Skin Game

Fifty

I stepped up to the door with my staff in hand just as the three men hurled the bottles of vodka, pointed the staff, and snarled, “Infriga!”

Icy air screamed. The bottles soared up toward the house and hit the roof with a number of dull thunks, then came rattling back down to fall to the lawn, glass cracking, their contents frozen solid.

A number of things happened, all at once.

Tessa let out a hellish screech. She lifted a hand toward me, gathering power in her palm, but as she released it, Nicodemus seized her arm and directed the blast straight up into the air.

Squires started shooting at me. A bullet smacked into my duster over my left lung and hit me like a fist, spinning me to one side.

Mouse hurtled toward the rear of the house.

And, as I fell, Mab’s earring burst, the two pieces flying out of my ear in different directions and bouncing off the walls of the entry hall, and all the pain in the universe came crashing down on me at the same time.

Dimly, I heard Butters calling my name. Bullets hit the entry hall and the doorway and darted past me in spiteful, hissing whispers to thwack into the stairs behind me. I lay there in a stupor of pain, and another round hit my duster again, and then Butters was hauling me out of the doorway by main force.

I tried to care about other things that were happening, but mostly I was trying to work up enough energy to curl up into a defensive fetal position-and failing.

“Harry!” Butters screamed, propping me up. “Harry, get up! They’re coming back!”

“Burn it!” Tessa shrieked. “Burn them! Burn them all!”

“Harry!” Butters howled. “Do something!”

I didn’t have enough left in me to contort my face.

“Oh, God,” Butters said. “OhGodohGodohGod. .”

And that was when I saw Waldo Butters choose to be a hero.

He looked up the stairs, toward where the children were hidden. Then he looked out toward the men outside. Then he hardened his jaw.

And with businesslike motions, he stripped me out of my leather duster. He put it on. The sleeves were too long and it was grotesquely oversized, but I had to admit that he got a lot more coverage out of the thing than I ever did.

“Bob,” he said.

Glowing lights surged up out of one of the pouches on his Batman vest, dancing nervously in the slowly growing light of dawn. “Yeah, boss?”

“We’re going in.”

“Uh. .”

“If anything happens to me,” he said, “I want you to head back to the skull. Tell Andi everything you saw. Tell her I said to get you to someone responsible. And tell her that I said that I loved her. Okay?”

“Boss,” Bob said, his voice subdued. “You sure about this?”

“There’s nobody else here,” Butters said quietly. “Harry’s down. Charity’s been captured. We can’t risk Uriel’s demise. And if we wait for help, they’ll burn the kids to death while we wring our hands.”

“But. . you aren’t up for this. You can’t possibly beat them.”

“Gotta try,” Butters said.

“You’ll die trying,” Bob said. “And it won’t make any difference.”

“I’ve got to believe that it will,” he said. “Maybe I can slow them down until some real help gets here.”

“Oh,” Bob said, his voice very small.

“You ready?” Butters asked. “Can you access the duster?”

“Sure. I tutored Harry on these spells.”

“Keep the bullets off me for as long as you can,” Butters said.

“Got it,” Bob said. “Let’s give ’em hell, boss.”

“That’s the spirit,” Butters said. He took a deep breath, and then put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, Harry. You’ve done enough. I got this.”

I wanted to scream at Butters not to go, not to throw his life away-to go get the kids and try to run. It would have been just as hopeless, but he might not realize that. And at least they’d die with bullets in them instead of being burned to death. But I couldn’t move, or think or do anything else. The pain was simply too great. It wasn’t a headache now. It was a worldache. I didn’t have a broken arm anymore-I didn’t have a body at all. I just had pain.

But I started crying as Waldo Butters stood up, rolled the sleeves of my duster up until his hands could reach out of them, grabbed a couple of things from his vest, flung something on the floor of the porch and went out the door.

The first globe he’d hurled down released a sudden, brief cloud of opaque smoke that went roiling out in all directions, and guns began firing outside.

No, dammit.

No.

I couldn’t let things end like this. Butters was a friend, and too good a man to let die while I lay on the floor unable to go to his aid.

I fought to rise, but my arms and legs couldn’t hear me through the pain. Again, I struggled, throwing up every mental shield I could against the agony, and this time I managed to shift my weight, and fall heavily onto my side. My cheek lay on the floor and I found myself staring along it, down the hall toward the back of the house, past the dining room where I’d struggled with the squires who invaded. . and where the remnants of Fidelacchius had been carefully set on the dining room table.

The table had been jarred in the fight. The broken hilt of the Sword of Faith had fallen and rolled toward the front of the house. It was only a few feet away from me.

Could it be?

When the Knights of the Blackened Denarius set out to wreak harm, the Swords were there to oppose them. The Sword of Faith was no more. But that did not mean that the power that guided the Swords could not find another means of expressing itself. I’d seen Charity Carpenter rely upon her faith when Molly was in danger before. How much deeper would it be now, with her home and family in peril?

Maybe Michael was right about the Sword. If he was, there was still a chance.

And I had to believe that. People I loved were going to die. I had to believe that there was hope.

Hope lets you do things you would otherwise never be able to do, gives strength when everything is darkest. In that moment, maybe it helped me-because I forced my nerve endings to respond and dragged myself toward the hilt of the Sword, clenching my teeth in sheer defiance of the agony supplanting my existence. It felt like it took forever before my fingers settled on the wooden grip of the Sword, but by the time I finally reached it, and turned back to the door, Butters had only at that moment reached the front gate. My duster whirled and swirled around him like a living thing, orange light playing along the normally invisible black runes I’d tattooed into the leather, the mantle flaring up wildly like a cobra’s hood.

Half a dozen squires stood stupefied and confused in dissipating clouds of memory mist, and of the others who were moving, only one had a clean shot at Butters. But the little guy’s hand pointed and an orange flicker danced out, a thin line wrapping around the barrel of the gunman’s weapon and holding fast. Butters heaved, shouting, and hauled the rifle out of the man’s hands. The cord released the gun in a glitter of orange light and slithered back up Butters’s sleeve.

And then, before any of the scrambling gunmen could get a clear shot at him, Butters hurdled the Carpenters’ little fence and smashed into Tessa in a tackle that, if not exactly physically impressive, was dynamic as hell.

The impact tore the pint-sized Tessa loose from Charity, and the emaciated Denarian let out a furious squall and went down under Butters’s weight.

Nicodemus drew his sword and thrust it at Butters’s back, but the flying folds of my leather duster slapped the blade aside. Butters wasn’t much of a fighter, but he was game. He screamed and slammed his head down into Tessa’s.

Then she lifted her hand and shouted something, and there was a crash of sound, a flash of light.

Butters flew off of her and landed six feet away, sprawled and dazed on the icy street. I could see blood running from one of his ears. He made a vague, spreading gesture with one hand, and Bob’s trail of campfire sparks emerged from the duster and soared away in the general direction of Butters’s apartment.

“What was that?” Tessa demanded, her tone furious as she came back to her feet.

“A detail,” Nicodemus said, his tone harsh. “Stupid, but brave, little man. Nice try.” He stepped over to Butters and raised his sword. Butters clenched his jaw and raised his hand in a hopeless defensive gesture. He knew what was coming-what had to come. But though his face was ghostly white, his eyes were steady, unflinching.

He’d made his choice, and he would accept the consequences of his actions.

And for that moment, everyone out there was looking at Nicodemus and Butters-and no one was looking at Michael Carpenter’s wife.

Hope gave me a last burst of strength.

“Charity!” I croaked.

Her head snapped around toward me, and she blinked in my direction.

I threw the broken hilt of Fidelacchius as hard as I could.

There are moments in your life that, when you look back at them, you realize were perfect. A hundred million things had to happen, to all come together at the same time, for such moments to come into existence-so many things that it beggars imagination to think that they could possibly have happened by random chance.

This was one of them.

The broken hilt of the Sword tumbled in a perfect arc. It flew up, soared down, and cleared the little fence in the front yard by maybe an inch. The rotation of its length was as precise as a juggler’s throw, setting the hilt to tumble directly into Charity’s palm.

But she bobbled it, and missed the grab.

The wooden hilt with its lonely, harmless little fragment of the Sword’s blade bounced off the icy sidewalk and up into the air. It tumbled several more times, clipped Nicodemus’s shoulder. .

. . and landed directly in Waldo Butters’s upraised hand.

His fingers closed around the grip of the broken Sword of Faith, and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would scarcely have believed what happened.

There was a flash of light.

There was a sound like a howl of holy trumpets backed up by the voices of an entire choir.

And suddenly a shaft of blinding silver-white light three feet long sprang from the broken hilt of Fidelacchius and shone in the first golden light of that day’s dawn, humming with the full power of the Sword, only louder now, more melodic, and physically audible.

Nicodemus’s sword was already falling, and when it met the blade of light, there was a shriek of protesting metal, a flash of sparks, and he reeled back three quick steps, staring at his own weapon in incomprehension.

Fidelacchius had sheared it off as neatly as if it had been paper instead of steel. The severed end of Nicodemus’s sword glowed white-hot.

“Ah,” said a voice next to me, in a tone of intense satisfaction, and I jerked a quick glance up to see Uriel crouching next to me, his teeth showing, his eyes glittering.

Butters came to his feet, and his jaw hung open. He stared at the humming blade in his hands for a second and then suddenly his teeth showed in a joyous smile that was no less fierce for being so.

And his eyes locked on Nicodemus.

Suddenly, there was an incoherent scream from behind one of the vans, and the vehicle rocked, as if something enormous had smashed against it. A second later, Mouse stepped out from behind the van, where its bulk was shielding him from the immediate aim of the slowly recovering squires. The Foo dog’s head was low, his body crouched and tensed, hackles raised, gleaming, sharp, freshly bloodied teeth bared. He was no more than a few feet from Nicodemus’s back, and at his appearance, Anduriel’s shadow form went berserk, flickering and twisting in a dozen directions at once, like a panicked animal running to the ends of its tether.

“Nice try?” Butters said. “Mister, where I come from, there is no try.”

And he lifted the Sword to a guard position and charged, coat flaring dramatically, impossibly.

Mouse let out a great, coughing roar of a bark and flung himself forward, silver-blue light gathering in his fur and around his mane and jaws.

I saw the fury and the rage and bafflement in Nicodemus’s face as the newly minted Sir Butters came toward him, and I saw something else there, too.

Fear.

The furious light of the Sword of Faith renewed filled him with terror.

He let out a cry of frustration and leapt into the air, where Anduriel’s shadow gathered around him in a sudden blob of fluid darkness, and then streaked away, up into the dawn-lit fog, and was gone.

Butters whirled at once, toward Tessa, but the other Denarian had already fled into the fog, leaving behind a frustrated cry that turned into her demonform’s brassy shriek as it faded.

Butters, with Mouse at his side, turned to face the squires who still remained. The nearest one, I saw, was Jordan, who clutched his shotgun in white-knuckled hands, his expression bewildered.

In fact, as I looked around, I saw the same expression on the faces of every squire there. Utter confusion, as if they’d just beheld something that they knew damned well was impossible. They’d just seen their unbeatable lord and master humbled and forced to flee by a pipsqueak of a Knight who wore black-rimmed spectacles and might have weighed a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet.

“It’s over,” Butters said. Fidelacchius’s ominous hum gave his voice a certain terrifying punctuation. “We make an end of it, right here. It’s over, guys.”

Jordan, his eyes welling with tears, dropped his arms to his side, abruptly, limply, like an exhausted child. His weapon tumbled to the ground. And, over the next few seconds, the others did exactly the same.

The Sword of Faith, I thought, cuts both ways.

I realized my cheek was back against the floor a moment later, and dully noted that my eyes had stopped working at some point. They were open, but they weren’t showing me any images. Maybe that’s what they meant by the phrase “lazy eye.” Hah. I’m hysterical when I’m dying.

I heard a sound then-a distant howl of northern wind, rapidly growing louder in pitch and volume.

“Easy, Harry,” said Uriel’s voice in the blackness. “Molly’s here. Easy.”

And then I went away.