Dead Beat

Chapter Six

Butters hadn't taken time to collect his coat when he left, and the last time the Beetle's heater had worked was before the demolition of the Berlin Wall. I ducked into the store, got us each a cup of coffee, then untwisted the wire that holds down the lid of the storage trunk. I dug out a worn but mostly clean blanket that I kept in the trunk to cover the short-barreled shotgun I stored in the event that I would ever need to give Napoleon's charging hordes a taste of the grape. Given the way the night was going, I got the shotgun, too, and slipped it into the backseat.

Butters accepted the blanket and the coffee gratefully, though he shivered hard enough to slop a little of the drink over the side of the cup. I sipped a little coffee, slipped the cup into the holder I'd rigged on the car's dashboard, and got moving again. I didn't want to wait around in the same place for too long.

"All right," I told Butters. "There are two things you have to accept if you want to understand what's going on."

"Hit me."

"First the tough one. Magic is real."

I could feel him looking at me for a moment. "What do you mean by that?"

"There's an entire world that exists alongside the everyday life of mankind. There are powers, nations, monsters, wars, feuds, alliances- everything. Wizards are a part of it. So are a lot of other things you've heard about in stories, and even more you've never heard of."

"What kind of things?"

"Vampires. Werewolves. Faeries. Demons. Monsters. It's all real."

"Heh," Butters said. "Heh, heh. You're joking. Right?"

"No joke. Come on, Butters. You know that there are weird things out there. You've seen the evidence of them."

He pushed a shaking hand through his hair. "Well, yes. Some. But, Harry, you're talking about something else entirely here. I mean, if you want to tell me that people have the ability to sense and affect their environment in ways we don't really understand yet, I can accept that. Maybe you call it magic, and someone else calls it ESP, and someone else calls it the Force, but it's not a new idea. Maybe there are people whose genetic makeup makes them better able to employ these abilities. Maybe it even does things like make them reproduce their DNA more clearly than other people so that they can live for a very long time. But that is not the same thing as saying that there's an army of weird monsters living right under our noses and we don't even notice them."

"What about those corpses you analyzed?" I said. "Humanoid but definitely not human."

"Well," Butters said defensively, "it's a big universe. I think it's sort of arrogant to assume that we're the only thinking beings in it."

"Those corpses were the bodies of vampires of the Red Court, and you don't want to meet a living one. There were a lot of them in town at one point. There aren't so many now, but there are plenty more where they came from. They're only one flavor of vampire. And vampires are only one flavor of supernatural predator. It's a jungle out there, Butters, and people aren't anywhere near the top of the food chain."

Butters shook his head. "And you're telling me that nobody knows about it?"

"Oh, lots of people know about it," I said. "But the ones who are in the know don't go around talking about it all that much."

"Why not?"

"Because they don't want to get locked up in a loony bin for three months for observation, for starters."

"Oh," Butters said, flushing. "Yeah. I guess I can see that. What about regular people who see things? Like sightings and close encounters and stuff?"

I blew out a breath. "That's the second thing you have to understand. People don't want to accept a reality that frightening. Some of them open their eyes and get involved-like Murphy did. But most of them don't want anything to do with the supernatural. So they leave it behind and don't talk about it. Don't think about it. They don't want it to be real, and they work really hard to convince themselves that it isn't."

"No," Butters said. "I'm sorry. I just don't buy that."

"You don't need to buy it," I said. "It's true. As a race, we're an enormous bunch of idiots. We're more than capable of ignoring facts if the conclusions they lead to make us too uncomfortable. Or afraid."

"Wait a minute. You're saying that a whole world, multiple civilizations of scientific study and advancement and theory and application, all based around the notion of observing the universe and studying its laws is… what? In error about dismissing magic as superstition?"

"Not just in error," I said. "Dead wrong. Because the truth is something that people are afraid to face. They're terrified to admit that it's a big universe and we're not."

He sipped coffee and shook his head. "I don't know."

"Come on, Butters," I said. "Look at history. How long did the scholarly institutions of civilization consider Earth to be the center of the universe? And when people came out with facts to prove that it wasn't, there were riots in the streets. No one wanted to believe that we all lived on an unremarkable little speck of rock in a quiet backwater of one unremarkable galaxy. The world was supposed to be flat, too, until people proved that it wasn't by sailing all the way around it. No one believed in germs until years and years after someone actually saw one. Biologists scoffed at tales of wild beast-men living in the mountains of Africa, despite eyewitness testimony to the contrary, and pronounced them an utter fantasy-right up until someone plopped a dead mountain gorilla down on their dissecting table."

He chewed on his lip and watched the streetlights.

"Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether."

"You're saying that the entire human race is in denial," he said.

"Most of the time," I replied. "It's not a bad thing. It's just who we are. But the weird stuff doesn't care about that-it keeps on happening. Every family's got a ghost story in it. Most people I've talked to have had something happen to them that was impossible to explain. But that doesn't mean they go around talking about it afterward, because everyone knows that those kinds of things aren't real. If you start saying that they are, you get the weird looks and jackets with extra-long sleeves."

"For everyone," he said, voice still skeptical. "Every time. They just keep quiet and try to forget it."

"Tell you what, Butters. Let's drive down to CPD and you can tell them how you were just attacked by a necromancer and four zombies. How they nearly outran a speeding car and murdered a security guard who then got up and threw your desk across the room." I paused for a moment to let the silence stretch. "What do you think they'd do?"

"I don't know," he said. He bowed his head.

"Unnatural things happen all the time," I said. "But no one talks about it. At least, not openly. The preternatural world is everywhere. It just doesn't advertise."

"You do," Butters said.

"But not many people take me seriously. For the most part even the ones who accept my help just pay the bill, then walk out determined to ignore my existence and get back to their normal life."

"How could someone do that?" Butters asked.

"Because it's terrifying," I said. "Think about it. You find out about monsters that make the creatures in the horror movies look like the Muppets, and that there's not a damned thing you can do to protect yourself from them. You find out about horrible things that happen- things you would be happier not knowing. So rather than live with the fear, you get away from the situation. After a while you can convince yourself that you must have just imagined it. Or maybe exaggerated it in the remembering. You rationalize whatever you can, forget whatever you can't, and get back to your life." I glanced down at my gloved hand and said, "It's not their fault, man. I don't blame them."

"Maybe," he said. "But I don't see how things that hunt and kill human beings could be there among us without our knowing."

"How big was your graduating class in high school?"

Butters blinked. "What?"

"Just answer me."

"Uh, about eight hundred."

"All right," I said. "Last year in the U.S. alone more than nine hundred thousand people were reported missing and not found."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah," I said. "You can check with the FBI. That's out of about three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year. It's been almost twenty years since you graduated? So that would mean that between forty and fifty people in your class are gone. Just gone. No one knows where they are."

Butters shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "So?"

I arched an eyebrow at him. "So they're missing. Where did they go?"

"Well. They're missing. If they're missing, then nobody knows."

"Exactly," I said.

He didn't say anything back.

I let the silence stretch for a minute, just to make the point. Then I started up again. "Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators."

Butters drew his knees up to his chest, huddling further under the blanket. "Really?"

"Yeah," I said. "Nobody talks about this kind of thing. But all those people are still gone. Maybe a lot of them just cut their ties and left their old lives behind. Maybe some were in accidents of some kind, with the body never found. The point is, people don't know. But because it's an extremely scary thing to think about, and because it's a lot easier to just get back to their lives they tend to dismiss it. Ignore it. It's easier."

Butters shook his head. "It just sounds so insane. I mean, they'd believe it if they saw it. If someone went on television and-"

"Did what?" I asked. "Bent spoons? Maybe made the Statue of Liberty disappear? Turned a lady into a white tiger? Hell, I've done magic on television, and everyone not screaming that it was a hoax was complaining that the special effects looked cheap."

"You mean that clip that WGN news was showing a few years back? With you and Murphy and the big dog and that insane guy with a club?"

"It wasn't a dog," I said, and shivered a little myself at the memory. "It was a loup-garou. Kind of a superwerewolf. I killed him with a spell and a silver amulet, right on the screen."

"Yeah. Everyone was talking about it for a couple of days, but I heard that they found out it was a fake or something."

"No. Someone disappeared the tape."

"Oh."

I stopped at a light and stared at Butters for a second. "When you saw that tape, did you believe it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

He took a breath. "Well, because the picture quality wasn't very good. I mean, it was really dark-"

"Where most scary supernatural stuff tends to happen," I said.

"And the picture was all jumpy-"

"The woman with the camera was terrified. Also pretty common."

Butters made a frustrated sound. "And there was an awful lot of static on the tape, which made it look like someone had messed with it."

"Sort of like someone messed with almost all of my X-rays?" I shook my head, smiling. "And there's one more reason you didn't believe it, man. It's okay; you can say it."

He sighed. "There's no such things as monsters."

"Bingo," I said, and got the car moving again. "Look, Butters. You are your own ideal example. You've seen things you can't explain away. You've suffered for trying to tell people that you have seen them. For God's sake, twenty minutes ago you got attacked by the walking dead. And you're still arguing with me about whether or not magic is real."

Seconds ticked by.

"Because I don't want to believe it," he said in a quiet, numb voice.

I exhaled slowly. "Yeah."

Dead silence.

"Drink some coffee," I told him.

He did.

"Scared?"

"Yeah."

"Good," I said. "That's smart."

"Well, then," he murmured. "I m-must be the smartest guy in the whole world."

"I know how you feel," I said. "You run into something you totally don't get, and it's scary as hell. But once you learn something about it, it gets easier to handle. Knowledge counters fear. It always has."

"What do I do?" Butters asked me.

"I'm taking you somewhere you'll be safe. Once I get you there, I'll figure out my next move. For now, ask me questions. I'll answer them."

Butters took a slower sip of his coffee and nodded. His hands looked steadier. "Who was that man?"

"He goes by Grevane, but I doubt that's his real name. He's a necromancer."

"What's a necromancer?"

I rolled a shoulder in a shrug. "Necromancy is the practice of using magic to muck around with dead things. Necromancers can animate and control corpses, manipulate ghosts, access the knowledge stored in dead brains-"

Butters blurted out, "That's impos-" Then he stopped himself and coughed. "Oh. Right. Sorry."

"They can also do a lot of really freaky things involving the soul," I said. "Even in the weird circles, it isn't the kind of thing you talk about casually. But I've heard stories that they can inhabit corpses with their consciousness, possess others. I've even heard that they can bring people back from the dead."

"Jesus," Butters swore.

"I kinda doubt they had anything to do with that one."

"No, no, I meant-"

"I know what you meant. It was a joke, Butters."

"Oh. Right. Sorry." He swigged more coffee, and started looking around at the streets again. "But bringing the dead to life? That doesn't sound so bad."

"You're assuming that what the necromancer brings them back to is better than death. From what I've heard, they don't generally do it for humanitarian reasons. But that might be a load of crap. Like I said, no one talks about it."

"Why not?" Butters asked.

"Because it's forbidden," I told him. "The practice of necromancy violates one of the Laws of Magic laid down by the White Council. Capital punishment is the only sentence, and no one wants to even come close to being suspected by the Council."

"Why? Who are they?"

"They're me," I said. "Sort of. The White Council is a… well, most people would call it a governing body for wizards all over the world, but it's really more like a Masonic lodge. Or maybe a frat."

"I've never heard of a fraternity handing out a death sentence."

"Yeah. Well the Council has only seven laws, but if you break them…" I drew my thumb across my neck. "By the way, they aren't fond of regular folks knowing about them. So don't talk about them to anyone else."

Butters swallowed and touched the fingers of one hand to his throat. "Oh. So this guy, Grevane. He was like you?"

"He's not like me," I said, and it came out in a snarl that surprised even me. Butters twitched violently. I sighed and made an effort to lower my voice again. "But he's probably a wizard, yeah."

"Who is he? What does he want?"

I blew out a breath. "He's most likely a student of this badass black magic messiah named Kemmler. The Council burned Kemmler down a while back, but several of his disciples may have escaped. I think Grevane is looking for a book his teacher hid before he died."

"A magic book?"

I snorted. "Nah. Trinkets aren't too hard to come by. If my guess is correct, this book contains more of the knowledge and theory Kemmler used in his most powerful magics."

Butters nodded. "So… if Grevane gets hold of the book and learns, he gets to be the next Kemmler?"

"Yeah. And he mentioned that there were others involved in this business too. I think word of the presence of Kemmler's book came up, and his surviving students are showing up to grab it before their fellow necromancers do. For that matter, just about anyone involved in black magic might want to get their hands on it."

"So why doesn't the Council just grab them and…?" He drew his thumb across his throat.

"They've tried," I said. "They thought the disciples had all been accounted for."

Butters frowned. Then he said, "I guess wizards can go into denial about uncomfortable things too, huh?"

I barked out a laugh. "People are people, man."

"But now you can tell this Council about Grevane and this book, right?"

My stomach quivered a little. "No."

"Why not?"

Because if I did, Mavra would destroy my friend. The thought screamed across my brain in a blaze of frustration that I tried to keep concealed.

"Long story. The short version is that I'm not real popular with the Council, and they're pretty busy right now."

"With what?" he asked.

"A war."

He scrunched up his nose and tilted his head, studying me. "That's not the only reason you aren't calling them, is it?" Butters said.

"Egad, Holmes," I told him. "No, it isn't. Don't push."

"Sorry." He finished the coffee, then made a visible effort to cast around for a new conversational thread. "So. Those were actual zombies?"

"Never seen one before," I said. "But that seems like a pretty good guess."

"Poor Phil," Butters said. "Not a saint or anything, but not a bad guy."

"He have a family?" I asked.

"No," Butters said. "Single. That's a mercy." He was silent for a second, then said, "No. I guess it isn't."

"Yeah."

"If those guys were zombies, how come they didn't want brains?" Butters said. He held both arms stiff out in front of him, rolled his eyes back in his head, and moaned, "Braaaaaaaaaaaains."

I snorted. He gave me a weak smile.

"Seriously," Butters said. "These guys were more like the Terminator."

"What's the use of a foot soldier who can't do anything but hobble along and moan about brains?"

"Good point," Butters said. He scrunched up his nose in thought. "Don't I remember something about sewing a zombie's lips shut with thread to kill them? Does that work?"

"No clue," I said. "But you saw those things. If you want to get close enough to find out, be my guest, but I'll be observing it through a freaking telescope."

"No, thank you," Butters said. "But how do we stop them?"

I sighed. "They're tough, but they're still flesh and bone. Massive trauma will do it sooner or later."

"How massive?"

I shrugged. "Run them over with a truck. Chop them to bits with an ax. Burn them to ashes. A gun or a baseball bat won't do it."

"This may come as a shock to you, Harry, but I don't have an ax with me. Is there something else? Maybe something that isn't so Bunyan-esque?"

"Plenty," I said. "If you can cut off the flow of energy into them, they'll drop."

"How do you do that?"

"You'd have to ground them out. Running water is the best way, but there needs to be a lot of it. A small stream, at least. I could also probably trap one in a magic circle and cut off any energy from getting to it. Either way, they'd just fall over, plop."

"Magic circles," Butters shook his head. "And nothing else?"

"Keep in mind that they aren't intelligent," I said. "Zombies follow orders, but they don't have much more intellect than your average animal. You have to outthink them-or the necromancer who is giving them orders. You could also cut off the necromancer's control of them."

"How?"

"Kill their drum."

"Uh, what?"

I shook my head. "Sorry. A zombie… well, it isn't really a person with thoughts and feelings and such, but the corpse is used to being a person. To eating, breathing-and to a beating heart. That's how the necromancer controls them. He plays a beat or some kind of rhythmic music, and uses magic to substitute his beat for the zombie's heartbeat. He links himself to the beat, the beat to the zombie's heart, and when the necromancer gives a command, as far as the zombie is concerned it's coming from inside him and he wants to do it. That's how they can control them so completely."

"That book," Butters said. "Grevane kept drumming it against his leg. And then outside, that huge bass woofer in that Cadillac."

"Exactly. Make the beat stop or get the zombies out of earshot, and he loses control of them. But that's really dicey."

"Why?"

"Because it won't destroy the zombie. It just frees it from the necromancer's control. Anything could happen. It could just shut down, or it could start killing everyone it sees. Totally unpredictable. If I'd stopped him from drumming in the exam room, they might have killed us all. Or run off in different directions to hurt other people. We couldn't afford to take the chance."

Butters nodded, absorbing this for a minute. Then he piped up with, "Grevane said you weren't a Warden. What is a Warden?"

"Wardens are the White Council's version of cops," I said. "They enforce the Laws of Magic, bring criminals in for a trial, and then they chop off their heads. Sometimes they get enthusiastic and just skip to the chopping."

"Well. That doesn't sound so bad."

"In theory," I said. "But they're so paranoid that next to them, Joe McCarthy looks like a friendly puppy. They don't ask many questions, and they don't hesitate to make up their minds. If they think you've broken a law, you might as well have."

"That's not fair," Butters said.

"No. It isn't. I'm not real popular with the Wardens. I'm not sure they'd come out to help me if I asked them."

"What about other wizards on the Council?"

I sighed. "The White Council is already at the limits of its resources. Even if they weren't, the Council really, really likes to not get involved."

He frowned. "Could the cops stop Grevane?"

"No way," I said, "Not a chance in hell are any of them prepared to handle him. And if they tried, a whole lot of good people would die."

Butters sputtered. "They'll just sit there and let people like Phil get killed?" he demanded, his voice outraged. "If regular people can't do it, and the Council won't get involved, who the hell is going to stop him?"

"I am," I said.