Chapter Forty-One

Between 1:34 and 1:33, the backward-running hand of the stopwatch suddenly halted. Or it seemed that way. But several moments later, the hand twitched down to the next second, and the tick sounded more like a hollow thump. I just lay there staring at it, and wondering if this was how my mind was reacting to my own imminent death.

And then I thought that I'd had enough will to wonder about something, rather than just being crushed and suffocated by despair and terror. Maybe that was how I was reacting to my imminent death: with denial and escapist self-induced hallucinations.

"Not precisely, my host," came Lasciel's voice.

I blinked, which was a lot more voluntary movement than I'd had a second before. I tried to look around.

"Don't try," Lasciel said, her voice a little alarmed. "You could harm yourself."

What the hell. Had she somehow slowed down time?

"Time does not exist," she said, her tone firm. "Not the way you consider it, at any rate. I have temporarily accelerated the processes of your mind."

The stopwatch thud-thumped again: 1:32.

Accelerating my brain. That made more sense. After all, we all use only about ten percent of our brain's capacity, anyway. There was no reason it couldn't handle a lot more activity. Well, except that...

"Yes," she said. "It is dangerous, and I cannot maintain this level of activity for very long before it begins inflicting permanent damage."

I presumed that Lasciel was about to make me an offer I couldn't refuse.

Her voice became sharp, angry. "Don't be a fool, my host. If you perish, I perish. I simply seek to give you an option that might enable us to survive."

Right. And by some odd coincidence, might that option just happen to involve the coin in my basement?

"Why do you continue to be so stubborn about this, my host?" Lasciel demanded, her voice tight with frustration. "Taking up the coin would not enslave you. It would not impede your ability to choose for yourself."

Not at first, no. But it would finish up with me enslaved to the true Lasciel, and she knew it.

"Not necessarily," she said. There was a tone of pleading to her voice. "Accommodations can be reached. Compromises made."

Sure, if I'm willing to go along with her every plan, I'm sure she'd be quite agreeable.

"But you would be alive," Lasciel cried.

It didn't matter, given that the coin was buried in the stone under my lab anyway.

"Not an obstacle, my host. I can teach you how to call it to you within a few seconds."

Thud-thump : 1:31.

A thud from behind me. Footsteps. The ghouls. They were coming. I could see part of Marcone's face, twisted in agony under Vittorio Malvora's psychic assault.

"Please," Lasciel said. "Please, let me help you. I don't want to die."

I didn't want to die, either.

I closed my eyes for another second.

Thud-thump : 1:30.

It took an effort of will, and what seemed like several moments of effort, but I managed to whisper aloud, "No."

"But you will die," Lasciel said, her voice anguished.

It was going to happen sooner or later. But it didn't have to be tonight.

"Then quickly! First, you must picture the coin in your mind. I can help you - "

Not like that. She could help me.

Silence.

Thud-thump : 1:29.

"I can't," she whispered.

I thought she could.

"I can't," she replied, her voice anguished. "She would never forgive that. Never accept me back into her... just take the coin. Harry, just take the coin. P-please."

I gritted my teeth.

Thud-thump : 1:28.

Again, I said, "No."

"I can't do this for you!"

Untrue. She'd already partially shielded me from the effects of Malvora's attack. The situation was simple, for her: She could do more of what she'd already done. Or she could stand by and do nothing. It was her choice.

Lasciel appeared in front of me for the first time, on her hands and knees. She looked... odd. Too thin, her eyes too sunken. She had always looked strong, healthy, and confident. Now, her hair was a wreck, her face twisted with pain, and...

... and she was crying. She looked blotchy, and she needed a tissue. Her hands touched either side of my face.

"It could hurt you. It could inflict brain damage. Do you understand what that could mean, Harry?"

Never can tell. It might be nice to have brain damage. I already liked Jell-O. And maybe they'd have cable TV at whatever home they wound up sticking me in. Either way, it would be better than having my brains scooped out by ghouls.

Lasciel stared at me for a moment and then let out a choking little laugh. "It's your brother. Your friends. That's why."

If frying my brain got Murphy, Ramirez, Thomas, and Justine out of the mess I'd gotten them into, it would be worth it.

She stared at me for another long moment.

Thud-thump : 1:27.

Then a look of almost childish resentment came over her face, and she looked over one shoulder before turning back to me. "I..." She shook her head and said, very softly, wonderingly, "She... doesn't deserve you."

Deserved or not, the fallen angel wasn't getting me. Not ever.

Lasciel squared her shoulders and straightened. "You're right," she said. "It is my choice. Listen to me." She leaned closer, her eyes intent. "Vittorio has been given power. That is how he can do this. He is possessed."

I wished I could have raised my eyebrows. Possessed by what?

"An Outsider," Lasciel said. "I have felt such a presence before. This attack is drawn directly from the mind of the Outsider."

Gosh, that was interesting. Not relevant, but interesting.

"It is relevant," Lasciel said, "because of the circumstances of your birth - because of why you were born, Harry. Your mother found the strength to escape Lord Raith for a reason."

What the hell was she talking about?

Thud-thump : 1:26.

"There was a complex confluence of events, of energies, of circumstances that would have given a child born under them the potential to wield power over Outsiders."

Which didn't make any sense. Outsiders were all but immune to magic. It took power garnered only from centuries of study and practice, wielded by the most powerful wizards on the planet, even to slow them down.

"Strange, then, don't you think, that you defeated one when you were sixteen years old?"

What? Since when? The only serious victory I'd had over a spiritual entity when I was that young had been when my old master had sent an assassin demon after me. It hadn't turned out the way DuMorne had been hoping.

Lasciel leaned closer. "He Who Walks Behind is an Outsider, Harry. A terrible creature, the most potent of the Walkers, a powerful knight among their ruling entities. But when he came for you, you overthrew him."

True. I had. It was all still a little blurry, but I remembered the end of the fight well enough. Lots and lots of kaboom, and then no more demon. And there was a burning building.

Thud-thump : 1:25.

"Listen," Lasciel said, giving my head a little shake. "You have the potential to hold great power over them. You may be able to escape the power now held over you. If you are sure it is what you want, I can give you an opportunity to defy Malvora's sending. But you'll have to hurry. I don't know how long it will take to throw it off, and they are almost upon you."

After which, we were going to have a long talk about my mother and these Outsiders and their relation to the Black Court and exactly what the hell was going on.

Lasciel - Lash, rather - nodded once and said, "I will tell you all that I can, Harry."

Then she rose and stepped past me and toward the oncoming ghouls and Vitto Malvora. Her clothes made a slow, soft rustle as she stepped away from me, and Marcone's stopwatch went thud  -

Tick, tick, tick...

For just a second, no more than a heartbeat or two, I remained impaled on that horrible pike of psychic anguish. Then an odd sensation fell over me, and I don't know precisely how to describe it, except to say that it felt like stepping from brutal, burning sunlight into a sudden, deep shadow. Then that horrible pain eased - not much, but enough to let me suddenly move my arms and my head, enough to know that I could act.

So I froze in place.

"Mine!" howled a voice, so distorted with lust and violence that it sounded like nothing human. "She is mine!"

Footsteps came closer, thump-drag, thump-drag. I saw Vittorio's horribly burned leg go by in my peripheral vision. The sensation of shade began to fade at the edges, with the power of Vittorio's spell returning by slow degrees, like sunlight beginning to burn its way through a sheet of frosted glass.

"Little Raith bitch," Vittorio snarled. "What I do to you will make your father's blood run cold."

There was the sound of a heavy blow. I twitched my head a tiny bit to one side to get a look at what was around me.

A lot of really huge ghouls, that was what, apparently no less fierce for being battered and torn by the battle. Vittorio stood over Lara, his face pale, his leg horribly burned. He had his right hand held out, the hand that projects energy, fingers spread, and I could still feel the terrible power radiating from them. He was maintaining the pressure of the spell that held everyone down, then - and I could see, from the reaction of the ghouls around him, that they were feeling the bite of the spell, too. It seemed only to make them flinch and cower a little, rather than incapacitating them entirely. Maybe they were more used to feeling such things.

He kicked Lara in the ribs, twice more, heavy and ugly kicks that cracked bones. Lara let out little sounds of pain, and I think it was that, more than anything, that let me push the paralyzing awl of hostile magic completely away from my mind. I moved one hand, and that slowly. From the lack of outcry, I took it that no one noticed.

"We'll put a pin in this, for now, little Raith bitch." He whirled toward my brother. "I had intended to find you, you know, Thomas," Vittorio continued. "An outcast like you, I assumed, might be inclined to throw in his lot with someone with a more equitable vision for the future. But you're like some sad dog, too ugly to be allowed into the house, but faithfully defending the master that holds him in contempt. Your end isn't going to be pretty, either." He started to turn toward me, smiling. "But first, we start with the busybody wizard." He finished the turn, saying, "Burns hurt, Dresden. Have I mentioned how much I hate being exposed to fire?"

No sense in wasting perfectly good irony. I waited until he said fire to spin and pull the trigger on Marcone's shotgun.

The weapon bucked hard - I hadn't had time to brace it properly - and slammed into my shoulder with bruising force only partly attenuated by my duster. The blast pretty well removed Vittorio's right hand at the middle of his forearm.

The way I hear it, amputation is bad for your concentration. It certainly wasn't good for Vittorio's, and you can't hold up the pressure on a spell like he'd been using without concentration. There was a sudden surge of particularly intense discomfort through the spell as Vittorio's physical trauma sent a flare of energy through it, like feedback on an enormous speaker. The ghouls howled in agonized reaction to the surge of discord, and it gave me a second or so to act.

I lashed out with both legs and got Vittorio in one of his knees - the one that wasn't all burned. A kick to the knees doesn't bother a vampire from the Red Court - their actual knees are all backward anyway. A Black Court vampire wouldn't have been anything but annoyed at having a hand blown off with a shotgun.

Vitto wasn't either.

When he wasn't drawing upon the power gained from his Hunger, he was pretty much human. And while I'm a wizard and all, I'm also a fairly big guy. Tall and skinny, sure, but when you get tall enough, even skinny guys are pretty darned heavy, and I've got strong legs. His knee bent in backward and he fell with a scream.

Before he could recover, I was up on one knee with the shotgun's stock against my shoulder and its long barrel against Vittorio's nose. "Back off!" I shouted. I was going for cool and strong, but my voice came out sounding angry and not overly burdened with sanity. "Tell them to back off! Now!"

Vittorio's face was twisted with surprise and pain. He blinked at the shotgun, then at me, and then at the stump of his right hand.

I couldn't hear or see the stopwatch anymore, but my head provided the sound effect. Tickticktickticktick. How much time was left? Less than sixty seconds?

Around me, the ghouls, recovered from their moment of pain, began to let out a steady, low growl, like the rumbling engines of several dozen motorcycles. I kept my eyes focused on their boss. If I took a moment to get a good look at all the bits of feral anatomy around me that might start ripping into my flesh at any second, I would probably cry. That would be unmanly.

"B-back!" Vittorio stammered. Then he said something in a language that sounded vaguely familiar, but that I didn't understand. He repeated it in a half scream, and the ghouls edged a couple of inches away from us.

Ticktickticktick.

"This is what happens," I told Vittorio. "I take my people. I go through the gate. I close it. You get to live." I leaned into the shotgun a little, making him flinch. "Or we can all go down together. I'm feeling ambivalent toward which way we go, so I'll leave it up to you."

He licked his lips. "Y-you're bluffing. Pull that trigger, and the ghouls will kill everyone. You won't l-let them die for the pleasure of killing me."

"It's been a long day. I'm tired. Not thinking real clearly. And the way I see it, you got me pretty much dead to rights here, Vitto." I narrowed my eyes and spoke very quietly. "Do you really think I'll let myself go down without taking you with me?"

He stared at me for a long moment, and licked his lips.

"G-go," he said, then. "Go."

"Thomas!" I shouted. "Wakey, wakey! Now is not the time to lie down and die."

I heard my brother groan. "Harry?"

"Lara, can you hear me?"

"Quite," she said. Thomas's older sister was already on her feet, from the sound, and her voice was coming from close behind me.

"Thomas, get Marcone and get him through the gate." I gave Vittorio a fierce glare. "Don't move. Don't even twitch."

Vittorio, his face in agony, held up his left hand, fingers spread. He was bleeding, a lot, and started shivering. There wasn't any fight left in his face. He'd hit me with his best shot, and I'd apparently shrugged it off. I think it had scared the hell out of him. Losing his hand hadn't helped his morale any, either. "Don't shoot," he said. "Just... d-don't shoot." He shot a glance around at the ghouls and said, "L-let them go."

I heard Marcone let out a groan, and Thomas grunted with effort. "Okay," Thomas said from behind me. "I'm through."

I kept the gun on Vittorio and stood up, trying not to let the barrel waver. How many seconds did I have left? Thirty? Twenty? I've heard about people who can keep track of wild situations like this while keeping a steady count, but apparently I wasn't one of them. I took a step back, and felt Lara's back pressing against mine. From the corner of my eye, I could see that the ghouls had spread out all around us. If she hadn't been there, one of them could have blind-sided me without any trouble the second I was a couple of feet away from Vittorio. Gulp.

I took a step back, forcing myself to move smoothly, steadily, when my instincts were screaming at me to run.

"Three more steps," Lara told me in a whisper. "A little more to your left."

I corrected the direction of my next step, trusting her word. One step more, and I could hear winter wind sighing behind me. Silver moonlight shone on the barrel of the shotgun.

And then I found out whether or not Cowl was actually there.

There was a surge of power, an abrasive scream against my arcane senses, and the offspring of a comet and a pterodactyl came hurtling out of the darkness at the far end of the cavern. My eyes had adjusted enough to see a dim oval of reddish light that outlined a heavily cloaked figure - Cowl, standing in his own gate.

"Master!" Vittorio cried, his voice slurred.

"Look out!" I screamed, and thrashed behind me with my arm as I ducked and lurched to one side, trying to sweep Lara out of the flying thing's path as I did. It missed us by inches, but we got out of the way.

Cowl's leathery, rasping voice hissed something in a slithering tongue, and a second surge of power lashed invisibly across the cavern - not at us, but at my gate.

And as quickly as that, my gate began to close, the opening sewing itself shut like a Ziploc bag - starting with the end closest to me.

Tickticktickticktick.

The gate was closing far more quickly than I could have gotten up and moved. I wasn't getting out. But Lara might.

"Lara!" I shouted. "Go!"

Something with the strength of a freight train and the speed of an Indy car seized my duster and hauled on it so hard that it wrenched my neck and nearly dislocated my arms.

"Dresden!" called Marcone's voice from the closing gate. "Nineteen!"

I hurtled through the air. Looking wildly around showed me that Lara had seized me and leaped for the far end of the collapsing gate.

"Eighteen!" came Marcone's shout.

Lara and I flew through empty and unremarkable air.

The gate had closed.

We missed it.

Chapter Forty-Two

The only light was the dim scarlet glow from Cowl's gate, and everything had become blood and shadows. The eyes of dozens of ghouls burned like nearly dead coals as they turned toward us, reflecting that lurid luminescence.

"Lara," I hissed. "This cavern goes up in seventeen seconds, and there are ghouls in the tunnel out."

"Empty night," Lara swore. Her voice was thready with pain and fear. "What can I do?"

Good question. There had to be... Wait. There might be a way to survive this. I was too tired to work any magic, but...

"You can trust me," I said. "That's what you can do."

She turned her pale, beautiful, gore-smattered face to me. "Done."

"Get us to the tunnel's mouth."

"But if there are ghouls there already - "

"Hey!" I said. "Tick, tick!"

Before I'd gotten to the end of the first tick, Lara had seized me again and hauled us across the floor to the mouth of the tunnel. Behind me, Cowl was shouting something, and so was Vittorio, and the ghouls set up a howl and were running after us. Only one of the ghouls was close enough to get in the way, but Lara's wicked little wavy-bladed sword ripped straight across its eyes and left the monster momentarily stunned with pain.

Lara dumped me at the mouth of the tunnel, and I took a couple of steps back in, checking the smooth tunnel walls as I shook out my shield bracelet. That demonic flying thing of Cowl's banked around for another pass.

"What now?" Lara demanded. The ghouls were coming. They were nowhere near as fast as Lara had been, but they weren't far away.

I took a deep breath. "Now," I said. "Kiss me. I know it seems weir - "

Lara let out a single, ravenous snarl and was abruptly pressed up against me, arms sliding around my waist with sinuous, serpentine power. Her mouth met mine and . . .

. . . ohmygod.

Lara had once boasted that she could do more to me in an hour than a mortal woman could in a week. But it ain't boasting if it's true. The first, searing second of that kiss was indescribably intense. It wasn't simply the texture of her lips. It was how she moved them, and the simple, naked hunger beneath every quiver of her mouth. I knew she was a monster, and I knew she would enslave and kill me if she could, but she wanted me with a passion so pure and focused that it was intoxicating. That succubus kiss was a lie, but it made me feel, within that single moment, strong and masculine and powerful. It made me feel that I was attractive enough, strong enough, worthy enough to deserve that kind of desire.

And it made me feel lust, a primal need for sex so raw, so scorching, that I felt sure that if I didn't find expression for that need - here and now  - that I would surely go insane. The fires that surged up in me weren't limited to my loins. It was simply too hot, too intense for that, and my whole body felt suddenly aflame with need. Every inch of me was suddenly supernaturally aware of Lara, in all her blood-soaked sensuality, in all her wanton desirability, pressed against me, the mostly transparent white silk of her gown doing less to conceal her nudity than the black blood of her foes.

Now., my body screamed at me. Take her. Now. Fuck the stopwatch and the bombs and the monsters. Forget everything and feel her and nothing else.

It was a close thing, but I held back enough to keep from forgetting the danger. The lust nearly killed me - but lust is an emotion, too.

I embraced that lust, allowed it to enfold me, and returned the kiss with nearly total abandon. I slid my right hand around the succubus's waist, and down, pulling her hips hard against me, feeling the amazing strength and elasticity and rondure of her body on mine.

With my left hand, I extended the shield bracelet toward the cavern, the bombs, the onrushing ghouls - and I fed that tidal force of lust through it, building up the energy I would need, some part of me shaping and directing it even as the rest of me concentrated on the mind-consuming pleasure of that single kiss.

The clocks stopped ticking.

The explosives went off.

Cleverness, determination, treachery, ruthlessness, courage, and skill took a leave of absence, while physics took over the show.

Tremendous heat and force expanded from the explosives. It swept through the cavern in an almighty sword of fire, laying low anything unfortunate enough to have remained within. I saw, for one flash-second, the outline of the ghouls, still charging us, unaware of what was about to happen, against the white-hot fireball that expanded through the chamber.

And then that blast hit my shield.

I didn't try to withstand that incredible sledgehammer of expanding force and energy. It would have shattered my shield, melted my bracelet to my wrist, and crushed me like an egg. The shield wasn't meant to do that.

Instead, I filled the space at the mouth of the cave with flexible, resilient energy, and packed layer upon layer of it behind the shield, and more of it all around us. I wasn't trying to stop the energy of the explosion.

I was trying to catch it.

There was an instant of crushing compression, and I felt the pressure on my shield like a vast and liquid weight. It flung me from my feet, and I held hard to Lara, whose arms gripped me in return. I began to tumble, blinded by the flame, and fought to hold the shield, now hardening it all around us, into a sphere, constricting it around us until we were pressed body-to-body. We hurtled up the tunnel, flung out ahead of the explosion like a ship ahead of a hurricane - or, more accurately, like a ball being fired down the barrel of a long, stony musket. The shield banged against the smooth walls, dragging more effort out of me. A single outcropping might have stopped our progress for a disastrous instant, shattering stone, shield, succubus, and shamus into one big mess. Thank God the vanity of Lara's family had made sure the walls of the tunnel were polished smooth and gleaming.

I didn't see the ghouls guarding the upper reaches of the tunnel, so much as I felt them hit the shield and be smashed aside and splattered like bugs, only to be consumed by the flood of fire washing up the tunnel after us. I don't know how fast we were going, beyond "very." The explosion flung us up the long tunnel, and out into the night air and up through the branches of a couple of trees - which shattered under the force. Then we were arcing through the night, spinning, with stars above us whipping by and a long tongue of angry flame emerging from the entrance to the Deeps below.

And all the while, I was locked in the heated ecstasy of Lara's kiss.

I lost track of what was happening somewhere near the top of the arc, right about when Lara's legs twined with mine and she ripped aside my shirt and hers to press her naked chest against me. I had just begun wondering what it was I'd forgotten about how kissing Lara was not the best idea when there was a horrible crashing sound that went on for several seconds.

We weren't moving. The shield wasn't under pressure, and I was so dizzy and tired that I couldn't string two thoughts together. I lowered the shield with a groan of relief that was lost in an answering moan of need from the succubus in my arms.

"St-stopped," I said. "Lara... st-stop."

She pressed closer, parted my lips with her tongue, and I thought that I was going to explode, when she suddenly let out a hiss and recoiled from me, a hand flying to her mouth - but not before I saw the blisters rising from the burned flesh around her lips.

I fell slowly to my back and lay there gasping in the near-dark. There were several small fires nearby. We were in a building of some kind. There were a lot of broken things.

I was sure to get blamed for this one.

Lara turned away from me, huddling in upon herself. "Bloody hell," she said after a moment. "I can't believe you're still protected. But it's old... My intelligence said Ms. Rodriguez hadn't left South America."

"She hasn't," I croaked.

"You mean..." She turned and blinked at me, astonishment on her face. "Dresden... do you mean to say that the last time you had relations with a woman was nearly four years ago?"

"Depressing," I said. "Isn't it."

Lara shook her head slowly. "I had just always assumed that you and Ms. Murphy..."

I grunted. "No. She... she doesn't want to get serious with me."

"And you don't want to be casual with her," Lara said.

"There's an outside chance that I have abandonment issues," I said.

"Still... a man like you and it's been four years ..." She shook her head. "I have enormous personal respect for you, wizard. But that's just... sad."

I grunted again, too tired to lip off. "Saved my life just now, I suppose."

Lara looked back at me for a moment and then she... turned pink. "Yes. It probably did. And I owe you an apology."

"For trying to eat me?" I said.

She shivered, and the tips of her breasts suddenly stood out against the white silk. She'd rearranged her clothes to cover them. I was too tired to feel more than a little disappointed about it. "Yes," she said. "For losing control of myself. I confess, I thought that we were facing our last moment. I'm afraid I didn't restrain myself very well. For that, you have my apologies."

I looked around and realized, dimly, that we were in some part of the Raith chateau itself. "Hngh. I'm, uh. Sorry about the damage to your home here."

"Under the circumstances, I'm inclined to be gracious; You saved my life."

"You could have saved yourself," I said quietly. "When the gate was closing. You could have left me to die. You didn't. Thank you."

She blinked at me as if I had just started speaking in alien tongues. "Wizard," she said after a moment. "I gave you my word of safe passage. A member of my Court betrayed you. Betrayed us all. I could not leave you to die without forsaking my word - and I take my promises seriously, Mister Dresden."

I stared quietly at her for a moment and then nodded. Then I said, "I notice that you didn't go terribly far out of your way to save Cesarina Malvora."

Her lips twitched up at the corners. "It was a difficult time. I did all that I could to protect my House and then the other members of Court in attendance. More's the pity that I could not save that usurping, traitorous bitch."

"You couldn't save that usurping, traitorous Lord Skavis, either," I noted.

"Life is change," Lara replied quietly.

"You know what I think, Lara?" I asked.

Her eyes narrowed and fastened on me.

"I think someone got together with Skavis to plan his little hunt for the low-powered-magic folks. I think someone encouraged him to do it. I think someone pointed it out as a great plan to usurp mean old Lord Raith's power base. And then I think that same someone probably nudged Lady Malvora to move, to give her a chance to steal Lord Skavis's thunder."

Lara's eyelids lowered, and her lips spread in a slow smile. "Why would someone do such a thing?"

"Because she knew that Skavis and Malvora were going to make a move soon in any case. I think she did it to divide her enemies and focus their efforts into a plan she could predict, rather than waiting upon their ingenuity. I think someone wanted to turn Skavis and Malvora against one another, keeping them too busy to undermine Raith." I sat up, faced her, and said, "It was you. Pulling their strings. It was you who came up with the plan to kill those women."

"Perhaps not," Lara replied smoothly. "Lord Skavis is - was - a well-known misogynist. And he proposed a plan much like this one only a century ago." She tapped a finger to her lips thoughtfully and then said, "And you have no way of proving otherwise."

I stared at her for a long moment. Then I said, "I don't need proof to act on my own."

"Is that a threat, dear wizard?"

I looked slowly around the ruined room. There was a hole in the house, almost perfectly round, right through the floors above us and the roof four stories above. Bits and pieces were still falling. "What threat could I possibly be to you, Lara?" I drawled.

She took in a slow breath and said, "What makes you think I won't kill you right here, right now, while you are weary and weakened? It would likely be intelligent and profitable." She lifted her sword and ran a fingertip languidly down the flat of the blade. "Why not finish you right here?"

I showed her my teeth. "You gave me your word of safe passage."

Lara threw back her head in a rich laugh. "So I did." She faced me more directly, set the sword aside, and rose. "What do you want?"

"I want those people returned to life," I spat at her. "I want to undo all the pain that's been inflicted during this mess. I want children to get their mothers back, parents their daughters, husbands their wives. I want you and your kind never to hurt anyone ever again."

Right in front of my eyes, she turned from a woman into a statue, cold and perfectly still. "What do you want," she whispered, "that I might give you?"

"First, reparations. A weregild to the victims' families," I said. "I'll provide you with the details for each."

"Done."

"Second, this never happens again. One of yours starts up with genocide again, and I'm going to reply in kind. Starting with you. I'll have your word on it."

Her eyes narrowed further. "Done," she murmured.

"The little folk," I said. "They shouldn't be in cages. Free them, unharmed, in my name."

She considered that for a moment, and then nodded. "Anything else?"

"Some Listerine," I said. "I've got a funny taste in my mouth."

That last remark drew more anger out of her than anything else that had happened the entire night. Her silver eyes blazed with rage, and I could feel the fury roiling around her. "Our business," she said in a whisper, "is concluded. Get out of my house."

I forced myself to my feet. One of the walls had fallen down, and I walked creakily over to it. My neck hurt. I guess being moved around at inhuman speed gives you whiplash.

I stopped at the hole in the wall and said, "I'm glad to preserve the peace effort," I said, forcing the words out. "I think it's going to save lives, Lara. Your people's lives, and mine. I've got to have you where you are to get that." I looked at her. "Otherwise, I'd settle up with you right now. Don't get to thinking we're friends."

She faced me, her face all shadowed, the light of slowly growing fires lighting her from behind. "I am glad to see you survived, wizard. You who destroyed my father and secured my own power. You who have now destroyed my enemies. You are the most marvelous weapon I have ever wielded." She tilted her head at me. "And I love peace, wizard. I love talking. Laughing. Relaxing." Her voice dropped to a husky pitch. "I will kill your folk with peace, wizard. I will strangle them with it. And they will thank me while I do."

A cold little spear slid neatly into my guts, but I didn't let it show on my face or in my voice. "Not while I'm around," I said quietly.

Then I turned and walked away from the house. I looked blearily around me, got my directions, and started limping for the front gate. On the way there, I fumbled Mouse's whistle out of my pocket and started blowing it.

I remember my dog reaching my side, and holding on to his collar the last fifty yards or so down the road out, until Molly came sputtering up in the Blue Beetle and helped me inside.

Then I collapsed into sleep.

I'd earned it.

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