Dresden Files SSC01 - Side Jobs

by Jim Butcher

  Caine let out an ugly laugh and stepped forward, his big hands closing into fists. I leaned my staff so that he stepped into it, the blunt tip of the wood thrusting solidly against the hollow of his throat. He made a noise that sounded like glurk, and stepped back, scowling ferociously at me.

  I tugged my staff back against my chest so that I could hold up both hands, palms out, just as the dumpy cop, attracted by Braddock’s thumping and cursing, came into the room with one hand on his nightstick. “Easy there, big guy,” I said, loud enough to make sure the cop heard. “The kid’s just upset on account of his wife. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  The bruiser lifted one closed fist as if he meant to drive it at my noggin, but one of his two buddies said urgently, “Cop.”

  Caine froze and glanced back over his shoulder. The officer might have been overweight, but he looked like he knew how to throw it around, and he had a club and a gun besides. Never mind all the other uniforms theoretically behind him.

  Caine opened his fist, showing an empty hand, and lowered it again. “Sure,” he said. “Sure. Misunderstanding. Happen to anybody.”

  “You want to walk away,” the cop told Caine, “do it now. Otherwise you get a ride.”

  Caine and company departed in sullen silence, glaring daggers at me—well, glaring letter openers, anyway; Caine didn’t seem real sharp.

  The cop stalked over to me more lightly than he should have been able to—no question about it, the man knew how to play rough. He looked at me, then at my staff, and kept his nightstick in his hand. “You Dresden?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Heard of you. Work for Special Investigations sometimes. Call yourself a wizard.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know Rawlins?”

  “Good man,” I said.

  The cop grunted. He jerked his head toward the departing Caine as he put the stick away. “Guy’s a con. A hard case, too. Likes hurting people. You keep your eyes open, Mr. Wizard, or he’ll make some of your teeth disappear.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Golly, he’s scary.”

  The cop eyed me, then snorted and said, “Your dentures.” He nodded, and walked out again, probably tailing Caine to make sure he left.

  The cop and Caine weren’t all that different, in some ways. The cop would have loved to take his stick to Caine’s head as much as Caine had wanted to swat mine. They were both damn near equally sensitive about Braddock’s missing wife, too. But at least the cop had channeled his inner thug into something that helped out the people around him—as long as he didn’t have to run up too many stairs, I guessed.

  I turned back to Mac and found him still standing between the kid and the door. Mac nodded his thanks to me. Braddock looked like he might be about to start crying, or maybe start screaming.

  “No love lost there, eh?” I said to Braddock.

  The kid snarled at the empty space where Caine had been. “Elizabeth embarrassed him once. He doesn’t take rejection well, and he never forgets. Do you think he did it?”

  “Not really. Mac,” I said, “something tipped you off that this was from the spooky side. Lights flicker?”

  Mac grunted. “Twice.”

  Braddock stared at Mac and then at me. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Active magic tends to interfere with electrical systems,” I said. “It’ll disrupt cell phones, screw up computers. Simpler things, like the lights, usually just flicker a bit.”

  Braddock had a look somewhere between uncertainty and nausea on his face. “Magic? You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m tired of having this conversation,” I said. I reached into my pocket for Elizabeth Braddock’s fallen hairs. “This joint got a back door?”

  Mac pointed silently.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Come on, Mouse.”

  THE BACK DOOR opened into a long, narrow, dirty alley running parallel to Clark. The wind had picked up, which meant that the cold rain was mostly striking the upper portion of one wall of the alley. Good for me. It’s tough to get a solid spell put together under even a moderate rain. When it’s really coming down, it’s all but impossible, even for a relatively simple working—such as a tracking spell.

  I’d done this hundreds of times, and by now it was pretty routine. I found a clear spot of concrete in the lee of the sheltering wall and sketched a quick circle around me with a piece of chalk, investing the motion with a deliberate effort of will.

  As I completed the circle, I felt the immediate result—a screen of energy that rose up from the circle, enfolding me and warding out any random energy that might skew the spell. I took off my necklace, a silver chain with a battered old silver pentacle hanging from it, murmuring quietly, and tied several of Elizabeth’s hairs through the center of the pentacle. After that, I gathered up my will, feeling the energy focused by the circle into something almost tangible, whispered in faux Latin, and released the gathered magic into the pentacle.

  The silver five-pointed star flickered once, a dozen tiny sparks of static electricity fluttering over the metal surface and the hairs bound inside it. I grimaced. I’d been sloppy, to let some of the energy convert itself into static. And I’d been harping on my apprentice about the need for precision for a week.

  I broke the circle by smudging the chalk with one foot, and glanced at Mouse, who sat patiently, mouth open in a doggy grin. Mouse had been there for some of those lessons, and he was smarter than the average dog. How much smarter remained to be seen, but I got the distinct impression he was laughing at me.

  “It was the rain,” I told him.

  Mouse sneezed, tail wagging.

  I glowered at him. I’m not sure I could take it if my dog was smarter than me.

  The falling rain would wash away the spell on the amulet if I left it out in the open, so I shielded it as carefully as I could with the building and my hand. A hat would have come in handy for that purpose, actually. Maybe I should get one.

  I held up the amulet, focusing on the spell. It quivered on the end of its chain, then swung toward the far end of the alley, in a sharp, sudden motion.

  I drew my hand and the amulet back up into the sleeve of my duster, whistling. “She came right down this alley. And judging by the strength of the reaction, she was scared bad. Left a really big trail.”

  At that, Mouse made a chuffing sound and started down the alley, snuffling. The end of his short lead, mostly there for appearance’s sake, dragged the ground. I kept pace, and by the time Mouse was twenty yards down the alley, he had begun growling low in his throat.

  That was an occasion worth a raised eyebrow. Mouse didn’t make noise unless there was Something Bad around. He increased his pace, and I lengthened my stride to keep up.

  I found myself growling along with him. I’d gotten sick of Bad Things visiting themselves upon people in my town a long time ago.

  When we hit the open street, Mouse slowed. Magic wasn’t the only thing that a steady rain could screw up. He growled again and looked over his shoulder at me, tail drooping.

  “I got your back,” I told him. I lifted a section of my long leather duster with my staff, so that I could hold the amulet in the shelter it offered. I looked only moderately ridiculous while doing so.

  I’m going to get a hat one of these days. I swear.

  The tracking spell held, and the amulet led me down the street, toward Wrigley. The silent stadium loomed in the cold grey rain. Mouse, still snuffling dutifully, abruptly turned down another alley, his steps hurrying to a lope. I propped up my coat and consulted the amulet again.

  I was so busy feeling damp and cold and self-conscious that I forgot to feel paranoid, and Caine came out of nowhere and swung something hard at my skull.

  I turned my head and twitched sideways at the last second, taking the blow just to one side of the center of my forehead. There was a flash of light, and my legs went wobbly. I had time to watch Caine wind up again and saw that he was swinging a long, wh
ite, dirty athletic sock at me. He’d weighted one end with something, creating an improvised flail.

  My hips bounced off a municipal trash can, and I got one arm between the flail and my face. The protective spells on my coat are good, but they’re intended to protect me against gunfire and sharp, pointy things. The flail smashed into my right forearm. It went numb.

  “So what, you steal my keg for Braddock, so his homo-bee cinnamon crap would win the division? I’m gonna take it out of your ass.”

  And with that pleasant mental image, Caine wound up again with that flail.

  He’d made a mistake, though, pausing to get in a little dialogue like that. If he’d hit me again, immediately, he probably could have beaten me unconscious in short order. He hadn’t hesitated long—but it had been long enough for me to pull my thoughts together. As he came in swinging, I snapped the lower end of my heavy staff into a rising quarter spin, right into his testicles. The thug’s eyes snapped wide-open, and his mouth locked into a silent scream.

  It’s the little things in life you treasure.

  Caine staggered and fell to one side, but one of the Cainettes came in hard behind him and pasted me in the mouth. By itself, I might have shrugged it off, but Caine had already rung my bells once. I went down to one knee and tried to figure out what was going on. Someone with big motorcycle boots kicked me in the guts. I fell to my back and drove a heel into his kneecap. There was a crackle and a pop, and he fell, howling.

  The third guy had a tire iron. No time for magic—my damn eyes wouldn’t focus, much less my thoughts. By some minor miracle, I caught the first two-handed swing on my staff.

  And then two hundred pounds of wet dog slammed into Cainette Number Two’s chest. Mouse didn’t bite, presumably because there are some things even dogs won’t put in their mouths. He just over-bore the thug and smashed him to the ground, pinning him there. The two of them thrashed around.

  I got up just as Caine came back in, swinging his flail.

  I don’t think Caine knew much about quarterstaff fighting. Murphy had been teaching it to me, however, for almost four years. I got the staff up as Caine swung and intercepted the sock. The weighted end wrapped around my staff, and I jerked the weapon out of his hands with a sweeping twist. With the same motion, I brought the other end of the staff around and popped him in the noggin.

  Caine flopped to the ground.

  I stood there panting and leaning on my staff. Hey, I’d won a brawl. That generally didn’t happen when I wasn’t using magic. Mouse seemed fine, if occupied holding his thug down.

  “Jerk,” I muttered to the unconscious Caine, and kicked him lightly in the ribs. “I have no idea what happened to your freaking keg.”

  “Oh my,” said a woman’s voice from behind me. She spoke perfectly clear English, marked with an accent that sounded vaguely Germanic or maybe Scandinavian. “I have to admit, I didn’t expect you’d do that well against them.”

  I turned slightly, so that I could keep the thugs in my peripheral vision, and shifted my grip on the staff as I faced the speaker.

  She was a tall blonde, six feet or so, even in flat, practical shoes. Her tailored grey suit didn’t quite hide an athlete’s body, nor did it make her look any less feminine. She had ice blue eyes, a stark, attractive face, and she carried a duffel bag in her right hand. I recognized her. She was the supernatural security consultant to John Marcone, the kingpin of Chicago crime.

  “Miss Gard, isn’t it?” I asked her, panting.

  She nodded. “Mr. Dresden.”

  My arm throbbed and my ears were still ringing. I’d have a lovely goose egg right in the middle of my forehead in an hour. “Glad I could entertain you,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m working.”

  “I need to speak to you,” she said.

  “Call during office hours.” Caine lay senseless, groaning. The guy I’d kicked in the knee whimpered and rocked mindlessly back and forth. I glared at the thug Mouse had pinned down.

  He flinched. There wasn’t any fight left in him. Thank God. There wasn’t much left in me, either.

  “Mouse,” I said, and started down the alley.

  Mouse rose up off the man, who said, “Oof!” as the dog planted both paws in the man’s belly as he pushed up. Mouse followed me.

  “I’m serious, Mr. Dresden,” Gard said to my back, following us.

  “Marcone is only a king in his own mind,” I said without stopping. “He wants to send me a message, he can wait. I’ve got important things to do.”

  “I know,” Gard said. “The girl. She’s a brunette, maybe five foot five, brown eyes, green golf shirt, blue jeans, and scared half out of her mind.”

  I stopped and turned to bare my teeth at Gard. “Marcone is behind this? That son of a bitch is going to be sorry he ever looked at that—”

  “No,” Gard said sharply. “Look, Dresden, forget Marcone. This has nothing to do with Marcone. Today’s my day off.”

  I stared at her for a moment, and only partly because the rain had begun to make the white shirt she wore beneath the suit jacket become transparent. She sounded sincere—which meant nothing. I’ve learned better than to trust my judgment when there’s a blonde involved. Or a brunette. Or a redhead.

  “What do you want?” I asked her.

  “Almost the same thing you do,” she replied. “You want the girl. I want the thing that took her.”

  “Why?”

  “The girl doesn’t have enough time for you to play twenty questions, Dresden. We can help each other and save her, or she can die.”

  I took a deep breath and then nodded once. “I’m listening.”

  “I lost the trail at the far end of this alley,” she said. “Clearly, you haven’t.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Skip to the part where you tell me how you can help me.”

  Wordlessly, she opened up the duffel bag and drew out—I kid you not—a double-bitted battle-ax that must have weighed fifteen pounds. She rested it on one shoulder. “If you can take me to the grendelkin, I’ll deal with it while you get the girl out.”

  Grendelkin? What the hell was a grendelkin?

  Don’t get me wrong—I’m a wizard. I know about the supernatural. I could fill up a couple of loose-leaf notebooks with the names of various entities and creatures I recognized. That’s the thing about knowledge, though. The more you learn, the more you realize how much there is to learn. The supernatural realms are bigger, far bigger, than the material world, and humanity is grossly outnumbered. I could learn about new beasties until I dropped dead of old age a few centuries from now and still not know a quarter of them.

  This one was new on me.

  “Dresden, seconds could matter, here,” Gard said. Beneath the calm mask of her lovely face, I could sense a shadow of anxiety, of urgency.

  As I absorbed that, there was a sharp clicking sound as a piece of broken brick or a small stone from roofing material fell to the ground farther down the alley.

  Gard whirled, dropping instantly into a fighting crouch. Both hands were on her ax, which she held in a defensive position across the front of her body.

  Yikes.

  I’d seen Gard square off against a world-class necromancer and her pet ghoul without batting a golden eyelash. What the hell had her so spooked?

  She came back out of her stance warily, then shook her head and muttered something under her breath before turning to me again. “What’s going to happen to that girl . . . ? You have no idea. It shouldn’t happen to anyone. So I’m begging you. Please help me.”

  I sighed.

  Well, dammit.

  She said please.

  THE RAIN WAS weakening the tracking spell on my amulet and washing away both the scent of the grendelkin and the psychic trail left by the terrified Elizabeth, but between Mouse and me, we managed to find where the bad guy had, literally, gone to earth. The trail ended at an old storm cellar-style door in back of the buildings on the east side of Wrigley Field, under the tracks of the El,
near Addison Station. The doors were ancient and looked as if they were rusted shut—though they couldn’t have been, if the trail went through them. They were surrounded by a gateless metal fence. A sign on the fence declared the area dangerous and to keep out—you know, the usual sound advice that thrill-seeking blockheads and softhearted wizards with nagging headaches always ignore.

  “You sure?” I asked Mouse. “It went in there?”

  Mouse circled the fence, snuffling at the dry ground protected from the rain by the El track overhead. Then he focused intently on the doors and growled.

  The amulet bobbed weakly, less definitely than it had a few minutes before. I grimaced and said, “It went down here, but it traveled north after that.”

  Gard grunted. “Crap.”

  “Crap,” I concurred.

  The grendelkin had fled into Undertown.

  Chicago is an old city—at least by American standards. It’s been flooded, burned down several times, been constructed and reconstructed ad nauseam. Large sections of the city have been built up as high as ten and twelve feet above the original ground level, while other buildings have settled into the swampy muck around Lake Michigan. Dozens and dozens of tunnel systems wind beneath its surface. No one knows exactly how many different tunnels and chambers people have created intentionally or by happenstance, and since most people regard the supernatural as one big scam, no one has noticed all the additional work done by not-people in the meantime.

  Undertown begins somewhere just out of the usual traffic in the commuter and utility tunnels, where sections of wall and roof regularly collapse, and where people with good sense just aren’t willing to go. From there, it gets dark, cold, treacherous, and jealously inhabited, increasingly so the farther you go.

  Things live down there—all kinds of things.

  A visit to Undertown bears more resemblance to suicide than exploration, and those who do it are begging to be Darwined out of the gene pool. Smart people don’t go down there.