by Butcher, Jim
It probably would have been helpful to have remembered at seven or eight, instead of at two a.m.
I’m not even sure I can claim to be the author of this piece, since it was almost entirely written by a coalition of caffeine molecules and exhausted twitches.
I sat on a stool in the cluttered laboratory beneath my basement apartment. It was chilly enough to make me wear a robe, but the dozen or so candles burning around the room made it look warm. The phone book lay on the table in front of me.
I stared at my ad in the Yellow Pages:
HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD
Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations.
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or
Other Entertainment
I looked up at the skull on the shelf above my lab table and said, “I don’t get it.”
“Flat, Harry,” said Bob the Skull. Flickering orange lights danced in the skull’s eye sockets. “It’s flat.”
I flipped through several pages. “Yeah, well. Most of them are. I don’t think they offer raised lettering.”
Bob rolled his eyelights. “Not literally flat, dimwit. Flat in the aesthetic sense. It has no panache. No moxy. No chutzpah.”
“No what?”
Bob’s skull turned to one side and banged what would have been its forehead against a heavy bronze candleholder. After several thumps, it turned back toward me and said, “It’s boring.”
“Oh,” I said. I rubbed at my jaw. “You think I should have gone four-color?”
Bob stared at me for a second and said, “I have nightmares about Hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.”
I glowered up at the skull and nodded. “Okay, fine. You think it needs more drama.”
“More anything. Drama would do. Or breasts.”
I sighed and saw where that line of thought was going. “I am not going to hire a leggy secretary, Bob. Get over it.”
“I didn’t say anything about legs. But as long as we’re on the subject …”
I set the Yellow Pages aside and picked up my pencil again. “I’m doing formulas here, Bob.”
“It’s formulae, O Maestro of Latin, and if you don’t drum up some business, you aren’t going to need those new spells for much of anything. Unless you’re working on a spell to help you shoplift groceries.”
I set the pencil down hard enough that the tip broke, and I stared at Bob in annoyance. “So what do you think it should say?”
Bob’s eyelights brightened. “Talk about monsters. Monsters are good.”
“Give me a break.”
“I’m serious, Harry! Instead of that line about consulting and finding things, put, ‘Fiends foiled, monsters mangled, vampires vanquished, demons demolished.’”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “That kind of alliteration will bring in the business.”
“It will!”
“It will bring in the nutso business,” I said. “Bob, I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but most people don’t believe that monsters and fiends and whatnot even exist.”
“Most people don’t believe in love potions, either, but you’ve got that in there.”
I held on to a flash of bad temper. “The point,” I told Bob, “is to have an advertisement that looks solid, professional, and reliable.”
“Yeah. Advertising is all about lying,” Bob said.
“Hey!”
“You suck at lying, Harry. You really do. You should trust me on this one.”
“No monsters,” I insisted.
“Fine, fine,” Bob said. “How about we do a positive-side spin, then? Something like, ‘Maidens rescued, enchantments broken, villains unmasked, unicorns protected.’”
“Unicorns?”
“Chicks are into unicorns.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s an ad for my investigative business, not a dating service. Besides, the only unicorn I ever saw tried to skewer me.”
“You’re sort of missing the entire ‘Advertising is lying’ concept, Harry.”
“No unicorns,” I said firmly. “It’s fine the way it is.”
“No style at all,” Bob complained.
I put on a mentally challenged accent. “Style is as style does.”
“Okay, fine. Suppose we throw intelligence to the winds and print only the truth. ‘Vampire slayer, ghost remover, faerie fighter, werewolf exterminator, police consultant, foe of the foot soldiers of Hell.’”
I thought about it for a minute, then got a fresh piece of paper and wrote it down. I stared at the words.
“See?” Bob said. “That would look really hot, attract notice, and it would be the truth. What have you got to lose?”
“This week’s gas money,” I said, finally. “Too many letters. Besides, Lieutenant Murphy would kill me if I went around blowing trumpets about how I help the cops.”
“You’re hopeless,” Bob said.
I shook my head. “No. I’m not in this for the money.”
“Then what are you in it for, Harry? Hell, in the past few years you’ve been all but killed about a million times. Why do you do it?”
I squinted up at the skull. “Because someone has to.”
“Hopeless,” Bob repeated.
I smiled, picked up a fresh pencil, and went back to my formulas—formulae. “Pretty much.”
Bob sighed and fell quiet. My pencil scratched over clean white paper while the candles burned warm and steady.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Blood Rites
A ROC Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2004 by Jim Butcher
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
For information address:
The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 1-101-14666-4
A ROC BOOK®
ROC Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ROC and the “ROC” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
Electronic edition: August, 2004
For my nieces and nephews: Craig, Emily, Danny, Ellie, Gabriel, Lori, Anna, Mikey, Kaitlyn, Greta, Foster, and Baby-to-Be-Named-Later. I hope you all grow up to find as much joy in reading as has your uncle.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
&
nbsp; Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter One
The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.
My boots slipped and slid on the tile floor as I sprinted around a corner and toward the exit doors to the abandoned school building on the southwest edge of Chicagoland. Distant streetlights provided the only light in the dusty hall, and left huge swaths of blackness crouching in the old classroom doors.
I carried an elaborately carved wooden box about the size of a laundry basket in my arms, and its weight made my shoulders burn with effort. I’d been shot in both of them at one time or another, and the muscle burn quickly started changing into deep, aching stabs. The damned box was heavy, not even considering its contents.
Inside the box, a bunch of flop-eared grey-and-black puppies whimpered and whined, jostled back and forth as I ran. One of the puppies, his ear already notched where some kind of doggie misadventure had marked him, was either braver or more stupid than his littermates. He scrambled around until he got his paws onto the lip of the box, and set up a painfully high-pitched barking full of squeaky snarls, big dark eyes focused behind me.
I ran faster, my knee-length black leather duster swishing against my legs. I heard a rustling, hissing sound and juked left as best I could. A ball of some kind of noxious-smelling substance that looked like tar went zipping past me, engulfed in yellow-white flame. It hit the floor several yards beyond me, and promptly exploded into a little puddle of hungry fire.
I tried to avoid it, but my boots had evidently been made for walking, not sprinting on dusty tile. They slid out from under me and I fell. I controlled it as much as I could, and wound up sliding on my rear, my back to the fire. It got hot for a second, but the wards I’d woven over my duster kept it from burning me.
Another flaming glob crackled toward me, and I barely turned in time. The substance, whatever the hell it was, clung like napalm to what it hit and burned with a supernatural ferocity that had already burned a dozen metal lockers to slag in the dim halls behind me.
The goop hit my left shoulder blade and slid off the protective spells on my mantled coat, spattering the wall beside me. I flinched nonetheless, lost my balance, and fumbled the box. Fat little puppies tumbled onto the floor with a chorus of whimpers and cries for help.
I checked behind me.
The guardian demons looked like demented purple chimpanzees, except for the raven-black wings sprouting from their shoulders. There were three of them that had escaped my carefully crafted paralysis spell, and they were hot on my tail, bounding down the halls in long leaps assisted by their black feathered wings.
As I watched, one of them reached down between its crooked legs and . . . Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but it gathered up the kind of ammunition primates in zoos traditionally rely upon. The monkey-demon hurled it with a chittering scream, and it combusted in midair. I had to duck before the noxious ball of incendiary goop smacked into my nose.
I grabbed puppies and scooped them into the box, then started running. The demon-monkeys burst into fresh howls.
Squeaky barks behind me made me look back. The little notch-eared puppy had planted his clumsy paws solidly on the floor, and was barking defiantly at the oncoming demon-chimps.
“Dammit,” I cursed, and reversed course. The lead monkey swooped down at the puppy. I made like a ballplayer, slid in feetfirst, and planted the heel of my boot squarely on the end of the demon’s nose. I’m not heavily built, but I’m most of a head taller than six feet, and no one ever thought I was a lightweight. I kicked the demon hard enough to make it screech and veer off. It slammed into a metal locker, and left an inches-deep dent.
“Stupid little fuzzbucket,” I muttered, and recovered the puppy. “This is why I have a cat.” The puppy kept up its tirade of ferocious, squeaking snarls. I pitched him into the box without ceremony, ducked two more flaming blobs, and started coughing on the smoke already filling the building as I resumed my retreat. Light was growing back where I’d come from, as the demons’ flaming missiles chewed into the old walls and floor, spreading with a malicious glee.
I ran for the front doors of the old building, slamming the opening bar with my hip and barely slowing down.
A sudden weight hit my back and something pulled viciously at my hair. The chimp-demon started biting at my neck and ear. It hurt. I tried to spin and throw it off me, but it had a good hold. The effort, though, showed me a second demon heading for my face, and I had to duck to avoid a collision.
I let go of the box and reached for the demon on my back. It howled and bit my hand. Snarling and angry, I turned around and threw my back at the nearest wall. The monkey-demon evidently knew that tactic. It flipped off of my shoulders at the last second, and I slammed the base of my skull hard against a row of metal lockers.
A burst of stars blinded me for a second, and by the time my vision cleared, I saw two of the demons diving toward the box of puppies. They both hurled searing blobs at the wooden box, splattering it with flame.
There was an old fire extinguisher on the wall, and I grabbed it. My monkey attacker came swooping back at me. I rammed the end of the extinguisher into its nose, knocking it down, then reversed my grip on the extinguisher and sprayed a cloud of dusty white chemical at the carved box. I got the fire put out, but for good measure I unloaded the thing into the other two demons’ faces, creating a thick cloud of dust.
I grabbed the box and hauled it out the door, and then slammed the school doors shut behind me.
There were a couple of thumps from the other side of the doors, and then silence.
Panting, I looked down at the box of whimpering puppies. A bunch of wet black noses and eyes looked back up at me from under a white dusting of extinguishing chemical.
“Hell’s bells,” I panted at them. “You guys are lucky Brother Wang wants you back so much. If he hadn’t paid half up front, I’d be the one in the box and you’d be carrying me.”
A bunch of little tails wagged hopefully.
“Stupid dogs,” I growled. I hauled the box into my arms again and started schlepping it toward the old school’s parking lot.
I was about halfway there when something ripped the steel doors of the school inward, against the swing of their hinges. A low, loud bellow erupted from inside the building, and then a Kong-size version of the chimp-demons came stomping out of the doorway.
It was purple. It had wings. And it looked really pissed off. At least eight feet tall, it had to weigh four or five times what I did. As I stared at it, two little monkey-demons flew directly at demon Kong—and were simply absorbed by the bigger demon’s bulk upon impact. Kong gained another eighty pounds or so and got a bit bulkier. Not so much monkey Kong, then, as Monkey Voltron. The original crowd of guardian demons must have escaped my spell with that combining maneuver, pooling all of their energy into a single vessel and using the greater strength provided by density to power through my binding.
Kongtron spread wings as wide as a small airplane’s and leapt at me with a completely unfair amount of grace. Being a professional investigator, as well as a professional wizard, I’d seen slobbering beasties before. Over the course of many encounters and many years, I have successfully developed a standard operating procedure for dealing with big, nasty monsters.
Run away. Me and Monty Python.
The parking lot and the Blue Beetle, my beat-up old Volkswagen, were only thirty or forty yards off, and I can really move when I’m feeling motivated.
Kong bellowed. It motivated me.
There was the sound of a small explosion, then a blaze of red l
ight brighter than the nearby street lamps. Another fireball hit the ground a few feet wide of me and detonated like a Civil War cannonball, gouging out a coffin-sized crater in the pavement. The enormous demon roared and shot past me on black vulture wings, banking to come around for another pass.
“Thomas!” I screamed. “Start the car!”
The passenger door opened, and an unwholesomely good-looking young man with dark hair, tight jeans, and a leather jacket worn over a bare chest poked his head out and peered at me over the rims of round green-glassed spectacles. Then he looked up and behind me. His jaw dropped open.
“Start the freaking car!” I screamed.
Thomas nodded and dove back into the Beetle. It coughed and wheezed and shuddered to life. The surviving headlight flicked on, and Thomas gunned the engine and headed for the street.
For a second I thought he was going to leave me, but he slowed down enough that I caught up with him. Thomas leaned across the car and pushed the passenger door open. I grunted with effort and threw myself into the car. I almost lost the box, but managed to get it just before the notch-eared puppy pulled himself up to the rim, evidently determined to go back and do battle.
“What the hell is that?” Thomas screamed. His black hair, shoulder length, curling and glossy, whipped around his face as the car gathered speed and drew the cool autumn wind through the open windows. His grey eyes were wide with apprehension. “What is that, Harry?”
“Just drive!” I shouted. I stuffed the box of whimpering puppies into the backseat, grabbed my blasting rod, and climbed out the open window so that I was sitting on the door, chest to the car’s roof. I twisted to bring the blasting rod in my right hand to bear on the demon. I drew in my will, my magic, and the end of the blasting rod began to glow with a cherry-red light.