Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

She snorted. “You think I can’t handle myself?”

“Don’t,” I said quietly. “I was ready to take you with me into literal Hell and you know it. Every warrior gets hurt. Has limits. There’s no shame in acknowledging that.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she asked, “If you were hurt, would you sit this one out?”

I said nothing.

“It’s my home, too, Harry.”

I clenched my teeth.

“And,” she said, leaning her cheek against my biceps, “if you try to strand me on that damned island to keep me safe, I swear to God I will shoot you in the leg.”

I stiffened and gave her a quick guilty glance.

She smiled wanly in the green chemical light, widened her eyes, and said in a dramatic impersonation of my voice, “I’ll be back in time.” She snorted. “Get over yourself. You are who you are. And mostly I like it. But let’s treat each other like grown-ups. Promise me.”

I felt sick.

Karrin was smart, tough, and capable. She was also hurt. She was also right. And what was coming would give her no special consideration whatsoever.

But she was who she was. Karrin Murphy could no more have sat quietly by while Chicago burned than she could grow wings and fly. She would fight for her home. She would die for it.

Some part of me made whimpering animal sounds, way down deep inside.

At the end of the day, people have to be who they are. If you try to take that from them, you diminish them. You reduce them to children, unable to make decisions for themselves. There’s no way to poison your relationship with someone else faster.

I didn’t want to lose her.

If she fought, she might well be taken from me.

If I tried to keep her from fighting, I would lose her for sure.

So while my heart and some enormous portion of my soul quailed in terror, my mouth said, “I promise.”

I felt her arm go around my lower back and she squeezed gently for a moment. “Thank you.”

“Promise me you’ll fight smart,” I said.

She bumped her head against my arm and said, “How would you know if I did?”

I huffed out part of a laugh. And we stood together.

34

The little cheap plastic compass swung and bobbed as the boat did, but I didn’t need it. Now that I had acquainted myself with the island’s arcane functions, I had my own personal compass, a subtle, tiny sensation in my head that always told me where I could find the place.

That was part and parcel of being the Warden of Demonreach.

I felt it when the Water Beetle hit the outer ring of defenses, about a mile out from the island. With a few words and an effort of will, I could have had the island causing treacherous currents, frigid vortexes that would pull intruders down to sharp rocks below. The lake would have boiled like a sea under a storm.

I could tell that Karrin felt the island’s influence as well, a subtle presence that caused unease in all who entered. It prevented casual visitors: No one who came into these waters would feel at ease until they’d changed course to go around the island. Hell, planes didn’t fly directly overhead; that’s how powerful the island’s influence was.

That wasn’t a planned defense, exactly. It was simply the natural presence of the things held prisoner there—a menagerie of supernatural terrors that started with some of the foulest beings I’d ever faced and progressed down into the depths of nightmare from there. Demonreach was the Alcatraz of the supernatural world—and I was the guy holding all the keys.

I could have found that place blindfolded and in the dark. Hell, I was finding it in the dark, piloting the ship without much need to turn the wheel until the looming mass of the island rose above us.

We’d prepared for arriving at night—the floating dock my brother and I had built, the Whatsup Dock, had been lined with luminescent marine tape. I cut the throttle and came in slow and careful. Even without the possibility of aquatic bad guys, operating a boat was a damned dangerous occupation for fools, so I had to be extra cautious.

I saw Freydis move up to the prow of the ship as we approached the dock, skin glowing in the green chemical light. She rubbed her arms a few times as the shadow of the island fell over her, as if the place chilled her. Beside me, Karrin shifted restlessly.

“It’s that bad?” I asked her.

“You don’t feel it at all, do you?” she asked. “Ugh. It’s … You know that feeling, when you’re dreaming, and you realize that you’re in a nightmare?” She nodded toward the island. “It’s that. In IMAX.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it’s not supposed to be a place where visitors are welcome.”

“I worry about you, when you’re out here,” she said. “What it’s doing to you.”

“It’s not doing anything to me,” I said. “I’m the Warden.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe it’s something you can’t feel happening to you. Something else.”

A disturbing thought.

But not one I hadn’t had before.

“You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m standing here.”

I brought the ship in carefully to the dock and Freydis leapt like a doe down from the ship and started making her fast.

“Is the cabin still livable?” Karrin asked. “It has supplies?”

“Everything we need,” I said. I cut the motor and headed out of the wheelhouse. “I’ll check on Thomas.”

I cracked a fresh light and took it down belowdecks with me, to the boat’s little living compartment, and into a tableau from some kind of Renaissance painting.

The boat had a couple of bunks, nothing fancy, generally covered in white sheets and heavy red plaid blankets. Thomas and Lara were reclining on one of them. She sat up at the head of the bunk, and he was sprawled back, his shoulders across her upper body. Both were naked, and there was nothing sexual in the moment at all. One of her hands held his broken ones upon his chest. The other simply cupped his cheek. Her head was bowed, as if in exhaustion, and her shoulders sagged. Her hair spilled across her face, hiding all but a bit of her profile, and brushed across his forehead.

My brother’s eyes were open, unfocused. They had acquired faint hints of grey among the silver in his gaze.

He looked like some poor broken knight, being gathered into the gentle arms of an angel of death.

“What the hell?” I asked.

Lara lifted her gaze to me, her eyes flickering with bits of mirror-bright silver that shifted even as I took note of them, sending the eerie light of the chemical stick dancing about them in fluttering, kaleidoscope changes of all shades of otherworldly green… .

I tore my eyes away before something bad happened.

“Lara. What are you doing?”

It took her a moment to speak. Her voice came out furry and delicious. “I’m giving him the energy I took earlier. It’s … slowing down the damage his Hunger is inflicting. But it’s very bad. And I’m almost …”

She licked her lips. The sight of it made me want to rip off my shirt and start boasting of my many manly deeds.

“… empty.” She made the word sound like a sin. “I’ll need to feed if I’m to give him more.”