She winks at him, and preens just a little bit - very tastefully. “Oh, Nicodemus has his own predilections, and I am decidedly not to them, and the world is a better place for it.” Her eyes go unfocused for a moment, then she looks at him intently. 

“Are you trying to do the right thing, Melkor?”

Harry Dresden is having a tough day.

Someone is threatening his friend Michael - someone with a sniper rifle and excellent anti-wizard training. His car is broken down, again. He fell down a flight of stairs, resulting in a concussion, dislocated shoulder, broken nose, and some stitches. He’s been shot at. And now, the asshole with the sniper rifle has just kidnapped Michael’s teenage daughter Alicia, and wants to ransom her for the holy sword that’s been entrusted to Harry’s keeping.

He, Michael, and Molly are huddled around the desk in Michael’s office. Michael is leaning back in his chair, looking as weary as Harry has ever seen him.

“You’re sure there’s no way to track her?” Michael asks.

“It’s like he said on the phone.” Harry shakes his head. “Nothing that won’t trip his alarms if we get close, and put her life in danger. We have no choice but to offer this guy Fidelacchius if we want to save her.”

A tendril of frosty cold air swirls through the room, and out of the corner steps a beautiful woman with a frozen crown and white hair flowing down her back. “There is always a choice, Harry Dresden.”

Harry levels his blasting rod at her out of instinct, then stares in surprise. “Mab,” he says flatly. “Your, um, Icy Fae Magesterialness. What are you doing here?”

Mab’s berry red lips curve slightly upwards. ”I’m here to solve two of your problems at once. You have need of an expert tracker, and it so happens I am in contact with one. Furthermore, if you help him out of his current… predicament, I will hold one of the favors you owe me repaid.”

And that’s how I ended up here, hoping that the White Council would see it my way when they found out I’d let something in through the Outer Gates - even though Mab, thrice bound, had promised that to the best of her knowledge he was not, in fact, an Outsider, just a native to a different world who had somehow ended up Outside. Better yet, hope that they never found out at all.

The Outer Gates rise before him. They are set in a gigantic wall, between two towers each the size of the Chrysler building. He can just see guards atop the wall, like little action figures instead of the twelve foot tall trolls they probably are.

“I don’t suppose this thing has an elevator anywhere,” Harry quips to Mab, eyeing the very janky looking staircase carved in switchbacks up the side of the wall. He looks over at her, but she is gone. And, yup, standing atop the wall now. He sighs and begins to climb.

Some time later, Harry, panting, legs burning, reaches the top of the wall. He flops down with his back against a crenellation and rests for a minute under Mab’s expressionless gaze. Then he stands, and looks out over the far side of the Gates.

Beyond the wall lies the void, like an infinite star field but lacking stars - just blackness. Well, an occasional spark lights the void, here and there. However, if the weak-willed try to focus on them too hard, they will find their spirit increasingly drawn outwards, over the wall and out.

Mab, of course, has no difficulty with this, but the trolls have been trained to keep their eyes fixed on the portion of the void that lies closest to the gate. In that spot, a trail appears like an arm of the Milky Way, signaling the location of the entrance to reality.

Usually the trail swarms with attackers, but today it has been curiously quiet. The only presence outside the gate is the man.

The man stands comfortably amid the emptiness, tall and white and fell. The bow he bears is strung with the heartstring of a dragon. The arrows in his quiver are tipped with a matte black alloy fit to pierce mithril and magic alike. His tunic and furs are supple but strong, proof against elements and evil. And his hair is gorgeous.

He sights Harry as if he were a red-breasted grosbeak in the tundra. ”Hail, queen’s ally. I sense that a dark day it must be for these mighty gates to be parted. I can only attest that the darkness is indeed deep, and deep beyond your ken, mortal servant.”

Harry knows that he should be polite, he really does, but he just can’t stop himself. “Wow, uh, female gaze much? I’ve got an apprentice wizard who’d love to know your Instagram handle. What is it with you guys and the over-done Tolkien cosplays?” It wasn’t his wittiest of banner, but his legs are still trembling from climbing all those stairs, and he’s got some other stuff on his mind too.

Oromë snarls with rage, draws his bow, and buries an arrow in the throat of a horse-sized octo-rantula that thought it could sneak up on him while he was distracted.

”Whoever this ‘Tolkien’ is,” The Huntsman says as he plants a boot on the slain monster’s underbelly and rips his arrow free, “‘play’ this is not.”

“The bargain is this,” Mab calls out, “Harry Dresden, mortal wizard, shall open the Gates long enough for Oromë, Valar huntsman, to pass through. In exchange, Oromë shall track and return the mortal girl Alicia Carpenter from the grasp of enemies into her family, before he continues with his own business in our reality.

“And Oromë shall owe me favors three, to be called in at a time of my choosing. One for the discharge of the favor owed to me by Harry Dresden, one for brokering this deal, and one for safe passage through Winter to the mortal realm.”

She looks from the wizard to the huntsman and back again. “Do all parties find the terms agreeable?”

Oromë nods grimly. “Know only that should mine favors owed unto thee be mere coinage minted to thwart my quest or abet my quarry, the surety of the Valar shall be arrayed behind me in pursuit of relief or restitution from said usurious treachery.”

Harry lets out a startled guffaw.

Mab just nods gravely. “Understood, Hunter.”

The magnitude of what he is about to do - and risk - is starting to hit home for Harry. He squints at the man outside the gate. “And you’re sure you can find Alicia without setting off this guy’s traps?”

“Did The Great Enemy’s duplicity and subterfuge prevent the herald Eönwë from tracking him to the very depths of Angband and reclaiming his ill-begotten Silmarils? And is not the Lord of Forests greater than a mere herald?”

“Uh, I don’t know what any of that means,” says Harry. 

Oromë growls and draws his gleaming hunting knife. In the span of three breaths, 13 cornerhounds lay bleeding and gutted at his feet.

He takes a breath. Speaks slowly and simply. “The mortal girl Alicia Carpenter shall be found. And safely returned to her family. On my honor as a… guardian of life.”

Harry nods slowly. “I respect that,” he says. “Thank you.” And to Mab, “I accept the terms.”

She inclines her head minutely. “I think you will not regret it, Dresden. He has killed more outsiders in the space of our negotiation than my forces typically destroy in a week’s time. Whatever else he may be, he is extremely skilled, and very powerful.”

This does not particularly make Harry feel better - he’s about to turn this guy loose in the mortal realms - but he thinks of Alicia and keeps his nerve. Then something occurs to him, that he really should have thought about sooner - “I don’t suppose the Gatekeeper is around?” he asks. “So I can, uh, try to explain…” Stupid to forget that one of the Gate’s guardians was literally a member of the White Council’s leadership.

The faintest hint of smugness crosses Mab’s expression. “Funny thing,” she says. “Rashib was called away on other business. He should return within the hour.”

“Well I guess we’d better do this.” Harry looks around. “Is there a… lever, or something?

Knock knock knock.

Melkor knocks on the door of a house that, if anything, looks even more wrecked than the place he ate those crab tacos. There’s wires sticking out, exposed piping, and entire walls missing, down to the studs.

“This place looks like a hurricane hit it with a baseball bat fifty-six times and left it in an alley to die.”