Changes (The Dresden Files, #12)

by Jim Butcher

Mac’s place looks like Cheers after a mild apocalypse. There are thirteen wooden pillars irregularly spaced around the room, holding up the roof. They’re all carved with scenes of Old World fairy tales, some of them amusing, more of them sinister. There are thirteen ceiling fans spinning lazily throughout the place, and the irregularly shaped, polished wooden bar has thirteen stools. There are thirteen tables in the room, placed in no specific pattern.

“Don’t know if I ever told you,” I said. “I was an orphan.” Mac watched me silently. “There were times when . . . when it was bad. When I wanted someone to come save me. I wished for it so hard. Dreaming of . . . of not being alone. And when someone finally did come, he turned out to be the biggest monster of all.” I shook my head. “I won’t let that happen to my child.”

He put my sandwich down in front of me. Then he took a bowl with some bones and some meat out to Mouse, along with a bowl of water. I ate my sandwich and idly noted that Mac never carried food out to anyone. Guess he was a dog person.

“I never understood why you didn’t move out of this musty little hole.” “Musty? Little? My home this is,” I said.

“Duchess Arianna of the Red Court found out about her, somehow, and had her taken. Do you know who she is?” “Yeah,” I said. I tried to ignore the way my blood had run cold at the mention of the name. “Duke Ortega’s widow. She’s sworn revenge upon me—and she once tried to buy me on eBay.”

Is there anything else you want to say?” I eyed the man and said, “You went blond. It makes you look sort of gay.” Martin shrugged, completely unperturbed. “My last assignment was on a cruise ship catering to that particular lifestyle.”

Where is everybody?” She blinked at me again, as though I had spoken in Ewok. “Why, they’re in the Senior Council’s residence hall. It was the only place big enough for everyone who wished to witness it.” I nodded pleasantly and tried to remain calm. “Witness what?” “The ambassador,” MacFee said, impatience touching her voice. She gestured at the switchboard. “You haven’t heard?” “Was sort of busy yesterday,” I said. “Heard what?” “Why, the Red Court, of course,” she said. “They’ve sent an ambassador plenipotentiary.” She beamed. “They want to change the cease-fire into a genuine peace. They’ve sent no less than Duchess Arianna Ortega to ask for terms.”

“I could take the bitch,” I growled. “There’s no way for us to know how old Arianna is,” she contradicted, “because humanity hasn’t had a written language for that long. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I pushed my empty glass away with my fingers and said, “I could take the prehistoric bitch.”

“In all probability the child is already dead, or else turned,” Langtry said. “And even if she still survives, we must face a cold truth: Uncounted billions now living and yet to be born will be saved if we stop the Red Court from feeding on humanity ever again.” His voice became even colder. “No one life, innocent or not, is worth more than that.” I said nothing for several long, silent seconds. Then I stood up. I faced the Merlin for a moment. I could feel the obdurate, adamant will that drove the man, and made his power the greatest well of mortal magic on the face of the earth. “You’ve got it backward, you know,” I told him quietly. “No life is worth more than that? No, Merlin. No life is worth less.” His expression never changed. But his fingers tightened slightly on his staff. His cold blue eyes touched lightly upon Molly, and then returned to me. The threat was plain to see. I leaned over close to his ear and whispered, “Go ahead, Arthur. Try it.” Then I straightened slowly away, letting every emotion and every thought drain out of my expression. The tension in the air was thick. No one moved. I could see Molly trembling where she sat. I nodded slowly at the Merlin.

“Your weapons, grasshopper,” I said in my Yoda voice. “You will not need them.” She frowned at me in annoyance and said, “You know, I believe it is possible to reference something other than Star Wars, boss.” I narrowed my eyes in Muppetly wisdom. “That is why you fail.” “That doesn’t even . . . Augh. It’s easier just to do it.” She stood up and held out her hand. I tossed her the keys to the Blue Beetle. “Come on, Mouse.”

I waited until the Beetle had started and pulled out to close the door. Then I picked up Martin’s printed pages, tugged aside the rug that covered the trapdoor in the living room floor, and descended into my laboratory. “My laboratory,” I said, experimentally, drawing out each syllable. “Why is it that saying it like that always makes me want to follow it with ‘mwoo-hah-hah-hah-hahhhhhh’?” “You were overexposed to Hammer films as a child?” chirped a cheerful voice from below.

“What did you say the trigger was, again?” “For something this dark?” Bob asked. “Only one thing’ll do.” I felt myself freeze. My coffeeless gorge began to rise. “Human sacrifice,” the skull chirped brightly. “The slaughter of an innocent.”

“Son of a bitch,” I snarled. “I am going to throw Rudolph halfway across Lake Michigan and see if the slimy little turd floats.” “I’ll bring the lead weights,” Murphy said.

“I’m not worried about just you. You’ve got at least one gun stashed here, and I’m betting there’s more illegal material in the lab. If they like you for a suspect, they’ll get a warrant. And the FBI, as far as I know, doesn’t have any amulets to get them in here alive.” I groaned aloud. Murph was right. I had a couple of illegal weapons in my apartment. The Swords were still in the lab, too. Plus some miscellaneous material that the government probably wouldn’t want me owning, including depleted uranium dust, for when the answer to “Who you gonna call?” turns out to be “Harry Dresden.”

Then she said, very gently, “You’re a good man, Harry.” I swallowed and bowed my head, made humble by the tone of her voice and the expression on her face, more than the words themselves. “Not always rational,” she said, smiling. “But you’re the best kind of crazy.” “Thank you, Karrin.”

“Of course, now we’re trapped,” Bob noted. “And that wall is going to run out of juice soon. You can keep chopping them up for a while. Then they’ll eat you.” “Nah,” I said, panting. “We’re in this together. We’ll both get eaten.” “Ah,” Bob said. “You’d better open a Way back to Chicago, then.” “Back to my apartment?” I demanded. “The FBI is there just waiting to slap cuffs onto me.” “Then I guess you shouldn’t have become a terrorist, Harry!” “Hey! I never—” Bob raised his voice and shouted toward the centipedes, “I’m not with him!”

“Hey. How did you know where to find me?” “I let Mouse drive.” Thump, thump, thump. I was tired. It took my brain a second to sort out the humor in her tone. “It isn’t funny when everyone does it, Molly. Not ready for the burden of constant wiseassery are you.” She grinned widely, evidently pleased at having scored the point on me. “I used a tracking spell and the hair you gave me in case I ever needed to find you.” Of course she had. “Oh, right. Well-done.”

“Of course, child,” she said agreeably. “No harm done.” She snapped her fingers and the cocoons seemed to sublimate into a fine green mist that quickly dispersed. Susan fell limply from the wall, but I was waiting to catch her and lower her gently to the floor. Martin plummeted from the ceiling and landed on a threadbare throw rug covering the concrete floor. Nobody was there to catch him, which was awful. Just awful.

I reached out and took the gem from my godmother’s hand.

“Plan B,” I said. “Okay, right. We need a plan B. If we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.” Susan let out a puff of laughter, and then I turned to her, my eyes alight.

“Steed” PS—Why, yes, I can in fact capitalize any words I desire. The language is English. I am English. Therefore mine is the opinion which matters, colonial heathen. I read over the letter again, more slowly. Then I sat down on the fireplace mantel and swallowed hard. “Steed” was an appellation I’d stuck on Warden Chandler, who was a fixture of security in Edinburgh, one of the White Council’s home guards, and, once I had thought upon it, one of the guys who I’d always seen operating near Anastasia and in positions of trust: Standing as the sole sentinel at a post that normally required half a dozen. Brewing the Wardens and their captain their tea.

“He won’t speak of it over the line. He says that you have incurred no debt with him for asking the question. He will only speak to Dresden. Personally.” Marcone lifted his eyebrows. “Interesting.” “I thought so,” Gard said. “Ahem,” I said. “Who wants to meet me?” “My . . . employer,” Gard said. “Donar Vadderung, CEO of Monoc Securities.”

The receptionist who had spoken into her mike flexed one hand slowly closed and open. Her nails peeled up little silver curls from the stainless-steel desk. I thought about making a manicure joke . . . and decided not to. Go, go, Gadget wisdom. “Do you do oranges, too?” asked my mouth, without checking in with the rest of me. “What about sharpening table knives and scissors and lawn tools? My landlady’s lawn mower blade could use a hand job from a girl like y—”

“Perhaps your insults and insolence are not the valued commodities you believe them to be.” “Heh,” I said. “Good one.”

Donar Vadderung sat with his chin propped on the heel of his hand, squinting at a holographic computer display, and the first thing my instincts did was warn me that he was very, very dangerous. He wasn’t all that imposing to look at. A man in good shape, maybe in his early fifties. Lean and spare, in the way of long-distance runners, but too heavy in the shoulders and arms for that to be all he did. His hair was long for a man, and just a bit shaggy. It was the color of a furious thundercloud, and his eye was ice blue. A black cloth patch over the other eye combined with a vertical scar similar to my own made me think that I’d been right about the corporate logo. He kept a short, neat beard. He was a striking-looking rogue, particularly with the eye patch, and looked like the sort of person who might have served thirty years of a triple life sentence and managed to talk the parole board into setting him free—probably to their eventual regret.

“Then help me.” Vadderung pursed his lips in thought. “In that, you may be disappointed. I am . . . not what I was. My children are scattered around the world. Most of them have forgotten our purpose. Once the Jotuns retreated . . .” He shook his head. “What you must understand is that you face beings such as I in this battle.” I frowned. “You mean . . . gods?” “Mostly retired gods, at any rate,” Vadderung said. “Once, entire civilizations bowed to them. Now they are venerated by only a handful, the power of their blood spread out among thousands of offspring. But in the Lords of Outer Night, even the remnants of that power are more than you can face as you are.”

Vadderung just looked at me. Then he said, “Let me help you understand.” And a force like a hundred anvils smashed me out of the chair and to the floor. I found myself on my back, gasping like a landed fish. I struggled to move, to push myself up, but I couldn’t so much as lift my arms from the ground. I brought my will into focus, with the idea of using it to deflect some of that force from me and— —and suddenly, sharply felt my will directly in contention with another. The power that held me down was not earth magic, as I had assumed it to be. It was the simple, raw, brute application of the will of Donar Vadderung, Thunder’s Father, the Father and King of the Aesir. Father Odin’s will held me pinned to the floor, and I could no more escape it or force it away than could an insect stop a shoe from descending. In the instant that realization came to me, the force vanished, evaporating as if it had never been. I lay on the floor gasping. “It is within my capabilities to kill you, young wizard,” Vadderung said quietly. “I could wish you dead. Especially here, at the center of my power on Midgard.” He got up, came around the desk, and offered me his hand. I took it. He pulled me to my feet, steady as a rock. “You will be at the center of their power. There will be a dozen of them, each nearly as strong as I am.” He put a hand on my shoulder briefly. “You are bold, clever, and from time to time lucky. All of those are excellent qualities to have in battles like yours. But aga...

Martin was alphabetizing my bookshelves. They used to kill men for sacrilege like that.

“Or at least a little of it. Our people found out exactly who is tailing us up here.” “Yeah?” I asked. “Who?” “The Eebs,” she said. Molly came in and frowned severely at what they were doing. Granted, the place was kind of a mess after the FBI and cops got done, but still. She was probably as used to the place as I was. “Sounds like the Scoobies, only less distinctive.” Martin shook his head. “Esteban and Esmerelda Batiste,” he clarified. “One of the husband-wife teams the Red Court uses for fieldwork.”

“Um, Harry?” Molly asked. I turned to her. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to jump in with this kind of thing or not, but . . . if there’s some sort of internal schism going on inside the Red Court . . . what if the kidnapping and so on is . . . like a cover for something else she’s doing, inside her court? I mean, maybe it isn’t all about you. Or at least, not only about you.” I stared at her blankly for a moment. “But for that to be true,” I said, “I would have to not be the center of the universe.” Molly rolled her eyes. “Good thought, grasshopper,” I said. “Something to keep in mind. Maybe we’re the diversion.”

I doubted it would be as simple as bopping a couple of guards over the head, then donning their uniforms and sneaking in with my friends the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Woodsman. (I had cast myself as the Scarecrow in that one. If I only had a brain, I’d be able to come up with a better plan.)

I nodded. “Say ‘oilcan.’” Thomas blinked. “What?” “You get to be the Tin Woodsman.” “What?”

Thomas nodded, and picked up a section of ruined deck that had scattered around where he landed. He shouldered a corner post, a section of four-by-four about a yard and a half long, and said, “Don’t sweat, Harry. We’ll be back for you in a minute.” “Go, Team Dresden,” I wheezed. The two of them took off, zero to cheetah speed in about a second. Then they were out of sight. I heard Thomas let out a high-pitched cry that was a pretty darn good Bruce Lee impersonation, and there was a thunder crack of wood striking something hard. An instant later, Mouse let out his battle roar. There was a flicker of strobing colors of light as Molly pitched a bit of dazzling magic at the creature. It wouldn’t hurt the thing, but the kid could make eye-searing light in every color imaginable burst from empty air, accompanied by a variety of sounds if she so chose. She called it her One-woman Rave spell, and during the last Independence Day, she had used it to throw up a fireworks display from her parents’ backyard so impressive that evidently it had caused traffic problems on the expressway.

“Aha,” I said. “You must be Esteban and Esmerelda. I’ve heard about you.” “We are famous,” hissed the little woman, beaming up at the man. He gave her a stern look, sighed, and said, “Aye, we are. Here to stop you from allowing Arianna to proceed with her design.” I blinked. “What?” Esmerelda leaned closer. Her hair brushed my nose and lips. “Are its ears broken? If the ears are defective, can we detach them and send them back?”

But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn’t about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn’t about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It’s about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It’s about making sacrifices for the good of others—even when there’s not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are. Faith is a power of its own, and one even more elusive and difficult to define than magic.

I stared dully at the mess. It looked as though something had taken Thomas’s white Jag and put it in a trash compactor with the Blue Beetle. The two cars, together, had been smashed down into a mass about four feet high. Liquids and fuel bled out onto the street below them. Thomas gingerly put me down on my good leg as I stared at my car. There was no way the Beetle was going to resurrect from this one. I found myself blinking tears out of my eyes. It wasn’t an expensive car. It wasn’t a sexy car. It was my car.

Once I had them both, I was able to get up and gimp my way over to the kitchen. Tylenol 3 is good stuff, but it is also illegal stuff to have without a prescription if you aren’t Canadian, so it was currently buried in my godmother’s insane garden. I took a big dose of Tylenol the original, since I didn’t have my Tylenol 3 or its lesser-known, short-lived cousin, Tylenol Two: The Pain Strikes Back.

I found Mrs. S in the apartment’s one bedroom. She was sleeping mostly sitting up, propped on a pile of pillows. Her old television was on, sans volume, with subtitles appearing at the bottom of the screen. I gimped over to her and shook her gently. She woke up with a start and slugged me with one tiny fist. I fell backward onto my ass, more out of pure surprise than anything else, and grimaced in pain—from the fall, not the punch. I shook it off and looked up again, to find the little old lady holding a little revolver, probably a .38. In her hands, it looked magnum-sized. She held it like she knew what she was doing, too, in two hands, peering down at me through the gun’s sights. “Mr. Dresden!” she said, her voice squeaky. “How dare you!” “Fire!” I said. “Mrs. S, there’s a fire! A fire!” “Well, I won’t fire if you just sit still,” she said in a querulous tone. She took her left hand off the gun and reached for her phone. “I’m calling the police. You hold real still or I gotta shoot you. No bluff. This here is a grandfathered gun. Legal and proper.”

The stairs up to the Willoughbys’ place were already on fire. I turned to her and shouted, “Ladder! Where’s the ladder? I need to use the ladder!” “No!” she shouted back. “You need to use the ladder!” Good grief. “Okay!” I shouted back, and gave her a thumbs-up.

“So many scars,” said my godmother, and her voice had changed subtly, growing cold and precise. “Your scars are beautiful things. Within and without.” The shadowed figure stepped behind one of the fallen stones and emerged from behind another on the opposite side of the circle. “Yes,” said the cold voice coming from the Leanansidhe’s lips. “I can work with this.”

“You want me to become the Winter Knight,” I whispered. A laugh, both merry and cold, bubbled beneath her response. “Yes.” “I will,” I said. “With a condition.” “Speak it.” “That before my service begins, you restore my body to health. That you grant me time enough to rescue my daughter and take her to safety, and strength and knowledge enough to succeed. And you give me your word that you will never command me to lift my hand against those I love.” The figure kept its eerie pace as she circled me again, and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. “You ask me to risk my Knight in a place of dire peril, to no gain for my land and people. Why should I do this?” I looked at her steadily for a moment. Then I shrugged. “If you don’t want to do business, I’ll go elsewhere. I could still call Lasciel’s coin to me in a heartbeat—and Nicodemus and the Denarians would be more than happy to help me. I am also one of the only people alive who knows how to pull off Kemmler’s Darkhallow. So if Nicky and the Nickelheads don’t want to play, I can damned well get the power for myself—and the next time I call your name, I won’t need to be nearly so polite.”

I grimaced. “Please don’t take this as an insult. But you’re the least evil of my options.” The cold voice told me nothing about her reaction. “Explain.” “The Denarians would have me growing a goatee and gloating malevolently within a few years, if I didn’t break and turn into some kind of murderous tardbeast first. And I’d have to kill a lot of people outright, if I wanted to use the Darkhallow.” I swallowed. “But I’ll do it. If I have no other way to get my child out of their hands, I’ll do it.”

But I knew the man they were carrying strapped to a plank. Like me, he was naked. He had been shorter than me, but more athletic, heavier on muscle. But that had been years ago. Now he was a wasted shell of a human being, a charcoal sketch that had been smudged by an uncaring hand. His eyes were missing. Gone, but neatly gone, as if removed surgically. There were tattoos covering his entire face, particularly his sunken eyelids, all of them simply a word in different languages and styles of lettering: traitor. His mouth was partly open, and his teeth had been inscribed with whorls and Celtic design, then stained with something dark and brown, turning his mouth into living scrimshaw. His entire body, in fact, was adorned with either tattoos or artistic, ritually applied scars. He was held to the plank with seven lengths of slender silken cord, but his emaciated limbs looked like they would never have the strength to overcome even those frail bonds.

“Wizard,” whispered Mab’s appropriated voice, seemingly directly into my ear, “the time has come.” My heart began pounding very hard, and I felt sick to my stomach. “Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden,” Mab’s voice said, almost lovingly. “Choose.”

And as I stared at my daughter’s fading image, my fear vanished. If I wound up like Slate, if that was the price I had to pay to make my daughter safe, so be it. If I was haunted for the rest of my life because Maggie needed me to make hard choices, so be it. And if I had to die a horrible, lingering death so that my little girl could have a chance to live . . . So be it. I tightened my grip on the hideous weight of the ancient bronze knife. I put one hand gently on Lloyd Slate’s forehead to hold him still. And then I cut his throat.

“I’m hit, aren’t I?” Butters stuttered. “I’m in shock. I can’t feel it because I’m in shock. Right? Was it in the liver? Is the blood black? Call emergency services!” “Butters,” I said. “Look at me.” He did, his eyes wide. “Polka,” I said, “will never die.” He blinked at me. Then he nodded and started forcing himself to take slower, deeper breaths. “I’m all right?” “The magic underwear worked,” I said. “You’re fine.” “Then why does my back hurt so much?” “Somebody just hit it twice with a hammer moving about twelve hundred feet per second,” I said. “Oh,” he said.

There’s a Pizza ’Spress less than two blocks from St. Mary’s. Sanya and I went straight there. I ordered. “I do not see how this helps us,” Sanya said, as I walked out from the little shop with four boxes of pizza. “You’re used to solving all your problems the simple way,” I said. “Kick down the door, chop up everybody who looks fiendish, save everyone who looks like they might need it. Yeah?” “It is not always that simple,” Sanya said, rather stiffly. “And sometimes I use a gun.” “Which I applaud you for, very progressive,” I said. “But the point is, you do your work directly. You pretty much know where you’re going, or get shown the way, and after that it’s just up to you to take care of business.” “Da,” Sanya said as we walked. “I suppose.” “My work is sort of the same,” I said. “Except that nobody ever points the way for me.” “You need to know where to go,” Sanya said. “Yes.” “And you are going to consult four large pizzas for guidance.” “Yes,” I said. The big man frowned for a moment. Then he said, “There is, I think, humor here which does not translate well from English into sanity.”

Sanya somehow managed to look down his nose at me, despite the fact that I was several inches taller. “I am only saying that I do not need the written code of a spiritual belief to act like a decent human being.” “You are way kookier than me, man,” I said, turning into an alley. “And I talk to pizza.”

“Bozhe moi!” Sanya sputtered, and Esperacchius was halfway from its sheath by the time he finished speaking. I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “There’s some real irony in your using that expression, O Knight of Maybe.” “Go ahead!” piped a shrill voice, like a Shakespearean actor on helium. “Draw your sword, knave, and we will see who bleeds to death from a thousand tiny cuts!” Sanya stood there with his mouth open and his sword still partly in its sheath. “It is . . .” He shook his head as if someone had popped him in the nose. “It is . . . a domovoi, da?”

The little faerie in question stood nearly fifteen full inches in height, appearing as a slender, athletic youth with the blurring wings of a dragonfly standing out from his shoulders and a tuft of hair like lavender dandelion fluff. He was dressed in garments that looked like they’d been thugged from someone’s old-school G.I. Joe doll, an olive-drab jumpsuit with the sleeves removed and holes cut through it for his wings. He wore a number of weapons about his person, most of them on nylon straps that looked like they’d been lifted from convention badges. He was carrying one letter opener shaped like a long sword at his side and two more, crossed over each other, on his back. I’d given him the letter opener set last Christmas, advising him to keep half of them stashed somewhere safe, as backup weapons. “Domovoi?” the little faerie shrilled, furious. “Oh, no, you didn’t!”