The Dresden Files 2: Fool Moon

by Jim Butcher

  "Win some, lose some." I got to my feet.

  "Like hell," she said and turned and started into the building.

  I hurried to catch up with her. "Where are you going?"

  "Inside. To look for stairs, a ladder, whatever."

  "You can't follow them," I said, falling into step beside her as she went into the darkened building. "You can't take them on, not with just you and me."

  "Them?" Murphy said. "I only saw one." She stopped and looked at me, and I explained to her in terse terms what had happened since we parted in the parking lot. Murphy listened, the lines at the corners of her blue eyes serious.

  "What do you think happened?" she asked when I was finished.

  "We found werewolves," I said. "The woman, the dark one with the grey in her hair, was their leader."

  "Group killers?" Murphy said.

  "Pack," I corrected her. "But I'm not so sure that they were the killers. They didn't seem … I don't know. Cold enough. Mean enough."

  Murphy shook her head and turned to walk outside. "Can you give me a good description?"

  I kept up with her. "Good enough, I guess. But what do you want it for?"

  "I'm going to put out an APB for the woman we saw, and I want you to describe the kids you heard talking."

  "What do you need that for? Don't you have the plates off the car she was driving?"

  "I already called them in," Murphy said. "Rental. Probably taken out under a false ID."

  "I think you've got the wrong people, Murph," I said. "Don't put out that APB."

  "Why shouldn't I?" Murphy asked. "Someone follows me back to town from the scene of a murder. Not only that, but you can confirm to me that they were the killer from the scene. Not in a court of law, I know, but you can give it to me, and that's enough. Standard investigation will turn up the rest if we know where to look."

  I held up my hand. "Hold on, hold on. My spell didn't tell me that the woman was the killer. Only that it was her blood at the scene."

  Murphy folded her arms and glared up at me. "Whose side are you on, anyway?"

  "You still don't get it, Murphy," I said, my own temper rising a little. "You don't start something with the kind of people who live in boogety-land unless you're willing to take it all the way, right there, right then. If you start harassing a pack of werewolves, setting the police after them, you've just declared war. You'd better be ready to fight it."

  Murphy thrust her jaw out. "Don't worry about me. I can handle it."

  "I'm not saying you can't," I said. "But whatever it was that tore apart Spike back at Marcone's club wasn't the same thing that was with me in the dark back there." I jerked my head at the main room of the department store.

  "Oh yeah?" Murphy said. "Why not?"

  "Because it could have killed me and it didn't."

  "You don't think you could have taken care of yourself against a wolf, Harry?"

  "In the dark?" I said. "Murphy, it's been nearly a hundred years since the wolf went extinct in most of the United States. You've got no idea, none at all, of how dangerous they can be. A wolf can run faster than you can drive a car through most of Chicago. His jaws can snap your thighbones with one jerk. A wolf can see the heat of your body in the complete dark, and can count the hairs on your head from a hundred yards off by starlight. He can hear your heart beating thirty or forty yards away. The wolf that was there in the dark with me could have killed me, easy. It didn't. It disarmed me, even after I'd hit it, and then it left."

  "That doesn't mean anything," Murphy said—but she folded her arms over her stomach and glanced at the shadows around us with a little shiver. "Maybe the killer knows you. Maybe it didn't want to risk killing a wizard. Maybe, just maybe, the wolf did it to throw you off. Maybe it spared you just so you would react in this way, just to avoid suspicion."

  "Maybe," I admitted. "But I don't think so. The kids I saw …" I shook my head. "Don't put out the APB, yet. Hold off on it, until I can get you some more information. Look, you pay me to give you my advice, to be your consultant on the supernatural. I'm your expert, right? Listen to me. Trust me."

  She stared up at my face, her expression intent, looking away quickly when her eyes met mine. Murphy had known me for a while. You don't go looking into a wizard's eyes without a darned good reason. Wizards see too much.

  "All right," she said finally. "I'll hold off on it—but only until tomorrow morning, when I have that report. If you can't show me anything by then, I'm going ahead after the people we saw tonight." Her mouth quirked in a fierce little grin. "I'd have a hell of a time explaining what I was doing out at the crime scene in Rosemont, anyway." The grin vanished, leaving only ferocity. "But you will have that information for me, Dresden, bright and early. Make no mistake. I will catch the killer before anyone else dies."

  I nodded to Murphy. "In the morning," I said. "You got it."

  Murphy's flashlight flickered and then went out as the filament burst with an audible pop.

  Murphy sighed in the darkness. "Nothing ever works right when you're here. Sometimes, Harry," she said, "I really hate hanging out with you."

  Chapter 7

  I entered my apartment, tossed my blasting rod, which I had recovered from the abandoned department store, into the corner next to my wizard's staff and my sword cane, and locked the door behind me. It was one of those steel-frame doors, the antiburglar kind. I bought it after a demon had come stomping into my apartment six months ago and wrecked my place.

  My apartment is in the basement of a huge old rooming house that somehow managed to survive all the Chicago fires. It's made almost entirely of wood, and it creaks and groans when the wind blows, which is all the time in this city, and makes gentle, soothing music. It's a place with a history, the neighbors are quiet, and my rent is cheap—though less so than it was before the demon trashed my place.

  The apartment itself is devoid of electrical devices, for reasons that should be evident by now. There is a fireplace, and a kitchenette off the main room, a little bedroom adjacent to that, and a bathroom inside the bedroom. Sunken windows are high on each of the four walls, and one is on the wall of the bathroom.

  I decorate in textures more than I do in colors; there were thick rugs all over the bare stone floors, layered on top of one another in most places. Demon acid had burned away most of my furniture, and I had been obliged to scavenge secondhand stores for replacements. I like furniture with a lot of old wood and soft cloth, and I had made my purchases accordingly. Tapestries hung from my walls, the oldest tapestries that I could find, covering the bare stone. In the ruddy firelight, the oranges and browns and reds that constituted the primary colors of the decor didn't look half bad.

  I went over to the fireplace and built up the fire. October in Chicago is a cold, breezy month, and my dank little haven is usually chilly until I get a fire going. I dropped a few logs on the fire, and Mister made an appearance, rubbing up against my leg and purring fondly, staggering my balance off to one side.

  "Been getting into the steaks again, eh, Mister?" I said, and rubbed the big, grey cat's ears. Mister is larger than a lot of dogs. Maybe one of his parents was part wildcat. I found him in a dumpster one day when he was a kitten and he promptly adopted me. Despite my struggles, Mister had been an understanding soul, and I eventually came to realize that I was a part of his little family, and by his gracious consent was allowed to remain in his apartment. Cats. Go figure.

  I fired up the wood-burning stove and prepared a quick meal of Spaghettios, grilled chicken, and toast. Mister shared in my meal, and split a can of Coke with me, as usual, and I tossed the dishes in the sink to soak before I went to my bedroom and put on my robe.

  Let the wizardry commence.

  I went to a spot in the far corner and moved the rug there, then lifted up the door in the floor beneath it, revealing the steep stepladder that led down to the subbasement, where I kept my lab.

  I teetered down the stairs, holding a lit candle that cast a golden glow
on the cheerful havoc that is my laboratory. Tables lined the walls, and the longest table filled most of the center of the room, leaving a cramped walk space around it, except for an area at the far side of the lab that I kept completely clear for my summoning circle, a ring of bright copper set into the floor. Books, notebooks, defunct ballpoint pens, broken pencils, boxes, plastic containers, old butter bowls, empty jelly jars, and plastic Baggies lay next to other containers of every size and shape that held the spices, rare stones, bones, fur, blood, oddments, jewelry, and other ingredients useful to wizardly pursuits and studies.

  I reached the bottom of the ladder, stepped over a precariously balanced stack of comic books (don't ask), and started lighting the other candles that lay on dishes around the chilly room, finally bending to light up the kerosene heater that I keep down in the lab in an effort to at least blunt the cold. "Bob," I said then. "Wake up, sleepyhead."

  Up on one of the shelves, huddled in the midst of a thick stack of hardbacks, was the bleached, smooth form of a human skull, its empty eye sockets gaping. Deep in those eye sockets, there was a flickering of orange light, which grew and solidified into twin points of lambent illumination. "Sleepyhead. Oh, that's rich, Harry. With a sense of humor like that, you could make a living as a garbage man anywhere in the country." The skull's mouth gaped open in the parody of a yawn, though I knew the spirit within, Bob, didn't feel fatigue in the same way that living beings did. I put up with his lip, so to speak—Bob had worked for several wizards over the course of a dozen mortal lifetimes, and he knew more about the nuts and bolts of magic than I ever would.

  "What are we doing, now?" Bob sniggered. "More weight-loss potions?"

  "Look, Bob," I said. "That was only to get me through a rough month. Someone's got to pay the rent around here."

  "All right," Bob said smugly. "You going to get into breast enhancement, then? I'm telling you, that's where the money is."

  "That isn't what magic is for, Bob. How petty can you get?"

  "Ah," Bob said, his eye lights flickering. "The question is, how pretty can you get them? You aren't a half-bad wizard, Dresden. You should think about how grateful all those beautiful women will be."

  I snorted and started cleaning off a space on the center table, stacking things up to one side. "You know, Bob, some of us aren't obsessed with sex."

  Bob snorted, no easy feat for a guy with no nose or lips. "Some of us don't take a real, working body and all five senses for granted, either, Harry. When's the last time you saw Susan?"

  "I don't know," I responded. "Couple weeks ago. We're both pretty busy with work."

  Bob heaved a sigh. "A gorgeous woman like that, and here you are, down in your musty old lab, getting ready to do more ridiculous nonsense."

  "Precisely," I said. "Now, shut up and let's get to work."

  Bob grumbled something in Latin, but rattled a few times to shake the dust off of the skull. "Sure, what do I know? I'm just a pathetic little spirit, right?"

  "With a photographic memory, three or four hundred years' worth of research experience, and more deduction capacity than a computer, Bob, yeah."

  Bob almost seemed to smile. "Just for that, you get my best effort tonight, Harry. Maybe you're not such an idiot after all."

  "Great," I said. "I want to work up a couple of potions, and I want to know everything you know about werewolves."

  "What kind of potions, and what kind of werewolves?" Bob said promptly.

  I blinked. "There's more than one?"

  "Hell, Harry. We've made at least three dozen different kinds of potions down here ourselves, and I don't see why you wouldn't—"

  "No, no, no," I growled at Bob. "Werewolves. There's more than one kind of werewolf?"

  "Eh? More than one kind of what?" Bob tilted his skull over to one side, as though cocking an invisible hand to his ear bones.

  "Werewolf, werewolf."

  "There wolf," Bob replied solemnly, his voice seething with a hokey accent. "There castle."

  I blinked at him. "Uh. What the heck are you talking about?"

  "It's a joke, Harry. Stars almighty, you never get out, do you?"

  I eyed the grinning skull and growled in frustration. "Don't make me come up there."

  "Okay, okay. Sheesh. Aren't we grumpy tonight?" Bob's jaws stretched in a yawn again.

  "I'm working another murder case, Bob, and I don't have time to goof around."

  "Murder. Mortal business is so complicated. You never hear about murder charges in the Nevernever."

  "That's because everything there is immortal. Bob, just shut up and tell me what you know about werewolves. If there's a bunch of different flavors, tell me what they are." I got out a notebook and a fresh pencil, then a couple of clean beakers with alcohol-flame burners to heat whatever liquid I put in them.

  "All right," Bob said. "How much do you know?"

  "Exactly nothing about werewolves. My teacher never covered that with me."

  Bob barked out a harsh little laugh. "Old Justin had a lousy sense of just about everything. He got what was coming to him, Harry, and don't let anyone on the White Council tell you any different."

  I stopped for a moment. A sudden rush of mixed feelings, anger and fear and mostly regret, washed through me. I closed my eyes. I could still see him, my teacher, dying in flames born of my will and anger. "I don't want to talk about it."

  "Hell, the Council even suspended the sentence on you. You were vindicated. Say, I wonder what ever happened to Elaine. Now there was a sweet piece of—"

  "Werewolves, Bob," I said, in a very quiet, very angry voice. One hand started to hurt, and I saw that my fingers had clenched into a fist, the knuckles turning white. I turned my eyes to him, glaring.

  I heard the skull make a gulping sound. And then he said, "Right. Okay. Werewolves. And, uh, which potions did you want?"

  "I want a pick-me-up potion. A night's rest in a bottle. And I want something that will make me imperceptible to a werewolf." I reached for the notebook and my pencil.

  "First one's tough to do. There's nothing quite like a decent night's sleep. But we can make some super-coffee, no problem." He spouted out the formula to me, and I noted it down as he went, my handwriting too dark and angular. I was still angry from the mere mention of my old master's name. And the welter of emotions that rushed up with my memories of Elaine wouldn't subside for an hour.

  We all have our demons.

  "What about the second one?" I asked the skull.

  "Can't really be done," Bob said. "Wolves have just got way too much on the ball to hide from every one of their senses without doing some major work. I'm talking, like, a greater Ring of Invisibility, not just a Shadowcape or something."

  "Do I look like I'm made of money? I can't afford that. What about a partial-hiding potion, then?"

  "Oh, like a blending brew? Look like an unobtrusive part of the background, something like that? I would think that would be the most useful, really. Keep you from being noticed to begin with."

  "Sure," I said. "I'll take what I can get."

  "No problem," Bob assured me, and rattled off another formula, which I jotted down. I checked the ingredients list, and thought that I had them all in stock among the countless containers on my shelves.

  "Fine. I can get started on these. How much do you know about werewolves, Bob?"

  "Plenty. I was in France during the Inquisition." Bob's voice was dry (but that is to be expected, considering).

  I started on the first potion, the stimulant. Every potion has eight parts. One part is a base liquid to hold the others and provide a medium for mixing. Five parts are symbolically linked to each of the five senses. One is similarly linked to the mind, and another to the spirit. The basic ingredient to the stimulant potion was coffee, while the base for the scent-masking potion was water. I got them both to boiling. "Lot of werewolfery going on then?"

  "Are you kidding?" Bob said. "It was werewolf central. We had every kind of werewolf you could think of. H
exenwolves, werewolves, lycanthropes, and loup-garou to boot. Every kind of lupine theriomorph you could think of."

  "Therro-what?" I said.

  "Theriomorph," Bob said. "Anything that shape-shifts from a human being into an animal form. Werewolves are theriomorphs. So are werebears, weretigers, werebuffaloes …"

  "Buffaloes?" I asked.

  "Sure. Some Native American shamans could do a buffalo. But almost everyone does predators, and until pretty recently, wolves were the scariest predator anyone around Europe could think of."

  "Uh, okay," I said. "And there's a difference between types of werewolves?"

  "Right," Bob confirmed. "Mostly it depends on how you go from human form to wolf form, and how much of your humanity you retain. Don't burn the coffee."

  I turned down the flame beneath the beaker of coffee, annoyed. "I know, I know. Okay, then. How do you get to be a wolf?"

  "The classic werewolf," Bob said, "is simply a human being who uses magic to shift himself into a wolf."

  "Magic? Like a wizard?"

  "No," Bob said. "Well. Sort of. He's like a wizard who only knows how to cast the one spell, the one to turn him into a wolf, and knows how to get back out of it again. Most people who learn to be werewolves aren't very good at it for a while, because they keep all of their own humanity."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well," Bob said, "they can reshape themselves into the form of a wolf, but it's pretty much just topology. They rearrange their physical body, but their mind remains the same. They can think and reason, and their personality doesn't change—but they don't have a wolf's instincts or reflexes. They're used to being sight-oriented bipeds, not smell-oriented quadrupeds. They would have to learn everything from scratch."

  "Why would someone do something like that?" I said. "Just learn to turn into a wolf, I mean."

  "You've never been a peasant in medieval France, Harry," Bob said. "Life was hard for those people. Never enough food, shelter, medicine. If you could give yourself a fur coat and the ability to go out and hunt your own meat, you would have jumped at the chance, too."