Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7)

by Jim Butcher

According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain’s brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.

Death isn’t something anyone likes to think about, but the fact is that you can’t get out of it. No matter what you do, how much you exercise, how religiously you diet, or meditate, or pray, or how much money you donate to your church, there is a single hard, cold fact that faces everyone on earth: One day it’s going to be over. One day the sun will rise, the world will turn, people will go about their daily routines – only you won’t be in it. You’ll be still. And cold.

‘Harry?’ Bob asked. ‘Are your feet wet? And can you see the pyramids?’ I blinked. ‘What?’ ‘Earth to Dresden,’ Bob said. ‘You are standing knee-deep in de Nile.’

You are the product of your own choices, Harry, and nothing can change that. Don’t let anyone or anything tell you otherwise.’

‘It gets sort of Zen after a while,’ Butters said brightly. ‘Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is a jar.’

It was made of the emptiness at the loss of a loved one, of the silence between the beats of a heart, and of the inevitability of the empty void that waited patiently for the stars to grow cold and burn out.

‘Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I’m too stubborn to die.’ I hauled on the shirt even harder. ‘And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.’

‘Maybe it’s the cloak,’ Bob suggested brightly. ‘Harry, do you feel any more judgmental and self-righteous than you did this morning?’

I didn’t know this before, but as it turns out, Tyrannosaurs can really haul ass.

Here’s something else I bet you didn’t know about Tyrannosaurs: they don’t corner well.

‘I believe that there’s a cloud for every silver lining,’

Cowl’s apprentice was tough and competent, but no amount of training or forethought can prepare you for the sight of an angry dinosaur coming to eat your ass.