there. And you tell me Karrin did, too. And Thomas. Many times.” He shook his head. “That’s . . . astounding to me, Harry.”