Dead mans hand, p.34
Dead Man's Hand, page 34
“I’m merely assistant director; my hands are tied.”
“And who the hell becomes director when they replace Peters?”
He straightened his stylish suit jacket and shrugged with his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t dare to assume—”
“You. We both know it will be you.”
“Why, Les, I didn’t know you had such faith in me.”
Mayflower felt the urge to sock Grieves in the side of his face but managed to resist. It wouldn’t do Grimsby any favors. Nor his own numerous stitches. Though it might have done wonders for the Huntsman’s temper.
He forced the urge back down. “You think I’m an idiot?”
“Why, Les, of course not.”
“You knew about Peters. The whole goddamned time, you knew.”
For the first time, Grieves looked him in the eye, his expression as level as if an engineer had laid it out on a schematic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why else would you involve me? Tell me about Mansgraf against Peters’s direct orders?”
“Informational oversight on my part.”
“Bullshit. You knew Peters was involved. Maybe you didn’t know the dirty details, but you knew enough. Enough to know that involving me would better the odds Peters was discovered and revealed. With him gone, you’d be the obvious successor.”
Grieves’s face was as much a mask as those worn by his Auditors. He flicked a gaze around the room, ensuring it was empty aside from Mayflower and himself. “I’m only happy that a man who would abuse his position has been relieved of it, and if it is decided that I should be a suitable candidate for his replacement, then I shall be happy of that as well.”
Mayflower felt something foul on his tongue and resisted the urge to spit. “You’re a damned snake, Grieves. If you’re not going to admit you used me, fine. But you’re a dumbass if you throw an asset like that kid out on the street.” He pointed to Grimsby on the other side of the glass. He sat in his cushionless chair, his head hung on his neck as he stared at the table he was cuffed to.
“I’ve read Mansgraf’s report on him. ‘Mediocre witch. Decent person. Not Department material.’ Brief and to the point, just as she liked to be.”
“She was wrong.”
“Was she now?”
Mayflower glanced at Grimsby, then nodded firmly. “Mostly.”
Grieves shook his head. “I can’t be employing dangerous rogue assets like Grimsby. What will people think?”
“Whatever you tell them to,” Mayflower said grimly.
“Perish the thought,” Grieves said. Then he smiled for the first time.
“You owe me,” Mayflower said.
“Do I?”
“Without me—hell, without Grimsby—Peters would still be around. And you’d still be his peon.”
Grieves’s smile faded as quick as it had come. “I don’t recall any such agreement.”
“You’re a real son of a bitch, Grieves.”
He clicked his tongue. “Such shameful decorum. In spite of that, I’d still like to hire you, just as before.”
“I told you no once,” Mayflower said. He had to keep his tone level, though he felt a growl bubble in his throat as his hand trembled the slightest twitch. If not for Grimsby’s intervention, Mayflower would have killed Hives and Peters would have gotten away with murdering Mansgraf. His old intuitions were as rusted as he feared them to be when this all began, and it was a miracle he hadn’t gotten anyone killed who hadn’t deserved it.
No, he thought, shaking his head firmly, I can’t go back to this life.
No matter how much he wanted to.
“You certain about that?” Grieves asked, his expression tinged with the barest hint of smugness.
“You think I’m the type to change my mind easily?” Mayflower said, temper simmering as he tore his attention away from his own twisted guts.
Grieves flicked a glance to Grimsby, and his smile returned. “Oh, I think you can be reasoned with.”
Mayflower realized the director’s meaning and felt a hot coal in the pit of his stomach. “You’re a real son of a bitch, Grieves.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Grimsby sat on his broken couch, staring through the old TV set. Some old black-and-white Western was playing, though he didn’t pay it much mind. Beside him, though, Wudge sat eagerly on the edge of the couch, munching on a square of dried ramen.
“Wudge likes the part when they shoots each other,” he said, bouncing a little on the cushion.
“That’s all the parts, Wudge,” he said distantly.
Wudge cackled in agreement.
Grimsby turned his stare to the hole in the ceiling where the fan had been.
The Department had dropped him off the night before with hardly a word. He hadn’t slept since, and not just because Wudge hadn’t budged from his sleeping couch.
He had called Carla at MMDFK but only got an automated message. Apparently, the Food Kingdom would be closed for the foreseeable future for “development,” whatever that meant. Regardless, it left him officially unemployed.
He didn’t know what he would do, or how he’d get by, and he’d been staring at a blur of old Westerns trying to figure it out since he got home.
Now, however, he was doing little more than staring. He’d seen no tunnel, let alone a light at the end of it. No solutions, no hope.
Just grainy pictures of good guys chasing bad guys.
He had once thought things would be so simple, but not anymore.
Three knocks sounded at his door, stirring him from his dazed stupor. He automatically stood and made his way to the entry, stepping over the body of the familiar he’d destroyed. It had been too heavy to move on his own, and Wudge had demanded more ramen to help remove it than Grimsby could afford.
He made his way past the open door of the closet. After he had gotten home, he’d lifted the door off the hinges and tossed it into the alley below. The scrawled pictures the familiar had left on it still gave him chills.
He turned the dead bolt, leaving the chain in place, and cracked the door open to reveal Mayflower.
Grimsby felt his brain lock up for a moment. He hadn’t seen the Huntsman since they had both been arrested. He quickly unlatched the chain and opened the door wider, trying to think of something meaningful to say.
Instead, he just said, “Uh, hi.”
Mayflower nodded. “Grimsby.” He looked over his shoulder at the television and nodded. “That’s a good one.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
There was a long moment of silence that Grimsby felt the urge to break. “So, glad to see you’re doing better.”
Mayflower lifted his slung arm briefly and shrugged. “Yeah. Department’s got decent docs.”
“So . . . what are you doing here?”
For the first time, Grimsby realized Mayflower wasn’t dressed in his usual careless manner. His mismatched suit had been replaced with a dark blue one that was well tailored. His flannel shirt was replaced with a suspiciously clean white one. Only his brown motorcycle boots remained the same.
He rocked his head back and forth in annoyance. “Department code. You know how it is.”
Grimsby felt his gut twist and an acrid taste grow in his mouth. “No, I don’t.”
“Well, you’ll be sick of it soon enough.” He offered a small black square of leather to Grimsby.
He took it, more by confused autopilot than by choice. It was a bifold. He opened it to reveal the silver star of the Department. Below it was an engraved metal plate.
It read: G. G. Grimsby, Auditor.
He was so shocked that he dropped it onto the floor. He stared down at it, the wheels in his brain somehow caught on themselves. “That—that—that—”
“Is yours,” Mayflower said, grunting as he knelt to retrieve the badge. “If you want it.”
“Mine?”
He nodded. “Fair warning, though. You’re to be partnered with the hardest, meanest, and grumpiest old bastard they have in the Department.”
“Who?” Grimsby asked, still numbly dumbfounded.
Mayflower sighed and shook his head. “Me, dumbass. Now, the offer’s on the table. There’s only one question left: do you still want it?”
There was something dire in the Huntsman’s face, some tangled burden that Grimsby could not discern, though he could hardly spare it a thought as he stared at the badge, suddenly uncertain. All he had ever wanted, for as long as he could remember, was to be an Auditor.
Now it was right here before him, and a question rattled around in his head. But it wasn’t if he was ready. And it wasn’t if he was good enough. Mayflower had been right; the only question left was simple.
Did he still want it?
After all he had endured the last few days, after all the close calls and closer calls, he had managed because he had no choice. He had to manage, or he would die.
Now there was a choice. And it was one he never knew would be so hard.
Two paths: one dangerous, the other sad.
Mayflower saw the indecision in his face. “The path unchosen is the path most regretted,” he said. “But that doesn’t make it the right path.”
“How do I know what the right one is?” Grimsby asked. “How could I know?”
The Huntsman curled a smirk at him. “That’s the trick, kid. You don’t find the right path. You make it. Whichever one you choose, walk it, and walk it hard, and you’ll do all right for yourself.”
Grimsby felt his words run out.
The time to talk was done, and the time to choose had come.
He took a deep breath and then took the badge the Huntsman offered.
Mayflower nodded, something heavy in the gesture. “All right. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To get your suit, Auditor Grimsby.”
EPILOGUE
Are you certain?” Damien Grieves asked. He forced his tone to remain cool and composed, though he felt his throat tighten as he stared past the two-way mirror and into the darkened room.
“I think it would be best, Director,” Auditor Bathory said, her furrowed brow difficult to see in the dim light. “Seeing someone it knows well might trigger unpredictable responses.”
Damien said nothing. Auditor Elizabeth “Rayne” Bathory was as sharp as they came, despite her young tenure at the Department. He never trusted anyone entirely, but he trusted her assessment when it came to this matter.
“Very well,” he said, ignoring the heavy tread of his own pulse. “You may proceed.”
Auditor Bathory nodded and stepped into the sealed chamber that formed an airlock between observation and interrogation. He could barely see her in the dim light. She had suggested that less stimulus would be ideal for not upsetting the subject.
At the room’s center was a steel table, bolted to the floor. Rayne approached it and sat in the seat nearest Damien’s window. The room was quiet and still. The only sound was the rustle of cloth as the Auditor took her place, played over speakers from microphones placed all around the room. Across from her, a shadowed form remained motionless.
“Subject appears unresponsive,” Rayne said. “Requesting permission to proceed.”
Damien bit back his initial reply. It was a risk, their plan. The subject—he had to call her that to keep his head level—had been unresponsive to everyone, aside for occasional scant movement. They were uncertain she—it, he corrected himself—was even aware.
He took a breath, then nodded, leaning forward to press the intercom button. “Proceed.”
Auditor Bathory produced a black plastic bag from which she drew two items of patchwork cloth: a robe and a limp pointed hat.
In the darkness at the far side of the table, something moved.
Rayne placed the items on the table, then slid them to the middle of the table.
The figure across from her twitched.
There was a long, tense pause. Then the sound of metal squeaked against metal.
Damien felt like he could almost see its eyes in the dark, like twin holes in space, more deeply black than any void.
“Response confirmed,” Rayne said. Her voice was level, but Damien could see fear creep into her posture. Like a true Auditor, she suppressed it immediately. “Permission to proceed?”
Phase two was even more dangerous. It could well be that at his next word, Auditor Bathory would die horribly, her body torn open and spilled upon the very window he now peered through. The Agents standing at the ready outside would be too slow to help her, and even Damien’s own magic would likely come too late.
He felt his reserve falter for a moment but steeled it down as one might lash a madman to a ship’s mast. Bathory—Rayne knew the risks. Yet she had volunteered to face the danger because she also knew what it might mean to the Department.
What it might mean to him.
His finger was white, numb, and bloodless as he pressed the intercom button. “Proceed.”
He then pressed the button near it—a button that released the shackles that held the creature in place.
The table buzzed loudly and shuddered as the shackles built into it released. Auditor Bathory flinched, albeit barely, at the sudden noise. She braced herself, but there was no flash of motion, no blur of violence. Only silence.
Then, slowly, a hand reached out of the dark, one made of twisted metal overlaid with silver plates, oddly slender and beautiful. It clamped down on the robe and hat and pulled them back into the dark. There was more movement, and the rustle of cloth over steel. Then, silence.
Damien felt his mouth go dry as he pressed the intercom button. “Proceed to final phase.”
Rayne nodded without turning around. She withdrew a pad and pen and set them on the table.
“Can you hear me?” she asked.
For a moment, there was no reply. Then a solitary ping rang out as a metal finger tapped on the table.
She jotted a note, then pressed again. “Do you know where you are?”
There was another tap on the table.
“Do you know who you are?” Rayne asked.
There was another pause, one so long that Damien thought they’d receive no reply at all, until finally another tap came, this one softer.
Damien found himself leaning forward, his body tensed.
Rayne gathered herself for the last question.
“Is your name Samantha Mansgraf?”
The figure across the table leaned forward until the patchwork hat came into view. Beneath it lay a skull, still fresh and pink, webbed with dark veins of congealed blood. Black runes marked the skull, somehow written in Mansgraf’s own hand.
A sepulchral breath echoed into the room, like a winter wind through an abandoned city, all emanating from the familiar and its hollow skull.
Damien felt his blood run cold and his hand tremble as he heard the thing whispering Mansgraf’s final words in a grave tone caught between a cackle and a curse:
“Flesh and blood.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES J. BUTCHER spends most of his time in places that don’t exist, some of which he even made himself. What little time he has left is usually spent writing or exercising. He is the son of #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher, who introduced him to books, movies, and games. James lives in Denver and is working on his next novel.
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James J. Butcher, Dead Man's Hand
