Chapter 14

Death Curse

'I know where the Word of Kemmler is.' Getting your head banged repeatedly is not a shortcut to brainwaves that I'd recommend, but sometimes it knocks the puzzle pieces together.

Three pairs of eyes stared at me. Mouse didn't bother. He was too busy appreciating being towelled dry.

'Where?' Irene asked.

'How?' asked Butters.

'Hercule's clue.'

The head of the beast. Hercule had been a very clever man. On its own the phrase meant nothing, unless you also knew Chicago and you knew where Hercule had been on the day he died. Unless you had all three components, you'd be chasing your own tail all over the Windy City. And even if you managed to figure it out, breaking into a museum, with security and cameras all over the place, wasn't going to be easy either. Hercule had effectively ensured that Grevane would never get his hands on the book. He had outwitted his murderer even after his death.

If I'd met him, I was sure I would have liked him.

I had to explain, because they didn't get it. Of course, Kai and Irene were not that familiar in Chicago and Butters had missed pieces of the investigation.

'You got all of that from a bang on the head?' Irene asked.

What can I say? Inspiration comes from the strangest of places. One of these days I will maybe have it strike me in the shower, like a normal person.

Time was ticking, so we locked up and piled back into the Beetle. Murphy would probably kill me over the state I left her house in, but at least I'd remembered to water her plants. Unfortunately, I'd also watered everything else.

Kai insisted on driving. I was relocated to the passenger seat. Irene, Butters and Mouse folded themselves into the backseat. Butters's polka contraption, which he absolutely refused to leave behind, got squashed in whatever space was left. Windows were rapidly opened again in search of fresh air.

The power was still out. Law enforcement was out in droves on the bigger intersections, and the mood was grim. That it was Halloween didn't help. An undercurrent of fear ran rampant through the city, feeding the black magic about to be worked.

The one advantage of the black-out was that every security camera and alarm system was out too. There wasn't a better time to attempt a break-in of a museum. It was dark inside. I couldn't see any security guards. They had all decided to be elsewhere.

'No sign of any necromancers,' Kai said.

Irene looked behind. 'No sign of pursuit either.'

We hadn't seen any sign of pursuit when we went to Murphy's, but somehow Alberich had found us. Now that my head was clearing, I had some questions about that. Why he had wrecked the ritual was no mystery, but he must have honed in on us somehow. Had he been following us?

The museum was pitch dark, so I channelled some of my will into my pentacle. The light it cast was enough to see by.

'That's not eerie at all, is it?' Butters muttered, glancing at the giant skeleton of Sue. The little light made her cast vast shadows on the wall.

Irene looked it over. 'And the book is in the skull?'

'Not the one on the skeleton,' I said. I hoped. Hercule had been here during the day, when the place would have had people milling around. Not many, maybe, especially not in late October early in the day, but someone would have noticed if an elderly man would have pulled up a ladder to put something in the skull. 'That's a replica anyway. The real deal is upstairs.'

The real skull of Sue had been too misshapen to put on top of the rest of her, so they kept that separately, past a Wild West display. We made our way up in silence, me in front, Butters behind me and Irene and Kai bringing up the rear.

I couldn't see anything at first. I made my way around, bent over to look under the platform, but saw no sign of the book.

Could I have been wrong after all?

Irene meanwhile ran her fingers over the skull, feeling her way around. Just when I was about to say I must have been mistaken, she began to smile. 'He hid it inside,' she said.

'I don't see anything,' Butters said.

'That's the point,' Irene said excitedly. 'You're not supposed to. He used the Language to open the skull, slid the book inside and then closed the skull again as if nothing ever happened. You can't retrieve the book unless you know it's there and you can use the Language to get it out again.'

'So he could retrieve it himself,' Kai understood. 'But none of the necromancers could.'

I knew the old man had been clever, but this was cleverer than I had thought. By killing Hercule, Grevane had killed his only chance for getting the book. Talk about flipping someone off from beyond the grave.

I wouldn't have been able to get it myself had Irene not been here.

'Shouldn't we leave it?' Butters asked nervously.

'Alberich can use the Language,' Irene said. 'If he's followed us again, he can get it.' She looked at me. 'Shall I?'

I nodded.

Irene rested her hand gently on the skull. 'Dinosaur skull which I am touching, open up to reveal the hiding place of the book that is hidden inside.'

The skull cracked and opened just wide enough for me to slide my hand in. I had to slide it in until halfway up my forearm before I felt a thin book under my fingers. It wasn't stuck, and I pulled out a slim leather-bound volume. I checked the title page to see that we had the right book, which proclaimed the book the Word of Heinrich Kemmler.

'Dinosaur skull which I am touching, close and return to the state you were in before the book was hidden.'

The skull closed. Not even a slim line remained to show where the hiding place had been.

We had the book. Cowl had Bob, but I had some hope that Bob had deleted enough of the relevant memories permanently that Cowl could not pull his tricks off without the book. Against the odds, we had won a round.

And then I heard a noise.

Kai sneaked to the railing overlooking the hall and glanced over. Then he came back. 'Grevane and Liver Spots,' he reported.

The only good news about that was that it wasn't Alberich. Somehow they had followed us again. All of this was really starting to annoy me.

I have some of my best ideas when people push my buttons.

They took their time coming up. By the time they finally reached the top of the stairs, we were ready for them.

'Looking for this?' I held the book up for Grevane's inspection.

Grevane scowled. The fight from last night hadn't done his looks any good. A wound ran from temple to neck, held closed with stitches. Another crossed his forehead. He had a bite mark on his left cheek. He looked more like Frankenstein's monster than Frankenstein.

Liver Spots wasn't doing any better. He limped and walked with a cane. The right side of his face was a riot of colour where Kai's dragon paw had batted him off me.

It hadn't improved his mood.

And I still couldn't remember where I had met him before. You'd think I'd remember making an enemy of someone as dangerous as him.

'Hand it over,' Grevane said.

'Or what? You'll kill me like you did Dr Vincent?'

I really shouldn't give these bad guys ideas. The next moment I was covered in snakes. They fell on me from above. My duster kept most of them away from my skin, but I was bitten a few times on my hands and face. And that hurt.

'Snakes, throw yourselves over the railing into the hall below,' Irene commanded. 'Poison, depart Harry Dresden by the way you entered.'

Sometimes it pays having a Librarian on your side. There were things she could do that magic couldn't. Of course there were things I could do that her magic couldn't. Such as following up her command with a good old blast of energy that made both of the necrmancers sail right back down the stairs.

They could keep the snakes company.

It didn't last long. They cast a spell to break their fall, so regrettably neither of them broke their necks, although Liver Spots screamed in pain. Unfortunately he was not too injured to come back up again.

By that time I had put the book somewhere out of sight. I gripped my staff, planted my feet, had my shield bracelet at the ready and prepared to be as recalcitrant as I could. That never takes much effort, so I was ready in seconds.

'Last chance,' said Grevane when he had ascended the stairs a second time. Liver Spots limped a bit more and if looks could kill, I would have dropped dead on the spot. Or burst into flame. It was that kind of a look.

'No.' I was getting a bit tired of people trying to steal my book. Grevane had killed a good man to get it.

Grevane narrowed his eyes. 'Thrice I ask and done. Give me the book.' He was not in fact doing a lot of actual asking.

Not that it mattered. He could have begged on his bare knees and I wouldn't have given him the Word of Kemmler. 'Thrice I say and done. No. It's my book. So, here is my demand: get out of my city and I won't have to hand you your arse.'

Grevane didn't even bother to respond to that. He muttered something and the book shot out of the pocket of my duster and into his hand. 'You are a predictable fool, Dresden,' he said, smiling in triumph.

I nodded at Irene.

'Book that is in the hands of Grevane, burn!' she said.

The book burst into flames so enthusiastically that it singed Grevane's eyebrows off. He dropped it, muttered a spell and quenched the fire, but not before the pages had become too charred to read.

He glared at me. 'You'll pay for that.'

I feigned surprise. 'What? Didn't you expect that, what with me being so predictable?'

He really didn't like that. Both Grevane and Liver Spots hurled spells in my direction. I had my shield up before they finished casting. My shield rose up just in time for their spells to bounce off. I couldn't keep it up indefinitely, but I didn't need to, because I had allies now.

Irene was at least as hard on buildings as I was, because she dropped the entire ceiling on them, which forced them to redirect their attention to the more immediate threat. The ceiling came down and exploded in clouds of dust and plaster, which hid them from sight. I kept my shield ready, just in case.

Grevane exploded out of the rubble, plaster clinging to every part of him and blood running down his face. He looked like a reject from a cheap horror movie, but his encounter with the ceiling hadn't slowed him down. He blasted Irene into the Wild West display. She went down with a shriek and then didn't move again.

'You should not have done that.'

The voice that spoke made the entire building tremble on its foundation. It was the kind of voice that no one would ever mistake for human. It was the kind of voice that made your knees knock together. It made them knock so hard together that the safest course of action was to fall to your knees and plead for mercy.

Grevane froze for a moment, then turned around only to find himself face to face with a very large, very angry Dragon that had come up the stairs behind him.

Kai had been awe-inspiring out in the street during the zombie fight. Somehow he seemed even larger and more awe-inspiring in the confined space of the museum. In the mostly dark his eyes glowed with menace.

Grevane whimpered.

'I gave you the chance to run,' Kai said, inching closer until he was right in Grevane's face, where he could properly appreciate the size of Kai's teeth. 'You should have stayed away.'

I don't think Grevane was used to the idea that he was not the scariest thing in the room, or in command of the scariest thing in the room. It's that kind of arrogance that can really come back to bite you in the arse.

I made a bit of a habit of operating out of my weight class. I was used to it. I punched up.

Grevane punched down.

But not today.

He rallied, and I could feel him drawing in his magic for something probably very nasty. I started drawing in power myself, but it wasn't needed. Kai swiped with a paw and knocked Grevane down into the hall below, disrupting whatever working Grevane had been cooking up. Kai himself followed after him.

Liver Spots was probably still somewhere under the rubble, which freed me up to get a look at Irene. Her arm and head were bleeding where she had been thrown through a glass window of a display, but she was breathing and regaining consciousness. Butters was already next to her, taking her pulse and demanding to be told how many fingers he was holding up.

'It's dark,' Irene complained. 'I can barely tell which way is up.'

I lifted the cowboy hat from the display from her eyes and smiled helpfully.

She glared at me on principle, but it was a bit of a cross-eyed one. 'Three,' she told Butters. 'What happened to Grevane?'

'Kai,' I answered. Crashing noises from the level below us indicated that he was still in the process of reminding Grevane what an enormous mistake it had been to attack Irene. Grevane defended himself, throwing spells around like there was no tomorrow.

Of course his chances of seeing tomorrow were slim to none.

I didn't want to see the state of that place when they were done with it.

A few pieces of falling plaster were all the warning we had that Liver Spots was not out of action. I threw myself into Irene and Butters, which was just as well. Some very nasty energy sailed right over our heads and atomised the display case behind us.

I rolled off and fired my next spell lying on the ground. Liver Spots was too late to dance out of its way, but he brought up a Louisville Slugger and took the spell on that. It ripped the bat from his hand, but didn't do any other damage.

Hell's bells.

Now that I knew who he was, there was no unseeing it. The snakes, the slugger… My brain finally connected the dots. It should have done that when he dropped the snakes, but hey, I was probably still concussed.

Quintus Cassius, Snakeboy and former Knight in the Order of the Blackened Denarius, had not aged well. The last time I had seen him he could have passed for forty.

He didn't pass for forty now.

'You looked a lot better the last time I saw you,' I remarked.

Of course, the last time I saw him I had taken a Louisville Slugger to his kneecaps. Given the way he looked at me now, he had not forgotten that. And I was about to pay the price.

Snakeboy didn't appreciate my comments on his appearance. He snarled and hurled another spell at me. I had my shield up in time and I kept it up. Cassius had one of the Fallen riding along for fifteen centuries; he'd learned enough to be dangerous even without a demon whispering instructions in his ear every minute of every day.

Speaking of which, my own unwanted guest whispered that she would be glad to be of assistance in this matter, that she knew all his tricks and would only be too pleased to show me how to deal with him.

I told her to get lost.

'The last time you saw me you broke my bones,' he snarled, sending another volley of snakes at me.

I angled my shield to keep them off my face and let Irene send them down the stairs again. She and Butters had sensibly taken cover behind me. Irene couldn't conjure a shield of her own, but so long as she could make herself heard, she could use her Language.

It was nice to have allies for once.

'And you took my coin!' Another spell, but no snakes this time.

'You're going senile, Cassius,' I said. 'You surrendered your coin.'

He screamed in rage. Snakeboy was not the most stable kid on the block and he kept throwing spells around like he had energy to burn, which I was pretty sure he didn't, not at his age, after a fall down the stairs and a ceiling to the head. Sooner rather than later he was going to run out of steam.

And then it would be my turn.

I realised something. 'You're the one who smashed up my car.' Probably with the bat. That made sense. The Beetle is not the kind of car that invites vandalism and it had been parked in a relatively safe place. The way it had been beat up suggested that it was personal.

Cassius was taking this very personal.

He bared his teeth. 'It isn't fair!' he screamed. 'You got Lasciel and I got nothing! Where is it?'

That demand made a lot more sense now too.

I debated telling him that Lasciel's coin was buried beneath two feet of concrete and not actually with me, but just in case he survived this, I didn't want him to break into my apartment to get it. One break-in a day was more than enough.

'I don't have it.'

He looked at me like I had grown a second head. Unfortunately, he didn't believe it for very long. He tried to throw another spell, but he was finally out of energy. He managed a small flame that sputtered out the next second. When that failed, he grabbed his bat off the floor and started racing at me surprisingly fast for such an old man.

He never made it.

Mouse was a lot faster than old Snakeboy Cassius, and a lot stronger. He barrelled into Cassius, tackled him to the ground and then his own speed carried him over. He barely skidded to a stop before he crashed into the railing.

Cassius tried to get up, his eyes gleaming with hate.

'Ceiling above Cassius, fall down and bury him!'

I could see in his eyes that he knew he was going to die. I could feel him drawing together the power for his death curse. And I was right in his line of fire.

Then the ceiling fell on him, and broke his neck with an audible snap.

The power vanished.

Cassius would never cast a death curse, but Grevane did. The battle below was the background noise to Cassius's end, and it was absolutely not a fair fight. Possibly for the first time in his life, Grevane was going up against someone stronger and tougher than himself.

And it did not end well for him.

But he still had his death curse left. 'LIVE IN AGONY.'

The building shook with the force of it, and a second later it shook again when Kai threw Grevane into a wall and killed him.

Silence fell. The dust settled.

I ran to the railing and peered over. The hall below me was almost completely thrashed. The fight had taken lumps out of the wall and made dents in the floor. Most of the furniture had not survived.

The only thing miraculously untouched was Sue, presiding over the battlefield like a triumphant general. Kai, now back in human form, stood in the middle of ground zero, not a hair out of place.

He grinned up at me. 'You all right up there?'

Surprisingly, the answer to that was yes. Only Irene was bleeding, and even she was standing up. Mouse bounced over to my side and presented himself for the behind the ear scratches he considered his fair due. I paid him, and threw in a few tips besides.

'All right,' I agreed.

Right now I was a little more worried about what that death curse was going to do to Kai, what the necromancers were doing to my city, if I could meet Mavra's deadline and what the Erlking was getting up to. You know, all of life's little problems. Just an average day for me.

And a very bad one for Kai, once the death curse took effect.

He showed no signs of any agony yet. 'Coming up,' he announced, taking the stairs two at a time, dodging the fallen debris with inhuman grace.

I considered the wreckage around us and idly wondered how many cases I would have to work to pay for this lot. I know I am not good for buildings, but this was slightly excessive even by my standards. And I'd set fire to the Forensic Institute as well. And wrecked Bock Ordered Books.

Murphy was going to kill me when she got back.

Provided I could get Mavra off her back.

Speaking of which, 'Do you still have it?' I asked Butters.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Word of Kemmler. 'Is it over now?'

How I wished. 'Cowl still has Bob. The Erlking is still in Chicago.' We had taken out one faction. The other three were still alive and kicking.

Butters's face fell a little.

I opened the Word of Kemmler. The thing that Grevane had thought was the Word was in fact a museum guide book that Irene had commanded to mimic the Word. We didn't know how long that would last, so burning it was the best way to ensure he never found out that he had a fake.

And to the surprise of no one, he'd never expected I'd hand it off for safekeeping to someone like Butters.

I hadn't had a good look at it before Grevane and Cassius interrupted. It was in German, so I handed it to Irene, who did speak more German than I did, although she warned me that it wasn't her best language.

She took it with shaking hands. 'I've never killed anyone before,' she said.

It had been some years since I was in that position. I tried to remember if I had handled it well, but between being arrested by the White Council and almost having my head chopped off, there hadn't been a lot of time to let it sink in what had happened and what I had done.

That had not happened till later.

I didn't mention that it was a good thing she was not under the auspices of the White Council. 'It was self-defence,' I said, although technically it was more Dresden-defence. But considering that Snakeboy Cassius would never have left Irene and Butters alive, it wasn't that much of a stretch.

Kai joined us and without any subtlety whatsoever took her left hand in his. So it was that kind of mentor-apprentice relationship.

I tried tact for once and didn't say anything.

We didn't have the time for it anyway.

It wasn't a thick volume, which was good news. Irene skimmed through it and then gave us the highlights. The good news was that I now knew what the Necromancy Club was up to.

The bad news was that I now knew what the Necromancy Club was up to.

Of course, that was when I had a brilliant idea. 'Butters, I am going to need your help.'

'You need my help?'

I grinned. It would have been a mad idea on any other day. Tonight, it was the only idea that just might work. I needed to go big, or go home.

And I wasn't going home.

'I never thought I'd say this: fetch your polka suit.'

Next time: Harry engages in the act of borrowing without permission.

Reviews would be welcome.