by Jim Butcher
My mouth worked and twisted, but no words came out. How could they? Words couldn’t possibly contain the frustration, the rage, the fear that poured through me. It cut through my weariness, sharp as thorns and barbed wire. It wasn’t fair. We’d done everything we could. We’d risked everything.
Not we. The choices had been mine.
I’d risked everything.
And I’d lost.
Michael and I couldn’t possibly fight them all alone. They’d taken Susan. The help we thought we’d found had turned against us.
They had Susan.
And it was my fault. I hadn’t listened to her, when I should have. I hadn’t protected her. And now she was going to die, because of me.
I don’t know how that realization would make someone else feel. I don’t know if the despair, and the self-loathing and the helpless fury would crumble them like too-brittle concrete, or melt them like dirty lead, or shatter them like cheap glass.
I only know what it did to me.
It set me on fire.
Fire in my heart, in my thoughts, in my eyes. I burned, burned down deep in my gut, burned in places I hadn’t known I could hurt.
I don’t remember the spell, or the words I said. But I remember reaching for that pain. I remember reaching for it, and thinking that if we had to go, then so help me God, weakened or not, hopeless or not, I was going to take these murdering, bloodsucking sons of bitches with me. I would show them that they couldn’t play lightly with the powers of creation, of life itself. That it wasn’t smart to cross a wizard of the White Council when someone has stolen his girlfriend.
I think Michael must have sensed something and taken the girl from my arms, because the next thing I remember is thrusting my hands toward the night sky and screaming, “Fuego! Pyrofuego! Burn, you greasy bat-faced bastards! Burn!”
I reached for fire—and fire answered me.
The tree-towers of the topiary castle exploded into blazes of light, and the hedge-walls, complete with their crenelated tops, went up with them. Fire leapt up into the air, forty, fifty feet, and the sudden explosion of it lifted everyone but me up and off the ground, sent wind roaring around us in a gale.
I stood amidst it, my mind brilliantly lit by the power coursing through me. It burned me, and some part of me screamed out in joy that it did. My cloak flapped and danced in the gale, spreading out around me in a scarlet and sable cloud. The abrupt glare fell on the scene of the vampires’ revelry, lighting it harshly. The young people of earlier lay about, out in the darkness near the hedges, near the fires, pathetic little lumps. Some of them twitched. Some of them breathed. A few whimpered and tried to crawl away from the heat—but most lay dreadfully, perfectly still.
Pale. Pretty.
Dead.
The fury in me grew. It swelled and burned and I reached out to the fires again. Flames flew out, caught one of the more cowardly of the vampires, huddled at the back, scrabbling to slip his flesh mask back over his squashed bat face. The fire touched him and then twined about him, searing and blackening his skin, then dragging him back, winding and rolling him toward the blaze.
The magic danced in my eyes, my head, my chest, flying wild and out of control. I couldn’t follow everything that happened. More vampires got too close to the flames, and began screaming. Tendrils of fire rose up from the ground and began to slither over the courtyard like serpents. Everything exploded into motion, shadows flashing through the brightness, seeking escape, screaming.
I felt my heart clench in my chest and stop beating. I swayed on my feet, gasping. Michael got to me, Lydia slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He’d torn his cloak off, and it lay to one side, burning. He dragged my arm across his shoulder, and half carried me down the stairs.
Smoke gathered on us, thick and choking. I coughed and retched, helpless. The magic coursed through me, slower now, a trickle—not because the floodgates had closed, but because I had nothing left to pour out. I hurt. Fire spread out from my heart, my arms and legs clenching and twitching. I couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t think, and I knew, somewhere amidst all that pain, that I was about to die.
“Lord!” Michael coughed. “Lord, I know that Harry hasn’t always done what You would have done!” He staggered forward, carrying me, and the girl. “But he’s a good man! He’s fought against Your foes! He deserves better than to die here, Lord! So if you could be kind enough to show me how to get us out of here, I’d really appreciate it.”
And then, abruptly, the smoke parted, and sweet, untainted air hit us in the face like a bucket of ice water.
I fell to the ground. Michael dropped the girl somewhere near me and tore the cheap tuxedo open. He laid his hand over my heart and let out a short cry. After that, I don’t remember much more than pain, and a series of dull, hard thumps on my chest.
And then my heart lurched and began to beat again. The red haze of agony receded.
I looked up.
The smoke had parted in a tunnel, as though someone had shoved a glass tube of clean air through it and around us. At the far end of the tunnel stood a slender, willowy figure, tall, feminine. Something like wings spread out behind the figure, though that might have been an illusion, light falling on it from many angles, so that it was all shadow and color.
“I thought He wasn’t so literal,” I choked.
Michael drew back from me, his soot-stained face breaking into a brief smile. “Are you complaining?”
“H-heck, no. Where’s Susan?”
“I’ll come back in for her. Come on.” Too tired to argue, I let him haul me back to my feet. He picked up Lydia, and we staggered forward and out, to the figure at the tunnel’s far end.
Lea. My faerie godmother.
We both drew up short. Michael fumbled for his knife, but it was gone.
Lea quirked one delicate brow at us. Her dress, still blue, un-soiled, flowed around her, and her silken mane matched the bloody fires consuming the courtyard. She looked almost good enough to drink, and she still held the black box Bianca had given her beneath one slender arm.
“Godmother,” I said, startled.
“Well, fool? What are you waiting for. I took the trouble to show you a way to escape. Do it.”
“You saved us?” I coughed.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Though it pains me in ways I could not explain, yes, child. How am I supposed to have you if I let this Red Court hussy kill you? Stars above, wizard, I thought you had better sense than this.”
“You saved me. So you could get me.”
“Not like this,” Lea said, holding a silken cloth to her nose, delicately. “You’re a husk, and I want the whole fruit. Go rest, child. We will speak again soon enough.”
And then she withdrew and was gone.
Michael got me out of the house. I remember the smell of his old truck, sawdust and sweat and leather. I felt its worn seat creak beneath me.
“Susan,” I said. “Where’s Susan?”
“I’ll try.”
Then I drifted in darkness for a while, dimly conscious of a lingering pain in my chest, of Lydia’s warm skin pressed against my hand. I tried to move, to make sure the girl was all right, but it was too much effort.
The truck door opened and slammed closed. Then came the rumble of its engine.
And then everything went mercifully black.
Chapter Thirty-one
The darkness swallowed me and kept me for a long time. There was nothing but silence where I drifted, nothing but endless night. I wasn’t cold. I wasn’t warm. I wasn’t anything. No thought, no dreams, no anything.
It was too good to last.
The pain of the burns came to me first. Burns are the worst injuries in the world. I’d been scorched on my right arm and shoulder, and it throbbed with a dull persistence that dragged me out of the peace. All the other assorted scrapes and bruises and cuts came back to me. I felt like a collection of complaints and malfunctions. I ached everywhere.
Memory
came through the haze next. I started remembering what had happened. The Nightmare. The vampire ball. The kids who had been seduced into being there.
And the fire.
Oh, God. What had I done?
I thought of the fire, towering up in walls of solid flame, reaching out with hungry arms to drag the vampires screaming back into the pyre I had made of the hedges and the trees.
Stars and stones. Those children had been helpless in that. In the fire and the smoke that I’d needed a major sidhe sorceress’s assistance to escape. I had never stopped to think about that. I had never even considered the consequences of unleashing my power that way.
I opened my eyes. I lay in my bed in my room. I stumbled out of the bed and into my bathroom. Someone must have fed me soup at some point, because when I started throwing up, there was something left to come out.
Killed them. I killed those kids. My magic, the magic that was the energy of creation and life itself had reached out and burned them to death.
I threw up until my belly ached with the violence of it, wild grief running rampant over me. I struggled, but I couldn’t force the images out of my head. Children burning. Justin burning. Magic defines a man. It comes from down deep inside you. You can’t accomplish anything with magic that isn’t in you, somewhere, to do.
And I had burned those children alive.
My power. My choice. My fault.
I sobbed.
I didn’t come to myself until Michael came into the bathroom. By the time he did, I lay on my side, curled up tight, the water of the shower pouring down over me, the cold making me shiver. Everything hurt, inside and out. My face ached, from being twisted up so tightly. My throat had closed almost completely as I wept.
Michael picked me up as though I weighed no more than one of his children. He dried me with a towel and shoved me into my heavy robe. He had on clean clothes, a bandage on his wrist and another on his forehead. His eyes looked a little more sunken, as though short on sleep. But his hands were steady, his expression calm, confident.
I gathered myself again, very slowly. By the time he was finished, I lifted my eyes to his.
“How many?” I asked. “How many of them died?”
He understood. I saw the pain in his eyes. “After I got the pair of you out, I called the fire department and let them know that people needed a rescue. They got there pretty quickly, but—”
“How many, Michael?”
He drew in a slow breath. “Eleven bodies.”
“Susan?” My voice shook.
He hesitated. “We don’t know. Eleven was all they found. They’re checking dental records. They said the heat was so intense that the bones hardly look human.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Hardly human. There were more kids than that there—”
“I know. But that’s all they found. And they rescued a dozen more, alive.”
“It’s something, at least. What about the ones unaccounted for?”
“They were gone. Missing. They’re . . . they’re presumed dead.”
I closed my eyes. Fire had to burn hot to reduce bones to ash. Had my spell been that powerful? Had it hidden most of the dead?
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“Harry,” Michael said. He put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ve no way to know. We just don’t. They could have been dead before the fires came. The vampires were feeding from them indiscriminately, where we couldn’t see.”
“I know,” I said. “I know. God, I was so arrogant. Such an idiot to go walking in there like that.”
“Harry—”
“And those poor, stupid kids paid the price. Dammit, Michael.”
“A lot of the vampires didn’t make it out, either, Harry.”
“It isn’t worth it. Not if it wiped out all the vamps in Chicago.”
Michael fell quiet. We sat that way for a long time.
Finally, I asked him, “How long have I been out?”
“More than a day. You slept through last night and yesterday and most of tonight. The sun will rise soon.”
“God,” I said. I rubbed at my face.
I could hear Michael’s frown. “I thought we’d lost you for a while. You wouldn’t wake up. I was afraid to take you to the hospital. Any place where there’d be a record of you. The vampires could trace it.”
“We need to call Murphy and tell her—”
“Murphy’s still sleeping, Harry. I called Sergeant Stallings, last night, when I called the fire department. S.I. tried to take over the investigation, but someone up the line called the police department off of it altogether. Bianca has contacts in City Hall, I guess.”
“They can’t stop the missing persons investigations that are going to start cropping up as soon as people start missing those kids. But they can stick a bunch of things in the way of it. Crap.”
“I know,” Michael said. “I tried to find Susan, the girl Justine, and the sword, after. Nothing.”
“We almost pulled it off. Sword and captives and all.”
“I know.”
I shook my head. “How’s Charity? The baby?”
He looked down. “The baby—they still don’t know about him. They can’t find out what’s wrong. They don’t have any idea why he is getting weaker.”
“I’m sorry. Is Charity—?”
“She’s stuck in bed for a while, but she’ll be fine. I called her yesterday.”
“Called. You didn’t go see her?”
“I guarded you,” Michael said. “Father Forthill was with my family. And there are others who can watch them, when I’m away.”
I winced. “She didn’t like that, did she. That you stayed with me.”
“She’s not speaking to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “So am I.”
“Help me up. I’m thirsty.”
He did, and I only swayed a little as I stood. I tottered out into the living area of my apartment. “What about Lydia?” I asked.
Michael remained silent, and my eyes answered my own question a few seconds later. Lydia lay on the couch in my living room, under a ton and a half of blankets, curled up, her eyes closed and her mouth a little open.
“I recognize her,” Michael said.
I frowned. “From where?”
“Kravos’s lair. She was one of the kids they hauled away, early on.”
I whistled. “She must have known him. Known what he was going to do, somehow.”
“Try not to wake her up,” Michael said, his voice soft. “She wouldn’t sleep. I think they’d drugged her. She was panicky, gabbling. I just got her quieted down half an hour ago.”
I frowned a little and went into the tiny kitchen. Michael followed. I got a Coke out of the icebox, thought better of it with my stomach the way it was, and fetched a glass of water instead. I drank unsteadily. “I’ve got hell to pay now, Michael.”
He frowned at me. “How do you mean?”
“What you do comes back to you, Michael. You know that much. Roll a stone and it rolls back upon you. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.”
Michael lifted his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize you’d read much of the Bible.”
“Proverbs always made a lot of sense to me,” I said. “But with magic, things like that come a lot sharper and cleaner than with other things. I killed people. I burned them. It’s going to come back to haunt me.”
Michael frowned, and looked out at Lydia. “The Law of Three, eh?”
I shrugged.
“I thought you told me once that you didn’t believe in that.”
I drank more water. “I didn’t. I don’t. It’s too much like justice. To believe that what you do with magic comes back to you threefold.”
“You’ve changed your mind?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that there’s going to be justice, Michael. For those kids, for Susan, for what’s happened to Charity and your son. If no one else is going to arrange
it, I’ll damn well do it myself.” I grimaced. “I just hope that if I’m wrong, I can dodge karmic paybacks long enough to finish this.”
“Harry, the ball was the whole point. It was Bianca’s chance to put you down while staying within the terms of the Accords. She laid her trap and missed. Do you think she’s going to keep pushing it?”
I gave him a look. “Of course. And so do you. Or you wouldn’t have played watchdog here for the past day.”
“Good point.”
I raked my fingers through my hair, and reached for the Coke, my stomach be damned. “We just have to decide what our next move is going to be.”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t know. I need to be with Charity. And my son. If he’s . . . if he’s sick. He needs me near him.”
I opened my mouth to object, but I couldn’t. Michael had already risked his neck for me more than once. He’d given me a lot of good advice that I hadn’t listened to. Especially about Susan. If I’d only paid more attention, told her what I felt, maybe . . .
I cut off that line of thought before the hysterical sob that rose in my throat became more than a blur of tears in my eyes. “All right,” I said. “I . . . thank you. For your help.”
He nodded, and looked down, as though ashamed. “Harry. I’m sorry. I’ve done all that I could. But I’m not as young as I used to be. And . . . I lost the sword. Maybe I’m not the one to hold it anymore after all. Maybe this is how He is telling me that I need to be at home now. Be there for my wife, my children.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s all right. Do what you think is best.”
He touched the bandage on his forehead, lightly. “If I had the sword, maybe I’d feel differently.” He fell quiet.
“Go on,” I said. “Look, I’ll be all right, here. The Council will probably give me some help.” If they didn’t hear about the people who’d died in the fire, that is. If they heard about that, that I’d broken the First Law of Magic, they’d take my head off my neck faster than you could say “capital offense.” “Just go, Michael. I’ll take care of Lydia.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll . . .”
A thought occurred to me, and I didn’t hear what Michael said next.
