Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter
Fifty-Five
Cleanup was gonna take a lot of mops.
It cost me about five minutes of pure mental effort and some of Bob’s help to get the stones of the second floor over the entry to the main hall put back.
The heavy enchanted stone drifted slowly up into the air and locked back into place as securely as ever.
We’d have to reseal it, but I was pretty sure Michael and I could manage it on our own with maybe a long day’s work.
Lara and her folk didn’t come inside, but I made something of a show of going out to them outside the gates, after the fighting was done, the enemy in full retreat, and thanking her in front of her family members.
Lara’s sisters took the mind-melted Renfields with them, and I didn’t argue.
Once the Black Court got done using their butcher-shop psychomancy on mortals, the victims weren’t coming back.
Wizards way better than me had tried to help such victims in the past and failed.
And if Ramirez hadn’t done what he’d done to them, they’d have thrown themselves after their fallen masters in psychotic rages.
Unless we’d lost, I supposed, in which case the Black Court would have devoured them before moving on—the usual doom of Renfields.
The White Court’s version of hospice care would be kinder than any other fate awaiting them.
Once Toot’s scouts reported that the enemy truly was gone, we brought the residents back up from the basement. Maggie came pelting up the stairs alongside Mouse, flung herself at me, and proceeded to climb me until she had her skinny arms around my neck.
I spent a while hugging her while Mouse pranced happily around us, making huffing sounds of pleasure.
“That was so loud,” Maggie said. “I was scared.”
“Me, too, punkin,” I said quietly.
“You got the bad guys?” she asked.
“They came to mess with my little girl,” I told her. “Wasn’t even close.”
“Did you cheat?” she asked.
“As much as possible,” I said.
“Good,” she replied, and squeezed extra tight.
“Urk,” I said. “Ack.”
She giggled but loosened her grip, and I hugged her some more.
I saw Matias doing exactly the same thing with his wife and kids. We looked at each other, nodded, and went back to our families.
“Fitz!” Maggie cried out as my apprentice walked wearily over to me, while Bear lumbered along behind him. Maggie let go of me with one arm long enough to give him a high five.
“Hey, kid,” Fitz said to Maggie, grinning. “Harry. I’m sorry. I didn’t last very long.”
I shifted Maggie over to one arm and clasped hands with the young man. “You did just fine,” I said. “First fight, you kept it together, only hit the bad guys, and helped out when I really needed it. You survived. That means you won.”
“Wasn’t like I called down a thunderstorm or anything,” Fitz said.
Bear burst out in a laugh. She was still flushed and covered in sweat and she looked as if she’d lost ten pounds, but she was moving without pain. “The seidrmadr’s been doing this his whole life. He hasn’t even been teaching you for a year yet. Give him a break.”
Fitz flushed and looked a little embarrassed.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “You made enemies today, kid. Those Malvora you burned. They aren’t going to forget it.”
Fitz’s face darkened slightly. “Then they shouldn’t have come to my home looking for trouble, should they? And if they come back, maybe I won’t be so nice.”
“My man,” I said approvingly. He held up his fist, and we bumped knuckles firmly.
Basil and the gargoyles came out of the walls and floor in the aftermath, gathering around little Cinnamon. The monkey-cat little guy was in half a dozen broken pieces, where one of the Black Court had flung him into the castle’s wall.
“Mmmm,” Basil said, as I approached, still carrying Maggie. “My lord.”
“Uh,” I said. “Is he…”
“He is but injured,” Basil intoned seriously. “This isn’t too bad, my lord. With your permission, we will gather materials to mend him. There are many mounds of rubble in the city nearby where it can be done.”
“Go and be back before dawn,” I said. “Should be foggy tonight.”
“My lord,” Basil said, bowing his head. The gargoyles carefully gathered up Cinnamon’s pieces and vanished into the walls.
Ramirez came walking in the front door with Butters and Daniel and the werewolves, still in animal form. Father Forthill and Rabbi Aaronson were with them. The rabbi wore the shofar on a baldric of colorfully woven cloth.
“Rabbi,” I said brightly. “I didn’t see you during the action.”
“Because I’m too old to be fighting,” said the elderly man brightly, “and I am not so much a fool as the Catholic, and blowing the horn once was enough work for one night, I think.”
“Daniel,” I said to the younger man, offering my hand. He shook it, grinning. “Thank you for showing up. Again.”
“Glad to, Harry,” he said.
Butters grinned and shook my hand as well, and gestured at Ramirez. “I kind of like being the distraction,” he said. “Way less cardio involved.”
Ramirez smiled. “I haven’t really gotten to work with one of the Knights of the Sword before. It was a pleasure, Sir Waldo.”
Mouse barked happily and bounded up to Will and the Alphas. There were a great many wagging tails and sniffing noses and canine noises.
“Will,” I called. “War council in the gym in ten, okay? See if you can catch Lara before she leaves? I want her in on it. Ask her if she will.”
The most muscular of the wolves nodded to me, an eerily out-of-place motion on the lupine form, and ghosted outside.
“You gotta talk to people?” Maggie asked.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “You know. Wizard stuff. Sort things out.”
“Can we do a movie night after?”
“I’d be a fool to turn down an offer like that,” I said.
—
We gathered in the gym. Me, Lara, Ramirez, Forthill, Will (wearing a bathrobe and carrying a notepad), and Butters. Bear was hanging out nearby with Freydis, who looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen her.
“A helicopter,” Lara was telling Butters. “It dropped us off in a park about three miles from here and we ran the rest of the way. My security people followed in cars and they’ll take us home. How did you get here in half an hour?”
“We happened to be about a mile off at a B-dubs to watch the fights,” Butters said. “Sometimes things just work out.”
“You don’t really think that, do you?” Lara said, smiling.
Butters grinned. “No, ma’am. Hey, isn’t there supposed to be a wedding? How come I haven’t gotten my invitation?”
Lara glanced at me. “I spoke with Mab about that. We agreed midwinter would be a better date symbolically. I suppose we’ll do invites at the end of the summer.”
News to me. But Mab had gotten what she wanted. She tended to be less utterly unyielding once that had happened. “Okay, okay,” I said. “Social hour can continue after.” I went around and made the introductions, just to be sure everyone knew who everyone else was.
“I thought the White Council wasn’t on good terms with you anymore,” Lara said, arching an eyebrow at Ramirez.
“I’m not here,” he answered calmly. “And I’ll be able to prove it later.”
“You know,” Lara said to me, “I’ve always liked him.”
“I want to figure out what happened,” I said to everyone. “I only saw the fight at the front of the castle and up on the roof. What happened back at the rear?”
Freydis raised her hand. “Me and Gard and the goth girls took it to the ghouls and the Malvora. Ghouls put up a pretty good fight. Malvora are a bunch of cowards. Started running the second blood started hitting the ground. Gard says hello, by the way, Dresden. Says to tell you not to think she was there because Marcone likes you.”
“Oh no,” I said in a dull tone. “Not that. What do we need to be worried about here?”
“How many injured do you have?” Lara asked at once.
“Uh…” I scratched at my head. “Bear, you okay?”
Bear shrugged. “Mostly I’d say I’m better than just okay.”
“One of the gargoyles got busted up,” I said. “Basil says they’ll fix him up in a couple of days. What about your people?”
“Two of my sisters were wounded,” Lara said. “They’ll be more cautious in the future.”
Will, who had been ready to start writing things down, said, “That’s it?”
I looked around the room and said, cautiously, “Yes.”
“Thank God.” Forthill sighed.
“A coterie of Black Court ancients,” Ramirez mused. “Several dozen White Court with small arms. Fifty or so ghouls. And no one died.”
“We had early warning,” I said quietly. I took the black envelope out of my pocket and held it up. “If we hadn’t, we’d have had a massacre on our hands. Our dead hands.”
“May I?” Lara asked. I passed it to her. She opened it and read the note from Drakul, frowning, then passed it down to Ramirez. Everyone looked at it.
“I don’t understand,” Forthill said quietly. “Why would Drakul do that? It ensured that his forces took total losses.”
“Not total,” I said quietly. “Mavra got away. She seemed pleased by it all.”
Ramirez made a growling sound. “Why does she keep surviving?”
“Because she’s intelligent,” Lara said calmly. “And she learns from her mistakes. That is what survivors do.”
“Which is what we’re trying to do right now,” I said. “This whole night was one piece of paper away from being a disaster. I don’t want to sit here fat and happy and think because the fight went well that it means we’re invincible.”
“Without casting any accusations,” Forthill said delicately, “I feel I must point out that there was a significant presence of Lady Lara’s people involved in the attack.”
“They are my people,” Lara said forthrightly. “If only barely. I knew they were plotting but I didn’t know what they had in mind, specifically. In my defense, in the past my intelligence about the other Houses has been a great deal more precise.”
“Maybe,” I suggested, “they had help from inside Raith.”
Lara looked at me and met my eyes for a moment. I could see the calculation happening there. It took her almost an entire second to get it.
“Oh,” she said in a flat, unamused voice. “Really.”