by Jim Butcher
“He wants to make his own private playground out of the Rocky Mountains?” I blurted.
“No, Harry Dresden. He wishes to acquire the lands that are not already owned by the government, then donate them, provided the government guarantees that they will be used as a part of the Northwest Passage Project. He has considerable backing from environmentalist groups throughout the country, and support in your capital, as well, provided he can get the land.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “You said he has a lot of support. Who wants to stop him?”
“Industrial interests still looking to expand into the Northwest, ” Chauncy said.
“Let me guess. James Harding III was one of them,” I said, already writing it down.
“How did you know?” Chauncy asked.
“He was killed by a werewolf last month, along with his bodyguard. Several other people died as well.”
Chauncy beamed. “You are a clever man, Harry Dresden. Yes. James Douglas Harding III was exceptionally interested in blocking MacFinn’s efforts to acquire property. He came to Chicago to have negotiations with MacFinn, but died before they were complete.”
I closed my eyes for a minute, thinking. “Okay. Harding comes to town to talk to MacFinn. Harding’s in cahoots with Marcone, so maybe Marcone is hosting the talks. Harding and his bodyguard get et-all-up by a werewolf. So . . . MacFinn is the werewolf in question?”
Chauncy smiled, a rather intimidating expression. "MacFinn is a member of an ancient family line from an island known as Ireland. His family has a notable history. Sometime in the murky past, legend would have it, the man known as Saint Pat-rick cursed his ancestor to become a ravening beast at every full moon. The curse came with two addenda. First, that it would be hereditary, passing down to someone new each and every generation. And second, that the cursed line of the family would never, ever die out, lasting until the end of days.”
I wrote that down as well. “A Catholic saint did that?”
Chauncy made a sound of distaste. “I am not responsible for the sorts of people the Other Side employs, wizard. Or the tactics they use.”
“Considering the source, I think I’ll note it as a biased opinion. Your folk have done a thousand times worse,” I said.
“Well. True,” Chauncy admitted. “But we tend to be quite honest about the sort of beings we are and the sorts of things we stand for, at least.”
I snorted. “All right. This is making a lot more sense now. MacFinn is a loup-garou, one of the legendary monsters. He’s trying to do some good in his spare time, make the big park for all the furry critters, but Harding puts himself in the way. MacFinn goes on a killing spree and wipes him out.” I frowned. “Except that Harding was the last person to be murdered last month. You would have thought that if MacFinn was going to lose it, Harding would be the first to go.” I peered at Chauncy. “Is MacFinn the murderer?”
"MacFinn is a murderer,” Chauncy said. “But among humankind, he is one of many, and not the most monstrous.”
“Is he the one who killed Marcone’s bodyguard? The other people last month?”
“My information on that point is inconclusive, Harry Dresden, ” Chauncy said. His black eyes gleamed. “Perhaps for the price of another name, I could inquire of my brethren and give you a more precise answer.”
I scowled. “Not a chance. Do you know who murdered the other people, last month?”
“I do,” Chauncy said. “Murder is one of the foremost sins, and we keep close track of sins.”
I leaned forward intently. “Who was it?”
Chauncy laughed, a grating sound. “Really, Harry Dresden. In the first place, our bargain was for information regarding MacFinn and the Northwest Passage Project. In the second, I could not tell you the answer to such a direct question, and you know it. There is a limit to how much I may involve myself in mortal affairs.”
I let out a breath of frustration and rubbed at my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. All right, Chauncy. What else can you tell me?”
“Only that Harley MacFinn was planning to meet with John Marcone tomorrow night, to continue the talks.”
“Wait a minute. Is Marcone the major opponent to the project now?”
“Correct,” Chauncy said. “He assumed control of a majority of the business interests shared with Harding upon Harding’s death.”
“So . . . Marcone had a fantastic motive to have Harding killed. It broadened his financial empire, and put him in a position to gouge MacFinn for as much money as he possibly could.”
Chauncy adjusted his wire-frame spectacles. “Your reasoning would seem to be sound.”
I thumped my pencil on my notebook, staring at what I had written. “Yeah. But it doesn’t explain why everyone else got killed. Or who did it. Unless Marcone’s got a pack of werewolves in his pocket, that is.” I chewed on my lip, and thought about my encounter at the Full Moon Garage. “Or Streetwolves.”
“Is there anything else?” Chauncy asked, his manner solicitous.
"Yes,” I said. “Where can I find MacFinn?”
“Eight eighty-eight Ralston Place.”
I wrote it down. “But that’s right here in Chicago. In the Gold Coast.”
“Where did you expect a billionaire to live when he was in Chicago, Harry Dresden? Now, I seem to have lived up to all of my obligations. I expect my payment now.” Chauncy took a few restless steps back and forth within the circle. His time on earth was beginning to wear on him.
I nodded. “My name,” I said, “is Harry Blackstone Dresden. ” I carefully omitted “Copperfield” from the words, while leaving the tones and pronunciation the same.
“Harry. Blackstone. Dresden,” Chauncy repeated carefully. “Harry as in Harry Houdini? Blackstone, the stage illusionist?”
I nodded. “My dad was a stage musician. When I was born, he gave me those names. They were always his heroes. I think if my mother had survived the birth, she would have slapped him for it.” I made a few more notes on my page, getting ideas down on paper before they fled from memory.
“Indeed,” Chauncy agreed. “Your mother was a most direct and willful woman. Her loss was a great sadness to all of us.”
I blinked, startled, and the pencil fell from my fingers. I stared at the demon for a moment. “You . . . you knew my mother? You knew Margaret Gwendolyn Dresden?”
Chauncy regarded me without expression or emotion. “Many in the underworld were . . . familiar with her, Harry Blackstone Dresden, though under a different name. Her coming was awaited with great anticipation, but the Dark Prince lost her, in the end.”
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
Chauncy’s eyes gleamed with avarice. “Didn’t you know about your mother’s past, Mr. Dresden? A pity that we didn’t have this conversation sooner. You might have added it into the bargain we made. Of course, if you would like to forfeit another name, to know all about your mother’s past, her . . .” his voice twisted with distaste, “redemption, and the unnatural deaths of both mother and father, I am certain we can work something out.”
I gritted my teeth in a sudden rush of childlike frustration. My heart pounded in my ears. My mother’s dark past? I had expected that she was a wizardess, but I had never been able to prove anything, one way or another. Unnatural deaths? My father had perished in his sleep, of an aneurism, when I was young. My mother had died in childbirth.
Or had they?
A sudden, burning desire to know filled me, starting at my gut and rolling outward through my body—to know who my mother was, what she had known. She had left me her silver pentacle, but I knew nothing of the sort of person she was, other than what my gentle and too-generous father had told me before his death. What were my parents like? How had they perished and why? Had they been killed? Did they have enemies lurking out there, somewhere? If so, had I inherited them?
My mother’s dark past. Did that explain my own fascination with the darker powers, my somewhat-less-than-sterling adherence to the rules of
the White Council that I considered foolish or inconvenient?
I looked up at the demon, and felt like a sucker. I had been set up. He had intended, all along, to dangle this information in front of me as bait. He wanted to get my whole name, if he could, or more.
“I can show them to you, Harry Blackstone Dresden, as they really are,” Chaunzaggoroth assured me, his voice dulcet. “You’ve never seen your mother’s face. I can give that to you. You’ve never heard her voice. I can let you hear that as well. You know nothing of what sort of people your parents were—or if you have any other family out there. Family, Harry Blackstone Dresden. Blood. Every bit as tormented and alone as you are . . .”
I stared at the demon’s hideous form and listened to his soothing, relaxing voice. Family. Was it possible that I had a family? Aunts? Uncles? Cousins? Others, like me, perhaps, moving through the secret societies of the wizards, hidden from the view of the mortal world?
“The price is comparatively low. What need have you for your immortal soul when your body is finished with it? What harm to pass on to me only one more name? This is not information easily gained, even by my kind. You may not have the chance to garner it again.” The demon pressed his pincers against the barrier of the conjuring circle. His beaklike maw fairly trembled with eagerness.
“Forget it,” I said quietly. “No deal.”
Chaunzaggoroth’s jaw dropped open. “But, Harry Blackstone Dresden—” he began.
I didn’t realize that I was shouting until I saw him flinch. “I said forget it! You think I’m some kind of simp for you to sucker in, darkspawn? Take what you have gained and go, and feel lucky that I do not send you home with your bones torn from your body or your beak ground into dust.”
Chaunzaggoroth’s eyes flashed with rage and he hurled himself against the barrier again, howling with blood lust and fury. I extended my hand and snarled, “Oh no you don’t, you slimy little shit head.” The demon’s will strained against mine, and though sweat burst out on my forehead, I came out ahead once more.
Chaunzaggoroth began to grow smaller and smaller, howling out his frustrated rage. “We are watching you, wizard!” he screamed. “You walk through shadows and one night you will slip and fall. And when you do, we will be there. We will be waiting to bring you down to us. You will be ours in the end.”
He went on like that until he shrank to the size of a pinpoint and vanished with a little, imploding sound. I let my hand drop and lowered my head, breathing hard. I was shaking all over, and not only with the cold of my laboratory. I had badly misjudged Chaunzaggoroth, thought him a somewhat reliable, if dangerous, source of information, willing to do reasonable business. But the rage, the fury, the frustrated malice that had been in his final offer, those last words, had shown his true colors. He had lied to me, deceived me about his true nature, played me along like a sucker and then tried to set the hook, hard. I felt like such an idiot.
The phone began to ring upstairs. I stirred into sudden motion, shoving stacks of things out of my way, pushing past them and over them, to reach the stepladder stairs that led up to my apartment. I hurried up them, my notebook in one hand, and caught the phone on its fifth ring. My apartment was dark. Night had fallen while I had interviewed the demon.
“Dresden,” I said, puffing.
“Harry,” Murphy said, her voice weak. “We’ve got another one.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “I’m coming. Give me the address.” I set down the notebook and held my pencil ready to write.
Murphy’s tone was numb. “Eight eighty-eight Ralston Place. Up in the Gold Coast.”
I froze, staring at the address I had written down on the notebook. The address the demon had given me.
“Harry?” Murphy said. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard,” I told her. “I’m coming, Murph.” I hung up the phone and headed out into the light of the full moon overhead.
Chapter Twelve
Eight eighty-eight Ralston was a townhouse in the Gold Coast, the richest area of Chicago. It was set on its own little plot, surrounded by trees that hid the house from view almost entirely. High hedges, worked around the house in a small garden, added to the concealment as I drove up the white pebble drive, and parked the Beetle at the rear of a small fleet of police cars and emergency vehicles.
The strobing blue lights were almost comforting, by now. I’d seen them so many times that it felt, in an unsettling way, like a homecoming. Murphy had called me in early—I didn’t see the forensics van yet, and only now were officers putting up yellow tape around the property.
I got out of my car, dressed in my jeans, button-down shirt, and boots again, my old black duster flapping around my calves. The wind was brisk, cold. The moon was riding high overhead, barely visible through the city’s haze of pollution.
A chill ran down my neck, and I stopped, looking at the rows and rows of elegantly illuminated hedge sculptures, flower beds, and rows of shrubbery around me. I was abruptly certain that someone was out in the darkness; I could feel eyes on me.
I stared out at the night, sweeping my gaze slowly around. I could see nothing, but I would have bet money that there was someone out there. After a moment, the sense of being watched faded, and I shivered. I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked quickly toward the townhouse.
“Dresden,” someone called, and I looked up to see Carmichael coming down the front stairs of the townhouse toward me. Carmichael was Murphy’s right hand in Special Investigations. Shorter than average, rounder than average, slobbier than average, and with piggier eyes than average, Carmichael was a skeptic, a doubter, and a razor-sharp cop. He came down the stairs in his soup-stained old tie and shirtsleeves. “It’s about fucking time. Jesus Christ, Dresden.” He wiped a hand over his sweating brow.
I frowned down at Carmichael as we went up the stairs side by side. “That’s the nicest greeting you’ve ever given me, I think,” I said. “You change your mind about me being a fake?”
Carmichael shook his head. “No. I still think you’re full of shit with this wizard-magic business. But Christ almighty, there are times when I wish you weren’t.”
“You never can tell,” I said, my voice dry. “Where’s Murphy?”
“Inside,” Carmichael said, his mouth twisting with distaste. “You go on up the stairs. The whole place belongs to this guy. Murphy figures you might know something. I’m going to stay here and bog down the Feds when they show.”
I glanced at him. “She still worried about looking bad for Internal Affairs?”
Carmichael grimaced. “Those assholes in IA would be all over her if she kicked the Feds out. Christ almighty, I get sick of city politics sometimes.”
I nodded agreement and started up the stairs.
“Hey, Dresden,” Carmichael said.
I looked over my shoulder at him, expecting the familiar jeers and insults. He was studying me with bright, narrow eyes. “I hear things about you and John Marcone. What’s the deal?”
I shook my head. “No deal. He’s lying scum.”
Carmichael studied me intently, and then nodded. “You ain’t much of a liar, Dresden. I don’t think you could keep a straight face about something like this. I believe you.”
“But you don’t believe me when I say I’m a wizard?” I asked.
Carmichael grimaced and looked away. “Do I look like a fucking moron to you? Huh? You better get upstairs. I’ll make some noise when Denton and the Stepford agents get here.”
I turned to go and saw Murphy standing at the head of the stairs in a crisp grey business jacket and slacks, with sensible low heels and jewelry the color of steel. Her earrings seemed to be little more than bright beads of silver in her ears, which I had never really noticed when she had worn her golden hair long. Murphy’s earlobes were cute. She’d kill me, just for thinking it.
“About time, Dresden. Get up here.” Her voice was hard, angry. She vanished from the top of the stairway, and I took the rest of the stairs two at a t
ime to catch up with her.
The apartment (though it was too big for the word to really apply) was brightly lit, and smelled, very faintly, of blood. Blood has a sweet sort of metallic odor. It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and mine snapped to attention at once. There was another smell as well, maybe incense of some kind, and the fresh scent of the wind. I turned down a short hall at the top of the stairs, and followed Murphy into what was apparently a master bedroom, where I found the source of all the scents.
There was no furniture inside the master bedroom—and it was huge, large enough to make you wince at how far you’d have to go to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night. There was no carpeting. There were no decorations on the walls. There was no glass in the huge, single-pane window, letting in the October wind. The full moon shone down through it like a picture in a frame.
What the room did have was blood. There was blood all over, scattered in droplets and splashed in spurts against one wall. The scarlet footprints of something like a large wolf led in a straight line toward the shattered window. In the center of the room were the remains of a greater circle of summoning, its three rings of symbols carefully wrought in white chalk upon the wooden floor, burning sticks of incense interspersed among the symbols of the second ring.
What was left of Kim Delaney lay naked and supine on the bloodstained floor a few feet from the circle. The expression of shock and surprise on her face wouldn’t change until rigor set in. Her dark, once-glittering eyes stared up at the ceiling, and her lips were parted, as though in the middle of an apology.
A large, wheel section of flesh beneath her chin was missing, and with it Kim’s larynx and trachea. Bloody red meat was showing, the ragged ends of arteries and torn sections of muscle, and pale white bones gleamed at the bottom of the wound. Long rakes down her body had opened her like a Ziploc bag, leaving her covered in scarlet.
Something went “click” in my head. Someone threw some kind of switch that just turned off my emotions entirely and immersed me in a surreal haze. I couldn’t be seeing this. It simply couldn’t be real. It had to be some sort of game or hoax, in which the actors would start giggling in a few moments, unable to contain the mirth of their prank.