Small Favor

I leaned my staff against the wall and did so. I’d know those monosyllables anywhere. "Hi, Hendricks."

A massive man appeared from the dimness in the next room, holding a police-issue riot gun in hands that made it look like a child’s toy. He was built like a bull, and you could apply thick and rocklike to just about everything in his anatomy, especially if you started with his skull. He came close enough to let me see his close-cropped red hair. "Dresden. Step aside."

I did, and the shotgun was trained on my brother. "You, vampire. Sword down. Fingers laced behind your head."

Thomas rolled his eyes and complied. "How come he doesn’t have to put his hands behind his head?"

"Wouldn’t make any difference with him," Hendricks replied. Narrow, beady eyes swiveled like gun turrets back to me. "What do you want?"

I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Hendricks speak a complete sentence, much less string phrases together. It was sort of disconcerting, the way it would be if Mister suddenly developed the capacity to open his own cans of cat food. It took me a second to get over the mental speed bump. "Uh," I said. "I want to…"

I realized how lame this was going to sound. I gritted my teeth and said it quickly. "I want to help your boss."

There was a clicking sound from the wall, the sound of an audio speaker popping to life. A woman’s voice said, "Send the wizard up."

Hendricks growled. "You sure?"

"Do it. The vampire stays downstairs."

Hendricks grunted and tilted his head to the right. "Through there and up the stairs, Dresden. Move it."

"Harry," Thomas said quietly.

Hendricks brought his shotgun back up and covered Thomas. "Not you, prettyboy. You stay put. Or both of you get out."

"It’s okay," I said quietly to my brother. "I feel better if someone I trust is watching the door anyway. Just in case someone else shows up." I cast my eyes meaningfully in the direction of the woods where Thomas had said something lurked.

He shook his head. "Whatever." Then he leaned back against the wall, casual and relaxed, his hands behind his head as if they were there only to pillow his skull.

I brushed past Hendricks. Without slowing down or looking behind me, I said, "Careful with that gun. He gets hurt and it’s going to be bad for you, Hendricks."

Hendricks ignored me. I had a feeling it was his strongest conversational ploy.

I went up the stairs, noting a couple of details as I went. First, that the carpet was even cheaper than mine, which made me feel more confident for some obscure reason.

Second, that there were bloodstains on it. A lot of them.

At the top of the stairs I found more bloodstains, including a long smear along one wall. I followed them down to one of three bedrooms on the upper level of the house. I paused and knocked on the door.

"Come in, Dresden," said a woman’s voice.

I came in.

Miss Gard lay in bed. It had been hauled over to the window so that she could see out of it. She had a heavy assault rifle of a design I didn’t recognize next to her. The wooden handle of a double-headed battle-ax leaned against the bed, within reach of her hand. Gard was blond, tall, athletic, and while she wasn’t precisely beautiful, she was a striking woman, with clean-cut features, icy blue eyes, and an athlete’s build.

She was also a mess of blood.

She was soaked in it. So was the bed beneath her. Her shirt was open, revealing a black athletic bra and a long wound that ran the width of her stomach, just below her belly button. Slick grey-red ropy loops protruded slightly from the wound.

My stomach twisted, and I looked away.

"Goodness," Miss Gard said, her voice quiet and rough, her face pale. "You’d think you never saw anyone disemboweled before."

"Just relieved," I said. I forced myself to face her. "First time today I’ve run into someone who looks worse than me."

She showed me a weary smile for a moment.

"You need a doctor," I said.

She shook her head. "No."

"Yes," I said. "You do. I’m surprised you haven’t bled to death already. Think of what it would cost Monoc Securities to replace you."

"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."

"Damn," 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?"