Turn Coat

Chapter Thirty-six

Grimm’s fairy tales, a compilation of the most widely known scary stories of Western Europe, darn near always feature a forest as the setting. Monstrous and terrifying things live there. When the hero of a given story sets out, the forest is a place of danger, a stronghold of darkness—and there’s a good reason for it.

It can be freaking frightening to be walking a forest in the dark. And if that isn’t enough, it’s dangerous, to boot.

You can’t see much. There are sounds around you, from the sigh of wind in the trees to the rustle of brush caused by a moving animal. Invisible things touch you suddenly and without warning—tree branches, spiderwebs, leaves, brush. The ground shifts and changes constantly, forcing you to compensate with every step as the earth below you rises or dips suddenly. Stones trip up your feet. So do ground-hugging vines, thorns, branches, and roots. The dark conceals sinkholes, embankments, and the edges of rock shelves that might drop you six inches or six feet.

In stories, you read about characters running through a forest at night. It’s a load of crap. Oh, maybe it’s feasible in really ancient pine forests, where the ground is mostly clear, or in those vast oak forests where they love to shoot Robin Hood movies and adaptations of Shakespeare’s work. But if you get into the thick native brush in the U.S., you’re better off finding a big stick and breaking your own ankle than you are trying to sprint through it blind.

I made my way cautiously uphill, passing through the ramshackle, decaying old buildings of what had been a tiny town, just up the slope from the dock. The trees had reclaimed it long since, growing up through floors and out broken old windows.

There were deer on the island, though God knows how they got there. It’s big enough to support quite a few of the beautiful animals. I’d found signs of foxes, raccoons, skunks, and wildcats, plus the usual complement of rabbits, squirrels, and groundhogs. There were a few wild goats there as well, probably descendants of escapees from the former human residents of the island.

I began to sense the hostile presence of the island before I’d gone twenty steps. It began as a low, sourceless anxiety, one I barely noticed against the backdrop of all the perfectly rational anxiety I was carrying. But as I continued up the hill, it got worse, maturing into a fluttery panic that made my heart beat faster and dried out my mouth.

I steeled myself against the psychic pressure, and continued at the same steady pace. If I let it get to me, if I wound up panicking and bolted, I could end up a victim of the normal threats of a forest at night. In fact, that was probably what the island had in mind, so to speak.

I gritted my teeth and continued, while my eyes slowly adjusted to the night, revealing the shapes of trees and rocks and brush, and making it a little easier to move safely.

It was a short hike to the mountain’s summit. The final bit of hill was at an angle better than forty-five degrees, and the only way one could climb it safely was to use the old steps that had been carved into the rock face. They had felt weirdly familiar and comfortable the first time I went up them. That hadn’t changed noticeably in subsequent visits. Even now, I could go up them in the dark, my legs and feet automatically adjusting to the slightly irregular spacing of the steps, without needing to consult my eyes.

Once at the top of the stairs, I found myself on a bald crown of a hilltop. A tower stood there, an old lighthouse made of stone. Well, about three-quarters of it stood there, anyway. Some of it had collapsed, and the stones had been cannibalized and used to construct a small cottage at the foot of the tower.

The silent presence of the island was stronger here, a brooding and dangerous thing that did not care for visitors.

I looked around the moonlit hilltop, nodded once, marched over to the flat area in front of the cottage and planted my ritual box firmly on the ground.

What I was about to attempt had its beginnings in ancient shamanic practice. A given tribe’s shaman or wise one or spirit caller or whatever would set out into the wild near home and seek out a place of presence and power, such as this one. Depending on the culture involved, the practitioner would then invoke the spirit of the place and draw its full attention. The ritual that happened next wasn’t quite an introduction, or a challenge, or a staking of a claim on the land, or a battle of wills, but it incorporated elements of all of those things. If the ritual was successful, it would form a sort of partnership or peerage between the shaman and the genius loci in question.

If it wasn’t successful, well . . . It’s a bad thing to have the full attention of a dangerous spirit that can exert control over the environment around you.

This spirit, bolstered by the dark energy of the ley line that ran beneath the tower, was more than capable of driving me insane or recycling me into food for its animals and trees.

“And yet here I am about to pop you in the nose,” I muttered. “Am I daring or what?”

I set my staff down and opened the box.

First, the circle. Using a short whisk broom, I quickly cleared dirt and dust from the rock shelf beneath me in an area about three feet across. Then I used a wooden-armed chalk compass, like those used in geometry classrooms, to draw out a perfect circle on the stone in faintly luminescent, glow-in-the-dark chalk. The circle didn’t have to be perfectly round in order to work, but it was a little bit more efficient, and I wanted every advantage I could get.

Next, I got five white candles out of the box, and checked a magnetic compass so that I could align them properly. The compass needle spun wildly and aimlessly. The turbulence of the nearby ley line must have been throwing it off. I put the thing away and sighted on the North Star, setting the candles out at the five points of a pentagram, its tip aligned with due north.

After that, I got out an old and genuine KA-BAR U.S. Marine combat knife, along with a plain silver chalice and a silver former Salvation Army bell with a black wooden handle.

I double-checked each of the objects and the circle, then stepped a few feet away and undressed completely, losing my rings, bracelet, and all my other magical gear except for the silver pentacle amulet around my neck. I didn’t have to do the ritual sky clad, but it reduced the chances of any of the enchantments on my gear causing interference by a small if significant amount.

All the while, the pressure from the island’s awareness kept doubling and redoubling. My head started pounding, which was just lovely in combination with the fresh bumps on it. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Mosquitoes began to whine and buzz around me, and I shuddered to think of the places that were going to get bitten while I did this.

I went to the circle, checked everything again, got a box of matches out of the ritual box, and then knelt down in the circle. Yes, I could have lit them with a spell—but again, that would have left an energy signature on the candles that could potentially interfere. So I did it the old-fashioned way. As I struck the first match and leaned down to light the northernmost candle, a screech owl let out an absolutely alien-sounding cry from so nearby that I almost jumped out of my skin. I barely kept from losing my balance and smudging the circle.

“Cheap shot,” I muttered. Then I lit a fresh match and began again. I lit the five candles, then turned to face the north and reached out to gently touch the chalk circle. A mild effort of will closed it, and the psychic pressure I’d been feeling for the last half hour or more abruptly vanished.

I closed my eyes and began to regulate my breathing, relaxing my muscles group by group, focusing my thoughts on the task at hand. I felt my will begin to gather. Outside my circle, the owl shrieked again. A wildcat let out an earsplitting yowl. A pair of foxes set up a yipping, howling chorale in the brush.

I ignored them until I felt that I had gathered all the strength I could. Then I opened my eyes and picked up the bell. I rang it sharply once, and filled my voice with the power of my will. “I am not some clueless mortal you can frighten away,” I said to the hilltop. “I am magi, one of the Wise, and I am worthy of your respect.”

A wind came rushing up from the lake. The trees muttered and sighed with the force of it, a sound like angry surf, enormous and omnipresent.

I rang the bell again. “Hear me!” I called. “I am magi, one of the Wise, and I know your nature and your strength.”

The wind continued to rise around me, making the candles flicker. With an effort of will, I steadied their flames, and felt the temperature of my body drop a couple of degrees in reaction.

I set the bell down, took up the knife, and drew it along the knuckles of my left hand, opening a thin line in my flesh. Blood welled up immediately. I put the knife down, took up the chalice, and let my blood trickle into the cup.

And as it did, I used the one thing that made me think it was possible—just possible—to pull this thing off.

Soulfire.

During a case a little more than a year ago, an archangel had decided to invest in my future. Uriel had replaced the power I’d lost when I resisted the temptations offered me by one of the Fallen. The demon’s Hellfire had been literal hell on wheels for destructive purposes. Soulfire was apparently the angelic equivalent of the same force, the flip side of the coin—fires of creation rather than those of destruction. I hadn’t experimented with it much. Soulfire used my own life force as its source of energy. If I poured too much into any given working, it could kill me.

As the blood dripped down into the chalice, I reached out to the place in my mind where the archangel’s gift resided, and poured soulfire into my blood. Silver-white sparks began to stream from the cuts and accompanied the blood down into the chalice, filling it with supernatural power far in excess of what my blood, a common source of magical energy, contained on its own.

I lifted the chalice in my right hand and the silver bell in my left. Droplets of blood and flickering sparks of soulfire fell on the silver, and when it rang again, the sound was piercing, the tone so perfect and pure that it could have shattered glass.

“Hear me!” I called, and my soulfire-enhanced voice rang out in a similar fashion, sharp and precise, strong and resonant. Small stones fell from a broken section of the tower wall. “I am magi, one of the Wise! I make of my blood this gift to you, to honor your strength and to show my respect! Come forth!” I set the bell down and prepared to break the circle and release the spell. “Come forth!” I bellowed, even louder.

“COME FORTH!”

I simultaneously broke the circle, released my will, and poured out the scarlet and silver fire of my enhanced blood onto the stone of the hilltop.

Animals of the forest erupted into screams and howls. Birds exploded from their sleeping places to swarm in the skies above me. Half a dozen tree branches snapped all together in the rushing wind, the sounds crackling over the stony hilltop like rifle shots.

And, an instant later, a bolt of viridian lightning crashed down out of a completely clear sky and struck the ground in the center of the empty shell of the old lighthouse.

There was little enough in the lighthouse that could burn, but some brush and grasses grew there. Their light danced and flickered on the walls, if only for a few seconds—and then suddenly revealed an indistinct and solid shape inside.

I took a slow breath and rose to my feet, facing the lighthouse. It was a rare thing for such an entity to take material form, and I had thought it so unlikely to happen that I had scarcely bothered to plan for it.

The woods all around me rustled, and I darted my eyes left and right without moving.

Animals had appeared. Deer were the largest and most obvious, the stags’ horns wicked in the moonlight. Foxes and raccoons were there, too, as well as rabbits and squirrels and all manner of woodland creatures, predator and prey alike. They were all staring at me with obvious awareness that was far more than they should have had, and all of them were eerily still.

I did my best not to think about what it might be like to be overrun and chewed to death by hundreds of small wild animals. I turned my eyes back to the tower, and waited.

The dark shape, indistinct in the heavy shadows, moved and came closer, until it looked like . . . something that was not quite human. Its shoulders were too wide, its stance too crooked, and it walked with a slow, limping gait, drag-thump, drag-thump. It was covered with what appeared to be a voluminous dark cloak—oh, and it was eleven or twelve feet tall.

Yikes.

Green eyes the same color as the bolt of unnatural lightning burned inside the darkness of the cloak’s hood. They faced me and flashed brighter, once, and a gust of wind washed down onto me, almost taking me from my feet.

I gritted my teeth against it and endured, until a moment later it died away.

I looked at the dark shape for a moment, and then nodded. “Right,” I said. “I get you.” I reached for my will, infused it with a meager portion of soulfire, and hurled my right hand forward, calling, “Ventas servitas!”

Wind festooned with ribbons of silver light rushed from my outstretched hand, crashing into the figure. It didn’t move the thing—the entity was far too massive for that—but the wind cast the grey cloak back as sharply as a ship’s flag caught in a gale, making the fabric snap and pop.

My evocation died away, and the entity’s cloak settled down again. Once more, its eyes flashed, and the earth beneath my feet and slightly behind me erupted, solid rock splitting and cracking. Sharp shards flew up from the supernatural impact, and I instantly felt half a dozen hot, stinging cuts on my legs and back.

“Ow,” I muttered. “At least they weren’t in any tender spots, I guess.” Then again I summoned my will and soulfire, this time focusing on the earth near the entity.

“Geodas!” I shouted, and the earth beneath the entity twisted and screamed, suddenly opening into a sinkhole.

The entity never moved. It just stood there on empty air, as if I hadn’t literally pulled the ground out from under it.

The entity’s eyes kindled to life again, but this time I had anticipated it. Flame gathered before it in a lance and rushed toward me, leaving a coating of sudden frost and ice on the ground beneath it as it came. But my own will had reached down into the ground below me, and found the water from the stream that fed the cottage’s little well. I drew it up through the cracks the entity had created in the rock, taking advantage of the work it had done, with a shout of, “Aquilevitas!” A curtain of water rose up to meet the onrushing flame, and they consumed one another, leaving only darkness and a cloud of steam.

I lifted a hand and my soulfire-enhanced will and shouted, “Fuego!” A column of silver-and-blue flame as thick as my chest roared across the ground and struck the entity hard in the center of its mass.

It rocked back at the impact. Not much. Maybe half an inch, though that column of fire would have blown apart a brick wall. But Ihad moved it that half an inch. There was no doubt about that.

Weariness was slowly seeping into my limbs as the entity stared at me. I forced myself to stand straight and face the being without blinking—and without looking weak.

“You want to keep it up?” I asked it aloud. “I could do this all night.”

The entity stared at me. Then it walked closer.

Drag-thump. Drag-thump.

I was not at all scared. Even a little. The only reason my mouth was so dry was all that fire that had been flying around.

It stopped five feet away, towering over me.

And I realized that it was waiting.

It was waiting for me to act.

My heart pounded harder as I bowed my head respectfully. I don’t know why I said what I did, exactly. I just know that my instincts screamed at me that it was the right thing to say, my voice infused with my will.

“I am Harry Dresden, and I give thee a name, honored spirit. From this day on, be thou called Demonreach.”

Its eyes flashed, burning more brightly, sending out tendrils and streams of greenish fire in a nimbus around its head.

Then Demonreach mirrored my gesture, bowing its own head in reply. When it looked up, its head turned briefly toward the cottage. Then the wind rose again, and darkness fluttered over the hilltop.

When it passed, I was alone, the hilltop empty of entity and animal alike. I was also freezing.

I staggered toward my clothes and gathered them up, shaking so hard that I thought I might just collapse on the ground. As I rose with my gear in my arms, I saw a light flickering in the cottage.

I frowned and shambled over to it. The door, like the windows, had long since rotted away, and there was very little roof to speak of—but the cottage did have one thing in it that still functioned.

A fireplace.

A neat stack of fallen wood was burning in the fireplace, putting off a cheery warmth, its golden flames edged with flickers of green at their very edges.

I blinked at the fire for a moment, and then made my way over to it, reveling in the warmth as I dressed again. I glanced up, searching for that alien presence. I found it immediately, still there, still alien, still dangerous, though it no longer seemed determined to drive me away.

I slid will into my voice as I said, simply, “Thank you.”

The gentle wind that sighed through the trees of Demonreach may have been a reply.

Or maybe not.