Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7)

by Jim Butcher

I mean, we’re all going to die. We know that on an intellectual level. We figure it out sometime when we’re still fairly young, and it scares us so badly that we convince ourselves we’re immortal for more than a decade afterward.

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.

My righteous fury kept on fading, and I missed it. Once it was gone, there was going to be only sick worry and fear left in its place.

Mouse liked going places in the car. That the place had happened to be a clandestine meeting in a freaking graveyard didn’t seem to spoil anything for him. It was all about the journey, not the destination. A very Zen soul, was Mouse.

‘I know how you feel,’ I said. ‘You run into something you totally don’t get, and it’s scary as hell. But once you learn something about it, it gets easier to handle. Knowledge counters fear. It always has.’

She paused as she got closer, and peered up at me. ‘You’re him,’ she said. ‘You’re Harry Dresden.’ ‘That’s what the IRS keeps telling me,’ I said.

Like I said, magic comes from life, and especially from emotions. They’re a source of the same intangible energy that everyone can feel when an autumn moon rises and fills you with a sudden sense of bone-deep excitement, or when the first warm breeze of spring rushes past your face, full of the scents of life, and drowns you in a sudden flood of unreasoning joy. The passion of mighty music that brings tears to your eyes, and the raw, bubbling, infectious laughter of small children at play, the bellowing power of a stadium full of football fans shouting ‘Hey!’ in time to that damned song – they’re all charged with magic.

He pulled a couple of packs of powdered creamer from a knapsack, and passed them over to me along with a couple of packs of sugar. We prepared the coffee in silence and sipped at it for a few moments. It filled me with an earthy, satisfying warmth that made the terrible chill along my spine more bearable.

‘I don’t understand it,’ I said. ‘Why am I so afraid?’ ‘Because you’ve got more to lose than you ever have before,’ he said. ‘Your brother. Your friends. You’ve opened yourself up to them. Loved them. You can’t bear the thought of someone taking them away from you.’

‘It’s getting to be too much,’ I said. My voice shook. ‘I just keep getting more wounded and tired. They just keep coming at me. I’m not some kind of superhero. I’m just me. And I didn’t want any of this. I don’t want to die.’

‘That fear is natural. But it is also a weakness. A path of attack for what would prey upon your mind. You must learn to control it.’ ‘How?’ I whispered. ‘No one can tell you that,’ he said. ‘Not me. Not an angel. And not a fallen angel. You are the product of your own choices, Harry, and nothing can change that. Don’t let anyone or anything tell you otherwise.’

‘But . . . my choices haven’t always been very good,’ I said. ‘Whose have?’ he asked.

‘My boy. There’s so much still ahead of you.’ ‘So much?’ I whispered. ‘Pain. Joy. Love. Death. Heartache. Terrible waters. Despair. Hope.

This stillness was a horrible, hungry emptiness, something that took its power from being not. 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. It was power wholly different from the burning fires of life that formed the magic I knew – and it was strong.

She looked over her shoulder at Marcone and frowned. ‘This is a mistake. It was his fate to die in that alley.’ ‘What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?’ Marcone asked. ‘There will be consequences,’ she insisted. Marcone shrugged. ‘When aren’t there?’

‘You might be right,’ I said. ‘But if we tell him to rabbit, he’s never going to be able to get over the fear. We’ll be making it worse for him. He has to face it down.’ ‘He doesn’t want to.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘but he needs to.’

‘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.’

I watched Butters quietly for a moment and said, ‘It gets easier.’ ‘What does?’ ‘Living with the fear.’ ‘It goes away?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Never. Gets worse, in some ways. But once you face it down, you learn to accommodate it. Even work with it, sometimes.’

Fear is a part of life. It’s a warning mechanism. That’s all. It tells you when there’s danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.’

She regarded me steadily and said, ‘You aren’t nearly as funny as you think you are.’ ‘I had to come up with some kind of response to your offer to corrupt and enslave me. Bad jokes seemed perfectly appropriate, because I can only assume that you’ve got to be kidding.’

The Wardens had been one of my biggest fears practically since I had learned about their existence. There was something deeply satisfying about seeing the object of that fear take a hostile interest in Grevane and company. Like when Darth Vader turns against the emperor and throws him down the shaft. There’s nothing quite so cool as seeing someone who scares the hell out of you go at an enemy.

‘You’re either incredibly stupid or one of the most courageous men I’ve ever seen.’ ‘Go with stupid,’ I said lightly. ‘In my experience, you can’t go wrong assuming stupid.’

‘Are you afraid, boy?’ Cassius whispered. ‘You’re about the fifth-scariest person I’ve met today,’ I said. His eyes became very cold. ‘Don’t knock it,’ I said. ‘That’s really better than it sounds.’

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

‘But I want to go with you. I want to help. I’m not afraid to’ – he swallowed, face pale – ‘die fighting beside you.’ ‘Look at it this way,’ I said. ‘If we blow it, you get to die anyhow.’ Butters stared at me for a second, and then said, ‘Gee. Now I feel better.’ ‘I believe that there’s a cloud for every silver lining,’ I said. ‘Come on, Ramirez.’

‘When you do something stupid and die, it’s pathetic,’ I said. ‘When you do something stupid and survive it, then you get to call it impressive or heroic.’

He walked around the grave and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Son. Everyone dies alone. That’s what it is. It’s a door. It’s one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone.’ His fingers squeezed me tight. ‘But it doesn’t mean you’ve got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren’t alone on the other side.’

‘Harry, life isn’t simple. There is such a thing as black and white. Right and wrong. But when you’re in the thick of things, sometimes it’s hard for us to tell. You didn’t do what you did for your own benefit. You did it so that you could protect others. That doesn’t make it right – but it doesn’t make you a monster, either. You still have free will. You still get to choose what you will do and what you will be and what you will become.’ He clapped my shoulder and turned to walk away. ‘As long as you believe you are responsible for your choices, you still are. You’ve got a good heart, son. Listen to it.’