by Butcher, Jim
“I’m fine,” my apprentice answered.
“The security office,” I said.
Sarah stared at me for a second, her eyes intense. “But … but I don’t understand why—”
I put my hand firmly over her mouth. “Sarah,” I said, meeting her eyes for as long as I dared, “I’ve been in trouble before, and I know what I’m doing. I need you to trust me. All right?”
Her eyes widened for a second. She reached up to lightly touch my wrist, and I let her push my hand gently away from her mouth. She swallowed and nodded once.
“There’s no time. We have to find the security office now.”
“A-all right,” she said. “This way.”
She led us off and we followed her, creeping through the cavernous dimness of the unlit mall. Molly leaned in close to me to whisper. “Even if we get the security guards, what are they going to do against something that can do that?”
“They’ll have radios,” I whispered back. “Cell phones. They’ll know all the ways out. If we can’t call in help, they’ll give us the best shot of getting these people out of here in one—”
Lights began flickering on and off—not blinking, not starting up and shutting down in rhythm, but irregularly. First they came on over a section of the third floor for a few seconds. Then they went out. A few seconds later, it was a far section of the second floor. Then they went out. Then light shone from one of the distant wings for a moment and vanished again. It was like watching a child experiment with the switches.
Then the PA system let out a crackle and a little squeal of feedback. It shut off again and came back on. “Testing,” said a dry, rasping voice over the speakers. “Testing one, two, three.”
Sarah froze in place, and then backed up warily, looking at me. I stepped up next to her, and she pressed in close to me, shivering.
“There,” said the voice. It was a horrible thing to listen to—like Linda Blair’s impression of a demon-possessed victim, only less melodious. “I’m sure you all can hear me now.”
And I’d heard such a voice before. “Oh, hell,” I breathed.
“This is Constance,” continued the voice. “Constance Bushnell. I’m sure you all remember me.”
I glanced at Molly, who shook her head. Sarah looked frightened and confused, but when she caught my look, she shook her head, too.
“You might also remember me,” she continued, “as Drulinda.” And then the voice started singing “Happy Birthday.” The tune wasn’t even vaguely close to the actual song, but the “Happy birthday to me” lyrics were unmistakable.
Sarah’s eyes had widened. “Drulinda?”
“Who the hell is Drulinda?” I asked.
Sarah shook her head. “One of our characters. But her player ran away from home or something.”
“And you didn’t recognize her actual name?”
Sarah gave me a slightly guilty glance. “Well, I never played with her much. She wasn’t really very, you know—popular.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Tell me whatever you can about her.”
She shook her head. “Um. About five four, sort of … plain. You know, not ugly or anything, but not really pretty. Maybe a little heavy.”
“Not that.” I sighed. “Tell me something important about her. People make fun of her?”
“Some did,” she said. “I never liked it, but …”
“Crap.” I looked at Molly and said, “Code Carrie. We’re in trouble.”
The horrible, dusty song came to an end. “It’s been a year since I left you,” Drulinda’s voice said. “A year since I found what all you whining losers were looking for. And I decided to give myself a present.” There was a horrible pause, and then the voice said, “You. All of you.”
“Code what?” Molly asked me.
I shook my head. “Sarah, do you know where the announcement system is?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “Administration. Right by—”
“The security office.” I sighed.
Drulinda’s voice continued. “The entrances are closed and watched. But you should feel free to run for them. You all taste so much better when you’ve had time to be properly terrified. I’ve so been looking forward to seeing your reaction to the new me.”
With that, the PA system shut off, but a second later, it started playing music—“Only You,” by the Platters.
“Molly,” I hissed, suddenly realizing the danger. “Veil us, now.”
She blinked at me, then nodded, bowing her head with a frown of concentration and folding her arms across her chest. I felt her gather up her will and release it with a word and a surge of energy that made the air sparkle like diamond dust for a half second.
Inside the veil, the air suddenly turned a few degrees cooler, and the area outside it seemed to become even dimmer than it had been a second before. I could sense the delicate tracery of the veil’s magic in the air around us, though I knew that, from the other side, none of that would be detectable—assuming Molly had done it correctly, of course. Veils were one of her strongest areas, and I was gambling our lives that she had gotten it right.
Not more than a breath or two later, there was a swift pattering sound and a dim blur in the shadows, which ceased moving abruptly maybe twenty feet away and revealed the presence of a vampire of the Black Court.
Drulinda, or so I presumed her to be, was dressed in dark jeans, a red knit sweater, and a long black leather coat. If she’d been heavy in life, death had taken care of that problem for her. She was sunken and shriveled, as bony and dried up as the year-old corpse she now was. Unlike the older vamps of her breed, she still had most of her hair, though it had clearly not been washed or styled. Most of the Black Court I’d run into had never been terribly body conscious. I suppose once you’d seen it rot, there just wasn’t much more that could happen to sway your opinion of it, either way.
Unlike the older vampires I’d faced, she stank. I don’t mean that she carried a little whiff of the grave along with her. I mean she smelled like a year-old corpse that still had a few juicy corners left and wasn’t entirely done returning to the earth. It was noxious enough to make me gag—and I’d spent my day tracking down and dismantling a freaking slime golem.
She stood there for a moment, while the Platters went through the first verse, looking all around her. She’d sensed something, but she wasn’t sure what. The vampire turned a slow circle, her shriveled lips moving in time with the music coming over the PA system, and as she did, two more of the creatures, slower than Drulinda, appeared out of the darkness.
They were freshly made vampires—so much so that for a second, I thought them human. Both men wore brown uniforms identical to Raymond’s. Both were stained with blood, and both had narrow scoops of flesh missing from the sides of their throats—at the jugular and carotid, specifically. They moved stiffly, making many little twitching motions of their arms and legs, as if struggling against the onset of rigor mortis.
“What is it?” slurred one of them. His voice was ragged but not the horrible parody Drulinda’s was.
Her hand blurred, its movement too fast to see. The newborn vampire reacted with inhuman speed, but not nearly enough of it, and the blow threw him from his feet to land on the floor, shattered teeth scattering out from him like coins from a dropped purse. “You can talk,” Drulinda rasped, “when I say you can talk. Speak again, and I will rip you apart and throw you into Lake Michigan. You can spend eternity down there with no arms, no legs, no light, and no blood.”
The vampire, his nose smashed into shapelessness, rose as if he’d just slipped and fallen on his ass. He nodded, his body language twitchy and cringing.
Drulinda’s leathery lips peeled back from yellow teeth stained with drying brownish blood. Then she turned and darted ahead, her footsteps making that light, swift patter on the tiles of the floor. She was gone and around the corner, heading for the bistro, in maybe two or three seconds. The two newbie vampires went after her, if far more slowly.
&n
bsp; “Crap,” I whispered as they vanished. “Dammit, dammit, dammit.”
“What was that, Harry?” Molly whispered.
“Black Court vampires,” I replied, trying not to inhale too deeply. The stench was fading, but it wasn’t gone. “Some of the fastest, strongest, meanest things out there.”
“Vampires?” Sarah hissed, incredulous. She didn’t look so good. Her face was turning green. “No, this is, no, no, no—” She broke off and was violently sick. I avoided joining in by the narrowest of margins. Molly had an easier time of it than I, focused as she was on maintaining the veil over us, but I saw her swallow very carefully.
“Okay, Molly,” I said quietly, “listen to me.”
She nodded, turning abstracted eyes to me.
“Black Court vampires,” I told her. “The ones Stoker’s book outed. All their weaknesses—sunlight, garlic, holy water, symbols of faith. Remember?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Most of the strengths, too. Strong, fast. Don’t look them in the eyes.” I swallowed. “Don’t let them take you alive.”
My apprentice’s eyes flickered with both apprehension and a sudden, fierce fire. “I understand. What do you want me to do?”
“Keep the veil up. Take Sarah here. Find a shady spot and lie low. This should be over in half an hour, maybe less. By then, there’s going to be a ruckus getting people’s attention, one way or another.”
“But I can—”
“Get me killed trying to cover you,” I said firmly. “You aren’t in this league, grasshopper. Not yet. I have to move fast. And I have friends here. I won’t be alone.”
Molly stared at me for a moment, her eyes shining with brief, frustrated tears. Then she nodded once and said, “Isn’t there anything I can do?”
I peered at her, then down at her Birkenstocks. “Yeah. Give me your shoes.”
Molly hadn’t been my apprentice in the bizarre for a year and a half for nothing. She didn’t even blink, much less ask questions. She just took off her shoes and handed them to me.
I put a gentle hand on her shoulder, then touched Sarah’s face until she lifted her eyes to me. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” she whispered.
“Stay with Molly,” I told Sarah. “She’s going to take care of you. Do whatever she says. All right?” I frowned down at her expensive black heels. “Gucci?”
“Prada,” she said in a numb voice.
Being all manly, I know dick about shoes, but hopefully it wouldn’t blow my cover as Thomas’s mystery man. “Give them to me.”
“All right,” she said, and did, too shocked to argue.
Thomas had been right about the larpers. The corpse of Sarah’s innocence lay on the floor along with her last meal, and she was taking it pretty hard.
I fought down a surge of anger and rose without another word, padding out from the protection of Molly’s veil, shoes gripped in one hand, my gun in the other. The .44 might as well have been Linus’s security blanket. It wouldn’t do a thing to help me against a vampire of the Black Court—it just made me feel better.
I went as fast as I could without making an enormous racket and stalked up the nearest stairs—a deactivated escalator. Once I’d reached the second level, I took a right and hurried toward Shoegasm.
It was a fairly spacious shop that had originally occupied only a tiny spot, but after ironing out some early troubles, the prosperous little store had expanded into the space beside it. Now, behind a steel mesh security curtain, the store was arranged in an oh-so-trendy fashion and sported several huge signs that went on with a thematically appropriate orgasmic enthusiasm about the store’s quality money-back guarantee.
“I am totally underappreciated,” I muttered. Then I raised my voice a little, forcing a very slight effort of will, of magic, into the words as I spoke. “Keef! Hey, Keef! It’s Harry Dresden!”
I waited for a long moment, peering through the grating, but I couldn’t see anything in the dim shadows of the store. I took a chance, slipping the silver pentacle amulet from its chain around my neck, and with a murmur willed a whisper of magic through the piece of jewelry. A soft blue radiance began to emanate from the silver, though I tried to keep the light it let out to a minimum. If Drulinda or her vampire buddies were looking even vaguely in my direction, I was going to stand out like a freaking moron holding the only light in an entire darkened shopping mall.
“Keef!” I called again.
The cobb appeared from an expensive handbag hung over the arm of a dressing dummy wearing a pair of six-hundred-dollar Italian boots. He was a tiny thing, maybe ten inches tall, with a big puff of fine white hair like Albert Einstein. He was dressed in something vaguely approximating nineteenth-century urban-European wear—dark trousers, boots, a white shirt, and suspenders. He also wore a leather work belt thick with tiny tools, and he had a pair of odd-looking goggles pushed up over his forehead.
Keef hopped down from the dressing dummy and hurried across the floor to the security grate. He put on a pair of gloves and pulled out a couple of straps from his work belt. Then, nearly as nimble as a squirrel and very careful not to touch the metal with his bare skin, he climbed up the metal grate using a pair of carabiners. Keef was a faerie, one of the Little Folk who dwelled within the shadows and hidden places of our own world, and the touch of steel was painful to him.
“Wizard Dresden,” he greeted me in a Germanic accent as he came level with my head. The cobb’s voice was pitched low, even for someone as tiny as he. “The market this night danger roams. Here you should not be.”
“Don’t I know it,” I replied. “But there are people in danger.”
“Ah,” Keef said. “The mortals you insist to defend. Unwise that battle is.”
“I need your help,” I said.
Keef eyed me and gave me a firm shake of his head. “The walking dead very dangerous are. My people’s blood it could cost. That I will risk not.”
“You owe me, Keef,” I growled.
“Our living. Not our lives.”
“Have it your way,” I said. Then I lifted up one of Sarah’s shoes and, without looking away from the little cobb, snapped the heel off.
“Ach!” Keef cried in horror, his little feet slipping off the metal grate. “Nein!”
There was a chorus of similar gasps and cries from inside Shoegasm.
I held up the other shoe and did it again.
Keef wailed in protest. All of a sudden, thirty of the little cobbs, male and female, pressed up to the security grate. All of them had the same frizzy white hair, all of them dressed like something from Oktoberfest, and all of them were horrified.
“Nein!” Keef wailed again. “Those are Italian leather! Handmade! What are you doing?”
I took a step to my left and held the broken shoes over a trash can.
The cobbler elves gasped, all together, and froze in place.
“Do not do this,” Keef begged me. “Lost all is not. Repaired they can be. Good as new we can fix them. Good as new! Do not throw them away.”
I didn’t waver. “I know things have been hard for your people since cobblers have gone out of business,” I said. “I got you permission for your clan to work here, fixing shoes, in exchange for taking what you need from the vending machine. True?”
“True,” Keef said, his eyes on the broken shoes in my hand. “Wizard, over the trash you need not hold them. If dropped they are, trash they become, and touch them we may not. Lost to all will they be. Anything we both will regret let us not do.”
Anxious murmurs of agreement rose from the other cobbs.
Enough of the stick—it was time to show them the carrot. I held up Molly’s battered old Birkenstocks. The sight made several of the more matronly cobbs cluck their tongues in disapproval.
“I helped set you up with a good deal here at Shoegasm,” I said. “But I can see you’re getting a little crowded. I can get you another good setup—a family, seven kids, mom and dad, all of them active.”
Keef coughed delicately and said, staring anxiously at the broken heels in my hand, “And the shoes?”
“I’ll turn them over to you,” I said, “if you help me.”
Keef narrowed his eyes. “Slaves to you we are,” he snapped. “Threatened and bribed.”
“You know the cause I fight for,” I said. “I protect mortals. I’ve never tried to hide that, and I’ve never lied to you. I need your help, Keef. I’ll do what it takes to get it—but you know my reputation by now. I deal fairly with the Little Folk, and I always show gratitude for their help.”
The leader of the cobbs regarded me steadily for a moment. Nobody likes being strong-armed, not even the Little Folk, who are used to getting walked on, but I didn’t have time for diplomacy.
Keef’s gaze kept getting distracted by the shoes, dangling over the trash can, and he made no answer. The other cobbs all waited, clearly taking their cue from Keef.
“Show of good faith, Keef,” I said quietly. I took the broken shoes and set them gently on the ground in front of the shop. “I’ll trust you and your people to repair them and return them. And I’ll pay in pizza.”
The cobbs gasped, staring at me as if I’d just offered them a map to El Dorado. I heard one of the younger cobbs exclaim, “True, it is!”
“Fleeting, pizza is,” Keef said sternly. “Eternal are shoes and leather goods.”
“Shoes and leather goods,” the rest of the cobbs intoned, their tiny voices solemn.
“Few mortals to the Little Folk show respect, these days,” Keef said quietly. “Or trust. True it is that beneath this roof we are crowded. And unto the wizard, debt is owed.” He gave the shoes a professional glance and nodded once. “Under your terms, and within our means, our aid is given. Your need unto us speak.”
“Scouts,” I said at once. “I know there are Black Court vampires in the mall. I need to know exactly how many and exactly where they are.”
“Done it will be,” Keef barked. “Cobbs!”
There was a little gust of wind, and I was suddenly alone. Oh, and both Sarah’s expensive heels and Molly’s clunky sandals were gone, the latter right out of my hands and so smoothly that I hadn’t even noticed them being taken. I checked, just to be careful, but my own shoes remained safely on my feet, which was a relief. You can’t ever be certain with cobbs. The little faeries, at times, could get awfully fixated upon whatever their particular area of concern might be, and messing around with it was more dangerous than most realized. Despite the metal screen between the cobbs and me, I’d been playing with fire when I held those Pradas over the trash can.