Proven Guilty df-8

by Jim Butcher

  “I guess,” I sighed.

  Her mouth twitched, but she didn’t quite smile or laugh at me. “Seems to me that you should have seen that one coming.”

  “Don’t laugh at me,” I said. “It hurts.”

  “You’ve had worse,” she said heartlessly. “And it serves you right for letting a little girl into your hotel room. Now get up. I’ll be downstairs.”

  She left, too.

  Mouse came over and started patiently nuzzling my chin and putting slobbering dog kisses on the bruise I could feel forming there.

  “Women confuse me,” I told him.

  Mouse sat down, jaws dropping open into a doggie grin. I groaned, pushed myself to my feet, and set about preparing the redirection spell, while outside my room’s window the sun raced for its nightly rendezvous with the western horizon.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I shut the door again and rushed to prepare the beacon spell, hurrying, certain that every second counted. I would only get one shot at diverting the phages, and I finished my preparations in feverish haste.

  Nothing happened.

  The sun set, leaving me mostly in the dark, since I hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights.

  Nothing continued happening.

  I knelt in my circle of sand until my legs cramped and then went numb, and my knees felt like they were resting in molten lead.

  And all that nothing just kept on coming.

  “Oh come on,” I snarled. “Bring on the doom, already.”

  From his spot near the door, Mouse heaved a sigh.

  “Oh, shut up,” I told him. I didn’t dare take a break. If the bad guys moved and I wasn’t ready, people would get hurt. So I knelt there, holding the spell ready in my mind, uncomfortable as hell, and swearing sulfurously under my breath. Stupid, lame-ass summoner. What the hell was he waiting for? Any half-competent villain would have had monsters roaming the halls hours ago.

  Mouse’s tail thumped against the wall, and a moment later the room’s lock clicked, and Rawlins opened the door. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that concealed the bandages on his wounded arm, and he carried a wardflame candle in one hand. The blocky, dark-skinned officer leaned down and held his hand out to Mouse, who sniffed Rawlins in typical canine fashion and wagged his tail some more.

  Rawlins remained in the doorway and said, “Hello? Dresden?”

  “Here,” I muttered.

  Rawlins thumped at the wall until he found the lights and flicked them on. He stared at me for a minute, eyebrows slowly rising. “Uh-huh. There’s something I don’t see every day.”

  I grimaced. “Murphy found you, I see.”

  “Almost like she’s a detective,” Rawlins said, grinning.

  “Your boss know you’re here?” I asked.

  “Not so far,” he replied. “But I expect someone might notice and tell him about me at some point.”

  “He won’t be happy,” I said.

  “I just hope I can live with myself later.” He waved his little candle. “Murphy sent me up here to make sure you was still alive.”

  “I’m going to need knee surgery,” I sighed. “I never planned on it taking this long.”

  “Uh-huh,” Rawlins said again. “You ain’t one of those Satan worshipers are you?”

  “No,” I said. “More like Pythagoras.”

  “Pih-who?”

  “He invented triangles.”

  “Ah,” Rawlins said, as if that had explained everything. “So, what are you doing here?”

  I explained it to him, though it looked like he was having trouble accepting my words. Maybe I lacked credibility. “But I figured he would have moved by now.”

  “Crooks are funny that way,” he agreed. “No respect.”

  I scrunched up my face in thought. I was hungry, thirsty, tired, hurting, and I had to use the bathroom in the worst way. None of those things were going to become easier to bear as the night went on, and I needed to have all the concentration I could get.

  “Okay,” I said. “Be smart. Take a break.” I leaned down and broke the circle by sweeping the sand aside with my hand, letting the energy of the spell I’d been holding ready drain away. At least I’d already done it once. Getting it back into position wouldn’t take nearly as long as the first time.

  I tried to rise, but my legs were incommunicado. I grimaced at Rawlins and said, “Give me a hand here?”

  He set his candle aside and helped me up. I wobbled precariously for a couple of seconds, but then stumbled to the bathroom and back out.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m good. Tell Murphy to hold steady.”

  Rawlins nodded. “We’ll be downstairs.” He paused and said, “Hope this happens soon. There’s some kind of costume contest going on.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “There are a lot of skimpy getups, and some of those people should not be wearing them.”

  “Call the fashion police,” I said.

  Rawlins nodded gravely. “They’ve crossed a line.”

  “Do me a favor?” I asked him. “Take Mouse out for a walk?” I dug a couple of bills from my back pocket and passed them to Rawlins. “Maybe get him a hot dog or something?”

  “Sure,” Rawlins agreed. “I like dogs.”

  The dog’s tail thumped rapidly against the wall.

  “Whatever you do, don’t give him nachos. I didn’t bring my gas mask with me.”

  Rawlins nodded. “Sure.”

  “Keep your eyes open,” I said. “Tell Murph I’ll be reset in a couple of minutes.”

  Rawlins grunted and left.

  I had a canteen of fruit punch in my backpack, along with some beef jerky and some chocolate. I went to the bag and started wolfing down all three while pacing back and forth to stretch my legs. Holding myself ready to strike had been more than simply a physical strain. My head felt like someone had packed it in wool, while at the same time my senses seemed slighdy distorted; edges made sharper, curves more ambiguous, the whole combining to make the hotel room feel like a toned-down Escher painting. There was no help for that. The use of magic was mostly in the mind, and holding a spell together for a long time often triggered disconcerting side effects.

  I polished off the food as fast as I could gulp it down, went easy on the drink, in case I was there for another several hours, and settled back down in my circle, preparing to close it again.

  When the room’s phone rang.

  “Deja vu,” I commented to the empty room. I stood up, my knees creaking, and went to the phone.

  “Dresden Taxidermy,” I said. “You snuff it, we’ll stuff it.”

  There was a beat of startled silence from the phone, and then a young man’s voice said, “Urn. Is this Harry Dresden?”

  I recognized the voice-Boyfriend Nelson. That made my ears perk up, metaphorically speaking. “Yeah, this is him,” I said.

  “This is…”

  “I know who it is,” I told him. “How did you know where I was?”

  “Sandra,” he said. “I called her cell. She told me you’d checked in.”

  “Uh-huh. Why are you calling me?”

  “Molly said… she said you helped people.” He paused to take a breath, and then said, “I think I need your help. Again.”

  “Why?” I asked. Keep the questions open, I thought. Never give him one with a simple answer. “What’s going on?”

  “Last night, during the attacks. I think I saw something.”

  I sighed. “It was going around,” I agreed. “But if you saw something, you’re a witness to a crime, kid. You need to show up and work with the cops. They get sort of unreasonable with people who go all evasive when they want to ask questions about a murder.”

  “But I think some… thing is following me,” he said. An unsteady tremor shook Nelson’s voice. “Look, they’re just cops, man. They just have guns. I don’t think they can help me. I hope you can.”

  “Why?” I asked him. “What is it that you saw?”<
br />
  “No,” he said. “Not on the phone. I want to meet with you. I want you to promise me your help. I’ll tell you then.”

  Right. Because it wasn’t like I had anything better to be doing. “Look, kid…”

  Nelson’s voice suddenly went thready with breathless fear. “Oh, God. I can’t stay here. Please. Please.”

  “Fine, fine,” I said, trying to keep my voice strong, steady. The kid was scared-the bone-deep, knee-watering, half-crazy kind of scared that makes rational thinking all but impossible. “Listen to me. Stay around people, as many of them as you can. Go to Saint Mary of the Angels Church. It’s holy ground, and you’ll be safe there. Ask for Father Forthill. He’s a little guy, mostly bald, glasses, bright blue eyes. Tell him everything and tell him I’m coming to collect you as soon as I can.”

  “Yes, all right, thank you,” Nelson said, the words hysterically rushed. There was a brief clatter, and then I heard running footsteps on concrete. He hadn’t even gotten the phone back into its cradle before he’d taken off at a dead sprint.

  I chewed on my lip. The kid was definitely in trouble, or at least genuinely believed that he was. If so, it meant that maybe he had seen something last night, something that made it important for someone to kill him-i.e., some kind of damning evidence that would probably help me figure out what the hell was going on. I felt a stab of anxiety. Holy ground was a powerful deterrent to the things that went bump in the night-or in this case, things that went stab, stab, hack, slash, rip in the night-but it wasn’t invulnerable. If something of sufficient supernatural strength really was after the kid, it might be able to force its way into the church.

  Dammit, but what choice did I have? If I left my position here, any fresh attack could make last night’s look like a friendly round of Candy-land. What could he possibly have seen that would make him worth killing? Why the hell was he being followed? I felt like I was floundering around in the dark inside someone else’s house, benighted of savoir faire enough to move with assurance. I was spread too thin. If I didn’t start finding more pieces of the puzzle and put them together, and soon, more people would die.

  I could only be in one place at one time. If the kid was in real trouble, he’d be as safe at the church, with Forthill, as anywhere in town short of the protection of my heavily warded apartment. Meanwhile, there were a bunch of other kids here who looked to be the next meal on the phobophage buffet. I had to act where I could do the most good. It was a cold sort of equation, the calculus of survival, but undeniable. I’d get to Nelson after I had taken care of business at the hotel.

  I settled down on my knees again, carefully, closed the circle, and began to pick up the pieces of the redirection spell once more.

  The single wardflame candle on the room’s dresser suddenly exploded into lurid red light. Simultaneously, I felt a heavy thrumming in the air, where the strands of my web spell had suddenly encountered powerful magic in motion, drawing my thoughts and attention to a back hallway in the hotel, not far from the kitchens, up to the hall outside the hotel’s exercise room, and a swift double-thrum from another of the hotel’s bathrooms.

  Four attackers, this time. Four of them at least.

  I had ten seconds to get the spell off.

  Nine.

  Maybe less.

  Eight.

  I threw myself into the spell.

  Seven.

  It had to be fast.

  Six.

  It had to be perfect on the first attempt.

  Five.

  If I screwed this one up, someone else would pay for it.

  Four.

  They’d pay for it in blood.

  Three.

  Two.

  One…

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I readied my spell, terrified that I was already too late, terrified that I had made a critical mistake, terrified that more innocents were about to face hideous agony and death.

  That was how it had to be. If I wanted to lure the phages from their rampage by directing them after a richer source of fear, it had to come from somewhere-specifically, it had to come from me. If I’d tried to use falsified emotion, it would no more have worked on them than an attempt to make a gorilla interested in a plastic banana. The fear had to be genuine.

  Of course, I hadn’t really planned on being quite this afraid. Being taken off my guard and handed a time limit had added an edge of panicked hysteria to the ample anxiety I already had.

  The spell coalesced, and time came to an abrupt stop.

  In that illusory stasis, my senses were on fire. The presence of the dangerous entities now entering the material world rippled through my detection web; a jittery, fluttering sensation. The energy of the spell burned like an invisible star before my outstretched hands, and my terror rushed into it and fused with the spell. Streamers from the lure whipped out along the lines of power that constituted my detection web, brushing lightly at the entities, attracting their attention, giving them a whiff of rich sustenance.

  And somewhere in the middle of all that, I felt a single, quiet, quivering pulse-a living presence that could only be the phages’ summoner and beacon.

  “Gotcha,” I hissed, and with an effort of will broke the circle and sent the spell winging toward him.

  Time resumed its course. The energy that powered the spell fled out of me in another rush, and left me lying on my side, struggling to draw in enough breath. I could feel the spell sizzling down the lines of power for the summoner, and a heartbeat later there was a sense of impact as the spell went home. As it happened, the entities my web touched went abruptly still, the web ceasing its trembling-and then they all surged forward into sudden motion, vanishing from the web, and presumably streaking after the lure.

  All but one.

  A breath or two after the entities had departed, my web trembled again, now growing more agitated, its motion a kind of subliminal pressure against my thoughts.

  I had missed one. My spell had gotten out in time to draw away the others, but either my web had failed me at some point or the remaining phage had been quicker on the draw than his buddies from the Never-never. I could feel it moving from the hotel’s kitchens toward the convention halls.

  I wanted to curl into a fetal position and go into a coma. Instead, I shoved my wobbly way to my feet, took up my pack, and opened the drawer to get Bob.

  “Did it work?” he chirped.

  “Almost,” I said. “There’s one left. Keep your head down.”

  “Oh, very funny…” he began.

  I zipped the skull into my pack, took up my staff and blasting rod, and shuffled wheezily out to find the remaining phage before it found someone else.

  My legs almost gave out just thinking about taking the stairs, so I rode the elevator down to the first floor. I heard nothing until the floor indicator told me we’d just passed the second floor, at which point I began to hear frightened, muffled screams. The elevator hit the first floor, and the doors had just begun to roll open when the power went out.

  Blackness fell over the hotel. The screams redoubled. I took out my pentacle amulet and sent enough of my will into it to make it glow with pale blue wizard’s light. I jammed my staff into the slightly open elevator doors and levered them apart, then slipped out into the hotel.

  Though the sun had set more than an hour before, the crowded convention hall had remained stuffy while its air conditioners labored in vain. I got my bearings and headed for the kitchen. As I did, the air temperature plummeted, sending the hotel’s climate from near-sauna to near-freezing in a handful of seconds. The suddenly cooled air could no longer contain the oppressive humidity it had been holding, and this resulted in a sudden, thick fog that coalesced out of nowhere and cut visibility down to maybe three or four long steps.

  Dammit. The phages that had appeared so far seemed to be specialists in the up-close-and-personal venue of violence, whereas wheezy wizards like me prefer to do business from across the street, or down the block, or maybe fro
m a neighboring dimension. Farther away, if possible. Wizards have a capacity for recovering from injury that might be more than most humans‘, but that was a long-term deal. In a bar fight, it wasn’t going to do me any good. Hell, I didn’t even have my duster with me, and now that the cold had rolled over the hotel, I missed it for multiple reasons.

  I put my amulet back on, then shook out my shield bracelet and readied it for use, creating a second source of glowing blue light-though by accident, not design. The silver bracelet I used to focus magic into a tangible plane of force had been damaged in the same fire that took most of my left hand, and sparks of blue light tended to dribble from it whenever I moved my arm around. I had to be ready to use the shield at an instant’s notice. It would be the only thing between me and whatever might come rushing from the fog.

  I went with my staff in my right hand. When it came to taking apart rampaging monsters, I preferred my blasting rod, but I’ve had an incident or two involving buildings and fire. If I went blazing away at the thing in a crowded hotel and burned the place down, it would kill more people than the rampage would have. The staff was a subtle tool, not as potent a weapon as the blasting rod, but it was more versatile, magically speaking.

  Plus, in a pinch, I could brain someone with it-which isn’t subtle, but sure as hell is reassuring.

  The emergency lights hadn’t snapped on, so either someone had sabotaged them or there was enough raw magical energy flying around to take them out. But as I moved out toward the kitchens, I didn’t feel anything like the kind of ambient energy it would take to blow out something as simple as a battery-powered light. That meant that someone had deliberately taken the emergency lights off-line, by magical means or otherwise, and it wasn’t hard to guess why.

  Gunshots rang out, weirdly muted by the building’s acoustics; flat, heavy sounds like someone swinging a baseball bat at a metal trash can. Screams and sounds of confusion, fear, worry, and even pain continued all around me as people fumbled in the dark, tripped, fell, or collided with furniture and one another. The building was already emptying, at least here on the first floor, but the sudden darkness had resulted in a panicked stampede, and people had been injured in the crush. The darkness had created confusion, slowed the intended prey from fleeing, and left wounded behind who could neither defend themselves nor flee the building. Their helplessness would be driving them mad with fear.