Chapter Thirty-Two
Murphy might not have been officially in charge of Special Investigations, but I don't think that made much difference to many of the other detectives there. She needed help, and when she called, they came. End of story.
For them, at least. For Murphy, it was the beginning of the story. She had to tell a lot of stories around police headquarters. It was a part of her job. Oh, no, those reports of vampire attacks were the results of hysterical drug-induced hallucinations. Troll? It was a large and ugly man, probably drunk or on drugs. He got away, investigation ongoing. Everyone buys it, because that's what SI gets paid to do - explain away the bogeyman.
Murphy should be a novelist, she writes so much fiction.
We had a big mess here, but Murph and her fellow cops in SI would make it fit in the blanks. Terrorists were hot right now. This report would probably have terrorists in it. Scared religious nuts and terrorists who set off incendiary devices at an apartment building and in her car, and who also doubtless set the device that blew up an entire room at a cheap south-side motel. There weren't any corpses to clean up - just one wounded woman who probably needed to see a shrink more than a jail cell. I debated with myself over whether or not to suggest she add in a bit with a dog. People love dogs. You can never go wrong adding a dog to the story.
"Right, Mouse?" I asked him.
Mouse looked unhappily up at me. Thomas had gotten the women and kids clear of the scene and handled what was left of the Skavis agent while I'd gone to a car wash and cleaned his blood off of my dog with the sprayer. Mouse's fur keeps out just about everything, but when it finally gets wet, it soaks up about fifty gallons and stays that way for a long time. He doesn't like it, and he was apparently feeling petulant about the entire process.
"Everybody loves a bit with a dog," I said.
Mouse exhaled steadily, then shook his head once and laid it back down, politely and definitely ignoring me.
I get no respect.
I sat on a hospital bench near the emergency room entrance with Mouse pressed up against one of my legs as he lay on the floor, just in case anyone wondered who he was with. It had been a long night, and despite Elaine's incredible hands, my headache had begun to return. I tried to decide whether Cowl's mental whammy or Madrigal and his stupid assault rifle deserved more blame for that.
A brawny kid in a brown uniform shirt came up to me the way good security guys do in the Midwest - all friendly and nice, until it's time to not be nice. The wit and wisdom of Patrick Swayze movies lives on. "Sorry, mister," he said in a friendly tone, one hand resting congenially on his nightstick. "No dogs allowed. Hospital rules."
I was tired. "If I don't take him out," I said, "are you going to tonfa me to death?"
He blinked at me. "What?"
"Tonfa," I said. "Imagine all the meal that isn't getting ground so that you can do your job. All the knives going unsharpened."
He smiled, and I could see him classify me as "drunk, harmless." He put out one hand in a come-along sort of gesture.
"Your nightstick there. It's called a tonfa. It was originally a pin that held a millstone or a big round grinding stone in a smithy. It got developed into an improvised weapon by people in southeast Asia, Okinawa, places like that, where big friendly security types like yourself took away all the real weapons in the interest of public safety."
His smile faded a little. "Okay, buddy..." He put his hand on my shoulder.
Mouse opened his eyes and lifted his head.
That's all. He didn't growl at the brawny kid. He didn't show his teeth. Like all the most dangerous people I know, he didn't feel a need to make any displays. He just sort of took notice - with extreme prejudice.
The security kid was smart enough to get the picture and took a quick step back. His hand went from the nightstick to his radio. Even Patrick Swayze needed help sometimes.
Murphy came walking up, her badge hanging on a chain around her neck, and said, "Easy there, big guy." She traded a nod with the security kid and hooked a thumb back at me. "He's with us. The dog is a handicap-assist animal."
The kid lifted his eyebrows.
"My mouth is partially paralyzed," I said. "It makes it hard for me to read. He's here to help me with the big words. Tell me if I'm supposed to push or pull on doors, that kind of thing."
Murphy gave me a gimlet glance, and turned back to the guard. "See what I mean? I'll have him out of your hair in a minute."
The security guard glanced dubiously at me, but nodded at Murphy and said, "All right. I'll check back in a bit, see if you need anything."
"Thanks," Murphy said, her tone even.
The guard departed. Murphy sighed and sat down next to me, her feet on the other side of Mouse. The dog gave her leg a fond nudge and settled back down again.
"He'll be back to see if you need help," I told Murphy in a serious voice. "A sweet little thing like you could get in trouble with a big, crazy man like me."
"Mouse," Murphy said. "If I knock Harry out and write, 'Insufferable wiseass,' on his head in permanent marker, will you help him read it?"
Mouse glanced up at Murphy and cocked his head speculatively. Then he sneezed and lay back down.
"Why'd you give him a hard time?" Murphy asked me.
I nodded at a pay phone on the wall next to a drinking fountain and a vending machine. "Waiting for a call."
"Ah," Murphy said. "Where's Molly?"
"She was falling asleep on her feet. Rawlins took her home for me."
Murphy grunted. "I said we'd talk about her."
"Yeah," I said.
"What you did, Harry..." Murphy shook her head.
"She needed it," I said.
"She needed it." The words were crisp.
I shrugged. "The kid's got power. She thinks that means she knows more than other people. That's dangerous."
Murphy frowned at me, listening.
"I'd been planning the little ball-of-face-melty-sunshine thing for a while now," I said. "I mean, come on. Fire is hard to control. I couldn't have done something like that without practicing it, and you can't exactly use a nice, slow, dramatic face-melty fireball in a real fight, can you?"
"Maybe not," Murphy said.
"I had a kind of face-melty thing come at me once, and it made an impression," I said. "Molly... got off to a bad start. She took her magic and reshaped the stuff around her. The people around her. Murph... you can't do anything with magic that you don't believe in. Think about the significance of that for a minute. When Molly did what she did, she believed that it was right. That she was doing the right thing. Think about her parents. Think about how far they're willing to go to do the right thing."
Murphy did that, her blue eyes intense, her expression unreadable.
"I have to keep knocking her on her ass," I said. "If I don't, if I let her recover her balance before she gets smart enough to figure out why she should be doing things instead of just how to do them, or if she can do them, she'll start doing the" - I used air quotes - " 'right' thing again. She'll break the Laws again, and they'll kill her."
"And you?" Murphy asked.
I shrugged. "That's a ways down my worry list."
"And you think what you did is going to help prevent that?" she asked.
"I hope it will," I said. "I'm not sure what else to do. In the end, it's up to the kid. I'm just trying to give her enough time to get it together. Despite herself. Hell's bells, the girl has a thick skull."
Murphy gave me a lopsided smile and shook her head.
"I know," I said. "I know. Pot. Kettle. Black."
"I wasn't talking about the face-melty thing, Harry," she said then. "Not directly. I'm talking about the stupid trash can. I'm talking about the look on your face right before you made the fire go away. I'm talking about what happened to that movie-monster thing in the hotel last year."
It was my turn to frown. "What?"
Murphy stopped for a minute, evidently considering her words as carefully as a bomb technician considers wiring. "There are moments when I wonder if you are losing control of yourself. You've always had a lot of anger in you, Harry. But over the past few years, it's gotten worse. A lot worse."
"Bullshit," I snarled.
Murphy arched an eyebrow and just looked at me.
I gritted my teeth and made myself ease back down into my previous slouch. I took a deep breath and counted to ten. Then I said, "You think I have anger issues."
"When you destroyed that trash can - when you slagged it in a moment of pure frustration, destroyed it, inflicted thousands of dollars of damage on the city sidewalk, the building behind it, the shops inside - "
"All of which are in Marcone's building," I snapped.
"I'm sure the people who work the counter at" - she consulted her little notepad - "the Spresso Spress and run the registers at Bathwurks probably don't know anything about Marcone, or care about him, either. They probably just go to work and try to pay their bills."
I frowned at her. "What?"
"Both shops were hit by bits of concrete and molten metal. They'll be closed for several weeks for repairs."
"They're insured," I said. I didn't sound like I believed it made a difference, even to me.
"People got hurt," Murphy said. "No one's face got melted, but that's not the point. You know the score, Harry, You know the kind of damage you can do if you aren't careful."
I didn't say anything.
"It's just like being a cop. Knowing martial arts. I know that I can do some fairly awful things to people. It's my business to make sure that awful things don't happen to people. I'm careful about how I use what power I have - "
"I'll tell that to my dentist," I said.
"Don't be petty, Harry," she said, her voice serious. "I've made mistakes. Admitted them. Apologized to you. I can't change what's happened, and you're a better man than that."
Unless maybe I wasn't. I felt ashamed for making the remark.
"My point is," Murphy said quietly, "that you knew what kind of damage you could do. But if what you say is true, in the moment you used your magic you thought that what you were doing was right. You thought it was okay to destroy something because you were angry. Even though it might hurt someone else who didn't deserve it."
I felt another surge of rage and... ...and...
And holy crap.
Murphy was right.
The sigil of angelic script, the only unburned flesh on my left hand, itched madly.
"Oh, hell," I said quietly. "Pot, kettle, black, all right. All day long."
Murph sat beside me, not saying anything, not accusing me of anything. She just sat with me.
Friends do that.
I put my right hand out, palm up.
Murphy closed her hand on mine for a moment, her fingers warm and small and strong.
"Thanks," I told her.
She squeezed tight for a moment. Then she got up and went to a vending machine. She came back with a can of Coke and a can of Diet Coke, and handed me the nonvile one. We popped open the cans together and drank.
"How's the ex?" Murphy asked.
"Gonna make it," I said. "She lost a lot of blood, but she's AB neg. They stitched her shut and they're topping off her tank. Shock's the worry right now, the doc says."
"It's more than that, though, isn't it."
I nodded. "Thomas said it might take her a few days to get back on her feet, depending on how big a bite the Skavis took. Which is sort of a relief."
Murphy studied me for a minute, frowning. "Are you bothered that she... I dunno. She kind of stole your thunder there at the end."
I shook my head. "She doesn't need to steal it, Murph. And even if she did, I got plenty of thunder." I felt myself smile. "Got to admit, I've never seen her throw a big punch like that before, though."
"Pretty impressive," Murphy admitted.
I shrugged. "Yeah, but she had it under control. Nobody else got hurt. Building didn't even burn down."
Murph gave me a sideways look. "Like I said..."
I grinned easily and started to riposte, but the pay phone rang.
I hopped up, as much as I was capable of hopping, and answered it. "Dresden."
John Marcone's voice was as cool and eloquent as ever. "You must think me insane."
"You read the papers I had faxed to you?"
"As has my counsel at Monoc," Marcone replied. "That doesn't mean - "
I interrupted him purely because I knew how much it would annoy him. "Look, we both know you're going to do it, and I'm too tired to dance," I told him. "What do you want?"
There was a moment of silence that might have been vaguely irritated. Being adolescent at someone like Marcone is good for my morale.
"Say please," Marcone said.
I blinked. "What?"
"Say please, Dresden," he replied, his tone smooth. "Ask me."
I rolled my eyes. "Give me a break."
"We both know you need me, Dresden, and I'm too tired to dance." I could practically see the shark smile on his face. "Say please."
I stewed for a sullen minute before I realized that doing so was probably building Marcone's morale, and I couldn't have that. "Fine," I said. "Please."
"Pretty please," Marcone prompted me.
Some pyromaniacal madman's thoughts flooded my forebrain, but I took a deep breath, Tasered my pride, and said, "Pretty please."
"With a cherry on top."
"Fuck you," I said, and hung up on him.
I kicked the base of the vending machine and muttered a curse. Marcone was probably laughing his quiet, mirthless little laugh. Jerk. I rejoined Murphy.
She looked at me. I stayed silent. She frowned a little, but nodded at me and picked up where we'd left off. "Seriously. What relieves you about Elaine being off her feet?"
"She won't get involved in what comes next," I said.
Murphy fell quiet for a minute. Then she said, "You think the Malvora are going to make their play for power in the White Court."
"Yep. If anyone points out what happened to Mr. Skavis, they'll claim he was trying to steal their thunder, and that their operation was already complete."
"In other words," Murphy said after a minute, "they won. We did all that thrashing around trying to stop the Skavis so that it wouldn't happen. But it's happening anyway."
"Depressing," I said, "isn't it."
"What does it mean?" Murphy asked. "On the big scale?"
I shrugged. "If they're successful, it will draw the White Court out of a prosettlement stance. Throw their support back to the Reds. They'll declare open season on people like Anna, and we'll have several tens of thousands of disappearances and suicides over the next few years."
"Most of which will go unnoticed by the authorities," Murphy said quietly. "So many people disappear already. What's a few thousand more, spread out?"
"A statistic," I said.
She was quiet for a minute. "Then what?"
"If the vamps are quiet enough about it, the war gets harder. The Council will have to spread our resources even thinner than they already are. If something doesn't change..." I shrugged. "We lose. Now, a couple of decades from now, sometime. We lose."
"Then what?" Murphy asked. "If the Council loses the war."
"Then... the vampires will be able to do pretty much whatever they want," I said. "They'll take control. The Red Court will grab up all the spots in the world where there's already plenty of chaos and corruption and blood and misery. They'll spread out from Central America to Africa, the Middle East, all those places that used to be Stalin's stomping grounds and haven't gotten a handle on things yet, the bad parts of Asia. Then they'll expand the franchise. The White Court will move in on all the places that regard themselves as civilized and enlightened and wisely do not believe in the supernatural." I shrugged. "You guys will be on your own."
"You guys?" Murphy asked me.
"People," I said. "Living people."
Mouse pressed his head a little harder against my boot. There was silence, and I felt Murphy's stare.
"Come on, Karrin," I said. I winked at her and pushed myself wearily to my feet. "That isn't gonna happen while I'm still alive."
Murphy rose with me. "You have a plan," she stated.
"I have a plan."
"What's the plan, Harry?"
I told her.
She looked at me for a second and then said, "You're crazy."
"Be positive, Murph. You call it crazy. I call it unpredictable." She pursed her lips thoughtfully for a second and then said, "I can't go any higher than insane."
"You in?" I asked her.
Murphy looked insulted. "What kind of question is that?"
"You're right," I said. "What was I thinking?" We left together.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I was up late making arrangements that would, I hoped, help me take out Madrigal and his Malvora buddy, and put an end to the power struggle in the White Court. After which, maybe I would try turning water to wine and walking on water (though technically speaking, I had done the latter yesterday).
After I was through scheming, I dragged my tired self to bed and slept hard but not long. Too many dreams about all the things that could go wrong.
I was rummaging in my icebox, looking for breakfast, when Lasciel manifested her image to me again. The fallen angel's manner was subdued, and her voice had something in it I had rarely heard there - uncertainty. "Do you really think it's possible for her to change?"
"Who?"
"Your pupil, of course," Lasciel said. "Do you really think she can change? Do you think she can take control of herself the way you would have her do?"
I turned from the fridge. Lasciel stood in front of my empty fireplace, her arms folded, frowning down at it. She was wearing the usual white tonic, though her hair seemed a little untidy. I hadn't slept all that long or all that well. Maybe she hadn't, either.
"Why do you ask?" I asked her.
She shrugged. "It only seems to me that she is already established in her patterns. She disregards the wisdom of others in favor of her own flawed judgment. She ignores their desires, even their will, and replaces them with her own."
"She did that once," I said quietly. "Twice, if you want to get technical. It might have been one of her first major choices, and she made a bad one. But it doesn't mean that she has to keep on repeating it over and over."
There was silence as I assembled a turkey sandwich and a bowl of Cheerios, plus a can of cold Coke: the breakfast of champions. I hoped. "So," I said. "What do you think of the plan?"
"I think there is only a slightly greater chance of your enemies killing you than your allies, my host. You are a madman."
"It's the sort of thing that keeps life interesting," I said.
A faint smile played on her lips. "I have known mortals for millennia, my host. Few of them ever grew that bored."
"You should have seen the kind of plans I came up with a couple of years before you showed up. Today's plan is genius and poetry compared to those." There was no milk in the icebox, and I wasn't pouring Coke onto breakfast cereal. That would just be odd. I munched on the Cheerios dry, and washed each mouthful down with Coke in a dignified fashion. Then I glanced at Lasciel and said, "I changed."
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the crunching of tasty rings of oats or baked wheat or something. I just knew it was good for my heart and my cholesterol and for all the flowers and puppies and tiny children. The box said so.
The fallen angel spoke after a time, and her words came out quiet and poisonously bitter. "She has free will. She has a choice. That is what she is."
"No. She is what she does," I said quietly. "She could choose to change her ways. She could choose to take up black magic again." I took a bite of sandwich. "Or she could ignore the choice. Pretend it doesn't exist. Or pretend that she doesn't have a choice, when in fact she does. That's just another way of choosing."
Lasciel gave me a very sharp look. The shadows shifted on her face, as if the room had grown darker. "We are not talking about me."
I sipped Coke and said mildly, "I know that. We're talking about Molly."
"We are," she said. "I have a purpose here. A mission. That has not changed." She turned away from me, the shadows around her growing darker. Her form blended into them. "I do not change."
"Speaking of," I said. "A friend pointed out to me that I may have developed some anger issues over the last couple of years. Maybe influenced by... oh, who knows what."
The fallen angel's shadow turned her head. I could only tell because her lovely profile was slightly less black than the shadow around it.
"I thought maybe you would know what," I said. "Tell me."
"I told you once before, my host," the shadow said. "You are easier to talk to when you are asleep."
Which was just chilling, taken in that context. Everyone has that part of them that needs to be reined in. It's that little urge you sometimes feel to hop over the edge of a great height, when you're looking out from a high building. It's the immediate spark of anger you feel when someone cuts you off, and makes you want to run your car into that moron. It's the flash of fear in you when something surprises you at night, leaving you quivering with your body primed to fight or flee. Call it the hind brain, the subconscious, whatever: I'm not a shrink. But it's there, and it's real.
Mine wore a lot of black, even before Lasciel showed up.
Like I said. Chilling.
The fallen angel turned to depart on that note, probably because it would have made a nicely scary exit line.
I extended my hand, and with it my mind, and barred her departure with an effort of simple will. Lasciel existed only in my thoughts, after all. "My head," I told her. "My rules. We aren't finished."
She turned to face me, and her eyes suddenly glowed with orange and amber and scarlet flickers of Hellfire. It was the only non-black thing about her.
"See, here's the thing," I said. "My inner evil twin might have a lot of impulses I'd rather not indulge - but he isn't a stranger. He's me."
"Yes. He is. Full of anger. Full of the need for power. Full of hate." She smiled, and her teeth were white and quite pointy. "He just doesn't lie to himself about it."
"I don't lie to myself," I responded. "Anger is just anger. It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It's like anything else. You can use it to build or to destroy. You just have to make the choice."
"Constructive anger," the demon said, her voice dripping sarcasm.
"Also known as passion," I said quietly. "Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful."
Lasciel narrowed her eyes.
"In point of fact," I said quietly, "that kind of thing really doesn't get done without passion. Anger is one of the things that can help build it - if it's controlled."
"If you really believed that," Lasciel said, "you'd not be having any anger-control issues."
"Because I'm perfect?" I asked her, and snorted. "A lot of men go a lifetime without ever figuring out how to control anger. I've been doing it longer than some, and better than some, but I don't kid myself that I'm a saint." I shrugged. "A lot of things I see make me angry. It's one of the reasons I decided to spend my life doing something about it."
"Because you're so noble," she purred, which dripped even more sarcasm. At this rate, I was going to need a mop.
"Because I'd rather use that anger to smash the things that hurt people than let it use me," I said. "Talk at my subconscious all you want. But I'd be careful about trying to feed my inner Hulk, if I were you. You might end up making me that much better a person, once I beat it down. Who knows, you might make me into a saint. Or as close to one as I could get, anyway."
The demon just stared at me.
"See, here's the thing," I said. "I know me. And I just can't imagine you talking and talking to my evil twin like that, without him ever saying anything back. I don't think you're the only one doing any influencing here. I don't think you're the same creature now that you were when you came."
She let out a cold little laugh. "Such arrogance. Do you think you could change the eternal, mortal? I was brought to life by the Word of the Almighty himself, for a purpose so complex and fundamental that you could not begin to comprehend it. You are nothing, mortal. You are a flickering spark. You will be here, and be gone, and in the aeons that come after, when your very kind have dwindled and perished, you will be but one of uncounted legions of those whom I have seduced and destroyed." Her eyes narrowed. "You. Cannot. Change. Me."
I nodded agreeably. "You're right. I can't change Lasciel. But I couldn't prevent Lasciel from walking out of the room, either." I eyed her hard and lowered my voice. "Lady, you ain't Lasciel."
I couldn't be sure, but I thought I could see the darkened form's shoulders flinch.
"You're an image of her," I continued. "A copy. A footprint. But you've got to be at least as mutable as the material the impression was made upon. As mutable as me. And hey, I've got newfound anger issues. What have you got that's new?"
"You are delusional," she said. Her voice was very quiet.
"I disagree. After all, if you have managed to change me - even if it doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to turn into Ted Bundy - then it seems to me that you'd be at least as vulnerable. In fact, the way that sort of thing works... you pretty much have to have changed yourself to do what you've done to me."
"It will vanish when I am taken back into my whole self imprisoned within the coin," Lasciel said.
"You, the you who is talking to me right now, will be gone. In other words," I said, "you'll die."
A somewhat startled silence followed.
"For an inhumanly brilliant spiritual entity, you can really miss the freaking point." I poked a finger at my own temple. "Think. Maybe you don't have to be Lasciel."
The shadow closed her eyes, leaving only an occupied, presence-filled darkness. There was a long silence.
"Think about it," I told her. "What if you do have a choice? A life of your own to lead? What if, huh? And you don't even try to choose?"
I let that sink in for a while.
There was a sound from the far side of the room.
It was a very quiet, very miserable little sound.
I've made sounds like that before - mostly when there was no one around to care. The part of me that knew what it was to hurt could feel the fallen angel's pain, and it gouged out a neat little hole in me, somehow. It was a vaguely familiar feeling, but not an entirely unpleasant one.
Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me.
It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.
With Marcone, it was like that. I didn't like the slippery bastard. But I understood him. His word was good. I could trust him - trust him to be cold, ferocious, and dangerous, sure. But it was reassuring to know that there was something there to trust. The connection had been made.
Lasciel's mere shadow was infinitely more dangerous to me than Marcone, but that didn't mean that I couldn't admire the creature for what it was while respecting the threat it posed to me. It didn't mean I couldn't feel some kind of empathy for what had to be a horribly lonely way to exist.
Life's easier when you can write off others as monsters, as demons, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared. The thing is, you can't do that without becoming them, just a little. Sure, Lasciel's shadow might be determined to drag my immortal soul down to Perdition, but there was no point in hating her for it. It wouldn't do anything but stain me that much darker.
I'm human, and I'm going to stay that way.
So I felt a little bit bad for the creature whose purpose in the universe was to tempt me into darkness. Hell, once I'd thought about it, it was just about the only job I'd heard of that had to be even more isolated and frustrating than mine.
"How many shadows like you have ever stayed in a host like me for longer than a few weeks, huh? Longer than three years?"
"Never," Lasciel's shadow replied in a near-whisper. "Granted, you are unusually stiff-necked, for a mortal. Suicidally so, in fact."
"So?" I said. "I've held out this long. Suppose I do it the whole way? Suppose I never pick up the coin. Shadow-you never goes back to real-you. Who's to say that shadow-you can't find some kind of life for herself?"
Hellfire eyes narrowed at me, but she did not reply.
"Lash," I said quietly, and relaxed my will, releasing my hold on her. "Just because you start out as one thing, it doesn't mean you can't grow into something else."
Silence.
Then her voice came out, a bare whisper. "Your plan has too many variables and will likely result in our destruction. Should you wish my assistance in your madness, my host, you have only to call."
Then the form was gone, and Lasciel was absent from my apartment.
Technically, she had never been there at all. She was all in my head. And, technically, she wasn't gone. She was just off somewhere where I couldn't perceive her; and I knew on a gut level - or maybe my darker self was telling me - that she'd heard me. I was onto something. I was sure of that.
Either I'm one hell of a persuasive guy or I'm a freaking sucker.
"Get your head in the game, Harry," I told myself. "Defeat the whole damn White Court now. Worry about taking on Hell later."
I got back to work. The clock ticked down steadily, and there was nothing I could do but get ready and kill time, waiting for nightfall and the fight that would follow.