by Butcher, Jim
“So, yeah,” I said. “You may have anger issues where Maggie is concerned, Harry.”
Heh. You think?
“Got a rocket,” I sang, “in your pocket. Turn off the juice, boy.”
Show tunes? Really? It wasn’t bad enough that you’ve started talking to yourself, man. Now you’re doing performing art.
But the musically inclined me had a point.
“Play it cool, boy,” I whispered. “Real cool.”
I approached the Big Hoods’ lair obliquely and cautiously. One might even accuse me of being overly cautious. I circled the lair from all angles, including up above, in a slow, spiral-shaped pattern that only gradually drew closer. I held a veil over myself the entire time, too. It wasn’t any easier as a ghost than it had been in the flesh, and I still couldn’t throw the greatest veil in the world, but I managed to make myself if not invisible, at least difficult to see.
I wasn’t there to fight. I was there to learn. Mort needed my help, but maybe the best way to give it to him wasn’t to go charging in like a rogue rhinoceros. Knowledge is power. I needed all the power I could get if I was going to help Morty.
The problem was that the Grey Ghost had apparently marshaled supporters of both the spirit and the flesh—and I couldn’t fight the damned crazy thugs who just happened to be made of solid matter. I’d need help. Maybe I could hop into Morty again and toss out enough power to let him run away—but that assumed Morty would let me step in at all. He sure as hell didn’t seem to like it the first time. It also assumed that he would be free and able to physically escape, and that I could neutralize his material captors. There was no guarantee either of those things would be the case.
I thought that the tip from Nick was a good one. I think he had identified the right bunch of yahoos, and I had faith in his knowledge of Chicago streets. After a lifetime walking them—and surviving—Nick was an expert. Chicago PD’s gang unit sometimes went to him for advice. Sometimes he even gave it to them.
But any expert could be wrong. If the Grey Ghost was wily enough to have a hideout separate from its material mooks’ living quarters and had stashed Mort there, I was about to waste a whole lot of time. But how would it get a setup of its own without physical help to establish it? If it was strong enough, I supposed, it could have a demesne of its own in the Nevernever—the spirit world. I’d dealt with a ghost named Agatha Hagglethorn once, and she’d had her own little pocket dimension filled with a Victorian-era copy of Chicago.
(It burned down.)
(I was not responsible.)
Anyway, I had to wonder if the Grey Ghost didn’t have a similar resource. It would make one fine hidey-hole to avoid annoying things like sunrise, daylight, and recently deceased wizards.
I paused for a moment to consider a notion. I wondered if I could establish a demesne of my own. I mean, theoretically, I knew how it would work. Granted, there’s as much space between theory and practice in magic as there is in physics, but it isn’t an unbridgeable gap. I was reasonably sure that it could be done. Maybe I could get Butters to let me talk shop with Bob for a few minutes. He’d know what I needed to make it happen, I was sure.
But what would I make it look like? I mean . . . in theory, I could make it practically anything I wanted. I’m sure there would be some kind of energy-to-area requirement that would limit it in absolute terms, but if I wanted, I could make it look like the Taj Mahal or the old Aladdin’s arcade where I used to play video games, back before my magic made it all but impossible. I could have a mansion. I could probably make some kind of simulacrum of a butler, if I wanted.
I sighed. Bob would, I was certain, suggest simulacrum French maids tottering around in stiletto heels as his first and most conservative contribution. It would only get more depraved from there.
In the end, there was really only one of a couple of things my demesne could possibly be: a Burger King restaurant or my old apartment. The one that had burned with the rest of my life.
Suddenly, there was no appeal in considering my own demesne anymore.
“Stop wasting time,” I told myself.
I shook off the thoughts and continued my stalk of the Big Hoods’ clubhouse, sniffing around for possible magical defenses; alarm spells seemed most likely, but I had to assume that a ghostly sorcerer could create as much destructive mayhem as a mortal one. I could run into anything from ill-tempered guardian entities to a magical equivalent of claymore antipersonnel mines.
Hell, I’d seen a vampire’s nest that used actual AP mines. Nasty toys. I would be keeping an eye out for any physical defenses as well, in the event I needed to warn Murphy or her crew about them when I showed up for the actual rescue operation.
“For the op,” I corrected myself. “Sounds cooler if you call it the op.” I moved closer, veil in place, senses tuned to the possibility of danger. “Definitely. Murphy would call it the op.”
The entrance to the hideout was just where Nick had said it would be, beneath an overpass where a steel door had once led to an old cityworks storage area. I found no suspect magic in the immediate area around the bridge, which made sense. If I had been spreading detection spells around my own hideout, I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to set them up where the sunrise would obliterate them every morning.
To make something that lasted longer than a day or two at most, considerable effort was required. At the very least, you’d have to use some kind of physical object to harbor the spell’s energy. Technically, you could use any object, though it was not unheard-of for wizards to utilize whatever they happened to have in their pockets at the time. It’s probably where all the old stories of enchanted spindles, combs, brushes, and mirrors come from.
Most often, the magical energy was channeled into carvings or painted symbols. I’d once set up a rental storage unit as a short-term haven in case things ever went to hell. I’d laid up about a hundred small protective spells on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the place in various colors of paint. The energy inside them was stored in the paint, safe from the sunrise and ready to project a shield whenever the symbols felt the touch of hostile magic.
But a monitoring spell wouldn’t be the kind of thing that could lie dormant. It had to actually be “looking” around all the time. That meant a constant, modest expenditure of energy, which would in turn be exposed and vulnerable to sunrise. Land mine–type spells were a lot easier, like my protective spells, only with more kaboom in them. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t find any of those outside the hideout. Few people would host a picnic underneath the overpass, but it was Chicago, and all sorts of folks would be through this area during the day. Random people being horribly incinerated would certainly draw the attention of the local authorities, and possibly that of the White Council. The Grey Ghost didn’t seem to be an idiot. No death traps were left lying around where some schoolkid or bum might stumble into them.
I wouldn’t have set up like that, either. It made far more sense for such sentry spells to be laid down underground, deep enough for the steady presence of the earth to shield the spell energy from disruption.
The Grey Ghost was smart. Things would get interesting about fifteen or twenty feet down.
I finished my last circuit of the site and moved to the door. I reached out a hand and stopped with my palm about an inch away from the metal. I sensed something subtle but there, like the attractive field around an old, weak magnet. I frowned and focused on it, finding a spell of a composition unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
It was something subliminal, sending out a kind of beckoning energy that I wouldn’t have noticed had I not been specifically looking for something like it. It would otherwise have been buried in the background energy of the city and its inhabitants. I stretched out a hand to touch the stream of energy flowing steadily outward. It oozed over the surface of my skin, a crawling sensation that made me shudder.
It’s smarter not to play around with unfamiliar magic. Besides, I had other things to do. I lowered my hand and stepped
toward the source of the music I’d begun hearing in my head at some point. There was little sense wasting more time up on the surface. And I hadn’t heard that song in forever, but I could still sing along. I started humming and—
—and stopped myself with my nose about half an inch from the steel door.
I broke out into a cold sweat.
Hell’s bells. That magic hadn’t been heavy-duty, but it had been puissant. A few seconds after touching it, I had almost walked blindly and mindlessly through the door and into whatever reception was prepared for intruders on the other side. I couldn’t know exactly what was over there without getting a look, but it sure as hell wasn’t a gift basket and a bottle of wine.
I stepped back from the door and the siren spell with what I felt was a properly Darwinian appreciation of the danger it represented. Oh, it might not blow you up like the defensive wards I’d had on my apartment, but a scalpel can open up your arteries just as readily as a sword. In some cases, more so. I shivered and clutched my arms to my belly.
That spell wasn’t the work of a novice or marauding sorcerer experimenting with magic he’d found in the metaphysical section of a bookstore. Whoever had put that thing together had been a true professional, one with centuries of experience.
One who was probably more capable than I when it came to magic.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m hoss. When the spells start flying, mine are some of the flashiest, most violent on the planet. I’m like the Andre the Giant of the supernatural world. I’ve got a lot of power and mass to throw around.
Andre would be a great person to have on your side in a brawl against a rowdy tavern crowd. But in a more focused situation, he would be at the mercy of professionals who, while lacking his raw power, could nonetheless apply their own strength more efficiently and effectively. Murphy was an excellent example of that kind of fighter. She wasn’t much bigger than a bread box, but I’d seen her toss around guys weighing most of three hundred pounds like they were unruly puppies.
If the Grey Ghost was responsible for that spell, then I was lucky to have survived our first meeting. The smart move would be to scamper. If it came to a fair fight, I might find myself completely outclassed.
I felt a shivering, cold presence on the back of my neck, and turned to find wraiths nearby. They drifted toward the hideout from all directions, coming in a slow, steady procession and moving in perfectly straight lines. The siren spell made sense to me now. It wasn’t a guard spell, though it could certainly have that purpose. It was also a beacon, a dinner bell being rung to signal the mindless horde now approaching.
They never sped up, never slowed. They just kept floating forward until they began to pass through the closed steel door in groups of two and three as they converged upon it.
I pursed my lips, thinking. The Grey Ghost wasn’t killing wraiths. It was using them. For the moment, at least, there wouldn’t be any kind of guard spell on the other side of the door. There couldn’t be, or the Grey Ghost would be slaughtering its own troops and wasting its own investment of time and energy to boot.
I might have an opportunity here. The inbound wraiths would almost certainly be routed by what amounted to a cattle chute. That route would most likely be clear of supernatural booby traps. It might be possible to gain entry, find a vulnerable point along the chute, and then duck out of it to run a quick reconnaissance of the Grey Ghost’s headquarters and find Mort.
It took half an hour for the procession to be complete, and the flow of wraith traffic never let up. I stopped counting them at 450 and swallowed. That wasn’t a herd of wraiths. That was a bloody horde. If one of the wraiths decided it wanted to eat me, it would have to perform a miracle to divide me into enough pieces to feed all of its dinner company.
My veil seemed to have prevented me from being noticed as they approached, but that could just as easily be the effect of the beacon spell. For all I knew, once the beacon shut off, they’d all turn around and come at me like greyhounds leaving the gate. It would require a singularly stupid man to go hang around in narrow tunnels and cramped spaces alongside a threat like that.
“And I, Harry Dresden, am that man,” I stated.
I waited for the last wraith to go in and counted to twenty. My mouth felt dry. Fear boiled in my belly and made my knees feel unsteady. My fingers trembled.
I told them all that they were just preconceived residual memories anyway and that I would tolerate no guff from them.
Then I ground my teeth and followed the horde.
Chapter Twenty-eight
I slipped through the steel door and into the blackness on the other side. I ignored the darkness until it went away, and then began to move stealthily forward.
I stopped with the Scooby-Doo action a couple of feet later and just started walking. I mean, honestly, sneaking. It wasn’t as though I could step on a twig or accidentally kick an old can and make a sound, right? Being a ghost, the problem wasn’t being sneaky—it was getting noticed in the first place.
Besides. Nobody who was concerned about detecting my presence would be using their ears to sense me coming.
I began extending my wizard’s senses out in front of me.
When I say wizard senses, I mean it in a similar fashion to spider sense. Spidey’s enhanced senses detect when he’s in danger and warn him that he’s got incoming. A wizard’s senses don’t do that (though I suppose with enough work, someone could come close). What they do sense is the presence of magic, in both its natural state and its worked forms. You don’t have to be concentrating to make it happen—it’s natural in every practitioner.
The theory I’ve heard espoused most often is that the ability to sense such energies makes it possible for a regular person to become a wizard, providing the kind of sensory feedback he needs to gradually work with more and more energy. So while a regular person who lacked the sense could, technically, learn how to use magic without it, it would be a process as difficult as someone who was born blind teaching himself to paint.
I focused on that sense in me, partially blocking out my less important, physical senses to give greater attention to the presence of magic in my surroundings. It was pretty thick in here. The door led to a concrete stairway going down into the earth, and each step bore lit candles and thickly painted magical symbols. The latent energy in the paint was almost devoid of arcane power, barely detectable, but it was there and I saw it as faint phosphorescence. The energy of the beacon spell was still going strong. Somewhere in my head I had evidently decided to interpret it as a sound, because I could hear its slow throb like a bass beat on a big woofer.
I went down the stairs, my senses attuned to the ground at my feet. What looked like one more bit of barely magical scribbling could be concealing something far more potent and dangerous—but it didn’t. I went down two flights of stairs unmolested.
The bottom of the stairway opened onto a rectangular room that had once been some sort of electrical junction. It obviously wasn’t in service anymore. Large steel boxes and glass-faced readouts were spotted with rust and dust. There was more of the occult writing down here—all of it disjointed and fantastically disconnected, as if someone had composed a poem in a foreign language by randomly stringing together words from a dictionary.
It all bore the same trace amounts of magical energy as the writing on the stairs. The Big Hoods evidently had a certain amount of latent talent, which seemed to fit together with the idea of the Grey Ghost recruiting some mortal flunkies to assist it in . . .
. . . In whatever the hell he or she was trying to do.
What was he or she trying to do?
I mean, I knew the Grey Ghost had attacked Mort’s place. But why? Why take Mort to begin with? Granted, the little ectomancer could probably be a pain in the ass to any ghost who got too ambitious in Chicago, but the Grey Ghost’s ambitions seemed to have been limited to gunning for Morty. What could he possibly have to offer as a target?
At the far end of the junction room, th
ere was a gaping, ragged hole in the wall that looked like it had been made with sledgehammers. It opened onto a rough tunnel beyond—the beginnings of Undertown proper.
A man’s anguished scream came from the opening.
I nearly burst into a sprint but stopped myself. Unthinking sprints were a good way to get killed. Re-killed. Instead, I moved forward into the rough-hewn corridor. It was cold and damp, and slime and mold were everywhere. I unimagined the strong, musty smell that would otherwise have filled my nose and paced forward, watching for traps and working hard not to move my feet in time with the bass-drum rhythm of the beacon spell.
I passed a number of alcoves that joined the corridor. They were individual quarters for the Big Hoods, apparently. Each contained a mattress or an air mattress and something resembling bedding, only covered with mildew and mold. Each had a box or a couple of bags, containing what I presumed to be personal belongings. More arcane gibberish covered the walls, along with slogans such as THE LIZARD FOLK ARE ALREADY HERE! WATCH FOR THEIR EYES! A couple of them looked occupied, with large, bulky forms snoring under the disgusting blankets.
A minute or two later, the passage opened up into a torch-lit room about the size of a hockey rink. The entrance was high up on one wall, so that my head was level with the larger room’s ceiling. There were stairs cut into the wall beneath my feet, so that I could walk down them into the large room—which I didn’t, as it was packed full of bad guys. I swallowed and made sure my veil was still running strong.
The bass beat of the beacon hammered loudly here, coming from a pit that had been cut into the floor. It must have been at least ten feet across, and I couldn’t tell how deep it was. It was surrounded by written formulae that were far less nonsensical than the others, and they sent out flashes of dim red light in time with each pulse of the beacon.
The pit was full of wraiths.
They swirled round and round in steady, mindless motion, each of them overlapping with dozens of others, so that it looked less like a group of beings moving in a circle than some bizarre stew with the occasional recognizable portion of human anatomy appearing above the mix. The hollow not-scream of the empty-eyed wraiths was a huge and hideous sound, one that surged in time with the beacon.