Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

I ground my teeth, and Bob sent another one of Binder’s suits flying past me. I ducked absently. My instincts told me to get moving again, as quickly as possible. I told them to shut the hell up. I could go sprinting off in some direction, but that was unlikely to result in accomplishing anything. I took a moment to lever the Winter mantle away from my thoughts, and found them clearer. The Winter Knight was not needed here.

I ran down the street to the discarded sports bottle and snagged it. Just as I did, one of those mini-SUVs sliced through the slush in the middle of the avenue, sliding only slightly to one side as it braked, and Karrin stuck her head out the window. “Get in!”

I ran for the vehicle as Karrin stared in fascination at the sight of more than a dozen suits swarming over the lion, struggling to overturn it, and the huge thing twisting and spinning like a dervish trying to keep them off, orange eyelights blazing.

“Huh,” Karrin said. “That’s new.”

I slammed the door shut and said, “It’s Bob. Butters let him off the chain.”

“Is that good?” she asked.

I stuffed my staff mostly into the back and fumbled with the bottle. “It’s exciting, anyway. Butters gave them the slip, but Nicodemus and the Genoskwa are on his trail.”

“Is our cover blown?”

“Not yet,” I said. “We’re still bad guys. At least, enough to satisfy Mab. You know how confusing fights can be.”

“Hah,” Karrin said. “What’s the plan?”

“Find Butters. Get me to somewhere I can step out of the rain and give me a second to get a tracking spell running.”

“No need,” she said and started driving. “I know where he’s going.”

I blinked. “Where?”

“You’re Butters. You know basically everything that’s been going on in Chicago for the past dozen years. You’ve got a bunch of demons and supernatural bad guys including the Knights of the Blackened Denarius after you,” she said. “Where would you go?”

I frowned, thinking. She was right about that. If Butters had been working that closely with Bob, he’d know pretty much anything the skull did, and he’d recognize Deirdre and Nicodemus by name—hell, he must have, which probably explained his mistrust. I’d declined to tell him anything about what I’d gotten Karrin into, and he’d listened in on me spending a day with a bunch of super-criminals and sitting down at a table with Nicodemus Archleone.

And where in this city would be the best place to go if one wanted protection from Fallen angels?

“Hell’s bells,” I breathed. “He’s going to Michael’s.”

“Yeah,” Karrin said, real anger in her voice. “Dammit, he knows better.”

I blinked several times and then felt my jaw drop as a flash of intuition hit me. “The Swords are there, aren’t they? And Butters knows it.”

Her jaw tensed. She eyed me and gave me a single short nod. “I wanted one other person to know, in case something happened to me. My place isn’t secure enough, even with what the Paranetters can do. And I’m sure as hell not going to trust those things to Marcone’s people. Anything bad that tries to get into Michael’s place has got a world of hurt coming down. It was the best I could think of.”

“If they catch Butters before he gets there,” I said, “he’s dead. If you’re wrong about where he’s going, he’s dead.”

“And if we stop for a couple of minutes for you to get your mojo together, we might get there too late to do anything,” she said, and bit her lip. She was coaxing as much speed from the little truck as she could, in this weather, its all-wheel drive churning steadily. “What do you think we should do?”

This was my fault. If I’d brought Butters in, at least far enough to understand what was going on, he wouldn’t have gone poking around himself. But dammit, how could I have done it without . . .

Augh.

I hated this cards-close-to-the-chest thing.

I suck at cards. I’m more a Monopoly sort of guy.

“I hadn’t talked to Michael in years,” I said. “The first day I do, I set off a chain of events that has some heavyweight monsterage heading right for his house.”

“Yeah,” Karrin said, “I noticed that.”

“Maybe it isn’t a coincidence,” I said.

She arched one pale brow. “Faith, Harry? You?”

“Oh, blow me,” I said, scowling. “Drive.”

She bared her teeth in a fierce smile and said, “Buckle up.”

I did, as the fine, freezing rain began to turn to heavy sleet.

Twenty-nine

We were two blocks from Michael’s place, back in the residential neighborhoods, when a cab all but teleported out of the sleet, moving too fast. It rolled through a stop sign and forced Karrin to slam on the brakes and swerve to avoid a collision.

The little SUV did its best, but it slid on the sleet-slickened street, bounced over the curb, through a wooden privacy fence, and wound up with its front wheels in someone’s emptied pool.

Karrin slapped the vehicle in

to reverse and tried to pull out, but the rear tires spun uselessly on the ice. “Dammit!” she snarled. “Go. I’m right behind you!”

I grabbed my staff and leapt out into the sleet without hesitating, wrapping myself in Winter as I went running through the storm and into the hazy pseudo-darkness. I went straight for Michael’s place, sprinting down a sidewalk briefly, and then cutting through yards, bounding over fences and parked cars (Parkour!) as I went.

I got to the Carpenters’ home just as the cab that had caused our wreck slid to a gradual stop a few houses past Michael’s. Butters popped out of the back and threw several wadded bills at the driver, then put his head down and sprinted toward Michael’s house. He looked pale and shaky. I sympathized. That potion had left me feeling like I’d just ridden a couple of dozen roller coasters, all at once, with a bad hangover. He hadn’t run five steps before one of his feet went out from under him on the frozen, slippery sidewalk, and he went down hard. I heard his head rap the concrete, and then felt a sympathetic pang at the explosion of air from his lungs as the fall knocked the wind out of him.

I didn’t slow down until I was close to Butters, sweeping my gaze around the neighborhood, and finding it quiet and still.

“Jesus!” Butters blurted out as I got close. He flinched away from me, raising one hand as if to ward off a blow, reaching for something inside his coat with the other.

“Hell’s bells, Butters,” I said on a note of complaint. “If I was going to hurt you, I’d have blasted you from way the hell over there.”

“You tried . . . ,” he wheezed, hand still poised inside his coat. “Stay . . . back. I . . . mean it.”

“Hell’s bells, you are smarter than this.” I sighed and offered him my hand. “Come on. They’re bound to be right behind you. You can’t stay out here. Let me help you up.”

He stared up at me for a second, clearly a little dazed from the fall, and just as obviously terrified.