Jim Butcher - Proven Guilty

I thought. I thought some more. I picked up all the facts I knew, turning them every which way, trying to figure out something, anything , that would let me put a stop to this insanity.

The phages. The answer was in the phages. Once I knew their identity, I could begin to work out who might be using them, and what I might do to learn more about them. There had to be a commonality to them, somewhere; something that linked them together, some fact that could provide me a context in which to judge their motivations and intentions.

But what the hell could they have in common, other than being monsters who fed on fear? They’d shown up randomly in a bathroom, a kitchen, a parking lot, a conference room. Their victims had been disparate, seemingly random. They had all appeared as figures from horror movies, but that fact seemed fairly unremarkable, relatively speaking. Try as I might, I could find nothing to join them together, to let me recognize them.

Frustrated, I rose and went over to Daniel’s cot. I called up my Sight. It took me longer than normal. I braced myself and regarded the boy.

I’d been right. He’d taken a psychic flogging. The phage had been worrying at his mind, his spirit, even as it had threatened his flesh. I could see the wounds as long, bleeding tears in his flesh. Poor little guy. It would haunt him. I hoped he would be able to get a little rest before the nightmares woke him up.

I stared at him for a good while, making sure his suffering was burned indelibly into my head. I wanted to remember for the rest of my life what the consequences of my screw-ups might be.

I heard a sound to the side and glanced up without thinking, turning my Sight upon the source of the sound-a restlessly stirring Nelson.

If little Daniel had been the recipient of a savage beating, Nelson’s spirit had been in the hands of Hell itself. His entire upper body was disfigured under my Sight, covered in hideous, festering boils and raw, bleeding burns. The damage was worst around his head, and faded gradually as it descended his torso.

And each of his temples bore tiny, neat holes, sharp and cauterized, as if by a laser scalpel.

Just like Rosie.

Chains of logic cascaded through my brain. My head swam. I shoved the Sight away from me, and my ass fell straight down to the floor.

I knew.

I knew why my spell had sent the phages after the Carpenters.

I knew why Molly had been taken. I could make a good guess at where.

I knew what the phages all had in common.

I knew who had sent them. The realization terrified me with a fear so cold and sharp that it literally paralyzed me. I could barely clap my hand over my mouth to keep from making whimpering sounds.

It took me a while to force myself to calm down. By the time I did, Forthill had returned bearing sandwiches. He settled down on a cot, clearly exhausted, and went to sleep.

I ate my sandwiches. Then I went looking for Charity.

I found her in the chapel, sitting up high in the balcony. She stared down at the altar, and did not react when I came up the steps to her and settled down on the bench beside her. I sat with her in silence for a minute.

“Charity,” I whispered. “I need to ask you something.”

She sat in stony silence. Her chin moved a fraction of a degree up and down.

“How long?” I murmured.

“How long since what?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. “How long has it been since you’ve used your magic?”

I couldn’t have gotten more of a reaction if I’d shot her. Charity’s face turned sheet white, the blood draining from it. She froze in place grasping the edge of the wooden pew in front of her with both hands. Her knuckles turned white, and the wood creaked. She gnashed her teeth and bowed her head.

I didn’t push. I waited.

She opened her eyes again, and she wasn’t hard to read. Her thoughts and emotions were clear on her face. Panic. Desperation. Self-loathing. Her eyes flicked from one possibility to another. She considered denying it. She considered lying to me. She considered simply walking away.

“Charity,” I told her. “Tell me the truth.”

Her breathing quickened. I saw her desperation growing.

I reached out with one hand and turned her face toward me. “Your daughter needs you. If we don’t help her, she’s going to die.”

Charity flinched and pulled away from me. Her shoulders shook with a silent sob. She fought to control her breathing, her voice, and whispered, “A lifetime.”

I felt some tension ease in me. Her reaction confirmed that I was on the right track.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Just putting lots of little things together,” I said. “Please, Charity. Tell me.”

Her voice was rough, half strangled, as though the breath that carried her words had been tainted with something rotten. “I had some talent. It showed just before my sixteenth birthday. You know how awkward that kind of thing can be.”

“Yeah,” I said. “How’d your family take it?”

Her mouth twisted. “My parents were wealthy. Respectable. When they had time to notice me, they expected me to be normal. Respectable. They found it easier to believe that I was a drug addict. Emotionally unbalanced.”

I winced. There were a lot of situations that could meet someone with a burgeoning magical talent. Charity’s was one of the worst.

“They sent me away to schools,” she said. “And to hospitals disguised as schools.” She waved a hand. “I eventually left them. Just left them. I struck out on my own.”

“And fell in with a bad crowd,” I said quietly.

She gave me a bitter smile. “You’ve heard this story before.”

“It isn’t uncommon,” I said quietly. “Who was it?”

“A… coven, of sorts, I suppose,” she said. “More of a cult. There was a young man leading it. Gregor. He had power. He and the others, all young people, mixed in religion and mysticism and philosophy and… well. You’ve probably seen such things before.”

I nodded. I had. A charismatic leader, dedicated followers, a collection of strays and homeless runaways. It rarely developed into something positive.

“I wasn’t strongly gifted,” she said. “Not like you. But I learned about some of what happens out there. About the White Council.” The bitter smile returned. “Everyone was terrified of them. A Warden visited us once. He delivered a warning to Gregor. He’d been toying about with some kind of summoning spells, and the Wardens got wind of it. They interviewed each of us. Evaluated us. Told us the Laws of Magic, and told us never to break them if we wished to live.”

I nodded and listened. She spoke more quickly now, the words coming out in a growing rush. They had been pent up a long time.

“Gregor resented it. He grew distant. He began practicing magic that walked the crumbling edges of the Council’s Laws. He had us all doing it.” Her eyes grew cold. “The others began disappearing. One by one. No one knew where they had gone. But I saw what was happening. I saw Gregor growing in power.”

“He was trading them,” I said.

She nodded once. “He saw my face, when I realized it. I was the next one to go. He came to take me away, and I fought him. Tried to kill him. Wanted to kill him. But he beat me. I remember only parts of it. Being chained to an iron post.”

“The dragon,” I said.

She nodded. Some of the bitterness faded from her smile. “And Michael came. And he destroyed the monster. And saved me.” She looked up at me. Tears filled her eyes and streaked down her cheeks, but she did not blink. “I swore to myself that I would leave that behind me. The magic. The power. I had… urges.” She swallowed. “To do things only… only a monster would do. When Siriothrax died, Gregor went mad. Utterly mad. But I wanted to turn my power against him anyway. I couldn’t think of anything else.”