Cold Days (The Dresden Files 14)

"Right," I said, the word slurring a little. "There."

"Dammit, Dresden," Karrin said, her voice exasperated. "Just lie down until we can look at you."

I threw her a salute with my right hand and paused, feeling an unfamiliar weight on my arm.

I looked. Captain Hook dangled from it, half a dozen of his armor's barbs caught in the denim of my jacket. I peered at the tiny armored figure and then poked him with a fingertip. He let out a semiconscious little moan, but the hooks had effectively immobilized him.

"Huh," I said. Then I cackled. "Hah. Hah, hah, heh hahhah."

Thomas glanced over his shoulder and blinked several times. "What the hell is that?"

"A priceless intelligence asset," I replied.

Thomas lifted his eyebrows. "You're going to interrogate that little guy?"

"If Molly has a turkey baster, maybe you can waterboard him," Murphy said in an acid tone.

"Relax," I said. "And drive. We need to . . ."

I forgot what I had been about to say we needed to do. I guess all that cackling had really taken it out of me. The world turned sideways and the leather of the backseat pressed up against my unwounded cheek. It felt cool and nice, which was a stark contrast to the waves of pure ache and steady burn that pulsed through my body with every heartbeat.

The world didn't fade to black so much as turn a dark, restless red.

Chapter Twenty-seven

I woke up when someone shoved a branding iron into my neck.

Okay, that isn't what happened, but I was coming out of unconsciousness at the time, and that was what it seemed like. I let out a curse and flailed with my arms.

"Hold him, hold him!" someone said in an intent voice. Hands came down on my arms, pressing them back against a smooth, rigid surface beneath me.

"Harry," Thomas said. "Harry, easy, easy. You're safe."

There were lights in my eyes. They weren't pleasant. I squinted against them until I could see Thomas's upside-down head looming over me.

"There you are," Thomas said. "We were getting worried." He lifted his hands from my arms and gave the side of my face something somewhere between a pat and a slap. "You weren't waking up."

I looked around me. I was lying on the table in Molly's apartment, the same spot where we'd seen to Toot's injuries earlier in the day. There was the sharp smell of disinfectant in the air. I felt terrible, but less terrible than I had in the car.

I turned my head and saw a wiry little guy with a shock of black hair, a beaky nose, and glittering, intelligent eyes. He picked up a metal bowl in one hand, and moved a pair of needle-nose pliers in the other, dropping something into the bowl with a clink. "And he just wakes up?" Waldo Butters, Chicago's most polka-savvy medical examiner, asked. "Tell me that isn't a little creepy."

"What are you talking about?" I said.

Butters held up the metal bowl, tilting it so that I could see inside. Several tiny, bright, sharp, bloodied pieces of metal were inside. "Barbs from those fishhooks," he said. "Several of them broke off in your skin."

I grunted. My collapse in the car made more sense now. "Yeah," I said. "Any kind of iron gets under my skin, it seems to disagree with the Winter Knight's bundle of awesome. Takes the gumption right out of me." I started to sit up.

Butters very calmly put his hands on my chest and shoved me back down. Hard. I blinked at him.

"I don't do assertive much," he said apologetically. "I don't really like doctoring people who are still alive. But if I'm going to do it, dammit, I'm going to do it right. So. You stay put until I say you can get up. Got it?"

"I, uh . . ." I said. "Yeah, I guess."

"Smart," Butters said. "You have two giant bruises where the lower halves of your arms usually go. You're covered in lacerations, and a couple need sutures. Some are already inflamed. I need to clean them all out. That'll work best if you hold still."

"I can do that," I said. "But I'm feeling all kinds of better, man. Look." I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. They felt a little tight. I glanced down at them. They were a mottled shade of purple and swollen. My wrists and forearms were blotchy with bruises and swollen, too.

"Harry, I once saw an addict pound his fist into concrete until he'd broken nearly every bone in his hand. He never even blinked."

"I'm not on drugs," I said.

"No? There's damage to your body's machinery. Just because you aren't feeling it doesn't mean it isn't there," Butters said firmly. "I've got a theory."

"What theory?" I asked, as he got to work on the cuts.

"Well, let's say you're a faerie queen with a need for a mortal enforcer. You want the guy to be effective, but you don't want to make him too powerful to handle. It seems reasonable to me that you might fiddle with his pain threshold. He's not actually any more indestructible, but he feels like he is. He'll ignore painful things like . . . like knife wounds or . . ."

"Gut shots?" Thomas suggested.

"Or gut shots, right," Butters said. "And most of the time, that is probably a huge advantage. He can Energizer Bunny his way right through your enemies-and then, when it's over, there he is. He feels great, but in reality he's all screwed up and it's going to take his body weeks or months to repair itself. If you don't like the job he's done, well, there he is all weakened and vulnerable. And if you do like it, you just let him rest and use him again another day."

"Wow, that's cynical," I said. "And calculating."

"I'm in the right ballpark, aren't I?" Butters asked.

I sighed. "Yeah, it sounds . . . very Mab-like." Especially if what Maeve had said about me being dangerous to Mab was true.

Butters nodded sagely. "So, as strong or quick or as fast to heal as it makes you, just remember: You aren't any more invincible to trauma than before. You just don't notice it when something happens. . . ." He was quiet for a moment and then asked, "You didn't even feel that, did you?"

"Feel what?" I asked, lifting my head.

He put the heel of his hand on my forehead and pushed it down again. "I just stitched up a three-inch-long slice over one of your ribs. No anesthetic."

"Huh," I said. "No, I didn't. . . . I mean, I felt something; it just wasn't uncomfortable."

"Supports my theory," he said, nodding. "I already did that cut over your eye while you were out. That's a beauty. Right down to the bone."