Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

I heard Karrin blow out a breath. “Okay,” she said, without any kind of heat. “What can you tell me?”

“His arm’s broken,” Butters said. “From the swelling and bruising, badly. Whatever put that dent in the aluminum brace on it—did he get it taken care of in a tool shop?—rebroke it. I set it again, I think, and wrapped it up in the brace again, but I can’t be sure I did it right without imaging equipment, which would probably explode if he walked into the room with it. If it hasn’t been set right, that arm might be permanently damaged.” He blew out a breath. “The hole in his chest wasn’t traumatic, by his usual standards. It didn’t go through the muscle. But the damned nail was rusty, so I hope he’s had his tetanus shots. I gave the hole another stitch and I washed the blood off the nail.”

“Thank you,” Karrin said.

Butters’s voice was weary. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Sure. Karrin . . . can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“This thing he’s got going with Mab,” Butters said. “I know that everyone thinks it’s turned him into some kind of superhero. But I don’t think that’s right.”

“I’ve seen him move,” she said. “I’ve seen how strong he is.”

“So have I,” Butters said. “Look . . . the human body is a pretty amazing machine. It really is. It can do really amazing things—much more so than most people think, because it’s also built to protect itself.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Inhibitors,” Butters said. “Every person walking around is about three times stronger than they think they are. I mean, your average housewife is actually about as strong as a fairly serious weight lifter, when it comes to pure mechanics. Adrenaline can amp that even more.”

I could hear the frown in Karrin’s voice. “You’re talking about when mothers lift cars off their kid, that kind of thing.”

“Exactly that kind of thing,” Butters said. “But the body can’t function that way all the time, or it will tear itself apart. That’s what inhibitors are built for—to keep you from injuring yourself.”

“What does that have to do with Dresden?”

“I think that what this Winter Knight gig has done for him is nothing more than switching off those inhibitors,” Butters said. “He hasn’t added all that much muscle mass. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The body is capable of those moments of startling strength, but they’re meant to be something that you pull out of the hat once or twice in a lifetime—and with no inhibitors and no ability to feel pain, Dresden’s running around doing them all the time. And there’s no real way he can know it.”

Karrin was silent for several seconds, digesting that. Then she said, “Bottom line?”

“The more he leans on this ‘gift,’” Butters said, and I could picture him making air quotes, “the more he tears himself to shreds. His body heals remarkably, but he’s still human. He’s got limits, somewhere, and if he keeps this up, he’s going to find them.”

“What do you think will happen?”

Butters made a thoughtful sound. “Think about . . . a football player or boxer who has it hard and breaks down in his early thirties, because he’s just taken too damned much punishment. That’s Dresden, if he keeps this up.”

“I’m sure that once we explain that to him, he’ll retire to a job as a librarian,” Karrin said.

Butters snorted. “It’s possible that other things in his system are being affected the same way,” he said. “Testosterone production, for example, any number of other hormones, which might be influencing his perception and judgment. I’m not sure he’s actually got any more real power at all. I think it just feels that way to him.”

“This is fact or theory?”

“An informed theory,” he said. “Bob helped me develop it.”

Son of a bitch. I kept quiet and thought about that one for a minute.

Could that be true? Or at least, more true than it wasn’t?

It would be consistent with the other deal I’d worked out with a faerie—my godmother, Lea, had made a bargain to give me the power to defeat my old mentor, Justin DuMorne. Then she’d tortured me for a while, assuring me that it would give me strength. It did, though mostly, in retrospect, because I had believed it had.

Had I been magic-feathered by a faerie again?

And yet . . . at the end of the day, I could lift a freaking car.

Sure you can, Harry. But at what price?

No wonder the Winter Knights stayed in the job until they died. If Butters was right, they would have been plunged into the crippling agony of their battered bodies the moment the mantle was taken from them.

Sort of the same way I had just been rendered into agonized Jell-O when the Genoskwa had shoved a nail into me.

“I worry,” Butters said quietly, “that he’s changing. That he doesn’t know it.”

“Look who’s talking,” Karrin said. “Batman.”

“That was one time,” Butters said.

Karrin didn’t say anything.

“All right.” Butters relented. “A few times. But it wasn’t enough to keep those kids from being carried off.”

“You pulled some of them out, Waldo,” Karrin said. “Believe me, that’s a win. Most of the time, you can’t even do that much. But you’re missing my point.”

“What point?”

“Ever since you’ve had the skull, you’ve been changing, too,” Karrin said. “You work hand in hand with a supernatural being that can scare the crap out of me. You can do things you couldn’t do before. You know things you didn’t know before. Your personality has changed.”

There was a pause. “It has?”

“You’re more serious,” she said. “More . . . intense, I suppose.”

“Yeah. Now that I know more about what’s really happening out there. It’s not something influencing me.”

“Unless it is and you just don’t know it,” Karrin said. “I’ve got the same evidence on you that you have on Dresden.”

Butters sighed. “I see what you did there.”

“I don’t think you do,” she said. “It’s . . . about choices, Waldo. About faith. You have an array of facts in front of you that can fit any of several truths. You have to choose what you’re going to allow to drive your decisions about how to d

eal with those facts.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could let fear be what motivates you,” Karrin said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Dresden is being turned into a monster against his knowledge and will. Maybe one day he’ll be something that kills us all. You’re not wrong. That kind of thing can happen. It scares me, too.”

“Then why are you arguing with me?”

Karrin paused for a time before answering. “Because . . . fear is a terrible, insidious thing, Waldo. It taints and stains everything it touches. If you let fear start driving some of your decisions, sooner or later, it will drive them all. I decided that I’m not going to be the kind of person who lives her life in fear of her friends’ turning into monsters.”

“What? Just like that?”

“It took me a long, long time to get there,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I would rather have faith in the people I care about than allow my fears to change them—in my own eyes, if nowhere else. I guess maybe you don’t see what’s happening with Harry, here.”

“What?” Butters asked.

“This is what it looks like when someone’s fighting for his soul,” she said. “He needs his friends to believe in him. The fastest way for us to help make him into a monster is to look at him like he is one.”

Butters was quiet for a long time.

“I’m going to say this once, Waldo,” she said. “I want you to listen.”

“Okay.”

“You need to decide which side of the road you’re going to walk on,” she said gently. “Turn aside from your fears—or grab onto them and run with them. But you need to make the call. You keep trying to walk down the middle, you’re going to get yourself torn apart.”

Butters’s voice turned bitter. “Them or us, choose a side?”

“It’s not about taking sides,” Karrin said. “It’s about knowing yourself. About understanding why you make the choices you do. Once you know that, you know where to walk, too.”

The floorboards creaked. Maybe she’d stepped closer to him. I could picture her, putting her hand on his arm.