White Night (The Dresden Files #9) - Jim Butcher Page 0,123

upon our land," she replied, her voice calm. "Most would simply have killed them, rather than pressing them into service."

"Yeah. You're all heart."

"Where there is life, there is hope, Dresden," Lara replied. "My father's policies on such matters have changed of late. Death is… gauche, when it can be avoided. Alternative courses are far more profitable and agreeable to all involved. It is for precisely that reason that my father seeks to help create a peace between your folk and mine."

I glanced aside at the shining eyes of a short-haired redhead in her early thirties, absolutely lovely, her kimono still open from whatever had fed on her, the tips of her small breasts taut as she panted, the muscles of a lean stomach still trembling. Behind us, the thralls stretched out into the darkness. Ahead of us, they went on for a hundred yards or more. So many of them.

I started to shudder, but the faces of the women the Skavis and his pretenders had murdered flickered through my mind, and I fought it down. Like hell was I going to let Lara see me look discomfited, no matter how sick the display of the White Court's seductive power made me feel.

The path went for another hundred yards through the woods and stopped at the mouth of a cave. It wasn't large or sinister or dramatic. It was simply a fissure in an almost-flat stretch of ground at the base of a tree, with the hypnotic sway of firelight dancing somewhere below. There were guards outside—set back in the woods, out of obvious sight. I spotted a couple of deer stands, occupied by dark shapes. There were others standing silent sentinel. I assumed that there would be more guards I could not see.

Lara turned to us. "Gentlemen," she said. "If you will wait here for a moment, I will send someone when the White King is ready to receive you."

I nodded once, settled my staff on the ground, and leaned on it a little, saying nothing. Ramirez took his cue from me.

Lara gave me a level look. Then she turned and descended into the Deeps, flawlessly graceful despite her high heels.

"You've met her before," Ramirez noted quietly.

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"Set of a porn movie. She was acting."

He stared at me for a second. Then shrugged in acceptance and said, "What were you doing?"

"Stuntman," I replied.

"Uh…" he said.

"I'd been hired by the producer to find out why people involved with the movie were being killed."

"Did you?"

"Yeah."

"So… did you and she…?"

"No," I said. "You can tell from how I'm breathing and possessed of my own will." I nodded toward the entrance of the cave, where a shadow briefly darkened the firelight from below. "Someone's coming."

A young woman in an especially fine white kimono, heavily embroidered with silver thread, emerged from the fissure. I thought she was blond for a second, but that was because of the light. As she approached us with slow, quiet steps, her hair turned blue, then green, passing through the light of the faerie lamps. Her hip-length hair was pure white. She was lovely, very nearly as much so as Lara, but there was none of the predatory sense of hunger in her that I'd come to associate with the White Court. She was slim, and sweetly shaped, and looked quite frail and vulnerable. It took me a second to recognize her.

"Justine?" I asked.

She gave me a little smile. It was oddly disconnected, as if her dark eyes were focused on something other than what she smiled at, and she never looked directly at me. She spoke, her words flecked with little pauses and emphasis on odd syllables, as if she were speaking a foreign language in which she had merely technical proficiency. "It's Harry Dresden. Hello, Harry. You look dashing this evening."

"Justine," I said, accepting her hand as she offered it to me. I bowed over it. "You look… ambulatory."

She gave me a shy smile and spoke in a dreamy singsong. "I'm healing. One day I'll be all better and go back to my lord."

Her fingers, though, tightened hard on mine as she spoke, a quick and measured sequence, to the rhythm of "shave and a haircut."

I blinked for a second and then squeezed back on the beat for "six bits."

"I'm sure any man would be delighted to see you."

She blushed daintily and bowed to us. "So kind, my lord. Would you accompany me, please?"

We did. Justine led us down into the fissure, which proved to be a smooth-walled descent