Skin Game

  Molly was in her midtwenties and gorgeous, though she still looked a little too lean to my eyes. Her hair, which had seemed to be colored at random ever since she was a teenager, was now long and white-blond. She wore old designer jeans, a blue T-shirt with a faded recycling symbol on it, and sandals.

  “I hate dreams like this,” I said. “There’s no plot—just random weird things happening. I get enough of that when I’m awake.”

  She looked at me as if startled and blinked several times. “Harry?”

  “Obviously,” I said. “It’s my dream.”

  “No,” she said, “it kind of isn’t. How are you doing this?”

  I took my hands off the steering wheel long enough to waggle my fingers and say, in a dramatic voice, “Wizard.”

  Molly burst out into a warm laugh. “Oh, good Lord, it’s an accident, isn’t it? Are you finally off the island, then? How’s your head?”

  At that, I blinked. “Wait. Molly?”

  “Me,” she said, smiling, and leaned across the car. She snaked an arm around my neck for a second and leaned her head against my shoulder in a quick hug. There was a sense of warmth to the touch that went beyond the normal sense of a dream, a sense of another’s presence that was too absolute to question. “Wow, it’s good to hear from you, boss.”

  “Wow,” I said. “How is this happening?”

  “Good question,” she said. “I’ve been attacked in my dreams, like, fifty times since the New Year. I thought I had my defenses locked up pretty tight.”

  “Attacked? By who?” I asked.

  “Oh,” she said in an offhand tone, “the Sidhe, mainly.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to be their princess?”

  “In the flesh, sure,” Molly said, her eyes sparkling. “In dreams, though, they can come at me anonymously, so every punk thinks he’s tough. It’s like the Internet for faeries.”

  “What jerks,” I said.

  “No,” she said, “not at all. Look, Harry, Maeve was a really, really awful Winter Lady. I have a job to do. The Sidhe just want to be sure I’m up for it. So they test me.”

  “By coming at you?” I asked.

  “Quietly, where Mab can’t see,” Molly said. “It actually kind of reminds me of when Mom used to leave me in charge of all my little brothers and sisters at home. Only more felonious.”

  I blinked at that and let out a short bark of laughter.

  “There, good, a smile,” she said. “They step up. I swat them down. It’s nothing personal,” she continued. “Then I get back to business. Which, by the way, is why you haven’t heard much from me. Sorry. I’ve had about a hundred and fifty years of Maeve’s backlog to deal with. What’s your excuse?”

  “I’ve been sending messengers every day for the last six months,” I said.

  Molly’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “Mab.”

  “Mab.”

  “Grrr,” she said. “You need me?”

  “The day before yesterday. There’s this thing in my head that’s going to kill me in the next couple of days. Demonreach says you can help. Apparently, Mab thinks so, too.”

  Molly’s blue eyes went icy. “Or she wouldn’t have intercepted your messengers. That bitch. If I’d known . . .” She chewed on her lower lip. “She’s got me doing something that I can’t get out of right away.”

  “What, it isn’t convenient?” I asked.

  “I’m under two miles of ice at the moment,” she said. “It took me a day to get here—that’s why I’m asleep now. What’s the situation?”

  I told her.

  “Oh, God, Harry!” she said. “Nicodemus, really? Is Sanya there?”

  “No,” I said, then amended it. “At least, not yet.”

  “A Knight will be there,” she said. “That’s how it works. And I’m on the way.” Her expression became distressed, and a moment later the dream world started flickering, and I was suddenly driving in a small herd of Blue Beetles, all of them filled with slightly different versions of Harry Dresden and Molly Carpenter. I had to slalom the VW through them.

  “. . . there as soon as I can . . .” came Molly’s voice, distantly, and then I was driving alone.

  The traffic got worse and worse and more confusing, and then there was a loud screech of tires and twisting metal, a bright light, and a sensation of tumbling and falling in exaggerated, graceful slow motion.

  The radio blared with static and a woman’s voice spoke in the tones of a news commentator. “. . . other news, Harry Dresden, Chicago wizard, blindly charges toward his own destruction because he refuses to recognize simple and obvious truths which are right there in front of him. Dresden ignored several excellently placed warnings, and as a result is expected to perish in the next forty-eight hours . . .”

  * * *

  I hauled myself out of the dream and sat up in bed, shaking and sweating, with my instincts keyed up for danger and certain that I was no longer alone in the room.

  My instincts were half right.

  Karrin shut the door behind her almost silently and padded over to the bed in the dim glow of a reflected streetlight outside. She was wearing a long, faded CPD T-shirt and her hair was back in a simple ponytail. She also had her favorite SIG in her hand, held down at her side.

  “Hey,” she half whispered. She stopped at the side of the bed. “I heard noises. Are you all right?”

  I rubbed at my eyes with one hand. Had my dream of Molly been just that? A dream? Or had it been something more? I knew that a lot of crazy stuff was possible when it came to dreaming, and I knew that it had felt incredibly real, but that didn’t mean that it had been real. “Dreams,” I muttered. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t really sleeping anyway. You were muttering, moving around a lot.” I heard her set the SIG down on the bedside table. She was maybe a foot and a half away from me, and from that close, I could smell her. Clean laundry, some kind of vaguely floral deodorant, a hint of sunlight-warmed skin, a trace of cleaning solvent from tending to her guns. A second later, she laid her hand across my forehead.

  “You’re running a temperature,” she said. “Fever dreams are the worst. Sit tight.” She went into the bathroom and came out a minute later with a Dixie cup of water and four pills. “Ibuprofen,” she said. “How’s your stomach?”

  “Fine,” I muttered. “It’s the cuts and bruises that are bothering me.” She passed me the pills and the water and I swallowed both and put the cup down on the table. “Thanks.”

  She picked up the cup and turned to drop it in the trash can, and the light from the bathroom highlighted the strong, curved muscles in her legs as she did. I tried not to notice how much that appealed to me.

  But Karrin did.

  She paused that way, looking at me obliquely, noticing me noticing her. Then she turned and reached around the bathroom door to shut off the light. The motion showed me even more of her legs. Then the light shut off and we were in sudden darkness. She didn’t move.

  “Your eyes,” she said quietly. “You’ve only looked at me like that a few times. It’s . . . intense.”

  “Sorry,” I said. My voice sounded rough to me.

  “No,” she said. Cloth rustled softly. Her weight pushed down on the edge of the bed. “I . . . I’ve been thinking about what we talked about last year.”

  My throat suddenly felt dry, and my heartbeat accelerated. “What do you mean?”

  “This,” she said. Her hand touched my chest and slid up to my jaw. Then her weight shifted the bed a little more in the darkness, and she found my mouth with hers.

  It was a good kiss. Slow. Warm. Her lips were soft and gentle and explored mine in gentle surges. I could hear her breathing getting faster, too, and her fingers slid up into my hair, her short nails scratching over my scalp and then tracing down over my neck to my shoulder. br />
  Desire flooded through me in a sudden surge of hot, hungry need, and the Winter in me rose up with a howl, demanding that I sate it. Every instinct in my body told me that Karrin was there, and warm, and real, and pressing more of her body against mine through one fragile layer of cloth—that she was mine for the taking.

  I didn’t move my hands. But I broke from the kiss with a gentle groan and said, “Karrin.”

  “I know,” she said, breathing harder, not drawing away, her breath hot against my skin. “This thing you have with Mab. It pushes you. I know.”

  Then she took my hand and guided it to her hip. After a second, she moved it lower, below the hem of the shirt, and then slid it up. I felt the soft skin and tight muscle of her thigh, the curve of her hip as she moved my hand up to her waist.

  She was naked beneath the shirt.

  I absolutely froze in place. It was the only alternative to doing something sudden and primal.

  “What?” she breathed.

  Something in me that had nothing to do with Winter howled at me for stopping, urged me to start moving my fingers, to get the shirt out of the way, to explore further. I beat it down with a club.

  She was too important. This wasn’t something I could decide with my glands.

  Unfortunately, my head wasn’t getting thoughts through to my mouth. “You aren’t . . . I’m not sure if I can . . . Karrin, I want this, but . . .”

  “It’s all right,” she said quietly.

  “I’m not sure,” I said again. I wanted her. But I wanted it to be about more than desire. I could have that if I wanted—mindless, empty sex is not exactly in short supply among the Sidhe of Winter.

  But that kind of thing can eat you hollow, if you let it. And Karrin was courage and loyalty and brains and heart and so much more than mere need and desire.

  I tried to explain that. Words just sort of sputtered out. I wasn’t even sure they were in the right order.

  She slid her hand over my mouth after a few faltering moments. I could hear the smile in her voice as she spoke. “I’ve had a year to think about this, Harry. And I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I was too scared to take the next step.” She leaned down and kissed one of my eyelids, her mouth gentle. “I know that you’re a good man. And I’ve never had a friend like you.” She leaned down and kissed the other eyelid. “And I know you’ve been alone for a long time. So have I. And I’m right here. And I want this. And you want this. So would you please shut up and do something about it.”

  My fingers flexed, all by themselves, savoring the warmth and texture, the soft, tight skin over the curve of her hip, and she shivered and let out a breathless little sigh.

  That set something off. I slipped my other hand around her and all but lifted her on top of me. Karrin was made of muscle, but she was still small, and I was a hell of a lot stronger than I had been at any other point in my life. I pulled her atop me, her breasts pressing against my chest through the cotton shirt, and tightened my hands on her lower back, sliding them down, feeling softness, warmth, drawing another gasp out of her.

  I groaned and said, “I don’t know if I can control . . . I don’t want to hurt you.”

  In answer, she found my mouth again with hers, and the kiss was pure, hungry fire. I pressed back into it, our tongues touching, dancing, and she started pushing and kicking the bedsheets down.

  “I spar with Viking warriors, Harry,” she snarled. “I’m not made of glass. You need this. We need this. Shut up, Dresden.” Then her mouth was on mine again, and I stopped thinking about anything else.

  The kiss got hotter, her hands bolder. I got lost in running my fingers up and down the length of her back, beneath the shirt, from the nape of her neck, down over the supple muscles beside her spine, down over the curves of her hips to her thighs and back, over and over, skin on skin. Her mouth traveled to my jaw, my ear, my neck, sending jolts of sensation coursing down my body, until it became almost more than I could bear.

  I let out a snarl and rolled, pinning her beneath me, and heard her gasp. I caught her wrists and slammed them to the mattress, gripping tight, and slid down her body until my mouth found her sex. She tasted sweet, and she let out gasping, breathless sounds as I explored her with my lips and tongue, rising excitement in every shivering motion of her body, in the increasingly frantic roll of her hips and arch of her back. She twisted her wrists, using them as an anchor point so that she could move—and then her breathing abruptly stopped, her body arching up into a shivering bow.

  She gasped a few seconds later, twisting and twitching in reaction, and I could see her again in the dim streetlight, her face flushed with passion, her eyes closed. I was hard, so hard it hurt, and lunged up her body again, this time pinning her wrists down above her head.

  “Yes,” she hissed. “Now. Please.”

  My God, there are times when the sexiest thing a woman can give a man is permission.

  I didn’t hold back.

  She was slippery and hot and I could only barely keep myself from simply taking, going. Some tiny bit of me managed to slow things down as I began to press into her—until she got her legs up and dug her heels into my hips, pulling me hard inside her.

  After that, I didn’t even try.

  She twisted her wrists free of my grip and twined her arms around my neck. She pulled me down frantically, and the difference in our heights made it awkward to get my mouth down to hers without withdrawing from her, and there was no way I was going to do that. I managed. Our mouths were frantic on each other, breath mingling as our bodies surged in rhythm. She writhed against me, her eyes rolling back in her head as she climbed again, her back arching into a sudden bow once more, a soft, soft moan torn from her as she shuddered against me. I didn’t stop as she came down from the climax, and she only grew more frantic, her body rolling to meet each thrust. “Now,” she breathed. “Don’t hold back. Don’t hold back.”

  And suddenly I couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t want to. I braced my hands on the bed, holding my weight off of her, and could think of nothing but how good it felt, about the pleasure building and building.

  “Yes,” Karrin hissed. “Come on.”

  I reached the shuddering edge—

  —and felt something cold and hard press against my temple.

  I opened my eyes and saw her holding her SIG against the side of my head. And as I watched, a second set of eyes, glowing with a hellish violet light, opened above her eyebrows, and a burning sigil of the same fire, in a shape vaguely reminiscent of an hourglass, appeared on her forehead.

  Her voice changed, became lower, richer, more sensual. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” she purred.

  And then she pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  I sat up in Karrin’s bed choking down a short cry.

  I blinked my eyes several times, struggling to order my thoughts, fighting sleep out of my head. The silver earring in my left ear felt like a tiny lump of frozen lead, heavy and arctic. I was breathing hard and covered in a light sweat, and some of the cuts were burning with discomfort. My body hurt everywhere—and worse, was utterly keyed up with frustrated, not quite consummated sexual arousal.

  I lay back in bed with a groan.

  “Oh come on,” I panted. “Not even in the dream? That’s ri-goddamned-diculous!”

  A moment later, the light in the hall clicked on, and the bedroom door opened.

  Karrin was standing there in her CPD T-shirt and pair of big loose gym shorts, holding her SIG loosely at her side. “Harry?” she said. “Are you . . . ?” She paused, eyed me, and arched one dark gold eyebrow.

  I grabbed a pillow, plopped it down over my hips, on top of the covers, and sighed.

  She regarded me for a second, her expression difficult to read. “Save it for fight night, big guy,” she said. She started to turn and then paused. “But o
nce we’re clear of this mess . . .”

  She smiled, and looked back at the pillow. Her smile was an amazing thing, equal parts joy and wickedness.

  “Once we’re clear, we should talk.”

  I found myself blushing furiously.

  She gave me that smile again, and said, “See you in the morning.”

  Then she shut the door and left me in bed alone.

  Yet somehow, thinking of that smile, I didn’t really mind.

  Fifteen

  Karrin, Valmont, and I showed up at the slaughterhouse at dawn. As I came up the stairs and out onto the catwalk, Jordan and one of the other squires were hastily walking apart, with the mien of teenagers who hadn’t been doing something they were supposed to do. Jordan was tucking a small notebook into his pocket as he did.

  “Hi, Jordan,” I said brightly. “Whatcha doin’?”

  He glowered at me.

  I walked up to him, smiled down, and said, “Let me see the notebook, please.”

  Jordan continued glowering at me. He looked aside at the other squire, who by now was standing forty feet away at an intersection of two strips of catwalk, evidently where he was supposed to be standing guard. The other squire resolutely ignored Jordan.

  I held my hand out and said, “Humor me. I’m going to stand here until you cooperate or Nicodemus comes looking.”

  Jordan’s lips twisted into an unpleasant grimace. Then he took the notebook from his pocket and slapped it into my hand.

  “Thanks,” I said, opening it to the page that had evidently been written on most recently, and read.

  10 goats now.

  The reply was written in a blocky, heavy hand—presumably the other squire’s.

  SO WHAT?

  So one went missing last night, and another one in the last hour. Where did they go?

  DID YOU TELL THE LORD ABOUT IT?

  Yes, of course.

  WHAT DID HE SAY?

  Nothing.

  THEN THAT’S WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO KNOW.

  Something is in here with us. Dangerous. Can’t you feel it?