Dead Beat (28 page)

I stared at the notepad for a moment, trying to absorb the summoning, to remember its rhythm, the rolling sound of consonant and verb that were only incidentally related to language. This wasn't a poem—it was simply a frequency, a signal of sound and timing, and I committed it with methodical precision to memory, the same way I stored the precise inflections required to call upon a spirit being using its true name. In a sense, the poem
was
a name for the Erlking. He would respond to it in the same way.

When I looked up again a few moments later, I felt the gentle pressure of Shiela's gaze. She was watching me, her eyes worried. "You're either incredibly stupid or one of the most courageous men I've ever seen."

"Go with stupid," I said lightly. "In my experience, you can't go wrong assuming stupid."

"If you use the summoning," she said quietly, not smiling at my tone, "and something bad happens to you, I will be to blame."

I shook my head. "No," I said. "I know what I'm doing. It will be my own damned fault."

"I'm not sure that your acceptance can absolve me of responsibility," she said, frowning. "Is there anything else I can do to help you?"

"There's no need to offer," I said.

"Yes," she said earnestly. "There is. I need to know that I've done whatever I can. That if something happens to you, it won't be because of something I didn't do."

I studied her face for a moment, and found myself smiling. "You take this whole responsibility thing very seriously," I said.

"Is there some reason I shouldn't?" she asked.

"None at all," I said. "It's just unusual from someone… well, don't take this the wrong way, but it's unusual from someone so far down the ladder, when it comes to raw power."

She smiled a little. "It doesn't take much power to hurt someone," she said. "It's far easier than healing the damage. It's always like that, for everything. Not just magic."

"Yeah. But not many people seem to get that." I reached over and put my right hand on hers. She had very soft, very warm hands. "Thank you for helping me. If there's anything I can ever do to pay you back…"

She smiled at me and said, "There is one thing."

"Oh?" I asked.

She nodded. "A friend told me once that you can tell a lot about a person from how they do things the first time."

I blinked a couple of times and then said, "Uh. Like what?"

"Like this," she said, and came to me. She moved beautifully—fluid and graceful and elegantly feminine. She was all warm curves and soft flesh scented of wildflowers as she slid one leg over mine, straddling my thighs. Her gentle hands lightly framed my face as she leaned down to kiss me, her eyes rolling back and closing in anticipation as her mouth met mine.

The kiss began slowly, quietly—sensuous but not impassioned, patience without hesitance. Her lips were a warm and gentle contact on mine, and there was a sense of exploration to her mouth, as she felt her way around the kiss. Maybe I was just too tired, or too injured, or too worried about my prospects for immediate survival, but it felt good. It felt really good. Shiela's mouth wasn't inflamed with need. She demanded nothing with the kiss. All she wanted was to taste my mouth, to feel my skin under her hands.

And then without warning, a desperate yearning for more of that simple contact, that human warmth, roared through me in a flash fire of need.

Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.

I hadn't been touched much for… well, a long damned time. Thomas may have been my brother, but he avoided physical contact, even casual and incidental contact, like the plague. I hadn't exactly been overwhelmed with romantic interests, either. The closest thing to it I'd had of late had been the advances of a neophyte succubus—and that contact had been anything but loving.

When sex becomes part of the equation, the impact of another's touch can be even more urgent and profound—so much so that good sense, even basic logical deduction, can go right out the window, washed away in a flood of needs that simply
must
be met.

I hadn't been touched in a long time. I hadn't been kissed in even longer. Given how likely it was that I was going to die before my next sunrise, Shiela's presence, her warmth, the simple fact that she
wanted
to be touching me crowded out every worry and fear, and I was glad to see them go. Shiela's kiss freed me from pain and from fear—even if only for a moment. And I wanted to hold on to that moment for as long as I possibly could.

I tightened my grip on the kiss, and my good arm rose, sliding deliberately around the small of her back, pulling her toward me.

Shiela let out a hiss of sudden excitement, but her kiss grew no deeper, no swifter. Her mouth stayed in its gentle rhythm, and I leaned harder into it myself. Her breath quickened still more, but her kiss deepened only slowly, maddeningly patient, torturously gentle. Her hips shifted in slow tension against mine, and I could feel the heat of her against me.

What I wanted to do was to reach up and haul down the sequined top. I wanted my mouth to explore every sinuous curve of her. I wanted to drive her mad with need, to fill my senses with her warmth, her cries, her scent. I wanted to forget everything arrayed against me, even if it was just for a little while, and bare her an inch at a time. The emptiness that her warmth had begun to fill howled at me to let go.

But what I did was open my mouth and brush my tongue over her lips, gently and slowly, and only once. She shivered at that touch, and her teeth tugged delicately at my lower lip. I drew the kiss to a slow, quiet close, and bowed my head, so that my forehead rested against hers. Both of us remained like that for a minute, breathing a little fast.

"Did you want to stop?" she whispered.

"No," I answered. "But I needed to."

"Why?"

"Because you don't know me," I said. "Did you want me to stop?"

"No," she said. "But I needed you to. You don't know me, either."

"Then why kiss me?" I asked.

"I…" I heard a touch of something like embarrassment in her voice. "It's been a long time for me. Since I've kissed anyone. I didn't realize how much I've missed it."

"Same here."

Her fingers stirred lightly, touching the sides of my face. "You seem so alone. I just… wanted to know what it was like. Just the kiss. Before anything else gets involved."

"That's reason enough," I agreed. "What did you think of it?"

She made a low sound in her throat. "I think I want more."

"Mmmm," I said, agreeing. "That works for me."

She let out a quiet, wicked little laugh. "Good." She shivered again and then drew away from me, dark eyes bright, still breathing fast enough to make her chest absolutely mesmerizing. She stood up, smiling. "Is there anything else I can do to help you?"

"Grab my staff for me?"

She arched a brow.

I felt my cheeks flush. "Uh. The literal staff."

"
Oh
," she said, and passed it to me.

She watched me with quiet concern as I heaved myself to my feet, but she made no move to help me, for which my ego was entirely grateful. I hobbled over to her door, and she walked beside me.

I turned to her and touched her cheek with my right hand. She leaned her face against my palm, just a little, and smiled up at me.

"Thank you," I told her. "You're a lifesaver. Probably literally."

She looked down and nodded. "All right. Be careful?"

"I'll try," I told her.

"Try hard," she said. "I'd like to see you again soon."

"Okay. I'll survive. But only because you asked."

She laughed, and I smiled, and then I left her in her apartment and started back down the stairs to the street.

Going down was a lot harder than going up had been. I made it to the third floor before I had to stop for a breather, and I sat down to rest my aching leg for a moment.

So I was panting and sitting flat on my ass when the air in front of me wavered, and a dark, hooded figure stepped forward from out of nowhere, one hand extended, some sort of fine mesh that covered her outstretched palm flickering with ugly purple light.

"Be very still, Dresden," Kumori said, her voice soft. "If you try to move, I'll kill you."

Chapter Twenty-nine

Kumori stood about four feet from me—easily within reach of my staff, if I wanted to strike at her. But since I was sitting down and had only one strong hand to swing the staff, I wouldn't be able to hit hard enough to disable her, even if I somehow managed to hit her before she unleashed the power she was holding in her hand.

And besides. She was a girl.

Unless she proved herself to be some kind of monstrous thing that just looked like a girl, I wasn't going to hit her. On some rational level, I knew my attitude was dangerously illogical, but that didn't change anything. I don't hit girls.

I had the feeling she was quick enough to beat me, as she stood over me with the magical equivalent of a cocked and readied gun sparkling through the metal mesh over her right palm. I could feel the air vibrating with a low, steady note of power, and her stance was both confident and wary.

One thing I was pretty sure of—she was here to talk. If she'd wanted to kill me, she could have done it already. So I stayed sitting, set my staff aside, very slowly, and mildly raised both hands. "Take it easy there, cowgirl," I said. "You got me dead to rights."

I couldn't see her face within the depths of the hood, but I heard a dry note of amusement in her voice. "Take off the bracelet, please. And the ring on your right hand."

I arched a brow. The ring was spent, and probably didn't have enough juice left in it to push her back a step, but I'd never run into anyone who had noticed it before. Whoever she was, Kumori knew how wizards operated, and it made me even more sure that she was hiding her face because she was someone I might recognize—someone on the White Council.

I slipped the bracelet off my left hand and lowered it slowly to the stair beside me, but getting that ring off was going to be problematic. "I can't get the ring off," I said.

"Why not?" Kumori asked.

"Fingers on my left hand don't work anymore," I said.

"What happened?"

I blinked at her for a second. The question had been polite. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd have taken her tone for actual interest.

"What happened to your left hand?" she asked, her tone patient.

I answered her as politely as I could while staring at her, trying to figure her out. "I was fighting vampires. There was a fire. Burned my hand so bad the doctors wanted to take it off. There's no way I can get the ring off unless you want to come over here and take it yourself."

She was still for a moment. Then she said, "It might be easier if you would agree to a truce for the duration of this conversation. Are you willing to give your word on it?"

She wanted a truce, which meant that she had indeed come to talk, rather than to execute me. There sure as hell wouldn't be any harm in agreeing to a truce, and it might prevent hostilities that could be triggered by raw nerves. "In exchange for yours," I said. "This conversation and half an hour after its conclusion."

"Done," Kumori said. "You have my word."

"And you have mine," I said.

She lowered her hand at once, taking the odd mesh over it and its sparkling energies into the deep sleeves of her robe. I didn't take my eyes off her as I reclaimed my shield bracelet and fixed it back onto my wrist. "All right," I said. "What did you want to talk about?"

"The book," she said. "We still want your copy."

"You'll have to talk to the Corpsetaker," I said. "He and his ghoul took it from me last night. But if you go looking, he looks like a girl in her early twenties. Great dimples."

The hood shifted, as though Kumori had tilted her head to one side. "You know of the source of the Corpsetaker's name?"

"I figure he's a body switcher," I said. "I've heard necromancers can do that kind of thing. Move their consciousness from one body to another.

Exchange with some poor sucker who can't protect themselves. Corpsetaker was in that old professor's body. I figure he swapped with his assistant, and then killed the old man's body with the girl's mind inside."

The hood nodded, conceding me the point. "But I have difficulty believing your story. Had the Corpsetaker taken the book from you, he would have killed you as well."

"Wasn't for lack of trying," I said, and gestured at my leg. "He was overconfident, and I was a little bit lucky. He got the book, but I got away."

She was silent for a moment and then said, her voice thoughtful, "You're telling me the truth."

"I'm bad at lying. Lies get all confusing. Can't keep them straight."

Kumori nodded. "Then let me make you this offer."

"Join or die?" I guessed.

She exhaled softly through her nose. "Hardly. Cowl has a certain amount of respect for you, but he believes you too raw to make some sort of alliance feasible."

"Ah," I said. "Then you'll probably go to the second offer I always get. Go away and you won't kill me."

"Something like that," Kumori said. "You have no real idea of what is going on here. Your ignorance is more dangerous than you know, and your continued involvement in this matter could cause disastrous consequences."

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Withdraw from the field," she said.

"Or what?"

"Or you will regret it," she said. "That isn't a threat. Simply a fact. As I said, Cowl has a certain respect for you, but he will not be able to protect you or treat you gently should you continue to involve yourself. If you stand in his way, he
will
kill you. He would prefer it if you stood clear."

"Gosh. That's so altruistic of him." I shook my head. "If he kills me, he'll have my death curse to contend with."

"He has already contended with such curses," Kumori said. "Many times. I advise you to retire from the field."

"I can't do that," I said. "I know what you people are doing. I know about the Darkhallow. I know why you're doing it."

"And?"

"And I can't let that happen," I said. "Insurance in Chicago is expensive enough without adding in a petulant new deity tearing up the real estate."

"Our goals are not so different," Kumori said. "Grevane and the Corpsetaker are madmen. They must be stopped."

"From what I've seen of old Cowl, he's a couple of french fries short of a Happy Meal too."

"And you would do what?" Kumori asked. "Prevent them from reaping the bounty of the Darkhallow? Take the power for yourself?"

"I want to make sure
nobody
takes it," I said. "I don't particularly care how I get it done."

"Truly?" she asked.

I nodded. "Now here's where I make you an offer."

She hesitated, clearly taken off guard. "Very well."

"Bail," I told her. "Leave Cowl and the Sociopath Squad to their squabbling. Give me what information I need to stop them."

"He'd kill me in a day," she said.

"No," I told her. "I'd take you to the White Council. I'd get you protection."

She stared at me from within her hood, utterly silent.

"See, Kumori, you're sort of a puzzle," I said. "Because you're working with these necromancers. In fact, I'm willing to bet you aren't bad at necromancy yourself. But you went out of your way to save someone's life the other night, and that just doesn't jive with that crowd."

"Doesn't it?" she said.

"No. They're killers. Good at it, but they're just killers. They wouldn't take a step out of their way to help someone else. But you went way the hell out of your way to help a stranger. It says that you aren't like them."

She was silent for a moment more. Then she said, "Do you know why Cowl has made a study of necromancy? And why I have joined him?"

"No."

"Because necromancy embraces the power of death, just as magic embraces the power of life. And as magic can be twisted and perverted to cruel and destructive ends, necromancy can be turned upon its nature as well. Death can be warded off, as I did for the wounded man that night. Life can be served by that dark power, if one's will and purpose are strong."

"Uh-huh," I said. "You got involved with the darkest and most corruptive, insanity-causing forces in the universe so that you could jump-start wounded bodies to life."

She moved her hand, a sudden, slashing motion. "No. No, you idiot. Don't you see the potential here? The possibility to end
death
."

"Uh. End death?"

"You will die," she said. "I will die. Cowl will die. Everyone now walking this tired old world knows but one solid, immutable fact. Their life will end. Yours. Mine. Everyone's."

"Yeah," I said. "That's why they call us 'mortals.' Because of the mortality."

"Why?" she asked.

"What?"

"Why?" she repeated. "Why must we die?"

"Because that's the way it is," I said.

"Why must that be the way it is?" she said. "Why must we all live with that pain of separation? With horrible grief? With rage and loss and sorrow and vengeance ruling the lives of every soul beneath the sky? What if we could change it?"

"Change it," I said, my skepticism clear in my voice. "Change death."

"Yes," she said.

"Just… poof. Make it go away."

"What if we could?" she said. "Can you imagine what it would mean? If mere age would not lay mankind low after his threescore and ten, how much better would the world be? Can you imagine if da Vinci had continued to live, to study, to paint, to invent? That the remarkable accomplishments of his lifetime could have continued through the centuries rather than dying in the dim past? Can you imagine going to see Beethoven in concert? Taking a theology class taught by Martin Luther? Attending a symposium hosted by Albert Einstein?
Think
, Dresden. It boggles the
mind
."

I thought about it.

And she was right.

Supposing for half a second that what she said might be possible, it would mean… Hell. It would change
everything
. There would be so much more time, and for everyone. Wizards lived for three or even four centuries, and to them even their own lives seemed short. What Kumori was talking about, the end of death itself, would give everyone else the same chance to better themselves that wizards enjoyed. It would, in a single stroke, create more parity between wizards and the rest of mankind than any single event in history.

But that was insane. Setting out to conquer
death
? People died. That was a fact of life.

But what if they didn't have to?

What if my mother hadn't died? Or my father? How different would my life be today?

Impossible. You couldn't just drive death away.

Could you?

Maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe this was one of those things in which the effort meant more than the outcome. I mean, if there was a chance, even a tiny, teeny chance that Kumori was right, and that the world could be so radically changed, wouldn't I be obliged to try? Even if I never reached the goal, never finished the quest, wouldn't the attempt to vanquish death itself be a worthy pursuit?

Wow.

This question was a big one. Way bigger than me.

I shook my head and told Kumori, "I don't know about that. What I know is that I've seen the fruits of that kind of path. I saw Cowl try to murder me when I got in his way. I've seen what Grevane and the Corpsetaker have done. I've heard about the suffering and misery Kemmler caused—and is still causing today, thanks to his stupid book.

"I don't know about something as big as trying to murder death. But I know that you can tell a tree from what kind of fruit falls off it. And the necromancy tree doesn't drop anything that isn't rotten."

"Ours is a calling," Kumori said, her voice flat. "A noble road."

"I might be willing to believe you if so much of that road wasn't paved in the corpses of innocents."

I saw her head shake slowly beneath the hood. "You sound like them. The Council. You do not understand."

"Or maybe I'm just not quite arrogant enough to start rearranging the universe on the assumption that I know better than God how long life should last. And there's a downside to what you're saying, too. How about trying to topple the regime of an immortal Napoleon, or Attila, or Chairman Mao? You could as easily preserve the monsters as the intellectual all-stars. It can be horribly abused, and that makes it dangerous."

I faced her down for a long and silent second. Then she let out a sigh and said, "I think we have exhausted the possibilities of this conversation."

"You sure?" I asked her. "The offer is still open. If you want to get out, I'll get the Council to protect you."

"Our offer is open as well. Stand aside, and no rancor will follow you."

"I can't," I said.

"Nor can I," she said. "Understand that I do not wish you any particular harm. But I will not hesitate to strike you down should you place yourself in our path."

I stared at her for a second. Then I said, "I'm going to stop you. I'm going to stop you and Cowl and Grevane and Corpsetaker, and your little drummers too. None of you are going to promote yourself to god-hood. No one is."

"I think you will die," she said, her tone even, without inflection.

"Maybe," I said. "But I'm going to stop you all before I go. Tell Cowl to get out of the way now, and I won't hunt him down after all of this is over. He can walk. You too."

She shook her head again and said, "I'm sorry we could not work something out."

"Yeah," I said.

She hesitated. Then she asked me, her voice soft and genuinely curious, "Why?"

"Because this is what I have to do," I said. "I'm sorry you aren't going to let me help you."

"We all act as we think we must," she said. "I will see you by and by, Dresden."

"Count on it," I said.

Kumori left without another word, gliding silently down the stairs and out of sight.

I sat there for a moment, aching and tired and more scared than I had sounded a minute before.

Then I got up, shoved my pain and my fear aside, and hobbled out to the Blue Beetle.