Proven Guilty (25 page)

My balance wobbled a bit as I finished the spell and the energy left me, submerging me in a temporary flood of fatigue. I sat there with my head down, breathing hard for a minute.

“Wow,” Murphy said, her tone less than impressed. I looked up to see her shutting the room’s door behind her. “What did you do?”

I waved around to indicate the hotel and panted, “If bad mojo shows up in the hotel, the spell will sense it.” I gestured at the three candles. “Take one with you. If you see it flare up, it means we’ve got incoming.”

Murphy frowned but nodded. “How much warning will they give us?”

“Not much,” I said. “A couple minutes, maybe less. Maybe a lot less.”

“Three candles,” she said. “One for you, one for me, and…”

“I thought we’d see if Rawlins wanted one.”

“Is he here?” Murphy said.

“Gut feeling,” I said. “He seems like the kind who sees something through.”

“He also seems like the kind who’s been injured. No chance he’d get active duty here.”

“He didn’t have it at the hospital, either,” I pointed out.

“True,” Murphy said.

I caught my breath a little, and asked, “Anything at Pell’s theater?”

Murphy nodded and crossed the room to pick up two of the candles. “A lot of nothing. Place was locked up tight. Chains on the front doors, and the back door was locked. Sign on the door said they were closed until further notice.”

I grunted. “You’d think Pell would be wild to have the place open, if the convention was providing a significant amount of his income—even if he was in a hospital bed. Hell,
especially
if he was in a hospital bed.”

“Unless he doesn’t have anyone he trusts to run it for him.”

“But he does have someone he trusts enough to lock it up?” I said. “That doesn’t track. Pell sure as hell didn’t lock up after he was attacked.”

Murphy frowned, but she didn’t disagree with me. “I tried to call him to ask him about it, but the nurse said he was sleeping.”

I ran my fingers back through my hair, frowning over the situation. “Curiouser and curiouser,” I said. “We’re missing something here.”

“Like what?” Murphy asked.

“Another player,” I said. “Someone we haven’t seen yet.”

Murphy made a thoughtful sound. “Maybe. But imagining invisible perpetrators or hidden conspiracies veers pretty close to paranoia.”

“Maybe not another suspect, then,” I said thoughtfully. “Maybe another motive.”

“Like what?” she asked, though I could see the wheels turning in her head as she followed the logic chain from the notion.

“These phage attacks look fairly simple at first glance. Like… I don’t know. Shark attacks. Something hungry shows up to eat someone and then leaves. Natural occurrences. Or rather, typical supernatural occurrences.”

“But they aren’t random,” Murphy said. “Someone is sending them to a specific place. Someone who used magic to try to stop you when you interfered with one of the phages.”

“Which begs the obvious question…” I began.

Murphy nodded and finished the thought. “Why do it in the first place?”

I stuck my left hand out to one side of me and said, “Look over here.” Then I mimed a short jab with my right fist.

“It’s a rope-a-dope,” Murphy said, her eyes narrowing. “A distraction. But from what?”

“Something worse than homicidal, shapeshifting, supernatural predators, apparently,” I mused. “Something we’d want to stop a lot more.”

“Like what?”

I shook my head and shrugged. “I don’t know. Not yet, anyway.”

Murphy grimaced. “Leave it to you to make paranoia sound plausible.”

“It’s only paranoia if I’m wrong,” I said.

Murphy glanced over her shoulder and shivered a little. “Yeah.” She turned back to me, squared her shoulders, and took a steadying breath. “Okay. What’s the play, here? I assume you’ve got something in mind beyond having a minute or two of warning.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

“It gets kind of technical,” I said.

“I’ll try to keep up,” she said.

I nodded. “Anytime something from the spirit world wants to cross into the mortal world, it has to do a number of things to cross the border. It has to have a point of origin, a point of destination, and enough energy to open the way. Then it has to cross over, summon ectoplasm from the Nevernever, and infuse it with more energy to give itself a physical body.”

She frowned. “What do you mean by points of origin and destination?”

“Links,” I told her. “Sort of like landmarks. Usually, the creature you’re calling up can serve as its own point of origin. Whoever is opening the way across is usually the destination.”

“Can anyone be the destination?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “You can’t call up anything that isn’t…” I frowned, looking for words. “You can’t call up anything that doesn’t have some kind of reflection inside you, a kind of point of reference for the spirit being. If you want evil, nasty, hungry beings, there’s got to be evil, nasty, and hunger inside of you.”

She nodded. “Does the way have to be opened from this side?”

“Generally,” I said. “It takes a hell of a lot more oomph to get it done from the other side.”

She nodded. “Go on.”

I told her about my plan to turn the phages back upon their summoner.

“I like that,” she said. “Using their own monsters against them. But what does that leave me to do?”

“You buy me time,” I said. “There will be a moment just when the phage or phages cross over, where they will be vulnerable. If you’re able to see one and distract it, it will give me more time to aim them back at their summoner. And it’s possible that my spell might not work. If it goes south, you’ll be near enough to help clear people out, maybe do them some good.”

Murphy began to speak—then she paused, turned around, and asked, “Harry. Is there someone in the shower?”

“Uh. Yeah,” I said, and rubbed at the back of my neck.

She arched a brow and waited, but I didn’t offer any explanation. Maybe it was my way of getting petty vengeance for her brutal honesty in the elevator.

“All right then,” she said, and took up the candles. “I’ll get downstairs and look for Rawlins. Otherwise, I’ll grab one of my guys from SI.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

Murphy left, while I started planning out my redirection spell. It didn’t take me long.

Mouse lifted his head suddenly, and a second later someone knocked at the door. I went over and opened it.

Charity stood on the other side, dressed in jeans, a knit tank top, and a blue blouse of light cotton. Her features were drawn with stress, her shoulders clenched in unconscious tension. When she saw me, her features became remote and neutral, very controlled. “Hello, Mister Dresden.”

It was probably the friendliest greeting I could expect from her. “Heya,” I said.

Standing beside her was an old man, a little under average height. What was left of his hair was grey, trimmed neatly, though hardly a fringe remained. He had eyes the color of robin’s eggs, spectacles, a comfortably heavy build, and wore black slacks and a black shirt. The white square of his clerical collar stood out distinctively against the shirt. He smiled when he saw me, and offered me his hand.

I shook it, smiling, and had no need to fake it. “Father Forthill. What are you doing here?”

“Harry,” he said amiably. “Lending some moral support, by and large.”

“He’s my attorney,” Charity added.

I blinked. “He is?”

“He is,” Forthill said, smiling. “I passed the bar before I entered the orders. I’ve kept my hand in on behalf of the diocese and my parishioners. I do some pro bono work from time to time, too.”

“He’s a lawyer,” I said. “He’s a priest. This does not compute.”

Forthill let out a belly laugh. “Oxymoronic.”

“Hey, did I start calling
you
names?” I grinned at him. “What can I do for you?”

“Molly was supposed to be waiting for us downstairs,” Charity said. “But we haven’t found her. Do you know where she is?”

The universe conspired against me. If Charity had asked the question ten seconds sooner, I would have been fine. But instead, the bathroom door opened, and Molly appeared in a swirl of steam. She had a towel wrapped around her hair, and was holding another around her torso. Hotel towels and Molly’s torso being what they were, the towel didn’t quite get all the way around her, and barely maintained modesty. “Harry,” she said. “I left my bag out he—” She broke off suddenly, staring at Charity.

“This, uh, isn’t what it looks like,” I stammered, turning back to Charity.

Her eyes blazed with cold, righteous rage. An old Kipling axiom about the female of the species being more deadly than the male flashed through my mind, right about the time Charity introduced my chin to her right hook.

Light flashed behind my eyes and I found myself flat on my back while the ceiling spun around a little.

“Mother,” Molly said in a shocked voice.

I looked up in time to see Forthill put a firm hand on Charity’s arm, preventing her from following up the first blow. She narrowed her eyes at Forthill, but the old man’s fingers dug into her biceps until she gave him a slight nod and took a small step back into the hallway.

“Dress,” she told Molly, implacable authority in her tone. “We’re leaving.”

The kid looked like she might just start falling apart on the spot. She grabbed her bag, ducked into the bathroom, and was dressed in under a minute.

“There was nothing going on,” I mumbled. It came out sounding more like, “Mmrphg
ggggh
oonng.”

“I may not be able to keep you away from my husband,” Charity said, her tone cold, her diction precise. “But if you come near one of my children again, I will kill you. Thank you for calling me.”

She left, the weary Molly following her.

“There was nothing going on,” I said again, to Forthill. This time it sounded mostly like English.

He sighed, looking after the pair. “I believe you.” He gave me a smile that was one part amusement to four parts apology, and followed them.

Murphy must not have reached the elevators before Charity and Forthill had arrived. She appeared in the doorway, peering inside the room, and then back the way Charity had gone. “Ah,” she said. “You all right?”

“I guess,” I sighed.

Her mouth twitched, but she didn’t quite smile or laugh at me. “Seems to me that you should have seen that one coming.”

“Don’t laugh at me,” I said. “It hurts.”

“You’ve had worse,” she said heartlessly. “And it serves you right for letting a little girl into your hotel room. Now get up. I’ll be downstairs.”

She left, too.

Mouse came over and started patiently nuzzling my chin and putting slobbering dog kisses on the bruise I could feel forming there.

“Women confuse me,” I told him.

Mouse sat down, jaws dropping open into a doggie grin. I groaned, pushed myself to my feet, and set about preparing the redirection spell, while outside my room’s window the sun raced for its nightly rendezvous with the western horizon.

Chapter Twenty-four

I shut the door again and rushed to prepare the beacon spell, hurrying, certain that every second counted. I would only get one shot at diverting the phages, and I finished my preparations in feverish haste.

Nothing happened.

The sun set, leaving me mostly in the dark, since I hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights.

Nothing continued happening.

I knelt in my circle of sand until my legs cramped and then went numb, and my knees felt like they were resting in molten lead.

And all that nothing just kept on coming.

“Oh come
on
,” I snarled. “Bring on the doom, already.”

From his spot near the door, Mouse heaved a sigh.

“Oh, shut up,” I told him. I didn’t dare take a break. If the bad guys moved and I wasn’t ready, people would get hurt. So I knelt there, holding the spell ready in my mind, uncomfortable as hell, and swearing sulfurously under my breath. Stupid, lame-ass summoner. What the hell was he waiting for? Any half-competent villain would have had monsters roaming the halls hours ago.

Mouse’s tail thumped against the wall, and a moment later the room’s lock clicked, and Rawlins opened the door. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that concealed the bandages on his wounded arm, and he carried a wardflame candle in one hand. The blocky, dark-skinned officer leaned down and held his hand out to Mouse, who sniffed Rawlins in typical canine fashion and wagged his tail some more.

Rawlins remained in the doorway and said, “Hello? Dresden?”

“Here,” I muttered.

Rawlins thumped at the wall until he found the lights and flicked them on. He stared at me for a minute, eyebrows slowly rising. “Uh-huh. There’s something I don’t see every day.”

I grimaced. “Murphy found you, I see.”

“Almost like she’s a detective,” Rawlins said, grinning.

“Your boss know you’re here?” I asked.

“Not so far,” he replied. “But I expect someone might notice and tell him about me at some point.”

“He won’t be happy,” I said.

“I just hope I can live with myself later.” He waved his little candle. “Murphy sent me up here to make sure you was still alive.”

“I’m going to need knee surgery,” I sighed. “I never planned on it taking this long.”

“Uh-huh,” Rawlins said again. “You ain’t one of those Satan worshipers are you?”

“No,” I said. “More like Pythagoras.”

“Pih-who?”

“He invented triangles.”

“Ah,” Rawlins said, as if that had explained everything. “So, what are you doing here?”

I explained it to him, though it looked like he was having trouble accepting my words. Maybe I lacked credibility. “But I figured he would have moved by now.”

“Crooks are funny that way,” he agreed. “No respect.”

I scrunched up my face in thought. I was hungry, thirsty, tired, hurting, and I had to use the bathroom in the worst way. None of those things were going to become easier to bear as the night went on, and I needed to have all the concentration I could get.

“Okay,” I said. “Be smart. Take a break.” I leaned down and broke the circle by sweeping the sand aside with my hand, letting the energy of the spell I’d been holding ready drain away. At least I’d already done it once. Getting it back into position wouldn’t take nearly as long as the first time.

I tried to rise, but my legs were incommunicado. I grimaced at Rawlins and said, “Give me a hand here?”

He set his candle aside and helped me up. I wobbled precariously for a couple of seconds, but then stumbled to the bathroom and back out.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m good. Tell Murphy to hold steady.”

Rawlins nodded. “We’ll be downstairs.” He paused and said, “Hope this happens soon. There’s some kind of costume contest going on.”

“Is it bad?”

“There are a lot of skimpy getups, and some of those people should
not
be wearing them.”

“Call the fashion police,” I said.

Rawlins nodded gravely. “They’ve crossed a line.”

“Do me a favor?” I asked him. “Take Mouse out for a walk?” I dug a couple of bills from my back pocket and passed them to Rawlins. “Maybe get him a hot dog or something?”

“Sure,” Rawlins agreed. “I like dogs.”

The dog’s tail thumped rapidly against the wall.

“Whatever you do, don’t give him nachos. I didn’t bring my gas mask with me.”

Rawlins nodded. “Sure.”

“Keep your eyes open,” I said. “Tell Murph I’ll be reset in a couple of minutes.”

Rawlins grunted and left.

I had a canteen of fruit punch in my backpack, along with some beef jerky and some chocolate. I went to the bag and started wolfing down all three while pacing back and forth to stretch my legs. Holding myself ready to strike had been more than simply a physical strain. My head felt like someone had packed it in wool, while at the same time my senses seemed slighdy distorted; edges made sharper, curves more ambiguous, the whole combining to make the hotel room feel like a toned-down Escher painting. There was no help for that. The use of magic was mostly in the mind, and holding a spell together for a long time often triggered disconcerting side effects.

I polished off the food as fast as I could gulp it down, went easy on the drink, in case I was there for another several hours, and settled back down in my circle, preparing to close it again.

When the room’s phone rang.

“Deja vu,” I commented to the empty room. I stood up, my knees creaking, and went to the phone.

“Dresden Taxidermy,” I said. “You snuff it, we’ll stuff it.”

There was a beat of startled silence from the phone, and then a young man’s voice said, “Urn. Is this Harry Dresden?”

I recognized the voice—Boyfriend Nelson. That made my ears perk up, metaphorically speaking. “Yeah, this is him,” I said.

“This is…”

“I know who it is,” I told him. “How did you know where I was?”

“Sandra,” he said. “I called her cell. She told me you’d checked in.”

“Uh-huh.
Why
are you calling me?”

“Molly said… she said you helped people.” He paused to take a breath, and then said, “I think I need your help. Again.”

“Why?” I asked. Keep the questions open, I thought. Never give him one with a simple answer. “What’s going on?”

“Last night, during the attacks. I think I saw something.”

I sighed. “It was going around,” I agreed. “But if you saw something, you’re a witness to a crime, kid. You need to show up and work with the cops. They get sort of unreasonable with people who go all evasive when they want to ask questions about a murder.”

“But I think some… thing is following me,” he said. An unsteady tremor shook Nelson’s voice. “Look, they’re just cops, man. They just have guns. I don’t think they can help me. I hope you can.”

“Why?” I asked him. “What is it that you saw?”

“No,” he said. “Not on the phone. I want to meet with you. I want you to promise me your help. I’ll tell you then.”

Right. Because it wasn’t like I had anything better to be doing. “Look, kid…”

Nelson’s voice suddenly went thready with breathless fear. “Oh, God. I can’t stay here. Please.
Please.
”

“Fine, fine,” I said, trying to keep my voice strong, steady. The kid was scared—the bone-deep, knee-watering, half-crazy kind of scared that makes rational thinking all but impossible. “Listen to me. Stay around people, as many of them as you can. Go to Saint Mary of the Angels Church. It’s holy ground, and you’ll be safe there. Ask for Father Forthill. He’s a little guy, mostly bald, glasses, bright blue eyes. Tell him everything and tell him I’m coming to collect you as soon as I can.”

“Yes, all right, thank you,” Nelson said, the words hysterically rushed. There was a brief clatter, and then I heard running footsteps on concrete. He hadn’t even gotten the phone back into its cradle before he’d taken off at a dead sprint.

I chewed on my lip. The kid was definitely in trouble, or at least genuinely believed that he was. If so, it meant that maybe he
had
seen something last night, something that made it important for someone to kill him—i.e., some kind of damning evidence that would probably help me figure out what the hell was going on. I felt a stab of anxiety. Holy ground was a powerful deterrent to the things that went bump in the night—or in this case, things that went stab, stab, hack, slash, rip in the night—but it wasn’t invulnerable. If something of sufficient supernatural strength really was after the kid, it might be able to force its way into the church.

Dammit, but what choice did I have? If I left my position here, any fresh attack could make last night’s look like a friendly round of Candy-land. What could he possibly have seen that would make him worth killing? Why the hell was he being followed? I felt like I was floundering around in the dark inside someone else’s house, benighted of savoir faire enough to move with assurance. I was spread too thin. If I didn’t start finding more pieces of the puzzle and put them together, and soon, more people would die.

I could only be in one place at one time. If the kid was in real trouble, he’d be as safe at the church, with Forthill, as anywhere in town short of the protection of my heavily warded apartment. Meanwhile, there were a bunch of other kids here who looked to be the next meal on the phobophage buffet. I had to act where I could do the most good. It was a cold sort of equation, the calculus of survival, but undeniable. I’d get to Nelson after I had taken care of business at the hotel.

I settled down on my knees again, carefully, closed the circle, and began to pick up the pieces of the redirection spell once more.

The single wardflame candle on the room’s dresser suddenly exploded into lurid red light. Simultaneously, I felt a heavy thrumming in the air, where the strands of my web spell had suddenly encountered powerful magic in motion, drawing my thoughts and attention to a back hallway in the hotel, not far from the kitchens, up to the hall outside the hotel’s exercise room, and a swift double-thrum from another of the hotel’s bathrooms.

Four attackers, this time. Four of them at least.

I had ten seconds to get the spell off.

Nine.

Maybe less.

Eight.

I threw myself into the spell.

Seven.

It had to be fast.

Six.

It had to be perfect on the first attempt.

Five.

If I screwed this one up, someone else would pay for it.

Four.

They’d pay for it in blood.

Three.

Two.

One…

Chapter Twenty-five

I readied my spell, terrified that I was already too late, terrified that I had made a critical mistake, terrified that more innocents were about to face hideous agony and death.

That was how it had to be. If I wanted to lure the phages from their rampage by directing them after a richer source of fear, it had to come from somewhere—specifically, it had to come from me. If I’d tried to use falsified emotion, it would no more have worked on them than an attempt to make a gorilla interested in a plastic banana. The fear had to be genuine.

Of course, I hadn’t really planned on being quite
this
afraid. Being taken off my guard and handed a time limit had added an edge of panicked hysteria to the ample anxiety I already had.

The spell coalesced, and time came to an abrupt stop.

In that illusory stasis, my senses were on fire. The presence of the dangerous entities now entering the material world rippled through my detection web; a jittery, fluttering sensation. The energy of the spell burned like an invisible star before my outstretched hands, and my terror rushed into it and fused with the spell. Streamers from the lure whipped out along the lines of power that constituted my detection web, brushing lightly at the entities, attracting their attention, giving them a whiff of rich sustenance.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I felt a single, quiet, quivering pulse—a living presence that could only be the phages’ summoner and beacon.

“Gotcha,” I hissed, and with an effort of will broke the circle and sent the spell winging toward him.

Time resumed its course. The energy that powered the spell fled out of me in another rush, and left me lying on my side, struggling to draw in enough breath. I could feel the spell sizzling down the lines of power for the summoner, and a heartbeat later there was a sense of impact as the spell went home. As it happened, the entities my web touched went abruptly still, the web ceasing its trembling—and then they all surged forward into sudden motion, vanishing from the web, and presumably streaking after the lure.

All but one.

A breath or two after the entities had departed, my web trembled again, now growing more agitated, its motion a kind of subliminal pressure against my thoughts.

I had missed one. My spell had gotten out in time to draw away the others, but either my web had failed me at some point or the remaining phage had been quicker on the draw than his buddies from the Never-never. I could feel it moving from the hotel’s kitchens toward the convention halls.

I wanted to curl into a fetal position and go into a coma. Instead, I shoved my wobbly way to my feet, took up my pack, and opened the drawer to get Bob.

“Did it work?” he chirped.

“Almost,” I said. “There’s one left. Keep your head down.”

“Oh,
very
funny…” he began.

I zipped the skull into my pack, took up my staff and blasting rod, and shuffled wheezily out to find the remaining phage before it found someone else.

My legs almost gave out just
thinking
about taking the stairs, so I rode the elevator down to the first floor. I heard nothing until the floor indicator told me we’d just passed the second floor, at which point I began to hear frightened, muffled screams. The elevator hit the first floor, and the doors had just begun to roll open when the power went out.

Blackness fell over the hotel. The screams redoubled. I took out my pentacle amulet and sent enough of my will into it to make it glow with pale blue wizard’s light. I jammed my staff into the slightly open elevator doors and levered them apart, then slipped out into the hotel.