Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  “BEGONE!” I roared, and slammed my staff down, unleashing my will as I did.

  And within the ring of fire, reality became a storm of ghostly energy, of random light and sound, of darting bolts of light and color. I felt the cornerhounds raise their will against mine—and theirs crumbled like day-old corn bread. I tore them from their ectoplasmic bodies and sent their unseen, immaterial asses screaming back to the Void outside of all Creation.

  The thirteenth hound’s talons were maybe eight inches from the tip of my nose when energy howled and swirled in the circle as the banishing spell caught up the cornerhounds. There was a sudden indrawn-breath sound that moaned through the night all around us, a great shuddering in the air—and then they simply vanished.

  So instead of being dismembered by a thousand-pound monster, a thousand pounds of gross, slimy ectoplasm smashed into my chest, promptly knocking me on my ass and sending me sliding fifteen feet across the floor.

  Twelve more cornerhounds’ worth of ectoplasm washed out over the now-extinguished ring of fire and began to ooze over the entire parking garage.

  Ebenezar sagged down to lie on his side, then rolled onto his back, breathing as heavily as if he’d been running up stairs, while a sludgy flow of ectoplasm three or four inches deep went past him. It looked like the after-party on the set of The Blob.

  I tried to flick goo from my fingers and had little luck. The stuff was like snot but stickier, and if not for the fact that it would sublimate and vanish within about a quarter of an hour, it would have put a real dent in my wardrobe over the years.

  But for the moment, I was covered in clear, gelatinous snot.

  We were both silent for a moment before Ebenezar croaked, “See? Not one vampire needed.”

  I eyed the old man, weary from the expenditure of so much energy. Then I asked, “Why do you hate them so much, sir?”

  He glanced over at me and stared for a moment, pensive. Then he asked me, “Why did you hate those ghouls you killed at Camp Kaboom?”

  I frowned and looked away. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done that day. But I wasn’t sure I’d do it any differently, either. The things those ghouls had done to a couple of kids I’d been helping to teach did not bear thinking upon.

  Neither did the ghouls’ endings.

  I used ants.

  The old man sighed. When I looked back at him, his eyes were closed. His cheeks seemed sunken. And there was a sense of desperate weariness to him that I had never seen before. When he spoke, he didn’t open his eyes. “See? You know why. I hate them because I know them. Because they took someone from me.”

  “Mom?” I asked.

  His jaw muscles tightened. “Her, too. What you did to the Reds was a hell of a thing, Hoss. But the part of me that knows them thinks it was only a good beginning. God help me, some days I’m not sure I don’t agree.”

  “The Red Court got the way they were by killing a human being. Every one of them. The White Court is different. They’re born that way. And they’re not all the same,” I said.

  “Game they’ve played for a very long time, Hoss,” he said. “You’ll see it for yourself. If you live long enough.”

  He exhaled and sat up. Then he reclaimed his staff and shoved himself to his feet. His face didn’t look right. It wasn’t purple at least, but it was too pale, his lips maybe a little grey. His eyes belonged on a starving man.

  “It’s best if we get off the street and behind some wards,” he said. “If they’ve got the gumption and resources, whoever sent those things might try it again.”

  “No,” I said. “Not until I get something on this whole starborn thing.”

  His jaw flexed a couple of times. Then he said, “I told you. You were born at the right time and place. As a result, you …” He sighed as if struggling to find an explanation. “Your life force resonates at a frequency that is the mirror opposite and cancellation of the Outsiders. They can’t take away your free will. They’re vulnerable to your power. Hell, you can punch them and they’ll actually feel pain from it.”

  Well. A kick to the sort-of face had made that cornerhound flinch for three-quarters of a second, anyway. “Let’s call that one Plan B.”

  “Good idea,” Ebenezar said.

  I frowned. “This starborn thing. It happens all the time?”

  The old man seemed to think about that one before he answered. “Once every six hundred and sixty-six years.”

  “Why?” I asked him. “What’s it for? What’s coming?”

  The old man shook his head. “Lesson’s over for tonight. I already said more’n I should’ve.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  “Hoss,” he said, his voice quiet and like granite, “there’s nothing you can do for the vampire except go down with him. Drop it.” He closed his eyes and spoke through clenched teeth. “Or I’ll make you drop it.”

  I expected to feel fury at his words. I don’t react well to authoritarian gestures.

  But I didn’t feel angry.

  Just … hurt.

  “You don’t trust my judgment,” I said quietly.

  “Course I do,” he said grumpily. “But I care about you even more—and you’re ears-deep in alligators and you ain’t thinking so straight right now.” He pushed back a glob of ectoplasm that threatened to gloop down into his eyes. “You know me. I don’t want to do this to you, Hoss. Don’t make me.”

  I thought about what I was going to say for a moment.

  I had always known Ebenezar McCoy as a gruff, abrasive, tough, fearless, and unfailingly kind human being, even before I knew he was my grandfather.

  I wanted to tell him about his other grandson. But I understood the hate he felt. I understood it because I felt it myself. It was the kind of hate not many people in the first world are ever forced to feel—the hate that comes from blood and death, from having those near you hurt and killed. That was old-school hate. Weapons-grade. Primal.

  If someone somehow revealed to me that a ghoul was actually my offspring, I wasn’t sure how I’d react, beyond knowing that it wouldn’t be reasonable and that fire was going to come into it somewhere.

  I couldn’t count on my grandfather. I might be all my brother had going for him.

  “Sir,” I said finally. “You know me. When someone I care about is in trouble, I’ll go through whatever it takes to help them.” My next words came out in a whisper, “Don’t make me go through you, sir.”

  He narrowed his eyes for a long moment. “You figure you can, Hoss?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Said the man falling past the thirtieth floor.”

  We both stood there for a moment, dripping ectoplasm, neither one of us moving.

  “Stars and stones,” the old man sighed finally. “Go cool off. Think it over. Sleep on it.” His voice hardened. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  “Maybe one of us will.”

  “One of them,” he spat the last word as if it had been made of acid, “is not worth making an orphan of your daughter.”

  “It’s not about who they are,” I said quietly. “It’s about who I am. And the example I’m setting.”

  The old man stared at me for a moment, his expression unreadable.

  Then he turned and stalked away, slowly, his shoulders slumped, his jaw clenched. As he went, he vanished behind a veil that was, like most of his magic, better than anything I could do. Then I was standing there alone in an empty parking garage.

  I looked around at the wreckage and closed my eyes.

  Family complicates everything.

  Dammit.

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  Hounds of Tindalos are real, huh?” Butters asked. “Weird.”

  “Well. For some values of ‘real,’ ” I said. “Lovecraft got kicked out of the Venatori Umbrorum for mucking about with Thule Society research. Don’t know many of the details, but apparently it wasn’t actually cancer that ate his guts out later. It was … something more literal.”r />
  I sat at the little table in Butters’s apartment kitchen. I had my duster off and both arms resting on the table with my palms up. Butters sat across from me wearing loose exercise clothes. An EMT’s toolbox sat on the table next to him, and he was currently peering at my hands through his thick glasses, which he now wore in the form of securely fastened athletic goggles.

  Butters was a little guy in his early forties, even littler since he’d gotten in shape. Now he was all made of wire. Maybe five foot five, but if he weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds, I’d eat my duster without salt. His hair was a dark, curly, unkempt mess, but that might have been a factor of my showing up at his door after hours.

  “God,” Butters muttered, using a wipe to try to clean up the deep, gashing cuts on my hands. “You’ve got motor oil in the gashes.”

  “That a problem?”

  He gave me a sleepy, unamused look. “Considering all the debris it collects, yes. Yes, it is.” He sighed. “Gotta debride it. Sorry, man.”

  I nodded. “Just get it over with.”

  After that, it was about twenty minutes of water, Betadine solution, and a stiff-bristled brush being applied to the area around and inside the wound. Could have been worse. Butters could have used iodine. Could have been worse—but it wasn’t exactly a picnic, either. Hands are sensitive.

  Twenty minutes later, I was sweating and grumpy, and Butters was glowering at the injuries with dissatisfaction. “That’s the best I can do here. I’ll wrap them up, but you’ll need to change the bandages every day and watch like hell for any sign of infection. But in the ‘ounce of prevention’ department, until you get invulnerable skin, buy some gloves to protect your hands, Hulk.”

  “Not a bad idea,” I said. “How bad is the damage?”

  I have this issue with feeling pain. It’s part of the Winter Knight package. When something happens to me, I sort of notice it, but ongoing pain just fades into my background. So bad things can happen to me without my knowing it, if I don’t use my head.

  “I don’t think there’s damage to the actual working structure of your hands,” Butters said. “But the human body isn’t really made for flipping trucks, man. You’ re … developed to something like the maximum potential for your height and build, but your joints are still human joints. Your cartilage is still only cartilage, and even though your body will actually heal damage to it, it has a failure point. And your bones are still just made of bone.” He shook his head. “Seriously. One of these days you’re going to try to lift something too heavy, and even if your muscles can handle it, your bones and joints won’t.”

  “What’s that gonna look like?” I wondered aloud.

  “An industrial accident,” Butters said. He wiped down my hands one more time, thoroughly, and then began wrapping the injuries. “Okay. So the White Council wants to give you a hard time. So what else is new?”

  Butters was not up on the concept of the Black Council, a covert group of wizards who were nebulous and impossible to identify with absolute certainty, working toward goals that seemed nefarious at best. That information was being held under wraps by the wizards dedicated to fighting them. Partly because we had little hard evidence about the Black Council, what they wanted, and who their members were, and partly because the bad guys would have more trouble taking action against us if they couldn’t even be sure who was their enemy.

  Butters was trustworthy, but the Black Council was a wizard problem.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

  Butters gave me a look, because I’m not a very good spy, and lying to a friend doesn’t come naturally to me. But he shrugged and let it pass. “Okay.” He yawned. “When you called, you said something about health issues, plural. What else is bothering you?”

  I told him about my sneezes and the conjuritis.

  His eyes narrowed and he said, “This isn’t some kind of prank you’re playing on the new guy in the game, is it? Cause I’ve sort of been expecting that.”

  “What? No, that’s crazy talk,” I said, and tried hard not to think about my “Dino Serenade,” due for his birthday. “This is a real problem, man.”

  “Sure,” Butters said, snapping his rubber gloves off and beginning to clean up. “Whatever.”

  Augh, of all the crazy things to happen in my life, I wouldn’t think that my randomly involuntarily conjuring objects out of nothing at the drop of a hat would really ping anyone’s radar. All the things happening right now, and this is the point that Butters picks to decide to stonewall me on?

  I sneezed again. Hard.

  There was an enormous crash as a section of mortared stone wall, maybe four feet square, landed on Butters’s kitchen floor so hard that the tables and chairs jumped off the floor. Butters yelped and fell over backwards out of his chair—into a backwards roll that brought him onto his feet right next to the steak-knife holder on the counter. He had his hand on a knife before I could get all the way to my feet.

  Little guy. But fast. Knights of the Sword aren’t ever to be underestimated.

  “Dere,” I said, swiping awkwardly at my nose with my forearms. “Dere, do yuh see dow?”

  Butters just stared at the stone wall. Then he quivered when it shuddered, went transparent, and then collapsed into gallons and gallons of ectoplasm. The supernatural gelatin kind of spread out slowly over the floor, like a test shot for a remake of The Blob.

  “Okay,” Butters said. “ So … that just happened.” He regarded the ectoplasm and then me and shook his head. “Your life, Harry. What the hell?”

  “Dod’t asg be,” I said. I sloshed across the kitchen floor, got a paper towel, and started trying to blow my nose clean. It was kind of a mess. It took several paper towels’ worth of expelled ectoplasm to be able to breathe properly again. “Look, I can’t be randomly making things appear out of nowhere.”

  “I’m a medical examiner,” Butters wailed. “Christ, Harry! Some kind of virus that has an interaction with your nervous system, or your brain or your freaking subconscious? This is something to take to Mayo or Johns Hopkins. Or maybe Professor Xavier’s school.”

  “None of those guys are weird enough. You do weird.”

  He put the knife back and threw up his hands. “Augh. Okay. Is there always a sneeze?”

  “Yeah, so far,” I said.

  “Then go get whatever cold medicine you use when you have a cold. Maybe if you stop the sneezing, you’ll stop the conjuring, too.”

  I eyed him blearily and then said, betrayed, “I could have worked that out for myself.”

  “Weird,” he said, “it’s almost as if you’re a grown damned man who could make some commonsense health decisions for himself, if he chose to.”

  I flipped him a casual bird, idly noting the pain of my wounded hand as I did. “What about the nausea? I feel like I’m stuck on one of those rides where you go in circles.”

  “Infrasound is pretty wild and unexplored stuff,” Butters said. “There’s too many potential weapon and military communication applications for it, and it’s hard to measure, so there hasn’t been a ton of publicly available research. But, the Paranet being the Paranet, I found some Bigfoot researchers who say that the Bigfoot use it all the time to encourage people to leave the area. Tigers and other large predators use it, too, as part of the roar. You know when you hear stories about people freezing when a tiger roars? That’s infrasound, having an effect on the parasympathetic nervous system.”

  “Thank you for confirming that infrasound is real and has real effects on people,” I said, “but I sort of worked that one out for myself. How do we fix it?”

  “According to the Bigfoot guys, mostly what it takes to recover is a solid sleep cycle. So if you’re going to insist on treating me like your personal physician, here: Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, sleep probably isn’t an option, either.”

  “Course not.” Butters sighed. He went to a cabinet, got a
plastic bottle out, and tossed it to me.

  “Allergy meds?” I asked skeptically.

  “Are you a doctor now?” Butters went to the sink and filled a cup of water.

  “Maybe I’m only a medical examiner.”

  Butters dipped a finger in the water and flicked it at me, then sloshed carefully through the slime and put the cup down on the table in front of me. “Diphenhydramine,” he said. “Sneezing is usually a histamine reaction. This is an antihistamine. Should help. Take two.”

  I did as I was told without uttering any intelligible complaints, thus proving that I am not a contrary, obstreperous stiff neck who resents any authority figure telling him what to do. I mean, it’s documented now. So that’s settled.

  I heard a soft sound and looked up at the doorway to the kitchen as a young woman appeared in it. Andi had long, wavy red hair and bombshell curves. She wore an emerald green terry-cloth robe, which she held closed with one hand, her eyes were sleepy, and she was possibly the most adorable werewolf I knew. “Waldo? What was that bang? What happened to the floor? Oh, Harry.” She gathered the robe closed a little more closely and belted it. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “Andi,” I said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  She gave me a tired smile. “Word is that things are getting tense out there.”

  “Word’s right,” I said. “Be a good idea for you to get as much sleep as possible, in case you’re needed.”

  “And yet,” Butters protested, “here you are waking me up, I notice.”

  “For you, sleep time was yesterday,” I said. “You’re needed now.”

  There were soft footsteps and a second female voice said, “Is everything okay?”

  Another young woman appeared, built slim but strong, legs like a long-distance runner’s beneath an Avengers T-shirt big enough to serve her as a dress. She had very fine mousy brown hair to her shoulders, and she was squinting her large brown eyes against her lack of glasses, her narrow face disrupted by sleep marks on one cheek. “Oh,” she said. “My goodness. Hello, Harry. I’m, um, sleeping over. After the LAN party. Oh, did you hurt your hands?”