Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

I watched behind us. Nothing followed.

I sagged down, breathing hard, and closed my eyes.

“Harry?” Thomas demanded, his voice worried. “Are you all right?”

I grunted. Even that much was an effort. It took me a minute to manage to say, “Just tired.” I recovered from that feat and added, “Madrigal pushed me into that thing and bugged out.”

Thomas winced. “Sorry I wasn’t there sooner,” he said. “I grabbed Rawlins. I figured you’d have told me to get him out anyway.”

“I would have,” I said.

He looked up at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes pale and worried. “You sure you’re all right?”

“We’re all alive. That’s what counts.”

Thomas said nothing more until we slid off the highway and he began to slow the van. I busied myself checking Rawlins. The cop had kept going in the face of severe pain and even more severe weirdness. Damned heroic, really. But even heroes are human, and human bodies have limits you can’t exceed. Everything had finally caught up to Rawlins. His breathing was steady, and his wounded foot had swollen up so badly that his own shoe held down the bleeding, but I don’t think a nuclear war could have woken him.

I ground my teeth at what I had to do next. I set my deformed left hand on the floor of the van at the angle Lasciel had shown me and let my weight fall suddenly onto it. There was an ugly pop, more pain, and then the agony subsided somewhat. It was a giddy feeling, and my hand looked human again, if bruised and swollen.

“So,” I said, after I had worked up the energy. “It was you following me around town.”

“I didn’t want to be seen openly with you,” he said. “I figured the Council might take it badly if they found out you had taken a White Court vampire on a Warden ride-along.”

“Probably,” I said. “I take it you followed them from the parking garage?”

“No, actually,” Thomas said. “I tried but I lost them. Mouse didn’t. I followed him. How the hell did they keep him away from you when they grabbed you?”

“They hit him with this van,” I said.

Thomas raised his eyebrows and glanced back at Mouse. “Seriously?” He shook his head. “Mouse led me to you. I was trying to figure out how to get into that garage without getting us shot. Then you made your move.”

“You stole my coat,” I said.

“Borrowed,” he corrected.

“They never talk about this kind of crap when they talk about brothers.”

“You weren’t wearing it,” he pointed out. “Hell, you think I’m going to walk into one of your patented Harry Dresden anarchy-gasms without all the protection I can get?”

I grunted. “You looked good tonight.”

“I always look good,” he said.

“You know what I mean,” I told him quietly. “Better. Stronger. Faster.”

“Like the Six Million Dollar Man,” Thomas said.

“Stop joking, Thomas,” I told him in an even tone. “You used a lot of energy tonight. You’re feeding again.”

He drove, eyes guarded, his face blank.

I chewed on my lip. “You want to talk about it?”

He ignored me, which I took as a “no.”

“How long have you been active?”

I was sure he was stonewalling when he said, in a very quiet voice, “Since last Halloween.”

I frowned. “When we took on those necromancers.”

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s… look, there’s something I didn’t tell you about that night.”

I tilted my head, watching his eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Remember, I said Murphy’s bike broke down?”

I did. I nodded.

“It wasn’t the bike,” Thomas said. He took a deep breath. “It was the Wild Hunt. They came across me while I was trying to catch up with you. Sort of filled up the rest of my evening.”

I arched my eyebrows. “You didn’t have to lie about something like that, man. I mean, everyone who won’t join the Hunt becomes its prey. So it’s not your fault the Hunt chased you around.” I scratched at my chin. Stubble. I needed a shave. “Hell, man, you should be damned proud. I doubt that more than five or six people in history have ever escaped the Hunt.”

He was quiet for a minute and then said, “I didn’t run from them, Harry.”

My shoulders twitched with sudden tension.

“I joined them,” he said.

“Thomas…” I began.

He looked up at the mirror. “I didn’t want to die, man. And when push comes to shove, I’m a predator. A killer. Part of me wanted to go. Part of me had a good time. I don’t like that part of me much, but it’s still there.”

“Hell’s bells,” I said quietly.

“I don’t remember very much of it,” he said. He shrugged. “I let you down that night. Let myself down that night. So I figured this time I’d try to help you out, once you told me you were on a job again.”

“You’ve got a car now, too,” I said quietly.

“Yeah.”

“You’re making money. And feeding on people.”

“Yeah.”

I frowned. I didn’t know what to say to that. Thomas had tried to fit in. He tried to get himself an honest job. He tried it for most of two years, but always ended badly because of who and what he was. I had begun to wonder if there was anyplace in Chicago that hadn’t fired him.

But he’d had this job, whatever it was, for a while now.

“There anything I need to know?” I asked him.

He shook his head, a tiny gesture. His reticence worried me. Though he’d been repeatedly humiliated, Thomas had never had any trouble talking-complaining, really-about the various jobs he’d tried to hold. Once or twice, he’d opened up to me about the difficulty of going without the kind of intense feeding he’d been used to with Justine. Yet now he was clamming up on me.

An uncharitable sort of person would have gotten suspicious. They would have thought that Thomas must have been engaging in something, probably illegal and certainly immoral, to make his living. They would have dwelt on the idea that, as a kind of incubus, it would be a simple matter for him to seduce and control any wealthy woman he chose, providing sustenance and finances in a single package.

Good thing I’m not one of those uncharitable guys.

I sighed. If he wasn’t going to talk, he wasn’t going to talk. Time to change the subject.

“Glau,” I said quiedy. “Madrigal’s sidekick, there. You said he was a jann?”

Thomas nodded. “Scion of a djinn and a mortal. He worked for Madrigal’s father. Then my father arranged to have Madrigal’s father go skydiving naked. Glau stuck with Madrigal after that.”

“Was he dangerous?” I asked.

Thomas thought about it for a moment and then said, “He was thorough . Details never slipped by. He could play a courtroom like some kind of maestro. He was never finished with something until it was dissected, labeled, documented, and locked away in storage somewhere.”

“But he wasn’t a threat in a fight.”

“Not as such things go. He could kill you dead enough, but not much better than any number of things.”

“Funny, then,” I said. “The Scarecrow popped him first.”

Thomas glanced back at me, arching a brow.

“Think about it,” I said. “This thing was supposed to be a phobophage, right? Going after the biggest source of fear.”

“Sure.”

“Glau was barely conscious when it grabbed him,” I said. “It was probably me or Madrigal who was feeling the most tension, but it took out Glau, specifically.”

“You think someone sent it for Glau?”

“I think it’s a reasonable conclusion.”

Thomas frowned. “Why would anyone do that?”

“To shut him up,” I said. “I think Madrigal was supposed to go down for these attacks, at least in front of the supernatural communities. Maybe Glau was in on it. Maybe Glau arranged for Madrigal to be here.”