Blood Lite

by Jim Butcher

  "Jesus, Mick! You hit my kidney! You know I got a

  stone there!"

  Mick the Mick turned away, rubbing his temples, willing an idea to come.

  "That one really hurt, Mick." Mick the Mick shushed him. "I mean it. I'm gonna be pissing red for a week." "Quiet, Willie. Lemme think." "It looks like cherry Kool-Aid. And it burns, Mick. Burns like fire."

  Mick the Mick snapped his fingers. Fire, , "That's it, Willie. Fire. Your house is insured, right?"

  "I guess so. Hey, do you think there's any of yesterday's pizza left? I like pepperoni. That's a fun word to say. 'Pepperoni.' It rhymes with 'lonely.' You think pepperoni gets lonely, Mick?"

  To help Willie focus, Mick the Mick kicked him in his bum leg, even though it really didn't help him focus much.

  "Jesus, Mick! You know I got the gout!" "Pay attention, Willie. We burn down the house, collect the insurance, and pay off Nate the Nose." Willie rubbed his shin, wincing. "But where's Nana supposed to live, Mick?" "I hear the Miskatonic Nursing Home is a lot nicer, now that they arrested the guy who was making all the old people wear dog collars."

  "I can't put Nana in a nursing home, Mick!" "Would you rather be munching on your vein sausage? Nate the Nose makes you eat the whole thing, or else you also get served a side of meatballs."

  Willie folded his arms. "I won't do it. And I won't let you do it." "Woof!"

  Bruno the beagle sprang to his feet, ran sixteen laps around the men, then tore up the stairs.

  "Bruno!" they heard Nana chide. "Get off the counter! You've had enough pound cake!"

  Mick the Mick put his face in his hands, very close to tears. The last time he cried was ten years ago, when Nate the Nose ordered him to break his mother's thumbs because she was late with a loan payment. When he tried, Mom had stabbed Mick with a meat thermometer. That hurt, but not as much as a wienerectomy would.

  "Maybe we can leave town," Willie said, putting a hand on Mick the Mick's shoulder.

  That left Willie's kidney exposed. Mick the Mick took advantage, even though it didn't help their situation.

  Willie fell to his knees. Bruno the beagle flew down the stairs, straddled Willie's calf, and began to hump so fast his little doggie hips were a blur.

  Mick the Mick began searching the basement for something flammable. As it often happened in life, arson was really the only way out. He found a can of paint thinner on a dusty metal shelf and worked the top with his thumbnail.

  "Bruno, no! Mick, no!"

  Mick couldn't get it open. He tried his teeth.

  "You can't burn my house down, Mick! All my stuff is here! Like my comics! We used to collect comics when we were kids, Mick! Don't you remember?"

  Willie reached for a box, dug out a torn copy of Amazing Spider-Man #146, and traced his finger up and down the Scorpion's tail in a way that made Mick the Mick uncomfortable. So he reached out, slapped at Willie's bad tooth. Willie dropped the comic and curled up fetal, and Bruno the beagle abandoned the calf for the loftier possibilities of Willie's head.

  Mick managed to pop the top on the can and he began to sprinkle mineral spirits on some cartons labeled "Precious Photos & Memories."

  Willie moaned something unintelligible through closed lips—he was probably afraid to open his mouth until he disengaged Bruno the beagle. "Mmphp-muummph-mooeoemmum!" "We don't have a choice, Willie. The only way out of this is fire. Beautiful, cleansing fire. If there's money left over, we'll bribe the orderlies so Nana doesn't get abused. At least not as much as the others."

  "Mick!" Willie cried. It came out "Mibb!" because Bruno the beagle had taken advantage. Willie gagged, shoving the dog away. Bruno the beagle ran around Willie seven times, then flew up the stairs.

  "Bruno!" they heard Nana chide. "Naughty dog! Not when we have company over!"

  Willie hacked and spit, then sat up. "A heist, Mick. We could do a heist." "No way," Mick the Mick said. "Remember what happened to Jimmy the Spleen? Tried to knock over a WaMu in Pittsburgh. Cops shot his ass off. His whole ass. You want one of them creepy poop bags hanging on your belt?

  Freaks me out."

  Willie wiped a sleeve across his tongue. "Not a bank,

  Mick. The Arkham Museum."

  "The museum?"

  "They got all kinds of expensive old stuff. And it ain't guarded at night. I bet we could break in there, get away with all sorts of pricey antiques. I think they got like a T. rex skull. That could be worth a million bucks. If I had a million bucks, I'd buy some scuba gear, so I could go deep diving on shipwrecks and try to find some treasure so I could be rich."

  "You think Tommy the Fence is going to buy a T. rex skull? How we even gonna get it out of there, Willie? You gonna put it in your pocket?"

  "They got other stuff, too, Mick. Maybe gold and gems and stamps."

  "I got a stamp for you."

  "Jesus, Mick! My toe! You know I got that infected ingrown!"

  Mick the Mick was ready to offer seconds, but he stopped midstomp.

  "You ever been to the museum, Willie?"

  " 'Course not. You?"

  "Nah."

  But maybe it wasn't a totally suck-awful idea.

  "What about the alarms?"

  "We can get past those, no problem. Hey, you think I need a haircut? If I look up, I can see my bangs."

  Willie did just that. Mick the Mick stared at the cardboard boxes, soaked with paint thinner. He wanted to light them up, watch them burn. But insurance took forever. There were investigations, forms to fill out, waiting periods.

  But if they went to the museum and pinched something small and expensive, chances are they could turn it around in a day or two. The faster they could pay off Nate the Nose, the safer Little Mick and the Twins.

  "Okay, Willie. We'll give it a try. But if it don't work, we torch Nana's house. Agreed?"

  "Agreed."

  Mick the Mick extended his hand. Willie reached for it, leaving his hernia bulge unprotected. Now that they had a plan, it served absolutely no purpose to hit Willie again.

  He hit him anyway.

  "I don't like it in here, Mick," Willie said as they entered the great central hall of the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards.

  Mick the Mick gave him a look, which was pretty useless since Willie couldn't see his face and he couldn't see Willie's. The only things they could see were whatever lay at the end of their flashlight beams.

  Getting in had been a walk. Literally. The front doors were unlocked. And no alarm. Really weird. Unless the museum had stopped locking up because nobody ever came here. Mick the Mick had lived in Arkham all his life and never met anyone who'd ever come here except on a class trip. Made a kind of sense then not to bother with locks. Nobody came during the day when the lights were on, so why would anyone want to come when the lights were out? Which made Mick the Mick a little nervous about finding anything valuable.

  "It's just a bunch of rooms filled with loads of old

  crap."

  Willie's voice shook. "Old stuff scares me. Especially this old stuff." "Why?"

  " 'Cause it's old and—hey, can we stop at Burger Pile on the way home?"

  "Focus, Willie. You gotta focus."

  "I like picking off the sesame seeds and making them fight wars."

  Mick the Mick took a swing at him and missed in the dark.

  Suddenly the lights went on. They were caught. Mick the Mick feared prison almost as much as he feared Nate the Nose. He was small for his size, and unfortunately blessed with perfectly shaped buttocks. The cons would trade him around like cigarettes.

  Mick the Mick ducked into a crouch, hands above his head. He saw Willie standing by a big arched doorway with his hand on a light switch.

  "There," Willie said, grinning. "That's better."

  Mick wanted to punch his hernia again, but he was too far away.

  "Put those out!"

  Willie stepped away from the wall toward one of the displays. "Hey, look at this."


  Mick the Mick realized the damage had been done. Sooner or later someone would come to investigate. Okay, maybe not, but they couldn't risk it. They'd have to move fast.

  He looked up and saw a banner proclaiming the name of the exhibit: elder gods and lost races of south

  CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA.

  "What's this?" Willie said, leaning over a display case. Suddenly a deep voice boomed: "WELCOME!" Willie cried, "Whoa!" and Mick the Mick jumped— high enough so that if he'd been holding a basketball he could have made his first dunk.

  Soon as he recovered, he did a thorough three-sixty, but saw no one else but Willie.

  "What you see before you," the voice continued, "is a rare artifact that once belonged to an ancient lost race that dwelled in the Arkham area during prehistoric times. This, like every other ancient artifact in this room, was excavated from a site near the Arkham landfill."

  After recovering from another near dunk, plus a tiny bit of pee-pee, Mick noticed a speaker attached to the underside of the case.

  Aha. A recording triggered by a motion detector. But the sound was a little garbled, reminding him of the voice of the aliens in an old black-and-white movie he and Willie had watched on TV last week. The voice always began, "People of Earth ..." but he couldn't remember the name of the film.

  "We know little about this ancient lost race but, after careful examination by the eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards, they arrived at an irrefutable conclusion."

  "Hey," Willie said, grinning. "Sounds like the alien voice from Earth Versus the Flying Saucers''

  "The ancient artifact before you once belonged to an ancient shaman."

  "What's a shaman, Mick?"

  Mick the Mick remembered seeing something about that on TV once. "I think he's a kind of a witch doctor. But forget about—"

  "A shaman, for those of you who don't know, is something of a tribal wise man, what the less sophisticated among you might call a 'witch doctor.'" "Witch doctor? Cooool."

  Mick the Mick stepped over to see what the voice was talking about. Under the glass he saw a three-foot metal staff with a small globe at each end.

  "The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards have further determined that the object is none other than an ancient shamans scepter of power."

  Willie looked a Mick the Mick with wide eyes. "Did you hear that? A scepter of power! Is that like He-Man's Power Sword? He-Man was really strong, but he had hair like a girl. Is the scepter of power like a power sword, Mick?" "No, it's more like a magic wand, but forget—" "The less sophisticated among you might refer to a scepter of power as a 'magic wand,' and in a sense it functioned as such." "A magic wand! Like in the Harry Potter movies? I love those movies, and I've always wanted a magic wand! Plus, I get crazy hot thoughts about Hermione. She's a real fox, Mick. Kinda like Drew Barrymore in E. T. Hey, why does the wand have a deep groove in it?"

  Mick the Mick looked again and noticed the deep groove running its length.

  "Note, please, the deep groove running the length of the scepter of power. The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards believe that to be what is knows as a fuller..."

  A fuller? Mick thought. Looks like a blood channel. "... which the less sophisticated among you might call a 'blood channel.' The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards believe this ancient scepter of power might have been used by its shaman owner to perform sacred religious ceremonies—specifically, the crushing of skulls and ritual disemboweling."

  Mick the Mick got a chill. He hoped Nate the Nose never got his hands on something like this. "What's disemboweling, Mick?" "When someone cuts out your intestines." "How do you dooky, then? Like squeezing a toothpaste

  tube?"

  "You don't dooky, Willie. You die."

  "Cool! Can I have the magic wand, Mick? Can I?"

  Mick the Mick didn't answer. He'd noticed something engraved near the end of the far tip. He leaned closer, squinting until it came into focus.

  Sears.

  What the—?

  He stepped back for another look at the scepter of

  power and—

  "A curtain rod . . . it's a freakin' curtain rod!" Willie looked at him like he was crazy. "Curtain rod? Didn't you hear the man? It's, like, a magic wand, and— hey, what's that over there?"

  Mick slapped at Willie's kidney as he passed, but missed because he couldn't take his eyes off the Sears scepter of power. Maybe they could steal it, return it to Sears, and get a brand-new one. That wouldn't help much with Nate the

  Nose, but Mick the Mick did need a new curtain rod. His old one had broken, and his drapes were attached to the wall with forks. That made Thursdays—spaghetti night— particularly messy.

  "WELCOME!" boomed the same voice as Willie stopped before another display. "What you see before you is a rate artifact that once belonged to an ancient lost race that dwelled in the Arkham area during prehistoric times. This, like every other ancient artifact in this room, was excavated from a site near the Arkham landfill." "Hey, Mick, y'gotta see this."

  After some biblical thinking, Mick the Mick spared the rod and moved along.

  "We know little about this ancient lost race but, after careful examination by the eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards, they arrived at an irrefutable conclusion: The artifact before you was used by an ancient shaman of this lost race to perform surrogate sacrifices. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'shaman,' please return to the previous display.)"

  "I know what a shaman is, 'cause you just told me," Willie said. "But what's a surrogate—?"

  "A surrogate sacrifice was an image that was sacrificed instead of a real person. Before you is a statuette of a woman carved by the ancient lost race from a yet-to-be-identified flesh-colored substance. Note the head is missing. This is because the statuette was beheaded instead of the human it represented."

  Mick the Mick stepped up to the display and immediately recognized the naked pink figure. He used to swipe his sister Suzy's and make it straddle his rocket and go for a ride. Only Suzy's had a blonde head.

  "That's a freakin' Barbie doll!" He grabbed Willie's shoulder and yanked him away.

  "Jesus, Mick! You know I got a dislocating shoulder!"

  Willie stumbled, knocking Mick the Mick into another display case, which toppled over with a crash.

  "WELCOME! What you see before you is a rare tome of lost wisdom that once belonged—"

  Screaming, Mick the Mick kicked the speaker until the voice stopped.

  "Look, Mick," Willie said, squatting and poking through the broken glass, "it's not a tome, it's a book. It's supposed to contain lost wisdom. Maybe it can tell us how to keep Nate the Nose off our backs." He rose and squinted at the cover. "The Really, Really, Really Old Ones."

  "It's a paperback, you moron. How much wisdom you gonna find in there?"

  "Yeah, you're right. It says, 'Do not try this at home. Use only under expert supervision or you'll be really, really, really sorry' Better not mess with that."

  "Oh yeah?" Mick had had it—really had it. Up. To. Here. He opened to a random page and read. " 'Random dislocation spell.'"

  Willie winced. "Not my shoulder!"

  " 'Use only under expert supervision.' Yeah, right. Look, it's got a bunch of gobbledygook to read."

  "You mean like 'Mekka-lekka hi—'?"

  "Shaddap and I'll show you what bullshit this is."

  Mick the Mick started reading, pronouncing the gobbledygook as best he could, going slow and easy so he didn't screw up the words like he normally did when he read.

  When he finished, he looked at Willie and grinned. "See? No random dislocation."
/>   Willie rolled his shoulder. "Yeah. Feels pretty good. I wonder—"

  The smell hit Mick the Mick first, hot and overpowering, reminding him of that time he stuck his head in the toilet because his older brother told him that's where brownies came from. It was followed by the very real sensation of being squeezed. But not squeezed by a person. Squeezed all over by some sort of full-body force, like being pushed through a too-small opening. The air suddenly became squishy and solid and pressed into every crack and pore on Mick the Mick's body, and then it undulated, moving him, pushing him, through the solid marble floor of the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards.

  The very fabric of reality, or something like that, seemed to vibrate with a deep resonance, and the timbre rose to become an overpowering, guttural groan. The floor began to dissolve, or maybe he began to dissolve, and then came a horrible yet compelling farting sound and Mick the Mick was suddenly plopped into the middle of a jungle. Willie landed next to him. "I feel like shit," Willie said.

  Mick the Mick squinted in the sunlight and looked around. They were surrounded by strange, tropical trees and weird-looking flowers with big fat pink petals that made him feel sort of horny. A dragonfly the size of a bratwurst hovered over their heads, gave them a passing glance, then buzzed over to one of the pink flowers, which snapped open and bit the bug in half.

  "Where are we, Mick?"

  Mick the Mick scratched his head. "I'm not sure. But I think when I read that book I opened a portal in the space-time continuum and we were squeezed through one of the eleven imploded dimensions into the late Cretaceous period."

  "Wow. That sucks."

  "No, Willie. It doesn't suck at all."

  "Yeah, it does. The season finale of MacGyver: The Next Generation is on tonight. It's a really cool episode where he builds a time machine out of some pocket lint and a broken meat thermometer. Wouldn't it be cool to have a time machine, Mick?"

  Mick the Mick slapped Willie on the side of his head.

  "Jesus, Mick! You know I got swimmer's ear!"

  "Don't you get it, Willie? This book is a time machine. We can go back in time!"