Chapter Thirty

Murphy came out of the building about ten seconds after I did. "Thomas answered his phone, said he was on the way. He sounded kind of out of it, though. I called both rooms, but the call went straight to the hotel's voice mail," she reported, slipping her cell phone away as she approached me.

"Does it do that by itself?"

"No. You have to call the desk and ask for it."

"Dammit," I said, and tossed her my keys. "The Skavis thought of that already. Drive."

Murphy blinked at me, but turned to the Beetle at once. "Why?"

"I'm going to try to reach Elaine my way," I said. I hurried around my car to the passenger seat and jerked open the door. "Get us there as fast as you can."

"Magic on the road? Won't that kill the car?"

"This car? Probably not," I said. "I hope not." I threw my staff in the backseat.

"Ow!" shrieked a voice.

Murphy's gun came out every bit as fast as I raised my blasting rod, its tip glowing with a scarlet incandescence.

"Don't shoot, don't shoot!" squeaked the voice, considerably more panicked. There was a flickering, and then Molly appeared in my backseat, legs curled up against her chest, her eyes wide, her face very pale.

"Molly!" I shouted. "Dammit, what do you think you're doing?"

"I came to help. I was good enough to track down your car, wasn't I?"

"I told you to stay home!"

"Because of the stupid bracelet?" she demanded. "That has got to be the lamest scam ever. Yoda never gave anybody a bracelet that - "

I whirled in pure frustration and snarled, "Fuego!"

My raw anxiety and rage lashed from the tip of my blasting rod in a lance of blinding scarlet fire. It blasted into a metal trash can in front of Marcone's building and... well, it would be bragging to say that it vaporized the trash can. Even I would have trouble with that. It did, however, slag the thing into a shower of molten metal as it gouged a two-foot-deep, coffin-length furrow in the concrete of the sidewalk behind it. Chunks of heated concrete and globs of molten metal hit the building's exterior, cracking several thick panes of glass, pocking stone walls, and leaving several wooden planters on fire. The concussion rattled every window within a hundred yards, and shattered the casing of the nearest streetlight, so that it cast out fractured illumination. Half a dozen car alarms went off.

I turned back to Molly and found her staring at me with her mouth open until my shadow, cast by the rising fires and crippled streetlight, fell across her. My voice came out in a growl. "I. Am not. Yoda."

I stripped the glove off my left hand and held it up, my fingers spread. It didn't look as horrific as it used to, but it was plenty ugly enough to make an impression on a nineteen-year-old girl. "This isn't a goddamn movie, Molly. Screw up here and you don't vanish and leave an empty cloak. You don't get frozen in carbonite. And you should damned well know that by now."

She looked shocked. I'll curse from time to time, but I don't generally indulge in blasphemy - at least, not around Michael or his family. I don't think God is terribly threatened by my occasional slip of the tongue, but I owe enough to Michael to respect his wishes regarding that particular shade of profanity. Mostly.

Hell, the whole practice of invective was developed to add extra emphasis when the mere meaning of words alone just wasn't enough. And I was feeling plenty emphatic.

Snarling, I cupped my left hand, focused my ongoing anger, and a sudden sphere of light and heat blossomed to life. It wasn't big - about the diameter of a dime. But it was as bright as a tiny sun.

"Harry," Murphy said. Her voice was a little shaky. "We don't have time for this."

"You think you're ready?" I told Molly. "Show me."

I blew on the sphere and it wafted out of my hand and glided smoothly into the open door of the Beetle and toward Molly's face.

"Wh-what?" she said.

"Stop it," I said, my voice cold. "If you can."

She swallowed and raised a hand. I saw her try to control her breathing and focus her will, her lips blurring over the steps I'd taught her.

The sphere drifted closer.

"Better hurry," I added. I did nothing to hide the anger or the taint of derision in my voice.

Beads of sweat broke out on her skin. The sphere slowed, but it had not stopped.

"It's about twelve hundred degrees," I added. "It'll melt sand into glass. It doesn't do much for skin, either."

Molly lifted her left hand and stammered out a word, but her will fluttered and failed, amounting to nothing more than a handful of sparks.

"Bad guys don't give you this much time," I spat.

Molly hissed - give the kid credit, she didn't let herself scream - and pressed herself as far as she could from the fire. She threw up an arm to shield her eyes.

For a second, I felt a mad impulse to let the fire continue for just a second more. Nothing teaches like a burned hand, whispered a darker part of my self. I should know.

But I closed my fingers, willed the ending of the spell, and the sphere vanished.

Murphy, standing across the car, just stared at me.

Molly lowered her hand, her arm moving in frightened little jerks. She sat there shivering and staring. Her tongue piercing rattled against her teeth.

I looked at both of them and then shook my head. I got control of my rampaging temper. Then I leaned down and stuck my head in the car, looking Molly in the eyes.

"We play for keeps, kid," I said quietly. "I've told you before: Magic isn't a solution to every problem. You still aren't listening."

Molly's eyes, frightened and angry, filled with tears. She turned her head away from me and said nothing. She tried not to make any noise, but it's tough to keep a good poker face when a snarling madman nearly burns it off. There wasn't any time to waste - but I gave the kid a few seconds of space while I tried to let my head cool off.

The door to Marcone's building opened. Hendricks came out.

Marcone followed him a moment later. He surveyed the damage. Then he glanced at me. Marcone shook his head, took a cell phone from his suit pocket, and went back inside, while Hendricks kept me pinned down with his beady-eyed scowl.

What I'd seen soulgazing Helen Beckitt was still glaringly fresh in my mind - just as it always would be. Marcone had looked a lot younger when he wore his hair longer, less neat, and dressed more casually. Or maybe he'd just looked younger before he'd seen Helen's daughter die.

The thought went utterly against the pressure of the rage inside me, and I grabbed hold of myself while I had the chance. I took a deep breath. I wouldn't do anyone any good if I charged in full of outrage and absent of brains. I took another deep breath and turned to find Murphy on the move.

She walked around the car and faced me squarely.

"All done?" Murphy asked me, her voice pitched low. "You want to smoke a turkey or set fire to a playground or anything? You could terrorize a troop of Cub Scouts as an encore."

"And after that, I could tell you all about how to do your job, maybe," I said, "right after we bury the people who get killed because we're standing here instead of moving."

She narrowed her eyes. Neither one of us met each other's gaze or moved an inch. It wasn't a long standoff, but it was plenty hard.

"Not now," she said. "But later. We'll talk. This isn't finished."

I nodded. "Later."

We got in the Beetle and Murphy started it up and got moving. "Ask you questions as we go?"

I calculated distances in my head. The communion spell with Elaine had been created to reach over a couple of yards at the most. It had mostly been used at, ahem, considerably shorter range than that. I could extend the range, I thought, to most of a mile - maybe. It wasn't as simple as just pouring more power into the spell, but it was fairly simple. That gave me a couple of minutes to steady my breathing while Murphy drove. I could talk while that happened. It would, in fact, help me keep my mind off my fear for Elaine. Ah, reason, banisher of fear - or at least provider of a place to stick my head in the sand.

"Go ahead," I told her. I paid no attention to Molly, giving the kid time to think over the lesson and to get herself together. She didn't like anyone to see her when she was upset.

"Why do you think your ex is in danger?" Murphy asked. "Shouldn't this Skavis just run off if it knows you're onto it?"

"If it was operating alone, sure," I said. "That would be the smart thing. But it isn't running off. It's making a fight of it."

"So... what? It has help?"

"It has rivals," I said.

"Yeah. Grey Cloak and Madrigal Raith." Murphy shook her head. "But what does that mean?"

"Think in terms of predators," I said. "One predator has just gotten its teeth into something good to eat."

"Scavengers?" Murphy said. "They're trying to take the prize from him?"

"Yeah," I said. "I think that's what they're doing."

"You mean Elaine?" Murphy said.

I shook my head. "No, no. More abstract. The Skavis is methodical. It's killing women of magical talent. It doesn't have to do that to live - it can eat any human being."

"Then why those targets?" Murphy asked.

"Exactly," I said. "Why them? This isn't about food, Murph. I think the Skavis is making a play for power."

"Power?" Molly blurted from the backseat.

I turned and gave her a glare that quelled her interest. She sank back into the seat. "Within the White Court," I said. "This entire mess, start to finish, is about a power struggle within the White Court."

Murph was silent for a second, absorbing that. "Then... then this is a lot bigger than a few killings in a few towns."

"If I'm right," I said, nodding. "Yeah."

"Go on."

"Okay. And remember as I go that White Court vamps don't like their fights out in the open. They arrange things. They use cat's-paws. They pull strings. Confrontation is for losers."

"Got it."

I nodded. "The White King is supporting peace talks between the Council and the Red Courts. I think the Skavis is trying to prove a point - that they don't need peace talks. That they have us in a choke hold and all they have to do is hang on."

Murphy frowned at me, and then her eyes widened. "You told me once that magic is inherited. Mostly along family lines."

"Salic law," I said. "Mostly through female lines. I got it from my mom."

Murphy nodded, her eyes going back to the road. "And they can start... what? Thinning the herd, I suppose, from their point of view. Killing those that have the potential to produce more wizards."

"Yeah," I said. "One Skavis goes around to half a dozen cities in the most dangerous - to them - nation on the planet, doing it at will," I said. "He proves how easy it is. He identifies and hunts down the best targets. He plants all kinds of distrust for the Council as he does it, making the potential prey distrust the only people who could help them."

"But what does he hope to accomplish?" Murphy said. "This is just one guy."

"Exactly what he wants them to say," I said. "Look what just one vampire accomplished working alone. Look how easy it was. Raith is weak. Time to expand the operation now, while the Council is hurt, and screw talking peace with them. Change the guard. Let House Skavis take leadership."

"And Grey Cloak and Madrigal, seeing that he's onto something good, try to swoop in at the last minute, shoulder the Skavis aside, and take credit for the plan in front of the whole Court," Murphy finished.

"Yeah. They sing the exact same tune, only they substitute Malvora for Skavis." I shook my head. "The hell of it is, if Madrigal hadn't had a personal beef with me I might not have gotten involved. I made him look really bad when he tried to auction me on eBay and instead I fed his djinn to the Scarecrow and made him run off like a girl."

"Like a what?" Murphy bridled.

"Now is not the time to go all Susie Q. Anthony on me," I said. "Madrigal's wounded pride makes him leave clues to try to sucker me into the show. He figures Grey Cloak or our Skavis killer will help him handle me. Except that they ran into another problem."

"Thomas," Murphy said, her voice certain.

"Thomas," I said. "Snatching their targets out from under them."

"How's he finding them?"

"Same way they are," I said. "He's a vampire. He knows what resources they have and how they think. So much so, in fact, that he's ruining the finale of the whole program for everyone involved."

Murphy nodded, getting it. "So Madrigal gets a gang of ghouls and tries to take out his own cousin. And finds you and Elaine there too."

"Right," I said. "He's already being a loser, but it's still a sucker punch, and Madrigal figures, What the hell. If he gets away with it, he pulls off the plan and gets his mojo back from me."

"I still don't get why Thomas didn't say anything," Murphy said. "To you, I mean. I never figured him for that kind of secrecy."

"That's what tipped me off to the whole thing," I said. "There just aren't many things which could make Thomas do that. I think he was counting on it to tip me off, in fact."

Murphy shook her head. "A phone call would have been easier."

"Not if he's being watched," I said. "And not if he's made a promise."

"Watched?" Murphy said. "By who?"

"Someone who has more than one kind of leverage," I said. "Someone who is his family, who is protecting the woman he loves, and who has the kind of resources it takes to watch him, and enough savvy to know if he's lying."

"Lara Raith," Murphy said.

"Big sister is the one behind the peace movement," I said. "Everyone thinks it's Papa Raith, but he's just her puppet now. Except that there aren't many people who know that."

"If Raith's authority is challenged openly by the Skavis," Murphy said, putting things together, "it exposes the fact that he's utterly powerless. Lara would have to fight openly."

"And the White Court vamp who is driven to that has already lost," I said. "She can't maintain her control over the Court if she's revealed as the power behind the throne. Not only does she not have the raw strength she'd need to hold on to it, but the very fact that she was revealed would make her an incompetent manipulator and therefore automatically unsuitable in the eyes of the rest of the White Court."

Murphy chewed on her lip. "If Papa Raith falls, Lara falls. And if Lara falls..."

"Justine goes with her," I said, nodding. "She wouldn't be able to protect her for Thomas anymore."

"Then why didn't she just have Thomas go to you and ask for help? " Murphy said.

"She can't have it get out that she asked for help from the enemy team, Murph. Even among her own supporters, that could be a disaster. But remember that she knows how to pull strings. Maybe better than anyone operating right now. She wouldn't be upset if I got involved and stomped all over agents of Skavis and Malvora."

Murphy snorted. "So she forbids Thomas from speaking to you about it."

"She's too smart for that. Thomas gets stubborn about being given orders. She gets him to promise to keep quiet. But by doing that, she's also done the one thing she knows will make him defiant to the spirit of the promise. So he's made a promise and he can't come out and talk to me, but he wants to get my attention."

"Ha," Murphy said. "So he gets around it. He works sloppy, deliberately. He lets himself be seen repeatedly taking off with the women he was rounding up."

"And leaves a big old honking wall o' clues in his apartment for me, knowing that when I get involved, I'm going to get curious about why he's been seen with missing women and why he's not talking to me. He can't talk to me about it, but he leaves me a map." I found my right foot tapping against an imaginary accelerator, my left against a nonexistent clutch.

"Stop twitching," Murphy said. The Beetle jolted over some railroad tracks, officially taking us to the wrong side. "I'm a better driver than you, anyway."

I scowled because it was true.

"So right now," Murphy said, "you think Priscilla is shilling for the Skavis agent."

"No. She is the Skavis agent."

"I thought you said it was a man," Murphy said.

"Strike you funny that Priscilla wears turtlenecks in the middle of a hot summer?"

Murphy let out a word that should not be spoken before small children. "So if you're right, he's going to clip Elaine and all those moms."

"Kids too," I said. "And anyone who gets in the way."

"Mouse," Molly said, her voice worried.

This time I didn't yell her down. I was worried about him, too. "The Skavis knows that Mouse is special. He saw the demonstration. That's been the only thing keeping him from acting sooner than he did. If the vampire started drawing upon his powers, Mouse would have sensed it and blown his cover. So Mouse is definitely going to be near the top of his list."

Murphy nodded. "So what's the plan?"

"Get us to the motel," I said. We were getting close enough that I could start trying the spell. "I'm going to try to reach Elaine."

"Then what?"

"I've got no use for anything that does what this thing does," I said. "Do you?"

Her blue eyes glittered as the car zipped through the illumination of a lonely streetlamp. "No."

"And as I recall, you are on vacation right now."

"And having fun, fun, fun," she snarled.

"Then we won't worry too much about saving anything for later," I said. I turned my head and said, "Molly."

The girl's head whipped up almost audibly. "Um. What?"

"Can you drive a stick?"

She was silent for a second, then jerked her head in a nod.

"Then when we get out, I want you to get behind the wheel and keep the engine running," I said. "If you see anyone else coming, honk the horn. If you see a tall woman in a turtleneck sprinting away, I want you to drive the car over her."

"I... but... but..."

"You wanted to help. You're helping." I turned back around. "Do it."

Her answer came back with the automatic speed of reflex. "Yes, sir."

"What about Grey Cloak and Madrigal?" Murphy asked me. "Even if we take out the Skavis, they're waiting to jump in."

"One thing at a time," I said. "Drive."

Then I closed my eyes, drew in my will, and hoped that I could call out to Elaine - and that she would be alive to hear me.

Chapter Thirty-One

I closed my eyes and blocked out my senses, one by one. The smell of the car and Murphy's deodorant went first. At least Molly had learned from experience and left off any overt fragrances when she tried to use the veil trick a second time. Sound went next. The Beetle's old, laboring engine, the rattle of tires on bad spots of road, and the rush of wind all faded away. Chicago's evening lights vanished from their irregular pressure on my closed eyelids. The sour taste of fear in my mouth simply became not, as I focused on the impromptu variation of the old, familiar spell.

Elaine.

I referred to the same base image I always had. Elaine in our first soulgaze, an image of a woman of power, grace, and oceans of cool nerve superimposed over the blushing image of a schoolgirl, naked for the first time with her first lover. I had known what she would grow into, even then, that she would transform the gawky limbs and awkward carriage and blushing cheeks into confidence and poise and beauty and wisdom. The wisdom, maybe, was still in process, as evidenced by her choice of first lovers, but even as an adult, I was hardly in a position to cast stones, as evidenced by my choice of pretty much everything.

What we hadn't known about, back then, was pain.

Sure, we'd faced some things as children that a lot of kids don't. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.

Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

Adding pain to that image of Elaine wasn't a process of imagining horrors, fantasizing violence, speculating upon suffering. It was no different from an artist mixing in new color, adding emphasis and depth to the image that, while bright, was not true to itself or to life. So I took the girl I knew and added in the pains the woman I was reaching for had been forced to face. She'd stepped into a world she'd left behind for more than a decade, and found herself struggling to face life without relying upon anyone else. She'd always had me, and Justin - and when we'd gone away, she'd leaned upon a Sidhe woman named Aurora for help and support. When that had vanished, she had no one - I had given my love to someone else. Justin had been dead for years.

She'd been alone in a city, different from everyone around, struggling to survive and to build a life and a home.

So I added in all the pains I'd learned. Cooking blunders I'd had to eat anyway. Equipment and property constantly breaking down, needing repairs and attention. Tax insanity, and rushing around trying to hack a path through a jungle of numbers. Late bills. Unpleasant jobs that gave you horribly aching feet. Odd looks from people who didn't know you, when something less than utterly normal happened. The occasional night when the loneliness ached so badly that it made you weep. The occasional gathering during which you wanted to escape to your empty apartment so badly you were willing to go out the bathroom window. Muscle pulls and aches you never had when you were younger, the annoyance as the price of gas kept going up to some ridiculous degree, the irritation with unruly neighbors, brainless media personalities, and various politicians who all seemed to fall on a spectrum somewhere between the extremes of "crook" and "moron."

You know.

Life.

And the image of her in my mind deepened, sharpened, took on personality. There's no simple way to describe it, but you know it when you see it, and the great artists can do it, can slip in the shades of meaning and thought and truth into something as simple as a girl named Mona's smile, even if they can't tell you precisely how they managed it.

The image of Elaine gained shadows, flaws, character, and strength. I didn't know the specifics of what she'd been through - not all of them, anyway - but I knew enough, and could make good guesses about plenty more. That image in my mind drew me in as I focused on it, just as I once had focused on that younger image of Elaine unrealized. I reached out with my thoughts and touched that image, breathing gentle life into it as I whispered her True Name, freely given to me when we were young, within the vaults of my mind.

Elaine Lilian Mallory.

And the image came to life.

Elaine's face bowed forward, her hair falling around it, not quite hiding the expression of bone-deep weariness and despair.

Elaine, I whispered to her. Can you hear me?

Her thoughts came to me in an echoing blur, like when they want to confuse you at the movies and they muck around with a voice-over... believe I could make a difference. One person doesn't. One person can't ever make a difference. Not in the real world. God, what arrogance. And they paid for it.

I put more will into my thoughts. Elaine !

She glanced up for a moment, looking dully around the room. The image of her was filling in, slowly. She was in well-lit room without many features. Most of it seemed to be white. Then her head bowed again.

Trusting me to keep them safe. I might as well pull the trigger myself. Too cowardly for that, though. I just sit here. Set things up so that I don't have to fail. I don't have to try. I don't have to worry about being nothing. All I have to do is sit.

I didn't like the sound of that at all. Within the senseless vaults of my mind, I screamed, Elaine!

She looked up again, blinking her eyes slowly. Her mouth began moving in time with her audible thoughts. "Don't know what I thought I could do. One woman. One woman who spent her whole life running away. Being broken. I would have served them better to end it before I ever left, rather than dragging them down with me."

Her lips stopped moving, but, very faintly, I heard her thoughts call, Harry?

And suddenly I could hear a difference in the other thoughts.

"Just sit," she mumbled. "Almost over now. I won't be useless anymore. Just sit and wait and I won't have to hurt anymore. Won't fail anyone else. It will all be over and I can rest."

It didn't sound like Elaine's voice. There were subtle differences. It sounded... like someone doing an impersonation. It was close, but it wasn't her. There were too many small inconsistencies.

Then I got it.

That was the Skavis, whispering thoughts of despair and grief into her mind, just as the Raiths would whisper of lust and need.

She was under attack.

Elaine Lilian Mallory! I called, and in my head, my voice rumbled like thunder. I am Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, and I bid thee hear me! Hear my voice, Elaine!

There was a shocked silence, and then Elaine's thought-voice said, more clearly, Harry?

And her lips moved, and the not-Elaine voice said, "What the hell?"

Elaine's eyes snapped to mine, suddenly meeting them, and the room around her clarified into crystalline relief.

She was in the bathroom of the hotel, in the tub, naked in the bath.

The air was thick with steam. She was bleeding from a broad cut across one wrist. The water was red. Her face was god-awful pale, but her eyes weren't fogged over and hazed out. Not yet.

Elaine! I thundered. You are under a psychic attack! Priscilla is the Skavis!

Elaine's eyes widened.

Someone slapped me hard on the face and screamed, "Harry!"

The world flew sideways and expanded in a rush of motion and sound as my denied senses came crashing back in upon me. The Beetle was sitting sideways across several parking spaces in the motel's little lot, both doors open, and Murphy, gun in one hand, had a hold of my duster with the other and was shaking me hard. "Harry! Get up!"

"Oh," I said. "We're here."

I stumbled out of the car, getting my bearings. Behind me, Molly scrambled behind the wheel.

"Well?" Murphy demanded. "Did you get through?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could, every light in sight suddenly went dim. I don't mean they went out. They didn't They just... dwindled, the way a lantern's flame does if you close off the glass. Or, I thought, struck with a sudden impression, the way a fire might dim if something nearby had just drawn the air away. Something big enough to dim nearby flame as it inhaled.

Something big taking a deep breath.

And then a voice that rang with silvery rage rolled through the air, kicking up a layer of dust from the ground in a broad wave in the wake of its passing as it rang out in an echoing clarion call, "FUL-MINARIS!"

There was a flash of green-white light so bright that it came to my reawakened senses as a physical pain, a roar of sound loud enough to drown out a spring break band, and the entire front wall of the first-floor hotel room we'd rented earlier that day was blown off the freaking building and into the street.

I had my shield up overhead before the debris started raining down, protecting Murphy, me, the windshield of the Beetle, and the girl staring wide-eyed through it. I squinted through the flying bits of building and furniture and rock, and a second later managed to spot a broken human form lying with its head in the street, its feet still up on the curb. Priscilla's turtleneck was on fire, and her hair stood straight out and was blackened and burned off within three or four inches of her skull. She ripped the turtleneck away in a kind of wobbly, disoriented panic - and revealed a bra and falsies. Those got ripped off too, and what was left, while slender and hairless, was also obviously the upper torso of a very pale, rather effeminate-looking man.

There was motion in the gaping maw of ruin that had been Elaine's hotel room, and a woman appeared in it. She was dressed in the cheap plastic curtain that had been hanging over the tub. She had a thick-linked chain wrapped tightly around her left arm a couple of inches above her bloodied, slashed wrist, tied in an improvised tourniquet. She was quite dry, and her hair floated out and around her head, crackling with little flashes of static electricity as she moved. She slid herself slowly, carefully across the debris-strewn floor, and she held a short length of carved wood that looked like nothing so much as an enormous thorn of some kind in her right hand, its sharp tip pointing at the man in the parking lot. Tiny slivers of green lightning danced around its tip, occasionally flickering out to touch upon nearby objects with snapping, popping sounds as she passed.

Elaine kept that deadly little wand pointed at the Skavis, eyes narrowed, and said, her voice rough and raw, "Who's useless now, bitch?"

I just stared at Elaine for a long minute. Then I traded a glance with Murphy, who looked just as startled and impressed as I felt. "Murph," I said, "I think I got through."

The Skavis agent came to his feet and bounded at us, quick as thinking.

I raised my staff and unleashed a burst of raw force. He might be strong as hell, but once off the ground, with nothing to push against, he was just mass times acceleration. The blow from the staff swatted him out of the air to the concrete not far from the Beetle. I immediately used another blow to throw him back across the parking lot, creating clear space around him.

"Thank you, Harry," Elaine said, her rough voice prim. Then she lifted the wand and snapped, "Fulminaris!"

There was another blinding flash of light, another crack of homemade thunder, and a green-white globe of light enclosed the vampire. There was a scream, and then his limp form fell to the concrete, one shoulder and most of his chest blackened. It smelled disturbingly like burned bacon.

Elaine lifted her chin, eyes glittering. She lowered the wand, and as she did, the lights came back up to full strength. She nodded once. Then she slipped and staggered to one side.

"Watch him!" I barked to Molly, pointing at the fallen vampire.

Murphy and I reached Elaine at about the same time, and we tried to catch her before she dropped. We succeeded in easing her down to the debris-littered concrete.

"Jesus," Murphy said. "Harry, she needs a hospital."

"They'll be watching the - "

"Fuck 'em," Murphy said, rising. "They can watch her through a wall of cops." She stalked away, drawing out her phone.

I bit my lip as Elaine looked up at me and smiled faintly. She spoke, her words faintly slurred. "Dammit. Every time I come to Chicago, I've got to get rescued. Embarrassing as hell."

"At least it wasn't me that did the building this time," I said.

She made a sound that might have been a laugh if she'd had more energy behind it. "Bastard had me dead to rights. Snuck it up on me. I didn't realize."

"That's how the old psychic whammy works," I said quietly. "Once you start thinking, 'Gee, maybe that isn't me thinking about suicide,' it kind of falls apart."

"Wouldn't have happened if you hadn't warned me," she said. She met my eyes again. "Thank you, Harry."

I smiled at her, and checked her wrist. "This doesn't look good. We're gonna get you to a doctor. Okay?"

She shook her head. "The upstairs room. Abby, Olivia, the others. Make sure they're all right."

"I doubt they've lost as much blood as you have," I said. Murphy, though, was way ahead of me, and was already on the stairs on the way up to the second level, then down to check the room.

"Okay. Time to wrap this up." I picked Elaine up. I made sure the shower curtain didn't fall off. "Come on. You can sit in the car until the EMTs get here. Maybe I can find something else to keep your arm tied off, huh?"

"If you can find my purse," she said, her eyes closed now, a little smile on her mouth, "you can use my golden lariat."

I turned to the car just as the horn started frantically beeping.

I whirled.

The Skavis agent was moving again. He got his knees underneath him.

"Dammit," I said, and rushed the car. I got the passenger door open and dumped Elaine inside, even as the Skavis rose to his feet. "Murphy!"

Murphy called something I didn't hear very well. The Skavis turned toward me. His face, all contorted with burns on one side, twisted up into a hideous grimace.

Murphy's gun began barking in a steady, deliberate shooting rhythm. Sparks flew up from the concrete near his feet. At least one shot hit the Skavis, making his upper body jerk.

I rose, blasting rod in hand.

There was a roar more appropriate to a great cat than any dog, and the sound of shattering glass from the second level. Mouse flew over the safety railing, landed heavily on the ground, and lunged at the Skavis.

The dog wasn't six inches behind the Skavis agent as it closed on me, its one remaining arm raised up to... well, hit me. But given how hard the blow was going to be, I upgraded the verb to smite. He was about to smite me.

Thomas came out of nowhere with that cavalry saber of his and took off the Skavis's smiting arm at the shoulder.

He let out a scream that didn't sound anything like human, and tried to bite me. I rolled out of his way, helping him along with a stiff shove to his back.

Mouse came down on top of him, and that was that.

I eyed Thomas as Mouse made sure that the remarkably resilient vampire wasn't going to be getting up again for anything, ever. It had been a close call. The Skavis had timed his move just right. Another second, give or take, and he'd have broken my neck.

"Well," I told Thomas, my breathing still quick. "It's about time."

"Better late than never," Thomas replied. He glanced at the bleeding Elaine, licked his lips once, and said, "She needs help."

"It's on the way," Murphy said. "Response is slow here, but give them a couple of minutes. Everyone's okay up there, Harry."

Thomas let out a breath of relief. "Thank God."

Which was odd, coming from him, all things considered. I concurred with the sentiment, though.

Molly sat behind the wheel of the Beetle, breathing too quickly, her eyes very wide. She couldn't quite see Mouse or his grisly chew toy from where she was sitting, but she stared as if she could see right through the Beetle's hood to where my dog was finishing up his deadly, ugly work.

"So," I asked Thomas. "How'd Lara get you to promise not to talk?"

My brother turned toward me and gave me a huge grin. Then he wiped it off his face and said, in the tone of a radio announcer on Prozac, "I don't know what you're talking about, Warden Dresden." He winked. "But hypothetlcally speaking, she might have told me that Justine was in danger and refused to divulge anything else until I promised to keep my mouth shut."

"And you let her get away with that kind of crap?" I asked him.

Thomas shrugged and said, "She's family."

Molly suddenly lunged up out of the driver's seat of the Beetle and was noisily sick.

"Seems a little fragile," Thomas said.

"She's adjusting," I replied. "Madrigal and his Malvora buddy are still out there."

"Yeah," Thomas said. "So?"

"So that means that this was just a warm-up. They're still a threat," I said. "They've got enough bodies to lay the whole thing out to the White Court and make people like the Ordo look like a casino buffet. If that happens, it won't just be one Skavis running around with a point to prove. It will be a quiet campaign. Thousands of people will die."

Thomas grunted. "Yeah. There's not a lot we can do about that, though."

"Says who?" I replied.

He frowned at me and tilted his head.

"Thomas," I said quietly, "by any chance, is there a gathering of the White Court anytime soon? Perhaps in relation to the proposed summit talks?"

"If there was a meeting of the most powerful hundred or so nobles of the Court scheduled to meet at the family estate the day after tomorrow, I couldn't tell you about it," Thomas said. "Because I gave my sister my word."

"Your sister has guts," I said. "And she sure as hell knows how to put on a show." I glanced at the ruined hotel, and dropped my hand to scratch Mouse's ears. They were about the only part of him not stained with too-pale blood. "Of course, I've been known to bring down the house once or twice, myself."

Thomas folded his arms, waiting. His smile was positively vulpine.

"Call Lara," I said. "Pass her a message for me."

Thomas narrowed his eyes. "What message?"

I bared my teeth in an answering smile.