Jim Butcher: Turn Coat

I was not going to roll over and die.

Sledgehammers of perfect memory pounded me down into blackness.

When I pulled myself back together, I was sitting on the bed, my legs folded Indian-style. My palms rested on my knees. My breathing was slow and rhythmically heavy. My back was straight. My head pounded painfully, but not cripplingly so.

I looked up and around the room. It was dark, but I’d been in there long enough for my eyes to adjust to the light coming under the door. I could see myself in the dresser mirror. My back was straight and relaxed. I’d taken my coat off, and was wearing a black T-shirt that read “PRE-FECTIONIST” in small white letters, backward in the mirror. A thin, dark runnel of blood had streamed from each nostril and was now drying on my upper lip. I could taste blood in my mouth, probably from where I’d bitten my tongue earlier.

I thought of my pursuer again, and the image made me shudder—but that was all. I kept breathing slowly and steadily.

That was the upside of being human. On the whole, we’re an adaptable sort of being. Certainly, I’d never be able to get rid of my memory of this awful thing, or any of the other awful things I’d Seen—so if the memory couldn’t change, it would have to be me. I could get used to seeing that kind of horror, enough to see it and yet remain a reasoning being. Better men than I had done so.

Morgan had.

I shivered again, and not because of any memory. It was because I knew what it could mean, when you forced yourself to live with hideous things like that. It changed you. Maybe not all at once. Maybe it didn’t turn you into a monster. But I’d been scarred and I knew it.

How many times would something like this need to happen before I started bending myself into something horrible just to survive? I was young for a wizard. Where would I be after decades or centuries of refusing to look away?

Ask Morgan.

I got up and went into the bathroom attached to the bedroom. I turned on the lights, and winced as they raked at my eyes. I washed the blood from my face, and cleaned the sink of it carefully. In my business, you don’t leave your blood where anyone can find it.

Then I put my coat back on and left the bedroom.

Billy and Georgia were in the living room. Billy was at the window that led out to the tiny balcony. Georgia was on the phone.

“I’m not getting anything out here,” Billy said. “Is he sure?”

Georgia murmured into the phone. “Yes. He’s sure it circled this way. It should be in sight from where you are.”

“It isn’t,” Billy said. He turned his head over his shoulder and said, “Harry. Are you all right?”

“I’ll survive,” I said, and paced over to the window. “It followed me here, huh?”

“Something’s outside,” Billy said. “Something we’ve never run into before. It’s been playing hide-and-seek with Kirby and Andi for an hour. They can’t catch it or get a good look at it.”

I gave Billy a sharp look. There weren’t many things that could keep ahead of the werewolves, working together. Wolves are just too damn alert and quick, and Billy and company had been working Chicago almost as long as I had. They knew how to handle themselves—and in the past couple of months, I’d been teaching my apprentice a little humility by letting her try her veiling spells against the werewolves. They’d hunted her down in moments, every time.

“So whatever’s out there, it isn’t human,” I said. “Not if it can stay ahead of Kirby and Andi.” I crossed to the window and stared out with Billy. “And it can veil itself from sight.”

“What is it?” Billy asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s real bad.” I glanced back at Georgia. “How long was I down?”

She checked her watch. “Eighty-two minutes.”

I nodded. “It’s had plenty of time to try to come in, if that’s what it wanted.” I felt a nauseated little quiver in my stomach as a tight smile stretched my lips. “It’s playing with me.”

“What?” Billy said.

“It’s dancing around in front of us out there, under a veil. It’s daring me to use my Sight so that I’ll be able to spot it.”

From outside, there was a sound, a cry. It was short and high-pitched, loud enough to make the windows quiver. I’d never heard anything like it before. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, a purely instinctive reaction. My instincts had been tracking this thing well, so far, so I trusted them when they told me one more thing—that cry was a statement. The hunt was on.

An instant later, every light in sight blew out in a shower of sparks, and darkness swallowed several city blocks.

“Tell Andi and Kirby to get back here to the apartment!” I snapped at Georgia. I grabbed my staff from where it leaned against the wall by the door. “Billy, you’re with me. Get your game face on.”

“Harry?” Georgia said, confused.

“ Now!” I snapped, flinging the bar off the door.

By the time I’d reached the bottom of the stairs, there was the sound of a heavy, controlled impact, and a wolf with hair the same dark brown as Billy’s hit the floor next to me. It was an enormous beast, easily as heavy as Mouse, but taller and leaner—a wolf the world has rarely seen between here and the last ice age. I slammed open the door and let Billy out ahead of me. He bounded over a parked car—and I mean completely over it, lengthwise—and shot toward the buildings at the back of the complex.

Billy had been in contact with Andi and Kirby, and knew their approximate positions. I followed him, my staff in hand, already summoning up my will. I wasn’t sure what was out here, but I wanted to be ready for it.

Kirby appeared from around the northernmost corner of the other building. He hurried along with a cell phone pressed to his ear, a lanky, dark-haired young man in sweat pants and a baggy T-shirt. The active phone painted half his face like a miniature floodlight. I checked the southern corner of the building at once, and saw a dark, furry shape trotting around the corner—Andi, like Billy, in her wolf form.

Wait a minute.

If the whatever-it-was had taken out the local lights, how in the hell had Kirby’s cell phone survived the hex? Magic and technology don’t get along so well, and the more complex electronic devices tended to fall apart most quickly. Cell phones were like those security guys in red shirts on old Star Trek : as soon as something started happening, they were always the first to go.

If the creature, whatever it was, had blown out the lights, it would have gotten the phone, too. Unless it hadn’t wanted to take the phone out.

Kirby was the only clearly lit object in sight—an ideal target.

When the attack came, it came fast.

There was a ripple in the air, as something moving beneath a veil crossed between me and the light cast by Kirby’s phone. There was an explosive snarl, and the phone went flying, leaving Kirby hidden in shadow.

Billy flung himself forward, even as I ripped the silver pentacle amulet from around my neck and lifted it, calling forth silver-blue wizard light with my will. Light flooded the area between the complex’s buildings.

Kirby was on his back, in the center of a splatter of black that could only be blood. Billy was standing crouched over him, his teeth bared in a snarl. He suddenly lunged forward, teeth ripping, and a distortion of the air in front of him bounded up and then to one side. I lurched forward, feeling as if I was running through hip-deep peanut butter. I got the impression of something four-legged and furry evading Billy’s attack, a raw flicker of vision like something seen out of the very corner of the eye.