JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

“Bitch!” Murphy snarled, one side of her face a sheet of blood. She tried to reach for her pistol-in its shoulder holster, beneath her harness, beneath her coat. It might as well have been on the surface of the moon.

“Murph!” I said. I twisted my shoulders and thrust the end of Fidelacchius to within reach of her hand.

Murphy’s fingers closed on the hilt of the holy blade.

She drew it maybe an inch from the scabbard.

White light blinded me. Blinded Deirdre. Blinded Murphy. Blinded Thomas. Blinded everyone.

“No!” Deirdre screamed, utter despair and terror in her voice. “No, no, no!”

The pressure on my ankles vanished, and I heard the Denarian splash into the water.

Murphy released the hilt of the sword. The light died. It took maybe half a minute before I could see anything else. Thomas recovered faster, of course, and by that time he had us both back onto the deck of the Water Beetle . There was no evidence of Deirdre anywhere, and the two boatloads of soldier boys were hightailing it away as fast as they could go.

Murphy, bleeding from a cut running parallel to her right eyebrow all the way into her hairline, was staring in shock at me and at the sword. “What the fuck was that?”

I slipped the sword off my shoulder. I felt really tired. I hurt everywhere. “Offhand,” I mumbled, “I’d say it was a job offer.”

“We’ve got to move before we get carried onto the reef,” Thomas muttered. He hurried off, pirate style. He looked good doing it. Of course. He doesn’t even moisturize.

Murphy stared at the sword for a second more. Then she looked at me, and her bloody face went tight with concern. “Jesus, Harry.” She moved to the side of my wounded leg and helped support my weight as I hobbled into the ship’s cabin. “Come on. Let’s get you warmed up.”

“Well?” I asked her as she helped me. “How ’bout it? I got this sword that needs somebody to use it.”

She sat me down on one of the bench seats in the ship’s cabin. She looked at the sword for a moment, seriously. Then she shook her head and said quietly, “I’ve got a job.”

I smiled faintly and closed my eyes. “I thought you’d say that.”

“Shut up, Harry.”

“Okay,” I said.

And I did. For hours. It was glorious.

I woke up covered in a couple of heavy down comforters and innumerable blankets, and it was morning. The bench seat on the Water Beetle had been folded out into a reasonably comfortable cot. A kerosene heater was burning on the other side of the cabin. It wasn’t exactly toasty, but it made the cabin warm enough to steam up the windows.

I came to slowly, aching in every joint, muscle and limb. The after-action hangover was every bit as bad as I had anticipated. I tried to remind myself that this was a deliriously joyous problem to deal with, all things considered. I wasn’t being a very good sport about it, though. I growled and complained bitterly, and eventually worked up enough nerve to sit up and get out from under the covers. I went to the tiny bathroom-though on a boat, I guess it’s called a “head” for some stupid reason-and by the time I zombie-shuffled out, Thomas had come down from the deck and slipped inside. He was putting a cell phone back into his jacket pocket, and his expression was serious.

“Harry,” he said. “How you doing?”

I suggested what he could do with his reproductive organs.

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Better than I’d expected.”

I grunted. Then I added, “Thank you.”

He snorted. That was all. “Come on. I’ve got coffee for you in the car.”

“I’m leaving everything to you in my will,” I said.

“Cool. Next time I’ll leave you in the water.”

I pulled my coat on with a groan. “Almost wish you had. Coin? Sword?”

“Safe, stowed below. You want them?”

I shook my head. “Keep them here for now.”

I followed him out to the truck, gimping on my bad knee. I noted that someone had, at some point in the evening, cleaned me up a bit and put new bandages on my leg, and on a number of scrapes and contusions I didn’t even remember getting. I was wearing fresh clothing, too. Thomas. He didn’t say anything about it, and neither did I. It’s a brother thing.

We got into the battered Hummer, and I seized a paper cup of coffee waiting for me next to a brown paper bag. I grabbed the coffee, dumped in a lot of sugar and creamer, stirred it for about a quarter turn of the stick, and started sipping. Then I checked out the bag. Doughnut. I assaulted it.

Thomas began to start the car but froze in place and blinked at the doughnut. “Hey,” he said. “Where the hell did that come from?”

I took another bite. Cake doughnut. White frosting. Sprinkles. Still warm. And I had hot coffee to go with it. Pure heaven. I gave my brother a cryptic look and just took another bite.

“Christ,” he muttered, starting the truck. “You don’t even explain the little things, do you?”

“It’s like a drug,” I said, through a mouthful of fattening goodness.

I enjoyed the doughnut while I could, letting it fully occupy all my senses. After I’d finished it, and the coffee started kicking in, I realized why I’d indulged myself so completely: It was likely to be the last bit of pleasure I was going to feel for a while.

Thomas hadn’t said a damned thing about where we were going-or how anyone was doing after the events of the night before.

The Stroger building, the new hospital that has replaced the old Cook County complex as Chicago’s nerve center of medicine, is only a few yards away from the old clump of buildings. It looks kind of like a castle. If you scrunch up your eyes a little, you can almost imagine its features as medieval ramparts and towers and crenellation, standing like some ancient mountain bastion, determined to defend the citizens of Chicago against the plagues and evils of the world.

Provided they have enough medical coverage, of course.

I finished the coffee and thought to myself that I might have been feeling a little pessimistic.

Thomas led me up to intensive care. He stopped in the hallway outside. “Luccio’s coordinating the information, so I don’t have many details. But Molly’s in there. She’ll have the rest of them for you.”

“What do you know?” I asked him.

“Michael’s in bad shape,” he said. “Still in surgery, last I heard. They’re waiting for him up here. I guess the bullets all came up from underneath him, and that armor he was wearing actually kept one of them in. Bounced around inside him like a BB inside a tin can.”

I winced.

“They said he only got hit by two or three rounds,” Thomas continued. “But that it was more or less a miracle that he survived it at all. They don’t know if he’s going to make it. Sanya didn’t go into anything more specific than that.”

I closed my eyes.

“Look,” Thomas said. “I’m not exactly welcome around here right now. But I’ll stay if you need me to.”

Thomas wasn’t telling me the whole truth. My brother wasn’t comfortable in hospitals, and I was pretty sure I’d figured out why: They were full of the sick, the injured, and the elderly-i.e., the kind of herd animals that predators’ instincts told them were weakest, and the easiest targets. My brother didn’t like being reminded about that part of his nature. He might hate that it happened, but his instincts would react regardless of what he wanted or didn’t want. It would be torture for him to hang around here.

“No,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

He frowned at me. “All right,” he said after a moment. “You’ve got my number. Call me; I’ll give you a ride home.”