Chapter Four
Chapter
Four
Three days later, I’d finished my workout in the bare-essentials gym on the second floor of the castle, and Will and I were talking with the parents of the families currently staying with me—four couples and a harried single mother whose husband had gone missing during the fighting and hadn’t turned up.
Two of the families had sick kids who weren’t getting better like they should have.
The single mother was the one with a diabetic child. All of them were worried.
Three of my Knights of the Bean were loitering in the great hall at a folding card table, playing listless hands of poker using M&M’s as chips. I’d have joined them, but when I did, I spent most of my time eating my bets.
Will was doing most of the talking, while I nodded and made the occasional monosyllabic comment, and at precisely eight o’clock, someone started pounding on the castle’s great door.
The reaction was instantaneous. Will came to his feet, whipped off his T-shirt in a single smooth movement, and rippled into the form of a lean, terrible timber wolf who stepped calmly out of his sweatpants.
The Knights of the Bean rose, taking up weapons—shotguns and a high-powered deer rifle, in this case.
The parents acted a beat later, rising and hurrying back out of the great hall toward their chambers, doubtless to round up their kids.
I glanced back over my shoulder until the civilians were out of the way. Then I put down my cup of coffee, rose deliberately, and started for the door, taking up my staff as I walked, passing into the entry hall.
The front doors of the castle were great double doors twice as high as the average Joe.
We opened both doors whenever the troops needed to sally out, which was never, and the rest of the time we used the smaller door that was built into one of the big ones.
The knocking was coming from the small door, and I shot the bolt without preamble, calling enough power into my staff to set the runes carved into it ablaze with green-gold light and to fill the air with the faint scent of woodsmoke.
Then I faced the door and called, “What’s the password?”
The knocking stopped.
There was a silent moment, and then a scratching sound beneath the larger doors. With a little difficulty, someone managed to wiggle a small vellum envelope beneath the door.
I picked it up, testing it with my wizard’s senses, but there wasn’t anything to it but paper. I mean, I suppose someone could have put anthrax in it or something, but when I opened it carefully there wasn’t any powder or anything. Just a note:
Harry,
What you asked for and a little more.
—Lara
I scanned the note and then held it down at eye level for Will, who let out a suspicious growl.
“I know,” I said. “It’s weirding me out a little, too. Stand ready.”
The Knights of the Bean fanned out and covered the doorway from several angles. I just hoped none of them would shoot me in the back. They had hearts of solid oak, and they’d stood to fight when Chicago needed them, but they weren’t professionals.
I waited until they were in position and opened the door.
“Hi!” boomed a large, cheerful-looking woman on the other side. “I’m Bear!”
I blinked for a moment.
When I said she was a large woman, I meant larger than me.
Seven feet tall if she was an inch. She wasn’t any kind of lean, mean fighting machine, either.
She probably weighed around four hundred, and that was before you added in the heavy canvas sling bag she had on her shoulder, the rifle cases under one arm, and the scaled-up, stuffed-full ruck she had on her back.
She was pretty and round-cheeked, with forest-green eyes and dark brown hair pulled into a braid as thick as my forearm, and her smile was absolutely radiant.
She wore comfortable jeans and a battered old black biker jacket over a golden T-shirt.
“I like it when they answer their own door,” she said. “You’re the seidrmadr, huh?”
“Uh,” I said, looking up at her. That was not an angle to which I was accustomed. “I’m Dresden.”
She tilted her head back over her shoulder. “I come bearing beds, meds, and a doc,” she said. “Plus me.”
I leaned my head out enough to look past her, though I had to stand on tiptoe to do it.
Sure enough, on the street outside was a trio of little workhorse four-wheelers, each of them hauling a trailer big enough to handle several mattresses.
I recognized Lara’s head of security, a guy named Riley, at the head of the column.
He was helping a middle-aged woman carrying a satchel with a red cross on it off the back of one of the four-wheelers.
“Plus you?” I asked, feeling somewhat bewildered. “Oh wait. Seidrmadr. You’re a Valkyrie.”
Bear clapped my shoulder, and several things in her ruck and bags clanked. “Buddy,” she said, “I’m the Valkyrie. And I’m here to protect your skinny ass. Invite me in.”
“Hah,” I said. “How do I know you’re who you say you are?”
Bear scowled at me, nodding. “Careful. That’s smart.
Well, Riley over there will vouch for me.
Freydis told me to tell you a seven is better than any man has done since Hastings and to call her if you want to share a bottle.
And here.” She stuffed her free hand into her jacket pocket, pulled out a heavily folded sheaf of papers, and thrust them at me.
I took it and unfolded it as best as I could. It had what appeared to be barbecue sauce stains on it, but the paper was on familiar letterhead. Monoc Securities. I scanned the contract, between said corporation and Lara Raith.
“…whose sole duty will be to protect the person and home of Harry Dresden, wizard, currently residing in the city of Chicago…” I muttered. “Term of service of not less than five years.”
I practically choked upon reading that. I’d looked into what it might take to hire one myself, and Valkyries cost way more than a guy with a couple of gym socks full of mystery diamonds could afford.
“You want, call One-Eye,” Bear said affably. “He’ll tell you what I look like.”
I stared at her for a moment and said, “Will. Watch her.”
“Hey, a werewolf, excellent,” Bear said, her smile widening. She fell a pace back from the door. “Good to see you got a lick of sense, seidrmadr. Make this job a lot easier. I’ll wait. I get paid the same either way. And it ain’t like I’m getting any older.”
I strode away, back down into the guts of the castle, past my chambers, and opened the door in the floor that led down to my repaired and recoalescing laboratory, the only thing standing from my original home in Mrs. Spunkelcrief’s rooming house.
It was little more than five levels of wire shelving around three walls and a long worktable in the middle, with a little space for a writing desk and a fire-ruined copper summoning circle built into the floor at one end of the table.
But it was home.
I could breathe here.
“Bob,” I called, letting my impatience show in my voice.
A blue streak of light suddenly appeared on the white paint of the concrete wall.
It swept around the room to the old shelf where an ancient human skull rested, nestled among a pile of paperback romances.
The skull’s eye sockets kindled to life with glowing red-gold embers a moment later, and it burbled, “You have but to call and I am here!”
“I noticed.” I sighed. The spirit of intellect that lived in the skull was an old friend and confidant, or at least a mostly faithful assistant.
When I had moved into the castle, it had become clear that the building had been constructed with a great many magical systems built into it—but it had to have a spirit to run it, a genius constructi, if you will.
Bob had taken to the place as gleefully as a fourteen-year-old who’d been given the keys to a monster truck.
He could inhabit the stones of the castle as easily as he could his own skull, and he’d been positively bouncy ever since.
“Look, I know you get satellite and radio and television signals now,” I began.
“And internet!” Bob burbled. “Do you wanna watch Lord of the Rings again?”
“You’re never going to convince me that Arwen was actually wearing lingerie the whole film,” I said soberly. “You edited.”
“Well,” Bob said sullenly. “Just be glad it wasn’t Gimli.”
“I need to speak to Vadderung,” I said.
Bob whistled. “Harry. You don’t just call up One-Eye himself.”
“Good God,” I said. “We’re not summoning him. I’ve got more sense than that.”
“Do you, though?”
“I need to confirm that the Valkyrie at the front door is who she says she is,” I said.
“Oh, easy, then,” Bob said brightly. “That’s a corporate thing. I’ll just call his office.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Please do.”
“Riiiinnnng,” Bob said. “Riiiinnnng!”
There was a clicking sound from the skull, and a woman’s cold, calm voice said, “Monoc Securities, Mister Vadderung’s office. Who may I say is calling?”
“This is Harry Dresden, wizard,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, her tone clearly disappointed.
“Please let him know I need a moment of his time,” I said.
“I am skeptical of that,” she replied, and suddenly Muzak started playing. I never knew Wagner could be Muzaked.
“Dresden,” came a deep, resonant voice a minute later. “I take it Bear has arrived.”
“Yeah, Andrea the Giant in a motorcycle jacket, green eyes,” I said.
“That’s the one,” Vadderung said with a low chuckle. “Ms. Raith seems somewhat determined to ensure your safety. Bear is my best.”
“Huh,” I said. “You read her contract?”
“Negotiated it myself,” Vadderung said. “Bear is practically family.”
“So this is on the level?” I asked.
“As far as I can tell,” Vadderung replied. “You have my word.”
“Okay,” I said. “Uh. Thanks, I guess. That’s all I needed.”
“Make sure she gets enough to eat,” Vadderung suggested, “or you’ll regret it.” And then he hung up.
I blinked. “I have to feed her?”
“Whoa!” Bob exclaimed. “Harry, you’ve got a Valkyrie bodyguard!” His eyes flicked toward the front doors of the castle, as if he had no trouble gazing through the earth and stone between the two points. “A big one! Wow!”
For a second, I wished it could have been a little one.
About five feet tall and blond would do.
I closed my eyes.
“Harry!” Bob said, in a tone that suggested he’d already said it several times.
I blinked my eyes open to find Bob’s glowing presence in the wall nearest my head.
“You okay, boss?”
I scowled and said, “I’m getting tired of people asking me that.”
“Well,” Bob said, “stop checking out in the middle of conversations, maybe.”
I grunted. “Thanks, Bob. We’ll do movies later tonight.”
I went back upstairs to the front doors and found Bear sitting on the rifle cases, her face tilted up to the sun. She looked down and opened her eyes as I approached, and then stood up.
“Okay, wizard,” she said. “We in business?”
“We’re in business,” I said. “Come in. We’ll find you quarters.”
“You’ll put me in a room next to yours,” she said cheerfully, scooping up her gear again.
She must have been carrying a couple hundred pounds of stuff.
She slung it around like a kid with a book bag.
Then she turned, put her thumb and forefinger in her mouth, and let out an earsplitting whistle.
“Hey, Riley! Let’s unload this stuff! Doc, you’re with me. ”
She stepped back as I pulled some bolts and opened one of the main doors to make room for the men carrying mattresses in, and a second later, Bear came stomping in, with a few extra stomps as if testing the firmness of the flagstones beneath her feet.
“Oh, hell yeah,” she said. “Proper fortress spells here. You got a nice setup, wizard. Doc, come here. This is Harry Dresden. Harry, this is Doctor Lacalle.”
The middle-aged woman with the shoulder bag nodded firmly at me. “Ms. Raith tells me you have sick children here.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “We do.”
She gave me a professional smile and a nod. “Well then,” she said. “Let’s see how we can help them.”