Disclaimer: I do not own trademarks or copyrights on any of the characters appearing herein. Harry Dresden and all associated characters and concepts is the intellectual property of Jim Butcher. Ghost Rider and any associated characters is the intellectual property of Marvel Comics.

I am receiving no monetary compensation for this story. It is purely for entertainment purposes.

A/N: This story takes place between Small Favor and the short story The Warrior (found in the Side Jobs anthology).

I will be taking some liberties with the backstory of Ghost Rider to help fit him into the Dresden universe more smoothly. Rest assured he will remain largely the same otherwise.

I may add a few other Marvel characters if I can think of a way to fit them in without altering them too much. Mostly street level characters that don't have any true superpowers.

CHAPTER 1

Another day at the office.

For most people that's a statement implying boredom or monotony. But for Chicago's only openly practicing wizard it just means that something weird could walk through the door at any moment. And knowing my luck, it would pick the worst possible time. I hadn't spent much time at my office lately between dealing with a new apprentice, White Court vampires, and fallen angels. I had put my apprentice's training on hold for a little while so she could be with her family. Her father Michael Carpenter had been shot with an assault rifle by a fallen angel a few months back. He had survived, but it was a close one and he was never going to be the same man again. He was certainly done with his duties as a Knight of the Cross, a holy warrior who wielded one of three swords: Amoracchius, Fidelacchius, and Esperacchius. In layman's terms, the Sword of Love, the Sword of Faith, and the Sword of Hope. And each one had a nail from the Cross embedded in it.

Yeah, that Cross. Subtle, huh?

The fallen angel in question was one of thirty who reside in silver coins called denarius. They seduced mortals into becoming their hosts with promises of power beyond their wildest dreams. And before you ask, yes, they are those thirty pieces of silver. The ones Judas was paid for his betrayal. As a whole the lot of them are known as the Order of the Blackened Denarius, which I thought was far too dignified a name for them. They were also called Denarians for short, which was a little better. I preferred Nicky and the Nickelheads.

I couldn't help feeling responsible for Michael's injuries, since they had happened while he was helping me. No one else blamed me. That's okay, I blamed myself enough for all of them.

I had taken on his daughter Molly as my apprentice after she had broken the Laws of Magic trying to help some friends kick a drug addiction. She'd meant well, but screwing around with people's minds was against one of the seven Laws of Magic that carry a death penalty if any practitioner is caught breaking them. She'd had no idea, but the White Council doesn't accept ignorance as an excuse. To be fair, they had good reason. Once someone broke one of the Laws they usually kept breaking them until they became a full blown warlock. So their reasoning was sound, but that doesn't mean I had to like it.

I'd intervened on her behalf much like my own mentor had done for teenaged me after I'd killed my first mentor with magic in self-defense. Now she was under the Doom of Damocles, a sort of magical probation, just like I had been. If she ever broke any of the Laws again she would be executed with no appeal. Second chances are incredibly rare when the Laws are broken, and third chances simply don't happen. Besides being rather fond of Molly and owing her father big time, I had a personal stake in keeping her on the straight and narrow. As her mentor, if she was executed I'd be on the chopping block right next to her.

No pressure or anything, right?

So I was sitting at my desk going through the pile of mail that had built up since I had last been here, noting with an un-wizardly sigh that my rent was due in a week and I didn't have the cash to pay it. I had no cases to work and my stipend as a Warden of the White Council wasn't due to be paid for another three weeks. Wardens are basically the Council's police force, and it's their job to bring in anyone who has broken one of the Laws. I had the position forced on me, and I was determined not to directly cause the death of an ignorant kid if I could help it. It's depressing how often someone's abilities manifest during times of duress, causing them to break a Law unintentionally. Thou Shalt Not Kill With Magic was by far the most common cause of some poor kid's execution, and it was usually in self-defense like my brush with death had been. Unlike me, though, they don't have anyone in their corner.

I was reaching for the phone to check my answering service when it rang unexpectedly. I would have viewed it as a favorable coincidence if I hadn't been taking a sip of my Coke with the other hand at the time. As it was, the unexpected sound startled me slightly and I inhaled some of the Coke instead of swallowing it. I picked it up while trying in vain to stifle a coughing fit.

"Dresden." I sputtered into the receiver.

"Harry," came the familiar voice of Karrin Murphy "You busy?"

"Just trying to drown myself with caffeine and caramel coloring." I replied "Nothing too exciting."

"O..kaaay" came Murphy's response. I could almost hear her eyebrow raising through the phone "We got one that looks like your department. Nearly dead guy in an alley. It's...pretty odd."

That statement from Murphy was telling. She's been dealing with the weird stuff in Chicago for a long time now as the former head of the Chicago PD's Special Investigations unit. She'd been demoted to Sergeant a few years back after leaving a crime scene to help me rescue Molly from the Winter Court. A lot of people view SI as the place careers go to die, but the veterans in the division know they're one of the last lines of defense between the general public and the supernatural. Hell, before I opened my practice they were the only line. The other cops think they're a joke and a waste of resources. But the other cops also don't deal with vampires and trolls on a daily basis.

"What's weird about it?" I asked, still recovering from inhaling my soda.

Murph just sighed.

"Better come see for yourself." she said "We've got enough scraped together for your normal rate."

I winced a little at that. The division used to have it in the budget to contract me as a consultant on the really weird cases. That ended when the higher ups on the force decided I was a fraud (my appearances on the Larry Fowler Show didn't help matters) and refused to pay for it anymore. Now the SI veterans, the ones who know there are things out there that normal police procedure can't handle, have a pool going to pay my fees when they run across something they don't know what to do about. Since they've seen a lot at this point, I assumed this one was going to be off-the-reservation odd.

"I'll go hourly" I told her "At least until I have an idea what I'm dealing with. I know you guys don't have a lot of cash on hand to pay my fees and I'm not going to charge you a whole day if it only takes a few hours to solve. Where am I going?"

"Thanks, Harry." she replied "I would have had to go out of pocket for part of it. The pool is a little tapped out these days. The rookies don't like putting money in to pay a charlatan to do their jobs for them. Their words, not mine."

She gave me an address on the south side about a half hour away.

"Better step on it, Harry." she said. "I don't know how long I can stall the crime scene investigators."

"Be there as soon as I can." I told her as I shrugged my way into my duster and grabbed my staff from where it was propped against the wall.

Forty eight minutes later I pulled my trusty Beetle into a space between two police cruisers. Chicago traffic sucks in any weather, but late January is especially bad and there was enough snow on the ground to make driving treacherous. I unfolded myself from the driver's seat and stepped out into the bitter cold. The Blue Beetle isn't the most comfortable transportation when you're most of seven feet tall, but it has the advantage of actually running nine days out of ten. It also isn't entirely blue anymore. It had acquired red, green, and white panels over the years. My mechanic Mike was some kind of genius in that regard, and he didn't ask questions. Even when I sent the car in with three foot long claw marks in the hood. Modern vehicles tend to fail spectacularly around wizards, so the more low tech the car the better off we are. Magic and technology mix like Cold Iron and faeries, with similar results. But at least technology isn't deeply offended by it. It just blows up.

When I arrived on the scene the first thing I noticed was the groove melted into the asphalt leading away from the alley the cops were milling around in. It was in the center of a three or four foot wide swath of melted snow. It looked as though something narrow and incredibly hot was dragged or rolled down the street. Strangely, the cops milling around in its vicinity didn't seem to think it was odd in the slightest. Which means they were either oblivious, incompetent, or had already made a note of it. I hoped for Chicago's sake it was the third option.

I spotted Murphy's blonde hair sticking out from under a knit stocking cap near the mouth of the alley. She looked tiny next to her partner Rawlins, who she was talking with in low tones. She was maybe five foot even to his six foot plus. I knew better than to let her stature fool me though. I'd seen her take down thugs three times her size without breaking a sweat. Other people underestimated her all the time though, to my great amusement and their dismay.

"Hey, Murph. What do you have for me?" I asked by way of greeting.

"Black male, early thirties. Alive, but totally unresponsive. No signs of physical trauma" she replied "He's down this way."

Rawlins nodded at me and gestured for me to follow Murphy down the alley.

"Rawlins. Who you gonna call?" I quipped. I'd noticed a while back that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Ernie Hudson, and I gave him him crap about it from time to time.

"You, apparently." he shot back. "At least Dan Aykroyd had a professional vehicle to show up in."

Zing. Okay, he had me there. The Beetle, for all its reliability, doesn't exactly scream "trustworthy professional".

When I got closer to the victim they'd called me about, I glanced around the immediate vicinity and noticed there was no snow within twenty feet or so of where he lay slumped against a building. The ground wasn't even wet, so something had been hot enough to both melt the snow and evaporate the water afterward. But there was no sign of anything actually having been on fire. I also noted that if there was a struggle here, it had been pretty one-sided. The hilt of what looked to have been a large knife lay on the ground beside him, the blade apparently having melted. As Murphy had said, the guy looked to be mostly unharmed. Except for his eyes. I'm no optometrist, but I'm pretty sure eyes that resemble lumps of coal aren't considered normal in anything from this side of the supernatural fence.

"Okay... that's new." I commented absently

"So you haven't seen anything like this before?" Rawlins said from behind me

"Not even close." I responded "I'll have to take a closer look to see what's going on here. Give me some space."

While Murph was shooing the other cops away from me, I was mentally preparing myself to open my Sight. I was almost certain I wasn't going to like what I saw.

For the record, I was right.

When I opened my eyes all I could see was fire. And not just your garden variety fire, either.

Hellfire.

I was familiar with it from having the shadow of a fallen angel in my head for a few years. I'd actually used it myself for a while. The victim was at the center of the fire, and seemed to actually be the source of it. He looked fine on the outside. Okay, mostly fine. But viewing him through my Wizard Sight I could see that his freaking soul wason fire. And it was still burning. Judging by the expression on his face it was even more unpleasant than being physically on fire. His face was locked in a silent scream that told me he was still feeling every bit of the flame that engulfed him without consuming anything.

I added that frozen expression of terror to the long list of things I'd really prefer to forget, but can't. That's the downside to using the Sight. You see things how they really are but you can't ever forget them, no matter how much you want to. Sometimes it's pleasant, but mostly its pretty horrific. I'd seen a lot of horrific. I practically had it trademarked at this point.

"Stars and stones." I breathed. "He's not dead, but I'm looking at his soul right now. And it's on fire."

"His soul is burning?" Murphy asked incredulously.

"Yep. Full on four alarm fire. I've never seen anything like it." I told her, deliberately avoiding any mention of Hellfire. She knew I'd been using it for a while and that I'd stopped. We had come to the unspoken agreement not to talk about it. "It's possible to burn a soul. Against the Laws of Magic, but possible. But keeping it going after the attacker has left? That's a new one. You got any information on this guy, or any witnesses to what went down?"

Murphy consulted a notepad for a moment before answering.

"His name's Calvin Robinson. Age thirty three. Rap sheet a mile long, with a history of violence. Assault, aggravated assault, menacing, and so on." she told me "If it's a violent offense, he's either done it or been accused of doing it. Warrant out for his arrest in connection with a robbery turned homicide a few weeks ago. No physical evidence to speak of, but a witness placed him near the scene. Given his history, it seems likely enough."

"Sounds like he really pissed somebody off."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." Murph deadpanned "Whatever would we do without your keen deductive reasoning?"

"Die of boredom?" I suggested and was met with a distinctly un-amused look "Anyone see anything unusual at all? Because I'm betting whoever or whatever did this was pretty damn unusual."

"Well, it was actually called in by the fire department." Murphy replied. "A neighbor thought they saw a fire in the alley and called them to put it out. The crew called it in when they found Mr. Robinson here. The witness also said they heard a motorcycle leaving the area. A loud one. That wouldn't be noteworthy except for the fact that no one in the neighborhood has one. And it was four thirty in the morning. And it's January with six inches of snow on the ground. You'd have to be a pretty hardcore biker to ride in this crap, and a better rider than most to not wreck your bike in the process."

"A motorcycle?" I mused.

Something clicked just then and I walked back to the groove in the asphalt I'd noticed when I first arrived. It looked about the right size and shape, but how the hell could a motorcycle melt asphalt like that?

"Murph." I called "Does this look about right for motorcycle tires?"

Murphy walked up next to me and examined the groove for a moment.

"Yeah, it could be." she said. "But if it is, it would be a custom job. Stock motorcycles don't usually have tires this wide. Are you thinking a motorcycle was hot enough to melt asphalt and somehow kept going? That kind of heat should have melted the tires."

"Sounds crazy, but I think that's exactly what happened. Someone would have noticed if a random person took the time to take a blowtorch to the street. What I'm wondering about is why the melted part is only leaving the scene, with no evidence of a similar one arriving."

"So we're looking for someone who can manipulate magical fire well enough to burn someone's soul without harming them physically, and who rides a motorcycle that melts asphalt and keeps going?" Murphy asked "Can't put that in a report if I want anyone to take it seriously. Can you do anything for the victim? I'm guessing a doctor wouldn't even know where to start."

"You're probably right on that. Honestly, it's probably beyond me, too." I told her "I don't want to take the chance of making things worse if I try to do something without knowing how it was done in the first place. I'll see if I can get Wizard Listens-To-Wind to take a look at him. He's the best healer I know. If he can't help him, no one can."

Murphy grimaced.

"I hate to think this guy is going to suffer like this forever." she said "Even if he is scum, and probably a murderer."

"What happened to innocent until proven guilty?" I asked.

Murph snorted.

"After you do this job for a while you start to get a sense for who's guilty or innocent." she said "We can't convict on a gut instinct, but any cop that's been around a while gets pretty good at predicting how the case is going to go. This guy probably did it, but it's the prosecutor's job to prove it in court. It's our job to make sure he gets the chance to."

"Ah." I said "That's, uh, pretty cynical, Murph."

"Just reality." she shrugged "You can't always tell who the bad guys are, but sometimes it's pretty obvious."

I really couldn't dispute that, so I dropped the subject.

"Go ahead and get this guy to a hospital." I said "I can't do anything for him, and I don't need him here to finish examining the scene."

Murphy just gave me a curt nod and waved the EMTs over.

"You can take him now, guys." she told them "We're done with him."

The EMTs took one look at the guy and shuddered in unison.

"What happened to this guy?" one of them asked

"Not totally sure." Murphy replied "He's alive, but he's not in good shape. Dresden here is going to call a specialist to look at him once he gets to the hospital."

I raised an eyebrow at Murphy.

"Don't EMTs usually stay with a living victim until they're transported?" I asked

Murphy nodded.

"Usually, but since his pulse was still strong and he didn't have any visible injuries they agreed to let you get a look at him before they took him, on the condition that we get out of their way if anything changed. Don't count on that happening again, I called in a favor one of the guys owed me."

I finished up my investigating and walked over to where Murphy was waiting.

"I've got everything I can get from here." I told her. "I'm going to go through my library and see if I can turn up any information on what could have done something like this. It's a pretty distinct M.O., so if anyone has seen it before I should be able to turn up something. I'll also come back later with some resources I don't want the vanillas seeing. I'll send you a bill for two hours for now and figure out the rest after I have a better idea what I'm dealing with."

"Thanks, Harry." Murphy replied "Keep me in the loop on what you find out."

"You got it, Murph." I said "I'll give you a call as soon as I know something."

With that I stuffed myself back into the Blue Beetle for the drive to my apartment slash lab.

When I got to my apartment building, Father Anthony Forthill was waiting for me outside. I started to make a joke about him hanging out in seedy areas but it died on my lips when I saw the worried look in his pale blue eyes. Father Forthill is generally unflappable, so if he looked worried it was probably something serious.

"Padre" I greeted him. "Why do I get the feeling this isn't a social call?"

"Harry" he said, with relief evident in his voice "the Church needs your help and Sanya is unavailable for the moment. Red Court in Prague."

Sanya was the only remaining active Knight of the Cross, and the wielder of Esperachhius. He was Russian and built like a pro wrestler. He also happened to be black, which he informed me is incredibly rare in Russia.

"What's up, padre?" I asked him

Forthill sighed and ran his hand through his thinning hair.

"It's the Blackened Denarius the Church had for safekeeping." he answered. "Nine of the fourteen coins we had have been stolen."