Chapter 10

Butters broke the shocked silence that had pervaded the room for several minutes. "Um... Now what, Harry?"

I don't think any of us had an answer for the moment. Any of us except for Mouse that is. The big dog ambled over and stood on his hind legs to rest his front paws on the metal drawer the man was laying on. Mouse leaned in and gave the guy a sniff and a lick. The guy didn't move. It was such a homely reaction that I lowered my blasting rod to point it at the floor. Butters just giggled.

"Maybe," Molly said from over by the door. "You should check to see if he's still alive."

Butters looked at me and I nodded. As I've said, Butters is not a doctor but he does have most of the training. He was a little shaky as he lifted the guy's wrist and checked for a pulse. A frown creased his face and he quickly turned to lift one of the guy's eyelids. Forgetting his apprehension, Butters threw back the blanket and looked puzzled and a little amazed by what he saw. I stepped closer and discovered that where Butters had sliced the torso open when he'd begun his examination there was only a slight discoloration. It looked sort of like when you scratch yourself and leave the skin pink but not abraded. There was no scar. No evidence that there had ever been a cut. In fact the only scars we could see were on the hands, face and a large one on the right forearm. All of those looked very old. Healed many years ago. Mouse raised his eyes to look at us and wagged his tail as if to say everything was alright.

"Well?" I asked Butters.

"His pulse is weak but steady. His pupils react." The little medical examiner shook his head. "It's like he's just exhausted or something."

"I guess coming back from the dead would be kinda hard on you," I said. The situation was a little more complicated for me now. Back a few Halloweens ago I'd come across a necromancer that had used her power to bring a man back from the dead after he'd been killed in an accident. She hadn't been able to heal his wounds but she had drawn him from the realms of the dead. The EMTs on the scene had patched him up as best they could and gotten him to an emergency room where the doctors were able to stabilize him and save his life. I was worried that I had come across something similar. If this guy was a necromancer then I would, as a Warden of the White Council, be forced to take him into custody and deliver him to the justice of the Council. Something just didn't feel right though. There was more to the situation than what I could put together here. Parts of the puzzle were missing. Besides, Mouse wouldn't be acting like he was if there were dark magic at play.

I extended my hand over the former corpse and extended my Senses with it. The feeling was instant and powerful. I forced myself to hold on long enough to get a real feel of the magic emanating from the man. I'd felt this before. I knew I had felt it before but I wasn't sure where. My thoughts were interrupted by a low warning growl from Mouse. He'd dropped back down to the floor and was facing the door of the lab. The growl had been brief and nearly sub-vocal but all of us had heard it.

"What's wrong, Harry?" Butters asked. His voice had taken on the nervous tone he'd had earlier.

"Not sure," I said. "Trouble. Maybe company."

I moved to the door and opened it a crack. The hall was empty. Everything was quiet and ordinary.

"Wait here," I said stepping out into the hall. "I'll be right back."

I'm not the most stealthy guy in the world but over my career I've had to learn to be quiet and sneaky. I moved down the empty hall with not so much as a squeak of my soles on the tile. I know that doesn't sound like a great feat but when you consider the fact that vampires, werewolves and a host of other supernatural and preternatural creatures can hear far better than even the most sensitive of human ears I think you'll agree that it was no small thing. I got to the corner where the main hall met the entrance hall and I stopped. I could hear a conversation coming from the guard's station at the security door. I breathed out and calmed down forcing my heart back to a normal rhythm. Then I listened. It's not a magical ability. I'm pretty sure that anyone can do it if they practice. Basically I just tune out all of the background noise like the rush of air through heating ducts or the muzac playing over bad speakers. I focus on what I want to hear and it comes to me. In this case I wanted to listen to what the guard was saying to whoever it was at the desk.

"...have to come back after eight." The guard sounded bored. "I can't let you go back to the labs unescorted."

"But all I want to know is if my cousin is here," said a familiar voice. The last time I'd heard it the man had been speaking into a cell phone. "I don't mind filling out the paperwork or whatever else needs to be done."

"I appreciate that, sir," the guard replied still bored. "But there are only a few nightshift personnel here at the moment. The office staff will be in after eight and they'll be able to help you."

"So the nightshift people couldn't show me any of the bodies?" I was right. It was Gray Eyes. "Could I just wait here? Maybe someone will come in early."

I didn't stick around to hear the rest of the conversation. Even if the guard told Gray Eyes to leave I knew the vampire would just sit in the parking lot waiting for me. As quickly and quietly as I could I slunk back down to Butters' lab.

"Well?" Butters asked as soon as the door was closed.

"Vampire," I said going to our guest in his drawer. "I want to get this guy out of here. I think he's involved in the murder Murphy and I are investigating."

"Him?" Butters' eyes went wide.

"Answer something for me." I lifted the blanket to expose the lower half of the guy's body. Like his arm the leg had mysteriously reattached itself. I don't usually check out a guy's package, so to speak, but I had to look to be sure. I nodded once I'd seen what I needed to and dropped the blanket again. "When you did the exam on Danica Raith, you said you had learned she'd had a lot of sex recently."

Butters glanced at Molly, looked embarrassed but nodded. "We tested for rape and ummm... semen and all the usual things we have to include in our reports."

I made a point of not looking at Molly and asked, "What color was her pubic hair?"

Butters blinked at me, turned bright red and replied, "She... Um... didn't have any."

"Harry," Molly interrupted. "The vampire. Remember?"

"Think you're up to a veil, Molly?" I asked as I removed the blanket from the ex-corpse.

"Sure," she said. Molly can whip up a veil faster and better than anyone I've ever met. She isn't super powerful but veiling comes naturally to her.

I quickly explained my plan to them and a few minutes later all of us were moving down the hall as quiet as church mice. Butters lead the way while Molly, Mouse, the un-corpse and I followed under one of her wonder veils. I'd slung the guy over my shoulders in a fireman's carry. It's the best way to cart around anyone who's been incapacitated. A very small person can actually carry a good bit of weight if they can get the leverage to do it. Fortunately for me the guy wasn't all that big. He was just under average height with a build like an iron worker or a farmer. He had real muscle, not the sort that you see on guys who go to the gym all the time. Still, he wasn't heavy. Of course, he wasn't my brother either. For decency he was now clothed in a set of blue scrubs Butters had taken from a closet in his lab. The guy might get a little cold but we were beggared for options.

Butters stopped at the desk and signed himself out before going to the door. As he opened it he dropped his keys and a couple of magazines. While he collected them Butters propped the door open so that the rest of us could pass unnoticed. The main doors were straight ahead. Butters pushed both of them wide while taking in a big breath as though he were trying to fill his lungs with clean morning air. As we passed through the little lobby I looked over at Gray Eyes sitting quietly in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs. He never saw us. Out in the parking lot Butters went to his car and we turned our steps toward the big white truck. I scanned around the best I could with my vision partly blocked by the body over my shoulders. Not far from the door was the Land Rover I'd seen last night at the liquor store. There was no one in it. At the truck Molly opened the passenger door and we loaded Mouse and my burden in the back seat. Molly and I climbed in and she drove out into the early morning traffic again.

We'd been on the road for a couple minutes heading down Eisenhower when Molly looked in the rearview mirror. I saw her go a little pale and glanced over my shoulder. Mouse was looking out the back window.

"I think we're being followed, Harry," Molly said stiffly. "Big green car back there. It followed us through the last couple of turns and up the on ramp."

I looked closer at the car and recognized it as the one that had followed me into the parking lot last night. Damnit! I should have known.

"What do you want me to do?" Molly asked.

"We need to get out of this traffic," I said. "Take us toward Garfield Park. There won't be so many people there at this hour."

We sped down the Eisenhower and Molly took the next off ramp heading toward the park through the nearly deserted side streets. I was watching the sedan as she did. Sure enough, the big car followed us. I love it when things go so well. Molly was focused on her driving but she was nervously stealing looks in the rearview.

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"I'm hoping that we can lose them in the park or in one of the neighborhoods near it." I tried to sound more confident than I felt. I did not want to tangle with any vampires while I had Molly with me. I was toying with the idea of getting out of sight and booting my apprentice out of the truck when the sedan sped up.

"Hold on!" I shouted.

The sedan rammed into the rear bumper just hard enough to rattle us without doing any real damage. They wanted to get our attention. Mouse bared his teeth and made one of those sub-vocal growls of his that you feel more than hear. Molly struggled with the wheel but was able to keep control without great difficulty. Her breathing got faster and her knuckles went white. I saw her look into the rearview mirror and then back to the road. I pulled my .44 from my duster pocket. I didn't want to get into a running gun battle in the middle of a Chicago neighborhood but I sure as hell didn't want these bozos getting comfortable with ramming us.

Molly pressed the gas and the big V eight rumbled angrily as we careered down the street. The sedan matched her speed and then leaped at us again. This time they rammed us hard enough to knock Mouse off the back seat and Molly had to fight the wheel to keep us straight. As I watched a hand came out of the passenger side window gripping an automatic. Bullets zinged by as we thundered along. In the movies they always make it look easy to hit a car from another moving car but in real life it's hard as hell to aim. The back window burst into a spider web pattern as a round finally struck the cab. I shook out my shield bracelet and focused my will. As more bullets pelted into us I felt little bursts of heat when they struck the shield. Molly kept her head even when they rammed us again and the remains of the back window fell out into the bed.

I'd had just about enough of this crap. Someone was going to get killed if I didn't do something soon. Even with my shield up there were plenty of bystanders who could be struck by a ricochet or someone might just drive their car out in front of Molly and then things would get messy. I laid my pistol barrel across the back of the seat and when I saw the gun disappear back into the sedan I dropped the shield and snapped off two rounds. I was lucky. The first round tore a gouge out of their hood and the second smashed a hole through the windshield at a point between the driver and passenger. The sedan swerved wildly and slowed. Molly turned sharply into the ball fields as we finally reached Garfield Park. Our pursuers followed and increased speed again to match Molly's frantic efforts to escape. As the gun came back out I drew in my will. Now I'm not Mister Finesse so I wasn't sure if what I was about to do was going to work but on the off chance that they were mortals I couldn't blast these jerks with a fireball. The most stringently enforced of the Seven Laws of Magic is Thou Shalt not Kill. With that in mind I focussed on the weapon and sent a flash of energy out with a growl.

"Fuego reduzido!" I said savagely.

An instant later the gun exploded as the ammunition in it cooked off in a miniature cataclysm. Bits of the weapon and I'm sure parts of the hand that had held it flew in all directions. The sedan swerved again but was back on us in an instant. This time though they came up on our passenger side and tried to perform what cops call a PIT maneuver. It's meant to cause a vehicle to go out of control. When properly executed the cop will ram a suspects car just hard enough to break traction and cause the suspect vehicle to spin in a one-eighty. The sedan slammed into the truck a little too far forward. The truck was a beefy machine that absorbed the impact with a loud bang and crunching of metal. I checked quickly to see that everyone was alright and noticed a fierce look in Molly's eyes. She cast a glance at the side mirror and hooked the steering wheel over hard. There was a resounding clash of metal on metal as the big truck overbore the car. Molly held her course long enough to push the sedan completely off the road and into a low chain link fence. I watched as the once stately vehicle tore the fence apart and ran up on one of the poles. Instantly a cloud of smoke or steam came roiling out from under the hood. The sedan's forward momentum carried it out onto the ball field in a cloud of gray smoke.

Molly looked at me with a touch of worry in her eyes. "Dad's going to kill me."