by Jim Butcher
That said, the back of the place, the delivery doors, looked quite modestly functional. We went there, Charity driving her family’s minivan, Thomas, me, and Mouse in Madrigal’s battered rental van. Mouse and I got out. Thomas didn’t. I frowned at him.
“I’m going to find someplace to park this,” he said. “Just in case Madrigal decides to report it as stolen or something.”
“Think he’ll make trouble for us?” I asked.
“Not face-to-face,” Thomas said, his voice confident. “He’s more jackal than wolf.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “Maybe the Scarecrow turned around and got him.”
Thomas sighed. “Keep dreaming. He’s a greasy little rat, but he survives.” He looked up at the church and then said, “I’ll keep an eye on things from out here. Come on out when you’re done.”
I got it. Thomas didn’t want to enter holy ground. As a vampire of the White Court, he was as close to human as vampires got, and as far as I knew, holy objects had never inconvenienced him. So this wasn’t about supernatural allergies. It was about his perceptions.
Thomas didn’t want to go into the church because he wasn’t optimistic that the Almighty and his institutions would smile on him. Like me, he favored maintaining a low profile with regards to matters temporal. And if he had gone back to older patterns, doing what came naturally to his predator’s nature, it might incline him to stay off the theological radar. Worse, entering such a place as the church might force him to face his choices, to question them, to be confronted with the fact that the road he’d chosen kept getting darker and further from the light.
I knew how he felt.
I hadn’t been in a church since I’d smacked my hand down on Lasciel’s ancient silver coin. Hell, I had a freaking fallen angel in my head-or at least a facsimile of one. If that wasn’t a squirt of lemon juice in God’s eye, I didn’t know what was.
But I had a job to do.
“Be careful,” I told him quietly. “Call Murphy. Tell her what’s up.”
“You’d better get some rest soon, Harry,” he replied. “You don’t look good.”
“I never look good,” I said. I offered him my fist. He rapped my knuckles gently with his own.
I nodded and walked over to knock on the delivery doors while he drove off in Madrigal’s van. I’d taken my duster back, once Daniel had a blanket on him. Screw the heat. I wanted the protection. Its familiar weight on my shoulders and motion against my legs were reassuring.
Forthill answered my knock, fully dressed, the white of his clerical collar easily seen in the night. His bright blue eyes looked around the parking lot once, and he hurried toward the van without a word being exchanged. I followed him. Forthill moved briskly, and we unloaded the van, Alicia shepherding the mobile kids indoors while he and Charity carried Daniel in between them. I followed with the two little wet dishrags, trying to keep my tired muscles from shaking too obviously.
Forthill led us to the storage room that sometimes doubled as refugee housing. There were half a dozen folded cots against one wall, and another one already opened, set out, and occupied by a lump under a blanket. Forthill and Charity got the wounded Daniel onto a cot first, and then opened the rest of them. We deposited tired children on them.
“What happened?” Forthill asked, his voice quiet and calm.
I didn’t want to hear Charity talk about it. “Got a cramp,” I told them. “Need to walk it off. Come find me when Daniel gets coherent.”
“Very well,” Charity said.
Forthill looked back and forth between us, frowning.
Mouse rose with a grunt of effort to limp after me. “No, boy. Stay and keep an eye on the kids.”
Mouse settled down again, almost gratefully.
I beat it, and started walking. It didn’t matter where. There were too many things flying around in my head. I just walked. Motion wasn’t a cure, but I was tired enough that it kept the thoughts, the emotions, from drowning me. I walked down hallways and through empty rooms.
I wound up in the chapel proper. I’ve been in smaller stadiums. Gleaming hardwood floors shine over the whole of the chapel. Wooden pews stand in ranks, row upon row upon row, and the altar and nave are gorgeously decorated. It seats more than a thousand people, including the balcony at the rear of the chapel, and every Sunday they still have to run eight masses in four different languages to fit everyone in.
More than size and artistry, though, there is something else about the place that makes it more than simply a building. There’s a sense of quiet power there, deep and warm and reassuring. There’s peace. I stood for a moment in the vast and empty room and closed my eyes. Right then, I needed all the peace I could get. I drifted through the room, idly admiring it, and wound up in the balcony, all the way at the top, in a dark corner.
I leaned my head back against a wall.
Lasciel’s voice came to me, very quietly, and sounded odd. Sad. It is beautiful here.
I didn’t bother to agree. I didn’t tell her to get lost. I leaned my head back against the rear wall and closed my eyes.
I woke up when Forthill’s steps drew near. I kept my eyes closed, half hoping that if I didn’t seem to waken he would go away.
Instead, he settled a couple of feet down the pew from me, and remained patiently quiet.
The act wasn’t working. I opened my eyes and looked at him.
“What happened?” he asked quietly.
I pressed my lips together and looked away.
“It’s all right,” Forthill said quietly. “If you wish to tell me, I’ll speak of it to no one.”
“Maybe I don’t want to talk to you,” I said.
“Of course,” he said, nodding. “But my offer stands, should you wish to talk. Sometimes the only way to carry a heavy burden is to share it with another. It is your choice to make.”
Choices.
Sometimes I thought it might be nice not to make any choices. If I never had one, I could never screw it up.
“There are things I don’t care to share with a priest,” I told him, but I was mostly thinking out loud.
He nodded. He took off his collar and set it aside. He settled back into the pew, reached into his jacket, and drew out a slender silver flask. He opened it, took a sip, and offered it to me. “Then share it with your bartender.”
That drew a faint, snorting laugh from me. I shook my head, took the flask, and sipped. An excellent, smooth Scotch. I sipped again, and I told him what happened at the convention, and how it had spilled over onto the Carpenter household. He listened. We passed the flask back and forth. I finished by saying, “I sent those things right to her door. I never meant it to happen.”
“Of course not,” he said.
“It doesn’t make me feel any better about it.”
“Nor should it,” he said. “But you must know that you are a man of power.”
“How so?”
“Power,” he said, waving a hand in an all-encompassing gesture. “All power is the same. Magic. Physical strength. Economic strength. Political strength. It all serves a single purpose-it gives its possessor a broader spectrum of choices. It creates alternative courses of action.”
“I guess,” I said. “So?”
“So,” he said. “You have more choices. Which means that you have much improved odds of making mistakes. You’re only human. Once in a while, you’re going to screw the pooch.”
“I don’t mind that,” I said. “When I’m the only one who pays for it.”
“But that isn’t in your control,” he said. “You cannot see all outcomes. You couldn’t have known that those creatures would go to the Carpenter house.”
I ground my teeth. “So? Daniel’s still hurt. Molly could be dead.”
“But their condition was not yours to ordain,” Forthill said. “All power has its limits.”
“Then what’s the point?” I snarled, suddenly furious. My voice bounced around the chapel in rasping echoes. “What good is it
to have power enough to kill my friend’s family, but not power enough to protect them? What the hell do you expect from me? I’ve got to make these stupid choices. What the hell am I supposed to do with them?”
“Sometimes,” he replied, his tone serious, “you just have to have faith.”
I laughed, and it came out loud and bitter. Mocking echoes of it drifted through the vast chamber. “Faith,” I said. “Faith in what?”
“That things will unfold as they are meant to,” Forthill said. “That even in the face of an immediate ugliness, the greater picture will resolve into something all the more beautiful.”
“Show me,” I spat. “Show me something beautiful about this. Show me the silver fucking lining.”
He pursed his lips and mused for a moment. Then he said, “There’s a quote from the founder of my order: There is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“That the good that will come is not always obvious. Nor easy to see. Nor in the place we would expect to find it. Nor what we personally desire. You should consider that the good being created by the events this night may have nothing to do with the defeat of supernatural evils or endangered lives. It may be something very quiet. Very ordinary.”
I frowned at him. “Like what?”
He finished off the little flask and then rose. He put it away and put his collar back on. “I’m afraid I’m not the one you should ask.” He put a hand on my shoulder and nodded toward the altar. “But I will say this: I’ve been on this earth a fair while, and one way or another, this too shall pass. I have seen worse things reverse themselves. There is yet hope for Molly, Harry. We must strive to do our utmost, and to act with wisdom and compassion. But we must also have faith that the things beyond our control are not beyond His.”
I sat quietly for a minute. Then I said, “You almost make me believe.”
He arched an eyebrow. “But?”
“I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if it’s possible for me.”
The corners of his eyes wrinkled. “Then perhaps you should try to have faith that you might one day have faith.” His fingers squeezed and then released my shoulder. He turned to go.
“Padre,” I said.
He paused.
“You… won’t tell Charity?”
He turned his head, and I could see sadness in his profile. “No. You aren’t the only one too afraid to believe.”
Sudden footsteps clattered into the chapel, and Alicia hurried in, accompanied by Mouse. The big grey dog sat down and stared up at the balcony. Alicia, panting, looked up. “Father?”
“Here,” Forthill said.
“Come quick,” she said. “Mama said to tell you Daniel’s awake.”
Chapter Thirty-one
We listened to Daniel’s recounting of the attack. It was simple enough. He’d heard Molly moving around downstairs and had come down to talk to his sister. There had been a knock at the door. Molly had gone to answer it. There had been an exchange of words, and then Molly had screamed and slammed the door.
“She came running into the living room,” Daniel said. “And they broke down the door behind her and came in.” He shivered. “They were going upstairs and Molly said we had to distract them, so I grabbed the poker from the fireplace and just sort of jumped them.” He shook his head. “I thought they were just costumes. You know. Like… really stupid burglars or something. But the Reaper grabbed me. And he was going to… you know. Cut me with that curved knife.” He gestured vaguely at his wounded arm. “Molly hit him and he dropped me.”
“With what?” I asked him.
He shook his head. His thin, awkward, adolescent features were hollow with pain, weariness, and a kind of lingering disbelief. His words were all slightly stiff, wooden, as if reporting events in an unappealing motion picture, rather than actual experiences. “I couldn’t see. I think she must have had a bat or something. He dropped me.”
“Then what?” I asked him.
He swallowed. “I fell, and bumped my head on the floor. And they grabbed her. The Reaper and the Scarecrow. And they carried her out the door. She was screaming…” He bit his lip. “I tried to stop them, but Hammerhand chased me. So I ran out the back and up into the tree house, cause I figured, you know. He doesn’t have any hands. Just hammers. So how’s he going to climb up after me?”
He looked to Charity and said, shame in his voice, “I’m sorry, Mom. I wanted to stop them. They were just… too big.” Tears welled up in his eyes and his thin chest heaved. Charity caught him in a fierce hug, squeezing him hard and whispering to him. Daniel broke down, sobbing.
I got up and walked to the far side of the room. Forthill joined me there.
“These creatures,” I told him quietly, “inflict more than simple physical damage. They rip into the psyches of those they attack.”
“This happened to Daniel?” Forthill asked.
“I’d have to take a closer look to be certain, but it’s probable. Kid’s gonna have it tough for a while,” I said. “It’s like emotional trauma. Someone dying, that kind of thing. It tears people up the same way. They don’t get over it fast.”
“I’ve seen it too,” Forthill said. “I haven’t brought this up yet, but I thought you should know that Nelson came to me earlier this evening.”
I nodded at the cot that had been occupied when we came in. “That him?”
“Yes.”
“How’d he strike you?” I asked.
Forthill pursed his lips. “If I didn’t know you sent him, I would have thought he was having a bad reaction to drugs. He was almost incoherent. Very agitated. Terrified, in point of fact, though he would not or could not explain why. I managed to get him calmed down and he all but fainted.”
I frowned, running the fingers of my right hand back through my hair. “Did you have the sense that anyone was following him?”
“Not at all. Though I might have missed something.” He essayed a tired smile. “It’s late. And I’m not as spry as I used to be, after ten o’clock or so.”
“Thank you for helping him,” I said.
“Of course.Who is he?”
“Molly’s boyfriend,” I said. I glanced across the room, at the mother holding her son. “Maybe Charity doesn’t need to know that part, either.”
He blinked and then sighed, “Oh, dear.”
“Heh. Yeah,” I said.
“May I ask you a question?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“These creatures, these phages. If they are what you say, beings of the spirit world, then how did they manage to cross the house’s threshold?”
“Traditional way,” I said. “They got an invitation.”
“From whom?”
“Probably Molly,” I said.
He frowned. “I have difficulty believing that she would do such a thing.”
I felt my mouth tighten. “She probably didn’t know they were monsters. They’re shapeshifters. They probably appeared to her as someone she knew, and would invite in.”
Forthill said, “Ah. I see. Someone such as you, perhaps.”
“Perhaps,” I said quietly. “Makes it the second time someone has used my face to get a shot at Michael’s family.”
Forthill said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “It occurs to me that these creatures killed without compunction in your previous encounters. Why would they carry Molly away instead of simply murdering her?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I don’t know how my spell managed to bring them to Molly. I don’t know precisely what these things are, or where they hail from. Which means I can’t figure out why they’ve been showing up, or where they might have taken the girl.” I waved a hand in a frustrated gesture. “It’s driving me insane. I’ve got tons of facts and none of them are lining up.”
“You’re tired,” Forthill said. “Perhaps some rest-”
I shook my head. “No, Padre. The things that took her won’t rest. The longer she’s in their hands, the less likely it is we’ll ever see her again.” I rubbed at my eyes. “I need to rethink it.”
Forthill nodded at me and rose. On the other side of the room, Charity was covering her exhausted son with a blanket. Even Alicia had surrendered to fatigue, and now only the adults were awake. “I’ll leave you to it then. Have you eaten recently?”
“Sometime in the Mesozoic Era,” I said.
“Sandwich?”
My stomach made a gurgling noise. “Only if you insist.”
“I’ll see to it,” Forthill said. “Excuse me.” He went over to Charity and took her arm, leading her out as he spoke quietly to her. Now that her children had been cared for, she looked like she might come apart at the seams. They left the room together, leaving me in the dimness with Mouse and a lot of sleeping kids.
I thought. I thought some more. I picked up all the facts I knew, turning them every which way, trying to figure out something, anything, that would let me put a stop to this insanity.
The phages. The answer was in the phages. Once I knew their identity, I could begin to work out who might be using them, and what I might do to learn more about them. There had to be a commonality to them, somewhere; something that linked them together, some fact that could provide me a context in which to judge their motivations and intentions.
But what the hell could they have in common, other than being monsters who fed on fear? They’d shown up randomly in a bathroom, a kitchen, a parking lot, a conference room. Their victims had been disparate, seemingly random. They had all appeared as figures from horror movies, but that fact seemed fairly unremarkable, relatively speaking. Try as I might, I could find nothing to join them together, to let me recognize them.
Frustrated, I rose and went over to Daniel’s cot. I called up my Sight. It took me longer than normal. I braced myself and regarded the boy.
I’d been right. He’d taken a psychic flogging. The phage had been worrying at his mind, his spirit, even as it had threatened his flesh. I could see the wounds as long, bleeding tears in his flesh. Poor little guy. It would haunt him. I hoped he would be able to get a little rest before the nightmares woke him up.
