He blinked at me. Then he nodded and started forcing himself to take slower, deeper breaths. “I’m all right?”
“The magic underwear worked,” I said. “You’re fine.”
“Then why does my back hurt so much?”
“Somebody just hit it twice with a hammer moving about twelve hundred feet per second,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. He turned to look at Molly, who nodded at him and gave him an encouraging smile. Then he shuddered and closed his eyes in relief. “I don’t think I’m temperamentally suited for the action thing.”
“Yeah. Since when are you the guy in the bulletproof vest?” I asked him.
Butters nodded at Molly. “I put it on about ten seconds after she called me and said you needed help,” he said. He fumbled a small case from his pocket and opened it. “See? I got chalk, and holy water, and garlic, too.”
I smiled at him, but felt a little bit sick. The gunman had put Butters down for the simple reason that he had been blocking the shooter’s line of sight to the room. If he’d been trying for Butters, the two shots to clear his sight line would have included a third shot to the back of Butters’s head. Of course, if Butters hadn’t been in the way, my head wouldn’t have fared any better than his.
We’re all so damned fragile.
Footsteps sounded outside the door, and I raised the gun to cover it, taking a grip with both hands, my feet centered. I was lining up the little green targeting dots when Sanya came through the door carrying a platter of sandwiches. He stopped abruptly and lifted both eyebrows, then beamed broadly. “Dresden! You are all right.” He looked around the room for a moment, frowning, and said, “Did I miss something? Who is that?”
“I don’t think there’s anything broken,” Butters told Forthill, “but you’d better get an X-ray, just to be sure. Mandibular fracture isn’t anything to play around with.”
The old priest nodded from his chair in the living quarters of the church’s residents, and wrote something down on a little pad of paper. He showed it to Butters.
The little guy grinned. “You’re welcome, Father.”
Molly frowned and asked, “Should we take him to the emergency room?”
Forthill shook his head and wrote on his notepad: Things to tell you first.
Now I had a pair of guns I’d swiped from bad guys: the security guard’s .40-caliber and the gunman’s nine-millimeter. I was inspecting them both on the coffee table, familiarizing myself with their function, and wondering if I should be planning to file off the serial numbers or something. Mouse sat next to me, his flank against my leg and his serious brown eyes watching me handle the weapons.
“You found out something?” I asked Forthill.
In a way, he wrote back. There are major movements afoot throughout South and Central America. The Red Court’s upper echelon uses human servitors to interface with mortals. Many of these individuals have been sighted at airports in the past three days. All of them are bound for Mexico. Does Chichén Itzá have any significance to you?
I grunted. Donar Vadderung’s information seemed to have been solid, then. “Yeah, it does.”
Forthill nodded and continued writing. There is a priest in that area. He cannot help you with your fight, but he says he can offer you and your people sanctuary, care, and secure transportation from the area when you are finished.
“It seems like begging for trouble to plan for our victorious departure before we know if we can get there in the first place,” I said. “I can get us to the general area, but not into the ruins themselves. I need to know anything he can find out about the security the Red Court will be setting up in the area.”
Forthill frowned at me for a moment. Then he wrote, I’ll ask him. But I’ll need someone to talk for me.
I nodded. “Molly, you’re with the padre. Get a little sleep as soon as you can. Might not get a chance to before we move out, otherwise.”
She frowned but nodded instead of trying to talk me out of it. It’s nice how brushes with violent death can concentrate even the most stubbornly independent apprentice’s better judgment.
Forthill held up a hand. Then he wrote, First, I need to know how it is that you are back on your feet. Dr. Butters said that you would be too injured to