by Butcher, Jim
“Oh shut up,” I said, shuddering. “Neither of us wants that conversation.”
Maybe I imagined it, but it looked like he relaxed slightly. He nodded and closed his eyes again.
“Don’t go back to sleep yet,” I told him. “I still have to take your temperature. It would be awkward.”
“God’s beard, yes,” Morgan said, opening his eyes. I went and got my thermometer, one of the old-fashioned ones filled with mercury. When I came back, Morgan said, “You didn’t turn me in.”
“Not yet,” I said. “I’m willing to hear you out.”
Morgan nodded, accepted the thermometer, and said, “Aleron LaFortier is dead.”
He stuck the thermometer in his mouth, presumably to attempt to kill me with the suspense. I fought back by thinking through the implications, instead.
LaFortier was a member of the Senior Council—seven of the oldest and most capable wizards on the planet, the ones who ran the White Council and commanded the Wardens. He was—had been—skinny, bald, and a sanctimonious jerk. I’d been wearing a hood at the time, so I couldn’t be certain, but I suspected that his voice had been the first of the Senior Council to vote guilty at my trial, and had argued against clemency for my crimes. He was a hard-line supporter of the Merlin, the head of the Council, who had been dead set against me.
All in all, a swell guy.
But he’d also been one of the best-protected wizards in the world. All the members of the Senior Council were not only dangerous in their own rights, but protected by details of Wardens, to boot. Attempted assassinations had been semiregular events during the war with the vampires, and the Wardens had become very, very good at keeping the Senior Council safe.
I did some math from there.
“It was an inside job,” I said quietly. “Like the one that killed Simon at Archangel.”
Morgan nodded.
“And they blamed you?”
Morgan nodded and took the thermometer out of his mouth. He glanced at it, and then passed to me. I looked. Ninety-nine and change.
I met his eyes and said, “Did you do it?”
“No.”
I grunted. I believed him.
“Why’d they finger you?”
“Because they found me standing over LaFortier’s body with the murder weapon in my hand,” he replied. “They also turned up a newly created account, in my name, with several million dollars in it, and phone records that showed I was in regular contact with a known operative of the Red Court.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Gosh. That was irrational of them, to jump to that conclusion.”
Morgan’s mouth turned up in a small sour smile.
“What’s your story?” I asked him.
“I went to bed two nights ago. I woke up in LaFortier’s private study in Edinburgh, with a lump on the back of my head and a bloody dagger in my hand. Simmons and Thorsen burst into the room maybe fifteen seconds later.”
“You were framed.”
“Thoroughly.”
I exhaled a slow breath. “You got any proof? An alibi? Anything?”
“If I did,” he said, “I wouldn’t have had to escape custody. Once I realized that someone had gone to a lot of effort to set me up to take the blame, I knew that my only chance—” He broke off, coughing.
“Was to find the real killer,” I finished for him. I passed him the drink again, and he choked down a few sips, slowly relaxing.
A few minutes later, he turned exhausted eyes to mine. “Are you going to turn me in?”
I looked at him for a silent minute, and then sighed. “It’d be a lot easier.”
“Yes,” Morgan said.
“You sure you were going down for it?”
Something in his expression became even more remote than usual. He nodded. “I’ve seen it often enough.”
“So I could leave you hanging out to dry.”
“You could.”
“But if I did that, we wouldn’t find the traitor. And since you’d died in his place, he’d be free to continue operating. More people would get killed, and the next person he framed—”
“—might be you,” Morgan finished.
“With my luck?” I said glumly. “No might about it.”
The brief sour smile appeared on his face again.
“They’re using tracking spells to follow you,” I said. “I assume you’ve taken some kind of countermeasure, or they’d already be at the door.”
He nodded.
“How long is it going to last?”
“Forty-eight hours. Sixty at the most.”
I nodded slowly, thinking. “You’re running a fever. I’ve got some medical supplies stashed. I’ll get them for you. Hopefully we can keep it from getting any worse.”
He nodded again, and then his sunken eyes closed. He’d run out of gas. I watched him for a minute, then turned and started gathering up my things.
“Keep an eye on him, boy,” I said to Mouse.
The big dog settled down on the floor beside the bed.
Forty-eight hours. I had about two days to find the traitor within the White Council—something no one had been able to do during the past several years. After that, Morgan would be found, tried, and killed—and his accomplice, your friendly neighborhood Harry Dresden, would be next.
Nothing motivates like a deadline.
Especially the literal kind.
Chapter Three
I got in my busted-up old Volkswagen bug, the mighty Blue Beetle, and headed for the cache of medical supplies.
The problem with hunting down the traitor in the White Council was simple: because of the specific information leaks that had occurred, there were a limited number of people who could have possessed the information. The suspect pool was damn small—just about everyone in it was a member of the Senior Council, and everyone there was beyond reproach.
The second someone threw an accusation at one of them, things were going to get busy, and fast. If an innocent was fingered, they would react the same way Morgan had. Knowing full well that the justice of the Council was blind, especially to annoying things like facts, they would have little choice but to resist.
One punky young wizard like me bucking the system was one thing, but when one of the heavyweights on the Senior Council did it, there would be a world of difference. The Senior Council members all had extensive contacts in the Council. They all had centuries of experience and skill to back up enormous amounts of raw strength. If one of them put up a fight, it would mean more than resisting arrest.
It would mean internal strife like the White Council had never seen.
It would mean civil war.
And, under the circumstances, I couldn’t imagine anything more disastrous for the White Council. The balance of power between the supernatural nations was a precarious thing—and we had barely managed to hang on throughout the war with the Vampire Courts. Both sides were getting their wind back now, but the vampires could replace their losses far more quickly than we could. If the Council dissolved into infighting now, it would trigger a feeding frenzy amongst our foes.
Morgan had been right to run. I knew the Merlin well enough to know that he wouldn’t blink twice before sacrificing an innocent man if it meant holding the Council together, much less someone who might actually be guilty.
Meanwhile, the real traitor would be clapping his hands in glee. One of the Senior Council was already down, and if the Council as a whole didn’t implode in the next few days, it would become that much rifer with paranoia and distrust, following the execution of the most capable and highly accomplished combat commander in the Wardens. All the traitor would need to do was rinse and repeat, with minor variations, and sooner or later something would crack.
I would only get one shot at this. I had to find the guilty party, and I had to be right and irrefutable the very first time.
Colonel Mustard, in the den, with the lead pipe.
Chapter Four
About five minutes after I left Thoma
s’s place, I found myself instinctively checking the rearview mirror every couple of seconds and recognized the quiet tension that had begun to flow through me. My gut was telling me that I’d picked up a tail.
Granted, it was only an intuition, but hey. Wizard, over here. My instincts had earned enough credibility to make me pay attention to them. If they told me someone was following me, it was time to start watching my back.
If someone was following me, it wasn’t necessarily connected to the current situation with Morgan. I mean, it didn’t absolutely have to be, right? But I hadn’t survived a ton of ugly furballs by being thick all of the time. Generally, maybe, but not all the time, and I’d be an idiot to assume that my sudden company was unconnected to Morgan.
I took a few turns purely for fun, but I couldn’t spot any vehicles following mine. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. A good surveillance team, working together, could follow a target all but invisibly, especially at night, when every car on the road looked pretty much like the same pair of headlights. Just because I couldn’t see them didn’t mean that they weren’t there.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt my shoulders ratcheting tighter with each passing streetlight.
What if my pursuer wasn’t in a car?
My imagination promptly treated me to visions of numerous winged horrors, soaring silently on batlike wings just above the level of the ambient light of the city, preparing to dive down upon the Blue Beetle and tear it into strips of sheet metal. The streets were busy, as they almost always were in this part of town. It was one hell of a public location for a hit, but that didn’t automatically preclude the possibility. It had happened to me before.
I chewed on my lower lip and thought. I couldn’t go back to my apartment until I was sure that I had shaken the tail. To do that, I’d have to spot him.
I wasn’t going to get through the next two days without taking some chances. I figured I might as well get started.
I drew in a deep breath, focused my thoughts, and blinked slowly, once. When I opened my eyes again, I brought my Sight along with them.
A wizard’s Sight, his ability to perceive the world around him in a vastly broadened spectrum of interacting forces, is a dangerous gift. Whether it’s called spirit vision, or inner sight, or the Third Eye, it lets you perceive things you’d otherwise never be able to interact with. It shows you the world the way it really is, matter all intertwined with a universe of energy, of magic. The Sight can show you beauty that would make angels weep humble tears, and terrors that the Black-Goat-with-a-Thousand-Young wouldn’t dare use for its kids’ bedtime stories.
Whatever you see, the good, the bad, the insanity-inducing—it sticks with you forever. You can’t ever forget it, and time doesn’t blur the memories. It’s yours. Permanently.
Wizards who run around using their Sight willy-nilly wind up bonkers.
My Third Eye showed me Chicago, in its true shape, and for a second I thought I had been teleported to Vegas. Energy ran through the streets, the buildings, the people, appearing to me as slender filaments of light that ran this way and that, plunging into solid objects and out the other side without interruption. The energies coursing through the grand old buildings had a solid and unmoving stability about them, as did the city streets—but the rest of it, the random energies generated by the thoughts and emotions of eight million people, was completely unplanned and coursed everywhere in frenetic, haphazard, garish color.
Clouds of emotion were interspersed with the flickering campfire sparks of ideas. Heavy flowing streams of deep thought rolled slowly beneath blazing, dancing gems of joy. The muck of negative emotions clung to surfaces, staining them darker, while fragile bubbles of dreams floated blissfully toward kaleidoscope stars.
Holy crap. I could barely see the lines on the road through all of that.
I checked over my shoulder, seeing each occupant of the cars behind me clearly, as brilliantly lit shapes of white that skittered with other colors that changed with thoughts, moods, and personalities. If I’d been closer to them, I’d have been able to see more details about them, though they would be subject to my subconscious interpretation. Even at this distance, though, I could tell that they were all mortals.
That was a relief, in some ways. I’d be able to spot any wizard strong enough to be one of the Wardens. If whoever was pursuing me was a normal, it was almost certain that the Wardens hadn’t caught up to Morgan yet.
I checked up above me and—
Time froze.
Try to imagine the stench of rotten meat. Imagine the languid, arrhythmic pulsing of a corpse filled with maggots. Imagine the scent of stale body odor mixed with mildew, the sound of nails screeching across a chalkboard, the taste of rotten milk, and the flavor of spoiled fruit.
Now imagine that your eyes can experience those things, all at once, in excruciating detail.
That’s what I saw: a stomach-churning, nightmare-inducing mass, blazing like a lighthouse beacon upon one of the buildings above me. I could vaguely make out a physical form behind it, but it was like trying to peer through raw sewage. I couldn’t get any details through the haze of absolute wrongness that surrounded it as it bounded from the edge of one rooftop to another, moving more than fast enough to keep pace with me.
Someone screamed, and I dimly noted that it was probably me. The car hit something that made it shriek in protest. It jounced hard up and down, wham-wham. I’d drifted into the curb. I felt the front wheels shimmy through the steering wheel, and I slammed on the brakes, still screaming, as I fought to close my Third Eye.
The next thing I knew, car horns were blaring an impatient symphony.
I was sitting in the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel until my knuckles were white. The engine had died. Judging from the dampness on my cheeks, I must have been crying—unless I’d started foaming at the mouth, which, I reflected, was a distinct possibility.
Stars and stones. What on God’s green earth was that thing?
Even brushing against the subject in my thoughts was enough to bring the memory of the thing back to me in all its hideous terror. I flinched and squeezed my eyes shut, shoving hard against the steering wheel. I could feel my body shaking. I don’t know how long it took me to fight my way clear of the memory—and when I did, everything was the same, only louder.
With the clock counting down, I couldn’t afford to let the cops take me into custody for a DWI, but that’s exactly what would happen if I didn’t start driving again, assuming I didn’t actually wreck the car first. I took a deep breath and willed myself not to think of the apparition—
I saw it again.
When I came back, I’d bitten my tongue, and my throat felt raw. I shook even harder.
There was no way I could drive. Not like this. One stray thought and I could get somebody killed in a collision. But I couldn’t remain there, either.
I pulled the Beetle up onto the sidewalk, where it would be out of the street at least. Then I got out of the car and started walking away. The city would tow me in about three point five milliseconds, but at least I wouldn’t be around to get arrested.
I stumbled down the sidewalk, hoping that my pursuer, the apparition, wasn’t—
When I looked up again, I was curled into a ball on the ground, muscles aching from cramping so tight. People were walking wide around me, giving me nervous sidelong glances. I felt so weak that I wasn’t sure I could stand.
I needed help.
I looked up at the street signs on the nearest corner and stared at them until my cudgeled brain finally worked out where I was standing.
I rose, forced to lean on my staff to stay upright, and hobbled forward as quickly as I could. I started calculating prime numbers as I walked, focusing on the process as intently as I would any spell.
“One,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen . . .”
And I staggered through the night, literally too terrified to think
about what might be coming after me.
Chapter Five
By the time I’d reached twenty-two hundred and thirty-nine, I’d arrived at Billy and Georgia’s place.
Life had changed for the young werewolves since Billy had graduated and started pulling in serious money as an engineer, but they hadn’t moved out of the apartment they’d had in college. Georgia was still in school, learning something psychological, and they were saving for a house. Good thing for me. I wouldn’t have been able to walk to the suburbs.
Georgia answered the door. She was a tall woman, lean and willowy, and in a T-shirt and loose, long shorts, she looked smarter than she did pretty.
“My God,” she said, when she saw me. “Harry.”
“Hey, Georgia,” I said. “Twenty-two hundred and . . . uh. Forty-three. I need a dark, quiet room.”
She blinked at me. “What?”
“Twenty-two hundred and fifty-one,” I responded, seriously. “And send up the wolf-signal. You want the gang here. Twenty-two hundred and, uh . . . sixty . . . seven.”
She stepped back from the door, holding the door open for me. “Harry, what are you talking about?”
I came inside. “Twenty-two hundred and sixty . . . not divisible by three, sixty-nine. I need a dark room. Quiet. Protection.”
“Is something after you?” Georgia said.
Even with the help of Eratosthenes, when Georgia asked the question and my brain answered it, I couldn’t keep the image of that thing from invading my thoughts, and it drove me to my knees and would have sent me all the way to the floor—except that Billy caught me before I could get there. He was a short guy, maybe five six, but he had the upper body of a professional wrestler and moved with the speed and precision of a predator.
“Dark room,” I gasped. “Call in the gang. Hurry.”
“Do it,” Georgia said, her voice low and urgent. She shut the door and locked it, then slammed down a heavy wooden beam the size of a picnic table’s bench that they had installed themselves. “Get him into our room. I’ll make the calls.”