by Jim Butcher
I began to run toward him on pure instinct. Herd instinct, really, operating on the assumption that there was greater safety in numbers. My feet pounded the parking lot’s asphalt at normal speed, and his eyes widened with almost comical slowness and amazement as I ran toward him.
“Is that what you are?” came the creature’s voice, from no direction and from all of them. “One of them? One of the swarm that infests this world?” The origin point of the voice changed, and I suddenly felt hot, stinking breath right on the back of my neck. “I expected better of a pupil of DuMorne.”
I whirled, throwing my arms up defensively. I had time to see everything in the reflection of the convenience store’s broad front windows.
He Who Walks Behind emerged from the shadows in front of the terrified Stan. Broad, horrible arms wrapped around him, crushing him as easily as a man picking up a child. Another limb, maybe a tail or some kind of tentacle, covered in the same growth-fur-scales as the rest of the creature, joined the two arms, so that Stan was wrapped at the shoulders, at the bottom of the ribs, and at the hips.
And then with a slow smile and a simple, savage twisting motion, He Who Walks Behind tore Stan the convenience store clerk into three pieces.
I’d seen death before, but not like that. Not terrible and swift and bloody. I spun back to Stan in time to see the three pieces fall to the ground. Blood went everywhere. One of his arms waved in frantic windmills, and his mouth opened as if to scream, but nothing came out except a vomiting gurgle and a gout of blood. Wide, terrified eyes stared at mine for a second, and I jerked my gaze away, desperate to avoid seeing Stan’s soul as he died.
Then he just sort of . . . changed. From a person in hideous pain and fear to an empty pile of . . . of meat. Parts. Soiled cloth.
I had never seen death come like that. As a humiliation, a reduction of a unique soul to nothing more than constituent matter. When the creature killed Stan, it didn’t simply end his life. It underscored the underlying futility, the ultimate insignificance of that life. It made a man, albeit a fairly unmotivated one, into less than nothing—something that had been a waste of the resources it had consumed. Something that had never had a choice in its own fate, never had a chance to be anything more.
I had involved Stan in this struggle. It hadn’t been his fight at all.
Granted, I had never intended to hurt the guy and never would have. Nonetheless, without my decision to stick up the convenience store, he would have still been loitering behind the counter, killing time until his next joint. He had been caught up in violence that he had done nothing to earn or expect—and it had killed him.
Something in my head went click.
That wasn’t right.
Stan shouldn’t have died like that. No one should. No one—man, beast, or otherwise—should get to decide, in a moment of malicious humor, that it got to end Stan’s life, to take away everything he was and everything he might ever be.
Stan hadn’t deserved it. He hadn’t been looking for it. And that creature, that demon, had murdered him.
I felt my jaw begin to ache as it clenched harder and harder. I could feel my rapid pulse beating behind my eyes. There was a terrible pressure inside my head and inside my chest, and with it came a rising wave of anger, and something darker and deadlier than anger that came welling up like a great wave from an unlit sea.
It.
Wasn’t.
Right.
No, it wasn’t. But the world wasn’t a fair place, was it? And I had more reason to know it than most people twice my age. The world wasn’t nice, and it wasn’t fair. People who didn’t deserve it suffered and died every single day.
So what? So somebody ought to do something about it.
My right arm and shoulder burned like fire as I felt my right hand slowly form a tight fist. The knuckles popped one by one. They hadn’t ever done that before.
I turned to face the creature’s image in the reflection. It was crouched over Stan’s corpse, its talons tapping lightly on the dead man’s open eyes, its mouth still stretched into that horrible, wide smile.
And when it saw the look on my face, its smile widened and its eyes narrowed. “Ahhhh,” it said. “Ahhhhh. There you are.”
I was not a victim. I was not a powerless child. I was a wizard. I was furious. And I was finished running. “This isn’t your world,” I whispered.
“Not now,” He Who Walks Behind murmured, its smile widening. “But it will be ours again in just a little time.”
“You won’t be around to see it,” I said.
I had never used my power in anger. I had never consciously tried to harm another being with my magic.
But this thing? If anything I had ever seen had it coming, if ever a being was deserving of receiving my violence, it was the bloodstained creature crouching over Stan’s mangled body. Everything had been taken away from me in the space of a single afternoon. My home. My family. And now, it seemed, I was about to lose my life. Well, if that was how it was going to be, if I couldn’t run without getting more innocent bystanders killed, then I would make my stand here—and I had no intention of going quietly.
I reached into that deep well of anger and began drawing it together into something as hot and violent and destructive as what I was feeling inside.
“There’s something you should know,” I said. “I skipped sixth hour today. Spanish. Which I’m not very good at anyway.”
“What is that to me?” asked the creature.
“Flickum bicus just doesn’t seem appropriate,” I replied. The heat in my right arm and shoulder concentrated into my right hand. The scent of burned hairs crept up to my nose. “And you really don’t understand where you’re standing, do you?”
The creature’s reflection looked left and right at the gas pumps on either side of it.
I kept my eyes locked on its image in the windows, extended my right hand back toward it, and formed my little fire-lighting spell into something a thousand times bigger, hotter, and deadlier than anything I had ever attempted before.
I met the thing’s eyes in the reflection, reached down to the well of energy and pure will I’d built inside me, extended my hand toward the creature, and screamed, “Fuego!”
My rage and fear poured out of me. Fire lashed out from my open hand like water from a broken hydrant. It spilled all over He Who Walks Behind and over Stan’s body, and lit up the darkness with angry golden light.
The creature let out a scream, more surprise and anger than pain, clutching at its eyes with its huge hands. The light changed the reflection in the glass and I could no longer see what was behind me. I swept the torrent of fire left and right without turning away or changing the direction my back faced. I hoped it would slow He Who Walks Behind long enough for my modified fire-starting spell to do its thing.
Gasoline pumps have all kinds of safety mechanisms built into them to reduce the odds of accidentally igniting them. They’re pretty good. I mean, how many times have you touched off an explosion while filling your car? But as reliable as they are, those measures are made to stop accidents.
And no engineer in the world ever thought about building them to stop angry young wizards.
It took a couple of seconds, but then there was a screaming sound, something metallic strained past the breaking point, and the first tank went up in a bloom of spectacular fire.
The explosion flung me back, scorching my skin and burning away the hair on my eyebrows. I landed on my ass—again—and lay there, stunned, for a few seconds. Sudden weariness, deeper than anything I had ever known, flooded over me in reaction to the energy I’d expended on my economy-sized ignition spell.
And then the second tank went up.
Hot wind and pieces of smoking metal showered against the front of the convenience store. I’m glad the first blast knocked me down. If I’d been standing, the metal shrapnel that punched out the entire front wall of windows would have gone through me first.
I stared at the flames an
d saw a shape within it—or, rather, I saw a creature-shaped void where the smoke and fire should have been. A voice emerged from the fire, something huge and terrifying, a voice that belonged to gods and monsters of myth.
“HOW DARE YOU!” it roared. “HOW DARE YOU RAISE YOUR HAND AGAINST ME!”
Then that not-figure crashed to its knees and fell limply onto its side.
The roaring flames swept in and consumed it.
And my first true battle was over.
Chapter Thirty-three
“That was my first fight,” I said quietly to my godmother. “I’d never used magic to hurt anything before.” I rubbed my hand over my head. “If I hadn’t cut class that day . . . I don’t know. I might never have become what I did.”
“Is that the lesson you took from the memory?” Lea asked, her smile spreading. “You were clearly being prepared to be an enforcer.”
“It seems that way,” I hedged, trying to read her expression. “But Justin never actually tried to get me to hurt anyone.”
“Why would he wish you to be armed against him before he was certain of your loyalty?” Lea asked. “He would have. It was inevitable.”
“Probably,” I said. “But there’s no way we can know, really. It’s a long way from breaking boards in practice to breaking bones in life.”
“Quite. Because convincing a young mortal to believe that it is right and proper to use magic for violence is a delicate process and one that cannot be rushed.”
I grunted and leaned my head back against the wall of my grave.
“All the wishing in the world will not change the past, my godson,” Lea said. “You would like to believe that perhaps Justin had hidden good intentions of some sort. That what happened between you was some kind of misunderstanding. But you understood him perfectly.”
“Yeah. Probably. I’d forgotten how much it hurt—that’s all,” I said quietly. “I’d forgotten how much I loved him. How much I wanted him to be proud of me.”
“Children are vulnerable,” Lea said. “They are easily deceived and notoriously subject to such delusions. You are no longer a child.” She leaned forward slightly and said, with slight emphasis, “I am bound to answer two more questions. Will you ask them now?”
“Yes,” I said. “Give me a moment to consider them.”
“As you wish,” Lea said.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to clear my thoughts. Asking questions of inhuman entities can be a tricky and dangerous business—with the fae more than most. You almost never got direct answers from one of the lords of Faerie, the Sidhe. Asking them direct questions, especially questions touching on information relevant to a conflict of some sort, was likely to elicit obscure and maliciously misleading answers. I was on good terms with my godmother, as human-Sidhe relationships went, but that was no reason not to cover my bases.
So I thought over recent events for a while and looked for the blank spots, but I kept getting distracted by the memories of that night in the convenience store. They chewed at me and refused to be pushed aside—especially the conversation with He Who Walks Behind.
“Priorities,” I said out loud. “This is about priorities.”
“Oh?” Lea asked.
I nodded. “I could ask you a lot of questions about my past—and you’d answer them.”
“That is true.”
“Or I could ask you about what is happening right now in the city. I could find out how I could best help Murphy.”
Lea nodded.
“But I was sent back here to find my killer,” I said. “I’m supposed to be hunting down whoever killed me, and yet I’ve been doing a whole lot of everything but that.”
“In point of fact,” Lea said, “you’ve been doing little else.”
I blinked.
She gave me an enigmatic, feline smile.
“Oh, you bitch.” I sighed. “You just love doing that to me.”
Lea demurely lowered her gaze. She fluttered her eyelashes twice.
I scowled at her and folded my arms over my chest. Lea had been involved in my life since I was born, and probably before that. She could tell me any number of things I’d been quietly dying to know since I was old enough to ask questions at all. She was up on all the current events, too. All of the high Sidhe are fanatic gatherers of information, and my godmother was no exception. Of course, they tended to guard their knowledge as ferociously as a dragon guards its gold—and they parted with it almost as reluctantly.
The Sidhe aren’t dummies. Information is a great deal more valuable than gold, any day of the week.
So I circled back to my earlier question. Where did my priorities lie? What was more important to me: Digging up secrets from the shadowy bits of my past? Getting the information I needed to move on to my future? Or helping my friends and loved ones right now?
Yeah. No-brainer.
“What can you tell me about the Corpsetaker, her resources, and her goals?” I asked.
Lea considered the answer for a moment before nodding to herself. “The creature you ask about is motivated purely by self-interest. After the body she possessed was killed by a brash, impulsive, and dangerous young wizard, her spirit remained behind. It took a score of moons for her to gather enough coherence to act, and even then she had precious little power to exert upon the mortal world.
“She was limited to speaking with the few mortals who can perceive such things. So she found them and began to manipulate them, guiding them together into the group you have already encountered. Her goal was to assemble her followers, spiritual and material, and then to abduct a body of appropriate strength.”
“Clarification,” I interjected. “You mean a body with magical capability?”
“With significant capability,” Lea replied, stressing the phrase. “When Corpsetaker’s spirit still dwelt upon the mortal coil, even bodies with latent talent were hospitable enough for her to exercise her full power. But thanks to you, and like you, my dear godson, she has passed beyond the threshold between life and death. Now she requires a body with a much greater inherent talent in order to use her gifts once she is inside it.”
I tapped my lips with a fingertip, thinking. “So you’re saying Mort is a major talent.”
“In certain respects, he is more potent than you were, Godson. And he is a great deal more practical—he avoided the notice of the White Council almost entirely and hid his abilities from them quite neatly. The Corpsetaker wants him. She doubtless intends to make some use of the city’s dead and establish herself as the city’s dominant practitioner.”
I blinked. “Why? I mean . . . she’s just going to attract attention from the Council if she does that, and she’s still on their Wanted Dead or Alive but Mostly Dead list.”
“Not if she looks like the little ectomancer,” Lea countered. “She will simply be a concealed talent unveiling itself in a time of dire need.”
“But why risk it in the first place? Why Chicago?”
Lea frowned, golden red brows drawing together. “I do not know. But the Fomor are dangerous folk with whom to make bargains.”
I lifted my eyebrows. Considering the source, that was really saying something.
“In my judgment,” she continued, “the only reason Corpsetaker would deal with the Fomor would be to establish her presence here—probably as a loosely attached vassal of their nobility.”
I found myself scowling. “Well. She isn’t going to do it. This is my town.”
My godmother let out another silver-chime laugh. “Is it? Even now?”
“Course,” I said. I rubbed at my jaw. “What happens if she gets Morty?”
Lea looked momentarily baffled. “She wins?”
I waved a hand. “No, no. How do I get her back out of him?”
Her eyelids lowered slightly. “You have already utilized the only method I know.”
“So I gotta get her before she gets to Morty,” I said quietly.
“If you wish to save his life, yes.”
“It would seem to be wise,” Lea said.
“Why the Fomor?” I asked. “I mean, I barely know who they are. Why are they all over Chicago now? Who are they?”
“Once, they were the enemies of my people, Winter and Summer alike,” she said, lifting her chin as her emerald eyes grew distant. “We banished them to the sea. Now they are the exiles of myth and legend, the outcasts of the gods and demons of every land bordering the sea. Defeated giants, fallen gods, dark reflections of beings of light. They are many races and none, joined together beneath the banner of the Fomor in a common cause.”
“Revenge,” I guessed.
“Quite. It is a goal best served by gathering power, an activity that has been made attractive by the fall of the Red Court. And I have been more than generous with my answer to your question.”
“You have. I am grateful, Godmother.”
She smiled at me. “Such a charming child, betimes. Two questions have been answered. Your third?”
I thought some more. Somehow, I doubted that asking Say, who killed me? would yield any comprehensible results.
On the other hand, what the hell? You never know until you try.
“Say,” I asked, “who killed me?”
Chapter Thirty-four
The Leanansidhe looked down at me, her almond-shaped green eyes distant, pensive.
“Oh, my child,” she breathed after a moment. “You ask such dangerous questions.”
I cocked my head to one side. “You agreed to answer.”
“And I must,” she agreed. “And I must not.”