A/N - SPOILER* Don't read this story until you've read Changes. The latest book in the series. A truly awesome read and you wont understand anything in this story if you havnt read up to that. Remember. This is the Book-verse- and not that horrid crap of a TV-show.

Chapter 1

I sat at a table in McAnally's enjoying a nice steak sandwich and the God of beer's when the shadow fell over me. I looked up and saw a pretty face. Hell. More than pretty. My eyes betrayed me and I have her a once over then a second over.

"Harry Dresden?" she asked me. A sweet feminine voice to go with the soft brown hair.

I finished my bite, it would never do for first impressions for me to talk with my mouth full. "Who's asking?" I swallowed the last bite with a sip of beer.

She flashed a smile and sat across from me without asking. The nerve. Maybe I'd get lucky. I knew her from somewhere I though. I just couldn't put my finger on it. She held out a hand. Nails were clipped short with the lightest of pink nail polish.

"Susan Rodriguez, of The Arcane. Mind if I ask you a few questions?"

I eyed her warily, but didn't take the hand. All sort of nasty things could be done my touching something. Physical contact would let foreign magic through any natural defenses I had. Plus she was a reporter. Nasty things.

"The Arcane huh? What's up?" Odd. No witty remark from me? I wasn't myself.

She smirked and took back her hand. I knew her from someplace. I knew I did. I felt a strong connection, a pull so violent that I had to physically stop myself from leaping over the table and kissing her.

"Just a few questions, Mr. Dresden. Are you really a wizard?"

I sighed. Always the same question. No one could just accept and let it go. I nodded. "Yup. Wyatt Earp of the supernatural at your service."

She tilted her head and looked me over. "Then why are you lying dead at the bottom of a lake?"

Huh? The world melted to white and a rushing sound like a train next to my head filled my ears. I thought my tiny brain would explode when the ride screeched to a stop. I was in a mansion. A long flight of stairs arched to a balcony and Bianca stood over me. Standing beside her, broken and bleeding, was Susan. My lover.

" Harry," she asked me, "Why are you trying to save me?"

My breath caught and my heart almost broke. "Because I love you."

She tilted her head in that charming way I knew so well. "But you killed me, Harry. Why save me to kill me?"

I shook my head. My mouth had gone dry and felt like watered down cotton. "I didn't. I didn't mean…"

"DON'T LIE TO ME!" She screamed and her skin, so perfectly natural, seemed to give a heave and shred apart like Bruce Banner's cloths in the old Hulk series. Just before the white train took off I caught a glimpse of a little girl emerging from the transformed Susan, her eyes glaring at me with accusation.

This time the rushing came with a tumbling feeling. Like an endless uncontrolled falling. It felt like I was being turned and twisted and then suddenly I was rising. The white so thick that I could kick against it and I swam up and up and up and up. It felt like I was at it for hours until the surface of the white train broke and I found myself on a rocky beach. I trudged out of the vaporous mists and looked behind me. It looked like a rolling sea of clouds. Flickers of silver and gold fires wisped up and through the bank. Winking and dancing.

"Took you long enough." I turned and a man was sitting on a large rock, whittling away at a piece of wood. He was wearing some worn jeans with a few patches in them, Some red suspenders with one of them broken and hanging down to the ground. His white shirt was smeared with soot and a hole was torn in the shoulder.

I walked over to him and took a seat in the sand. "You're looking pretty rough there. Boss having you wage another war with the players down in hell?"

Uriel snorted. Really unbecoming of an arch-angel and all that, but it made it easier to relat to him if he seemed more human.

"That rabble? Nah, that game is far from starting. This is just me doing some dirty work to keep the fence from coming down."

"Dirty work? Fence? You know I hate that cryptic stuff." I looked around. "What is this place anyways?" I spied a fallen down lighthouse in the distance. "Demonreach? What am I doing here?"

"You're not there. This is In-between. Although why you ever decided to entangle yourself with that island is beyond even me. That really threw everyone for a loop. Changed the game up,"

"Well, sorry, but I don't know the rules. When the rules don't let me win I cheat and make up my own. Only fair." I took a closer look at his carving. Hey it was me, only half done. I looked better though.

Uriel smiled and gave a nod. "It was an option we had not considered or taken into account. That means the enemy hadn't thought about it either. It's a good thing for you, but it makes the waters a bit more dangerous."

"How so?"

"That's a discussion for another time. You're not ready for that yet. What more important right now is why you're here."

I blinked and scowled. "Yeah. Why am I here?"

Uriel considered the question and spoke bluntly. "Because you're dead."

Huh? That couldn't be right. Applying my considerable intellect and deductive reasoning I responded. "What?"

He cackled. The divine-superuber- -angel actually cackled at me.

"You're dead. Or well as close to it as you can get. And THAT has given everyone what they wanted."

My thoughts got all tumbled together and I felt like my training wheels had just broken and I tipped over. "You wanted me dead?"

"Heaven's no. We've invested too much in you to want you dead, but being dead at the right time removed your stubbornness as an obstacle and opened up a path we felt could be utilized."

"I, umm…don't get it." I ran a hand through my hair and stilled my foot from tapping a hole to China.

"Hey. Look at it this way. How many cheesy stories have you seen where you think the bad guy is dead, only he comes back in the end and surprised everyone and foils everything?"

"But, I'm not the bad guy."

"To them you are. And now everyone thinks you're dead. You can move freely for awhile."

"Thinks I'm dead?" I was getting angry now. "You just said I was dead! How can I move freely and foil dastardly plot if I'm I'm six feet under?"

Uriel sighed and set aside the cavering and looked at my with clear blue eyes, full of well…I'd have to call it compassion. "Have you ever played tug-of-war?"

"Errr? Kinda." My mind flashed to several encounters with some big-nasties.

He grinned and nodded. "Like that," damn mind readers, "We've been holding our own, slowly giving ground. Now it's time to give them some slack, throw them off balance and then tug real hard and pull a bunch of them into the mud."

My mind worked around the idea, tossing it around like an active grenade. "I kinda get what you're saying. But there's still the problem with me being dead."

Uriel waved that off. "You're in-between. Dead but not dead. Accepting the Winter Knight opened this door to us and we're taking it."

"Thanks for consulting me about it," I snarled. "I kinda have a vested interest in this, you know."

The angel gave a helpless shrug. "You woulda been scared and not gone through with it. Relax. One of your benefactors has been keeping you safe until you healed up and it was time to let you loose."

"And that would be?"

He grinned. "That would be me, ape." A new voice spoke and a frost coalesced from the air and Mab's beautiful face manifested in the air.

I gulped. "Mab," I greeted.

She frowned severely and arched an ice-brow. "That's 'My Queen' to you dog. "

I licked my lips. I accepted her deal. She gave me what I needed and my daughter, my little Maggie, was safe. It was time for me to live up to my bargain. "My…Queen. " It felt like I was pulling a nail off to say that. Courtesy was never my thing. Everyone knew that.

Mab gave a sensuous smile. "The pet can learn new tricks. I was right. I can work with this."

I looked between the two of them and scowled. "What is this. A Conspiracy to manipulate Harry Dresden?"

Uriel and Mab traded looks. "Do you wish to live and continue your work?" Uriel responded.

Now THAT was a question. My life has been, well…pretty shitty. I've been beaten, tortured, burned, and almost beheaded. Abused, possessed, betrayed and heartbroken. I've lied and seen friends die. I've murdered a woman I loved and had to leave my daughter to be raised by someone else. In the past ten years I can't remember being honestly happy. So? Did I wish to live?

"Damn right I do. Too many people have screwed with me and I have a mountain of scores to settle."

Mab walked forward. All her curves moving fluidly, hips rolling and eyes smoldering in their coldness. Without preamble she whispered. "Mine…" and kissed me.

When I woke up it felt like my first breath as I gasped. The sudden intake of the air send me into a wheezing hack and I started to cough up a lung. I couldn't seem to open my eyes. I tried to move, but my legs and arms only seemed to twitch. I was suddenly so tired that I gave up and faded off too sleep.

I don't know how long I was out. I would remember waking up briefly and trying to move and open my eyes, but the efforts drained me so much that I was soon out again. I had dreams. Terrible nightmares that assaulted me unendingly. I dreamed of Murphy and Molly dead by my hands. I killed them in order to stop the Black Council. I dreamed of Billy and his gang becoming like Denton and his agents, blood thirsty and savage, raiding the University with regularity.

At times I would wake up and try to scream, but all that came out was a croak and sent me into another fit and would knock me out again. Every now and then something soft would touch me and I would feel something wet and gritty touch my cheek.

Finally, after a lifetime of slumbering, I woke up and didn't feel nearly as tired as I had been. I tried again to open my eyes and thankfully they obeyed, as did my legs and hands. I looked around and found that I was in a cellar of some sort. Wooden beams and floorboards were broken overhead and moonlight came through to give the slightest illumination to my surroundings. Even that little bit of light seemed to sting. God my eyes hurt.

I licked my lips and found them cracked and split. Blood dried from the tiny tears of my skin. Trying to speak was an effort in futility. My mouth, the greatest source of my trouble, just warbled inarticulate sounds. My tongue kept getting tangled and flopped uselessly around the bottom of my mouth.

With some of the greatest effort I'd ever summoned I sat up and saw I was lying on the floor. Dumped on a floor. How rude. Could have at least given me a blanket and a pillow.

I was so thirty, so hungry. My stomach was cramped up and seemed to tighten even more at the thought of Burger King. Water. I needed water first thing.

No sooner than I thought it than I saw that there was a plate of food and a glass of water waiting at a burned out table. A few knick-knacks were scattered about, also burnt, and I cleared them away and set into the sustenance like toot did to pizza. It only took a few bites until I was full, but the water I forced myself to finish. My legs started to shake and I laid back down on the floor and went back to sleep.

When I woke up it was day time and got the first good look at where I was. The site broke my heart. It was my lab. What was left of my home. It was charred and disused. Puddles of water and fallen, rotted timber lay around the floor. Although there was soot still, it was caked and stained into the basement walls. This place had been this way for a long time. Jesus! How long was I sleeping!

Wait. Sleeping. I was more than sleeping. What happened to me? The last thing I remember was kissing Murph's fingers and promising each other that in one hour we would finally take our relationship to the next level. After that there was only the dreams and waking up here.

On a deep level I knew something bad had happened, but the more I thought about it the more of a head-ache I developed. I decided it wasn't healthy and that answers would come my usual way. A sudden spark of insight and a leap to the answer.

I saw another plate of food and water for me and I set into it a little slower this time. Taking my time to savor the taste, which was actually very good before I realized I was eating and drinking something from someone I didn't know. Oh well it was too late now and it would have been a shame to let it go to waste so I polished it off, even licking the plate.

I was attacked without warning. The beast, came in low and took me in the chest. I gave a startled cry and tried to raise my shield, but it was too late and plus I didn't have any of my foci. It was several seconds before I saw that the monster was the largest cat in the world. Mister. It was Mister.

"Mister…" I tried to croak out, but my voice still didn't want to work and instead it came out. "Mppter. Tmph gd mur o ight." Translation. Mister, thank god you're alright!

I held the closest thing to family besides Maggie and stroked him. For once he was affectionate and seemed to return my love. I sent good thoughts to him until he felt the formality of reunion was observed then he imperiously jumped away and went out into his mighty jungle. That's my cat.

I shielded my eyes from the banefully sun and climbed up a fallen plank and stepped outside. As soon as I did I regretted it. Clearly something in my lab was protecting me from the effects. A miasma of black magic was in the air so thick that I almost gagged. I dropped to my knees and held my stomach as it churned. I looked around quickly to see if I was under attack, but there was no one. A car or two drove by, but that was it.

Braving the possibility I opened my third sight and just stared in astonishment. Black veins ran through the sky in chaotic webs far into the horizon. I walked around the corner and started at the Chicago skyline. They went as far as I could see. They seemed to pulse with a mockery of life like things were traveling through them. I quickly turned my sight off and rubbed my aching eyes. I was so weak. What the hell had happened to my city. How long was I sleeping. Who looked after me. What happened to me?

"Those things you must find out for yourself, child."

I turned and saw my godmother standing behind me. Her smile was indulgent and surprisingly happy as she looked on me.

"Godmother," I replied warily. My godmother was a big bad fairy from the Winter Court. Second only to Mab and most likely on par with Maeve herself. She had a twisted view of helping me, a promise to my mother made long ago. That usually involved her wanting to transform me into something to keep by herside.

She inclined her head at the greeting. "It's…pleasant to see you walking again."

"What happened here? To me?"

She thought about it for a moment. "I am forbidden from telling you. Unless you wish to trade for that information. Right now though, you don't have much to bargain with."

I scowled, but should have known better. "You or Mab had something to do with it. Too much a coincidence you being here right now and all."

The brief fluttering smile was all the confirmation I needed. I was angry. Very angry. "I can tell you one thing. It was not anyone in the Winter Court who perpetrated the deed. We only allowed it to happen and kept you safe for a little bit.

"How long is a little bit?" I said snidely. Fairy time was different t than mortal time.

"I'm not sure how humans go about counting such a passage. It was several month to us."

Months…holy shit. I had to find a newspaper fast. "And the city? What's happened to it?"

Lea touched the side of her nose and gave a wicked feline grin. "Search for the answers. You were once good at that. For now here is a small amount of paper mortals use to make trade. You call it money. Use it to get, how do you say it? Back on your feet again."

She offered me a wad of cash and I shook my head. "Thank you, but I can't accept that."

She threw back her head and laughed. It was a purr full of amusement. "Child this isn't a gift. Consider it payment up front for the services you will soon perform. A tool needed for the job."

Well if that was the case…I snatched the money and could already imagine one of the paper crowns and a rubber band around my head and the flame grilled taste of Burger King and salted fries. I looked up to ask her one more question but she was already gone.

"I really need to learn how to do that," I muttered and gained my bearings. First things first I needed a newspaper and then some salty fries. Then I could come up with a plan to find out just what the hell was going on.

I walked to a bus stop. I had to stop several times to rest. Took at least thirty minutes to go three blocks. There I found a newspaper stand and did a simple hex to throw it open. I didn't have change after all.

The Chicago Tribune, ratty paper as it was, left me standing and shaking as the sun overclouded and the light drizzle of rain soon left me wet. The date kept dancing in my mind. I couldn't believe it.

Two years. I've been gone for two years.