by Butcher, Jim
The big dog’s jaws didn’t snap closed—but the tips of his teeth sank into flesh, and he held Thomas there, a growl bubbling from his chest. My brother’s hand flailed, reaching for the poker that hung beside the fireplace. Mouse took note of it and gave Thomas a warning shake, his teeth sinking a tiny bit deeper. My brother didn’t quit reaching for the weapon, and I saw the tension gathering in the big dog’s body.
I came rushing back into myself all at once and said, weakly, “Thomas.”
He froze. Mouse cocked an ear toward me.
“Thomas,” I croaked. “Don’t. He’s protecting the girl.”
Thomas let out a gasping, pained sound. Then I saw him grimace and force himself to relax, to surrender. His body slowly eased away from its fighting tension, and he held up both hands palms out, and lifted his chin a little higher.
“Okay,” he rasped. “Okay. It’s okay now.”
“Show me your eyes,” I said.
He did. They were a shade of pale, pale grey, with only flecks of reflective hunger dancing through them.
I grunted. “Mouse.”
Mouse backed off slowly, gradually easing the pressure of his jaws, gently taking his teeth out of Thomas’s throat. He took a pair of steps back and then sat down, head lowered to a fighting crouch that kept his own throat covered. He kept facing Thomas, made no sound, and didn’t move. It looked odd and eerie on the big dog.
“Can’t stay here,” Thomas said. The bite wounds in his throat looked swollen, angry. Their edges were slightly blackened, as if the dog’s teeth had been red- hot. “Not with her like that.” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t mean to. Sorry.”
I looked at Molly, who was curled into a fetal position and shaking, still breathing hard.
“Get out,” I said.
“How will you—”
“Thomas,” I said, and my voice was slightly stronger, hot with anger. “You could have hurt Molly. You could have killed her. My only defense is down here babysitting you instead of standing guard. Get out. You’re no good to me like this.”
Mouse let out another warning growl.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said again. “I’m sorry.”
Then he eased around Mouse and departed, his feet making little sound as he went up the stairs.
I sat there for a moment, hurting in practically every sense. My entire body tingled with unpleasant pinpricks, as though it had gone to sleep and was only now feeling the return of circulation. The soulfire. I must have pushed too much of it through me. Terror- adrenaline must have kept me rolling for a little while, but after that, I’d collapsed into pure passivity.
Terror on behalf of my brother and Molly had given me back my voice, my will, but it might not last. It hurt to sit upright. It hurt to breathe. Moving anything hurt, and not moving anything hurt.
So, I supposed, I might as well be moving.
I tried to get up, but my left leg wasn’t having any of it, and I was lucky not to end up on the floor. Without being told, Mouse got up and hurried into my room. I heard some heavy thumping as he rustled around under my bed, which had required him to lift it onto his massive shoulders. He came out a moment later, carrying one of my crutches, left over from injuries past, in his teeth.
“Who’s a good dog?” I said.
He wagged his tail at me and went back for the other one. Once I had them both, I was able to get up and gimp my way over to the kitchen. Tylenol 3 is good stuff, but it is also illegal stuff to have without a prescription if you aren’t Canadian, so it was currently buried in my godmother’s insane garden. I took a big dose of Tylenol the original, since I didn’t have my Tylenol 3 or its lesser- known, short-lived cousin, Tylenol Two: The Pain Strikes Back.
I realized that I was telling Mouse all of this out loud as I thought it, which had the potential to become awkward if it should become a habit. Once that was done, and I’d drunk a third glass of water, I moved over to Molly and checked her pulse. It was steady. Her breathing had slowed. Her eyes were slightly open and unfocused.
I muttered under my breath. The damned girl was going to get herself killed. This was the second time she’d come very close to being fed upon by a vampire, though admittedly the first had been in a vicarious fashion. Still, it couldn’t be good for her to be hit with it again. And if Thomas had actually begun to feed on her, there was no telling what it might do to her.
“Molly,” I said. Then louder, “Molly!”
She drew in a sudden little breath and blinked up at me.
“You’re smearing paint all over my rug,” I said wearily.
She sat up, looking down at herself and at the green paint smeared all over her. She looked up at me again, dazed. “What just happened?”
“You soulgazed Thomas. You both lost perspective. He nearly ate you.” I poked her with a crutch. “Mouse saved you. Get up.”
“Right,” she said. “Right.” She stood up very slowly, wincing and rubbing at one wrist. “Um. Is . . . is Thomas all right?”
“Mouse nearly killed him,” I said. “He’s scared, ashamed, half out of his mind with hunger, and gone.” I thumped her leg lightly with my crutch. “What were you thinking?”
Molly shook her head. “If you’d seen . . . I mean, if you’d seen him. Seen how lonely he was. Felt how much pain he was in, how empty he feels, Harry . . .” She teared up again. “I’ve never felt anything so horrible in my life. Or seen anyone braver.”
“Apparently, you figured you’d help him out by letting him rip the life out of you.”
She faced me for a moment, then flushed and looked away. “He . . . It doesn’t get ripped out. It gets . . .” She blushed. “I think the only phrase that works is ‘licked away.’ Like licking the frosting off of a cake. Or . . . or the candy coating off of one of those lollipops.”
“Except that as soon as you find out how many licks it takes him to get to your creamy center, you’re dead,” I said. “Or insane. Which is somewhat chilling to consider, given the things you can do. So I repeat.” I thumped her leg with the tip of my crutch on each word. “What. Were. You. Thinking.”
“It won’t happen again,” she said, but I saw her shiver as she said it.
I grunted skeptically, staring down at her.
Molly wasn’t ready. Not for something like we were about to do. She had too much confidence and not nearly enough sound judgment.
It was frustrating. By the time I had been her age, I had finished my apprenticeship in private investigation and was opening my own business. And I had been living under the Doom of Damocles for the better part of a decade.
Of course, I had an experience advantage on Molly. I had made my first dark compact, with my old master Justin DuMorne, when I was ten or eleven, though I hadn’t known what I was getting into at the time. I’d made a second one with the Leanansidhe when I was sixteen. And I’d wound up under round-the-clock observation from the paranoid Warden Morgan.
It had been a brief lifetime for me, at that point, but absolutely chock-full of lessons in the school of hard knocks. I had made plenty of dumb decisions of my own by then, and somehow managed to survive them.
But I also hadn’t been dallying around in situations as hot as this one was. A troll under a bridge or an upset spirit or two was as bad as it got. It had prepared me for what I faced today.
Molly was facing it cold. She’d been burned once before, but it had taken me more than one attempt to learn that lesson.
She might not survive her next test.
She looked up at me and asked, “What?”
“We need to move,” I said. “I met the Eebs while you three were playing with the Ik’k’ . . . with the Ik’koo-koo-kachoo . . .” I scrunched up my nose, trying to remember the name of the creature, and couldn’t. “With the Ick,” I said, “and they were charming in an entirely amoral, murderous sort of way. Thomas was right: They’ll be after me, looking for an opening. We’re going.”
“Where?”
“St. Mary’s,” I
said. “The Red Court can’t walk on holy ground, and Susan knows I’ve used it as a fallback position before. She and Martin can catch up to me there. And I’ve got to get some rest.”
She rose, nodding. “Okay. Okay, I’ll get you a change of clothes, all right?”
“Call a cab first,” I said. “And pack the Tylenol. And some of Mouse’s food.”
“Right. Okay.”
I leaned on my crutches and stayed standing while she bustled around the room. I didn’t want to risk sitting down again. The Tylenol had taken the worst edge off the pain, and my thoughts, though tired and sluggish, seemed to be firmly connected to my body again. I didn’t want to risk relaxing into lassitude.
“Say that five times fast,” I murmured, and tried. It was something to do that I couldn’t screw up too badly.
A while later, Mouse made a whuffing sound from the top of the stairs outside, and Molly plodded up them wearily. “Cab’s here, Harry,” she called.
I got myself moving. Stairs on crutches isn’t fun, but I’d done it before. I took my time, moving slowly and steadily.
“Look out!” she yelled.
A bottle smashed against the top interior wall of the stairwell, and its contents splashed all over the place, fire spreading over them as they did. Ye olde Molotov cocktail, still a formidable weapon even after a century of use. There’s more to one of those things than simple burning fuel. Fire that hot sucks the oxygen out of the air around it, especially when it has a nice, dank stairway to use as a chimney. And you needn’t get splattered by the spilling fuel to get burned. When a fire is hot enough, it’ll burn exposed flesh from inches or feet away, turning the atmosphere around it into an oven.
I was only on the second or third step up from the bottom, but I staggered back before anything could get roasted—been there, done that, not going back. I tried to fall onto my uninjured side, figuring that it deserved a chance to join in the fun, too. I landed more or less the way I wanted to, and it hurt like hell, but at least I didn’t faint. I screamed, though, a number of vitriolic curses, as fire roared above me, leaping from my little stairwell to the rest of the house, chewing into the old wood like a hungry, living thing.
“Harry!” Molly called from somewhere beyond the flames. “Harry!”
Mouse let out a heartsick-sounding bay, and I saw fire beginning to climb the sides of the house. The fire was starting from the outside. By the time it started setting off fire alarms, it would be too late to escape.
At this time of night, somewhere up above me, Mrs. Spunkelcrief was asleep and unaware of the danger. And on the second floor, my elderly neighbors, the Willoughbys, would be in similar straits, and all because they were unlucky enough to live in the same building as me.
I’d dropped one of my crutches up on the stairs and one end had caught on fire. There was no way I was pulling much in the way of magic out of my hat, not until I’d had food and some rest. Hell’s bells, for that matter I didn’t know if I could stand up on my own. But if I didn’t do something, three innocent people—plus myself—were going to die in a fire.
“Come on, Harry,” I said. “You aren’t half-crippled. You’re half-competent.”
The fire roared higher, and I didn’t believe myself for a second.
But I put my hands on the ground and began heaving myself upright. “Do or die, Dresden,” I told myself fiercely, and firmly ignored the fear pounding in my chest. “Do or die.”
The dying really did seem a lot more likely.
Chapter Twenty-eight
I looked up at my apartment’s ceiling, hobbling along on my crutch. I found the spot I thought would be the middle of Mrs. S’s living room and noted that one of my old sofas was directly beneath it.
Using the crutch as a lever, I slipped one end of it behind one of my big old bookcases and heaved. The bookcase shuddered and then fell in a great crash of paperback novels and hardwood shelves, smashing down onto my couch. I grunted in satisfaction and climbed up onto the fallen bookcase, using its back as a ramp. I crawled painfully up to the end of the ramp, lifted my right hand, and triggered one of the rings I wore there.
They were magical tools, created to retain a little bit of kinetic energy every time I moved my arm, and when they were operating at capacity they packed one hell of a lot of energy—and I had freshly charged them up on the punching bag. When I cut loose with the ring, invisible force struck my ceiling, blowing completely through it and through the floor of the room above, tearing at faded carpeting the color of dried mustard.
I adjusted my aim a little and blew the entire charge out of the ring on the next finger, and another one after that, each one blasting the opening wider, until it was big enough that I thought I ought to fit through it.
I hooked the padded end of my crutch over the broken end of a thick floor joist and used it to haul myself up to my good leg. Then I tossed the crutch up through the hole and reached up to pull myself through.
Mister let out a harsh, worried meow, and I froze in place. My cat was still in my apartment.
I looked wildly around the room for him, and found him crouching in his usual favorite spot atop the highest bookshelf. His hair stood on end and every muscle on him seemed tight and strained.
I’d already tossed the crutch through. If I went back for him, I might not be able to stand once I’d made it back to the ramp. I had no idea how I’d hold him while climbing up, assuming I could do it at all. Mister weighs the next-best thing to thirty pounds. That’s one hell of a handicap on a pull-up.
For that matter, if the fire spread as quickly as I thought it would, the extra time it took might mean that I wound up trapped with no exit. And there would be no one to help Mr. S and the Willoughbys.
I loved my cat. He was family.
But as I stared at him I knew that I couldn’t help him.
“Unless you use your flipping brain, Harry,” I snapped at myself. “Duh. Never quit. Never quit.”
The sunken windows around my apartment were too small to be a means of escape for me, but Mister could clear them with ease. I took aim, used a single charge from my ring, and shattered the sunken window closest to the cat. Mister took the hint at once, and prowled down the tops of two bookcases. It was a five- foot leap from the top of the shelf to the window well, but Mister made it look casual. I felt myself grinning fiercely as he vanished through the broken window and into the cool air of the October night.
Stars and stones, at least I’d accomplished one positive thing that day.
I turned, reached up into the opening with my arms straight over my head, and hopped as hard as I could with one leg. It wasn’t much of a leap, but it was enough to let me get my arms through and my elbows wedged against either side of the opening. My ribs were on fire as I kicked and wriggled my way up through the hole and hauled myself into Mrs. Spunkelcrief’s living room.
It had last been decorated in the seventies, judging by the mustard yellow carpet and the olive green wallpaper, and it was full of furniture and knickknacks. I dragged myself all the way through the hole, knocking over a little display stand of collector’s plates as I did. The room was dimly lit by the growing flames outside. I grabbed my crutch, climbed to my feet through screaming pain, and hobbled farther into the apartment.
I found Mrs. S in the apartment’s one bedroom. She was sleeping mostly sitting up, propped on a pile of pillows. Her old television was on, sans volume, with subtitles appearing at the bottom of the screen. I gimped over to her and shook her gently.
She woke up with a start and slugged me with one tiny fist. I fell backward onto my ass, more out of pure surprise than anything else, and grimaced in pain—from the fall, not the punch. I shook it off and looked up again, to find the little old lady holding a little revolver, probably a .38. In her hands, it looked magnum-sized. She held it like she knew what she was doing, too, in two hands, peering down at me through the gun’s sights.
“Mr. Dresden!” she said, her voice squeaky. “How dare you!�
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“Fire!” I said. “Mrs. S, there’s a fire! A fire!”
“Well, I won’t fire if you just sit still,” she said in a querulous tone. She took her left hand off the gun and reached for her phone. “I’m calling the police. You hold real still or I gotta shoot you. No bluff. This here is a grandfathered gun. Legal and proper.”
I tried to point toward the bedroom door without moving my body, indicating it with my fingertips and tilts of my head.
“Are you on drugs, boy?” she said, punching numbers on the phone without looking. “You are acting like a crazy junkie. Coming into an old woman’s . . .” She glanced past me, where there was some fairly bright light flickering wildly in the hallway outside the bedroom.
I kept wiggling my fingers and nodding toward it, desperately.
Mrs. S’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “Fire!” she said abruptly. “There’s a fire right there!”
I nodded frantically.
She lowered the gun and started kicking her way clear of covers and pillows. She wore flannel pajamas, but grabbed at a blue robe in any case and hurried toward the door. “Come on, boy! There’s a fire!”
I struggled desperately to my feet and started hobbling out. She turned to look at me, apparently surprised that she was moving faster than I was. You could hear the fire now, and smoke had begun to thicken the air.
I pointed up at the ceiling and shouted, “The Willoughbys! Willoughbys!”
She looked up. “Lord God almighty!” She turned and hurried down the hall, coming within ten feet of a wall that was already becoming a sheet of flame. She grabbed at something, cursed, then pulled her robe down over her hand and picked up something, using the material as an oven mitt. She hurried over to me with a ring of keys. “Come on! The front door’s already going up! Out the back!”
We both hurried out the back door of the house and into its minuscule little yard, and I saw at once that the entire front side of the house was aflame.
The stairs up to the Willoughbys’ place were already on fire.