AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter is set during the final battle in Changes. It was built around another that I wrote for Day By Drabble. I kind of…dismantled it, I guess, and reworked it into this chapter. I've always wanted something from Karrin's perspective during this moment, so I did it myself.
Contains a cameo by a character from another urban fantasy series I enjoy, a direct quote from Blood Rites and a line from the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley.
Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you if you touch him.
— Eowyn, 'The Return of the King,' J.R.R. Tolkien
Help me find the dawn of the dying day
—'Light My Way,' Audioslave
Karrin once had some of the mysteries of the universe laid out for her in a Wal-Mart McDonald's, over bad coffee, by a man she had known for a long time and hadn't known very well at all.
He had, in the calm, steady voice of someone explaining how to work an algebra problem, confirmed and then proved everything she had always suspected but never acknowledged except in a sort of half-hearted denial.
It was still hard to accept, sometimes, even though she had seen the inexplicable things he had done, beautiful and terrible things.
This was a terrible thing.
The jungle air was heavy with smoke and the sickly-sweet metallic scent of blood. It was hot but a cold sweat had broken out over her skin, an electric feeling pressed against every nerve ending.
Karrin had not seen combat like this since they had faced off against the ghouls in the Deeps, since the Denarian conflict on the island in Lake Michigan.
This time she had followed him to the gates of Hell.
Her throat still burned from that Other Voice, and she could feel it still, not a pressure or a presence, but a centering. A certainty, a feeling of purpose, something that resonated with the part of her that called for retribution, that revelled in the wholesale slaughter of evil and lusted for blood. It amplified the feeling, multiplied it, turned it into something wholly unstoppable.
Muscles ached but every strike, every step, every parry was flawless. Perfect. Every shot hit home with fatal accuracy. She knew she should have been exhausted, should have dropped an hour ago, should be dead on the ground in a hundred different places.
She knew should have been afraid. That there should not be shapeshifting demons and monsters that steal little children. There should not be magic swords and faerie godmothers.
Yet here she was.
And in their wake lay a swath of destruction wreaked by fire and ice, by steel and lead and the closer they had gotten to their destination, the more she had felt it – his rage, like it was a power all its own, cold and implacable.
I've never seen a wizard cut loose before.
There was a reason people like Dresden were once hunted down and burned at the stake. There was a reason that these monsters cowered in fear when they saw him.
You still haven't.
Emotion was catalytic for him and she had felt them all because he couldn't, had experienced every feeling he had set aside to be taken up later as weapons honed to a razor's edge. Karrin knew what it had taken for him to ask his friends to come here, what he had given up to be able to come here himself. Part of her hated Susan for causing this, for denying him something he had wanted so badly, a doubled hurt because it was something she had never been able to give anyone.
The same part of her acknowledged the reason she was here, though she still wasn't able to say it aloud. Maybe if they made it through this...
But her claim on him was baseless, a jealous little thing that she held close to her heart. His friendship was too precious to risk ruining, complicating. What they had transcended partnership; no longer the anticipation of the other's words or actions but a sort of silent telepathy.
Karrin looked up in time to see Dresden plant a boot in the chest of one of the enemy, and she screamed something incomprehensible, wordless and triumphant. Sanya joined in, teeth bared in a fierce smile, and they fought on – it was hard to tell for how long, until everything was silver and crimson and black.
Awareness ingrained from years of training showed her the subtle moment when the battle stumbled, a hitch in the pace of the fight like a scratch on a record. Every flame dwindled to a single pinpoint of vivid blue and she felt what she realized was energy, being drawn into the temple. The violent pressure of the reverse shockwave that followed sent her to her knees along with everyone else for miles.
She gained a white-knuckled grip on the Sword in one hand and the SIG in her other as an earsplitting roar shook the entire temple, followed by a flash of bloody lightning that rent the sky, so bright she could see it through her eyelids.
It burned against her skin and went on for what seemed like hours. There was silence. And then screaming. She opened her eyes and wished she hadn't.
Someone was pulling her to her feet—lifting her clear of the ground.
"Go. Find Dresden," Sanya roared in her ear over the screams, pushing her toward the stairs. "Go!"
She sprinted up the wide steps, barely slowing as she put three rounds into the head of a vampire that reached for her, clawing at her legs even as it died. All around her, they were dead or dying horribly and her feet slipped on stones coated with ichor.
The soft glow of pre-dawn slanted through the eastern door and shadows began to coalesce. Blood was thick on the floor, black and glittering in the violet light.
The form on the altar was a woman, one dark-tanned arm hung limply over the edge, blood dripped from fingertips that look blackened and burned. The bold swirls and points of crimson winding down her arm were slowly fading and –
Karrin tripped over a man's body.
She stifled a silent shriek with the back of her hand, her tac boots slid on the gore-spattered stone as she threw herself against the wall. Blindly, she stumbled out the nearest door and almost ran into a tall, slender woman whose long hair was wind-whipped into tendrils of flame as the first rays of dawn breached the horizon.
It was quieter at the top of the stone pyramid, the wind rushed through the trees and drowned the sound of death, the early light was too pure for the destruction it lit.
The Leanansidhe surveyed the scene with cold approval.
Harry was sitting on the topmost step of the pyramid, in the shadow of a hunched, crumbling stone jaguar. In his arms was a bundle wrapped in the feathered cloak Susan had worn – she could see dark hair against his shoulder.
He didn't look like a demigod anymore. Just a man, tired and broken, staring blankly past the horizon at something she couldn't see. Tear tracks cut clean paths through the blood and soot on his face.
Karrin reached out for him, took a step toward him and froze when something whispered in her ear;
"Not yet. Give him a minute, that spell was a bitch-and-a-half."
She put a hand on the P90 hanging by its sling from her shoulder. The voice of Bob was unmistakable – it was hard to forget being hit on by a sex-crazed spirit who inhabited a human skull. She looked up at the Leanansidhe, very careful not to meet the faerie's eyes or let slip her hold on the sword.
"Maggie. Is she—"
The Sidhe woman bared her teeth in a chilling approximation of a smile. "Alive."
"What happened—" she started, turning back toward the temple room. Martin was the man on the floor, she recognized him now in the dawn light. His eyes were open and dull, his throat missing.
"That man betrayed them, gave the girl up to the Red King." The faerie woman inclined her head toward the body on the altar – Susan. "She killed him."
Karrin's mind moved a step faster than Lea's words, piecing together what Dresden had told her about the spell the Reds had set up; a bloodline curse to kill every older relative of a family member. Her stomach turned.
"And then he killed them all."
She staggered to the corner of the temple and was sick. She scrubbed at her mouth with the back of her glove, leaning against the wall as she tried to steady her breathing.
"Does something trouble you, warrior? So many would like to have you. The White God, of course." The faerie tipped her head to one side, tapped a finger against her lips. "Vadderung has shown an interest. The Black Court, though to their own ends. I feel I should make an offer of my own. What would you give me, child, were I to ease his pain?"
As Lea stepped closer, Karrin moved between Lea and Harry.
The faerie smirked. "If not yourself, the Sword?"
With a twitch of her wrist she flung vampire blood from the water-patterned steel of the holy blade and rested the tip of the sword on the stone between her boots. She squared her shoulders and stood her ground between the faerie and her friend.
"Foolish girl." Lea held both elegant hands out toward the bloody chaos around them, taking a step toward her. "This is what love does, little one."
"Leave her alone, you old banshee," a gray-cloaked figure growled as he breached the top step, a black staff in his hand. Lea raised an eyebrow and drifted away, her attention again on the chaos below.
McCoy stomped over to stand next to Karrin. He pulled a canteen from beneath his cloak and handed it to her wordlessly. It wasn't water.
She drank anyway and they watched as a military helicopter landed among the bodies on the ground and departed. Her head began to ache dully with sensory overload, a tired haze.
Everything felt distant, like it was happening far away; she was talking to Harry, stepping from ancient ruins into a dim church with the warm, sleepy weight of a child in her arms, feeling the tremor of her friend's shoulder beneath her hand as he asked her to make sure his daughter disappeared.
Dresden left the church as soon as he could. She couldn't blame him.
There was a wooden table in the corner, a vase of cut roses that smelled familiar. She had brought Forthill a few of her grandmother's heirloom plants years ago, when the Nightmare had torn up the ones he tended on the church grounds.
"You did a good thing today." The priest regarded her with worried blue eyes as she watched over the sleeping girl. "Struck a huge blow for the Light."
Karrin was seized by the sudden urge to confess – something she hadn't done in years.
"I didn't do it for Him."
Without waiting for Forthill's reaction, she stepped outside into the hall lined with stained glass saints, staring down at her in silent judgment. She tried not to break into a run – there was somewhere else she should be.
Sanya informed her of Dresden's whereabouts, though she'd had her suspicions. Karrin dodged the big Russian before he could try to talk her into having a drink with him and made her way to the parking lot. High-definition realizations washed over her with every step; they had finally finished off the Reds. Her career lay in ruins, sacrificed the way she had always known it would happen. She would do it all again without a moment's hesitation.
Leaning against the church wall near her car was a dark-haired, clean-cut young man in a tan trench coat.
"Daniel?" she asked from a distance, thinking he was the Carpenter boy and might know something of Molly's condition that she could tell Harry.
The man looked up at her with solemn eyes, old - much older than any person had a right to be - intense enough to make it seem like he had his own sort of gravitational field.
He wasn't one of the Carpenters, or anyone she had ever seen before.
Or human.
She reached for her gun and he smiled kind of fondly, like her reaction was exactly what he had expected.
"You must be Karrie," he said, and she stopped. No one called her that. Not her mother, not even her closest friend, and it felt almost like the shivery sensation of being Named, but this was something else. Something bigger – the same pull she had felt while wielding the Sword of Faith. The stranger looked her over from messy ponytail to bloodied tactical boots, and raised an eyebrow. "Looks like you've had a busy day."
Murphy stared him down without meeting his eyes.
"What are you?"
He said nothing and she followed his gaze to the ground where the long angle of the evening sun cast an image of feathered wings across the asphalt on either side of his shadow.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph." She took a breath and reassured herself that in her situation, meeting an honest-to-God angel in a parking lot could hardly be considered strange. "Sanya told me this might happen. Look, if you're here to offer me a job—"
The stranger sighed with what might have been annoyance.
"I don't necessarily... play for that team. I owe somebody a favor and I'm here to pay it back." He patted down his pockets and Karrin twitched when he reached beneath his coat. Instead of a weapon he produced a creased and faded piece of paper the size of a playing card. "I am supposed to deliver this message to you..." He checked his watch. "Now."
The stranger held out the slip of paper and she took it. It was a prayer card. There used to be one just like it tucked into the old, worn leather police badge she kept on the mantle at home. The card was faded and creased, printed with a woodcut image of Saint Joan.
Her fingers trembled.
A single line had been copied down in blocky script beneath the typeset prayer. The handwriting she knew as well, though there was no way it could be real — the ink looked fresh but the person who had written it was long gone. The scribbled words were a line she had heard for the first time at the age of eleven;
I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
Memories hit her like a physical blow - the smell of fall leaves and fresh dirt and a few people gathered around a grave, the pained cadence of a man reading a poem. She had been a child with only a vague understanding of why there was no priest, the reason for her mother's tears as a police officer took the card of out the wallet and left it on the modest headstone, then put the leather-backed badge in her little hands.
"How did you—why do you have this?"
"I'm not allowed to say. There are rules."
Stunned, Karrin couldn't move out of reach before the man – the angel - stepped closer and...hugged her.
The embrace did more than block the biting chill of Chicago wind. The cold, leaden feeling of fatigue in her limbs vanished instantly. None of the day's cuts or bumps ached anymore, it was as if she hadn't traveled across the world on foot and taken part in the extermination of an entire species.
In an instant she knew what to tell Harry, how to reassure him after everything that had happened, how to convince him that no matter what he had bargained away, she would never let anyone change him.
That nothing done out of love was as damning as he thought.
After a moment, the stranger stepped away and straightened his tie. "Also part of the favor. Sergeant." He saluted and walked toward an old black Chevy idling at the opposite end of the parking lot.
Clutching the card, she turned and unlocked her car with shaking hands.
The cell phone charging on the dash beeped to life and began chiming wildly as she fumbled the keys into the ignition. John Stallings's name appeared on most of the notifications, a missed call from Jared, about a dozen voicemails from her ex-husband and a few million texts from her mother – WHY IS THE FBI LOOKING FOR YOU?
Karrin ripped the phone from the charger and threw it into the floorboard, put the card in the pocket of her tac vest.
She slammed the car into gear and ran every red light from the church to the marina.
Thank you again for your patience.