by Jim Butcher
Andi dragged lust-glazed eyes from Kirby to me. “Primitive … ?”
“Yeah,” I said. I nodded to them. “Hence the two of you, um. And I imagine they make you want to change form.”
Andi’s eyelids fluttered. “Yes. Yes, that sounds lovely.” She shook her head slightly and came to her feet, her eyes suddenly glimmering with tears. “Is it … Can you make them go away?”
I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I can’t figure out how they would have gotten there in the first place. I mean, these things are only attracted to very specific kinds of energy. And you’d only be vulnerable to them when you were actually drawing upon the matter of the Nevernever—when you were shifted. And”—I blinked and then rubbed at my forehead—“Andi. Please don’t tell me that you and Kirby have been getting down while you were fuzzy.”
The bombshell blushed, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her … toes.
“God, that’s just … so wrong.” I shook my head. “But to answer your question, yes, I think that—”
“Harry?” Molly called from the lab. “Um. Do you have a fire extinguisher?”
“What!?”
“I mean, if I needed one!” she amended, her voice quavering. “Hypothetically speaking!”
“Hypothetically speaking?” I half shouted. “Molly! Did you set my lab on fire?!”
Andi, a distracted expression on her face, idly lifted my hand from her shoulder and slid my index finger between her lips, suckling gently. A pleasant flicker of lightning shot up my arm, and I felt it all the way to the bottoms of my feet.
“Oh, hey, ho-ho-ho! Hold on there,” I said, pulling my finger away. It came out of her mouth with another intriguing sensation and a soft popping sound. “Andi. Ahem. We really need to focus, here.”
Kirby let out a raw snarl and hit me with a right cross that sent me tumbling back across the room and into one of my bookshelves. I rebounded off it, fell on my ass, and sat there stunned for a second as copies of the Black Company novels fell from the shelf and bounced off my head.
I looked up to see Kirby seize Andi by the wrist and jerk her back behind him, placing his body between her and me in a gesture of raw possession. Then he balled up his hands into fists, snarled, and took a step toward me.
Mouse loomed up beside me then, two hundred pounds of shaggy grey muscle. He didn’t growl at Kirby, or so much as bare his teeth. He did, however, stand directly in Kirby’s path and face him without backing down.
Without blinking, Kirby’s body seemed to shimmer and flow, and suddenly a black wolf nearly Mouse’s size, but leaner and swifter looking, crouched across the apartment, white teeth bared, amber eyes glowing with rage.
Holy crap. Kirby was about half a second from losing it, and he had the skill and experience to cause some real mayhem. I mean, taking on an animal is one thing. Taking on an animal directed by a human intelligence with years of experience in battling the supernatural is a challenge at least an order of magnitude greater. If it came down to a fight, a real fight, between me and Kirby, I was sure I could beat him, but to do it I’d have to hit him fast and hard, without pulling any punches.
I was not at all confident that I could beat him without killing him.
“Kirby,” I said, trying to keep my voice as low and steady as I could. “Kirby, man, think about this for a minute. It’s Harry. Listen, man, this is Harry, and you’ve just blown your willpower check, like, completely. You need to take a deep breath and get some perspective here. You’re my friend, you’re under the influence, and I’m trying to help you.”
“Harry?” Molly called out, her voice higher-pitched than ever. “Acid doesn’t eat through concrete, right?”
I blinked at the trapdoor and screamed in frustration, “Hell’s bells, what are you doing down there?!”
Kirby took another pace forward, wolf eyes bright, jaws slavering, head held low and ready for a fight. Behind him, Andi was watching the whole thing with a wide-eyed look that mixed terror, lust, excitement, and rage in equal parts, her impressive chest heaving. Her hands and lower arms had already begun to slowly change, sprouting curling russet fur, her nails lengthening into dark claws. Her eyes traveled to me and her mouth dropped open, revealing fangs that were already beginning to grow.
Super. In a fight against Kirby, I was worried about him not surviving. Against Kirby and Andi, in these quarters, it would be me who was running against long odds.
But I try to be an optimist: At least things weren’t going to get any worse.
Above and behind me, a window broke.
A length of lead pipe, maybe a foot long, capped at both ends with plastic, landed on a rug five feet away from me. Cheap, Mardi Gras- style beads were wrapped around it.
A lit fuse sparked and fizzed at one end of the pipe.
It was maybe half an inch away from vanishing into the cap.
“But this is my day off!” I howled.
I know things looked bad. But I honestly think I could have handled it if Mister hadn’t picked that exact moment to leap down from his perch and go streaking across the room, acting upon some feline imperative unknown and unknowable to mere mortals.
Kirby, already on the edge of a feral frenzy, did what any canine would do—he let out a snarl and gave immediate chase.
Mouse let out a sudden bellow of rage—for crying out loud, he hadn’t gotten that worked up over me being in danger—and launched himself after Kirby. Andi, upon seeing Mouse in pursuit of her fellow werewolf, shifted entirely to her own wolf shape and flung herself after Mouse.
Mister rocketed around my tiny apartment, with several hundred pounds of furious canine in pursuit. Kirby bounded over and around furniture almost as nimbly as Mister. Mouse didn’t bother with nimble. He simply plowed through whatever was in the way, smashing my coffee table and one easy chair, knocking over another bookcase, and churning the throw rugs on the floor into hummocks of fabric and fiber.
I leapt for the pipe bomb and picked it up, only to have my legs scythed out from beneath me by Kirby as he went by. Mouse accidently slammed a paw bearing his full weight down onto me as he rumbled past in pursuit, and got me right where the damn dog always gets a man. There was none of that delayed-reaction component to the pain, either. My testicles began reporting the damage instantly, loudly, and in nauseating intensity.
I had no time for pain. I lunged for the pipe bomb and nearly wet my pants as another explosion shook the floor—only this one was followed an instant later by an absolute flood of bright green smoke that billowed up from the lab.
I grabbed the pipe bomb and tried to pluck out the fuse, but it vanished into the cap and beyond the reach of my fingers. In a panic, I scrabbled across the floor to the door and ripped it open with terrified strength. I hauled back to throw the thing out and—
There was a sharp burst of sound.
My hand exploded into pins and needles.
I fell limply to the floor, my head falling in such a way as to bring my gaze over to where my hand had been clutching the pipe bomb a few seconds before and—
And I was still holding it now, unharmed. Heavy jets of scarlet and purple smoke were billowing wildly from both ends of the pipe, scented heavily with a familiar odor.
Smoke bombs.
The freaking thing had been loaded with something remarkably similar to Fourth of July smoke bombs, the kind kids play with. Bemused, I tugged one plastic cap off, and several little expended canisters fell out along with a note: The next time you interfere with me, more than smoke will interfere with you.
More than smoke will interfere with you?
Who talks like that?
Mouse roared, snapping my focus back to the here and now, as he pounced onto Kirby’s back, smashing the werewolf to the floor by dint of sheer mass. Mister, sensing his opening, shot out the front door with a yowl of disapproval and vanished into the outdoors, seeking a safer environment, like maybe traffic.
Andi leapt onto Mouse’s back, fangs ripp
ing, but my dog held fast to Kirby—buying me a couple of precious seconds. I seized a bit of chalk from the basket by the door and, choking on smoke, ran in a circle around the embattled trio, drawing a line of chalk on the concrete floor. Then I willed the circle closed, and the magical construct snapped into existence, a silent and invisible field of energy that, among other things, completely severed the connection between the psychic parasites in the Nevernever and the werewolves whaling on my dog.
The fight stopped abruptly. Kirby and Andi both blinked their eyes several times and hurriedly removed their fangs from Mouse’s hide. A few seconds later, they shimmered and resumed their human forms.
“Don’t move!” I snapped at them, infuriated to no end. “Any of you! Don’t break the circle or you’ll go nuts again! Sit! Stay!”
That last was for Mouse.
Mostly.
I couldn’t see what Molly had done to my lab, but the fumes down there were cloying and obviously dangerous. I hauled myself over to the trapdoor.
Molly hadn’t made it up the folding staircase and just lay sprawled semiconscious against it. I had to grab her and haul her up the stairs. She was undressed from the waist up. I spotted her shirt and bra on the floor near the worktable, both of them riddled with acid-burned holes.
I got her laid out on her back, elevated her feet on a stray cushion from the smashed easy chair, and checked her breathing. It didn’t take long, because she wasn’t, though she did still have a faint pulse. I started rescue breathing for her—which is a lot more demanding than people think. Especially when the air is still thick with the smell of God only knows what chemical combinations.
I finally got her to cough, and my racing heartbeat subsided a little as she began breathing again, raggedly, and opened her eyes.
I sat up slowly, breathing hard, and found Anastasia Luccio standing in the open doorway to my apartment, her arms folded over her chest, one eyebrow arched.
Anastasia was a pretty girl—not glamorously lovely, but believably, genuinely pleasant to look at, with a fantastic smile and killer dimples. She looked like someone in her twenties, for reasons too complex to go into right now, but she was an older woman. A much older woman.
And there I was, apparently sitting up from kissing a topless girl, with a naked couple a few feet away, and the air thick with a pall of smoke and the smell of noxious fumes. For crying out loud, my apartment looked like the set of some kind of bizarre porno.
“Um,” I said, and swallowed. “This isn’t what it might appear to be.”
Anastasia just stared at me. I knew it had been a long time since she’d opened up to anyone. It might not take much to make her close herself off again.
She shook her head, very slowly, and the smile lines at the corners of her eyes deepened along with her dimples. Then she burst out into a hearty belly laugh. “Madre di Dio, Harry. I cannot for the life of me imagine what it does appear to be.”
I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. “You aren’t upset?”
“By the time you get to be my age,” she replied, “you’ve either worked out your insecurities, or they’re there to stay. Besides, I simply must know how this happened.”
I shook my head and then smiled at her. “I … My friends needed help.”
She looked back and forth between the Alphas and Molly. “And still do,” she said, nodding sharply. She came in and, as the only one actually wearing shoes, began picking up pieces of fallen glass from the broken window, literally rolling up her sleeves as she went. “Shall we?”
IT TOOK MOST of the day to get Molly to the hospital, gather the materials needed to fumigate Kirby’s and Andi’s auras, and actually perform the work to get the job done. By the time they left, all better and psychophage-free, it was after seven.
“So much for our day off,” I said.
She turned to consider me. “Would you do it differently if you had it to do again?”
“No. Of course not.”
She shrugged. “Then it was a day well spent. There will be others.”
“You never can be sure of that, though, can you?”
Her cheeks dimpled again. “Today is not yet over. You mourn its death somewhat prematurely.”
“I just wanted to show you a nice time for a day. Not get bogged down in more business.”
Anastasia turned to me and put her fingers over my mouth. Then she replaced her fingers with her lips.
“Enough talk,” she murmured.
I agreed.
Backup
Thomas
1
Let’s get something clear right up front.
I’m not Harry Dresden.
Harry’s a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-goodness wizard. He’s Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket. He’ll spit in the eye of gods and demons alike if he thinks it needs to be done, and to hell with the consequences—and yet somehow my little brother manages to remain a decent human being.
I’ll be damned if I know how.
But then, I’ll be damned regardless.
My name is Thomas Raith, and I’m a monster.
The computer in my little office clamored for my attention. I’ve got it set up to play Nazi Germany’s national anthem whenever I receive e-mail from someone in my family. Not Harry, my half brother, naturally. Harry and e-mail go together like Robert Downey, Jr., and sobriety. I mean the other side of my family.
The monsters.
I finished cleaning off the workstation and checked the clock—five minutes until my next appointment. I took a quick look around my boutique, smiled at one of my regular customers, playfully scolded the young stylist working on her, and went back down the hall, around the corner, down the narrow stairwell, and then through ten feet of claustrophobic hallway to get to my office. I sat down at the desk and nudged my laptop to life. The virus scanner pored over the e-mail before it chimed again, a soft sound that a human wouldn’t have heard from the end of the hall, much less from upstairs, and pronounced it safe.
The e-mail from [email protected] was empty, but the subject line read, Re: 0b.ll.vl.0n.
Oh.
Super.
Just what I needed.
I never really enjoyed hearing from that side of the family, even when the subject was something boring—like business pertaining to the war between the Vampire Courts and the wizards’ White Council, for example. Whenever Lara wanted to get in touch with me, for any reason, it was bad news.
But when it was about an Oblivion matter, it was worse.
I had Lara’s number on the speed dial on my cell phone. I gave her a ring.
“Brother-mine,” purred my eldest sister, her voice pure honey. It was the kind of voice that would give men ideas—really bad ideas, though they’d never realize that part. “You hardly ever call me anymore.”
“I’ve hardly ever called you, Lara. Period.” I ignored the lure she was sliding into her voice. She’d fed very recently—or was doing so at the moment. “What do you want?”
“You received my e-mail?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a project I think you’ll be interested in.”
“Why?”
“Take a look at it,” she said. “You’ll understand.”
The line was supposedly secure, but we both knew how much that was worth. Neither of us would mention any details over the phone— and we certainly would not use the word oblivion. Too many Venatori had discovered, too late, that the enemy had very sharp ears, and that they would swiftly carry the war into the homes of those careless enough not to guard their tongues.
It had been nearly eight years since I had been involved in the Oblivion War. I suppose I had known I couldn’t avoid being drawn back into the fight forever. Lara, the only other Venator in the White Court, was largely occupied with her current responsibilities—namely, spending her days manipulating our father like a puppet on her psychic strings and ruling the White Court from the shadows behind
his throne. Naturally, if something came up, she would pass it along to me to deal with.
“I’m busy,” I told her.
“Grooming pets?” she said. “Trimming their fur? Checking for fleas? Priorities, brother-mine.”
Lara is most annoying when she has a point. “Where do you want to meet?”
She laughed, a warm little sound. “Tommy, Tommy, I’m flattered you want to be with me, but no. I’ve no time to spend playing games with you. I’ve sent a courier with everything you need and … Mmmmmm.” Her voice turned into a sensual little purr of pleasure. “You know the stakes. Don’t ask too many questions, brother-mine,” she murmured. “Don’t start using that pretty little head for anything taxing. Go back to your apartment. Talk to the courier. Take the job. Or you and I are going to have a very … ahhhhh …” Her breathing sped up. “A very serious falling-out.”
I could hear other soft sounds in the background, and another voice. A woman. Maybe two. Most of my family isn’t what you’d call particular, when it comes to feeding on mortals.
“I’d tell you that you were a much nicer person before you got into the power-behind-the-throne game, Lara,” I said. “But you were a bitch then, too.”
I hung up on her before she had a chance to reply and went back upstairs, thinking. It was always good to get as much thinking done as you could, before the actual mind-boggling crisis came down. That way, when it got there and you only had half a second to decide what to do before something from beyond the borders of sanity started ripping at your soul, you could skip the preliminaries and go straight to the mistake.
When you deal with someone like my sister, you never take anything at face value. She was up to something. Whatever it was, it included putting pressure on me to hurry. Lara wanted me to rush into the situation blindly. If that was what she wanted me to do, it was probably a good idea not to do it.
Besides, I didn’t want Lara to start getting used to the idea that I would run to do her bidding every time she snapped her fingers. More important, I didn’t want to get into the habit of obeying her. It was an important first step toward becoming ensnared by more inflexible means, the way she had done to our father.