Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Me too.”

Valmont shook off the awe of the place first. She strode over to the diamond-fountain, unzipped her backpack, and held it beneath the spigot in a matter-of-fact gesture, filling it as if it were a bucket.

“Seriously?” Ascher asked her. “You aren’t even going to shop?”

“Highest value for the weight,” Valmont replied tightly. “And they’re small enough to move easily. There’s no point in taking something you can’t sell when you get it back home.”

“But there’s so much,” Ascher breathed.

“Ascher,” I said. After a couple of seconds, I said, louder, “Hannah.”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Go tell Nicodemus that it looks clear. Let’s get our stuff and get gone.”

“Right,” she said. “Right. Gone.” She turned and hurried from the room.

I turned to Michael and the Genoskwa and said, “I’m going to do a quick circuit of the room with Valmont and check for anything else, just in case. Don’t wander anywhere until I give you the high sign.”

Michael nodded slowly. There has never been a backpack made that was big enough for the Genoskwa. But he had several military-style duffel bags looped to a long piece of cargo strapping like you see used on diesel trailers on the highway.

“Come on, Anna,” I said. “Let’s check for more booby traps.” I started walking. Valmont shouldered her pack and came after me. I lifted my staff as we went, pouring out more light, until Valmont had to squint against it, and we walked out of sight of the others. Our shadows faded to mere slips beneath the extreme illumination.

“What’s with the light show?” she asked me.

“Trust me,” I said quietly, and dropped my voice to a bare whisper, leaning down close to her ear. “When it starts, stay close to me. I’ll protect you.”

Her eyes widened and she gave me a quick nod without saying anything back.

I nodded my approval, then leaned my staff against another Corinthian column, putting enough effort of will into it to make the light continue issuing forth for a while. Then I put a finger against my lips, and beckoned Valmont to follow me.

I cut immediately through the displays to get to the amphitheater, and descended into it, heading for the stage, at the feet of the two enormous statues.

Valmont looked back at my brightly blazing staff in sudden understanding. Look, everybody, Dresden and Valmont are right there, see? Nowhere near the heart of the collection.

The amphitheater stage, in stark contrast to every other display in the vault, had no overwhelming riches, fantastic jewels, or precious metals. It was stark and bare, with a single block of silver-veined marble rising about four feet off the stage floor in its center.

And upon the marble sat five simple objects.

An ancient wooden placard, its paint so faded that the symbols could not be recognized.

A circlet woven from thorny branches.

A clay cup.

A folded cloth.

A knife with a wooden handle and a leaf-shaped blade.

Why take one priceless holy relic when you could take five of them?

And I knew exactly what relic Nicodemus truly wanted.

I turned to Anna and mouthed, “Check it.”

She nodded and hunkered down to examine the block, moving cautiously around it. Meanwhile, I extended my senses toward them, feeling carefully for any enchantments that might be protecting them.

That was a mistake. There weren’t any traps on the objects, but the collective aura of power around them seared my awareness as sharply as if I’d jammed a penny in an electrical outlet. I let out a hiss and leaned back, while my thoughts blazed with the energy focused upon those artifacts—a combined aura that made the thrumming power of a roused Amoracchius seem like a low-wattage lightbulb by comparison.

“My God,” I breathed, before I could remember to remain silent. “These are weapons.” I looked slowly around me. “This isn’t a vault. It’s an armory.”

Anna Valmont did not respond.

In fact, she didn’t move at all.

I stepped around the block and found her peering at its rear side, her expression focused in concentration. She was entirely frozen.

I then realized that the quality of the light had changed, and I looked up at the flames in the outstretched hands of the two Hecate statues. The flames had ceased flickering. They hadn’t gone out—they’d simply frozen in place.

The hairs on the back of my neck didn’t go up so much as they let out tiny, hirsute whimpers and started trembling as violently as the rest of me.

“You are, of course, correct,” said a basso rumble of a voice from behind me. “This is an armory.”

Slowly I turned.

A man in an entirely black suit stood on the amphitheater stage behind me. He was seven feet tall if he was an inch, with the proportions of a professional athlete and the noble features of a warrior king. His hair was dark and swept back from his face in a mane that fell to the base of his neck. His beard was equally black, though marked at the chin with a single streak of silver. His eyes . . .

I jerked my gaze away from those caverns of utter midnight before I could be drawn into them. My stomach twisted, and I suddenly had to fight not to throw up. Or fall down. Or start weeping.

“Wh—” I stammered. “Wh—wh— Are, uh, y-y-you—”

“In point of fact,” he said, “it is my armory, mortal.”

“I can explain,” I blurted.

But before I could try, Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, Greek god of death, seized the front of my duster, and a cloud of black fire engulfed me.

Forty-one

The black fire faded and left me standing half crouched down with my arms up around my head. It’s possible that I was making a panicked noise, which I strangled abruptly when I realized that the fire had neither burned nor consumed nor otherwise harmed me in any way at all.

My heart beat very loudly in my ears, and I made myself control my breathing and stand up straight. The terror didn’t fade so much as drop to manageable levels. After all, if I wasn’t dead, it was because Hades didn’t want me dead.

He did, however, apparently want to speak to me in a different room, because we were no longer in the vault.

>

I stood in a chamber that might have belonged to a Spartan king. The furnishings were few, and simple, but they were exquisitely crafted of nothing but the finest materials. A wooden panel, stained with fine smoke and time, framed a fireplace, and was carved with images of the gods and goddesses of Greece scattered about the slopes of Mount Olympus. Two large chairs of deep, polished red wood and rich black leather sat before the fire, with a low wooden table between them, polished to the same gleaming, deep red finish. On the table was a ceramic bottle. A simple, empty wineglass sat next to it.

I looked around the chamber. A bookcase stood against each wall, volumes neatly aligned, and the spines showed a dizzying variety of languages. There were no doors.

I wasn’t alone.

Hades sat in one of the chairs in front of the fire, holding a second wineglass in one negligent hand. His dark eyes gleamed as he stared at the flames. The light was better in here than it had been out in the vault. I could see several dozen tiny objects moving in a steady circular orbit around his head, maybe eight or ten inches out from his skull. Each looked like a small, dark mass of shadow, trailing little tendrils of black and deep purple smoke or mist and . . .

Oh, Hell’s bells. It was mordite. A substance so deadly that if it simply touched anything alive, it would all but disintegrate it on the spot, devouring its life energy like a tiny black hole. Hades was wearing a crown made of it.

On the floor next to Hades was a mass of fur and muscle. Lying flat on its belly, the beast’s shoulders still came up over the arms of the chair, and its canine paws would have left prints the size of dinner plates. One of its heads was panting, the way any dog might do during a dream. The other two heads were snoring slightly. The dog’s coat was sleek and black, except for a single blaze of silver-white fur that I could see on one side of its broad chest.

“Sir Harry,” Hades rumbled. “Knight of Winter. Be welcome in my hall.”

That made me blink. With that greeting, Hades had just offered me his hospitality. There are very few hard and fast rules in the supernatural world, but the roles of guest and host come very close to being holy concepts. It wasn’t unheard of for a guest to betray his host, or vice versa, but horrible fates tended to follow those who did, and anything that managed to survive violating that custom would have its name blackened irreversibly.