COLD CASE - Chapter 10

After a night's sleep I felt a little felt better. I was still woozy the next morning, but at least I wasn't in such bad shape that a particularly determined and ruthless girl-scout troop could have taken me down.

The knock on my door came as a surprise. Even more of a surprise was when I heard Edna's voice call out, "Harry, it's me. Open up."

I opened the curtain to verify it was Edna. Then I tossed Bob back into his case and opened the door.

"Hi, Edna," I said as I stepped back.

Edna immediately stepped into my room - and right over the thin line of salt that I'd blended into the carpet at the inside edge of the doorframe. Hotel rooms don't have much of a threshold. They're too public. But my magically augmented salt line would react if the person entering the room was something other than human.

"Are you okay?" Edna asked gruffly.

"Yeah. That potion is now officially on the never-again list."

Edna sat down in a beat-up, but comfortable-looking easy chair. "Did you learn anything?"

I sat on the edge of my bed. "Yes, but I'm not sure how to explain it."

"Give me a try."

"Skorzeny wasn't a vampire. He was a possessed by a spirit that had him imitating the characteristics of a classic movie vampire. Something similar has happened to Shelley Forbes and Howard Sykes and his wife. They might be dangerous. Very dangerous."

Edna shook her head, "Yesterday, we saw all three of them in broad daylight."

"I don't think they're sorta-vampires. They're sorta-something-else besides vampires. I'm just not sure what."

Edna took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Damn it, Harry. I just don't know what to believe."

I nodded, "Can I ask you to do something that might help you decide?"

Her eyes got wary. "What?"

I pulled some money out of my wallet and handed it to her. "There's a drug-store just down the street. Go buy some Tylenol and a candle. The candle should be in some kind of packaging so you know it hasn't been tampered with."

After a moment of thought, Edna nodded and left the room.

It took longer than I thought it would. So long that I began to wonder if Edna had simply got into her land-barge and steamed away. But she eventually came back.

She tossed me the Tylenol and I swallowed three pills as Edna dropped my change on the nightstand. Then she held up an an ordinary white candle that was still in the shrink wrap.

"Don't give it to me," I said. "Just unwrap it and hold it in your hands."

Beginning to look impatient, Edna did as I'd said.

"Flickum Bicus," I said.

The wick of the candle flared into flame. Edna stared at it with wide eyes.

"I didn't go to the drugstore you told me to go to," Edna said. "I thought you might have set something up with the clerk. So instead I went to a grocery store a dozen blocks away. It wasn't even the closest grocery store."

"Smart," I said approvingly.

"Last night, I looked you up in an online business phone directory," Edna continued. "You were listed under 'Wizard'. You were the only one."

"Most of the other wizards keep a lower profile."

"I also tracked down Mrs. Winfield and gave her a call. She confirmed that you were working for her. And she said she hired you because you can do things nobody else can."

I nodded.

"Then I called the Chicago Police. I eventually ended up talking to a Lieutenant named Murphy. She vouched for you."

I couldn't help but laugh. "You're wasting your time as a columnist, Edna. You need to get back to reporting."

Edna sighed. "Real reporting is almost dead, Harry. And sometimes I think it died in 2006 and is buried in a grave somewhere in Los Angeles."

Then she paused and gave me a long look.

"What do we do next?" Edna asked.

The first thing I did was have breakfast. I was starving. As I ate, I told Edna what I knew about Archetypes. She didn't say anything in response, but at least she listened respectfully.

The second thing I did was more dangerous. I called White Council headquarters and asked to talk to Morgan. Unfortunately, I was out of luck. He was actually there and the Council flunky who answered the phone managed to convince him to talk to me.

"What do you want, Dresden?" Morgan growled into the phone as the connection popped and hissed. I could almost see his hand on the pommel of his sword.

"I hear that you're the expert on Archetypes. So tell me... how can you tell if someone is possessed by an Archetype?"

There was a long pause. Normally, Morgan didn't have much use for me. However, he was a man driven by a sense of duty - some might say driven crazy by a sense of duty - and if he was the Council's go-to guy on a subject he would find it hard to walk away from that. Even if it meant talking to me.

"You've found an Archetype?" he asked slowly.

"Maybe. I'm not sure," I lied. I try to be honest with the Edna's of the world. Morgan was something else.

"We will need a full report," Morgan said. I could hear suspicion oozing from his words.

"I'm not sure I have anything to report. Am I supposed to send in a potentially false alarm every time I bump into something weird? You'd be demanding my head on a pike if I did that."

"Tell me what you have."

"Years ago, something that looked like a Black Court vampire came to town," I said - being carefully unspecific about which town I was talking about. "It killed at least seven people and probably more. Four were women that he bled dry. Three were men that he killed with his bare hands. Eventually a local used a cross and a stake to kill him."

Morgan laughed humorlessly, "If an ordinary man killed a Black Court vampire, then he was either very smart or incredibly lucky."

"Yeah. And this vampire was a strange mix. Effected by holy symbols. Fangs. Blood-drinking. Avoided sunlight. Pale blood. A repulsive, but not undead appearance. He could pass for human."

"In other words, a vampire from the moving pictures," Morgan interrupted. "That does sound like an Archetype. But if the Archetype vampire is dead, why do you want to know how to identify one?"

"Because three years later another one popped up. It eventually got staked as well, but it turned out to be a woman who vanished when the first vampire was doing his thing. I think whatever the original vampire had was catching."

"Yes, that's possible. In fact, that might even make sense for an Archetype based on the ordinary mortal concept of a vampire."

"Is it common for an Archetype to generate another Archetype?" I pressed.

"No. Actually, it's rather rare, but it obviously does happen. However, I've never heard of an Archetype creating more than two other Archetypes."

Okay, that surprised me. A the moment, I had three Archetypes, two of which were directly connected to Skorzeny. And there had been another back in the '70s. I was running into something that the Council's supposed expert hadn't seen before.

"That's good news," I said, trying to keep my doubts out of my voice, "but I'm still worried that there might be more of those things around town. I need something that I can quickly and easily use in public to detect these things."

"That's a problem. Any of the common detection and analysis rituals will work, but they're neither fast nor easy to use in public. Your best bet is the Sight."

"What's the next best bet?" I asked hurriedly. The Sight is something you definitely do not use unless absolutely neccesary. It gave you a stark and perfect image of the magical truth behind the illusion of day-to-day so-called 'reality'. Some of the things you might see when using the Sight were potentially sanity-damaging. And, as a bonus, anything that you percieved with the Sight was permanently etched into your memory with complete clarity. Look at the wrong thing with the Sight and it might drive you mad. Look at a really, really wrong thing with the Sight and the phrase, "his head exploded," can become awfully close to being literal.

"Can you read aurae?" Morgan said. His tone indicated that a wizard who couldn't do that was an utter incompetent and he expected me to be one of those wizards.

"I've had a little experience," I said dryly. "But I'm not good at it."

"Then all that's left is Wizard's Touch."

I nodded slowly even though Morgan couldn't see it. Wizard's Touch is the ability of the Wizard to discern magical potential - or reality - by actually touching something. To say the least, that's also not a preferred option.

"So I suggest you shake hands with your potential vampires," Morgan said in obvious amusement. "A person accursed with an Archetype has a very distinct tactile signature. It feels like the vibration of a ringing bell."

"Okay. Next question... can you cure someone who's gone Archetypical?"

"No. When we refer to someone claimed by an Archetype as being possessed, that's actually inaccurate. You don't have an intact human soul that's being controlled by a hostile spirit. Instead, the Archetypical spirit essentially merges into the victim's soul, thus warping and changing it. Even the Council's master exorcists have never been able to do anything to help a victim of an Archetype. The curse is permanent and insidious. But..."

Morgan paused. I waited for him to continue, but he didn't.

"But?" I prodded.

He sighed. "Council policy is that Archetypes can be destroyed without question or censure. But that's not the same as saying that they should be destroyed. In my experience, not every Archetype needs to be killed."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Morgan, are you suggesting that there's a way to handle a problem that doesn't involve decapitation? What's the world coming to?"

"Ah - there's the Harry Dresden I'm used to," Morgan snorted. "The brash and arrogant loud-mouth dancing on the edge of disaster. You must no longer need my help."

"Actually, I do. What kind of Archetype doesn't need destroying?"

"The kind that isn't hurting anyone. They do exist."

"Such as?"

"There's a woman... well, she was once a woman... All she does is wander from third-world hellhole to third-world hellhole, helping people. She's an Archetype of the wise healing woman."

"That sounds like a good thing," I said cautiously.

"I suppose. Of course, the woman in question had a life of her own before she was infected by the Archetype. She had family, friends, and plans for the future. But once she was infected, that all vanished. She simply walked away from her old life. Her husband eventually divorced her and remarried. Her son and daughter haven't seen her in twenty years. Her friends only have dim memories of her. The Archetype just doesn't have time for that sort of thing."

"But you didn't kill her."

"No, I didn't. That is my privilege as a Warden of the White Council. But that's also something that you don't have the right to decide. If you find an Archetype, Dresden, you report it to me. If you don't... well, that would be a violation of Council policy. Which would hopefully mean that the unfinished business between you and I could finally be settled."

Gulp.

"Anything else worth knowing about Archetypes?" I asked, keeping my voice steady.

"No. Well... actually there is one thing about them that's not widely known. The nature of an Archetype can apparently change with time. I once encountered an Archetype who had been a human-appearing serial rapist for several years immediately after his infection. But when I tracked him down, he had obviously changed. He had become a troll-like figure living in the sewers. He avoided all contact with human beings - especially women."

"What did you do?" I asked.

There was a long silence. The Morgan said quietly, "I didn't think I could take the chance. So I finished him."