Skin Game

  “It did, but not like this.” My fingers still tingled from touching the cloth. “Besides, we’re talking about the power of faith, here,” I said. “Enough people believe that the fake is really the Shroud, maybe that’s enough to make it powerful all by itself.”

  “Seems like a cheat.”

  “Don’t knock it,” I said.

  Her head snapped up, and her eyes widened. “Dresden,” Anna hissed.

  I heard footsteps approaching a couple of seconds later. My heart thudded in my chest. I managed to get the knife and slip it up the sleeve of my duster, then quietly slid the cup into the exact center of the altar. Even that brief contact was like touching a live wire. Tingles flew up my arm and set every hair of my body on end.

  I fought to suppress a full-body shudder, and about half a second later, Nicodemus appeared, trailing Michael, Hannah Ascher, and the Genoskwa. Ascher carried my staff in one hand, the lights of its runes gradually growing dimmer. She looked tired but smug, wearing one backpack that sagged with wealth and lugging a second like a too-heavy carry-on bag at the airport.

  “There,” Michael said when he spotted me. He looked relieved, and he hadn’t, as far as I could tell, picked up anything. “Thank God.”

  I waved a hand at the group, using the gesture to let the knife fall a little deeper into my sleeve. “Over here. Found it.”

  They all came down to the stage with me. Nicodemus’s eyes were narrow with suspicion as he walked. “Dresden. You’ve found the Grail?”

  “I just had Valmont check this altar for traps, and she says it’s clear,” I said, not quite lying. “I just got done examining it myself.”

  “Why did you leave your staff back there?” Nicodemus asked, his rough voice harsh. “A distraction?”

  “Figured you guys could use it as a waypoint to find us,” I lied blatantly. I stepped aside with a little Vanna White gesture, revealing the cup, and said, “Ta-da.”

  Nicodemus stared at me hard for a second, then at the cup on the marble altar. I could see the wheels spinning in his head as he thought. Michael’s eyes went to it as well, widening.

  “That’s it?” Michael asked. “That’s really it?”

  “Thing makes my teeth buzz it’s so powerful,” I said. “Yeah, I think that’s it.” I looked at Nicodemus and said, “You’ve got your damned cup. Let’s pack up, get Grey his share, and get the hell out of here.”

  Nicodemus walked a slow circle around the altar, examining it. His shadow twisted and writhed with eagerness where it fell on the floor around him. I took a step to one side to avoid letting it fall on me, because ick.

  “I know you’ve been aching to have your hands on my staff,” I said to Ascher, as Nicodemus examined the altar for himself. I held out my hand. “But I’d rather be the one fondling my tool. Wizards are weird like that.”

  “Wow,” she said, and flashed me a grin, her face flushed, excited. “You left me nowhere to go with that one. I have nothing to add.”

  “I’m just that good,” I said.

  She tossed the staff back to me, imprecisely, and I fumbled it for a second and nearly dropped it. I had a hell of a time both catching it in my right hand and keeping my left arm bent enough to keep the knife from slipping out of my sleeve.

  And the brass hilt of the knife clicked against the aluminum splint still on my left arm.

  Nicodemus looked up sharply at the sound.

  His eyes stayed on me, dark and opaque for a moment.

  “Miss Valmont,” he said quietly. “Go back to the entrance. Stand watch there and tell Grey he’s free to collect his share.”

  Valmont hesitated, looking at me.

  She was a liability here. If I could get her clear, it would be harder for Nicodemus to use her against me. Also, the more I could spread these artifacts out, the better.

  I nodded, and Valmont vanished silently toward the entrance to the vault.

  Michael came to stand next to me, and abruptly tilted his head, looking up at the statues. “Harry,” he asked, “does that statue look like Molly to you?”

  Oh, crap. I so didn’t need this kind of thing distracting either of us right now.

  “Pffffft,” I said. “What? No. That’s absurd. Maybe a little. Some people might think so. She’s got, uh, one of those faces.”

  He pursed his lips and eyed me.

  “Would you get your head in the game?” I said. “Trapped in the Underworld, possible epic Greek menace all around us? Focus, please.”

  Michael eyed me.

  Dammit, I so didn’t need this right now. Anna had, by now, gotten well out of the way. For the next few moments, Grey might be distracted with collecting his share, leaving Nick and the Genoskwa against me and Michael.

  I’d take that fight.

  But where would Hannah Ascher come down? Whichever side she chose would have the advantage, and that was that. Ascher liked me, on the one hand. But on the other, Nicodemus had saved her life against the Salamander, and she had signed on to be a part of his crew, not mine. If she held to Binder’s mercenary code, she’d back Nick’s play and not mine. I racked my brains for anything I could do to get her to come down on my side, at this point. But I had nothing.

  Man.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have rejected her advances. Especially not if she’d already been feeling the rejection from Binder. Maybe that would have made a serious difference.

  On the other hand, who knows? It had been a while for me. Maybe that would have hurt my chances even more.

  Something nagged at the back of my brain, an instinct that was attached to Ascher but too vague to make any sense out of.

  The moment was passing, when Nicodemus was at the height of his tension and uncertainty. If I didn’t hurry, I was going to lose it. Time to start pushing.

  “Would you hurry it up?” I said to Nicodemus. “I don’t want to get eaten by a three-headed dog or maybe bump into the shade of Medusa because you went into gloat-mode like every Evil Overlord shouldn’t. I told you we already checked it.”

  “If you don’t mind,” Nicodemus said, going back to his examination, “I’m going to make certain for myself.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, you can’t be serious,” I said. “Mab is a tricksy bitch, but she’s good to her word. She gave you her word that I would help you secure the cup and bring it back as long as you didn’t get up to any shenanigans, and that’s what I’m going to do. It’s safe. Stick a needle in my eye.”

  Nicodemus continued in his slow circle.

  “You get all cautious now?” I asked him. And I shifted my staff into the crook of my left arm and plucked up the Grail.

  Nicodemus’s hand went to his sword, and his eyes narrowed, but I just held it speculatively, bouncing it in my hand. “See? No traps. It’s not an Indiana Jones movie, man.”

  Nicodemus remained there, frozen—but his shadow exploded back across the amphitheater stage and climbed halfway up the rear arch of the seating, its edges flaring out wildly, like a monstrous cobra. As tells go, that seemed like a pretty damned big one.

  My stomach turned as I began to speak, but I didn’t let that show in my voice. “This is what you came for, right?” I said quietly. “What your daughter died to give you. Hey, if I dropped it, do you think it would break?”

  “Dresden,” Nicodemus said. There was no silk in his voice now—only rasp.

  “Gravity seems a little higher here,” I said. “You notice? Maybe exactly high enough to break something like this if it fell. And then she’d have died for nothing.”

  “Give me the Grail,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Now.”

  “Sure. Come get it,” I said.

  He started stalking around the altar toward me, and I casually mirrored him, keeping it between us. “Deirdre talked to me about your relationship yesterday,” I said. “Did you know that?” r />
  He swallowed. His shadow shifted, surging toward me, spreading out in a large circle around us. The light from the upraised hands of the two triple statues grew a little dimmer. It was like suddenly being enfolded in enormous, shadowy wings.

  “She went on about the centuries you two had spent together,” I said carelessly. “About how there was no word for how close you two had become because no mortal could possibly understand. Hell, I guess that’s true. Because you threw her away like she was so much trash. I don’t have a word that seems sufficient to cover a father who would do that.”

  At that, Nicodemus went still again. “Give me the Grail,” he whispered. “And shut your ignorant mouth.”

  “You said she was the only one you trusted, back where you murdered her,” I continued in a conversational tone, putting a little emphasis on the verbs. “Call me crazy, but it seems to me that it’s going to be a long, cold, empty place for you for the next few millennia. I mean, talk about having an empty nest. That Coin in your pocket must feel pretty heavy right about now.”

  Nicodemus began to breathe faster.

  He was thousands of years old. He was a villain who had forgotten more victims than the most wildly successful serial killer ever claimed. I had no doubt that he’d killed men for much less reason than I was currently offering him. He was skilled in every form of the infliction of damage and death that the world had to offer. He was the most personally dangerous foe I’d ever faced.

  But somewhere, deep inside the monster, was something that was still almost human. Something that could feel loss. Something that could feel pain.

  And because of that, he was furious.

  And he was beginning to lose control.

  This, I thought, is just about your best plan ever, Harry.

  “That must have been really difficult for someone so used to wielding power,” I said. “To realize that as a result of the life you’d led, there was no one who would willingly come with you, willingly let you slaughter them, willingly pull that lever for you after you had. I’ll bet you chewed that problem for years, trying to crack it. Did it hurt when you realized what you were going to have to give up?”

  Nicodemus’s chest started heaving, and his eyes got wider.

  In my peripheral vision, I could see Michael standing with his sword at port arms, his eyes cast slightly to one side, focused on nothing. The Genoskwa loomed behind him. I saw Michael ripple the fingers of his right hand into a fighting grip on Amoracchius, and take a slow, centering breath.

  “The funny part is that bit about her being protected from Hell,” I said. “You brought her here and expected that she wouldn’t get her sentence? Have you read Greek mythology? Do you know the kinds of things Hades sentences people to endure? At least Hell is, by all reports, more or less nondiscriminatory. Down here, they get personal. Did you just try to give her a comforting lie at the last minute? Just to make sure she pulled the lever?”

  Nicodemus’s sword sprang into his hand. “Give me the Grail or I’m going to kill you.”

  Hell’s bells. I was hurting him.

  I considered the Grail and felt bad for what I was doing, and I didn’t hesitate or slow down for a second. There are weapons that have nothing to do with steel or explosions or vast arcane power, and I used mine. “Do you remember?” I asked in a very quiet voice. “The first time you saw her? The first time she looked at you? Do you remember that change? That shift, when the whole universe suddenly tilted? Do you remember looking at her and knowing that you would never, ever be quite the same person? Do you think the cup will do that for you?”

  I flicked him the Grail, sending it in a smooth arc through the air.

  His eyes widened in surprise, but he caught it adroitly, his whole body shuddering as its power washed over him.

  I watched him, his face, his posture, and put every ounce of scorn I had into my voice. “I don’t know how you said it back in the day, but I’ll bet you anything her first word was ‘dada.’”

  Something snapped.

  His chest stopped heaving.

  A single tear appeared.

  And he said, in an utterly flat, utterly dead voice, “Kill them.”

  And that ended the game, right there.

  I win?

  Forty-three

  With those words, Nicodemus broke his pact with Mab and freed me of any obligation to keep helping him secure the Grail. I had fulfilled every ounce of her promise to him, or at least to well within the obligation as Mab would see it. Hell, I had actually given him the Grail. And if he couldn’t take a little harsh truth, as Mab would see it, then that was Nicodemus’s problem, not hers.

  Well. Nicodemus’s problem—and mine. The big downside of the plan to infuriate an emotionally traumatized psychopath into trying to kill me was part two, where the lunatic actually did it.

  As spots for a fight went, this was better than most. It was limited to as few people and as few environmental factors as possible. If I’d waited until we were back in Chicago, Nick would have had a virtually unlimited number of civilians to harm and possible hostages to seize. Not only that, but I would have had a virtually unlimited number of collaterals to damage, and I didn’t imagine that any fight with the head of the Denarians was going to be something I wanted to finesse. Additionally, if we’d duked it out in Chicago, I would have had to worry about whose side Binder would throw in on, not to mention a possible strike team of Denarian squires standing by in the wings, and on top of all of that I was pretty sure that Marcone’s troubleshooters would be trying to murder us all.

  Here, in the Underworld, I could take the gloves off. The fight would be clean, or as clean as such things got, and I wouldn’t have to worry about innocents being harmed.

  Just, you know, Michael and me.

  I could think abstract thoughts about the decisions leading up to the fight in the back of my head all I wanted, because the real fight happened almost too fast for any thinking to get involved.

  The Genoskwa lunged toward me, making a foolish mistake—he should have gone after Michael.

  The Knight of the Cross pivoted on the balls of his feet, and Amoracchius blazed into furious light. He didn’t move with blinding speed. Michael’s attack was all about timing, and his timing was pretty much perfect. As the Genoskwa thundered past him, Michael whirled, cloak flying out, and struck a spinning blow that started at the level of his ankles and swept up until he was holding Amoracchius over his head in both hands. On the way, the Sword cut a line of light into the back of one of the Genoskwa’s thick, hairy knees.

  I heard the suddenly parted tendons, thicker than heavy ropes, snap like bowstrings, and the Genoskwa’s leg melted out from underneath it in the middle of its stride.

  At the same moment, Nicodemus flung both his arms forward, and a terrible, smothering darkness came slamming down upon me.

  I’d had two possible responses to his first attack in mind—and they had to be responses, not assaults of my own. When all this was over, I wanted there to be absolutely no question in Mab’s mind that he had turned on me, not the other way around. He might have come at me with his sword—it was how he normally preferred to do business, in every case that I had seen. A shield would have held him off, at least for a time.

  Or, in his rage, he might unleash the full malice of Anduriel upon me. Which he had done.

  This was not a normal circumstance for Nicodemus.

  I’d prepared the proper defense.

  “Lumios!” I shouted, as the darkness closed in, and I poured my will into the same light spell I’d used earlier—only I added a measure of soulfire into the mix.

  The light leapt forth in a sphere and exploded into sparks as it collided with something that simply devoured it, swallowing it into nothingness as it streamed forth. The effect was damned odd-looking, from the inside. Light poured forth to be enveloped by a slither
ing blackness all around me, something that recoiled from the sparks and then came surging back in their wake with frenzied agitation—but the darkness could reach no closer than just beyond the reach of my arm.

  I heard Nicodemus shout something in a language I didn’t understand, and the Genoskwa let out a howl of furious pain. Something heavy made the ground quiver beneath my feet, and there was an enormous crashing sound.

  Michael’s voice rang out like a silver trumpet, calling, “In nomine Dei! Lux et veritas!”

  Steel rang on steel, and I realized that I hadn’t figured the numbers right after all. It wasn’t Nick and the Genoskwa versus me and Michael. It was Nick, the Genoskwa, and Anduriel versus me and Michael. And I had the last two as my dance partners.

  The Genoskwa let out a roar, and I knew it was coming right at me. I couldn’t move without stepping into that smothering blackness and that seemed like a horrible idea, so instead I folded my arms across my chest, and muttered, “Let’s see you ground this, ugly.” Then I called upon Winter, and cried out, “Arctispinae!”

  I expanded my arms out explosively, and as I did, slivers of Winter cold froze the water in the air into hundreds of spines of needle-pointed ice that exploded out from me, into the darkness and beyond. No magic attached itself to the spines of ice once they had been formed—they simply became sharp, hurtling pieces of solid matter. I was betting that whatever power the Genoskwa had to negate the effects of directly applied magic, it still had to follow the laws of magic as I understood them.

  The bet paid off. The Genoskwa let out another ear-shattering roar of pain from no more than seven or eight feet away.

  I used the sound as a point of reference and whirled my staff in a swooping arc, its green-silver soulfire-infused light driving back the substance of the Fallen angel still trying to compress in upon me. My will gathered more Winter ice around the end of the staff in an irregular globe the size of my head and harder than stone, and I aimed at the source of the sound and cried, “Forzare!”

  A lance of pure kinetic energy flung the hailstone from the end of my staff and out through the darkness like a cannonball, and it hit something with an enormous and meaty-sounding thunk of obdurate ice against muscle-dense flesh. I must have gotten him in the breadbasket, because instead of roaring, the Genoskwa let out a windy, seething sound.