The Pier was mostly deserted when I finally started to investigate it at around 12:15. I suppose it wasn't surprising. The wind was stiff and cold off Lake Michigan that day, and the air was so chilly it felt like it could break if something big enough applied the right amount of force.
I was grateful for the warmth, the protection from the wind that my duster provided, but even so, my face already felt as if it was being stripped away in icy layers, one after the other. The sun mercilessly shone down from the frigid, cloudless sky, and for just a moment, I fantasized about purchasing a hat to keep at least some of the glare out of my eyes. Then another gale from the east blew by and hit me square in the chest, taking me midstride and almost blowing me over right then and there. I planted my staff and squared my feet.
Eh, me and hats never really gelled together anyways. They don't call Chicago the Windy City for nothing, after all.
"This is getting freaking ridiculous," I growled through clenched teeth. By that point I'd almost circumnavigated the Pier, my wizard's senses spread wide to pick up on any magical irregularities that would require me to use my spell-reinforced armored duster for other reasons. Mainly the ones that left me covered with bruises and aching top to bottom, but still breathing and still in one piece.
In my march of misery around the Pier, I'd sensed nothing, and it made some sense, I guess - only the world's crappiest or most sadomasochistic necromancer would be out on an icy spit jutting three and a half thousand feet into Lake Michigan on a crisp winter day like this.
But that woman, that Mrs. Zhou lady, she had left me a warning for a reason. On weird heat-sensitive card paper, natch. You don't use those kinds of theatrics unless you're planning something big. And in my line of work, you can never be too careful.
Maybe Navy Pier had been made a staging ground for something big and ugly as all get-out. Maybe it was made to remove the White Council's official Warden of the Midwest. Maybe it was nothing.
But I had a responsibility to my city to do everything I could to prove it one way or the other - and, if necessary, to protect my people from the kinds of terrors that they'd otherwise only dreamed of in splatterhouse movies and horror games.
And so, I rubbed my face with my undamaged right hand, trying to scrounge up whatever temporary warmth the forces of friction could afford me, and started a weary march towards the very edge of the Pier.
Flags snapped in the strong wind above me, thirteen of them in total. A score of copies of the Stars and Stripes, accompanied by two military banners, stood pretty much straight out from their poles, the stripes pointing directly inland. I faced the opposite direction, looking out over the lake as I prepared myself for what I was about to do.
One breath, two, and I turned around with my eyes closed and felt an acute pressure building steadily between my eyebrows. I released it with a sharp inhale and opened my eyes, mental defenses raised.
The enormous, solid anchor of the USS Chicago stood in front of me, at least twice the height and twice the mass of what it was in the physical realm, with a gravity all its own that pulled me forward a few steps. I'd been here when it was put up in '95 as a memorial to Chicago's Navy and Marine vets, but this was the first time I'd ever looked at it with my Sight. Like everything else I Saw with the magical force known to wizards as the Third Eye, the beefed-up presence of the anchor made a strong impression, one that burned itself into my mind where it would stay forever. It wasn't unpleasant. I've Seen much, much worse over the years. It was just powerful, bordering on overwhelming, and provided me with a good baseline with which to ground myself for what came next.
I raised my damaged hand to block off a portion of my Vision, what would become the view of the Loop's skyline, and sidled around Chicago's monumental anchor. Even with those precautions, I began to get a splitting headache as images burned themselves into my brain - the vast, cresting waves of winter wind surging in from Lake Michigan like a frozen tsunami moving in slow motion, the impenetrably dense existence of the swampy ground Chicago was built on. Hundreds and hundreds of multicolored pinpricks, each unique yet too far away to make out any details, representing thousands of human beings and the lives they led. I saw the city, golden, filthy, from the tops of the enormous skyscrapers that had inspired so many and borne witness to countless stories of love, despair, hatred, and contentment to their steel and concrete roots, faint but Visible, scores and scores of yards below that faraway horizon.
And that was with my hand obscuring most of the skyline. Even then, it was almost too much for me to tolerate.
With a last groan of effort and pain, I focused on Navy Pier itself. With that much invisible power floating around, the results of where mankind's creation met the Almighty's and only a fraction of it magical in nature, any energies stirred up by a rogue necromancer would stick out like a pint of raw sewage in a clear tank of the purest seltzer water. The Pier appeared . . . watery in of itself, like viewing it through a plastic bottle. The lights scattered across its surface seemed cloudier and murkier than usual, glowing with the intensity of midnight gaslamps on a smoggy Victorian-era street. Ethereal waves lapped at the edges of the Pier and sort of fused with it, the ghostly water rippling up the Terminal Building's superstructure and becoming one with the brick.
It was massive. It was magnificent. It would have been mind-breaking if I hadn't braced myself for it. And it was my city.
There was something else, too. At the base of the closest building, the Grand Ballroom, some kind of dark blur hovered near the funky ululating water-wall, flickering slightly. It looked to be in the general shape of a man, but lacked any kind of distinguishing features of its own. It was bleeding slightly, oozing some type of deep red fluid visible even from this distance from several deep lacerations along its indistinct form, but didn't seem to be inconvenienced by it.
And it was watching me.
I mean, it didn't feel threatening or anything. My senses were working overdrive at this point, laboring at full capacity, and I felt nothing. I Saw nothing out of the ordinary, no black magic traces, no odd energy patterns, nothing. Whatever or whoever this thing was, it was no necromancer. I'd be able to taste one of them across the plaza. And yet, I felt an unmistakable tug whenever my Sight passed over the blur's form, and could definitely feel its attention on me. I was the only person out on the Pier at this point, and I knew the blur certainly wasn't admiring the anchor from that distance.
Seems I had another admirer.
With a moment of concentration, I shut off my Sight and dropped to a knee, bracing myself with my staff. That had been a lot of information to take in, a lot of powerful forces to See. I let my senses collapse as I gasped for breath, and all of a sudden I was standing on a frigid pier in Chicago again, shivering profusely and returned to a normal state of awareness. And yet, I was glad I'd done it, even if I'd never forget what I'd Seen in those moments. I knew Navy Pier, at least, was safe from a necromantic hootenanny. Perhaps the blur, whatever it was, was a contact of Mrs. Zhou's, someone who could finally get me some answers on whatever this shell game was that had been hounding me all over my city.
"Paparazzi again," I muttered, and hauled myself to my feet. "I'm starting to feel like I'm on one of those reality shows."
I glanced across the Pier to the point where I'd seen my shadow, only to catch a glimpse of a man wrapped in a trenchcoat flicking inside the building.
"Hey! Get back here!" I barked, and began to jog after him. I'd recovered, mostly, and my headache was beginning to fade into the background. My mind was still chewing on that image of the world's true Appearance, and my legs didn't respond as well as I would have liked.
As I got closer to the ballroom, I noticed that he'd wedged a salt bucket in the door to leave it ajar. Ah. Of course. The Terminal Building was closed today for one reason or another - probably something to do with the holiday - and he wasn't supposed to enter any more than I was. So I was dealing with someone who probably had either a connection with a worker in the Terminal, or someone who was pretty good at getting into places he wasn't supposed to be in. Or maybe both.
I ripped the door open and charged inside. It was dark and warm in the ballroom, especially compared to the snowblinded Pier outside, and I had to let my eyes adjust before advancing. When the spots cleared from my vision, I found myself standing in a great hall, only lit by the light streaming in through the windows on the eastern wall, with an enormous, cavernous bandshell facing me all the way on the other side of the room like the yawning mouth of a great sea serpent. Tables and chairs, shrouded in white tablecloths, were strewn around the Ballroom, some of them lined up in silent rows facing the serpent's maw, a legion of ghosts waiting for a show that didn't exist.
In a subconscious manner, I began to channel energy into my staff and shield bracelet. The bracelet began to throw off some heavy sparks at intermittent intervals, but as long as it did its job and kept me alive it was no bother. I felt uncomfortable. This smelled like a trap and played like a D&D encounter, and I got the overwhelming feeling that maybe the mystery man wasn't here to help after all. My staff lit up with patterns of orange-red runes along its entire length, and the clean scent of woodsmoke seasoned with just a dash of sulfur filled my nostrils.
"Right. Be ready for anything, Harry," I instructed myself. My voice was amplified by the empty ballroom's acoustics, and sounded strange when it came back to me in multiple series of echoes.
A door was ajar at the far end of the room, and with nowhere else for the man to easily lurk, it was clear he'd gone thataway.
I crossed the Ballroom full of pent-up energy, darting between empty tables and vaulting over a few rows of chairs, broke into a sprint for the last few yards, and, with a wizardly yell, slammed my shoulder into the open door.
"KNOCK KNOCK, PAL!" I shouted into the darkened abyss that was the next room over. My shield was up and spitting long silver sparks like a faulty showerhead, my staff leaving a trail of smoke behind it as it blazed with the light of Hellfire. It made a heck of an impression, and I do like to make an entrance, after all.
Or at least, it would have made a heck of an impression. As it stood, however, I had barely unleashed my oldie-but-goodie "big entrance" line when, I kid you not, a bucket of warm tap water plummeted from its perch atop the lintel and hit me in the head, soaking my leather duster top-to-freaking-bottom with rivulets of lukewarm liquid. A gallon or so of it even got down my t-shirt and happily headed south from there to dampen the most foreign crevasses of my jeans.
Stars and stones. I'd fallen victim to a middle schooler's idea of a practical joke. And yeah, I didn't like it now any more than I had when I actually was in middle school.
But this time was different. This time, I was drawing energy from the universe around me to play around with the forces of nature themselves, shaping them to my will. Running water doused me head to toe, utterly severing my connection with the energies I was running through my tools - at least for as long as I was still absolutely dripping wet. I watched in something not unlike muted terror as the orange light emanating from my staff flickered and went out.
Crap.
"Who's there?" a raspy, high-pitched man's voice whispered in my ear. Something hard pushed into the base of my skull - something that was definitely a weapon of some kind.
Double crap.
"Hey, buddy," I said, very calmly and in a measured tone of voice that you can't prove didn't exist. "We're all friends here. Vivian Zhou sent me. I just want to talk, promise."
The weapon pushed further into my neck. "Drop the stick."
"OK, OK, whatever you say. Just, please, man, don't-"
I whipped around, ducking at the same time at a speed much faster than your average rent-a-thug would expect from a guy my size. I swept the heavy oaken butt end of my wizard's staff up from the ground as well, intercepting whatever my assailant had pressed against my neck and flinging it to the side with a mighty clatter. Despite that, my assailant didn't drop his weapon and recovered quickly, throwing a backwards heel kick at my face as he regained his balance. I met his foot with my staff, held crosswise across my body, and struck his sole with a fierce shove, utilizing the prodigious length of my arms, strength in my joints, and his backwards momentum to deliver a stiff shock to the poor fellow's system. He grunted, threw himself into a smooth forward roll away from me, and came up hopping on his opposite foot - but I surged forward with a bone-shattering downward blow aimed at his head. I'm not sure what exactly happened next, but the end result turned out to be me, doubled over and wheezing, pointing the cavernous barrel of my .44 Magnum at the mook's center mass. My ribs really hurt - he'd redirected my strike and somehow managed to poke me halfway across the corridor in the process.
" . . . assume that a wizard's unarmed just 'cause you've knocked out his magic," I finished asthmatically.
Across the hall, my opponent had a pistol levelled at me as well - a snubnose affair straight out of the pages of a pulp novel from the thirties. He was favoring the foot I'd whacked with my staff, but seemed like it wasn't too much of a bother for him. We kind of shuffled in a counterclockwise circle around each other, sizing one another up, I guess.
And, uh, the guy was a flavor of weird I usually don't come across too often, and I've ridden zombie dinosaurs into battle in Northern Illinois.
His body was very clearly human, that of a well-dressed, well-built man in the prime of his life. He was shorter than me - a lot of people are, seeing as I'm closer to seven foot than six - but not by a lot, and he more than compensated for the height difference by being so jacked I could see it through the horribly mismatched, tacky three-piece suit he wore. Over that, he wore the trenchcoat I'd noticed earlier, and . . . look, there's no easy way to say this. It looked like his coat had been forgotten in the back of the fridge and went over a few weeks ago. It seemed as if it was supposed to be your average tan mid calf-length coat, but something had gone horribly wrong around the man's rib cage, resulting in a symphony of unnatural shades of orange, purple, and even some sickly green lining the edges, all muddled up in illogical and revolting patterns like some kind of vast creeping fungus.
Oh, and he didn't have a face. Just a blank expanse of thick Caucasian skin situated beneath a head of slicked-back black hair and a hat the same color as what his jacket should have been, only without the stomach-turning psychedelic color scheme
"You know why I'm here," he said in his weird sibilant rasp.
I frowned, making a show of the expression. "Christmas convention? I think that was the last event held here. Hate to break it to you, pal, but that's been over since the 26th."
He wasn't amused. He wasn't anything but vaguely, monotonously irritated, judging by the sound of his voice. "The storms, Dresden. The 'tornado' in Evanston. You were there. People died. I want answers."
There was silence for a moment.
"What happened in my city last Halloween?" he inquired.
So that's what it was all about.
"Stars and stones," I said, very quietly, "I'm just about sick of being asked that question."
I reached deep within myself and pulled up every scrap of Power I could summon, slamming it through the shield bracelet on my left wrist, which was the most sensitive focus I had on me at the moment. At the same time, I raised the revolver I was holding in the same hand and yelled "BANG!" bringing up my shield in a blizzard of bright white sparks as I did so. It took about twice the amount of effort I'd usually need to call up a shield, and I could only summon a quarter dome that just barely covered my upper body for a second or two, but at least my magic was coming back a little bit.
My opponent had taken the bait. A cloud of orangish, roiling smoke exploded over my pathetic, yet very eye-catching shield for the brief moment it was there - a smoke pellet?
"What the-" was all I got out before my shield failed and the gas entered my lungs.
You ever spray-paint some object outside on a windy day for one reason or another? It's not the sort of thing that tends to build habits. The sticky, cloying paint whips around in a cloud that always seems to know just where it can blow to in order to cause you the most discomfort. It ruins your clothes, irritates your eyes even if you've worn protection, and reeks like an OSHA-non-compliant chemical plant on a crisp autumn evening. It's the smell that bothers me the most. You probably know what it's like - it doesn't stink so much as it's omnipresent and heavily industrial, a thick chemical scent that lingers in the air, inspires crippling headaches and constricts the lungs even minutes later.
The gas that the Faceless Man had shot at me with was like that, turned up to eleven. I doubled over coughing again, with my head starting to ache like someone had grabbed it in a single massive, eternally strong palm and begun to squeeze. I almost didn't notice it when the Faceless Man hurtled out of the cloud of irritant, coming in low and fast like he'd rolled through the smoke, and hit me with a solid shoulder to my gut and the entirety of his 200-pounds-or-so weight. I'd still kept enough wits about me to twist a little, so he hit me in the thigh rather than my solar plexus, but it still hurt like a mother and nearly knocked the wind out of me. Which, of course, would have resulted in me gasping more of his chemical crap.
As it was, I was thrown back by the impact and sent a web of complex cracks up the floor-to-ceiling window of a nearby restaurant outlet, closed for the season and darkened like the rest of the Terminal Building. The Faceless Man followed me, raising a balled fist to greet my own face. Maybe he was jealous, I don't know.
Point is, I managed to intercept his incoming attack with the head of my staff, which had just begun to flicker with faint Hellfire like it was a dying candle. I probably could have handled him straight, but I was out of breath, my eyes were puffy and running like crazy, and I could only block what he had to throw at me. Finally, I snuck in a weak headbutt on his gross featureless face while he was winding up again, right about where his nose should have been, which didn't do much for my headache but surprised him enough to throw him off his rhythm.
"My turn," I sputtered, and very heroically and bravely threw a cheap knee at his groin. He was a good fighter, but only managed to partially redirect it and lost his balance in the process. I exploited the error, snapped the end of my staff up at his horrible non-face, then followed that up with two more well-placed whacks and, when he threw a dazed punch at me, launched him the rest of the way through that window with a jiujitsu maneuver my friend Murph had taught me earlier that month.
It was extremely effective. I stepped rather quickly through the broken window, staff in a loose rest position, to get away from that acrid cloud of ick. The eatery was one of those new wave joints, all low lighting, way-too-hoppy craft beer, and men with man buns who think their tacky Hawaiian shirt is a suitable excuse for having a distinct personality.
"Cheap shot," the Faceless Man groaned as he staggered to his feet amid broken glass and scattered barstools. He braced himself on one of them, hunched over and tenderly rubbing the lower half of his mien as if he even had a jaw to get thundertapped by a ticked-off wizard's staff.
"Look who's talking, Pepé le Pew," I replied, out of breath and coughing the last of the gas out of my lungs. "You wanna keep going rounds with a wizard, now, or do you have some pussycat to chase around Chicago instead?"
"I . . . don't have an answer to that nonsense," he said, then hurled the stool he was leaning against at me. I swatted it aside easily with my staff, and I kid you not, the guy pulled out a pair of freaking tonfa from the inside folds of his nasty-looking trenchcoat. They were synthetic plastic PR-24s, matte black in color with clear portions halfway along the shafts, and looked like they'd seen their fair share of combat.
Funnily enough, so had I.
He hit first, but I blocked it with my staff and hit back just as hard. We became a singular flurry of quick, skillful strikes, one that traveled back and forth across the restaurant. I landed some good hits in the mêlée. He did the same, but we kept on fighting.
I'm no martial artist, but I can handle myself even without magic, and he was even quicker with his batons than he'd been barehanded. I had every advantage over the guy - taller, longer reach, heavier weapon - and he still was making me struggle for every half foot of ground. He just didn't let up, striking again and again as I got more and more tired. This battle was gonna turn ugly fast if I didn't end it, and I was quickly running out of energy.
Luckily, I could feel a different kind of energy returning to me.
"Forzare!" I cried, flinging my left arm at my erstwhile opponent in a sweeping motion. In response to my spell, a series of overturned chairs and various other accoutrements rattled and leapt at the Faceless Man like he'd just insulted their mothers. It wasn't anywhere near the peak of my power, and sweat broke out on my pounding temples just trying to toss a few pieces of furniture around, but it was effective. The man was buried in a storm of trendy rough-hewn wood and cast-iron stool legs, unable to do anything but hunker down and cover his head with his tonfa in a protective, primal pose.
It looked like it hurt. A lot. But I wasn't the kind of guy to let an opportunity go to waste, and so I raised my right hand and sent another crescent-shaped wave of force aimed low at his legs. He slammed down hard on his front side and rolled over, pulling that screwy little gas revolver out again, but I swept one of my long legs over him, sending the revolver skittering across the tiles, planted a foot on his chest, and shoved the tip of my staff, which was glowing and smoking again, deep into his Adam's apple.
"Don't move, freak," I snarled, pushing down a little bit for emphasis. "I could crush your windpipe in a second right now without speaking a single curse, but I've already got a bit of the old mojo coming back to me. Either way, this doesn't end well for you."
"Ack . . ." the Faceless Man gurgled. Seconds later, the madman started chuckling, despite everything. Chuckling. Weirdo.
"What's so funny?" I demanded.
"Heh, heh . . . nothing," he whispered. "I underestimated you, that's all. Thought you were either a wannabe or a fraud before this. Figured, 'what am I going to get out of this, anyway? He's just some shyster off the street, but he's the best lead I've got.' For a minute there, I almost believed you were just some edgy punk playing at being Gandalf the Grey, putting innocent people in danger so you can enjoy your urban protector fantasy."
"Says the faceless idiot stalking people around town in a trenchcoat and hat to chase a conspiracy about a bad autumn storm," I growled. "Zhou, that cabbie - those your guys? Did you hire them to play into your little game?"
"Touché on that first point," he conceded, barely audible. "But I was wrong. You're the real deal. Magic really does exist. Hallelujah, praise the globalists, and pass the ammunition. How much else can they possibly be hiding, I wonder?"
"What are you even talking about?"
"I'm glad I took precautions, just in case you were legit after all. Guess the Internet can be right, too, every now and again. Hours of trolling through forums and chatrooms, nothing to lose but my sanity - and it paid off."
I threw up my hands. "This isn't working. Look, dollface, I'm going to ask you something now and you're gonna answer me. Just one question, then I won't turn your throat into an overcooked hamburger and we'll both go our merry ways singing 'Kumbaya,' get me? Why is everyone so freaking obsessed with how my Halloween went today, and why now of all times?"
His facial features still remained absent and disturbing, but even so, I got the impression of a wry smirk. "Good Question, Dresden. Very good Question."
Before I could react, his hands, which had previously been hovering palms-up before me, shot down to his belt level. Something happened, and he exploded into a cloud of disgusting orange chemical vapors inches away from my very vulnerable face.
My world became gas.
I couldn't breathe. Could barely think. He'd caught me on the exhale, on an empty lung, and I'd sucked a good lungful of the acrid crap in surprise.
My headache pounded so hard it felt like my parietal lobe was about to achieve orbit at any moment.
I jerked back in raw animal reaction to the irritating cloud of orange poison, dropped my staff with a hollow-sounding clatter. My eyes bled tears and mucus, and I tripped over one of those ridiculous hipster chairs and went down hard. Hell's bells, it was awful. I felt like-
Like-
I collapsed, coughing up a lung like Doc Holliday in the old movies, threw up on the floor, and convulsed violently even as my vision faded from orange, to burnt orange, to a deep red.
Then black.
I was plucked.
As I slipped into unconsciousness, a ridiculous and disquieting thought crossed my mind: a faceless, raspy Pepé le Pew, floating after his pussycat quarry over a sea of anchors and rustic barstools.
"C'est la vie, mon ami," I sort of heard Mel Blanc's silly quasi-French accent croon, then nothing else but the rhythmic pounding of my fevered brain.
ANONYMOUS GUEST REVIEW: You probably won't see this, Anon, but I did read your review and took it to heart. First off, thanks for reading my story! I'm glad that despite its flaws, it still held your interest long enough to make it to Chapter Three and shattered your expectations enough to make you comment on it. Secondly, profanity really isn't necessary, I'll listen to you regardless of whether or not you call me names in your analysis. And thirdly, dude, the story's not even halfway through yet, it's just a little bit early to start saying that Dresden's underpowered and I "clearly have know [sic] clue how Dresden works."
For the record, Anon, I've never even picked up a Question comic, but the character interests me and I feel it's time for him to be represented in fanfiction. On the other hand, I have read every book in the Dresden Files, excluding the tabletop RPG and the graphic novels, and yes, the bucket of water shouldn't have crippled him too badly, but I do have an excuse for that, one I'd be happy to talk with you about if you'd let me know privately. We could have a nice conversation about something we both are clearly very passionate about.
Thank you for your interest! And I'd recommend you stick around as the story unfolds some more - you might find your questions answered.