Jim Butcher: Blood Rites

Keys are a nasty missile weapon, and any street fighter will tell you so. For fun, get yourself a milk carton and throw a ring of keys at it. You don't even have to throw it very hard. Odds are better than merely good that the milk carton is going to have holes in it and that milk is going to be dribbling out everywhere.

And eyelids are way thinner than milk cartons.

Raith got a bunch of keys in the face and they hit him hard enough to make him scream. I caught them again on the rebound and sent them zipping back at him, as if they'd been fastened to rubber bands tied to his nose. I don't care how superhumanly sexy you are, if you're a vertically symmetrical biped, you don't have much choice but to react when something tries to put out your eyes.

I pummeled Raith with the keys until he ducked out of the light of the black candles, and then I sent them darting over to Thomas. I shouted his name as I did, and he reached up and caught them with his free hand. He shook one out without delay, and started freeing himself of his chains.

It was just then that the swirling clouds over the empty triangle coalesced into the vague outline of an inhuman face-one that I recognized from the darkest hour of my past and the nightmares it had inhabited since. That demonic mouth split into an eerily soundless scream, as if it had created a sudden void of sound rather than the opposite. That hideous face oriented on the very edge of the remaining candlelight-upon Madge. The cloud surged forward and down, sprouting sudden rows of almost toothlike spines as it did. Madge sat up, raising her hands in a useless gesture of defense. The demonic cloud shot itself forward and into her mouth. The spines tore at her, and Madge struggled to keep it out of her, but it was all useless, and not particularly speedy. She had plenty of time to feel it as the demonic killer, the guiding mind who had been behind the entropy curse, flowed in its semigaseous form into her mouth and throat and lungs, then extruded savage spines and tore her apart from within.

Madge didn't manage to get out a scream as she died.

But it wasn't for lack of trying.

Thomas got his arms and legs free and got up, staring in horror at Madge-or more accurately, at the spined cloud still mangling Madge's corpse from within.

Raith hit Thomas from behind, a blur of motion. There was only a second to see what was happening, but I saw it clearly when Raith seized Thomas by the shoulder and chin, and with a single savage twist, broke his neck.

Thomas fell without so much as a twitch.

"No!" I screamed.

Raith turned toward me.

I dropped my sword, slashed at the air with the cane and my will, and the gun Murphy had taken from the bodyguard flew to my hand.

Raith's face was bruised and torn. Thick globules of pink blood had splattered over his battered features and his dark shirt. He smiled as he started toward me, and the shadows between the candles and my cane covered him.

I aimed more or less at Raith and shot. The flash showed him to me for an instant. I used that single image to redirect my fire and shot again. And again. And again. The last shot showed me Raith, only eight or ten feet away, a look of shock upon his face. The next shot showed him on his knees, clutching at his stomach, where a welter of pink fluid had soaked him.

Then the gun locked open, and empty.

For a minute it was all dark.

Then Raith's flesh began to glow. His shirt was in shreds, and he tore it from him with a negligent gesture. His skin became suffused with a pale light once more, and I saw his body rippling weirdly around an ungainly hole left of his navel. He was healing.

I stared at him tiredly for a minute, then bent over and picked up my sword.

He laughed at me. "Dresden. Wait there for a moment. I'll deal with you as I did Thomas."

"He was my blood," I said quietly. "He was my only family."

"Family," Raith spat. "Nothing but an accident of birth. Random consequence of desire and response. Family is meaningless. It is nothing but the drive of blood to further its own. Random combination of genes. It is utterly insignificant."

"Your children don't think that," I said. "They think family is important."

He laughed. "Of course they think that. I have trained them to do so. It is a simple and convenient way to control them."

"And nothing more?"

Raith rose, regarding me with casual confidence. "Nothing more. Put the sword down, Dresden. There's no reason this has to hurt you."

"I'll pass. You can't have much left in you," I said. "I've given you enough of a beating to kill three or four people. You'll stay down sooner or later."

"I have enough left in me to deal with you," he said, smiling. "And after that, things will change."

"Must have been hard," I said. "All those years. Playing it careful. Never pushing yourself or using your reserves. Not able to risk getting your hands dirty, for fear everyone would see that you couldn't do what your kind do. Couldn't feed."

"It was an annoyance," Raith said after a wary pause. He took a step toward me, testing my response. "And perhaps taught me a measure of humility, and of patience. But I never told anyone what Margaret's curse did to me, Dresden. How did you know?"

I kept the point of the sword pointed at his chest and said, "My mother told me about it."

"Your mother is dead, boy."

"You're immune to magic, too. Guess she just doesn't have a lot of respect for the rules."

His face darkened into an ugly, murderous mask. "She's dead."

I smirked at him, waving the tip of my sword in little circles.

The glow on his skin began to fade, and the darkness closed in with deadly deliberation. "It has been a pleasure speaking with you, but I am healed, wizard," Raith snarled. "I'm going to make you beg me for death. And my first meal in decades is going to be the little police girl."

At which point all the lights in the cavern came up at the same time, restoring the place to its slightly melodramatic but perfectly adequate lighting.

Lara stepped from behind the screen, her scarlet skirt swaying, sword on her hip, and murmured, "I think I'd like to see that, Father."

He stopped, staring at her, his face hardening. "Lara. What do you think you're doing?"

"Writhing in disillusionment," she said. "You don't love me, dearest Papa. Me, your little Lara, most dutiful daughter."

He let out a harsh laugh. "You know better. And have for a century."

Her beautiful face became remote. Then she said, "My head knew, Father. But my heart had hoped otherwise."

"Your heart," he said, scorn in his voice. "What is that? Take the wizard at once. Kill him."

"Yes, Papa," she said. "In a moment. What happened to Thomas?"

"The spell," he said. "Madge lost control of it when she unleashed it at Dresden. Your brother died trying to protect him. Subdue him, dearest. And kill him."

Lara smiled, and it was the coldest, most wintry expression I had ever seen. And I had seen some of the champs. She let out a mocking, scornful little laugh. "Did you stage that for my benefit, wizard?"

"It was a little rough," I said. "But I think I got my point across."

"How did you know I was watching?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Someone had to have told Raith that bullshit about the accident with the gun," I said. "You were the only one who could have done that. And since this confrontation was going to be pivotal to your future, regardless of how it turned out, you'd be an idiot not to watch."

"Clever," she said again. "Not only is my father drained of his reserves, he is unable to recover more." She lowered her eyelids, her eyes glittering like silver ice as she did. "Quite helpless, really."

"And now you know it," I said.

I gave Raith a very small smile.

Raith's expression twisted into something somewhere between rage and horror. He took a step back from Lara, looking from her to me and back.