Chapter 7

The Hollow Soul

With the help of Hercule's emergency cash, Kai and Irene managed to pay for another cab back to Bock Ordered Books. Irene began to feel that maybe they were getting somewhat closer to useful answers than they were this morning.

Right up to the moment that the cab dropped them off at the end of the street. Kai was still paying the cabbie when a man went sailing out of Bock Ordered Books in a hail of splinters. Perhaps that kind of thing was normal here, but she didn't think it was a coincidence, not in this chaos-slanted world.

She exchanged a look with Kai – the cabbie had already beaten a hasty retreat before he could get dragged into this – but there was really no question about what they were going to do. They had some questions they needed to get an answer to, after all.

The unwilling flier had landed in the middle of the road, but he got up again as if he had only lightly set down in a field of grass. Irene couldn't see any blood or injuries. Could it be Alberich?

If it was, then this was the first time she had seen him do what he did next. He changed. What emerged was vaguely human-looking, as in that the figure had arms and legs and a torso and a head, but all the proportions were wrong. He was definitely not human. Irene had never seen anything like it – she scoured her memory for anything useful that may have been in the briefing and came up empty – and would have been happy if it had remained that way.

The definite not-human snarled and ran back into the shop, where a brawl was already well underway, if the sounds were anything to go by.

'Shall we?' she said to Kai.

They went.

Upon entering the shop Irene was somehow not at all surprised to find Harry Dresden in the middle of it. He was the first person she saw, clinging to a bookshelf as if that was all that stopped him from falling flat on his face. The blood had drained from his face; he looked exhausted.

In the middle of the shop was a woman who didn't look exhausted. She was small, but practically crackling with power. The human-looking-but-definitely-not-human man with her was bleeding from bullet wounds – probably caused by the gun in Harry's hand – but far from being at death's door, he bared his teeth in anger.

'I'll take the man,' Kai whispered.

That suited Irene well enough. A handy bookcase beside the door facilitated her first move: 'Bookcase which I am touching, fall on the woman in the black boots.'

Hurling themselves at people was not something that bookcases often did, so the action took a lot more energy than Irene liked. It lurched from its place and threw itself at the woman, who was forced to take her eyes off Harry to deal with the new threat. She batted the bookcase aside only just before it hit her.

While she was still busy with that, Irene lined up her next attack: 'Books, fly off the shelves and keep hitting the woman in the black boots.' A name would be nice, but she'd make do. Like with the bookcase, this took more efforts than she liked, but by making it a continuous assault, she should at least be able to buy herself a little time.

Kai had thrown himself at the non-human. Irene had seen him fight before, but it was mesmerising to watch it again. He was fast, certainly faster than his opponent and, although she couldn't see where he'd got it from, suddenly there was a knife in his hand. His opponent wasn't taking that lying down, either. A vicious fight ensued. Another bookcase went over.

The woman had a job trying to keep all the books off her. To ensure that she would be busy for a while longer, Irene commanded the floor to hold her feet and then, for good measure, sent every crystal in the shop after her as well. Even with all that, Black Boots didn't seem to be getting hurt. Her attention was occupied, and she was well and truly pissed off, but keeping all of Irene's improvised missiles off her it didn't seem to cost her any energy, while all use of the Language was giving Irene a nasty headache.

Harry managed to get upright again and gestured at someone hiding behind the counter to get out. Irene couldn't see him for all the books flying around, but she assumed it was the owner who was now hurrying for cover. Just as well, because this fight was not getting any nicer.

Harry had a clear shot at the man and took it. The man jerked under the impact, but did not go over. It did allow Kai to manhandle him out of the shop and into the street. Harry put his gun away and retrieved his staff before following. He made it about two steps before he keeled over, but Irene had seen it in time and managed to get her arm around his waist before he hit the ground. Harry was a tall man, so it was an awkward fit, but Irene got him out of the shop.

That was when she made a mistake.

She had Harry out on the pavement when she looked back at the book-battling woman. Most of the books had been thrown away with great force – some were even embedded into the wall – and she was flinging the last ones away from her as Irene looked back.

Their eyes met for a long moment.

The next moment Irene felt as if she was falling down a rabbit hole, only the rabbit hole was Black Boots' eyes and the bottom of the hole was her soul. Howling winds surrounded her on all sides, but the longer she stood there the less it sounded like wind and more like human voices screaming. There was swirling mist all around her, through which she could glimpse faces, some men, some women, but all of them screaming, gone again before Irene could take in any details.

The only person who was constant, standing with Irene in the heart of the vortex, was a human-looking shape. The figure was too vague and undefined to be classed either man or woman, the face simply generically human. The eyes were the only part that could be used to identify. The colour was indeterminable, but the sparkling madness in them was the same that Irene had seen in Black Boots.

'Who are you?' she demanded and then repeated it in the Language: 'Tell me who you are!'

The mouth of the figure opened, but the sound came from all around her, repeated over and over again: 'Capiorcorpus, Capiorcorpus, Capiorcorpus.'

Irene stood her ground. 'That's a title, not a name. Tell me your name!'

'Capiorcorpus, Capiorcorpus, Capiorcorpus.'

It hit her then. Capiorcorpus, taker of bodies or, more sinister, of corpses. This person had taken so many bodies, the bodies in the mist most likely, hopping from one to the other until the original identity had been completely eroded, until even the memory of the original name was lost. All that remained was the vague impression of past faces and the power that howled all around them.

It ended as quickly as it had begun. Irene was back on the pavement, staring in open-mouthed horror at the person in the shop. If there was any consolation, it was that Capiorcorpus seemed just as taken aback by what had happened as Irene.

'Door, close and lock,' Irene shouted, trying very hard not to panic and not to be sick. She only half succeeded; she wasn't sick, but she was definitely panicking. 'Door, weld to your frame. Splinters of wood, reassemble yourselves in the frame where you came from.'

That should at least buy them a few seconds to think of something else. Not that she was going to be capable of much else; she had already expended a great deal of energy on this fight and she was running on empty. Harry wasn't in a much better state. He didn't need Irene's support anymore, but he was leaning heavily on his staff. The only one still in any state to fight was Kai, who had finally got the not-quite-human man on the ground.

'Kai, stand back,' Harry instructed.

Kai did as he was told. Harry snarled 'Fuego!' and a stream of hot, dark fire engulfed the figure. If he had still been alive before that, he certainly wasn't afterwards.

'We need to go,' Irene said, but even as she did, the door was blown outwards in a surge of power that made it bounce in the street and finally land against the building on the other side.

Capiorcorpus stood in the doorway, snarling in anger. She – he, it, who could tell anymore? – spared barely a glance for her fallen lackey, before turning her attention to the trio on the pavement.

Harry got there ahead of her. 'Forzare!' he shouted and Capiorcorpus was thrown back into the shop. She came to a landing somewhere inside to the tune of crashing books and falling furniture, which hopefully knocked her out. She didn't appear again and, other than some last crystals falling down, there was no more sound.

Time to go. Irene did not want to explain this to the police. Quite frankly, she wouldn't know where to begin explaining this mess. It was bad enough that she eventually would have to put this in a report for Coppelia.

A problem for another day.

'We need to go,' she said again.

Harry nodded, but he was looking a bit dazed and, now that Irene looked closer, bleeding too. For good measure she looked herself over as well and found that she too had a few wounds to show for this altercation. The flying books, splinters and crystals, probably. Nothing too serious, probably, but something to take care of soon. Death by papercut sounded like a very Librarian way to go, but also a very embarrassing one.

'Bock will kill me,' Harry predicted darkly.

Considering what they had done to his shop, Irene could only concur.

Kai looked at the mostly charred remains of the Capiorcorpus's lackey with distaste. 'What was that?' he asked Harry.

'Ghoul. Hard to kill.'

But clearly not impossible.

'We need to go,' Irene said a third time.

'I've got a car,' Harry said, putting a few steps in the right direction. His balance was a bit wobbly, so Kai stepped up and draped Harry's left arm over his shoulder, to be his walking stick on the other side. Irene brought up the rear. Occasionally she glanced over her shoulder, but the streets were deserted. People had probably taken one look at the fight and had sensibly run for cover.

And called the police. Sirens wailed in the distance.

She had a strange sense of déjà-vu.

The only difference with the first fight in the bookshop was that this time it was in daylight. And actually mostly in the shop itself rather than in front of it.

Harry had parked his car a few streets away and, miracle of miracles, they made it there before the cops. Kai took one look at Harry and decided he wasn't fit to drive. Harry readily agreed and handed him the key. Irene was discounted too, and probably for good reason. She had driven cars before, but it was in another alternate and it was a while ago. She slipped into the backseat beside Harry.

Kai took the wheel and started the engine.

'Now entering Dubai,' said a smooth voice emerging from the dashboard, immediately followed by: 'The door is ajar.'

All the doors were closed.

Kai frowned, then turned the engine off and then on again.

'Now leaving Dublin. Please fasten your seatbelt.'

'I think this car is broken,' Kai said.

'Just drive.' Harry leaned his head back, but Irene thought he was smiling.

'This can't be normal,' Kai insisted, but he pulled out of the parking spot without trouble.

'The perks of wizardry,' Harry informed him. 'Most technology made after World War Two breaks around me.'

'The door is ajar.'

Irene remembered that his apartment had been heated by fire and lit by candles. She hadn't seen any modern conveniences at all. Even the stove in the tiny kitchen seemed to be fuelled by wood. Strange, the place had been so nice and cozy that she hadn't even noticed until he explained. Either that or she had been more tired than she thought.

The headache was begin to retreat a little. She tried to get her thoughts in order now that the crisis was temporarily over, but the vision of what she had seen in Capiorcorpus's head kept popping up, vivid as if it had only ended a second ago. She deliberated if she should ask Harry, but he'd been a reliable ally so far, as well as the local expert.

In fact, for being just a step up from strangers, he had probably saved the lives of Kai and her a few times. She had the same kind of feeling around him as she did around Vale, that of an ally and almost a friend. They were now firmly involved in one another's mess. Perhaps fighting necromancers together was one of those bonding experiences; you couldn't do that without ending up friends with the other person.

She might as well ask Harry what she needed to know: 'When I looked at her face, I…' She searched for the right words, but embarrassingly couldn't seem to think of any that accurately described exactly what that experience had been like.

'A soulgaze,' Harry replied. 'That's what happens when a wizard looks in someone's eyes.'

'I am not a wizard,' Irene pointed out.

'She is. Soulgazing is a two-way street. You got to see her, but she got a nice, long look at you as well.'

That explained a few things, like why both Harry and Grevane hadn't met her eyes even once. She'd thought it was a social norm here at first, but nobody in the library had done it and neither had Harry's roommate Thomas. So he was not a wizard then.

'She saw me?' Irene frowned. 'How do I know what she saw?' There were any number of Library secrets she really didn't want to give away to someone like the Corpsetaker.

'You don't.'

Of course. That would have been too simple. Still, it didn't all add up. 'You've looked at Kai a few times,' she said. 'It didn't happen then.' If so, Kai would definitely have said.

'Kai is a Dragon,' Harry explained. 'Doesn't work with the Fae either.'

That explained the last of it. 'I'll avoid looking at that person again,' Irene muttered darkly. 'She was absolutely insane.' No, that wasn't the right word. 'Hollow.'

Harry shook his head. 'That only happens once,' he said. 'Hollow?'

Irene reminded herself that she was a Librarian who wielded the Language; she could give an accurate reporting of what she had found in that individual's soul. 'Eroded. She's jumped from body to body until her entire original identity was lost, deliberately or by accident. She doesn't remember her name. I'm not even sure if she started out male or female, because she doesn't remember it herself. She's just power now, and she knows it, but that's all that's holding it together. There is no core belief or identity that's at the heart. And it has driven her insane.'

'Like Alberich,' said Harry. He explained what he had been up to and the accidental soulgaze he had had with Alberich at the Forensic Institute. 'He didn't tell me what he was there for, but you told me he likes to dress up in someone else's skin, so I had to perform an instant cremation.'

Irene's first instinct was to erupt in indignation. Hercule had been a Librarian. He deserved better than that. He'd had friends who wanted to come to his funeral. But then her brain switched on before she could ruin it all. If the choice had been between having Hercule cremated – in a somewhat haphazard and possibly illegal manner – or having his skin stolen by Alberich, she knew which one she'd choose as well.

'Thank you,' she said with feeling. 'For sparing him that.'

Harry nodded. 'Alberich is starting to look a lot like Hercule's murderer.'

Irene grimaced. 'So is Grevane.' She reported what had taken place at the library this morning. 'What is The Word of Kemmler?'

'Basic guide to advanced necromancy,' Harry said. 'The Corpsetaker needs it for some Darkhallow ritual, although she didn't say what that does.'

Nothing good, Irene would wager.

'Kemmler was a necromancer. These clowns are his disciples. Whatever they've planned, they'll do it on Halloween. So that gives us until tomorrow night to throw a wrench in their plans.'

Irene was both pleased and horrified at the us in that sentence. But that was the deal she made for Die Lied der Erlking, so she had better stick with it. And Alberich was involved in this up to his stolen ears, which made it her business anyway.

'Grevane thought Hercule had the Word.' Harry nodded in confirmation. He had arrived at the same conclusion. 'It wasn't in his office, or the Library. Could he have had it on him when he died?'

'It wasn't at the Forensic Institute.'

'He must have hidden it,' Kai chimed in. 'Like Lord Wyndham had done with the Grimm book.' He looked at Irene by way of the rear view mirror.

'We'll have to go back, to look at his notes.' But not right now. It was only the afternoon, but now that the adrenaline was wearing off, she was bone-tired. It had been a brief night after a long day, and all hands to the pump since breakfast as well. Nothing too unusual, but the repeated use of the Language for some serious feats was taking its toll as well.

She closed her eyes for just a second.

It must have been a very long second, because when she opened them again, Kai was parking the car and, with a last insistence that 'the door is ajar,' shut it off.

Harry got out of the car first, staff at the ready, but there was nothing there to warrant that kind of attention. They made it into the apartment without problems, where Irene breathed just a little easier, knowing she was behind a double layer of wards again.

There was a small man in the living room she hadn't seen last night. Harry introduced him as Waldo Butters, the coroner who had Grevane after him and now, possibly, Alberich. He seemed a little nervous.

Thomas looked them all up and down. 'Did you go for a round against a dinosaur?'

It did feel like it.

'Asshole,' Harry muttered, before looking at Butters. 'We are in need of your medical skills.' Oddly he indicated Irene, but not himself.

Butters made sputtering noises. 'Harry, I cut into dead people. I don't know what to do with living ones.'

Harry smiled winningly. 'Think of it as preventative autopsy.'

As in the meaning to prevent the need for an autopsy, Irene desperately hoped. She took her coat off and was somewhat surprised to find her white blouse decidedly less white than it had been when she bought it. The idea of undressing in front of so many people was somewhat nerve-wracking, but the apartment was small enough that she didn't think there was much room for privacy. Butters demanded that they all turned their backs instead.

For someone who insisted that he wasn't a real doctor Butters was surprisingly good at patching people up. Most of Irene's injuries were papercuts and small wounds caused by flying crystals, so, in other words, self-inflicted. Butters cleaned them, but only two required stitches, which he performed while muttering about his lack of medical skills at regular intervals.

Harry was next. Butters didn't ask any of them to turn their backs for that, so Irene had a prime view for the myriad of cuts and bruises Harry had incurred not only in the fight today, but also the fight from yesterday. She noticed that his left hand was still in the glove that he hadn't taken off since she met him. Come to think of it, he didn't use that hand either. An earlier wound, maybe, now competing with his newly acquired collection of injuries. She nearly winced just looking at them. Harry on the other hand continued his report of what they had done and what they found out.

That took a while.

'Three necromancers, two drummers and one rogue Librarian turned necromancer,' Thomas summarised at the end. 'As well as two very wanted books, one of which is missing.' He grinned winningly. 'Did I miss anything?'

That actually summed it up nicely.

Harry shook his head. 'I've never heard of this Darkhallow. Offhand it sounded like some super necromancy ritual.'

'But if they don't have the book, they don't know how to perform it,' Kai pointed out. 'Otherwise they wouldn't be hunting for it.'

'They've got another day to find it,' Harry said.

Yes, they did. And at least Alberich and Grevane knew that Hercule had been involved with the Word somehow. Irene had put some Library wards on Hercule's office – he had enough books strewn around to manage them – which should keep Alberich out, but she had no clue how to even begin shielding a place against a wizard without magic herself. Hopefully Grevane had no idea that Kai and Irene had left and they could sneak back inside to look through anything they might have missed this morning.

'We should go and have a look now,' Kai said.

It was late, but not too late, Irene supposed. Because it was late October it meant that it was already growing dark outside. It was warm inside and the sandwiches Thomas had whipped up meant that she was both full and warm, not to mention getting a little drowsy. But this was – in some sense, if you squinted really hard – Library business. And the Library always took precedence.

She forced herself to her feet. Fortunately Harry did the same.

Then Mouse got to his feet, stepped between them and the door and growled. It was so low it was hard to hear, but Irene could feel it vibrating in her bones.

'Trouble?' Butters asked in the kind of voice that very clearly conveyed his sincere hope that the answer to this question was no.

They should be so lucky.

Irene looked through the window. From there she could just about see the stairs leading up to the street level.

They were not empty.

'Harry,' she said. 'We might have a problem. I can see dead people.'

Next time: zombies and ghosts and necromancers, oh my!

Reviews would be appreciated.