by Jim Butcher
I backed away from her, and fumbled out to my side with one hand. I found the bloodstained towel I'd been using before, and threw it at her. She stopped for a moment, staring, and then lowered her face with a groan, beginning to lick at the towel.
I scooted back on all fours, getting away from her, still dizzy. "Justine," I hissed. "What do we do?"
"There's nothing to do," Justine whispered. "We can't get out. She isn't herself. Once she kills, she'll be gone."
I flashed a glance at her over my shoulder. "Once she kills? What do you mean?"
Justine watched me with solemn eyes. "Once she kills. She's different. But she isn't quite like them until it's complete. Until she's killed someone feeding on them. That's the way the Reds work."
"So she's still Susan?"
Justine shrugged again, her expression disinterested. "Sort of."
"If I could talk to her, though. Get through to her. We could maybe snap her out of it?"
"I've never heard of it happening," Justine said. She shivered. "They stay like that. It gets worse and worse. Then they lose control and kill. And it's over."
I bit my lip. "There's got to be something."
"Kill her. She's still weak. Maybe we could, together. If we wait until she's further gone, until the hunger gives her strength, she'll take us both. That's why we're in here."
"No," I said. "I can't hurt her."
Something flickered in Justine's face when I spoke, though I couldn't decide whether it was something warm or something heated, angry. She closed her eyes and said, "Then maybe when she drinks you she'll die of the poison in you."
"Dammit. There's got to be something. Something else you can tell me."
Justine shrugged and shook her head, wearily. "We're already dead, Mister Dresden."
I clenched my teeth together and turned back to Susan. She kept licking at the towel, making frustrated, whimpering noises. She lifted her face to me and stared at me. I could have sworn I saw the bones of her cheeks and jaw stand out more harshly against her skin. Her eyes became drowning deep and pulled at me, beckoned to me to look deeper into that spinning, feverish darkness.
I jerked my eyes away before that gaze could trap me, my heart pounding, but it had already begun to fall away. Susan furrowed her brow in confusion for a moment, blinking her eyes, whatever dark power that had touched them fading, slipping unsteadily.
But even if that gaze hadn't trapped me, hadn't gone all the way over into hypnosis, it made something occur to me: Susan's memories of the soulgaze hadn't been removed. My godmother couldn't have touched those. I was such an idiot. When a mortal looks on something with the Sight, really looks, as a wizard may, the memories of what he sees are indelibly imprinted on him. And when a wizard looks into a person's eyes, it's just another way of using the Sight. A two-way use of it, because the person you look at gets to peer back at you, too.
Susan and I had soulgazed more than two years before. She'd tricked me into it. It was just after that she began pursuing me for stories more closely.
Lea couldn't have taken memories around a soulgaze. But she could have covered them up, somehow, misted them over. No practical difference, for the average person.
But, hell, I'm a wizard. I ain't average.
Susan and I had always been close, since we'd started dating. Intimate time together. The sharing of words, ideas, time, bodies. And that kind of intimacy creates a bond. A bond that I could perhaps use, to uncover fogged memories. To help bring Susan back to herself.
"Susan," I said, forcing my voice out sharp and clear. "Susan Rodriguez."
She shivered as I Named her, at least in part.
I licked my lips and moved towards her. "Susan. I want to help you. All right? I want to help you if I can."
She swallowed another whimper. "But I'm so thirsty. I can't."
I reached out as I approached her, and plucked a hair from her head. She didn't react to it, though she leaned closer to me, inhaling through her nose, letting out a slow moan on the exhale. She could smell my blood. I wasn't clear on how much of the toxin would be in my bloodstream, but I didn't want her to be hurt. No time to dawdle, Harry.
I took the hair and wound it about my right hand. It went around twice. I closed my fist over it, then grimaced, reaching out to grab Susan's left hand. I spat on my fingers and smoothed them over her palm, then pressed her hand to my fist. The bond, already something tenuously felt in any case, thrummed to life like a bass cello string, amplified by my spit upon her, by the hair in my own hands, the joining of our bodies where our flesh pressed together.
I closed my eyes. It hurt to try to draw in the magic. My weakened body shook. I reached for it, tried to piece together my will. I thought of all the times I'd had with Susan, all the things I'd never had the guts to tell her. I thought of her laugh, her smile, the way her mouth felt on mine, the smell of her shampoo in the shower, the press of her warmth against my back as we slept. I summoned up every memory I had of us together, and started trying to push it through the link between us.
The memories flowed down my arm, to her hand—and stopped, pressing against some misty and elastic barrier. Godmother's spell. I shoved harder at it, but its resistance only grew greater, more intense, the harder I pushed.
Susan whimpered, the sound lost, confused, hungry. She rose up onto her knees and pressed against me, leaning on me. She snuggled her mouth down against the hollow of my throat. I felt her tongue touch my skin, sending an electric jolt of lust flashing through me. Even close to death, hormones will out, I guess.
I kept struggling against Godmother's spell, but it held in place, powerful, subtle. I felt like a child shoving fruitlessly at a heavy glass door.
Susan shivered, and kept licking at my throat.
My skin tingled pleasantly and then started to go numb. Some of my pain faded. Then I felt her teeth against my throat, sharp as she bit at me.
I let out a startled cry. It wasn't a hard bite. She'd bitten me harder than that for fun. But she hadn't had eyes like that then. Her kisses hadn't made my skin go narcotic-numb then. She hadn't been halfway to membership in Club Vampire then.
I pushed harder at the spell, but my best efforts grew weaker and weaker. Susan bit harder, and I felt her body tensing, growing stronger. No longer did she lean against me. I felt one of her hands settle on the back of my neck. It wasn't an affectionate gesture. It was to keep me from moving. She took a deep, shuddering breath.
"In here," she whispered. "It's in here. It's good."
"Susan," I said, keeping the feeble pressure on my godmother's spell. "Susan. Please don't. Don't go. I need you here. You could hurt yourself. Please." I felt her jaws begin to close. Her teeth didn't feel like fangs, but human teeth can rip open skin just fine. She was vanishing. I could feel the link between us fading, growing weaker and weaker.
"I'm so sorry. I never meant to let you down." I said. I sagged against her. There wasn't much reason to keep fighting. But I did anyway. For her, if not for me. I held onto that link, to the pressure I had forced against the spell, to the memories of Susan and me, together.
"I love you."
Why it worked right then, why the webbing of my godmother's spell frayed as though the words had been an open flame, I don't know. I haven't found any explanation for it. There aren't any magical words, really. The words just hold the magic. They give it a shape and a form, they make it useful, describe the images within.
I'll say this, though: Some words have a power that has nothing to do with supernatural forces. They resound in the heart and mind, they live long after the sounds of them have died away, they echo in the heart and the soul. They have power, and that power is very real.
Those three words are good ones.
I flooded into her, through the link, into the darkness and the confusion that bound her, and I saw, through her thoughts, that my coming was a flame in the endless cold, a beacon flashing out against that night. The light came, our memories, the warmth of us, she
and I, and battered down the walls inside her, crushed away Lea's lingering spell, tore those memories away from my godmother, wherever she was, and brought them back home.
I heard her cry out at the sudden flush of memory, as awareness washed over her. She changed, right there against me—the hard, alien tension changed. It didn't vanish, but it changed. It became Susan's tension, Susan's confusion, Susan's pain, aware, alert, and very much herself again.
The power of the spell faded away, leaving only the blurred impression of it, like lightning that crackles through the night, leaving dazzling colors in the darkness behind.
I found myself kneeling against her, holding her hand. She still held my head. Her teeth still pressed against my throat, sharp and hard.
I reached up with my other shaking hand, and stroked at her hair. "Susan," I said, gentle. "Susan. Stay with me."
The pressure lessened. I felt hot tears fall against my shoulder.
"Harry," she whispered. "Oh, God. I'm so thirsty. I want it so much."
I closed my eyes. "I know," I said. "I'm sorry."
"I could take you. I could take it," she whispered.
"Yes."
"You couldn't stop me. You're weak, sick."
"I couldn't stop you," I agreed.
"Say it again."
I frowned. "What?"
"Say it again. It helps. Please. It's so hard not to …"
I swallowed. "I love you," I said.
She jerked, as though I'd punched her in the pit of the stomach.
"I love you," I said again. "Susan."
She lifted her mouth from my skin, and looked up, into my eyes. They were her eyes again—dark, rich, warm brown, bloodshot, filled with tears. "The vampires," she said. "They—"
"I know."
She closed her eyes, more tears falling. "I tr-tried to stop them. I tried."
Pain hit me again, pain that didn't have anything to do with poison or injuries. It hit me sharp and low, just beneath my heart, as though someone had just shoved an icicle through me. "I know you did," I told her. "I know you did."
She fell against me, weeping. I held her.
After a long time, she whispered, "It's still there. It isn't going away."
"I know."
"What am I going to do?"
"We'll work on that," I said. "I promise. We have other problems right now." I filled her in on what had happened, holding her in the dimness.
"Is anyone coming for us?" she asked.
"I … I don't think so. Even if Thomas and Michael got away, they couldn't storm this place. If they ever even got out of the Nevernever. Michael could go to Murphy, but she couldn't just smash her way in here without a warrant. And Bianca's contacts could probably stall that for a while."
"We have to get you out of here," she said. "You've got to get to a hospital."
"Works in theory. Now we just have to work out the details."
She licked her lips. "I … can you even walk?"
"I don't know. That last spell. If there was much left in me, that spell took it out."
"What if you slept?" she asked.
"Kravos would have his chance to torture me." I paused, and stared at the far wall.
"God," Susan whispered. She hugged me, gently. "I love you, Harry. You should get to hear it't—" She stopped, and looked up at me. "What?"
"That's it," I said. "That's what needs to happen."
"What needs to happen? I don't understand."
The more I thought about it, the crazier it sounded. But it might work. If I could time it just right …
I looked down, taking Susan's shoulders in my hands, staring at her eyes. "Can you hold on? Can you keep it together for another few hours?"
She shivered. "I think so. I'll try."
"Good," I said. I took a deep breath. "Because I need to be asleep long enough to start dreaming."
"But Kravos," Susan said. "Kravos will get inside of you. He'll kill you."
"Yeah," I said. I took a slow breath. "I'm pretty much counting on it."
Chapter Thirty-six
My nightmares came quickly, dull cloud of poisonous confusion blurring my senses, distorting my perceptions. For a moment, I was hanging by one wrist over an inferno of fire, smoke, and horrible creatures, the steel of the handcuffs suspending me cutting into my flesh, drawing blood. Smoke smothered me, forced me to cough, and my vision blurred as I started to fade out.
Then I was in a new place. In the dark. Cold stone chilled me where I lay upon it. All around me where the whispers of things moving in the shadows. Scaly rasps. Soft, hungry hisses, together with the gleam of malevolent eyes. My heart pounded in my throat.
"There you are," whispered one of the voices. "I watched them have you, you know."
I sat up, shivering violently. "Yeah, well. That's why they call them monsters. It's what they do."
"They enjoyed it," came the whispering voice. "If only I could have videotaped it for you."
"TV will rot your brain, Kravos," I said.
Something blurred out of the darkness and struck me across the face. The blow drove me back and down. My vision blurred over with scarlet and my perceptions sharpened through a burst of pain, but I didn't drop unconscious. You don't, as a rule, in dreams.
"Jokes," the voice hissed. "Jokes will not save you now."
"Hell's bells, Kravos," I muttered, sitting up again. "Do they produce a Cliche Lines Textbook for Villains or something? Go for broke. Tell me that since you're going to kill me anyway, you might as well reveal your secret plan."
The dark blurred toward me again. I didn't bother trying to defend myself. It drove me to the ground, and sat on my chest.
I stared up at Kravos. Forms and shapes hung about him like misty clothes. I could see the shape of the shadow demon, around him. I could see my own face, drifting among the layers. I saw Justine there, and Lydia. And there, at the center of that distorted, drifting mass, I saw Kravos.
He didn't look much different. He had a thin, pinched face, and brown hair faded with grey. He wore a full, untrimmed beard, but it only made his head seem misshapen. He had wide, leathery shoulders, and symbols painted in blood, ritual things whose meanings I could vaguely piece together, covered his chest. He lifted his hands and delivered two more blows to my face, explosions of pain.
"Where are your gibes now, wizard?" Kravos snarled. "Where are your jokes? Weak, petty, self-righteous fool. We are going to have a very good time together, until Bianca comes to finish you."
"You think so?" I asked. "I'm not sure. It's our first date. Maybe we should take this one step at a time."
Kravos hit me again, across the bridge of my nose, and my vision blurred with tears. "You aren't funny!" he shouted. "You are going to die! You can't treat this as a joke!"
"Why not?" I shot back. "Kravos, I took you out with a piece of chalk and a Ken doll. You're the biggest joke of a spellslinger I've ever seen. Even I didn't expect you to drop like that; maybe the link with that doll worked so well because it was anatomically corr—"
I didn't get the chance to finish the sentence. Kravos screamed and took my dream self by the throat. It felt real. It felt completely as though he had me, his weight pinning my weakened body down, his fingers crushing into my windpipe. My head pounded. I struggled against him, futile and reflexive motions—but to no avail. He kept on choking me, the pressure increasing. Blackness covered my dream vision, and I knew that he would hold it until he was sure I was dead.
People who have near-death experiences often talk about moving toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Or ascending toward the light, or flying or floating, or falling. I didn't get that. I'm not sure what that says about the state of my soul. There was no light, no kindly beckoning voice, no lake of fire to fall into. There was only silence, deep and timeless, where not even the beating of my heart thudded in my ears. I felt an odd pressure against my skin, my face, as though I had pressed into and through a wall of plastic wrap.
I felt a du
ll thud on top of my chest, and a sudden lessening of the burning in my lungs. Then another thud. More easing on my lungs. Then more blows to my chest.
My heart lurched back into motion with a hesitant thunder, and I felt myself take a wheezing breath. The plastic-wrap sensation tugged at me for a moment, then lifted away.
I shuddered, and struggled to open my eyes again. When I did, Kravos, still holding my throat, blinked his eyes in shock. "No!" he snarled. "You're dead! You're dead!"
"Susan's giving his real body CPR," someone said, behind him. Kravos whipped his head around to look, just in time to catch a stiff cross to the tip of his chin. He cried out in startled fear, and fell off of me.
I sucked in another labored breath and sat up. "Hell's bells," I gasped. "It worked."
Kravos struggled to his feet and backed away, staring, his eyes flying open wide as they looked back and forth between me and my savior.
My savior was me, too. Or rather, something that looked a very great deal like me. It was my shape and coloring, and had bruises and scratches, mixed with a few burns, all over it. Its hair was a wild mess, its eyes sunken over circles of black in a pale, sickly face.
My double peered at me and said, "You know. We really look like hell."
"What's this?" hissed Kravos. "What trick is this?"
I offered myself a hand up, so I took it. It took me a moment to balance, but I said, "Hell, Kravos. As flexible as the boundaries between here and the spirit world have been, I would have expected you to figure it out by now."
Kravos looked at the two of us, and bared his teeth. "Your ghost," he hissed.
"Technically," my ghost said. "Harry actually died for a minute. Don't you remember how ghosts are made? Normally, there wouldn't be enough latent energy to create an impression like me, but with him being a wizard—a real wizard, not a petty fake like you—and with the border to the Nevernever in such a state of flux, it was pretty much inevitable."
"That was very well said," I told my ghost.
"Just be glad your theory worked. I wouldn't be very good at this, solo."
"Well, thank Kravos here. It was him and Bianca and Mavra who stirred things up enough to make this possible." We looked at Kravos. "You aren't getting to sneak attack me while I'm doped unconscious, bub. It isn't going to be like last time. Any questions?"