Jim Butcher - Summer Knight

"All right," Meryl said with a laconic nod.

"Yeah," Fix said. "Okay."

I looked around at all of them and grimaced. They looked so damned young. Or maybe it was just me feeling old. I reminded myself that Billy and the Alphas had already had their baptism by fire, and they'd had almost two years to hone their skills against some of the low-intensity riffraff of the Chicago underground scene. But I knew that they were getting in way over their heads on this one.

I needed them, and they'd volunteered. The trick was to make sure that I didn't lead them to a horrible death.

"Okay," I said. "Let's go."

Billy pushed open the passenger door, and Georgia moved back to the crowded rear seats. I got in beside Billy and asked, "Did you get them?"

Billy passed me a plastic bag from Wal-Mart. "Yeah, that's why it took so long to get here. There was police tape all over and cops standing around."

"Thanks," I said. I tore open a package of orange plastic box knives and put them into the doctor's valise, then snapped it closed again. Then I took the grey stone from my pocket, wrapped the thread it hung by around my hand, and held my hand out in front of me, palm down and level with my eyes. "Let's go."

"Okay," Billy said, giving me a skeptical look. "Go where?"

The grey stone quivered and twitched. Then it swung very definitely to the east, drawing the string with it, so that it hung at a slight angle rather than straight down.

I pointed the way the stone leaned and said, "Thataway. Toward the lake."

"Got it," Billy said. He pulled the van onto the street. "So where are we heading?"

I grunted and stuck an index finger up.

"Up," Billy said, his voice skeptical. "We're going up."

I watched the stone. It wobbled, and I focused on it as I might on my own amulet. It stabilized and leaned toward the lake without wavering or swaying on its string. "Up there," I clarified.

"Where up there?"

Lightning flashed and I pointed toward it. "There up there."

Billy glanced at someone in the back and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I hope you know a couple of streets I don't, then." He drove for a while more, with me telling him to bear right or left. At a stoplight, the rain still pounding on the windshield, wipers flicking steadily, he asked, "So what's the score?"

"Well-intentioned But Dangerously Insane Bad Guys are ahead coming down the stretch," I said. "The Faerie Courts are duking it out up there, and it's probably going to be very hairy. The Summer Lady is our baddie, and the Winter Knight is her bitch. She has a magic hankie. She's going to use it to change a statue into a girl and kill her on a big Flintstones table at midnight."

There were a couple of grunts as Meryl pushed her way toward the front of the van. "A girl? Lily?"

I glanced from the stone back to her and nodded. "We have to find Aurora and stop her. Save the girl."

"Or what happens?" Billy asked.

"Badness."

"Kaboom badness?"

I shook my head. "Mostly longer term than that."

"Like what?"

"How do you feel about ice ages?"

Billy whistled. "Uh. Do you mind if I ask a few questions?"

I kept my eyes on the chip of stone. "Go ahead."

"Right," Billy said. "As I understand it, Aurora is trying to tear apart both of the Faerie Courts, right?"

"Yeah."

"Why? I mean, why not shoot for just Winter so her side wins?"

"Because she can't," I said. "She's limited in her power. She knows she doesn't have the strength it would take to force things on her own. The Queens and the Mothers could stop her easily. So she's using the only method she has open to her."

"Screwing up the balance of power," Billy said. "But she's doing it by giving a bunch of mojo to Winter?"

"Limits," I said. "She can't move Winter's power around at all, the way she can Summer's. That's why she had to kill her own Knight. She knew she could pour his power out into a vessel of her choosing."

"Lily," growled Meryl.

I glanced over my shoulder at her and nodded. "Someone who would trust her. Who wouldn't be able to protect herself against Aurora's enchantment."

"So why'd she turn the girl to stone?" Billy asked.

"It was her cover," I said. "The Queens could have found an active Knight. But once Lily was turned to stone, the Knight's mantle was stuck in limbo. Aurora knew that everyone would suspect Mab of doing something clever and that Titania would be forced to prepare to fight. Mab would have to move in response, and the pair of them would create the battleground around the Stone Table."

"What's the Table for?"

"Pouring power into one of the Courts," I said. "It belongs to Summer until midnight tonight. After that, any power that gets poured in goes to Winter."

"Which is where we're going now," Billy said.

"Uh-huh," I said. "Turn left at that light."

Billy nodded. "So Aurora steals the power and hides it, which forces the Queens to bring out the battleground with the big table."

"Right. Now Aurora plans to take Lily there and use the Unraveling to free her of the stone curse she's under. Then she kills her and touches off Faerie-geddon. She's got to get to the table after midnight, but before Mab's forces actually take the ground around it. That means she's only got a small window of opportunity, and we need to stop her from using it."

"I still don't get it," Billy said. "What the hell is she hoping to accomplish?"

"Probably she thinks she can ride out the big war. Then she'll put it all together again from the ashes just the way she wants it."

"Thank God she's not too arrogant or anything," Billy muttered. "It seems to me that Mab is going to be handed a huge advantage in this. Why didn't Aurora just work together with Mab?"

"It probably never occurred to her to try it that way. She's Summer. Mab is Winter. The two don't work together."

"Small favors," Billy said. "So what do we do to help?"

"I'm going to have to move around through a battleground. I need muscle to do it. I don't want to stop to fight. We just keep moving until I can get to the Stone Table and stop Aurora. And I want all of you changed before we go up there. Faeries are vindictive as hell and you're going to piss some of them off. Better if they never get to see your faces."

"Right," Billy said. "How many faeries are we talking about?"

I squinted up at a particularly violent burst of lightning. "All of them."

The stone the Gatekeeper had given me led us to the waterfront along Burnham Harbor. Billy parked the van on the street outside the wharves that had once been the lifeblood of the city and that still received an enormous amount of shipping every year. Halogen floodlights every couple of hundred feet made the docks into a silent still life behind a grid of chain-link fence.

I turned to the Alphas and said, "All right, folks. Before we go up, I've got to put some ointment on your eyes. It stinks, but it will keep you from being taken in by most faerie glamours."

"Me first," Billy said at once. I opened the little jar and smeared the dark ointment on under his eyes, little half-moons of dark, greasy brown. He checked his eyes in the mirror and said, "And I used to sneer at the football team."

"Get your game face on," I said. Billy slipped out of the car and pitched his sweats and T-shirt back in. I got out of the van and opened the side door. Billy, in his wolf-shape, came trotting around the side of the van and sat nearby as I smeared the greasy ointment on the eyes of all the Alphas.

It was a little unnerving, to me anyway. They were all naked as I did it, shimmering into wolf-form as soon as I had finished, and joining Billy outside. One of the girls, a redhead who had been daintily plump, now looked like something from a men's magazine. She gave me a somewhat satisfied smile as I noticed, and the next, a petite girl with mousy brown hair and a long scar on her shoulder, held her dress against her front and confided, "She's been impossible this year," as I smeared ointment on her.