Jim Butcher - Blood Rites

Murphy shivered. "Not an issue. If I could help it they weren't going to be touching me anyway."

An engine roared and a white sports car shot through the last several hundred yards of Little Sherwood. It all but flew up the drive, narrowly missed Murphy's bike, spun, and screeched to a neat stop, parallel-parked in the opposite direction.

Murphy traded a glance with me. She looked impressed. I probably looked annoyed.

The door opened and Lara slid out, dressed in a long, loose red skirt and a white cotton blouse with embroidered scarlet roses. She walked purposefully toward us. Her feet were bare. Silver flashed on a toe and one ankle, and as she drew closer I heard the jingle of miniature bells. "Good evening, wizard."

"Lara," I said. "I like the skirt. Nice statement. Very Carmen. "

She flashed me a pleased smile, then focused her pale grey gaze on Murphy and said, "And who is this?"

"Murphy," she said. "I'm a friend."

Lara smiled at Murphy. Very slowly. "I can never have too many friends."

Murph's cop face held, and she added a note of casual disdain to her voice. "I didn't say your friend," she said. "I'm with Dresden."

"What a shame," Lara said.

"I'm also with the police."

The succubus straightened her spine a little at the words, and studied Murphy again. Then she inclined her head with a little motion half suggesting a curtsy, a gesture of concession.

The other door of the white sports car opened and Reformed Bully Bobby got out, carsick and a little wobbly on his feet. Inari followed him a second later, slipping underneath one of his arms to help hold him steady despite her own broken arm and sling.

Lara raised her voice. "Inari? Be a darling and fetch her for me right away. Bobby, dear, if you could help her I would take it as a kindness."

"Yeah, sure," Bobby said. He looked a little green but was recovering as he hurried toward the house with Inari.

"We'll bring her right down," Inari said.

I waited until they had gone inside. "What the hell are they doing here?" I demanded of Lara.

She shrugged. "They insisted and there was little time for argument."

I scowled. "Next time you're practicing the sex appeal, maybe you should spend some time working up some 'go-thither' to go with all the 'come-hither."

"I'll take it under advisement," she said.

"Who are they bringing out?" I asked.

Lara arched a brow. "Don't you know?"

I gritted my teeth. "Obviously. Not."

"Patience then, darling," she said, and walked around to the back of the sports car, hips and dark hair swaying. She opened the trunk and drew out a sheathed rapier-a real one, not one of those skinny car-antenna swords most people think of when they hear the word. The blade alone was better than three feet long, as wide as a couple of my fingers at the base, tapering to a blade as wide as my pinkie nail and ending in a needle tip. It had a winding guard of silver and white-lacquered steel that covered most of the hand, adorned with single red rose made of tiny rubies. Lara drew out a scarlet sash, tied it on, and slipped the sheathed weapon through it. "There," she said, and sauntered over to me again. "Still Carmen !"

"Less Carmen. More Pirates of Penzance ," I said.

She put the spread fingers of one hand over her heart. "Gilbert and Sullivan. I may never forgive you that."

"How will I find the will to go on?" I asked, and rolled my eyes at Murphy. "And hey, while we're on the subject of going on…"

Inari slammed the door of the house open and held it that way. Bobby came out a minute later, carrying an old woman in a white nightgown in his arms. The kid was big and strong, but he didn't look like he needed to be to carry her. There was an ephemeral quality to the woman. Her silver hair drifted on any wisp of air, her arms and legs hung weakly, and she was almost painfully thin.

The kid came to us, and I got a better look. It wasn't an old woman. Her skin was unwrinkled, even if it had the pallor of those near death, and her arms and legs weren't wasted, but were simply slender with youth. Her hair, though, was indeed silver, white, and grey. The evening breeze blew her hair away from her face, and I knew it had gone grey literally overnight.

Because the girl was Justine.

"Hell's bells," I said quietly. "I thought she was dead."

Lara stepped up beside me, staring at the girl, her features hard. "She should be," she said.

Anger flickered in my chest. "That's a hell of a thing to say."

"It's a matter of perspective. I don't bear the girl any malice, but given the choice I would rather she died than Thomas. It's the way of things."

I shot her a look. "What?"

Lara moved a shoulder in a shrug. "Thomas pulled himself away from her at the last possible instant," she said. "Truth be told, it was after that instant. I don't know how he managed it."

"And that bothers you?" I demanded.

"It was an unwarranted risk," she said. "It was foolish. It should have killed him to draw away."

I gave her a look that managed to be both blank and impatient.

"It's the intensity of it," she said. "It's… a unification. Thomas's store of life energy was all but gone. Forcibly breaking away from a vessel-"

"From Justine," I interrupted.

Lara looked impatient now. "Forcibly breaking away from Justine was an enormous psychic trauma, and he was at his weakest. Taking only lightly and breaking the contact isn't difficult. In fact, it's normally the way of things. But he'd been feeding regularly from the girl for several years. He could draw energy from her with a simple caress. To take her fully…" Lara's eyes grew a shade paler, and the tips of her breasts tightened against her blouse. "There's no thought involved in it. No judgment. No hesitation. Only need."

"That's horrible," Murphy said, her voice a whisper. "To force that on her."

Lara's pale eyes drifted to Murphy. "Oh, no. It isn't coerced, dear officer. She was more than willing to give. When prey has been taken so many times, they stop caring about death. There's only the pleasure of being fed upon. They're eager to give more, and they care nothing about the danger."

Murphy sounded sickened. "Maybe she broke it off instead."

Lara's mouth curled into a smirk. "No. By the time my brother took enough to restore him to his senses, the girl was little more than an animal in season."

Murphy's eyes narrowed as she stared at Lara. "And talking about it excites you. That's sick."

"Have you never made yourself hungry by talking about food, Officer Murphy?" Lara asked.

Murphy scowled, but didn't answer.

"In any case," Lara said, "what Thomas did was cruel. Justine cared for him as much as any of our prey ever can. There was little left when he drew away, of her body or her mind. Strictly speaking, she survived, Officer. But I'm not sure one could say that she is alive."

"I get it," I said. "She and Thomas had… made an impression on each other. A sort of psychic bond. And you think Justine might be able to tell us where he is."

Lara nodded. "It happens when we keep someone too long. Though I'm surprised you know of it."

"I didn't," I said. "But when Bianca took Justine from him, Thomas knew that she was being held in Bianca's manor. He wouldn't say how."

Lara nodded. "If there is enough of her mind left, she might be able to lead us to my brother. I do not think he will be far from here. Father does not often travel far outside the property he controls."

Bobby reached us with the girl, and Inari ducked into the house and came out with a wheelchair. She rushed it over to Justine, and Bobby settled her into it.

I knelt down by the wheelchair. Justine lay almost bonelessly, barely holding her head up. Her dark eyes were heavy and unfocused. A small smile touched her mouth. Her eyes were sunken and her skin was almost translucent. She took slow, shallow breaths, and I heard her make a soft, pleased sound on each exhalation.