Skin Game

Forty-seven

Ursiel was too big to fight.

Look, people go on and on about how size isn’t everything, and how the bigger they are, the harder they fall, but the people who say that probably haven’t ever faced down a charging demon-bear so big it should have been on a drive-in movie screen. As a defensive adaptation, sheer size is a winner. It’s a fact. Ask an elephant.

But.

As a hunting adaptation, size is only good when the things you’re hunting are also enormously huge. Successful predators aren’t necessarily bigger than the things they take down-they’re better armed, and just big enough to get the job done if they do it right. Too much bulk and nimble prey can escape, leaving the hunter less able to handle a broad range of targets.

Grey had done something brilliant, in blinding the Genoskwa: He’d forced it to rely upon Ursiel’s eyes. That meant, apparently, that he had to stay in that giant bear form to do it. If the Genoskwa had been able to pursue me in his natural form, he would have caught me and torn me apart in short order-I’d seen him move. The bear might have been an irresistible mass of muscle, claws, and fangs, but I’d had a little experience with very, very large creatures on the move, and I’d learned one important fact about them.

They didn’t corner well.

Ursiel closed in and went into a little bounce, a motion as close to a pounce as something that size could manage, and I darted to one side. Harry Dresden, wizard, might have bought the farm right there. But Sir Harry, the Winter Knight, dodged the smashing paws and snapping jaws by a tiny margin, hopped back several yards, and shouted, “Olé! Toro!”

Ursiel roared again, but its head swung around toward the retreating forms of Michael and Grey. Ursiel was no tactical genius, from what I’d seen of it, but both it and the Genoskwa were predators-and Michael and Grey were wounded and vulnerable. It could catch them and dispatch them easily and then hunt me down at its leisure, like a cat dealing with so many troublesome mice.

So I lifted my staff, pointed it at the demon-bear, and shouted, “Fuego!”

The blast of fire I sent at him wasn’t much. I didn’t feel like passing out from exhaustion at the moment, and both the Genoskwa and Ursiel had displayed a troublesome resistance to my magic. That wasn’t the point. The mini-blast of flame struck the bear in the side of the nose, and while it didn’t sear the flesh, it singed some hairs and I bet it stung like hell.

The bear’s head whipped back toward me and it rolled a step forward. Then the glowing eyes brightened and it swung again toward the wounded men, now leaving the vault. The conflict of wills going on between the Genoskwa and the Fallen angel was all but visible.

“Jeez,” I drawled, in the most annoying tone I possibly could. “You suck, Gen. I’ll bet you anything River Shoulders wouldn’t be all torn and conflicted right now.”

That got it done.

The great bear whirled back to me and lunged into instant, savage motion, and again I skittered out of the way a couple inches ahead of being ground into paste. I darted a few more yards to one side, putting one of the displays between us. It didn’t bother to go around-it just crashed straight through, spraying gold and jewels everywhere, and I damned near got my head redecorated with a falling marble column. I slipped, recovered my footing, and kept moving, forcing the huge bear to keep turning laterally if it wanted to pursue me.

It went like that for a subjective century and a half, and maybe thirty objective seconds. Several suits of armor were crushed and scattered when a flashing, enormous paw shattered the marble column holding up the roof of their display area. Half a dozen pieces of art that might have been Fabergé eggs in delicate golden cages were smashed flat when a sledgehammer blow missed me by an inch. At one point, I picked up a cut diamond the size of my fist, screamed, “Get rocked!” and flung it at Ursiel’s nose before darting behind another exhibit, this one of rare sacred texts, featuring half a dozen Gutenberg Bibles as the centerpiece.

And then something scary happened.

The roaring stopped.

I froze in place, instantly. Everything got quiet, except for the rushing sound of the flames in the hands of the giant statues, and a rising tide of moaning, terrifying wails coming steadily and unnervingly closer from the rear of the vault.

Something made a metallic clinking sound. Like, maybe the sound a great big foot would make as its blind owner accidentally kicked a fallen gem into something made of precious metal.

Oh, crap.

I looked around, and realized that there was rubble scattered over every inch of floor around me for fifty feet in every direction. I had forgotten that Ursiel’s bestial nature was not the only one I had to deal with. The Genoskwa’s intellect had been at work behind it, too, and I’d been had.

The Genoskwa had been trying to catch and kill me, sure-but he had also been intentionally covering the floor around us with detritus so that there would be no way in hell I could move without making noise.

Then he wouldn’t need eyes to catch me and kill me.

“Little wizard,” rumbled the Genoskwa’s voice. It had a weirdly modulated quality to it. It was coming from behind a veil, maybe, and I couldn’t isolate the direction of its origin. “Going to twist your head off your skinny neck. Going to enjoy it.”

I had some material I could have thrown back at him, but I didn’t dare speak. I would have sounded terrified, anyway. The howls and the eerie presence of the shades continued to grow closer and more intense, and my heart was pounding hard enough to shake my chest. I held my feet perfectly still and tried to turn my head without rustling my clothing at all, scanning for the Genoskwa. I couldn’t see him, but his voice was close.

I knew I would only get one chance to move. If I didn’t do it right, he would run me down and do exactly what he said he’d do, and a weird little fluttery sensation went slithering through my neck at the thought of it. I had to know where he was.

“Take off your head like a cap, little wizard,” the Genoskwa rumbled, pausing to listen between each sentence. “Drink your blood. Like a bottle of pop.”

That image was so vivid that I nearly let out a nervous giggle. I caught it just in time and closed my eyes, Listening as hard as I could. I could hear small, faint sounds. Crunching rubble. Weight shifting atop a pile of spilled gems. But it all had the same distorted tone as the Genoskwa’s voice, impossible to localize.

Stop behaving like a prey animal, Harry, and use your brain.

Right.

The Genoskwa couldn’t hear me and couldn’t know exactly where I was-but sooner or later, if I held still, he’d find me. If I muttered the word to a spell to veil my own movement, he’d hear that, too. My pounding head was already under enough pressure that I didn’t dare try to use magic without a verbal utterance. I could do it, but the psychic feedback was devastating and the last thing I needed was to slip up and take myself out for him. Even using my magical senses might give me away-the Genoskwa was something of a practitioner himself, and might well be able to feel me extending my aura to detect energy around me.

The shades came closer, and the air in the vault had grown uncomfortably warm with the heat from the melted rock. The heated air around it was rising, and that updraft was what was fanning the fires in the hands of the statues, making them growl quietly.

Draft.

Air brushed across the fine hairs on the back of my hand, flowing gently past me from the exterior of the vault and in toward the hot stone more or less in the center of the huge chamber.

Don’t think like a human, Harry. Think like a predator. Ignore sight. Forget hearing. Where would a predator go when stalking his prey?

Downwind.

The Genoskwa would be moving downwind of me, locating me through my scent. It wasn’t the same as knowing where he was, but for my purposes it was close enough.

Assuming, of course, that my reasoning was correct. If it wasn’t, I was about to trap myself with him and become Harry Dresden, human beverage.

I didn’t have much energy left in me for spells, but I had to chance it.

So I called upon Winter, focused my will through my staff and shouted, “Glacivallare!”

Icy cold rolled out of the staff and solidified into a wall of ice maybe twenty feet long and a foot thick, curved slightly toward me. I prayed that the Genoskwa was on the other side of it, turned, and sprinted, my life depending upon it.

I hadn’t gone twenty feet when something hit the wall and shattered it with a crash. I flashed a quick look back over my shoulder to see the Genoskwa as a large, humanoid blur behind a veil that had faltered as tiny flecks of ice landed on the Genoskwa and melted to water. The veil shimmered and fell, and he didn’t bother trying to restore it. He recovered his balance after almost a whole half second, and came after me, coming along the ground in a rush, using his huge arms as well as his legs to run.

If Michael hadn’t lamed him, the Genoskwa could have claimed his five-cent deposit for my corpse. But though he was on the mend, he still wasn’t moving at full speed, and I was able to stay a couple of steps ahead of him. His stench filled my nose, and his huge breathing was terrifying as he came along behind me, tracking me by the frantic sound of my running feet and labored breath.

I couldn’t fight this guy.

But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t kill him.

We flew out of the vault, and out past the Gate of Blood, and I poured it on, committing all of my reserves to the effort. I called light to my staff as I sprinted down the tunnel that emerged at the Gate of Ice, and as I went by it, I drew upon the power of the Winter mantle to slam the iron lever back up to the ON position and snap it off at the base in the same savage motion.

And then I plunged out into the two-hundred-yard-long killing field as the house-sized blocks of ice began to fall and shatter and slide and flip and smash together like some kind of enormous, demented garbage disposal unit.

“Parkour!” I screamed, dropping to a slide that took me just under a horizontally flying block of ice as big as a freight car, then popping back up to keep running.

“Parkour!” I shouted again, bounding up onto a small block and diving over several more, ducking and weaving between them, the Genoskwa hot on my tail, casting frantically quick glances back at him, watching him close the distance inch by inch, his huge body moving with an utterly unfair amount of agility as he handled the obstacles better than I could have, even without his eyes.

And then the cold started to get to him.

It wasn’t much at first. He lost a step on me. But then in the next row of grinders, one of them clipped his monstrous shoulder. He recovered his balance and kept moving, and we were nearly through the field when I played dirty.

I jumped over a pair of low grinders, and turned in midair, just enough to point a finger back at the ground behind me and snap, “Infriga!”

I didn’t use a lot of power. Barely a whisper, really-just enough to coat a ten-foot patch of cavern floor with smooth Winter ice.

And his foot slipped.

It wasn’t a big slip. But his cold-dulled reflexes weren’t up to catching him and his balance wavered. Not much-he was, after all, running on all fours. But enough. It staggered him as he came after me, slowing his pace again.

Suddenly, there was a ten-foot wall of grinders in front of me, each individual block spinning and smashing and flipping at unpredictable intervals, and I let out a scream and leapt over it completely, high-jump-style. My shoulders brushed the top of the wall, treating me to a dandy view of another house-sized block falling straight at me from the darkness overhead, and then I bounced off the top of the wall and tumbled into the clear.

The Genoskwa grabbed the top of the wall and vaulted it easily, his huge hairy form moving with effortless power. He’d somehow anticipated its presence. He must have heard my shout and jump, and maybe the way I’d gone over it at the top. Or maybe Ursiel was helping him through his sightless chase, the way Lasciel had once helped guide me in total darkness.

But neither the Genoskwa nor the Fallen angel sensed what was plummeting soundlessly toward them.

A block of ice the size of a building came down like the hammer of God Almighty, and crushed the Genoskwa like a beer can.

I rolled to a stop and flopped on the stone cavern floor, utterly exhausted, breathing like a steam engine. But I had enough energy to turn my head to the gruesome remains being tossed about like a rag doll among the last row of grinders.

“Parkour,” I panted. “Bitch.”

Then I just breathed for a minute.

Footsteps approached a moment later, and I felt hands hauling me up. Michael had sheathed Amoracchius again, and he steadied me as I rose. Grey stood and watched the grinders grind for a moment before he shook his head and said, “Yuck.”

“Right?” I said.

Anna Valmont shuddered, her face pale, and turned to me. “Are you all right, Harry?”

“Nothing two months asleep in a good bed won’t cure,” I said.

A chorus of moaning wails suddenly came toward us, as though the shades that had begun flooding the vault had reached some kind of critical mass and were now surging forward. I still hadn’t seen them, and I didn’t want to see them. I had this vague image of the scrubbing bubbles of undeadness from that Lord of the Rings movie in my brain, and I was sure that would serve fine for imagining the threat drawing quickly nearer.

“What was that?” Anna asked.

“Bouncers,” I said. “We don’t want to be around when they get here. Let’s get clear of the first gate, people.”

And we did, hurrying down the tunnel to the location of the original Way. I took a deep breath and steadied myself for what I hoped would be the last serious effort of the day.

“Michael,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I figure Nicodemus had Lasciel and Ascher as his backup Way home,” I said. Ascher had been throwing Hellfire around. With a couple of weeks’ training from a good teacher, say a Fallen angel who could provide her with images and communicate directly in thought, she might have enough talent to learn how to manage a Way-but probably not from inside several hundred tons of molten rock. “Maybe the Genoskwa could have done it. But they’re out. That leaves one way for him to get back.”

Michael grunted and drew his sword, and Grey frowned and looked warier than he had a moment before.

“We’re not in much shape for a fight, Harry,” Michael said.

“Neither is he,” I said. “Eyes open. Get through the Way as quick as we can, and I’ll zip it closed behind us. Nick can find his own way home.” Then I focused my will, drew a line in the air with my staff and said, “Aparturum.”

Once more, a line of light split the air and widened, and from where I stood, I could see the inside of the vault back at Marcone’s bank.

I leaned heavily on my staff, and felt fairly proud of myself for not falling over and going to sleep right there.

“Michael,” I said. “Go.”

Michael drew his sword and went through first, his eyes wary for any danger.

“Anna,” I said.

Valmont went through, still carrying her backpack, I noted. It was one of the identical ones that Nicodemus had provided for everyone and that I had ignored. Grey had used a duplicate as his decoy, back at the amphitheater.

“My God,” Grey said, looking at me. “You didn’t get any loot? How the hell are you going to pay me?”

“Think of something,” I said.

Grey smirked. “I know we’re in a hurry, but there’s something you need to realize.”

“What?”

“No one got Binder’s share,” he said. “We’re all worn pretty ragged-and he’s got an army of demons he can jump us with. Food for thought.” Then he went through the Way.

“Oh,” I said. “Crap.”

I just wanted to go have a nice lie-down somewhere. Why was nothing ever simple?

I stepped through the Way and back into the mortal world, and almost instantly I felt better, lighter, more free. Gravity change. I wrenched my head back into the moment, because I had to focus. Nicodemus might be rushing the Way even now-as might a few million furious shades. I didn’t think Hades would allow his prisoners to come flooding into the mortal world, but on the other hand, you never know with those types.

At least wrecking the weaving of a spell was easier work than creating it.

“Michael,” I said. “Cover me.”

He came to my side, Sword in hand. I turned to the Way, tired to my bones, lifted my staff and muttered, “Disperd-”

And a black shadow hurtled through the Way, hitting me like a truck.

I was watching for trouble and ready. Michael was ready. Either we were both wearier than we realized, or the shadow moved with such speed that neither of us had a chance to react. Or both.

The impact spun me around in a circle and dumped me on the ground with my everything hurting and my elbows tangled with my scapulae.

I jerked my head up blearily, raising my arms in a defensive gesture, to see that the streak of shadow had whooshed to the far end of Marcone’s vault, to its main door.

Nicodemus rose up out of the swirl of shadow. He looked pale and awful, his eyes sunken with pain, but he held himself straight. His sword was sheathed again, and he still carried the Holy Grail negligently in one hand. Moving with obvious stiffness and pain, he twisted a handle that opened the main door of the vault from the inside. The door swung open when he pushed.

Then he looked directly at me and quite calmly snapped the handle off at its base.

“Dresden,” Nicodemus said. There was something furious and horrible in his eyes-I could see it, even from there. “From one father to another,” he called. “Well played.”

I felt my eyes widen. “Stop him!” I blurted and flung myself to my feet.

Michael started running. Grey blurred toward the far end of the vault, moving at speeds one normally associates with low-flying aircraft.

None of us got there in time to stop Nicodemus from letting out a harsh, bitter laugh, and slamming the huge door closed.

I ran to the other end of the vault anyway, or mostly ran, breathing hard. Anna Valmont stayed beside me, still carrying her tool roll.

“God!” I said. I tried what was left of the handle, but couldn’t get a grip on it. The vault door had locked, shutting us in. I slammed a shoulder against the door, but it wasn’t moving, and I wasn’t sure I could have blasted it open even if I’d been fresh. “Michael, did you hear what he said?”

“I heard,” Michael said grimly.

“How could he know?”

“You told him,” Michael replied quietly. “When you taunted him about Deirdre. You said things only another father would know to say.”

I let out a groan, because Michael was right. Once Nicodemus had realized that I was a father, it was not too much of a stretch to identify the dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl who had suddenly appeared at Michael’s house, a place that I knew damned well Nicodemus would surveil, even if he couldn’t use his pet shadow to do it. And she had appeared there immediately after my insane assault on the Red Court and my apparent death, to boot. It wasn’t hard to figure.

Nicodemus might not be able to walk onto Michael’s property-but he had an entire dysfunctional posse of squires with assault rifles and shotguns who could, and he was filled with the pain of losing his daughter.

Maggie was there. So were Michael’s children. So was a defenseless archangel.

“He’s going to your house,” I breathed. “He’s going after our families.”