Author's Note: By popular request, here's what's been going on with Dresden in the real world. I honestly think Molly and Bakura have been having an easier time…

Shadows of Anarchy

As Harry Dresden stared down at the scorched, blackened patch of asphalt in front of him, which he recognized as the result of a spot of road's rather unfortunate meeting with a fireball, he began to get the feeling that he was missing something. Pieces of metal that looked like they might have been cars in some past life littered the street, and most of them looked like they'd gone a few rounds with a trash compactor – and lost badly. He grimaced at a lump of charred metal that reminded him uncomfortably of what his Blue Beetle had looked like after an encounter with a brick wall and a flamethrower that one time…

Shaking off the – highly unpleasant – memory of his narrow escape from sharing his beloved car's fate, the wizard instead carefully examined the area around the burned section of street, the noise of police officers doing the same behind him fading into the background. His eyes narrowed in thought as his previously quick walk around the scene slowed to only a few steps every six or seven minutes. As a rather accomplished user of fire magic (if he did say so himself), he well recognized the burn pattern associated with a truly impressive fireball, and the melted asphalt showed all the signs of having encountered exactly that.

If he looked at the destruction as the scene of a magical battle, the damage done to the road suddenly made a lot more sense.

Fire damage aside (though that was definitely the result of magic), the crushed and torn apart cars were done by something else entirely. He stopped to examine one, and was able to see, after a few moments of squinting, the vague outline of what might have been finger-marks…if normal fingers were as long as a Little League baseball bat and twice as big around. Yeah, he probably wouldn't mention that to anyone but Murphy, he thought to himself as he moved along to the next bit of rubble.

Several minutes later, and that feeling Harry had had of missing something important had grown to an almost certainty that he was missing something. He finally gave in, took a deep breath, and opened his Sight, the ability all wizard's possessed to see beneath the surface of the physical world and into the magical. It allowed magic-users to see the residue left behind by all varieties of magic and strong emotion and the true appearance of a person's soul, though the Sight was a double-edged sword in that whatever a wizard looked at with it, they never forgot. This could be a blessing, in the case of pure, vibrant souls (like Murphy's, his mind traitorously whispered and that he did his best to ignore), or a curse, in the case of…well, nearly everything else he'd ever viewed with his Sight.

He didn't have the best of luck when it came to things like that, unlike his apprentice Molly who had gotten to…ahem…the first time she had used her sympathetic abilities to tap into a murder victim's last moments. His face still turned red just thinking about it…

It took him a few minutes to get that memory out of his head, and when he managed it his face was still tinged red in embarrassment, but he was able to focus on what he was Seeing in front of him. At first it was just a haze of misty colors, but then things got clearer and he was able to make out the individual shades: the soft yellow of confusion near the compacted-but-not-really car, the murky gray of fear that twisted and wound from one end of the street to stop in the middle of the melted asphalt that he had been investigating, and worst of all, the brilliant, angry red that could only come from a mixture of rage and hunger. The kind of rage and hunger that creatures of the Nevernever usually gave off when they came to this world for a quick snack – or were summoned for a quick snack.

What confused him, however, was the lingering darkness in the center of the melted asphalt, the dark absence of any of any other lingering emotion. He had only seen that color a few times before (namely because it was rare that his Sight manifested as colors, but nevertheless) and he knew what it meant: something very, very dark had been there, and it had been strong enough to overpower all the other lingering emotions and magical traces that were bound to have crossed through it.

Harry blinked as he closed his Sight and then re-opened his eyes, having more questions than answers, but that was usually par for the course in cases like this one. He supposed he should just be glad that the Chicago police had officially hired him for this one so he could get paid, he mused to himself as he looked around the ruined street with a new perspective, piecing together what his Sight had showed him and trying to come up with a rough estimate of what had gone down. He definitely didn't like what he came up with, and not just because some of the traces he'd found were very familiar to him…

The wizard blinked, shook his head minutely, and forced himself to think in general terms and not what he suspected (although he would certainly be calling the Carpenter house after he got done at the scene).

From what he could figure out, whatever creatures had been there had been chasing the source of the fear-gray trail, which had fought back with some blasts of magic that apparently hadn't done much. Then someone or something else had arrived on the scene and taken cover behind the crushed car when they had seen what was happening, and then the traces had gotten all mixed together so he couldn't really make out anything from them, but he did know something: a third party (not including the monsters who had chased the terrified person down the street) had been the one who did whatever it was that had melted a large part of the street.

He had no idea what had happened to the other two people, but he had the sinking feeling that it wasn't good. He tried to ignore that feeling because, against all evidence to the contrary and all attempts of the universe to convince him otherwise, he was an optimist.

Harry sighed, stepping back and heading over to lean against the lamppost near Murphy's car while the woman herself talked seriously with one of the uniforms on the opposite sidewalk, rolling his shoulders to try and ease some of the tension he was feeling as he looked over the ruined section of street. The devastation he was looking at was just the latest in a long string of off occurrences he had been called in on, though it was definitely the most obvious. The others had included, but were not limited to, dozens of floating lights appearing near the docks, people reporting huge shadows moving around the backstreets near Cabrini Green, and a wall of thorny vines growing overnight to block the entrances of three storage warehouses (all of them belonging to one Gentlemen Johnny Marcone, oddly enough…and no, Harry wasn't smiling at all, what are you talking about?).

Some individual people had also come to his office to report items that had mysteriously disappeared – all of them family heirlooms – and though it had been easy enough for him to use a tracking spell to find them (they had all been in some truly unexpected places…) the frequency that it had been happening unnerved him. And while business might have been going well, everything else hadn't: the Blue Beetle (the Frankenstein of a car might actually have been blue at some point in its' life) had broken down again and was in the shop, leaving him to hitch rides whenever he could and risking the Chicago cab service whenever he couldn't. The last 'monster of the week' had busted his door down, so he'd had to shell out the money to have that fixed, and combined with his bills, the cab fare, food and drink expenses, that one trip to the mall so he could find some more clothes after that one infestation of mold demons, the pay from the constant string of jobs he'd been getting disappeared pretty fast.

The Wizard with the Mojo tried to look on the bright side; at least he had been able to pay off his debts and have a couple of dollars worth of pocket change left over. That was breaking even if ever he had done it, he decided as he mentally groaned and forcefully turned his thoughts back to the matter at hand. He straightened up when Murphy came over to him, a serious expression on her face, and he had to restrain a rather unmanly giggle at the sight of such a serious expression on her unmistakably cute face. Sergeant Karrin Murphy really wasn't what you would expect the head of a division of the police force devoted to dealing with the supernatural crimes of the city to look like, but that was exactly what she was: barely over five foot height, blonde pixie bob haircut, and almost dainty frame and all.

Harry knew for a fact that she could kick butt and take names with the best of them, having gone up against her in the sparring ring more than a few times. Not to mention her skill with a gun (and chainsaw) were not to be looked down upon lest you find yourself on the receiving end of a beat-down courtesy of the slight blonde.

"Well? Any idea of what went down here?" She asked wearily, slight lines around her eyes betraying the stress she had been under recently with this recent string of odd and undoubtedly supernatural things happening. Thankfully no one had actually gotten killed because of them (although a few of Marcone's men had had to go to hospital due to giant thorn wounds), but there had been several accidents and injuries caused by the without a doubt magical occurrences. It was actually pretty tame compared to what he was used to, and that made him even more suspicious that this was just the calm before the storm, as it were.

"Something big from the Nevernever came through here chasing someone, they had a showdown, someone else stumbled onto what was happening, and there was apparently a fireball conjured at some point." And whoever it was the thing was chasing was scared, nearly terrified, he mentally added, not to mention the second person on the scene.

Murphy looked briefly exasperated, "You can't give me anything more than that?"

Harry responded with a brief headshake, "No, all I saw was faint emotional traces, but I figured out that something nasty from the Nevernever was here and feeling hungry. I couldn't tell what happened to the two people, though, but I'll keep looking." He dropped his eyes to a point on Murphy's left shoulder as he spoke in order to avoid a soul-gaze (when people said eyes were the windows to the soul, they weren't half-wrong).

A few more minutes of Harry describing what he'd managed to find out, and they parted ways, neither satisfied with what they'd learned, and a harrowing cab ride later in which the vehicle almost broke down and the GPS began speaking Swahili, the wizard arrived back at his basement apartment. Paying the swearing cabby and making sure to tip a few extra dollars, he barely avoided having his foot run over as the cab pulled quickly away. If he didn't know any better, Harry would have sworn that the guy had been in a hurry to leave (though if it was to fix the GPS, he honestly couldn't blame him).

Forcing open the heavy door and entering the apartment, which was dominated mostly by overfilled bookshelves, comfortable second-hand furniture, and a multitude of shaggy rugs covering the stone floor, he grunted as he pushed the iron barrier closed (the reason he didn't get it fixed was simple – the effort required to open it had saved his life more than once). When he turned around, he had to brace himself as thirty pounds of gray fur assaulted his shins. Mister, his overly-large and lazy cat, purred loudly as he pushed against the tall wizard's shins, then turned and went over to his empty food bowl in an imperious demand that it be filled.

On one of the couches, a large mountain of gray fur poked its' head up, revealing itself to be what looked like a wolf/draft-horse hybrid. Mouse, his ironically named dog (give him a break, the dog had been able to fit in his duster pocket as a puppy!), stepped down from the couch to join Mister over by the food bowls, looking at Harry with pleading eyes before looking down at his sadly empty dish. And because Harry was a big softie, he filled up both bowls with their respective animal's food.

Making his way over to the trapdoor leading to his sub-basement/laboratory as the sounds of kibble crunching sounded behind him, he prepared to get down to business as he grabbed a candle, lit it, and descended the ladder. Remembering to close the trapdoor behind him, he called out, "Rise and shine, Bob!" and on one of the shelves that lined his workroom, a human skull's eye sockets lit up with orange lights.

Bob was his assistant, a spirit of Air and Intellect bound to the human skull sitting on the shelf next to a metal box and a large stack of porn novels. The skull yawned, though how it made the sound without lungs Harry would never know, and said, "'Sup Boss?"

"We've got work to do, Bob," Harry said, lighting the candles around the lab with a quick 'fuego' and set about gathering his divining supplies.

Bob's eyes brightened to a brighter shade of orange and he asked eagerly, "What are we brewing up today? A lust potion? Maybe an orgy-in-a-bottle?"

Harry rolled his eyes at Bob's usual perverted suggestions, "No, we're going to do a little divination to try and figure out what's causing all the magical mishaps around the city. I can't help but feel like all the minor things are working towards something bigger." He gathered the various maps of Chicago lying around his lab and a set of Scrabble tiles he'd gotten in case of emergency and looked expectantly over at Bob.

"Ugh, fine. You know, a good roll in the sheets could really help you loosen up, Harry." Bob grumbled before rattling off the directions for a standard question/answer spell and Harry got to work.

Ten minutes later, the wizard was getting annoyed and asked Bob insistently, "Are you sure that that was all there was to the spell?"

"Yes, for the third time Harry! Are you sure you're doing it right? Repeat what you did back to me." The spirit exclaimed with no small amount of annoyance.

Harry carefully recited what he'd done, wishing for the hundredth time that Little Chicago, his life-sized model of the city, was up and operational. But no, the model was still very much under construction and wouldn't be ready for at least another several months, which meant he was stuck with standard divination. Which, at the moment, wasn't doing much more than confusing and frustrating him, "I did everything right, so is there some other reason the spell wouldn't work?" He asked.

The skull made a thoughtful noise – don't ask him how – and then said, "Well, if it's not the spell itself, maybe it has to do with how you phrased your question…what did you ask and what answer did you get?"

"I went for something easy, so I asked who was behind the strange occurrences going on – and yes, I know that there could be more than one person causing the trouble, but I was being hopeful – and all I got back was 'darkness'. Whatever that means." The last part was grumbled in annoyance under his breath.

"Hmmm, maybe a spell a little stronger will be more specific?" Bob cheerfully rattled off directions to a different spell, and Harry cleared everything up before setting up for the new ritual, this one involving the use of the maps, tiles, and for some reason flower petals. Fifteen minutes later, and just as the spell was about to take hold, the flower petals caught fire, caused a large burst of light that had Harry diving for cover beneath his desk and swearing, "Stars and stones!" as he whacked his leg on the corner in the process.

When the light died down and left only the smell of burnt flowers in the air, Harry's head cautiously emerged from behind the desk, rubbing his leg as he stood up on seeing that it was all clear. He certainly hadn't expected that to happen, he thought ruefully as he called out, "Bob? What just happened?" Distantly, he registered the sound of scratching coming from the trapdoor, and what sounded an awful lot like Mouse whining, which ratcheted up his concern level by more than a few notches.

The skull's eye sockets flickered with light briefly and then brightened, Bob sounding a bit dazed as he warbled out, "Whoa, didn't see that coming…look at the pretty lights…"

Seeing that his assistant was still pretty star-struck, Harry hobbled over to his worktable and looked at the burned and charred map (he really hoped that that wasn't an omen meant for the actual city) and blackened tiles. He sucked in a breath, and he said uneasily, "Hey, Bob, pull it together. I really need to know something."

Hearing the unnerved tone in his wizard's voice, Bob's skull rattled briefly before he said, in a much more coherent voice, "Yeah, I'm good now. What do you need, Harry?"

The tall wizard turned his head to look at the skull, slightly long black hair swinging with the motion, and he asked shakily, "What does it mean when that spell explodes and the ash spells out the word 'shadows'?"

"…Nothing good, Harry, nothing good."

Author's Note: Not the best chapter, I know, but this one just didn't want to be written! This is also my 'thank-goodness-we're-all-okay!' chapter, because I went through a large scare when those tornadoes tore through Oklahoma and Texas a couple of weeks/a month ago. Believe it or not, I actually started this when things calmed down and I just now managed to finish it…:P