by L. A. Banks
"I'd say Georgia was the one in danger," Murphy said.
"I mean that Billy's in danger, too," I said.
"How so?"
"This isn't happening on their wedding day by chance. The faeries want to use it against them."
Murphy frowned. "What?"
"A wedding isn't just a ceremony," I said. "There's power in it. A pledging of one to another, a blending of energies. There's magic all through it."
"If you say so," she said, her tone wry. "What happens to him if he marries a faerie?"
"Conservatives get real upset," I said absently. "But I'm not sure, magically speaking. Bob?"
"Oh," Bob said. "Um. Well, if we assume this is one of the Winter Sidhe, then he's going to be lucky to survive the honeymoon. If he does, well. She'll be able to influence him, long-term. He'll be bound to her, the way the Winter Knights are bound to the Winter Queens. She'll be able to impose her will over his. Change the way he thinks and feels about things."
I ground my teeth. "And if she changes him enough, it will drive him insane."
"Usually, yup," Bob said. His voice brightened. "But don't worry, boss. Odds are he'll be dead before sunrise tomorrow. He might even die happy."
"That isn't going to happen," I said. I checked my watch. "The wedding is in three hours. Georgia might need help now." I looked back at Murphy. "You carrying?"
"Two on me. More in the car."
"Now there's a girl who knows how to party!" Bob said.
I popped the skull back into my backpack harder than I strictly had to, and zipped it shut. "Feel like saving the day?"
Her eyes sparkled, but she kept her tone bored. "On the weekend? Sounds too much like work."
We started from the apartment together. "I'll pay you in donuts."
"Dresden, you pig. That cop-donut thing is a vicious stereotype."
"Donuts with little pink sprinkles," I said.
"Professional profiling is just as bad as racial profiling."
I nodded. "Yeah. But I know you want the little pink sprinkles."
"That isn't the point," she said loftily, and we got into her car.
We buckled in, and I said, more quietly, "You don't have to come with me, Karrin."
"Yes," she said. "I do."
I nodded and focused on the tracking spell, turning my head south. "Thataway."
The worst thing about being a wizard is all the presumption, people's expectations. Pretty much everyone expects me to be some kind of con artist, since it is a well-known fact that there is no such thing as magic. Of those who know better, most of them think that I can just snap my fingers, poof, and have whatever I want. Dirty dishes? Snap my fingers and they wash themselves, like in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Need to talk to a friend? Poof, teleport them in from wherever they are, because the magic knows where to find them, all by itself.
Magic ain't like that. Or I sure as hell wouldn't drive a beat-up old Volkswagen.
It's powerful, true, and useful, and enormously advantageous, but ultimately it is an art, a science, a craft, a tool. It doesn't go out and do things by itself It doesn't create something From nothing. Using it takes talent and discipline and practice and a lot of work, and none of it comes Free.
Which is why my spell led us to downtown Chicago and suddenly became less useful.
"We've circled this block three times," Murphy told me. "Can't you get a more precise fix on it?"
"Do I look like one of those GPS thingies?" I sighed.
"Define 'thingie,' " Murphy said.
"It's my spell," I said. "It's oriented to the points of the compass. I didn't really have the z-axis in mind when I designed it and it only works for that when I'm right on top of the target. I keep meaning to go back and fix that, but there's never time."
"I had a marriage like that," Murphy said. She stopped at a light and stared up. The block held six buildings—three apartments, two office buildings, and an old church. "In there. Somewhere. It could take a lot of time to search that."
"So call in all the king's horses and all the king's men," I said.
She shook her head. "I might be able to get a couple, but since Rudolph moved to Internal Affairs, I've been flagged. If I start calling in people left and right without a damned good logical, rational, wholly normal reason . . ."
I grunted. "I get it. We need to get closer. The closer I get to Georgia, the more precise the tracking spell will be."
Murphy nodded once and pulled over in front of a fire hydrant, parking the car. "Let's be smart about this. Six buildings. Where would a faerie take her?"
"Not the church. Holy ground is uncomfortable for them." I shook my head. "Not the apartments. Too many people there. Too easy for someone to hear or see something."
"Office buildings on a weekend," Murphy said. "Empty as you can find in Chicago. Which one?"
"Let's take a look. Maybe the spell can give me an idea."
It took ten minutes to walk around the outside of both buildings. The spell remained wonderfully nonspecific, though I knew Georgia was within a hundred yards or so. I sat down at the curb in disgust. "Dammit," I said, pushing at my hair. "There has to be something."
"Would a faerie be able to magick herself in and out of there?"
"Yes and no," I said. "She couldn't just wander in through the wall, or poof herself inside. But she could walk in under a veil, so that no one saw her—or else saw an illusion of what she wanted them to see."
"Can't you look for residual whatsis again?"
It was a good idea. I got Bob and tried it, while Murphy found a phone and tried to reach Billy or anyone who could reach Billy. After an hour's effort, we had accomplished enormous amounts of nothing.
"In case I haven't mentioned it before," I said, "dealing with Faeries is an enormous pain in the ass." Someone in a passing car flicked a still-smoldering cigarette butt onto the concrete near me. I kicked it through a sewer grate in disgust.
"She covered her tracks again?"
"Yeah." "How?"
I shrugged. "Lot of ways. Scatter little glamours around to misdirect us. Only used her magic very lightly, to keep from leaving a big footprint. If she did her thing in a crowded area, enough people's life force passing by would cover it. Or she could have used running water to—"
I stopped talking and my gaze snapped back to the sewer grate.
I could hear water running through it in a low, steady stream.
"Down there," I said. "She's taken Georgia to Undertown."
Murphy stared at the stairs leading down to a tunnel with brick walls and shook her head. "I wouldn't have believed this was here."
We stood at the end of an uncompleted wing of Chicago's underground commuter tunnels, at a broken section of wall hidden behind a few old tarps that led down into the darkness of Undertown.
Murphy had thrown on an old Cubs jacket over her shirt. She switched guns, putting her favorite Sig away in exchange for the Glock she wore holstered on one hip. The gun had a little flashlight built onto the underside of its barrel, and she flicked it on. "I mean, I knew there were some old tunnels," Murphy said. "But not this."
I grunted and took off the silver pentacle amulet I wore around my neck. I held it in my right hand, my Fingers clutching the chain against the solid, round length of oak in my right hand, about two feet long and covered with carved runes and sigils—my blasting rod. I sent an effort of will into the amulet, and the silver pentacle began to glow with a gentle, blue-white light. "Yeah. The Manhattan Project was run out of the tunnels here until they moved it to the Southwest. Plus the town kept sinking into the swamp For a hundred and fifty years. There are whole buildings sunk right into the ground. The Mob dug places during Prohibition. People built bomb shelters during the fifties and sixties. And other things have added more, plus gateways back and forth to the spirit world."
"Other things?" Murphy asked, gun steady on the darkness below. "Like what?"
"Things," I said, staring down at the
patient, lightless murk of Undertown. "Anything that doesn't like sunlight or company. Vampires, ghouls, some of the nastier faeries, obviously. Once I fought this wacko who kept summoning up fungus demons."
"Are you stalling?" Murphy asked.
"Maybe I am," I sighed. "I've been down there a few times. Never been good."
"How you wanna do this?"
"Like we did the vampire lair. Let me go first with the shield. Something jumps out at us, I'll drop and hold it off until you kill it."
Murphy nodded soberly. I swallowed a lump of fear out of my throat. It settled into my stomach like a nugget of ice. I prepared my shield, and the same color light as emanated from my pentacle surrounded it, drizzling heatless blue-white sparks in an irregular stream. I prepared myself to use my blasting rod if I had to, and started down the stairs, following the tracking spell toward Georgia.
The old brick stairs ended at a rough stone slope into the earth. Water ran down the walls and in rivulets down the sides of the tunnel. We went forward, through an old building that might have been a schoolhouse, judging by the rotted piles of wood and a single old slate chalkboard fallen from one wall. The floor was tilted to one side. The next section of tunnel was full of freezing, dirty, knee-deep water until it sloped up out of the water, went round a corner where the walls had been cut by rough tools, then opened into a wider chamber.
It was a low-ceilinged cave—low for me, anyway. Most folks wouldn't have been troubled. Three feet from the doorway, the floor dropped away into silent, black water that stretched out beyond the reach of my blue wizard light. Murphy stepped up next to me, and the light on her gun sent a silver spear of white light out over the water.
There, on a slab of stone that rose up no more than an inch or two from the water's surface, lay Georgia.
Murphy's light played over her. Georgia was a tall woman—in high-enough heels, she could have looked me in the eye. She'd been stork-skinny and frizzy-haired when I met her. The years in between had softened the lines of her and brought out a natural confidence and intelligence that made her an extraordinarily attractive, if not precisely beautiful, woman. She was naked, laid on her back with her arms crossed over her chest in repose, funeral-style. She took slow breaths. Her skin was discolored from the cold, her lips tinged blue.
"Georgia?" I called, feeling like a dummy. But I didn't know of any other way to see if she was awake. She didn't stir.
"What now?" Murphy asked. "You go get her while I cover you?"
I shook my head. "Can't be as easy as it looks."
"Why not?"
"Because it never is." I bowed my head for a moment, pressed my fingertips lightly to my forehead, between my eyebrows, and concentrated on bringing up my Sight.
One of the things common to all wizards is the Sight. Call it a sixth sense, a third eye, whatever you please, around the world everyone with enough magic has the Sight. It lets you actually see the forces of energy at work in the world around you—life, death, magic, what have you. It isn't always easy to understand what I see, and sometimes it isn't pretty—and anything a wizard views with his Sight is there, in Technicolor, never fading. Forever.
That's why you have to be careful what you choose to Look at. I don't like doing it, ever. You never know what it is you'll See.
But when it came to finding out what kinds of magic might be between me and Georgia, I didn't have many options. I opened my Sight and Looked out over the water to Georgia.
The water was shot through with slithery tendrils of greenish light—a spell of some kind, just under its placid surface. If the water moved, the spell would react. I couldn't tell how. The stone Georgia lay upon held a dull, pulsing energy, a sullen violet radiance that wound in slow, hypnotic spirals through the rock. A binding, I was sure, something to keep her from moving. Another spell played over and through Georgia herself—a cloud of deep blue sparkles that lay against her skin, especially around her head. A sleeping spell? I couldn't make out any details from here.
"Well?" Murphy said.
I closed my eyes and released my Sight, always a mildly disorienting experience. The remnants of my hangover made it worse than usual. I reported my findings to Murphy.
"Well," she said. "I sure am glad we have a wizard on the case. Otherwise we might be standing here without any idea what to do next."
I grimaced and stepped to the water's edge. "This is water magic. It's tricky stuff. I'll try to take down the alarm spell on the surface of the pool, then swim out and get Geo—"
Without warning, the water erupted into a boiling Froth at my Feet, and a claw, a Freaking pincer as big as a couple of basketballs, shot out of the water and clamped down on my ankle.
I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it For a sudden yelp of unmanly Fear, but trust me. It was a battle cry.
The thing, whatever it was, pulled my leg out From under me, trying to drag me in. I could see slick, wet black shell. I whipped my blasting rod around to point at the thing and snarled, "Fuego!"
A lance of fire as thick as my thumb lashed from the tip of my blasting rod, which was pointed at the thing's main body. It hit the water and it boiled into steam. It smashed into the shell of the creature with such force that it simply ripped the thing's body from its clawed limb. I brought my shield up, a pale, fragile-looking quarter dome of blue light that coalesced into place before the steam boiled back into my eyes.
I squirmed away from the water on my butt, shaking wildly at the severed limb that still clutched me.
The waters surged again, and another slick-shelled thing grabbed at me. And another. And another. Dozens of the creatures were rushing toward our side of the pool, and the pressure wave rushing before them rose a foot off the pool's surface.
"Shellycobbs!" I shouted, and flicked another burst of flame at the nearest, driving it back. "They're shellycobbs!"
"Whatever," Murphy said, stepped up beside me, and started shooting. The third shellycobb took three hits in the same center area of its shell and cracked like a restaurant lobster.
It bought me a second to act, and I raised the blasting rod and tried something new on the fly, a blending of a blast of fire with my shield magic. I pointed the rod at one side of the shore, gathered my will, and thundered, "Ignus defendarius!"
A bar of flame, bright enough to hurt my eyes, shot out to one side of the room. I drew a line across the stone with the tip of the blasting rod, and as the flame touched the stone it adhered, spooling out from my blasting rod until it had formed a solid line between us and the water, and an opaque curtain of flame three feet high separated us from the shellycobbs. Angry rattles and splashes came from the far side of the curtain.
If the fire dropped, the faerie water monsters would swarm us.
The fire took a lot of energy to keep up, and if I tried to hold it too long I'd probably black out. Worse, it was still fire—it needed oxygen to keep burning, and in those cramped tunnels there wasn't going to be much of it around for breathing if the fire stayed lit too long. All of which meant that we only had seconds and had to do something. Fast.
"Murph!" I snapped. "Could you carry her?"
She turned wide blue eyes to me, her gun still held ready and pointing at the shellycobbs. "What?"
"Can you carry her?"
She gritted her teeth and nodded once.
I met her eyes for a dangerous second and asked, "Do you trust me?"
Fire crackled. Water boiled. Steam hissed.
"Yes, Harry," she whispered.
I flashed her a grin. "Jump the fire. Run to her."
"Run to her?"
"And hurry," I said, lifting my left arm, focusing as my shield bracelet began to glow, blue-white energy swiftly becoming incandescent. "Now!"
Murphy broke into a run and hurtled over the wall of fire.
"Forzare!" I shouted, and extended my left arm and my will.
I reshaped the shield, this time forming it in a straight, flat p
lane about three feet wide. It shot through the wall of flame, over the water, to the stone upon which Georgia lay. Murphy landed on the bridge of pure force, kept her balance, and poured on the speed, sprinting over the water to the unconscious young woman.
Murphy slapped her gun back into its holster, grabbed Georgia, and with a shout and a grunt of effort managed to get the tall girl into a fireman's carry. She started back, much more slowly than she'd gone forward.
The shellycobbs thrashed even more furiously, and the strain of holding both spells started to become a physical sensation, a spidery, trembling weakness in my arms and legs. I clenched my teeth and my will, focusing on holding the wall and the bridge until Murphy could return. My vision distorted, shrinking down to a tunnel.
And then Murphy shouted again and plunged through the fire, this time more slowly. She let out a gasp of pain as she got singed, then stumbled past me.
I released the bridge with a gasp of relief. "Go!" I said. "Come on, let's go!"
Together, we were barely able to get Georgia lifted. I was only able to hold the wall of flame against the shellycobbs for about fifty feet when I had to release the spell or risk passing out. I guess the shellycobbs weren't sprinters, because Murphy and I outran them, dragging the naked girl out of her Undertown prison and back to Murphy's car.
In all that time, Georgia never stirred. Murphy had a blanket in her trunk. I wrapped Georgia in it and got in the backseat with her. Murphy gunned the car and headed for the Lincolnshire Marriott Resort Hotel, twenty miles north of town and one of the most ostentatious places in the area to hold a wedding. Traffic wasn't good, and according to the clock in Murphy's car, we had less than ten minutes before the wedding was supposed to begin.
I struggled in the backseat, Fumbling to keep Georgia From bouncing off the ceiling, to get my backpack open, and to ignore the cuts the shellycobbs pincer left on my leg.
"Is that blood on her Face?" Murphy asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Dried. But I Figure it wasn't hers. Bob said she wolfed out in the apartment. I think Georgia got her Fangs into Jenny Greenteeth before she got grabbed."
"Jenny who?"
