Skin Game (37 page)

Lasciel laughed, musically, the sound of it pure pleasure on the ears. “Oh, Harry,” she said. “Did you really think that it’s possible to pick up corruption in a nice clean handkerchief and lock it away in a box? No, of
course not. Forces such as we cannot be contained by mortals, my lover. We are a part of you all.”

Michael leaned his head back a little toward me and asked, “Lover?”

I twitched one shoulder in answer and said, “It’s complicated.”

“Oh dear.”

I turned to Lasciel and said, “Hey, Hannah. Take it from someone who knows. You really don’t want to be doing what you’re doing.”

Ascher’s human eyes narrowed. “Oh, sure,” she said, in her own voice. “Because the high road is just so awesome. Wardens of the White Council have been trying to kill me for most of my adult life because when I was seventeen years old I defended myself against three men who tried to rape me.”

“I’m not defending them,” I said. “But you killed people with magic, Hannah. You broke the First Law.”

“Like you haven’t,” she snarled. “You hypocrite.”

“Hey, whoa,” I said. “Hold on there. Me and Lasciel have some history, but even if we’ve been on different sides of the law, you and I don’t have a personal quarrel.”

“The hell we don’t,” she said. “After a few years on the run, I got in with the Fellowship of St. Giles. You remember them, right? Bunch of folks who fought the Red Court? They gave me training, safe places to live. Hell, I lived on the
beach
in Belize for six years. I had a life. Friends. I even fought the good fight.”

“Yay?” I said, trying not to sound as baffled as I felt. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“Everything!” she screamed, and the purple mist around her was suddenly suffused with sullen, glowing flame.

I swallowed, despite myself.

“When you destroyed the Red Court, you killed most of the Fellowship with it. All the half vampires more than a few decades old just
withered
away in front of our eyes. People who had given me trust. Respect. My
friends
.” She shook her head. “And, you arrogant son of a bitch, I’ll bet you never gave them a thought before you did it, did you?”

“If I’d known it was going to happen,” I said, “I’d have done it anyway.” Because if I hadn’t, Maggie wouldn’t have survived the night.

“The world fell apart after that,” Ascher spat. “The finances, the coordination, the communication. I was on the street. If Binder hadn’t found me . . .” She shook her head.

“Yeah, Binder and his Rule Number One,” I said. “He doesn’t know about what you’ve done, does he?”

She narrowed her eyes and her voice became a degree hotter. “Nicodemus and Lasciel and the other Denarians have treated me with
respect
,” she said. “They’ve talked to me. Trusted me. Worked with me. Made me
rich
. When one side treats you like a sad freak and a hunted animal and the other treats you like an equal, it gets really easy to decide where you stand.”

Hard to argue with that. But I tried. “Doesn’t mean you have to run everything exactly the way he wants you to do it,” I said.

She let out a harsh laugh. “But I
do
want to do it,” she said. “I’ve been looking
forward
to it. Every time you looked at me, flirted with me, spoke with me.”

“As have I,” said Lasciel’s voice, from the same mouth. “No one’s ever turned me down before, Harry. Not once. And to think that I
liked
you.”

“We wouldn’t have worked out, babe,” I said.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not. In any case, be assured that I may have one of the few accurate perspectives in the universe when I say that ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.’”

Ah. So that’s what my subconscious had been trying to warn me about. That Lasciel was right there in front of me, and itching for payback.

“Meaning what?” I asked her.

“Meaning that since a whisper in your ear that should have killed you seems to have failed, I intend to skip the subtlety, rip your head apart, and collect our child. She’s far too valuable a resource to be allowed to die with you.”

My eyes widened. “You, uh, you know about that.”

“Child?” Michael said, baffled.

“Complicated,”
I said through clenched teeth.

Well. At least now I knew which side Ascher was taking.

“I’d tell you to give me the knife, Dresden,” Nicodemus said, still
smiling. “But unlike your friend, I don’t do second chances. And you won’t have any need for it in a moment.”

Ursiel made a sound that I normally only associate with tractor-trailer rigs, and which might have been a hungry growl. Then he stepped over the four-foot block with no particular difficulty and padded in near silence to my left. Lasciel took up station a bit to my right, with Nicodemus making the third point of a lopsided triangle surrounding us.

This day was going bad a little more rapidly than I had anticipated. It had, in fact, sprayed gravel on the windshield of my worst-case scenario as it went rocketing past.

And then footsteps sounded, and Grey sauntered into the amphitheater, casually carrying Anna Valmont’s pack over one shoulder.

There was blood on it, and on Grey’s fingers.

“Ah, Grey,” Nicodemus said. He was enjoying getting a little of his own back after the theater I’d thrown into his face. “And?”

“Valmont’s dead, as ordered,” Grey said calmly. He surveyed the scene on the stage as he approached, his eyes lingering on Lasciel appreciatively. “We about done here?”

“A few final details to tie up,” Nicodemus said. “Have you considered my offer?”

“The Coin thing?” Grey asked. He shrugged and glanced at Lasciel again. “It’s got possibilities. I’ve got questions. Let’s finish the job and talk about them over dinner.”

“Excellent,” Nicodemus said. “Would you mind?”

I tracked Grey, staring hard at him as he took up position at the fourth corner of the square centered on me and Michael, watching him as he set the pack of diamonds and artifacts to one side and cracked his knuckles, smiling.

“I never pretended to be anything but a villain,” he said to me, as if baffled by my glare. “Should have seen this one coming, wizard.”

“You really killed her?” I asked.

“No particular reason not to. It was quick.”

“You are a treacherous son of a bitch,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Maybe you should have been the one to hire me, then.”

His response made me grind my teeth.

There weren’t going to be any temptations offered this time, no bargains to think twice about, and no cavalry was about to ride over the horizon. Nicodemus meant to kill us.

Michael and I could not win this fight.

I heard him take a deep breath and murmur a low, steady prayer. He set his feet and raised his sword to the high guard.

I gripped my staff mostly in my right hand, holding it across my body with a few fingers of my damaged left arm, and called forth my will and Winter, readying for a hopeless battle.

Lasciel turned her hands palms up, and searing points of violet light appeared in them. Waves of heat shimmered around Hannah Ascher’s body.

Anduriel seethed up around Nicodemus like a dark cloak made from a breaking wave, foaming around the slender man as he raised his sword and started forward.

Ursiel let out a subsonic rumble that shook my chest, and the Genoskwa’s beady eyes stared hate from the face of the prehistoric demon-bear.

Grey tensed and crouched slightly, his bland features relaxed and amused.

And I stopped being able to fight back the maniac’s grin that had been struggling to get loose as I played my hole card and said, “Game over, man. Game over.”

A
good con doesn’t just happen.

It’s all about the setup.

Let’s rewind.

Set the Wayback Machine for three mornings ago, just after walking out of that first meeting with Nicodemus and Deirdre at the Hard Rock, while riding away in the limo with Mab.

I told her who I wanted to see.

For a moment, she didn’t react. Her eyes were locked somewhere beyond the roof of the limo, her head tracking slowly, as if she could still see Nicodemus and Deirdre in their suite. There was no expression on her face, absolutely none—but the interior of the car had dropped several degrees in temperature, purely from the intensity of whatever she wasn’t showing.

“You grow in wisdom, my Knight,” she said a moment later, turning her head back to face the front. “Slowly, perhaps, but you grow. He is the logical person to consult in this matter. I have already arranged a meeting.”

“Oh,” I said, and idly fingered the earring, unused to the sensation of something metallic there. “Good.”

“Stop playing with that,” Mab said. “The less attention you draw to it, the better.”

I scowled and futzed with it a little more, just to show her that I could, but she was right. As things stood, it might be seen as a simple fashion
statement. If Nicodemus realized that by taking the earring away, he could all but incapacitate me, things could go downhill rapidly once we finally came to grips.

So I dropped my hands and schooled myself mentally the rest of the way to the meeting, focusing on accepting the new sensation and dismissing it from my thoughts entirely.

I started playing with it again as the limo stopped, and Mab sighed.

McAnally’s pub is the best of the watering holes in Chicago that serve the supernatural community. It’s a basement bar, like Cheers, but there the resemblance ends. It’s all decorated in stained and polished wood, with clunky electric ceiling fans from the thirties whirling lazily overhead. The ceiling isn’t very high, so they whirl away just a few inches over my head, and I remind myself not to do the bunny hop every time I come through the door.

Normally, Mac’s does a brisk trade, but today there was a sign on the door that read:
CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY
. A second sign hung inside the door, a wooden one, into which the words
AC
CORDED NEUTRAL TERRI
TORY
had been neatly burned. It meant that the establishment was officially neutral ground under the guidelines of the Unseelie Accords, what amounted to the Geneva Convention of the supernatural world. Mab had written the Accords, and their signatories defied them at peril of the antipathy of the supernatural establishment and, worse, her personal displeasure.

One corner of the sign was scorched and cracked, which had happened in a battle with Outsiders, who weren’t very civic-minded.

Mac, bald, lean, and silent, stood behind the bar in his usual crisp white shirt and spotless apron. When Mab entered, he put down the rag he was using to polish the wooden bar, and bowed at the waist, somehow giving the gesture an accent of courtesy rather than obeisance.

“Barkeep,” Mab replied, and inclined her head considerably more deeply than she had to Nicodemus a few minutes before. “May your patrons be prosperous and honest.”

Mac, as a rule, rarely uttered multi-syllables. Today, he said, “May your scales always return to balance.”

Her mouth quirked at the corner and she said, “Flatterer.”

He smiled and nodded to me. “Harry.”

“Mac. I haven’t had good food in months. Though, uh, I’m a little short on funds. I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a sandwich and a beer today.”

He nodded.

“Thanks.”

Mab turned to the table nearest the door and gave me a look. It took me a beat to realize what she wanted, and to pull out a chair for her. She sniffed and sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and stared at nothing in particular, dismissing the rest of us from her world as thoroughly as if she had entered a locked room.

My contact was waiting for me at a table in the back corner, and I walked over to join him. He was a big man by every definition of the word, tall and strong and solid, with a barrel for a chest and a smaller keg of a belly to go with it. His hair and beard were white and silver, though the rosy smoothness of his cheeks belied any indication of old age, and his eyes were blue and bright. He wore a chain-mail shirt and hunting leathers, and a long, hooded red coat trimmed in white fur hung from the back of the chair beside him. A simple, worn-looking broadsword hung at his side, and a large, lumpy leather sack sat on the floor beside him, as natural there as a mail carrier with his bag.

“Sir Knight,” he said.

“You’re here as Kringle, seriously?” I asked him.

Kringle winked at me. “The Winter Knight called for me in his official capacity as an agent of the Winter Court. Mab has the right to summon Kringle. If she’d called for Vadderung, I’d have told her to get in line.”

Donar Vadderung was the name of the CEO of Monoc Securities, a corporate security interest that provided information and highly skilled specialists to those with a great deal of money. Vadderung had access to more information than anyone I knew, except maybe the Senior Council of the White Council of Wizardry—only he was a hell of a lot smarter about using it. He was also, I was reasonably certain,
Odin
. The Odin. Or
if he wasn’t, he could do an awfully good impersonation. Oh, and also, he was Santa Claus.

Vadderung is a complicated guy.

“But you and Kringle are the same person,” I said.

“Legally speaking, Kringle and Vadderung are two entirely different people who simply happen to reside in the same body,” he replied.

“That’s just a fiction,” I said, “a little game of protocol.”

“Little games of protocol are how one shows respect, especially to those with whom one does not get along famously well. It can be tedious, but generally is less trouble than a duel would be.”

Mac set a couple of his homebrewed beers down on the bar. I rounded them up and returned to the table, putting both bottles out in the middle. Kringle chose one, nodded to the chair across from him, and I sat.

“To start with, I’m going to assume you know everything I do,” I said.

His eyes wrinkled at the corners as he took a drink. “That seems wise.”

I nodded and sipped my own. Wow. Mac’s beer is an excellent argument that there is a God, and that furthermore, He wants us to be happy. I savored it for a couple of seconds and then wrenched my mind back to business. “I want to float some thoughts at you and see if you think they’re sound.”

“By all means.”

“First,” I said, “Nicodemus is after something powerful. I don’t know what it is, but I do know that if I can get him to
tell
us what he’s after, it’s going to be a lie. He’d never let anyone know his true goal if he could help it.”

“I concur,” Kringle said.

I nodded. “He’ll assemble a crew. Some of them will be his people, and some of them will be outside specialists, but I’m pretty sure at least one of them is going to be a plant—they’ll look all independent but they’ll have one of those Coins on them and one of the Fallen whispering in their ears.”

“I would consider that a high probability,” Kringle said.

“Third,” I said, “he’s going to betray me at some point along the line.
He’s proactive, and obsessed with control, so he’ll be the one who wants to stick the knife in first. He knows the limits Mab has placed on me, so he’ll want to do it after I’ve gotten him to wherever he wants to go, but before we finish the job, to guarantee him the first blow.”

“Also sound reasoning,” Kringle said.

“Dammit,” I said. “I had hoped I was wrong about something. If I’m to follow Mab’s rules, my options are limited.”

Kringle’s eyes went to the slender figure at the table by the door. “May I offer you a word of advice, based purely upon my knowledge of the Queen’s nature?”

“Sure.”

“Mab moves in mysterious ways,” he said, looking back at me with a grin. “Nasty, unexpected, devious, patient, and mysterious ways. I don’t think she’d throw away a piece as valuable as you on a lost cause. Look for an opening, a weakness. It will be there.”

“Have you seen this guy in action?” I asked. “Nicodemus Archleone is . . . He’s better than me. Smart, dangerous, ruthless, and experienced. All by himself, he’d be bad enough. I’ve never even seen him go to his bench. All the other Denarians whip out their Fallen buddies left and right, but Nicodemus, as far as I can tell, mostly uses his to chauffeur him around. I’ve got no idea what Anduriel can do, because Nick has never had to fall back on him.”

“Perhaps that’s because Nicodemus understands just as well as you do where true power comes from,” Kringle said.

I arched an eyebrow at that. “Knowledge,” I said. I thought about it, putting pieces together. “Wait. You’re telling me that he doesn’t use Anduriel in fights because Anduriel isn’t a fighter.”

“Any of the Fallen are absolutely deadly in battle,” Kringle said severely, “even hampered as they are. But the Master of Shadows doesn’t prefer to operate that way, no.”

Nicodemus’s control over the gang of superpowered lunatics was starting to make more sense now. “Master of Shadows. That’s an old, old phrase for a spy master.”

“Exactly,” Kringle said. “Nicodemus knows very nearly as much as I
do. Anduriel has the potential to hear anything uttered within reach of any living being’s shadow, and sometimes to look out from it and see.”

My eyes widened and I looked down at my own shadow on the table.

“No,” Kringle said. “That’s why Mab remains here, to secure this conversation against Anduriel. But you must exercise extreme discretion for the duration of this scenario. There are places Anduriel cannot reach—your friend Carpenter’s home, for example, or your island, now that you have awakened it. And the Fallen must know to pay attention to a given shadow, or else it’s all just a haze of background noise—but you can safely assume that Anduriel will be listening very carefully to your shadow during this entire operation. Anything you say, Nicodemus will know. Even writing something down could be compromised.”

“Hell’s bells,” I said. If that was the case, communicating with my friends would just get them set up for a trap. Man, no wonder Nicodemus was always a few steps ahead of everyone else. “I’m . . . going to have to play the cards really damned close to my chest, then.”

“If I were you, I’d hold them about three inches behind my sternum, just to be sure,” Kringle said.

I swigged beer and drummed my fingers on the table. “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Good to know. But it’s not enough. I need another advantage.”

“I never find having too many advantages any particular burden.”

“What would be perfect is a plant of my own,” I said. “Someone Nicodemus doesn’t see coming. But to work that angle, I’d have to know who he was getting together, someone he already planned to have in place.”

Kringle took on the air of a professor prompting a stumbling protégé. “How could you work with this theoretical person, without the ability to speak with him, to coordinate your efforts?”

“Hide it in plain sight,” I said, “disguised as something else. Code.”

“Interesting. Go on.”

“Uh . . . ,” I said. “He’d be taking his cues from me, so mostly he’d be the one asking me questions. Tell him to refer to me as ‘wizard’ just before he asks a question relating to the situation at hand. The first word of my response would be the answer. Then we could make the actual conversation sound like something else entirely. We play along until it’s
time for me to make my move. Then I use the phrase ‘game over’ and we hit them.”

Kringle took a pull of his beer. “Not bad. Not perfect, but then, it never is.” He set his bottle aside and reached down into the sack by his foot. He rummaged for a moment and then produced a large envelope, which he offered to me.

I regarded it carefully. Gifts have an awful lot of baggage attached to them among the Fae, and both Kringle and I were members of the Winter Court. “I didn’t get you anything,” I said.

He waved his other hand negligently. “Consider it a belated holiday gift, free of obligation. That island is a tough delivery.”

“Prove it,” I said. “Say ‘ho, ho, ho.’”

“Ho, ho, ho,” he replied genially.

I grinned and took the envelope. I opened it and found a photo and a brief description inside.

“Who is this?”

“A covert operative, a mercenary,” Kringle replied. “One of the best.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Because he’s covert?”

I bobbed my head a bit in admission of the point. “Why am I looking at his picture?”

“There are four operatives who could play one role Nicodemus needs filled in this venture,” he said. “Two of them are currently under contract elsewhere, and the third is presently detained. That leaves Nicodemus only one option, and I know he won’t exercise it until the last possible moment—and he’s not far away.”

“You think if I get to him first, I can hire him?”

“If I make the introduction and we establish your communication protocol under Mab’s aegis? Yes.”

“But if he’s a mercenary, he can by definition be bought. What’s to stop Nicodemus from outbidding me?”

Kringle sat back in his seat at that, considering the question. Then he said, “If you buy this man, he stays bought. It’s who he is.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You’re asking me to trust a stranger’s professional integrity?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Kringle said. “I’m asking you to trust mine.”

I exhaled, slowly. I took a long pull of beer.

“Well, hell,” I said. “What’s the world coming to if you can’t trust Santa Claus?” I leaned forward, peering at the printed summary and said, “So let’s meet with Goodman Grey.”