The Vampire Files Anthology

by P. N. Elrod

  “Kill her. You have to kill her before she destroys us—I have seen it.” It was Molly, the girl from Jon’s message.

  “You couldn’t see your way out of a paper bag, Molly,” said Moira. “Not that you’re wrong, of course.”

  There were other people in the barn, Tom could smell them, but they stayed quiet.

  “You aren’t going to kill me,” said Kouros. “If you could have done that, you’d have done it before now. Which brings me to my point: Why are you here?”

  “To stop you from killing this man,” Moira told him.

  “I’ve killed men before—and you haven’t stopped me. What is so special about this one?”

  MOIRA FELT THE burden of all those deaths upon her shoulders. He was right. She could have killed him before—before he’d killed anyone else.

  “This one has a brother,” she said.

  She felt Tom’s presence in the barn, but her look-past-me spell must still have been working, because no one seemed to notice the werewolf. And any witch with a modicum of sensitivity to auras would have felt him. His brother was a faint trace to her left—something his constant stream of words made far more clear than her magic was able to.

  Her father she could follow only from his voice.

  There were other people in the structure—she hadn’t quite decided what the cavernous building was: probably a barn, given the dirt floor and faint odor of cow—but she couldn’t pinpoint them either. She knew where Molly was, though. And Molly was the important one, Kouros’s right hand.

  “Someone paid you to go up against me?” Her father’s voice was faintly incredulous. “Against us?”

  Then he did something, made some gesture. She wouldn’t have known except for Molly’s sigh of relief. So she didn’t feel too bad when she tied Molly’s essence, through the gum she still held, into her shield.

  When the coven’s magic hit the shield, it was Molly who took the damage. Who died. Molly, her little sister, whose presence she could no longer feel.

  Someone, a young man, screamed Molly’s coven name—Wintergreen. And there was a flurry of movement where Moira had last sensed her.

  Moira dropped the now-useless bit of gum on the ground.

  “Oh, you’ll pay for that,” breathed her father. “Pay in pain and power until there is nothing left of you.”

  Someone sent power her way, but it wasn’t a concerted spell from the coven, and it slid off her protections without harm. Unlike the fist that struck her in the face, driving her glasses into her nose and knocking her to the ground—her father’s fist. She’d recognize the weight of it anywhere.

  Unsure of where her enemies were, she stayed where she was, listening. But she didn’t hear Tom; he was just suddenly there. And the circle of growing terror that spread around him—of all the emotions possible, it was fear that she could sense most often—told her he was in his lupine form. It must have been impressive.

  “Your victim has a brother,” she told her father again, knowing he’d hear the smugness in her tone. “And you’ve made him very angry.”

  The beast beside her roared. Someone screamed. . . . Even witches are afraid of monsters.

  The coven broke. Children most of them, they broke and ran. Molly’s death followed by a beast out of their worst nightmares was more than they could face, partially trained, deliberately crippled fodder for her father that they were.

  Tom growled, the sound finding a silent echo in her own chest as if he were a bass drum. He moved, a swift, silent predator, and someone who hadn’t run died. Tom’s brother, she noticed, had fallen entirely silent.

  “A werewolf,” breathed Kouros. “Oh, now there is a worthy kill.” She felt his terror and knew he’d attack Tom before he took care of her.

  The werewolf came to her side, probably to protect her. She reached out with her left hand, intending to spread her own defenses to the wolf—though that would leave them too thin to be very effective—but she hadn’t counted on the odd effect he had on her magic. On her.

  Her father’s spell—a vile thing that would have induced terrible pain and permanently damaged Tom had it hit—connected just after she touched the wolf. And for a moment, maybe a whole breath, nothing happened.

  Then she felt every hair under her hand stand to attention, and Tom made an odd sound and power swept through her from him—all the magic Kouros had sent—and it filled her well to overflowing.

  And she could see. For the first time since she’d been thirteen, she could see.

  She stood up, shedding broken pieces of sunglasses to the ground. The wolf beside her was huge, chocolate-brown, and easily tall enough to leave her hand on his shoulder as she came to her feet. A silvery scar curled around his snarling muzzle. His eyes were yellow brown and cold. A sweeping glance showed her two dead bodies—one burnt, the other savaged—and a very dirty, hairy man tied to a post with his hands behind his back, who could only be Tom’s brother Jon.

  And her father, looking much younger than she remembered him. No wonder he went for teens to populate his coven—he was stealing their youth as well as their magic. A coven should be a meeting of equals, not a feeding trough for a single greedy witch.

  She looked at him and saw that he was afraid. He should be. He’d used all his magic to power his spell—he’d left himself defenseless. And now he was afraid of her.

  Just as she had dreamed. She pulled the stone out of her pocket—and it seemed to her that she had all the time in the world to use it to cut her right hand open. Then she pointed it, her bloody hand of power at him.

  “By the blood we share,” she whispered, and felt the magic gather.

  “You’ll die, too,” Kouros said frantically, as if she didn’t know.

  “Blood follows blood.” Before she spoke the last word, she lifted her other hand from Tom’s soft fur that none of this magic should fall to him. And as soon as she did so, she could no longer see. But she wouldn’t be blind for long.

  TOM STARTED MOVING before her fingers left him, knocking into her with his hip and spoiling her aim. Her magic flooded through him, hitting him instead of the one she’d aimed all that power at. The wolf let it sizzle through his bones and returned it to her, clean.

  Pleasant as that was, he didn’t let it distract him from his goal. He was moving so fast that the man was still looking at Moira when the wolf landed on him.

  Die, he thought as he buried his fangs in Kouros’s throat, drinking his blood and his death in one delicious mouthful of flesh. This one had moved against the wolf’s family, against the wolf’s witch. Satisfaction made the meat even sweeter.

  “Tom?” Moira sounded lost.

  “Tom’s fine,” answered his brother’s rusty voice. He’d talked himself hoarse. “You just sit there until he calms down a little. You all right, lady?”

  Tom lifted his head and looked at his witch. She was huddled on the ground, looking small and lost, her scarred face bared for all the world to see. She looked fragile, but Tom knew better, and Jon would learn.

  As the dead man under his claws had learned. Kouros died knowing she would have killed him.

  Tom had been willing to give her that kill—but not if it meant her death. So Tom had the double satisfaction of saving her and killing the man. He went back to his meal.

  “Tom, stop that,” Jon said. “Ick. I know you aren’t hungry. Stop it now.”

  “Is Kouros dead?” His witch sounded shaken up.

  “As dead as anyone I’ve seen,” said Jon. “Look, Tom. I appreciate the sentiment, I’ve wanted to do that any time this last day. But I’d like to get out of here before some of those kids decide to come back while I’m still tied up.” He paused. “Your lady needs to get out of here.”

  Tom hesitated, but Jon was right. He wasn’t hungry anymore, and it was time to take his family home.

  Patricia Briggs is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling Mercedes Thompson series. She lives with seven horses, a dog, three cats, snakes, birds,
kids, and a very awesome and tolerant husband in a home that resembles a zoo crossed with a library. The horses live outside.

  LAST CALL

  JIM BUTCHER

  ALL I WANTED was a quiet beer.

  That isn’t too much to ask, is it—one contemplative drink at the end of a hard day of professional wizarding? Maybe a steak sandwich to go with it? You wouldn’t think so. But somebody (or maybe Somebody) disagreed with me.

  McAnnally’s pub is a quiet little hole in the wall, like a hundred others in Chicago, in the basement of a large office building. You have to go down a few stairs to get to the door. When you come inside, you’re at eye level with the creaky old ceiling fans in the rest of the place, and you have to take a couple of more steps down from the entryway to get to the pub’s floor. It’s lit mostly by candles. The finish work is all hand-carved, richly polished wood, stained a deeper brown than most would use, and combined with the candles, it feels cozily cavelike.

  I opened the door to the place and got hit in the face with something I’d never smelled in Mac’s pub before—the odor of food being burned.

  It should say something about Mac’s cooking that my first instinct was to make sure the shield bracelet on my left arm was ready to go as I drew the blasting rod from inside my coat. I took careful steps forward into the pub, blasting rod held up and ready. The usual lighting was dimmed, and only a handful of candles still glimmered.

  The regular crowd at Mac’s, members of the supernatural community of Chicago, were strewn about like broken dolls. Half a dozen people lay on the floor, limbs sprawled oddly, as if they’d dropped unconscious in the middle of calisthenics. A pair of older guys who were always playing chess at a table in the corner both lay slumped across the table. Pieces were spread everywhere around them, some of them broken, and the old chess clock they used had been smashed to bits. Three young women who had watched too many episodes of Charmed, and who always showed up at Mac’s together, were unconscious in a pile in the corner, as if they’d been huddled there in terror before they collapsed—but they were splattered with droplets of what looked like blood.

  I could see several of the fallen breathing, at least. I waited for a long moment, but nothing jumped at me from the darkness, and I felt no sudden desire to start breaking things and then take a nap.

  “Mac?” I called quietly.

  Someone grunted.

  I hurried over to the bar and found Mac on the floor beside it. He’d been badly beaten. His lips were split and puffy. His nose had been broken. Both his hands were swollen up and purple—defensive wounds, probably. The baseball bat he kept behind the bar was lying next to him, smeared with blood. Probably his own.

  “Stars and stones,” I breathed. “Mac.”

  I knelt down next to him, examining him for injuries as best I could. I didn’t have any formal medical training, but several years’ service in the Wardens in a war with the vampires of the Red Court had shown me more than my fair share of injuries. I didn’t like the look of one of the bruises on his head, and he’d broken several fingers, but I didn’t think it was anything he wouldn’t recover from.

  “What happened?” I asked him.

  “Went nuts,” he slurred. One of his cut lips reopened, and fresh blood appeared. “Violent.”

  I winced. “No kidding.” I grabbed a clean cloth from the stack on the shelf behind the bar and ran cold water over it. I tried to clean some of the mess off his face. “They’re all down,” I told him as I did. “Alive. It’s your place. How do you want to play it?”

  Even through as much pain as he was in, Mac took a moment to consider before answering. “Murphy,” he said finally.

  I’d figured. Calling in the authorities would mean a lot of questions and attention, but it also meant that everyone would get medical treatment sooner. Mac tended to put the customer first. But if he’d wanted to keep it under the radar, I would have understood that, too.

  “I’ll make the call,” I told him.

  THE AUTHORITIES SWOOPED down on the place with vigor. It was early in the evening, and we were evidently the first customers for the night shift EMTs.

  “Jesus,” Sergeant Karrin Murphy said from the doorway, looking around the interior of Mac’s place. “What a mess.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said glumly. My stomach was rumbling, and I was thirsty besides, but it just didn’t seem right to help myself to any of Mac’s stuff while he was busy getting patched up by the ambulance guys.

  Murphy blew out a breath. “Well. Brawls in bars aren’t exactly uncommon.” She came down into the room, removed a flashlight from her jacket pocket, and shone it around. “But maybe you’ll tell me what really happened.”

  “Mac said that his customers went nuts. They started acting erratic and then became violent.”

  “What, all of them? At the same time?”

  “That was the impression he gave me. He wasn’t overly coherent.”

  Murphy frowned and slowly paced the room, sweeping the light back and forth methodically. “You get a look at the customers?”

  “There wasn’t anything actively affecting them when I got here,” I said. “I’m sure of that. They were all unconscious. Minor wounds, looked like they were mostly self-inflicted. I think those girls were the ones to beat Mac.”

  Murphy winced. “You think he wouldn’t defend himself against them?”

  “He could have pulled a gun. Instead, he had his bat out. He was probably trying to stop someone from doing something stupid, and it went bad.”

  “You know what I’m thinking?” Murphy asked. “When something odd happens to everyone in a pub?”

  She had stopped at the back corner. Among the remnants of broken chessmen and scattered chairs, the circle of illumination cast by her flashlight had come to rest on a pair of dark brown beer bottles.

  “Ugly thought,” I said. “Mac’s beer, in the service of darkness.”

  She gave me a level look. Well. As level a look as you can give when you’re a five-foot blonde with a perky nose, glaring at a gangly wizard most of seven feet tall. “I’m serious, Harry. Could it have been something in the beer? Drugs? A poison? Something from your end of things?”

  I leaned on the bar and chewed that thought over for a moment. Oh, sure, technically it could have been any of those. A number of drugs could cause psychotic behavior, though admittedly it might be hard to get that reaction in everyone in the bar at more or less the same time. Poisons were just drugs that happened to kill you, or the reverse. And if those people had been poisoned, they might still be in a lot of danger.

  And once you got the magical side of things, any one of a dozen methods could have been used to get to the people through the beer they’d imbibed—but all of them would require someone with access to the beer to pull it off, and Mac made his own brew.

  In fact, he bottled it himself.

  “It wasn’t necessarily the beer,” I said.

  “You think they all got the same steak sandwich? The same batch of curly fries?” She shook her head. “Come on, Dresden. The food here is good, but that isn’t what gets them in the door.”

  “Mac wouldn’t hurt anybody,” I said quietly.

  “Really?” Murph asked, her voice quiet and steady. “You’re sure about that? How well do you really know the man?”

  I glanced around the bar, slowly.

  “What’s his first name, Harry?”

  “Dammit, Murph,” I sighed. “You can’t go around being suspicious of everyone all the time.”

  “Sure I can.” She gave me a faint smile. “It’s my job, Harry. I have to look at things dispassionately. It’s nothing personal. You know that.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “I know that. But I also know what it’s like to be dispassionately suspected of something you didn’t do. It sucks.”

  She held up her hands. “Then let’s figure out what did happen. I’ll go talk to the principals, see if anyone remembers anything. You take a look at the beer.”

/>   “Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

  AFTER BOTTLING IT, Mac transports his beer in wooden boxes like old apple crates, only more heavy-duty. They aren’t magical or anything. They’re just sturdy as hell, and they stack up neatly. I came through the door of my apartment with a box of samples and braced myself against the impact of Mister, my tomcat, who generally declares a suicide charge on my shins the minute I come through the door. Mister is huge, and most of it is muscle. I rocked at the impact, and the bottles rattled, but I took it in stride. Mouse, my big shaggy dogosaurus, was lying full on his side by the fireplace, napping. He looked up and thumped his tail on the ground once, then went back to sleep.

  No work ethic around here at all. But then, he hadn’t been cheated out of his well-earned beer. I took the box straight down the stepladder to my lab, calling, “Hi, Molly,” as I went down.

  My apprentice, Molly, sat at her little desk, working on a pair of potions. She had maybe five square feet of space to work with in my cluttered lab, but she managed to keep the potions clean and neat, and still had room left over for her Latin textbook, her notebook, and a can of Pepsi, the heathen. Molly’s hair was kryptonite-green today, with silver tips, and she was wearing cutoff jeans and a tight blue T-shirt with a Superman logo on the front. She was a knockout.

  “Hiya, Harry,” she said absently.

  “Outfit’s a little cold for March, isn’t it?”

  “If it were, you’d be staring at my chest a lot harder,” she said, smirking a little. She glanced up, and it bloomed into a full smile. “Hey, beer!”

  “You’re young and innocent,” I said firmly, setting the box down on a shelf. “No beer for you.”

  “You’re living in denial,” she replied, and rose to pick up a bottle.

  Of course she did. I’d told her not to. I watched her carefully.

  The kid’s my apprentice, but she’s got a knack for the finer aspects of magic. She’d be in real trouble if she had to blast her way out of a situation, but when it comes to the cobweb-fine enchantments, she’s a couple of lengths ahead of me and pulling away fast—and I figured that this had to be subtle work.