Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

It was a real bitch, trying to undo the grendelkin’s knotted ropes while still holding the illusion in place in my mind. Beneath the glamour that made him look like me, he fought furiously, clawing and swinging at the malks attacking him. It didn’t help that Elizabeth was screaming again, thanks to the illusion of the grendelkin I was holding over myself, but hey. No plan is perfect.

“Mouse!” I cried.

A malk flew over my head, screaming, and splattered against a wall.

My dog bounded up just as I got the girl loose. I shoved her at him and said, “Get her out of here! Run! Go, go, go!”

Elizabeth didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she understood that last part well enough. She fled, back toward the crude staircase. Mouse ran beside her, and when a malk flung itself at Elizabeth’s naked back, my dog intercepted the little monster in the air, catching it as neatly as a Frisbee at the park. Mouse snarled and shook his jaws once. The malk’s neck broke with an audible snap. My dog dropped it and fled on.

I grabbed my staff and ran to Gard. The malks hadn’t noticed her yet. They were still busy mobbing the grendelkin—

Crap. My concentration had wavered. It looked like itself again, as did I.

I whirled and focused my will upon the giant pile of clean-picked bones. I extended my staff and snarled, “Counterspell this. Forzare! ”

Hundreds of pounds of sharp white bone flung themselves at the grendelkin and the malks alike. I threw the bones hard, harder than the grendelkin had thrown his rock, and the bone shards ripped into them like the blast of an enormous shotgun.

Without waiting to see the results, I snatched up the still-burning flare and flung it into the pile of nesting fabric, bloody clothes, and old newspapers. The whole mound flared instantly into angry light and smothering smoke.

“Get up!” I screamed at Gard. One side of her face was bruised and swollen, and she had a visibly broken arm, one of the bones in her forearm protruding from the skin. With my help, she staggered up, dazed and choking on the smoke, which also blotted out the light. I got her onto the stairs, and even in our battered state, we set some kind of speed record going up them.

The deafening chorus of bellowing grendelkin and howling malks faded a little as the smoke started choking them, too. Air was moving in the tunnel, as the fire drew on it just as it might a chimney. I lit up my amulet again to show us the way out.

“Wait!” Gard gasped, fifty feet up the tunnel. “Wait!”

She fumbled at her jacket pocket, where she kept the little ivory box, but she couldn’t reach it with her sound arm. I dug it out for her.

“Triangle, three lines over it,” she said, leaning against a wall for support. “Get it out.”

I poked through the little ivory Scrabble tiles until I found one that matched her description. “This one?” I demanded.

“Careful,” she growled. “It’s a Sunder rune.” She grabbed it from me, took a couple of steps back toward the grendelkin’s cavern, murmured under her breath, and snapped the little tile. There was a flicker of deep red light, and the tunnel itself quivered and groaned.

“Run!”

We did.

Behind us, the tunnel collapsed in on itself with a roar, sealing the malks and the grendelkin away beneath us, trapping them in the smothering smoke.

We both stopped for a moment after that, as dust billowed up the tunnel and the sound of furious supernatural beings cut off as if someone had flipped a switch. The silence was deafening.

We both stood there, panting and wounded. Gard sank to the floor to rest.

“You were right,” I said. “I guess we didn’t need to worry about the malks on the way out.”

Gard gave me a weary smile. “That was my favorite ax.”

“Go back for it,” I suggested. “I’ll wait for you here.”

She snorted.

Mouse came shambling up out of the tunnel above us. Elizabeth Braddock clung to his collar, and looked acutely embarrassed about her lack of clothing. “Wh-what?” she whispered. “What happened here? I d-don’t understand.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Braddock,” I said. “You’re safe. We’re going to take you back to your husband.”

She closed her eyes, shuddered, and started to cry. She sank down to put her arms around Mouse’s furry ruff, and buried her face in his fur. She was shivering with the cold. I shucked out of my coat and draped it around her.

Gard eyed her, then her own broken arm, and let out a sigh. “I need a drink.”

I spat some grit out of my mouth. “Ditto. Come on.”

I offered her a hand up. She took it.

SEVERAL HOURS AND doctors later, Gard and I wound up back at the pub, where the beer festival was winding to a conclusion. We sat at a table with Mac. The Braddocks had stammered a gratuitous number of thanks and rushed off together. Mac’s keg had a blue ribbon taped to it. He’d drawn all of us a mug.

“Night of the Living Brews,” I said. I had painkillers for my shoulder, but I was waiting until I was home and in bed to take one. As a result, I ached pretty much everywhere. “More like night of the living bruise.”

Mac rose, drained his mug, and held it up in a salute to Gard and me. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I said.

Gard smiled slightly and bowed her head to him. Mac departed.

Gard finished her own mug and examined the cast on her arm. “Close one.”

“Little bit,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

She nodded.

“The grendelkin called you a Geat,” I said.

“Yes, he did.”

“I’m familiar with only one person referred to in that way,” I said.

“There are a few more around,” Gard said. “But everyone’s heard of that one.”

“You called the grendelkin a scion of Grendel,” I said. “Am I to take it that you’re a scion of the Geat?”

Gard smiled slightly. “My family and the grendelkin’s have a long history.”

“He called you a Chooser,” I said.

She shrugged again, and kept her enigmatic smile.

“Gard isn’t your real name,” I said. “Is it?”

“Of course not,” she replied.

I sipped some more of Mac’s award-winning dark. “You’re a Valkyrie. A real one.”

Her expression was unreadable.

“I thought Valkyries mostly did pickups and deliveries,” I said. “Choosing the best warriors from among the slain. Taking them off to Valhalla. Oh, and serving drinks there. Odin’s virgin daughters, pouring mead for the warriors, partying until Ragnarok.”

Gard threw back her head and laughed. “Virgin daughters.” She rose, shaking her head, and glanced at her broken arm again. Then she leaned down and kissed me on the mouth. Her lips were a sweet, hungry little fire of sensation, and I felt the kiss all the way to my toes—some places more than others, ahem.

She drew away slowly, her pale blue eyes shining. Then she winked at me and said, “Don’t believe everything you read, Dresden.” She turned to go, then paused to glance over her shoulder. “Though, to be honest, sometimes he does like us to call him Daddy. I’m Sigrun.”

I watched Sigrun go. Then I finished the last of the beer. Mouse rose expectantly, his tail wagging, and we set off for home.

—from Blood Lite, edited by Kevin J. Anderson

Takes place between Small Favor and Turn Coat

Kevin Anderson talked to me at NYCC and asked me if I’d be interested in participating in a new kind of anthology (for me, anyway) in which authors known for their work in supernatural and horror fiction tried their hands at comedy. I loved the idea.