There's nothing like witnessing a decapitation to really ruin your day.
I had heard the sounds of the duel before actually seeing it. Charging into the alleyway the clanging noises were coming from, I was greeted with the sight of two men trying their darnedest to kill each other. Now, while that may not be unusual for dark alleys in big cities, these people were using swords, for goodness' sake. I mean, I'm a wizard – the only one in the Chicago phone book – and even I prefer to use a gun whenever purely physical force is needed. Anyway, as I turned to charge back out of the alley and call the cops, one of the swordsmen took a slice on the hand and stumbled. His opponent took immediate advantage of his opening and knocked the wounded man's sword to the ground. Then, he raised his weapon to his opponent's throat, and softly, almost delicately, spoke:
"There can only be one." There was a quick movement of the man's sword, and his vanquished foe's head rolled on the concrete.
Hell's Bells. Before I could react (whether by doing the noble thing and tackling the perp, or the smart thing and fleeing to phone the cops, I hadn't quite decided yet), my attention was drawn to the headless corpse lying on the pavement. Wisps of some kind of energy were flowing out of the body, and towards his executioner. A sudden gust of wind blew through the alley and knocked me to my knees. The alley was filled with crackling energy, nearly all of which appeared to be arcing from the headless corpse to the swordsman who had caused his unfortunate condition. Then, just as abruptly, it was over. I scrambled to my feet, preparing to blast the mysterious assailant into submission – but he was gone.
Suddenly, I was acutely aware of the fact that I was standing in an alley, alone, with a corpse that quite obviously didn't die of natural causes. I decide to practice the better part of valor and made myself scarce.
Of course, I couldn't just head back to my apartment and leave a headless body lying in the streets, so I headed over to the mildly dilapidated building housing the CPD Special Investigations unit. After showing the officer at the front desk the department voucher proclaiming me a "psychic consultant", I headed up the stairs and stuck my head into Murphy's office. She started and looked up at me.
"Harry!" She quickly turned her computer off. I have this tendency to cause electronics in my vicinity to spontaneously fry. "What are you – "
"Sorry, Murph, but I just saw a guy get his head chopped off, and I'm not entirely sure there wasn't someone from my side of the street involved."
She was already pulling on a jacket and ushering me back down the stairs. As we rushed out to her squad car, I reported the entire episode, including the bizarre lightning display that had followed the beheading, and described what I could remember of the killer.
"Any idea who or what it was?" she asked as we sped through the streets, siren blaring. I shook my head. As we approached the alley where the body lay, I saw her grimace.
"Really, I've never seen anything like – "
"I believe you, Harry, just look." I looked. And then I grimaced too, at the sight of a squad car cordoning off the entrance to the alleyway. Knowing my luck, some random passerby saw my abrupt exit, investigated, and called the cops, who probably thought I was the killer. As we exited the car and started walking towards the entrance, one of the officers looked up, grabbed his partner, and went for his gun. I hate being right about things like this. Fortunately, Murphy had the situation well in hand.
"Stand down, you idiots!" Quite the way with words, Murphy has, especially when she's angry. "This man is a witness, not a suspect!" The detective didn't draw his gun, thankfully, but kept his hand on it as he addressed Murphy.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant, but a man answering the description was seen exiting this alley at approximately the time of the incident, and no-one else was seen in the area. How do you know that he isn't the perpetrator?"
Murphy gave him a magnificent glare. "Because if he were, he would have to have come to me to report the murder immediately after committing it. I happen to know this man, and even he isn't that stupid." Gee, thanks, Murph.
As she reassured the incredulous detectives of my innocence, I took the opportunity to slip down the alley to where the beheading had taken place. The body had already been removed, but that wasn't what I had come for. I shut my eyes, and pushed with the not-quite-muscle behind my sinuses. Then, I opened them and Looked.
Strictly speaking, Seeing – the ability to look at something and see beyond the mundane – isn't a talent restricted wizards. However, it does need a magical catalyst to work, either from the user's own talent or an outside source, such as a potion. Unfortunately, the only potion I've ever heard of that opened the third eye didn't come with a way to close it back up, a somewhat dangerous oversight.
As I Looked down the alley, I felt as if my breath had been knocked out of me. Normally, the kinds of things that I See are horrible – curses, black magic, and the broken spirits of those unlucky enough to encounter them. Even worse, the things that are Seen stay with me, unblemished by the passage of time. But this . . . this was beautiful. An immense spiral of magic twisted from where the headless body had lain to the spot that the assailant had been standing. It was wild and chaotic, but at the same time wondrously, almost irresistibly, alluring. As I gazed at it, I heard someone coming up behind me.
"Harry?" I turned, and there stood the angelic creature I knew to be Karrin Murphy. I blinked away the Sight, and she went back to normal. "Come on, you need to give Detective Gordon your statement." I quickly nodded and followed her back to the cars, wondering all the while what I had just seen.
After several hours of telling my story to the investigators from Homicide – carefully making no mention of freak electrical discharges or massive magic residues – I trudged towards the turn-of-the-century building housing my basement apartment. After rooting around in the icebox to find something to eat, I found I had no appetite and ended up feeding most of it to my cat, Mister. Exhausted, I collapsed onto my couch and started to mull over the day's events.
After an hour or two, I was forced to admit that I had no idea what might have caused the dead body in the alley to give off the pyrotechnic display I had witnessed earlier. However, I realized I did know someone who had a great deal more experience than me, and total recall to boot. I got up off the couch, pulled up the trapdoor in my apartment's floor, clambered down the ladder, and headed over to the wooden shelf containing the human skull surrounded by romance novels. I knocked it a couple of times.
"Time to get up, Bob."
A single point of light flared up inside the skull's left eye socket. It promptly disappeared. I knocked harder.
"C'mon, Bob, I need some help here."
"I'll say." This time both eye sockets lit up. "Do you ever do anything besides work? Dating, for example. You haven't had a date in – "
I interrupted him before he could get too far into his criticism of my love life. "Bob, quiet. I saw something freaky today and need to know if you've ever heard of anything similar."
"More freaky than normal, you mean?" grumbled Bob. I glared at the skull and continued my story. As I finished, he hmmed to himself, stared at the ceiling, and finally replied, "Sounds like a Quickening to me."
"Quickening?"
"Yeah. There's been rumors practically forever of people who don't die, going about all around the world chopping each other's heads off with swords. Supposedly that's the only way they can be killed."
"Immortality, huh?" I scratched my head. "What about the lightning and wind?"
"I was just getting to that. Secondhand accounts of these immortals dueling with each other claimed that, when one of them would win, something like what you described would happen – they're known as Quickenings – but I've never heard any descriptions of it with the Third Eye." Bob gave a sigh. "Besides, Harry, these are just rumors. Before today, nobody I had met had ever credibly seen one of these immortals, never mind two of them dueling." He snorted, all the more impressively since he had no nose. "Back in the 1800's, one of my old masters had an acquaintance who claimed to have met one – named Mac Cloud or something like that – but François Lupin was the craziest Frenchman I've ever heard of. Say, Harry, since I'm already awake, how 'bout letting me out for a while?"
I shook my head, and held up a hand to forestall the inevitable protests. "No, Bob, but I've got this, if you want it." I held up the slim paperback I had found in a dumpster outside a used bookstore. The cover featured a lurid illustration of a overmuscular man with no shirt holding a swooning shepherdess.
Bob made a noise astoundingly similar to lips smacking. "Burning Hearts of Cronus! That's a classic! Where did you find it?"
"Don't ask." I replied as I set the book on the shelf, next to Bob's skull. Then I climbed up the ladder and crawled into bed. After a few minutes, I was dead to the world.
Over the next couple of weeks, it became painfully clear that the Chicago Headhunter (as the Arcane labeled him) was no one-hit wonder. Three more headless bodies had turned up, and apparently there had been two more the week before the incident I witnessed, but no more eyewitnesses had come forward. Since the case was not being handled by Special Investigations, I really had nothing more to do with it, but the knowledge that there was something supernatural about him – even if I had no idea what it was beyond Bob's vague suggestions of immortality – kept me interested. Besides, it was business as usual for Dresden Investigations – meaning, there wasn't any. So a little pro bono work kept me from going insane with boredom.
Unfortunately, I was as stymied as everyone else. Murphy had tipped me off to the locations of a couple of the murders, but all I found was the same wild magic residue that had been left at the first one. A discreet call to my contact at the morgue – one Waldo Butters – confirmed only that there seemed to be no pattern in the victims' age, race, or gender.
It was with this cheerful thought in mind that I headed down to McAnally's for dinner one evening. Afterwards, I sat nursing a mug of Mac's homemade ale and trying to chat with him.
"So, these beheadings, pretty weird, huh?"
"Hmmph." Mac's not big on conversation. However, we seemed to have caught the attention of someone just down the bar.
"Beheadings?" I turned and sized up the newcomer. I had never seen him before, which was slightly unusual since most of Mac's clientele were a fairly closeknit group. "That's interesting. That's very interesting." He leaned back, and stroked his mustache. Then, he clanked his mug at Mac and said, "How's about some more of that rum?"
"The rum's gone." I didn't know Mac even sold rum.
The stranger's face fell. "Why is the rum gone?" Mac gestured at the mug, and the empty bottle sitting next to it. "Oh."
He turned to me. "So, tell me, who's been beheading folks in this fair city? It sounds like a bloody good tale."
I ignored the unintended pun; from his accent the man was undeniably British. "Nobody knows – the killer is still on the loose, Mr. - ?"
"Captain." He extended his hand. "Captain Jackson." As we shook, I noticed he avoided meeting my eyes. Not that I particularly minded, but is proved this guy knew something about wizards. "Harry Dresden. So, what brings you to Chicago, Captain Jackson?"
"Well, mate, in addition to the opportunity to partake of the fine drinking offered by this establishment, I'm here to conduct a little business. Commodities, mostly . . . precious metals, savvy?" Everything about Jackson shouted shifty character, from his mannerisms to his appearance – dreadlocks aren't typically worn by legitimate investment types – but you never know. "In fact, should you find yourself with some treasures that you are, sadly, unable to retain possession of, I would be most happy to give you a quote." He handed me a card, which read Captain Keith Jackson – Nautical Acquisition & Redistribution – S. S. Bootstrap's Revenge.
"You work out of a boat?" The setup of a conman if I ever saw one.
"Ship, mate, ship. I've sailed her around the world and back, and it's cheap living." He winked at me, then pulled out an old-fasioned pocket watch and glanced at it. "Well, it's been fun, but I must be shoving off. Perhaps our paths will cross again." He stood, pulled on a black peacoat, and gave a sort of half-salute as he swaggered out the door.
Mac and I traded glances. "Well," I said, pocketing the card, "He certainly is a character. Does he come in often?"
Mac shrugged. I decided to call it a night, paid up, and headed home.
The next morning, I was startled out of a sound sleep by the sound of the phone ringing. I stumbled out of bed and found the telephone under yesterday's newspaper. " 'lo?"
"Harry? It's Murphy. I need you to come down to the morgue right away."
"What for?"
"I need you to identify a body."
That woke me up. "I'll be right there." I hung up the phone and dashed out the door. Five minutes later, the Blue Beetle and I were chugging towards the morgue. Murphy was waiting for me outside. After I parked, she lead me to one of the examination rooms. The table, and the body on it, were ominously covered with a white sheet.
"The body was discovered early this morning." Murphy said. "The coroner estimates the time of death to be 4:15 this morning." She nodded at the man, who pulled back the sheet. Suddenly, I was glad that I hadn't had time for breakfast. The body was, as far as I could tell, the same man I had seen win the duel in the alleyway. The major difference being, when I saw him in the alley his head was still attached. "Is this the man you saw kill Steven Hobson?"
Hobson, I vaguely recalled, had been the name of the loser of the duel I had witnessed. "Yeah, it is. Do you need anything else?" When Murphy shook her head I turned and started to leave the building. She followed.
"Harry," she asked, once we had gotten to the parking lot, "I know you've been looking into this case, on your own time. I wanted to thank you, and tell you something. That guy in there," – she jerked her thumb back towards the morgue – "his name is Thomas Klingonsmith. He was wanted for questioning concerning a string of decapitations in New York, Boston, and Pittsburgh. Have you found out anything that could help us out?"
I shook my head. "The killer, or killers, left no traces I could follow. I asked Bob, and he could only tell me some rumors he'd heard about a group of decapitation-happy immortals almost two hundred years ago. If they really were immortal, some could still be around, but . . ." I shrugged. Murphy slumped.
"Thanks anyway, Harry. I'll see you later, OK?" I nodded and got into the Beetle. As I pulled onto the street, my mind wandered back to the man I had met at Mac's the night before. He had seemed awfully interested in the beheadings going on. What the heck, I thought, It's not like I have anything better to do.
After parking at the docks and asking a few questions, I had found my quarry. The S. S. Bootstrap's Revenge turned out to be a large sailing yacht, a good twenty feet long, if not more. It was a fairly nondescript vessel of its type, the only really distinguishing feature being a Jolly Roger, the kind with a skull over crossed swords, fluttering in the breeze. I found the flag kind of ironic, considering the circumstances.
It seemed that I had arrived just in the nick of time, as I saw Jackson untying the ropes that held the boat to the docks. "Captain Jackson!" I called. "Could I talk to you for a minute?"
He looked up from the ropes, and grinned. "Harry, mate, welcome aboard! Is this a business, or social call?" He shook my hand as I climbed up onto the deck. "You know, mate, that jacket doesn't flatter you at all."
I looked down at my duster. "What's wrong with my jacket?"
"It belongs on the set of El Dorado, mate. Anyway, care for a drink? I've just laid in a fine selection for my voyage up to - "
"Actually, Captain, I've come to ask you about a murder that occurred last night."
Jackson's expression hardened. I gripped the handle of my sword cane and hoped I wouldn't have to use it. Then he shrugged. "I guess you really are a wizard, mate, I thought so from the moment I saw you. Are you a copper as well?"
It took me a moment to realize what he meant. "No, I'm a private investigator. I'm just trying to find out who's been killing all these people lately. Was it you? Or Klingonsmith? Or both of you?"
Captain Jackson shook his head. "No, mate, Klingonsmith's the only one I've killed in this town, if that's the name he's going by now. I knew him as Kartracho, back when we sailed together on a ship called the Black Pearl." As he said this, he got a faraway look in his eyes. Then, suddenly, his eyes locked with mine.
It's hard to describe the sensation of viewing another person's soul. Jackson's was unlike any I had gazed with before – it was almost as if he had pieces of other people's souls along with his own. More than anything else, it gave me a sensation of age, of a man who had seen far, far more than anyone had a right to, and of a man who lived by his own rules. When the soulgaze ended, I knew that, whatever else this man may have done in his life, he didn't kill anybody in Chicago who didn't deserve death a hundred times over.
We regarded each other for a moment. "So, is it true?" I asked. "Are you an Immortal?"
He grinned at me and reached for a bottle of Captain Morgan. "This is your lucky day, mate. This is the day that you got to meet Captain Jack Sparrow."
Author's Notes:
The Dresden Files is copyright Jim Butcher. This story is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, noncommercial fiction.
I don't own Highlander-Style Immortality.
I don't own Captain Jack Sparrow.
And I don't own any of the other works of fiction that I may have made an allusion to in this story. However, I'm not going to tell you what any of them are, because finding them is half the fun.