Small Favor

"Unless you should agree to take up the mantle of the Winter Knight," Mab said, smiling. "I should be forced to choose another Emissary if you did, and your involvement in this matter could end." Her eyelids lowered, sleepily sensual, and her surrogate voice turned liquid, heady, an audible caress. "As my Knight you would know power and pleasure that few mortals have tasted."

The Winter Knight. The mortal champion of the Winter Court. The previous guy who had that job was, when last I knew, still crucified upon a frozen tree within bonds of ice, tortured to the point of death and then made whole, only to begin the process again. He’d lost his sanity somewhere in one of the cycles. He wasn’t a real nice guy when I knew him, but no human being should have to suffer like that.

"No," I said. "I don’t want to end up like Lloyd Slate."

"He suffers for your decision," she said. "He remains alive until you take up the mantle. Accept my offer, wizard child. Give him release. Preserve your life. Taste of power like none you have known." Her eyes seemed to grow larger, becoming almost luminous, and her not-voice was a narcotic, a promise. "There is much I can teach you."

A decent person would have rejected her offer out of hand.

I’m not always one of those.

I could offer you some excuses, if you like. I could tell you that I was an orphan by the time I was six. I could tell you that the foster father who eventually raised me subjected me to more forms of psychological and physical abuse than you could shake a stick at. I could tell you that I’d been held in unjust suspicion for my entire adult life by the White Council, whose principles and ideals I’d done my best to uphold. Or maybe I could say that I’d seen too many good people get hurt, or that I’d looked upon a lot of nasty things with my indelible wizard’s Sight. I could tell you that I’d been caught and abused by the creatures of the night myself, and that I hadn’t ever really gotten over it. I could tell you that I hadn’t gotten laid in a really long time.

And all of those things would be true.

But the fact of the matter is that there’s simply a part of me that isn’t so nice. There’s a part of me that gets off on laying waste to my enemies with my power, that gets tired of taking undeserved abuse. There’s this little voice inside my head that sometimes wants to throw the rules away, stop trying to be responsible, and just take what I want.

And for a minute, I wondered what it might be like to accept Mab’s offer. Life among the Sidhe would be…intense. In every sense a mortal could imagine. What would it be like to live in a house? Hell, probably a big house, if not a freaking castle. Money. Hot showers every day. Every meal a feast. I’d be able to afford whatever clothes I wanted, whatever cars I wanted. Maybe I could do some traveling, see places I’d always wanted to see. Hawaii. Italy. Australia. I could learn to sail, like I always wanted.

Women, oh, yeah. Hot and cold running girls. Inhumanly beautiful, sensuous creatures like the one before me. The Winter Knight had status and power, and those are even more of an aphrodisiac to the fae than they are to us mortals.

I could have…almost anything.

All it would cost me was my soul.

And no, I’m not talking about anything magical or metaphysical. I’m talking about the core of my identity, about what makes Harry Dresden who and what he is. If I lost those things, the things that define me, then what would be left?

Just a heap of bodily processes-and regret.

I knew that. But all the same, the touch of Mab’s chilled lips on my ear lingered on, sending slow, pleasant ripples of sensation through me when I breathed. It was enough to make me hesitate.

"No, Mab," I said finally. "I don’t want the job."

She studied my face with calm, heavy eyes. "Liar," she said quietly. "You want it. I can see it in you."

I gritted my teeth. "The part of me that wants it doesn’t get a vote," I said. "I’m not going to take the job. Period."

She tilted her head to one side and stared at me. "One day, wizard, you will kneel at my feet and ask me to bestow the mantle upon you."

"But not today."

"No," Mab said. "Today you repay me a favor. Just as I said you would."

I didn’t want to think too hard about that, and I didn’t want to openly agree with her, either. So instead I nodded at the patch of ground where the sculptures had been. "Who took Marcone?"

"I do not know. That is one reason I chose you, Emissary. You have a gift for finding what is lost."

"If you want me to do this for you, I’m going to need to ask you some questions," I said.

Mab glanced up, as if consulting the stars through the still-falling snow. "Time, time, time. Will there never be an end to it?" She shook her head. "Wizard child, the hour has nearly passed. I have duties upon which to attend-as do you. You should rise and leave this place immediately."

"Why?" I asked warily. I got to my feet.

"Because when your little retainer warned you of danger, wizard child, he was not referring to me."

On the street outside the alley, the gale-force wind and the white wall of blowing snow both died away. On the other side of the street, two men in long coats and big Stetson hats stood facing the alley. I felt the sudden weight of their attention, and got the impression that they had been surprised to see me.

I whirled to speak to Mab-only to find her gone. Grimalkin, too, both of them vanished without a trace or a whisper of power to betray it.

I turned back to the street in time to see the two figures step off the sidewalk and begin moving toward me with long strides. They were both tall, nearly my own height, and thickly built. The snowfall hadn’t lightened, and the street was a smooth pane of unbroken snow.

They were leaving cloven footprints on it.

"Crap," I spat, and fled back down the narrow, featureless alley.

Chapter Seven

At this sign of retreat, the two men threw back their heads and let out shrill, bleating cries. Their hats fell off when they did, revealing the goatlike features and curling horns of gruffs. But they were bigger than the first attack team-bigger, stronger, and faster.

And as they closed the distance on me, I noticed something else.

Both of them had produced submachine guns from beneath their coats.

"Oh, come on," I complained as I ran. "That’s just not fair."

They started shooting at me, which was bad news. Wizard or not, a bullet through the head will splatter my brains just as randomly as the next guy’s. The really bad news was that they weren’t just spraying bullets everywhere. Even with an automatic weapon, it isn’t easy to hit a moving target, and the old "spray and pray" method of fire relied upon blind luck disguised as the law of averages: Shoot enough bullets and eventually you have to hit something. Do your shooting like that and sometimes you’ll hit the target, and sometimes you won’t.