Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

Murphy scowled down at the carnie and said, “Give me twenty bucks.”

The man licked his lips. Then he fished my folded twenty out of his shirt pocket and passed it to Murphy.

She nodded and flashed her badge. “Get out of here before I realize I witnessed you taking a bribe and endangering lives by letting customers use the attraction in an unsafe manner.”

The carnie bolted.

Murphy handed me the twenty. I pocketed it, and we climbed down the ladder.

WE REACHED THE bottom and went silent again. Murphy’s body language isn’t exactly subtle—it can’t be, when you’re her size and working law enforcement. But she could move as quietly as smoke when she needed to. I’m gangly. It was more of an effort for me.

The ladder took us down to what looked like the interior of a buried railroad car. There were electrical conduits running along the walls. Light came from a doorway at the far end of the car. I moved forward first, shield bracelet at the ready, and Murphy walked a pace behind me and to my right, her Sig held ready.

The doorway at the end of the railroad car led us into a large workroom, teeming with computers, file cabinets, microscopes, and at least one deluxe chemistry set.

Maroon sat at one of the computers, his profile in view. “Dammit, Stu,” he snarled. “I told you that you can’t keep coming down here to use the john. You’ll just have to walk to one of the—” He glanced up at us and froze in midsentence, his eyes wide and locked on Murphy’s leveled gun.

“Stu took the rest of the night off,” I said amiably. “Where’s your boss?”

A door opened at the far end of the workroom and a young woman of medium height appeared. She wore glasses and a lab coat, and neither of them did anything to make her look less than gorgeous. She looked at us and then at Maroon and said, in a precise, British accent, “You idiot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Good help is hard to find.”

The woman in the lab coat looked at me with dark, intense eyes, and I sensed what felt like a phantom pressure against my temples, as if wriggling tadpoles were slithering along the surface of my skin. It was a straightforward attempt at mental invasion, but I’d been practicing my defenses for a while now, and I wasn’t falling for something that obvious. I pushed the invasive thoughts away with an effort of will and said, “Don’t meet her eyes, Murph. She’s a vampire. Red Court.”

“Got it,” she said, her gun never moving from Maroon.

The vampire looked at us both for a moment. Then she said, “You need no introduction, Mr. Dresden. I am Baroness LeBlanc. And our nations are not, at the moment, in a state of war.”

“I’ve always been a little fuzzy on legal niceties,” I said. I had several devices with me that I could use to defend myself. I was ready to use any of them. A vampire in close quarters is nothing to laugh at. LeBlanc could tear off three or four of my limbs in the time it takes to draw and fire a gun. I watched her closely, ready to act at the slightest semblance of an attack. “We both know the war is going to start up again eventually.”

“You are out of anything reasonably like your territory,” she said, “and you are trespassing upon mine. I would be well within my rights under the Accords to kill you and bury your torso and limbs in individual graves.”

“That’s the problem with this ride,” I complained to Murphy. “There’s nothing that’s actually scary in the Tunnel of Terror.”

“You did get your money back,” she pointed out.

“Ah, true.” I smiled faintly at LeBlanc. “Look, Baroness. You know who I am. You’re doing something to people’s minds, and I want it stopped.”

“If you do not leave,” she said, “I will consider it an act of war.”

“Hooray,” I said in a Ben Stein monotone, spinning one forefinger in the air like a New Year’s noisemaker. “I’ve already kicked off one war with the Red Court, and I will cheerfully do it again if that is what is necessary to protect people from you.”

“That’s irrational,” LeBlanc said. “Completely irrational.”

“Tell her, Murph.”

“He’s completely irrational,” Murphy said, her tone wry.

LeBlanc regarded me impassively for a moment. Then she smiled faintly and said, “Perhaps a physical confrontation is an inappropriate solution.”

I frowned. “Really?”

She shrugged. “Not all of the Red Court are battle-hungry blood addicts, Dresden. My work here has no malevolent designs. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

I tilted my head. “That’s funny. All the corpses piled up say differently.”

“The process does have its side effects,” she admitted. “But the lessons garnered from them serve only to improve my work and make it safer and more effective. Honestly, you should be supporting me, Dresden, not trying to shut me down.”

“Supporting you?” I smiled a little. “Just what is it you think you’re doing that’s so darned wonderful?”

“I am creating love.”

I barked out a laugh.

LeBlanc’s face remained steady, serious.

“You think that this , this warping people into feeling something they don’t want to feel is love ?”

“What is love,” LeBlanc said, “if not a series of electrochemical signals in the brain? Signals that can be duplicated, like any other sensation.”

“Love is more than that,” I said.

“Do you love this woman?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But that isn’t anything new.”

LeBlanc showed her teeth. “But your current feelings of longing and desire are new, are they not? New and entirely indistinguishable from your genuine emotions? Wouldn’t you say, Sergeant Murphy?”

Murphy swallowed but didn’t look at the vampire. LeBlanc’s uncomplicated mental attack might be simple for a wizard to defeat, but any normal human being would probably be gone before they realized their minds were under attack. Instead of answering, she asked a question of her own. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do this? Why experiment with making people fall in love?”

LeBlanc arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t it obvious?”

I sucked in a short breath, realizing what was happening. “The White Court,” I said.

The Whites were a different breed of vampire from the Reds, feeding on the life essence of their victims, generally through seduction. Genuine love and genuine tokens of love were their kryptonite, their holy water. The love of another human being in an intimate relationship sort of rubbed off on you, making the very touch of your skin an anathema to the White Court.

LeBlanc smiled at me. “Granted, there are some aberrant effects from time to time. But so far, that’s been a very small percentage of the test pool. And the survivors are, as you yourself have experienced, perfectly happy. They have a love that most of your kind seldom find and even more infrequently keep. There are no victims here, Wizard.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. Except for the victims.”

LeBlanc exhaled. “Mortals are like mayflies, Wizard. They live a brief time, and then they are gone. And those who have died because of my work at least died after days or weeks of perfect bliss. There are many who ended a much longer life with less. What I’m doing here has the potential to protect mortalkind from the White Court forever.”

“It isn’t genuine love if it’s forced upon someone,” Murphy said, her tone harsh.

“No,” LeBlanc said. “But I believe the real thing will very easily grow from such a foundation of companionship and happiness.”

“Gosh, you’re noble,” I said.

LeBlanc’s eyes sparkled with something ugly.

“You’re doing this to get rid of competition,” I said. “And, hell, maybe to try to increase the world’s population. Make more food.”