Grave Peril

I lifted a hand to my aching throat and looked around me. The sounds of baying hounds and thundering hooves had gone. "See what?" I asked.

"Look." He pointed at the smoldering ghost-corpse.

I looked. In my struggles with Agatha’s ghost, I had torn aside the prim white shirt, and she must have ripped up the dress when she’d been crashing through sidewalks and strangling wizards and so on. I crawled a bit closer to the corpse. It was burning – not blazing, but steadily being eaten away by Amoracchius’s white fire, like newsprint slowly curling into flame. The fire didn’t hide what Michael was talking about, though.

Wire. Strands of barbed wire ran about the ghost’s flesh, beneath her torn clothing. The barbs had dug cruelly into her flesh every two inches or so, and her body was covered with small, agonizing wounds. I grimaced, picking away at the burning cloth in tentative jerks. The wire was a single strand that began at her throat and wrapped about her torso, beneath the arms, winding all the way down one leg to her ankle. At either end, the wire simply vanished into her flesh.

"Sun and stars," I breathed. "No wonder she went mad."

"The wire," Michael asked, crouching down next to me. "It was hurting the ghost?"

I nodded. "Looks like. Torturing it."

"Why didn’t we see this in the hospital?"

I shook my head. "Whatever this is … I’m not sure it would be visible in the real world. I don’t think we would have seen it if we hadn’t come here."

"God smiled on us," Michael said.

I eyed my own injuries, then glowered at the bruises already spreading over Michael’s arm and throat. "Yeah, whatever. Look, Michael – this kind of thing doesn’t just happen. Someone had to do it to this ghost."

"Which implies," Michael said, "that they had a reason to want this ghost to hurt those children." His face darkened into a scowl.

"Whether or not that was their goal, what it implies is that someone is behind all the recent activity – not some thing or condition. Someone is purposefully doing this to the ghosts in the area." I stood up and brushed myself off, as the corpse continued to burn, like the buildings around us. Fire raged up the sides of anything vertical, and began to chew its way across the streets and sidewalks as well. A haze of smoke filled the air, as the spirit’s demesne in the Nevernever crumbled along with its remains.

"Ow," I complained. I keep my complaints succinct. Michael took the handle of his sword and drew it out of the flames, shaking his head. "The city is burning."

"Thank you, Sir Obvious."

He smiled. "Can the flames hurt us?"

"Yes," I said, emphatic. "Time to go." Together, we headed back to the rift at a quick trot. At one point, Michael shouldered me out of the way of a tumbling chimney, and we had to skirt around the pile of shattered bricks and blazing timbers. "Wait," I said suddenly. "Wait. Do you hear that?"

Michael kept me hustling over the ground, toward the rift. "Hear what? I don’t hear anything."

"Yeah." I coughed. "No more hounds howling."

A very tall, slender, inhumanly beautiful woman stepped out of the smoke. Reddish hair curled down past her hips in a riotous cascade, complementing her flawless skin, high cheekbones, and lush, full, bloodred lips. Her face was ageless, and her golden eyes had vertical slits instead of pupils, like a cat. Her gown was a flowing affair of deep green.

"Hello, my son," Lea purred, evidently unaffected by the smoke and unconcerned about the fire. Three great shapes, like mastiffs built from shadows and soot, crouched about her feet, watching us with flat, black eyes. They stood between us and the rift that led back home.

I swallowed and forced down a sudden feeling of childlike panic that started gibbering down in my belly and threatened to come dancing up out of my throat. I stepped forward, between the faerie and Michael and said, in a rough voice, "Hello, Godmother."

Chapter Six

My godmother looked around at the inferno and smiled. "It reminds me of times gone by. Doesn’t it remind you, my sweet?" She idly reached down and stroked the head of one of the hounds at her side.

"However did you find me so quickly, Godmother?" I asked.

She gave the hellhound a benign smile. "Mmmm. I have my little secrets, sweet. I only wanted to greet my long-estranged godson."

"All right. Hi, good to see you, have to do it again sometime," I said. Smoke curled up into my mouth and I started coughing. "We’re kind of in a hurry here, so – "

Lea laughed, a sound like bells just a shade out of tune. "Always in such a rush, you mortals. But we haven’t seen each other in ages, Harry." She walked closer, her body moving with a lithe, sensuous grace that might have been mesmerizing in other circumstances. The hounds spread out silently behind her. "We should spend some time together."

Michael lifted his sword again, and said, calmly, "Madame, step from our path, if you please."

"It does not please me," she spat, sudden and vicious. Those rich lips peeled back from dainty, sharp canines, and at the same time the three shadowy hounds let out bubbling growls. Her golden eyes swept past Michael and back to me. "He is mine, sir Knight, by blood right, by Law, and by his own broken word. He has made a compact with me. You have no power over that."

"Harry?" Michael shot me a quick look. "Is what she says true?"

I licked my lips, and gripped my staff. "I was a lot younger, then. And a lot more stupid."

"Harry, if you have made a covenant with her of your own free will then she is right – there is little I can do to stop her."

Another building fell with a roar. The fires gathered around us, and it got hot. Really, really hot. The rift wavered, growing smaller. We didn’t have much time left.

"Come, Harry," Lea purred, her voice gone, pardon the pun, smoky again. "Let the good Knight of the White God pass on his way. And let me take you to waters that will soothe your hurts and balm your ills."

It sounded like a good idea. It sounded really good. Her own magic saw to that. I felt my feet moving toward her in a slow, leaden shuffling.

"Dresden," Michael said, sharply. "Good Lord, man! What are you doing?"

"Go home, Michael," I said. My voice came out thick, dull, as though I’d been drinking. I saw Lea’s mouth, her soft, lovely mouth, curl upward in a triumphant smirk. I didn’t try to fight the pull of the magic. I wouldn’t have been able to stop my legs in any case. Lea’d had my number for years, and as far as I could tell she always would. I hadn’t a prayer of taking control back for more than a few seconds. The air grew cooler as I got closer to her, and I could smell her – her body, her hair, like wildflowers and musky earth, intoxicating. "There isn’t much time before the rift closes. Go home."