The whining noise that had been getting gradually louder for fifteen minutes turned into a grinding and the wheels of my truck abruptly lost power. I managed to steer to the kerb before it came to a complete halt, and switched off the engine.
I leaned my forehead on the rim of the steering wheel. Everything happens for a reason but that doesn't always make it easy to appreciate being stuck in a bad part of Chicago when it's late and freezing and you're tired and had thought you were minutes from seeing your family for the first time in three days. Molly and Daniel would have been in bed hours ago and hopefully the babies were asleep, but Charity would be waiting.
It didn't matter about the truck, or how long the rest of my journey would take. They were waiting at the end of it. I pulled my overnight case out of the back, followed by the long gym bag that held my most important piece of luggage, and started walking in the direction I'd been driving, breathing steam in the chill November night. A few cars zipped by.
As I rounded a corner a scream split the air, a long unending shriek of agony.
I dropped my suitcase and tore open the gym bag. As I gripped the hilt of my sword and drew it clear of the bag and its scabbard in one go, the inhuman howl paused for barely a breath and continued, fainter and hoarse. Ahead of me and over the road.
The squeal of brakes and a frantic horn sounded as I sprinted across the dark street, Amoracchius naked in my hand. The screams stopped a few instants before a figure bolted out of the black void between two concrete cubes of apartment blocks.
I had the impression of a woman, even before she staggered through a streetlight. She was limping and there was blood around her mouth which seemed swollen or misshapen. Someone shouted a single word and a tongue of red flame erupted from the darkness.
The injured woman cried out in alarm, looking back, then turned again and saw me. She recoiled, flinging up her arms defensively. I lowered Amoracchius to my side.
"It's alright. It's alright. What's happening?"
She stared at me. There was another yell of pain from deep within the narrow space and I was about to run past her when she finally choked out a response, "He killed her," she said. "Oh god, stop him." She moved aside and I covered the last few feet to reach the alleyway.
Blue-white light illuminated a tall, lean man. He held a short rod in his right hand, and a much longer and heavier staff in the other. The light came from some object gripped in the same hand as the smaller stick, and it also showed me a shorter, heavier figure.
They both stood crouched and tense. The air was full of a smoky smell that I might have called burnt barbecue if I hadn't heard those screams. I took a firmer grip on my sword and stepped forward in the momentary silence.
Both men turned to look at me. For an instant I thought the shorter one's face scarcely looked human, some trick of the light appearing to give him an elongated snout-like jaw. When I looked again a heartbeat later I saw nothing odd. He seemed unhurt, while the other had blood trickling from his dark hair into one of his eyes and a dark stain around a long tear in his pants leg.
He was young, probably not long out of his teens, with a thinness that might have been slightly more than the leanness of youth and his tall frame – I judged he stood at least two inches above me, and I'm not short by any measure. But I must have had several stone on him.
He was staring at me in horrified shock. It was more than mere surprise, more than quite reasonable fear of a stranger with a weapon. I felt sure there was recognition: he knew who I was, or else he knew what the sword was. And feared it.
"I haven't done anything," he snarled. "It's been years and I haven't done anything."
I didn't answer immediately. I was looking around the dank space. A charred object smouldered a few yards away.
I saw a flicker of movement and my focus snapped back to the shorter man. So did the kid's, his rod coming to bear as though it was a rifle, while I raised Amoracchius slightly. The man's eyes slid from me to the boy. He made a sound that I would never have thought came from a human throat, and as he sprang forwards he changed.
His face swelled into a canine muzzle with fangs not far short of tusks. His arms stretched too. Claws emerged from the ends of his fingers as he reached towards the young man.
He only hesitated for a heartbeat. "Fuego," he bellowed, and a gout of flame burst from the wooden rod towards the ghoul.
A heartbeat was enough. By the time the fire reached it the creature had twisted almost out of the way. It howled as its back blistered, the coat it still wore curling into shreds of ash. It hit the ground and bounded up again.
The boy backpedalled desperately, raising his left hand as he reached the wall and half collapsed against it. He screamed another word and a bluish shimmer separated him from his attacker.
The ghoul, already in mid leap, slammed into the barrier. I started running. It staggered, recovered, and tried to turn. Five feet of broadsword took it just in front of the right armpit and emerged below its left shoulder blade, covered in brown ichor.
It shrieked again, spraying foul blood towards me. One of its long arms reached for me. I turned my face away, raising my left arm to guard my eyes. It raked my forearm and the tip of one claw drew a hot line across my cheek, but I kept my weight behind the sword and bore the creature to the ground. Its screams turned into bubbling gasps and finally died away.
I braced one boot on its chest and hauled Amoracchius free. I wiped it clean of the ghoul's blood on its own clothing and lowered it. The scabbard was still in my gym bag across the street.
I turned back to the kid. He was staring at me, wide-eyed, and his half-visible shield still hung in the air between us. I backed off a few steps, keeping my eyes on him but keeping the sword pointing to the ground. He scrambled to his feet, using his staff for support. The shield vanished but he didn't relax.
"I've kept all the Laws," he said, sullen and bitter. "You know this doesn't count. The Laws are about people. Hell's bells, they killed an old lady." He drew in a sharp breath, "You can't think... that wasn't me! When I found out I tried to stop it. You saw that one go after me."
I had. But I hadn't seen what had happened before that. This young man had power, power that if I was any judge had nothing to do with the Lord, save that ultimately all things come from Him. The most I could say was that he was dangerous to his enemies, and just because one evil being sets itself against you doesn't make you a force for good.
Whatever his motivation, tension radiated from him. I stayed carefully still. "Son," I said, with an effort to keep my own apprehension out of my voice, "you seem to know who I am."
"I know what you are," he replied. "I don't know you, or why you're here instead of Morgan." A humourless smile crossed his face. "Please tell me something's happened to the asshole."
"I don't know any Morgan. There's no-one by that name in my Order." He looked sceptical. "I don't know who you are either, but I can see you're a powerful user of magic."
"I'm a Wizard of the White Council," he retorted, "and I've broken no Laws. You have no-"
I held up my hand. "I've heard of the Council. My name is Michael Carpenter; I'm a Knight of the Cross."
The boy visibly sagged with relief. "You're not a Warden. I thought... Your sword, it has power, I can feel it. You're not here to kill me."
I was fairly sure that was true, now, but I still wasn't sure what I should do with him. "I'm here because my car broke down round the corner."
He raised his eyebrows.
"Things happen for a reason, but as a rule I don't get a note telling me what."
"You saved my life," he insisted. "Before you got here it had the drop on me. And just now, I don't know if I could have beaten it."
I didn't say anything immediately. A note of desperation crept into his voice. "I'm not going to do anything. Even if I had any reason to, I couldn't. The Council would have my head. Literally. Morgan would do it as soon as breathe."
I wasn't sure if he realised that his rod was pointed squarely at me, or that he held it in a white-knuckled grip. He was watching me intently but never let his eyes rest on mine for more than a moment.
I hadn't met many wizards but I'd heard a few things.
"Son, I'm not here to execute you. But I want to know who you are."
He hesitated, which didn't surprise me. I waited.
"My name is Harry Dresden." He watched my face. "What else do you want? I already told you I'm White Council; apart from that I'm no-one really." He shut his eyes for a second and blew out a long breath. "I was a warlock – I broke the Laws of Magic. Killed someone. It was him or me and I'd do it again, with a gun or whatever. But not like that, not with magic.
"That was nearly five years ago. The Council were lenient: they put me on probation. One strike." He drew a finger across his throat.
No wonder I'd frightened him. I could understand his hostility now but still he was clearly dangerous, and in danger. The resentment pouring off him was no less harmful for being rooted in justified fear. If he was sincere, he was trying to put the darkness of his past behind him. If he was sincere, the charred lump of meat on the ground had been another ghoul. I counted such a creature's destruction a good deed, but I still had to suppress a shudder at the memory of those screams.
I wanted to help him if I could, but I had to know. "Harry," I said, "look me in the eye."
He shook his head. "You don't know what you're asking for."
"I know. I told you, Harry, I want to know who you are."
His gray eyes met mine, just for an instant before he looked away again, biting his lip. Then he drew in a deep breath and locked gazes with me.
They call it a soulgaze. The eyes are the windows and so on. The saying goes more literally for wizards. And for those who looked into their eyes: he would see me just as truly as I him.
Nothing happened for a few moments. There was an instant of dizziness, and when my head cleared I was still standing in the darkened alleyway, staring into the eyes of the stranger who'd rescued me and then turned on me. The betrayal stabbed at my guts. I couldn't help but see another face, in my mind's eye, one that had offered me shelter, security, even love, and then revealed it all to be a sham.
A second memory also poked at my consciousness when I looked at him. A big man, wielding a massive sword that exuded power, standing before me with a cool surety of purpose.
It took an effort of will to realise that these were Harry's emotions. I was the stranger, the cause of the fear and pain I was now feeling as if they were my own.
I struggled to wall those feelings away, as I was doing the physical pain in my head and leg, the cold, the tiredness. They weren't gone but they were unimportant, pushed away with everything else to leave my mind free and clear.
Except that they weren't unimportant to me. The boy's detachment made it easier to think my own thoughts: those feelings were why I had asked for this. I searched deeper in what I tried to remember were not actually my feelings.
The burned-flesh stench in the air drew another memory to the surface: smells are good at that. A firestorm, a face I knew now contorted in agony of my own making. The screams that hovered on the edge of hearing might have been from five years ago or five minutes.
A different face glided across my consciousness: a teenaged girl. Loss and betrayal bit a little deeper.
I glimpsed more memories, some as sharp and clear as if they were happening around me, others vague and hazy with time. I felt the emotion that came with each one, and I forced myself to push further into the morass of feelings. Rage, joy, despair, love, grief, fear, pain, shame. There was some brightness there, but it was amid the blackest things that I found my answer.
I stopped searching, and moments later the soulgaze ended. I shut my eyes and tried to clear my head. I wasn't as good as Harry at shutting down my feelings, and I had some of my own to go with the borrowed ones. The memories of those were bright and crisp, and I had an idea that they would stay that way. I wouldn't have minded forgetting a lot of it.
I opened my eyes. The boy had half turned away from me, his head bowed
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry." I could see the tears running down his face. They were stained pink with blood.
I put a hand to my own face, where the ghoul had wounded me. My fingertips came away with drops of red but it was a shallow scratch and hardly bleeding. My arm was worse, and painful now that the heat of battle had faded. My coat and shirt sleeve were torn and bloody. But it wasn't serious.
Harry appeared quite calm now. I remembered the stoic detachment I'd felt, from this kid who might or might not have been old enough to drink. He was no stranger to pain or fear.
Before I could react he'd lifted his staff to the horizontal and cried another word of power.
There was no heat or light: perhaps a faint shimmer rippled through the air or perhaps that was my imagination. It wasn't a blast of wind but pure force that slammed into my shoulder. I staggered backwards until my back hit the concrete wall. Half winded, half stunned, I heard a shriek and turned my head just as Harry ran past me.
It was the woman who had fled as I arrived. At least, it was wearing most of her clothes. Now it was fully in its natural form, red blood still staining its jaws. It was sprawled on the ground in the mouth of the alley but as I watched it gathered its limbs under it and sprang to its feet.
Ghouls are frighteningly quick and this one was too quick for Harry. It dropped to all fours in the same instant that he unleashed his power and another wave of force merely rippled the coat on its back as it bounded towards him.
He backed away, translucent shield flickering back into life. I still stood against the wall, holding Amoracchius loosely. Harry sidestepped, putting himself and his shield between the ghoul and me.
This ghoul didn't slam into the shield. It launched itself upwards, springing right over the boy's head, and as it landed turned its momentum into a spin and lashed out hard with one foot at the back of his knee.
I heard the impact. I finally moved, raising my sword and trying to get in front of the ghoul as Harry struggled to regain his balance. He got his staff to the ground and kept his footing with its support, but this time I was too slow for the monster as it leapt past me and landed on the young man's back.
He went down hard with a pained cry, the ghoul tearing savagely with teeth and claws. I hesitated.
I know how to handle my weapon but you can't casually take five pounds of steel blade to a moving target that close to anything you don't want to damage. I inverted the sword, gripping it by the blade in both hands. I could feel the edges digging into my flesh but it would be safe as long as I didn't relax my grip.
Harry had crossed his arms over the back of his head and neck. I put all the force I could muster behind Amoracchius.
The medieval manuals call it the murder stroke. To all intents and purposes it converts a sword into a sledgehammer, which hit the ghoul on the back of its thick skull. Ghouls are also frighteningly tough, and it continued to struggle weakly until I kicked it onto its back and cut its throat open to the bone.
Harry rolled onto his side and started to sit up. He looked dazed and his leg lay at an unpleasant angle. The ghoul hadn't been able to rip into his neck but the back and both arms of his coat were shredded and soaked with blood.
"It's alright, Harry, take it easy." I crouched down to help him into a sitting position. "Was that all of them?"
He nodded, then groaned and raised a hand to his face. I moved to support his weight better; he resisted for a moment and then leaned his head on my shoulder.
I checked the wound on his head, a messy but superficial scalp laceration. His back was worse: none of the cuts were really serious but there were a lot of them. He was starting to shake with cold too; his jacket was torn to pieces and the shirt under it wasn't much better. I took my coat off and draped it around his shoulders.
"Can you stand up?"
He nodded again and I pulled him to his feet, leaning on my shoulder and his staff, and we started to make our way to my truck.