Blood Lite

by Jim Butcher

  Willie got wide-eyed. "I get it! We can get back to the present a few minutes early so I won't miss MacGyverl"

  Mick the Mick considered hitting him again, but his hand was getting sore.

  "Think bigger than MacGyver, Willie. We're going to be rich. Rich and famous and powerful. Once I figure out how this book works, we'll be able to go to any point in history."

  "You mean like we go back to summer camp in 1975? Then we could steal the candy from those counselors so they couldn't lure us into the woods and touch us in the bad place."

  "Even better, Willie. We can bet on sports and always win. Like that movie." "Which one?"

  "The one where he went to the past and bet on sports so he could always win."

  "The Godfather?"

  "No, Willie. The Godfather was the one with the fat guy who slept with horse heads."

  "Oh yeah. Hey, Mick, don't you think those big pink flowers look like—"

  "Shut your stupid hole, Willie. I gotta think." Mick the Mick racked his brain, but he was never into sports, and he couldn't think of a single team that won anything. Plus, he didn't have any money on him. It would take a long time to parlay the eighty-one cents in his pocket to sixty grand. But there had to be other ways to make money with a time machine. Probably.

  He glanced at Willie, who was walking toward one of those pink flowers, leaning in to sniff it. Or perhaps do something else with it, because Willie's tongue was out.

  "Willie! Get away from that thing and try to focus! We need to figure out how to make some money." "It smells like fish, Mick."

  "Dammit, Willie! Did you take your medicine this morning like you're supposed to?"

  "I can't remember. Nana says I need a stronger subscription. But every time I go to the doctor to get one, I forget to ask."

  Mick the Mick scratched himself. Another dragonfly—this one shaped like a banana wearing a turtleneck— flew up to one of those pink flowers and was bitten in half, too. Damn, those bugs were stupid. They just didn't learn. He scratched himself again, wondering if the crabs were back. If they were, he'd be really angry. When you paid fifty bucks for a massage at Madame Yoko's, the happy ending should be crab-free.

  Willie said, "Maybe we can go back to the time when Nate the Nose was a little boy, and then we could be real nice to him so when he grew up he would remember us and wouldn't make us eat our junk."

  Or we could push his stroller into traffic, Mick the Mick thought.

  But Nate the Nose had bosses, and they probably had bosses, too, and traveling through time to push a bunch of babies in front of moving cars seemed like a lot of work.

  "Money, Willie. We need to make money."

  "We could buy old things from the past then sell them on eBay. Hey, wouldn't it be cool to have four hands? I mean, you could touch twice as much stuff."

  Mick the Mick thought about those old comics in Willie's basement, and then he grinned wider than a zebra's ass.

  "Action Comics' number one, which had the first appearance of Superman!" Mick the Mick said. "I could buy it with the change in my pocket, and we can sell it for a fortune!"

  Come to think of it, he could buy eight copies. Didn't they go for a million a piece these days?

  "I wish I could fly, Mick. Could we go back into time and learn to fly like Superman?"

  "Shh!" Mick the Mick tilted his head to the side, listening to the jungle. "You hear something, Willie?"

  "Yeah, Mick. I hear you talkin' to me. Now I hear me talkin'. Now I'm singing a sooooong, a haaaaaaaaappy soooooong."

  Mick the Mick gave Willie a smack in the teeth, then locked his eyes on the tree line. In the distance the canopy rustled and parted, like something really big was walking toward them. Something so big, the ground shook with every step.

  "You hear that, Mick? Sounds like something really big is coming."

  A deafening roar came from the thing in the trees, so horrible Mick the Mick could feel his curlies straighten. "Think it's friendly?" Willie asked. Mick the Mick stared down at his hands, which still held the Really, Really, Really Old Ones book. He flipped it open to a random page, forcing himself to concentrate on the words. But, as often happened in stressful situations, or even situations not all that stressful, the words seemed to twist and mash up and go backward and upside down. Goddamn lesdyxia—shit—dyslexia, "Maybe we should run, Mick." "Yeah, maybe ... wait! No! We can't run!" "Why can't we run, Mick?"

  "Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer went back in time and stepped on a butterfly? The point is, evolution is a really fickle bitch. If we screw up something in the past, it can really mess up the future."

  "That sucks. You mean we would get back to our real time but instead of being made of skin and bones, we're made entirely out of fruit? Like some kind of juicy fruit people?"

  Another growl, even closer. It sounded like a lion's roar—if the lion had cojones the size of Chryslers.

  "I mean really bad stuff, Willie. I gotta read another passage and get us out of here."

  The trees parted, and a shadow began to force itself into view.

  "Hey, Mick, if you were made of fruit, would you take a bite of your own arm if you were really superhungry? I think I would. Wonder what I'd taste like?"

  Mick the Mick tried to concentrate on reading the page, but his gaze kept flicking up to the trees. The prehistoric landscape lapsed into deadly silence. Then, like some giant monster coming out of the jungle, a giant monster came out of the jungle.

  The head appeared first, the size of a sofa—a really big sofa—with teeth the size of daggers crammed into a mouth large enough to tear a refrigerator in half.

  "I think I'd take a few bites out of my leg or something, but I'd be afraid because I don't know if I could stop. Especially if I tasted like strawberries, because I love strawberries, Mick. Why are they called strawberries when they don't taste like straw? Hey, is that a T. rex?"

  Now Mick the Mick pee-peed more than just a little. The creature before them was a deep green color, blending seamlessly into the undergrowth. Rather than scales, it was adorned with small, prickly hairs that Mick the Mick realized were thin brown feathers. Its huge nostrils flared and it snorted, causing the book's pages to ripple.

  "I think we should run, Mick. I don't wanna be dinosaur poop."

  Mick the Mick agreed. The tyrannosaurus stepped into the clearing on massive legs and reared up to its full height, over forty feet tall. Mick the Mick knew he couldn't outrun it. But he didn't have to. He only had to outrun Willie. He felt bad, but he had no other choice. He had to trick his best friend if he wanted to survive.

  "The T. rex has really bad vision, Willie. If you stay very still, it won't be able to ... Willie, come back!"

  Willie had broken for the trees, moving so fast he was a blur. Mick the Mick tore after him, swatting dragonflies out of the way as he ran. Underfoot, he trampled on a large brown roach, a three-toed lizard with big dewy eyes and a disproportionately large brain, and a small furry mammal with a face that looked a lot like Sal from Manny's Meats on Twenty-third Street, which gave a disturbingly human cry when its little neck snapped.

  Behind them, the T. rex moved with the speed of a giant two-legged cat shaped like a dinosaur, snapping teeth so close to Mick the Mick that they nipped the eighteen trailing hairs of his comb-over. He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the mouth of the animal open so wide Mick the Mick could set up a table for four on the creature's tongue and play Texas hold 'em, not that he would, because that would be fucking stupid.

  Then, just as the death jaws of death were ready to close and cause terminal death, the T. rex skidded to a halt and squinted down at the dead little furry thing that used to look a lot like Sal from Manny's Meats, but now looked like Sal with a broken neck. The T. rex nudged it with its massive snout, as if it was trying to wake proto-Sal up.

  "What's it doing, Mick?"

  Mick the Mick had no idea. The dinosaur nosed the furry thing back and forth, back and forth. Like
playing with a toy. Then it gently picked up proto-Sal and flung it across the jungle, toward Willie. It landed at his friend's feet.

  "I think it wants to play, Mick." Willie picked up the limp animal. "Hey, you see this mouse thing? Looks like that butcher from Manny's. But smaller. And with a tail. And it don't got no tattoo that says 'Fillet the World.'"

  "Throw it, Willie!"

  Willie cocked his arm back, aiming at Mick.

  "To the dinosaur, you moron!"

  "Oh. Fetch, boy!"

  Willie tossed proto-Sal, and the T. rex snatched it right out of the air, crunching on it like popcorn.

  "He can catch, Mick! Let's throw him something else."

  Mick the Mick scanned the jungle floor, quickly overturning a large, flat rock. Beneath it was a family of small rodents who resembled the Capporellis up in 5B—so much so that he swore one even said, "Fronzo!" when he broke its little furry spine. Mick the Mick scooped it up, raising his arm to throw. But the lizard was no longer staring at them. Instead, the creature was bent over and sniffing one of the big pink, fishy-smelling flowers.

  "Throw it to me, Mick! We'll play monkey in the middle!"

  The 'saur stuck out its queen-size-bed tongue for a lick, and the flower chomped down on it. This sent the T. rex into a screeching, stomping, spitting fit, crushing the flower beneath gigantic talons. Then it sniffed out a similar flower and gave that one a lick.

  "Now's our chance to get away, Willie. Willie!" Before Mick the Mick could stop him, Willie yelled, "Catch!" and chucked a fallen tree branch at the dinosaur. It smacked against the T. rex's head with a painful-sounding thud. The T. rex locked eyes on them and roared.

  "He don't want to play no more, Mick. I don't, neither." They ran. The thunder lizard lunged after them and gained quickly—no surprise, what with it being able to cover a dozen of their steps with only one of it own.

  As Mick the Mick whipped through the jungle, overwhelmed with bladder-squeezing panic, he tried to force lucidity and make his very last thought something profound and revelatory. Instead, all he could think of was that Brady Bunch episode in Hawaii when Greg found the cursed tiki idol.

  Not a brilliant last thought, but everyone had to admit that was one of the show's best episodes. "Mick! It's not following us anymore!" Mick the Mick chanced an over-the-shoulder look and indeed the T. rex had once again abandoned pursuit. It simply stood there, staring off into the jungle, as if in deep thought. Then it dropped to the ground like it had been shot, the impact a sound of thunder.

  Had some caveman killed the dinosaur? Or perhaps some rich hunter from the future on some kind of prehistoric hunting expedition? Or Nate the Nose, who had come back in time to get his money?

  But another look at the Tyrannosaurus dispelled any such notion. The thunder lizard wasn't dead. It was licking itself between its legs. Really going at it, too, like a giant Jurassic dog.

  "I wish I could do that," Willie said. "But he'd probably

  bite me."

  After a good thirty seconds, the T. rex sighed loudly, balletically leapt to its feet, and became distracted by one of those dragonfly things, wandering off after it.

  This T. rex was beginning to remind Mick the Mick of someone he knew. He just couldn't place who. But he was getting a flash of why the damned things were

  extinct.

  Which gave Mick the Mick a great idea. An idea that would save their asses and make them even richer than Action Comics #1.

  "Look for an egg, Willie."

  "An egg, Mick? You hungry? I'm kinda hungry, too. I like my eggs sunny-side up, because they look like big yellow eyes. Then I make a smiley mouth out of bacon, and I call him Mr. Henry. Don't we need chickens to get eggs, Mick?"

  "Dinosaur eggs, Willie. If we bring one back with us, we can grow a dinosaur. Just like that movie."

  "Which one?"

  "The one where they grew the dinosaurs."

  "The Merchant of Venice?"

  "Just find an egg, Willie."

  "I get it, Mick. We grow a dinosaur, and we can feed it Nate the Nose so he won't kill us—"

  "Shaddup and search for a damn nest."

  "I'm searching, Mick. Hey! Look!"

  "You find one?"

  "I found one of those pink flowers that smell like fish and look like—"

  Willie screamed. Mick the Mick glanced over and saw his lifelong friend was playing tug of war with one of those toothy prehistoric flowers, using a long red rope.

  No. Not a red rope. Those were Willie's intestines.

  "Help me, Mick!"

  Without thinking, Mick the Mick reached out a hand and grabbed Willie's duodenum. He squeezed, tight as he could, and Willie farted.

  "It hurts, Mick! Being disemboweled hurts!"

  A bone-shaking roar from behind them. The T. rex had lost interest in the dragonflies and was sniffing at the newly spilled blood, his sofa-size head only a few meters away and getting closer. Mick the Mick could smell its breath, reeking of rotten meat and bad oral hygiene and dooky.

  No, the dooky was all Willie. Pouring out like brown shaving cream. Willie's face contorted in pain.

  "I think I need a doctor, Mick. Use your cell phone. Call nine-one-one."

  Mick the Mick released his friend's innards and wiped his hand on his shirt just as the T. rex leaned over them and opened its maw, blotting out the sky. All Mick the Mick could see was teeth and tongue and that dangly thing that hangs in the back of the throat like a big punching bag. He could never remember what those things were called.

  "Look, the dinosaur is back," Willie groaned. "Check out the size of his epiglottis, Mick. Like a big punching bag."

  The book. It was their only chance. Mick the Mick raised the Really, Really, Really Old Ones and flipped open to the same page that had brought them here. Maybe if he read the passage again, it would take them back to their time. Or if he read a little earlier, maybe they could go back to before Nana made the cake, and prevent this incredibly stupid chain of events.

  "I think my kidney just fell out." Willie held something red and squishy in his cupped hands. "It still hurts from when you punched me."

  Mick the Mick concentrated. Concentrated as hard as he

  could, blotting out Willie and the T. rex and everything in

  this horrible prehistoric world except the words on the page.

  "It looks like a kidney bean. Is that why they call them

  kidneys, Mick? Because they look like beans? I like beans."

  Mick the Mick's hands shook, and his vision swam,

  and all the vowels on the page looked exactly the same and

  the consonants looked like pretzel sticks, but he began to

  read aloud.

  "Is this my liver, Mick? And what's this thing? I should put all this stuff back in." Willie dropped to his knees and began scooping up guts and twigs and rocks and shoving everything into the gaping hole in his belly.

  The T. rex lowered its mouth, about to swallow them both at once.

  Sweat soaked his face and stung his eyes, and the hair still left on Mick the Mick's comb-over started to curl from the T. rex's breath as its jaws began to close, but he finished the passage, reading better and faster and harder than a homeschooled foreign kid who won spelling bees. Nothing happened.

  The fabric of reality didn't vibrate. The ground didn't dissolve. There was a familiar pbbbbth sound, but it was from Mick stepping on Willie's colon.

  Willie flopped sideways and sprawled out onto his back, limbs akimbo, looking like he took a bath in lasagna. Mick the Mick ducked down next to him, narrowly escaping the snap of the dinosaur's bite. The Tyrannosaurus grunted, then opened wide for a second try.

  "Mick ..." Willie panted, his breath fading. "Read ... read the part... that sent us here ... but... read it backward."

  The T. rex snatched both of them into its jaws like a giant bulldozer, if bulldozers had jaws and could snatch people. The Really, Really, Really Old Ones book fell from Mick the Mick's grasp,
and the dagger teeth punched into his legs and chest with agonizing agony, but for the first and only time in his life his dyslexia paid off, and with his last breath he managed to cry out:

  "OTKIN ADARAB UTAALK!"

  Another near-turd experience and then they were excreted into a room with a television and a couch and a picture window. But the television screen was embedded—or growing out of?—a toadstool-like thing that was in turn growing out of the floor. The couch looked funny, like who'd sit on that? And the picture window looked out on some kind of nightmare jungle.

  And then again, maybe not so weird.

  No, Mick the Mick thought. Weird. Very weird.

  He looked at Willie.

  And screamed.

  Or at least tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

  Because it wasn't Willie. Not unless Willie had grown four extra eyes—two of them on stalks—and sprouted a fringe of tentacles around where he used to have a neck and shoulders. He now looked like a conical turkey croquette that had been rolled in seasoned bread crumbs before baking and garnished with live worms after.

  The thing made noises that sounded like, "Mick, is that you?" but spoken by a turkey croquette with a mouth full of linguine.

  Stranger still, it sounded a little like Willie. Mick the Mick raised a tentacle to scratch his—

  Whoa! Tentacle?

  Well, of course a tentacle. What did he expect?

  He looked down and was surprised to see that he was encased in a bread-crumbed, worm-garnished, turkey croquette. No, wait, he was a turkey croquette.

  Why did everything seem wrong, and yet simultaneously at the same time seem not wrong, too?

  Just then another six-eyed, tentacle-fringed croquette glided into the room. The Willie-sounding croquette said, "Hi, Nana." His words were much clearer now.

  Nana? Was this Willie's Nana?

  Of course it was, Mick the Mick had known her for years.

  "There's an unpleasant man at the door who wants to talk to you. Or else."

  "Or else what?"

  A new voice said, "Or else you two get to eat cloacal casseroles, and guess who donates the cloacas?"

  Mick the Mick unconsciously crossed his tentacles over his cloaca. In his twenty-four years since budding, Mick