Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, #6)

by Jim Butcher

Being a professional investigator, as well as a professional wizard, I’d seen slobbering beasties before. Over the course of many encounters and many years, I have successfully developed a standard operating procedure for dealing with big, nasty monsters. Run away. Me and Monty Python.

“Christ, Dresden! You almost got me killed!” “Don’t be a baby. You’re fine.” Thomas frowned at me. “You at least could have told me!” “I did tell you,” I said. “I told you at Mac’s that I’d give you a ride home, but that I had to run an errand first.” Thomas scowled. “An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo.”

“Jobs are a part of life. Maybe you’ve heard of the concept. It’s called work? See, what happens is that you suffer through doing annoying and humiliating things until you get paid not enough money.

“Some wizard you are.” “It’s a big universe,” I said. “No one can know it all.”

“What can I say? I put the ‘ick’ in ‘magic.”

“Thomas, you don’t really know me. Not at all.” “I think I do. I’ve seen you under pressure.”

It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done. It had the potential to lead to lethally unhealthy decisions.

Brother Wang’s English was worse than my Latin, and that’s saying something, but his body language was unmistakable.

Bram Stoker’s book told everyone how to kill them, and the Blacks had been all but exterminated in the early twentieth century.

Mister tilted his head at me and sniffed at the air. Then he made a low, warning sound of his imperial displeasure.

I had forbidden the cleaning service to move around my lab, and as a result it had been slowly losing the war against entropy for a couple of years.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” Bob asked. “Bed. Early day tomorrow. New case.” “And the temple dog is staying here why?” “Because I don’t want to leave him all by his lonesome,” I said. “If I take him with me I think Mister would eat him after I went to sleep.” “Dammit, Harry, I’m a voyeur, not a veterinarian.” I scowled. “I need shut-eye.” “And I get to babysit the dog?” “Yeah.” “My job sucks.” “Form a union,” I said heartlessly.

I had a nylon backpack full of various magical tools I might need to ward off malevolent energies: salt, a bunch of white candles, holy water, a ring of keys, a small silver bell, and chocolate. Yeah, chocolate. Chocolate fends off all kinds of nasty stuff. And if you get hungry while warding off evil, you have a snack. It’s multipurpose equipment.

“Who the hell are you?” he growled. “I the hell am Harry,” I said.

Vengeance of some kind could be a motive, but after a moment’s thought, I decided that greed opened up the field to more possibilities. Greed is a nice, sterile motivation. If the money’s right, you don’t need to know someone to take advantage of them. You don’t have to hate them, or love them, or be related to them. You don’t even have to know who they are. You just have to want money more than you want them to keep on breathing, and if history is any indicator, that isn’t a terribly uncommon frame of mind.

For most people it would be a desperate situation. But most people hadn’t been through them as many times as I had. My worry and tension slowly grew, and as they did I took a perverse comfort in the familiar emotions. It actually felt good to feel my survival instincts put me on guard against premature mortality. Hell’s bells. Is that insane or what?

“My mom called,” she said. “Bad news?” I asked. “Yeah.” She closed her eyes and bit off a third of the candy bar. “Sort of. Not really.” “Oh,” I said, as if her answer made some kind of sense.

She glanced back toward the SI offices. If looks could kill, hers would have blown that section of the building into Lake Michigan.

Murphy was worried about being close to her mom. Murphy should just go talk to her mom, right? Bite the bullet and clear the air. With anyone else she’d have handled the problem exactly that way. But I’ve noticed that people got the most irrational whenever family was around—while simultaneously losing their ability to distinguish reason from insanity. I call it familial dementia.

People change. The world changes. And sooner or later you lose people you care about. If you don’t mind some advice from someone who doesn’t know much about families, I can tell you this: Don’t take yours for granted. It might feel like all of them will always be there. But they won’t.”

“I choose to exercise my status as an apex predator. And I laugh in the face of cholesterol.”

“Being the center of the universe is a big job. Maybe it’s weighing on her nerves.”

My heart suddenly overflowed with excitement, my thoughts with hope, confidence, and eager anticipation, and if I had a personal soundtrack to my life it would have been playing Ode to Joy while a stadium of Harry fans did the wave.

Unfortunately, my back wasn’t exactly breaking under the weight of all my options.

Raith whipped his head around to stare daggers at me. His voice was cold enough to merit the use of a Kelvin scale.

“What I said was out of line.” He shook his head. “No. You were right.” “Right isn’t the same thing as cruel. I’m sorry.” Thomas shrugged and we said nothing more on the matter.

We can inspire lust, but it’s just a shadow. An illusion. Love is a dangerous force.” He shook his head. “Love killed the dinosaurs, man.” “I’m pretty sure a meteor killed the dinosaurs, Thomas.” He shrugged. “There’s a theory making the rounds now that when the meteor hit it only killed off the big stuff. That there were plenty of smaller reptiles running around, about the same size as all the mammals at the time. The reptiles should have regained their position eventually, but they didn’t, because the mammals could feel love. They could be utterly, even irrationally devoted to their mates and their offspring. It made them more likely to survive. The lizards couldn’t do that. The meteor hit gave the mammals their shot, but it was love that turned the tide.”

“You can have everything in the world, but if you don’t have love, none of it means crap,” he said promptly. “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love always forgives, trusts, supports, and endures. Love never fails. When every star in the heavens grows cold, and when silence lies once more on the face of the deep, three things will endure: faith, hope, and love.” “And the greatest of these is love,” I finished. “That’s from the Bible.” “First Corinthians, chapter thirteen,” Thomas confirmed. “I paraphrased. Father makes all of us memorize that passage. Like when parents put those green yucky-face stickers on the poisonous cleaning products under the kitchen sink.”

“You’re lying,” I growled. “What proof have you got?” “Would anything satisfy you?” he demanded. “Proof is something you use with rational people, and right now you aren’t.”

I rubbed at my eyes. I needed more sleep to do any thinking, so I went looking for the next best thing—coffee and a backup brain.

“Your Morse is rusty,” he said a few minutes later. “On my staff it sounded like you spelled it ‘blampires.” ’ “I did,” I said. “Black Court vampires. I just shortened it some.”

“Too many acronyms?” I asked. “Ayuh.” “Well, then,” I said. “I’m glad you took the time to RSVP me. I have a problem that needs to stay on the QT, but is rapidly going FUBAR. I’m sorry to call you LD through AT&T instead of using UPS, but I needed your help ASAP. I hope that’s OK.”

Murphy shook her head. “But it doesn’t mean it needs to be vigilante work. Harry, give me three hours to establish probable cause and I’ll have every cop and every SWAT team in two hundred miles ready to take on that nest.” “And you’ll tell them what, exactly?” I said. “ ‘ Basement full of vampires’ is not going to cut it, and you know it. And if they go in with blinders on, cops will get killed.” “And if it’s us?” Murphy asked. “What then? We kick down the door, shoot anything standing, and then make like we’re the Flying Van Helsings? A direct assault on a wary target is one of the best ways in the world to get killed.”

“I don’t know the right thing to do,” she said. “Neither do I,” I said. “But someone has to do something. And we’re the only ones around. Either we choose to take a stand now or we choose to stand around at all the funerals regretting it later.”

I whirled on Kincaid. “Stop it.” Kincaid met my eyes, calm and defiant. “Permission to engage in philosophical debate with the hypocrite, sir?”

I curled up for a minute while my pounding heart telegraphed consecutive tidal waves of agony through me.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The world might be vicious and treacherous and deadly, but it couldn’t kill laughter. Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style.

It wasn’t encouraging, but time was short, my options few, and standing around outdoors was likely to get everyone a bad case of deaditis.

What can I say, inspiring anger is my gift. I have a responsibility to use it wisely.

“Took you long enough,” I said to Murphy. “I was going to run out of actual sentences and just start screaming incoherently.” “That’s what happens when your vocabulary count is lower than your bowling average.” “Me not like woman with smart mouth,” I said. “Woman shut smart mouth and get me free or no wild monkey love for you.” She found the right key and got the shackles off me. My wrists and ankles ached. “You had me scared,” I said. “Until you called me Mister Dresden, I almost believed he’d gotten to you.”