Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)

by Jim Butcher

I shook my head, put my tools away, and then the ice just beneath my toes shattered and a long, bony arm, covered in wrinkles and warts and spots, and belonging to a body that would have been at least twenty feet tall, shot up and seized my head. Not my face. My entire head, like a softball. Or maybe an apple. Stained black claws on the ends of the knobby fingers dug into me, piercing my skin, and I was abruptly jerked down into the freaking ice with so much power that for a second I was terrified my neck had snapped.

“Tragedy,” said Mother Winter in a purr that made me think of rasping scorpions. “Pain? Terror? Sorrow? Why should I wish to prevent such a thing? It is sweeter than an infant’s marrow.” It is a good thing I am a fearless and intrepid wizardly type, or that last bit of sentence would have set my flesh to crawling hard enough to carry me across the dirt floor.

“So,” she whispered a moment later. “You have finally come to see what has been before you all this time.”

“Mab,” said Mother Winter in a tone of pure disgust, “is too much the romantic.” Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Mother Winter, right there.

“Ah, yes. I see,” Mother Summer said. “So many new futures unwinding.” “Too many bright ones,” Mother Winter said sullenly. “Even you must think better that than empty night.” Mother Winter spit to one side.

The writing on the cracked pot said simply, Wormwood. The letters began to fade, but I saw some of the others: Typhos. Pox. Atermors. Choleros. Malaros. Typhus. Smallpox. The Black Death. Cholera. Malaria. And Wormwood. And there were lots of other jars on the shelf. My hands started shaking a little. “It is not yet the appointed time for that one to be born,” Mother Summer said quietly, and her hard eyes flicked toward Mother Winter.

“If you choose to walk with me, what is seen cannot be unseen, and what is known cannot be unknown. It may harm you.” “Harm me how?” I asked. “You may never know a night’s peace again. Knowledge is power, young man. Power to do good and power to do harm. Some knowledge can hurt. Some can kill.” “What happens if I don’t have it?” Mother Summer smiled, a gentle sadness in her eyes. “You keep the bliss of ignorance—and

“It’s better to know than not know,” I said quietly. “Why?” Mother Summer challenged. “Because you can’t truly make a choice without knowledge, ma’am.” “Even if it may haunt you? Harm you? Isolate you?” I thought about it some more and then said, “Especially then. Show me.” An emotion flickered across Mother Summer’s face—gentle pain and regret. “So be it,” she said quietly. “Come with me.”

We stood atop a small, barren mountain, looking down. Near us, only a few hundred yards away, was an immense wall, the kind you’d use to hold out the Mongols if they were the size of King Kong. It was built entirely from ice or some kind of translucent crystal. Even from here, I could see that there were chambers and rooms in the wall, rooms containing barracks, hospitals, kitchens, you name it. There were dim and indistinct forms moving around in them. The walls were lined with what had to be tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers. I peered, trying to get a better look, and then realized that they were armored Sidhe. All of them.

Though the land was somehow lit, the sky was as black as Cat Sith’s conscience, without a single star or speck of light to be seen—and it was an overwhelming sky, enormous, like in the open, rolling lands of Montana and Wyoming.

“Holy . . . Outsiders? Mab’s fighting Outsiders?”

My senses and mind alike simply could not process everything I was seeing. But my heart was beating very swiftly, and frozen fear had touched my spine like Mab’s fingers. The Outsiders wanted in.

“When?” I asked. “When did this start?” “Oh, Harry,” Mother Summer said gently. “What?” I asked. But I had noticed something. Those layers and mounds of shale? They weren’t shale. They were bones. Millions and millions and millions of fucktons of bones.

“What happens if they get in?” I asked. Mother Summer’s lips thinned. “Everything stops. Everything.”

“You’re telling me that this is why Mab has her power? To . . . to protect the borders?” “To protect all of you from the Outsiders, mortal.” “Then why does Titania have hers?” I asked. “To protect all of you from Mab.”

“This is a siege,” I said. “Those guys out there are attacking the walls. But there are others trying to dig their way in so that they can open the gates for their buddies. That’s what the adversary is. Right? A sapper, an infiltrator.” Mother Summer said, “There, you see? You possess the potential to be quite intelligent. Do stay beside me, dear.”

“Yes?” asked Mother Summer. “I was sort of expecting . . . something else.” “Winter and Summer are two opposing forces of our world,” she said. “But we are of our world. Here, that is all that matters. And showing respect to one’s elders is never unwise.” “Yes, ma’am,” I said. Mother Summer gave me a small, shrewd smile.

“Rashid,” I murmured, recognizing the man. “What is he doing here—” I froze and stared up at the massive gates rising above us. Rashid, a member of the Senior Council of the White Council of Wizards, had another title, the name he went by most often. The Gatekeeper.

The other had been replaced with . . . I looked around me. Yes, definitely. The other eye had been replaced with the crystalline material that was identical to that which had been used to create the gates and the walls around them.

“Excellent. I was certain your particular pursuits would get you killed long before you got a chance to learn.” “How can I help?” I asked him. He leaned his head back and then a slow smile reasserted itself on his face. “I know something of the responsibilities you’ve chosen to take up,” he said, “to say nothing of the problems you’ve created for yourself that you haven’t found out about yet. And still, in the face of learning that our world spins out its days under siege, you offer to help me? I think you and I could be friends.”

“Hell’s bells. The gates . . . they’re . . . some kind of spiritual CAT scanner?” “Among many other things,” he said. “But it’s one of their functions, yes. Mostly it means that the adversary cannot use such tactics effectively here. As long as the Gatekeeper is vigilant, it rarely tries.”

“This,” I said, pointing up at the gates. “What the hell? How long has this attack been going on?” “Always,” he said.

Rashid studied my face and then started to nod. “I see. There are things happening back in Winter. That’s why Mother Summer brought you here. To show you what was at stake.”

“Pep? What is needed in the Warden is far more than pep, Harry.” “What, then?” I asked. He took up his staff and poked my chest with it gently. “You, it would seem.” “What?” “You,” he repeated firmly. “What we need is you. You have what you have for a reason. Unwitting or not, virtually your every action in the past few years has resulted in a series of well-placed thumbs in the adversary’s eye. You want to know how you can help me, Harry?” “Engh,” I said, frustrated. “Yeah.” “Go back to Chicago,” he said, turning away, “and keep being yourself.”

“I will do what I can. If we both survive the next several hours, I will settle matters between you and the Council, which knows only as much about our roles as it needs to—and that isn’t much. I will verify your return and that you are indeed yourself, and will see to it that your back pay as one of the Wardens is forwarded to you. There’s some paperwork to fill out to get the Council’s office to reestablish your official identity with the government, but I’ll see to it that it happens. I think I remember all the necessary forms.” I stared at him for a second and said, “You’ll . . . you’ll help me with White Council paperwork.” He held up a finger. “Do not underestimate the depth of this favor,” he said soberly, but his eye was twinkling.

“You don’t need help, Warden. You are the help.” “We’re in trouble,” I said. He winked at me, restored his hood to its usual position, and said, “We always are. The only difference is, now you know it. God be with you, my friend. I will cover this end. You see to yours.”

And that’s when it hit me. I mean, when it really, really hit me. It was up to me. There wasn’t a backup plan. There wasn’t a second option. There wasn’t any cavalry coming over the hill.

I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they’re communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they’re actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person’s body language.

When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we’re having a conversation. Singular. We’re paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been going on for the last several thousand years? I didn’t even know that they existed until I read that stupid article, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.

So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it’s tempting to think to yourself, “The man can’t possibly be that stupid!” But yes. Yes, he can.

We are the mighty hunters, who are good at focusing on one thing at a time. For crying out loud, we have to turn down the radio in the car if we suspect we’re lost and need to figure out how to get where we’re going. That’s how impaired we are. I’m telling you, we have only the one conversation.

I could indulge my self-pity after I’d taken care of business. Scratch that. After I’d taken care of bidness.

Lacuna peered at my shirt. “Aer-O-Smith. Arrowsmith. Does the shirt belong to your weapon dealer?” “No.” “Then why do you wear the shirt of someone else’s weapon dealer?”

“You have a visitor, my lord.” I frowned. “What?” “That is why I came in here. You have a visitor waiting for you.” I stood up, exasperated. “Why didn’t you say so?” Lacuna looked confused. “I did. Just now. You were there.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps you have brain damage.” “It would not shock me in the least,” I said.

“I’m going to use them to track him down and thwart him.” “Thwart?” Sarissa asked. “Thwart,” I said. “To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person.”

Okay, I’m not like a car fanatic or anything—but the guitar riff from “Bad to the Bone” started playing in my head.

“What are the terms of your alliance?” I asked, walking around the car toward the driver side. “I get the apartment,” Molly said. “I mean, it’s mine. I own it. They handle any maintenance for the next fifty years, and as long as I’m on their property, they consider me to be a citizen of their nation, with all the rights and privileges that entails.” I whistled as we got in and shut the doors. “And what did you give them for that?” “Their honor. And there might have been this bomb problem I handled for them.”

But mostly, I couldn’t do it because Molly had been crushing on me since she was about fourteen years old. She was in love with me, or at least thought she was—and I didn’t feel it back. It wouldn’t be fair to her to rip her heart out that way. And I would never, ever forgive myself for hurting her.

Then the storm door flew open and something grey and shaggy and enormous shot out onto the porch. It cleared the porch railing in a single bound, hurtled across the ground and the little picket fence, and hit me in the chest like a battering ram. My dog, Mouse, is a temple dog of Tibet, a Foo dog of a powerful supernatural bloodline, though he could have passed for an exceptionally large Tibetan mastiff.

“I need your help, boy,” I said. “Bad guys took Butters, Andi, and Justine.” Mouse shook his head vigorously and half sneezed. “Mouse thinks Andi should be locked in the garage at night, until she learns not to get abducted.” “Once we get her back, we’ll start calling her Danger-prone Daphne,” I promised him.

You in, Scoob?” In answer, Mouse hurried to the street, looked both ways, then crossed it to sit down at the back door of the Munstermobile. Then he looked at me, as if asking me why I wasn’t opening it for him. “Of course he’s in,” Molly translated, smiling. “Good thing you’re here,” I said. “He’s tough to read.”

If I lived through the next day or so, I needed to start keeping track of where these jokers liked to get their bloodthirsty freak on. It might give me an edge someday. Or at least a list of places that could use a nice burning down. I hadn’t burned down a building in ages.

There was a gated area in front of the main entryway, though the gate had been blasted off its hinges by some deranged ruffian who did not look like me, no matter what the witnesses said, and apparently no one had replaced it since.

Mac didn’t. That was interesting. Why hadn’t Mac been tied up? Or if he had, how come there wasn’t a mark to show for it? Either way, that was odd.

“Stars and stones,” I breathed. “That’s what’s happening here.” Karrin blinked up at me several times. “Excuse me?” I kept thinking about it, following the logic. “That’s why Mab sent me to kill Maeve. She’s no different from Titania. She knew it needed to be done but . . .” “But what?” Karrin asked. “Maeve is still her little girl,” I said quietly. “Mab isn’t human, but there are . . . remnants in all the Sidhe. Mother Winter called Mab a romantic. I think this is why. Mother Summer went on and on about how humans have influenced the Sidhe. That’s what this whole thing is about.” “I don’t understand,” Karrin said. “Mab loves her daughter,” I said simply. “She won’t kill Maeve because she loves her.” I

The Munstermobile had . . . Had been sabotaged. With gum and superglue. It was a trick I’d had Toot and company play on others more than once. And now what I had done unto others had been done unto me at the damnedest moment imaginable. “Aggggh!” I screamed. “I hate ironic reversal!”

As if they’d been waiting for an opening away from so many prying eyes, the Wild Hunt swept down on us like a falcon diving onto a rabbit. But they were not attacking a rabbit. They were attacking a wabbit. A wascally wabbit. A wascally wabbit with a Winchester.

I got a look at the armor beneath the mask, and a portion of his face, and realized with renewed terror that I’d just put a bullet into the Erlking. And an instant later I realized with a surge of incandescent hope that I’d just put a bullet into the Erlking on Halloween night.

Now for the dangerous part, I thought. Which made me start giggling. Now it was getting dangerous.

“Join, hide, or die,” I growled. “Those are your options when the Wild Hunt comes for you.” Kringle narrowed his eyes. “Everyone knows that’s true.” “Not anymore it isn’t,” I growled. I got to my feet, slowly, and just as slowly I lowered the rifle. Then I extended a hand to Kringle. “Tonight, the Hunt is joining me.”