PROLOG: A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

The night was dark, and stormy. Chicago was shrouded in a thick, dense fog. The kind of fog that you usually only see in low budget horror films. A lone figure walked across a wet street. The rain had stopped some time ago, but the streets still glistened with its remains.

The full moon struggled behind a veil of heavy clouds. Every once in while, its bright beams would light up the street. When that happened, a shadowy figure would stop and look around, searching for something.

A howl broke into the still night air. It was coming from the east.

A woman stopped dead in her tracks. She had heard the noise too. But for her, the howl wasn't coming from the east, or any other compass point. It was right in front of her, and she could see, in the pale beam of moonlight, that the menacing growl was coming from the strangest, scariest dog she'd ever seen.

She let out a high pitched scream. It filled the night with terror.

The man, dressed in a long, black coat ran full force toward the sound of the scream. It was enough to wake the dead. He prayed that it wouldn't. Mumbling something under his breath, he reached under his worn coat and pulled out a long rod. His other hand reached for his gun.

The woman was no longer screaming. She couldn't. Where her vocal cords had once made beautiful music on the stages of some of the world's greatest opera houses, there was now nothing but a gaping hole, and blood; lots of blood.

He was too late. He looked around for the creature that had done this. Given the full moon, and the brutality for which she was attacked, Harry was certain he was looking for a werewolf. He hated dealing with werewolves. They had no reasoning abilities. They were mindless killing machines at every full moon. The trouble was, when the moon wasn't full, they were perfectly ordinary human beings; bankers, fathers, school teachers, you name it. Werewolves were, for the majority of their life, just like anyone else. Harry Dresden hated killing werewolves.

A light rain began to fall. That's how the night had gone; rain on and off and the ominous rolls of thunder in the distance, threatening to attack the city at any moment. Harry looked down at the body one last time; then set off to kill himself a werewolf.

An hour later, bloody and badly beaten, he headed for home. He kept telling himself, as he walked the lonely street, that he'd made the city a little bit safer. But he kept imagining in his head, the small, huddled man he had killed. Once you kill a werewolf, they revert back to their human form, and this one looked to be a middle aged accountant. He probably had a wife whose better days had passed and two or three kids in school. Probably had a dog too. Just a nice guy in a dead end job who ended up on the wrong end of a really bad curse.

His apartment was as he left it, a mess. Most of the furniture had been overturned during a rather nasty battle. The windows where blown out, and a small corner of the main room was still smoldering. He would deal with it tomorrow. All he wanted to do was go to bed.

He stopped. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a small, red blinking light. He groaned. He hated the phone but, being the small business owner he was, if you could call what he did a small business, he needed a phone, and an answering machine, for when some millionaire decided to make him an offer he couldn't refuse.

He hit the button and waited for the message, which was most likely his landlord. He slapped his forehead. He'd forgotten to pay the rent…again. It was a miracle he hadn't been evicted by now.

Much to his surprise, it was not his landlord.

"Harry? Um…" She sounded nervous, uncertain. "I don't know if you remember me." He recognized the voice right away. "It's Lisa…Cuddy… from school." How could she possibly think he'd forgotten her? "I need your help. I don't normally…it's complicated. Is there any way you could come to Princeton, NJ? I'll pay for the trip, hotel, everything. Just please, let me know soon." Click. The line went dead.

But wait folks, there's more. Harry listened as a second message began. "Harry, it's Murphy. I need you downtown. RIGHT NOW!"

Harry looked at the phone in disbelief. He had been out all night, fighting off a pack of rather dangerous werewolves, a lovely damsel from the past was in distress, and now he had to go down to the police station and get harassed by Detective Murphy.

Harry grabbed a carton of cold Chinese from the ice box and headed back out the door.

Half an hour later, he walked into Murphy's office. He was a mess, his hair more unkempt than usual, his favorite duster torn in several places with a set of rather nasty looking claw marks running down the back. There was also a fair amount of blood splattered here and there.

"What the hell happened to you?" Murphy's eyes grew wide at the sight of him. She'd seen Harry banged up badly many times, but she never really got used to it.

"I rushed over here so fast when I got your message that I tripped over a rock." Harry plopped down into a chair.

"It must have been a very big rock," Murphy replied skeptically.

"It was. With very large teeth." Harry picked up the coffee cup on her desk and took a swig. He fought the urge to spit it out, and made a valiant effort to swallow. "It's cold!"

"I didn't ask you here for a coffee break."

"I already knew that. So, what's up?" Harry was often called in by Murphy for the more inexplicable of her cases. They had an agreement. She paid him a consulting fee and he pretended he was just an ordinary detective when anyone asked.

"What do you know about this?" Murphy slid a photo across the desk. Harry cringed and pushed it quickly away. He'd seen the carnage first hand; he didn't need a photo reminder of the mangled body of the woman he'd failed to save.

"Looks bad."

"Yeah. Looks bad," she mimicked him. Sometimes she wondered if working with Harry Dresden was really worth the hassle.

"I'll see what I can find out." Harry was about to get up, but Murphy reached over and grabbed him.

"Funny thing is; we have a witness." She didn't sound like she found it funny. Harry's heart sunk as she stood up and started walking toward him, pulling her handcuffs off her belt as she went.

"You don't think I did this?!" Harry looked down at the photo reluctantly then quickly looked away. No matter how much he saw in his line of work, he never could get used to the bloody violence of it all.

"If I don't arrest you for this Dresden, people are going to wonder if I'm such a good cop. You were seen at the scene of the crime, and eye witness described you to a tee."

"It was dark, lots of guys look like me in the dark."

"Wouldn't know." Murphy didn't really sound like she was enjoying this at all. "Besides, he knew your name."

Harry thought for a moment. Who…

"Let's just do this." She clamped one cuff around his right wrist. "Harry Dresden, you have the right to remain silent…"

"I don't want to remain silent. I didn't do anything to remain silent about." That wasn't entirely true. He did go running around Chicago in search of a werewolf, and felt like remaining pretty silent about that, but still, he was innocent of what she was arresting him for.

"Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney,"

"Don't know any." It was true.

"If you cannot afford an attorney…" she was slapping the other cuff on his other wrist.

"Come on Murphy, it's me. You don't have to go through all this."

"One will be provided for you by a court of law." She sighed. "It's my job Harry. I'm sorry."

"Your job sucks." Harry mumbled.

"Do you understand these rights as I have presented them to you?" She didn't disagree.

"Nope." Harry wasn't going to play nice.

"Harry?" She pleaded.

"Yeah, I understand my rights, but do you understand that you're arresting an innocent man?"

Her answer was nothing more than a sigh. She looked tired. She sounded tired. Murphy was the one woman authority against things that went bump in the night. The rest of the force laughed at her behind her back. Few of them dared laugh to her face. She might be small, but she had a big bite.

Harry would be lying if he said he couldn't feel something big coming. He tried to lie to himself about it, ignore the signs, the increase in late night attacks, but if it was affecting Murphy, well, there was one thing Harry couldn't ignore, and that was a woman in need.

4