Interlude: Medford, Oregon

Sandra Coleman hated the coma ward, but she needed extra shifts, and Silver Oaks Private Hospital needed extra hands in the coma ward.

There were only ten patients in what the hospital administrators, all too aware of public image and political correctness, called the Somnolent Care Ward, and the doctors and nurses called the coma ward. The work wasn't that hard, but something about all of those people just lying there, sleeping their lives away— or worse, empty shells kept alive by too-hopeful families— gave Sandra the creeps.

She moved down the line of private rooms, entered each one, checked the patient's chart, IV, support and monitoring devices, stepped out of each room, shuddered lightly, and went to the next.

Everything was fine until the sixth room. Jennifer Calder, age twenty-two, had been here for most of four years, after the small plane crash that had killed her parents and left her comatose. The family had been wealthy, so their lawyer arranged for the kind of care provided only by private facilities like Silver Oaks, care more advanced than turning the patient every few hours to prevent bed sores. Here, physical therapists worked each patient's arms, legs, shoulders, hips, neck and back every single day.

Jennifer looked healthy, if too pale and too slender, but Sandra knew better; this one wasn't just in a coma, she was in what the medical profession called a 'persistent vegetative state.' Her brain was dead, or at least the parts of it that actually thought was. The parts that kept the heart beating, the lungs pumping, all the things necessary for the body to live, those worked. But there was no chance of this girl ever waking up; her brain was effectively dead.

Which is why, when Jennifer Calder said, "May I have a drink, please?" in a sandy, deathly-dry scratch of a voice, Sandra jumped a full three feet into the air and let out a small scream that would have been a big one, if her throat hadn't locked up in terror.

"Sorry," said the girl, her voice still sounding like a horror-film zombie. "Didn't mean… sorry. But so thirsty…."

Sandra managed to speak, finally, though she couldn't make herself go to the bed and look at the girl's face. "I'll… get a doctor. He may not want you to have a drink just yet, you've been…."

"In a coma for a while?" the girls said, her voice quieter, less raspy. "Yeah. I know. Okay. Get a doctor, please, miss."

Sandra managed not to run out of the room— but once she was out of sight of the bed, she broke into a run for the nurse's station, where her friend Anne took one look at her and said, "My god, Sandra, what happened? Is one of the patients dead?"

"No," Sandra gasped, her voice shaky and wild. "No, it's— Jennifer Calder, four-oh-six, she— she's awake."

"What?" Anne looked confused. "Sandra, you must have the wrong room, she's brain-dead, has been for—"

"She's awake!" Sandra said, her voice edgy, as though she were barely managing not to scream. "Get a doctor, she's awake and wants a drink!"

Anne stared for a second longer, then picked up the phone and paged Dr. Bernard, the neurologist on duty.

In her room, the woman who was not Jennifer Calder smiled to herself and said, very, very softly, "I'm coming, Harry Dresden."

Harry:

When Buffy decked Glenn Corwin, all six of his animals went into hostile mode immediately. The two gorilla-cat-things went straight for Buffy, and the other four started for Carlos and I. For a second, it looked as though there might be a fight over which of the things got to attack which of us, but that didn't happen. Instead, the male of the quilled lions leaped at me while the female went for Carlos— and the two armored mongooses went around as though to flank us or hit us from behind.

Carlos and I might have practiced our response, it was so fluid and solid. I threw my shield up in front of the two of us, using only the kinetic aspect of the focus in order to preserve energy. While I did that, Carlos stepped back behind me and fired a bolt of entropic magic at the mon-rhino on my side. As both lions hit my shield, staggering me backwards but not knocking me down, I leveled my staff at the mon-rhino on Carlos's side and snarled "Forzaré!"

Both of the mon-rhinos dodged our attacks, but they also didn't attack us right then, which was all to the good.

"Drop your shield on three!" Carlos cried, and moved to kneel in front of me. He brought his gauntlet up, whispered a word in some language I didn't know, and what looked to be a thin layer of bright green Jello poured out of the gauntlet and molded itself to the half-dome of faint blue light that was my kinetic shield. "One, two… three!"

I dropped my shield just as the male quilled lion leaped again, and it hit Carlos's shield of pure entropy claws first— and Carlos and I took a bath in finely pureed critter as it dissolved and poured through the entropy field. All of it, it had a lot of mass and even more momentum behind it.

"You're paying for dry cleaning the coat!" I spat around a mouthful of disgusting gunk.

"No problem," Carlos agreed. "Just do something about the mongoose-things while I keep the lioness off of us!"

Before I could even answer, the nearer of the two mon-rhinos leapt straight at me, and it was so fast that I barely had time enough to think my shield back up. Claws scrabbled uselessly at the vertical half-dome of my shield, and I heard movement behind me as well, more scrabbling claws, this time on asphalt. I looked around, aimed my staff at the bounding mon-rhino trying to pounce on my back, and yelled again, "Forzaré!"

This time, I caught the thing in mid-leap, and it couldn't dodge the way it had my first attack. It tried, and it twisted part way out of the way, but I still caught it on one side of the chest, which flung it back and away from me. When it landed, it didn't seem real eager to get back up— and it didn't really get the chance.

As the thing lifted its head from the asphalt and looked hatred at me, I heard a single sharp cracking sound— like a good, solid hit in a baseball game when you're close to home plate— and the thing's head pretty much exploded.

"Murphy must've made a silencer for the rifle," Carlos said as he turned to check on me, having destroyed the quilled lioness with several bolts of entropy. "Nice. Doesn't sound like a gunshot.

"Hey, you need help with the giant mongoose, Harry?"

"No, I got this," I assured Carlos. "Can you see how Buffy's doing?"

"Not really— but the way the two gorilleopards are staggering around, I'm pretty sure she's okay." Carlos snorted laughter and said, "I like her style. 'And you shouldn't call me a girl,' that was great."

I didn't have time to acknowledge the statement, because I had a snarling, spitting, ferocious whatsit trying to claw through my shield and eat my face. Apparently, it thought I had killed it's pal, or mate, or whatever, and it wasn't happy about that. The thing was clawing at my shield so fast and furiously that my shield bracelet was starting to heat up a little— not enough to burn me, but enough to be noticeable.

I dropped my staff, took my blasting rod from my left hand, reached over the shield, shoved the tip of the rod into the mon-rhino's face and snarled "Fuego!"

A beam of bright orange fire as thick as my wrist jetted forth from the blasting rod, and suddenly, we were treated to the smell of cooked monster— not a very pleasant smell, but then, it wasn't shaping up to be a pleasant night, what with being coated in the remains of another monster and all.

"Okay, that's it for the critter commandos," I said, straightening up and letting my shield lapse. I looked around to find Carlos walking slowly, casually, in the direction of Buffy and her fight. Even as I started to follow him, one of the gorilleopards landed a blow on Buffy's shoulder, sent her spinning to the ground. She rolled to land on her back, and as the other gorilleopard leapt at her, Buffy pulled her knees to her chin, rolled back on her shoulders, and kicked the thing in the gut as it arced down towards her.

As the gorilleopard flew upwards from the power of her kick, Buffy yelled "Pull!"

A single shot came from the upstairs window, again sounding more like a home-run hit than a gunshot, and the thing's face disintegrated on one side as Murphy shot it at the top of its flight.

Buffy kipped neatly to her feet, watched in amusement as the last of Corwin's creatures looked around uneasily. Then, with a nearly human grumbling sigh, the thing leapt at Buffy, clawed hands out to rake and rip.

Buffy took a long, low step, her back leg actually dragging the ground, and I saw her arm piston out in front of her, hand clenched in a fist so small that it made the force more deadly, concentrating it into a smaller space. She punched the thing right below its ribcage— you could see where the ribs stopped, because of it's rather peculiar build— and all of the air went out of the creature as it folded across her arm. It lay on the ground, rocking a little and trying to breathe— until Buffy, moving quickly to prevent it from recovering, stomp-kicked its neck, killing it.

"Nice work," Carlos said, grinning. "I think I want fighting lessons."

"Buffy, Carlos Ramirez, a Warden of the White Council," I said, waving in his direction. "Carlos, Buffy Sinclair, whose title shall remain unspoken.

"Hey, where the hell did Corwin go?"

The others looked around, too, and none of us saw him. He'd used the confusion of the fight to get away.

"No way," Buffy said, looking shocked. "He should've been unconscious for a while— I didn't pull my punch that much."

"Harry! Buffy! Across the street!" Karrin yelled from her position in the house.

We turned to look, and there, across the street and down a little, a couple of car lengths in front of Captain Midnight, stood Glenn Corwin, in the middle of what looked to be a hastily drawn magical diagram. Even as I started to move that way, raising my staff to send a bolt of force his way in hopes of knocking him down before he finished whatever-the-hell he was doing, Corwin shouted a short string of words that meant nothing to me, turned the hand he held cupped in front of him over, and spilled the blood he'd been cupping in that hand onto the diagram.

The whole thing flared up in brilliant, purple-blue light, and my force bolt ricocheted off to one side and shook a tree.

And inside the circle, which looked to be about twenty feet across, appeared eight figures, four armored in what looked like scale mail of some sort and carrying various and sundry weapons, and four wearing heavy black robes with cloaks and cowls, each holding a staff in one hand and a heavy dagger in the other.

"Oh, shit," I muttered. "This does not look good!"

The light faded from the circle, the eight guys— presumably, though some of the ones in the robes could have been girls, I guess— stepped out, and then the light came back, and Corwin started moving around the inside of the circle, making some sort of adjustments.

"Carlos, you and me on the robes," I said, taking command without thinking about it. I'd been doing this for longer than him, and while Buffy had been fighting monsters for as long as me or longer, she hadn't been doing it on this, my Earth, and things were different here. "Buffy, did you bring a melee weapon?"

"Of course," she said from behind me, and I glanced back to see her pull the Scythe out of the shopping bag she'd left on the steps. "I get the armored guys, right?"

"Bet on it," I said. "Just shout if you need help— we don't know what they can do."

"Gotcha, boss," Buffy said, and there was no sarcasm in her voice.

"Harry!" Murphy had come out the front door of Fowler's house, and there was no sign of the rifle she'd been using. "People are starting to come out and see what's going on— I've called SI, but it will take them a few minutes to get here."

"Do what you can with the crowd," I said, shaking my head in annoyance. "We'll try to keep the collateral damage down, but this kid's doing stuff I've never even heard of before, Karrin. This is going to get ugly, I can pretty much guarantee it."

"Okay, I'll do what I can," Karrin sighed. She looked at me and sighed. "Be careful, all of you." She turned away and started walking down the street, headed for a knot of people standing in front of the house on the corner of Cullerton and Calumet, and called in a voice that expected to be obeyed, that had years of experience as a cop behind it, "All right folks, you need to get inside your homes and stay there— the situation is dangerous, and we're doing what we can to contain it, but you need to be inside."

"Thank god I hired her," I muttered as Carlos, Buffy and I walked down the street towards the eight people— were they people?— from Glenn Corwin's magic circle.

Maybe fifty feet separated us when the robed person in front raised his staff to the sky, said a single word, and sent a bolt of lightning up into the starry night.

I figured out what that meant in time to get my shield up and between us and him, and yank Buffy closer to Carlos and I.

A much, much bigger bolt of lightning came down on the same general path that the spell-caster's bolt had gone up, and struck the dagger that the man— I could see a hairy forearm, he was a man— carried, then fired out his staff and at us.

My shield held easily but the second one of the casters had stepped forward and her (a wind had come up, and was making her robe press against her in a fashion that revealed her to be a woman, and a nicely built one) staff was glowing with a red-orange light that I recognized. Even as lightning-boy stepped back to prep for another strike (thank god these people were amateurs), she sent a bolt of fire as big around as Buffy at me, and I barely got the shield's defense switched from electricity to heat in time.

"Buffy, go," I said, jerking my head at the two armored goons who were headed at us from her side. "Carlos, this kid's thinking in patterns, so the next one—"

"The next one's mine to shield, yeah," Carlos said, and he moved up to start forming his own shield behind my own again. "I really hate this kid, you know?"

"I know," I agreed as the third of the kid's enthralled spell-casters gestured, and a man-sized chink of street tore itself free of the ground and hovered in front of him. "Uh, no, not having that!"

I dropped to the street, rolled sideways, and aimed my staff at the person who'd ripped up the chunk of street, and was now throwing it at Carlos. I switched my aimed as best I could, given my hurry, and snapped "Forzaré!" A bolt of force tore down the street— and deflected the chunk of rock to one side, where it hit a tree and knocked it most of the way down, setting off the car alarm of the Mercedes sedan that had been parked under the tree.

I shifted aim to the caster who seemed to be using just earth magic, drew up my will to slap him with a gust of wind powerful enough to knock him down—

—and something hit me in the side, hard, sent me rolling across the street, and I cursed every time I rolled across the point where it had hit— it felt like whatever it was had cracked or broken a rib or two.

I looked back at where I'd been— and muttered a curse. I'd been hit with the cap off of a fire hydrant, apparently forced off its hydrant by an increase in water pressure caused by the last of the four spell-casters that Corwin had enslaved, or created, or whatever he'd done.

Also, the water from that hydrant was now gathering itself into a really, really big ball— it was already a good fifteen feet through the center— as it moved to position itself over Carlos.

Running water can ground out magic, even water magic, Carlos's specialty. I know, that sounds counter-intuitive, but it's true. If the caster dumped a lot of water on Carlos, it'd essentially ground out his running magics, and he'd be defenseless while he rebuilt things.

Carlos had his hands full with the fire and air casters (lightning is air magic, trust me, I use it), couldn't deal with water and earth (who had raised another chunk of asphalt to fling around).

I couldn't stop and worry about my ribs right now. I had to figure out how to help Carlos and stop the assholes attacking him.

"Okay, Harry," I muttered, "when all else fails— use their own weapons against them."

I never had been much with water magic, and most of the earth magic I knew was either not the sort of thing you used in a metropolitan area (suspending gravity over a large area for a couple of second in a city would be disastrous) or crossed over with my preferred element of fire (like making mini-volcanoes, also a bad idea in a residential area). Spirit— raw force— wasn't likely to work this time.

I gathered up my will, shaped it, and channeled it into my staff, released it at a point just past the now-twenty-five-foot-thick ball of water, and did my best to roar "Ventas servitas!" (As roars went, it wasn't much— but my ribs hurt, give me a break!)

A huge wind blew the ball of water back at the four gathered mages— and Carlos took care of the rest, sent a bolt of pure entropy through the middle of the ball, disrupting the magic that held it together.

All four of the enemy spell-casters got drenched in the resultant downpour, and lost all their active spells, had to call up their wills and start over.

Carlos and I didn't give them time. I wasn't moving so well, so I just sent bolts of force their way while Carlos, good and pissed by now, waded in with fists and feet. He wasn't Buffy, but he knew how to fight, and his targets didn't.

I managed to get to my feet and glanced over at Buffy, who had reduced her foes to a single large man with a bastard sword. She wasn't attacking to kill, she knew that this might well be some poor guy under mind control, so she used the Scythe strictly for defense, and you could see her opponent getting more and more frustrated as his sword blade met the red-and-silver metal of the Scythe every time he swung. His swings kept getting more and more wild— and suddenly, he screamed aloud, a thing of rage and frustration, and threw his sword at Buffy. It caught her completely by surprise, and actually hit her, a glancing blow one the side of the head with the flat of the blade— but it sent her to the ground.

Her opponent howled in victory, stepped forward—

—and screamed in agony as what seemed like every roman candle, spotlight and camera flash in the city of Chicago went of around his head in a long, painful series, accompanied by the sounds of sirens and screaming women, crying children and cats in the throes of heat.

I grinned, and didn't bother looking around, just said to the air, "About time you caught up with us, Molly!"

"Sorry, boss— Mom and Dad's anniversary is coming up, I was shopping for their present," Molly said from somewhere between me and Buffy. "I came as soon as Dawn filled me in."

Buffy climbed to her feet, shook her head to clear it, looked at her former opponent— now staggering around in circles as he tried to clear his vision and the ringing in his ears— snickered once, and knocked him unconscious with a single kick to the jaw.

"Thanks, Molly," Buffy called— and Molly finally became visible, then gave Buffy a sweeping bow.

"No problem," Molly said. She looked around at the mess on the street and said, "Boss, these people? All mind controlled. I checked. And this asshole, he's a combination of clumsy and uncaring… I don't think any of them will ever recover all the way, even with Injun Joe— I mean, Wizard Listens-to-Wind— even with him and the other healers helping.

"Carlos?"

"Warlock," Carlos said, shaking his head as he took one of Molly's hands in his and gave it a squeeze. "Harry, I know you don't like it, b—"

"This time, I get it, Carlos!" I snapped, my memory of the things Glenn Corwin had done to the women in his home intruding on my vision. I let Buffy help me to my feet, nodded my thanks to her, and added, "This time— I don't think I could swing the sword myself, but I'll damned well make myself watch when he's beheaded. I owe that much to the women he killed."

"You can't, Harry," Molly said, looking at me in sympathy. "The council will have to be notified, and you—"

"Want them to think I'm dead, yeah," I said, and dry scrubbed my face. "Hell. Okay. Well, I'll just have to be glad he's not hurting anyone else, and leave it at that."

"We probably ought to actually catch him first, Harry," Carlos pointed out.

"Details," I sighed, waving a hand at him. "Mere details.

"Let's sleep these eight, and then see what Corwin's up to next."

Carlos, Molly and I used the little bit of mind-magic that, while considered gray by the White Council, all of them have used at one time or another, and put Corwin's eight most recent victims into a deep, dreamless sleep that would last for hours, and even through serious noise and other potential distractions. Then we turned towards Corwin's big circle, still lit up with that weird, blue-purple light— and we froze.

"Oh, shit," Molly said in a very small voice. "Oh, shit, what… what are those things?"

"Nightmares," Carlos said, shivering visibly. "Fucking homemade nightmares."

I couldn't argue.

Corwin had filled his circle with… things. Monsters. Each of them was visibly a combination of two ordinary earthly creatures, but there were things in there that should never, ever have been thought of, much less made.

Huge, scaly, purple-and-orange striped tigers, their fangs visibly dripping poison. Things that looked like baboons, only with the clear skin and muscles but visible nerves and circulatory system of a jellyfish, and stinger tendrils dangling off of their bodies in places. Small elephants with too many legs that had too many joints, and the odd, faceted eyes of spiders, as well as stingers on the ends of their trunks. Impossibly long ferrets, or maybe minks, with slit-pupiled snake's eyes, rattles on their tails and diamond patterns in their fur. Something that I thought might have started life as a polar bear, before Corwin crossed it with, or gave it features of, an alligator. (Or crocodile. Either way, it was a horror to look at.)

Worst were the men and women. Just three of each, and again in what were probably meant to be mated pairs.

One pair had been successfully given reptilian attributes— scales, backwards bent legs, tails, and clawed hands and feet— even fangs. Their scales were pink and lavender, and more hideous for being such innocuous colors.

One pair had the heavy, powerful bone structure and muscle of bears, as well as the mass and the fur— and the claws and teeth.

The last… were somehow the worst. At first I couldn't get a handle on their more bestial features, couldn't understand what they'd been crossed with— then something about the way the female moved went "click" inside my head, and I made a sound of disgust.

The last two had chitin, not skin, and had a ruddy cast to their chitin. Their arms and legs had visible serrations on the chitin there, their eyes protruded from their sockets slightly, and moved independently of each other. Their hands… two heavy fingers and an opposable thumb, yet still they resembled the claws of some sort of crab. He'd crossed people with some sort of crab.

"I think," Carlos said, his voice low and furious, "that I may volunteer to swing the sword on this asshole."

Then the light of the magical circle went down, the critters made various (and hideous) sounds of challenge, and charged us—

—even as what seemed to be half the police cars in Chicago came around the corner of Cullerton and Calumet and screeched to a halt behind us.

"This," I observed to no one in particular, "sucks."

"Amen," Buffy said from my left.

Then it got hectic.

I blasted a charging spider-phant with a shot from my blasting rod, actually killed it in a single blast, as I got it right in the head. Then I muttered a curse at myself and did the smart thing, the thing I should have done first.

I turned to my left, aimed my blasting rod at the street, channeled my will and a dash of Soulfire into my blasting rod and bellowed "MURO FUEGO!" as I swept the blasting rod from one edge of the street to the other.

A wall of fire, flickering with silver-white from my addition of Soulfire to the magic, sprang up across the street, and while it didn't stop the monsters Glenn Corwin sent at us, it did slow them down, make them hesitant. Fear of fire is deeply ingrained in most animals, and whatever he'd done to the minds of the miserable things, he hadn't eradicated that fear. While they came, the overwhelming swarm became more of a couple of lines of now-nervous and twitchy critters.

"Nice one, Dresden," Carlos called, and nodded his respect my way. "Everyone okay for the moment?"

"Good here," Buffy said, jerking the Scythe out of the corpse of a polar-gator and looking for her next target. "Harry, you were hurt earlier. You okay?"

"I'm good," I said, nodding at her. "Molly?"

My former apprentice too the time to do something surprising and pretty cool before she answered, and I found myself thinking of what Carlos had said about her ability to turn stuff that shouldn't have been weapons into dangerous magic.

Molly looked at the jelly-baboon that was edging up to the far side of the fire, then backing off, working itself up for a run-and-leap, and she opened her mouth— and sang. Not words, just a note, a high one, somewhere in the soprano range— and then, for just a second, the sound got— not louder, but denser. All the sudden, I couldn't hear it so well, but I could feel it, somewhere between my ears.

The jelly-baboon screamed, clawed its own ears completely off its head— and then its head actually popped, like it had taken a really big bullet right in the center.

"I'm good," Molly gulped, and glanced around. "Look, someone needs to go after Corwin, or he could make or summon more of these— whichever he's doing."

"Molly, I'm going to have to start calling you Black Canary," I told her, and smiled as she flushed with pride. "Neat trick, Wizard Carpenter.

"Buffy, if we get crazy for a minute or two, can you get around there and knock Corwin down and out?"

"Betcha," she said, and grinned a hard grin. "I'll enjoy it, too."

"Okay, then, we'll do—"

Something hit me in the gut, and it felt like I'd been hit with a mighty big hammer, swung by a mighty big man— say Andre the freaking Giant in the prime of his life. I went down, folded around something big and heavy, and glad as hell that it had hit my coat. If whatever-it-was had hit my unprotected stomach, I was pretty sure I'd have died.

"Harry!" Buffy yelled, and bent over to look at me. "Harry, can you breathe?"

I could, but not real well, so I didn't waste any of it on talking, just nodded. Buffy helped me stretch out some, and took the weight off of my stomach. It was a cinder block— a freaking concrete cinder block. Somehow it had been thrown hard enough to have probably killed me, if not for my enchanted duster.

"It was a bear-guy," Buffy said, her hands moving gently over my stomach, jerking away when I hissed in pain. "Crap. I think you need a doctor, Harry."

"Later," I managed to wheeze. "Help me sit up."

"No!" Molly said, and appeared behind Buffy. "You lay down, Harry! I've got this." She rounded on Buffy and said, "When the animals go bugshit, you go after Corwin. Carlos and I will cover you from here. You'll have to be quick, or they may kill him."

"Got it," Buffy said. She looked at me, saw me trying to sit up, and said, "Harry, you lay your ass down, or I'm telling Murphy— and then when she's done kicking your ass, it'll be my turn."

I ignored her, and pushed the cinder block behind the small of my back so I could sort of sit up. Not far, but enough to see, and maybe to help, if it got too crazy.

"Damn your stubborn ass!" Buffy snapped. She rolled her eyes, squeezed my hand, and said, "Fine— but don't move, or I'm telling Maggie."

I glared at her. That was going too far.

"Good," she said, seeing my glare and smiling. "Got your attention. Now be still!"

Molly had moved nearer to my wall of fire— still going strong, thanks to the little bit of Soulfire I'd added to it— and she stood there chanting softly. Carlos stood next to her, shooting bolts of disintegrating energy at anything that came too close to her, and watching her with an interest that seemed academic, as though he was hoping to learn whatever magic she was doing.

Again, Molly opened her mouth and a single note came out— but this one was low. Really low, lower than I would have thought a woman could reach. And it got lower. And lower. It sank below basso profundo, and it kept getting lower. And lower, until suddenly, I couldn't hear it— and I felt my nerves jumping, dancing, telling me to run, to get away, because something was wrong, something bad was happening.

"Holy shit," I breathed as I realized what Molly had done. She was magically making her voice infrasonic, taking it below the range of normal perception. Infrasonic waves had the ability to make humans feel fear for no apparent reason— and to make animals go crazy with fear.

The animals on the other side of the wall of fire started attacking whatever was nearest to them— mostly each other, though some attacked cars and trees. I saw the bear-man holding a second cinderblock, watched in horrified fascination as he beat a Gila-tiger to death with it.

Buffy had gone over my wall of flame in a single leap, and was headed for Glenn Corwin, who was yelling at his creatures to stop attacking each other, cowering from those near him, and sometimes screaming wordlessly in frustration and fear. I watched as she beheaded the other spider-phant as it charged her, a screeching, trumpeting noise coming from its trunk. Then a rattle-mink tried to bite her, and she picked it up and threw it idly at the other jelly-baboon. The rattle mink ended up wrapped around the jelly-baboon, and they started trying to sting and bite each other to death.

Then one of the crab-people leapt at Buffy, screaming and chattering as it flew at her, serrated forearms out to rake her and grab her at the same time. Buffy simply tucked and rolled, went under the thing, came up and threw a back round kick at its head. It folded to the ground and didn't move.

I hoped it wasn't dead. There was a person in there, and there was a chance— slim as hell, but a chance, dammit!— that one of the White Council's healers could help them.

I watched as Buffy fought her way to Glenn Corwin in an amazingly short period of time, and I grinned at the sight. Watching the TV show had always been a blast— but this was Buffy the Vampire Slayer doing what she did best, and doing it live. I am enough of a geek to appreciate that more than most, and I found myself smiling, just a little bit, as she waltzed through hell and made it look easy— just like on TV.

Then she reached Corwin, and he drew his sword and attacked her.

It was kinda pathetic. Buffy caught his blade on the Scythe, twisted her weapon two directions at once— and Corwin's blade snapped off about three inches above the hilt. While he was staring at his broken sword in shock, Buffy kicked him in the groin, the gut and the face— in that order. He went over backwards, and she picked him up and started back towards us.

Molly and Carlos started picking off the rest of the monsters, though they were careful not to kill those that obviously were part human.

I tried to help, but my stomach was hot and tight, and it hurt, so I just lay there and watched, and wondered why the world was getting fuzzy. After a couple of minutes, I guess I passed out.

I woke up in a hospital room with a fire in my gut and a head that felt like I'd gone twenty rounds with a troll and lost every round.

"What…?" I managed to say— and Buffy appeared in my vision, looking relieved. "What happened?"

"When Bruno the Bear-guy tossed that cinderblock at you," Buffy said, taking my hand in one of hers and giving me a look that expressed a lot of relief, "it popped your appendix, Harry. They had to operate to clean it up, or you'd have died."

"Oh," I said, and thought about that. "Do they… do they know about how I can affect machines?"

"Well… yes," Buffy said, and she sounded a little hesitant. "Um, Harry, you're not in a Chicago hospital."

"Then where am I?" I asked, trying to think of why I might not be in Chicago.

"You're in Southern Illinois," said a slow, deep, pleasant voice that I knew well. "You're at a hospital the White Council runs here— but only I and one other member of the Council know you're here, Hoss Dresden."

"Wizard Listens-to-Wind," I said, trying not to groan at the old Native American standing in the door of my hospital room. "It's good to see you, sir. And since I'm pretty sure you took care of the operation, thank you."

"You're welcome, Hoss Dresden," Listens-to-Wind said, a merry gleam in his eye. "Now, let me answer the question you are afraid to ask."

Listens-to-Wind stepped aside, and into the room stepped a stocky, powerfully built old man in overalls and a flannel shirt. A fringe of white hair circled his head, and his dark eyes sparkled with mock-anger that couldn't disguise his delight at seeing me. Ebenezar McCoy, who had stood up for me at my trial before the council, after I had killed my former mentor, Justin DuMorne, in self defense. Who had mentored me after, taught me much about what a wizard is supposed to be, and more about what man is supposed to be. And who, I'd found out during the battle to save my daughter's life at Chichén Itzá, had been so eager to mentor me, to see me become a member of the White Council, to help me, because he was my grandfather.

"Damn, but it's good to see you, son," he said, and stepped fully into the room. "Lot of people think you died after you got home from the Battle of Chichén Itzá, but I knew you'd be back.

"I would like to know why you're hiding out from the magical world, if you don't mind tellin' me, though."

"Well, sir," I said, trying to contain my delight at seeing him. "It's kind of a long story, and before I should tell it, have you met my friend, here?"

"We've been introduced in passing, but only in passing," my grandfather admitted.

"Then let me do it right," I said, grinning. I knew that Ebenezar had watched at least some of the show about Buffy, because he'd watched it with me. "Ebenezar McCoy, my former mentor and my friend, I'd like you to meet Buffy Sinclair— formerly Buffy Summers, and still the Slayer."

Ebenezar had been stepping forward to shake Buffy's hand, but when I finished the introduction, he froze, and I saw him studying her, comparing her face with that of Sarah Michelle Gellar, noting the differences— and accepting them.

"Well, I'll be," Ebenezar said, grinning. "Miss Sinclair, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Buffy, please," she said, easily, and gave him a grin. "And the pleasure goes both ways— as I understand it, if you hadn't taken a chance on Harry, my friends and I would still be wandering around in the Nevernever."

Ebenezar snickered and said, "Well, that answers part of my question about your presence. Hoss, you gonna answer the rest of it?"

"Yes, sir," I said. I gave him a grin. "But it's a long story, sir. Maybe you'd better sit down…."

My grandfather pulled a chair over to the bed, Buffy sat on the edge of the bed near the foot, and I talked for the next couple of hours.