Skin Game

Twenty-eight

It had been a good long while since I’d had a freaking lion coming at me, and at the time it had been one of the genuine flesh-and-blood variety, from the zoo. I’d never had something made entirely of metal try to kill me before, unless you counted the instruments of the occasional would-be vehicular homicide that came my way, and never both at the same time-so actually that made this a first.

And that’s important in a job. Fresh challenges. What would I do without them?

Without the Winter mantle on my side, I think Bob might have taken my head off of my shoulders. But instead, I ducked, fast enough and low enough to avoid the enormous paw that flashed toward me in anticipation of the move, and Bob flew over me, crashing into a pair of Binder’s suits with juggernaut enthusiasm. They went flying like ninepins, and the bronze lion whirled toward me, far too fast for something so massive, and crouched to leap at me again.

And one of the lion’s golden orange glowing eyes, the one away from the street, shivered down in the barest little wink imaginable.

Bob got it.

My former lab assistant thundered, “Die, traitor!” and then roared again.

“Watch out, he’s loose!” I screamed to a nearby suit, reeling back toward him and fighting to keep the sudden grin off my face. “He’ll tear us all apart!”

“Rargh!” Bob screamed and came rushing at me again.

I flung myself to one side at the last second, when the suit wouldn’t see Bob coming until it was too late. The bronze lion smashed into the suit, sending it tumbling in a whirl of broken limbs, to smash into the side of the Art Institute. It exploded into gelatinous clear goo, its physical vessel simply too mangled to enable the spirit Binder had summoned to continue animating it, and the lion let out a roar of triumph, and turned toward the next nearest suits.

“I’ll get him!” I shouted. I pointed my staff at Bob and snarled, “Fuego!” A blast of pure fire erupted from the staff, missed the rampaging lion statue by inches, and took a pair of suits full-on, setting them ablaze and causing them to issue weird howls of frustration and rage as it began to consume their physical forms.

Furious, the burning suits flung themselves at Bob, and the hunting-pack mentality of the demons prompted the others to leap at the rampaging statue as well. Bob roared, his eyelights blazing merrily, and started batting them around like Mister playing with multiple catnip lures on a string.

I hopped back from the immediate vicinity of the havoc and looked around wildly for Butters. I checked his last direction but saw nothing-except an empty plastic sports-drink bottle rolling slowly down the sidewalk, pushed by the mild wind coming in from the north, exactly like the kind I used to store a potion in when I made one.

Butters was in the wind. Hell, maybe literally. It had been a long time since I’d brewed that escape potion that had saved me from a toad demon, but if I’d had a twenty, I’d have bet it against a piece of bubble gum that Butters had duplicated my old formula and used it to pull a quick vanishing act in the confusion.

Because confusion there was: The explosions and roaring and noise had done exactly what I had hoped they would, and attracted attention. Though the muffling effect of the weather had dulled the sounds, and though it was well after business hours, that didn’t mean that the area around us was wholly empty of life. Lights had begun to flick on. Faces had begun to appear at windows in nearby buildings.

One of the cardinal points of common sense, in the supernatural world, is that you don’t get yourself involved with mortal authorities. The average individual mortal (or twenty) might not be a match for a real supernatural predator. I’m pretty sure the serious bad guys, like the hulking, hairy one standing in the shadows across the street from the Art Institute, could take on a riot’s worth of mortals without hesitation, and expect victory. But in a city like Chicago, starting a rumble with humanity wouldn’t mean fighting a score of mortals, or a couple of hundred. It would mean thousands, and more important, it would mean tangling with those who had the training and equipment to be a genuine threat.

People had actually begun to appear on the street, from inside the café and a nearby sandwich shop. Cell phones were coming out. And Chicago PD had maybe half a dozen stations within a mile of where I stood.

“What are you waiting for?” I shouted toward the Genoskwa, and pointed at the animated statue. “Lend a hand, big guy!”

The Genoskwa glowered at me for a second, and then at the rampaging Bob. There was a flash of ugly yellow tusks, a glitter of malicious and angry eyes, and then the creature faded from sight, turning as it vanished, and starting up the street in the direction Butters had last been going.

Worse, there was a sound of rushing wind overhead, and something dark and swift passed between me and some of the higher lights in the area, sending a multitude of wavering, flickering shadows across the street. I squinted up into the rain and mist, and saw nothing but a large, winged form, moving fast, in the same direction.

Well, crap.

Nicodemus and Anduriel had taken to the air. I had no doubt that the Genoskwa could track Butters as well as any hound, and that escape potion, if that’s what he’d used, would only transport him a relatively short distance, maybe a couple of blocks. It would be only a matter of time before Nicodemus spotted Butters or the Genoskwa picked up his trail-and he no longer had Bob to propel his skateboard or cover his back.

I ground my teeth, and Bob sent another one of Binder’s suits flying past me. I ducked absently. My instincts told me to get moving again, as quickly as possible. I told them to shut the hell up. I could go sprinting off in some direction, but that was unlikely to result in accomplishing anything. I took a moment to lever the Winter mantle away from my thoughts, and found them clearer. The Winter Knight was not needed here.

I ran down the street to the discarded sports bottle and snagged it. Just as I did, one of those mini-SUVs sliced through the slush in the middle of the avenue, sliding only slightly to one side as it braked, and Karrin stuck her head out the window. “Get in!”

I ran for the vehicle as Karrin stared in fascination at the sight of more than a dozen suits swarming over the lion, struggling to overturn it, and the huge thing twisting and spinning like a dervish trying to keep them off, orange eyelights blazing.

“Huh,” Karrin said. “That’s new.”

I slammed the door shut and said, “It’s Bob. Butters let him off the chain.”

“Is that good?” she asked.

I stuffed my staff mostly into the back and fumbled with the bottle. “It’s exciting, anyway. Butters gave them the slip, but Nicodemus and the Genoskwa are on his trail.”

“Is our cover blown?”

“Not yet,” I said. “We’re still bad guys. At least, enough to satisfy Mab. You know how confusing fights can be.”

“Hah,” Karrin said. “What’s the plan?”

“Find Butters. Get me to somewhere I can step out of the rain and give me a second to get a tracking spell running.”

“No need,” she said and started driving. “I know where he’s going.”

I blinked. “Where?”

“You’re Butters. You know basically everything that’s been going on in Chicago for the past dozen years. You’ve got a bunch of demons and supernatural bad guys including the Knights of the Blackened Denarius after you,” she said. “Where would you go?”

I frowned, thinking. She was right about that. If Butters had been working that closely with Bob, he’d know pretty much anything the skull did, and he’d recognize Deirdre and Nicodemus by name-hell, he must have, which probably explained his mistrust. I’d declined to tell him anything about what I’d gotten Karrin into, and he’d listened in on me spending a day with a bunch of super-criminals and sitting down at a table with Nicodemus Archleone.

And where in this city would be the best place to go if one wanted protection from Fallen angels?

“Hell’s bells,” I breathed. “He’s going to Michael’s.”

“Yeah,” Karrin said, real anger in her voice. “Dammit, he knows better.”

I blinked several times and then felt my jaw drop as a flash of intuition hit me. “The Swords are there, aren’t they? And Butters knows it.”

Her jaw tensed. She eyed me and gave me a single short nod. “I wanted one other person to know, in case something happened to me. My place isn’t secure enough, even with what the Paranetters can do. And I’m sure as hell not going to trust those things to Marcone’s people. Anything bad that tries to get into Michael’s place has got a world of hurt coming down. It was the best I could think of.”

“If they catch Butters before he gets there,” I said, “he’s dead. If you’re wrong about where he’s going, he’s dead.”

“And if we stop for a couple of minutes for you to get your mojo together, we might get there too late to do anything,” she said, and bit her lip. She was coaxing as much speed from the little truck as she could, in this weather, its all-wheel drive churning steadily. “What do you think we should do?”

This was my fault. If I’d brought Butters in, at least far enough to understand what was going on, he wouldn’t have gone poking around himself. But dammit, how could I have done it without. .

Augh.

I hated this cards-close-to-the-chest thing.

I suck at cards. I’m more a Monopoly sort of guy.

“I hadn’t talked to Michael in years,” I said. “The first day I do, I set off a chain of events that has some heavyweight monsterage heading right for his house.”

“Yeah,” Karrin said, “I noticed that.”

“Maybe it isn’t a coincidence,” I said.

She arched one pale brow. “Faith, Harry? You?”

“Oh, blow me,” I said, scowling. “Drive.”

She bared her teeth in a fierce smile and said, “Buckle up.”

I did, as the fine, freezing rain began to turn to heavy sleet.