Death Masks

Chapter Thirty-three

I woke up in the back of Michael's pickup staring up at the stars and the moon and in considerable pain. Sanya sat at the back of the truck, facing me. Michael lay still and unmoving beside me.

"He's awake," Sanya said when he saw me moving.

Murphy's voice came from the front of the truck. "Harry, be still, okay? We don't know how badly you've been shot."

"Okay," I said. "Hi, Murph. It should have torn."

"What?" Murphy asked.

"Shroud. It should have torn like wet tissue. That just makes sense, right?"

"Shhhhh, Harry. Be still and don't talk."

That sounded fine to me. The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the morgue.

This, all by itself, is enough to really ruin your day.

I was lying on the examining table, and Butters, complete with his surgical gown and his tray of autopsy instruments, stood over me.

"I'm not dead!" I sputtered. "I'm not dead!"

Murphy appeared in my field of vision, her hand on my chest. "We know that, Harry. Easy. We've got to get the bullet out of you. We can't take you to the emergency room. They have to report any gunshot wounds."

"I don't know," Butters said. "This X ray is all screwed up. I'm not sure it's showing me where the bullet is. If I don't do this right, I could make things worse."

"You can do it," Murphy said. "The technical stuff always messes up around him."

Things spun around.

Michael stood over me at one point, his hand on my head. "Easy, Harry. It's almost done."

And I thought, Great. I'm going to require an armed escort to make sure I get to hell.

When I woke up again, I was in a small bedroom. Stacks and boxes and shelves of fabric filled the place nearly to the ceiling, and I smiled, recognizing it. The Carpenters' guest room.

On the floor next to the bed was Michael's breastplate. There were four neat holes in it where the bullets had gone through. I sat up. My shoulder screamed at me, and I found it covered in bandaging.

There was a sound by the door. A small pair of eyes peeked around the corner, and little Harry Carpenter stared at me with big blue-grey eyes.

"Hi," I said to him.

He dutifully lifted his pudgy fingers and waved them at me.

"I'm Harry," I said.

He frowned thoughtfully and then said, "Hawwy."

"Good enough, kid."

He ran off. A minute later he came back, reaching way up over his head to hold on to his daddy's fingers. Michael came in the room and smiled at me. He was wearing jeans, a clean white T-shirt, and bandages over one arm. The cut on his face was healing, and he looked rested and relaxed. "Good afternoon," he said.

I smiled tiredly at him. "Your faith protects you, eh?"

Michael reached down and turned the breastplate around. There was a cream-colored material lining in the inside of the breastplate, with several deep dents in it. He peeled it back to show me layers and layers of bulletproof fabric backing ceramic strike plates set against the front of the breastplate. "My faith protects me. My Kevlar helps."

I laughed a little. "Charity made you put it in?"

Michael picked up little Harry and put him on his shoulders. "She did it herself. Said she wasn't going to spend all that trouble making the breastplate and then have me get killed with a gun."

"She made the breastplate?" I asked.

Michael nodded. "All of my armor. She used to work on motorcycles."

My shoulder throbbed hard enough to make me miss the next sentence. "Sorry. What did you say?"

"I said you'll need to take your medicine. Can you handle some food first?"

"I'll try."

I had soup. It was exhausting. I took a Vicodin and slept without dreaming.

Over the next couple of days, I managed to piece together what had happened from talking to Michael and, on the second day, to Sanya.

The big Russian had come out of things all right. Marcone, after getting me and Michael out of the water, had called Murphy and told her where to find us. She had already been on the way, and got there in only a couple of minutes.

The crew of the train, it turned out, had been killed. The three goons that had been trussed up on the train had bitten down on suicide pills and were dead when the cops found them. Murphy had taken us all to Butters instead of to the emergency room, since once my gunshot wound was reported, Rudolph and company could have made my life hell.

"I must be out of my mind," Murphy told me when she visited. "I swear, Dresden, if this comes back to bite me in the ass, I'm taking it out on your hide."

"We're fighting the good fight, Murph," I said.

She rolled her eyes at me, but said, "I saw the body at the airport concourse, Harry. Did you know him?"

I looked out the window, at Michael's three youngest playing in the yard, watched over by a tolerant Molly. "He was a friend. It could have been me instead."

Murphy shivered. "I'm sorry, Harry. The people who did it. Did they get away from you?"

I looked at her and said, "I got away from them. I don't think I did much more than annoy them."

"What happens when they come back?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Wrong," Murphy said. "The answer to that question is that you don't know exactly but that you will certainly call Murphy from the get-go. You get less busted up when I'm around."

"That's true." I covered her hand with mine and said, "Thanks, Murph."

"You're gonna make me puke, Dresden," she said. "Oh, so you know. Rudolph is out of SI. The assistant DA he was working for liked his toadying style."

"Rudolph the Brownnosed Reindeer," I said.

Murphy grinned. "At least he's not my problem anymore. Internal Affairs has to worry now."

"Rudolph in Internal Affairs. That can't be good."

"One monster at a time."

On the fourth day, Charity inspected my wound and told Michael that I could leave. She never actually spoke to me, which I considered an improvement over most visits. That afternoon, Michael and Sanya came in. Michael was carrying Shiro's battered old cane.

"We got the swords back," Michael said. "This is for you."

"You'll have a better idea what to do with that than me," I told him.

"Shiro wanted you to have it," Michael said. "Oh, and you got some mail."

"I what?"

Michael offered me an envelope and the cane as a unit. I took them both, and frowned at the envelope. The lettering was in black calligraphy, and flowed beautifully across the envelope.

"To Harry Dresden. And it's your address, Michael. Postmarked two weeks ago."

Michael shrugged.

I opened the envelope and found two pages inside. One was a copy of a medical report. The other was ornately handwritten, like the envelope. It read:

Dear Mr. Dresden,

By the time you read this letter, I will be dead. I have not been given the details, but I know a few things that will happen over the next few days. I write you now to say what I might not have the chance to in the flesh.

Your path is often a dark one. You do not always have the luxury that we do as Knights of the Cross. We struggle against powers of darkness. We live in black and white, while you must face a world of greys. It is never easy to know the path in such a place.

Trust your heart. You are a decent man. God lives in such hearts.

Enclosed is a medical report. My family is aware of it, though I have not shared it with Michael or Sanyo. It is my hope that it will give you a measure of comfort in the face of my choice. Do not waste tears on me. I love my work. We all must die. There is no better way to do so than in the pursuit of something you love.

Walk in mercy and truth,

Shiro

I read over the medical report, blinking at several tears.

"What is it?" Sanya asked.

"It's from Shiro," I said. "He was dying."

Michael frowned at me.

I held up the medical report. "Cancer. Terminal. He knew it when he came here."

Michael took it and let out a long breath. "Now I understand."

"I don't."

Michael passed the report to Sanya and smiled. "Shiro must have known that we would need you to stop the Denarians. It's why he traded himself for your freedom. And why he accepted the curse in your place."

"Why?"

Michael shrugged. "You were the one we needed. You had all of the information. You were the one who realized Cassius was masquerading as Father Vincent. You had contacts within the local authorities to give you access to more information, to help us when we needed the concourse emptied. You were the one who could call in Marcone for his help."

"I'm not sure that says anything good about me," I said, glowering.

"It says that you were the right man in the right place and at the right time," Michael said. "What of the Shroud? Does Marcone have it?"

"I think so."

"How should we handle it?"

"We don't. I do."

Michael regarded me for a moment, then said, "All right." He stood up and then said, "Oh. The dry cleaners called. They said they're going to charge you a late fee if you don't swing by and pick up your laundry today. I'm running out for groceries. I can take you."

"I don't have anything that goes to a dry cleaners," I muttered. But I went with Michael.

The dry cleaners had my leather duster. It had been cleaned up and covered with a protective treatment. In the pockets were the keys to the Blue Beetle, along with a bill to a parking garage. On the back of the bill, written in flowing letters, were the words thank you.

So I guess Anna Valmont wasn't all that horrible a person after all.

But then, I've always been a sucker for a pretty face.

When I got back to my house, I found a postcard with a picture of Rio and no return address with my mail. There was a number on the back. I called the number, and after a few rings, Susan asked, "Harry?"

"Harry," I said.

"Are you all right?"

"Shot," I said. "It'll heal."

"Did you beat Nicodemus?"

"I got away from him," I said. "We stopped the plague. But he killed Shiro."

"Oh," she said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"I got my coat back. And my car. Not a total loss." I started opening mail as I spoke.

Susan asked, "What about the Shroud?"

"Jury's not out yet. Marcone got involved."

"What happened?" she said.

"He saved my life," I said. "Michael's too. He didn't have to do it."

"Wow."

"Yeah. Sometimes it feels like the older I get, the more confused everything is."

Susan coughed. "Harry. I'm sorry I wasn't around. By the time I was conscious, we were already over Central America."

"It's okay," I said.

"I didn't know what Martin had in mind," she said. "Honestly. I wanted to talk to you and to Trish and pick up a few of my things. I thought Martin was only coming along to help. I didn't know that he had come here to kill Ortega. He used me to cover his movements."

"It's okay."

"It isn't okay. And I'm sorry."

I opened an envelope, read it, and blurted, "Oh, you're kidding me."

"What?"

"I just opened a letter. It's from Larry Fowler's lawyer. The jerk is suing me for trashing his car and his studio."

"He can't prove that," Susan said. "Can he?"

"Whether or not he can, this is going to cost me a fortune in legal fees. Smarmy, mealymouthed jerk."

"Then I hate to add more bad news. Ortega is back in Casaverde, recovering. He's called in all his strongest knights and let it be widely known that he's coming to kill you personally."

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Did you see the subtle humor there? Vampires, cross? God, I'm funny."

Susan said something in Spanish, not into the phone, and sighed. "Damn. I have to go."

"Saving nuns and orphans?" I asked.

"Leaping tall buildings in a single bound. I should probably put on some underwear."

That brought a smile to my face. "You joke around a lot more than you used to," I said. "I like it."

I could picture the sad smile on her face as she spoke. "I'm dealing with a lot of scary things," she said. "I think you have to react to them. And you either laugh at them or you go insane. Or you become like Martin. Shut off from everything and everyone. Trying not to feel."

"So you joke," I said.

"I learned it from you."

"I should open a school."

"Maybe so," she said. "I love you, Harry. I wish things were different."

My throat got tight. "Me too."

"I'll get you a drop address. If you ever need my help, get in touch."

"Only if I need your help?" I asked.

She exhaled slowly and said, "Yeah."

I tried to say, "Okay," but my throat was too tight to speak.

"Good- bye, Harry," Susan said.

I whispered, "Good-bye."

And that was the end of that.

I woke up to a ringing telephone the next day. "Hoss," Ebenezar said. "You should watch the news today." He hung up on me.

I went down to a nearby diner for breakfast, and asked the waitress to turn on the news. She did.

"- extraordinary event reminiscent of the science-fiction horror stories around the turn of the millennium, what appeared to be an asteroid fell from space and impacted just outside the village of Casaverde in Honduras." The screen flickered to an aerial shot of an enormous, smoking hole in the ground, and a half-mile-wide circle of trees that had been blasted flat. Just past the circle of destruction stood a poor-looking village. "However, information coming in from agencies around the world indicates that the so-called meteor was in actuality a deactivated Soviet communications satellite which decayed in orbit and fell to earth. No estimates of the number of deaths or injuries in this tragic freak accident have yet reached authorities, but it seems unlikely that anyone in the manor house could possibly have survived the impact."

I sat slowly back, pursing my lips. I decided that maybe I wasn't sorry Asteroid Dresden turned out to be an old Soviet satellite after all. And I made a mental note to myself never to get on Ebenezar's bad side.

The next day I tracked down Marcone. It wasn't easy. I had to call in a couple of favors in the spirit world to get a beacon-spell going on him, and he knew all the tricks for losing a tail. I had to borrow Michael's truck so that I could have a prayer of following him inconspicuously. The Beetle may be way sexy, but subtle it ain't.

He changed cars twice and somehow called into effect the magical equivalent of a destructive electromagnetic pulse that scrambled my beacon-spell. Only quick thinking and some inspired thaumaturgy combined with my investigative skills let me stay with him.

He drove right on into the evening, to a private hospital in Wisconsin. It was a long-term-care and therapeutic facility. He pulled in, dressed in casual clothes and wearing a baseball cap, which alone generated enough cognitive dissonance to make me start drooling. He pulled a backpack out of the car and went inside. I gave him a little bit of a lead and then followed him with my beacon. I stayed outside, peering in windows at lit hallways, keeping pace and watching.

Marcone stopped at a room and went inside. I stood at the window, keeping track of him. The paper tag on the door from the hall read DOE, JANE in big, permanent marker letters that were faded with age. There was a single bed in the room, and there was a girl on it.

She wasn't old. I'd place her in her late teens or early twenties. She was so thin it was hard to tell. She wasn't on life support, but her bedcovers were flawlessly unwrinkled. Combined with her emaciated appearance, I was guessing she was in a coma, whoever she was.

Marcone drew up a chair beside the bed. He pulled out a teddy bear and slipped it into the crook of the girl's arm. He got out a book. Then he started reading to her, out loud. He sat there reading to her for an hour, before he slipped a bookmark into place and put the book back into the backpack.

Then he reached into the pack and pulled out the Shroud. He peeled down the outermost blanket on her bed, and carefully laid the Shroud over the girl, folding its ends in a bit to keep it from spilling out. Then he covered it up with the blanket and sat down in the chair again, his head bowed. I hadn't ever pictured John Marcone praying. But I saw him forming the word please, over and over.

He waited for another hour. Then, his face sunken and tired, he rose and kissed the girl on the head. He put the teddy bear back into the backpack, got up, and left the room.

I went to his car and sat down on the hood.

Marcone stopped in his tracks and stared at me when he saw me. I just sat there. He padded warily over to his car and said, voice quiet, "How did you find me?"

"Wasn't easy," I said.

"Is anyone else with you?"

"No."

I saw the wheels spinning in his head. I saw him panic a little. I saw him consider killing me. I saw him force himself to slow down and decide against any rash action. He nodded once, and said, "What do you want?"

"The Shroud."

"No," he said. There was a hint of frustration to his voice. "I just got it here."

"I saw," I said. "Who is the girl?"

His eyes went flat, and he said nothing.

"Okay, Marcone," I said. "You can give me the Shroud or you can explain it to the police when they come out here to search this place."

"You can't," he said, his voice quiet. "You can't do that to her. She'd be in danger."

My eyes widened. "She's yours?"

"I'll kill you," he said in that same soft voice. "If you so much as breathe in her direction, I'll kill you, Dresden. Myself."

I believed him.

"What's wrong with her?" I asked.

"Persistent vegetative state," he said. "Coma."

"You wanted it to heal her," I said quietly. "That's why you had it stolen."

"Yes."

"I don't think it works like that," I said. "It isn't as simple as plugging in a light."

"But it might work," he said.

I shrugged. "Maybe."

"I'll take it," he said. "It's all I have."

I looked back toward the window and was quiet for a minute. I made up my mind and said, "Three days."

He frowned. "What?"

"Three days," I said. "Three's a magic number. And supposedly that's how long Christ was wrapped in it. In three days, three sunrises, you should know whether it's going to help or not."

"And then?"

"Then the Shroud is returned in a plain brown wrapper to Father Forthill at Saint Mary of the Angels," I said. "No note. No nothing. Just returned."

"And if I don't, you'll expose her."

I shook my head and stood up. "No. I won't do that. I'll take it up with you."

He stared at me for a long moment before his expression softened. "All right."

I left him there.

When I'd first met Marcone, he'd tricked me into a soulgaze. Though I hadn't known the specifics, I knew then that he had a secret-one that gave him the incredible amount of will and inner strength needed to run one of the nation's largest criminal empires. He had something that drove him to be remorseless, practical, deadly.

Now I knew what that secret was.

Marcone was still a black hat. The pain and suffering of the criminal state he ruled accounted for an untold amount of human misery. Maybe he'd been doing it for a noble reason. I could understand that. But it didn't change anything. Marcone's good intentions could have paved a new lane on the road to hell. But dammit, I couldn't hate him anymore. I couldn't hate him because I wasn't sure that I wouldn't have made the same choice in his place.

Hate was simpler, but the world ain't a simple place. It would have been easier to hate Marcone.

I just couldn't do it.

A few days later, Michael threw a cookout as a farewell celebration for Sanya, who was heading back to Europe now that the Shroud had been returned to Father Forthill. I was invited, so I showed up and ate about a hundred and fifty grilled hamburgers. When I was done with them, I went into the house, but stopped to glance into the sitting room by the front door.

Sanya sat in a recliner, his expression puzzled, blinking at the phone. "Again," he said.

Molly sat cross-legged on the couch near him with a phone book in her lap and my shopping list she'd picked up in the tree house laid flat over one half of it. Her expression was serious, but her eyes were sparkling as she drew a red line through another entry in the phone book. "How strange," she said, and read off another number.

Sanya started dialing. "Hello?" he said a moment later. "Hello, sir. Could you please tell me if you have Prince Albert in a can-" He blinked again, mystified, and reported to Molly, "They hung up again."

"Weird," Molly said, and winked at me.

I left before I started choking on the laugh I had to hold back, and went out into the front yard. Little Harry was there by himself, playing in the grass in sight of his sister, inside.

"Heya, kid," I said. "You shouldn't be out here all by yourself. People will accuse you of being a reclusive madman. Next thing you know, you'll be wandering around saying, 'Woahse-bud.'"

I heard a clinking sound. Something shining landed in the grass by little Harry, and he immediately pushed himself to his feet, wobbled, then headed for it.

I panicked abruptly and lunged out ahead of him, slapping my hand down over a polished silver coin before the child could squat down to pick it up. I felt a prickling jolt shoot up my arm, and had the sudden, intangible impression that someone nearby was waking up from a nap and stretching.

I looked up to see a car on the street, driver-side window rolled down.

Nicodemus sat at the wheel, relaxed and smiling. "Be seeing you, Dresden."

He drove away. I took my shaking hand from the coin.

Lasciel's blackened sigil lay before my eyes. I heard a door open, and on pure instinct palmed the coin and slipped it in my pocket. I looked back to find Sanya frowning and looking up and down the street. His nostrils flared a few times, and he paced over to stand near me. He sniffed a few more times and then peered down at the baby. "Aha," he rumbled. "Someone is stinky." He swooped the kid up in his arms, making him squeal and laugh. "You mind if I steal your playmate for a minute, Harry?"

"Go ahead," I said. "I need to get going anyway."

Sanya nodded and grinned at me, offering his hand. I shook it. "It has been a pleasure to work with you," Sanya said. "Perhaps we will see each other again."

The coin felt cool and heavy in my pocket. "Yeah. Maybe so."

I left the cookout without saying good-bye, and headed home. I heard something the whole time, something whispering almost inaudibly. I drowned it out with loud and off-key singing, and got to work.

Ten hours later, I put down the excavating pick and glowered at the two-foot hole I had chipped in my lab's concrete floor. The whispering in my head had segued into "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Stones.

"Harry," whispered a gentle voice.

I dropped the coin into the hole. I slipped a steel ring about three inches across around it. I muttered to myself and willed energy into the ring. The whispering abruptly cut off.

I dumped two buckets of cement into the hole and smoothed it until it was level with the rest of my floor. After that, I hurried out of the lab and shut the door behind me.

Mister came over to demand attention. I settled on the couch, and he jumped up to sprawl on his back over my legs. I petted him and stared at Shiro's cane, resting in the corner.

"He said that I must live in a world of greys. To trust my heart." I rubbed Mister's favorite spot, behind his right ear, and he purred in approval. Mister, at least for the moment, agreed that my heart was in the right place. But it's possible he wasn't being objective.

After a while, I picked up Shiro's cane and stared down at the smooth old wood. Fidelacchius's power whispered against my fingertips. There was a single Japanese character carved into the sheath. When I asked Bob, he told me that it read, simply, Faith.

It isn't good to hold on too hard to the past. You can't spend your whole life looking back. Not even when you can't see what lies ahead. All you can do is keep on keeping on, and try to believe that tomorrow will be what it should be-even if it isn't what you expected.

I took Susan's picture down. I put the postcards in a brown envelope. I picked up the jewel box that held the dinky engagement ring I'd offered her, and that she'd turned down. Then I put them all away in my closet.

I laid the old man's cane on my fireplace mantel.

Maybe some things just aren't meant to go together. Things like oil and water. Orange juice and toothpaste.

Me and Susan.

But tomorrow was another day.