"I don"t blame myself," I said.
My apprentice arched an extremely skeptical eyebrow.
I looked away from her.
"You wanna talk to me about it?"
"No," I said. I suddenly felt very tired. "Not until I"m sure the swords are safe."
"If he knew where to send the pictures," Molly said, "then he knows where your house is."
"But he can"t get inside. Even if he could get the doors or one of the windows to open, the wards would roast him."
"And your wards are perfect," Molly said. "There"s no way anyone could get around them, ever. The way you told me those necromancers did a few years ago."
"They didn"t go around," I said. "They went through. But I see your point. If I have to, I"ll take one of the Ways to Warden"s command center at Edinburgh and leave the swords in my locker."
Molly"s eyes widened. "Wow. A locker?"
"Technically. I haven"t used it. I"ve got the combination written down. Somewhere. On a napkin. I think."
"Does it hurt to be as suave as you, boss?"
"It"s agonizing."
"Looks it." Her smile faded. "What are you going to do after you"re sure the swords are safe?"
She hadn"t thought it through. She didn"t know what was going to happen in the next few minutes. So I gave her my best fake grin and said, "One step at a time, gra.s.shopper. One step at a time."
I BEGAN POURING my will into my shield bracelet about half a mile from home. That kind of active magic wasn"t good for the Beetle, but having a headless driver smash it into a building would be even worse. I fastened the b.u.t.tons on my leather duster, too. The spells that reinforced the coat were fresh, and they"d once stood up to the power of a Kalashnikov a.s.sault rifle-but that was a world of difference from the power of a .50-caliber sniper round.
Buzz had missed his shot at the sword at Michael"s house. It"s really hard to tail someone without being noticed, unless you"ve got a team of several cars working together-and this had all the earmarks of a lone-gunman operation. Buzz hadn"t been tailing me today, and unless he"d given up entirely-sure, right-that could only mean he was waiting for me somewhere. He"d had plenty of time to set up an ambush somewhere he knew I"d go.
Home.
The sword was my priority. I wasn"t planning on suicide or anything, but at the end of the day, I was just one guy. The swords had been a thorn in the side of evildoers for two thousand years. In the long term, the world needed them a lot more than it needed one battered and somewhat shabby professional wizard.
As I came down the street toward my apartment, I stomped on the gas. Granted, in an old VW Beetle, that isn"t nearly as dramatic as it sounds. My car didn"t roar as much as it coughed more loudly, but I picked up speed and hit my driveway as hard as I could while keeping all the wheels on the ground. I skidded to a stop outside my front door as the engine rattled, pinged, and began pouring out black smoke, which would have been totally cool if I"d actually made it happen on purpose.
I flung myself out of the car, the sword in hand, and into the haze of smoke, my shield bracelet running at maximum power in a dome that covered me on all sides. I rushed toward the steps leading down to the front door of my bas.e.m.e.nt apartment.
As my foot was heading down toward the first step, there was a flash of light and a sledgehammer hit me in the back. It spun me counterclockwise as it flung me down, and I went into a bad tumble down the seven steps to my front door. I hit my head, my shoulder screamed, and the taste of blood filled my mouth. My shield bracelet seared my wrist. Gravity stopped working, and I wasn"t sure which way I was supposed to be falling.
"Get up, Harry," I told myself. "He"s coming. He"s coming for the sword. Get up up."
I"d dropped my keys in the fall. I looked for them.
I saw blood all over the front of my shirt.
The keys lay on the concrete floor of the stairs. I picked them up and stared stupidly at them. It took me a minute to remember why I needed them, and then another minute to puzzle out which of the five keys on the ring went to my front door. My head was pounding and I felt sick; I couldn"t get a breath.
I tried to reach up to unlock the door, but my left shoulder wouldn"t hold my weight. I almost slammed my head against the concrete again.
I made it up to a knee. I shoved my key at the door.
He"s coming. He"s coming.
Blue sparks flew up, and a little shock lit up my arm with pain.
My wards. I"d forgotten about my wards.
I tried to focus my will again, but I couldn"t get it to gel. I tried again, and again, and finally I was able to perform the routine little spell that disarmed them.
I shoved my key into the lock and turned it. Then I leaned against the door.
It didn"t open.
My door is a heavy steel security door. I installed it myself, and I"m a terrible carpenter. It doesn"t quite line up with the frame, and it takes a real effort to get it open and closed. I had grown used to the routine b.u.mp and thrust of my shoulders and hips that I needed to open it up-but like the spell that disarmed my wards, that simple task was, at the moment, beyond me.
Footsteps crunched in the gravel.
He"s coming.
I couldn"t get it open. I sort of flopped against it as hard as I could.
The door groaned and squealed as it swung open, pulled from the other side. Mouse, my huge, s.h.a.ggy grey dog, dropped his front paws back to the ground, shouldered his way through the door, and seized my right arm by the biceps. His jaws were like a vise, though his teeth couldn"t penetrate the leather. He dragged me indoors like a giant, groggy chew toy, and as I went across the threshold, I saw Buzz appear at the top of the stairs, a black shadow against the blue morning sky.
He raised a gun, a military sidearm.
I kicked the door with both legs, as hard as I could.
The gun barked. Real guns don"t sound like the guns in the movies. The sound is flatter, more mechanical. I couldn"t see the flash, because I"d moved the door into the way. Bullets pounded the steel like hailstones on a tin roof.
Mouse slammed his shoulder against the door and rammed it closed.
I fumbled at the wards, babbling in panicked haste, and managed to restore them just in time to hear a loud popping sound, a cry, and a curse from the other side of the door. Then I reached up and snapped the dead bolt closed for good measure.
Then I fell back onto the floor of my apartment and watched the ceiling spin for a while.
In two or three minutes, maybe, I was feeling a little better. My head and shoulder hurt like h.e.l.l, but I could breathe. I tried my arms and legs; three of them worked. I sat up. That worked, too, though it made my left shoulder hurt like more h.e.l.l, and it was hard to see straight through the various pains.
I knew several techniques for reducing and ignoring pain, some of them almost too effective-but I couldn"t really seem to line any of them up and get them working. My head hurt too much.
I needed help.
I half crawled to my phone and dialed a number. I mumbled to the other end of the phone, and then lay back on the floor again and felt terrible. Buzz must have fallen back by now, knowing that the sound of the shots could attract attention. Now that the sword was behind the protection of my wards, there was no reason for him to loiter around outside my apartment-I hoped.
The next thing I knew, Mouse was pawing at the door, making anxious sounds. I dragged myself over to it, disarmed the wards, and unlocked it.
"Are these sh.e.l.l casings on the ground? Is this blood?" sputtered a little man in pale blue hospital scrubs and a black denim jacket. He had a shock of black hair like a startled haystack, and black wire-rimmed spectacles. "Holy Hannah, Harry, what happened to you?"
I closed the wards and the door behind him. "Hi, b.u.t.ters. I fell down."
"We"ve got to get you to a hospital," he said, turning to reach for my phone.
I slapped my hand weakly down onto it, to keep him from picking it up. "Can"t. No hospitals."
"Harry, you know I"m not a doctor."
"Yes, you are. I saw your business card." The effort of vocalizing that many syllables hurt.
"I"m a medical examiner. I cut up dead people and tell you things about them. I don"t do live patients."
"Hang around," I said. "It"s early yet." Still too many syllables.
"Oh, this is a load of c.r.a.p," he muttered. Then he shook his head and said, "I need some more light."
"Matches," I mumbled. "Mantel." Better.
He found the matches and started lighting candles. "Next, I"ll be getting out a big jar of leeches."
He found the first aid kit under my kitchen sink, boiled some water, and came over to check me out. I sort of checked out for a few minutes. When I came back, he was fumbling with a pair of scissors and my duster.
"Hey!" I protested. "Lay off the coat!"
"You"ve dislocated your shoulder," he informed me, frowning without stopping his work with the scissors. "You don"t want to wriggle it around trying to take your shirt off."
"That"s not what I-"
The pin that held the two halves of the scissors together popped as b.u.t.ters exerted more pressure on their handles, and the two halves fell apart. He blinked at them in shock.
"Told you," I muttered.
"Okay," he said. "I guess we do this the hard way."
I won"t bore you with the details. Ten minutes later, my coat was off, my shoulder was back in its socket, and b.u.t.ters was pretending that my screams during the two failed attempts to put it back hadn"t bothered him. I went away again, and when I came back, b.u.t.ters was pressing a cold c.o.ke into my hand.
"Here," he said. "Drink something. Stay awake."
I drank. Actually, I guzzled. Somewhere in the middle, he pa.s.sed me several ibuprofen tablets and told me to take them. I did.
I blinked blearily at him as he held up my coat. He turned it around to show me the back.
There was a hole in the leather mantle. I flipped it up. Beneath the hole, several ounces of metal were flattened against the second layer of spell-toughened leather, about three inches below the collar and a hair to the right of my spine.
That was chilling. Even through my best defenses, that was how close I"d come to death.
If Buzz had shot me six inches lower, only a single layer of leather would have been between the round and my hide. A few inches higher, and it would have taken me in the neck, with absolutely no protection. And if he"d waited a quarter of a second longer, until my foot had descended to the first step leading down to my door, he would have sprayed my brains all over the siding of the boardinghouse.
"You broke your nose again," b.u.t.ters said. "That"s where some of the blood came from. There was a laceration on your scalp, too, which accounts for the rest. I st.i.tched it up. You"re holding your neck rigid. Probably whiplash from where the round hit you. There are some minor burns on your left wrist, and I"m just about certain you"ve got a concussion."
"But other than that," I muttered, "I feel great."
"Don"t joke, Harry," b.u.t.ters said. "You should be under observation."
"Already am," I said. "Look where it got me."
He grimaced. "Doctors are required to report gunshot wounds to the police."
"Good thing I don"t have any gunshot wounds, eh? I just fell down some stairs."
b.u.t.ters shook his head again and turned toward the phone. "Give me a reason not to do it, or I call Murphy right now."
I grunted. Then I said, "I"m protecting something important. Someone else wants it. If the police get involved, this thing would probably get impounded as evidence. That"s an unacceptable outcome, and it could get a lot of people hurt."
"Something important," b.u.t.ters said. "Something like a magic sword?"
I scowled at him. "How do you know that?"
He nodded at my hand. "Because you won"t let go of it."
I looked down to find the burn-scarred fingers of my left hand clutching Amoracchius" Amoracchius"s hilt in a white-knuckled grasp. "Oh," I said. "Yeah. Kind of a tip-off, isn"t it?"
"Think you can let it go now?" b.u.t.ters asked quietly.
"I"m trying," I said. "My hand"s kind of locked up."
"Okay. Let"s just go one finger at a time, then." b.u.t.ters peeled my fingers off the sword, one at a time, until he had removed it from my grasp. My hand closed in on itself, tendons creaking, and I winced. It sort of hurt, but at the moment it was a really minor thing.
b.u.t.ters set the sword aside and immediately took my left hand in his, ma.s.saging brusquely. "Murphy"s going to be p.i.s.sed if you don"t call her."
"Murphy and I have disagreed before," I said.
b.u.t.ters grimaced. "Okay. Can I help?"
"You are helping."
"Besides this," b.u.t.ters said.
I looked at the little ME for a moment. b.u.t.ters had been my unofficial doctor for a long time, never asking a thing in return. He"d waded into some serious trouble with me. Once, he"d saved my life. I trusted his discretion. I trusted him, generally.
So, as the blood started returning to my hand, I told him more or less everything about Buzz and the swords.
"So this guy, Buzz," b.u.t.ters said. "He"s just a guy."
"Let"s don"t forget," I said. "Despite all the nasties running around out there, it"s just guys who dominate most of the planet."
"Yeah, but he"s just a guy," b.u.t.ters said. "How"s that?"