by Jim Butcher
Whatever you see, the good, the bad, the insanity-inducing—it sticks with you forever. You can’t ever forget it, and time doesn’t blur the memories. It’s yours. Permanently.
Wizards who run around using their Sight willy-nilly wind up bonkers.
My Third Eye showed me Chicago, in its true shape, and for a second I thought I had been teleported to Vegas. Energy ran through the streets, the buildings, the people, appearing to me as slender filaments of light that ran this way and that, plunging into solid objects and out the other side without interruption. The energies coursing through the grand old buildings had a solid and unmoving stability about them, as did the city streets—but the rest of it, the random energies generated by the thoughts and emotions of eight million people, was completely unplanned and coursed everywhere in frenetic, haphazard, garish color.
Clouds of emotion were interspersed with the flickering campfire sparks of ideas. Heavy flowing streams of deep thought rolled slowly beneath blazing, dancing gems of joy. The muck of negative emotions clung to surfaces, staining them darker, while fragile bubbles of dreams floated blissfully toward kaleidoscope stars.
Holy crap. I could barely see the lines on the road through all of that.
I checked over my shoulder, seeing each occupant of the cars behind me clearly, as brilliantly lit shapes of white that skittered with other colors that changed with thoughts, moods, and personalities. If I’d been closer to them, I’d have been able to see more details about them, though they would be subject to my subconscious interpretation. Even at this distance, though, I could tell that they were all mortals.
That was a relief, in some ways. I’d be able to spot any wizard strong enough to be one of the Wardens. If whoever was pursuing me was a normal, it was almost certain that the Wardens hadn’t caught up to Morgan yet.
I checked up above me and—
Time froze.
Try to imagine the stench of rotten meat. Imagine the languid, arrhythmic pulsing of a corpse filled with maggots. Imagine the scent of stale body odor mixed with mildew, the sound of nails screeching across a chalkboard, the taste of rotten milk, and the flavor of spoiled fruit.
Now imagine that your eyes can experience those things, all at once, in excruciating detail.
That’s what I saw: a stomach-churning, nightmare-inducing mass, blazing like a lighthouse beacon upon one of the buildings above me. I could vaguely make out a physical form behind it, but it was like trying to peer through raw sewage. I couldn’t get any details through the haze of absolute wrongness that surrounded it as it bounded from the edge of one rooftop to another, moving more than fast enough to keep pace with me.
Someone screamed, and I dimly noted that it was probably me. The car hit something that made it shriek in protest. It jounced hard up and down, wham-wham. I’d drifted into the curb. I felt the front wheels shimmy through the steering wheel, and I slammed on the brakes, still screaming, as I fought to close my Third Eye.
The next thing I knew, car horns were blaring an impatient symphony.
I was sitting in the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel until my knuckles were white. The engine had died. Judging from the dampness on my cheeks, I must have been crying—unless I’d started foaming at the mouth, which, I reflected, was a distinct possibility.
Stars and stones. What on God’s green earth was that thing?
Even brushing against the subject in my thoughts was enough to bring the memory of the thing back to me in all its hideous terror. I flinched and squeezed my eyes shut, shoving hard against the steering wheel. I could feel my body shaking. I don’t know how long it took me to fight my way clear of the memory—and when I did, everything was the same, only louder.
With the clock counting down, I couldn’t afford to let the cops take me into custody for a DWI, but that’s exactly what would happen if I didn’t start driving again, assuming I didn’t actually wreck the car first. I took a deep breath and willed myself not to think of the apparition—
I saw it again.
When I came back, I’d bitten my tongue, and my throat felt raw. I shook even harder.
There was no way I could drive. Not like this. One stray thought and I could get somebody killed in a collision. But I couldn’t remain there, either.
I pulled the Beetle up onto the sidewalk, where it would be out of the street at least. Then I got out of the car and started walking away. The city would tow me in about three point five milliseconds, but at least I wouldn’t be around to get arrested.
I stumbled down the sidewalk, hoping that my pursuer, the apparition, wasn’t—
When I looked up again, I was curled into a ball on the ground, muscles aching from cramping so tight. People were walking wide around me, giving me nervous sidelong glances. I felt so weak that I wasn’t sure I could stand.
I needed help.
I looked up at the street signs on the nearest corner and stared at them until my cudgeled brain finally worked out where I was standing.
I rose, forced to lean on my staff to stay upright, and hobbled forward as quickly as I could. I started calculating prime numbers as I walked, focusing on the process as intently as I would any spell.
“One,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen . . .”
And I staggered through the night, literally too terrified to think about what might be coming after me.
Chapter Five
By the time I’d reached twenty-two hundred and thirty-nine, I’d arrived at Billy and Georgia’s place.
Life had changed for the young werewolves since Billy had graduated and started pulling in serious money as an engineer, but they hadn’t moved out of the apartment they’d had in college. Georgia was still in school, learning something psychological, and they were saving for a house. Good thing for me. I wouldn’t have been able to walk to the suburbs.
Georgia answered the door. She was a tall woman, lean and willowy, and in a T-shirt and loose, long shorts, she looked smarter than she did pretty.
“My God,” she said, when she saw me. “Harry.”
“Hey, Georgia,” I said. “Twenty-two hundred and . . . uh. Forty-three. I need a dark, quiet room.”
She blinked at me. “What?”
“Twenty-two hundred and fifty-one,” I responded, seriously. “And send up the wolf-signal. You want the gang here. Twenty-two hundred and, uh . . . sixty . . . seven.”
She stepped back from the door, holding the door open for me. “Harry, what are you talking about?”
I came inside. “Twenty-two hundred and sixty . . . not divisible by three, sixty-nine. I need a dark room. Quiet. Protection.”
“Is something after you?” Georgia said.
Even with the help of Eratosthenes, when Georgia asked the question and my brain answered it, I couldn’t keep the image of that thing from invading my thoughts, and it drove me to my knees and would have sent me all the way to the floor—except that Billy caught me before I could get there. He was a short guy, maybe five six, but he had the upper body of a professional wrestler and moved with the speed and precision of a predator.
“Dark room,” I gasped. “Call in the gang. Hurry.”
“Do it,” Georgia said, her voice low and urgent. She shut the door and locked it, then slammed down a heavy wooden beam the size of a picnic table’s bench that they had installed themselves. “Get him into our room. I’ll make the calls.”
“Got it,” Billy said. He picked me up the way you’d carry a child, barely grunting as he did. He carried me down the hall and into a dark bedroom. He laid me down on a bed, then crossed to the window—and pulled and locked a heavy steel security curtain over it, evidently another customization that he and Georgia had installed.
“What do you need, Harry?” Billy asked.
“Dark. Quiet. Explain it later.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Right.” Then he padded out of the room and shut the door.
It left me in the dark
with my thoughts—which is where I needed to be.
“Come on, Harry,” I muttered to myself. “Get used to the idea.”
And I thought about the thing I’d Seen.
It hurt. But when I came back to myself, I did it again. And again. And again.
Yes, I’d Seen something horrible. Yes, it was a hideous terror. But I’d Seen other things, too.
I called up those memories, too, all of them just as sharp and fresh as the horror pressing upon me. I’d Seen good people screaming in madness under the influence of black magic. I’d Seen the true selves of men and women, good and bad, Seen people kill—and die. I’d Seen the Queens of Faerie as they prepared for battle, drawing all their awful power around them.
And I’d be damned if I was going to roll over for one more horrible thing doing nothing but jumping from one rooftop to another.
“Come on, punk,” I snarled at the memory. “Next to those others, you’re a bad yearbook picture.”
And I hit myself with it, again and again, filling my mind with every horrible and beautiful thing I had ever Seen—and as I did, I focused on what I had bloody well done about it. I remembered the things I’d battled and destroyed. I remembered the strongholds of nightmares and terrors that I had invaded, the dark gates I’d kicked down. I remembered the faces of prisoners I’d freed, and the funerals of those I’d been too late to save. I remembered the sounds of voices and laughter, the joy of loved ones reunited, the tears of the lost and bereaved.
There are bad things in the world. There’s no getting away from that. But that doesn’t mean nothing can be done about them. You can’t abandon life just because it’s scary, and just because sometimes you get hurt.
The memory of the thing hurt like hell—but pain wasn’t anything special or new. I’d lived with it before, and would do it again. It wasn’t the first thing I’d Seen, and it wouldn’t be the last.
I was not going to roll over and die.
Sledgehammers of perfect memory pounded me down into blackness.
When I pulled myself back together, I was sitting on the bed, my legs folded Indian-style. My palms rested on my knees. My breathing was slow and rhythmically heavy. My back was straight. My head pounded painfully, but not cripplingly so.
I looked up and around the room. It was dark, but I’d been in there long enough for my eyes to adjust to the light coming under the door. I could see myself in the dresser mirror. My back was straight and relaxed. I’d taken my coat off, and was wearing a black T-shirt that read “PRE-FECTIONIST” in small white letters, backward in the mirror. A thin, dark runnel of blood had streamed from each nostril and was now drying on my upper lip. I could taste blood in my mouth, probably from where I’d bitten my tongue earlier.
I thought of my pursuer again, and the image made me shudder—but that was all. I kept breathing slowly and steadily.
That was the upside of being human. On the whole, we’re an adaptable sort of being. Certainly, I’d never be able to get rid of my memory of this awful thing, or any of the other awful things I’d Seen—so if the memory couldn’t change, it would have to be me. I could get used to seeing that kind of horror, enough to see it and yet remain a reasoning being. Better men than I had done so.
Morgan had.
I shivered again, and not because of any memory. It was because I knew what it could mean, when you forced yourself to live with hideous things like that. It changed you. Maybe not all at once. Maybe it didn’t turn you into a monster. But I’d been scarred and I knew it.
How many times would something like this need to happen before I started bending myself into something horrible just to survive? I was young for a wizard. Where would I be after decades or centuries of refusing to look away?
Ask Morgan.
I got up and went into the bathroom attached to the bedroom. I turned on the lights, and winced as they raked at my eyes. I washed the blood from my face, and cleaned the sink of it carefully. In my business, you don’t leave your blood where anyone can find it.
Then I put my coat back on and left the bedroom.
Billy and Georgia were in the living room. Billy was at the window that led out to the tiny balcony. Georgia was on the phone.
“I’m not getting anything out here,” Billy said. “Is he sure?”
Georgia murmured into the phone. “Yes. He’s sure it circled this way. It should be in sight from where you are.”
“It isn’t,” Billy said. He turned his head over his shoulder and said, “Harry. Are you all right?”
“I’ll survive,” I said, and paced over to the window. “It followed me here, huh?”
“Something’s outside,” Billy said. “Something we’ve never run into before. It’s been playing hide-and-seek with Kirby and Andi for an hour. They can’t catch it or get a good look at it.”
I gave Billy a sharp look. There weren’t many things that could keep ahead of the werewolves, working together. Wolves are just too damn alert and quick, and Billy and company had been working Chicago almost as long as I had. They knew how to handle themselves—and in the past couple of months, I’d been teaching my apprentice a little humility by letting her try her veiling spells against the werewolves. They’d hunted her down in moments, every time.
“So whatever’s out there, it isn’t human,” I said. “Not if it can stay ahead of Kirby and Andi.” I crossed to the window and stared out with Billy. “And it can veil itself from sight.”
“What is it?” Billy asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s real bad.” I glanced back at Georgia. “How long was I down?”
She checked her watch. “Eighty-two minutes.”
I nodded. “It’s had plenty of time to try to come in, if that’s what it wanted.” I felt a nauseated little quiver in my stomach as a tight smile stretched my lips. “It’s playing with me.”
“What?” Billy said.
“It’s dancing around in front of us out there, under a veil. It’s daring me to use my Sight so that I’ll be able to spot it.”
From outside, there was a sound, a cry. It was short and high-pitched, loud enough to make the windows quiver. I’d never heard anything like it before. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, a purely instinctive reaction. My instincts had been tracking this thing well, so far, so I trusted them when they told me one more thing—that cry was a statement. The hunt was on.
An instant later, every light in sight blew out in a shower of sparks, and darkness swallowed several city blocks.
“Tell Andi and Kirby to get back here to the apartment!” I snapped at Georgia. I grabbed my staff from where it leaned against the wall by the door. “Billy, you’re with me. Get your game face on.”
“Harry?” Georgia said, confused.
“Now!” I snapped, flinging the bar off the door.
By the time I’d reached the bottom of the stairs, there was the sound of a heavy, controlled impact, and a wolf with hair the same dark brown as Billy’s hit the floor next to me. It was an enormous beast, easily as heavy as Mouse, but taller and leaner—a wolf the world has rarely seen between here and the last ice age. I slammed open the door and let Billy out ahead of me. He bounded over a parked car—and I mean completely over it, lengthwise—and shot toward the buildings at the back of the complex.
Billy had been in contact with Andi and Kirby, and knew their approximate positions. I followed him, my staff in hand, already summoning up my will. I wasn’t sure what was out here, but I wanted to be ready for it.
Kirby appeared from around the northernmost corner of the other building. He hurried along with a cell phone pressed to his ear, a lanky, dark-haired young man in sweat pants and a baggy T-shirt. The active phone painted half his face like a miniature floodlight. I checked the southern corner of the building at once, and saw a dark, furry shape trotting around the corner—Andi, like Billy, in her wolf form.
Wait a minute.
If the whatever-it-was had taken out the local lights, ho
w in the hell had Kirby’s cell phone survived the hex? Magic and technology don’t get along so well, and the more complex electronic devices tended to fall apart most quickly. Cell phones were like those security guys in red shirts on old Star Trek: as soon as something started happening, they were always the first to go.
If the creature, whatever it was, had blown out the lights, it would have gotten the phone, too. Unless it hadn’t wanted to take the phone out.
Kirby was the only clearly lit object in sight—an ideal target.
When the attack came, it came fast.
There was a ripple in the air, as something moving beneath a veil crossed between me and the light cast by Kirby’s phone. There was an explosive snarl, and the phone went flying, leaving Kirby hidden in shadow.
Billy flung himself forward, even as I ripped the silver pentacle amulet from around my neck and lifted it, calling forth silver-blue wizard light with my will. Light flooded the area between the complex’s buildings.
Kirby was on his back, in the center of a splatter of black that could only be blood. Billy was standing crouched over him, his teeth bared in a snarl. He suddenly lunged forward, teeth ripping, and a distortion of the air in front of him bounded up and then to one side. I lurched forward, feeling as if I was running through hip-deep peanut butter. I got the impression of something four-legged and furry evading Billy’s attack, a raw flicker of vision like something seen out of the very corner of the eye.
Then Billy was on his back, slashing with canine claws, ripping savagely with his teeth, while something shadowy and massive overbore him, pinning him down.
Andi, a red-furred wolf that was smaller and swifter than Billy’s form, hurtled through the air and tore at the back of the attacker.
