Jim Butcher - Blood Rites

"You won't need to. Just take me to him. I'll get Thomas myself."

"After which, my father will be so impressed with your diplomatic skills that he cedes the House to me?"

"Something like that," I said. "Get me there. Then all you have to do is watch from the sidelines while Cat's-paw Dresden handles your father."

"Mmm," she said. "That would certainly raise my status among the Lords of the Court. To arrange for a usurpation isn't so unusual, but very few manage to have good seats to it as well. A firsthand view of it would be a grace note few have attained."

"Plus if you were standing right there and things went badly for me, you'd be in a good spot to backstab me and keep your father's goodwill."

"Of course," she said, without a trace of shame. "You understand me rather well, wizard."

"Oh, there's one other thing I want."

"Yes?" she asked.

"Leave the kid alone. Don't push her. Don't pressure her. You come clean with Inari. You tell her the deal with her bloodline and you let her make up her own mind when it comes to her future."

She waited for a beat and then said, "That's all?"

"That's all."

She purred again. "My. I am not yet sure if you are truly that formidable or simply a vast and mighty fool, but for the time being I am finding you an extremely exciting man."

"All the girls tell me that."

She laughed. "Let us assume for a moment that I find your proposal agreeable. I would need to know how you intend to overthrow my father. He's somewhat invincible, you see."

"No, he isn't," I said. "I'm going to show you how weak he really is."

"And how do you know this?"

I closed my eyes and said, "Insight."

Lara lapsed into a thoughtful silence for a moment. Then she said, "There is something else I must know, wizard. Why? Why do this?"

"I owe Thomas for favors past," I said. "He's been an ally, and if I leave him hanging out to dry it's going to be bad for me in the long term, when I need other allies. If the plan comes off, I also get someone in charge of things at the White Court who is more reasonable to work with."

Lara made a soft sound that was probably mostly pensive but that would have been a lot more interesting in the dark. Uh. I mean, in person.

"No," she said then. "That's not all of it."

"Why not?"

"That would be sufficient reason if it were me," she said. "But you aren't like me, wizard. You aren't like most of your own kind. I have no doubt that you have reasonable skill at the calculus of power, but calculation is not at the heart of your nature. You prepare to take a terrible risk, and I would know why your heart is set to it."

I chewed on my lip for a second, weighing my options and the possible consequences. Then I said, "Do you know who Thomas's mother was?"

"Margaret LeFay," she said, puzzled. "But what does that-" She stopped abruptly. "Ah. Now I see. That explains a great deal about his involvement in political matters over the past few years." She let out a little laugh, but it was somehow sad. "You're much like him, you know. Thomas would sooner tear off his own arm than see one of his siblings hurt. He's quite irrational about it."

"Is that reason enough for you?" I asked.

"I am not yet entirely devoid of affection for my family, wizard. It satisfies me."

"Besides," I added, "I've just handed you a secret with the potential for some fairly good blackmail down the line."

She laughed. "Oh, you do understand me."

"Are you in?"

There was silence. When Lara finally spoke again, her voice was firmer, more eager. "I do not know precisely where my father would have had Thomas taken."

"Can you find out?"

Her voice took on a pensive tone. "In fact, I believe I can. Perhaps it was fate."

"What was fate?"

"You'll see," she said. "What sort of time frame did you have in mind?"

"An immediate one," I said. "The immediater the better."

"I'll need half an hour or a little more. Meet me at my family's home north of town."

"Half an hourish," I said. "Until then."

I hung up the phone just as a loud, low rumble approached my house. A moment later Murphy came back in. She was decked out in biker-grade denim and leather again. "I guess we're going somewhere."

"Rev up the Hog," I said. "You ready for another fight?"

Her teeth flashed. She tossed me a red motorcycle helmet and said, "Get on the bike, bitch."

Motorcycles aren't safe transport, as far as it goes. I mean, insurance statistics show that everyone in the country is going to wind up in a traffic accident of some kind and most of us are going to be involved in more than one. If you're driving around in a beat-up old Lincoln battleship and someone clips you at twenty miles an hour, it probably is going to frighten and annoy you. If you're sitting on a motorcycle when it happens, you'll be lucky to wind up in traction. Even if you aren't in an accident with another vehicle, it's way too easy to get yourself hurt or killed on a bike. Bikers don't wear all that leather around simply for the fashion value or possible felony assaults. It's handy for keeping the highway from ripping the skin from your flesh should you wind up losing control of the bike and sliding along the asphalt for a while.

All that said, riding a motorcycle is fun.

I put on the bulky, clunky red helmet, fairly certain that I had never before disguised myself as a kitchen match-stick. Murphy's black helmet, by comparison, looked like something imported from the twenty-fifth century. I sighed as the battered corpse of my dignity took yet another kick in the face and got on the bike behind Murphy. I gave her directions, and her old Harley growled as she unleashed it on the unsuspecting road.

I thought the bike was going to jump out from underneath me for a second, and my balance wobbled.

"Dresden!" Murphy shouted back to me, annoyed. "Hang on to my waist!"

"With what?" I shouted back. I waved my bandaged hand to one side of her field of vision and the hand holding the staff to the other.

In answer, Murphy took my staff and shoved the end of it down into some kind of storage rack placed so conveniently close to the rider's right hand that it couldn't have been mistaken for anything but a holster for a rifle or baseball bat. My staff stuck up like the plastic flagpole on a golf cart, but at least I had a free hand. I slipped my arm around Murphy's waist, and I could feel the muscles over her stomach tensing as she accelerated or leaned into turns, cuing me to match her. When we got onto some open road and zoomed out of the city, the wind took the ends of my leather duster, throwing them back up into the air of the bike's passage, and I had to hold tight to Murphy or risk having my coat turn into a short-term parasail.

We rolled through Little Sherwood and up to the entrance of Chateau Raith. Murphy brought the Harley to a halt. It might have taken me a few extra seconds to take my arm from around her waist, but she didn't seem to mind. She had her bored-cop face on as she took in the house, the roses, and the grotesque gargoyles, but I could sense that underneath it she was as intimidated as I had been, and for the same reasons. The enormous old house reeked of the kind of power and wealth that disdains laws and societies. It loomed in traditional scary fashion, and it was a long way from help.

I got off the bike and she passed me my staff. The place was silent, except for the sound of wind slithering through the trees. There was a small flickering light at the door, another at the end of the walk up to it, and a couple of splotches of landscape lighting, but other than that, nothing.

"What's the plan?" Murphy asked. She kept her voice low. "Fight?"

"Not yet," I said, and gave her the short version of events. "Watch my back. Don't start anything unless one of the Raiths tries to physically touch you. If they can do that, there's a chance they could influence you in one way or another."