Proven Guilty (33 page)

I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw blood on the doorway.

The decorative mailbox three feet from me read, in cheerfully painted letters: THE CARPENTERS.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

Oh,
God
.

I’d sent the phages after Molly.

Chapter Thirty

I got out of the van, too shocked to see anything but the destruction. It made no sense. It made no sense at all. How in the hell could this have happened? How could my spell have turned the phages and sent them here?

I stood on the sidewalk outside the house with my mouth hanging open. The streetlights were all out. Only the lights of the van showed the damage, and Thomas turned them off after only a moment. There was no disturbance on the street, no outcry, no police presence. Whatever had happened, something had taken steps to keep it from disturbing the neighbors.

I don’t know how long I stood there. I felt Mouse’s presence at my side. Then Thomas’s, on the other side of me.

“Harry?” he said, as if he was repeating himself. “What is this place?”

“It’s Michael’s house,” I whispered. “His family’s home.”

Thomas flinched. He looked back and forth and said, “Those things came here?”

I nodded. I felt unsteady.

I felt so damned tired.

Whatever happened here, it was over. There was nothing I could do at this point, except see who had been hurt. And I did not want to do that. So I stood there staring at the house until Thomas finally said, “I’ll keep watch out here. Circle the house, see if there’s anything to be seen.”

“Okay,” I whispered. I swallowed, and my stomach felt like I’d swallowed a pound of thumbtacks. I wanted nothing in the world so much as to run away.

But instead, I dragged my tired ass over the damaged lawn and through the house’s broken doorway. Mouse, walking on three legs, followed me.

There were sprinkles of blood, already dried, on the inside of the doorway.

I went on inside the house, through the entry hall, into the living room. Furniture lay strewn all over the place, discarded and broken and tumbled. The television lay on its side, warbling static on its screen. A low sound, all white noise and faint interference, filled the room.

There was utter silence in the house, otherwise.

“Hello?” I called.

No one answered.

I went into the kitchen.

There were school papers on the fridge, most of them written in exaggerated, childish hands. There were crayon drawings up there, too. One, of a smiling stick figure in a dress, had a wavering line of letters underneath that read: I LOW OU MAMA.

Oh, God.

The thumbtacks in my belly became razor blades. If I’d hurt them… I didn’t know what I would do.

“Harry!” Thomas called from outside. “Harry, come here!”

His voice was tense, excited. I went out the kitchen door to the backyard, and found Thomas climbing down from a tree house only a little nicer than my apartment, built up in the branches of the old oak tree behind the Carpenters’ house. He had a still form draped over his shoulder.

I drew out my amulet and called wizard light as Thomas laid the oldest son, Daniel, out on the grass in the backyard. He was breathing, but looked pale. He was wearing flannel pajama pants and a white T-shirt soaked with blood. There was a cut on his arm; not too deep, but very messy. He had bruises on his face, on one arm, and the knuckles on both his hands were torn and ragged.

Michael’s son had been throwing punches. It hadn’t done him any good, but he’d fought.

“Coat,” I said, terse. “He’s cold.”

Thomas immediately took off my duster and draped it over the boy. I propped his feet up on my backpack. “Stay here,” I told him. I went in the house, fetched a glass of water, and brought it out. I knelt down and tried to wake the boy up, to get him to drink a little. He coughed a little, then drank, and blinked open his eyes. He couldn’t focus them.

“Daniel,” I said quietly. “Daniel, it’s Harry Dresden.”

“D-dresden?” he said.

“Yeah. Your dad’s friend. Harry.”

“Harry,” he said. Then his eyes flew open wide and he struggled to sit up. “Molly!”

“Easy, easy,” I told him. “You’re hurt. We don’t know how bad yet. Lie still.”

“Can’t,” he mumbled. “They took her. We were… is Mom okay? Are the little ones okay?”

I chewed on my lip. “I don’t know. Do you know where they are?”

He blinked several times and then he said, “Panic room.”

I frowned. “What?”

“S-second floor. Safe room. Dad built it. Just in case.”

I traded a look with Thomas. “Where is it?”

Daniel waved a vague hand. “Mom had the little ones upstairs. Molly and me couldn’t get to the stairs. They were there. We tried to lead them away.”

“Who, Daniel? They who?”

“The movie monsters. Reaper. Hammerhand.” He shuddered. “Scarecrow.”

I snarled a furious curse. “Thomas, stay with him. Mouse, keep watch.” I stood up and stalked into the house, crossed to the stairs, and went up them. The upstairs hallway had a bunch of bedrooms off it, with the oldest children’s rooms being at the opposite end of the hall from the master bedroom, the younger children being progressively closer to mom and dad. I looked inside each room. They were all empty, though the two nearest the head of the stairs had been torn up pretty well. Broken toys and shattered, child-sized furniture lay everywhere.

If I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed the extra space between the linen closet and the master bedroom. I checked the closet in the master bedroom and turned up nothing. Then I opened the door to the linen closet, and found the shelves in complete disarray, sheets and towels and blankets strewn on the floor. I hunkered down and held up my mother’s amulet, peering closely, and then found a section of the back wall of the closet just slightly misaligned with the corner it met. I reached out and touched that part of the wall, closed my eyes, extending my senses through my fingertips.

I felt power there. It wasn’t a ward, or at least it was unlike any ward I had ever encountered. It was more of a quiet hum of constant power, and was similar to the power I’d felt stirring around Michael on several occasions—the power of faith. There was a form of magic protecting that panel.

“Lasciel,” I murmured quietly. “You getting this?”

She did not appear, but her voice rolled through my thoughts.
Yes, my host. Angelic work
.

I exhaled. “Real angels?”

Aye. Rafael or one of his lieutenants, from the feel of it.

“Dangerous?”

There was an uncertain pause.
It is possible. You are touched by more darkness than my own. But it is meant to conceal the room beyond, not to strike out at an intruder
.

I took a deep breath and said, “Okay.” Then I reached out and rapped hard on the panel, three times.

I thought I heard a motion, weight shifting on a floorboard.

I knocked again. “Charity!” I called. “It’s Harry Dresden!”

This time, the motion was definite. The panel clicked, then rolled smoothly to one side, and a double-barreled shotgun slid out, aimed right at my chin. I swallowed and looked down the barrel. Charity’s cold blue eyes faced me from the other end of the gun.

“You might not be the real Dresden,” she said.

“Sure I am.”

“Prove it,” she said. Her tone was quiet, balanced, deadly.

“Charity, there’s no time for this. You want me to show you my driver’s license?”

“Bleed,” she said instead.

Which was a good point. Most of the things who could play doppel-ganger did not have human plumbing, or human blood. It wasn’t an infallible test by any means, but it was as solid as anything a nonwizard could use for verification. So I pulled out my pen knife and cut my already mangled left hand, just a little. I couldn’t feel it in any case. I bled red, and showed her.

She stared at me for a long second, and then eased the hammers on the shotgun back down, set the weapon aside, and wriggled out of the space beyond the panel. I saw a candle lit back there. The rest of the Carpenter children, sans Molly, were inside. Alicia was sitting up, awake, her eyes worried. The rest were sacked out.

“Molly,” she said, once she’d gained her feet. “Daniel.”

“I found him hiding in the tree house,” I said. “He’s hurt.”

She nodded once. “How badly?”

“Bruised up pretty good, groggy, but I don’t think he’s in immediate danger. Mouse and a friend of mine are with him.”

Charity nodded again, features calm and remote, eyes cold and calculating. She had a great cool-headed act going, but it wasn’t perfect. Her hands were trembling badly, fingers clenching and unclenching arrhyth-mically. “And Molly?”

“I haven’t found her yet,” I said quietly. “Daniel might know what happened to her.”

“Were they Denarians?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Definitely not.”

“Is it possible that they may return?”

I shrugged. “It isn’t likely.”

“But possible?”

“Yes.”

She nodded once, and her voice had the quality of someone thinking aloud. “Then the next thing to do is to take the children to the church. We’ll make sure Daniel is cared for. I’ll try to send word to Michael. Then we’ll find Molly.”

“Charity,” I said. “Wait.”

Charity thrust the heel of her hand firmly into my chest and pushed my shoulders back against the opposite wall. Her voice was quiet and very precise. “My children are vulnerable. I’m taking them to safety. Help me or stand aside.”

Then she turned from me and began bringing her children out. Alicia helped as much as she could, her studious features tired and worried, but the littlest ones were sleepy to the point of hibernation, and remained limp as dishrags. I pitched in, picking up little Harry and Hope, carrying one on each hip. Charity’s expression flashed briefly with both worry and thanks, and I saw her control slip. Tears formed in her eyes. She closed them again, jaw clenched, and when she looked up she had regained her composure.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Let’s move,” I replied, and we did.

Tough lady. Very tough. We’d had our differences, but I had to respect the proud core of her. She was the kind of mother you read about in the paper, the kind who lifts a car off of one of her kids.

It was entirely possible that I’d just killed her oldest daughter. If Charity knew that, if she knew that I’d put her children in danger, she’d murder me.

If Molly had been hurt because of me, I’d help.

Saint Mary of the Angels is more than just a church. It’s a monument. It’s huge, its dome rising to seventeen stories, and covered in every kind of accessory you could name, including angelic statues spread over the roof and ledges. You could get a lot of people arguing over exactly what it’s a monument
to
, I suppose, but one cannot see the church without being impressed by its size, by its artistry, by its beauty. In a city of architectural mastery, Saint Mary of the Angels need bow its head to no one.

That said, the back of the place, the delivery doors, looked quite modestly functional. We went there, Charity driving her family’s minivan, Thomas, me, and Mouse in Madrigal’s battered rental van. Mouse and I got out. Thomas didn’t. I frowned at him.

“I’m going to find someplace to park this,” he said. “Just in case Madrigal decides to report it as stolen or something.”

“Think he’ll make trouble for us?” I asked.

“Not face-to-face,” Thomas said, his voice confident. “He’s more jackal than wolf.”

“Look on the bright side,” I said. “Maybe the Scarecrow turned around and got him.”

Thomas sighed. “Keep dreaming. He’s a greasy little rat, but he survives.” He looked up at the church and then said, “I’ll keep an eye on things from out here. Come on out when you’re done.”

I got it. Thomas didn’t want to enter holy ground. As a vampire of the White Court, he was as close to human as vampires got, and as far as I knew, holy objects had never inconvenienced him. So this wasn’t about supernatural allergies. It was about his perceptions.

Thomas didn’t want to go into the church because he wasn’t optimistic that the Almighty and his institutions would smile on him. Like me, he favored maintaining a low profile with regards to matters temporal. And if he had gone back to older patterns, doing what came naturally to his predator’s nature, it might incline him to stay off the theological radar. Worse, entering such a place as the church might force him to face his choices, to question them, to be confronted with the fact that the road he’d chosen kept getting darker and further from the light.

I knew how he felt.

I hadn’t been in a church since I’d smacked my hand down on Lasciel’s ancient silver coin. Hell, I had a freaking fallen angel in my head—or at least a facsimile of one. If that wasn’t a squirt of lemon juice in God’s eye, I didn’t know what was.

But I had a job to do.

“Be careful,” I told him quietly. “Call Murphy. Tell her what’s up.”

“You’d better get some rest soon, Harry,” he replied. “You don’t look good.”

“I never look good,” I said. I offered him my fist. He rapped my knuckles gently with his own.

I nodded and walked over to knock on the delivery doors while he drove off in Madrigal’s van. I’d taken my duster back, once Daniel had a blanket on him. Screw the heat. I wanted the protection. Its familiar weight on my shoulders and motion against my legs were reassuring.

Forthill answered my knock, fully dressed, the white of his clerical collar easily seen in the night. His bright blue eyes looked around the parking lot once, and he hurried toward the van without a word being exchanged. I followed him. Forthill moved briskly, and we unloaded the van, Alicia shepherding the mobile kids indoors while he and Charity carried Daniel in between them. I followed with the two little wet dishrags, trying to keep my tired muscles from shaking too obviously.

Forthill led us to the storage room that sometimes doubled as refugee housing. There were half a dozen folded cots against one wall, and another one already opened, set out, and occupied by a lump under a blanket. Forthill and Charity got the wounded Daniel onto a cot first, and then opened the rest of them. We deposited tired children on them.

“What happened?” Forthill asked, his voice quiet and calm.

I didn’t want to hear Charity talk about it. “Got a cramp,” I told them. “Need to walk it off. Come find me when Daniel gets coherent.”