Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

Hands and knives flashed, all whip-crack speed and whispering violence as they parted the air. I couldn’t keep track of the individual cuts. There were just too many of them. I saw Daniel’s mail shirt turn aside another pair of strikes, one of them hard enough to send a titanium ring tinkling across the floor. A flicker of red fanned through the air, where one of the fighters lost a splash of blood.

Daniel let out a short grunt. Then another. Aristedes barked out a sound of both pain and satisfaction. The two parted, both breathing heavily. Combat taxes a body’s reserves like nothing else on earth. Seconds of it can leave you exhausted, even if you’re in great shape.

Daniel staggered and went down on one knee, letting out a grunt of surprise.

There were wounds on both of his legs—punctures, deep stabs. Neither wound had hit one of the big arteries, or he’d already be unconscious, but they were right through the quadriceps muscles, and had to have been agonizing.

He snarled and attempted to rise. Halfway there, he faltered and went down again. Training, courage, and fortitude get you only so far. A deep enough wound on either leg could have taken Daniel out of the fight. He had them on both.

Aristedes hadn’t come away clean from the exchange, though. There was a deep cut on his right arm, where Daniel’s knife had caught him hard. Flesh hung from a flap of skin. Blood flowed, but his arm still seemed to work. If Aristedes lived long enough and if he kept the arm, he was going to have one hell of a scar to show off later.

But that wasn’t going to matter much to Daniel.

The sorcerer switched his knife to his left hand and stared at Daniel with flat eyes. “Kids like you. Haven’t learned the price of doing business. When to trade pain for victory.”

He blurred into motion again, and Daniel lifted his knife. Then the younger man cried out and fell to his side, clutching at his right arm with his left hand. His knife landed on the floor and spun away from him, eventually coming to rest against Aristedes’ feet.

The sorcerer took his time transferring his own knife to his left hand and picking up Daniel’s. He tested the blade’s balance and edge and said, “Serviceable.” He carefully wiped the blood from Daniel’s blade against the leg of his trousers, closed it, and slipped it into the pocket of his bathrobe. Then he fixed the young man with a nasty smile, raised his own blade over his head, so that Daniel’s blood dripped down it and fell on his upraised arm.

And he started to chant.

I felt the magic gathering at once. It wasn’t particularly powerful, but that was by my own standards. Magic doesn’t absolutely require a ton of horsepower to be dangerous. It took Aristedes maybe ten seconds to summon enough will and focus for whatever he was doing, and I stood there clenching my fists and my jaw in impotent fury. Daniel saw what was happening and found an old can in the detritus on the floor beside him. He threw it at Aristedes in an awkward, left-handed motion, but came nowhere close to striking the sorcerer.

Aristedes pointed the knife at Daniel, his eyes reptilian, hissed a word, and released the spell.

Michael’s eldest son arched his back and let out a strangled scream of agony. Aristedes repeated the word and Daniel contorted in pain again, his back bowing more than I would have thought possible.

I stifled a furious scream of my own and looked away as the sorcerer bent and twisted the energy of Creation itself into a means of torment. Looking away was almost worse: Aristedes’ young followers were watching with a sick fascination. Daniel screamed until he was out of breath, and then began to strangle himself as he tried to keep it up. One of the kids bent suddenly and began retching onto the floor.

“This is my house,” Aristedes said, his expression never changing. “I am the master here, and my will is—”

Butters appeared behind Aristedes, from around an upended vat of some kind, and swung three feet of lead pipe into the side of the sorcerer’s knee.

There was a sharp, clear crack as bone and cartilage snapped, and Aristedes screamed and went down.

“That sound you just heard,” Butters said, his voice tight with fear and adrenaline, “was your lateral collateral ligament and anterior cruciate ligament tearing free of the joint. It’s also possible that your patella or tibia was fractured.”

Aristedes just lay there in pain, gasping through clenched teeth. A line of spittle drooled out of his mouth.

Butters hefted the lead pipe like a batter at the plate. “Get rid of the knife, or I start on your cranium.”

Aristedes kept on gasping but didn’t look up. He tossed the creepy knife away.

“The one in your pocket, too,” Butters said.

The sorcerer gave him a look of pure hatred. Then he tossed away the knife he’d appropriated from Daniel.

“Sit tight, Daniel,” Butters called. “I’ll be with you in just a second.”

“ ’M fine,” Daniel groaned from the ground. He didn’t sound fine. But as I watched, I saw him winding pieces of the slashed cloak around the wound in his right arm, binding them closed and slowing the bleeding. Tough kid, and thinking under pressure.

Butters focused on Aristedes. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I want to help you. Your knee has been destroyed. You will never walk again if you don’t get medical attention. I’ll take you to a hospital.”

“What do you want?” Aristedes growled.

“The priest. Fitz. These kids.” He bounced the lead pipe against his own shoulder a couple of times. “And this really isn’t a negotiation.”

“Yes!” I said, clenching my fist. “You go, Butters!”

Aristedes eyed Butters for a moment more. Then he sagged and let out a soft groan of pain.

Oh, crap.

“You win,” the sorcerer said. “Just . . . please . . . help me.”

“Straighten it out,” Butters said, never quite looking at the man. “Lie back and leave it straight.”

Aristedes fumbled with his leg and let out another, higher-pitched moan of pain.

Butters flinched at the sound and his eyes were tortured. In a sudden flash of insight, I realized why he cut up corpses for a living instead of treating live patients.

Butters couldn’t handle seeing people in pain.

That was what he’d always meant when he said that he wasn’t a real doctor, when he said that treating living patients was messy and disturbing compared to extracting individual organs and cataloging them in autopsies. Dead people were just a pile of meat and bones. They were beyond all suffering.

A physician needs a certain level of professional detachment if he is going to best serve his patients, and Butters just . . . didn’t have it. The little guy couldn’t bring himself not to feel something for the people he worked with. So he had sought a career where he practiced medicine without trying to heal anyone—without involving himself with actual patients.

Aristedes had seen it, too. He probably didn’t understand it, but he saw the soft spot, and he went for it ruthlessly.

“Don’t,” I breathed. “Butters, don’t.”

“Dammit,” Butters said finally, gritting his teeth. He bent to help the man. “Hold still. You’re just making it worse. Here.” He tried to keep a wary distance as he lent the man a hand, but it just wasn’t possible to help him and stay out of reach. I saw it on his face as he realized it and began to withdraw. Then, as the man continued his low moans of pain, Butters gave his head a little shake and moved to help Aristedes straighten his leg.

I saw the sorcerer’s eyes narrow to slits, an almost sensual pleasure contained in them.

“Dammit!” I said. “Butters, move!” I vanished and appeared beside Butters, shoving my hands into his chest, willing myself to push him away.