Skin Game by Jim Butcher
I narrowed my eyes. “Wait. You’re saying that the parasite isn’t actually a parasite. But that means . . .”
“The wheel is turning,” my double said, in the tone of a reporter covering a sports event. “The fat, lazy old hamster looks like he’s almost forgotten how to make it go, but he’s sort of moving it now. Bits of rust are falling off. The cobwebs are slowly parting.”
“Screw you,” I said, annoyed. “It’s not like you’ve showed up with a ton to say ever since . . .” I trailed off and fell entirely silent for a long moment.
“Ah,” he said, and pointed a finger at me, bouncing up onto his toes. “Ah hah! Ah hah, hah, hah, the light begins to dawn!”
“Ever since I touched Lasciel’s Coin,” I breathed quietly.
“Follow that,” my double urged me. “What happened next?”
“Touching the Coin put an imprint of Lasciel in my head,” I said. “Like a footprint in clay, the same shape as the original. She tried to tempt me into accepting the true Lasciel into my head along with her, but I turned her down.”
My double rolled his wrist in a “keep it moving” gesture. “And then?”
“And then the imprint started to change,” I said. “Lasciel was immutable, but the imprint was made of me. A shape in the clay. As the clay changed, so did the imprint.”
“And?”
“And I gave her a name,” I said. “I called her Lash. She became an independent psychic entity in her own right. And we kind of got along until . . .” I swallowed. “Until there was a psychic attack. A bad one. She threw herself in the way of it. It destroyed her.”
“Yeah,” my double said quietly. “But . . . look, what she did was an act of love. And you were about as intimate with her as it gets, sharing the same mental space. I mean, it’s funny, you get twitchy when you start considering living with a woman, but having one literally inside your head was not an issue.”
“What do you mean?”
“Christ, you’re supposed to be the intellect here,” my double said. “Think.” He stared at me for a long moment, visibly willing me to understand.
My stomach fell into some unimaginable abyss at the same time my jaw dropped open. “No,” I said. “That isn’t . . . that’s not possible.”
“When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much,” my double said, as if speaking to a small child, “and they live together and hug and kiss and get intimate with each other . . .”
“I’m . . .” I felt a little ill. “You’re saying . . . I’m pregnant?”
My double threw up his arms. “Finally, he gets it.”
In years and years and years of experience as a wizard, I’d dealt with concepts, formulae, and mental models that ranged from bizarre to downright insanity-inducing. None of them had, in any way whatsoever, ever prepared my head to wrap around this. At all. Ever. “How is that . . . That isn’t even . . . What the hell, man?” I demanded.
“A spiritual entity,” my double said calmly. “Born of you and Lash. When she sacrificed herself for you, it was an act of selfless love—and love is fundamentally a force of creation. It stands to reason, then, that an act of love is fundamentally an act of creation. You remember it, right? After she died? When you could still play the music she’d given to you, even though she was gone? You could hear the echoes of her voice?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling dazed.
“That was because a part of her remained,” my double said. “Made of her—and made of you.”
And very gently, he drew back the black blanket.
She looked like a child maybe twelve years old, in the last few weeks of true childhood before the sudden surge of hormones brought on the chain of rapid changes that lead into adolescence. Her hair was dark, like mine, but her eyes were a crystalline blue-green, the way Lash’s had often appeared. Her features were faintly familiar, and I realized in a surge of instinct that her face had been constructed from those of people in my life. She had the square, balanced chin of Karrin Murphy, the rounded cheeks of Ivy the Archive, and Susan Rodriguez’s jawline. Her nose had come from my first love, Elaine Mallory, her hair from my first apprentice, Kim Delaney. I knew because they were my memories, right there in front of me.
Her eyes were fluttering uncertainly, and she was shivering so hard that she could barely stand. There was frost forming on her eyelashes, and even as I watched it started spreading over her cheeks.
“She’s a spiritual entity,” I breathed. “Oh, my God. She’s a spirit of intellect.”
“What happens when mortals get it on with spirits,” my double confirmed, though now without heat.
“But Mab said she was a parasite,” I said.
“Lot of people make jokes, refer to fetuses like that,” he said.
“Mab called her a monster. Said she would hurt those closest to me.”
“She’s a spirit of intellect, just like Bob,” my double said. “Born of the spirit of a fallen freaking angel and the mind of one of the most potent wizards on the White Council. She’s going to be born with knowledge, and with power, and be absolutely innocent of what to do with them. A lot of people would call that monstrous.”
“Argh,” I said, and clutched at my head. I got it now. Mab hadn’t been lying. Not precisely. Hell, she’d as much as told me that the parasite was made of my essence. My soul. My . . . me-ness. Spirits of intellect had to grow, and my head was a limited space. This one had been filling it up for years, slowly expanding, putting more psychic and psychological pressure on me—reflected in the growing intensity of my migraines over that time.
If I’d realized what was happening, I could have done something sooner, and probably a lot more simply. Now . . . I was overdue and it was looking like this was going to be a very, very rough delivery. And if I didn’t have help, I’d be in much the same shape as a woman giving birth alone and encountering complications. Odds were good that my head wouldn’t be able to stand the pressure of such a being abruptly parting ways with me, fighting its way out of a space that had become too small, in sheer instinct for its own survival. It could drive me insane, or kill me outright.
If that happened, it would leave the newly born spirit of intellect alone and bewildered in a world it didn’t understand, but about which it had lots and lots of data. Spirits like Bob liked to pretend they were all about rationality, but they had emotions, attachments. The new spirit would want to connect. And it would try to do so with the people who mattered most to me.
I shuddered, imagining little Maggie suddenly gaining a very, very seriously dangerous imaginary friend.
“See?” I demanded of my double. “You see? This is why you don’t go around having sex with everyone all the time!”
“You’re the brain,” he said. “Figure it out.” The lights flickered and he looked up and around. “Ugh,” he said. “Nail’s coming out.”
He was right. I could feel a faint pang in my chest, and a fading echo of the agony in my head. Frost continued covering the little girl, and she sighed, her knees buckling.
My double and I both stooped down and caught her before she could fall.
I picked her up. She didn’t weigh anything. She didn’t look dangerous. She just looked like a little girl.
Her eyes fluttered open. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “Sorry. But it hurts and I c-c-couldn’t talk to you.”
I traded a look with my double and then looked down at her. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. I’m going to take care of it. It’ll be all right.”
She sighed slightly and her eyes closed. Frost covered her in fine layers upon layers, as the spell on Mab’s earring wrapped her in sleep and silence, stilling her—for now—and turning her into a beautiful white statue.
I hadn’t even known she was there—and she was entirely my responsibility.
And if I didn’t handle it, she would kill me bein
I passed her carefully to my double. “Okay,” I said. “I’ve got it.”
He took her, very gently, and gave me a nod. “I know she’s weird. But she’s still your offspring.” His dark eyes flashed. “Protect the offspring.”
Primal drives indeed.
I’d torn apart a nation protecting my physical child. I was looking at part of the reason why. That drive was a part of me, too.
I took a deep breath and nodded to him. “I’m on it,” I said.
He wrapped the girl in a blanket and turned to carry her back into the darkness. He took the light with him, and darkness swallowed me again.
“Hey,” my double called abruptly, from the distance.
“What?”
“Don’t forget the dream!” he said. “Don’t forget how it ended!”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“You flipping idiot!” my double snarled.
And then he was gone along with everything else.
Twenty-four
I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling of Karrin’s bedroom. It was dark. I was lying down. Light from the hallway came creeping under the bedroom door, and was almost too bright for my eyes.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Butters’s voice was saying. “I don’t know. There’s no AMA-approved baseline for a freaking wizard Knight of Winter. He could be in shock. He could be bleeding from the brain. He could be really, really sleepy. Dammit, Karrin, this is what hospitals and practicing physicians are for!”
I heard Karrin blow out a breath. “Okay,” she said, without any kind of heat. “What can you tell me?”
“His arm’s broken,” Butters said. “From the swelling and bruising, badly. Whatever put that dent in the aluminum brace on it—did he get it taken care of in a tool shop?—rebroke it. I set it again, I think, and wrapped it up in the brace again, but I can’t be sure I did it right without imaging equipment, which would probably explode if he walked into the room with it. If it hasn’t been set right, that arm might be permanently damaged.” He blew out a breath. “The hole in his chest wasn’t traumatic, by his usual standards. It didn’t go through the muscle. But the damned nail was rusty, so I hope he’s had his tetanus shots. I gave the hole another stitch and I washed the blood off the nail.”
“Thank you,” Karrin said.
Butters’s voice was weary. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Sure. Karrin . . . can I tell you something?”
“What?”
“This thing he’s got going with Mab,” Butters said. “I know that everyone thinks it’s turned him into some kind of superhero. But I don’t think that’s right.”
“I’ve seen him move,” she said. “I’ve seen how strong he is.”
“So have I,” Butters said. “Look . . . the human body is a pretty amazing machine. It really is. It can do really amazing things—much more so than most people think, because it’s also built to protect itself.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Inhibitors,” Butters said. “Every person walking around is about three times stronger than they think they are. I mean, your average housewife is actually about as strong as a fairly serious weight lifter, when it comes to pure mechanics. Adrenaline can amp that even more.”
I could hear the frown in Karrin’s voice. “You’re talking about when mothers lift cars off their kid, that kind of thing.”
“Exactly that kind of thing,” Butters said. “But the body can’t function that way all the time, or it will tear itself apart. That’s what inhibitors are built for—to keep you from injuring yourself.”
“What does that have to do with Dresden?”
“I think that what this Winter Knight gig has done for him is nothing more than switching off those inhibitors,” Butters said. “He hasn’t added all that much muscle mass. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The body is capable of those moments of startling strength, but they’re meant to be something that you pull out of the hat once or twice in a lifetime—and with no inhibitors and no ability to feel pain, Dresden’s running around doing them all the time. And there’s no real way he can know it.”
Karrin was silent for several seconds, digesting that. Then she said, “Bottom line?”
“The more he leans on this ‘gift,’” Butters said, and I could picture him making air quotes, “the more he tears himself to shreds. His body heals remarkably, but he’s still human. He’s got limits, somewhere, and if he keeps this up, he’s going to find them.”
“What do you think will happen?”
Butters made a thoughtful sound. “Think about . . . a football player or boxer who has it hard and breaks down in his early thirties, because he’s just taken too damned much punishment. That’s Dresden, if he keeps this up.”
“I’m sure that once we explain that to him, he’ll retire to a job as a librarian,” Karrin said.
Butters snorted. “It’s possible that other things in his system are being affected the same way,” he said. “Testosterone production, for example, any number of other hormones, which might be influencing his perception and judgment. I’m not sure he’s actually got any more real power at all. I think it just feels that way to him.”
“This is fact or theory?”
“An informed theory,” he said. “Bob helped me develop it.”
Son of a bitch. I kept quiet and thought about that one for a minute.
Could that be true? Or at least, more true than it wasn’t?
It would be consistent with the other deal I’d worked out with a faerie—my godmother, Lea, had made a bargain to give me the power to defeat my old mentor, Justin DuMorne. Then she’d tortured me for a while, assuring me that it would give me strength. It did, though mostly, in retrospect, because I had believed it had.
Had I been magic-feathered by a faerie again?
And yet . . . at the end of the day, I could lift a freaking car.
Sure you can, Harry. But at what price?
No wonder the Winter Knights stayed in the job until they died. If Butters was right, they would have been plunged into the crippling agony of their battered bodies the moment the mantle was taken from them.
Sort of the same way I had just been rendered into agonized Jell-O when the Genoskwa had shoved a nail into me.
“I worry,” Butters said quietly, “that he’s changing. That he doesn’t know it.”
“Look who’s talking,” Karrin said. “Batman.”
“That was one time,” Butters said.
Karrin didn’t say anything.
“All right.” Butters relented. “A few times. But it wasn’t enough to keep those kids from being carried off.”
“You pulled some of them out, Waldo,” Karrin said. “Believe me, that’s a win. Most of the time, you can’t even do that much. But you’re missing my point.”
“What point?”
“Ever since you’ve had the skull, you’ve been changing, too,” Karrin said. “You work hand in hand with a supernatural being that can scare the crap out of me. You can do things you couldn’t do before. You know things you didn’t know before. Your personality has changed.”
There was a pause. “It has?”
“You’re more serious,” she said. “More . . . intense, I suppose.”
“Yeah. Now that I know more about what’s really happening out there. It’s not something influencing me.”
“Unless it is and you just don’t know it,” Karrin said. “I’ve got the same evidence on you that you have on Dresden.”
Butters sighed. “I see what you did there.”
“I don’t think you do,” she said. “It’s . . . about choices, Waldo. About faith. You have an array of facts in front of you that can fit any of several truths. You have to choose what you’re going to allow to drive your decisions about how to d
“What do you mean?”
“You could let fear be what motivates you,” Karrin said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Dresden is being turned into a monster against his knowledge and will. Maybe one day he’ll be something that kills us all. You’re not wrong. That kind of thing can happen. It scares me, too.”
“Then why are you arguing with me?”
Karrin paused for a time before answering. “Because . . . fear is a terrible, insidious thing, Waldo. It taints and stains everything it touches. If you let fear start driving some of your decisions, sooner or later, it will drive them all. I decided that I’m not going to be the kind of person who lives her life in fear of her friends’ turning into monsters.”
“What? Just like that?”
“It took me a long, long time to get there,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I would rather have faith in the people I care about than allow my fears to change them—in my own eyes, if nowhere else. I guess maybe you don’t see what’s happening with Harry, here.”
“What?” Butters asked.
“This is what it looks like when someone’s fighting for his soul,” she said. “He needs his friends to believe in him. The fastest way for us to help make him into a monster is to look at him like he is one.”
Butters was quiet for a long time.
“I’m going to say this once, Waldo,” she said. “I want you to listen.”
“Okay.”
“You need to decide which side of the road you’re going to walk on,” she said gently. “Turn aside from your fears—or grab onto them and run with them. But you need to make the call. You keep trying to walk down the middle, you’re going to get yourself torn apart.”
Butters’s voice turned bitter. “Them or us, choose a side?”
“It’s not about taking sides,” Karrin said. “It’s about knowing yourself. About understanding why you make the choices you do. Once you know that, you know where to walk, too.”
The floorboards creaked. Maybe she’d stepped closer to him. I could picture her, putting her hand on his arm.