Proven Guilty df-8

by Jim Butcher

  “I joined them,” he said.

  “Thomas…” I began.

  He looked up at the mirror. “I didn’t want to die, man. And when push comes to shove, I’m a predator. A killer. Part of me wanted to go. Part of me had a good time. I don’t like that part of me much, but it’s still there.”

  “Hell’s bells,” I said quietly.

  “I don’t remember very much of it,” he said. He shrugged. “I let you down that night. Let myself down that night. So I figured this time I’d try to help you out, once you told me you were on a job again.”

  “You’ve got a car now, too,” I said quietly.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re making money. And feeding on people.”

  “Yeah.”

  I frowned. I didn’t know what to say to that. Thomas had tried to fit in. He tried to get himself an honest job. He tried it for most of two years, but always ended badly because of who and what he was. I had begun to wonder if there was anyplace in Chicago that hadn’t fired him.

  But he’d had this job, whatever it was, for a while now.

  “There anything I need to know?” I asked him.

  He shook his head, a tiny gesture. His reticence worried me. Though he’d been repeatedly humiliated, Thomas had never had any trouble talking-complaining, really-about the various jobs he’d tried to hold. Once or twice, he’d opened up to me about the difficulty of going without the kind of intense feeding he’d been used to with Justine. Yet now he was clamming up on me.

  An uncharitable sort of person would have gotten suspicious. They would have thought that Thomas must have been engaging in something, probably illegal and certainly immoral, to make his living. They would have dwelt on the idea that, as a kind of incubus, it would be a simple matter for him to seduce and control any wealthy woman he chose, providing sustenance and finances in a single package.

  Good thing I’m not one of those uncharitable guys.

  I sighed. If he wasn’t going to talk, he wasn’t going to talk. Time to change the subject.

  “Glau,” I said quiedy. “Madrigal’s sidekick, there. You said he was a jann?”

  Thomas nodded. “Scion of a djinn and a mortal. He worked for Madrigal’s father. Then my father arranged to have Madrigal’s father go skydiving naked. Glau stuck with Madrigal after that.”

  “Was he dangerous?” I asked.

  Thomas thought about it for a moment and then said, “He was thorough. Details never slipped by. He could play a courtroom like some kind of maestro. He was never finished with something until it was dissected, labeled, documented, and locked away in storage somewhere.”

  “But he wasn’t a threat in a fight.”

  “Not as such things go. He could kill you dead enough, but not much better than any number of things.”

  “Funny, then,” I said. “The Scarecrow popped him first.”

  Thomas glanced back at me, arching a brow.

  “Think about it,” I said. “This thing was supposed to be a phobophage, right? Going after the biggest source of fear.”

  “Sure.”

  “Glau was barely conscious when it grabbed him,” I said. “It was probably me or Madrigal who was feeling the most tension, but it took out Glau, specifically.”

  “You think someone sent it for Glau?”

  “I think it’s a reasonable conclusion.”

  Thomas frowned. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “To shut him up,” I said. “I think Madrigal was supposed to go down for these attacks, at least in front of the supernatural communities. Maybe Glau was in on it. Maybe Glau arranged for Madrigal to be here.”

  “Or maybe the Scarecrow went after Glau because he was wounded and separate from the rest of us. It might have been a coincidence.”

  “Possible,” I allowed. “But my gut says it wasn’t. Glau was their cutout man. They killed him to cover their trail.”

  “Who do you think ‘they’ is?”

  “Uhhhhhh.” I rubbed at my face, hoping the stimulation might move some more blood around in my brain and knock loose some ideas. “Not sure. My head hurts. I’m missing some details somewhere. There should be enough for me to piece this together, but damned if I can see it.” I shook my head and fell quiet.

  “Where to?” Thomas asked.

  “Hospital,” I said. “We’ll drop Rawlins off.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I pick up the trail of those phages, and see if I can find out who summoned them.” I told him briefly about the events of the afternoon and evening. “If we’re lucky, all we’ll find is some maniac’s corpse with a surprised look on his face.”

  “What if we aren’t lucky?” he asked.

  “Then it means the summoner is a hell of a lot better than I am, to fight off three of those things.” I rubbed at one eye. “And we’ll have to take him down before he hurts anyone else.”

  “The fun never ends,” Thomas said. “Right. Hospital.”

  “Then circle the block around the hotel. The spell I diverted the phages with had the tracking element worked into it. Sunrise will unravel it, and we don’t know how long it will take to follow the trail.”

  I directed Thomas to the nearest hospital, and he carried the unconscious Rawlins through the emergency room doors. He came back a minute later and told me, “They’re on the job.”

  “Let’s go, then. Otherwise someone will want to ask us questions about gunshot wounds.”

  Thomas was way ahead of me, and the van headed back to the hotel.

  I got the spell ready. It wasn’t a difficult working, under normal circumstances, but I felt as wrung out as a dirty dishrag. It took me three tries to get the spell up and running, but I managed it. Then I climbed into the passenger seat, where I could see evidence of the phages’ passing as a trail of curling, pale green vapor in the air. I gave Thomas directions. We followed the trail, and it led us toward Wrigley.

  Not a whole hell of a lot of industry was going on in my aching skull, but after a few minutes something began to gnaw at me. I looked blearily around, and found that the neighborhood looked familiar. We kept on the trail. The neighborhood got more familiar. The vapor grew brighter as we closed in.

  We turned a last street corner.

  My stomach twisted in a spasm of horrified nausea.

  The green vapor trail led to a two-story white house. A charming place, somehow carrying off the look of suburbia despite being inside the third largest city in America. Green lawn, despite the heat. White picket fence. Children’s toys in evidence.

  The vapor led up to the picket fence, first. There were three separate large holes in the fence, where some enormous force had burst the fence to splinters. Heavy footprints gouged the lawn. An imitation old-style, wrought-iron gaslight had been bent to parallel with the ground about four feet up. The door had been torn from its hinges and flung into the yard. A minivan parked in the driveway had been crushed, as if by a dropped wrecking ball.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw blood on the doorway.

  The decorative mailbox three feet from me read, in cheerfully painted letters: THE CARPENTERS.

  Oh, God.

  Oh, God.

  Oh, God.

  I’d sent the phages after Molly.

  Chapter Thirty

  I got out of the van, too shocked to see anything but the destruction. It made no sense. It made no sense at all. How in the hell could this have happened? How could my spell have turned the phages and sent them here?

  I stood on the sidewalk outside the house with my mouth hanging open. The streetlights were all out. Only the lights of the van showed the damage, and Thomas turned them off after only a moment. There was no disturbance on the street, no outcry, no police presence. Whatever had happened, something had taken steps to keep it from disturbing the neighbors.

  I don’t know how long I stood there. I felt Mouse’s presence at my side. Then Thomas’s, on the other side of me.

  “Harry?” he said, as
if he was repeating himself. “What is this place?”

  “It’s Michael’s house,” I whispered. “His family’s home.”

  Thomas flinched. He looked back and forth and said, “Those things came here?”

  I nodded. I felt unsteady.

  I felt so damned tired.

  Whatever happened here, it was over. There was nothing I could do at this point, except see who had been hurt. And I did not want to do that. So I stood there staring at the house until Thomas finally said, “I’ll keep watch out here. Circle the house, see if there’s anything to be seen.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. I swallowed, and my stomach felt like I’d swallowed a pound of thumbtacks. I wanted nothing in the world so much as to run away.

  But instead, I dragged my tired ass over the damaged lawn and through the house’s broken doorway. Mouse, walking on three legs, followed me.

  There were sprinkles of blood, already dried, on the inside of the doorway.

  I went on inside the house, through the entry hall, into the living room. Furniture lay strewn all over the place, discarded and broken and tumbled. The television lay on its side, warbling static on its screen. A low sound, all white noise and faint interference, filled the room.

  There was utter silence in the house, otherwise.

  “Hello?” I called.

  No one answered.

  I went into the kitchen.

  There were school papers on the fridge, most of them written in exaggerated, childish hands. There were crayon drawings up there, too. One, of a smiling stick figure in a dress, had a wavering line of letters underneath that read: I LOW OU MAMA.

  Oh, God.

  The thumbtacks in my belly became razor blades. If I’d hurt them… I didn’t know what I would do.

  “Harry!” Thomas called from outside. “Harry, come here!”

  His voice was tense, excited. I went out the kitchen door to the backyard, and found Thomas climbing down from a tree house only a little nicer than my apartment, built up in the branches of the old oak tree behind the Carpenters’ house. He had a still form draped over his shoulder.

  I drew out my amulet and called wizard light as Thomas laid the oldest son, Daniel, out on the grass in the backyard. He was breathing, but looked pale. He was wearing flannel pajama pants and a white T-shirt soaked with blood. There was a cut on his arm; not too deep, but very messy. He had bruises on his face, on one arm, and the knuckles on both his hands were torn and ragged.

  Michael’s son had been throwing punches. It hadn’t done him any good, but he’d fought.

  “Coat,” I said, terse. “He’s cold.”

  Thomas immediately took off my duster and draped it over the boy. I propped his feet up on my backpack. “Stay here,” I told him. I went in the house, fetched a glass of water, and brought it out. I knelt down and tried to wake the boy up, to get him to drink a little. He coughed a little, then drank, and blinked open his eyes. He couldn’t focus them.

  “Daniel,” I said quietly. “Daniel, it’s Harry Dresden.”

  “D-dresden?” he said.

  “Yeah. Your dad’s friend. Harry.”

  “Harry,” he said. Then his eyes flew open wide and he struggled to sit up. “Molly!”

  “Easy, easy,” I told him. “You’re hurt. We don’t know how bad yet. Lie still.”

  “Can’t,” he mumbled. “They took her. We were… is Mom okay? Are the little ones okay?”

  I chewed on my lip. “I don’t know. Do you know where they are?”

  He blinked several times and then he said, “Panic room.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “S-second floor. Safe room. Dad built it. Just in case.”

  I traded a look with Thomas. “Where is it?”

  Daniel waved a vague hand. “Mom had the little ones upstairs. Molly and me couldn’t get to the stairs. They were there. We tried to lead them away.”

  “Who, Daniel? They who?”

  “The movie monsters. Reaper. Hammerhand.” He shuddered. “Scarecrow.”

  I snarled a furious curse. “Thomas, stay with him. Mouse, keep watch.” I stood up and stalked into the house, crossed to the stairs, and went up them. The upstairs hallway had a bunch of bedrooms off it, with the oldest children’s rooms being at the opposite end of the hall from the master bedroom, the younger children being progressively closer to mom and dad. I looked inside each room. They were all empty, though the two nearest the head of the stairs had been torn up pretty well. Broken toys and shattered, child-sized furniture lay everywhere.

  If I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed the extra space between the linen closet and the master bedroom. I checked the closet in the master bedroom and turned up nothing. Then I opened the door to the linen closet, and found the shelves in complete disarray, sheets and towels and blankets strewn on the floor. I hunkered down and held up my mother’s amulet, peering closely, and then found a section of the back wall of the closet just slightly misaligned with the corner it met. I reached out and touched that part of the wall, closed my eyes, extending my senses through my fingertips.

  I felt power there. It wasn’t a ward, or at least it was unlike any ward I had ever encountered. It was more of a quiet hum of constant power, and was similar to the power I’d felt stirring around Michael on several occasions-the power of faith. There was a form of magic protecting that panel.

  “Lasciel,” I murmured quietly. “You getting this?”

  She did not appear, but her voice rolled through my thoughts. Yes, my host. Angelic work.

  I exhaled. “Real angels?”

  Aye. Rafael or one of his lieutenants, from the feel of it.

  “Dangerous?”

  There was an uncertain pause. It is possible. You are touched by more darkness than my own. But it is meant to conceal the room beyond, not to strike out at an intruder.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Okay.” Then I reached out and rapped hard on the panel, three times.

  I thought I heard a motion, weight shifting on a floorboard.

  I knocked again. “Charity!” I called. “It’s Harry Dresden!”

  This time, the motion was definite. The panel clicked, then rolled smoothly to one side, and a double-barreled shotgun slid out, aimed right at my chin. I swallowed and looked down the barrel. Charity’s cold blue eyes faced me from the other end of the gun.

  “You might not be the real Dresden,” she said.

  “Sure I am.”

  “Prove it,” she said. Her tone was quiet, balanced, deadly.

  “Charity, there’s no time for this. You want me to show you my driver’s license?”

  “Bleed,” she said instead.

  Which was a good point. Most of the things who could play doppel-ganger did not have human plumbing, or human blood. It wasn’t an infallible test by any means, but it was as solid as anything a nonwizard could use for verification. So I pulled out my pen knife and cut my already mangled left hand, just a little. I couldn’t feel it in any case. I bled red, and showed her.

  She stared at me for a long second, and then eased the hammers on the shotgun back down, set the weapon aside, and wriggled out of the space beyond the panel. I saw a candle lit back there. The rest of the Carpenter children, sans Molly, were inside. Alicia was sitting up, awake, her eyes worried. The rest were sacked out.

  “Molly,” she said, once she’d gained her feet. “Daniel.”

  “I found him hiding in the tree house,” I said. “He’s hurt.”

  She nodded once. “How badly?”

  “Bruised up pretty good, groggy, but I don’t think he’s in immediate danger. Mouse and a friend of mine are with him.”

  Charity nodded again, features calm and remote, eyes cold and calculating. She had a great cool-headed act going, but it wasn’t perfect. Her hands were trembling badly, fingers clenching and unclenching arrhyth-mically. “And Molly?”

  “I haven’t found her yet,” I said quietly. “Daniel might know what happen
ed to her.”

  “Were they Denarians?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Definitely not.”

  “Is it possible that they may return?”

  I shrugged. “It isn’t likely.”

  “But possible?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded once, and her voice had the quality of someone thinking aloud. “Then the next thing to do is to take the children to the church. We’ll make sure Daniel is cared for. I’ll try to send word to Michael. Then we’ll find Molly.”

  “Charity,” I said. “Wait.”

  Charity thrust the heel of her hand firmly into my chest and pushed my shoulders back against the opposite wall. Her voice was quiet and very precise. “My children are vulnerable. I’m taking them to safety. Help me or stand aside.”

  Then she turned from me and began bringing her children out. Alicia helped as much as she could, her studious features tired and worried, but the littlest ones were sleepy to the point of hibernation, and remained limp as dishrags. I pitched in, picking up little Harry and Hope, carrying one on each hip. Charity’s expression flashed briefly with both worry and thanks, and I saw her control slip. Tears formed in her eyes. She closed them again, jaw clenched, and when she looked up she had regained her composure.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Let’s move,” I replied, and we did.

  Tough lady. Very tough. We’d had our differences, but I had to respect the proud core of her. She was the kind of mother you read about in the paper, the kind who lifts a car off of one of her kids.

  It was entirely possible that I’d just killed her oldest daughter. If Charity knew that, if she knew that I’d put her children in danger, she’d murder me.

  If Molly had been hurt because of me, I’d help.

  * * *

  Saint Mary of the Angels is more than just a church. It’s a monument. It’s huge, its dome rising to seventeen stories, and covered in every kind of accessory you could name, including angelic statues spread over the roof and ledges. You could get a lot of people arguing over exactly what it’s a monument to, I suppose, but one cannot see the church without being impressed by its size, by its artistry, by its beauty. In a city of architectural mastery, Saint Mary of the Angels need bow its head to no one.