Part 11 (2/2)

”They won't need to. I'll be fine. The company has a great health care package.” She picked up a small tube of what looked like heavy-duty modeling glue from the bed at her side. ”This isn't the first time I've had my guts ripped out. It isn't fun, but I'll make it.”

”d.a.m.n,” I said, genuinely impressed. ”Are they hiring?”

The question won another faint smile. ”You don't really fit the employee profile.”

”I am tired of being kept down by the man,” I said.

Gard shook her head wearily. ”How did you find us?”

”Demeter,” I said.

She lifted a golden eyebrow. ”I suppose that shouldn't surprise me. Though I've warned him. He's too trusting.”

”Marcone? Is too trusting?” I widened my eyes at her. ”Lady, that pretty much puts you in a paranoiac league of your own.”

”It isn't paranoia-just practical experience. A safe house isn't safe if it isn't secret.” She reached down and pressed bloodied fingers against a loop of gore, gently kneading it back into the wound. She let out a hiss of pain as she did, but she didn't let a little thing like an exposed internal organ get in the way of conversation. ”You threatened her?”

”Uh. Mostly I told her I'd help Marcone.”

She lifted the tube of airplane glue and smeared some of it onto either side of the wound, where she'd pushed her guts back in. She bled a little more. I noted that several inches of the wound had already been closed and sealed together.

”You gave her your word?” Gard asked.

”Uh, yeah, but-” I couldn't take it anymore. ”Look, could you maybe not do that while we talk? It makes it sort of hard for me to focus on the conversation.”

She pressed the edges of the wound together, letting out a breathy curse in a language I didn't know. ”Did you know,” she said, ”that this kind of glue was originally developed as an emergency battlefield suture?”

”Did you know that you're about to find out what I had for breakfast this morning?” I countered.

”I don't know if it's true,” she continued. ”I saw it in a movie. With-dammit-with werewolves.” She exhaled and drew her hands slowly from the wound. Another two or three inches of puckered flesh were now closed together. Gard looked awful, her face grey and lined with pain.

”Why, Dresden? Why are you looking for Marcone?”

”The short version? It's my a.s.s if I don't.”

She squinted at me. ”It's personal?”

”Pretty much. I'll give you my word on it, if you like.”

She shook her head. ”It's not...your word that I doubt. That's...always been good.” She closed her eyes against the pain and panted for several seconds. ”But I need something from you.”

”What?”

”The White Council,” she rasped. ”I want you to call upon the White Council to recover Marcone.”

I blinked at her. ”Uh. What?”

She grimaced and began packing another couple inches of intestine back into her abdomen. ”The Accords have been breached. A challenge must be lodged. An Emissary summoned. As a Warden”-she gasped for a moment, and then fumbled the glue into place-”you have the authority to call a challenge.”

Her fingers slipped, and the wound sprang open again. She went white with pain.

”Dammit, Sigrun,” I said, more appalled at her pain than her condition, and moved to help her. ”Get your hands out of the way.” When she did, I managed to close the wound a little more, giving the sharp-smelling glue a chance to bond the flesh closed.

She made an effort to smile at me. ”We...we worked well together at the beer festival. You're a professional. I respect that.”

”I'll bet you say that to all the guys who glue your stomach back together.”

”Call the Council,” Gard said. ”Lodge the challenge.”

”I've got a better idea,” I said. ”Tell me where Marcone is, I'll go get him and bring him home, and this will all be over.”

She started pus.h.i.+ng the next bit back in, while I waited with the glue. ”It isn't that simple. I don't know where he is.”

I caught on. ”But you do know who took him.”

”Yes. Another signatory of the Accords, just as Marcone is now. I have no authority to challenge their actions. But you do. You may be able to force them into the light, bring the pressure of all the members of the Accords against them.”

”Oh, sure,” I said, laying out more glue. ”The Council just loves it when one of their youngest members drags the entire organization into a fight that isn't their own.”

”You would know, wouldn't you?” Gard rasped. ”It's not as though it would be the first time.”

I held the wound together, waiting on the glue. ”I can't,” I said quietly.

She was breathing too quickly, too hard. I could barely keep the wound closed. ”Whatever you...nggh...say. After all...it's your a.s.s on the line.”

I grimaced and withdrew my fingers slowly, making sure the wound stayed closed. We'd gotten the last few inches, and the opening no longer gaped. ”Can't deny that,” I said. Then I squinted at her. ”Who is it?” I asked. ”Which signatory of the Accords swiped Marcone?”

”You've met them once already,” Gard said.

From downstairs Thomas suddenly shouted, ”Harry!”

I whirled toward the door in time for the window, behind me, to explode in a shower of gla.s.s. It jounced off my spell-layered leather duster, but I felt a pair of hot stings as bits of gla.s.s cut my neck and my ear. I tried to turn and had the impression of something coming at my face. I slapped it aside with my left hand even as I ducked, then hopped awkwardly back from the intruder.

It landed in a crouch upon the bed, digging one foot into the helpless Gard's wounded belly, a creature barely more than the size of a child. It was red and black, vaguely humanoid in shape, but covered in an insect's chitin. Its eyes were too large for its head, multifaceted, and its arms ended in the serrated clamps of a preying mantis. Membranous wings fluttered at its back, a low and maddening buzzing.

And that wasn't the scary part.

Its eyes gleamed with an inner fire, an orange-red glow-and immediately above the first set of eyes another set, this one blazing with sickly green luminescence, blinked and focused independently of the first pair. A sigil of angelic script burned against the chitin of the insect-thing's forehead.

I suddenly wished, very much, that my staff weren't twenty feet away and down a flight of stairs. It might as well have been on the moon, for all the good it was going to do me.

No sooner had that thought come out than the Knight of the Blackened Denarius opened its insectoid maw, let out a bra.s.sy wail of rage, and bounded at my face.

Chapter Thirteen.

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