Jim Butcher - Grave Peril

"A hungry chauvinist pig," I said. "I'm starving."

"You should eat more often, beanpole." Murphy sat me down on the top step and said, "Stay here. I'll get you something."

"Don't take too long, Murph. I've got work to do. The thing that did this comes out to play at sundown."

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. I thought of dead animals and smashed cars and frozen agonies wrapped around Micky Malone's tortured soul. "I don't know what the hell this Nightmare is. But I'm going to find it. And I'm going to kill it."

"That sounds about right," Murphy said. "If I can help, you've got it."

"Thanks, Murph."

"Don't mention it. Um, Harry?"

I opened my eyes. She was watching me, her expression uncertain. "For a minute there, when I came in. You stared at me. You stared at me with the strangest damned expression on your face. What did you see?" she asked.

"You'd laugh in my face if I told you," I said. "Go get me something to eat."

She snorted and turned to go down the stairs and sort things out with the excited S.I. officers roaming around on the first floor. I smiled, remembering the vision, sharp and brilliant in my mind's eye. Murphy, the guardian angel, coming through the door in a blaze of wrath. It was a picture I wouldn't mind keeping with me. Sometimes you get lucky.

And then I thought of that barbed wire, the hideous torment I'd seen and briefly felt. The ghosts rising of late had been suffering from the same thing. But who could be doing it to them? And how? The forces used in that torture-spell weren't like anything I had seen or felt before. I had never heard of any kind of magic that could be slapped on a spirit or a mortal with the same results. I wouldn't have thought it possible. How was it being done?

More to the point, who was doing it? Or what ?"

I sat there shivering and alone and aching. I was starting to take this business personally. Malone was an ally, someone who had stood up to the bad guys beside me. The more I thought about it, the more angry and the more certain I became.

I would find this Nightmare, this thing that had crossed over, and destroy it.

And then I would find whoever or whatever had created it.

Unless, Harry , I thought to myself, they find you first .

"No," I said into the phone. I tossed my coat onto a chair and then sprawled out on the couch. My apartment lay covered in shadows, sunlight filtering in through the sunken windows high up on the walls. "I haven't gotten the chance yet. I lost a couple of hours detouring to pull a spell off of Micky Malone, from S.I. Someone had wrapped barbed wire around his spirit."

"Mother of God," Michael said. "Is he all right?"

"Will be. But it's four hours of daylight lost." I filled him in on Mort Lindquist and his diaries, as well as the events at Detective Malone's house.

"There isn't much more time to find this Lydia, Harry," Michael agreed. "Sundown's in another six hours."

"I'm working on it. And after I get Bob out the door looking, I'll see if I can hit the streets myself. I got the Beetle back."

He sounded surprised. "It's not impounded?"

"Murphy fixed it for me."

"Harry," he said, disappointed. "She broke the law to get you your car back?"

"Darn tootin' she did," I said. "She owed me a favor. Hey man, the Almighty doesn't arrange for me to be anywhere on time. I need wheels."

Michael sighed. "There isn't time to debate this right now. I'll call you if I find her—but it doesn't look good."

"I just can't figure it. What would this thing have to do with that girl? We need to find her and work out the connection."

"Could Lydia be responsible for the recent disturbances?"

"I don't think so. That spell I ran into today—I've never seen anything like it. It was …" I shivered, remembering. "It was wrong, Michael. Cold. It was—"

"Evil?" he suggested.

"Maybe. Yeah."

"There is such a thing as evil, Harry, in spite of what many people say. Just remember that there's good, too."

I cleared my throat, uncomfortable. "Murphy put out the word to the folks in blue—so if one of her friends on patrol sees a girl matching Lydia's description, we'll hear about it."

"Outstanding," Michael said. "You see, Harry? This detour of yours to help Detective Malone is going to help us a great deal. Isn't that a very positive coincidence?"

"Yeah, Michael. Divine fortune, yadda, yadda. Call me."

"Don't yadda yadda the Lord, Harry. It's disrespectful. God go with you." And he hung up.

I put my coat away, got out my nice, heavy flannel robe and slipped into it, then went over to the rug against the south wall. I dragged it away from the floor, and the hinged door there, then swung the door open. I fetched a kerosene lamp, lit it up and dialed the wick up to a bright flame, then got ready to descend the folding wooden ladder into the sub-basement.

The telephone rang again.

I debated ignoring it. It rang again, insistent. I sighed, closed the door, put the rug back in place, and got to the phone on the fifth ring.

"What?" I said, uncharitably.

"I have to hand it to you, Dresden," Susan said. "You certainly know how to charm a girl the morning after."

I let out a long breath. "Sorry, Susan. I've been working and … it's not going so well. Lots of questions and no answers."

"Ouch," she said back. Someone said something to her in the background, and she murmured a response. "I don't want to add to your day, but do you remember the name of that guy you and Special Investigations took down a couple months ago? The ritual killer?"

"Oh, right. Him …" I closed my eyes, and grubbed about in my memory. "Leo something. Cravat, Camner, Conner. Kraven the Hunter. I didn't really get his name. I tracked him down by the demon he was calling up and nailed him that way. Michael and I didn't hang around for the paperwork afterwards, either."

"Kravos?" Susan asked. "Leonid Kravos?"

"Yeah, that might have been it, I think."

"Great," she said. "Super. Thank you, Harry." Her voice sounded a little tense, excited.

"Uh. Do you mind telling me what's going on?" I asked her.

"It's an angle I'm working on," she said. "Look, all I've got right now are rumors. I'll try to tell you more as soon as I've got something concrete."

"Fair enough. I'm sort of focused on something else right now, anyway."

"Anything you need help with?"

"God, I hope not," I said. I shifted the phone a little closer to my ear. "Did you sleep all right, last night?"

"Maybe," she teased. "It's hard to get really relaxed, when I'm that unsatisfied, but your apartment's so cold it's kind of like going into hibernation."

"Yeah, well. Next time I'll make sure it's a hell of a lot colder."

"I'm shivering already," she purred. "Call you tonight if I can?"

"Might not be here."

She sighed. "I understand. Potluck, then. Thanks again, Harry."

"Any time."

We said goodbye, hung up, and I went back to the stairs leading down into the sub-basement. I uncovered the trap door, opened it, got my lantern, and clumped on down the steep, folding staircase.

My lab never got any less cluttered, no matter how much more organization I imposed on it. The contents only grew denser. Counters and shelves ran along three walls. A long table ran down the center of the room, with enough space for me to slip sideways down its length on either side. Next to the ladder, a kerosene heater blunted the worst of the subterranean chill. On the far side of the table, a brass ring had been set into the floor—a summoning circle. I'd had to learn the hard way to keep it clear of the other debris in the lab.

Debris. Technically, everything in the lab was useful, and served some kind of purpose. The ancient books with their faded, moldering leather covers and their all-pervasive musty smell, the plastic containers with resealable lids, the bottles, the jars, the boxes—they all had something in them I either needed or had needed at one time. Notebooks, dozens of pens and pencils, paper clips and staples, reams of paper covered in my restless, scrawling handwriting, the dried corpses of small animals, a human skull surrounded by paperback novels, candles, an ancient battle axe, they all had some significance. I just couldn't remember what it was for most of them.