Kelley Armstrong - Blood Lite

I parked the car, never looking directly at them, and then got out of it, stuck my hands in my duster pockets, and stood there waiting.

"You're Harry Dresden," said the tallest one there, a young man with long black hair and a matching goatee.

I squinted at nothing, like Clint Eastwood would do, and said nothing, like Chow Yun-Fat would do.

"You're the one who came to New Orleans last week." He said it "Nawlins," even though the rest of his accent was Midwest standard. "You're the one who desecrated my works."

I blinked at him. "Whoa, wait a minute. There actually was a curse on that nice lady?"

He sneered at me. "She had earned my wrath."

"How about that," I said. "I figured it for some random bad feng shui."

His sneer vanished. "What?"

"To tell you the truth, it was so minor that I only did the ritual cleansing to make her feel better and show the Paranetters how to do it for themselves in the future." I shrugged. "Sorry about your wrath, there, Darth Wan­nabe."

He recovered his composure in seconds. "Apologies will do you no good, wizard. Now!"

He and his posse all raised their various accoutrements, sneering malevolently. "Defend yourself!"

"Okay," I said, and pulled my .44 out of my pocket.

Darth Wannabe and his posse lost their sneers.

"Wh-what?" said one of the girls, who had a nose ring that I was pretty sure was a clip-on. "What are you doing?"

"I'm a fixin' to defend myself," I drawled, Texas-style. I held the gun negligently, pointing down and to one side and not right at them. I didn't want to hurt anybody. "Look, kids. You really need to work on your image."

Darth opened his mouth. It just hung that way for a minute.

"I mean, the van's a bit overdone. But hell, I can't throw stones. My VW Bug has a big '53' inside a circle spray painted on the hood. You're sort of slipping elsewhere, though." I nodded at one of the girls, a brunette holding a wand with a crystal on the tip. "Honey, I liked the Harry Potter movies, too, but that doesn't mean I ran out and got a Dark Mark tattooed onto my left forearm like you did." I eyed the other male. "And you're wearing a freakin' Slytherin scarf. I mean, Christ. How's anyone supposed to take that seriously?"

"You would dare," Darth Wannabe began, obviously outraged.

"One more tip, kids. If you had any real talent, the air would practically have been on fire when you got ready to throw down. But you losers don't have enough magic between you to turn cereal into breakfast."

"You would dare—"

"I can tell, because I actually am a wizard. I went to school for this stuff."

"You would—"

"I mean, I know you guys have probably thrown your talents at other people in your weight class, had your little duels, and maybe someone got a nosebleed and someone went home with a migraine and it gave your inner mega­lomaniac a boner. But this is different." I nodded at one of the other girls, who had shaved her head clean. "Excuse me, miss. What time is it?"

She blinked at me. "Um. It's after one ... ?"

"Thanks."

The Dim Lord tried for his dramatic dialogue again. "You would dare threaten us with mortal weapons?"

"It's after midnight," I told the idiot. "I'm off the clock."

That killed his momentum again. "What?"

"It's my day off, and I've got plans, so let's just skip ahead."

Darth floundered wordlessly. He was really out of his element—and he wasn't giving me anything to work with at all. If I waited around for him, this was going to take all night.

"All right, kid. You want some magic?" I pointed my gun at the van. "Howsabout I make your windows disap­pear."

Darth swallowed. Then he lowered his staff, a cheaply carved thing you can pick up at tourist traps in Acapulco, and said, "This is not over. We are your doom, Dresden."

"As long as you don't drag it out too much. Good night, children."

Darth sneered at me again, pulled the shreds of his dignity about him, and strode to the van. The rest of them followed him like good little darthlings. The van started up and tore away, throwing gravel spitefully into the Blue Beetle.

Could it sneer at them, the Beetle would have done so. Its dents had dents that were worse than what that van inflicted.

I spun the .44 once around my finger and put it back into my pocket.

Clint Yun-Fat. As if I didn't have enough to do without worrying about Darth Wannabe and his groupies. I went inside, greeted my pets in order of seniority—Mister, my oversized cat first, then Mouse, my undersized ankylosaurus—washed up, and went to bed.

The Mickey Mouse alarm clock told me that it was five in the morning when my apartment's front door opened. The door gets stuck, because a ham-handed amateur installed it, and it makes a racket when it's finally forced open. I came out of the bedroom in my underwear, with my blast­ing rod in one hand and my .44 in the other, ready to do battle with whatever had come a-calling.

"Hi, boss!" Molly chirped, giving my blasting rod and gun a passing glance, but ignoring my mostly nudity.

I felt old.

My apprentice came in and set two Starbucks cups down on the coffee table, along with a bag that would be full of something expensive that Starbucks thought peo­ple should eat with coffee. Molly, who was young and tall and blonde and built like a brick supermodel, offered me one of the cups. "You want to wake up now or would you rather I kept it warm for you?"

"Molly," I said, trying to be polite. "I can't stand the sight of you. Go away."

She held up a hand. "I know, I know, Captain Grumpy-pants. Your day off and your big date with Luccio."

"Yes," I said. I put as much hostility into it as I could.

Molly had been overexposed to my menace. It bounced right off her. "I just thought it would be a good time for me to work out some of the kinks on my invisibility potion. You've said I'm ready to use the lab alone."

"I said 'unsupervised.' That isn't quite the same thing as alone." My glower deepened. "Much like having an apprentice puttering around the basement is not quite the same thing as being alone with Anastasia."

"You're going horseback riding," Molly said in a reason­able tone of voice. "You won't be here, and I'll be gone by the time you get back. And besides, I can make sure Mouse gets a walk or two while you're gone, so you won't have to come rushing back early. Isn't that thoughtful of me?"

Mouse's huge, gray doggy head came up off the floor and his tail twitched as she said "walk." He looked at me hopefully.

"Oh for crying out—" I shook my head wearily. "Lock up behind you before you go downstairs."

She turned back to the front door and started pushing.

"You got it, boss."

I staggered back to my bed to get whatever rest I could before my apprentice died in a fit of sleep-deprivation-induced psychotic mania.

For the first time ever, Mickey Mouse let me down.

Granted, being a wizard means that technology and I don't get along very well. Things tend to break down a lot faster in the presence of mortal magic than they would otherwise—but that's mostly electronics. My wind-up Mickey Mouse clock was pure springs and gears, and it had given me years and years of loyal service. It never went off, and when I woke up, Mickey was cheerfully indicating that I had less than half an hour before Anastasia was supposed to arrive.

I got up and threw myself into the shower, bringing my razor with me. I was only partway through shaving when the explosion rattled the apartment, hard enough to make a film of water droplets leap up off the shower floor.

I stumbled out, wrapped a towel around my waist, seized my blasting rod—just in case what was needed was more explosions—and went running into the living room. The trap door leading down to the lab in my subbasement was open and pink and blue smoke was roiling up out of it in a thick, noxious plume.