Chapter Twenty
Chapter
Twenty
Will defeated my wristlock, kicked the back of my knee hard enough to take my balance, and slammed an elbow into the base of my jaw as I dropped down, hard enough to make me see little birds.
“Point, Will!” Bear drawled, slashing a hand down between us.
I snarled and swiped out an arm in frustration, pushing Will’s proffered hand away.
Bear cuffed me across the head calmly, keeping me from getting any of my balance back. “Cool off, Dresden,” she said in a hard voice. “Corners, now.”
It was a cold, clear evening on the roof of the castle.
November could have come in a lot harder and crueler than it had, though everyone was waiting for the Witch of November, a quasi-apocryphal series of storms that often swept in over Lake Michigan, to put in her appearance.
Natural gas service had been prioritized by the city, especially to residential areas, and twenty-four-hour construction crews consisting of contractors and volunteers and Army Engineers had been laboring ceaselessly to try to make sure there would be buildings with heat over the winter.
I went to my corner, panting, until my ears stopped ringing.
Will had started off his werewolf career as an idealistic kid.
He was a warrior now. And I’d asked him to come at me hard.
He’d obliged me, whipping me by twenty points to maybe four of my own.
My back had been covered in bruises from the throws.
I’d taken half a dozen blows, knees, and kicks to the belly in the last hour. He’d mostly left my head alone.
“Good hit, Will,” I muttered, waggling my jaw back into place.
“You’re thinking all offense, Dresden,” Bear said.
“You have to think defense at the same time. Everyone you ever fight to the death is undefeated. They are looking to take you apart. You can’t rely on all-out offense.
Will’s smart, balanced, and strong.” She awarded Will a deep bow of her head. “That was properly done, warrior.”
“Thank you,” Will said quietly. I’d bloodied his lip for him earlier and he’d barely noticed. Damn he was quick for someone built as solidly as he was.
Will frowned and lifted his head to the evening wind, his nostrils flaring.
“Who?” I asked him.
Will considered for a moment before nodding slowly. “Ramirez and the Russian,” he said.
“Well, good. I can pass along Lord Darkdoom’s invitation. Bear,” I said, “the kid.”
“I’ll see to him,” the Valkyrie said, and hurried down off the roof.
“Will,” I said, “send them up here, would you?”
“You’re going to go after those Black Court bastards, aren’t you?” Will said.
I exhaled. “Well. Yeah, probably, sooner or later.”
“I’m going with you,” Will said.
“Will, I’m not going to be able to look out for you,” I said.
“I’ve been giving you an awful lot of my life lately, Harry. Also, hey, where’d you get all those bruises?” he asked. “Look, man. I told Bear what I had in mind. She’s been training me before you get up. And in case you didn’t notice, I just spent the last hour handing the Winter Knight his ass.”
I growled. “Yeah, well.”
“You remember that bruise on the cheek you gave me first round?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You see it now?”
I frowned and peered at him in the gathering dark. There was no mark on his face.
“Bruises take about a minute to go away,” he said. “Split my lip, it’s better in two. And rare meat is freaking ambrosia.”
“How?” I asked quietly.
“All the shifting lately,” he said. “And since the night of the battle I’ve…I don’t know. Felt things differently.” He met my eyes. His reflected light, like a wolf’s. “A lot of things changed that night.”
There had been an insane amount of power flowing through the city the night of the battle, God knew.
It had awakened Council-level power in Fitz, after all.
It had taken me days to realize how drunk I had been on it for a while.
I had unfurled a psychic banner of pure will and used it to make my allies stronger in that heady brew of terror and fury and pure arcane power that had roiled over the city.
I knew I had been stronger then, more able to affect the world around me.
Maybe a lot more.
Maybe with more consequence than I had realized.
I broke my gaze with Will before it got any more complicated. Hell’s bells, what had I unleashed without knowing?
I extended my wizard’s senses toward the other man and felt…
…kind of threatened, actually.
Will had always been dangerous as a werewolf. But he was changing. I could feel the shift in energy around him. He had gone through the fire, and he’d come out changed. Harder. Stronger.
“I’ll think about it,” I relented. “Will, I…thank you. For your help lately. I know I’m not firing on all cylinders right now. So…thank you.”
His expression softened. “Hell, man. You’ve had our backs since we were a bunch of dumb college kids. How can I not be there for you?”
He held up his hand.
We clasped hands, Arnold and Carl Weathers–style.
“Okay,” I said. “Send the Wardens up.”
Will vanished down the stairs. I grabbed a towel and mopped it over my sweat-soaked hair.
I was only wearing basketball shorts. I needed a haircut and a shave.
Now that I wasn’t moving, the evening’s wind should have been sending chills through me, but it just felt refreshing.
I stretched a little, sensing the bruises strain across my back, but it only made me feel a little more alive.
The Winter mantle made pain a nonfactor, and as the season advanced, it became increasingly difficult to ignore the simple animal pleasure of using my body.
Footsteps came up the stairs, light, clicking, and Ilyana the Warden appeared, wearing a lot of close-fit black under her grey cloak. She stepped out onto the rooftop and stared at me for a long moment, pale eyes raking over me.
“Like some kind of animal,” she spat quietly, contempt in her tone.
But she was staring at me, and holding herself in a way that if I didn’t know better I would have sworn was intentional.
The Winter mantle took keen interest in her grace, her slender appeal.
Her white-blond hair that would make her easy to see and hunt down in the dark.
Her lips were maddeningly full and appealing, even without makeup, even twisted into a sneer.
I tried not to notice, but ever since Lara had planted one on me, my body had suddenly remembered that sex was a thing, and that fact had been annoying me on a regular basis.
Never mind how the oncoming cold weather had woken the mantle, as it always did.
I could feel it, like a hungry beast prowling around in my chest and my guts and my… elsewhere.
“Nice to see you, too, Miss Astinova.” I sighed.
“That’s Warden Astinova to you.”
I showed her my teeth. “Where’s Carlos, Warden?”
“He’ll be along,” she said coldly. She seemed to make up her mind about something and strode quickly toward me, her eyes bright, her body tense.
Part of me sensed a threat. Part of me sensed an opportunity. I could have reacted in a number of ways, but I chose to just arch one eyebrow and give her my disapproving look.
She was maybe a buck fifteen, maybe five foot four. I had her by a hundred and fifty pounds and almost a foot and a half. She stopped short of me.
Then she took a deep breath, stepped forward, and placed her bare hand on my stomach.
I let her.
She stared at me for a moment, frowning. Then shot me a suspicious glare.
“You don’t sense any black magic, eh?” I asked her, my voice a low growl. “Go a little higher or a little lower, and this could get unpredictable.”
She jerked her hand back as if she’d been burned.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I’m sure you don’t,” I told her. I started taking steps toward her, and she began to backpedal, her face turning into a grimace of apprehension.
I didn’t stop until the small of her back bumped up against one of the merlons in the castle’s crenelation.
“Let me explain something to you, Ilyana,” I said quietly.
“When you’re here, you’re here as a guest. If you take liberties touching me again, I’m going to take it as a betrayal of guest-right and throw you off my roof. ”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she snapped.
“You’ve been duly warned about your breach of the ancient laws,” I said. “This isn’t White Council territory. Walk carefully.”
“Or?”
I smiled again, not pleasantly. “One way or another,” I said, “it’s time for you to get off my roof.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I will remind you,” she said in a low, hard voice, “that should I ever find you in breach of the Laws of Magic or Council policy, your already-signed death warrant will be withdrawn from suspension and handed over to the Blackstaff. And you will be executed.”
“You say that like I haven’t been here before,” I said. “With someone a hell of a lot scarier than you with his finger on the trigger. And here I stand.” I stepped back calmly and gave her a courtly little bow. “Good night, Warden.”
The door to the roof opened and Ramirez stepped out, stockier than usual in a winter coat beneath his Warden’s cloak. “Ilyana,” he said, his voice frosty. “Return to Edinburgh at once.”
Her pale eyes flashed and she strode from the roof, to the doorway and down the stairs. She slammed the door behind her.
“Don’t suppose she trained with Morgan?” I asked him.
Ramirez walked over to join me at the edge of the roof and looked out over the neighborhood, and past it, to the illuminated towers of the nicer parts of the city. “Early on. Then with Luccio. She”—he paused—“has been shaped by some of the same forces, I think.”
“I kind of miss Morgan sometimes,” I said.
“So do I. He was a pain in the ass.”
“But you always knew where he stood,” I said.
“Amen to that.”
I went over to the pile of workout clothes I’d slipped out of before starting rounds with Will and found my wallet. I pulled the business card Drakul had given me out of it and handed it to Ramirez.
Carlos held up a hand and muttered a gentle light spell into being. He read the card and looked up at me. “What’s this?”
“Drakul’s address,” I said. “I think he was telling the truth.”
Ramirez exhaled slowly. “Tell me.”
I did.
He shook his head. “He’s given us a legal license to hunt him down.”
“Seemed to think it would simplify things for him if we did.”
“Cocky bastard.”
I shrugged and slipped my shirt on. “Or maybe he’s just that good. Guy creeps me.”
“Does that change anything?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “But…I’m not ready. There was a fight. Ghouls. I, uh. Misfired.”
Ramirez tilted his head sharply.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just not…”
“You’re mourning,” he said quietly. “Murphy.”
It didn’t feel exactly like a knife going into my heart, I think, to hear her name aloud.
“She was good people,” he said. “I only knew her a little. But I could tell that much.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
“You blame yourself for her death,” he noted.
I shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe.”
“You’re too quick to take things like that on. Like you did with the twins.”
I didn’t answer him. The twins were the reason I hated ghouls. Young wizards in training, back at Camp Kaboom. The ghouls hadn’t left much.
Neither had I.
“Our world is dangerous,” he said. “Even if we could see every possible future, had the time and the knowledge to make the best choice every time, people would still die, Harry.”
“Maybe,” I said. “God. If I could go back…”
“Stars and stones,” Ramirez chuckled. “Don’t talk about breaking the Sixth Law right in front of a Warden, Dresden. Even I have limits.”
I gave him a bleak smile. “If I’d just disarmed that slimy little me-weasel Rudolph.” I sighed. “It wasn’t even on purpose. He was panicked. Had his finger on the trigger. His gun went off.”
Carlos winced. “I didn’t know the details.”
After a minute, I said, “I tried to kill him.”
“A cop?”
I nodded. “Sanya and Butters stopped me. I told him to get out of town.”
“Did he?”
“He probably ran for the border,” I said. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard about him. I haven’t gone looking.”
“Christ,” he said calmly. “No wonder you’ve got your mojo in a knot.”
I frowned at him.
“Drakul kills half of our squad from the war,” Ramirez said.
“That guy kills Murphy. Your hometown is in shambles. And when you moved back into your old place, it’s not your place anymore.
And you got this thing with Lady Raith going; that’s got to be fucking with you.
Plus, Ilyana and everyone who is cheering her on ready to send the Blackstaff after you.
You’re trying to take care of people whose homes were destroyed.
” He shook his head. “Fighting ghouls and whatnot. Harry, you need to balance some scales. You need a damned vacation. A year at a monastery. Something.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well. I’m not going to get it.”
He grunted. “You look like you’re in shape.”
“Only thing keeping me sane,” I said. “Assuming it is. I think it is.”
“Depends,” Ramirez drawled. “Did you threaten to defenestrate my partner just before I came up here?”
“No,” I said defensively. “There are no windows up here.”
He barked out a laugh.
“She touched me,” I said. “Looking for black magic.”
He sighed. “Well. That’s what Wardens do.”
“It’s not what guests do.”
“God, Dresden,” he said. “You don’t make things easier.”
“And here we’ve all had it so smooth and gentle lately.”
Ramirez sighed. “Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he said, “but you know we have spirits and other informants who alert us when black magic is used in most major cities.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Chicago’s been pinging the net,” he said. “That’s why Ilyana checked your aura.”
“Fuck,” I said quietly.
He tilted his head and eyed me.
I held up a hand to him. “How bad?”
“Not much,” he admitted. “If it had been you, enough for an excuse.”
“You sending a team?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Am I?”
“Give me a little time,” I said. “Maybe I can put a lid on it. Without beheading anyone.” I swallowed and barely managed to say, “There’s been enough blood spilled in my town.”
He stared at me for a long moment. Then he shrugged a shoulder.
“I’m the regional commander, but there are a lot of eyes on this.
You could have a hundred Wardens or the Blackstaff himself at your door if something goes south.
And there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it.
I hope you know what you’re doing, Harry. ”
“Yeah,” I said. “I hope so, too.”