Changes (31 page)

“Um, right,” I said. “But I’d feel better if she had some Kevlar along or something. Just in case.”

“Glenmael,” said my godmother.

The chauffeur calmly drew a nine-millimeter, pointed it at Susan’s temples from point-blank range, and squeezed the trigger. The gun barked.

Susan jerked her head to one side and staggered, clapping one hand to her ear. “Ow!” she snarled, rising and turning on the young Sidhe. “You son of a bitch, those things are loud. That
hurt
. I ought to kick your ass up between your ears for you.”

In answer, the Sidhe bent with consummate grace and plucked something from the ground. He stood and showed it to Susan, and then to me.

It was a bullet. The nose was smashed in flat, until it vaguely resembled a small mushroom.

Our eyes got kind of wide.

Lea spread her hands and said calmly, “Faerie godmother.”

I shook my head, stunned. It had taken me years to design, create, and improve my leather duster’s defensive spells, and even then, the protection extended only as far as the actual leather. Lea had whipped up a whole-body protective enchantment in
minutes
.

I suddenly felt a bit more humble. It was probably good for me.

But then I tilted my head, frowning. The power involved in my godmother’s gifts was incredible—but the universe just doesn’t seem to be willing to give you something for nothing. That was as true in magic as it was in physics. I could, with years of effort, probably duplicate what Lea’s gifts could do. The Sidhe worked with the same magic I did, though admittedly they seemed to have a very different sort of relationship. Still, that much power all in one spot meant that the energy cost for it was being paid elsewhere.

Like maybe in longevity.

“Godmother,” I asked, “how long will these gifts endure?”

Her smile turned a little sad. “Ah, child. I am a faerie godmother, am I not? Such things are not meant to last.”

“Don’t tell me midnight,” I said.

“Of course not. I am not part of Summer.” She sniffed, rather scornfully. “Noon.”

And that made more sense. My duster’s spells lasted for months, and I thought I’d worked out how to make them run for more than a year the next time I laid them down. Lea’s gifts involved the same kind of power output, created seemingly without toil—but they wouldn’t last like the things I created would. My self-image recovered a little.

“Lea,” I asked, “did you bring my bag?”

Glenmael opened the trunk and brought it over to me. The Swords in their scabbards were still strapped to the bag’s side. I picked it up and nodded. “Thanks.”

He bowed, smiling. I was tempted to tip him, just to see what would happen, but then I remembered that my wallet had been in my blue jeans, and was now, presumably, part of the new outfit. Maybe it would reappear at noon tomorrow—assuming I was alive to need it, I mean.

“I will wait here,” Lea said. “When you are ready to travel to the first Way, Glenmael will take us there.”

“Right,” I said. “Let’s go, princess.”

“Of course, Sir Knight,” Susan said, her eyes sparkling, and we went into the church.

39

Sanya was guarding the door. He swung it open wide for us, and studied Susan with a grin of appreciation. “There are some days,” he said, “when I just love this job.”

“Come on,” I said, walking past him. “We don’t have much time.”

Sanya literally clicked his heels together, took Susan’s hand, and kissed the back of it gallantly, the big stupidhead. “You are beyond lovely, lady.”

“Thank you,” Susan said, smiling. “But we don’t have much time.”

I rolled my eyes and kept walking.

There was a quiet conversation going in the living room. It stopped as I came through the door. I paused there for a second, and looked around at everyone who was going to help me get my daughter back.

Molly was dressed in her battle coat, which consisted of a shirt of tightly woven metal links, fashioned by her mother out of titanium wire. The mail was then sandwiched between two long Kevlar vests. All of that was, in turn, fixed to one of several outer garments, and in this case she was wearing a medium-brown fireman’s coat. Her hair was braided tightly against the back of her head—and back to its natural honey brown color—and a hockey helmet sat on a table near her. She had half a dozen little focus items I’d shown her how to create, none of which were precisely intended for a fight. Her face was a little pale, and her blue eyes were earnest.

Mouse sat next to her, huge and stolid, and rose to his feet and padded over to give me a subdued greeting as I came in. I knelt down and roughed up his ears for a moment. He wagged his tail, but made no more display than that, and his serious brown eyes told me that he knew the situation was grave.

Next came Martin, dressed in simple black BDU pants, a longsleeved black shirt, and a tactical vest, all of which could have been purchased from any military surplus or gun store. He was in the midst of cleaning and inspecting two sets of weapons: assault rifles, tactical shotguns, and heavy pistols. He wore a machete in a scabbard on his belt. A second such weapon rested in a nylon sheath on the table, next to a blade-sharpening tool kit. He never looked up at me, or stopped reassembling the pistol he’d finished cleaning.

A small chess set had been set up on the other end of the coffee table from Molly, next to Martin’s war gear. My brother sat there, with Martin (and, once he had finished greeting me, Mouse) between himself and the girl. He was wearing expensive-looking silk pants and a leather vest, both white. A gun belt bearing a large-caliber handgun and a sword with an inward-curving blade, an old Spanish falcata, hung over the corner of the couch, casually discarded. He lay lazily back on the couch, his eyes mostly closed, watching the move of his opponent.

Murphy was decked out in black tactical gear much like Martin’s, but more worn and better fitting. They don’t generally make gear for people Murph’s size, so she couldn’t shop off the shelf very often. She did have her own vest of Kevlar and mail, which Charity had made for her for Christmas the previous year, in thanks for the occasions when Murphy had gone out on a limb for them, but Murph had just stuck the compound armor to her tac vest and been done. She wore her automatic on her hip, and her odd-looking, rectangular little submachine gun, the one that always made me think of a box of chocolates, was leaned against the wall nearby. Murph was hunched over the chessboard, her nose wrinkled as she thought, and moved one of her knights into a thicket of enemy pieces before she turned to me.

She took one look at me and burst out giggling.

That was enough to set off everyone in the room except Martin, who never seemed to realize that there were other people there. Molly’s titters set off Thomas, and even Mouse dropped his jaws open in a doggy grin.

“Hah, hah, hah,” I said, coming into the room, so that Susan and Sanya could join us. No one laughed at Susan’s outfit. I felt that the injustice of that was somehow emblematic of the unfairness in my life, but I didn’t have time to chase that thought down and feed it rhetoric until the lightbulb over my head lit up.

“Well,” Murphy said, as the laughter died away. “I’m glad you got out all right. Went shopping after, did you?”

“Not so much,” I said. “Okay, listen up, folks. Time is short. What else did we manage to find out about the site?”

Murphy told Thomas, “Mate in six,” took a file folder from beneath her chair, and passed it to me.

“You wish,” Thomas drawled lazily.

I eyed him and opened the folder. There were multiple pages inside, color aerial and satellite photos of the ruins.

“Good grief,” I said. “How did you get these?”

“Internet,” Murphy said calmly. “We’ve got an idea of where they’re setting up and what security measures they’ll need to take, but before we can talk about an approach, we need to know where we’re going to arrive.”

I stroked a thumb over my mother’s gem and consulted the knowledge stored there. Then I went through the maps until I found one of the proper scale, picked up a pen from the table, and drew an X on the map. “Here. It’s about five miles north of the pyramid.”

Thomas whistled quietly.

“What?” I asked him. “You can’t do five miles?”

“Five miles of sidewalk, sure,” Thomas said. “Five miles of jungle is a bit different, Dresden.”

“He’s right,” Martin said. “And at night, too.”

Thomas spread his hands.

“Have done a little jungle,” Sanya said, coming over to study the map. “How bad is the bush there?”

“Tougher than the lower Amazon, not as bad as Cambodia,” Martin said calmly.

Sanya grunted. Thomas wrinkled his nose in distaste. I tried to pretend that Martin had given me some kind of tangible information, and idly wondered if Thomas and Sanya were doing the same thing as me.

“How long, Martin?” I asked him.

“Two hours, bare minimum. Could be more, depending.”

I grunted. Then I said, “We’ll see if Lea can’t do something to help us along.”

The room went still.

“Um,” Murphy said. “Your psycho faerie godmother? That Lea?”

“Harry, you told me she was dangerous,” Molly said.

“And I still have the scar to prove it,” Thomas added.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “She’s powerful and by any reasonable standard she’s insane and she’s currently pointed in the direction of our enemy. So we’re going to use her.”

“We’re using her, are we?” Sanya asked, grinning.

“He told us what Toot said about Mab, Harry,” Molly said softly.

There was a long stretch of quiet.

“You made a deal,” Murphy said.

“Yeah, I did. For Maggie, I did.” I looked around the room. “I’m me until this is all over. That was part of the deal. But if there’s anyone here who wants to bail on me and Susan, do it now. Otherwise, feel free to keep your mouth closed about the subject. My daughter doesn’t have time for us to debate the ethics of a choice that isn’t any of your goddamned business anyway.”

I looked around the room and Sanya said, “I am going. Who else goes with us?”

Mouse sneezed.

“I figured that,” I told him.

He wagged his tail.

“Me, obviously,” Martin said.

Murphy nodded. Molly did, too. Then Thomas rolled his eyes.

“Good,” I said. “Lea will probably have something to speed the trip,” I said.

“She’d better,” Thomas said. “Time’s short.”

“We will be there in time,” Sanya said confidently.

I nodded. Then I said, “And I have a favor to ask two of you.”

I put the bag down and pulled
Fidelacchius
from where I’d tied it. The ancient katana-style Sword had a smooth wooden handle that perfectly matched the wood of its sheath, so that when the weapon was sheathed it looked innocuous, appearing to be a slightly curved, sturdy stick of a good size to carry while walking. The blade was razor-sharp. I had dropped a plastic drinking straw across it as an experiment once. The rate of fall had been all the exquisite weapon had needed to slice the straw neatly in half.

“Karrin,” I said, and held out the Sword.

Sanya’s eyebrows climbed toward the roof.

“I’ve . . . been offered that Sword before, Harry,” she said quietly. “Nothing’s changed since then.”

“I’m not asking you to take up the mantle of a Knight,” I said quietly. “I want to entrust it to you for this night, for this purpose. This sword was made to fight darkness, and there’s going to be plenty to go around. Take it up. Just until my girl is safe.”

Murphy frowned. She looked at Sanya and said, “Can he do this?”

“Can you?” Sanya asked, looking at me.

“I was entrusted as the Sword’s guardian,” I said calmly. “Exactly what am I supposed to do with it if it is
not
my place to choose the Sword’s bearer to the best of my ability?”

Sanya considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “Seems implicit to me. They gave you the power of choice when they entrusted you with the Swords. One of those things they seem to tell you without ever actually saying anything that sounds remotely related.”

I nodded. “Murph. Used for the right reasons, in good faith, the Sword is in no danger. You’re the only one who can know if you’re doing it for the right reasons. But I’m begging you. Take it. Help me save my daughter, Karrin. Please.”

Murphy sighed. “You don’t play fair, Harry.”

“Not for one second,” I said. “Not for something like this.”

Murphy was quiet for a moment more. Then she stood up and walked to me. She took the Sword from my hand. There was an old cloth strap fixed to the sheath, so that the weapon could be carried over one shoulder or diagonally across the back. Murphy slipped the weapon on and said, “I’ll carry it. If it seems right to me, I’ll use it.”

“That’s all I can ask for,” I said.

Then I picked up
Amoracchius
, a European long Sword with a crusader-style hilt and a simple, wire-wrapped handle.

And I turned to Susan.

She stared at me and then shook her head slowly. “The last time I touched one of those things,” she said, “it burned me so bad I could still feel it three months later.”

“That was then,” I said. “This is now. You’re doing what you’re doing because you love your daughter. If you stay focused on that, this Sword will never do you harm.” I turned the hilt to her. “Put your hand on it.”

Susan did so slowly, almost as if against her will. She hesitated at the last moment. Then her fingers closed on the blade’s handle.

And that was all. Nothing happened.

“Swear to harm no innocents,” I said quietly. “Swear to use it in good faith, to return your daughter safely home. Swear that you will safeguard the Sword and return it faithfully when that task is done. And I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to wield it.”

She met my eyes and nodded. “I swear.”

I nodded in reply and took my hands from the weapon. Susan drew it slightly from its sheath. Its edge gleamed, and its steel was polished as smooth and bright as a mirror. And when she moved to buckle it to her belt, the Sword fit there as if made for it.

My godmother was probably going to feel very smug about that.

“I hope that the Almighty will not feel slighted if I carry more, ah, innovative weaponry as well,” Susan said. She crossed to the table, slid one of Martin’s revolvers into her holster, and after a moment picked up the assault rifle.

Sanya stepped forward as well, and took the tactical shotgun with its collapsible shoulder stock. “If He exists, He has never given me any grief about it,” he said cheerfully. “
Da
. This is going very well already.”

Thomas barked out a laugh. “There are
seven
of us against the Red King and his thirteen most powerful nobles, and it’s going well?”

Mouse sneezed.

“Eight,” Thomas corrected himself. He rolled his eyes and said, “And the psycho death faerie makes it nine.”

“It is like movie,” Sanya said, nodding. “Dibs on Legolas.”

“Are you kidding?” Thomas said. “I’m obviously Legolas. You’re . . .” He squinted thoughtfully at Sanya and then at Martin. “Well. He’s Boromir and you’re clearly Aragorn.”

“Martin is so dour, he is more like Gimli.” Sanya pointed at Susan. “Her sword is much more like Aragorn’s.”

“Aragorn wishes he looked that good,” countered Thomas.

“What about Karrin?” Sanya asked.

“What—for Gimli?” Thomas mused. “She
is
fairly—”

“Finish that sentence, Raith, and we throw down,” said Murphy in a calm, level voice.

“Tough,” Thomas said, his expression aggrieved. “I was going to say ‘tough.’ ”

Martin had gotten up during the discussion. He came over to me and studied the map I’d marked. Then he nodded. As the discussion went on—with Molly’s sponsorship, Mouse was lobbying to claim Gimli on the basis of being the shortest, the stoutest, and the hairiest—Martin explained what they knew of the security measures around the ruins.

“That’s why we’re going in here,” he said, pointing to the eastern-most point of the ruins, where rows and rows and rows of great columns stood. Once, they had held up some kind of roof over a complex attached to the great temple. “Now,” Martin continued, “the jungle has swallowed the eastern end of it. They’re only using torchlight, so movement through the galleries should be possible. There will be considerable shadow to move through.”

“Means they’ll have guards there,” I said.

“True. We’ll have to silence them. It can be done. If we can move fully through the galleries, we’ll be within two hundred feet of the base of the temple. That’s where we think they’ll be performing the ritual. In the temple.”

“Plenty of temples got built on top of ley line confluences,” I said, nodding. I studied the map. “A lot can happen in two hundred feet,” I said. “Even moving fast.”

Martin nodded. “Yes, it can. And, if our various intelligence sources are correct, there are more than a thousand individuals nearby.”

“A thousand vampires?” I asked.

Martin shrugged. “Many. Many will be their personal guards. Others, the . . . highest-ranking servants, I suppose you would call them. They are like Susan and myself. There may also be mortal foot soldiers, there to keep the sacrifices in line.”