Barrowill had been savvy enough to divest me of my accoutrements, but I was still a wizard, dammit, blasting rod or no. I drew up my will, aimed low, and snarled, “Forzare!” Pure kinetic force lashed invisibly through the air and caught Barrowill at the ankles. It kicked both of his feet up into the air, and he took a pratfall onto the floor. Connie landed with a grunt and bounced to one side. She lay there dazed and blinking.
Barrowill slithered back up to his feet, spinning toward me, and producing a pistol in one hand. I lurched back out of the line of fire as the gun barked twice, and bullets went by me with a double hiss. I went to my knees and bobbed my head out into the hall again for a quick peek, jerking it back immediately. Barrowill was picking Connie up. His bullet went through the air where my head would have been if I’d been standing.
“Don’t be a moron, Harry,” I said. “You came for the kid. He’s safe. That’s all you were obligated to do. Let it g—oh who am I kidding. There’s a girl.”
I didn’t have to beat the vampire—I just had to slow him down long enough for River Shoulders to catch up to him . . . assuming River did pursue.
I took note of which wing Barrowill was fleeing through and rushed down the stairs to the ground floor. Then I left the building and sprinted to the far end of that wing.
Barrowill slammed the emergency exit open and emerged from the building. He was moving fast, but he also had his daughter to carry, and she’d begun to resist him, kicking and thrashing, slowing him down. She tugged him off balance just as he shot at me again, and it went wide. I slashed at him with another surge of force, but this time I wasn’t aiming for his feet—I went for the gun. The weapon leapt out of his hands and went spinning away, shattering against the bricks of the dorm’s outer wall. Another blast knocked Connie off his shoulder, and she let out a little shriek. Barrowill staggered, then let out a snarl of frustration and charged me at a speed worthy of the Flash’s understudy.
I flung more force at him, but Barrowill bobbed to one side, evading the blast. I threw myself away from the vampire and managed to roll with the punch he sent at my head. He caught me an inch or two over one eyebrow, the hardest and most impact-resistant portion of the human skull. That and the fact that I’d managed to rob it of a little of its power meant that he only sent me spinning wildly away, my vision completely obscured by pain and little silver stars. He was furious, his power rolling over me like a sudden deluge of ice water, to the point where crystals of frost formed on my clothing.
Barrowill followed up, his eyes murderous—and then Bigfoot Irwin bellowed, “Connie!” and slammed into Barrowill at the hip, using his body as a living spear. Barrowill was flung to one side, and Irwin pressed his advantage, still screaming, coming down atop the vampire and pounding him with both fists in elemental violence, his sunken eyes mad with rage. “Connie! Connie!”
I tried to rise but couldn’t seem to make it past one knee. So all I could do was watch as the furious scion of River Shoulders unleashed everything he had on a ranking noble of the White Court. Barrowill could have been much stronger than a human being if he’d had the gas in the tank—but he’d spent his energy on his psychic assault, and it had drained him. He still thrashed powerfully, but he was no match for the enraged young man. Irwin slammed Barrowill’s nose flat against his face. I saw one of the vampire’s teeth go flying into the night air. Slightly too-pale blood began to splash against Irwin’s fists.
Christ. If the kid killed Barrowill, the White Court would consider it an act of war. All kinds of horrible things could unfold. “Irwin!” I shouted. “Irwin, stop!”
Kid Bigfoot didn’t listen to me.
I lurched closer to him but only made it about six inches before my head whirled so badly that I fell onto my side. “Irwin, stop!” I looked around and saw Connie staring dazedly at the struggle. “Connie!” I said. “Stop him! Stop him!”
Meanwhile, Irwin had beaten Barrowill to within an inch of his life—and now he raised his joined hands over his head, preparing for a sledgehammer blow to Barrowill’s skull.
A small, pretty hand touched his wrist.
“Irwin,” Connie said gently. “Irwin, no.”
“He tried,” Irwin panted. “Tried. Hurt you.”
“This isn’t the way,” Connie said.
“Bad man,” Irwin growled.
“But you aren’t,” Connie said, her voice very soft. “Irwin. He’s still my daddy.”
Connie couldn’t have physically stopped Irwin—but she didn’t need to. The kid blinked several times, then looked at her. He slowly lowered his hands, and Connie leaned down to kiss his forehead gently. “Shhhh,” she said. “Shhhh. I’m still here. It’s over, baby. It’s over.”
“Connie,” Irwin said, and leaned against her.
I let out a huge sigh of relief and sank back onto the ground.
My head hurt.
Officer Dean stared at me for a while. He chewed on a toothpick and squinted at me. “Got some holes.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “Like what?”
“Like all those kids saw a Bigfoot and them whatchamacalits. Ghouls. How come they didn’t say anything?”
“You walked in on them while they were all still trying to put their clothes back on. After flinging themselves into random sex with whoever happened to be close to them. They’re all denying that this ever happened right now.”
“Hngh,” Dean said. “What about the ghoul corpses?”
“After Irwin dragged their boss up to the fight, the ghouls quit when they saw him. River Shoulders told them all to get out of his sight and take their dead with them. They did.”
Dean squinted and consulted a list. “Pounder is gone. So is Connie Barrowill. Not officially missing, or nothing. Not yet. But where are they?”
I looked at Dean and shrugged.
I’d seen ghouls in all kinds of situations before—but I’d never seen them whipped into submission. Ghouls fought to the grisly, messy end. That was what they did. But River Shoulders had been more than their match. He’d left several of them alive when he could have killed them to the last, and he’d found their breaking point when Irwin had dragged Barrowill in by his hair. Ghouls could take a huge beating, but River Shoulders had given them one like I’d never seen, and when he ordered them to take their master and their dead and never to return, they’d snapped to it.
“Thanks, Connie,” I groaned as she settled me onto a section of convenient rubble. I was freezing. The frost on my clothes was rapidly melting away, but the chill had settled inward.
The girl looked acutely embarrassed, but that wasn’t in short supply in that dorm. That hallway was empty of other students for the moment, though. We had the place to ourselves, though I judged that the authorities would arrive in some form before long.
Irwin came over with a dust-covered blanket and wrapped it around her. He’d scrounged a ragged towel for himself though it did more to emphasize his physique than to hide it. The kid was ripped.
“Thank you, Irwin,” she said.
He grunted. Physically, he’d bounced back from the nearly lethal feeding like a rubber freaking ball. Maybe River Shoulders s water-smoothing spell had done something to help that.
Mentally, he was slowly refocusing. You could see the gleam coming back into his eyes. Until that happened, he’d listened to Connie. A guy could do worse.
“I . . . ” Connie shook her head. “I remember all of it. But I have no idea what just happened.” She stared at River Shoulders for a moment, her expression more curious than fearful. “You . . . You stopped something bad from happening, I think.”
“Yeah, he did,” I confirmed.
Connie nodded toward him in a grateful little motion.
“Thank you. Who are you?”
“Irwin’s dad,” I said.
Irwin blinked several times. He stared blankly at River Shoulders.
“Hello,” River rumbled. How something that large and that powerful could sit there bleeding from dozens of
wounds and somehow look sheepish was beyond me. “I am very sorry we had to meet like that. I had hoped for something quieter. Maybe with music. And good food.”
“You can’t stay,” I said to River. “The authorities are on the way.”
River made a rumbling sound of agreement. “This is a disaster. What I did . . . ” He shook his head. “This was in such awful taste.”
“Couldn’t have happened to nicer guys, though,” I said.
“Wait,” Connie said. “Wait. What the hell just happened here?”
Irwin put a hand on her shoulder, and said, to me, “She’s . . . she’s a vampire. Isn’t she?”
I blinked and nodded at him. “How did . . . ?”
“Paranet,” he said. “There’s a whole page.”
“Wait,” Connie said again. “A . . . what? Am I going to sparkle or something?”
“God, no,” said Irwin and I, together.
“Connie,” I said, and she looked at me. “You’re still exactly who you were this morning. And so is Irwin. And that’s what counts. But right now, things are going to get really complicated if the cops walk in and start asking you questions. Better if they just never knew you were here.”
“This is all so . . . ” She shook her head. Then she stared at River Shoulders. Then at me. “Who are you?”
I pointed at me, and said, “Wizard.” I pointed at River. “Bigfoot.” I pointed at Irwin. “Son of Bigfoot.” I pointed at her. “Vampire. Seriously.”
“Oh,” she said faintly.
“I’ll explain it,” Irwin told her quietly. He was watching River Shoulders.
River held out his huge hands to either side and shrugged. “Hello, son.”
Irwin shook his head slowly. “I . . . never really . . . ” He sucked in a deep breath, squared off against his father, and said, “Why?”
And there it was. What had to be the Big Question of Irwin’s life.
“My people,” he said. “Tradition is very important to them. If I acknowledged you . . . they would have insisted that certain traditions be observed. It would have consumed your life. And I didn’t want that for you. I didn’t want that for your mother. I wanted your world to be wider than mine.”
Bigfoot Irwin was silent for a long moment. Then he scratched at his head with one hand and shrugged. “Tonight . . . really explains a lot.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. We aren’t done talking. But okay.”
“Let’s get you out of here,” River said. “Get you both taken care of. Answer all your questions.”
“What about Harry?” Irwin said.
I couldn’t get any more involved with the evident abduction of a scion of the White Court. River’s mercy had probably kept the situation from going completely to hell, but I wasn’t going to drag the White Council’s baggage into the situation. “You guys go on,” I told them. “I do this kind of thing all the time. I’ll be fine.”
“Wow, seriously?” Irwin asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been in messier situations than this. And . . . it’s probably better if Connie’s dad has time to cool off before you guys talk again. River Shoulders can make sure you have that time.”
Outside, a cart with flashing bulbs on it had pulled up.
“River,” I said. “Time’s up.”
River Shoulders rose and nodded deeply to me. “I’m sorry that I interfered. It seemed necessary.”
“I’m willing to overlook it,” I said. “All things considered.” His face twisted into a very human-looking smile, and he extended his hand to Irwin. “Son.”
Irwin took his father’s hand, one arm still around Connie, and the three of them didn’t vanish so much as . . . just become less and less relevant to the situation. It happened over the course of two or three seconds, as that same nebulous, somehow transparent power that River had used earlier enfolded them. And then they were all gone.
Boots crunched down the hall, and a uniformed officer with a nametag reading DEAN burst in, one hand on his gun.
Dean eyed me, then said, “That’s all you know, huh?”
“That’s the truth,” I said. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. You gonna let me go now?”
“Oh, hell no,” Dean said. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re stoned out of your mind or insane. Either way, I’m going to put you in the drunk tank until you have a chance to sleep it off.”
“You got any aspirin?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, and got up to get it.
My head ached horribly, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard the end of this, but I was clear for now. “Next time, Dresden,” I muttered to myself, “just take the gold.”
Then Officer Dean put me in a nice quiet cell with a nice quiet cot, and there I stayed until Wild Bill Meyers showed up the next morning and bailed me out.
Jim Butcher is the New York Times bestselling author of the Dresden Files and the Codex Alera series. The fifteenth novel featuring Harry Dresden, Skin Game, will be published later this year. Butcher also has a new steampunk series, the Cinder Spires, that will be starting soon. He enjoys fencing, martial arts, singing, bad science-fiction movies, and live-action gaming. He lives in Missouri with his wife, son, and a vicious guard dog. You may learn more at www.jim-butcher.com.
Neighbors who walk past the house keep on moving; dogs pull their owners across to the other side of the street . . .
EVERYTHING MUST GO
Brooke Wonders
Split-level ranch-style home features a spacious and private fenced backyard with a covered deck and small dog run.
The blue-gray house at 1414 Linden Dr. is afraid of the dark. The foreclosure crisis hit its neighborhood hard, and in house after house, lights wink out and never turn back on. The house at 1414 waits for new families to move in, and sometimes they do, but more often than not the owners abandon their property. Linden Drive grows increasingly desolate, and 1414 clings to the warmth and safety of its inhabitants, sure that it is too well-loved to be left behind.
Its family owns a dog, an ancient mutt with a gray-frosted muzzle who spends most of his time in the backyard, sprawled on his side in the brown grass. The house has long admired the diligence with which the mutt defends its home. When neighbors pass by with their own dogs, Lucky drags himself over to the gate connecting his run to the front yard and lets loose a fit of barking. But one morning in late summer, a man with two collies strolls past, and Lucky doesn’t bark.
Two thick branches of English ivy pull away from 1414’s exterior and wend their way around the corpse. The rusted hinges of its cellar-door croon a lullaby of creaks and whines as they gape wide to receive Lucky. The house pulls the vine-choked body deep inside its walls. Tucked between sheets of plaster and insulation, the dog mortifies; soon the basement reeks of decay. Upstairs, a girl mourns her lost pet.
East-facing bedroom catches morning light, a bonus in wintertime.
The daughter at fourteen is a folded-up girl of elbows, knobby knees, and angles a which-way. She loves origami, late into every night creasing out birds of paradise, pagodas, sea horses, and lotuses that trip from her fingertips. From her ceiling hang a thousand cranes it took her months to fold, multicolored and hopeful, made of wrapping paper, construction paper, butcher paper, wax paper, glitter paper, natural-wood-pulp paper. Origami paper proper she treasures, hoards like allowance money or dragon’s gold. The house thinks of the folded-up girl as Paper, and loves her.
Corner bedroom features windows on two sides. Bright and airy!
The son is growing wings. They first appear after his thirteenth birthday party, when his mother burns the cake and then locks herself in the bathroom while his father sits alone in the garage, drinking whiskey and building birdhouses out of scrap. The son packs a suitcase and explains his plans to Paper: he’ll escape out his bedroom window, run away to join the circus. His sister talks him out of it, to the house’s relief. The boy’s wings begin as nubbins protruding from each shoulder blade that ache and ache
as he grows. By seventeen, nubbins have grown into a skeletal wing-structure, hollow bones covered in tufted feathers and long pinions, though he cannot yet lift himself off the ground. The house thinks of the winged boy as Bird, and loves him.
Third bedroom, slightly smaller—use it for storage, or turn it into baby’s first bedroom.
Their mother has her own workspace wherein she fashions elaborate textile art from found objects, fabric, and yarn. Lately, though, the house has noted a desperate loneliness threaded through her. Husband at work, kids at school, she fritters away her time following the soaps, crocheting blankets only to unravel them. She ties each member of the family to her via thick silken cords, cords whose color changes depending on her mood: crimson for anger, cerulean for disappointment, jet for possessiveness, silver for regret. The house lets these strings tangle throughout the hallways, following the arcing filaments from room to room. The house tries to warm to her, but she’s metal-cold, her voice scissor-sharp. The house fears her, and calls her Needle.
Two-car garage.
A grease-stained man who smells of slaughter, their father lives in the garage when he doesn’t live at his butcher shop. The house envies him his children’s unconditional love: they crouch at his elbows as he shingles a miniature roof, then fight over who gets to help install his latest creation. A neighborhood’s worth of elaborately finished birdhouses dot the backyard, attracting flocks of cardinals, rooks, and wrens.
But the house knows where the father keeps his skeletons, round glass secrets full of intoxicating oblivion stashed everywhere: in the trunk of the car, in with the New Year’s decorations, beneath the bathroom sink. When the couple’d first moved in, before there were papers or birds between them, he’d kept this secret, and long has the house tracked the ebb and flow of his addiction. It calls him Glass, for the bottles that clink like chains and sing to him from within their hiding places.
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2013 Edition Page 32