JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

Murphy rolled her eyes over the whole thing.

“War council?” Molly asked, wide-eyed. “Are we going to start another war?”

“I sort of meant it as a metaphor,” I said, as I made sure the ketchup-mustard ratio on my burger was within acceptable parameters. “I need to decide on my next step, and I’ve been hit in the head a few times lately. Figured my brain could use a little help.”

“Just now worked that out, did you?” Thomas murmured.

“Quiet, you,” I growled. “The idea is to generate useful thoughts here.”

“Not funny ones,” Molly said, suppressing a laugh.

I eyed her. She ate a french fry.

Murphy sipped at her Diet Coke. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know how much advice I can give you until I know what you’re up against.”

“I told you in the car,” I said. “The Knights of the Blackened Denarius.”

“Fallen angels, old tarnished coins, psychotic killers, got it,” Murphy said. “But that doesn’t tell me what their capabilities are.”

“She’s got a point,” Thomas said quietly. “You haven’t said much about these guys.”

I blew out a breath and took a big bite of hamburger to give me a moment to think while I chewed. “There’s a lot that these things can do,” I said afterward. “Mostly, the coins seem to allow their users to alter their physical form into something better suited for a fight than a regular human body.”

“Battle shapeshifting,” Molly said. “Cool.”

“It isn’t cool,” I told her. Then I paused and admitted, “Okay, maybe a little. It makes them harder to hurt. It makes them faster. It arms them with various forms of weaponry. Claws, fangs, that kind of thing. Cassius looked like he might have had a poisonous bite, for example. Ursiel’s wielder could shift into this huge bear thing with claws and fangs and horns. Another one turned her hair into about a million strips of living titanium blade, and they were whipping all over the place and shooting through walls. Stretched out like twenty or thirty feet.”

“I have some customers like that,” Thomas quipped.

Murphy blinked and glanced at him.

I cleared my throat and gave Thomas another glare. “Another one of them, Nicodemus, didn’t seem to do any shapeshifting, but his freaking shadow could leap off the wall and strangle you. Creepy as hell.”

“They don’t all have, like, a uniform or something?” Molly asked.

“Not even close,” I replied. “Each of the Fallen seems to have its own particular preferences. And I suspect that those preferences adapt themselves differently to different holders of the coins. Quintus Cassius’s Fallen had this whole serpent motif going, and Cassius’s magic was pretty snake-intensive, too. But he was totally different from Ursiel, who was totally different from Mantis Girl from this morning, who was different from the other Denarians I’ve seen.”

Murphy nodded. “Anything else?”

“Goons,” I said. “More like a cult, really. Nicodemus had a number of followers whose tongues had been removed. They were fanatics, heavily armed, and crazy enough to commit suicide rather than be captured by his enemies.”

She winced. “The airport?”

“Yeah.”

“That it?”

“No,” I said. “Nicodemus also had these…call them guard dogs, I guess. Except that they weren’t dogs. I don’t know what they were, but they were ugly and ran fast and had big teeth. But all of that isn’t what makes them dangerous.”

“No?” Thomas said. “Then what is?”

“The Fallen,” I replied.

The room fell silent.

“They’re beings older than time who have spent two thousand years learning the ins and outs of the mortal world and the mortal mind,” I said quietly. “They understand things we literally could not begin to grasp. They’ve seen every trick, learned every move, and they’re riding shotgun for each coin holder-if they aren’t in the driver’s seat already. Every one of them has a perfect memory, a library of information at his immediate disposal, and a schemer that makes Cardinal Richelieu look like Mother Teresa hanging around in his brain as an adviser.”

Thomas stared at me very hard for a moment, frowning. I tried to ignore him.

Murphy shook her head. “Let’s sum up: an unknown number of enemies with unknown capabilities, supported by a gang of madmen, packs of attack animals, and superhumanly intelligent pocket change.” She gave me a look. “It’s sort of tough to plan for that, given how much we don’t know.”

“Well, then that’s what we do next, isn’t it?” Molly asked tentatively. “Find out more about them?”

Thomas flicked a glance at Molly and nodded once.

“To do that we’d have to find them,” I said.

“A tracking spell?” Molly suggested.

“I don’t have any samples to work with,” I replied. “And even if I did, somebody on their team was able to obscure Mab’s divining spells. I’m nowhere close to Mab’s league. My spells wouldn’t have a prayer.”

“If they’ve got that much of an entourage, they’re going to stick out anywhere even vaguely public,” Murphy mused. “A gang of toughs with no tongues? If the Denarians are in town, that should make them relatively easy to locate.”

“Last time they were holed up in Undertown,” I said. “Believe me, there’s plenty of room for badness down there.”

“What about the spirit world?” Thomas asked quietly. “Surely there’s an entity or two who could tell us something.”

“Possibly,” I said. “I’m on speaking terms with one or two of the loa . But that kind of information is either expensive or unreliable. Sometimes both. And remember who we’re talking about. The Fallen are heavyweights in the spirit world. No one wants to cross them.”

Molly made a frustrated sound. “If we can’t track them with magic, and we can’t find them physically, then how are we supposed to learn more about them?”

“Exactly, kid,” I said. “Hence the whole ‘war council’ concept.”

We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Murphy said, “We’re coming at this from the wrong angle.”

“Eh?” I said wittily.

“We’re thinking like the good guys. We should be thinking like the bad guys. Figuring out what they had to face and get around.”

I leaned forward a little and nodded at her to go on.

“I don’t know as much about the supernatural aspects of this situation,” she said. “I don’t know much of anything about these Denarians. But I do know some things about Marcone. For example, I know that even if he has some underlings who want to take over the franchise, he’s got more who are personally loyal or who will figure that bailing him out will reap them some major profits.”

“Yeah,” I said, tilting my head at her. “So?”

“So wherever they took him, it has to be somewhere Marcone’s network can’t reach. We can be virtually certain that they aren’t hiding in plain sight.”

I grunted. “Hell’s bells, yeah. Not only that, but Marcone plans ahead. He had that panic room ready to go. In fact…” My eyes widened. “The location of your secret hidey-hole ought to be awfully secret, don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Molly said. “What good is a hiding place if everyone knows where it is?”

“The Denarians knew exactly where he was going,” I said. “The spell they set up to tear down that building’s defenses was no spur-of-the-moment magic-it was too complex. It had been planned out ahead of time .”

“Son of a bitch,” Thomas swore. “Someone inside Marcone’s organization ratted him out.”

“So if we find the rat…” Murphy said, catching on.

“We might find a trail that leads back to the Nickelheads,” I finished with a fierce grin. “Was this war council concept a brilliant idea or what?”