Skin Game

Twenty-four

I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling of Karrin’s bedroom. It was dark. I was lying down. Light from the hallway came creeping under the bedroom door, and was almost too bright for my eyes.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Butters’s voice was saying. “I don’t know. There’s no AMA-approved baseline for a freaking wizard Knight of Winter. He could be in shock. He could be bleeding from the brain. He could be really, really sleepy. Dammit, Karrin, this is what hospitals and practicing physicians are for!”

I heard Karrin blow out a breath. “Okay,” she said, without any kind of heat. “What can you tell me?”

“His arm’s broken,” Butters said. “From the swelling and bruising, badly. Whatever put that dent in the aluminum brace on it-did he get it taken care of in a tool shop? — rebroke it. I set it again, I think, and wrapped it up in the brace again, but I can’t be sure I did it right without imaging equipment, which would probably explode if he walked into the room with it. If it hasn’t been set right, that arm might be permanently damaged.” He blew out a breath. “The hole in his chest wasn’t traumatic, by his usual standards. It didn’t go through the muscle. But the damned nail was rusty, so I hope he’s had his tetanus shots. I gave the hole another stitch and I washed the blood off the nail.”

“Thank you,” Karrin said.

Butters’s voice was weary. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Sure. Karrin. . can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“This thing he’s got going with Mab,” Butters said. “I know that everyone thinks it’s turned him into some kind of superhero. But I don’t think that’s right.”

“I’ve seen him move,” she said. “I’ve seen how strong he is.”

“So have I,” Butters said. “Look. . the human body is a pretty amazing machine. It really is. It can do really amazing things-much more so than most people think, because it’s also built to protect itself.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Inhibitors,” Butters said. “Every person walking around is about three times stronger than they think they are. I mean, your average housewife is actually about as strong as a fairly serious weight lifter, when it comes to pure mechanics. Adrenaline can amp that even more.”

I could hear the frown in Karrin’s voice. “You’re talking about when mothers lift cars off their kid, that kind of thing.”

“Exactly that kind of thing,” Butters said. “But the body can’t function that way all the time, or it will tear itself apart. That’s what inhibitors are built for-to keep you from injuring yourself.”

“What does that have to do with Dresden?”

“I think that what this Winter Knight gig has done for him is nothing more than switching off those inhibitors,” Butters said. “He hasn’t added all that much muscle mass. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The body is capable of those moments of startling strength, but they’re meant to be something that you pull out of the hat once or twice in a lifetime-and with no inhibitors and no ability to feel pain, Dresden’s running around doing them all the time. And there’s no real way he can know it.”

Karrin was silent for several seconds, digesting that. Then she said, “Bottom line?”

“The more he leans on this ‘gift,’” Butters said, and I could picture him making air quotes, “the more he tears himself to shreds. His body heals remarkably, but he’s still human. He’s got limits, somewhere, and if he keeps this up, he’s going to find them.”

“What do you think will happen?”

Butters made a thoughtful sound. “Think about. . a football player or boxer who has it hard and breaks down in his early thirties, because he’s just taken too damned much punishment. That’s Dresden, if he keeps this up.”

“I’m sure that once we explain that to him, he’ll retire to a job as a librarian,” Karrin said.

Butters snorted. “It’s possible that other things in his system are being affected the same way,” he said. “Testosterone production, for example, any number of other hormones, which might be influencing his perception and judgment. I’m not sure he’s actually got any more real power at all. I think it just feels that way to him.”

“This is fact or theory?”

“An informed theory,” he said. “Bob helped me develop it.”

Son of a bitch. I kept quiet and thought about that one for a minute.

Could that be true? Or at least, more true than it wasn’t?

It would be consistent with the other deal I’d worked out with a faerie-my godmother, Lea, had made a bargain to give me the power to defeat my old mentor, Justin DuMorne. Then she’d tortured me for a while, assuring me that it would give me strength. It did, though mostly, in retrospect, because I had believed it had.

Had I been magic-feathered by a faerie again?

And yet. . at the end of the day, I could lift a freaking car.

Sure you can, Harry. But at what price?

No wonder the Winter Knights stayed in the job until they died. If Butters was right, they would have been plunged into the crippling agony of their battered bodies the moment the mantle was taken from them.

Sort of the same way I had just been rendered into agonized Jell-O when the Genoskwa had shoved a nail into me.

“I worry,” Butters said quietly, “that he’s changing. That he doesn’t know it.”

“Look who’s talking,” Karrin said. “Batman.”

“That was one time,” Butters said.

Karrin didn’t say anything.

“All right.” Butters relented. “A few times. But it wasn’t enough to keep those kids from being carried off.”

“You pulled some of them out, Waldo,” Karrin said. “Believe me, that’s a win. Most of the time, you can’t even do that much. But you’re missing my point.”

“What point?”

“Ever since you’ve had the skull, you’ve been changing, too,” Karrin said. “You work hand in hand with a supernatural being that can scare the crap out of me. You can do things you couldn’t do before. You know things you didn’t know before. Your personality has changed.”

There was a pause. “It has?”

“You’re more serious,” she said. “More. . intense, I suppose.”

“Yeah. Now that I know more about what’s really happening out there. It’s not something influencing me.”

“Unless it is and you just don’t know it,” Karrin said. “I’ve got the same evidence on you that you have on Dresden.”

Butters sighed. “I see what you did there.”

“I don’t think you do,” she said. “It’s. . about choices, Waldo. About faith. You have an array of facts in front of you that can fit any of several truths. You have to choose what you’re going to allow to drive your decisions about how to deal with those facts.”

“What do you mean?”

“You could let fear be what motivates you,” Karrin said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Dresden is being turned into a monster against his knowledge and will. Maybe one day he’ll be something that kills us all. You’re not wrong. That kind of thing can happen. It scares me, too.”

“Then why are you arguing with me?”

Karrin paused for a time before answering. “Because. . fear is a terrible, insidious thing, Waldo. It taints and stains everything it touches. If you let fear start driving some of your decisions, sooner or later, it will drive them all. I decided that I’m not going to be the kind of person who lives her life in fear of her friends’ turning into monsters.”

“What? Just like that?”

“It took me a long, long time to get there,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I would rather have faith in the people I care about than allow my fears to change them-in my own eyes, if nowhere else. I guess maybe you don’t see what’s happening with Harry, here.”

“What?” Butters asked.

“This is what it looks like when someone’s fighting for his soul,” she said. “He needs his friends to believe in him. The fastest way for us to help make him into a monster is to look at him like he is one.”

Butters was quiet for a long time.

“I’m going to say this once, Waldo,” she said. “I want you to listen.”

“Okay.”

“You need to decide which side of the road you’re going to walk on,” she said gently. “Turn aside from your fears-or grab onto them and run with them. But you need to make the call. You keep trying to walk down the middle, you’re going to get yourself torn apart.”

Butters’s voice turned bitter. “Them or us, choose a side?”

“It’s not about taking sides,” Karrin said. “It’s about knowing yourself. About understanding why you make the choices you do. Once you know that, you know where to walk, too.”

The floorboards creaked. Maybe she’d stepped closer to him. I could picture her, putting her hand on his arm.

“You’re a good man, Waldo. I like you. I respect you. I think you’ll figure it out.”

A long silence followed.

“Andi’s waiting on me to eat,” he said. “I’d better get going.”

“Okay,” Karrin said. “Thank you again.”

“I. . Yeah, sure.”

Footsteps. The front door opened and closed. A car started up and then drove away.

I sat up in bed, and fumbled until I found Karrin’s bedside lamp with my right hand. The light hurt my eyes. My head felt funny-probably the result of being bounced off of walls. I’d lost my shirt, again. Butters had added some more bandages and the sharp scent of more antibiotics to my collection of medical trophies. My arm had been bandaged again, inside its aluminum brace, and the brace was held in a sling tied around my neck.

I got out of bed and wobbled for a minute and then shambled across the floor to the bedroom door. Karrin opened it just as I got there, and stood looking up at me, her expression worried.

“God, you are turning into a monster,” she said. “A mummy. One bit at a time.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Ish.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Everything after his usual ‘I’m not really a physician’ disclaimer.”

Her mouth twitched. “He’s just. . He’s worried, that’s all.”

“I get it,” I said. “I think you handled it right.”

That drew a sparkle from her eyes. “I know I did.”

“Batman?” I asked.

“He’s been. .” She folded her arms. “You-ing, I suppose. With you gone from the city and Molly gone, the streets haven’t been getting any safer. Marcone’s crowd have taken up the fight against the Fomor, whenever their territory is threatened, but their protection costs. Not everyone can afford it.”

I grimaced. “Dammit,” I muttered. “Damn Mab. I could have been back here months and months ago.”

“Waldo does what he can. And because he has the skull, that’s more than most.”

“Bob was never meant to be used in the field,” I said. “He’s a valuable resource-until he attracts attention to himself. Once he’s been identified, he can be countered or stolen, and then the bad guys get that much stronger. It’s why I tried not to take him out of the lab.”

“The Fomor started taking children last Halloween,” Karrin said simply. “Six-year-olds. Right off the streets.”

I grimaced and looked down from her steady gaze.

“We’ll sort something out,” Karrin said. “You hungry?”

“Starving,” I said.

“Come on.”

I followed her to the kitchen. She took a pair of Pizza ’Spress pizzas from the oven, where she’d had them staying warm. They had almost settled onto the table before I started eating, ravenous. The pizza was my favorite. Not good, but my favorite, because it had been the only pizza I could afford for a long, long time, and I was used to it. Heavy on the sauce, light on the cheese, and the meat was just hinted at, but the crust was thick and hot and flaky and filled with delicious things that murdered you slowly.

“Present for you,” Karrin said.

“Mmmmnghf?” I asked.

She plopped a file folder down on the table beside me and said, “From Paranoid Gary the Paranetizen.”

I swallowed a mouthful and delayed getting another long enough to ask, “The one who found the deal with the boats last year? Crazy-but-not-wrong guy?”

“That’s him,” she said.

“Huh,” I said, chewing. I opened the folder and started flipping through printed pages of fuzzy images.

“Those are from Iran,” Karrin said. “Gary says that they show a functioning nuclear power plant.”

The images were obviously of some sort of installation, but I couldn’t tell anything beyond that. “Thought they had big old towers.”

“He says they’re buried in that hill behind the building,” Karrin said. “Check out the last few images.”

On the last pages of the folder, things in the installation had changed. Columns of black, greasy smoke rolled out from multiple buildings. In another image, the bodies of soldiers lay on the ground. And in the last image, up on the hillside, which was wreathed in white mist, or maybe steam. .

Three figures faced one another. One was a large man dressed in a long overcoat and wielding a slightly curved sword in one hand, an old cavalry saber. He carried what might have been a sawed-off shotgun in the other. His skin was dark, and though his head hadn’t been shaved like that the last time I’d seen him, it could really have been only one person.

“Sanya,” I said.

The world’s only Knight of the Cross was standing across from two blurry figures. Both were in motion, as if charging toward him. One was approximately the same size and shape as a large gorilla. The other was covered in a thick layer of feathers that gave an otherwise humanoid shape an odd, shaggy appearance.

“Magog and Shaggy Feathers,” I muttered. “Hell’s bells, those Coins are slippery. When were these taken?”

“Less than six hours ago,” Karrin said, “according to Paranoid Gary. The Denarians are up to something.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Deirdre said that Tessa was supposed to be in Iran. That makes sense.”

“In what way does that make sense?”

“Nicodemus wants to pull a job over here,” I said. “He knows there’s only one Knight running around. So he sends Tessa and her crew to the other side of the world to stir up major-league trouble. Let’s say Gary’s right, and Iran has a nuclear reactor running. And something goes horribly wrong with it. You’ve got an instant regional and international crisis. Of course a Knight gets sent to deal with it-where he can’t get to Chicago, or at least not in time to do any good.”

Karrin took that in silently, and I went back to eating. “So you’re saying, we’re on our own.”

“And the bad guys keep stacking up higher and higher,” I said.

“The Genoskwa, you mean,” Karrin said.

“Yeah.”

She shuddered. “That thing. . seriously, a Bigfoot?”

“Some kind of mutant serial killer Bigfoot, maybe,” I said. “Not like one of the regular Forest People at all.”

“I can’t believe it,” Karrin said.

“It’s no weirder than any number of-”

“Not that,” she said. “I can’t believe you met a Bigfoot and you never told me about it. I mean, they’re famous.”

“They’re kind of a private bunch,” I said. “Did a few jobs for one, a few years back, named River Shoulders. Liked him. Kept my mouth shut.”

She nodded understanding. Then she got up and left the kitchen, and came back a moment later with her rocket launcher and an oversized pistol case. She set the rocket launcher down and said, “This will take out something Bigfoot-sized, no problem.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. “Yeah,” I admitted. “Okay.”

She gave me a nod that did not, quite, include the phrase “I told you so.” “I like to be sure I’ve got enough firepower to cover any given situation.” She put the case on the table and slid it over to me. “And this is for you.”

I took the case and opened it a little awkwardly, using mostly one hand. In it was a stubby-looking pistol that had been built with a whole hell of a lot of metal, to the point where it somehow reminded me of a steroid-using weight lifter’s gargoylish build. The damned thing could have been mounted on a small armored vehicle turret. There were a number of rounds stored with it, each the size of my thumb.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, beaming.

“Smith and Wesson five hundred,” she said. “Short barrel, but that round is made for taking on big game. Big, Grey, and Ugly comes at you to make another friendly point, I want you to give him a four-hundred-grain bullet-point reply.”

I whistled, hefting the gun and admiring the sheer mass of it. “I’ve got one broken wrist already, and you give me this?”

“Ride the recoil, Nancy,” she said. “You can handle it.” She reached out and put her hand on the fingers of my left hand, protruding from the sling. “We’ll handle it. We’ll get this thing with Nicodemus done, and get that parasite out of your head. You’ll see.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got a problem there.”

“What’s that?”

“We can’t kill the parasite,” I said. “We have to save it.”

Karrin gave me a flat look and, after a brief pause, said, “What?”

“We, uh. . Look, it’s not what I thought it was. My condition isn’t what we thought it was, either.”

She eyed me carefully. “No? Then what is your condition, exactly?”

I told her.

* * *

“Come on,” I said. “Get up.”

She sat on the floor, rocking back and forth helplessly with laughter. Her plate with its slice of pizza had landed beside her when she’d fallen out of her chair a few minutes before, and hadn’t moved.

“Stop it,” she gasped. “Stop making me laugh.”

I was getting a little annoyed now, as well as embarrassed. My face felt as though it had a mild sunburn. “Dammit, Karrin, we’re supposed to be back at the slaughterhouse in twenty minutes. Come on, it’s just not that funny.”

“The look”-she panted, giggling helplessly-“on your. . face. .”

I sighed and muttered under my breath and waited for her to recover.

It took her only a couple more minutes, though she drifted back into titters several times before she finally picked herself up off the floor.

“Are you quite finished?” I asked her, trying for a little dignity.

She dissolved into hiccoughing giggles again instantly.

It was highly unprofessional.