Blood Rites (The Dresden Files 6)

Kincaid regarded me, his expression unreadable. I thought I saw something wild and bloodthirsty and satisfied in his eyes for just a second. Then he said, "Maybe you're right."

He vanished into the smoke.

Murphy helped me to my feet. She had all the kids join hands, took the hand of the lead child herself, and led us all to the stairs. She bent and scooped up her jeans on the way. There wasn't enough denim left to avoid public indecency, and she dropped them with a sigh.

"Pink panties," I said, looking down. "With little white bows. I wouldn't have guessed that."

Murphy looked too tired to glare, but she tried.

"They really go with the Kevlar and the gun belt, Murph. Shows you're a woman with her priorities straight."

She stepped on my foot, smiling.

"Clear," said Kincaid's voice from the smoke. He appeared again, coughing a little. "Found four coffins occupied. One of them was that One-ear guy you told me about. Beheaded them. Vampires are history."

"Mavra?" I asked.

He shook his head. "That whole end of the hall looks like a chop shop for a black market organ bank. The vampire took that blast from the mine right in the kisser. You'd need her dental records and a jigsaw puzzle all-star to get a positive ID."

Kincaid didn't see Mavra flicker into sight. She rose out of the smoke behind him, horribly torn and mangled, badly burned, and angry as hell. She was missing her lower jaw, half of an arm, a basketball-sized section of lower abdomen, and one of her legs was attached by only a scrap of flesh and her black tights. For all of that, she moved no less swiftly, and her eyes burned with dead fire.

Kincaid saw the look on my face. He dropped flat.

I whipped the stupid little paintball gun out of my duster and emptied it at Mavra.

May lightning strike me dead if the damned thing didn't work like a charm. Hell, better than most charms, and I'm the guy who should know. The shots poured out almost as swiftly as from Kincaid's deadly little machine guns, and they splattered into Mavra, sizzling viciously. Silver fire immediately began chewing at her flesh wherever the paintballs struck and broke. It ripped into her and it happened fast, as if some hyperkinetic gourmet were taking a melon bailer to her flesh.

Mavra let out a shocked and dusty shriek.

The holy water and garlic paintballs put a hole as wide as a three-liter bottle of Coke all the way through her. I could see the glow of fire in the pall of smoke behind her. She staggered and fell to her knees.

Murphy drew the machete from her belt and threw it underhand.

Kincaid caught it as he turned back to Mavra, and took her head off at the base of her neck. The head went one way. The body went straight down-there was no thrashing, no howling or spurting ichor, no gales of magical wind or sudden clouds of dust. Mavra's remains simply thumped to the ground, nothing but a withered cadaver once more.

I looked from Mavra's corpse to the paintball gun, impressed. "Kincaid. Can I keep this?"

"Sure," he said. "I'll add it to the bill." He stood up slowly, looking at the destruction. He shook his head. Then he joined us as we went up the stairs. "Even seeing it, it's tough to believe."

"What is?" I asked.

"Your shield. And that bit with all the wind and fire, especially with your hand like that." He glanced at me, something like caution in his expression. "I've never seen a wizard cut loose before."

What the hell. It wouldn't hurt to encourage the mercenary to be wary of me. I stopped and leaned on my staff. The runes still glowed with a sullen fire, though it was slowly fading. Tiny, white wisps of wood smoke curled up from it, sharp in my nose. It hadn't ever done that before, but there was no reason to mention that for the time being.

I looked straight at him until it was obvious that he was refusing to meet my eyes. Then I said in a quiet, gentle voice, "You still haven't."

I walked on out, leaving him to stare after me. I didn't think for a second that he would allow what he'd seen to scare him out of killing me if I didn't pay him. But it might scare him enough to make him more cautious about taking that option. Every little bit helps.

Before we got out of the shelter, I took off my duster and draped it onto Murphy's shoulders. It enveloped her entirely, its hem dragging the ground, covering her legs. She gave me a grateful look just as Ebenezar appeared in the doorway. The old man looked at the kids, then at my hand, and drew in a sharp breath.

"You all right to walk yourself out?" he asked.

"So far. We need to get these kids and ourselves the hell away from here."

"Fine," he said. "Where?"

"We'll take the kids to Father Forthill at Saint Mary of the Angels," I said. "He'll have a good idea of what can be done to help them."

Ebenezar nodded. "I know him by reputation. Good man."

We went outside and started loading kids into Ebenezar's old Ford truck. The old man had a gun rack at the back of the cab, his thick old staff in the bottom rack, his old Greener shotgun in the top one. He lifted the kids into the back one by one, where he had them lie down on a thick old thermal blanket and covered them with a second one.

Kincaid came out of the shelter carrying a contractor's heavy garbage bag, the smoke growing thicker behind him. The bag was half full. He threw it over one shoulder, then turned to me and said, "Taking care of details. As I see it, the contract is done. You satisfied with that?"

"Yeah," I said. "Nice working with you. Thank you."

Kincaid shook his head. "The money is how you thank me."

"Yeah, uh," I said, "about that. It's Saturday, and I'm going to have to talk to someone at the bank..."

He stepped closer to me and handed me a white business card. It had a number printed on it in gold lettering. There was another number written in ink that made the balance currently in my checking account look extremely small. Nothing else.

"My Swiss account," he explained. "And I'm in no hurry. Have it there by Tuesday and we'll be square."

He got in the van and left.

Tuesday.

Crap.

Ebenezar watched the white van pull out, then helped Murphy get me into the truck. I sat in the middle, my legs over on Murphy's side of the cab. She had a first-aid kit in her hands, and as we rode along she covered my burned hand lightly with gauze, entirely silent. Ebenezar drove off cautiously. We heard sirens start up when we were a couple of blocks away. "The kids to the church," he said. "Then where?"

"My place," I said. "I'll get patched up for round two."

"Round two?" Ebenezar asked.

"Yeah," I said. "If I don't do something, a ritual entropy curse is gonna head my way before midnight."

"How can I help?" he asked.

I looked steadily at him. "We'll have to talk about it."

He squinted out ahead of us and kept his emotions off of his face. "Hoss. You're too involved. You do too much. You take on way too damned much."

"There's a bright side, though," I said.

"Oh?"

"Uh- huh. If I buy it tonight, at least I won't have to figure out how to pay Kincaid before he kills me."