Dead Beat df-7

by Jim Butcher

  "I'm not sure how many of them are in town," I said. "I need to know where they are-or at least how many of them are here. I want you to ask the dead to help me locate them."

  He lifted both hands. "They won't. I'll tell you that for certain. You couldn't get a ghost to willingly appear within screaming distance of a necromancer."

  "Come on, Mort. Don't start holding out on me."

  "I'm not," he said, and held up two fingers in a scout's hand signal. "My pledge of honor upon it."

  I exhaled, frustrated. "What about residual magic?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Whenever these necromancers work with dark magic it leaves a kind of stain or footprint. I can sense it if I get close enough."

  "So why don't you do it?"

  "It's a big town," I said. "And whatever these lunatics are up to, it's got to happen by midnight Halloween. I don't have time to walk a grid hoping to get close."

  "And you think the dead will?"

  "I think the dead can move through walls and the floor, and that there are a whole lot more of them than there are of me," I said. "If you ask them, they might do it."

  "They might attract attention to themselves, you mean," Mort said. "No. They may be dead, but that doesn't mean that they can't get hurt. I won't risk that for Council infighting."

  I blinked for a second. A few years ago Mort had barely been able to crawl out of his bottle long enough to cold-read credulous idiots into believing he could speak to their dead loved ones. Even after he had gotten his life together and begun to reclaim his atrophied talents, he had never displayed any particular indication that he wanted anything more than to turn a profit on his genuine skills rather than with fraud. Mort always looked out for number one.

  But not tonight. I recognized the quiet, steady light in his eyes. He was not going to be pushed on this issue. Maybe Mort wasn't willing to go to the wall for his fellow human beings, but apparently with the dead it was different. I hadn't expected the little ectomancer to grow a backbone, even if it was only a partial one.

  I weighed my options. I could always try to lean harder on Mort, but I was pretty sure that it wouldn't do me much good. I could try contacting the ghosts of Chicagoland myself-but while I knew the basic theory of ectomancy, I had no practical experience with it. I had no time to waste floundering around like a clueless newbie in an area of magic totally outside my practical experience.

  "Mort," I said, "look. If you mean it, I'll respect that. I'll go right now."

  He frowned, his eyes wary.

  "But this isn't about wizard politics," I said. "Kemmler's disciples have already killed at least one person here in town, and they're going to kill more."

  He slumped a little in his chair and closed his eyes. "Bad things happen to people, Dresden. That's not my fault."

  "Please," I said. "Mort, I have a friend involved in this. If I don't deal with these assholes, she's going to get hurt."

  He didn't open his eyes or answer me.

  Dammit. I couldn't force him to help me. If he wasn't going to be moved, he wasn't going to be moved.

  "Thanks for nothing then, Mort," I told him. My voice sounded more tired than bitter. "Keep on looking out for number one." I rose, picked up my staff, and walked toward the door.

  I had it unlocked and half-open when Mort said, "What's her name?"

  I paused and inhaled slowly. "It's Murphy," I said without turning around. "Karrin Murphy."

  There was a long silence.

  "Oh," Mort said then. "You should have just said so. I'll ask them."

  I looked over my shoulder. The ectomancer stood up and walked over to a low bureau. He withdrew several articles and started laying them out on the table.

  I shut the door and locked it again, then went back to the ectomancer. Mort unfolded a paper street map of Chicago and laid it flat on the table. Then he set candles at each of its corners and lit them. Finally he poured red ink from a little vial into a perfume atomizer.

  After watching him for a moment, I asked, "Why?"

  "I knew her father," Mort said. "I know her father."

  "She's a good person," I said.

  "That's what I hear." He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. " Dresden, I need you to be quiet for a while. I can't afford any distraction."

  "All right," I said.

  "I'm going to ask them," Mort said. "You won't hear me, but they will. I'll spray the ink into the air over the map, and they'll bring it down wherever they find one of your footprints."

  "You think it will work?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "Maybe. But I've never done this before." He closed his eyes and added, "Shhh."

  I sat waiting and tried not to fidget. Mort was completely still for several minutes, and then his lips started moving. No sound came from them, except for the quiet sighs of breathing when he inhaled. He broke out into a sudden and heavy sweat, his bald head gleaming in the candlelight. The air suddenly vibrated against my face, and flashes of cold raced over my body at random. A second later I became acutely conscious of another presence in the room. Then another. And a third. Seconds after that, though I could see or hear no one, I became certain that the room was packed with people, and an accompanying sense of claustrophobia made me long to get outside into fresh air. It was definitely magic, but different from any I had felt before. I fought the trapped, panicked sensation and remained seated, still and quiet.

  Mort nodded sharply, picked up the atomizer, and sprayed a mist of red ink into the air over the map.

  I held my breath and leaned closer.

  The mist drifted down over the map, but instead of settling into an even spread, the fine droplets began to swirl into miniature vortexes like tiny, bloody tornadoes sweeping over the map. Scarlet circles formed at the base of the minitornadoes, until the whirling cones spiraled down into vertical lines, then vanished.

  Mort let out a grunt and slumped forward in his chair, gasping for breath.

  I stood up and examined the street map by candlelight.

  "Did it work?" Mort rasped.

  "I think it did," I said. I put my finger beside one of the larger red circles. "This is the Forensic Institute. One of them created a zombie there earlier tonight."

  Mort sat up and leaned forward over the map, his eyes glazed with fatigue. He pointed at another bloody dot. "That one. It's the Field Museum."

  I traced my finger to another one. "This one is in a pretty tough neighborhood. I think it's an apartment building." I moved on to the next. "A cemetery. And what the hell, at O'Hare?"

  Mort shook his head. "The ink's darker than the others. I think that means it's beneath the airport, in Undertown."

  "Uh- huh," I said. "That makes sense. Two more. An alley down by Burnham Park, and a sidewalk on Wacker."

  "Six," Mort said.

  "Six," I agreed.

  Six necromancers like Grevane and Cowl.

  And only one of me.

  Hell's bells.

  Chapter Eleven

  I clipped my old iron mailbox with the front fender of the stupid SUV as I pulled into the driveway at my apartment. The box dented one corner of the vehicle's hood and toppled over with a heavy clang. I parked the SUV and shoved the pole the mailbox was mounted on back into the ground, but the impact had bent the pole. My mailbox leaned drunkenly to one side, but it stayed upright. Good enough for me.

  I gathered up my gear, including the sawed-off shotgun I'd removed from the Beetle, and got indoors in a hurry.

  I set things down and locked up my wards and the heavy steel door I'd had installed after a big, bad demon had huffed and puffed and blown down the original. It wasn't until I had them all firmly secured that I let out a slow breath and started to relax. The living room was lit only by the embers of the fire and a few tiny flames. From the kitchen alcove, I heard the soft thumping sound of Mouse's tail wagging against the icebox.

  Thomas sat in the big comfy recliner next to the fire, absently stroking Mister. M
y cat, curled up on Thomas's lap, watched me with heavy-lidded eyes.

  "Thomas," I said.

  "All quiet on the basement front," Thomas murmured. "Once Butters wound down he just about dropped unconscious. I told him he could sleep in the bed."

  "Fine," I said. I took my copy of Erlking, lit a few candles on the end table, and flopped down onto the couch.

  Thomas arched an eyebrow.

  "Oh," I said, sitting up. "Sorry, didn't think. You probably want to sleep."

  "Not especially," he said. "Someone should keep watch, anyway."

  "You all right?" I asked him.

  "I just don't feel like sleeping right now. You can have the couch."

  I nodded and settled down again. "You want to talk?"

  "If I did, I'd be talking." He went back to staring at the fire and stroking the cat.

  He was still upset, obviously, but I'd learned that it was pointless to start pushing Thomas, no matter how well-intentioned I might be. He'd dig in his heels from sheer obstinacy, and the conversation would get nowhere.

  "Thanks," I said, "for looking out for Butters for me."

  Thomas nodded.

  We fell into a relaxed silence, and I started reading the book.

  A while later I fell asleep.

  I dreamed almost immediately. Threatening trees, mostly evergreens, rose up around a small glade. In its center a modest, neat camp-fire sparked and crackled. I could smell a lake somewhere nearby, moss and flowers and dead fish blending in with the scent of mildewed pine. The air was cold enough to make me shiver, and I hunched a little closer to the fire, but even so I felt like my back was to a glacier. From somewhere overhead came the wild, honking screams of migrating geese under a crescent moon. I didn't recognize the place, but it somehow seemed perfectly familiar.

  A camping rig straddled the fire, holding a tin coffee mug and a suspended pot of what smelled like some kind of rich stew, maybe venison.

  My father sat across the fire from me.

  Malcolm Dresden was a tall, spare man with dark hair and steady blue eyes. His jeans were as heavily worn as his leather hiking boots, and I could see that he was wearing his favorite red-and-white flannel shirt under his fleece-lined hunting jacket. He leaned forward and stirred the pot, then took a sip from the spoon.

  "Not bad," he said. He picked up a couple of tin mugs from one of the stones surrounding the fire and grabbed the coffeepot by its wooden handle. He poured coffee into both cups, hung the coffeepot back over the fire, and offered me one of them. "You warm enough?"

  I accepted the mug and just stared at him for a moment. Maybe I had expected him to look exactly like I remembered, but he didn't. He looked so thin. He looked young, maybe even younger than me. And… so very, very ordinary.

  "You go deaf, son?" my father asked, grinning. "Or mute?"

  I fumbled for words. "It's cold out here."

  "It is that," he agreed.

  He pulled a couple of packs of powdered creamer from a knapsack, and passed them over to me along with a couple of packs of sugar. We prepared the coffee in silence and sipped at it for a few moments. It filled me with an earthy, satisfying warmth that made the terrible chill along my spine more bearable.

  "This is a nice change of pace from my usual dream," I said.

  "How so?" my father asked.

  "Fewer tentacles. Fewer screams. Less death."

  Just then, out in the blackness beneath the trees, something let out an eerie, wailing, alien cry. I shivered and my heart beat a little faster.

  "The night is young," my father said dryly.

  There was a rushing sound out in the woods, and I saw the tops of several trees swaying in succession as something, something big, moved among them. From tree to tree, the unseen threat moved, circling the little glade. I looked down and saw ripples on the surface of my coffee. My hand was trembling.

  "What is that?" I asked.

  "Beware the Jabberwock, my son," he said. He took a sip of his coffee and regarded the motion in the trees without fear. "You know what it is. You know what it wants."

  I swallowed. "The demon."

  He nodded, blue eyes on mine.

  "I don't suppose-"

  "I'm fresh out of vorpal swords," my father said. He reached into the pack and tossed me a miniature candy bar. "The closest I can get is a Snickers snack."

  "You call that a funny line?" I asked.

  "Look who's talking."

  "So," I said. "Why haven't I dreamed about you before?"

  "Because I wasn't allowed to contact you before," my father said easily. "Not until others had crossed the line."

  "Allowed?" I asked. "What others? What line?"

  He waved a hand. "It isn't important. And we don't have much time here before it returns."

  I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. "Okay, I'm done with the stupid nostalgia dream. Why don't you go back to wherever you came from and I'll have a nice soothing dream of going to work naked."

  He laughed. "That's better. I know you're afraid, son. Afraid for your friends. Afraid for yourself. But know this: You are not alone."

  I blinked at him several times. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that I'm not a part of your own subconscious, son. I'm me. I'm real."

  "No offense, but of course the dream version of you would say that," I said.

  He smiled. "Is that what your heart tells you I am? A dreamed shadow of memory?"

  I stared at him for a minute and then shook my head. "It can't be you. You're dead."

  He stood up, walked around the fire, then dropped to one knee beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder. "Yes. I'm dead. But that doesn't mean that I'm not here. It doesn't mean that I don't love you, boy."

  The light of the fire blurred in front of my eyes, and a horrible pang went through my chest. "Dad?"

  His hand squeezed tighter. "I'm here."

  "I don't understand it," I said. "Why am I so afraid?"

  "Because you've got more to lose than you ever have before," he said. "Your brother. Your friends. You've opened yourself up to them. Loved them. You can't bear the thought of someone taking them away from you."

  "It's getting to be too much," I said. My voice shook. "I just keep getting more wounded and tired. They just keep coming at me. I'm not some kind of superhero. I'm just me. And I didn't want any of this. I don't want to die."

  He put his other hand on my other shoulder and faced me intently. I met his eyes while he spoke. "That fear is natural. But it is also a weakness. A path of attack for what would prey upon your mind. You must learn to control it."

  "How?" I whispered.

  "No one can tell you that," he said. "Not me. Not an angel. And not a fallen angel. You are the product of your own choices, Harry, and nothing can change that. Don't let anyone or anything tell you otherwise."

  "But… my choices haven't always been very good," I said.

  "Whose have?" he asked. He smiled at me and rose. "I'm sorry, son, but I have to go."

  "Wait," I said.

  He put his hand on my head, and for that brief second I was a child again, tired and small and utterly certain of my father's strength.

  "My boy. There's so much still ahead of you."

  "So much?" I whispered.

  "Pain. Joy. Love. Death. Heartache. Terrible waters. Despair. Hope. I wish I could have been with you longer. I wish I could have helped you prepare for it."

  "For what?" I asked him.

  "Shhhhh," he said. "Sleep. I'll keep the fire lit until morning."

  And darkness and deep, silent, blissfully restful night swallowed me whole.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning my brain was throbbing with far too many thoughts and worries to allow for any productive thinking. I couldn't afford that. Until I knew exactly what was going on and how to stop it, the most important weapon in my arsenal was reason.

  I needed to clear my head.

  I got my running clothes on as quietly as I could, but as tired
as Butters looked I could probably have decked myself in a full suit of Renaissance plate armor without waking him. I took Mouse on his morning walk, filled up a plastic sports bottle with cold water, and headed for the door.

  Thomas stood waiting for me at the SUV, dressed as I was in shorts and a T-shirt. Only he made it look casually chic, whereas I looked like I bought my wardrobe at garage sales.

  "Where's the Beetle?" he asked.

  "Shop," I said. "Someone beat it up."

  "Why?"

  "Not sure yet," I said. "Feel like a run?"

  "Why?" he asked.

  "My head's full. Need to move."

  Thomas nodded in understanding. "Where?"

  "Beach."

  "Sure," he said. He hooked a thumb at the SUV. "What's with the battleship?"

  "Billy and Georgia loaned it to me."

  "That was nice of them."

  "Nice and stupid. It won't last long with me driving it." I sighed.

  "But I need the wheels. Come on. It's after dawn, but I still don't want to leave Butters alone for long."

  He nodded, and we got into the SUV. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

  "God, not until I can blow off some steam running."

  "I hear you," he said, and we remained silent all the way to the beach.

  North Avenue Beach is one of the most popular spots in town in the summer. On a cloudy morning at the end of October, though, not many folk were about. There were two other cars in the parking lot, probably belonging to the two other joggers moving steadily on the running trail.

  I parked the SUV, and Thomas and I got out. I spent a couple of minutes stretching, though it probably wasn't as thorough as it should have been. Thomas just leaned against the SUV, watching me without comment. From what I've seen, vampires don't seem to have a real big problem with pulled muscles. I nodded to him, and we both hit the running trail, starting off at the slowest jog I could manage. I ran like that for maybe ten minutes before I felt warm enough to pick up the pace. Thomas matched me the whole time, his eyes half-closed and distant. My breathing hit a comfortable stride, hard but not labored. Thomas didn't breathe hard at first, either, but my legs are a lot longer than his, and I'd developed a taste for running as exercise over the past few years. I shifted into a higher gear, and finally made him start working to keep up with me.