by Butcher, Jim
Maybe two dozen lemurs were scattered around the room. They’d lowered their hoods, and without their faceless menace to back them up, they just looked like people. Some were standing. Some were sitting. Another group was playing cards. Still others just stared at nothing, bemused.
A group of Big Hoods was gathered around the pit, all but two of them on their knees and chanting. They bowed at regular intervals and clapped their hands together at others. A gallows that looked like it had been constructed out of a driveway basketball goal hung over the pit, with a pair of Big Hoods holding one end of the rope.
Morty dangled from the other end, trussed up from his hips to his neck. He was swinging back and forth on the end of the line and slowly spinning. Gasps and broken sobbing sounds came from him.
Standing in empty air directly before him, moving as he did, was the Grey Ghost. The figure looked at least as menacing as it had the first time around. When it spoke, its voice was liquid, calm—and feminine.
“You need not do this to yourself, Mortimer,” the Grey Ghost said. “I take no pleasure in inflicting pain. Yield. You will do it in the end. Save yourself the agony.”
Mort opened his eyes. He licked his lips and said in a cracked, thick voice, “G-g-go fuck yourself.”
The Grey Ghost murmured, “Tsk.” Then nodded and said, “Again.”
“N-no,” Morty choked out, beginning to twist against his bonds. He accomplished nothing other than to start spinning more rapidly. “No!”
The two Big Hoods holding the rope calmly lowered Mort down into the swirling pit of insanely hungry wraiths. They collapsed in on Morty, as if the surf could choose where it wished to crash—and it all wished to crash on the little ectomancer. The cauldron of mad ghosts boiled and congealed onto him, all but hiding him from sight.
Mort began to scream again, a horrible, humiliated sound.
“One,” counted the Grey Ghost. “Two. Three. Four.”
At the last number, the flunkies hauled him up out of the pool of wraiths, and Morty hung there, swinging back and forth and sobbing again, gasping for breath.
“Each time you refuse me, Mortimer, I will add another second to the count,” said the Grey Ghost. “I know what you’re thinking. How many seconds will it take to drive you mad?”
Mort tried to regain control of his breathing, but it was a futile effort. Tears marked his face. His nose had begun to run. He opened his eyes, his jaw clenched, his bald pate scarlet, and said, his voice cracking, “Go watch the sunrise.”
“Again,” said the Grey Ghost.
The Big Hoods lowered Morty into the pit once more. I didn’t know what happened to a living mortal attacked by a wraith, but if Morty’s reaction was any indicator, it wasn’t good. Again he screamed. It was higher pitched than a moment before, more raw. The screams all but drowned out the calm, monotonous count of the Grey Ghost. She went to five, and then the Big Hoods hauled him up again. He twitched in spasmodic motion, as if he’d developed a simultaneous charley horse in every muscle and sinew. It took his screams at least ten seconds to die away.
“It’s more art than science,” the Grey Ghost continued, as if nothing had happened. “In my experience, most minds break before seven. Granted, most do not have your particular gifts. Whatever happens, I’m sure I will find it fascinating. I ask again: Will you help me?”
“Go jump in a river, bitch,” Morty gasped.
There was a moment of silence. “Again,” the Grey Ghost snarled. “Slowly.”
The obedient Big Hoods began to lower Mort slowly toward the wraith pit again.
Mort shook his head vainly and twisted his obviously battered body, trying to curl up and away from the swirling tide of hungry ghosts. He managed to forestall his fate by a few seconds, but in the end, he went down among the devouring spirits once more. He screamed again, and only after the scream had well and truly begun did the Grey Ghost start counting.
I’d never really had the highest opinion of Morty. I had hated the way he’d neglected his talents and abused his clients for so long, back when I’d first met him. He’d gone up in my estimation since then, and especially in the past day. So maybe he wasn’t a paragon of virtue, but he was still a decent guy in his own way. He was professional, and it looked like he’d had more juice all along than I thought he had.
That said a lot about Morty, that he’d kept quiet about the extent of his ability. It said even more about him that he was standing in the lion’s den with no way out and was still spitting his defiance into the face of his captor.
Dammit, I thought. I like the guy.
And the Grey Ghost was destroying him, right in front of my eyes.
Even as I watched, Morty screamed again as the wraiths surged against him, raking at him with their pale, gaunt fingers. The Grey Ghost’s calm voice counted numbers. It felt like a minor infinity stretched between each.
I couldn’t get Mort out of this place. No way. Even if I went all-out on the room and defeated every single hostile spirit in it, Mort would still be tied up and the Big Hoods would still be looming. There was no percentage in an attack.
Yet standing around with my thumb up my ghostly ass wasn’t an option, either. I didn’t know what the Grey Ghost was doing to Morty, but it was clearly hurting him, and judging from her dialogue (straight out of Cheesy Villain General Casting, though it might be), exposure to the wraiths would inflict permanent harm if Morty continued to refuse her. And there were the murderous spirits back at the ruins of Mort’s house to think about, too.
And as if all that wasn’t enough, sunrise was on the way.
Dammit. I needed an edge, an advantage.
The fingers of my right hand touched the solid wooden handle of Sir Stuart’s pistol, and I was suddenly keenly aware of its power, of the sheer, tightly leashed potency of the weapon. Its energy hummed silently against my right palm. I remembered the fight at Morty’s place and the havoc Sir Stuart’s weapon had wreaked among the enemy—or, rather, upon a single enemy.
The Grey Ghost had feared Sir Stuart’s gun, and I couldn’t imagine she’d done so for no reason. If I could take her out, the other spirits who followed her would almost certainly scatter—the kind of jackals who followed megalomaniacs around rarely had the stomach for a confrontation without their leader to stiffen their spines. Right?
Sure. Just because the lemurs still outnumber you more than a dozen to one doesn’t mean they’ll see you as an easy victim, Dresden. You’ll be fine.
There should be a rule against your own inner monologue throwing around that much sarcasm.
But there was still merit in the idea: Kill the Grey Ghost and then run like hell. Even if the lemurs came after me, at least the main voice who appeared to be guiding the Big Hoods would be silenced. It might even get all the malevolent spiritual attention entirely off of Morty.
All I had to do was make one shot with Sir Stuart’s pistol. No problem. If I missed, I probably wouldn’t survive the experience, sure, but other than that it should be a piece of cake.
I gritted my teeth and began to move slowly toward the Grey Ghost. I didn’t know how close I could get before my half-assed veil became useless, but I had to do everything I could to maximize the chances of a hit. I wasn’t a marksman, and the pistols of the eighteenth century weren’t exactly precision instruments, but I couldn’t afford to miss. Of course, if the Grey Ghost sensed me coming, she would have time to run, to dodge, or to pull some sort of defense together.
I had to kill her before she knew she was under attack. There was some irony there, considering the way I’d died.
The Grey Ghost finished her count, and the Big Hoods hauled a sobbing Morty out of the pit again. He hung there, twitching, suffering, making involuntary sounds as he gasped for breath. The Grey Ghost stood in front of him, motionless and, I felt certain, gloating.
Ten feet. I knew my veil was shoddy and my aim only middling, but if I could close to ten feet, I figured I had a fairly good chance of hitting the targe
t. That would put me on the near edge of the wraith pit, shooting across it to hit the Grey Ghost. Of course, if I missed, the Grey Ghost wouldn’t need to kill me. All she’d have to do was freaking trip me. The wraiths, once they sensed my presence, would be all over me.
Then I’d get what Morty was getting. Except that as a ghost myself, they’d be tearing me into tiny, ectoplasm-soaked shreds. And eating them.
What fun, I thought.
I tried to move steadily, to keep myself calm. I didn’t have any adrenaline anymore to make my hands shake, but they shook anyway. Dammit. I guess even a ghost is still, on some level, fundamentally human. Nothing for it but to keep moving.
Thirty feet.
I passed within a few yards of a lemur who was apparently staring into nothingness—though his eyes were lined up directly with me. Perhaps he was lost in a ghostly memory. He never blinked as I went by.
Twenty-five.
The wraiths wheezed out their starving, strangled howls in the pit a few feet ahead of me.
Twenty.
Why do I keep winding up in these situations? Even after I’m dead?
For the fun, I thought to myself. For the fun, fun, fun-fun, fun.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Then the floor near the Grey Ghost’s feet rippled, and a human skull floated up out of it, its eye sockets burning with a cold blue flame.
The Grey Ghost turned to look at the skull, and something about her body language soured. “What?”
“A Fomor messenger is at the outer perimeter,” the skull said. It sounded creepily like Bob, but there was a complete absence of anything but a vague contempt in its voice. “He bears word from his lord.”
I got the impression that the Grey Ghost tilted her head beneath its hood. “A servitor? Arriving from the Nevernever?”
“The outer perimeter is the Nevernever side, of which I am custodian,” the skull replied. “The inner perimeter is the mortal world. You established that more than a year ago.”
The Grey Ghost made a disgusted sound. “Have a care, spirit. You are not indispensible.” She looked at the suspended Morty and sighed. “Of course the Fomor disturb me with sunrise near. Why must my most important work continually be interrupted?”
The skull inclined itself in a nod of acknowledgment. “Shall I kill him and send back the body, along with a note suggesting that next time they call ahead?”
“No,” snapped the Grey Ghost. “Of course not. Curb your tongue, spirit, lest I tear it out for you.”
“If it pleases you to do so. I am but a servant,” the skull said with another nod. The contempt in its tone held steady, though. “Shall I allow him to pass?”
“And be quick about it,” the Grey Ghost snarled.
“As it pleases you,” the skull replied, speaking noticeably more slowly than a moment before. It vanished into the floor.
I held very, very still. Motion was the hardest thing for a veil to hide, and I suddenly realized that the one-shot, one-kill plan had a serious flaw in it: I had forgotten to account for Evil Bob. The spirit was powerful, intelligent, dangerous—and apparently incapable of anything resembling fear or respect. I suppose that after a few decades of working with Kemmler, the most dangerous necromancer since the fall of the Roman Empire, it was difficult to take a lesser talent seriously.
Not that regular Bob was exactly overflowing with respect and courtesy. Heh. Take that, bad guy.
In any case, I had a chance to find out more about the enemy. You can’t ever get too much dirt on these cloaked lunatics. Frequently, learning more about them exposes some kind of gaping hole in their armor, metaphorical or otherwise. I’ve never had cause to regret knowing more about an enemy before commencing a fight.
Besides. If the Grey Ghost was a part of some kind of partnership, instead of operating alone, I had to know about it. Bad-guy alliances were never good news.
The Grey Ghost stepped away from the pit. In fewer than thirty seconds, the ground rippled again and a man appeared, arising from the ground a bit at a time, as if he were walking up a stairway. The skull came with him, floating along behind, just above the level of his head.
I recognized him at once: the leader of the Fomor servitors who had come after Molly. He was still dressed in the black turtleneck, but had added a weapons belt with a holstered pistol beneath his left hand and a short sword at his right. It was one of those Japanese blades, but shorter than the full katana. Wakazashi, then, or maybe it was a ninja-to. If it was, minus points for carrying it around out in the open like that.
Oh, there was something else odd about him: His eyes had changed color. I remembered them as a clear grey. Now they were a deep, deep purple. I don’t mean purple like the dark violet eyes that lots of Bob’s romance-novel heroines always seem to have. They were purple like a bruised corpse, or like the last colors of a twilit sky.
He faced the Grey Ghost calmly and bowed from the waist, the gesture slow and fluid. “Greetings, Lady Shade, from my master, Cantrev Lord Omogh.”
“Hello. Listen,” the Grey Ghost replied, her tone sour, “what does Omogh want from me now?”
Listen bowed again, purple eyes gleaming. “My master desires to know whether or not your campaign is complete.”
The Grey Ghost’s voice came out from between clenched teeth. “Obviously not.”
Listen bowed. “He would know, then, why you have escalated your search to a seizure of a second-tier asset.” The servitor paused to glance at Morty and then back to the robed figure. “This action runs counter to your arrangement.”
The eye sockets of the skull flickered more brightly. “We could still send the Fomor the message about calling ahead.”
“No,” the Grey Ghost said severely.
“It would be simple and direct. . . .”
“No, spirit,” the Grey Ghost snarled. “I forbid it.”
The skull’s eyes flickered rapidly for a moment, agitated. Then it bowed lower and said, “As you wish.”
The Grey Ghost turned to Listen and said, “My servant believes it would be logical to murder you and send your corpse back to your master in order to express my displeasure.”
Listen bowed again. “I am one of many, easily replaced. My death would be but a brief annoyance to my lord, and, I think, a somewhat anemic symbolic gesture.”
The Grey Ghost stared at him and then said, “If you weren’t speaking the literal truth, I think I should be satisfied with letting the skull have you. But you really have no sense of self-preservation at all, do you?”
“Of course I do, Lady Shade. I would never throw away my life carelessly. It would make it impossible for me to ensure that my death is of maximum advantage to my lord.”
The Grey Ghost shook her head within the hood. “You are a fool.”
“I will not contest the statement,” Listen said. “However, Lady Shade, I must ask you for an answer to return to my lord.” He added mildly, “Whatever form that answer may take.”
“Inform him,” said the Grey Ghost, voice annoyed, “that I will do as I see fit to acquire an appropriate body.”
Whoa.
The Lady Shade was looking for a meat suit.
Which meant . . .
I shook off the line of logic to be examined later. I focused on the conversation at hand.
“You made no mention of requiring such a valuable specimen for your ends,” Listen said.
“Look at what I have to work with,” Lady Shade snarled, gesturing at the Big Hoods gathered around the pit. “Scraps that cannot support the weight of my talent. Tell Omogh that if he wishes an ally who can face the Wardens, he must be tolerant. This specimen is of the least value to his purposes, and the greatest to mine.”
Listen considered that for a moment and then nodded. “And the Rag Lady?”
“Once I am seated within a mortal form, I will deal with her,” Lady Shade said. Her voice became detectably smug. “Assuming, of course, you have not already removed her yourself. Is that a burn on your c
heek, Listen? I hope it does not pain you.”
“Very kind, Lady,” Listen said with another bow. “I am in no discomfort worth noting. May I tell my lord that you will make him a gift of these fourth-tier creatures, once you are restored?”
Lady Shade seemed to consider that for a moment. She tilted her head and looked around at the Big Hoods. “Yes, I suppose so. I’ll have little need for such baubles.”
“Excellent,” Listen said. He sounded genuinely pleased.
Lady Shade shook her head again. “Is he so enamored of such minor talents?”
“A moment ago,” Listen said, “I was preparing to inform him of the potential loss of a second-tier. Now I may inform him of the probable gain of a dozen lesser acquisitions. It pleases me to draw positive gains for my lord from negative situations.”
From his place dangling over the pit, Morty said, in a slurred voice, “Tell him he ain’t getting squat. Bitch can’t have me.”
Listen lifted both eyebrows and looked at Lady Shade.
“I require his consent,” the Lady Shade said, her voice tight. “I will have it. Had you not interrupted me, I would have it already. Now dawn nears. It may be several hours after sundown before I complete the transfer.”
“Ah,” Listen said. Nothing in his tone made him sound overtly skeptical, but I got the impression that he was nonetheless. “Then with your leave, I will depart to carry word to my lord and trouble you no more.”
Evil Bob popped up into sight over Listen’s shoulder again. “Are you sure you do not wish this creature to be departed, my lady?”
“Go in peace, Listen,” Lady Shade said without so much as glancing at Evil Bob. “Inform your lord that I anticipate that we will be able to move against the Rag Lady and her allies in the fortress sometime tomorrow evening.”
Listen bowed at the waist again; then he turned and, followed by the floating skull, stepped down into the floor, vanishing from mortal reality and into the spirit world.