Mab’s gaze remained on me, cold and heavy as a blanket of snow. “For now.”
I didn’t shiver. I get muscle twitches sometimes. That’s all.
The goon capable of human speech returned, and was careful not to make eye contact with anyone as he bowed at the waist in Mab’s general direction. “Your Majesty. Please proceed. Your four guards may wait here, with these four, and I will show you to him.”
Mab did not so much as twitch to acknowledge that the goon had spoken. She just stepped out of the elevator smartly, her heels clicking with metronomic inevitability on the hard floor, and both the goon and I hurried to keep pace with her.
We walked around the screen of shrubbery where the goon had gone a moment before and found an elaborate raised platform with three wide steps leading up to it. The whole thing was thickly surrounded by more plant life, giving it the cozy feel of an alcove. Expensive living room furniture was spaced around it ideally for conversation, and that’s where Mab’s appointment was waiting for us.
“Sir,” the goon said. “Her Majesty, Queen Mab, and the Winter Knight.”
“Who needs no introduction,” said a man with a deep, resonant voice. I recognized it. That voice had once been smooth and flowing, but now there was a hint of rasp to it, a roughness that wasn’t there before, like silk gliding over old gravel.
A man of medium height and build rose from his chair. He was dressed in a black silk suit, a black shirt, and a worn grey tie. He had dark hair threaded with silver and dark eyes, and he moved with the coiled grace of a snake. There was a smile on his mouth, but not in his eyes as he faced me. “Well, well, well. Harry Dresden.”
“Nicodemus Archleone.” I slurred into a Connery accent. “My cut hash improved your voish.”
Something ugly flickered far back in his eyes, and his voice might have grown a little rougher, but his smile never wavered. “You came closer than anyone has in a long, long time.”
“Maybe you’re starting to slip in your old age,” I said. “It’s the little things that go first. For instance, you missed taking the tongue out of one of your goons. You’re going to make him feel left out if he’s the only one who can talk.”
That made Nicodemus smile more deeply. I’d met his gang of hangers-on before. They’d all had their tongues cut out.
He turned to Mab and bowed at the waist, the gesture more elegant than anything I could manage, the manners of another time. “Your Majesty.”
“Nicodemus,” Mab said in a frosty tone. Then, in a more neutral one, “Anduriel.”
Nicodemus didn’t move, but his freaking shadow inclined its head anyway. No matter how many times I saw that kind of action, it still creeped me out.
Nicodemus was a Knight of the Blackened Denarius, or maybe it was more accurate to say that he was the Knight of the Blackened Denarius. He had one of thirty silver coins on him somewhere, one that contained the essence of the Fallen angel, Anduriel. The Denarians were bad news, in a major way—even though angels were sharply curtailed in how they were allowed to use their power, hobbled and bound to a mortal partner, they were as dangerous as anything running around in the shadows, and when they teamed up with world-class lunatics like Nicodemus, they were several shades worse. Nicodemus, as far as I had been able to find out, had been perpetrating outrages for a couple of millennia. He was smart, ruthless and tough, and killing people was almost as significant to him as throwing away an empty beer can.
I’d survived him once. He’d survived me once. Neither of us had been able to put the other away.
Yet.
“I beg your indulgence for a moment,” Nicodemus said to Mab. “A minor matter of internal protocol to which I must attend before we continue.”
There was a frozen microinstant of displeasure before Mab answered. “Of course.”
Nicodemus bowed again, and then walked a few steps away and turned to the goon who had led us over. He beckoned to the man and said, “Brother Jordan, approach.”
Jordan came to rigid military attention, swallowed, and then walked formally forward, stopping precisely in front of Nicodemus before bracing to attention again.
“You have completed the trials of the Brotherhood,” Nicodemus said, his voice warm. “You have the highest recommendation of your fellows. And you have faced a dangerous foe with steadfast courage. It is my judgment that you have demonstrated your loyalty and commitment to our cause beyond the meager bonds of any oath.” He reached up and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Have you any final words?”
The kid’s eyes gleamed with sudden emotion, and his breathing sped. “I thank you, my lord.”
“Well said,” Nicodemus murmured, smiling. Then he said, “Deirdre.”
The second person in the alcove rose from where she had been sitting quietly in the background. She was a young woman in a simple black dress. Her features were lean and severe, her body graced with the same slight, elegant curves as a straight razor. She had long, dark hair to go with black eyes that were a double of Nicodemus’s own, and when she approached Jordan, she gave him an almost sisterly smile.
And then she changed.
First her eyes shifted, changing from dark orbs to pits filled with a burning crimson glow. A second set of eyes, these glowing green, blinked open above the first. And then her face contorted, the bones shifting. Her skin seemed to ripple and then hardened, darkening to the ugly deep purple of a fresh bruise, taking on the consistency of thick hide. The dress just seemed to shimmer out of existence, revealing legs that had contorted, her feet lengthening dramatically, until they looked backward-hinged. And her hair changed—it grew, slithering out of her scalp like dozens of writhing serpents, flattening into hard, metallic ribbons of midnight black that rustled and stirred and rippled of their own volition.
As that happened, Nicodemus’s shadow simply grew, with no change in the light to prompt it. It stretched out behind him, and then up the wall, growing and growing until it spread over the whole of that side of the huge loft.
“Bear witness,” Nicodemus said quietly, “as Brother Jordan becomes Squire Jordan.”
The green eyes atop Deirdre’s flickered brightly, as Deirdre lifted claw-tipped hands to cup Jordan’s face, quite gently. Then she leaned forward and kissed him, lips parted.
My stomach twisted and flipped over. I didn’t let it show.
Deirdre’s head suddenly snapped forward a little more, and Jordan’s body stiffened. A muffled scream escaped the seal of Deirdre’s lips, but was quickly choked off. I saw Deirdre’s jaws lock, and then she jerked her head away in the sudden, sharp motion of a shark ripping flesh from its prey. Her head fell back in something that looked horribly like ecstasy, and I could see the bloody flesh of Jordan’s tongue gripped between her teeth.
Blood fountained from the young man’s mouth. He let out a wordless sound and staggered, falling to one knee.
Deirdre’s head jerked in swallowing motions, like a seabird downing a fish, and she made a quiet gulping sound. Then she shuddered, and opened her burning eyes slowly. She turned to move deliberately to Nicodemus’s side, her purplish lips black with blood, and murmured, “It is done, Father.”
Nicodemus kissed her on the mouth. And, my God, him doing it with tongue now was even more unsettling than it had been the first time I’d seen it.
He lifted his mouth from Deirdre’s a moment later and said, “Rise, Squire Jordan.”
The young man staggered to his feet, the lower half of his face a mass of blood, dripping down over his chin and throat.
“Get some ice on that and see the medic, Squire,” Nicodemus said. “Congratulations.”
Jordan’s eyes gleamed again, and his mouth twisted into a macabre smile. Then he turned and hurried away, leaving a dripping trail of blood behind him.
My stomach twisted. One of these days, I’m going to have to learn to keep my mouth shut. Nicodemus had just casually had a young man maimed solely to make a point to me for teasing him about it. I clenched my jaw and resolved to use the incident to remind me exactly the kind of monster I was dealing with here.
“There,” Nicodemus said, turning back to Mab. “I apologize for any inconvenience.”