Jim Butcher - Changes

Tilly’s office was adjacent to the elevator. And I distinctly heard the hunting scream of a Red Court vampire echoing around the elevator shaft.

It was followed by a chorus of screams, more than a score of individual hunting cries.

Lots of vampires in an enclosed space. That was bad.

The heavy, throbbing beat of a hideous heart underlay the screams, audible four stories up and through the wall. I shuddered.

Lots of vampires and the Ick in an enclosed space. That was worse.

“What is that?” Rudolph asked in a squeaky whisper.

I willed light into my amulet, prepared my shield bracelet, and drew my blasting rod out of my coat. Beside me, Murphy had already drawn her SIG. She tested the little flashlight on it, found it functional, and looked up at me with the serene expression and steady breathing that told me that she was controlling her fear. “What’s the play?” she asked.

“Get Susan and get out,” I said. “If I’m not here and she’s not here, they’ve got no reason to attack.”

“What is it?” Rudolph asked again. “What is that noise? Huh?”

Murphy leaned her head a bit toward Rudolph, questioning me with a quirked eyebrow.

“Dammit.” I sighed. “You’re right. We’ll have to take him with us, too.”

“Tell me!” Rudolph said, near panic. “You have to tell me what that is!”

“Do we tell him?” I asked.

“Sure.”

Murphy and I turned toward the door, weapons raised, and spoke in offhanded stereo. “Terrorists.”

By the time Murphy and I had moved into the hall, gunfire had erupted on the floors below us. It didn’t sound like much—simple, staccato thumping sounds—but anyone who’d heard shots fired in earnest would never mistake them for anything else. I hoped that nobody was carrying rounds heavy enough to come up through the intervening floors and nail me. There just aren’t any minor injuries to be had from something like that.

“Those screams,” Murphy said. “Red Court, right?”

“Yeah. Where’s Susan?”

“Interrogation room, that way.” She nodded to the left, and I took the lead. I walked with my shoulder brushing the left- hand wall. Murph, after dragging the sputtering Rudolph out of the office, walked a step behind me and a pace to my right, so that she could shoot past me if she had to. We’d played this game before. If something bad came for us, I’d stand it off long enough to give her a clean shot.

That would be critical, buying her the extra second to place her shot. Vampires aren’t immune to the damage bullets cause, but they can recover from anything but the most lethal hits, and they know it. A Red Court vampire would almost always be willing to charge a mortal gunman, knowing how difficult it is to really place a shot with lethal effect, especially with a howling monster rushing toward you. You needed a hit square in the head, severing the spine, or in their gut, rupturing the blood reservoir, to really put a Red Court vampire down—and they could generally recover, even from those wounds, with enough time and blood to feed upon.

Murphy knew exactly what she was shooting at and had proved that she could be steady enough to deal with a Red—but the other personnel in the building lacked her knowledge and experience.

The FBI was in for a real bad day.

We moved down the hall, quick and silent, and when a frightened-looking clerical type stumbled out of a break room doorway toward us, I nearly sent a blast of flame through him. Murphy had her badge hanging around her neck, and she instructed him to get back inside and barricade the door. He was clearly terrified, and responded without question to the tone of calm authority in Murph’s voice.

“Maybe we should do that,” Rudolph said. “Get in a room. Barricade the door.”

“They’ve got a heavy with them,” I said to Murphy as I took the lead again. “Big, strong, fast. Like the loup-garou. It’s some kind of Mayan thing, an Ik-something-or-other.”

Murphy cursed. “How do we kill it?”

“Not sure. But daylight seems a pretty good bet.” We were passing down a hallway that had several offices with exterior windows. The light of the autumn afternoon, reduced by the occasional curtain, created a kind of murky twilight to move through, and one that my ambient blue wizard light did little to disperse.

Eerier than the lighting was the silence. No air ducts sighed. No elevators rattled. No phones rang. But twice I heard gunshots—the rapid bang-bang-bang of practically useless panic fire. Vampires shrieked out their hunting cries several different times. And the thub-dub of the Ick’s bizarre heartbeat was steady, omnipresent—and slowly growing louder.

“Maybe we need a lot of mirrors or something,” Murphy said. “Bring a bunch of daylight in.”

“Way harder to do than it looks in the movies,” I said. “I figure I’ll just blow open a hole in the side of the building.” I licked my lips. “Crud, uh. Which way is south? That’ll be the best side to do it on.”

“You’re threatening to destroy a federal building!” Rudolph squeaked.

Gunshots sounded somewhere close—maybe on the third floor, directly below us. Maybe on the other side of the fourth floor, muffled by a lot of cubicle walls.

“Oh, God,” Rudolph whimpered. “Oh, dear, sweet Jesus.” He just started repeating that in a mindlessly frightened whisper.

“Aha,” I said as we reached the interrogation room. “We have our Cowardly Lion. Cover me, Dorothy.”

“Remind me to ask what the hell you’re talking about later,” Murphy said.

I started to open the door, but paused. Tilly was armed, presumably smart enough to be scared, and it probably wasn’t the best idea in the world to just open the door of the room and scare him. So I moved as far as possible to one side, reached way over to the door, and knocked. In code, even. Shave and a haircut.

There was a lengthy pause and then someone knocked on the other side of the door. Two bits.

I twisted the knob and opened the door very, very slowly.

“Tilly?” I said in a hoarse whisper. “Susan?”

The interrogation room didn’t have any windows, and it was completely dark inside. Tilly appeared in the doorway, holding up a hand to shield his eyes. “Dresden?”

“Yeah, obviously,” I said. “Susan?”

“I’m here,” she said from the darkness, her voice shaking with fear. “I’m cuffed to the chair. Harry, we’ve got to go.”

“Working on it,” I said quietly.

“You don’t understand. That thing, that drumming sound. It’s a devourer. You don’t fight them. You run, and pray someone slower than you attracts its attention.”

“Yeah. Already met the Ick,” I said. “I’d rather not repeat the experience.” I held out a hand to Tilly. “I need cuff keys.”

Tilly hesitated, clearly torn between his sense of duty and order and the primal fear that had risen in the building. He shook his head, but it didn’t seem like his heart was in it.

“Tilly,” Murphy said. She turned to him, her expression ferociously determined, and said, “Trust me. Please just do it. People are going to die as long as these three are in the building.”

He passed me the keys.

I took them over to Susan, who was sitting in the same chair I had during my chat with the feds. She wore her dark leather pants and a black T-shirt and looked oddly vulnerable just sitting there during a situation like this. I went to her and started unfastening the cuffs.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I was getting a little worried there.”

“They must have come in through the basement somehow,” I said.

She nodded. “They’ll work their way up, floor by floor. Kill everyone they can. It’s how they operate. Remove the target and leave a message for everyone else.”