Death Masks

Something was wrong.

Bob’s manifestation of a candle flame-colored cloud of swirling lights bobbed drunkenly left and right on its way back to the shelf with the skull. Purple globs of glowing plasm dribbled from the cloud in a steady trail, striking the floor, where they winked out into blobs of transparent goo. The cloud flowed into the skull, and after a moment, faint violet flames appeared in the skull’s empty eye sockets.

"Ow," Bob said, his voice tired.

"Hell’s bells," I muttered. "Bob, you all right?"

"No."

Bob? Monosyllabic? Crap. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No," Bob said, faintly. "Rest."

"But- "

"Report," Bob said. "Have to."

Right. He’d been sent out on a mission and he was feeling pressured to finish it. "What happened?"

"Wards," Bob said. "Marcone’s."

I felt my mouth fall open. "What?"

"Wards," Bob repeated.

I sat down on my stool. "How the hell did Marcone get wards?"

Bob’s tone became a shade contemptuous. "Magic?"

The insult relieved me a little. If he was able to be a wiseass he’d probably be okay. "Could you tell who did the wards?"

"No. Too good."

Damn. A spell had to get up pretty early in the morning to get around Bob. Maybe he’d been hurt worse than I thought. "What about Ortega?"

"Rothchild," Bob said. "Half a dozen vamps with him. Maybe a dozen mortals."

Bob’s eyelights flickered and guttered. I couldn’t risk losing Bob by pushing him too hard-and spirit or not, he wasn’t immortal. He wasn’t afraid of bullets or knives, but there were things that could kill him. "Good enough for now," I said. "Tell me the rest later. Get some sleep."

Bob’s eyelights flickered out without another word.

I frowned at the skull for a while and then shook my head. I collected my potion bottles, cleaned up the work area, and turned to leave and let Bob get some rest.

I was leaning over the wardflames to blow them out when the green candle hissed and shrank to a pinpoint of light. The yellow candle beside it flared up without warning, brighter than an incandescent lightbulb.

My heart started pounding and nervous fear danced over the back of my neck.

Something was approaching my apartment. That’s what it meant when the flame spread from the green to the yellow candle. Warning spells I had threaded out to a couple of blocks from my house had sensed the approach of supernatural hostility.

The yellow candle dimmed, and the red candle exploded into a flame the size of my head.

Stars and stones. The intruder that had triggered the warning system the wardflames were linked to was getting closer; and it was something big. Or else a lot of somethings. They were heading in fast to set off the red candle so quickly, only a few dozen yards from my house.

I dashed up the ladder from the lab and got ready to fight.

Chapter Ten

I got up the ladder in time to hear a car door shut outside my apartment. I’d lost my.357 during a battle between the Faerie Courts hosted on clouds over Lake Michigan the previous midsummer, so I’d moved my.44 from the office to home. It hung on a gun belt on a peg beside the door, just over a wire basket I’d attached to the wall. Holy water, a couple cloves of garlic, vials of salt, and iron filings filled the basket, intended to be door prizes for anything that showed up in an attempt to suck my blood, carry me off to faerieland, or sell me stale cookies.

The door itself was reinforced steel, and could stand up to punishment better than the wall around it. I’d had a demon come a-knocking before, and I didn’t want an encore performance. I couldn’t afford new furniture, even secondhand.

I belted on the gun, shook out my shield bracelet, and took up my staff and blasting rod. Anything that came through my door would have to contend with my threshold, the aura of protective energy around any home. Most supernatural things didn’t do so well with thresholds. After that, they’d have to force their way past my wards-barriers of geometrically aligned energy that would block out physical or magical intrusion, turning that energy back upon its source. A small, gentle push at my wards would result in a similar push against whatever was trying to get in. A swift or heavy push would result in more energy feeding back onto the attacker. Within the wards were sigils of fire and ice, which were designed to deliver bursts of destructive energy about as powerful as your average land mine.

It was a solid and layered defense. With luck, it should be enough to stop a considerable amount of threat from even reaching my door.

And since I’m such a lucky guy, I took a deep breath, pointed my blasting rod at the door, and waited.

It didn’t take long. I expected flashes of magical discharge, demon howls, maybe some kind of pyrotechnics as evil magic clashed against my own defensive spells. Instead I got seven polite knocks.

I peered at the door suspiciously and then asked, "Who’s there?"

A low, rough man’s voice growled, "The Archive."

What the hell. "The Archive who?"

Evidently the speaker didn’t have a sense of humor. "The Archive," the voice repeated firmly. "The Archive has been appointed emissary in this dispute, and is here to speak to Wizard Dresden about the duel."

I frowned at the door. I vaguely remembered mention of an Archive of some sort during the last White Council meeting I’d attended, as a neutral party. At the time, I’d assumed it had been some sort of arcane library. I’d had other things on my mind at the time, and I hadn’t been listening too closely. "How do I know who you are?"

There was a rasp of paper on stone, and an envelope slid under my door, one corner poking out. "Documentation, Wizard Dresden," the voice replied. "And a pledge to abide by the laws of hospitality during this visit."

Some of the tension left my shoulders, and I lowered the gun. That was one good thing about dealing with the supernatural community. If something gave you its word, you could trust it. Within reason.

Then again, maybe that was just me. Of all the things I’d encountered, I’d been more of a weasel about keeping my word than any of them. Maybe that’s why I was leery about trusting someone else.

I picked up the envelope and unfolded a sheet of plain paper certifying that its bearer had been approved by the White Council to act as emissary in the matter of the duel. I passed my hand over it and muttered a quick charm with the last password I’d gotten from the Wardens, and in response a brief glowing pentacle appeared centered on the paper like a bioluminescent watermark. It was legit.