Blood Lite

by Jim Butcher

  "I wish I could conjure up a sponsor," I said. "But there are limits even to Cherokee magic."

  "I think I have an idea about that," said J.P. "Let me see what I can do."

  By the time I heard the details of J.P.'s brilliant idea, it was too late to do anything about it, except hope that it wouldn't blow up in our faces.

  NASCAR has changed a lot since the Champ last took the checkered flag. Back in those days, drivers were ordinary-looking fellows who knew their way around an engine, but now the sport is an international multibillion dollar behemoth, and the drivers are expected to be movie stars in firesuits. If you are a corporation looking to pay a race team ten million dollars a year to advertise your product, then you want a lot of charisma for your money. J.P.'s idea was to turn our driver into a celebrity. After all, "Victor" was supposed to be my Cherokee cousin, and NASCAR was all about diversity these days. The Ganassi team's new Hispanic driver had brought a whole new set of fans into NASCAR, and J.P. figured he could do the same with his Native American phenomenon. So he wrote up some press release, giving the sports journalists Victor's bio, which consisted of the pack of lies I had given our official team publicist, who was also the wife of the jackman. Then, since the next race was Martinsville, relatively close to home, J.P. arranged for our driver to do a bunch of local appearances the week of the race. He'd be doing a signing in a local auto parts store, meeting with NASCAR fans at a charity event at the Roanoke coliseum, and doing local TV and radio interviews. It was a helluva schedule, but the big-time NASCAR drivers do it every week of the season, each week in a different city. It's part of the job. Didn't use to be, in the Champ's day, but it was now.

  I was worried. The Champ knew how to drive, but he had never been known as Mr. Sunshine, and from what I could see, death hadn't made him any more outgoing.

  "Media celebrity is part of the job now," I told him. "Making you famous is our best hope of getting a sponsor. Just give it a shot, Champ. And keep your sunglasses on."

  He didn't like it much, but they assigned the jackman's wife to go along as his minder, and all week she walked him through that exhausting round of silly media questions and avid racing fans. The Champ spent, a couple of hours a day in appearances, autographing a few hundred "Victor Northstar" hero cards for folks who thought that wearing a NASCAR firesuit made you somebody. He answered all the reporters' questions politely, but in as few words as possible, and when avid fans insisted on hugging him and getting him to pose for pictures with them, he put up with that, too, but his cardboard smile looked like he had put it on with a staple gun. He seemed a little baffled by the questions relating to his Cherokee heritage, as well he might be, but he would just say something vague, and everybody just nodded and went on, because I don't think TV interviewers really listen to people's answers anyhow. When the jackman's wife dropped him off at the hotel after the last day's round of appearances, the Champ flopped down on the chair next to the window, closed his eyes, and let out a bone-weary sigh. "I'm glad that's over," he said.

  "Until next week it is," I told him. "J.P. intends to keep up this publicity blitz until you build up enough of a fan base to land us a sponsor. And after that, of course, you'll be in even more demand for these kinds of appearances, because the sponsor will expect you to keep their potential customers happy. So get used to it, Champ. This is a way of life. It's the new NASCAR."

  He didn't say anything for the rest of the evening, and when I went down for supper, he was still sitting there in the chair by the window, staring at nothing.

  Martinsville is a short track where a driver's skill can actually make a difference, so we had high hopes of a good showing in Sunday's race. He qualified well, because he knew the track and he'd always been good at it, so we thought this race was our best shot at reviving our hopes for the team.

  Sure enough, in Sunday's race everything went well for about seventy-eight laps, and then all of a sudden the Champ went into a spin all by himself in Turn Four, and slammed the car against the outside wall with two more cars piling into him from behind. Those wrecked cars slid down the apron next to the infield wall, and the drivers climbed out, but the Champ's car stayed where it was. I looked over that infield wall in time to see little tongues of flame begin to spiral up from the underside of the car. The fuel line must have broken, gas was spilling all over the pavement.

  "It's okay," said the crew chief, seeing my expression. "See? He put his window net down."

  That's what drivers do after a wreck to signal that they are conscious and functioning: they unfasten the window netting on the driver's-side window. When they do that, you expect them to climb out of the car unassisted within a couple of seconds. But he didn't.

  We watched and waited while the flames caught the gas from the leaking fuel line and leapt higher and higher, engulfing the back of the car. He didn't have much time left to escape. Soon the whole chassis would be a fireball. Yes, he was wearing a firesuit, but that term is misleading. Those things are fireproof for all of eight seconds, and after that you might as well be wearing your pajamas. Funny thing, but watching that fire melting thedecals off that race car and flicking toward the driver's seat just gave me chills.

  I grabbed a headset from the nearest crewman. "Champ!" I yelled, not caring who heard me. "Get out of there now! The flames are almost to your roll cage. Get out!"

  There was a little crackle in my headset, and then the Champ's voice, calm as ever, like he was already a long ways away. He said, "I'd rather be dead."

  Well, that was the end of our hopes for the current season. The car burned up so much they barely got enough of the driver out to bury. Our team made all the sports magazines for a week or so after the tragedy, and a few fan groups made up memorial T-shirts of Victor Northstar, but we were right back to square one as a team.

  After that, I gave up on the thought of bringing any more of the great ones back to race again. They just couldn't handle the carnival aspect of the sport these days. It ain't much about driving anymore. So we're scouring the east Tennessee high schools for some good-looking kid who photographs well and talks like they do on the TV. Then we'll worry about teaching him how to drive. Even magic has its limits, you know.

  Day Off

  A Story of the Dresden Files

  Jim Butcher

  The thief was examining another trapped doorway when I heard something—the tromp of approaching feet. The holy woman was in the middle of another sermon, about attentiveness or something, but I held up my hand for silence and she obliged. I could hear twenty sets of feet, maybe more.

  I let out a low growl and reached for my sword. "Company."

  "Easy, my son," the holy woman said. "We don't even know who it is yet."

  The ruined mausoleum was far enough off the beaten path to make it unlikely that anyone had just wandered in on us. The holy woman was dreaming if she thought that the company might be friendly. A moment later they appeared—the local magistrate and two dozen of his thugs.

  "Always with the corrupt government officials," muttered the wizard from behind me. I glanced back at him and then looked for the thief. The nimble little minx was nowhere to be seen.

  "You are trespassing!" boomed the magistrate. He had a big, boomy voice. "Leave this place immediately on pain of punishment by the Crown's law!"

  "Sir!" replied the holy woman. "Our mission here is of paramount importance. The writ we bear from your own liege requires you to render aid and assistance in this matter."

  "But not to violate the graves of my subjects!" he boomed some more. "Begone! Before I unleash the nine fires of Atarak upon—"

  "Enough talk!" I growled and threw my heavy dagger at his chest.

  Propelled by my massive thews, the dagger hit him two inches below his left nipple—a perfect heart shot. It struck with enough force to hurl him from his feet. His men howled with surprised fury.

  I drew the huge sword from my back, let out a leonine roar, and charged the two dozen thugs.

 
; "Enough talk!" I bellowed, and whipped the twenty-pound greatsword at the nearest target as if it were a wooden yardstick. He went down in a heap.

  "Enough talk!" I howled, and kept swinging. I smashed through the next several thugs as if they were made of soft wax. Off to my left, the thief came out of nowhere and neatly sliced the Achilles tendons of another thug. The holy woman took a ready stance with her quarterstaff and chanted out a prayer to her deities at the top of her lungs.

  The wizard shrieked, and a fireball whipped over my head, exploding twenty-one feet in front of me, then spread out in a perfect circle, like the shockwave of a nuke, burning and roasting thugs as it went and stopping a bare twelve inches shy of my nose.

  "Oh, come on!" I said. "It doesn't work like that!"

  "What?" demanded the wizard.

  "It doesn't work like that!" I insisted. "Even if you call up fire with magic, it's still fire. It acts like fire. It expands in a sphere. And under a ceiling, that means that it goes rushing much farther down hallways and tunnels. It doesn't just go twenty feet and then stop."

  "Fireballs used to work like that," the wizard sighed. "But do you know what a chore it is to calculate exactly how far those things will spread? I mean, it slows everything down."

  "It's simple math," I said. "And it's way better than the fire just spreading twenty feet regardless of what's around it. What, do fireballs carry tape measures or something?"

  Billy the Werewolf sighed and put down his character sheet and his dice. "Harry," he protested gently. "Repeat after me: It's only a game."

  I folded my arms and frowned at him across his dining room table. It was littered with snacks, empty cans of pop, pieces of paper, and tiny little model monsters and adventurers (including a massively thewed barbarian model for my character). Georgia, Billy's willowy brunette wife, sat at the table with us, as did the redheaded bombshell Andi, while lanky Kirby lurked behind several folding screens covered with fantasy art at the head of the table.

  "I'm just saying," I said. "There's no reason the magic can't be portrayed at least a little more accurately, is there?"

  "Again with this discussion." Andi sighed. "I mean, I know he's the actual wizard and all, but Christ."

  Kirby nodded glumly. "It's like taking a physicist to a Star Trek movie."

  "Harry," Georgia said firmly. "You're doing it again."

  "Oh, no I'm not!" I protested. "All I'm saying is that—"

  Georgia arched an eyebrow and gave me a steady look down her aquiline nose. "You know the law, Dresden."

  "He who kills the cheer springs for beer," chanted the rest of the table.

  "Oh, bite me!" I muttered at them, but a grin was diluting my scowl as I dug out my wallet and tossed a twenty on the table.

  "Okay," Kirby said. "Roll your fireball damage, Will." Billy slung out a double handful of square dice and said, "Hah! One-point-two over median. Suck on that,

  henchmen!"

  "They're all dead," Kirby confirmed. "We might as well break there until next week."

  "Crap," I said. "I barely got to hit anybody."

  "I only got to hit one!" Andi said.

  Georgia shook her head. "I didn't even get to finish casting my spell."

  "Oh yes," Billy gloated. "Seven modules of identifying magic items and repairing things the stupid barbarian

  broke, but I've finally come into my own. Was it like that

  for you, Harry?"

  "Let you know when I come into my own," I said, rising. "But my hopes are high. Why, this very morrow, I, Harry Dresden, have a day off."

  "The devil you say!" Billy exclaimed, grinning at me as the group began cleaning up from the evening's gaming

  session.

  I shrugged into my black leather duster. "No apprentice, no work, no errands for the council, no warden stuff, no trips out of town for Paranet business. My very own

  free time."

  Georgia gave me a wide smile. "Tell me you aren't going to spend it puttering around that musty hole in the ground you call a lab." "Urn," I said.

  "Look," Andi said. "He's blushing!" "I am not blushing," I said. I swept up the empty bottles and pizza boxes, and headed into Billy and Georgia's little kitchen to dump them into the trash.

  Georgia followed me in, reaching around me to send several pieces of paper into the trash, too. "Hot date with Stacy?" she asked, her voice pitched to keep the conversation private.

  "I think if I ever called her 'Stacy,' Anastasia might beat the snot out of me for being too lazy to speak her entire name," I replied.

  "You seem a little tense about it." I shrugged a shoulder. "This is going to be the first time we spend a whole day together without something trying to rip us to pieces along the way. I ... I want it to

  go right, you know?" I pushed my fingers back through my hair. "I mean, both of us could use a day off."

  "Sure, sure," Georgia said, watching me with calm, knowing eyes. "Do you think it's going to go anywhere with her?" I shrugged. "Don't know. She and I have very different ideas about... well, about basically everything except what to do with things that go around hurting people."

  The tall, willowy Georgia glanced back toward the dining room, where her short, heavily muscled husband was putting away models. "Opposites attract. There's a song about it and everything."

  "One thing at a time," I said. "Neither one of us is trying to inspire the poets for the ages. We like each other. We make each other laugh. God, that's nice, these days ..." I sighed and glanced up at Georgia, a little sheepishly. "I just want to show her a nice time tomorrow."

  Georgia had a gentle smile on her narrow, intelligent face. "I think that's a very healthy attitude."

  I was just getting into my car, a battered old Volkswagen Bug I've dubbed the "Blue Beetle," when Andi came hurrying over to me.

  There'd been a dozen Alphas when I'd first met them, college kids who had banded together and learned just enough magic to turn themselves into wolves. They'd spent their time as werewolves protecting and defending the town, which needed all the help it could get. The conclusion of their college educations had seen most of them move on in life, but Andi was one of the few who had stuck around.

  Most of the Alphas adopted clothing that was easily discarded—the better to swiftly change into a large wolf without getting tangled up in jeans and underwear. On this particular summer evening, Andi was wearing a flirty little purple sundress and nothing else. Between her hair, her build, and her long, strong legs, Andi's picture belonged on the nose of a World War II bomber, and her hurried pace was intriguingly kinetic.

  She noticed me noticing and gave me a wicked little smile and an extra jiggle the last few steps. She was the sort to appreciate being appreciated. "Harry," she said. "I know you hate to mix business with pleasure, but there's something I was hoping to talk to you about tomorrow."

  "Sorry, sweetheart," I said in my best Bogey dialect. "Not tomorrow. Day off. Important things to do."

  "I know," Andi said. "But I was hoping—"

  "If it waited until after the Arcanos game it can wait until after my da ... day off," I said firmly.

  Andi almost flinched at the tone, and nodded. "Okay."

  I felt myself arch an eyebrow. I hadn't put that much harsh into it—and Andi wasn't exactly the sort to be fazed by verbal salvos, regardless of their nature or volume. Socially speaking, the woman was armored like a battleship.

  "Okay," I replied. "I'll call." Kirby approached her as I got into the car, put an arm around her from behind, and tugged her backside against his frontside, leaning down to sniff at her hair. She closed her eyes and pressed herself into him.

  Yeah. I let myself feel a little smug as I pulled out of the lot and drove home. That one had just been a matter of time, despite everything Georgia had said. I totally called it.

  I pulled into the gravel parking lot beside the boarding-house where I live and knew right away that I had a problem. Perhaps it was my keenly developed intuition, honed by year
s of investigative work as the infamous Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, shamus of the supernatural, gumshoe of the ghostly, wiseguy of the weird, my mystically honed, preternatural awareness of the shadow of Death passing nearby.

  Or maybe it was the giant black van painted with flaming skulls, goat's head pentacles, and inverted crosses that was parked in front of my apartment door. Six-six-six of one, half a dozen of another.

  The van's doors opened as I pulled in and people in black spilled out with neither the precision of a professional team of hitters nor the calm swagger of competent thugs. They looked like I'd caught them in the middle of eating sack lunches. One of them had what looked like taco sauce spilled down the front of his frothy white lace shirt. The other four . . . well, they looked like something.

  They were all wearing mostly black, and mostly gothware, which meant a lot of velvet with a little leather, rubber, and PVC to spice things up. Three women, two men, all of them fairly young. All of them carried wands and staves and crystals dangling from chains, and all of them had deadly serious expressions on their faces.

  I parked the car, never looking directly at them, and

  then got out of it, stuck my hands in my duster pockets, and stood there waiting.

  "You're Harry Dresden," said the tallest one there, a young man with long black hair and a matching goatee.

  I squinted at nothing, like Clint Eastwood would do, and said nothing, like Chow Yun-Fat would do.

  "You're the one who came to New Orleans last week." He said it "Nawlins," even though the rest of his accent was Midwest standard. "You're the one who desecrated my works."

  I blinked at him. "Whoa, wait a minute. There actually was a curse on that nice lady?"

  He sneered at me. "She had earned my wrath."

  "How about that," I said. "I figured it for some random bad feng shui."

  His sneer vanished. "What?"