by Jim Butcher
So naturally I dropped the damn key.
I cursed and slid to a stop, slipping on the gravel. I looked around wildly for the dropped key, horribly aware of the mob of grey suits rushing toward us, now in eerie silence.
“Harry!” Murphy said.
“I know!”
She appeared beside me in a shooting stance, aiming at the nearest grey suit. “Harry!”
“I know!”
Metal gleamed amongst the gravel and I swooped down on it as Murphy opened fire with precise, measured shots, sending the nearest grey suit into a tumbling sprawl. The others just vaulted over him and kept coming.
I’d found the key, but it was already too late.
Neither of us was going to make it to the shelter of my hideaway.
Chapter
Nineteen
“Stay close!” I shouted. I thrust the end of my staff into the gravel and dragged it through, drawing a line in the dust and stones. I swiftly inscribed a quick, rough circle maybe four feet across around Murphy and me, actually getting between her gun and the grey suits for a second.
“Dammit, Harry, get down!” she shouted.
I did so, reaching out to touch the line in the gravel, slamming a quick effort of will into the simple design. Murphy’s gun barked twice. I felt the energy gather in the circle and coalesce in a rush, snapping into place in a sudden and invisible wall.
The nearest of the grey suits staggered, and then flung itself into a forward dive. Murphy flinched back, and I grabbed her, hard, before she could cross the circle and disrupt it.
The grey suit slammed into the circle as if striking a solid wall, rebounding from its surface in a flash of blue-white light that described a phantom cylinder in the air. An instant later, more of the grey suits did exactly the same thing, maybe twenty of them, each of them bouncing off the circle’s field.
“Easy!” I said to Murphy, still holding her against me. “Easy, easy!” I felt her relax a little, ceasing to struggle against being held in place. “It’s okay,” I said. “As long as we don’t break the circle, they can’t get through.”
We were both shaking. Murphy took a pair of gulping breaths. We just stood there for a moment, while the grey suits spread out around the circle, reaching out with their hands to find its edges. I had time to get a better look at them while they did.
They were all the same height and weight. Their features were unremarkable and similar, if not quite identical. They looked as if they could have all been from the same family. Their eyes were all the same color, an odd grey-green, and there was no expression, none whatsoever, on their faces.
One of them reached out as if to try to touch me, and his open hand flattened against the circle’s field. As it did, a freaking mouth opened on his palm, parallel to his fingers. It was lined with serrated sharklike teeth, and a slithering, coiling purple-black tongue emerged to lash randomly against the circle, as if seeking a way through. Yellowish mucus dripped thickly from the tongue as it did.
“Okay,” Murphy said in a small, toneless voice. “That is somewhat disturbing.”
“And it’s gonna get better,” I muttered.
Sure enough, the other grey suits started doing the same thing. Within seconds, we were completely surrounded by eerie hand-mouths, writhing tongues, and dripping slime.
Murphy shook her head and sighed. “Eckgh.”
“Tell me about it.”
“How long will this thing keep them off?”
“They’re spirit beings,” I said. “As long as the circle’s here, they’re staying outside it.”
“Couldn’t they just scuff dirt on it or something?”
I shook my head. “Breaking the circle isn’t just a physical process. It’s an act of choice, of will—and these things don’t have that.”
Murphy frowned. “Then why are they doing anything at all?”
I had to restrain myself from smacking my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Because someone summoned them from the Nevernever,” I said. “Their summoner, wherever he is, is giving them orders.”
“Could he break the circle?” Murphy asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Easily.”
“Which is an excellent note upon which to begin our conversation,” said a man’s voice with a heavy Cockney accent. “Make a hole, lads.”
The suits on one side of the circle lowered their hands and stood back, revealing a blocky bulldog of a man in a cheap maroon suit. He was average height, but heavy and solid with muscle, and he wore a few too many extra beers around his middle. His features were blunt and rounded, like water-worn stone. His hair was graying and cut into the shortest buzz you could get without going bald, and his eyes were small and hard—and the exact same color as those of the grey suits, a distinctive grey-green.
“Ah, love,” said the man, grinning. “I think it’s quite fine to see couples who aren’t afraid to express their affection for each other.”
I blinked at him, then down at Murphy, and realized I was still holding her loosely against me. By the expression on her face, Murph hadn’t really taken note of the fact, either. She cleared her throat and took a small step back from me, being careful not to step on the circle in the gravel.
He nodded at us, still grinning. “ ’Allo, Dresden. Why not make this easy for all of us and tell me which unit Donald Morgan is hiding in?”
I suddenly realized that I recognized this jerk from the profile the Wardens had on him. “Binder,” I said. “That’s what they call you, isn’t it?”
Binder’s smile widened and he bowed slightly at the waist. “The same.”
Murphy frowned at Binder and said, “Who is this asshole?”
“One of the guys the Wardens wish they could just erase,” I said.
“He’s a wizard?”
“I do have some skills in that direction, love,” Binder said.
“He’s a one-trick hack,” I said, looking directly at him. “Got a talent for calling up things from the Nevernever and binding them to his will.”
“So, Binder,” Murphy said, nodding.
“Yeah. He’s scum who sells his talent to the highest bidder, but he’s careful not to break any of the Laws of Magic, so the Wardens haven’t ever been able to take him down.”
“I know,” Binder said cheerfully. “And that’s why I am positively savoring the exquisite irony of me being the one to take down the famous Warden Donald Morgan. The self-righteous prig.”
“You haven’t got him yet,” I said.
“Matter of time, my lad,” Binder said, winking. He stooped and picked up a single piece of gravel. He bounced it thoughtfully on his palm and eyed us. “See, there’s a bit of competition for this contract, and it’s a fair bit of quid. So I’m willing to give you a chance to make my job easier in exchange for considerations.”
“What considerations?” I asked.
He held up the pebble between his thumb and forefinger. “I won’t pitch this into your circle and break it. That way, my lads won’t need to kill you both—and won’t that be nice?”
Behind Binder, down at the end of the row of storage units, the dust stirred. Something unseen moved across the gravel. Given how my life had been going, odds were good that it couldn’t be a good thing. Unless …
“Come on, Binder,” I said. “Don’t be a simp. What makes you think I won’t ask the lady here to put a bullet through that empty spot in your head where your brain’s supposed to go?”
“She does that, she lowers the circle, and my lads tear you apart,” Binder replied.
“That won’t be your problem, by then,” I said.
Binder grinned at me. “All of us go down in a blaze of gory, is it?”
Murphy calmly raised her gun and settled it on Binder’s face.
Binder faced her, his grin never fading. “Now, little lady. Don’t you be doing nothing you’ll regret. Without my, ah, personal guidance, my lads here will tear this good gentleman’s throat out right quick. But they’re considera
bly less, ah, professional with ladies.” His grin faded. “And you, miss, do not want to know what they’re like when they’re not professional.”
Fingers and slimy tongues and fangs continued pressing against the outer edge of the circle’s protective field.
Murphy didn’t let it show on her face, but I saw her shudder.
“Decision time, miss,” Binder said. “Either pull that trigger, right now, and live with what happens—or put it down like a proper lady and work through this politely.”
Murphy’s eyes narrowed at his comments. “For all I know, you’re about to toss that rock at us. I think I’ll keep the gun right where it is.”
“Bear something else in mind, Binder,” I said. “I know that you think you can just have your pets step in front of you and throw the rock from behind a wall of them, but think about what happens to you if you kill me.”
“Your death curse, is it?” he asked. Binder raised his hands and flattened his palms against his cheek in mock horror. “Oh no. A death curse. Whatever shall I do?”
I faced him with a chilly little smile. “You’ll spend the rest of your life unable to use magic, I think,” I said in a quiet, hopefully confident-sounding voice. “When I die, I take away your power. Forever. No more summoning. No more binding.”
Binder’s expression began to flatten out into neutrality.
“You ever had a job that you liked, Binder?” I asked him. “I’m betting you haven’t. I’ve read your file. You’re the kind who likes to sleep late, spend a lot of money impressing people. Always buys room service, always with the champagne. And you like the women the money gets you.” I shook my head. “How many bottles of champagne you think you’ll be able to afford when a paper hat becomes part of your professional wear? You’ve got enough talent to live a nice, long life, man. As a nobody.”
He stared at me in silence for a second. “You can’t do that,” Binder said. “Take away my talent. That isn’t possible.”
“I’m a wizard of the White Council, Binder. Not some stupid hack who spent his life using his gift to hurt people. Do you think we go around advertising everything we can do? If you knew half the things I’ve done that you think are impossible, you’d already be running.”
Binder faced me, beads of sweat suddenly standing out on his jowls.
“So I’d think real careful before I threw that rock, Binder. Real careful.”
A police siren sounded, from fairly nearby.
I smiled, showing teeth. “Hey, cops. This’ll get interesting.”
“You?” he asked, incredulously. “You’d bring the cops into a private matter?”
I pointed a finger sideways at Murphy, who produced her badge and tucked the back of its folder into her belt, so that the shield faced Binder.
“Already did,” Murphy said.
“Besides, the whole reason I picked this joint was how heavily the neighborhood was policed,” I said. “One gunshot and nobody reports anything. Half a dozen and people get nervous.”
Binder’s eyes narrowed, and he looked from us toward the front of the park.
“Tick-tock,” I said, applying the pressure as hard as I could. “It’s just a matter of time, my lad.”
Binder looked around him again, then shook his head and sighed. “Balls. It’s always messy when I have to deal with the cops. Idiots dying by the truckload. Buckets of blood.” He gestured at his men. “Identical suspects fleeing in all directions. Everyone out chasing them, and more people dying when they manage to catch them.” He stared hard at me. “How about it, wizard? Cop? Maybe you’ve got stones enough to take it when I threaten you. I can admire that.”
My stomach got a little sinking feeling. I had been counting out seconds, hoping that my nerves didn’t make me rush. There should have been enough time by now.
“How about those policemen? You willing to have their deaths on your conscience?” He rolled his neck a little, like a prizefighter warming up. “Because I’ll tell you right now that they aren’t going to stop me.”
I put my hand out and touched Murphy’s wrist. She glanced aside at me, and then lowered the gun.
“That’s better,” Binder said. There was no hint of jocularity in his manner now. “All I want is the Warden. He’s a dead man already, and you know it. What does it matter who takes him?”
Something stirred at the end of the row, behind Binder, and I started smiling.
“I’ve got no quarrel with you or with this town,” Binder continued. “Tell me where he is, I’ll leave peaceful, and Bob’s your uncle.”
Murphy drew in a sharp breath.
“Okay,” I said. “He’s right behind you.”
Binder’s smile, this time, was positively vulpine. “Dresden. We have a bit of banter going between us. We’re both here in a moment where neither of us wants to act rashly. And that’s all good fun. It’s one of the little things that makes a day more enjoyable.” His voice hardened. “But don’t do me the incredibly insulting disservice of assuming that I’m a bloody moron.”
“I’m not,” I told him. “He’s about forty feet behind you. In a wheelchair.”
Binder gave me a gimlet stare. Then he rolled his eyes and shot a brief glance over his shoulder—then did a double take as his mouth dropped open.
Morgan sat in his wheelchair about forty feet away from Binder, my shotgun in his hands. Mouse stood beside the chair, focused intently upon Binder and his minions, his body tensed and ready to spring forward.
“Hello, Binder,” Morgan said in a flat, merciless tone of voice. “Now, Miss Carpenter.”
Molly appeared out of literally nowhere as she dropped the veil she’d been holding over herself since I’d first seen her moving at the beginning of the conversation with Binder. She was holding my spare blasting rod in her hand, its far end covered with pale dust from being dragged through the gravel. She knelt beside the long, lazy arc of the circle she’d drawn in the dust and touched her hand to it, frowning in concentration.
Circles of power are basic stuff, really. Practically anyone can make one if they know how to do it, and learning how to properly establish a circle is the first thing any apprentice is taught. Circles create boundaries that isolate the area inside from the magical energies of the world outside. That’s why Binder’s minions couldn’t cross the plane of the circle I’d drawn on the ground—their bodies were made up of ectoplasm, held into a solid form by magical energy. The circle cut off that energy when they tried to cross it.
As it sprang to life at my apprentice’s will, Molly’s circle did the same thing as mine—only this time the grey suits were inside it. As the energy field rose up, it cut off the grey suits from the flow of energy they needed to maintain their solid forms.
And suddenly the next best thing to forty demonic thugs collapsed into splatters of transparent gook.
Binder let out a cry as it happened, spinning around desperately, mumbling some kind of incantation under his breath—but he should have saved himself the effort. If he wanted them back, he would have to get out of the isolating field of the enormous circle first, and then he would have to start from scratch.
“Ow, Binder,” I said in patently false empathy. “Didn’t see that one coming, did ya?”
“Ernest Armand Tinwhistle,” Morgan thundered in a tone of absolute authority, raising the shotgun to his shoulder. “Surrender yourself or face destruction, you worthless little weasel.”
Binder’s intense grey-green eyes went from Morgan to the two of us. Then he seemed to reach some kind of conclusion and charged us like a bull, his head down, his arms pumping.
Murphy’s gun tracked to him, but with a curse she jerked the barrel up and away from Binder. He slammed a shoulder into her chest, knocking her down, even as I received a stiff arm in the belly.
I threw a leg at his as he went by, but I was off balance from the shove, and although I wound up on my ass, I forced him to stumble for a step or three. Murphy took the impact with fluid grace, tumbled onto her
back, rolled smoothly over one shoulder, and came back up on her feet.
“Get them out of here,” she snarled as she spun and took off at a sprint after Binder.
Mouse came pounding up to my side, staring after Murphy with worried doggy eyes, then glancing at me.
“No,” I told him. “Watch this.”
Binder was running as hard as he could, but I doubted he had been all that light on his feet when he was young, much less twenty years and forty pounds later. Murphy worked out practically every day.
She caught him about ten feet before the end of the row, timed her steps for a second, and then sharply kicked his rearmost leg just as he lifted it to take his next step. His foot got caught on the back of his own calf as a result, and he went down in a sprawl.
Binder came to his feet with an explosive snarl of rage and whirled on Murphy. He flung a handful of gravel at her face, and then waded in with heavy, looping punches.
Murph ducked her head down and kept the gravel out of her eyes, slipped aside from one punch, and then seized his wrist on the second. The two of them whirled in a brief half circle, Binder let out a yelp, and then his bald head slammed into the steel door of a storage unit. I had to give the guy credit for physical toughness. He rebounded from the door a little woozily, but drove an elbow back at Murphy’s head.
Murphy caught that arm and continued the motion, using her own body as a fulcrum in a classic hip throw—except that Binder was facing in the opposite direction than usual for that technique.
You could hear his arm come out of its socket fifty feet away.
And then he hit the gravel face-first.
Binder got extra points for brains in my book, after that: he lay still and didn’t put up a struggle as Murphy dragged his wrists behind his back and cuffed him.
I traded a glance with Mouse and said, wisely, “Hard-core.”
The police sirens were getting louder. Murphy looked up at them, and then down the row at me. She made an exasperated shooing motion.
“Come on,” I said to Mouse. The two of us hurried down the row to Morgan’s chair.