Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

But I didn’t feel angry.

Just … hurt.

“You don’t trust my judgment,” I said quietly.

“Course I do,” he said grumpily. “But I care about you even more—and you’re ears-deep in alligators and you ain’t thinking so straight right now.” He pushed back a glob of ectoplasm that threatened to gloop down into his eyes. “You know me. I don’t want to do this to you, Hoss. Don’t make me.”

I thought about what I was going to say for a moment.

I had always known Ebenezar McCoy as a gruff, abrasive, tough, fearless, and unfailingly kind human being, even before I knew he was my grandfather.

I wanted to tell him about his other grandson. But I understood the hate he felt. I understood it because I felt it myself. It was the kind of hate not many people in the first world are ever forced to feel—the hate that comes from blood and death, from having those near you hurt and killed. That was old-school hate. Weapons-grade. Primal.

If someone somehow revealed to me that a ghoul was actually my offspring, I wasn’t sure how I’d react, beyond knowing that it wouldn’t be reasonable and that fire was going to come into it somewhere.

I couldn’t count on my grandfather. I might be all my brother had going for him.

“Sir,” I said finally. “You know me. When someone I care about is in trouble, I’ll go through whatever it takes to help them.” My next words came out in a whisper, “Don’t make me go through you, sir.”

He narrowed his eyes for a long moment. “You figure you can, Hoss?”

“So far, so good.”

“Said the man falling past the thirtieth floor.”

We both stood there for a moment, dripping ectoplasm, neither one of us moving.

“Stars and stones,” the old man sighed finally. “Go cool off. Think it over. Sleep on it.” His voice hardened. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

“Maybe one of us will.”

“One of them,” he spat the last word as if it had been made of acid, “is not worth making an orphan of your daughter.”

“It’s not about who they are,” I said quietly. “It’s about who I am. And the example I’m setting.”

The old man stared at me for a moment, his expression unreadable.

Then he turned and stalked away, slowly, his shoulders slumped, his jaw clenched. As he went, he vanished behind a veil that was, like most of his magic, better than anything I could do. Then I was standing there alone in an empty parking garage.

I looked around at the wreckage and closed my eyes.

Family complicates everything.

Dammit.

13

Hounds of Tindalos are real, huh?” Butters asked. “Weird.”

“Well. For some values of ‘real,’ ” I said. “Lovecraft got kicked out of the Venatori Umbrorum for mucking about with Thule Society research. Don’t know many of the details, but apparently it wasn’t actually cancer that ate his guts out later. It was … something more literal.”

I sat at the little table in Butters’s apartment kitchen. I had my duster off and both arms resting on the table with my palms up. Butters sat across from me wearing loose exercise clothes. An EMT’s toolbox sat on the table next to him, and he was currently peering at my hands through his thick glasses, which he now wore in the form of securely fastened athletic goggles.

Butters was a little guy in his early forties, even littler since he’d gotten in shape. Now he was all made of wire. Maybe five foot five, but if he weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds, I’d eat my duster without salt. His hair was a dark, curly, unkempt mess, but that might have been a factor of my showing up at his door after hours.

“God,” Butters muttered, using a wipe to try to clean up the deep, gashing cuts on my hands. “You’ve got motor oil in the gashes.”

“That a problem?”

He gave me a sleepy, unamused look. “Considering all the debris it collects, yes. Yes, it is.” He sighed. “Gotta debride it. Sorry, man.”

I nodded. “Just get it over with.”

After that, it was about twenty minutes of water, Betadine solution, and a stiff-bristled brush being applied to the area around and inside the wound. Could have been worse. Butters could have used iodine. Could have been worse—but it wasn’t exactly a picnic, either. Hands are sensitive.

Twenty minutes later, I was sweating and grumpy, and Butters was glowering at the injuries with dissatisfaction. “That’s the best I can do here. I’ll wrap them up, but you’ll need to change the bandages every day and watch like hell for any sign of infection. But in the ‘ounce of prevention’ department, until you get invulnerable skin, buy some gloves to protect your hands, Hulk.”

“Not a bad idea,” I said. “How bad is the damage?”

I have this issue with feeling pain. It’s part of the Winter Knight package. When something happens to me, I sort of notice it, but ongoing pain just fades into my background. So bad things can happen to me without my knowing it, if I don’t use my head.

“I don’t think there’s damage to the actual working structure of your hands,” Butters said. “But the human body isn’t really made for flipping trucks, man. You’ re … developed to something like the maximum potential for your height and build, but your joints are still human joints. Your cartilage is still only cartilage, and even though your body will actually heal damage to it, it has a failure point. And your bones are still just made of bone.” He shook his head. “Seriously. One of these days you’re going to try to lift something too heavy, and even if your muscles can handle it, your bones and joints won’t.”

“What’s that gonna look like?” I wondered aloud.

“An industrial accident,” Butters said. He wiped down my hands one more time, thoroughly, and then began wrapping the injuries. “Okay. So the White Council wants to give you a hard time. So what else is new?”

Butters was not up on the concept of the Black Council, a covert group of wizards who were nebulous and impossible to identify with absolute certainty, working toward goals that seemed nefarious at best. That information was being held under wraps by the wizards dedicated to fighting them. Partly because we had little hard evidence about the Black Council, what they wanted, and who their members were, and partly because the bad guys would have more trouble taking action against us if they couldn’t even be sure who was their enemy.

Butters was trustworthy, but the Black Council was a wizard problem.

“Yeah,” I said. “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

Butters gave me a look, because I’m not a very good spy, and lying to a friend doesn’t come naturally to me. But he shrugged and let it pass. “Okay.” He yawned. “When you called, you said something about health issues, plural. What else is bothering you?”

I told him about my sneezes and the conjuritis.

His eyes narrowed and he said, “This isn’t some kind of prank you’re playing on the new guy in the game, is it? Cause I’ve sort of been expecting that.”

“What? No, that’s crazy talk,” I said, and tried hard not to think about my “Dino Serenade,” due for his birthday. “This is a real problem, man.”