Changes (16 page)

Knowledge is power, and a couple of years before, the Archive had proved it. As a child not much older than Maggie, she had pitted her magic against the skills of beings with centuries of experience, and come out, for the most part, ahead. She was an unwholesomely powerful child, and while she had always comported herself with the gravity of a woman of forty, I had seen flashes of the child supporting the vast burden of the Archive. I knew what would happen if that child ever decided to take control of how the Archive was administered. It would probably look a lot like that episode of
The Twilight Zone
with the monstrous little kid with superpowers.

The phone rang again. I shivered and answered it. We’d run a long line down into the laboratory, and the old rotary phone sat near Molly’s desk, benefiting from being on the fringes of such a well-organized place. “Hello?”

“It’s Kincaid,” said a man’s baritone. Kincaid was Ivy’s driver, body-guard, cook, and all- around teddy bear. He was the single deadliest gunman I had ever had the terror of watching, and one of a relatively few number of people who I both disliked and trusted. He had once described the method he would use to kill me, if he had to, and I had to admit that he had an excellent chance of succeeding. He was tough, smart, skilled, and had a mercenary sense of honor—whoever held his contract was his charge, body and mind, and he never abrogated a contract once he had signed it.

“Dresden,” I replied. “This line probably isn’t clear.”

“I know,” Kincaid replied. “What do you want?”

“I need to find a child. She was taken by the Red Court a few days ago. We believe her to be somewhere in Mexico.”

“Somewhere in Mexico?” Kincaid said, and I could hear his grin. “You tried walking around and yelling her name really loud yet?”

“I’m getting there,” I said. “Look, does she know anything or not?”

Kincaid muffled the phone with something, probably his hand. I heard his low, buzzing voice as he asked a question. I might have heard a light soprano voice answering him.

Kincaid returned to the phone and said, “Ivy says she can’t get involved. That the business you’re on is deadly. She dares not unbalance it for fear of changing the outcome.”

I made a growling sound. “Goddammit, Kincaid. She owes me one. Remind her who came and took her away from those fucking Denarian lunatics.”

Kincaid’s voice became quieter, more sober. “Believe me, she remembers, Dresden. But she isn’t free to share her knowledge like you or me. When she says she can’t tell you, she’s being literal. She physically cannot let such information leave her head.”

I slammed the heel of my hand into a wall and leaned on it, closing my eyes. “Tell her,” I said, “that this is information I
must
have. If she can’t help me, I’ll be taking it up with other sources. The ones in my green notebook.”

Kincaid spoke with someone again. This time I definitely heard Ivy’s voice answering him.

“She can’t tell you where the girl is,” Kincaid said. There was a hint of steel in his voice, warning me not to push too hard. “But she says she can tell you someone who might.”

“Any help would be greatly appreciated,” I said, exhaling.

“She says to tell you that before you try the green book, there’s something else you might consider. The last man you want to see might have useful information.”

I understood what she was talking about at once and groaned. “Dammit,” I muttered. “Dammit.”

I dialed another number. A receptionist asked me how she could direct my call.

“This is Harry Dresden,” I said quietly. “Put me through to Mr. Marcone’s personal line, please.”

20

“I don’t like it,” Molly said, scowling. “You sure you don’t want me to go in there with you? He’s got people.”

“Definitely not,” I said calmly. “I don’t want you showing up on his radar.”

“I’d like to see him try something,” Molly said, clenching one hand into a fist and thumping the
Blue Beetle
’s steering wheel for emphasis. “I’d eat him for breakfast.”

“No, Molly,” I said in a firm tone of voice. “You wouldn’t. Marcone might be vanilla mortal, but he’s dangerous. Most men have limits. He doesn’t. Never forget that.”

“If he’s so dangerous, why are you talking to him?”

“Because he also has rules,” I said. “And besides. I just had to see him here. Keep your eyes open for a third party interfering. I’ll worry about Marcone. Okay?”

“Okay,” Molly said, nodding, her eyes intent. In a spectacular bid for the Do as I Say, Not as I Do Award, she took a long pull from an energy drink in a can the size of a milk carton. “Okay.”

I got out of the
Blue Beetle
and walked into my meeting with Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, the undisputed gang lord of Chicago.

Burger King had just opened its dining area, but it was already half-full. I ignored Marcone upon coming in and got in line. A sausage biscuit and cup of coffee later, I went to the back corner where Marcone sat and his retinue stood.

Hendricks was there, of course, in an extra-large suit and a red-haired buzz cut. Maybe he’d been working out, because he looked like he’d put on a few more pounds. If he got any bigger, he’d need a building permit. Miss Gard stood a little apart from Hendricks, covering the angles the big man couldn’t. She was just as blond and athletic and Amazonian as ever, her suit and tie muting her curves without reducing her appeal.

Marcone sat in the booth as if at a boardroom table. He wore a silk suit probably worth more than my car, and sat with his elbows on the table, his fingertips pressed together into a steeple. He looked like a man in his mature prime, neat and precise from his haircut to his polished leather shoes. He watched me come over to the table and slide my plastic tray into place before me. I dumped four or five packets of sugar into my coffee and stirred it with a little stick. “You’re not eating?”

He looked at his watch, and then at me. He had pale green eyes the color of old bills, but less personal. His stare was unsettling, and he met my eyes without concern. We had already taken the measure of each other’s souls. It was why I knew precisely how dangerous the man sitting across the table from me could be, and why I insisted upon treating him in as cavalier a fashion as possible. One doesn’t show dangerous predators weakness or fear. It makes them hungry.

I savored a bite of the biscuit, which was only a reminder of how good a real homemade biscuit and sausage was, but for the sake of my audience, I made sounds of enjoyment as I chewed and swallowed. “You sure?” I slurped some more coffee. “You’re missing out on ambrosia, here.”

“Dresden,” Marcone said, “this is aggravating. Even for you.”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling, and took another bite of sausage.

Hendricks made a growling sound.

I finished chewing and said, “You sure about that, big guy?”

“Hendricks,” Marcone said.

Hendricks subsided.

I nodded. Then I said, “You have information I want.”

“Undoubtedly,” Marcone said. “What information are you after, and what do you offer for it?”

“I’m not here to trade baseball cards with you, Marcone,” I said.

“And I am not a charity organization, Dresden,” he replied. “I take it this has something to do with your office building exploding.” He shook his head in a gesture of faint regret.

“Right,” I said. “You’re all broken up over the destruction.”

“I didn’t order it. I made no money on it. I failed to profit financially or politically from its destruction. And you survived. It was a complete waste.”

Hendricks made another growling sound that might have been gorilla for a laugh.

“Maybe it’s got something to do with the building. How much do you know about its owners?”

Marcone’s smile was a wintry thing. “That they are a part of the organization whose servitors have been attempting to intrude upon my business.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Someone’s muscling in on your territory?”

“Briefly,” Marcone said, “but incessantly.”

“Then we might have a common problem.”

Marcone looked at me as though I were a rather slow child. “Yes. Hence this meeting.”

I grunted and finished the biscuit. “The Red Court is on the move. Trouble is being stirred up between them and the Council. My interest in the matter is an eight-year-old girl. The Reds took her from her home. I believe that they’re holding her somewhere in Mexico. I need to know where.”

Marcone’s stare went on for several seconds before he said, “Somewhere. In Mexico. That’s as specific as you can be?”

“It’s as much as I know,” I said.

“For what purpose was she brought there?”

“Why does it matter?”

“If she was taken to be used as a sexual object, she would be in a different place than if she was going to be used as slave labor or harvested as an organ donor.”

I clenched my teeth and looked away briefly, treated to a number of delightful images by his words.

Marcone’s eyes narrowed. “Who is she to you, Dresden?”

“My client’s kid,” I said, struggling to keep my voice level and calm. “I think they’re going to use her in some sort of sacrificial ritual.”

“Then that narrows things considerably,” Marcone said. “As I understand the process, rituals such as the one you mention need to happen at a place of power.” He glanced up at Miss Gard, who nodded and immediately left the restaurant, heading for her car. “I suspect I can narrow it down even further for you, Dresden. Let’s talk price.”

“I’m going to use the information to put a major hurting on the people trying to take your territory away from you, Marcone,” I said. “That’s more than payment enough.”

“And if I do not agree?” Marcone asked.

“Then we throw down, right here, and after I toss your attack dogs over the top of the Sears building, I hurt you until you give me the information anyway.”

That cold smile returned. “Is that how you think it would happen?”

I shrugged a shoulder and kept my expression bland. “I think there’s only one way to find out.” I leaned forward a little and pitched my voice in a conspiratorial murmur. “But just between you and me, I don’t think the terrain favors you here.”

He stared across his steepled fingers at me for a time. Then he said, “It certainly doesn’t favor me in the manner I would prefer.” He laid his hands flat on the table and leaned back slightly. “There’s no sense in making a confrontation out of this. And I have never yet regretted it when I allowed you to rid me of an enemy.”

“I didn’t do it as a favor to you.”

He shrugged. “Your motivations are immaterial. The results are what matter.”

“Just remember that you’re on my list, Marcone. Soon as I get done with all the other evils in this town, you won’t be the lesser of them anymore.”

Marcone stared at me with half-lidded eyes and said, “Eek.”

“You think it’s funny?”

“I am not unduly concerned by dead men, Dresden.”

I bristled. “Is that a threat?”

“Hardly. One day, probably soon, you’ll get yourself killed thanks to that set of irrational compulsions you call a conscience, long before my name tops your list. I needn’t lift a finger.” He shrugged. “Giving you information seems an excellent way to accelerate that process. It will also tax the resources of my enemies.” Marcone mused for a moment, and then said, “And . . . I believe I have no objection to contributing against any organization which would victimize children so.”

I glowered at him. Partly because he was probably right, and partly because he’d once again shown the flash of humanity that prevented me from lumping him in with every other evil, hungry, predatory thing lurking in the wild world. For his own reasons, Marcone would go to extreme lengths to help and protect children. In Chicago, any adult was fair game for his businesses. Any child was off-limits. Rumor had it that he had vanished every single one of his employees who had ever crossed that line.

Gard reappeared, frowning, and walked over to our table.

Marcone glanced at her. “Well?”

Gard hesitated and then said, “He won’t speak of it over the line. He says that you have incurred no debt with him for asking the question. He will only speak to Dresden. Personally.”

Marcone lifted his eyebrows. “Interesting.”

“I thought so,” Gard said.

“Ahem,” I said. “Who wants to meet me?”

“My . . . employer,” Gard said. “Donar Vadderung, CEO of Monoc Securities.”

21

Gard and I went to Oslo.

It sounds like it would be a long trip, but it’s a hell of a lot faster when you don’t have to worry about boarding, clearing security, going through customs, or actually moving a linear distance.

Gard opened a Way into the Nevernever down near the zoo, simply cutting at the fabric of reality with a rune-etched dagger. The Way took us on a short hike through a dark wood of dead trees, and ended when we emerged in what she said was Iceland. It sure as hell was cold enough. A second Way took us across the surface of a frozen lake, to stop before the roots of a vast old tree whose trunk could have contained my apartment with room to spare for a garage.

From there, we emerged into what seemed like a cold, damp basement, and I found myself face-to-face with two dozen men wearing body armor and pointing sleek- looking, high-tech assault rifles at the end of my nose.

I did absolutely nothing. Carefully.

One of the men with guns said something, a short phrase in a language I didn’t understand. Gard answered in what I presumed to be the same tongue, and gestured to me.

The leader of the guards eyed us both suspiciously for a moment, then said something quietly and all the rifles stopped pointing at me. Two guards returned to stand on either side of a doorway. Two more took up a station facing Gard and me, evidently cautious about getting more company through the same Way we’d just used. The rest returned to a couple of card tables and a few sleeping cots.

Gard shook her head and muttered, “Einherjar. Give them a little sip of renewed mortality, and four thousand years of discipline go right out the window.”

“I recognize some of these guys,” I said. I nodded toward a trio playing cards. “Those three. They were some of the mercenaries Marcone brought to that party in the Raith Deeps.”

Gard glanced at the three and then rolled her eyes. “Yes. And?”

“And they’re just available for hire?” I asked.

“If you can afford them,” Gard said, smiling so that her teeth showed. “Though be warned that prices may vary. This way, Dresden.”

I followed her out into a hallway and past several rooms filled with enough weaponry to win a minor war in a century of one’s choice. Racks of ash-wood spears stood side by side with old bolt-action Mausers, which stood next to modern assault rifles. Katana-style swords shared a room with flintlocks and Maxim guns. One shelving unit housed an evolutionary progression of grenades, from powder-filled crockery with ignitable fuses to the most modern miniature flash-bang grenades. Judging from the variety of the place’s contents, it was like looking at a museum—but from the quantities present, it could only be an armory.

We got to an elevator whose walls were a simple metal grid, so that we could see out of them as we went up. I stopped counting after seeing seven floors of similarly equipped armories go by.

“Guess your boss believes in being prepared,” I said.

Gard smiled. “It’s one of his things, yes.”

“It’s a little extreme, isn’t it?”

She looked at me with an arched brow. Then she said, “One can have only as much preparation as he has foresight.”

I considered that for a moment, and decided that as cryptic statements went, it was all kinds of bad.

The elevator kept going up and up and up. Brief views of various floors went by. One floor looked like an enormous gym and was filled with sweating men and women working out. Another looked like an expensive legal office. Another was all done in antiseptic white, bathed with just a bit too much light, and smelled of disinfectant. Another was lit by candles and the murmuring of voices chanting. Still another was obviously some kind of enormous chemical laboratory. Still another level was filled with cells whose occupants could not be seen as anything other than shadowy presences. And so on.

I shook my head. “Hell’s bells. It’s like some kind of demented theme park.”

“The difference being that nothing you see here is meant to entertain,” Gard said. “And don’t bother asking questions. I won’t answer them. Ah, we’ve reached the ground floor.”

The elevator continued to rise up through an enormous atrium that housed ten or twelve stories of what looked like high-end corporate offices. Each floor was open to the atrium, and between the plants, decorative trees, the waterfall, and all the windows plus the skylights far above, the entire building looked like a single, massive garden. The sounds of office activity and equipment, birds, and the flowing waterfall all blended together into an active whole that formed a white noise bustling with life, variety, and movement. We soared up through the atrium and our open-sided elevator vanished into a short tunnel.

A moment later, the door opened on a rather novel reception area.

It had all the things such offices always did: a prominent desk, several seats in a waiting area, a coffee machine, and a table laden with magazines. In this office, however, all of those materials were made of stainless steel. So were the floors. So were the walls. As was the ceiling. Even the lamps and the coffeepot were made of stainless steel. The magazines alone stood out as shapeless, soft-looking blobs of garish color.

The logo for Monoc Securities stood out upon one wall, in basrelief, and somehow reminded me more of a crest upon a shield than a corporate marketing symbol: a thick, round circle bisected by a straight vertical line emerging from either side of the circle. It might have been a simplified, abstract representation of an eye being cut from its socket by some kind of blade—I have some of that symbol written in scar tissue on my own face, where a cut had run down from eyebrow to cheekbone but had barely missed my eye. It might have been simple abstract symbology, representing the female and the male with round and straight shapes, suggesting wholeness and balance. Or, heck, it could have been overlaid Greek lettering, omega and iota on top of each other. Omega-iota. The last detail? The final detail? Maybe it meant something more like “every last little thing.”

Or maybe it combined all of those things: the blind eye that sees all.

Yeah. That felt right.

Two women sat behind the big desk at computer monitors consisting of small clouds of very fine mist, wherein were contained all the drifting images and letters of the company cyber-reality, floating like the wispiest of illusions. Sufficiently advanced technology, I suppose.

The women themselves were, apparently, identical twins. Both had raven-dark hair cut in close-fitting caps, and it matched the exact shade of their identical black suits. Both had dark eyes that sparkled with intensity and intelligence. They were both pale and their features were remarkable, if not precisely beautiful. They would stand out in any crowd, and not in an unpleasant way, either—but they would never be mistaken for cover models.

The twins rose as the elevator doors opened, and their eyes looked very intent and very black as they stared at us. I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun before. This was like looking down four of them at once. They stood there, inhumanly motionless. Both wore headsets, but only one of them murmured into hers.

I started to step out of the elevator, but Gard put out a cautionary hand. “Don’t, until you’re approved,” she said. “They’ll kill you. Maybe me, too.”

“Like their receptionists tough in these parts, huh?”

“It would be wiser not to joke,” she said quietly. “They don’t miss anything—and they never forget.”

The receptionist who had spoken into her mike flexed one hand slowly closed and open. Her nails peeled up little silver curls from the stainless-steel desk.

I thought about making a manicure joke . . . and decided not to. Go, go, Gadget wisdom.

“Do you do oranges, too?” asked my mouth, without checking in with the rest of me. “What about sharpening table knives and scissors and lawn tools? My landlady’s lawn mower blade could use a hand job from a girl like y—”

“
Dresden
,” Gard hissed, her eyes both furious and wide with near-panic.

Both of the receptionists were focused on me intently now. The one who had remained silent shifted her weight, as though preparing to take a step.

“Come on, Sigrun,” I said to my companion. “I’m trying to be diplomatic. The wisdom of my ass is well-known. If I didn’t lip off to them, after shooting my mouth off to faerie queens and Vampire Courts—plural,
Courts
—demigods and demon lords, they might get their feelings hurt.”

Gard eyed me for a moment more, before her uncertain blue eyes gained a gleam of devil-may-care defiance. It looked a lot more natural on her than fear. “Perhaps your insults and insolence are not the valued commodities you believe them to be.”

“Heh,” I said. “Good one.”

The chatty twin tilted her head slightly to one side for a moment, then said, “Right away, sir.” She pointed her fingernail at me. “You are to enter the office through the doors behind me.” She aimed her nail at Gard next. “You are to accompany him and make introductions.”

Gard nodded shortly and then tilted her head in a “come along” sort of gesture. We walked out of the elevator and past the twins to the door behind them. They turned their heads as I went by, tracking my every movement. It was downright creepy.

On the other side of the door was a long hallway, also made of stainless steel. There were multiple ports or hatches of some kind in a row along the walls, all closed. They were about the size of dinner plates. I got a feeling that any visitors who tried the hors d’oeuvres served up from those plates would not be asking for the recipe later in the evening.

At the end of the hall was another set of steel doors, which gave way soundlessly before us, revealing another room done all in stainless steel, holding only a massive desk behind which was seated a man.

Donar Vadderung sat with his chin propped on the heel of his hand, squinting at a holographic computer display, and the first thing my instincts did was warn me that he was very, very dangerous.

He wasn’t all that imposing to look at. A man in good shape, maybe in his early fifties. Lean and spare, in the way of long-distance runners, but too heavy in the shoulders and arms for that to be all he did. His hair was long for a man, and just a bit shaggy. It was the color of a furious thundercloud, and his eye was ice blue. A black cloth patch over the other eye combined with a vertical scar similar to my own made me think that I’d been right about the corporate logo. He kept a short, neat beard. He was a striking-looking rogue, particularly with the eye patch, and looked like the sort of person who might have served thirty years of a triple life sentence and managed to talk the parole board into setting him free—probably to their eventual regret.

“Sigrun,” he said, his tone polite.

Gard went down to one knee and bowed her head. There was no hesitation whatsoever to the woman’s movements—the gesture was not simply a technicality she had to observe. She
believed
that Vadderung merited such obeisance.

“My lord,” Gard said. “I’ve brought the wizard, as you commanded.”

“Well done,” the grey-haired man said, and made a gesture to indicate that she should rise. I don’t think she saw it, with her head bowed like that, but she reacted to it anyway, and stood up. Maybe they’d just had a few hundred years to practice.

“My lord. May I present Harry Dresden, wizard and Warden of the White Council of wizards.”

I nodded to Vadderung.

“Wizard, this is Donar Vadderung, CEO of Monoc Secur—”

“I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what he’s in charge of,” I said quietly.

The old man’s mouth turned faintly up at the corners when I spoke. He gestured to a steel chair across the desk from him. “Please. Sit down.”

I pointed at the holographic display. “You sure you want to put that at risk? If I stand too close to it . . .”

Vadderung turned his face up to the ceiling and barked out a laugh of genuine amusement. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Suits me,” I said. I walked over to the desk and sat down in the steel chair across from Vadderung’s. It didn’t have a cushion or anything, but it was surprisingly comfortable nonetheless.

“Coffee?” he asked me. “Something to eat?”

I paused for a breath to think before answering. Duties such as this involved the obligations and responsibilities of guest to host and vice versa. If Vadderung was who I thought he was, he had been known, from time to time, to go forth and test people on how well they upheld that particular tradition—with generous rewards for the faithful, and hideous demises for the miserly, callous, or cruel.

In the supernatural world, such obligations and limits seem to be of vital importance to the overwhelming number of supernatural beings. I’m not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the thresholds of protective energy that form around a home.

“Only if it isn’t too much trouble,” I said.

“And something to eat,” Vadderung told Gard.

She bowed her head and said, “My lord.” Then she padded out.

Though the big man hadn’t stood up, I realized that he
was
big. Damned near a giant, really. Standing, he’d have more than a couple inches on me, and his shoulders made mine look about as wide as the spine of a book. He rested his chin on the heel of his hand again and studied me with his bright blue eye.

“Well,” he said. “I take it you believe you know who I am.”

“I’ve got a few guesses,” I said. “I think they’re good ones. Sigrun was kind of a tip-off. But honestly, that’s got nothing to do with why I’m here today.”

The blue eye wrinkled at the corners. “Doesn’t it?”

I frowned at him and tilted my head. “How so?”

He lifted a hand palm up as he explained. “Someone with enough foresight might, for example, arrange to be in a position to assist a hot-headed young wizard of the White Council one day. Perhaps who I am is directly responsible for why I am here.”

“Yeah. I guess that could be it,” I said. “It’s technically possible that your motives for assisting me are altruistic. On the other hand, it’s also technically possible that you are speaking with a forked tongue, and that all you’re really trying to do is find some way to take advantage of me when I’m under pressure.” I shrugged. “No offense intended, but there’s kind of a shortage of altruism out there.”