by Jim Butcher
“Excuse me,” Thomas said with distaste. “I can’t abide poachers. Do enjoy the party, Mister Dresden.”
He drifted off toward them, and Michael stepped up to me. I half-turned my head toward him, to hear him murmur, “They’re surrounding us.”
I looked around. The courtyard was full of people. Many of them were young, pretty folk, dressed in all manner of black, poster children for the Goth subculture. Leather, plastic, and fishnet seemed to be the major themes in display, complete with black domino masks, heavy hoods upon cloaks, and a variety of different kinds of face paint. They talked and laughed, drank and danced to the music. Some of them wore a band of scarlet cloth about their arm, or a bloodred choker around their throats.
While I watched, I saw a too-lean young man bend over a table to inhale something through one nostril. A trio of giggling girls, two blondes and a brunette, all dressed up like Dracula’s cheerleading squad, complete with black-and-red pom-poms, counted to three together and washed down a pair of pills with glasses of dark wine. Other young people pressed together in sensual motion, or simply sat or stood kissing, touching. A few, already partied out, lay upon the courtyard, smiling dreamily, their eyes closed.
I scanned the crowd with my eyes, and picked out the differences at once. Drifting among the young people clad in black were lean figures in scarlet—perhaps two or three dozen, in all. Male and female, of a variety of appearances and costumes, all shared the scarlet clothes, beauty, and a confident, stalking kind of motion that marked them as predators.
“The Red Court,” I said. I licked my lips, and looked around some more. The vampires were being casual about it, but they had wandered into a ring around us. If we remained there any longer, we wouldn’t be able to walk out of the courtyard without coming within a few feet of one of them. “The kids with the red bands are what? Junior vampires?”
“Marked cattle, I’d say,” Michael rumbled. There was anger in it, steady and slow anger.
“Easy, Michael. We need to move around a little. Make it harder for them to hem us in.”
“Agreed.” Michael nodded toward the drink table, and we headed that way, our pace brisk. The vamps tried to adjust to follow us, but they couldn’t make it look casual.
A couple in red moved to intercept us, meeting Michael and me just before we reached the table. Kyle Hamilton wore a harlequin’s outfit, all in shades of scarlet. Kelly followed along with him, dressed in a scarlet body stocking that left nothing to the imagination, but with a long cloak covering her shoulders and collarbones, the hood up high around her face. A scarlet mask hid her features, except for her chin and luscious mouth. I thought I could see a puckering of the skin at one side of her mouth—perhaps the burns she’d suffered.
“Harry Dresden.” Kyle greeted me in a too-loud voice, with a too-wide smile. “How pleasant to see you again.”
I chucked him boisterously on the shoulder, making his balance waver. “I wish it was mutual.”
The smile became brittle. “And of course you remember my sister, Kelly.”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “Hit that tanning bed a little too long, did we?”
I expected her to snarl or hiss or go for my throat. But instead she turned to the table, collected a silver goblet and a crystal wine-glass from the attendant there, and offered them to us with a smile that mirrored her brother’s. “It’s so pleasant to see you, Harry. I’m sorry that we didn’t get to see the lovely Miss Rodriguez tonight.”
I accepted the goblet. “She had to wash her hair.”
Kelly turned to Michael and offered him the glass. He accepted it with an inclination of his head, stiffly polite. “I see,” she purred. “I had no idea you were into men, Mister Dresden.”
“What can I say? They’re just so big and strong.”
“Of course,” Kyle said. “If I was surrounded by people who wanted to kill me as badly as I want to kill you, I’d want a bodyguard about, too.”
Kelly sidled up to Michael, her breasts thrust forward, straining the sheer fabric of the body stocking. She walked in a slow circle around him, while Michael remained standing just as he was. “He’s gorgeous,” she purred. “May I give him a kiss, Mister Dresden?”
“Harry,” Michael said.
“He’s married, Kelly. Sorry.”
She laughed, pressing close to Michael, and tried to catch his eyes. Michael frowned, and stared at nothing, avoiding her. “No?” she asked. “Well. Don’t worry, pretty man. You’ll love it. Everyone wants to party like it’s their last night on earth.” She flashed a wicked smile up at him. “Now you get to.”
“The young lady is too kind,” Michael said.
“So stiff. I admire that in a man.” She shot me a glance from behind her mask. “You really shouldn’t drag poor defenseless mortals into these things, Mister Dresden.” She looked Michael up and down again, admiring. “This one will be delicious, later.”
“Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” I advised her.
She laughed, as though delighted. “Well, Mister Dresden. I see his crosses, but we all know the value of them to most of the world.” She reached her hand toward Michael’s arm, possessively. “For a moment, you almost had me thinking that he might be a true Knight Templar.”
“No,” I said judiciously. “Not a Knight Templar.”
Kelly’s hand touched Michael’s steel-clad arm—and erupted into sudden, white flame, as brief and violent as a stroke of lightning. She screamed, a piercing wail, and fell back from him to the ground. She lay there, curled helplessly around her blackened hand, struggling to get enough breath back to scream. Kyle flew to her side.
I looked at Michael and blinked. “Wow,” I said. “Color me impressed.”
Michael looked vaguely embarrassed. “It happens like that sometimes,” he said, apologetically.
I nodded and took that in stride. I turned my gaze back to the vampire twins. “Let that be a lesson to you. Hands off the Fist of God.”
Kyle shot me a murderous look, his face rippling.
My heart sped up, but I couldn’t let the fear show. “Go ahead, Kyle,” I dared him. “Start something. Break the truce your own leader set up. Violate the laws of hospitality. The White Council will burn this place down so fast, people will call it Little Pompeii.”
He snarled at me, and picked Kelly up. “This isn’t over,” he promised. “One way or another, Dresden. I’ll kill you.”
“Uh-huh.” I flicked my wrist at him, my hand right in his face. “Shoo, shoo. I have to mingle.”
Kyle snarled. But the pair withdrew, and I turned my gaze slowly around the courtyard. Everything in the immediate vicinity had stopped while people, black- and red-clad alike, stared at us. Some of the vampires in scarlet looked at Michael, swallowed, and took a couple of steps back.
I grinned, as cocky and as confident as I could appear, and lifted my glass. “A toast,” I said. “To hospitality.”
They were quiet for a moment, then hurriedly mumbled an echo to my toast and sipped from their drinks. I drained my goblet in a single gulp, hardly noticing the delightful flavor of it, and turned to Michael. He lifted his glass to the mouth of his helm in a token sip, but didn’t take any.
“All right,” I said. “I got to touch Kyle. He’s out, too, though I didn’t expect him to be our man. Or woman. Or monster.”
Michael looked slowly around as the scarlet-clad vampires continued to withdraw. “It looks like we’ve cowed them for now.”
I nodded, still uneasy. The crowd parted at one side, and Thomas and Justine came to us, blazes of pale skin and brilliant color amidst the scarlet and black. “There you are,” Thomas said. He glanced down at my goblet and let out a sigh. “I’m glad I found you in time.”
“In time for what?” I asked.
“To warn you,” he said. He flicked a hand at the refreshments table. “The wine is poisoned.”
Chapter
Twenty-six
“Poisoned?” I said, witlessly.
Thomas peered at my face and then down at my goblet. He leaned over it enough to see that it was empty and said, “Ah. Oops.”
“Harry.” Michael stepped up beside me, and set his own glass aside. “I thought you said that they couldn’t try anything so overt.”
My stomach kept churning. My heart beat more quickly, though whether this was from the poison or the simple, cold fear that Thomas’s words had brought to me, I couldn’t say. “They can’t,” I said. “If I pitch over dead, the Council would know what happened. I sent word in today that I was coming here tonight.”
Michael shot Thomas a hard look. “What was in the wine?”
The pale man shrugged, slipping his arm around Justine once more. The girl leaned against him and closed her eyes. “I don’t know what they put in it,” he said. “But look at these people.” He nodded to those black-clad folk who were already stretched out blissfully upon the ground. “They all have wineglasses.”
I looked a bit closer and it was true. The servants moved about the courtyard, plucking up glasses from the fallen. As I watched, another young couple, dancing slowly together, sank down to the ground in a long, deep kiss that faded away into simple stillness.
“Hell’s bells,” I swore. “That’s what they’re doing.”
“What?” Michael asked.
“They don’t want me dead,” I said. “Not from this.” I didn’t have much time. I stalked past the refreshments table to a potted fern and bent over it. I heard Michael take up a position behind me, guarding my back. I shoved a finger down my throat. Simple, quick, nasty. The wine burned my throat coming back up, and the fern’s fronds tickled the back of my neck as I spat it back out into the base of the plant. My head spun as I sat back up again, and when I looked back toward Michael, everything blurred for a moment before it snapped back into focus. A slow, delicious numbness spread over my fingers.
“Everyone,” I mumbled.
“What?” Michael knelt down in front of me and gripped my shoulder with one arm. “Harry, are you all right?”
“I’m fuzzy,” I said. Vampire venom. Naturally. It felt good to have it in me again, and I wondered, for a moment, what I was so worried about. It was just that nice. “It’s for everyone. They’re drugging everyone’s wine. Vamp venom. That way they can say they weren’t just targeting me.” I wobbled, and then stood up. “Recreational poisoning. Put everyone in the party mood.”
Thomas mused. “Rather ham-handed, I suppose, but effective.” He looked around at the growing numbers of young people joining the first few upon the ground in ecstatic stupor. His fingers stroked Justine’s flank absently, and she shivered, pressing closer to him. “I suppose I’m prejudiced. I prefer my prey a little more lively.”
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” Michael said.
I gritted my teeth, and tried to push the pleasant sensations aside. The venom had to have an enormously quick absorption rate. Even if I’d brought the wine back up, I must have gotten a fairly good dose. “No,” I managed after a moment. “That’s what they want me to do.”
“Harry, you can barely stand up,” Michael objected.
“You are looking a bit peaked,” Thomas said.
“Bah. If they want me incapacitated, it means they’ve got something to hide.”
“Or just that they want you to get killed,” Michael said. “Or drugged enough to agree to let one of them feed on you.”
“No,” I disagreed. “If they wanted to seduce me, they’d have tried something else. They’re trying to scare me off. Or keep me from finding something out.”
“I hate to point out the obvious,” Thomas said, “but why on earth would Bianca invite you if she didn’t want you to be here?”
“She’s obligated to invite the Council to witness. That means me, in this town. And she didn’t expect me to actually show—pretty much everyone was surprised to see me at all.”
“They didn’t think you’d come,” Michael murmured.
“Yeah. Ain’t I a stinker.” I took a couple of deep breaths and said, “I think the one we’re after is here, Michael. We’ve got to stick this out for a little while. See if I can find out exactly who it is.”
“Exactly who is what?” Thomas asked.
“None of your beeswax, Thomas,” I said.
“Has anyone ever told you, Mister Dresden, that you are a thoroughly annoying man?” That made me grin, to which he rolled his eyes. “Well,” he said, “I’ll not intrude on your business any further. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.” He and Justine sauntered off into the crowd.
I watched Justine’s legs go, leaning on my cane a bit to help me balance. “Nice guy,” I commented.
“For a vampire,” Michael said. “Don’t trust him, Harry. There’s something about him I don’t like.”
“Oh, I like him,” I said. “But I sure as hell don’t trust him.”
“What do we do now?”
“Look around. So far we’ve got food in black, the vampires in red, and then there’s you and me, and a handful of other people in different costumes.”
“The Roman centurion,” Michael said.
“Yeah. And some Hamlet-looking guy. Let’s go see what they are.”
“Harry,” Michael asked. “Are you going to be okay?”
I swallowed. I felt dizzy, a little sickened. I had to fight to get clear thoughts through, bulldogging them against the pull of the venom. I was surrounded by things that looked at people like we look at cows, and felt fairly sure that I was going to get myself killed if I stayed.
Of course, if I didn’t stay, other people could get killed. If I didn’t stay, the people who had already been hurt remained in danger: Charity. Michael’s infant son. Murphy. If I didn’t stay, the Nightmare would have time to recuperate, and then it and its corporate sponsor, who I thought was here at this party, would feel free to keep taking potshots at me.
The thought of remaining in that place scared me. The thought of what could happen if I gave up now scared me a lot more.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Michael nodded, looking around, his grey eyes dark, hard. “This is an abomination before the Lord, Harry. These people. They’re barely more than children … what they’re doing. Consorting with these things.”
“Michael. Chill out. We’re here to get information, not bring the house down on a bunch of nasties.”
“Samson did,” Michael said.
“Yeah, and look how well things turned out for him. You ready?”
He muttered something, and fell in behind me again. I looked around and oriented on the man dressed as a Roman centurion, then headed toward him. A man of indefinite years, he stood alone and slightly detached from the rest of the crowd. His eyes were an odd color of green, deep and intense. He held a cigarette between his lips. His gear, right down to the Roman short sword and sandals, looked awfully authentic. I slowed a little as I approached him, staring.
“Michael,” I murmured, over my shoulder. “Look at his costume. It looks like the real thing.”
“It is the real thing,” said the man in a bored tone of voice, not looking at me. He exhaled a plume of smoke, then put the cigarette back between his lips. Michael would have barely been able to hear my question. This guy had picked it right out. Gulp.
“Interesting,” I said. “Must have cost you a fortune to put together.”
He glanced at me. Smoke curled from the corners of his mouth as he gave me a very slight, very smug smirk. And said nothing.
“So,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I’m Harry Dresden.”
The man pursed his lips and said, thoughtfully and precisely, “Harry. Dresden.”
When someone, anyone, says your name, it touches you. You almost feel it, that sound that stands out from a crowd of others and demands your attention. When a wizard says your Name, when he says it and means it, it has the same effect, amplified a thousandfold. The man in the centurion gear said my
part of my Name and said it exactly right. It felt like someone had just rung a tuning fork and pressed it against my teeth.
I staggered, and Michael caught my shoulder, keeping me upright. Dear God. He had just used one part of my full name, my true Name, to reach out to me and casually backhand me off my feet.
“Hell’s bells,” I whispered. Michael propped me back up. I planted my cane, so that I would have an extra support, and just stared at the man. “How the hell did you do that?”
He rolled his eyes, took the cigarette in his fingers and blew more smoke. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re not White Council,” I said.
He looked at me as though I had just stated that objects fall toward the ground; a withering, scathing glance. “How very fortunate for me.”
“Harry,” Michael said, his voice tense.
“Just a minute.”
“Harry. Look at his cigarette.”
I blinked at Michael. “What?”
“Look at his cigarette,” Michael repeated. He was staring at the man with wide, intent eyes, and one hand had fallen to the hilt of a knife.
I looked. It took me a minute to realize what Michael was talking about.
The man blew more smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and smirked at me.
The cigarette wasn’t lit.
“He’s,” I said. “He’s, uh.”
“He’s a dragon,” Michael said.
“A what?”
The man’s eyes flickered with interest for the first time, and he narrowed his focus—not upon me, but upon Michael. “Just so,” he said. “You may call me Mister Ferro.”
“Why don’t I just call you Ferrovax,” Michael said.
Mister Ferro narrowed his eyes, and regarded Michael with a dispassionate gaze. “You know something of the lore, at least, mortal.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Dragons … dragons are supposed to be big. Scales, claws, wings. This guy isn’t big.”
Ferro rolled his eyes and said, impatiently, “We are what we wish to be, Master Drafton.”
“Dresden,” I snapped.
He waved a hand. “Don’t tempt me to show you what I can do by speaking your name and making an effort, mortal. Suffice to say that you could not comprehend the kind of power I have at my command. That my true form here would shatter this pathetic gathering of monkey houses and crack the earth upon which I stand. If you gazed upon me with your wizard’s sight, you would see something that would awe you, humble you, and quite probably destroy your reason. I am the eldest of my kind, and the strongest. Your life is a flickering candle to me, and your civilizations rise and fall like grass in the summer.”