It’s My Birthday, Too

By Jim Butcher

"Hey, Miyagi-san," my apprentice said. Her jeans still dripped with purple-brown mucus. "You think the dry cleaners can get this out?"

I threw my car keys down on my kitchen counter, leaned my slimed, rune-carved wooden staff next to them, and said, "The last time I took something stained by a slime golem to a cleaner, the owner burned his place down the next day and tried to collect on the insurance."

Molly, my apprentice, was just barely out of her teens, and it was impossible not to notice what great legs she had when she stripped out of her trendily mangled jeans. She wrinkled her nose as she tossed them into the kitchen trash can. "Have I told you how much I love the wizard business, Harry?"

"Neither of us is in the hospital, kid. This was a good day at work." I took my mantled leather duster off. It was generously covered in splatters of the sticky, smelly mucus as well. I toted it over to the fireplace in my basement apartment, which I keep going during the winter. Given that I have to live without the benefits of electricity, it’s necessary. I made sure the fire was burning strongly and tossed the coat in.

"Hey!" Molly said. "Not the coat!"

"Relax," I told her. "The spells on it should protect it. They’ll bake the slime hard and I’ll chisel it off tomorrow."

"Oh, good. I like the coat." The girl subsided as she tossed her secondhand combat boots and socks into my trash after her ruined jeans. She was tall for a woman and built like a schoolboy’s fantasy of the Scandinavian exchange student. Her hair was shoulder length and the color of white gold, except for the tips, which had been dyed in a blend of blue, red, and purple. She’d lost a couple of the piercings she’d previously worn on her face, and was now down to only one eyebrow, one nostril, her tongue, and her lower lip. She went over to the throw rug in the middle of my living room floor, hauled it to one side, and opened the trapdoor leading down to my lab in the subbasement. She lit a candle in the fire, wrinkling her nose at the stink from the greasy smoke coming up from my coat, and padded down the stepladder stairs into the lab.

Mouse, my pet Sabertoothed Retriever, padded out of my bedroom and spread his doggy jaws in a big yawn, wagging his shaggy gray tail. He took one step toward me, then froze as the smell of the mucus hit his nose. The big gray dog turned around at once and padded back into the bedroom.

"Coward!" I called after him. I glanced up at Mister, my tomcat, who drowsed upon the top of my heaviest bookshelf, catching the updraft from the fireplace. "At least you haven’t deserted me."

Mister glanced at me, and then gave his head a little shake as the pungent smoke from the fireplace rose to him. He flicked his ears at me, obviously annoyed, and descended from the bookshelf with gracefully offended dignity to follow Mouse into the relative aromatic safety of my bedroom.

"Wimp," I muttered. I eyed my staff. It was crusty with the ichor. I’d have to take it off with sandpaper and repair the carvings. I’d probably have to do the blasting rod, too. Stupid freaking amateurs, playing with things they didn’t understand. Slime golems are just disgusting.

Molly thumped back up the stairs, now dressed in her backup clothes. Her experiences in training with me had taught her that lesson about six months in, and she had a second set of clothing stored in a gym bag underneath the little desk I let her keep in the lab. She came up in one of those black broomstick skirts that’s supposed to look wrinkled and Doc Martens, inappropriate for the winter weather but way less inappropriate than black athletic panties. "Harry, are you going to be able to drive me home?"

I frowned and checked the clock. After nine. Too late for a young woman to trust herself to Chicago’s public transportation. Given Molly’s skills, she probably wouldn’t be in any real danger, but it’s best not to tempt fate. "Could you call your folks?"

She shook her head. "On Valentine’s Day, are you kidding? They’ll have barricaded themselves upstairs and forced the older kids to wear the little ones out so that they’ll sleep through the noise." Molly shuddered. "I’m not interrupting them. Way too disturbing."

"Valentine’s Day," I groaned. "Dammit."

"What?"

"Oh, I forgot, what with the excitement. It’s, uh, someone’s birthday. I got them a present and wanted to get it to them today."

"Oh?" Molly chirped. "Who?"

I hesitated for a minute, but Molly had earned a certain amount of candor—and trust. "Thomas," I said.

"The vampire?" Molly asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Wow, Harry," she said, blue eyes sparkling. "That’s odd. I mean, why would you get him a birthday present?" She frowned prettily. "I mean, you didn’t get my dad one, and you’re friends with him, and he’s a Knight of the Sword and one of the good guys, and he’s saved your life about twenty times and all."

"More like four times," I said testily. "And I do Christmas for hi—"

Molly was looking at me, a smug smile on her face.

"You figured it out," I said.

"That Thomas was your brother?" Molly asked innocently. "Yep."

I blinked at her. "How?"

"I’ve seen you two fight." She lifted both pale eyebrows. "What? Have you seen how many brothers and sisters I have? I know my sibling conflicts."

"Hell’s bells," I sighed. "Molly—"

She lifted a hand. "I know, boss. I know. Big secret; safe with me." Her expression turned serious, and she gave me a look that was very knowing for someone so young. "Family is important."

I’d grown up in a succession of orphanages and foster homes. "Yeah," I said, "it is."

She nodded. "So you haven’t given family presents much. And your brother doesn’t exactly have a ton of people bringing him presents on his birthday, does he?"

I just looked at her for a second. Molly was growing up into a person I thought I was going to like.

"No," I said, quietly. "I haven’t and he doesn’t."

"Well then," she said, smiling. "Let’s go give him one."

I frowned at the intercom outside Thomas’s apartment building and said, "I don’t get it. He’s always home this time of night."

"Maybe he’s out to dinner," Molly said, shivering in the cold—after all, her backup clothing had been summer wear.

I shook my head. "He limits himself pretty drastically when it comes to exposing himself to the public."

"Why?"

"He’s a White Court vampire, an incubus," I said. "Pretty much every woman who looks at him gets ideas."

Molly coughed delicately. "Oh. It’s not just me, then."

"No. I followed him around town once. It was like watching one of those campy cologne commercials."

"But he does go out, right?"

"Sure."

She nodded and immediately started digging into her backpack. "Then maybe we could use a tracking spell and run him down. I think I’ve got some materials we can use."

"Me, too," I said, and produced two quarters from my pocket, holding them up between my fingers with slow, ominous flair, like David Blaine.

Then I took two steps to the pay phone next to the apartment building’s entrance, plugged the coins in, and called Thomas’s cell phone.

Molly gave me a level look and folded her arms.

"Hey," I told her as it rang. "We’re wizards, kid. We have trouble using technology. Doesn’t mean we can’t be smart about it."

Molly rolled her eyes and muttered to herself, and I paid attention to the phone call.

"’Allo," Thomas answered, the word thick with the French accent he used in his public persona.

"Hello, France?" I responded. "I found a dead mouse in my can of French roast coffee, and I’ve called to complain. I’m an American, and I refuse to stand for that kind of thing from you people."

My half brother sighed. "A moment, please," he said in his accent. I could hear music playing and people talking behind him. A party? A door clicked shut and he said, without any accent, "Hey, Harry."

"I’m standing outside your apartment in the freaking snow with your birthday present."

"That won’t do you much good," he said. "I’m not there."

"Being a professional detective, I had deduced that much," I said.

"A birthday present, huh?" he said.

"I get much colder and I’m going to burn it for warmth."

He laughed. "I’m at the Woodfield Mall in Schamburg."

I glanced at my watch. "This late?"

"Uh-huh. I’m doing a favor for one of my employees. I’ll be here until midnight or so. Look, just come back tomorrow evening."

"No," I said stubbornly. "Your birthday is today. I’ll drive there."

"Uh," Thomas said. "Yeah. I guess, uh. Okay."

I frowned. "What are you doing out there?"

"Gotta go." He hung up on me.

I traded a look with Molly. "Huh."

She tilted her head. "What’s going on?"

I turned and headed back for the car. "Let’s find out."

Woodfield Mall is the largest such establishment in the state, but its parking lots were all but entirely empty. The mall had been closed for more than an hour.

"How are we supposed to find him?" Molly asked.

I drove my car, the beat-up old Volkswagen Bug I had dubbed the Blue Beetle, around for a few minutes. "There," I said, nodding at a white sedan parked among a dozen other vehicles, the largest concentration of such transport left at the mall. "That’s his car." I started to say something else but stopped myself before I wasted an opportunity to Yoda the trainee. "Molly, tell me what you see."

She scrunched up her nose, frowning, as I drove through the lot to park next to Thomas’s car. The tires crunched over the thin dusting of snow that had frosted itself over scraped asphalt, streaks of salt and ice melt, and stubborn patches of ice. I killed the engine. It ticked for a few seconds, and then the car filled with the kind of soft, heavy silence you only get on a winter night with snow on the ground.

"The mall is closed," Molly said. "But there are cars at this entrance. There is a single section of lights on inside when the rest of them are out. I think one of the shops is lit inside. There’s no curtain down over it, even though the rest of the shops have them."

"So what should we be asking?" I prompted.

"What is Thomas doing, in a group, in a closed mall, on Valentine’s Day night?" Her tone rose at the end, questioning.

"Good; the significance of the date might mean something," I said. "But the real question is this: Is it a coincidence that the exterior security camera facing that door is broken?"

Molly blinked at me, then frowned, looking around.

I pointed a finger up. "Remember to look in all three dimensions. Human instincts don’t tend toward checking up above us or directly at our own feet, in general. You have to make yourself pick up the habit."

Molly frowned and then leaned over, peering up through the Beetle’s window to the tall streetlamp pole above us.

Maybe ten feet up, there was the square, black metal housing of a security camera. Several bare wires dangled beneath it, their ends connected to nothing. I’d seen it as I pulled the car in.

My apprentice drew in a nervous breath. "You think something is happening?"

"I think that we don’t have enough information to make any assumptions," I said. "It’s probably nothing. But let’s keep our eyes open."

No sooner had the words left my mouth than two figures stepped out of the night, walking briskly down the sidewalk outside the mall toward the lighted entrance.

They both wore long black capes with hoods.

Not your standard wear for Chicago shoppers.

Molly opened her mouth to stammer something.

"Quiet," I hissed. "Do not move."

The two figures went by only thirty or forty feet away. I caught a glimpse of a very, very pale face within one of the figure’s hoods, eyes sunken into the skull like pits. They both turned to the door without so much as glancing at us, opened it as though they expected it to be unlocked, and proceeded inside.

"All right," I said quietly. "It might be something."

"Um," Molly said. "W-were those v-vampires?"

"Deep breaths, kid," I told her. "Fear isn’t stupid, but don’t let it control you. I have no idea what they were." I made sure my old fleece-lined heavy denim coat was buttoned up and got out of the car.

"Uh. Then where are you going?" she asked.

"Inside," I said, walking around to the Beetle’s trunk. I unwrapped the wire that had held it closed ever since a dozen vehicular mishaps ago. "Whatever they are, Thomas doesn’t know about them. He’d have said something."

I couldn’t see her through the lifted hood, but Molly rolled down the window enough to talk to me. "B-but you don’t have your staff or blasting rod or coat or anything. They’re all back at your apartment."

I opened the case that held my .44 revolver and the box that held my ammunition, slipped shells into the weapon, and put it in my coat pocket. I dropped some extra rounds into the front pocket of my jeans and shut the hood. "They’re only toys, Padawan." Familiar, capable, proven toys that I felt naked without, but a true wizard shouldn’t absolutely rely on them—or teach his apprentice to do so. "Stay here, start up the car, and be ready to roll if we need to leave in a hurry."

"Right," she said, and wriggled over into the driver’s seat. Give Molly credit, she might be nervous, but she had learned the job of wheelman—sorry, political correctioners, wheelperson—fairly well.

I kept my right hand in my coat pocket, on the handle of my gun, hunched my shoulders against a small breath of frozen wind, and hurried to the mall entrance, my shoes crunching and squeaking on the little coating of snow. I walked toward the doors like I owned them, shoved them open like any shopper, and got a quick look around.

The mall was dark, except for the entrance and that single open shop—a little bistro with tinted windows that would have been dimly lit even when all the lights were on. I could see figures seated at tables inside and at a long dining counter and bar. They wore lots of black, and none of them looked much older than Molly, though the dim lights revealed few details.

I narrowed my eyes a bit, debating. Vampires gave off a certain amount of energy that someone like me could sense, but depending on which breed you were talking about, that energy could vary. Sometimes my sense of an approaching vampire was as overtly creepy as a child’s giggle coming from an open grave. Other times there was barely anything at all, and it registered on my senses as something as subtle as a simple, instinctive dislike for the creature in question. For White Court vamps like my half brother, there was nothing at all, unless they were doing something overtly vampiric. From outside the shop, I couldn’t tell anything.

Assuming they were vampires at all—which was a fairly large assumption. They didn’t meet up in the open like this. Vampires don’t apologize to the normal world for existing, but they don’t exactly run around auditioning for the latest reality TV shows, either.

One way to find out. I opened the door to the bistro, hand on my gun, took a step inside, holding the door open in case I needed to flee, and peered around warily at the occupants. The nearest was a pair of young men, speaking earnestly at a table over two cups of what looked like coffee and…

And they had acne. Not like disfiguring acne, or anything, just a few zits.

In case no one’s told you, here’s a monster-hunting tip for free: vampires have little to no need for Clearasil.

Seen in that light, the two young men’s costumes looked like exactly that. Costumes. They had two big cloaks, dripping a little meltwater, hung over the backs of their chairs, and I caught the distinctive aroma of weed coming from their general direction. Two kids, slipping out from the gathering to toke up and come back inside. One of them produced a candy bar from a pocket and tore into it, to the reassurance of the people who make Clearasil, I’m sure.

I looked around the room. More people. Mostly young, mostly with the thinness that goes with youth, as opposed to the leanly cadaverous kind that goes with being a bloodsucking fiend. They were mostly dressed in similar costume-style clothing, unless there had been a big sale at Goth-R-Us.

I felt my shoulders sag in relief, and I slipped my hand out of my pocket. Any time one of my bouts of constructive paranoia didn’t pan out was a good time.

"Sir," said a gruff voice from behind me. "The mall is closed. You want to tell me what you’re doing here?"

I turned to face a squat, blocky man with watery blue eyes and no chin. He’d grown a thick, brown gold walrus mustache that emphasized rather than distracted from the lack. He had a high hairline, a brown uniform, and what looked like a cop’s weapon belt until you saw that he had a walkie-talkie where the sidearm would be, next to a tiny can of mace. His name tag read: Raymond.

"Observing suspicious activity, Raymond," I said, and hooked my chin vaguely back at the bistro. "See that? People hanging around in the mall after hours. Weird."

He narrowed his eyes. "Wait. Don’t I know you?"

I pursed my lips and thought. "Oh, right. Six, seven years ago, at Shoegasm."

He grunted in recognition. "The phony psychic."

"Consultant," I responded. "And from what I hear, their inventory stopped shrinking. Which hadn’t happened before I showed up."

Raymond gave me a look that would have cowed lesser men. Much, much lesser men. Like maybe fourth graders. "If you aren’t with the group, you’re gone. You want to leave, or would you rather I took care of it for you?"

"Stop," I said, "you’re scaring me."

Raymond’s mustache quivered. He apparently wasn’t used to people who didn’t take him seriously. Plus, I was much, much bigger than he was.

"’Allo, ’Ah-ree," came my brother’s voice from behind me.

I turned to find Thomas there, dressed in tight black pants and a blousy red silk shirt. His shoulder-length hair was tied back in a tail with a matching red ribbon. His face didn’t look much like mine, except around the eyes and maybe the chin. Thomas was good looking the way Mozart was talented. There were people on the covers of magazines and on television and on movie screens who despaired of ever looking as good as Thomas.

On his arm was a slim young girl, quite pretty and wholesome-looking, wearing leather pants that rode low on her hips and a red bikini top, her silky brown hair artfully mussed. I recognized her from Thomas’s shop, a young woman named Sarah.

"Harry!" she said. "Oh, it’s nice to see you again." She nudged Thomas with her hip. "Isn’t it?"

"Always," Thomas said in his French accent, smiling.

"Hello, Mr. Raymond!" Sarah said, brightly.

Raymond scowled at me and asked Sarah, "He with you?"

"But of course," Thomas said, in that annoying French way, giving Raymond his most brilliant smile.

Raymond grunted and took his hand away from the radio. Lucky me. I had evidently been dismissed from Raymond’s world. "I was going to tell you that I’m going to be in the parking lot, replacing a camera we’ve got down, if you need me."

"Merci," Thomas said, still smiling.

Raymond grunted. He gave me a sour look, picked up a toolbox from where he’d set it aside, along with his coat and a stepladder, and headed out to the parking lot.

"’Ah-ree, you know Say-rah," Thomas said.

"Never had the pleasure of an introduction," I said, and offered Sarah my hand.

She took it, smiling. "I take it you aren’t here to play Evernight?"

I looked from her to the costumed people. "Oh," I said. "Oh, it’s a…game of some kind, I take it?"

"A larp," she said.

I looked blank for a second. "Is that like a lark?"

She grinned. "Larp," she repeated. "Live action role play."

"Live action…vampire role play, I guess," I said. I looked at Thomas. "And this is why you are here?"

Thomas gave me a sunny smile and nodded. "She asked me to pretend to be a vampire, just for tonight," he said. "And straight."

No wonder he was having a good time.

Sarah beamed at me. "Thomas never talks about his, ah, personal life. So you’re quite the man of mystery at the shop. We all speculate about you, all the time."

I’ll just bet they did. There were times when my brother’s cover as a flamingly gay hairdresser really grated. And it wasn’t like I could go around telling people we were related—not with the White Council of Wizards at war with the Vampire Courts.

"How nice," I told Sarah. I was never getting out of the role people had assumed for me around Thomas. "Thomas, can we talk for a moment?"

"Mais oui," he said. He smiled at Sarah, took her hand, and gave her a little bow over it. She beamed fondly at him, and then hurried back inside.

I watched her go, in her tight pants and skimpy top, and sighed. She had an awfully appealing curve of back and hip, and just enough bounce to make the motion pleasant, and there was no way I could ever even think about flirting with her.

"Roll your tongue back up into your mouth before someone notices," Thomas said, sotto voce. "I’ve got a cover to keep."

"Tell them I’m larping like I’m straight," I said, and we turned to walk down the entry hall, a little away from the bistro. "Pretending to be a vampire, huh?"

"It’s fun," Thomas said. "I’m like a guest star on the season finale."

I eyed him. "Vampires aren’t fun and games."

"I know that," Thomas said. "You know that. But they don’t know that."

"You aren’t doing them any favors," I said.

"Lighten up," Thomas said. The words were teasing, but there were serious undertones to his voice. "They’re having fun, and I’m helping. I don’t get a chance to do that very often."

"By making light of something that is a very real danger."

He stopped and faced me. "They’re innocent, Harry. They don’t know any better. They’ve never been hurt by a vampire, lost loved ones to a vampire." He lifted his eyebrows. "I thought that was what your people were fighting for in the first place."

I gave him a sour look. "If you weren’t my brother, I’d probably tell you that you have some awfully nerdy hobbies."

We reached the front doors. Thomas studied himself in the glass and struck a pose. "True. But I look gorgeous doing them. Besides, Sarah worked eleven Friday to Mondays in a row without a complaint. She earned a favor."

Outside, the snow was thickening. Raymond was atop his ladder, fiddling with the camera. Molly was watching him. I waved until I got her attention, then made a little outline figure of a box with my fingers, and beckoned her. She nodded and killed the engine.

"I came in here expecting trouble. We’re lucky I didn’t bounce a few of these kids off the ceiling before I realized they weren’t something from the dark side."

"Bah," Thomas said. "Never happen. You’re careful."

I snorted. "I hope you won’t mind if I just give you your present and run."

"Wow," Thomas said. "Gracious much?"

"Up yours," I said, as Molly grabbed the present and hurried in through the cold, shivering all the way. "And Happy Birthday."

He turned to me and gave me a small, genuinely pleased smile. "Thank you."

There was a click of high heels in the hall behind us, and a young woman appeared. She was pretty enough, I suspected, but in the tight black dress, black hose, and with her hair slicked back like that, it was sort of threatening. She gave me a slow, cold look and said, "So. I see that you’re keeping low company after all, Ravenius."

Ever suave, I replied, "Uh. What?"

"’Ah-ree," Thomas said.

I glanced at him.

He put his hand flat on the top of his head and said, "Do this."

I peered at him.

He gave me a look.

I sighed and put my hand on the top of my head.

The girl in the black dress promptly did the same thing and gave me a smile. "Oh, right, sorry. I didn’t realize."

"I will be back in one moment," Thomas said, his accent back. "Personal business."

"Right," she said, "sorry. I figured Ennui had stumbled onto a subplot." She smiled again, then took her hand off the top of her head, reassumed that cold, haughty expression, and stalked clickety-clack back to the bistro.

I watched her go, turned to my brother while we both stood there with our hands flat on top of our heads, elbows sticking out like chicken wings, and said, "What does this mean?"

"We’re out of character," Thomas said.

"Oh," I said. "And not a subplot."

"If we had our hands crossed over our chests," Thomas said, "we’d be invisible."

"I missed dinner," I said. I put my other hand on my stomach. Then, just to prove that I could, I patted my head and rubbed my stomach. "Now I’m out of character—and hungry."

"You’re always hungry. How is that out of character?"

"True," I said. I frowned, and looked back. "What’s taking Molly—"

My apprentice stood with her back pressed to the glass doors, faced away from me. She stood rigid, one hand pressed to her mouth. Thomas’s birthday present, in its pink and red Valentine’s Day wrapping paper, lay on its side among grains of snowmelt on the sidewalk. Molly trembled violently.

Thomas was a beat slow to catch on to what was happening. "Isn’t that skirt a little light for the weather? Look, she’s freezing."

Before he got to "skirt," I was out the door. I seized Molly and dragged her inside, eyes on the parking lot. I noticed two things.

First, that Raymond’s ladder was tipped over and lay on its side in the parking lot. Flakes of snow were already gathering upon it. In fact, the snow was coming down more and more heavily, despite the weather forecast that had called for clearing skies.

Second, there were droplets of blood on my car and the cars immediately around it, the ones closest to Raymond’s ladder. They were rapidly freezing and glittered under the parking lot’s lamps like tiny, brilliant rubies.

"What?" Thomas asked, as I brought Molly back in. "What is—" He stared out the windows for a second and answered the question for himself. "Crap."

"Yeah," I said. "Molly?"

She gave me a wild-eyed glance, shook her head once, and then bowed it and closed her eyes, speaking in a low, repetitive whisper.

"What the hell?" Thomas said.

"She’s in psychic shock," I said quietly.

"Never seen you in psychic shock," my brother said.

"Different talents. I blow things up. Molly’s a sensitive, and getting more so," I told him. "She’ll snap herself out of it, but she needs a minute."

"Uh-huh," Thomas said quietly. He stared intently at the shuddering young woman, his eyes shifting colors slightly, from deep gray to something paler.

"Hey," I said to him. "Focus."

He gave his head a little shake, his eyes gradually darkening again. "Right. Come on. Let’s get her a chair and some coffee and stop standing around in front of big glass windows making targets of ourselves."

We did, dragging her into the bistro and to the table nearest the door, where Thomas could stand watching the darkness while I grabbed the girl some coffee from a dispenser, holding my hand on top of my silly head the whole while.

Molly got her act together within a couple of minutes after I sat down. It surprised me: despite my casual words to Thomas, I hadn’t seen her that badly shaken up before. She grabbed at the coffee, shaking, and slurped some.

"Okay, grasshopper," I said. "What happened?"

"I was on the way in," she replied, her voice distant and oddly flat. "The security man. S-something killed him." A hint of something desperate crept into her voice. "I f-felt him die. It was horrible."

"What?" I asked her. "Give me some details to work with."

Molly shook her head rapidly. "D-didn’t see. It was too fast. I sensed something moving behind me—m-maybe a footstep. Then there was a quiet sound and h-he died.…" Her breaths started coming rapidly again.

"Easy," I told her, keeping my voice in the steady cadence I’d used when teaching her how to maintain self-control under stress. "Breathe. Focus. Remember who you are."

"Okay," she said, several breaths later. "Okay."

"This sound. What was it?"

She stared down at the steam coming up off her coffee. "I…a thump, maybe. Lighter."

"A snap?" I asked.

She grimaced but nodded. "And I turned around, fast as I could. But he was gone. I didn’t see anything there, Harry."

Thomas, ten feet away, could hear our quiet conversation as clearly as if he’d been sitting with us. "Something grabbed Raymond," he said. "Something moving fast enough to cross her whole field of vision in a second or two. It didn’t stop moving when it took him. She probably heard his neck breaking from the whiplash."

Not much to say to that. The whole concept was disturbing as hell.

Thomas glanced back at me and said, "It’s a great way to do a grab and snatch if you’re fast enough. My father showed me how it was done once." His head whipped around toward the parking lot.

I felt myself tense. "What?"

"The streetlights just went out."

I sat back in my chair, thinking furiously. "Only one reason to do that."

"To blind us," Thomas said. "Prevent anyone from reaching the vehicles."

"Also keeps anyone outside from seeing what is happening here," I said. "How are you guys using this place after hours?"

"Sarah’s uncle owns it," Thomas said.

"Get her," I said, rising to take up watching the door. "Hurry."

Thomas brought her over to me a moment later. By the time he did, the larpers had become aware that something was wrong, and their awkwardly sinister role-playing dwindled into an uncertain silence as Sarah hurried over. Before, I had watched her and her scarlet bikini top in appraisal. Now I couldn’t help but think how slender and vulnerable it made her neck look.

"What is it?" Sarah asked me.

"Trouble," I said. "We may be in danger, and I need you to answer a few questions for me, right now."

She opened her mouth and started to ask me something.

"First," I said, interrupting her, "do you know how many security men are present at night?"

She blinked at me for a second. Then she said, "Uh, four before closing, two after. But the two who leave are usually here until midnight, doing maintenance and some of the cleaning."

"Where?"

She shook her head. "The security office, in administration."

"Right," I said. "This place have a phone?"

"Of course."

"Take me to it."

She did, back in the little place’s tiny kitchen. I picked it up, got a dial tone, and slammed Murphy’s phone number across the numbers. If the bad guys, whoever or whatever they were, were afraid of attracting attention from the outside world, I might be able to avoid the entire situation by calling in lots of police cars and flashy lights.

The phone rang once, twice.

And then it went dead, along with the lights, the music playing on the speakers, and the constant blowing sigh of the heating system.

Several short, breathy screams came from the front of the bistro, and I heard Thomas shout for silence and call, "Harry?"

"The security office," I said to Sarah. "Where is it?"

"Um. It’s at the far end of the mall from here."

"Easy to find?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "You have to go through the administrative hall and—"

I shook my head. "You can show me. Come on." I stalked out to the front room of the bistro. "Thomas? Anything?"

All the larpers had gathered in close, herd instinct kicking in under the tension. Thomas stepped closer to me so that he could answer me under his breath.

"Nothing yet," Thomas said. "But I saw something moving out there."

I grunted. "Here’s the plan. Molly, Sarah, and me are going to go down to the security office and try to reach someone."

"Bad idea," Thomas said. "We need to get out of here."

"We’re too vulnerable. They’re between us and the cars," I said. "Whatever they are. We’ll never make it out all the way across the parking lot without getting caught."

"Fine," he said. "You fort up here and I’ll go."

"No. Once we’re gone, you’ll try to get through to the cops on a cell phone. There’s not a prayer of getting one to work if Molly and me are anywhere nearby—not with both of us this nervous."

He didn’t like that answer, but he couldn’t refute it. "All right," he said, grimacing. "Watch your back."

I nodded to him and raised my voice. "All right, everyone. I’m not sure exactly what is going on here, but I’m going to go find security. I want everyone to stay here until I get back and we’re sure it’s safe."

There was a round of halfhearted protests at that, but Thomas quelled them with a look. It wasn’t an angry or threatening look. It was simply a steady gaze.

Everyone shut up.

I headed out with Molly and Sarah in tow, and as we stepped out of the bistro, there was an enormous crashing sound, and a car came flying sideways through the glass wall of the entranceway about eight feet off the ground. It hit the ground, broken glass and steel foaming around it like crashing surf, bounced with a shockingly loud crunch, and tumbled ponderously toward us, heralded by a rush of freezing air.

Molly was already moving, but Sarah only stood there staring incredulously as the car came toward us. I grabbed her around the waist and all but hauled her off her feet, dragging her away. I ran straight away from the oncoming missile, which was not the smartest way to go—but since a little perfume kiosk was blocking my path, it was the only way.

I was fast, and we got a little bit lucky. I pulled Sarah past the kiosk just as the car hit it. Its momentum was almost gone by the time it hit, and it crashed to a halt, a small wave of safety glass washing past our shoes. Sarah wobbled and nearly fell. I caught her and kept going. She started to scream or shout or ask a question—but I clapped my hand over her mouth and hissed, "Quiet!"

I didn’t stop until we were around the corner and the crashing racket was coming to a halt. Then I stopped with my back against the wall and got Sarah’s attention.

I didn’t speak. I raised one finger to my lips with as much physical emphasis as I could manage. Sarah, trembling violently, nodded at me. I turned to give the same signal to Molly, who looked pale but in control of herself. She nodded as well, and we turned and slipped away from that arm of the mall.

I listened as hard as I could, which is actually quite hard. It’s a talent I seem to have developed, maybe because I’m a wizard, and maybe just because some people can hear really well. It was difficult to make out anything at all, much less any kind of detail, but I was sure I heard one thing—footsteps, coming in the crushed door of the mall, crunching on broken glass and debris.

Something fast enough to snap a man’s neck with the whiplash of its passage and strong enough to throw that car through a wall of glass had just walked into the mall behind us. I figured it was a very, very good idea not to let it know we were there and sneaking away.

We got away with it, walking slowly and silently out through the mall, which yawned all around us, three levels of darkened stores, deserted shops, and closed metal grates and doors. I stopped a dozen shops later, after we’d gone past the central plaza of the mall and were far enough away for the space to swallow up quiet conversation.

"Oh my God," Sarah whimpered, her voice a strangled little whisper. "Oh my God. What is happening? Is it terrorists?"

I probably would have had a more suave answer if she hadn’t been pressed up against my side, mostly naked from the hips up, warm and lithe and trembling. The adrenaline rush that had hit me when the car nearly smashed us caught up to me, and it was suddenly difficult to keep from shivering, myself. I had a sudden, insanely intense need to rip off the strings on that red bikini top and kiss her, purely for the sake of how good it would feel. All things considered, though, it would have been less than appropriate. "Uh," I mumbled, forcing myself to look back the way we’d come. "They’re…bad guys of some kind, yeah. Are you hurt?"

"No," Sarah said.

"Molly?" I asked.

"I’m fine," my apprentice answered.

"The security office," I said.

Sarah stared at me for a second, her eyes still wide. "But…but I don’t understand why—"

I put my hand firmly over her mouth. "Sarah," I said, meeting her eyes for as long as I dared. "I’ve been in trouble before, and I know what I’m doing. I need you to trust me. All right?"

Her eyes widened for a second. She reached up to lightly touch my wrist, and I let her push my hand gently away from her mouth. She swallowed and nodded once.

"There’s no time. We have to find the security office now."

"A-all right," she said. "This way."

She led us off and we followed her, creeping through the cavernous dimness of the unlit mall. Molly leaned in close to me to whisper, "Even if we get the security guards, what are they going to do against something that can do that?"

"They’ll have radios," I whispered back. "Cell phones. They’ll know all the ways out. If we can’t call in help, they’ll give us the best shot of getting these people out of here in one—"

Lights began flickering on and off. Not blinking, not starting up and shutting down in rhythm, but irregularly. First they came on over a section of the third floor for a few seconds. Then they went out. A few seconds later, it was a far section of the second floor. Then they went out. Then light shone from one of the distant wings for a moment and vanished again. It was like watching a child experiment with the switches.

Then the PA system let out a crackle and a little squeal of feedback. It shut off again and came back on. "Testing," said a dry, rasping voice over the speakers. "Testing one, two, three."

Sarah froze in place, and then backed up warily, looking at me. I stepped up next to her, and she pressed in close to me, shivering.

"There," said the voice. It was a horrible thing to listen to—like Linda Blair’s impression of a demon-possessed victim, only less melodious. "I’m sure you all can hear me now."

And I’d heard such a voice before. "Oh, hell," I breathed.

"This is Constance," continued the voice. "Constance Bushnell. I’m sure you all remember me."

I glanced at Molly, who shook her head. Sarah looked frightened and confused, but when she caught my look, she shook her head, too.

"You might also remember me," she continued, "As Drulinda." And then the voice started singing "Happy Birthday." The tune wasn’t even vaguely close to the actual song, but the lyrics, sung "to me," were unmistakable.

Sarah’s eyes had widened. "Drulinda?"

"Who the hell is Drulinda?" I asked.

Sarah shook her head. "One of our characters. But her player ran away from home or something."

"And you didn’t recognize her actual name?"

Sarah gave me a slightly guilty glance. "Well. I never played with her much. She wasn’t really very, you know. Popular."

"Uh-huh," I said. "Tell me whatever you can about her."

She shook her head. "Um. About five four, sort of…plain. You know, not ugly or anything, but not really pretty. Maybe a little heavy."

"Not that," I sighed. "Tell me something important about her. People make fun of her?"

"Some did," she said. "I never liked it, but…"

"Crap." I looked at Molly and said, "Code Carrie. We’re in trouble."

The horrible, dusty song came to an end. "It’s been a year since I left you," Drulinda’s voice said. "A year since I found what all you whining losers were looking for. And I decided to give myself a present." There was a horrible pause and then the voice said, "You. All of you."

"Code what?" Molly asked me.

I shook my head. "Sarah, do you know where the announcement system is?"

"Yes," Sarah said. "Administration. Right by—"

"The security office," I sighed.

Drulinda’s voice continued. "The entrances are closed and watched. But you should feel free to run for them. You all taste so much better when you’ve had time to be properly terrified. I’ve so been looking forward to seeing your reaction to the new me."

With that, the PA system shut off, but a second later, it started playing music: "Only You," by the Platters.

"Molly," I hissed, suddenly realizing the danger. "Veil us, now."

She blinked at me, then nodded, bowed her head with a frown of concentration, and folded her arms across her chest. I felt her gather up her will and release it with a word and a surge of energy that made the air sparkle like diamond dust for a half second.

Inside the veil, the air suddenly turned a few degrees cooler, and the area outside it seemed to become even more dim than it had been a second before. I could sense the delicate tracery of the veil’s magic in the air around us, though I knew that, from the other side, none of that would be detectable—assuming Molly had done it correctly, of course. Veils were one of her strongest areas, and I was gambling our lives that she had gotten it right.

Not more than a breath or two later, there was a swift pattering sound and a dim blur in the shadows—which ceased moving abruptly maybe twenty feet away and revealed the presence of a vampire of the Black Court.

Drulinda, or so I presumed her to be, was dressed in dark jeans, a red knit sweater, and a long black leather coat. If she’d been heavy in life, death had taken care of that problem for her. She was sunken and shriveled, as bony and dried up as the year-old corpse she now was. Unlike the older vamps of her breed, she still had most of her hair, though it had clearly not been washed or styled. Most of the Black Court that I’d run into had never been terribly body conscious. I suppose once you’d seen it rot, there just wasn’t much more that could happen to sway your opinion of it, either way.

Unlike the older vampires I’d faced, she stank. I don’t mean that she carried a little whiff of the grave along with her. I mean she smelled like a year-old corpse that still had a few juicy corners left and wasn’t entirely done returning to the earth. It was noxious enough to make me gag—and I’d spent my day tracking down and dismantling a freaking slime golem.

She stood there for a moment, while the Platters went through the first verse, looking all around her. She’d sensed something, but she wasn’t sure what. The vampire turned a slow circle, her shriveled lips moving in time with the music coming over the PA system, and as she did, two more of the creatures, slower than Drulinda, appeared out of the darkness.

They were freshly made vampires—so much so that for a second, I thought them human. Both men wore brown uniforms identical to Raymond’s. Both were stained with blood, and both of them had narrow scoops of flesh missing from the sides of their throats—at the jugular and carotid, specifically. They moved stiffly, making many little twitching motions of their arms and legs, as if struggling against the onset of rigor mortis.

"What is it?" slurred one of them. His voice was ragged but not the horrible parody Drulinda’s was.

Her hand blurred, too fast to see. The newborn vampire reacted with inhuman speed, but not nearly enough of it, and the blow threw him from his feet to land on the floor, shattered teeth scattering out from him like coins from a dropped purse. "You can talk," Drulinda rasped, "when I say you can talk. Speak again and I will rip you apart and throw you into Lake Michigan. You can spend eternity down there with no arms, no legs, no light, and no blood."

The vampire, his nose smashed into shapelessness, rose as if he’d just slipped and fallen on his ass. He nodded, his body language twitchy and cringing.

Drulinda’s leathery lips peeled back from yellow teeth stained with drying, brownish blood. Then she turned and darted ahead, her footsteps making that light, swift patter on the tiles of the floor. She was gone and around the corner, heading for the bistro, in maybe two or three seconds. The two newbie vampires went after her, if far more slowly.

"Crap," I whispered as they vanished. "Dammit, dammit, dammit."

"What was that, Harry?" Molly whispered.

"Black Court vampires," I replied, trying not to inhale too deeply. The stench was fading, but it wasn’t gone. "Some of the fastest, strongest, meanest things out there."

"Vampires?" Sarah hissed, incredulous. She didn’t look so good. Her face was turning green. "No, this is, no, no, no—" She broke off and was violently sick. I avoided joining in by the narrowest of margins. Molly had an easier time of it than me, focused as she was on maintaining the veil over us, but I saw her swallow very carefully.

"Okay, Molly," I said quietly. "Listen to me."

She nodded, turning abstracted eyes to me.

"Black Court vampires," I told her. "The ones Stoker’s book outed. All their weaknesses—sunlight, garlic, holy water, symbols of faith. Remember?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Most of the strengths, too. Strong, fast. Don’t look them in the eyes." I swallowed. "Don’t let them take you alive."

My apprentice’s eyes flickered with both apprehension and a sudden, fierce fire. "I understand. What do you want me to do?"

"Keep the veil up. Take Sarah here. Find a shady spot and lay low. This should be over in half an hour, maybe less. By then, there’s going to be a ruckus getting people’s attention, one way or another."

"But I can—"

"Get me killed trying to cover you," I said firmly. "You aren’t in this league, grasshopper. Not yet. I have to move fast. And I have friends here. I won’t be alone."

Molly stared at me for a moment, her eyes shining with brief, frustrated tears. Then she nodded once and said, "Isn’t there anything I can do?"

I peered at her, then down at her Birkenstocks. "Yeah. Give me your shoes."

Molly hadn’t been my apprentice in the bizarre for a year and a half for nothing. She didn’t even blink, much less ask questions. She just took off her shoes and handed them to me.

I put a gentle hand on her shoulder, then touched Sarah’s face until she lifted her eyes to me. "I don’t understand what’s happening," she whispered.

"Stay with Molly," I told Sarah. "She’s going to take care of you. Do whatever she says. All right?" I frowned down at her expensive black heels. "Gucci?"

"Prada," she said in a numb voice.

Being all manly, I know dick about shoes, but hopefully it wouldn’t blow my cover as Thomas’s mystery man. "Give them to me."

"All right," she said, and did, too shocked to argue.

Thomas had been right about the larpers. The corpse of Sarah’s innocence lay on the floor along with her last meal, and she was taking it pretty hard.

I fought down a surge of anger and rose without another word, padding out from the protection of Molly’s veil, shoes gripped in one hand, my gun in the other. The .44 might as well have been Linus’s security blanket. It wouldn’t do a thing to help me against a vampire of the Black Court—it just made me feel better.

I went as fast as I could without making an enormous racket and stalked up the nearest stairs—a deactivated escalator. Once I’d reached the second level, I took a right and hurried toward Shoegasm.

It was a fairly spacious shop that had originally occupied only a tiny spot, but after ironing out some early troubles, the prosperous little store had expanded into the space beside it. Now, behind a steel mesh security curtain, the store was arranged in an oh-so-trendy fashion and sported several huge signs that went on with a thematically appropriate orgasmic enthusiasm about the store’s quality money-back guarantee.

"I am totally underappreciated," I muttered. Then I raised my voice a little, forcing a very slight effort of will, of magic, into the words as I spoke. "Keef! Hey, Keef! It’s Harry Dresden!"

I waited for a long moment, peering through the grating, but I couldn’t see anything in the dim shadows of the store. I took a chance, slipping the silver pentacle amulet from its chain around my neck, and with a murmur willed a whisper of magic through the piece of jewelry. A soft blue radiance began to emanate from the silver, though I tried to keep the light it let out to a minimum. If Drulinda or her vampire buddies were looking even vaguely in my direction, I was going to stand out like a freaking moron holding the only light in an entire darkened shopping mall.

"Keef!" I called again.

The cobb appeared from an expensive handbag hung over the arm of a dressing dummy wearing a pair of six-hundred-dollar Italian boots. He was a tiny thing, maybe ten inches tall, with a big puff of fine white hair like Albert Einstein. He was dressed in something vaguely approximating nineteenth-century urban European wear—dark trousers, boots, a white shirt, and suspenders. He also wore a leather work belt thick with tiny tools and had a pair of odd-looking goggles pushed up over his forehead.

Keef hopped down from the dressing dummy and hurried across the floor to the security grate. He put on a pair of gloves, pulled out a couple of straps from his work belt, and climbed up the metal grate using a pair of carabiners, nearly as nimble as a squirrel, being very careful not to touch the metal with his bare skin. Keef was a faerie, one of the little folk who dwelled within the shadows and hidden places of our own world, and the touch of steel was painful to him.

"Wizard Dresden," he greeted me in a Germanic accent as he came level with my head. The cobb’s voice was pitched low, even for someone as tiny as he. "The market this night danger roams. Here you should not be."

"Don’t I know it," I replied. "But there are people in danger."

"Ah," Keef said. "The mortals whom you insist to defend. Unwise that battle is."

"I need your help," I said.

Keef eyed me and gave me a firm shake of his head. "The walking dead very dangerous are. My people’s blood it could cost. That I will risk not."

"You owe me, Keef," I growled.

"Our living. Not our lives."

"Have it your way," I said. Then I lifted up one of Sarah’s shoes and, without looking away from the little cobb, snapped the heel off.

"Ach!" Keef cried in horror, his little feet slipping off the metal grate. "Nein!"

There was a chorus of similar gasps and cries from inside Shoegasm.

I held up the other shoe and did it again.

Keef wailed in protest. All of a sudden, thirty of the little cobbs, male and female, pressed up to the security mesh. All of them had the same frizzy white hair, all of them dressed like something from Oktoberfest, and all of them were horrified.

"Nein!" Keef wailed again. "Those are Italian leather! Handmade! What are you doing?"

I took a step to my left and held the broken shoes over a trash can.

The cobbler elves gasped, all together, and froze in place.

"Do not do this," Keef begged me. "Lost all is not. Repaired they can be. Good as new we can fix them. Good as new! Do not throw them away."

I didn’t waver. "I know things have been hard for your people since cobblers have gone out of business," I said. "I got you permission for your clan to work here, fixing shoes, in exchange for taking what you need from the vending machine. True?"

"True," Keef said, his eyes on the broken shoes in my hand. "Wizard, over the trash you need not hold them. If dropped they are, trash they become, and touch them we may not. Lost to all will they be. Anything we both will regret let us not do."

Anxious murmurs of agreement rose from the other cobbs.

Enough of the stick. Time to show them the carrot. I held up Molly’s battered old Birkenstocks. The sight made several of the more matronly cobbs cluck their tongues in disapproval.

"I helped set you up with a good deal here at Shoegasm," I said. "But I can see you’re getting a little crowded. I can get you another good setup—a family, seven kids, mom and dad, all of them active."

The cobbs murmured in sudden excitement.

Keef coughed delicately and said, staring anxiously at the broken heels in my hand, "And the shoes?"

"I’ll turn them over to you," I said. "If you help me."

Keef narrowed his eyes. "Slaves to you we are," he snapped. "Threatened and bribed."

"You know the cause I fight for," I said. "I protect mortals. I’ve never tried to hide that, and I’ve never lied to you. I need your help, Keef. I’ll do what it takes to get it—but you know my reputation by now. I deal fairly with the little folk, and I always show gratitude for their help."

The leader of the cobbs regarded me steadily for a moment. Nobody likes being strong-armed, not even the little folk, who are used to getting walked on, but I didn’t have time for diplomacy.

Keef’s gaze kept getting distracted by the shoes, dangling over the trash can, and he made no answer. The other cobbs all waited, clearly taking their cue from Keef.

"Show of good faith, Keef," I said quietly. I took the broken shoes and set them gently on the ground in front of the shop. "I’ll trust you and your people to repair them and return them. And I’ll pay in pizza."

The cobbs gasped, staring at me as if I’d just offered them a map to El Dorado. I heard one of the younger cobbs exclaim, "True, it is!"

"Fleeting, pizza is," Keef said sternly. "Eternal are shoes and leather goods."

"Shoes and leather goods," the rest of the cobbs intoned, tiny voices solemn.

"Few mortals to the little folk show respect, these days," Keef said quietly. "Or trust. True it is that beneath this roof we are crowded. And unto the wizard, debt is owed." He gave the shoes a professional glance and nodded once. "Under your terms, and within our means, our aid is given. Your need unto us speak."

"Scouts," I said at once. "I know there are Black Court vampires in the mall. I need to know exactly how many and exactly where they are."

"Done it will be," Keef barked. "Cobbs!"

There was a little gust of wind, and I was suddenly alone. Oh, and both Sarah’s expensive heels and Molly’s clunky sandals were gone, the latter right out of my hands and so smoothly that I hadn’t even noticed them being taken. I checked, just to be careful, but my own shoes remained safely on my feet, which was a relief. You can’t ever be certain with cobbs. The little faeries, at times, could get awfully fixated upon whatever their particular area of concern might be, and messing around with it was more dangerous than most realized. Despite the metal screen between the cobbs and me, I’d been playing with fire when I held those Pradas over the trash can.

Another thing that most folks don’t realize is just how much the little folk can learn, and how fast they can do it—especially when things are happening on their own turf. It took Keef and his people about thirty seconds to go and return.

"Four, there are," Keef reported. "Three lesser, who of late this place did guard. One greater, who gave them not-life."

"Four," I breathed. "Where?"

"One outside near the group of cars waits and watches," Keef said. "One outside the bistro where the mortals hide stands watch. One beside his mistress stands within."

I got a sick little feeling in my stomach. "Has anyone been hurt?"

Keef shook his head. "Taunt them, she does. Frighten them." He shrugged. "It is not as their kind often is."

"No. She’s there for vengeance, not food." I frowned. "I need you to get me something. Can you?"

I told him what I needed, and Keef gave me a mildly offended look. "Of course."

"Good. Now, the one outside," I said. "Can you show me a way I could get close to him without being seen?"

Keef’s eyes glittered with a sudden ferocity that was wholly at odds with his size and appearance. "This way, wizard."

I went at what was practically a run, but the tiny cobb had no trouble staying ahead of me. He led me through a service access door that required a key to open—until it suddenly swung open from the other side, a dozen young male cobbs dangling from the security bar and cheering. My amulet cast the only light as Keef led me down a flight of stairs and through a long, low tunnel.

"Access to the drains and watering system, this passage is," Keef called to me. We stopped at a ladder leading up. A small paper sack sat on the floor by the ladder. "Your weapons," he said, nodding at the bag. He pointed at the ladder. "Behind the vampire, this opens."

I opened the bag and found two plastic cylinders. I didn’t want the crinkling paper, so I put one of them in my jacket pocket, kept the other in hand, and crept up the ladder. At the top was a hatch made out of some kind of heavy synthetic, rather than wood or steel, and it opened without a sound. I poked my head up and looked cautiously around the parking lot.

The lights were out, but there was enough snow on the ground to bounce around plenty of light, giving the outdoors an oddly close, quiet quality, almost as if someone had put a roof overhead, just barely out of sight. Over by the last group of cars in the mall parking lot, next to the Blue Beetle in fact, stood the vampire.

It was little more than a black form, and though it was human in shape, it was inhumanly still, every bit as motionless as the other inanimate objects in the parking lot. Snow had begun to gather on its head and shoulders, just as it had on the roofs and hoods of the parked cars. It stood facing the darkened mall, where snow blew into the hole left by the thrown car. It was watching, I supposed, for anyone who might come running out, screaming.

A newborn vampire might not be anywhere near as dangerous as an older one, but that was like saying a Mack truck was nowhere near as dangerous as a main battle tank. If you happened to be the guy standing in the road in front of one, it wouldn’t much matter to you which of them crushed you to pulp. If I’d had my staff and rod with me, I might have chanced a stand-up fight. But I didn’t have my gear, and even if I had, my usual magic would have made plenty of noise and warned the vampire’s companions.

Vampires are tough. They take a lot of killing. I had to take this one out suddenly and with tremendous violence without making any noise. If I had to face it openly, I’d have no chance.

Which is why I had used the cobbs’ intelligence to get sneaky.

I drew in my will, the magic I had been born with and that I had spent a lifetime exercising, practicing, and focusing. As the power came into me, it made the skin of my arms ripple with goose bumps, and I could feel a strange pressure at the back of my head and pressing against the inside of my forehead. Once I had the power ready, I started shaping it with my thoughts, focusing my will and intent on the desired outcome.

The spell I worked up wasn’t one of my better evocations. It took me more than twenty seconds to get it together. For fast and dirty combat magic, that’s the next best thing to forever.

For treacherous, backstabbing, sucker-punch magic, though, it’s just fine.

At the very last second, the vampire seemed to sense something. It turned its head toward me.

I clenched my fist as I released my will and snarled, "Gravitus!"

The magic lashed out into the ground beneath the vampire’s feet, and the steady, slow, immovable power of the earth suddenly stirred, concentrating, reaching up for the vampire standing upon it. In technical terms, I didn’t actually increase the gravity of the earth beneath it. I only concentrated it a little. In a circle fifty yards across, for just a fraction of a second, gravity vanished. The cars all surged up against their shock absorbers and settled again. The thin coat of snow leapt several inches off the parking lot and fell back.

In that same fraction of a second, all of that gravity from all of that area concentrated itself into a circle, maybe eighteen inches across, directly at the vampire’s feet.

There was no explosion, no flash of light—and no scream. The vampire just went down, slammed to the earth as suddenly and violently as if I’d dropped an anvil on him. There was a rippling, crackling sound as hundreds of bones shattered all together, and a splatter of sludgy liquid that splashed all over the cars around the vampire—mostly upon the Beetle, really.

The effort of gathering and releasing so much energy left me gasping. I was out of shape when it came to earth magic. It had never been my strongest suit—too slow, most of the time, to seem like it would have been worth the bother. As I hauled myself out of the ground, though, I had to admit that when there was enough time to actually use it, it sure as hell was impressive.

I padded to the car, watching the mall entrance, but there was no outcry and no sudden appearance of Drulinda or the other vampires of her scourge.

The vampire was still alive.

Un-alive. Whatever. The thing was still trying to move.

It was mostly just a mass of pulped, squishy meat. In the cold, at least, it hadn’t begun to rot, so that cut down on the smell. One eye rolled around in its mashed skull. Muscles twitched, but without a solid framework of bone to work with, they didn’t accomplish much beyond an odd, pulsing motion. It could probably put itself back together, given blood and time, but I didn’t feel like letting it have either. I held the plastic cylinder over it.

"Nothing personal," I told the vampire. Then I dumped powdered garlic from the pizzeria in the mall’s food court all over it.

I can’t say that the vampire screamed, really. It died the way a salted slug does, in silent, pulsing agony. I had to fight to keep my stomach from emptying itself, but only for a second. Absolutely disgusting demises are par for the course when fighting vampires. A few wisps of smoke rose up, and after a few seconds, the mass of undead flesh became simple dead flesh again.

One down.

Three to go.

I stalked toward the mall, moving with all the silence I could manage. After years working as a private investigator, and more years fighting a magical war against the vampires in the shadows, I know how to be quiet. I slipped up to within thirty feet of the entrance and spotted the second vampire before he noticed me, right where Keef’s people said he was.

He stood facing the door of the bistro, apparently intent on what was happening within. I could hear voices inside, though I could make out no details over the continued, repeated playing of "Only You," beyond that one of the voices was Drulinda’s leathery rasp. There were no sounds of fighting, which wasn’t good. Thomas certainly wouldn’t have allowed them to hurt anyone without putting up a struggle, and given the mutual capabilities of everyone involved, it would have been noticeable.

A second’s thought told me that it might also be a good sign. If they’d killed him, they would have made a big mess doing it. Assuming he hadn’t gone down without getting to put up much of a fight—and I refused to assume anything else: I knew my brother too well—something else had to be happening.

My brother could go toe to toe with a vampire of the Black Court, if he had to, but the last time he’d done it the effort had nearly killed both him and the woman he’d had to feed from in order to recover. There were two of them inside, and though Thomas was as combat-capable as any of the White Court’s best, he wasn’t going to start a slugfest if he thought he could get a better fight by biding his time, doing what the White Court did—looking human and using guile. My instincts told me that Thomas was stalling, choosing his moment. Hell, he was probably waiting for me to show up and help.

I looked down and found his birthday present, untouched by the flying debris, lying in its bright red and pink paper where Molly had dropped it on the sidewalk outside the doors.

I found myself smiling.

Twenty seconds or so later, I tossed the present underhand. It tumbled through the air and landed on the floor directly outside the bistro’s entrance. The head of the vampire on guard jerked around, focusing on the present. It tilted its head to one side. Then it whipped around toward me, baring its teeth in a snarl.

"Gravitus!" I thundered, releasing a second earthcrafting.

Once again, everything jumped up—but this time, it wasn’t quiet. The circle of nullified gravity embraced every shop nearby in the mall, sending merchandise and shelves and dishes and furniture and cash registers and dressing dummies and God knew what other sundry objects flying up, to come crashing back down to the floor again. A great crashing rose up from the floors above us as well.

Once again, the circle of supergravity crushed a brown-shirted vampire flat to the floor—only I’d forgotten about the levels above. There was a shriek of tortured metal and a great crashing rain of debris came down in a nearly solid column as floors and ceilings gave way under the sudden, enormous stress. It all thundered down on the pulped vampire.

There was a second of shocked silence, while objects continued falling from their shelves and bins and who knew what else. Evidently, the damage to the ceiling had torn through some plumbing; a steady stream of water began to patter down from overhead onto the mound of rubble, along with occasional bits of still-falling material.

Then two things happened, almost at the same time.

First, my brother chose his moment.

The front wall of the bistro exploded outward. I saw the flying form of another vampire security guard hurtle across the hallway into the opposite wall with no detectable loss of altitude, and it smashed against a metal security grate with terrifying force.

Second, Drulinda let out an eerie howl of fury. It was a horrible sound, nasty and rasping and somehow spidery, for all that it was of inhuman volume. There was a crash from inside the bistro. Young men and women started screaming.

There wasn’t any time to waste. I ran for the vampire my brother had thrown from the bistro. It had bounced off and fallen on the ground and was still gathering itself up. I had hoped it would take it a moment to recover from the blow, to give me time to get close enough to act.

It didn’t work out that way.

The vampire was on its feet again before I could get halfway there, one of its shoulders twisted and deformed by the impact, one arm hanging loosely. It spun toward me with no sense of discomfort evident in its expression or posture, and it let out a very human-sounding scream of fury and flung itself at me.

I reacted with instant instinct, raising my right hand, with my will, and calling, "Fuego!"

Fire kindled from my open palm and rushed out in a furious torrent, spewing raggedly across the tile floor in a great, slewing cone. It splashed against the floor, up onto the metal grate, and all over the vampire in question, a sudden, if clumsy, immolation.

But without my blasting rod to help me focus the attack, it was diffused; the heat was spread out over a broad area instead of focused into a single, searing beam. Though I’m sure it hurt like hell, and though it set the security guard vampire’s uniform on fire, it didn’t cripple him. It might have sent up an older, more withered vampire like a torch, but the newbie was still too…juicy. It didn’t burn him up so much as broil him a bit.

Pretty much, it just pissed him off.

The vampire came at me with another, higher-pitched scream, and swung a flaming arm at me. Maybe the fire had disoriented him a little, because I was able to get out of the way of the blow—sort of. It missed my head and neck and instead slammed into my left shoulder like a train wreck.

Pain flooded through me, and the canister of garlic went flying. The force of the blow spun me around, and I fell to the floor. The vampire came down on top of me, teeth bared, still on freaking fire as he leaned in with his non-pointy, still-white teeth, which were plenty strong enough to rip my throat open.

"Harry!" Thomas screamed. There was a rushing sound, and a tremendous force pulled the vampire off me. I sat up in time to see my brother drive his shoulder into the vampire’s chest, slamming the undead thing back against the concrete wall between two stalls. Then Thomas whipped out what looked like a broken chair leg and drove the shattered end of the wood directly into the vampire’s chest, a couple of inches below the gold, metallic security badge on his left breast, slightly off center.

The vampire’s mouth opened, too-dark blood exploding from it in a gasp. The creature reached for the chair leg with its remaining arm.

Thomas solved that problem in the most brutal way imaginable. His face set in fury, my brother ignored the flames of the vampire’s burning clothing, seized the remaining arm with both of his hands, and with a twist of his hips and shoulders ripped it out of the socket.

More blood splashed out, if only for a second—without a heartbeat to keep pumping it, blood loss is mostly about leakage—and then the mortally crippled vampire fell, twitching and dying as the stake of wood through its heart put an end to its unlife.

I felt Drulinda coming, more than I saw it happen, the cold presence of a Black Court vampire in a fury rubbing abrasively against my wizard’s senses. "Thomas!"

My brother turned in time to duck a blow so swift I didn’t even see it. He returned it with one of his own, but Drulinda, though new to the trade, was a master vampire, a creature with its own terrible will and power. Thomas had fought other Black Court vamps before—but not a master.

He was on the defensive from the outset. Though my brother was unthinkably strong and swift when drawing upon his vampiric nature, he wasn’t strong or swift enough. I lay sprawled on the ground, still half-paralyzed by the pain in the left half of my body, and tried to think of what to do next.

"Get out!" I screamed at the bistro. "Get out of here, people! Get the hell out now!"

While I screamed, Drulinda slammed my brother’s back into a metal security grate so hard that it left a broad smear of his pale red blood on its bars.

People started hurrying out of the bistro, running for the parking lot.

Drulinda looked over her shoulder and let out another hissing squall of rage. At this opening, Thomas managed to get a grip on her arm, set his feet, and swing her into the wall, sending cracks streaking through the concrete. On the rebound, he swung her up and around and then down, smashing her down onto the floor, then up from that and into a security mesh again, crushing tile and bending metal with every impact.

I heard a scream and looked up to see Ennui fall from her impossibly high black heels in her tiny, tight black dress, as she tried to flee the bistro.

A horribly disfigured hand had reached out from the rubble over the crushed vampire, and now held her.

I ran for the girl as my brother laid into Drulinda. My left arm wasn’t talking to me, and I fumbled the second canister out of my left jacket pocket with my right arm, then dumped garlic over the outstretched vampire’s hand.

It began smoking and spasming. Ennui screamed as the crushing grip broke her ankle. I stood up in frustration and started stomping down on the vampire’s arm. Supernaturally strong it might be, but its bones were made of bone, and it couldn’t maintain its grip on the girl without them.

It took a lot of stomping, but I was finally able to pull the girl free. I tried to get her to her feet, but her weight came down on her broken ankle, and from there it came down on my wounded shoulder. I went down to one knee, and it was all I could do not to fall.

I almost didn’t notice when my brother flew through the air just over my head, smashed out what had to be the last remaining pane of glass at the mall entrance, and landed limply in the parking lot.

I felt Drulinda’s presence coming up behind me.

The vampire let out a dusty laugh. "I thought it was just some poor pretty boy to play with. Silly me."

I fumbled with the canister for a second, and then whirled, flinging its contents at Drulinda in a slewing arc.

The vampire blurred to one side, dodging the garlic with ease. She looked battered and was covered with dust. Her undead flesh was approximately the consistency of wood, and so it wasn’t cut and damaged so much as chipped and crushed. Her clothes were torn and ruined—and none of that mattered. She was just as functional, just as deadly as she had been before the fight.

I dropped the canister and drew forth my pentacle amulet, lifting it as a talisman against her.

The old bit with the crucifix works on the Black Court—but it isn’t purely about Christianity. They are repelled not by the holy symbol itself, but by the faith of the one holding it up against them. I’d seen vampires repulsed by crosses, crucifixes, strips of paper written with holy symbols by a Shinto priest—once even a Star of David.

Me, I used the pentacle, because that’s what I believed in. The five-pointed star, to me, represented the five elements of earth, air, water, fire, and spirit, bound within the solid circle of mortal will. I believed that magic was a force intended to be used to create, to protect, and to preserve. I believed that magic was a gift that had to be used responsibly and wisely—and that it especially had to be used against creatures like Drulinda, against literal, personified evil, to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. That’s what I thought, and I’d spent my life acting in accordance with it.

I believed.

Pale blue light began to spill from the symbol—and Drulinda stopped with a hiss of sudden rage.

"You," she said after a few seconds. "I have heard of you. The wizard. Dresden."

I nodded slowly. Behind her, the fire from my earlier spell was spreading. The power was out, and I had no doubt that Drulinda and her former security-guard lackeys had disabled the alarms. It wouldn’t take long for a fire to go insane in this place, once it got its teeth sunk in. We needed to get out.

"Go," I mumbled at Ennui.

She sobbed and started crawling for the exit, while I held Drulinda off with the amulet.

The vampire stared steadily at me for a second, her eyes all milky white, corpse cataracts glinting in the reflected light of the fire. Then she smiled and moved.

She was just too damned fast. I tried to turn to keep up with her, but by the time I did, Ennui screamed, and Drulinda had seized her hair and dragged her back, out of the immediate circle of light cast by the amulet.

She lifted the struggling girl with ease, so that I could see her mascara-streaked face. "Wizard," Drulinda said. Ennui had been cut by flying glass or the fall at some point, and some blood had streaked out of her slicked-back hair, over her ear, and down one side of her throat. The vampire leaned in, extending a tongue like a strip of beef jerky, and licked blood from the girl’s skin. "You can hide behind your light. But you can’t save her."

I ground my teeth and said nothing.

"But your death will profit me, grant me standing with others of my kind. The feared and vaunted Wizard Dresden." She bared yellowed teeth in a smile. "So I offer you this bargain. Throw away the amulet. I will let the girl go. You have my word." She leaned her teeth in close and brushed them over the girl’s neck. "Otherwise…well. All of my new friends are gone. I’ll have to make more."

That made me shudder. Dying was one thing. Dying and being made into one of those…

I lowered the amulet. I hesitated for a second, and then dropped it.

Drulinda let out a low, eager sound and tossed Ennui aside like an empty candy wrapper. Then she was on me, letting out rasping giggles, for God’s sake, pressing me down. "I can smell your fear, wizard," she rasped. "I think I’m going to enjoy this."

She leaned closer, slowly, as she bared her teeth, her face only inches from mine.

Which is where I wanted her to be.

I reared up my head and spat out a gooey mouthful of powdered garlic directly into those cataract eyes.

Drulinda let out a scream, bounding away in a violent rush, clawing at her eyes with her fingers—and getting them burned, too. She thrashed in wild agony, swinging randomly at anything she touched or bumped into, tearing great, gaping gashes in metal fences, smashing holes in concrete walls.

"Couple words of advice," I growled, my mouth burning with the remains of the garlic I’d stuffed it with as she’d come sneaking up on me. "First, any time I’m not shooting my mouth off to a clichéd, two-bit creature of the night like you, it’s because I’m up to something."

Drulinda howled more and rushed toward me—tripping on some rubble and sprawling on the ground, only to rush about on all fours like some kind of ungainly and horrible insect.

I checked behind me. Ennui was already out, and Thomas was beginning to stir, maybe roused by the snow now falling on him. I turned back to the blinded, pain-maddened vampire. We were the only ones left in that wing of the mall.

"Second," I spat. "Never touch my brother on his fucking birthday."

I reached for my will, lifted my hand, and snarled, "Fuego!"

Fire roared out to eagerly engulf the vampire.

What the hell. The building was burning down anyway.

"Freaking amateur villains," I muttered, glowering down at the splatters on my car.

Thomas leaned against it with one hand pressed to his head, a grimace of pain on his face. "You okay?"

I waved my left arm a little. "Feeling’s coming back. I’ll have Butters check me out later. Thanks for loaning Molly your car."

"Least I could do. Let her drive Sarah and Ennui to the hospital." He squinted at the rising smoke from the mall. "Think the whole thing will go?"

"Nah," I said. "This wing, maybe. They’ll get here before too much more goes up. Keef and his folk should be all right."

My brother grunted. "How they going to explain this one?"

"Who knows," I said. "Meteor, maybe. Smashed holes in the roof, crushed some poor security guard, set the place on fire."

"My vote is for terrorists," Thomas said. "Terrorists are real popular these days." He shook his head. "But I meant the larpers, not the cops."

"Oh," I said. "Probably, they won’t talk to anyone about what they saw. Afraid people would think they were crazy."

"And they would," Thomas said.

"And they would," I agreed. "Come tomorrow, it will seem very unreal. A few months from now, they’ll wonder if they didn’t imagine some of it or if there wasn’t some kind of gas leak or something that made them hallucinate. Give it a few more years, and they’ll remember that Drulinda and some rough-looking types showed up to give them a hard time. They drove a car through the front of the mall. Maybe they were crazy people dressed in costumes who had been to a few too many larps themselves." I shook my head. "It’s human nature to try to understand and explain everything. The world is less scary that way. But I don’t think they’ll be in any danger, really. No more so than anyone else."

"That’s good," Thomas said quietly. "I guess."

"It’s the way it is." In the distance, sirens were starting up and coming closer. I grunted and said, "We’d better go."

"Yeah."

We got into the Beetle. I started it up and we headed out. I left the lights off. No sense attracting attention.

"You going to be all right?" I asked him.

He nodded. "Take me a few days to get enough back into me to feel normal, but…" He shrugged. "I’ll make it."

"Thanks for the backup," I said.

"Kicked their freaky asses," he said, and held out his fist.

I rapped my knuckles lightly against it.

"Nice signal. The birthday present."

"I figured you’d get it," I said. Then I frowned. "Crap," I said. "Your present."

"You didn’t remember to bring it?"

"I was a little busy," I said.

He was quiet for a minute. Then he asked, "What was it?"

"Rock’em Sock’em Robots," I said.

He blinked at me. "What?"

I repeated myself. "The little plastic robots you make fight."

"I know what they are, Harry," he responded. "I’m trying to figure out why you’d give me them."

I pursed my lips for a minute. Then I said, "Right after my dad died, they put me in an orphanage. It was Christmastime. On television, they had commercials for Rock’em Sock’em Robots. Two kids playing with them, you know? Two brothers." I shrugged. "That was a year when I really, really wanted to give those stupid plastic robots to my brother."

"Because it would mean you weren’t alone," Thomas said quietly.

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry I forgot them. And happy birthday."

He glanced back at the burning mall. "Well," my brother said. "I suppose it’s the thought that counts."

Originally published in "Many Bloody Returns" short story collection