"He wants me dead, Murph. That should mean something in my favor, shouldn't it?"
"Not really," she said, and squinted up at the top of the pit. "From what I can tell, Denton wants pretty much everybody dead. And you could still be lying to me."
"I'm not, Murph," I said, my voice soft. "Cross my heart."
"I can't just take your word on it, Harry," she whispered. "There are too many people dead. My men. My people. Civilians, the ones I'm supposed to protect. The only way to be sure is to take you all, everyone involved, and sort things out with you behind bars."
"No," I said. "There's more to it than what you can prove, Murph, more than what's going to stand up in court. Come on. You and me, we've known each other for years. You should be able to trust me by now, right?"
"I should be able to," Murphy agreed. "But after what I've seen, all the blood and death …" She shook her head. "No, Harry. I can't trust anyone anymore." She half smiled and said, "I still like you, Dresden. But I can't trust you."
I tried to match her smile, but my feelings were in too much turmoil. Pain, mostly. Physical pain, and a deeper heart hurt, both for Murphy's sake and for the sake of our friendship. She was so alone. I wanted to go to the rescue, somehow, to make her hurting go away.
She'd have spit in my face if I'd tried. Murphy wasn't the sort of person who wanted to be rescued, from anything. That she accepted as much comfort as my wet coat offered her came as a surprise to me.
I looked around the pit again intently. The other Alphas were recovering, enough to sit up, but apparently not enough to move. Tera just sat with her back against the wall, defeated and exhausted. Marcone swung from the platform high above me, not moving, though I thought I might have heard a moan from him at one point. I felt a pang of sympathy for him. However much of a heartless bastard he might be, no one deserved to dangle like bait from a hook.
The Alphas, Tera, Marcone, Murphy. They were all where they were because of me. It was my fault we were there, my doing that we were all about to die. Carmichael, the poor jerk, was dead, also because of me. So were other good cops. So was Hendricks.
I had to do something about it.
"I need to get out of here," I told Murphy. "Get me out of here, and maybe I can do something."
Murphy turned her head toward me. "You mean …?" She waved the fingers of her unbroken arm in a vaguely mystic gesture.
I nodded. I still had my ace in the hole. "Something like that."
"Right. So how do we get you out of here?"
"You going to trust me, Murph?"
Her jaw clenched. "It doesn't look as though I have much choice, does it?"
I smiled back at her, and rose to my feet, sloshing around in the water. "Maybe we could dig into the walls a bit. Make climbing holes."
"You'll probably get shot once you get to the top," Murphy said.
"No," I said, "I don't think they'll want to hang around the pit with MacFinn coming. They're bloodthirsty, but not stupid."
"So," Murphy said. "All we need to do is get you up to the top of the pit, and then you're going to go one-on-four with a bunch of armed FBI agents-cum-werewolves and beat them in time to go up against the loup-garou that we couldn't stop before with all of your magical gizmos and a building full of police officers."
"Essentially," I answered.
Murphy looked up at me and then shrugged and let out a short, defiant laugh. She stood up too, flicked her hair back from her eyes with a toss of her head, and said, "I guess it could be worse."
There was a soft sound from above and behind me. Murphy froze, staring upward, her eyes becoming almost impossibly wide.
I turned my head very slowly.
The loup-garou crouched up at the lip of the pit, huge and gnarled and muscled and deadly. Its foaming jaws were open, showing the rows of killing teeth. Its eyes gleamed with scarlet flames in the moonlight, and they were fastened on the dangling figure of Gentleman Johnny Marcone. I quivered, and the motion made a slight sound against the water. The beast turned its head down, and when it saw me its eyes narrowed to glowing slits, and it let out a harsh, low growl. Its claws dug into the earth at the edges of the pit, tearing through it like sand.
It remembered me.
My heart started ripping a staccato rhythm in my chest. That same raw, sharp, primitive fear I'd felt before, the fear of simply being jumped on and eaten, returned in full force and for a moment swept away all thoughts and plans.
"You had to say that," I said to Murphy, my voice wan and pale. "Happy? It's worse."
Chapter 32
"Okay," I said, fear making my voice weak. "This is bad. This is very, very bad."
"Wish I had my pistol," Murphy said, her tone resolute. "I wish we'd had some more time to talk things out, Harry."
I glanced over at Tera. One of the Alphas, the mouse-haired girl in her wolf-shape, was leaning against her and whimpering. "Close your eyes," Tera said softly and covered the little wolf's eyes with her hand. Her amber eyes met mine, without hope, without any sparkle of life.
They were going to die because of me. Dammit all, it wasn't fair. I hadn't done anything grossly stupid. It wasn't fair to have come so far, sacrificed so much, and to buy it down here in the mud, like some kind of burrowing bug. I searched the pit again desperately, but it was a fiendishly simple and complete trap. There were no options down here.
My eyes went up. Straight up.
"Marcone!" I shouted. "John Marcone! Can you hear me?"
The limp figure suspended above me stirred weakly. "What do you want, Mr. Dresden?"
"Can you move?" I asked. The loup-garou growled, low, and started pacing a circuit of the pit, glowing eyes flashing between us down at the bottom and Marcone, trying to decide who to rip apart first.
"An arm," Marcone confirmed a few seconds later.
"Do you still keep that knife on you? The one I saw at the garage?"
"Denton and his associates searched me and found it, I am afraid," came Marcone's voice.
"Dammit all. You're a miserable, stupid bastard for making a deal with Denton, Marcone. Now do you believe he wanted to kill you all along?"
The figure above me wiggled and writhed, swinging from the ropes that held him trussed up there. "Yes, do tell me that you told me so with your last breath, Mr. Dresden. I was already rather acutely aware of that," Marcone said, his voice dry. "But perhaps I'll yet have a chance to make amends."
"What are you doing?" I asked. I kept my eyes on the loup-garou, as it circled the pit, and kept myself opposite the creature, where I could see it.
"Reaching for the knife they didn't find," Marcone replied. He grunted, and then I saw a flicker of light on something shiny up above me.
"Forget it," Murphy said quietly, stepping close to my side as she watched Marcone. "He's just going to cut himself loose and leave us to rot here."
"We won't get the chance to rot," I pointed out. But I thought she was right.
Marcone started to spin slowly on his rope, wriggling around until his whole body was rotating on the end of it. He began to speak, his voice calm. "Ironic, isn't it? I'd planned to wait for the creature on the platform and tempt it into the pit. There are some nets ready to drop on it, after that. I would have held it until morning."
"You do know that it's right beneath you now, don't you, John?" I asked.
"Mr. Dresden," Marcone said crossly. "I've asked you not to call me that."
"Whatever," I said, but I had to admire the raw courage of the man to banter while dangling up there like a ripe peach.