by Butcher, Jim
I’d seen worse, but not many. Tall buildings and narrow alleys choked out a lot of the sunshine. Most windows below the third or fourth floor had been boarded up. Ground level commercial properties were largely vacant. The storm drains were clogged with litter and other urban detritus, most of the streetlights were out, and graffiti and gang signs had been spray-painted everywhere. The air smelled like mildew, garbage, and exhaust. The residents of the neighborhood moved with brisk purpose, confidence, and flat eyes as they walked, doing everything they could to indicate by body language that they were not good targets for assault or robbery.
I spotted a drug house in the first ten seconds of looking around. The burned-out hulk of an abandoned car had been stripped for parts before it had been set on fire, and I had a notion that Murphy was the first cop to visit in the past several weeks.
But there was something missing.
Bums. Transients. Homeless folk. Winos. Bag ladies. Even in broad daylight there should have been someone collecting cans, panhandling change, or shambling along drinking from a bottle still covered with a paper bag.
But there wasn’t. Everyone moving was getting from one place to another, not eking out a living from the environment.
“Look kind of quiet to you here?” Murphy asked, voice tight.
“Yeah,” I said.
“They’ve been killing,” she said, almost spitting the words.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Ebenezar said.
I nodded. “There’s dark power at work here. People sense that, even if they don’t know what it is. You’re feeling it now.”
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “The presence of dark magic. It makes you feel nervous and angry. If you forced yourself to calm down and tried to sense it, you could feel it. It leaves a kind of stain around it.”
“Stinks,” rumbled Ebenezar.
“What does that have to do with missing street people?” Murphy asked.
“You’ve been here about three minutes, and the power bothers you already. Imagine living in it. Getting a little more afraid every day. Angrier. More demoralized. People get rattled enough to leave, even if they don’t understand why. Over the long term this kind of power breeds its own wasteland.”
“You mean that the vampires have been here for a while?” she asked.
“To have this much effect, it’s been days at least,” I said, nodding.
“More like two weeks.” Ebenezar grunted with assurance. “Maybe three.”
“God,” Murphy said, shivering. “That’s scary.”
“Yeah. If they’ve been here that long, it means Mavra has something in mind.”
She frowned. “You mean that this vampire came here and then chose when to make you aware of its presence? This could be a trap.”
“It’s possible. Paranoid, but possible.”
Her mouth tightened into a line. “You didn’t mention that at breakfast.”
“We’re doing battle with the living dead, Murph. Expect the occasional curveball.”
“Are you patronizing me now?”
I shook my head. “No. Honest. Where’s Kincaid?”
“Second level of this parking garage,” Murphy said.
“Stop on the first level,” I told her.
“Why?”
“He doesn’t know about Ebenezar, and I don’t want to spook him. We’ll walk up and meet him.”
Ebenezar nodded to us and said, “Good call, Hoss. Decent gunman can be twitchy. I’ll give you a minute, then drive on up.”
Murphy stopped the truck and we got out. I waited until we were several paces from the truck before I lowered my voice and said, “I know. You’re afraid.”
She glared at me, and started to deny it. But she knew better, and shrugged one shoulder instead. “Some.”
“So am I. It’s okay.”
“I thought I was over this,” she said. Her jaw tightened. “I mean, the night terrors are gone. I can sleep again. But it isn’t like before, Harry. I used to get scared, but I’d be excited too. I would have wanted to do it. But I don’t want this. I’m so afraid that I’m about to throw up. Which sucks.”
“You’re scared because you’ve learned things,” I told her. “You know the kinds of things you’re fighting,” I said. “You know what could happen. You’d be an idiot if you weren’t afraid. I wouldn’t want someone with me who didn’t have enough sense to be worried.”
She nodded, but asked, “What if I freeze up on you again?”
“You won’t.”
“It could happen.”
“It won’t,” I said.
“You sure?”
I winked at her and twirled my staff in one hand. “I wouldn’t be betting my life on it otherwise. You’ve got my back, Murph. Shut up and dance.”
She nodded, her expression remote. “There’s nothing we can do to stop these things.”
The we had changed. She meant the police. “No. Not without getting a lot of good cops killed.”
“Those people with the vampires. These Renfields. We’ll have to kill some of them. Won’t we?”
“Probably,” I said in a quiet voice.
“It isn’t their fault they were taken.”
“I know. We’ll do whatever we can to avoid killing them. But from what I know about them, they’re too far gone to leave us many options.”
“Do you remember Agent Wilson?” Murphy asked.
“The Fed you shot off my back.”
Murph’s expression flickered, though it wasn’t quite a flinch. “Yeah. He went outside the law to bring down the people he thought were beyond its reach, and now we’re making that same choice.”
“No, we aren’t,” I said.
“No? Why not?”
“Because they aren’t people.”
Murphy frowned.
I thought about it. “Even if they were, assuming they were still as dangerous and untouchable, would it change anything?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what scares me.”
For as long as I’d known her, Murphy had upheld the law. She had a good head on her shoulders when it came to the nature of good and evil and of right and wrong, but her first duty had been to the law. She’d believed in it, that it was the best way to help and protect her fellow man. She’d had faith that the power of the law, while imperfect, was absolute—almost holy. It was a rallying point in her soul, a foundation block of her strength.
But several years of staring out at the darkness had showed her that the law was both blind and deaf to some of the nastier parts of the world. She’d seen things that moved in the shadows, perverting the purpose of the law to use it as a weapon against the people she had sworn to defend. Her faith had taken a beating, or she wouldn’t even have considered stepping outside the boundaries of her authority. And she knew it.
That knowledge cost her dearly. There weren’t any tears in her eyes, but I knew that they were there, on the inside, while she mourned the death of her faith.
“I don’t know the right thing to do,” she said.
“Neither do I,” I said. “But someone has to do something. And we’re the only ones around. Either we choose to take a stand now or we choose to stand around at all the funerals regretting it later.”
“Yeah,” Murphy said. She took a deep, almost meditative breath. “I guess I needed to hear that said out loud.” A small but violent light flared to life behind her eyes. “Let’s go. I’m ready.”
“Murph,” I said.
She tilted her head and looked at me. My lips suddenly felt very dry.
“You look good in the dress.”
Her eyes shone. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah.”
The eye contact got dangerously intense and I shied off. Murphy let out a low, quiet laugh and touched the side of my face. Her fingers were warm, the touch light and delicate. “Thank you, Harry.”
We came up to the second level of the garage together, walking with businesslike strides. The l
ights were out. In the depths of shadows I could see two vans parked side by side. The first one was a beat-up old fossil of a vehicle, born in an era when people would have thought it absurd to make a van “mini.” A Red Cross decal on the driver’s door proclaimed its identity.
The second was a white rental van. We approached, and Kincaid slid the side door open. I couldn’t see him very well in the shadows. “Didn’t take long,” he commented. “You walk fast.”
“Wheelman’s here,” I said. “He’s coming up in an old Ford truck in a minute. Wanted to let you know first.”
Kincaid glanced at the ramp and nodded. “Fine. What do we know?”
I told him. He took it all in without speaking, glanced once at the map Bob had drawn me, and said, “Suicide.”
“Eh?” I said.
Kincaid shrugged. “We go in there guns blazing, we’re going to get burned two feet from the door.”
“I tried to tell him that,” Murphy said.
“So we get a plan,” I said. Any suggestions?”
“Blow up the building,” Kincaid said without looking up. “That works good for vampires. Then soak what’s left in gasoline. Set it on fire. Then blow it all up again.”
“For future reference, I was sort of hoping for a suggestion that didn’t sound like it came from that Bolshevik Muppet with all the dynamite.”
“Check,” Kincaid said.
I peered at the van. “Hey. Where are the Red Cross people?”
“I killed and dismembered them,” Kincaid said.
I blinked.
Kincaid stared at me for a second. “That was a joke.”
“Right,” I said. “Sorry. Now where are they?”
“On their lunch break. They somehow got the idea that I was a cop and that they would interfere with a sting if they went into the shelter. I gave them a C-note and told them to go grab lunch.”
“They believed you?” I asked.
“They somehow got the idea that I had a badge.”
Murphy eyed Kincaid. “That’s the kind of thing that’s illegal to own.”
Kincaid turned to dig in the white van. “Sorry if I came afoul of your sensibilities, Lieutenant. Next time I’ll let them walk in and get killed. I added the hundred to your bill, Dresden.” A dark jacket with the Red Cross logo on the shoulder flew out of the van and hit Murphy in the chest. She caught it, and a second later caught the matching baseball cap that followed. “Put them on,” Kincaid said. “Our ticket to get close enough to get the drop on them. Maybe even get some walking targets out of the way.”
“Where did you get those?” I asked.
Kincaid leaned out of the van enough to arch an eyebrow at me. “Found ’em.”
“Kincaid,” Murphy said, “Give me the keys to the Red Cross van.”
“Why?”
“So I can change,” Murphy said, her voice tight.
Kincaid shook his head. “You got nothing everyone here hasn’t seen before, Lieutenant,” he said. After a moment he glanced at me and said, “Unless . . .”
“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’ve seen that sort of thing. It’s been a while, but I dimly remember.”
“Just checking,” Kincaid said.
“Now give her the damned keys.”
“Yassuh, Massah Dresden,” he said laconically, and tossed a ring with only two keys at Murphy. She caught it, let out a growling sound, and stalked over to the Red Cross van. She opened it and climbed in.
“Not bad,” Kincaid said, low enough that Murphy wouldn’t have heard him. He kept rooting around in the minivan, evidently without feeling any need for a light. “Her in a dress, I mean. Makes you notice she’s a woman.”
“Shut up, Kincaid.”
I could hear the wolfish smile, even if I couldn’t see it. “Yassuh. Now don’t look. I’m getting dressed and I blush easy.”
“Blow me, Kincaid,” I growled.
“Don’t you owe me enough already?” I heard him moving around. “You give any more thought to shutting down Mavra’s sorcery?”
“Yeah,” I said. Ebenezar’s truck growled as it changed gears. “Our wheelman is going to handle it.”
“You sure he can?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Here he comes.”
Kincaid stepped out of the van with guns strapped all over attachment points on a suit of black ballistic body armor that looked a generation or two ahead of the latest police-issue. He had one set of big-ass revolvers, a couple of those tiny, deadly machine guns that shoot so fast they sound like a band saw, and a bunch of automatics. They all came in matching pairs, presumably because he had an audition for the lead in a John Woo movie later that day.
Kincaid donned a second Red Cross jacket to help hide all the weaponry, and added his own matching cap like Murphy’s. He watched Ebenezar’s truck coming, and said, “So who is this guy?”
Just then Ebenezar’s truck rolled up, its headlights in our eyes until it had all but passed. “So, Hoss,” Ebenezar was saying through the open window. “Who is this hired gun?”
The old man and the mercenary saw one another and stared at each other from maybe seven or eight feet apart. Time stopped for one of those frozen, crystallized instants.
And then both of them went for their guns.
Chapter Thirty
Kincaid was faster. One of the guns he’d had on him got to his hand so quick it might have been teleported there from under his coat. But even as he raised the gun toward the old wizard, there was a flash of emerald light from a plain steel ring on Ebenezar’s right hand. I felt a low, harsh hum in the air and a surge of dizziness, and Kincaid’s pistol ripped its way out of his fingers and shot away into the shadows of the parking garage.
I swayed on my feet. Kincaid recovered before I did and a second gun came out from under the Red Cross jacket. I looked up to see Ebenezar settle the old shotgun’s stock against his shoulder, both barrels squarely on Kincaid’s head.
“What the hell!” I blurted, and threw myself between them. It put Kincaid’s pistol in line with my spine and Ebenezar’s shotgun in line with my head, which seemed like a positive at the moment. As long as I was in front of the weapons, the two couldn’t get a clean shot at each other. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“Hoss,” snarled Ebenezar, “you don’t know what you’re dealing with. Get down.”
“Put the shotgun down,” I said. “Kincaid, put the pistol away.”
Kincaid’s voice, behind me, sounded no different than it had at breakfast. “That sounds like a fairly low-percentage move for me, Dresden. No offense.”
“I told you,” Ebenezar said, his voice different—cold and terrible and hard. I’d never heard the old man speak that way before. “I told you if I ever saw you again, I’d kill you.”
“Which is one reason you haven’t seen me,” Kincaid answered. “There’s no point to this. If we start shooting, the kid’s going to get hit. Neither of us has an interest in that.”
“I’m supposed to believe you give a damn about him?” Ebenezar snarled.
“Half a damn, maybe,” Kincaid said. “I sort of like him. But what I meant was there’s no profit for either of us in killing him.”
“Put the damned guns down!” I choked. “And stop talking about me like I’m a kid who isn’t here.”
“Why are you here?” Ebenezar demanded, ignoring me.
“I’m a hired gun,” Kincaid said. “Dresden hired me. Do the math, Blackstaff. Of all people you should know how it goes.” The tone of Kincaid’s voice changed to something thoughtful. “But the kid doesn’t know what we do. Does he?”
“Harry, get down,” Ebenezar said, speaking to me again.
“You want me down?” I said. I met Ebenezar’s eyes and said, “Then I want your word you aren’t going to open up on Kincaid until we’ve talked.”
“Dammit, boy. I’m not giving my word to that—”
Anger made my voice lash out, hard and sharp. “Not him. Give
me your word, sir. Now.”
The old man’s gaze wavered and he lifted his forward hand from the shotgun, fingers spread in a conciliatory gesture. He let the barrel ease down. “All right. My word to you, Hoss.”
Kincaid exhaled slowly through his teeth. I felt his weight shift behind me.
I glanced back. His gun was half lowered. “Yours too, Kincaid.”
“I’m working for you right now, Dresden,” he said. “You already have it.”
“Then put the gun away.”
To my surprise, he did, though his empty eyes remained fastened on Ebenezar.
“What the hell was that about?” I demanded.
“Defending myself,” Kincaid said.
“Don’t give me that crap,” I said.
Anger touched Kincaid’s voice. It was a cold thing that lined his words with frost. “Self-defense. If I’d known your fucking wheelman was Blackstaff McCoy, I’d have been in another state by now, Dresden. I want nothing to do with him.”
“It’s a little late for that now,” I told him. I glared at Ebenezar. “What are you doing?”
“Taking care of a problem,” the old man said. He kept his eyes on Kincaid while he drew the gun back into the truck. “Harry, you don’t know this”—his mouth twisted with bitter revulsion—“this thing. You don’t know what it’s done.”
“You’re one to talk,” Kincaid replied. “Gorgeous work at Casaverde, by the way. Russian satellite for a measured response to Archangel. Very nice.”
I whirled on Kincaid. “Stop it.”
Kincaid met my eyes, calm and defiant. “Permission to engage in philosophical debate with the hypocrite, sir?”
Anger hit me in a red wave, and before I realized what I was doing I was up in Kincaid’s face, shoving my nose at his. “Shut your mouth. Now. This man took me in when no one else would, and it probably saved my life. He taught me that magic, that life was more than killing and power. You might be a badass, Kincaid, but you aren’t worth the mud that falls off his goddamned boots. If it came to it, I’d trade your life for his without a second thought. And if I see you trying to provoke him again I’ll kill you myself. Do you understand me?”