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“That’s called pain. Let me give you a lesson.” “Lady,” Molly panted, “did you pick the wrong part of my life in which to mess with me.”
My drifting, dream-slow advance had finally gotten me close enough. With sluggish and agonizing grace, I stretched out one hand… …and caught the Corpsetaker’s ankle as she slithered into my apprentice. I settled my grip grimly and felt myself pulled forward, into the havoc of the war for Molly’s body, mind, and soul.
She and Molly were locked together tight. The soulgaze had probably played a part in that. Neither was letting go until her opponent was dead.
“There are two kinds of people in the universe, Molly,” I said. “Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. This is shocking.” She sniffed. “This is the post-nerd-closet world, Harry. It’s okay to like both.” “Blasphemy and lies,” I said.
From outside, there was a long scream. An enormous one. Like, Godzilla-sized, or maybe bigger. Everyone on the bridge froze. A brass section from nowhere played an ominous sting: bahm-pahhhhhhhhhhm. “You’re kidding,” I said, looking around. “A sound track?” “I don’t mean to,” Ensign Molly said in a strained, teenager tone. She had a Russian accent that sounded exactly like Sanya. “I watched show too much when I was kid, okay?”
You ever get that feeling you’re standing in a room full of crazy people? I got that feeling. It isn’t a very nice feeling.
All I could do was… …was use my freaking brain. Duh.
Science Molly screamed back, and swung a fist into Captain Molly’s stomach. Music started playing. Loud. High-pitched. Strident. Most would recognize it.
I turned to Ensign Molly and said, “Dammit, do something!” “There’s nothing I can do,” she said, her eyes uncertain and full of sadness. “They’ve been like that ever since they killed you.” I stared at Molly and felt my mouth fall open. Time stopped. The door. The old wooden door. The cabinet where Molly had kept her suicide device. I turned toward them. My godmother’s voice echoed in my head. You are currently freed of the shackles of mortality. Your limited brain no longer impedes access to that record. The only blocks to your memory are those you allow to be. I remembered the door. The
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“Sanya,” Molly said, putting a hand on his arm. “Thank you.” He gave her a wide grin. “Perhaps it was just a coincidence I arrived when I did.” Molly rolled her eyes and gave him a faint shove toward the door.
I’d been insufficient to the challenge, and she was going to die because of it. I broke, right there. I just broke. The task given to me had been more than I could bear. And what followed would be nothing but torturous regret. I’d failed my own child. My chest convulsed, I made a sound, and my eyes filled until I couldn’t see.
I drew a deep breath. “Kid. I’ve got to cross a line.”
“I’m sorry. That I wasn’t here longer. That it couldn’t be more than it was.” “You never did anything wrong by me, Harry,” she said. She lifted her chin and met my eyes again. “This isn’t about me, though, is it? It’s about Maggie.” She nodded, and I saw steel enter her spine. “So of course I’ll help you.”
This is my choice, Molls.” She turned to go and paused. “You’ve never called me Molls before today.” “Was saving it,” I said. “For when you weren’t my apprentice anymore. Wanted to try it out.” She smiled at me. She shed one more tear. Then she left.
“There’s a good reason,” I said. “Yeah?” “There’s a little girl.” More silence.
God, that poor kid. Molly. I’d never wanted to cause her pain. She’d been a willing accomplice, and she’d done it with her eyes open—but, God, I wished it hadn’t had to happen to her. She was hurting so much, and now I could see why—and I could see why the madness she was feigning might be a great deal more genuine than she realized.
He was my brother. He’d deserved more than I’d given him. That was why I hadn’t thought of him, not once since returning to Chicago.
Uriel. I should have known from the outset. Uriel is the archangel who most people know little about. Most don’t even know his name—and apparently he likes it that way. If Gabriel is an ambassador, if Michael is a general, if Rafael is a healer and spiritual champion, then Uriel is a spymaster—Heaven’s spook.
“You had to understand.” I eyed him and said wearily, “Epic. Fail. Because I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Uriel tilted back his head and laughed. “This is one of those things that was about the journey, not the destination.” I shook my head. “You…you lost me.” “On the contrary, Harry: You found yourself.”
“I have a great deal of work to do. I recruit those willing to help me.” “What work?” I asked. “The same work as I ever have done,” Uriel said. “I and my colleagues labor to ensure freedom.” “Freedom of what?” I asked. “Of will. Of choice. The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them. It is my duty, my purpose in Creation, to protect and nourish that meaning.”
I frowned at him, then said, with dawning comprehension, “Lies.” The archangel turned, his eyebrows lifted, as though I were a somewhat dim student who had surprised his teacher with an insightful answer. “Yes. Precisely. When a lie is believed, it compromises the freedom of your will.”
Uriel looked at me and smiled faintly. “It added enough anger, enough self-recrimination, enough guilt, and enough despair to your deliberations to make you decide that destroying yourself was the only option left to you. It took your freedom away.” His eyes hardened again. “I attempt to discourage that sort of thing where possible. When I cannot, I am allowed to balance the scales.”
“Collin, our purpose is to defend freedom—not to decide how it should be used.” “Everything I told him was technically true, more or less, and I got the job done,” Jack said stubbornly. “Look, sir, if I were perfect, I wouldn’t be working here in the first place. Now, would I?” And then he hung up. On speakerphone. On a freaking archangel.
“I am saying that you cannot escape the consequences of your choices,” he said.
He shook his head sadly. “Things might be different now.” And, as if on cue, Mortimer Lindquist, ectomancer, limped out of the lower hallway and into the electrical-junction room, with Sir Stuart’s shade at his right hand.
“But it seems to me, you half-wit, that you probably shouldn’t have left a freaking ectomancer a pit full of wraiths to play with.”
They rode on a wave of Mort’s power and no longer drifted with lazy, disconnected grace. Now they came forth like rushing storm clouds, like racing wolves, like hungry sharks, a tide of mindless destruction. I saw Molly’s eyes widen and the pulsing spiritual mass that was the Corpsetaker began to pull away from the young woman. My apprentice didn’t let her.
The train swept her straight up into the air—and then reversed itself and slammed her down, into the earth. I saw her try to scream. But all I heard was the blaring howl of the horn of a southbound train. And then she was gone. “You’re right,” Uriel said, his tone filled with a chill satisfaction. “Someone needed to do something.” He glanced aside at me, gave me a slight bow of his head, and said, “Well-done.”
Molly closed her eyes and began to cry quietly. “I got her, boss,” Molly said quietly. “We got her. And I’m still here. Still me. Thank you.” “She’s thanking me,” I said quietly. “For that.” “And much more,” Uriel said. “She still has her life. Her future. Her freedom. You did save her, you know. The idea to have her call to Mortimer in the closing moments of the psychic battle was inspired.”
“Wow,” Butters slurred as he opened his eyes. He looked back and forth between the two werewolf girls. “Subtract the horrible pain in my chest, this migraine, and all the mold and mildew, and I’m living the dream.” Then he passed out.
Murphy’s face…just crumpled. Her eyes overflowed and she bowed her head. Her body shook in silence. Mort chewed on his lip for a moment, then glanced at the cops on the scene. He didn’t say anything else to Murphy or try to touch her—but he did put himself between her and everyone else, so that no one would see her crying. Damn. I wished I’d been bright enough to see what kind of guy Morty was while I was still alive.
He added, in a softer voice, “What the naagloshii did to him was not your fault.” “I know that,” I said, not very passionately.
“More guardian angels,” I said. “Michael Carpenter has more than earned them,” Uriel said, his voice warm. “As has his family.” I looked sharply at Uriel. “She’s…she’s here?” “Forthill wanted to find the safest home in which he could possibly place your daughter, Dresden,” Uriel said. “All in all, I don’t think he could have done much better.”
I wept openly as my dog all but bounced at me. He was obviously joyous and just as obviously trying to mute his delight—but his tail thumped loudly against everything in the room, and puppyish sounds of pleasure came from his throat as he slobbered on my face, giving me kisses. I sank my fingers into his fur and found it warm and solid and real, and I scratched him and hugged him and told him what a good dog he was.
Maggie Dresden was a dark-haired, dark-eyed child, which had been all but inevitable given her parents’ coloring. Her skin tone was a bit darker than mine, which I thought looked healthier than my skin ever had. I got kind of pasty, what with all the time in my lab and reading and running around after dark. Her features were…well, perfect. Beautiful.
“Temple dogs have been known to live for centuries,” he replied. “Your friend is more than capable of protecting her for a lifetime—even a wizard’s lifetime, if need be.”
Uriel regarded me pleasantly. He said nothing. A lot.
Uriel’s smile blossomed again. “You’ve got it backward, Harry,” he said. “You are a soul. You have a body.” I blinked at that. It was something to think about. “Mr. Sunshine, it has been a dubious and confusing pleasure.” “Harry,” he said, shaking my hand. “I feel the same way.”
Given the way my life has typically progressed, I probably should have guessed that What Came Next was pain. A whole lot of pain.
“Excellent,” rasped the voice. “I told you he had strength enough.” My thoughts resonated abruptly with another voice, one that had no point of contact with my ears: WE WILL SEE. What had my godmother said at my grave? That it was all about respect and… …and proxies.
What the hell kind of Hell was this supposed to be?
I looked up still farther…and found myself staring into the face of Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, the veritable mother of wicked faeries herself.
Mab tilted back her head and cackled. It was a dull, brittle sound, like the edge of a rusted knife. “No,” she said. “Alas, no, my knight. No, you have not escaped. I have far too much work for your hand to allow that. Not yet.”
“Fear not, ancient thing. Your custodian lives.” I turned my head slowly the other way. After a subjective century, I was able to see the other figure in the cave. It was enormous, a being that had to crouch not to bump its head on the ceiling. It was, more or less, human in form—but I could see little of that form. It was almost entirely concealed in a vast cloak of dark green, with shadows hiding whatever lay beneath it. The cloak’s hood covered its head, but I could see tiny green fires, like small, flickering clouds of fireflies, burning within the hood’s shadowed depth. Demonreach. The
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We’d…sort of had an arrangement, made a couple of years back. And I was beginning to think that maybe I hadn’t fully understood the extent of that arrangement.
“Long have this old thing and I labored to keep your form alive, my knight,” Mab said. “Long have we kept flesh and bone and blood knit together and stirring, waiting for your spirit’s return.”
I blinked slowly, and again my lagging brain started catching up to me. Mab had me. I hadn’t escaped her. I hadn’t escaped what she could make me become. Oh, God.
vanished into the utter darkness.” I licked at my lips again. “Guess…you’re kind of upset with me….” “You attempted to cheat the Queen of Air and Darkness,” Mab hissed. “You practiced a vile, wicked deception upon me, my knight.” Her inhuman eyes glittered. “I expected no less of you. Were you not strong enough to cast such defiance into my teeth, you would be useless to my purposes.” Her smile widened. “To our purposes now.”
And a voice—a very calm, very gentle, very rational voice whispered in my ear, “Lies. Mab cannot change who you are.”
And do you know what that will give you, my queen?” Her eyes burned. “What?” I felt my own smile widen. “A mediocre knight,” I said. “And mediocrity, my queen, is a terrible, terrible fate.”
