A/N: I apologize to all my readers; a few months after posting this, I realized I had written in a bad cliché to avoid wrenching hearts a little more. Hopefully I've fixed that and any other problems you guys brought up this second time around. This chapter and the last chapter have been most heavily changed, but I went through all of them to make sure everything was consistent and polished.
Chapter 1: Death
It's darkest before the dawn. The eleventh hour. The most foreboding of times when dark lords rise, devil worshipers work their rites and virgins are sacrificed to the appetites of evil gods.
My phone rang.
I jerked awake; a few sparks falling from finger-tips, singing sheets before my conscious mind realized the jangling old-fashioned dialing phone meant no harm. Right; evil-doers do not give courtesy calls to their victims—unless they need the victim conveniently positioned in front of a window. Any would-be sniper was out of luck, my windows didn't give assassins such a courtesy view. The phone jangled again. Probably SI.
At o' dark thirty I grappled with sleep as my hand did the same with the receiver, the smooth plastic of the antique phone almost slipped from my grip.
"Murph?" I mumbled.
"Dresden." The not-Murph's voice jerked me out of nostalgia. Right. Murphy hadn't worked at Special Investigations since she'd followed a suicidal wizard into a genocidal battle against Red Court Vampires. This wasn't Stallings either, now in charge of the police department who thanklessly tangled with the supernatural.
"Connie from SI," said unfamiliar voice. "We need your help."
Why hadn't Stallings called? Was this a trap? Or was he in trouble?
"Where?" My voice was comprehensible. Sleep had been conquered.
"Near Buttercup Park. Meet us there."
I grunted. For those with double X's, it translates to 'on my way.' Martian is a much easier language so early in the morning. Then I rolled out of a bed my legs didn't hang from—will wonders never cease—and got ready for a trap.
Until a few months ago my roommates could reliably take care of themselves—slob though my brother was—or deal with a few hours alone like Mouse and Mister. These days I had a different kind of live-in resident: one who could not take care of herself or be left alone for hours.
Using every bit of stealth mastered over years of stalking horrors of the night—or slinking away—I crept across cold hardwood flooring and peeked into Maggie's bedroom. A head of dark hair peeked out from behind the bulk of my saber-toothed dog, Mouse, who lay between her and the door. My soul gained another size at the sight. "Thanks boy," I whispered and with equal care closed my daughter's bedroom door and slipped away to dial a number.
Babysitter confirmed I geared up.
A heist on the vault of Hades—god of death and wealth, king of the underworld. That Hades—had paid off in millions. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop but it was more than enough for a townhouse of fireproof stone and brick crammed in a decent neighborhood for kids.
My new wizard's lab was already cluttered with second-hand wooden shelves sagging beneath the weight of new ingredients. Half a dozen projects were crammed between four different work tables and I had to root through tools and trappings to pluck out my new shield-bracelet. I hadn't bothered with any fancy, time-consuming upgrades just yet; any focus was better than no focus. I slipped on the chain of shields, a twin for my old one and snatched another project from a far table. This one wasn't quite finished but would have to do.
Investing in armor is a wise idea for the wiseass. Leather was my go-to material with its metaphysical connection to protection. My old leather duster, a gift from Susan, was also all I had.
Silk has a similar connection. Not as universal as leather but silkworms spun it into cocoons to protect them just like armor, strengthening the association. The white-silk body-suit made me the world's most conspicuous ninja with runes stitched in gold, platinum and silver thread. The precious metals would make enchantments last for years. The cloth was also thin and pale enough to wear beneath any clothing and protected me from the neck down.
Over the suit went an old shirt and pants too bloodstained to wear to my daughter's school. I shrugged on Molly's gift to me, a new leather coat, relaxing a little beneath its weight and magical protections. I also added one other thing I'd occasionally needed over the years, but had dragged my feet getting.
When Michael met me at the door I tipped the brim of my hat to him in thanks, tossed aside a breakfast bar wrapper and, staff in hand, left at a jog for the nearest Way.
If Chicago traffic is deadly, the roads through the Never-Never made the Walking Dead look like the teletubbies. Every ancient monster Greek heroes fought, the Norse wrote their bloodiest ballads about and the Native Americans warned against dwelt within its haunted wilderness. Lions, tigers and bears would be snacks to the horrors dwelling within a forest so ancient and wild it swallowed bulldozers. Opening the Way cut the breath from me. Mild early summer air froze from brutal Winter's breath, cold enough to freeze a drop of blood before it hit the ground. My shield was raised, my staff ready to fight and my icy expression daring something to try.
Something obliged me.
Only by Listening did I catch the slightest, muffled crunch of snow smashed by a swift paw. Mab's unique physical therapy paid off. I raised my magical shield facing the giant monster in time for its massive, shaggy body to collide, sending us both to the ground.
Laying beneath a predator was a fatal mistake. Before my back hit the frozen ground I tucked and rolled. Momentum shifted the monster off and I got to my feet ready to fight. The monster rose to its paws just as swiftly and I got my first good look at the attacker.
Someone had taken a sabertoothed tiger, decided it wasn't nearly large or vicious enough, bred it with saber-toothed lion and added spines. An ice-age liger crouched for another pounce. The creature's thick pelt was festooned with spines, a lion-like mane, a bear-like build, fangs long enough to double as swords and muscles bulging thicker than my whole body.
I stood my ground, gathering my magic.
It hesitated.
Predatory instincts have a very powerful, automatic reaction to fleeing prey: chase it. When prey doesn't flee, it stops feeling like prey.
I drew in heat like a volcano about to blow. Didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't blink from the stare of this primordial predator from an icy era long dead on Earth. Heat baked my brain like a mid-summer heat wave in the asphalt jungle. Waves of Death Valley heat cut through the chilly air and the snow beneath my feet melted so fast it turned to fog.
Coiling muscles slackened, flattened ears perked warily as though picking up the sound of a cobra's hiss. A broad nose twitched at the whiff of the idea that hunting this small mammal might hurt. Even supernatural predators don't like getting injured. But one other instinct could drive it to gamble.
Hunger.
Not the hunger of missing a single meal, or two, or three. The hunger of missing a meal in a world without food. The hunger of never eating again, of dragging oneself the world over while hunger devoured you from the inside out and dying without a morsel to be found. Of breathing a last breath after weeks of toil as your stomach digested the last of your organs.
The creature pounced, calling my bluff.
It met a hose of fire, bright golden with heat and powerful enough to bore through fur, skin and flesh. The creature's silent pounce turned into an inhuman scream of agony as it flopped to the ground. Nearby, all the trees I'd drawn warmth from exploded as liquid sap froze and expanded in a split-second. Slivers of wood shot everywhere, bouncing off my duster, cutting into my face and shooting into the rolling, writhing beast in the snow. It fled despite its wounds. Once it was out of sight and hearing I took the path again. A few more steps I remembered to release the breath and tension I was holding. My shaky steps afterward were from the cold. I swear.
"Halt traveler!"
The tone was the bubbly-wet sound of someone drowning in their own blood…or a Former. Automatically I readied staff and shield, stopping at the river-bank. In the middle of the icy waters, beside a bridge I tactically avoided, rose a mermaid designed with a catfish theme. Top half mostly human, bottom half mostly fish. In one webbed, clawed hand she held a trident devoid of any runes, gemstones or other supernatural graffiti. It was tipped with five very sharp prongs. In the other she bore a shield, likewise un-graffitied and likewise shield-ly. Strange tentacle-barbules drooped around her face like a grotesque beard and mustache, water sliding down them and over a pair of very generous breasts covered in golden-sheened scales. The combination of overtly feminine and masculine was weirder than an androgynous person walking into the office and trying to guess the right pronoun. Too dark, too wide eyes surveyed me with fury and wary suspicion.
"Guardian of this river, I mean you and those you protect no harm." Hey, I could do diplomacy.
"Regardless, to cross you must pay the toll or else cross weapons with me."
I frowned, "What is the toll?"
For a toothless mouth she sure gave an intimidating smile. "Blood."
So much for diplomacy. Blood can be used to kill the previous owner, power ritualistic sacrifices or be put to less merciful purposes. Forking a drop over was straight out. Crossing the bridge didn't seem wise either. Fairy tales have some truth in them, including all the ones about monsters beneath bridges. Crossing the guardian's creek was straight-up suicide, wizard or no. Freezing it was my (or the winter mantle's) first idea but if water broke the ice I'd be just as damned. Clearing the river in a single bound wasn't possible; fairy power didn't make me superman and the river guardian had better control over her home terrain than me.
Shrewd observations like that were what made me such an in-demand detective.
I focused on the ground, combining it with my favorite element. Magma bubbled from the river and rose into a miniature volcanic island barely large enough for one person to stand on. Fire and earth—if my guess was right—were two elements fishy kitty couldn't control. She charged me with a screech like a broken flute underwater. Once more I reached for heat in the middle of Winter. Magma froze to stone a second before a battering ram of fire jetted from my staff toward the guardian. She retaliated with a wave of water.
Elements clashed. Fog burst into the air, clouding the river and its banks as fire and water collided but I was already leaping to the island. Another bound and my feet slammed deep into cold, slick mud. Fully human, the cold would have deadened my limbs and I would have slid into the waters of the enraged guardian. With the winter mantle boosting a couple years of parkour training, I wrenched my feet free and heaved myself up. A stab of prongs hit my back like someone had thrust a training sword in my spine but the guardian's wood couldn't pierce the spell-enchanted coat, let alone my new ninja suit. Didn't bother sticking around. In the Never-Never loitering, speeding and all other traffic violations have the same punishment: dismemberment by predators.
Fifty paces away from the river I opened a Way over a felled tree and stepped off a dumpster in a Chicago back alley a block from the crime scene.
Death hit me.
Tangible in its stench; insatiable in its fresh horror, the metaphysical impression slammed into my metaphysical senses like a full load from a skunk in the face. Normally I'm an insensitive wizard—comes with the Y chromosome—and lucky to do more than sense a practitioner before shaking their hand. This scene though, someone had died here. They'd died horribly. Violently. Fear stained the scene like blood.
So did fortitude.
This had been a messy death but whoever died had stood their ground and tried giving the Reaper a two-for-one deal. Failed, but fought the dying of the light. I had to fight down the breakfast bar I'd eaten earlier. The scent of blood hung sharp and metallic in the air. A lot of blood. More than a kill. Had someone done a ritual with it?
I shouldered past the distinct reek of exposed organs and offal, toward the dark shape of a person leaning against an old police-car. Indistinct in the darkness, I could still clearly see sleek black dreads piled in a bun reflected in the streetlight and the hand in her pocket. She wasn't happy to see me. With an inch or two on Murphy, I still towered over her and her hand twitched around a gun.
"Guess you really are a wizard, thanks for making it so quick," Connie squinted in the pre-dawn light. "You okay?" she motioned to my face.
"Morning commute." She didn't ask and I stepped toward the scent of blood, disembowelment and death.
Prey.
That was my first thought in my head after clapping eyes on the remains of the poor former police officer. My second thought was a desperate plea for an obliviate. Something had skinned the cop, leaving everything that should stay on the inside brutally exposed. A knob of windpipe hung free at the neck, along with a thin piece of skin and scalp. A human face without the skull. My stomach staged an escape but got caught in my throat. A deep gash ran along the back of the bonelessly-flopping carcass. Someone—probably something—had also taken the spine. Guts, meat and limb-bones hung off the tree-branch like the remains of a poacher's kill: discarded, unimportant, non-trophy bits.
A speck of blood, cold from death, landed on my nose like a drop of rain.
Two decades ago a similarly gory scene had up-ended my stomach. Since then my guts hardened until the sight of that man hung like a fresh killed buck didn't require a bucket.
Though it burned my heart.
Humanity clashed with rising Winter Knight instincts like I'd clashed with the water guardian. The scent of blood and fresh meat coaxed terrible hunger and bloodlust from winter. I fought down the reaction and mentally grappled with the ancient mantle, woven from magic in the time of the Neanderthal. It struck back with fierce cold but my will was fueled with all the emotion turning my heart to molten metal. The mantle gave a last roar before humanity tightened the leash. Taming it.
For now.
Imagine suddenly having a second personality added to your own, the personality of a pedophile. That was the disgust rippling through me.
"Who."
Connie carefully held out a part of a blood-stained badge. Most of the name was still visible. Those black letters burned every hope I'd had of Stallings being okay. The tempting and repulsive body was all that was left of Murphy's former partner.
"I'm in charge now," Connie whispered despairingly. Her eyes looked shiny.
I needed the bucket.
After thoroughly ruining my image as a tough, hard-bitten PI and wizard, I straightened and accepted the bottle of water Connie held out to me. "What happened?" I asked once I could no longer taste my last meal.
"Finishing up a regular patrol, nothing out of ordinary. He was just reporting in, I was parking the damn car. Got what happened on tape…not that it helps much." As she withdrew the machine I took a couple cautious steps back. These days I could kill one of the new tablets at fifty meters, though the recorder was surprisingly old-fashioned. "Less likely to break around the magical—friend or foe," she said. Her face fell, "Stallings idea."
My heart churned with nausea. "I will stop this thing."
"Don't make promises you can't keep, wizard." A click of a button and the recorder issued a deep, carrying voice requesting assistance. I concentrated my entire being until nothing but myself and sound existed: Listening.
"BITN protocol. Something strange is following—" A body hit the ground heavily, followed swiftly by a gunshot. Then another, then another. A savage snarl interrupted and was answered by a soft curse and bullets. Stallings was making this thing work for it.
He was going to die and all I could do was Listen for clues, any hints of his killer's identity.
More gunshots, sharp and flat, a little louder than the usual police-issue nine millimeter. An inhuman cry of pain. Quick footsteps with the quiet depth of a large predator stalking. More scuffling and twisting, the sharper, louder crack of bone breaking. A human sound; quick, final, soft as a short breeze. An exhalation.
A voice spoke in an alien language, a short sentence followed by a sharp whine and a shot. Not a gunshot or arrow or spell or any other projectile I'd ever blocked over the years but the sound of something discharging. Then footsteps, heavier with confidence of a predator in its kill.
Connie shut off the tape.
"That's the end?" I asked, "He…died?"
"Yeah. It was quick at least. First shot. The rest of the recording was…" Connie swallowed, "All the sounds of," She waved a hand at the body, "That happening."
I didn't need my gruesome nightmares to come with a side order of sound-effects. "Right. I'll need to look at the scene of the crime undisturbed." Meeting her eyes as closely as a wizard could, I added more gently, "You need to warn every other cop about this. And not get killed. Stallings…he was taken as a trophy. If we don't stop this thing, he won't be the last."
Connie swallowed something down again but credit where credit was due, her first action was to get on the radio, passing my warning on.
Buttercup Park was a picturesque little thing with a child's playground surrounded by neatly-trimmed trees, bordered by houses Michael probably built. The last place one would look for a gristly murder. Now the grass was tainted liberally with Stallings blood. I turned away from the carcass, toward the scene of the murder rather than the butchering and crouched near a hole bored in asphalt. Hardly a drop of blood had fallen here. One shot. Fire and heat concentrated enough to sear through rock.
That was how he died.
Metal glinted beneath streetlights. Bullet-casings. A few spots of something glowing green stood out in the pre-dawn darkness. I scooped up a sample of the sci-fi blood and muttered a tracking spell just before the sun rose.
The first rays of light washed over the deathly scene, purifying the terror and rage.
Not a drop of blood vanished.
Dah'Mei crouched atop another tree branch, the best-hidden hunter on the planet, polishing her trophy absently and analyzing the investigators. These hunter-humans tended to appear at the scene of a kill in recent years. Wait long enough and better prey often revealed themselves.
One of their number had given her a good hunt. It had escaped the triangle of dots before Dah'Mei could pull the trigger, a feat most humans didn't have the head or reflexes for. Her side still stung from two bullets, testimony to the human's swiftness and aim. This one would be honored in story many times over when she returned home.
Suddenly her attention zeroed in on another human. This one joined the cop, though he was not of them; his clothes were all wrong—browns and grays and blacks instead of blues. Yet he was even more worthy of the description hunter-human. In all her centuries of experience, Dah'Mei had never seen quarry stalk so predatorily, as though transcending its prey nature and embracing the nurturing of a true hunter.
A pale face turned to the trees, scanning with sharp, raptorous eyes. She crouched perfectly still, hidden within the canopy of this rare foliage in a stone and steel jungle, hidden further with the camouflage patterned armor and netting to break up her outline. From such a distance, no human eyes could spot her. With cloaking activated, completely still, she was invisible.
Yet his eyes paused a moment, meeting hers across the distance.
A shiver ran up her spine. Instinct told her this human would be one of those hunts. A hunt of the century. A hunt one not only bragged about among fellow Yautja for a lifetime, but cherished in her heart. This prey was going to change her as a hunter; challenge her; transform her into a better one.
Yautja do not smile in the ordinary way but her features shifted with ecstatic glee. Had any human witnessed such an expression on the terrifyingly alien face, they would have fainted. The brown one followed her trail, passing beneath her on his way back to his den.
As silently as a shadow flowing over rock, Dah'Mei followed.
A/N: I edited this because in the original I had made an OC, Connie, for the sole purpose of killing her off. That's lazy writing. Especially since I didn't develop her as a character before doing the killing. Stallings being the murder victim is much harsher because he's not just a dead body but a person we and the other characters know.
