by Butcher, Jim
“I love you.”
Why it worked right then, why the webbing of my godmother’s spell frayed as though the words had been an open flame, I don’t know. I haven’t found any explanation for it. There aren’t any magical words, really. The words just hold the magic. They give it a shape and a form, they make it useful, describe the images within.
I’ll say this, though: Some words have a power that has nothing to do with supernatural forces. They resound in the heart and mind, they live long after the sounds of them have died away, they echo in the heart and the soul. They have power, and that power is very real.
Those three words are good ones.
I flooded into her, through the link, into the darkness and the confusion that bound her, and I saw, through her thoughts, that my coming was a flame in the endless cold, a beacon flashing out against that night. The light came, our memories, the warmth of us, she and I, and battered down the walls inside her, crushed away Lea’s lingering spell, tore those memories away from my godmother, wherever she was, and brought them back home.
I heard her cry out at the sudden flush of memory, as awareness washed over her. She changed, right there against me—the hard, alien tension changed. It didn’t vanish, but it changed. It became Susan’s tension, Susan’s confusion, Susan’s pain, aware, alert, and very much herself again.
The power of the spell faded away, leaving only the blurred impression of it, like lightning that crackles through the night, leaving dazzling colors in the darkness behind.
I found myself kneeling against her, holding her hand. She still held my head. Her teeth still pressed against my throat, sharp and hard.
I reached up with my other shaking hand, and stroked at her hair. “Susan,” I said, gentle. “Susan. Stay with me.”
The pressure lessened. I felt hot tears fall against my shoulder.
“Harry,” she whispered. “Oh, God. I’m so thirsty. I want it so much.”
I closed my eyes. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I could take you. I could take it,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“You couldn’t stop me. You’re weak, sick.”
“I couldn’t stop you,” I agreed.
“Say it again.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Say it again. It helps. Please. It’s so hard not to . . .”
I swallowed. “I love you,” I said.
She jerked, as though I’d punched her in the pit of the stomach. “I love you,” I said again. “Susan.”
She lifted her mouth from my skin, and looked up, into my eyes. They were her eyes again—dark, rich, warm brown, bloodshot, filled with tears. “The vampires,” she said. “They—”
“I know.”
She closed her eyes, more tears falling. “I tr-tried to stop them. I tried.”
Pain hit me again, pain that didn’t have anything to do with poison or injuries. It hit me sharp and low, just beneath my heart, as though someone had just shoved an icicle through me. “I know you did,” I told her. “I know you did.”
She fell against me, weeping. I held her.
After a long time, she whispered, “It’s still there. It isn’t going away.”
“I know.”
“What am I going to do?”
“We’ll work on that,” I said. “I promise. We have other problems right now.” I filled her in on what had happened, holding her in the dimness.
“Is anyone coming for us?” she asked.
“I . . . I don’t think so. Even if Thomas and Michael got away, they couldn’t storm this place. If they ever even got out of the Nevernever. Michael could go to Murphy, but she couldn’t just smash her way in here without a warrant. And Bianca’s contacts could probably stall that for a while.”
“We have to get you out of here,” she said. “You’ve got to get to a hospital.”
“Works in theory. Now we just have to work out the details.”
She licked her lips. “I . . . can you even walk?”
“I don’t know. That last spell. If there was much left in me, that spell took it out.”
“What if you slept?” she asked.
“Kravos would have his chance to torture me.” I paused, and stared at the far wall.
“God,” Susan whispered. She hugged me, gently. “I love you, Harry. You should get to hear it t—” She stopped, and looked up at me. “What?”
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s what needs to happen.”
“What needs to happen? I don’t understand.”
The more I thought about it, the crazier it sounded. But it might work. If I could time it just right . . .
I looked down, taking Susan’s shoulders in my hands, staring at her eyes. “Can you hold on? Can you keep it together for another few hours?”
She shivered. “I think so. I’ll try.”
“Good,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Because I need to be asleep long enough to start dreaming.”
“But Kravos,” Susan said. “Kravos will get inside of you. He’ll kill you.”
“Yeah,” I said. I took a slow breath. “I’m pretty much counting on it.”
Chapter Thirty-six
My nightmares came quickly, dull cloud of poisonous confusion blurring my senses, distorting my perceptions. For a moment, I was hanging by one wrist over an inferno of fire, smoke, and horrible creatures, the steel of the handcuffs suspending me cutting into my flesh, drawing blood. Smoke smothered me, forced me to cough, and my vision blurred as I started to fade out.
Then I was in a new place. In the dark. Cold stone chilled me where I lay upon it. All around me were the whispers of things moving in the shadows. Scaly rasps. Soft, hungry hisses, together with the gleam of malevolent eyes. My heart pounded in my throat.
“There you are,” whispered one of the voices. “I watched them have you, you know.”
I sat up, shivering violently. “Yeah, well. That’s why they call them monsters. It’s what they do.”
“They enjoyed it,” came the whispering voice. “If only I could have videotaped it for you.”
“TV will rot your brain, Kravos,” I said.
Something blurred out of the darkness and struck me across the face. The blow drove me back and down. My vision blurred over with scarlet and my perceptions sharpened through a burst of pain, but I didn’t drop unconscious. You don’t, as a rule, in dreams.
“Jokes,” the voice hissed. “Jokes will not save you now.”
“Hell’s bells, Kravos,” I muttered, sitting up again. “Do they produce a Cliched Lines Textbook for Villains or something? Go for broke. Tell me that since you’re going to kill me anyway, you might as well reveal your secret plan.”
The dark blurred toward me again. I didn’t bother trying to defend myself. It drove me to the ground, and sat on my chest.
I stared up at Kravos. Forms and shapes hung about him like misty clothes. I could see the shape of the shadow demon, around him. I could see my own face, drifting among the layers. I saw Justine there, and Lydia. And there, at the center of that distorted, drifting mass, I saw Kravos.
He didn’t look much different. He had a thin, pinched face, and brown hair faded with grey. He wore a full, untrimmed beard, but it only made his head seem misshapen. He had wide, leathery shoulders, and symbols painted in blood, ritual things whose meanings I could vaguely piece together, covered his chest. He lifted his hands and delivered two more blows to my face, explosions of pain.
“Where are your gibes now, wizard?” Kravos snarled. “Where are your jokes? Weak, petty, self-righteous fool. We are going to have a very good time together, until Bianca comes to finish you.”
“You think so?” I asked. “I’m not sure. It’s our first date. Maybe we should take this one step at a time.”
Kravos hit me again, across the bridge of my nose, and my vision blurred with tears. “You aren’t funny!” he shouted. “You are going to die! You can’t treat this as a joke!”
“Why not?” I shot back. “Kravos, I took you out with a piece of chalk and a Ken doll. You’re the biggest joke of a spellslinger I’ve ever seen. Even I didn’t expect you to drop like that; maybe the link with that doll worked so well because it was anatomically corr—”
I didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence. Kravos screamed and took my dream self by the throat. It felt real. It felt completely as though he had me, his weight pinning my weakened body down, his fingers crushing into my windpipe. My head pounded. I struggled against him, futile and reflexive motions—but to no avail. He kept on choking me, the pressure increasing. Blackness covered my dream vision, and I knew that he would hold it until he was sure I was dead.
People who have near-death experiences often talk about moving toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Or ascending toward the light, or flying or floating, or falling. I didn’t get that. I’m not sure what that says about the state of my soul. There was no light, no kindly beckoning voice, no lake of fire to fall into. There was only silence, deep and timeless, where not even the beating of my heart thudded in my ears. I felt an odd pressure against my skin, my face, as though I had pressed into and through a wall of plastic wrap.
I felt a dull thud on top of my chest, and a sudden lessening of the burning in my lungs. Then another thud. More easing on my lungs. Then more blows to my chest.
My heart lurched back into motion with a hesitant thunder, and I felt myself take a wheezing breath. The plastic-wrap sensation tugged at me for a moment, then lifted away.
I shuddered, and struggled to open my eyes again. When I did, Kravos, still holding my throat, blinked his eyes in shock. “No!” he snarled. “You’re dead! You’re dead!”
“Susan’s giving his real body CPR,” someone said, behind him. Kravos whipped his head around to look, just in time to catch a stiff cross to the tip of his chin. He cried out in startled fear, and fell off of me.
I sucked in another labored breath and sat up. “Hell’s bells,” I gasped. “It worked.”
Kravos struggled to his feet and backed away, staring, his eyes flying open wide as they looked back and forth between me and my savior.
My savior was me, too. Or rather, something that looked a very great deal like me. It was my shape and coloring, and had bruises and scratches, mixed with a few burns, all over it. Its hair was a wild mess, its eyes sunken over circles of black in a pale, sickly face.
My double peered at me and said, “You know. We really look like hell.”
“What’s this?” hissed Kravos. “What trick is this?”
I offered myself a hand up, so I took it. It took me a moment to balance, but I said, “Hell, Kravos. As flexible as the boundaries between here and the spirit world have been, I would have expected you to figure it out by now.”
Kravos looked at the two of us, and bared his teeth. “Your ghost,” he hissed.
“Technically,” my ghost said. “Harry actually died for a minute. Don’t you remember how ghosts are made? Normally, there wouldn’t be enough latent energy to create an impression like me, but with him being a wizard—a real wizard, not a petty fake like you—and with the border to the Nevernever in such a state of flux, it was pretty much inevitable.”
“That was very well said,” I told my ghost.
“Just be glad your theory worked. I wouldn’t be very good at this, solo.”
“Well, thank Kravos here. It was him and Bianca and Mavra who stirred things up enough to make this possible.” We looked at Kravos. “You aren’t getting to sneak attack me while I’m doped unconscious, bub. It isn’t going to be like last time. Any questions?”
Kravos hurled himself at me in a fury. He overpowered me, and bore down on me, far too strong for me to overcome directly. I thrust a thumb into his eye. He screamed and bit at my hand.
And then my ghost came in. He wrapped his arms around Kravos’s neck and leaned back, hard, tugging the man’s body into a bow. Kravos strained and struggled, his arms flailing, strong as any maddened beast. My ghost was a little stronger than I, but he wouldn’t be able to hold Kravos for long.
“Harry!” my ghost shouted. “Now!”
I gripped Kravos by the throat, letting all the frustration and fury inside well up. I held up my left hand, and my dream self’s nails lengthened into glittering claws. Kravos stared at me in shock.
“You think you’re the only one who can play in dreams, Kravos? If I’d been ready for you the last time, you’d have never been able to do to me what you did.” My face twisted, mouth extending into a muzzle. “This time I’m ready. You’re in my dream, now. And I’m taking back what’s mine.”
I tore into his guts. I ripped him open with my claws and wolfed into his vitals, just as he had to me. Bits of him flew free, dream-blood splashing, dream-vitals steaming.
I tore and worried and gulped down bloody meat. He screamed and fought, but he couldn’t get away. I tore him to pieces and devoured him, the blood a hot, sweet rush on my tongue, his ghost-flesh hot and good, easing the ache of emptiness inside of me.
I ate him all up.
As I did, I felt power, surety, confidence, all rushing back into me. My stolen magic came raging back into me, filling me like silver lightning, a tingling, almost painful rush as I took back what was mine.
But I didn’t stop there. My ghost fell away as I kept going. Kept tearing Kravos apart and gulping down the pieces. I got to his own power when I ate his heart—red, livid power, vital and primitive and dangerous. Kravos’s magic had been for nothing but causing harm.
I took it. I had plenty of harm to start causing.
By the time I’d finished tearing him to shreds, the pieces were vanishing like the remnants of any foul dream. I crouched on the dream-floor as they did, shaking with the rushing energy inside of me. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked up.
I must have looked feral. My ghost took a step back and lifted both hands. “Easy, easy,” he said. “I think you got him.”
“I got him,” I said quietly.
“He was a ghost,” my ghost said. “He wasn’t really a person any more. And even as ghosts go, he was a bad egg. You don’t have anything to regret.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said. “You don’t have to live with me.”
“True,” my ghost answered. He glanced down at himself. His bruised limbs grew slowly translucent, and he began vanishing. “That’s the only bad thing about this gig as a ghost. Once you accomplish whatever it was that caused you to get created, you’re done. Kravos—the real Kravos—is already gone. Just his shell stayed behind. And this would have happened to him, too, if he’d killed you.”
“Do unto others before they do unto you,” I said. “Thanks.”
“It was your plan,” my ghost said. “I feel like hell anyway.”
“I know.”
“I guess you do. Try not to get killed again, okay?”
“Working on it.”
He waved one hand, and faded away.
I blinked open my eyes. Susan knelt over me, striking my face with her hand. I felt wretched—but that wasn’t all. My body almost buzzed with the energy I held, my skin tingling as though I hadn’t used a whit of magic in weeks. She struck me twice more before I let out a strangled groan and lifted a hand to intercept hers.
“Harry?” she demanded. “Harry, are you awake?”
I blinked my eyes. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I’m up.”
“Kravos?” she hissed.
“I pushed his buttons and he lost control. He got me,” I said. “Then I got him. You did it just right.”
Susan sat back on her heels, trembling. “God. When you stopped breathing, I almost screamed. If you hadn’t told me to expect it, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“You did fine,” I said. I rolled over and pushed myself to my feet, though my body groaned in protest. The pain felt like something happening very far away, to someone else. It wasn’t relevant to me. The energy coursing through me—that was relevant. I
had to release some of it soon or I’d explode.
Susan started to help me, and then sat back, staring at me. “Harry? What happened?”
“I got something back,” I said. “It’s a high. I still hurt, but that doesn’t seem to be important.” I stretched my arms out over my head. Then I stalked over to the dirty laundry and found a pair of boxers that fit me, more or less. I gave Susan a self-conscious glance, and slipped into them. “Get something on Justine, and we’re out of here.”
“I tried. She won’t come out from behind the washing machine.”
I clenched my jaw, irritated, and snapped my fingers while saying, “Ventas servitas.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Fury surged through me, before fear or anxiety, a fury so scarlet and bright that I could scarcely believe it was mine. Maybe it wasn’t. After all, you are what you eat—even if you’re a wizard.
“Let go, Kyle,” I grated. “You’ve got one chance to live through this. Walk away, right now.”
Kyle laughed, letting his fangs extend. “No more bluffs, wizard,” he purred. “No more illusions. Take him, sister.”
Kelly came at me in a rush, but I had been waiting for that. I lifted my right hand and snarled, “Ventas servitas!” A furious column of wind slammed into her like a bag of sand, catching her in midair and driving her across the room, into the wall.
Kyle screamed in fury, drawing his hand back off of my throat and then driving it at me. I dodged the first blow by jerking my head to one side, and heard his hand crunch into the stone. The dodge cost me my balance, and as I teetered, he lashed out again, aiming for my neck. All I could do was watch it come.
And then Susan came between us. I didn’t see her move toward us, but I saw her catch the blow in both of her hands. She spun, twisting her hips and body and shoulders, letting out a furious scream. She threw Kyle across the room, in the air the whole way, and with no noticeable trajectory. He slammed into his sister, driving them both into the wall once more. I heard Kelly scream, incoherent and bestial. The black, slime-covered bat-thing beneath the pleasant flesh mask tore its way out, shredding damply flapping skin with its talons as it started raking at Kyle. He struggled against her, shouting something that became lost in his creature-form’s scream as he too tore his way free. The two of them started clawing at one another in a frenzy, fangs and tongues and talons flashing.