Changes (The Dresden Files, #12)

by Jim Butcher

The faerie quivered with outrage. “He’s Russian! And he doesn’t even know the difference between a domovoi and a polevoi when he sees one two feet away!” Toot-toot let out a blistering string of words in Russian, shaking a finger at the towering Knight.

I peered at him a bit more closely. “Why is half your face painted blue?” “Because we’re Winter now, my liege!” Toot said. His eyes darted to the side and down several times. “And . . . say, that doesn’t mean we have to eat the pizza cold, does it?” “Of course not,” I said.

Sanya’s eyes danced, though his face was sober. “You are a drug dealer. To tiny faeries. Shame.”

“Harry’s the new Winter Knight!” Toot-toot burbled. “Which is fantastic! The old Winter Knight mostly just sat around getting tortured. He never went on adventures or anything.” He paused and added, “Unless you count going crazy, I guess.”

“Did it hurt when you kissed Mab?” Toot asked. “Because I always thought her lips looked so cold that they would burn. Like streetlamps in winter!” Toot sat up suddenly, his eyes wide. “Ooooooh. Did your tongue get stuck to her, like on that Christmastime show?”

“So,” he said. “Mab.” I grunted vaguely in reply. “You hit that,” Sanya said. I did not look at him. My face felt red. “You”—he scrunched up his nose, digging in his memory—“tapped that ass. Presumably, it was phat.”

“You have your orders, Sergeant,” Rudolph said coldly. “Leave the building before I relieve you of your weapon and your shield.” “You mosquito-dicked weasel,” she said, her voice coldly furious.

“Oh, God,” Rudolph whimpered. “Oh, dear, sweet Jesus.” He just started repeating that in a mindlessly frightened whisper. “Aha,” I said as we reached the interrogation room. “We have our Cowardly Lion. Cover me, Dorothy.” “Remind me to ask what the hell you’re talking about later,” Murphy said.

And then I had a thought. A horrible, horrible thought. I turned slowly around. I looked at the wall I’d been standing against. And then I looked up. It wasn’t a wall, exactly. It was a dais. A big one. Atop it sat a great stone throne. And upon the throne sat a figure in black armor, covered from head to toe. He was huge, nine feet tall at least, and had a lean, athletic look to him despite the armor. His helm covered his head and veiled his face with darkness, and great, savagely pointed antlers rose up from the helmet, though whether they were adornment or appendage I couldn’t say. Within the visor of that helmet was a pair of steady red eyes, eyes that matched the thousands of others in the hall. He leaned forward, the Lord of the Goblins of Faerie, leader of the Wild Hunt, nightmare of story and legend and peer of the Queen of Air and Darkness, Mab herself. “Well,” murmured the Erlking. “Well, well, well. Isn’t this interesting.”

the Lord of Goblins was nothing like what I had expected. Upon his face, the hideous asymmetries of the goblins of his hall were all reflected and somehow transformed. Though he, too, shared the irregular batch of features, upon him their fundamental repulsiveness was muted into a kind of roguish distinction. His crooked nose seemed something that might have been earned rather than gifted. Old, faint scars marred his face, but only added further grace notes to his appearance. Standing there before the Erlking, I felt as if I were looking at something handcrafted by a true master, perhaps carved from a piece of twisted driftwood, given its own odd beauty, and then patiently refined and polished into something made lovely by its sheer, unique singularity. There was power in that face, too, in his simple presence. You could feel it in the air around him, the tension and focus of a pure predator, and one who rarely failed to bring down his prey.

You smash one, I burn the other, and we go get some custom coffee mugs to memorialize the occasion later.” Susan said, “I stopped drinking coffee. You know, the caffeine.” I looked at her with mock disgust. “You heathen.”

“May you enjoy good hunting of your own, Sir Knight, lady huntress. Please convey my greetings to the Winter Queen.” My sane brain fell asleep at the switch, and I said, “I will. It was a pleasure, Erl.” Maybe he didn’t get it. He just tilted his head slightly, the way a dog does at a new sound.

“Godmother,” I said, staring. “What . . . a big car you have.” She shook a finger at me. “The better to take you to the House of the Weeping Mother so that we may embark upon our quest, child. Glenmael, help them in, if you please. We race against time.”

We went through a dozen outfits in half as many minutes. A Victorian suit and coat, complete with tails, was nixed in favor of another silk outfit, this one inspired by imperial China. By then, Susan and Lea were actively engaged in the project, exchanging commentary with each other and ignoring absolutely every word that came out of my mouth. By the seventh outfit, I had given up trying to have any say whatsoever in how I was going to be dressed. I was given outfits drawing inspiration from widely diverse cultures and periods of history. I lobbied for the return of my leather duster stridently, but Lea only shushed me and kept speaking to Susan.

I turned to help Susan out and felt my mouth drop open a little. Her outfit was . . . um, freaking hot. The golden headdress was the first thing I noticed. It was decorated with feathers, with jade carved with sigils and symbols like those I had seen on the stone table, and with flickering gems of arctic green and blue. For a second, I thought her vampire nature had begun to rise again, because her face was covered in what I mistook for tattoos. A second glance showed me that they were some kind of precisely drawn design, sort of like henna markings, but far more primitive and savage-looking in appearance. They were also done in a variety of colors of black and deep, dark red. The designs around her dark brown eyes made them stand out sharply. Under that, she wore a shift of some material that looked like simple, soft buckskin, split on the sides for ease of movement, and her feet were wrapped in shoes made of similar material, also decorated with feathers. The moccasins and shift both were pure white, and made a sharp contrast against the dark richness of her skin, and displayed the smooth, tight muscles of her arms and legs tremendously well. A belt of white leather had an empty holster for a handgun on one of her hips, with a frog for hanging a scabbard upon it on the other. And over all of that, she wore a mantled cloak of feathers, not too terribly unlike the ones we had seen in Nevada—but the colors were all in the rich, cool tones of the Winter Court: glacial blue, ...

“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.’”

“Sanya,” I said. “Who did I get cast as?” “Sam,” Sanya said. I blinked at him. “Not . . . Oh, for crying out loud, it was perfectly obvious who I should have been.” Sanya shrugged. “It was no contest. They gave Gandalf to your godmother. You got Sam.” He started to leave and then paused. “Harry. You have read the books as well, yes?” “Sure,” I said. “Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,” Sanya said. “That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness.”

“Shame, child, is for those who fail to live up to the ideal of what they believe they should be.”

My faerie godmother looked at me and began laughing. Genuine, delighted belly laughter. She clapped her hands and bounced up and down, spinning in a circle, and laughed even more. I realized then what had happened. She had turned us—all of us, except for Mouse—into great, gaunt, long-legged hounds.

And Mouse said, in what sounded to me like perfectly understandable English, “That bitch.” We all stared at him.

Mouse said, again in what sounded like perfectly clear English, “Funny. Now restore them.” Lea turned to look at the big dog and said, “Do you dare to give me commands, hound?” “Not your hound,” Mouse said. I didn’t know how he was doing it. His mouth wasn’t moving or anything. “Restore them before I rip your ass off. Literally rip it off.”

The Leanansidhe tilted her head back and let out a low laugh. “You are far from your sources of power here, my dear demon.” “I live with a wizard. I cheat.” He took a step toward her and his lips peeled up from his fangs in unmistakable hostility. “You want to restore them? Or do I kill you and get them back that way?”

“Also,” I said, very seriously, “what happens in the Yucatán stays in the Yucatán. There will be no jokes about sniffing butts or chasing tails or anything like that. Ever. Agreed?” More sober nods, this time with a few smiles.

“You see what I have done to your rabble!” I called. “How many more must die before you come out from behind them, Duchess? I am come to kill you and claim my child! Stand forth, or I swear to you, upon the power in my body and mind, that I will lay waste to your strong place. Before I die, I will make you pay the price for every drop of blood—and when I die, my death curse will scatter the power of this place to the winds! “Arianna!” I bellowed, and I could not stop the hatred from making my voice sharply edged with scorn and spite. “How many loyal servants of the Red King must die tonight? How many Lords of Outer Night will taste mortality before the sun rises? You have only begun to know the power I bring with me this night. For though I die, I swear to you this: I will not fall alone.”

She lowered her eyes and turned her head to the right to bare her throat, the carotid artery, while still holding forth the blade. “Do with me as you will. I am a gift to you from the Great Lord.” “Oh, how thoughtful,” the Leanansidhe murmured. “You hardly ever meet anyone that polite, these days. May I?” “No,” I said, and tried to keep the edge of irritation out of my voice.

“Love this job,” Sanya murmured. “Just love it.” “I need to challenge more people to duels,” Thomas said in agreement. “Men are pigs,” Murphy said. “Amen,” said Molly. Lea gave me a prim look and said, “I’ve not sacrificed a holy virgin in ages.” “Completely unprofessional,” muttered Martin.

I took a slow breath and stepped past her, to face the king of the Red Court. He was kinda little. He stood with his back to me, his hands raised over his head, murmuring in what I presumed to be ancient Mayan or something. He was five-two, five-three, well muscled, but certainly nothing like imposing. He was dressed in a kind of skirt-kilt thing, naked from the waist up and the kneecap down. His hair was black and long, hanging to the top of his shoulder blades.

“Have you anything else to say?” “Always,” I said. “But it can wait.”

The best I came up with under the circumstances was this: What would Yoda do?

The stone smashed through it in a flash of reddish light, and then struck her in the hip, spinning her about wildly and sending her to the ground. “Harry Dresden, human catapult!” I screamed drunkenly.

“Infriga,” I hissed, and threw both hands forward. “Infriga forzare!” And the entire cloud bank of steam in the air around me congealed into needle-pointed spears of ice that flew at her as if fired from a gun. They struck her just as she unleashed her lightning bolt, which shattered one of the spears and tore a two-foot furrow in the dirt some twenty feet to my side. Arianna stood still for a moment, her black eyes wide with disbelief, staring down at the spears and shards of ice that had slammed deep into her flesh. She looked up at me for a second and opened her mouth. A blob of black blood burst out and spilled down over her chin. Then she shuddered and fell, simply limp, to the ground. From the far end of the ball court, I heard my godmother throw back her head and let out an eerie howl of excitement and triumph, bubbling with laughter and scorn. I watched Arianna twisting upon the spears of ice. She’d been pierced in dozens of places. The worst hit came from an icicle as thick as my forearm, which had impaled her through the belly and come out the back, bursting the blood reservoir of the creature beneath Arianna’s flesh mask. The pure, crystalline-clear ice showed a glimpse of her insides, as if seen through a prism.

She stared up at me with uncomprehending eyes, black blood staining her mouth. “Cattle. You are c-cattle.” “Moo,” I said. And I lifted my right hand.

I poured all that was left of my fury into my hand and snarled, “No one touches my little girl.” The explosion of force and fire tore a crater in the ground seven feet across and half as deep. Arianna’s broken, headless corpse lay sprawled within it. Silence fell over the ruined city.

Seconds later, I heard Bob thinking, Take this, shorty! And suddenly the Red King’s will was not enough to keep me down.

I heard his voice quite clearly when he said, “Bow. Down. Mortal.” I took one dragging step toward my friends. Then another. And another. And another, moving forward with increasing steadiness. Then I snarled through clenched teeth and said, “Bite. Me. Asshole.”

her hand flashed up to the hilt of Fidelacchius and drew the katana from its plain scabbard. White light like nothing that ancient stadium had ever seen erupted from the sword’s blade, a bright agony that reminded me intensely of the crystalline plain. Howls of pain rose from around us, but were drowned by Murphy’s sudden, silvery cry, her voice swelling throughout the stadium and ringing off the vaults of the sky: “False gods!” she cried, her blue eyes blazing as she stared at the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night. “Pretenders! Usurpers of truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crimes against the Mayans, against the peoples of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgment Almighty!” I think I was the only one close enough to see the shock in her eyes, and I realized that it wasn’t Murphy speaking the words—but someone else speaking them through her. Then she swept her sword in an arc, slashing the very air in front of us in a single, whistling stroke. And the will of the Red King vanished. Gone.

There were quick footsteps beside me, and then Molly pressed her back to mine. “You take that side!” she said. “I’ll take this one!” DJ Molly C lifted both of her wands and turned the battle chaos to eleven. Color and light and screaming sound erupted from those two little wands. Bands of light and darkness flowed around and over the oncoming jaguar warriors, fluttering images of bright sunshine intertwining with other images of yawning pits suddenly gaping before the feet of the attackers. Bursts of sound, shrieks and clashes and booms, and high-pitched noises like feedback on steroids sent the hyperkeen senses of full vampires into overload, literally forcing them back onto the weapons of those coming behind them. Vampires staggered through the handiwork of the One-woman Rave, not stopped but slowed and stunned by the incredible field of sound and light. “I love a good party,” Thomas shouted merrily, and he began to dance along the edges of Molly’s dance floor, his falcata whipping into the limbs and necks of the jaguar warriors as they wobbled forward, struck down before they could recover. I didn’t think anyone could have moved fast enough to catch them, but my brother evidently didn’t agree. He struck down the foe as they came for us, and he threw in a few dance moves along the way. The part he borrowed from break dancing, where a wave traveled up one arm and down the other, was particularly effective, aesthetically, when it was bracketed by his falcata beheading one ...

It took my dazzled eyes a few seconds to recover from that, and when they did, my heart almost stopped. Standing on the ball court were twelve figures. Twelve people in shapeless grey robes. Grey cloaks. Grey hoods. And every single one of them held a wizard’s staff in one hand. The Grey Council. The Grey Council!

“Fuego!” shouted someone on the walls—and for a second I was hit with a little sting of insult. Someone was shouting “fuego” and it wasn’t me. While I was feeling irrational pique, guns started barking, and they aimed at me first. Bullets rang sharply as they hit my armor, rebounding from it and barely leaving a mark.

Then he swept the Blackstaff from left to right, murmured a word, and ripped the life from a hundred men. They just . . . died. There was absolutely nothing to mark their deaths. No sign of pain. No struggle. No convulsion of muscles. No reaction at all. One moment they were firing wildly down at us—and the next, they simply— Dropped. Dead.

The Blackstaff itself pulsed and shimmered with shadowy power, and I got the sudden sense that the thing was alive, that it knew its purpose and wanted nothing more than to be used, as often and as spectacularly as possible. I also saw veins of venomous black begin to ooze their way over the old man’s hand, reaching up slowly, spreading to his wrist. He grimaced and held his left forearm with his right hand for a moment, then looked over his shoulder and said, “All right!”

Martin tagged along with me, apparently calm, and by all appearances unaware that he was in the middle of a battle. Say what I would about Martin, his blandness, his boring demeanor, and his noncombative body language were very real armor in this situation. He simply didn’t look like an important or threatening target, and he was untouched.

And she raised Fidelacchius, let out a scream that had startled a great many large men working out at her dojo, and plunged into the warriors of the Red Court like a swimmer breasting a wave. Sanya blinked. Holy crap, I hadn’t meant she should do that. “Tiny,” Sanya said, letting out a belly laugh as he began to move. “But fierce!”

Murphy did what no mortal should have been able to do—she cut a path through a mob of warrior vampires. She went through them as if they’d been no more than a cloud of smoke. Fidelacchius blazed, and no weapon raised against the Sword of Faith, neither modern steel nor living relic, could withstand its edge. Murphy hardly seemed to actually attack anyone. She simply moved forward, and when attacks came at her, bad things happened to whoever had attempted to strike her. Sword thrusts were slid gently aside while she continued onward, her own blade seeming to naturally, independently pass through an S-shaped slash upon the opponent’s body on the way through, wreaking terrible damage with delicate speed. Warriors who flung themselves upon her found their hands grabbing nothing, their bodies being sent tumbling through the air—and that horrible Sword of light left wounds in each and every opponent, their edges black and sizzling. They’d come at her in twos, and once, three of the jaguar warriors managed to coordinate an attack. It didn’t do them any good. Murphy had been handling opponents who were bigger and stronger and faster than her, in situations of real danger, since she was a rookie cop. The vampires and half-breeds, swift and strong as they were, seemed no more able to beat her down than had all of those thugs and criminals. Stronger though her enemies were, the blazing light of the Sword seemed to slow them, to undermine their strength—not much, but enough to make th...

Karrin Murphy led the charge, and Sanya and I tried to keep up. She went through that sea of foes like a little speedboat, her enemies spun and tossed and turned and disoriented in her wake. Sanya and I hacked our way through stunned foes, pushing and chopping with unsophisticated brutality—and that big Russian lunatic just kept laughing the whole time.

I jerked my eyes up in time to see Murphy rush the Lord of Outer Night and speed straight past him, her sword sweeping up in a single, upward, vertical slash. The gold mask fell from the vampire’s head—along with the front half of its skull. Silver fire burned at the revealed, twisted, lumpy lobes of the vampire’s brain, and as its blood flowed out and touched that fire, it went up in a sudden pyre of silver-white flame. The Lord of Outer Night somehow managed to scream as fire consumed it, and flung more bursts of magic blindly and in all directions for several more seconds, until it finally fell into blackened ash and ugly smears on the stone. Only then did the barrier of its will vanish, and Sanya, Martin, and I hustled up the stairs toward the temple.

I narrowed my focus to Martin, to the stairs up, and tried to ignore the burning in my arms, my legs, my chest. I drew in a sharp breath, and it was like inhaling sudden cool, clean wind. I thought I heard someone whispering to me, something in a tongue I didn’t understand—but I knew my queen’s voice. I became aware that a cloud of white mist and vapor was gathering around me as I continued, a little faster, the humid air of the Yucatán boiling around the frost that had formed on my armor. Then the cold washed away the hot fatigue, and I felt the ice flowing into me, implacable, merciless, relentless. My legs began to churn like the pistons of an engine. Suddenly one step per stride simply wasn’t enough, and I started flying up them two at a time, rapidly leaving Martin behind. I reached the top and a half-breed jaguar warrior flung himself toward me. I snarled, batted his sword aside with mine, and lashed out with one foot, landing a stomping kick in the center of his chest. His sternum cracked audibly, and he flew backward as if rammed by a truck. He hit the stone wall behind him hard enough to shake dust from the roof overhead, and crumpled like a broken toy. Which was exactly the kind of power the Winter Knight was supposed to have, and as I watched the poor idiot drop, I felt nothing but satisfaction.

“Martin,” she asked quietly. “Why did Arianna target my daughter?” Martin looked down at Susan, at Maggie, and then away. “Because the child’s father is the son of Margaret LeFay, the daughter of the man who killed her husband. By killing her, this way she would avenge herself upon all of you.” If I hadn’t already been more or less motionless, I would have frozen in place. Margaret LeFay. Daughter of the man who had killed Arianna’s husband (and vampire child), Paolo Ortega. Duke Ortega. Who had been destroyed by the Blackstaff. Ebenezar McCoy. One of the most dangerous wizards in the world. A man of such personal and political power that she would never have been able to take him down directly. So she had set out to strike at him through his bloodline. From him to my mother. From her to me. From me to Maggie. Kill the child and kill us all. That was what Arianna had meant when she said it wasn’t about me. It was about my grandfather.

One day I hope God will forgive me for giving birth to the idea that came next. Because I never will. I knew how angry she was. I knew how afraid she was. Her child was about to die only inches beyond her reach, and what I did to her was as good as murder. I focused my thoughts and sent them to Susan. Susan! Think! Who knew who the baby’s father was? Who could have told them? Her lips peeled away from her teeth. His knife can’t hurt you, I thought, though I knew damned well that no faerie magic could blithely ignore the touch of steel. “Martin,” Susan said, her voice low and very quiet, “did you tell them about Maggie?” He closed his eyes, but his voice was steady. “Yes.” Susan Rodriguez lost her mind.

Martin’s eyes were on mine for a fraction of a second. No more. But I felt the soulgaze begin. I saw his agony, the pain of the mortal life he had lost. I saw his years of service, his genuine devotion, like a marble statue of the Red King kept polished and lovingly tended. And I saw his soul change. I saw that image of worship grow tarnished as he spent year after year among those who struggled against the Red King and his empire of terror and misery. And I saw that when he had come into the temple, he knew full well that he wasn’t going to survive. And that he was content with it. There was nothing I could do in time to prevent what was coming next, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Martin said that it had taken him years and years to run a con on the Fellowship of St. Giles. But it had taken him most of two centuries to run the long con on the Red King. As a former priest, Martin must have known of the bloodline curse, and its potential for destruction. He must have known that the threat to Maggie and the realization of his betrayal would be certain to drive Susan out of control. He’d told me already, practically the moment he had come to Chicago, that he would do anything if it meant damaging the Red Court. He would have shot me in the back. He would have betrayed Maggie’s existence, practically handing her to the murderous bastards. He would betray the Fellowship to its enemies. He would destroy Susan. And he would die, himself. Everything he had done, I realized, he had...