Ghost Story (57 page)

She nodded again. “Do you know why you were on those stairs?”

“Bad people,” Josh said. “Bad people who were going to hurt us.” He frowned. “You?”

“I could hurt you right now, but I'm not going to. Am I?” Murphy said.

“No.”

“That's right,” she said. “I know this is hard, Josh, but I'm probably your friend.”

He frowned. “I don't know you. You're a stranger.”

“I'm going to help you,” she said. “Help all of you, if you'll let me. Get you some food and some clean clothes.”

Josh shrugged a shoulder. “ 'Kay. I'm hungry.”

Murphy looked away from him, and I saw her control another expression of anger. “I'm looking for a little bald man. I know he's here.”

Josh looked uncomfortable.

“Is he here? Downstairs?”

“You know he is,” I muttered.

It hadn't carried to the radio, but Murphy glanced with an arched eyebrow up the stairway, then turned back to the kid.

Josh looked back and forth and shifted his weight.

“Tell me the truth, Josh,” Murphy said. “It's all right.”

“Downstairs,” Josh said. “With Boz.”

“Boz?” Murphy asked.

“Boz is big,” Josh said.

Murphy eyed the kid up and down and squared her shoulders. “Um, right. Okay, Josh. There's one more thing I want you to do for me, and then you can go sit down with your friends.”

“ 'Kay.”

“My friends are up at the top of the stairs. I want you to ask them in.”

Josh furrowed his brow. “Huh?”

“Invite them inside, please.”

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head. “No one in the secret hideout. Orders.”

“It's all right,” Murphy said. “I'm giving you new orders. Invite them in, please.”

Josh seemed to waver. “Umm.”

Murphy's hand dipped into her pocket and he seemed to flinch. Then it emerged holding one of those high-activity protein bars wrapped in Mylar. “You can have this, if you do.”

The way to a dim minion's heart was evidently through his stomach. Josh snapped up the bar with both hands and said, up toward the top of the stairs, “Won't you please come inside?”

I took a tentative step forward and felt no resistance. The threshold had parted. Molly did the same and hurried down the stairs.

“Will, Andi, Marci,” Molly said in a calm voice. “Back a couple of steps, please.”

The wolves glanced at Murphy and then started backing up.

“What are you doing?” Murphy asked.

“I'm making sure we don't need to hurt them, Ms. Murphy,” Molly said. “Trust me.”

“Grasshopper?” I asked.

“It's legal,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Don't worry. And we can't just stand around. What's the response time to this block?”

“Eight minutes,” Murphy said calmly. “Ish.”

“It's been about four since the charge went off,” Molly said. “Ticktock.”

Murphy grimaced. “Do it.”

Molly turned to Josh and said, “Go stand with your friends. You guys look tired.”

Josh had a mouthful of whatever it was. He nodded. “Always tired.” And he shuffled over to the dazed-looking group in the corner.

“A lot of cults do that,” Molly said quietly. “It makes them easier to influence and control.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then took a slow, deep breath and opened them. She lifted her right hand and murmured, in a silken-soft tone,
“Neru.”

And the dozen or so Big Hoods just sank down to the floor.

“Mother of God,” Murphy said softly, and turned to stare at Molly.

“Sleep spell,” I said quietly. “Like the one I had to use on you, Murph.”

I didn't mention that the spell I'd used on Murphy had taken every bit of skill I'd had and ten times as long to put together. Molly had just done the same thing, only a dozen times bigger—touching each individual mind and crafting the spell to lull it to sleep. What she'd just done was
hard
.

In fact, it was what one could only have expected from a member of the White Council.

Maybe my godmother had a point.

Molly shuddered and rubbed at her arms. “Ugh. They aren't . . . they aren't right, Ms. Murphy. They weren't stable, and they could have had their switches flipped to violence at any time. This will at least make sure they won't hurt themselves or anyone else until morning.”

Murphy studied her for a moment and then nodded. “Thank you, Molly.”

My apprentice nodded back.

Murphy took up her gun again and then looked at her. She smiled and shook her head. “Rag Lady, huh?”

Molly looked down at her outfit and back up. “I didn't pick the name.”

The diminutive woman shook her head, her expression firm with disapproval. “If you're going to create a persona, you've got to think of these things. Do you know how many extra PMS jokes are flying out there now?”

Molly looked serious. “I think that just makes it even scarier?”

Murphy pursed her lips and shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah. I guess it might.”

“Scares me,” I said.

Murphy smiled a little more. “Because you're a chauvinist pig, Dresden.”

“No,” I snorted. “Because I realize a lot better than you two do how dangerous you are.”

Both of them stopped at that, blinked, and looked at each other.

“Okay, ghosty-scout time,” I said. “Sit tight for a second. I'm going to check below.”

“Meet you at the top of the next stairway,” Murphy said.

“Got it,” I said. “Oh. Nice work on that spell, grasshopper.”

Molly's cheeks turned pink, but she said, casually, “Yeah. I know.”

“Atta girl,” I said. “Never let them think you're out of your depth.”

I vanished and appeared in the main chamber below. I was unprepared for the sight that waited for me.

Corpsetaker was standing about twenty feet from where Mort hung suspended. Her jaw was . . . was unhinged, like a snake's, open much wider than it should have been able. As I watched, she made a couple of convulsive motions with her entire body and swallowed down a recognizable object—a child's shoe, circa nineteenth century. She tilted her head back, as if it helped her slide whichever one of the two child ghosts she'd eaten last down her gullet, and then lowered her chin and smiled widely at Mort Lindquist.

Sir Stuart's faded form was the only one still visible in the room. The wispy, camera-lit mists of several other spirits were still dissolving, all around the room.

Mort spotted me and slurred, “Dresden. You moron. What have you done?”

Corpsetaker tilted her head back and laughed.

“I wasn't keeping them shut away because they might hurt this bitch,” Morty said. He sounded hurt and exhausted and furious. “I was protecting them because she was going to
eat
them.”

I stared for a second.

The Corpsetaker had been going to
eat
the Lecters. The most vicious, dangerous, powerful spirits in all of Chicago.

Just like she had planned to do to Chicago's ghosts when Kemmler's disciples had attempted a ritual called a Darkhallow several years before, I realized—a ritual that, if successful, would have turned the necromancer who pulled it off into a being of godlike power.

“Ahhhh,” the Corpsetaker said, the sound deep and rich and full of satisfaction.

I got a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“I'm almost full,” she continued. She smiled at me with very wide, very white, very sharp-looking teeth. “Almost.”

O
ne thing you never do in a fight, no matter how emotionally satisfying it might seem, is pause to gloat with an enemy standing right in front of you. Savvy foes aren't going to just hang around letting you yak at them. They're going to take advantage of the opening you're giving them.

The same goes for desperate foes who aren't interested in trying to win a fair fight.

Before the Corpsetaker finished speaking, I snapped my staff forward and snarled,
“Fuego!”

Fire lashed toward her. She deflected the strike with a motion of her hand, like you'd use to ward off a fly. The memory-fire went flying on by her, through the wall and gone.

“Such a pity,” she said. “I was just going to—”

She wanted to keep up the gloating, I was game.

I hit her again, only harder.

This time I sent it flying a lot faster and it stung, though she slapped the fire aside before it could do much more than singe her. She let out a furious sound. “Fool! I will—”

Some people. I swear they never learn.

I'd built up a rhythm. So I gave her my best evocation, a burst of fire and force, sizzling with a lot of curve and English on it, an ogre-buster the size of a softball, blazing with scarlet and golden light.

She swept both arms into an X-shaped defensive stance, fingers contorted in a desperate defensive gesture, and she snapped out a string of swift words. She stopped the strike, but an explosion of flame and force rolled over her and she screamed in pain as she was driven twenty feet back and into the solid rock of the wall.

“Yahhh!” I shouted in wordless defiance, even as I reached for my next spell . . .

. . . and suddenly felt very strange.

“—sden, stop!” Mort was screaming. His voice sounded very far away. “Look at yourself !”

I had the next blast of fire and energy ready in my mind, but I stopped to glance at my hands.

I could barely see them. They were faded to the point of near invisibility.

The shock drove the spell out of my head, and color and substance rushed back into my limbs. They were still translucent, but at least I could see them. I turned wide eyes to where Mort still hung over the wraith pit. His voice suddenly snapped back up in volume, becoming very clear.

“You keep throwing your memories at her,” Mort said, “but part of what you are now goes out with them—and it doesn't come
back
. You're about to destroy yourself, man! She's luring you into it!”

Of course she was, dammit. Why stand around trying to block my attacks when she could just vanish from in front of them? Evil Bob's fortifications, it seemed, had served a purpose other than simply barring the way—I'd used up way too much of myself on the way through them. And then here, trading punches with Corpsetaker, I'd used up a lot more, slinging out the memory of my magic left and right, when I'd seen how careful Sir Stuart was to recover such expended power practically the minute I'd gotten out of Captain Jack's car.

I couldn't see her without bringing up my Sight, but Corpsetaker's mocking laugh rolled through the underground chamber from the section of wall I'd knocked her into. I stared at my hands again and clenched them in frustration. Mort was right. I'd already done too much. But how the hell else was I supposed to fight her?

I turned to Mort. He was having trouble keeping his eyes on me as he twisted slowly on the rope. He closed them. “Dresden . . . you can't do anything more. Get out of here. I don't want anyone else to give themselves away for me,” he said, his voice raw. “Not for me.”

Sir Stuart's shade, floating protectively beside Mort, regarded me with sober, distant eyes.

Corpsetaker's mad laughter mocked us all. Then she said, “If I'd known you would deliver so thoroughly, Dresden, I'd have gone looking for you ages ago. Boz. Kill the little man.”

There was a growl and the stirring of a large animal. And then a human garbage truck started climbing out of the wraith pit, emerging from the stewing broil of wraiths like Godzilla rising out of the surf. Boz had a stench to him so thick that it carried over into the realm of spirit—a psychic stink that felt like it might have choked me unconscious had I still been alive. The guy's
brain
had been down there stewing in wraiths for only God knew how long, and if Morty's reaction to exposure was any indication, Boz had to have had his sanity pureed. He was crusted over in filth so thick that I couldn't tell where the spiritual muck left off and the physical crud began. I could see his eyes, like dull, gleaming stones underneath his hood. They were absolutely gone. This guy was only a person by legal definitions. His humanity had long since begun to fester and rot.

Boz climbed out of the pit, radiating a physical and psychic power full of rot and corruption and rage and endless hungers. He stood there blankly for a second. And then he turned and took one slow, lumbering, Voorheesian step after another, toward the apparatus from which Mort hung.

The ectomancer regarded Boz weakly and then said, “Great. This is all I need.”

“What?” I said. “Mort? What does she mean?”

“Uh, sorry. Little distracted here,” Mort said. “What?”

“The Corpsetaker! What did she mean that she doesn't need you anymore?”

“You fed her enough power to fuel a couple of dozen Nightmares, Dresden,” Mort said. “She can do whatever she wants now.”

“What? So she gobbles a bunch of killers and she gets to be a real boy again? It can't be that easy.”

Boz reached the basketball goal, grabbed it in his huge hands, and just turned it slowly, the hard way. Mort began to rotate toward the edge of the pit.

“Agh! Dresden! Do something!”

I glared at Morty, spreading empty hands, and then in pure frustration I tossed a punch at Boz. It was like slapping my fist through raw sewage. I didn't hit anything solid, and my fist and arm came out covered in disgusting residue. I couldn't act. Information was the only weapon I had. “Kind of limited here, Mort!”