Skin Game

Thirty-four

The inside of the van was crowded, with twenty of Binder’s goons crammed in with the four of us, and a couple of squires driving.

“All right, Dresden,” Grey said. “Let’s have your wrists.”

“What?” I said. “Oh, right. The manacles.”

“What is he talking about?” Michael asked.

“Thorn manacles,” I said. “They inhibit magical ability. They should greatly reduce the odds that I’ll blow out any of the building’s security systems by walking past-and we need them to stay up and functioning until we get all the doors open.”

“His wrist is broken,” Michael said to Grey. “Will they fit on his ankles?”

Grey held up a set of manacles on a heavy steel chain. They looked just like the ones I’d seen before, only they had the heavy gleam of steel to them, instead of that weird silvery metal the Sidhe used. The inner surfaces of the cuffs were lined with small, sharp thorns of steel. They would bite into the flesh when they were locked on-and with that steel breaking my skin, the Winter mantle would go to pieces.

That wasn’t going to feel good.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said, eyeing them. “If either of the cuffs is on, I can’t use the magic. Just have them both on one wrist and wrap the chain around to keep it out of my way. Gimme.”

“Sure you don’t want me to do it?” Grey asked.

“Nah, I dislike you enough already. I’ll put them on.” I took the manacles from Grey and gave Michael a look to let him know that I wanted him to pay attention. He frowned and did.

I elbowed myself enough room to wrap the chain around my wrist. Then I closed my eyes for a moment and took slow, deep breaths, concentrating. Blocking out pain was a lesson I’d learned a long time ago, and I could do it pretty well if I had time to prepare for it. Mostly, the bad guys aren’t that courteous before they start hurting me, but fortunately this time the bad guy was me, and I was willing to cut myself a break. It took me a couple of minutes to erect the mental barriers, and then I opened my eyes, pulled up the sleeve of my duster, and fastened both manacles onto my right wrist, locking them on with their key.

Steel bit into my skin with a hundred tiny teeth, and the Winter mantle vanished. As suddenly as light comes on when you flip the switch, my body started reporting injuries.

My arm was pretty horrid, but my back had apparently turned into a single large contusion when the Genoskwa slammed me into that parked car. My calf burned steadily where I’d been shot. My feet were killing me, too, which-what the hell? Had I gotten a pair of shoes the wrong size or something? I was aching in the knees, and somehow I’d collected a cut on my tongue and on one of my gums-I hadn’t really noticed them before, though I sure as hell felt them now.

And my head. . oh, my aching head. Mab’s little silver earring was as cold as an ice cream truck in Antarctica, but with its numbing influence reduced by the steel, my head felt like it was going to crack open and spill out streams of molten lead.

I realigned my mental shields for a moment, once I knew exactly what I was supposed to be blocking out, and then straightened up slowly.

“Harry,” Michael said. “You just went pale.”

“Hurts,” I said shortly. “I’ll be fine.” I put the key to the manacles in my pocket, then picked up my oversized duffel bag and started rooting around in it. I’d tied a leather thong onto my wizard’s staff, and now wore it over one shoulder like a rifle. “Grey, I’m going to be making all kinds of light and noise once we’re inside. If you feel like doing something about the guards, try to make it nonfatal.”

“Or what?” Grey asked.

“The manacles come off and I get upset with you,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll just let them shoot you,” he said.

I gave him a pleasant smile. “If you do, who is going to open your Way to the vault, eh? Took me years of formal instruction to learn enough to make that happen. I guarantee you that Ascher can’t pull that one off.” I squinted at Grey. “Ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why take money for something like this?” I asked. “Someone with your talents can get it any way he wants.”

Grey shrugged. “No mystery. Everyone’s got to pay the Rent,” he said, and something in his voice put a capital letter on the last word.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“I know,” Grey replied placidly. “Not my problem.”

“If you don’t mind, gentlemen,” Valmont said, speaking for the first time since we got in the van. “You may think your bits of the job are simple, but mine is the next best thing to impossible. I would appreciate some quiet, please.”

I eyed Valmont, grunted, and fell silent, working to rearrange the contents of my duffel to my satisfaction.

It didn’t take us long to get where we were going. The van came to a stop, and a moment later Jordan rolled up its rear door.

The Capristi Building is one of the last skyscrapers to be had on the north end of the city of Chicago proper, right across the street from Lincoln Park. It’s made of white concrete and glass, a mediocre bit of soulless modern architecture that’s all monotonous squares and right angles stretching up and up into the still-sleeting skies.

Between the weather and the time, the streets were almost completely empty and still-which actually bothered me a little bit. That stillness would have made our vans pretty obvious to anyone who saw them moving. I stepped out of the van, slipped on the ice, and would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed onto the truck. Right. No Winter mantle to help with the ice.

By now, there was half an inch of transparent ice lying over every surface in sight. Power lines were bowed down with the weight of it. In the park behind me, the trees were bent almost double, and here and there, branches had cracked and fallen beneath its weight. The streets had been a mess, and only careful driving and the weight of the heavily loaded vans had kept them from slithering all over the place.

A sign on the first floor of the Capristi Building read: VERITY TRUST BANK OF CHICAGO. Which was a fine name for a mob bank. The first floor was the bank’s lobby, with the secure floors being on the levels below. At least half the outside of the building was glass, and I could see a security guard inside staring at the vans.

“Michael,” I said, striding toward the guard, drawing my gear out of my duffel and preparing it. “Doors.”

Michael stepped in front of me and said, as if reminding himself, “The building belongs to a criminal overlord and functions to assist him in his evil enterprise.” Then he drew Amoracchius, made two sweeping slashes, and the glass fell entirely out of the door immediately in front of me.

I deployed the material I’d picked up the day before: specifically, a self-lighting butane torch and a bundle of two dozen large roman candles I had duct-taped together. I held the roundish bundle of fireworks under my left arm and was already lighting their fuses en masse with the butane torch as Michael leapt aside. By the time the guard had begun to rise from his chair, twenty-four twenty-shot roman candles were sending out screaming projectiles that detonated with deafening cracks of thunder.

It was a constant stream of fire and sound and light and smoke, and the poor guard had no idea how to react. He’d been fumbling for his gun when the first projectile went off not a foot from his nose, and before he could recover from that, two dozen more were going off all around him.

I hated to admit it, but. . it was pretty gratifying. I mean, it was like holding my own personal pyrotechnic minigun, so many rounds were spewing out of the various roman candles. They filled the air with the scorched scent of sulfur and thick smoke that I hoped would confuse the surveillance cameras.

The guard was hit by twenty or thirty of the sizzling munitions in a couple of seconds, and flung himself down behind his desk, while I peppered the wall behind him with more of the raucous projectiles. While I did that, Grey bounded into the place, danced between the last few rounds from my bundle, and slugged the guard across the jaw with bone-cracking force.

The guard went down in a moaning heap.

Grey looked at something behind the desk and said, “He got to the silent alarm.”

“Right,” I said. I dropped the first bundle of roman candles and pulled the second one out of the duffel bag. I started walking toward the stairs down to the vault below as I lit the second bundle, and began hosing down the top of the stairway with more fireworks just as two more men in the same uniform came pelting up the stairs.

These two weren’t as slow as the first one-and they had shotguns. That said, there’s a really limited amount of damage you can do when you can’t see or hear and loud things are going bang half an inch from your face, or giving you first-degree burns as they sizzle into your arm. They got a few aimless rounds off before Deirdre, in her demonform, swarmed past them, walking on her ribbons of hair as if they were the manifold legs of some kind of sea crustacean. A couple of them lashed out, slashing the shotguns in half, and the guards began to beat a hasty retreat back down the stairs.

Grey flung himself down the stairwell after them, not touching the stairs with his feet on the way, and there came the sounds of efficient and brutal violence from below, beneath the howling and banging of the fireworks.

“Clear!” Grey shouted.

I went to the top of the stairs and looked down. Grey had both guards lying back to back at the bottom of the stairs, in front of the first security door. He was busy using their handcuffs to cross-bind their wrists to one another.

I spattered him with the last few rounds from the roman candles. He rolled his eyes and gave me a disgusted look.

“Oops,” I said, and discarded the exhausted bundle of fireworks.

Nicodemus appeared on the stairs beside me, looking down at Grey. He arched an eyebrow. “All three, still alive. Going soft, Grey?”

“They set off the silent alarm,” Grey said. “Means the authorities are coming. It will be easier for Binder to convince them to sit and talk rather than simply assaulting the place if we have prisoners instead of corpses.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Nicodemus said. He turned and called, “Mr. Binder, bring your associates in, if you would, and prepare to defend the building. Miss Ascher, we are ready for you now.”

I put the butane torch out, put it back in my duffel, and then slung my staff down off my shoulder. Nicodemus was eyeing me as I did.

“Fireworks,” he said.

“You think you’re the only guy in the world who can get things done without his supernatural gadgets?” I asked him.

He waved a hand at the smoke in his face and said mildly, “Let us hope that their firefighting systems do not include-”

An alarm began to blare, and sprinkler heads all around the first floor started up, spraying chilly, slightly stale-smelling water everywhere.

“-sprinklers,” Nicodemus finished on a sigh.

Hannah Ascher came in, moving quickly, and eyed me with disgust. “Fireworks? Seriously?”

“Loud and distracting, remember?” I called after her, as she descended the stairs. “I am the king of loud and distracting.”

“Not only do I have to burn through a wall,” she muttered. “I’ve got to do it in a downpour, too.”

“Get tough. It should help muffle the excess magical energy,” I said, maybe a bit grumpily.

Ascher shot a look back up at me, and gestured at the sprinklers. “You did this on purpose?”

“Yeah, well. Sometimes, when I get bored, I stop and think.”

She held up a small spray can. “How am I supposed to lay out a circle on the floor when there’s a layer of water over it? Did you think about that?”

“Deirdre,” Nicodemus said.

Deirdre promptly swarmed halfway down the stairs, and then there were several sharp sounds of impact, as her metallic hair shot out, surrounding Ascher, and slammed onto the floor around her. The flat ribbonlike hairs spread out, edge down, scraping along the marble tile like a squeegee, sweeping the standing water away.

Ascher looked like she nearly had a heart attack when Deirdre did that, and cast a glare up at the Denarian. But then she took the can and sprayed a layer of what looked like some kind of aerosolized plastic or rubber onto the floor. She laid it out in a large circle around her, overlapping the circle onto the wall and continuing it up to a few inches above her head. It was lopsided, but technically a circle didn’t have to be a perfect one to contain the magic. It was just a lot more efficient-not to mention professional-that way.

Ascher, who was looking damned appealing in her wet clothes (and dammit, how could I blame my reaction on the Winter mantle when it was being held at bay by iron?), went over the circle again, making sure the plastic spray was especially thick at the joints of the floor and wall. Then she nodded once, bent, and twisted her wrist so that a couple of drops of her blood fell from the manacles onto the circle. It snapped up into place at once, a screen of invisible energy, and she promptly unlocked her manacles and dropped them onto the floor at her feet. Then she narrowed her eyes, touched her finger to the wall inside the circle, and murmured a quiet word.

Light sprang out from her fingertip, sudden and fierce, and steam began to hiss up where droplets of water fell onto her hand or the wall. She began to move her fingertip slowly, and I watched as marble and the drywall and the concrete and metal beneath it began to crack and blacken and part. Glowing motes and sparks flew back from her, falling thickly on her hand and her arm, then blackening and dropping to the floor, burning holes in her sleeve but leaving her flesh, as far as I could see, untouched.

I lifted my eyebrows at that. I mean, I guess I could turn my finger into an arc welder, sure, but that wouldn’t mean that my entire hand wouldn’t burn to a crisp as I did it. That kind of inurement to the elements required an entirely different order and magnitude of talent-talent very few wizards, in my experience, possessed.

Man. When Ascher said she mostly worked with fire, she wasn’t kidding.

Binder and his troops came into the bank while she was working, and Binder immediately scouted out the place and started assigning groups to various defensive positions. As he did that, Anna Valmont slid silently across the floor until she stood near me. She looked at the thorn manacles on my wrist.

“I can’t stand to look at those things,” she said. “It must hurt.”

I bit down on a sharp reply. She wasn’t looking for that by standing near me. “Yeah, pretty much.”

She fiddled with her gear and licked her lips. “How long, do you think, before you can take them off?”

“No idea,” I said. “Depends on Ascher, I guess.”

There was a loud snapping sound and a squeal of parting metal from below, and Ascher half snarled, “That’s right, bitch,” and began putting her manacles back on in a businesslike fashion.

It had taken her less than three minutes to slice an opening large enough to admit a big guy into the reinforced wall.

She smeared the circle with her foot, and the excess energy of the spell dispersed into the air to be immediately smothered by the falling water. Then she put her hand on the cut section and began to push.

Grey slid in front of her and said, “Best let me go first, Miss Ascher.” He set his shoulders and almost casually shoved the cut section of wall down, and it fell through to the hallway beyond with a satisfying boom-and was instantly echoed by the hollow, coughing blast of a shotgun from the hallway beyond.

Grey was flung off of his feet to the ground, where he promptly became the origin point of a growing puddle of blood.

Ascher let out a choked sound and flattened herself desperately to the side of the opening, into the shelter of the unexposed side of the stairwell.

The shotgun boomed twice more, and then Deirdre was through the opening. The shotgun went off again, and then a man screamed.

Then silence.

I snarled wordlessly. I rushed down the stairs to check on Ascher, and then peered through the hole in the wall. Deirdre crouched beyond it, on all fours like a wary cat, her hair spread out around her and moving slowly, like strands of kelp in a gentle current. A fourth guard lay unmistakably dead on the floor in front of her, his shotgun still gripped loosely in his hand.

“Grey,” Nicodemus said, his voice tight.

Of course he was worried about Grey. Grey hadn’t done his job with the retina scanner yet.

Ascher was shaken but untouched. I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and turned to Grey, trying to remember what I knew about first aid and tourniquets.

I needn’t have bothered. Grey had already begun sitting up even before I turned around, and his hair was mussed. Other than that, and the bloodied clothing, he looked entirely healthy. His expression was annoyed. “Damn, that hurts.”

“Whiner,” I said. “One little load of buckshot to the chest.” I offered him my hand.

Grey stared blankly at my hand for a second, as if it had taken him a moment to remember what the gesture meant. Then he took it and I pulled him up to his feet. He wobbled once, and then shook his head and steadied.

“You okay?” I asked.

He gestured at all the blood on the floor. “Hit my heart. I’ll be fine in a minute.”

“Man,” I said, impressed. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

Grey showed me his teeth, then turned, poised and contained once more, and stalked through the doorway after Deirdre.

Hannah Ascher got slowly to her feet and stood staring down at the smeared puddle of blood on the floor. She swallowed and started back up the stairs.

I put out a hand and stopped her. “It’ll take the cops time to get here, but you probably don’t want to be standing around on the first floor when they do,” I said.

“Too right,” said Binder, coming up behind Valmont, still at the stairway’s top and nudging her down like a bulldog herding a hesitant child. “Bullets are no respecters of persons. Go on, girl. And Ash, love, don’t forget to fill my pack.”

Ascher had a couple of empty black backpacks slung over her shoulder. “I know, I know. The red ones.”

Nicodemus came to the top of the stairs, dragging the unconscious guard, and came down the steps, taking the guard along none too gently. Once he had the man to the bottom, he interlaced his handcuffs with those of the men already on the floor and cuffed him there.

“Well-done, Miss Ascher,” Nicodemus said. “We’ll secure the hallway and you can repeat your excellent performance on the second door. Miss Valmont, if you would accompany us, please-I’ll want you working on the main vault door the moment we have access to it.”

Anna Valmont tensed beside me, her fingers fretting over the surface of her tool roll, constantly wiping droplets of water away.

“Michael,” I said, “why don’t you go on in and make sure Valmont has everything she needs?”

Michael arched an eyebrow at me, but nodded, and came down the stairs to Anna Valmont’s side. He gave her an encouraging smile, which she returned hesitantly, and the two of them went on through in the wake of the others.

“Dresden,” Nicodemus said, his tone amused. “Surely you don’t think I’d do anything to the woman simply because her purpose had been served?”

“Not if you want that Way opened, you won’t,” I said.

Nicodemus smiled at me. He had buckled on a sword belt bearing the long blade he’d used earlier and a curved Bedouin dagger. “There, you see. You can learn to play the game after all.” He vanished through the security door. A moment later, a huge shadow moved through the narrow stairway. I never saw the Genoskwa go by, but I felt the brush of patchy fur against the skin of my right hand, smelled a faint reek of its odor in the air, and bits of ash and the scent of burned hair came from the edges of the torched opening as the huge beast squeezed through it.

“This stinks,” Binder said a moment later, his voice pitched low. “This stinks all to hell.”

“Hah,” I said. “Maybe it’s just the furball.”

He snorted, and we waited in silence for another three or four minutes, until Ascher reappeared, newly muddy with ashes and soot from burning through the second wall, wearing the manacles again. “That big thing creeps me out,” she said.

“Too right,” Binder said. “Gotta wonder what something like that wants with jewels, eh?”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

“You’re right,” I said. “It smells.”

Ascher traded a long look with Binder. “Should we leave?”

Binder grimaced. “And leave Old Nick unable to get through his fiery gate? He’d take that personal, I think. What is Uncle Binder’s Rule Number Two?”

“Keep your eyes on the money,” Ascher said.

“That’s right,” Binder said. “Don’t take things personal, don’t get emotional. We’re professionals, love. Do the job, get paid, get gone.”

“There could be more than money at stake here,” I said quietly.

“Nick and his cup?” Binder asked. “Been a lot of bad men and a lot of powerful artifacts since this ball started spinning. It’ll spin on.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. Nicodemus is connected like few others. What if I could make you an offer?”

“Cash?” Binder asked.

I grimaced. “Well. Not as such.”

He made a tsking sound and glanced at Ascher. “What’s Uncle Binder’s Rule Number One?”

“Money or nothing,” she said. “Anything else costs too much.”

He nodded. “So don’t offer me favors, wizard, or lenience from the White Council, or power from a Faerie Queen. Those things aren’t payment. They’re pretty, pretty things with strings attached, and sooner or later you’re all wrapped up like a bug in a web. Money or nothing.”

“What about freedom?” I asked him. “The cops are going to have this place surrounded by the time we get back. Do you think you’re going to fight your way out past an army of CPD?”

Binder let out a low belly laugh. “Look at you, Dresden. Damn, but you’re a Boy Scout. This is a mob bank, belongs to your local robber baron. Eight minutes since the silent alarm went off, and where are the sirens? Where are the uniforms?”

I grimaced. I’d noticed that, too.

“You really think the alarms call the gendarmes?” He shook his head. “Twenty to one, it’ll go to his people first. Then they can decide if they want to call in the coppers or handle the matter themselves.”

Yeah. Marcone’s people.

Gulp.

Binder busied himself making sure the groaning, stirring guards had been thoroughly disarmed and relieved of their handcuff keys. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, odds are good if this Marcone of yours is so savvy, someone will start playing circle games with me. I’ll need to be ready to counter them.” He pointed a finger at Ascher.

“For the hundredth time, the red ones,” Ascher said, quirking a slight smile.

“I’ll buy us a nice tropical island with a nice beach, and get you a new swimsuit,” he said, winking.

“You should be so lucky,” Ascher said back.

“I’ll hold the door for you lot. Don’t be too long.” Binder went up the stairs, his beady eyes sparkling, fairly bristling with energy.

“Huh,” I said.

“What?” Ascher asked.

“You and Binder. . not a thing?”

Ascher’s mouth turned up bitterly at the corners. “Not for lack of trying.”

“Well,” I said, “kinda hard to blame him. You’re damned attractive.”

“Not him, trying,” she said. “Me. He’s turned me down.” She looked up the stairs for a moment and sighed. “Rule Number One. He’s not into entanglements.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to imagine Ascher coming on to Binder and getting turned down. Granted, I’d turned her down too. Which. . now that I thought about it, just couldn’t have been awesome for her self-image.

Doesn’t matter how pretty you are. What’s important is how pretty you feel. No one feels pretty when they hear “no” often enough.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but you would not believe how many times I’ve had pretty girls who would have eaten me alive, like, literally, make a pass at me. Makes a guy a little tense about it.”

Ascher scratched at her nose with one finger, making the manacles jingle. She grimaced as the thorns dug at her wrists. “Wait a minute. You’re saying I’m too pretty to be attractive.”

“To a guy in my business, maybe,” I said. “Someone as alluring as you, there’s a high twitch factor. Binder strikes me as the type to have the same kind of wariness.”

Her voice turned thoughtful. “So if I’d been a little older and a little dumpier, maybe I’d have had some luck with you-like Murphy.”

I scowled. “Murphy’s made of muscle. You just can’t see it under the suit and the body armor,” I said. “And she hasn’t gotten lucky with me either.”

Ascher stared at me for a second and blinked slowly. “You’re. . serious, aren’t you?”

“We’re complicated,” I said.

“Because you’re twitchy?”

“And she’s had a couple of divorces. And her ex-boyfriend kind of shot me.”

“What?”

“I asked him to,” I said hurriedly.

“What?”

My mouth just kept running. “Plus there was this whole initiation rite with Mab, except I think that only happened in my brain or something. Traumatic-like getting it on with a hurricane. I think it’s kind of put me off sex in general.”

Ascher stared at me for a second more, then shook her head and turned away. “Man,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Dresden, but thanks for turning me down. Kinda dodged a bullet on that one.”

“Hey,” I protested.

“Seriously,” she said. “Way too much drama there for anyone sane.”

“We’re not dramatic,” I said. “Just-”

“Complicated?” she asked. She shook her head. “It isn’t complicated. You just open up and let someone in. And whatever comes after that, you face it together.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“The hell it isn’t. You had a chance for that and you turned it down? You’re a fucking idiot. I’m not making the same mistake.”

Footsteps came from the hallway beyond the security door and Michael appeared, Amoracchius in hand. The Sword was glowing with a faint, angry light.

“Harry,” he said. “Trouble.”

“What’s happening?”

“Nicodemus is about to kill Anna Valmont.”

“And you’re here?”

“Four of them and one of me,” he said.

I got out the key to my manacles and made sure it was handy.

“Dresden,” Ascher said, her voice tense, “if you blow out the electronics, you’ll blow the whole job!”

“I love it when a posh bird talks dirty!” called Binder merrily, from upstairs.

I ground my teeth, took my staff in my right hand, and said to Michael, “Come on.”

And then I took off down the hallway.