Elaine snorted. "You can't lose what you've never had." She glanced up at me. "Like the new shield, by the way."
"Yeah. Sexy, huh?"
"Complex," she replied. "Balanced. Strong. Sophisticated. I'm not sure I could have made a focus for something like that. It took real skill, Harry."
I felt myself actually blush, absurdly pleased by the compliment. "Well, it isn't perfect. It takes a lot more juice than the old shield did. But I figured getting tired faster is far preferable to getting dead faster."
"Seems reasonable," she said, and squinted at the docks. "Can you tell which boat it is?"
"Not yet. But once you get two or three hundred yards over the water, that spell would have grounded out. So we know it's one of these at the docks."
Elaine nodded. "You want to lead?"
"Yeah. We should be able to run it down fairly fast. Stay about ten or fifteen feet back from me."
Elaine frowned. "Why?"
"Any closer than that and we'd be a dandy target. Someone could take us both out with one burst from a machine gun."
Her face got a little pale. "I thought you trusted him."
"I do," I said. "But I don't know who might be there with him."
"And you've learned this kind of thing on the job? Machine guns?"
I felt my left hand twitch. "Actually, I learned it with flamethrowers. But it applies to machine guns, too."
She took a deep breath, green eyes flickering over the docks and ships. "I see. After you, then."
I readied my shield bracelet, got a good grip on my staff, and wrapped my amulet's chain around the first two fingers of my right hand, holding it up and out a little so that the amulet could dangle and indicate direction. I stepped out onto the docks and followed the spell toward the outermost row of moored boats. I was acutely conscious of Elaine's light, steady footsteps behind me, and the little slapping sighs of water hitting hulls.
The summer sky was overcast with lead, and occasional thunder rumbled through the air. The docks weren't nearly as crowded as they could be, but there were a couple of dozen people around, walking to and from boats, working on decks, getting ready to cast off or else just now securing their lines. I was the only one wearing a big leather coat, and got a few odd looks.
The amulet led me to the last slip of the dock farthest from shore. The boat moored there was a big one, at least for those docks, and looked like it might have been a stunt double for the boat in Jaws Jaws. It was old, battered, its white paint smudged to a faded, peeling grey, the planks of its hull often patched. The windows on the wheelhouse were obscured with dust and greasy smudges. It needed to be sandblasted and repainted-except for the lettering on its stern, which had apparently been added only recently in heavy black paint: WATER BEETLE WATER BEETLE.
I walked ten feet away and rechecked the amulet's indication, triangulating. The Water Beetle Water Beetle was the right boat. was the right boat.
"Hey!" I called out. "Er, uh. Ahoy! Thomas!"
Silence met my hail.
I checked over my shoulder. Elaine had moved away, to where she could see the little ship's entire deck while still standing a good twenty feet down the dock from me. What was the military term for that? Establishing a cross fire? Maybe it was creating a defilade. The point being, though, that if anything came gibbering up out of the boat's hold, we'd tear it up between us before you could say boogityboo.
Of course, if anyone on the boat had hostile intent and an ounce of brains, they'd probably realize that, too.
"Thomas!" I shouted again. "It's Harry Dresden!"
If someone on that boat meant me harm, the smart thing to do would be to stay quiet and tempt me out onto the boat itself. That would minimize my chances of avoiding an attack, and give them their best shot at taking me out in a hurry-which is just about the only reliable way to do it, when you're dealing with wizards. Give one of us time to catch our breath, and we can be a real handful.
"Okay," I said to Elaine, not taking my eyes off the boat. "I'm going aboard."
"Is that smart?"
"No." I glanced at her for a second. "You got a better idea?"
"No," she admitted.
"Cover me."
"Cover you." Elaine shook her head, but she let one end of the chain slip loose from her hand, and caught it in the other. She took a grip on it, leaving a couple of feet hanging from her left hand. Little flickers of light played along it-subtle enough that I doubted anyone would notice if they weren't looking for it. "I thought I was here on a job. Now it turns out I'm half of a buddy-cop movie."
"Uh-huh," I said. "I'm the zany yet lovable one. You're the brainy conservative."
"What if I want to be the zany one?"
"Then you can hop out there on the boat."
"Stop throwing the regulations out the window," she said, as if reciting a hastily memorized grocery list. "We're supposed to catch the maniacs, not become them. Don't do anything crazy, because I've only got two and a half seconds to go until I retire."
"That's the spirit," I said, and hopped from the dock to the deck of the Water Beetle Water Beetle.
I crouched, ready for trouble, but nothing came hurtling at me. One of the boats down the dock started up an engine that could not possibly have passed any kind of emissions test, including one for noise. Even so, though, I heard a thumping sound come from below the deck. I froze, but there was no further sound beyond the nearby rumbling engine, which, from the smell of it, was burning a lot of oil.
I tried to move silently, pacing around the wheelhouse. It was a tight squeeze between the deckhouse and the rail as I sidled by to peer around the corner and down a short flight of stairs that led into the ship's cabin hold. I was aware of a presence: nothing specific, really, beyond a sudden, intuitive certainty that someone was down there and aware of me in return.
I could probably dance around, listening and lurking in hopes of finding some other indication of who was below-but not for long. People would notice me crouching and taking cover on the ship's deck for no apparent reason. Some of them would ignore it. Hell, most of them would ignore it. But inevitably, one of them would think it odd enough to give the cops a ring.
"Screw it," I said. I made sure my duster was covering my back, brought my shield up before me, and stepped quickly down the stairs and into the hold.
I had maybe half a second of warning when someone came swinging down the stairs behind me-he must have been lying flat and out of sight atop the wheelhouse. I started to turn, but two heels hit my right shoulder blade in a double-legged kick and propelled me forcefully down into the hold.
The duster was hell on wheels for stopping claws and bullets, but it did me less good against the blunt impact of the kick. It hurt. I threw up the shield in front of me as I fell, and cut it again in an instant, since impacting a rigid plane of force would be much like slamming myself into a brick wall. The fluttering energy of the shield slowed me enough to control my fall and turn it into a roll. I came to my knees facing the stairway, as Thomas came hurtling down it with mayhem evidently in mind.
He crouched on the stairs with one of those crooked knives the Gurkhas use clutched in one fist, and a double-barreled shotgun with maybe six inches of barrel left to it in the other and pointed directly at my head. My brother was a little bit shy of six feet tall, slim, and made out of whipcord and steel cable. His eyes were alight with fury in his pale face, faded from their usual thundercloud grey to an angry, metallic silver that meant that he was drawing upon his power as a vampire. His shoulder-length dark hair was bound back under a red bandanna, and his 'do still looked more stylish than mine.
"Thomas," I snarled. "Ow. What is What is wrong wrong with you?" with you?"
"You get one chance to surrender, asshole. Drop the spells and face the wall."
"Thomas. Stop being a dick. I don't need this right now."
Thomas sneered. "Give it up. It's a good act, but I know you aren't Harry Dresden. There's no way the real Dresden would have come here with a woman like that instead of his dog."
I blinked at him and dropped my shield. "Now what the hell is that that supposed to mean?" I glared at him and added in a lower tone, "Hell's bells, if you weren't my brother, I'd paste you." supposed to mean?" I glared at him and added in a lower tone, "Hell's bells, if you weren't my brother, I'd paste you."
Thomas lowered the shotgun, his expression startled. "Harry?"
A shadow moved behind Thomas.
"Wait!" I screamed.
A length of heavy chain whipped around his throat. There was a flash of greenish light and a crackling explosion almost as loud as a gunshot. Thomas jerked into an agonized arch and was flung free of the chain to come hurtling into me. For the second time in sixty seconds, I got hit with my brother's full weight and slammed to the floor. My nose filled with the sharp scent of ozone and burned hair.
"Harry?" called Elaine's voice, high and loud. "Harry?"
"I said to wait," I wheezed.
She came hustling down the stairs and over to me. "Did he hurt you?"
"Not until you threw him on me," I snapped. Which wasn't true, but being repeatedly bashed about makes me grumpy. I touched a finger to my throbbing lip, and it came away wet with blood. "Ow."
Elaine said, "Sorry. I thought you were in trouble."
I shook my head to clear it and glanced at Thomas. His eyes were open and he looked startled. He was breathing, but his arms and legs lay limp. His lips moved a little. I leaned over and asked him, "What?"
"Ow," he whispered.
I sat up, a little relieved. If he was able to complain, he couldn't have been too bad off. "What was that?" I asked Elaine.
"Taser."
"Stored electricity?"
"Yes."
"How do you refill it?"
"Thunderstorm. Or I just plug it into any wall socket."
"Cool," I said. "Maybe I should get one of those."
Thomas's head moved, and one of his legs twitched and began to stir.
Elaine whirled on him at once, her chain held taut between her hands, and little flashes of light began flickering through the decorative metal embedded into the links.
"Easy, there," I said, firmly. "Back off. We came here to talk, remember?"
"Harry, we should at least restrain him."
"He isn't going to hurt us," I said.
"Would you listen to yourself for a second?" she said, her voice sharpening. "Harry, despite heavy evidence to the contrary, you're telling me that you like and trust a creature whose specialty lies in subverting the minds of his victims. That's the way they they all talk about a White Court vampire, and you know it." all talk about a White Court vampire, and you know it."
"That isn't what's happened here," I said.
"They say that, that, too," Elaine insisted. "I'm not saying any of this is your fault, Harry. But if this thing too," Elaine insisted. "I'm not saying any of this is your fault, Harry. But if this thing has has gotten to you somehow, this is exactly how you'd be responding to it." gotten to you somehow, this is exactly how you'd be responding to it."
"He's not a thing, thing," I snarled. "His name is Thomas."
Thomas took in a deep breath and then managed to say, in a very feeble voice, "It's all right. You can come out now."
The forward wall of the cabin creaked and suddenly shifted, swinging out on a concealed hinge to reveal a small area behind it, not quite as large as a typical walk-in closet. There were several women and two or three very small children huddled in that cramped space, and they emerged into the cabin warily.
One of them was Olivia the dancer.
"There," Thomas said quietly. He turned his head to Elaine. "There they are, and they're fine. Check them out for yourself."
I stood up, my joints creaking, and studied the women. "Olivia," I said.
"Warden," she said quietly.
"Are you all right?"
She smiled. "Except for a muscle cramp I got in there. It's a little crowded."
Elaine looked from the women to Thomas and back. "Did he hurt you?"
Olivia blinked. "No," she said. "No, of course not. He was taking us to shelter."
"Shelter?" I asked.
"Harry," Elaine said, "these are some of the women who have gone missing."
I digested that for a second, and then turned to Thomas. "What the hell is wrong with you? Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"
He shook his head, his expression still a little bleary. "Reasons. Didn't want you involved in this."
"Well, I'm involved now," I said. "So how about you tell me what's going on."
"You were at my apartment," Thomas said. "You saw my guest room wall."
"Yeah."
"They were being hunted. I had to figure out who was after them. Why. I got it, at least well enough to be able to figure out who they were planning to kill. It became a race between us." He glanced at the women and children. "I got everyone I could out of harm's way, and brought them here." He tried to move his head and winced. "Nnngh. There are another dozen at a cabin on an island about twenty miles north of here."
"A safe house," I mused. "You were taking them to a safe house."
"Yeah."
Elaine just stared at the women for a long moment, then at Thomas. "Olivia," she asked. "Is he telling the truth?"
"A-as far as I know," the girl answered. "He's been a perfect gentleman."
I'm pretty sure nobody but me caught it, but at her words, Thomas's eyes flashed with a cold and furious hunger. He may have treated the women gently and politely, but I knew that there was a part of him that hadn't wanted to. He closed his eyes tightly and started taking deep breaths. I recognized the ritual he used to control his darker nature, and said nothing of it.
Elaine talked quietly with Olivia, who began making introductions. I leaned against a wall-unless maybe, since we were on a ship, it was a bulkhead-and rubbed my finger at a spot between my eyebrows where a headache was coming on. The damned oily smoke smell from the nearby ship's sputtering engine wasn't helping matters any, either, and- My head snapped up and I flung myself up the stairs and onto the deck.
That big ugly boat had been moved from its moorings-and now floated directly beside the Water Beetle, Water Beetle, blocking it from the open waters of the lake. Its engine was pouring out so much blue-black oil smoke that it could not have been anything but deliberate. A choking haze had already enveloped the blocking it from the open waters of the lake. Its engine was pouring out so much blue-black oil smoke that it could not have been anything but deliberate. A choking haze had already enveloped the Water Beetle, Water Beetle, and I couldn't see beyond the next row of docks. and I couldn't see beyond the next row of docks.