Small Favor

Chapter Twelve

M arcone’s business interests were wide and varied. They had to be when you’re laundering as much money as he was. He had restaurants, holding companies, import/export businesses, investment firms, financial businesses of every description-and construction companies.

Sunset Point was one of those boils festering on the face of the planet: a subdivision. Located half an hour north of Chicago, it had once been a pleasant little wood of rolling hills around a single tiny river. The trees and hills had all been bulldozed flat, exposing naked earth to the sky. The little river had been choked into a sludgy trough. Underneath the blanket of snow the place looked as smooth and white and sterile as the inside of a new refrigerator.

“Look at this,” I said to Thomas. I gestured at the houses, each of them on a lot that exceeded the building’s foundation by the width of a postage stamp. “People pay to live in places like this?”

“You live in the basement of a boardinghouse,” Thomas said.

“I live in a big city, and I rent,” I said. “Houses like these go for several hundred thousand dollars, if not more. It’ll take thirty years to pay them off.”

“They’re nice houses,” Thomas said.

“They’re nice cages,” I responded. “No space around them. Nothing alive. Places like this turn a man into a gerbil. He comes home and scurries inside. Then he stays there until he’s forced to go back out to the job he has to work so that he can make the mortgage payments on this gerbil habitat.”

“And they’re way nicer than your apartment,” Thomas said.

“Totally.”

He brought the Hummer to a crunching halt in the snow, glaring through the windshield. “Damn snow. I’m only guessing where the streets are at this point.”

“Just don’t drive into what’s going to be somebody’s basement,” I said. “We passed Twenty-third a minute ago. We must be close.”

“Twenty-third Court, Place, Street, Terrace, or Avenue?” Thomas asked.

“Circle.”

“Damned cul-de-sacs.” He started forward again, driving slowly. “There,” he said, nodding to the next sign that emerged from the haze. “That one?”

“Yeah.” Next to the customized street sign was a standard road sign declaring Twenty-fourth Terrace a dead end.

“Damned foreshadowing,” I muttered.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

We drove through the murky grey and white of a heavy snowfall, the light luminous, without source, reflected from billions of crystals of ice. The Hummer’s engine was a barely audible purr. By comparison the crunch of its tires on snow was a dreadful racket. We rolled past half a dozen model houses, all of them lovely and empty, the snow piling up around windows that gaped like eye sockets in a half-buried skull.

Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t have told you what, exactly, but I could feel it as plainly as I could feel the carved wood of the staff I gripped in my hands.

We weren’t alone.

Thomas felt it too. Moving smoothly, he reached an arm behind the driver’s seat and drew forth his sword belt. It bore an old U.S. Cavalry saber he’d carried on a number of dicey occasions, paired up with a more recent toy he’d become fond of, a bent-bladed knife called a kukri, like the one carried by the Ghurkas.

“What is that?” he asked quietly.

I closed my eyes for a moment, reaching out with my arcane senses, attempting to detect any energies that might be moving in around us. The falling snow muffled my magical perceptions every bit as much as it did my physical senses. “Not sure,” I said quietly. “But whatever it is, it’s a safe bet it knows we’re here.”

“How do you want to play it if the music starts?”

“I’ve got nothing to prove,” I said. “I say we run like little girls.”

“Suits me. But don’t let Murphy hear you talking like that.”

“Yeah. She gets oversensitive about ‘little.’”

My shoulders tightened with the tension as Thomas drove forward slowly and carefully. He stopped the car beside the last house on the street. It had a finished look to it, the bushes of its landscaping poking up forlornly through the snow. There were curtains in the windows, and the faint marks of tire tracks, not quite full of new snowfall, led up the drive and to the closed garage.

“Someone’s behind that third window,” Thomas said quietly. “I saw them move.”

I hadn’t seen anything, but then I wasn’t a supernatural predator, complete with a bucketful of preternaturally sharp senses. I nodded to let him know that I’d heard him, and scanned the ground around the house. The snow was untouched. “We’re the first visitors,” I said. “We’re probably making someone nervous.”

“Gunman?”

“Probably,” I said. “That’s what most of Marcone’s people are used to. Come on.”

“You don’t want me to wait out here?”

I shook my head. “There’s something else out here. It might be nothing, but you’re a sitting duck in the car. Maybe if you’d gotten the armored version…”

“Nag, nag, nag,” Thomas said.

“Let’s be calm and friendly,” I said. I opened the door of the Hummer and stepped out into snow that came up over my knees. I made sure not to move too quickly, and kept my hands out in plain sight. On the other side of the Hummer Thomas mirrored me.

“Hello, the house!” I called. “Anyone home?” My voice had that flat, heavy timbre you can only get when there’s a lot of snow, almost like we were standing inside. “My name is Dresden. I’m here to talk.”

Silence. The snow started soaking through my shoes and my jeans.

Thomas whipped his head around toward the end of the little street, where the subdivision ended and the woods that were next in line for the bulldozers began. He stared intently for a moment.

“It’s in the trees,” he reported quietly.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I hoped fervently that whatever was out there, it didn’t have a gun. “I’m not here for trouble!” I called toward the house. I held up two fingers and said, “Scout’s honor.”

This time I saw the curtain twitch, and caught a faint stir of motion behind it. The inner door to the house opened and a man’s voice said, “Come in. Hands where I can see them.”

I nodded at Thomas. He lifted his hand, holding his car key, and pointed it at the Hummer. It clunked and chirped, its doors locking. He came around the car, sword belt hanging over his shoulder, while I broke trail to the front porch, struggling through the snow. I knocked as much of the powder as I could off my lower body, using it as an excuse to give me time to ready my shield bracelet. I didn’t particularly want to step through a dark doorway, presenting a shooting-gallery profile to any gunman inside, without taking precautions. When I came in I held my shield before me, silent and invisible.

“Stop there,” growled a man’s voice. “Staff down. Show your hands.”

I leaned my staff against the wall and did so. I’d know those monosyllables anywhere. “Hi, Hendricks.”

A massive man appeared from the dimness in the next room, holding a police-issue riot gun in hands that made it look like a child’s toy. He was built like a bull, and you could apply thick and rocklike to just about everything in his anatomy, especially if you started with his skull. He came close enough to let me see his close-cropped red hair. “Dresden. Step aside.”

I did, and the shotgun was trained on my brother. “You, vampire. Sword down. Fingers laced behind your head.”

Thomas rolled his eyes and complied. “How come he doesn’t have to put his hands behind his head?”

“Wouldn’t make any difference with him,” Hendricks replied. Narrow, beady eyes swiveled like gun turrets back to me. “What do you want?”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Hendricks speak a complete sentence, much less string phrases together. It was sort of disconcerting, the way it would be if Mister suddenly developed the capacity to open his own cans of cat food. It took me a second to get over the mental speed bump. “Uh,” I said. “I want to…”

I realized how lame this was going to sound. I gritted my teeth and said it quickly. “I want to help your boss.”

There was a clicking sound from the wall, the sound of an audio speaker popping to life. A woman’s voice said, “Send the wizard up.”

Hendricks growled. “You sure?”

“Do it. The vampire stays downstairs.”

Hendricks grunted and tilted his head to the right. “Through there and up the stairs, Dresden. Move it.”

“Harry,” Thomas said quietly.

Hendricks brought his shotgun back up and covered Thomas. “Not you, prettyboy. You stay put. Or both of you get out.”

“It’s okay,” I said quietly to my brother. “I feel better if someone I trust is watching the door anyway. Just in case someone else shows up.” I cast my eyes meaningfully in the direction of the woods where Thomas had said something lurked.

He shook his head. “Whatever.” Then he leaned back against the wall, casual and relaxed, his hands behind his head as if they were there only to pillow his skull.

I brushed past Hendricks. Without slowing down or looking behind me, I said, “Careful with that gun. He gets hurt and it’s going to be bad for you, Hendricks.”

Hendricks ignored me. I had a feeling it was his strongest conversational ploy.

I went up the stairs, noting a couple of details as I went. First, that the carpet was even cheaper than mine, which made me feel more confident for some obscure reason.

Second, that there were bloodstains on it. A lot of them.

At the top of the stairs I found more bloodstains, including a long smear along one wall. I followed them down to one of three bedrooms on the upper level of the house. I paused and knocked on the door.

“Come in, Dresden,” said a woman’s voice.

I came in.

Miss Gard lay in bed. It had been hauled over to the window so that she could see out of it. She had a heavy assault rifle of a design I didn’t recognize next to her. The wooden handle of a double-headed battle-ax leaned against the bed, within reach of her hand. Gard was blond, tall, athletic, and while she wasn’t precisely beautiful, she was a striking woman, with clean-cut features, icy blue eyes, and an athlete’s build.

She was also a mess of blood.

She was soaked in it. So was the bed beneath her. Her shirt was open, revealing a black athletic bra and a long wound that ran the width of her stomach, just below her belly button. Slick grey-red ropy loops protruded slightly from the wound.

My stomach twisted, and I looked away.

“Goodness,” Miss Gard said, her voice quiet and rough, her face pale. “You’d think you never saw anyone disemboweled before.”

“Just relieved,” I said. I forced myself to face her. “First time today I’ve run into someone who looks worse than me.”

She showed me a weary smile for a moment.

“You need a doctor,” I said.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Yes,” I said. “You do. I’m surprised you haven’t bled to death already. Think of what it would cost Monoc Securities to replace you.”

“They won’t need to. I’ll be fine. The company has a great health care package.” She picked up a small tube of what looked like heavy-duty modeling glue from the bed at her side. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had my guts ripped out. It isn’t fun, but I’ll make it.”

“Damn,” I said, genuinely impressed. “Are they hiring?”

The question won another faint smile. “You don’t really fit the employee profile.”

“I am tired of being kept down by the man,” I said.

Gard shook her head wearily. “How did you find us?”

“Demeter,” I said.

She lifted a golden eyebrow. “I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me. Though I’ve warned him. He’s too trusting.”

“Marcone? Is too trusting?” I widened my eyes at her. “Lady, that pretty much puts you in a paranoiac league of your own.”

“It isn’t paranoia-just practical experience. A safe house isn’t safe if it isn’t secret.” She reached down and pressed bloodied fingers against a loop of gore, gently kneading it back into the wound. She let out a hiss of pain as she did, but she didn’t let a little thing like an exposed internal organ get in the way of conversation. “You threatened her?”

“Uh. Mostly I told her I’d help Marcone.”

She lifted the tube of airplane glue and smeared some of it onto either side of the wound, where she’d pushed her guts back in. She bled a little more. I noted that several inches of the wound had already been closed and sealed together.

“You gave her your word?” Gard asked.

“Uh, yeah, but-” I couldn’t take it anymore. “Look, could you maybe not do that while we talk? It makes it sort of hard for me to focus on the conversation.”

She pressed the edges of the wound together, letting out a breathy curse in a language I didn’t know. “Did you know,” she said, “that this kind of glue was originally developed as an emergency battlefield suture?”

“Did you know that you’re about to find out what I had for breakfast this morning?” I countered.

“I don’t know if it’s true,” she continued. “I saw it in a movie. With-dammit-with werewolves.” She exhaled and drew her hands slowly from the wound. Another two or three inches of puckered flesh were now closed together. Gard looked awful, her face grey and lined with pain.

“Why, Dresden? Why are you looking for Marcone?”

“The short version? It’s my ass if I don’t.”

She squinted at me. “It’s personal?”

“Pretty much. I’ll give you my word on it, if you like.”

She shook her head. “It’s not…your word that I doubt. That’s…always been good.” She closed her eyes against the pain and panted for several seconds. “But I need something from you.”

“What?”

“The White Council,” she rasped. “I want you to call upon the White Council to recover Marcone.”

I blinked at her. “Uh. What?”

She grimaced and began packing another couple inches of intestine back into her abdomen. “The Accords have been breached. A challenge must be lodged. An Emissary summoned. As a Warden”-she gasped for a moment, and then fumbled the glue into place-“you have the authority to call a challenge.”

Her fingers slipped, and the wound sprang open again. She went white with pain.

“Dammit, Sigrun,” I said, more appalled at her pain than her condition, and moved to help her. “Get your hands out of the way.” When she did, I managed to close the wound a little more, giving the sharp-smelling glue a chance to bond the flesh closed.

She made an effort to smile at me. “We…we worked well together at the beer festival. You’re a professional. I respect that.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the guys who glue your stomach back together.”

“Call the Council,” Gard said. “Lodge the challenge.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Tell me where Marcone is, I’ll go get him and bring him home, and this will all be over.”

She started pushing the next bit back in, while I waited with the glue. “It isn’t that simple. I don’t know where he is.”

I caught on. “But you do know who took him.”

“Yes. Another signatory of the Accords, just as Marcone is now. I have no authority to challenge their actions. But you do. You may be able to force them into the light, bring the pressure of all the members of the Accords against them.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, laying out more glue. “The Council just loves it when one of their youngest members drags the entire organization into a fight that isn’t their own.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Gard rasped. “It’s not as though it would be the first time.”

I held the wound together, waiting on the glue. “I can’t,” I said quietly.

She was breathing too quickly, too hard. I could barely keep the wound closed. “Whatever you…nggh…say. After all…it’s your ass on the line.”

I grimaced and withdrew my fingers slowly, making sure the wound stayed closed. We’d gotten the last few inches, and the opening no longer gaped. “Can’t deny that,” I said. Then I squinted at her. “Who is it?” I asked. “Which signatory of the Accords swiped Marcone?”

“You’ve met them once already,” Gard said.

From downstairs Thomas suddenly shouted, “Harry!”

I whirled toward the door in time for the window, behind me, to explode in a shower of glass. It jounced off my spell-layered leather duster, but I felt a pair of hot stings as bits of glass cut my neck and my ear. I tried to turn and had the impression of something coming at my face. I slapped it aside with my left hand even as I ducked, then hopped awkwardly back from the intruder.

It landed in a crouch upon the bed, digging one foot into the helpless Gard’s wounded belly, a creature barely more than the size of a child. It was red and black, vaguely humanoid in shape, but covered in an insect’s chitin. Its eyes were too large for its head, multifaceted, and its arms ended in the serrated clamps of a preying mantis. Membranous wings fluttered at its back, a low and maddening buzzing.

And that wasn’t the scary part.

Its eyes gleamed with an inner fire, an orange-red glow-and immediately above the first set of eyes another set, this one blazing with sickly green luminescence, blinked and focused independently of the first pair. A sigil of angelic script burned against the chitin of the insect-thing’s forehead.

I suddenly wished, very much, that my staff weren’t twenty feet away and down a flight of stairs. It might as well have been on the moon, for all the good it was going to do me.

No sooner had that thought come out than the Knight of the Blackened Denarius opened its insectoid maw, let out a brassy wail of rage, and bounded at my face.