by Butcher, Jim
“Those defenses are meant to stop a magical assault,” I said. “Not physical entry.”
“Will they keep the zombies out?” Butters asked.
“Yes. But they’ll also keep us in.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Butters asked.
“Nothing,” I said, “until Grevane sets the building on fire. Once they go up, I can’t take them down again. We’ll be trapped.” I ground my teeth. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“But the zombies are out there!” Butters said.
“I’m not the only one who lives here,” I said. “If he burns down the house to get to me, people will die. Thomas, get dressed and get your shoes on. Butters, there’s a ladder under that Navajo rug there. I want you to take a candle and go down it. There’s a black nylon backpack on a table, and a white skull on a wooden shelf. Put the skull in the backpack and bring it to me.”
“What?” Butters said.
“Do it!” I snapped.
Butters scurried over to the Navajo rug, found the trapdoor down to my lab, and grabbed a candle. He disappeared down the ladder.
Thomas put the shotgun down and opened his trunk. It didn’t take him long to get dressed in socks, black combat boots, a white T-shirt, a black leather jacket. Maybe it was part of his supernatural sex-vampire powers—dressing quickly for a hasty getaway.
“You see?” he said while he dressed. “About Butters.”
“Shut up, Thomas,” I said.
“What is the plan?” he said.
I limped over to the phone and put it to my ear. Nothing.
“They cut the phone.”
“We can’t call for help,” Thomas said.
“Right. Only thing we can do is smash our way out to the car.”
Thomas nodded his head with a jerk. “How you want to do it?”
“What do you think?”
“Big old wall of fire would do it. Cover our left flank and keep the bad guys off of us. I’ll take the right flank and shoot anything that moves.”
Fire magic. A sudden memory of my burned hand flashed through my head so intensely that I felt actual, physical pain in the nerve endings that had been destroyed. I thought about what I would need to do to manage the wall Thomas had suggested, and at the mere thought my stomach twisted in revulsion—and worse, with doubt.
For magic to work, you have to believe in it. You have to believe that you can and should perform whatever action you had in mind, or you get zippo. As my hand burned with phantom agony, I realized something I had not admitted, not even to myself.
I wasn’t sure I could use fire magic again.
Ever.
And if I tried it and failed, it would only make it more difficult to focus my will on it again in the future, each failure building a wall that would only grow more difficult to breach. My belief in my powers might never recover.
I looked down at my maimed hand, and for just a second I actually saw the blackened, cracked flesh, my fingers swollen, the whole of it seeping blood and fluid. The second passed, and there was only my hand in its leather glove again, and I knew that beneath the glove it was scarred in various shades of white and red and pink.
I wasn’t ready. God, even to save lives that included my own, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to call up fire again. I stood there feeling helpless and angry and afraid and stupid—and most of all, ashamed.
I shook my head at Thomas and avoided meeting his eyes while I gave him an excuse. “I’m all but done,” I said quietly. “I’ve got to save whatever I have left to block Grevane if he throws power at us directly. I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to do.”
He searched my expression for a second, frowning. Then he shrugged into the jacket, his face grim. He seized the saber in its scabbard and buckled it on with a worn leather belt. He settled it at his hip and picked up the shotgun again. “Guess it’s up to me, then.”
I nodded.
“I’m not sure how hard I’ll be able to push,” he said quietly.
“You handled Black Court vampires pretty well last year,” I said.
“I’d been feeding on Justine every day,” he said. “I had a lot to draw on. Now…” He shook his head. “Now I’m not sure.”
“We aren’t exactly overstaffed here, Thomas.”
He closed his eyes for a second, and then nodded. “Right.”
“Here’s the plan. We get to the Beetle. We drive away.”
“And then what? Where do we go after that?” he asked.
“You don’t see me nitpicking your plans, do you?”
There was a sudden, heavy thump against the steel security door. It rattled in its frame. Bits of dust descended from my ceiling. Then another. And another. Grevane had thrown enough zombies at the wards to wear them out.
Thomas grimaced and looked at my leg. “Can you get up the stairs on your own?”
“I’ll make it,” I said.
Butters came panting up the stepladder from the lab, his face pale. He wore my nylon pack, and I could see Bob the skull making one side of it bulge a little.
“Gun,” I said to Thomas, and he handed me the shotgun. “Right. Here’s how it works. We open the door.” I gestured with the shotgun. “I sweep it clear enough to get Thomas clear of the doorway. Then Thomas goes in front. Butters, I’m going to hand you the shotgun.”
“I don’t like guns,” Butters said.
“You don’t have to like it,” I said. “You just have to carry it. With my leg hurt, I can’t get up the stairs without using my staff.”
The steel door rattled again, the pace of the blows against it increasing.
“Butters,” I snapped. “Butters, you’ve got to take the gun when I hand it to you and follow Thomas. All right?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Once we get up the stairs, Thomas runs interference while I start the car. Butters, you’ll get in the backseat. Thomas gets in and then we leave.”
“Um,” Butters said, “Grevane trashed my car so I couldn’t get away, remember? What if he’s done the same thing to yours?”
I stared at Butters for a second and tried not to show him how much that worried me.
“Butters,” Thomas said quietly, “if we stay here we’re going to die.”
“But if they’ve destroyed the car—” Butters began.
“We’ll die,” Thomas said. “But we don’t have a choice. Whether or not they’ve destroyed it, our only chance of getting out of this alive is to get to the Beetle and hope it runs.”
The little guy got even paler, and then abruptly doubled over and staggered over to the wall beneath one of my high windows. He threw up. He straightened after a minute and leaned back against the wall, shaking. “I hate this,” he whispered, and wiped his mouth. “I hate this. I want to go home. I want to wake up.”
“Get it together, Butters,” I said, my voice tight. “This isn’t helping.”
He let out a wild laugh. “Nothing I can do would help, Harry.”
“Butters, you’ve got to calm down.”
“Calm down?” He waved a shaking hand at the door. “They’re going to kill us. Just like Phil. They’re going to kill us and we’re going to die. You, me, Thomas. We’re all going to die!”
I forgot my bad leg for a second, crossed the room to Butters, and seized him by the front of his shirt. I hauled up until his heels lifted off of the floor. “Listen to me,” I snarled. “We are not going to die!”
Butters stared up at me, pale, his eyes terrified. “We’re not?”
“No. And do you know why?”
He shook his head.
“Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I’m too stubborn to die.” I hauled on the shirt even harder. “And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.”
He blinked.
“Polka will never die!” I shouted at him. “Say it!”
He swallowed. “Polka will never die?”
“Again!”
/>
“P-p-polka will never die,” he stammered.
I shook him a little. “Louder!”
“Polka will never die!” he shrieked.
“We’re going to make it!” I shouted.
“Polka will never die!” Butters screamed.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Thomas muttered.
I shot my half brother a warning look, released Butters, and said, “Get ready to open the door.”
Then the window just over Butters’s head exploded into shards of broken glass. I felt a hot, stinging sensation on my nose. I stumbled, my wounded leg gave out, and I fell.
Butters shrieked.
I looked up in time to see dead grey fingers clutching the little guy by the hair. They hauled him off of his feet, and two more zombie hands latched onto him and pulled him up through the broken window and out of the apartment. It happened so fast, before I could get my good leg under me, before Thomas could draw his saber.
There was a terrified scream from outside. It ended abruptly.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “Butters.”
Chapter
Twenty-three
I stood staring up at the broken window in stunned silence for a second.
“Harry,” Thomas said, quiet urgency in his voice, “we need to go.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not leaving him.”
“He’s probably dead already.”
“If he is,” I said. “It won’t protect him from Grevane. I won’t leave him there.”
“Do we have a chance in a fight?”
I shook my head with a grimace. “Help me up.”
He did. I limped over to the window and shouted, “Grevane!”
“Good evening,” Grevane said, the rich, cultured tones of his voice a marked contrast to the dull, steady pounding at my front door. “My compliments to your contractor. That door is really quite sturdy.”
“I like my privacy,” I called back. “Is the mortician alive?”
“That’s a somewhat fluid term in my experience,” Grevane said. “But he is well enough for the time being.”
My knees wobbled a little in relief. Good. If Butters was still all right, I had to keep Grevane talking. Barely five minutes had passed since the attack began. Even if the bad guys had cut the phone lines to the whole boardinghouse, the neighbors would have heard the racket and watched the light show from my wards. Someone was sure to call the authorities. If I could keep Grevane busy long enough, they would arrive, and I was willing to bet money that Grevane would rabbit rather than take chances this close to his goal. “You’ve got him. I want him.”
“As do I,” Grevane said. “I presume he found the information in the smuggler’s corpse.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And I take it you also know.”
“Yes.”
He made a thoughtful sound. He was very near the broken window, though I couldn’t see him. “That presents a problem for me,” Grevane said. “I have no intention of sharing the Word with anyone. I’m afraid it will be necessary for me to silence you.”
“I’m the least of your worries,” I called back. “Corpsetaker and Li Xian took the information from me this afternoon.”
There was a silence, broken only by the slow, steady pounding on my door.
“If that had happened,” Grevane said, “you would not be alive to speak of it.”
“I got lucky and got away,” I said. “Corpsetaker sounded all hot and bothered about this Darkhallow thing you guys have planned.”
I heard the angry sound of someone spitting. “If you are telling the truth,” Grevane said, “then it profits me nothing to allow you and the mortician to live.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” I said. “But you could just as easily say that it costs you nothing to do it, either. Last night you wanted to make me a deal. You still willing to talk?”
“To what purpose?” he said.
There was the shrieking sound of steel beginning to bend under stress. One corner of the door, up at the top, bent in, letting in cold evening air.
“Hurry,” Thomas urged me. “We have to do something fast.”
“Give me Butters,” I said to Grevane. “I’ll give you the information I found.”
“You offer me nothing. I have him already,” Grevane said. “I can extract the information from him myself.”
“You could,” I said, “if he knew it. He doesn’t.”
Grevane snarled something in a language I didn’t understand. I heard scuffing shoes, then the sound of a slap and a dazed exclamation from Butters. “Is that true?” Grevane asked him. “Do you have the information about the Word?”
“Dunno what it is,” Butters mumbled. “There was a jump drive. Numbers. It was a whole bunch of numbers.”
“What numbers?” Grevane snarled.
“Don’t know. Whole bunch. Can’t remember them all. Harry has them.”
“Liar,” Grevane said. There was the sound of another blow, and Butters cried out.
“I don’t know!” Butters said. “There were too many and I only saw them for a sec—”
Another blow fell, this time with the dull, heavy sound of a closed fist hitting flesh.
I clenched my teeth, rage filling me.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know…” Butters said. It sounded like he was crying.
“Look at me,” Grevane said. “Look.”
I closed my eyes and turned my face a little from the window. I could imagine what was happening. Butters, probably on his knees, being held by a pair of zombies, Grevane standing over him in his trench coat, pinching Butters’s chin between his thumb and forefinger. I could imagine him forcing Butters’s eyes up to meet his, to begin a soulgaze. Grevane wanted to see the inside of Butters’s head, in a swift and harsh attempt to assess the truth.
And Butters would be exposed to the corruption of a soul steeped in dark magic and a lifetime of murder.
I heard a high-pitched little sound that rose rapidly, growing louder and louder until it was a wail of terror and madness. There was no dignity in the sound. No self-control. I would never have recognized it as Butters’s voice if I hadn’t known he was out there. But it was him. Butters screamed, and he kept screaming without pausing to take a breath until it wound down to a frozen, gurgling sound and died away.
“Well?” asked another voice, one I did not recognize. It rasped harshly, as if the man speaking had spent a lifetime imbibing cheap Scotch and cheaper cigars.
“He doesn’t know,” Grevane reported quietly, disgust in his voice.
“You’re sure?” said the second voice. I moved a bit to one side and stood up on tiptoe to peer out the window. I could see the second speaker. It was Liver Spots.
“Yes,” Grevane said. “He doesn’t have any strength to him. If he knew, he’d answer.”
“If you kill the mortician, you’ll have to kill me,” I called. “Of course, I’m the only one with the information, other than Corpsetaker. I’m sure that you psychotic necro-wannabes with delusions of godhood are all about sharing with your fellow maniacs.”
There was silence from outside.
“So you should go ahead and take me out,” I said. “Of course, when I lay down my death curse on you, it’s going to make it that much harder for you to beat out Corpsetaker for the Darkhallow, but what’s life without a few challenges to liven things up?” I paused and then said, “Don’t be an idiot, Grevane. If you don’t deal with me, you’ll be cutting your own throat.”
“Is that what you think?” Grevane said. “Perhaps I will simply walk away.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “Because when Corpsetaker gets her membership to the Mount Olympus Country Club, the first thing she’s going to do is find her nearest rival—you—and rip your pancreas out through your nose.”
The door suddenly bent on a diagonal on the top half, folding it in as if it had been wax paper. The door didn’t quite go down, but I could see dead fing
ers reaching up through it, trying to rip and tear the weakened section.
“Harry,” Thomas said, his voice tight with apprehension. He drew his saber and went to the door. He hacked at dead fingers that appeared in the breach. They spun through the air and landed on the floor, still bending and wriggling like bisected earthworms.
“Make up your mind, Grevane!” I called. “If this goes any further, I’m going to do everything in my power to kill you. I can’t beat you. We both know that. But you won’t get the information out of me against my will. I’m not a pansy. I can push you hard enough to make you kill me.”
“You would have me believe that you would simply commit suicide?” Grevane asked.
“To take you down with me?” I replied. “Oh, hell, yeah. Count on it.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Liver Spots hissed. “Kill him. He knows he’s finished. He’s desperate.”
Which was true, dammit, but the last thing I needed was for someone to point that out to Grevane. A zombie finger flew past my head, and another bounced off my duster and fell to the floor at my feet, still twitching, a long and yellowed fingernail making an unsettling scratching sound against my boot. The pounding on the door got louder, the whole thing rattling in its frame.
And then, just like that, it stopped. Silence fell over the apartment.
“What are your terms?” Grevane asked.
“You release Butters to me,” I said. “You let us drive off with your sidekick in the car. Once we’re away from here, I give him the numbers and drop him off. Mutual truce until sunrise.”
“These numbers,” Grevane said. “What do they mean?”
“I don’t have a clue,” I said. “At least not yet. Neither did Corpsetaker.”
“Then what value do they have?” he asked.
“Someone is bound to figure it out. But if you don’t deal with me now, it sure as hell won’t be you.”
There was another long pause, and then Grevane said, “Give me your pledge that you will abide by the terms.”
“Only in return for yours,” I said.
“You have it,” Grevane said. “I swear it by my power.”
“No,” hissed Liver Spots. “Don’t do this.”