Jim Butcher - Dead Beat

There was more sound, so loud that no word could accurately describe it, incandescent lightning, screaming faces, and forms of spirits and ghosts, and trembling earth beneath me.

And blackness fell.

When I came to my senses there was darkness and steady, cold rain, and I had sunk up to my neck in a deep well of aching pain. Neither lightning nor thunder played through the skies. I lay there for a moment, gathering my wits, and as I did the lights of the city began to come on, bit by bit, as the power grids went back online.

A booted foot pressed into the ground beside my face, and I followed it up, up and up, until I saw the horned helmet of the Erlking outlined against the brightening Chicago skyline.

"Wizard. Called you forth a mighty hunter tonight. One that has not walked this earth since time gone and forgotten."

"Yeah," I said. "Pretty nifty, huh?"

There was a low, wild laugh from that helmet. "Daring. Arrogant. It pleases me." He tilted his head. "And you are poor game at the moment. Because of that, and because you pleased me with your calling of the old hunter, this night you may go free. But beware, mortal. The next time our paths cross, it shall be my very great pleasure to run you down."

There was a gust of cold autumn wind, and the Erlking was gone.

I looked around blearily. Every tree in the area was gone, torn off about a foot from the earth. The picnic tables had been torn to splinters. The buildings of the college, especially the museum, looked as if they had been ravaged by a tornado that had torn out great chunks and sections of them.

My ribs hurt. I looked down and saw that I had fallen around Bob the skull and curled my body around him as I had shielded myself. Orange flame flickered to life in the eye sockets.

"Some show, huh?" Bob said. He sounded exhausted.

"You had to go get the dinosaur, eh?" I said. "I figured you'd just grab a handy zombie."

"Why settle for wieners when you can have steak?" the skull said brightly. "Pretty good idea, Harry, talking to me once Cowl sat me on the ground. I didn't want to work for him anyway, but as long as he had the skull… well. You know how it is."

I grunted. "Yeah. What happened?"

"The spell backlashed when you slugged Cowl," Bob said. "Did just a bit of property damage."

I coughed out a little laugh, looking around me. "Yeah. Cowl?"

"Most likely there are little pieces of him still filtering down," Bob said brightly. "And his little dog, too."

"You see them die?" I asked.

"Well. No. Once that backlash came down, it tore apart every enchantment within a hundred miles. Your dinosaur sort of fell apart."

I grunted uneasily.

"Oh," Bob said. "I think that Warden over there is alive."

I blinked. "Ramirez?"

"Yeah," Bob said. "I figured that you were a Warden now and stuff, and that you would probably want me to help out some other Warden. So just before the big bang, I had the dinosaur stand over him, soak up the blast."

I grunted. "Okay," I said. "We've got to help him. But one thing first."

"What's that?" Bob asked.

I squinted around until I found Grevane's battered corpse. Then I crawled over to it. I fumbled in the trench coat's pockets until I found Kemmler's slender little book. I squinted around me, but there was no one to look as I put it in my pocket.

"Okay," I said. "Come on. Watch my back while I help Ramirez."

"You betcha, boss," Bob said, and his voice was very smug. "Hey, you know what? Size really does matter."

Ramirez made it out of that evening alive. He had four broken ribs and two dislocated shoulders, but he came through. With Butters's help, I was able to get him, Luccio, and Morgan back to my place. At some point in the evening, Butters had taken off his drum and let Morgan take over the drumming duties while he tried to help Luccio, and as a result her wound hadn't been quite as fatal as she had thought it would be.

They were far too badly hurt to stay at my place, though, and Senior Council member "Injun Joe" Listens-to-Wind himself showed up with half a dozen more stay-at-home wizards who knew something about medicine and healing to move them to a more secure location.

"Just don't get it," Morgan was telling Listens-to-Wind. "All of these things happening at once. It can't be a coincidence."

"It wasn't," I heard myself say.

Morgan looked at me. The resentment in his eyes hadn't changed, but there was something else there that hadn't been before-dare I hope it, some modicum of respect.

"Think about it," I said. "All those heavy vampire attacks just when Cowl and his buddies most needed the White Council not to be involved."

"Are you saying that you think Cowl was using the vampires as a tool?" Morgan asked.

"I think they had a deal," I said. "The vampires throw their first major offensive at the right time to let Cowl pull off this Darkhallow."

"But what do they get out of it?" Morgan asked.

I glanced at Listens-to-Wind and said, "The Senior Council."

"Impossible," Morgan said. "By that time, they had to know that the Senior Council was back at Edinburgh. The defenses there have been built over thousands of years. It would take…" Morgan paused, frowning.

I finished the sentence for him. "It would take a god to break through them and kill the Senior Council."

Morgan stared at me for a long time, but didn't say anything. It wasn't long before they left, pulling out the wounded Wardens and leaving.

It left me with only about half an hour to meet Mavra's deadline, but since the phones were up again, I left a message at her number and headed for our rendezvous.

I turned up at my grave again, standing over the open hole in the ground as Mavra approached me, this time openly and without melodrama. She faced me over my grave, and said nothing. I took the book out of my pocket and tossed it to her. She picked it up, regarded it, and then drew an envelope from her jacket and tossed it at my feet. I picked it up and found the negatives of the incriminating pictures of Murphy inside.

Mavra turned to leave.

I said, "Wait."

She paused.

"This never happens again," I said quietly. "You try to get to me through other mortals again and I'll kill you."

Mavra's rotted lips turned up at one corner. "No, you won't," she said in her dusty voice. "You don't have that kind of power."

"I can get it," I said.

"But you won't," she responded, mockery in her tone. "It wouldn't be right."

I stared at her for a full ten seconds before I said, in a very quiet voice, "I've got a fallen angel tripping all over herself to give me more power. Queen Mab has asked me to take the mantle of Winter Knight twice now. I've read Kemmler's book. I know how the Darkhallow works. And I know how to turn necromancy against the Black Court."

Mavra's filmed eyes flashed with anger.

I continued to speak quietly, never raising my voice. "So once again, let me be perfectly clear. If anything happens to Murphy and I even think you had a hand in it, fuck right and wrong. If you touch her, I'm declaring war on you. Personally. I'm picking up every weapon I can get. And I'm using them to kill you. Horribly."

There was utter silence for a moment.

"Do you understand me?" I whispered.

She nodded.

"Say it," I snarled, and my voice came out so harsh and cold that Mavra twitched and took half a step back from me.

"I understand," she rasped.

"Get out of my town," I told her.

And Mavra retreated into the shadows.

I stood there over my grave for a minute more, just feeling the pain of my battered body, and bitterly considering the inevitability of death. After a moment I felt another presence near me. I looked up and found the dream image of my father regarding my tombstone speculatively.