The Ultimate Dresden Omnibus, 0-15

by Butcher, Jim

  His lips were burned and blistered. He walked past us as if we weren’t there, his eyes distant.

  “He was always a romantic.” Lara sighed. “She’s protected. The little idiot should never have let himself feel so much for prey. It was that last time together that did it, I imagine.”

  “Had to go both ways.”

  “Greater love hath no man,” Lara agreed.

  We left. Thomas and I got into the Beetle and I asked him, “You okay?”

  His head was bowed. He didn’t say anything.

  “I asked after Inari,” I said.

  His eyes moved toward me, though he didn’t lift his head.

  “She’s in traction. And she’s in love. Gonna be weeks before she and Bobby are going to get to do anything. No crimes of passion.”

  “She’s free,” Thomas said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” After a minute he added, “No one should have to be like the Raiths. Destroying the people you care about the most.”

  “You didn’t destroy her. And I think Lara really will protect her.”

  He shrugged, his expression dark.

  “You slept much since Saturday?”

  “No.”

  “You need to rest and I need a dog-sitter. I’ll drop you at my place. I’ll run errands. You drink Mac’s beer until you crash on my couch. We’ll figure out what you do next when you’re rested. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

  I took him back to my apartment and spent the rest of the morning trying to collect on bills a few people still owed me. I didn’t have much luck. I spent the rest of the day applying for loans, and had even less luck. Bank guys get so hung up about things like bad credit histories and people who fill in the “occupation” blank of the application with wizard. I guess it could have been worse. I could have been filling out the reason the loan was needed with pay off mercenary for services rendered.

  By the end of the day, my hand hurt so badly that it had begun to cut through the painkillers, and I was exhausted. On the way out of the last bank, I forgot what my car looked like for a minute. I missed my street and had to drive around the block, but I missed it the second time, too. I managed to get home before I completely lost sentience, staggered past Thomas and Mister and the puppy asleep on the couch, and collapsed onto my bed.

  When I woke up, it was Tuesday morning.

  I found myself nervously looking around for the bright red dot of a laser sight to appear on my nose while I was in the shower with a plastic trash bag over my bandaged hand. I got dressed, got on the phone, and called Kincaid’s number, then waited for him to return the call.

  It took less than three minutes. “It’s Dresden,” I told the phone.

  “I know. How’s the hand?”

  “I saw this great Swiss Army prosthesis with all these different attachments, but my hopes got crushed. I’m keeping the original.”

  “Damn shame,” Kincaid said. “You need another contract?”

  “Wanted to talk about the last one,” I said. “Uh, I mean, I know you said Tuesday, but I’m still getting some assets turned into cash.” I wasn’t lying to him. I hadn’t sold all my used paperbacks yet, or dipped into my comic collection. “I need a little more time.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Time. I need more time.”

  “For what?”

  “To get your money,” I said, leaving out the word dolt. See? I can be diplomatic.

  “The money got here hours ago.”

  I blinked.

  “You can pay me twice if you like,” Kincaid said. “I won’t stop you. Anything else?”

  “Uh. No. I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t call me again if it isn’t business.” He paused. “Though I want to give you a piece of advice.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, cleverly hiding my confusion.

  “She went down pretty easy,” Kincaid said. “Mavra, I mean.”

  “Yeah. ’Cause of your groovy cutting-edge vampire-hunting weapon, I guess. Thanks.”

  “It’s paid for,” he said. “But I mostly gave it to you to make you feel better. And to make sure you didn’t shoot me by accident.”

  “What about what you said about how cool a weapon it was?”

  “Dresden. Come on. It’s a paintball gun. Mavra’s world-class bad news. I expected it to chew apart newbie vamps, sure. You think Mavra would have tottered on out of the smoke to let you kill her? Nice and dramatic like that? If you buy that one, I got a bridge to sell you.”

  I got a sick, sinking little feeling in my stomach. “It was her,” I said.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “Well. Because . . . she was wearing the same outfit,” I said. “Son of a bitch. That sounds really lame, even to me. One corpse looks a lot like another. It could have been a decoy.”

  “Could,” he said. “So my advice to you, Dresden. Watch your back.”

  “Gee. Thanks.”

  “No charge.” He paused for a second as someone spoke in the background, then said, “Ivy says to tell your kitty hello for her.” He hung up.

  I put the phone down, thoughtful. When I turned around Thomas was sitting up on the couch. Silently he offered me the business card with Kincaid’s account number and the amount of the bill on it.

  “Found it in the laundry,” he said.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

  “I know,” he replied.

  “You really have that much money?”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore. That was pretty much everything I’d set aside. I hadn’t made a lot of plans for independence. I figured I’d either be dead or running things. I’ve got about fifty bucks to my name now.”

  I sat down on the couch. The puppy snuffled me with his nose and wagged his tail in greeting.

  “Where are you going to go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Guess I can do what my cousin Madrigal does: find some rich girl.” He grimaced. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Look,” I said. “You really saved my ass. Crash here for a while.”

  “I don’t want charity.”

  “It isn’t,” I said. “Think of that money transfer as a rent payment. You can have the couch until you get your feet under you again. It’ll be crowded, maybe, but it isn’t forever.”

  He nodded. “You sure?”

  “Sure.”

  Later Thomas went to the grocery store and I went down to the lab to talk to Bob. I filled him in on events.

  “You’re sure?” Bob asked. “It was He Who Walks Behind?”

  I shivered. “Yeah. Thought I’d killed him.”

  “Walkers aren’t killable, Harry,” Bob said. “When you tore him up before, it banished him from the mortal realm. Might have hurt him, made him take time to heal up. But he’s still out there.”

  “That’s comforting,” I said. I unwrapped my burned hand.

  “Yuck,” said Bob.

  “Can you see anything about the injury?” I asked.

  “Burned meat and nerve damage, looks like,” Bob said. “Hmm, I think it still has reflexes, though. I bet you could use it a little if you did it without thinking about it.”

  I frowned. “You’re right. I think I did during the fight with Raith. But look at this.” I opened my stiff fingers with my right hand.

  There was unburned flesh there, just as the doctor had observed. What he didn’t know was that the unharmed flesh was in the shape of a sigil in angelic script—the name of one of the Fallen angels. Specifically, the same entity imprisoned in an ancient silver coin, at that very moment trapped under two feet of concrete and half a dozen warding spells on the far side of the lab.

  “Lasciel,” Bob said. His voice was worried.

  “I thought she was locked up. I thought she couldn’t touch me from there, Bob.”

  “She can’t,” Bob said, bewildered. “I mean, that’s impossible. There’s no way she sho
uld be able to reach out from there.”

  “Sounds kind of familiar,” I muttered. I wrapped up my hand again. “But that’s what I thought too. And my staff is acting weird. When I start to run power through it, I’m getting excess heat. The runes start glowing like embers and there smoke curling up out of them. Seemed like my workings with the staff were coming out a lot bigger than I wanted, too. Did I blow something on the preparation?”

  “Maybe,” Bob said. “But, uh. Well, it sounds a lot like Hellfire. I hear that some of the Fallen really love it.”

  “What?”

  “Hellfire,” Bob said. “Uh, it’s sort of an alternate power source. Not a pleasant one, but man, you could really turbocharge violent spells with it.”

  “I know what Hellfire is, Bob.”

  “Oh. Right. Why are you using it then, Harry?”

  I said through clenched teeth, “I don’t know. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

  “Hell,” Bob said. “Heh. You made with the funny, boss.”

  I had involuntary access to Hellfire. How had that happened?

  Lasciel’s sigil on my left palm was the only cool spot on my burning hand.

  Hell’s bells. I shook my head and headed for the ladder back up.

  As I left Bob said, “Hey, Harry?”

  “Yeah?”

  The orange lights in the skull glowed eagerly. “Tell me again about Murphy’s ass.”

  Thomas came back from the store later that day. “Got the puppy a bowl and a collar and food and so on. Nice little guy. Real quiet. Don’t think I’ve heard him whine at all.” He tousled the puppy’s ears. “You decide on a name?”

  The puppy cocked his head to one side, ears tilted up with interest, dark little eyes on my face.

  “I never said I was keeping him,” I said.

  Thomas snorted. “Yeah. Right.”

  I frowned down at the puppy. “He’s tiny. He’s grey. He doesn’t make much noise,” I said after a minute. I dropped to a knee and held my hand out to the little dog. “How about Mouse?”

  Mouse bounced straight up in a fit of eager puppy joy and romped over to lick my hand and chew gently on one of my fingers.

  Thomas smiled, though it was a little sad. “I like it,” he said.

  We started putting groceries away, and it was the strangest feeling. I was used to being alone. Now there was someone else in my personal space. Someone I didn’t mind being there. Thomas was all but a stranger, but at the same time he wasn’t. The bond I sensed between us was not made weaker by being inexplicable, no less absolute for being illogical.

  I had a family. Hell, I had a dog.

  This was a huge change. I was happy about it, but at the same time I realized that it was going to be a big adjustment. My place was going to be pretty crowded, pretty fast, but once Thomas got into his own apartment, it would be more normal. I don’t think either one of us wanted to be tripping all over each other every time we turned around.

  I felt myself smiling. It looked like life was looking up.

  I had started feeling a little crowded already, sure. But I took a deep breath and brushed it back. Thomas wouldn’t be here too long, and the dog was certainly a lot smaller than Mister. I could handle a little claustrophobia.

  I frowned at a giant green bag and asked Thomas, “Hey. Why did you get large breed Puppy Chow?”

  Contents

  Dead Beat

  Proven Guilty

  White Night

  Small Favor

  Turn Coat

  Changes

  Praise for The Dresden Files

  “What’s not to like about this series?…I would, could, have, and will continue to recommend [it] for as long as my breath holds out. It takes the best elements of urban fantasy, mixes it with some good old-fashioned noir mystery, tosses in a dash of romance and a lot of high-octane action, shakes, stirs, and serves.”

  —SF Site

  “Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series has consistently been one of the most enjoyable marriages of the fantasy and mystery genres on the shelves…a great series—fast-paced, vividly realized and with a hero/narrator who’s excellent company.”

  —Cinescape

  Dead Beat

  JIM BUTCHER

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Roc hardcover edition.

  Copyright © Jim Butcher, 2005

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 1-101-12844-5

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  For my son.

  The best thing that ever happened to me.

  I love you, Short-stuff.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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

  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 Forty-three

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe another round of thanks to the usual suspects: The inmates of the Beta Foo Asylum, both long-term and recent arrivals. The Dresden Files’ new editor, the warm and gracious Anne Sowards—are you sure you actually live in NYC, Anne? My agent, Jennifer Jackson, who has been doing ten kinds of running around getting various deals put together, and for whom I am most grateful.

  More thanks to my family for their continuing support and love. To Shannon for being who she is, and whose good opinion I would work ten…well, wait, no, maybe three times as hard to keep—okay, okay, five, tops. (Ten would be more hours than exist, babe, and besides, when could I play Halo?) Also thanks to my son JJ, whose boundless energy, enthusiasm, and love are wonderfully intimidating.

  Oh, and also for my ferocious furry bodyguard, Frost, who supports my career by frightening away any bad guys long before they get near enough to actually bother me, and by helping me eat any potentially distracting snacks.

  Chapter

  One

  On the whole, we’re a murderous race.

  According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain’s brother Abel probably never saw it coming.