by Jim Butcher
Molly stared at me for a moment, her eyes shining with brief, frustrated tears. Then she nodded once and said, “Isn’t there anything I can do?”
I peered at her, then down at her Birkenstocks. “Yeah. Give me your shoes.”
Molly hadn’t been my apprentice in the bizarre for a year and a half for nothing. She didn’t even blink, much less ask questions. She just took off her shoes and handed them to me.
I put a gentle hand on her shoulder, then touched Sarah’s face until she lifted her eyes to me. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” she whispered.
“Stay with Molly,” I told Sarah. “She’s going to take care of you. Do whatever she says. All right?” I frowned down at her expensive black heels. “Gucci?”
“Prada,” she said in a numb voice.
Being all manly, I know dick about shoes, but hopefully it wouldn’t blow my cover as Thomas’s mystery man. “Give them to me.”
“All right,” she said, and did, too shocked to argue.
Thomas had been right about the larpers. The corpse of Sarah’s innocence lay on the floor along with her last meal, and she was taking it pretty hard.
I fought down a surge of anger and rose without another word, padding out from the protection of Molly’s veil, shoes gripped in one hand, my gun in the other. The .44 might as well have been Linus’s security blanket. It wouldn’t do a thing to help me against a vampire of the Black Court—it just made me feel better.
I went as fast as I could without making an enormous racket and stalked up the nearest stairs—a deactivated escalator. Once I’d reached the second level, I took a right and hurried toward Shoegasm.
It was a fairly spacious shop that had originally occupied only a tiny spot, but after ironing out some early troubles, the prosperous little store had expanded into the space beside it. Now, behind a steel mesh security curtain, the store was arranged in an oh-so-trendy fashion and sported several huge signs that went on with a thematically appropriate orgasmic enthusiasm about the store’s quality money-back guarantee.
“I am totally underappreciated,” I muttered. Then I raised my voice a little, forcing a very slight effort of will, of magic, into the words as I spoke. “Keef! Hey, Keef! It’s Harry Dresden!”
I waited for a long moment, peering through the grating, but I couldn’t see anything in the dim shadows of the store. I took a chance, slipping the silver pentacle amulet from its chain around my neck, and with a murmur willed a whisper of magic through the piece of jewelry. A soft blue radiance began to emanate from the silver, though I tried to keep the light it let out to a minimum. If Drulinda or her vampire buddies were looking even vaguely in my direction, I was going to stand out like a freaking moron holding the only light in an entire darkened shopping mall.
“Keef!” I called again.
The cobb appeared from an expensive handbag hung over the arm of a dressing dummy wearing a pair of six-hundred-dollar Italian boots. He was a tiny thing, maybe ten inches tall, with a big puff of fine white hair like Albert Einstein. He was dressed in something vaguely approximating nineteenth-century urban-European wear—dark trousers, boots, a white shirt, and suspenders. He also wore a leather work belt thick with tiny tools, and he had a pair of odd-looking goggles pushed up over his forehead.
Keef hopped down from the dressing dummy and hurried across the floor to the security grate. He put on a pair of gloves and pulled out a couple of straps from his work belt. Then, nearly as nimble as a squirrel and very careful not to touch the metal with his bare skin, he climbed up the metal grate using a pair of carabiners. Keef was a faerie, one of the Little Folk who dwelled within the shadows and hidden places of our own world, and the touch of steel was painful to him.
“Wizard Dresden,” he greeted me in a Germanic accent as he came level with my head. The cobb’s voice was pitched low, even for someone as tiny as he. “The market this night danger roams. Here you should not be.”
“Don’t I know it,” I replied. “But there are people in danger.”
“Ah,” Keef said. “The mortals you insist to defend. Unwise that battle is.”
“I need your help,” I said.
Keef eyed me and gave me a firm shake of his head. “The walking dead very dangerous are. My people’s blood it could cost. That I will risk not.”
“You owe me, Keef,” I growled.
“Our living. Not our lives.”
“Have it your way,” I said. Then I lifted up one of Sarah’s shoes and, without looking away from the little cobb, snapped the heel off.
“Ach!” Keef cried in horror, his little feet slipping off the metal grate. “Nein!”
There was a chorus of similar gasps and cries from inside Shoegasm.
I held up the other shoe and did it again.
Keef wailed in protest. All of a sudden, thirty of the little cobbs, male and female, pressed up to the security grate. All of them had the same frizzy white hair, all of them dressed like something from Oktoberfest, and all of them were horrified.
“Nein!” Keef wailed again. “Those are Italian leather! Handmade! What are you doing?”
I took a step to my left and held the broken shoes over a trash can.
The cobbler elves gasped, all together, and froze in place.
“Do not do this,” Keef begged me. “Lost all is not. Repaired they can be. Good as new we can fix them. Good as new! Do not throw them away.”
I didn’t waver. “I know things have been hard for your people since cobblers have gone out of business,” I said. “I got you permission for your clan to work here, fixing shoes, in exchange for taking what you need from the vending machine. True?”
“True,” Keef said, his eyes on the broken shoes in my hand. “Wizard, over the trash you need not hold them. If dropped they are, trash they become, and touch them we may not. Lost to all will they be. Anything we both will regret let us not do.”
Anxious murmurs of agreement rose from the other cobbs.
Enough of the stick—it was time to show them the carrot. I held up Molly’s battered old Birkenstocks. The sight made several of the more matronly cobbs cluck their tongues in disapproval.
“I helped set you up with a good deal here at Shoegasm,” I said. “But I can see you’re getting a little crowded. I can get you another good setup—a family, seven kids, mom and dad, all of them active.”
The cobbs murmured in sudden excitement.
Keef coughed delicately and said, staring anxiously at the broken heels in my hand, “And the shoes?”
“I’ll turn them over to you,” I said, “if you help me.”
Keef narrowed his eyes. “Slaves to you we are,” he snapped. “Threatened and bribed.”
“You know the cause I fight for,” I said. “I protect mortals. I’ve never tried to hide that, and I’ve never lied to you. I need your help, Keef. I’ll do what it takes to get it—but you know my reputation by now. I deal fairly with the Little Folk, and I always show gratitude for their help.”
The leader of the cobbs regarded me steadily for a moment. Nobody likes being strong-armed, not even the Little Folk, who are used to getting walked on, but I didn’t have time for diplomacy.
Keef’s gaze kept getting distracted by the shoes, dangling over the trash can, and he made no answer. The other cobbs all waited, clearly taking their cue from Keef.
“Show of good faith, Keef,” I said quietly. I took the broken shoes and set them gently on the ground in front of the shop. “I’ll trust you and your people to repair them and return them. And I’ll pay in pizza.”
The cobbs gasped, staring at me as if I’d just offered them a map to El Dorado. I heard one of the younger cobbs exclaim, “True, it is!”
“Fleeting, pizza is,” Keef said sternly. “Eternal are shoes and leather goods.”
“Shoes and leather goods,” the rest of the cobbs intoned, their tiny voices solemn.
“Few mortals to the Little Folk show respect, these days,” Keef said quietly. “Or t
rust. True it is that beneath this roof we are crowded. And unto the wizard, debt is owed.” He gave the shoes a professional glance and nodded once. “Under your terms, and within our means, our aid is given. Your need unto us speak.”
“Scouts,” I said at once. “I know there are Black Court vampires in the mall. I need to know exactly how many and exactly where they are.”
“Done it will be,” Keef barked. “Cobbs!”
There was a little gust of wind, and I was suddenly alone. Oh, and both Sarah’s expensive heels and Molly’s clunky sandals were gone, the latter right out of my hands and so smoothly that I hadn’t even noticed them being taken. I checked, just to be careful, but my own shoes remained safely on my feet, which was a relief. You can’t ever be certain with cobbs. The little faeries, at times, could get awfully fixated upon whatever their particular area of concern might be, and messing around with it was more dangerous than most realized. Despite the metal screen between the cobbs and me, I’d been playing with fire when I held those Pradas over the trash can.
Another thing that most people don’t realize is just how much the Little Folk can learn, and how fast they can do it—especially when things are happening on their own turf. It took Keef and his people about thirty seconds to go and return.
“Four, there are,” Keef reported. “Three lesser, who of late this place did guard. One greater, who gave them not-life.”
“Four,” I breathed. “Where?”
“One outside near the group of cars waits and watches,” Keef said. “One outside the bistro where the mortals hide stands watch. One beside his mistress stands within.”
I got a sick little feeling in my stomach. “Has anyone been hurt?”
Keef shook his head. “Taunt them, she does. Frighten them.” He shrugged. “It is not as their kind often is.”
“No. She’s there for vengeance, not food.” I frowned. “I need you to get me something. Can you?”
I told him what I needed, and Keef gave me a mildly offended look. “Of course.”
“Good. Now, the one outside,” I said. “Can you show me a way I could get close to him without being seen?”
Keef’s eyes glittered with a sudden ferocity that was wholly at odds with his size and appearance. “This way, Wizard.”
I went at what was practically a run, but the tiny cobb had no trouble staying ahead of me. He led me through a service access door that required a key to open—until it suddenly swung open from the other side, a dozen young male cobbs dangling from the security bar and cheering. My amulet cast the only light as Keef led me down a flight of stairs and through a long, low tunnel.
“Access to the drains and watering system, this passage is,” Keef called to me. We stopped at a ladder leading up. A small paper sack sat on the floor by the ladder. “Your weapons,” he said, nodding at the bag. He pointed at the ladder. “Behind the vampire, this opens.”
I opened the bag and found two plastic cylinders. I didn’t want the crinkling paper, so I put one of them in my jacket pocket, kept the other in hand, and crept up the ladder. At the top was a hatch made of some kind of heavy synthetic, rather than wood or steel, and it opened without a sound. I poked my head up and looked cautiously around the parking lot.
The lights were out, but there was enough snow on the ground to bounce around plenty of light, giving the outdoors an oddly close, quiet quality, almost as if someone had put a roof overhead, just barely out of sight. Over by the last group of cars in the mall parking lot, next to the Blue Beetle in fact, stood the vampire.
He was little more than a black form, and though human in shape, he was inhumanly still, every bit as motionless as the other inanimate objects in the parking lot. Snow had begun to gather on his head and shoulders, just as it had on the roofs and hoods of the parked cars. He stood facing the darkened mall, where snow blew into the hole left by the thrown car. He was watching, I supposed, for anyone who might come running out, screaming.
A newborn vampire might not be anywhere near as dangerous as an older one, but that was like saying a Mack truck was nowhere near as dangerous as a main battle tank. If you happened to be the guy standing in the road in front of one, it wouldn’t much matter to you which of them crushed you to pulp. If I’d had my staff and rod with me, I might have chanced a stand-up fight. But I didn’t have my gear, and even if I had, my usual magic would have made plenty of noise and warned the vampire’s companions.
Vampires are tough. They take a lot of killing. I had to take this one out suddenly and with tremendous violence without making any noise. If I had to face it openly, I’d have no chance.
Which is why I had used the cobbs’ intelligence to get sneaky.
I drew in my will, the magic I had been born with and that I had spent a lifetime exercising, practicing, and focusing. As the power came into me, it made the skin of my arms ripple with goose bumps, and I could feel a strange pressure at the back of my head and pressing against the inside of my forehead. Once I had the power ready, I started shaping it with my thoughts, focusing my will and intent on the desired outcome.
The spell I worked up wasn’t one of my better evocations. It took me more than twenty seconds to get it together. For fast and dirty combat magic, that’s the next-best thing to forever.
For treacherous, backstabbing, sucker-punch magic, though, it’s just fine.
At the very last second, the vampire seemed to sense something. It turned its head toward me.
I clenched my fist as I released my will and snarled, “Gravitus!”
The magic lashed out into the ground beneath the vampire’s feet, and the steady, slow, immovable power of the earth suddenly stirred, concentrating, reaching up for the vampire standing upon it. In technical terms, I didn’t actually increase the gravity of the earth beneath it. I only concentrated it a little. In a circle fifty yards across, for just a fraction of a second, gravity vanished. The cars all surged up against their shock absorbers and settled again. The thin coat of snow leapt several inches off the parking lot and fell back.
In that same fraction of a second, all of that gravity from all of that area concentrated itself into a circle, maybe eighteen inches across, directly at the vampire’s feet.
There was no explosion, no flash of light—and no scream. The vampire just went down, slammed to the earth as suddenly and violently as if I’d dropped an anvil on it. There was a rippling, crackling sound as hundreds of bones shattered all together, and a splatter of sludgy liquid that splashed all over the cars around the vampire—mostly upon the Beetle, really.
The effort of gathering and releasing so much energy left me gasping. I was out of shape when it came to earth magic. It had never been my strongest suit—too slow, most of the time, to seem like it would have been worth the bother. As I hauled myself out of the ground, though, I had to admit that when there was enough time to actually use it, it sure as hell was impressive.
I padded to the car, watching the mall entrance, but there was no outcry and no sudden appearance of Drulinda or the other vampires of her scourge.
The vampire was still alive.
Un-alive. Whatever. The thing was still trying to move.
It was mostly just a mass of pulped, squishy meat. In the cold, at least, it hadn’t begun to rot, so that cut down on the smell. One eye rolled around in its mashed skull. Muscles twitched, but without a solid framework of bone to work with, they didn’t accomplish much beyond an odd, pulsing motion. It could probably put itself back together, given blood and time, but I didn’t feel like letting it have either. I held the plastic cylinder over it.
“Nothing personal,” I told the vampire. Then I dumped powdered garlic from the pizzeria in the mall’s food court all over it.
I can’t say the vampire screamed, really. It died the way a salted slug does, in silent, pulsing agony. I had to fight to keep my stomach from emptying itself, but only for a second. Absolutely disgusting demises are par for the course when fighting vampires. A few wisps of smoke r
ose up, and after a few seconds, the mass of undead flesh became simple dead flesh again.
One down.
Three to go.
I stalked toward the mall, moving with all the silence I could manage. After years working as a private investigator, and more years fighting a magical war against the vampires in the shadows, I knew how to be quiet. I slipped up to within thirty feet of the entrance and spotted the second vampire before he noticed me, right where Keef’s people said he was.
He stood facing the door of the bistro, apparently intent on what was happening within. I could hear voices inside, though I could make out no details over the continued, repeated playing of “Only You,” beyond that one of the voices was Drulinda’s leathery rasp. There were no sounds of fighting, which wasn’t good. Thomas certainly wouldn’t have allowed them to hurt anyone without putting up a struggle, and given the mutual capabilities of everyone involved, it would have been noticeable.
A second’s thought told me that it might also be a good sign. If they’d killed him, they would have made a big mess doing it. Assuming he hadn’t gone down without getting to put up much of a fight—and I refused to assume anything else. I knew my brother too well—something else had to be happening.
My brother could go toe-to-toe with a vampire of the Black Court, if he had to, but the last time he’d done it, the effort had nearly killed both him and the woman he’d had to feed from in order to recover. There were two of them inside, and though Thomas was as combat capable as any of the White Court’s best, he wasn’t going to start a slugfest if he thought he could get a better fight by biding his time, doing what the White Court did—looking human and using guile. My instincts told me that Thomas was stalling, choosing his moment. Hell, he was probably waiting for me to show up and help.
I looked down and found his birthday present, untouched by the flying debris, lying in its bright red and pink paper where Molly had dropped it on the sidewalk outside the doors.
I found myself smiling.
Twenty seconds or so later, I tossed the present underhand. It tumbled through the air and landed on the floor directly outside the bistro’s entrance. The head of the vampire on guard jerked around, focusing on the present. It tilted its head to one side. Then it whipped around toward me, baring its teeth in a snarl.
