Dead Beat

Chapter Seventeen

You," I snarled, gesturing at Bock with the end of my staff. "You little weasel. You were gonna sell me out. I ought to kill you right here."

From his vantage point above Alicia's curly-haired head, Bock blinked at me in confusion. I stared at him, hard, not daring to leave anything in my expression that the girl would see. If I'd tried to protect Bock, it would only have made it more likely that she would do something to him. By appearing to threaten him, it would make him seem more unimportant to the necromancer and her henchman. It was the best thing I could do to protect him.

Bock got it. His expression flickered through several subtle shades of comprehension, fear, and guilt. He twitched his head at me in a nod of thanks.

"Well, well," Alicia said. She hadn't moved, other than to turn toward me. "I've never heard of you, but I must admit that you know how to make an entrance, Harry Dresden."

"I took lessons," I said.

"Give me the book," she said.

"Ha," I said. "Why?"

"Because I want it," she said.

"Sorry. It's the hot Christmas present this year," I said. "Maybe you can find a scalper in a parking lot or something."

She tilted her head, the fingers of her hand still flickering with little shimmers, like heat rising from asphalt. "You refuse?"

"Yes, moppet," I told her. "I refuse. I deny thee. No, already."

Her eyes narrowed in anger and… well, something happened that I hadn't ever seen before. The store got darker. I don't mean that the lights went out. I mean everything got darker. There was a low, trembling sensation that seemed to make my eyeballs jiggle a little, and the shadows simply expanded up out of the corners and dim areas of the store like time-lapse photography of growing molds. As they slid over portions of the store, that nasty, greasy sensation of cold came with them. When the shadows washed over an outlet that housed the power cords to a pair of table lamps, the lamps themselves went dim and then died out. They covered the old radio, and Aretha Franklin's voice faded away to a whisper and vanished. The shadows got to the register and its lights went out, and when they brushed the old ceiling fan it began to whirl down to a stop. The shadows crept over Bock and he went pale and started shaking. He thrust one hand down onto the counter as if he had to do it to keep himself upright.

The only place the darkness didn't spread was over me. The shadows stopped in a circle all around me, maybe six inches away from me and the things I was carrying. The Hellfire smoldering in the runes of my staff glowed more brightly in the darkness, and the tiny sparks falling in a steady rain from my damaged shield bracelet seemed to burn away tiny pockets of the darkness where they fell, only to have it slide back in once they had burned away.

This was a kind of power I hadn't felt before. Normally when someone who can sling major mojo around draws their stuff up around them, it's something violent and active. I'd seen wizards who charged the air around them with so much electricity it made their hair stand on end, wizards whose power would gather light into nearly solid gem-shaped clouds that orbited around them, wizards whose mastery of earth magic literally made the ground shake, wizards who could shroud themselves in dark fire that burned anyone near them with the raw, emotional rage of their magic.

This was different. Alicia's power, whatever it was, didn't fill the store. It emptied it in a way that I didn't think I fully understood. Utter stillness spread out from her-not peace, for that would have been something tranquil, accepting. This stillness was a horrible, hungry emptiness, something that took its power from being not. It was made of the emptiness at the loss of a loved one, of the silence between the beats of a heart, and of the inevitability of the empty void that waited patiently for the stars to grow cold and burn out. It was power wholly different from the burning fires of life that formed the magic I knew-and it was strong. God, it was so strong.

I began to tremble as I realized that everything I had wasn't enough to go up against this.

"I don't like your answer," Alicia said. She smiled at me, a slow and evil expression. She had a dimple on one cheek. Hell's bells, an evil dimple.

My mouth felt dry, but my voice sounded steady when I spoke. "That's too bad. If you're so upset about not getting a copy, I suggest you take it up with Cowl."

She stared at me with no expression for a moment and then said, "You are with Cowl?"

"No," I told her. "I was, in fact, forced to drop a car on him last night when he tried to take the book from me."

"Liar," she said. "Had you truly fought Cowl, you'd be dead."

"Whatever," I replied, my tone bored. "I'll tell you what I told him. My book. You can't have it."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Wait a moment. You were at the mortuary. In the entryway."

"We call it the Forensic Institute now."

Her eyes glittered. "You found it. You succeeded where Grevane failed, didn't you?"

I turned up one corner of my mouth, and said nothing.

Alicia took in a deep breath. "Perhaps we can reach an understanding."

"Funny," I said. "Grevane said the very same thing."

Alicia took an eager step toward me. "You denied him?"

"I didn't like his hat."

"You have wisdom for one so young," she said. "In the end he is nothing but a dog mourning his fallen master. He would turn on you in a moment. The gratitude of the Capiorcorpus, by contrast, is an eternal asset."

Capiorcorpus. Roughly translated, the taker of corpses, or bodies. I suddenly had a better idea of why Li Xian had referred to Alicia as "my lord."

"Assuming I want that gratitude," I said, "what price would it carry?"

"Give me the book," she said. "Give me the Word. Stand with me at the Darkhallow. In exchange I will grant you autonomy and the principality of your choice when the new order arises."

I didn't want her to know that I had no freaking clue what she was talking about, so I said, "That's a tempting offer."

"It should be," she said. She lifted her chin, and her eyes glittered with something bright and utterly confident. "The new order will change many things in this world. You have the opportunity to help shape it to your liking."

"And if I turn you down?" I asked.

She met my eyes directly. "You are young, Harry Dresden. It is a great tragedy when a man with your potential dies before his time."

I shied away from her gaze at once. When a wizard looks into another person's eyes for an instant too long, he sees into them in a profound and unsettling kind of vision called a soulgaze. If I'd left my gaze on Alicia's eyes, I would get an up-close and personal look at her soul- and she at mine. I didn't want to see what was going on behind that dimpled smile. I recognized that perfect surety in her manner and expression as something more than rampant ego or fanatic conviction.

It was pure madness. Whatever else Alicia was, she was calmly and horribly insane.

My mouth felt a lot drier. My legs were shaking, and my feet were advising the rest of me to let them run away. "I'll have to think about it."

"By all means," Alicia said. Her face took on an ugly expression and her voice hardened. "Consider it. But take a single step from where you stand and it will be your last."

"Killing me might get you a copy of the book, but it won't get you the Word," I said. "Or did you think I was carrying both of them around with me?"

Her right hand clenched into a slow fist and the room got a couple of degrees colder. "Where is the Word?"

Wouldn't I like to know? I thought.

"Wouldn't you like to know," I said. "Kill me now and there's no Word. No new order."

She uncurled her hand. "I can make you tell me," she said.

"If you could do that, you'd have done it by now, instead of standing there looking stupid."

She started taking slow steps toward me, smiling. "I prefer to attempt reason before I destroy a mind. It is a somewhat taxing activity. Are you sure you wouldn't rather work with me?"

Gulp. Mental magic is a dark, dark, dark grey area of the art. Every wizard who makes it to the White Council has received training in how to defend against mental assaults, but that was perfunctory at best. After all, the Council made it a special point to wipe out wizards who violated the sanctuary of another's mind. It's one of the Laws of Magic, and if the Wardens caught someone doing it, they killed them, end of story. There was no such thing as an expert at that kind of magic on the White Council, and as a result the defense training was devised by relative amateurs.

Something told me that Alicia the Corpsetaker wasn't an amateur.

"That's close enough," I said in a cold voice.

She kept walking, very slowly, a sort of sinuous enjoyment in her stride. "Last chance."

"I mean it," I said. "Stay ba-"

Before I could finish the word, she made a rippling gesture with the shimmering fingers of her left hand.

There was a whirling sensation, and I was suddenly caught in a gale, a whirlwind that tried to carry me toward the girl. My feet started sliding across the floor. I leaned back with a cry, lifting my shield bracelet, and it blazed into a dome of solid blue light before me. It did nothing- nothing at all. The vicious vortex continued to draw me to her outstretched hand.

I started to panic, and then realized what was happening. There was no wind-not physically, anyway. The books on the shelves were not stirring, nor was my long leather duster. My shield offered me no protection from a wholly nonphysical threat, and I released it, saving my strength.

The hideous vacuum wasn't meant for my body. It was targeting my thoughts.

"That's right," Alicia said.

Holy crap. She'd heard me thinking.

"Of course, young man. Give me what I want now and I may leave you enough of your mind to feed yourself."

I gritted my teeth, marshaling my thoughts, my defenses.

"It's too late for that, boy."

Like hell it was. My thoughts coalesced into a unified whole, an absolute image of a wall of smooth, grey granite. I built the image of the wall in my mind and then filled it with the power I'd been holding at the ready. I felt a nauseating confusion for a second, and then the mental gale ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

Alicia's head jerked as if she'd been slapped across the cheek.

I glared at her, teeth gritted, and asked, "Is that all you got?"

Corpsetaker snarled out a spiteful curse, lifted her left arm, and twisted her fingers into a raking claw.

There was a hideous pressure against the image of the granite wall in my mind. It wasn't a single, resounding blow, as I had expected from my training, a kind of psychic battering ram. Instead it was an enormous, steady weight, as if a sudden tide had flooded in to wash the wall away completely.

I thought that pressure would ease in a moment, but it only became more and more difficult to bear. I struggled to hold the image of the wall in place, but despite everything I could do, dark and empty cracks began to appear and spread through it. My defenses were crumbling.

"Delicious," Corpsetaker said, and her voice didn't sound strained at all. "After a century, they're still teaching the young ones the same tripe."

I saw movement beyond Corpsetaker, and Li Xian appeared in the shattered plywood doorway. Half of his face was lumpy and purpled with bruising, and one shoulder had been smashed grossly out of shape. He was bleeding a thin, greenish-brown fluid, and moved as if in great pain, but he came in on his own power, and his eyes were alert.

"My lord," Xian said. "Are you well?"

"Perfectly," Corpsetaker purred. "Once I have his mind, the rest is yours."

His misshapen face twisted into a smile that spread too wide for human features. "Thank you, lord."

Holy crap. It was time to leave.

But my feet wouldn't move.

"You needn't bother, young wizard," Corpsetaker said. "If you take the attention you would need to free your feet, your wall will fail. Just open to me, boy. You will feel less pain."

I ignored the necromancer and tried to think of other options. My mental defenses were indeed crumbling, but any strength of will I spent to move my legs would collapse the defenses entirely. I had to get the pressure off of me for a moment-only time enough to distract Corpsetaker, to give me time to get the hell away. But given that I could barely move at all, my options were severely limited.

Part of the wall began to crumble. I felt Corpsetaker's will begin pouring in, the first trickle from a dark sea.

If I wanted to live, I had little choice.

I reached my thoughts down into the smoldering Hellfire burning in the runes of my staff, and sent it flooding into my mind, into the failing wall that protected me. The cracks in the cold grey granite filled with crimson flame, and where the dark sea of Corpsetaker's will pressed against it there was a screaming hiss of freezing water boiling into a cloud of steam.

Corpsetaker let out a sudden, hollow gasp, and the pressure on my thoughts vanished.

I spun, wobbled, got my balance, and then ran for the back door.

"Take him!" Corpsetaker snarled behind me. "He has the book and the Word!"

There was a sickly ripping, crackling sound, and Li Xian let out a bestial and inhuman howl.

I dashed through the back room of the bookstore, and to the back door. I slammed its opening bar and sprinted through it, out into the alley behind the shop. I heard two sets of feet following me, and Corpsetaker began chanting in a low, growling voice. That hideous pressure began to surge against my thoughts again, but this time I was ready for it, and my defenses fell into place more quickly, more surely. I was able to keep running.

I ran down the alley, and made it maybe thirty yards before a sudden fire exploded through my right calf. I crashed down to the ground, barely holding on to my mental defenses. I dropped my staff and reached down to my calf, to feel something metal and sharp protruding from it. I cut my fingers on an edge and jerked them back. I couldn't get a good look, but I saw a flash of steel and a lot of blood-and Corpsetaker and the ghoul were still coming.

There was no way I could have whipped up any magic to stop them-not with all of my power focused on keeping Corpsetaker from invading my mind. I wouldn't be able to overcome the ghoul physically- even wounded, Xian was quick on its feet, and closing the distance fast.

I drew the.44 and sent three shots back down the alley. Corpsetaker darted to one side, but the ghoul never even slowed down. It flung one too-long arm through an arc, and there was a glitter of steel in the gloomy alley. Something hit me in the ribs nearly hard enough to knock me down, but the spell-covered leather of my duster stopped it from piercing through. A triangle of steel fell to the ground, each point sharpened and given a razor's edge.

"All I needed," I muttered. "Ninja ghouls." I emptied the revolver at Xian. He wasn't ten feet from me on the last shot, and I must have hit him. He jerked, careened off a wall, and stumbled, but he was a long way from down.

Corpsetaker's will continued to erode my defenses. I had to get away from her, or she'd open up my brains like a tin of sardines-and then Xian would eat them.

The three-pointed shuriken still in my calf, I forced myself to my feet through the screaming pain. I seized my staff, hobbling in earnest this time, and struggled toward the end of the alley. My only chance was to make it to the street, to flag down a cab, somehow beg a ride from a passing car, or maybe get some help. I knew there wasn't much hope of any of those things happening, but it was all I had.

I almost got to the end of the alley, the pain in my leg growing steadily worse-and then I abruptly lost track of what was going on.

One moment I'd been busy, I knew. I was doing something important. The next I was just standing there, sort of floundering. Whatever I'd been doing, it was right on the tip of my tongue. I knew that if I could just focus for a second, I'd be able to remember it and get back on track. My leg hurt. I knew that. And my head felt jumbled, the thoughts there, but in disarray, as if I'd gone through a drawer of folded laundry, pulled out something from the bottom, and then slapped the drawer shut again without straightening anything up.

I heard a snarl behind me, and realized that whatever I'd been doing, it was too late to get back on track now. I tried to turn around, but for some reason I couldn't remember how.

"I have it," panted a woman's voice behind me. "Numbers. It's only… He only has numbers."

"My lord," snarled a thick, deformed voice. "What is your command?"

"He doesn't know where the Word is. He is useless to me. The book is in the right pocket of his coat. Take it, Xian. Then kill him."