by Jim Butcher
It didn’t turn me into an instant superhero or anything, but you don’t want me punching you in the nose, either.
Second, I can have issues noticing pain and discomfort. Mostly, that means things like cutting myself a lot while shaving. Sometimes when I stand up after reading for a long time, I don’t notice that my leg has gone to sleep and I fall down. I have to really pay attention to notice pain, most of the time. It’s probably been good for me to work on a little more self-awareness, but it isn’t much fun.
On the other hand, when you’re doing something to which pain is a serious obstacle, like running, it can be really convenient.
The average fit young person can manage about sixteen or eighteen miles an hour over a short distance. Top human sprint speed is about twenty-eight miles an hour. I can’t run that fast. But I can run considerably faster than average, maybe twenty-two or twenty-four miles an hour, and I can do it without slowing down for more or less as long as is necessary.
So when I hit the streets, I was really moving. I knew it wouldn’t take me long to reach the waterfront. In fact, my biggest worry was that I would break an ankle and not notice it until I’d kept running and pounded my foot to pulp.
But Chicago’s streets had changed.
Cars had simply come to a halt, dead in their rows. There were no streetlights, no lights in buildings, no signs, no traffic lights. No nothing. People had gotten out of their cars and were standing together in small groups, nervously talking. Everyone was holding a phone in their hands. None of the devices were working. The only human-made illumination came from, here and there, emergency road flares that people had deployed as light sources. If there hadn’t been a waxing moon, it would have been too dark to move as fast as I was.
It was eerily silent. Chicago was a busy place. At any time of the day or night, you could hear any number of the sounds of the modern world: radios blaring, deep bass notes from someone’s tricked-out car stereo, traffic, horns, sirens, construction equipment, public announcements, tests of the emergency broadcast system, what have you.
All of that was gone.
The only sounds were worried voices and my running footsteps.
There weren’t any screams. There wasn’t any smoke.
Not yet.
But it was coming. My God, it was coming. If Ethniu and the Fomor hit the city during the blackout, the resulting chaos could kill tens of thousands independently of whether anyone swung a blade or fired a shot. The sudden blackout had to have killed people in hospitals, in automobile collisions, maybe even in airplanes. I mean, how would I know? I couldn’t see the highways. A plane could have gone down a few blocks away and if I hadn’t seen it happen, and if there weren’t any fires to mark it, I’d never be able to tell from here.
The Accorded nations were preparing for all-out war. Freaking Ferrovax was involved.
I ran for the docks, and as I did, I realized something truly terrifying:
I had no idea what was coming next.
This was out of my experience, beyond what I knew of the world. The supernatural nations might have their issues, and when we fought sometimes there was collateral damage—but for the most part, we kept it among us. Old ruins, jungles, deserts, underground caverns, that was where we did most of our fighting.
Not in cities.
Not in the streets of freaking Chicago.
I mean, my God, she had kicked Mab through walls. Mab. Walls, plural. Ethniu had gone through her as if she didn’t exist.
A creature with power like that might not be impressed by a mere seven or eight billion mortals. She might very well be determined to play this one old-school, and a protogod’s idea of old-school probably checked in around the same weight class as Sodom and Gomorrah.
Before the night was out, the city would fight for its life. My grandfather and my friends and allies on the Council would be in the middle of it. My God, I had to get Thomas clear of it before it got started. I had to warn people. I mean, the supernatural-community grapevine would be spreading this one like wildfire, and everyone would be paying attention because I’d spread the word for everyone to keep their eyes open—but that left the rest of Chicago. Ninety-nine percent and then some of the city’s populace would have no idea what was going on when the attack began.
Like, zero idea.
And being initiated to the supernatural world was difficult even when it happened gently—much less when it rolled up and ripped someone’s face off.
About eight million people would react with panic. With terror. With violence.
And my daughter would be in the middle of it.
The very thought gave my feet wings.
Only two things kept me from going to her. First, where she was staying. She was a guest in the house of Michael Carpenter, and under his protection. And that meant that while she was there, she had a mostly retired hero and a squad of literal guardian angels looking out for her. I don’t care how badass you might be, even on the kind of scales I use—you don’t want to tussle with an angel. Those beings are absolute forces of the universe, and they are freaking Old Testament.
Tangling with one would be less like getting into a street fight than like getting into a fight with the street—it’s difficult to picture, you’re almost certain to look incredibly foolish, and however you approach that fight, things are probably not going to go your way. Maggie could hardly be in a safer place in the city than under their protection.
And the second reason was my brother. I had been trying to keep cool while we executed the rescue plan, but I was terrified for him. He was in bad shape. I could … not save him, exactly, but I could keep him alive, on the island. That was the whole point. Out there, I had a lot more say about what happened. Out there, I could keep him shielded from tracking magic, from deadly spells, from hostile sendings, could forbid the presence of the svartalves and enforce it. Out there, he’d have a chance.
With luck, I could save my brother and make it back to town before Ethniu and Corb did. I hated the thought, but the imminent attack ought to provide us with a damned fine distraction. We just had to get him to the island before anyone caught us.
But he wasn’t there yet.
I rounded the last corner at my best pace, feet pounding hard against the concrete, dashed across the street, and made it to the entrance of the docks at Burnham Harbor, where the Water Beetle was moored. I flew through the gates, guided through the dark by the white paint on the stairs and floorboards of the walkway. There was no one else here, no one else trying to get away from the city.
Not yet.
My footsteps on the dock hammered out over the open water, loud and clear, and I didn’t bother trying to be quiet. Speed was everything.
I flew down the last length of dock to the boat and saw green glowing light coming from belowdecks and from the cabin. The Water Beetle was a worn-out little old blue-water fishing trawler, pretty much a twin to the Orca in Jaws. As I slowed, panting, my footsteps got even louder, and Freydis’s slim form appeared on the deck, holding a green chemical emergency light in her hand. Murphy came limping out of the cabin a second later, her P90 riding on its harness across her chest, holding a second glow light.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Harry,” she breathed. “That blast of light. Was it an EMP?”
“Or a hex,” I said. “Or both. Where’s Lara?”
“She took Thomas below,” Murphy said, her voice tense. “He’s in rough shape.”
I nodded and put a foot on the gangplank. “Okay, then let’s—”
And from behind me came a deep, warbling, throbbing hum, like nothing I’d heard before.
My dad, the illusionist. I slipped the dark opal ring I’d gotten from Molly off my hand and palmed it.
Then I turned.
Hovering maybe twenty feet up, with his feet planted firmly on a stone the size of a Buick, was the Blackstaff, Ebenezar McCoy. One hand was spread out to one side for balance, fingers crooked in a mystic sign, sort of a kinetic shorth
and for whatever spell was keeping that boulder in the air.
The other gripped his staff, carved with runes like mine, and they glowed with sullen red-orange energy. His face had twisted into a rictus of cold, hard fury. Flickers of static electricity played along the surface of the stone.
“You fool,” he said. “You damned fool.”
I put my feet back on the dock. Then I knelt down and tied my shoe.
“Boy,” he said. “They’re using you.”
I set the palmed ring down behind my heel, out of sight. Breathed a word in barely a whisper.
There was a moment of dizziness and then I stood up and faced my grandfather. I gathered in my will. The shield bracelet on my left wrist began drizzling a rain of green and gold sparks of light. The runes of my staff began to glow with the same energy.
“Sir,” I said. “What are your intentions?”
“To salvage something out of this mess, boy,” he snapped. “The jaws of the trap are already closing in. I’m going to open your eyes.” His gaze flicked past me to the ship, and a flicker of electricity along the stone made a thrumming crack like a miniature thunderbolt. “The vampire’s in there, isn’t he?”
“You haven’t seen him there,” I said. “You have no idea.”
“Don’t play games with me, boy,” the old man spat. “I’m not one of your new Fae friends. And I’m not a lawyer.”
“He’s working for me,” came a clear, calm voice.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Lara Raith, still dressed in her party gown, standing on the Water Beetle’s deck, arms akimbo. I didn’t see any weapons on her. I didn’t see where the dress would have allowed her to hide any weapons. But she stood there like she was ready to draw and fire, and all things considered I would judge it the better part of valor to assume the implied threat was valid.
“I worked with Mab on some visa issues some of her people were having,” Lara said. “She owed me a favor. He’s it.”
The old man’s gaze remained on mine for a moment, growing harder and hotter and more hostile. I saw the rage gathering behind his eyes, before he moved them, slowly, to Lara.
“Vampire,” he said, “the Accords are the only reason I haven’t relieved you of your arms and legs and kicked you into the lake. Your brother stands accused of murder. He’s going to answer for that.”
The voice that came out of my grandfather when he said that … I’d heard it before.
I’d been that voice before.
I thought of ghouls buried to their necks in the earth. I thought of the savage satisfaction that had filled me while I did it. Because they had done wrong, and I had seen them do it. To children. And to deliver just retribution for that crime had been to be the right arm of the Almighty Himself, to be filled with pure, righteous, unarguably just hatred.
My God, I knew how he felt. I knew how bright and pure that fire burned. But when it was happening, I hadn’t been able to feel it burning me.
I just had to live with the scars afterward.
The vampires of the White Court had hurt my grandfather to the heart. And he was determined that it would not happen again. And that they would pay for what they had done.
If Mab had been standing there advising me, she would have said something like, It is his weakness. Use it against him.
And she wouldn’t have been wrong.
Ebenezar glared his hatred at Lara, and I realized with a sinking heart that there was only one way this was going to play out. His eyes were full of hate. It made him blind. There wasn’t room in them for anything else.
“Cast off,” I said in a calm, firm voice, my eyes never leaving my grandfather. “Go ahead with the plan. I’ll catch up.”
“Dresden?” Lara asked. “Are you sure?”
“Dammit, Lara!” I said, exasperated.
I checked over my shoulder in time to see Murphy step up beside Lara, catch her eye, and nod firmly.
“Freydis,” Lara said.
The Valkyrie moved for the ropes.
“Do that,” Ebenezar called, “and I’ll sink this boat right now.”
“No,” I said, calmly, firmly. I swallowed and faced the old man. “You won’t.”
The old man’s brows furrowed, and the air suddenly became as brittle and jagged as broken glass.
“If I let you do this,” the old man said to me, his voice desperate, “you’re out of the Council. You’re an outlaw. The svartalves won’t care about who hired who. They’ll know you prevented them from having justice. And they’ll kill you for it. It’s the only outcome their worldview will accept. Don’t you see, boy? You’ll be vulnerable, compromised. Mab, and this creature, they’re isolating you. That’s what abusers do.”
My heart broke.
“I think,” I said quietly, “that I’m just about done making my choices based on your mistakes.”
He stared at me.
“You don’t know me,” I said quietly. “Not really. You haven’t been there for most of it. And you don’t know Thomas.”
Behind me were two quiet thumps, as lines were dropped on the deck of the ship.
“I know enough to know a frog with a scorpion when I see one,” he replied. “You’ve been around them for a decade and change, and you think you know them. But I’ve dealt with their ilk for centuries. They’ll turn on you, frog. Even if it destroys them. They don’t get a choice about it. It’s what they are.”
Lara stared at the old man with furious …
… haunted …
… eyes.
Murphy strode into the wheelhouse and started the Water Beetle’s ancient engine. It was an old diesel, didn’t even have spark plugs. Hexes, EMP, none of it mattered. If a one-eyed, palsied squirrel was all you had to do maintenance, that engine would run until its molecules decayed into their component atoms.
Ebenezar’s eye flickered to the ship and hardened.
I sucked in a breath, ready to unleash Power.
My God.
Was this really about to happen? Was the old man really about to throw down with me?
He wouldn’t listen. Stars and stones, I couldn’t get him to accept that a White Court vampire might be partially human. If I told him that Thomas was his grandson, he would … not receive the news well.
The old man had a volcanic temper.
That wasn’t a metaphor.
If that happened … I really wasn’t sure what came next.
The Water Beetle’s engine didn’t roar so much as sputter and cough loudly to life. Compared with the almost-silent murmur of the water against the docks and the ships, the sound was deafening in the unnatural silence over the city.
Ebenezar McCoy snapped his staff across his body, held vertically—a duelist’s salute.
My heart lurched into overdrive.
I returned my grandfather’s salute with my own staff.
And then me and the old man went to war.
Chapter
Thirty-two
Some free advice for you: Never fight an old man.
They’ve been there, done that, written the book, made and starred in the movie, designed the T-shirt, and they’ve got no ego at all about how the fight gets won.
And never fight family.
They know you too well.
Ebenezar slashed his hand down at the boulder beneath him with a word, and in the same spell a blade of unseen force slashed a three hundred-pound section of rock free of the boulder he stood on and sent it zipping toward my boat at several hundred feet per second.
I wasn’t even going to try to stop it. It was just too much energy, too much momentum. It would be like lifting a medieval shield to block a descending war maul. Sure, you can do it, but if you do, you’re gonna wish you hadn’t.
No. The smart thing to do is to give that war maul a single sharp lateral tap just as it begins its forward momentum. A few pounds of pressure in the right place, at the right time, are often more effective than expending heroic levels of energy.
And besides
. If I tried to match the old man swing for swing, he’d bury me. Not so much because he was stronger, although he was, but because he was better than me, more energy efficient, milking twice the efficacy out of every single spell while expending half the energy to do it. Wizard fights between the old and the young were a reverse image of mundane confrontations between the same. I was the one who was weaker, slower, limited in what moves I could attempt, and had to play it smart if I wanted to win.
So as the old man sent the section of boulder at the Water Beetle, I lifted my staff, modifying the formula of my simple force-blow spell to send it in from the side instead of straight ahead, and smacked the projectile firmly in the flank as it got moving.
It streaked forward at an angle, wobbling and tumbling as a result, and smashed into one of the boats farther down the dock, plunging through the hull and part of the deck, straight on through the hold and out the other side, with such force that water splashed a hundred feet.
The old man brought his boulder around in a swooping arc, studying me through narrowed eyes, his voice bitter. “Now you learn that you don’t have to swing for the fences every time.”
“Yeah,” I said, studying him right back. The cleave mark where the boulder had been cut was a slightly darker grey than the surface—living rock, with water still inside, then. “Don’t tell anybody. You’ll ruin my maverick rep.”
He looked from me to the Water Beetle, chugging out into the open lake. “But you still ain’t using your brain.”
And he flicked a wrist and started sailing over me, out over the lake toward the boat.
The second his eyes were off me, I unlimbered my blasting rod from the sewn pocket inside my suit coat, aimed for the damp stone of the boulder, and shouted, “Fuego!”
Green-gold fire lanced from the blasting rod and smashed into the boulder—and I poured it on in a steady stream.
The boulder beneath my grandfather’s feet began to let out a kind of hissing, whistling scream, and the old man flung himself off into open air half a second before the water in the stone began to boil and shattered it into dozens of pieces. Some plummeted into the lake, and some onto and through the decks of more of the boats parked in the marina.