Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

A chorus of moaning wails echoed through the vault as if from a great distance.

Grey pursed his lips. “Should that Way be standing open like that?”

I whipped my head around and stared at the Way. The only light on the other side came from the Way itself, but that was just enough to show me a huge figure step to the Way. Its hairy kneecap was level with my sternum. Then it knelt down, and a huge, ugly humanoid face with a monobrow and one enormous eye in the center of its forehead peered hungrily at me.

I gripped my staff and drew together my will. “Just once I want something go according to plan,” I snarled. “Disperdorius.”

Energy left me in a dizzying wave, and the outline of the Way folded in on itself and vanished, taking the cyclops with it. I turned from the collapsing Way back to the vault door, even before the light show had finished playing out.

There was a little phunt sound, followed by a hissing, and I turned to find Valmont holding a miniature welding torch of some kind, hooked to a pair of little tanks by rubber hoses. She passed a steel-shafted screwdriver to Grey and said, “I need an L-shape.”

Grey grunted, took the thing in both hands, and narrowed his eyes. Then, with an abrupt movement and a blur in the shape of his forearms, he bent the screwdriver’s shaft to a right angle.

“Slide it inside the socket where he broke it off, here, and hold it,” she said.

Grey did. Valmont slid a strip of metal of some kind into the hole, held a little square of dark plastic up to protect her vision from the brilliant light of the torch, and sparks started to fly up from the door. She worked on it for about five hundred years that probably fit inside a couple of minutes, and then the torch started running out of fuel and faltered.

“Hold it still,” she said. “Okay, let go.”

Grey released the screwdriver’s handle, which now stuck out of the original fitting in approximately the same attitude as the original handle.

“Do it. Let’s go,” I said.

“No,” Valmont snapped. “These materials aren’t proper and I’m none too sanguine about that braze. We’ve got to let it cool or you’ll only break it off and I haven’t the fuel for a second try. Sixty seconds.”

“Dammit,” I said, pacing back and forth. “Okay, when we get out, I’m heading for the house as fast as I can get there. Michael, I want you to get to a phone and—”

“I’m going with you,” Michael said.

I turned to face him and said in a brutally flat, practical tone, “Your leg is hurt. You’ll slow me down.”

His jaw clenched. A muscle twitched. But he nodded.

“And you’ll need to help the others get clear of the bank. Hopefully without getting shot to pieces on the way. Get clear, find a phone and warn Charity. Maybe she’ll have time to get them to the panic room.”

“He’ll burn the house down around them,” Michael said quietly.

“Like hell he will,” I said. “Follow along as quick as you can.”

He nodded. Then, silently, he offered me the hilt of Amoracchius.

“Can’t take that from you,” I said.

“It’s not mine, Harry,” he said. “I just kept it for a while.”

I put my fingers on the hilt, and then shook my head and pushed it back toward him. The Sword had tremendous power—but it had to be used with equally tremendous care, and I had neither the background nor the disposition for it. “Murphy knew she shouldn’t have been using Fidelacchius, but last night she drew it anyway and now it’s gone. I’m no genius. But I learn eventually.”

Michael smiled at me a little. “You’re a good man, Harry. But you’re making the same mistake Nicodemus always has—and the same one Karrin did.”

“What mistake?”

“You all think the critical word in the phrase ‘Sword of Faith’ is ‘sword.’”

I frowned at him.

“The world always thinks that the destruction of a physical vessel is victory,” he said quietly. “But the Savior was more than merely cells and tissue and chemical compounds—and Fidelacchius is more than wood and steel.”

“It’s gone, Michael,” I said quietly. “Sometimes the bad guys win one.”

“Sometimes they seem to. But only for a time.”

“How can you know that?”

“I can’t know,” he said, his face lighting with a sudden smile. “That’s why they call it faith, Harry. You’ll see.”

Grey, I noticed, was staring at Michael intently.

“Time,” Valmont said. She reached up and braced the shaft of the screwdriver with her fingers. Then, very gently, she turned the handle.

The vault door let out a heavy click, and swung open.

“Let’s get moving,” I said.

“Assuming Binder lets us,” Grey added.

We pushed out of the vault and into the secure room, and found the place absolutely wrecked. The exterior of the vault had been pocked with dents half an inch deep. More dents and smears covered the security boxes on the other two walls. The wall that had contained the mines was simply gone, bared to the concrete beneath, and that had been chewed and mangled by ricocheting ball bearings, some of which were still visible, buried in the wall. The floor was covered in gravel and debris.

Also, thirty of Binder’s goons were in formation around the vault door, covering every possible angle. They were all pointing Uzis at us.

“Whoa!” I said, gripping my staff. “Binder, wait!”

“Move another inch and you’re slurry!” came Binder’s voice from the hallway outside the security room. By some minor miracle, the door was still on its hinges, and the little mercenary was staying out of sight behind it. “Where’s Hannah?”

My first instinct was to say Binder’s partner was coming along right behind us, but something told me that would be a bad idea. So I swallowed and said, “Dead.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Binder’s voice came back, roughened. “What happened?”

“She forgot Rule Number One,” I said. “She took one of the Coins. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Didn’t have a choice. You White Council boys say that a lot,” Binder said in a very mild tone that sounded infinitely more frightening than a harsh one would have been. “Nicodemus says your crew betrayed us, killed Deirdre, Hannah, and the big monkey, and that you’re keeping all the loot.”

“He told you some of the truth,” I said. “But he’s lying about who tried to stick the knife in first. We played it straight. He turned on us.”

Part of Binder’s face appeared from behind the door, and he grunted. Then he jerked his chin at Michael and said, “Sir Knight, is that what happened?”

“Your partner took the Coin of Lasciel,” Michael said firmly. “Nicodemus murdered his own daughter to open the Gate of Blood. Once we were inside, he ordered Miss Ascher and the Genoskwa to turn on the rest of us. We fought. They lost.”

Binder squinted at Grey, a disapproving scowl coming over his features. “You turned your coat, then?”

“Dresden contracted me before Nicodemus did. I did what he hired me to do.”

Binder lifted an eyebrow. “Ah. That explains it.”

Grey shrugged.

“Hannah,” Binder said, his eye going back to me. “You killed her?”

“I did,” I said. “I offered to let her back down. She wouldn’t. I’m sorry. She was too strong to handle any other way.”

Binder spat a quiet, vicious oath, and looked away. “Stupid kid. Not a bad partner. But not a scrap of sense.”

“Just curious,” Grey said. “You going to shoot us or what?”

“Eh?” Binder said. Then he glanced at the goons, and they lowered their weapons and began filing back out. “Ah, no, the lads ran out of ammunition at least twenty minutes ago. It was hand-to-hand after that, but then the coppers started to arrive and Marcone’s people backed off to think about things for a bit.”

“More like to get the Einherjaren as backup,” I muttered. Binder’s goons were formidable, but they weren’t going to be able to stand up to a crew of genuine Norsemen with a dozen centuries of experience each, who hadn’t been impressed by death the first time around. “What’s the status out there?”

Binder’s eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment. Then he reported, “A dozen patrol cars have blocked off the area. Some fire trucks are here. Parts of the building above us are on fire. There’re a million more vehicles on the way, one presumes, but the streets are one big sheet of ice, and for now the cops are just covering the exits. The weather’s turned foul. There’s a heavy fog coming off the Lake.”

“Ice and fog,” I said. “I like it.”

“Sun’s not up yet,” Binder said. “And some evil, handsome old bloke hexed all the streetlights and spotlights out. We get out of here now, we might do it in one piece.”

“What happened to Nicodemus?” Michael asked.

“He flew out,” Binder spat. “Told me you’d killed Hannah and left me to rot.”

I grunted.

“The bit about the money,” Binder asked. “How true is that?”

“We’ve got one backpack,” Valmont said quietly. “Small stones, easy to move. We’ll have to split it once we’re all clear.”