Grey Cloak watched him until he'd vanished into the night. Then he got out of the car. Insubstantial, I willed myself forward into the vehicle and looked. The steering column had been cracked open, the vehicle hot-wired.
I was torn for a second, which of the two to follow. The passenger was trying to get information out of someone. That could mean that he had a prisoner somewhere he was interrogating. On the other hand, it could just as likely mean that no matter how many drinks he poured, he couldn't get an informant to open up on a given topic. I also knew that he had confronted me before at some point-which was a great deal more than I knew about Grey Cloak.
He was something very different. He had tried to kill me a couple of times already, and was apparently responsible for at least some of the recent deaths. He was smart, and was connected to some kind of shady group called "the Circle." Could this be the reality of my heretofore theoretical Black Council?
He was walking away from the car now, my spell's anchor, and growing rapidly hazier as he walked away. If I didn't pursue him closely, he'd vanish into the vastness of the city.
Whoever the passenger had been, I had apparently sent him running once already. If I'd done it once, I could do it again.
Grey Cloak, then.
I pressed in close to Grey Cloak, focusing to keep the spell clearly fixed, and followed him. He walked several blocks, turned down a sharp alley, and then descended a flight of stairs that ended at a boarded-over doorway to what must have originally been a basement apartment like my own. He glanced around, tugged down a chain that looked like it had rusted flat to the wall beside the door, and opened it, disappearing within.
Crap. If this place had a threshold on it, I'd never be able to follow him inside. I'd just bang my metaphysical head against the doorway like a bird hitting a windshield. Never mind that if it had the proper kinds of wards, they could conceivably disintegrate my spiritual self, or at least inflict some fairly horrible psychic damage. I could wind up on the floor of my lab, drooling, transformed from professional wizard into unemployed vegetable.
Screw it. You don't do a job like mine by running away at any hint of danger.
I steeled myself and willed myself forward, following Grey Cloak.
Chapter Fifteen
No threshold, which was good. No wards, which was even better. Grey Cloak hadn't entered a living area-he'd entered Undertown.
Chicago is an old city-at least by American standards. It has been standing, in one form or another, since the French and Indian War, before the United States even existed. Being as Chicago is basically one giant swamp, from a strictly geographic point of view, buildings tended to slowly settle into the earth over years and years. The old wooden streets did the same, and new streets had to be built atop them in successive layers.
Wherever the ground isn't slow-motion mud, there's solid rock. Tunnels and cave systems riddle the area. The Manhattan Project had been housed briefly in such tunnels, before it got relocated to the middle of nowhere. Someone in the government had shown unaccountably good judgment in considering the notion that developing a freaking nuclear weapon smack in the middle of America's second-largest city qualified as a Bad Idea.
All of that had left behind an enormous labyrinth of passages, caves, half-collapsed old buildings, and crumbling tunnels seemingly ready to come thundering down at any moment. It was dark, human beings rarely went there, and as a result, Undertown had become a home, shelter, and hiding place to all kinds of nasty things-things no mortal, not even a wizard, had ever seen. Some of those things, in turn, had expanded some of the tunnels and caves, establishing jealously protected territories that never saw the face of the sun, never heard the whisper of wind. It's dark, close, cold, and intensely creepy down there. The fact that it was inhabited by things that had no love for mankind and potential radioactivity to boot didn't do much to boost its tourism industry.
Grey Cloak paced swiftly through a crack in the back wall of the building and into Undertown's tunnels. He grew even more indistinct as he did. I had to stay closer to him, and it cost me an increasingly greater effort of will to do so. Little Chicago hadn't accurately modeled Undertown, partly because there were no maps to be had of the place, and because taking samples to incorporate into the model would have been an act just shy of active suicide. Mostly, though, it hadn't happened because I had never considered doing so.
Through the translucent veil of earth and stone and brick, I could still see the real me standing over the city. My hand was still held out, but my fingers were trembling, and sweat beaded my forehead. Odd that I couldn't feel the strain on my body from here. I hadn't anticipated that. It was entirely possible that I might have continued on without ever realizing what the effort was costing me. It could kill my physical body, leaving me...
I don't know what. It might kill me outright. It might kill my body while stranding my mind here. It might bind my awareness into place like some sort of pathetic ghost.
Get tough, Dresden. You didn't take up this career to run at the first hint of fatigue.
I kept going-but all the same, I looked up to check on myself as often as I could.
Grey Cloak was not long in reaching his goal. He found a narrow cleft in a rock wall, slipped inside it, and then pressed his hands and feet against either wall on the inside of the cleft and climbed up it with rapid precision. Eight or nine feet up, it opened into a room with three walls of brick and one of earth-a partially collapsed basement, I assumed. There were a few creature comforts in it-an inflatable mattress and sleeping bag, a lantern, a miniature barbecue next to a heavy paper bag of charcoal, and several cardboard boxes that contained supplies.
Grey Cloak slipped a heavy grate over the hole he'd just climbed up, and weighted it down with several stones the size of cinder blocks. Then he opened a box, unwrapped a pair of those meal-replacement bars that people use to punish themselves when they think they're overweight, ate them, and emptied a plastic bottle of water. Critical information, there. Glad I was risking my metaphysical neck to pick up vital clues like this.
I checked up over my shoulder. My face had gone white and ran with sweat.
I expected Grey Cloak to turn in, but instead he turned the lantern down low, opened a second box, withdrew a plaque the size of a dinner plate, and laid it down on the floor. It was a simple wooden base, inset with a ring of some reddish metal, probably copper.
Grey Cloak pressed a fingernail against one of his gums, and when he withdrew it his fingertip glistened with blood that looked far more solid and real than the person it had come from. He touched it to the circle and began a low chant I did not recognize.
A faint mist swirled up within the copper circle, and through the spell I could see the raw magic forming itself into a pattern, a vortex that vanished beneath the plaque.
A second later, the mist resolved itself into a figure, in miniature, a vaguely humanoid shape wearing a heavy cloak and cowl that hid any possible details of appearance.
Except that I'd seen him before-or at least someone who dressed exactly like him.
The last time I'd seen Cowl, he'd been caught in the unbelievably savage backlash of an enormous power-summoning spell called a Darkhallow. It would have been impossible for the man to have survived that spell. There was no way, no way in hell that he'd lived through it. This couldn't be the same person.
Could it?
Surely it had to be someone else. The Ringwraith look was hardly uncommon among those who fancied themselves dark wizards of one kind or another, after all. It could just as easily be someone else entirely, someone not at all connected to Cowl or my theoretical Black Council.
On the other hand, Cowl had been the person whose actions had tipped me off to the possibility of the Black Council to begin with. Could he have been a part of the Circle that Grey Cloak had mentioned? After all, I dropped a freaking car onto Cowl's head, and he'd hardly blinked at it. If he'd been that well protected, could he have survived the wild energies of the disintegrating Darkhallow?
Worse, what if he hadn't? What if he was one of a set of people just as crazy and dangerous as he had been?
I started feeling even more nervous.
"My lord," Grey Cloak said, bowing his head. He left it that way.
There was a long moment of silence before Cowl spoke. Then he said, "You have failed."
"I have not yet succeeded," Grey Cloak replied with polite disagreement. "The curtain has not fallen."
"And the fool with you?"
"Still ignorant, my lord. I can preserve or dispose of him as you see fit." Grey Cloak took a deep breath and said, "He has gotten the wizard involved. There is some sort of vendetta between them, it would seem."
The little mist figure made a hissing sound. "The fool fool. There is not enough profit in Dresden's death to jeopardize the operation."
"He did not consult me on the matter, my lord," Grey Cloak said with another bow of his head. "Had he done so, I would have dissuaded him."
"And what followed?"
"I attempted to remove him along with the last of the culling."
"Dresden interfered?"
"Yes."
Cowl hissed. "This changes matters. What precautions have you taken?"
"I was not followed in flesh, my lord; of that I am certain."
Cowl held up a miniature hand for silence, a gesture that looked, somehow, stiff and pained. Then his hood panned around the room.
The figure's gaze met mine, and hit me like a literal, physical blow, a swift jab in the chest.
"He is there!" Cowl snarled. The misty figure turned to face me and lifted both hands.
An odd, cold pressure hit me like a wave and pushed me back several feet before I could gather up my will and exert pressure in return, coming to a stop several feet away from Grey Cloak and Cowl.
Cowl's hands clenched into claws. "Insolent child. I will rip your mind asunder."
I snarled at him and planted my insubstantial feet. "Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!"
Cowl screamed at me. He spoke a word that resonated in my head and thundered through the hazy confines of Grey Cloak's hideaway. Though I had braced myself to gather my will and pit it against his, his next strike hammered into me like a freight train. I could no more have resisted it than I could have stopped an ocean tide, and I felt it throwing me back and away.
In that last second before I was banished, I reached out with all the strength I had left, focusing on Grey Cloak, pouring everything I had into the spell to grant me a clear view of his face. I got it, for the barest instant, the face of a man in his mid-thirties, tall and lean and wolfish.
And then there was a geyser of scarlet pain, as if someone had seized both halves of my skull and torn it into two pieces.
Darkness followed.
Chapter Sixteen
I woke up with someone shaking my shoulder and someone else holding the back of my head against a running band saw. woke up with someone shaking my shoulder and someone else holding the back of my head against a running band saw.
"Harry," Molly said. She was speaking through some kind of megaphone pressed directly against the side of my head, evidently while pounding my skull with the pointy end of a claw hammer. "Hey, boss, can you hear me?"
"Ow," I said.
"What happened?"
"Ow," I repeated, annoyed, as if it should have been explanation enough.
Molly let out an exasperated, worried sound. "Do I need to take you to the hospital?"
"No," I croaked. "Aspirin. Some water. And stop screaming."
"I'm barely whispering," she said, and got up. Her combat boots slammed down on the floor in great Godzilla-sized rolls of thunder as she went up the stair steps.
"Bob," I said, as soon as she was gone. "What happened?"
"I'm not sure," Bob said, keeping his voice down. "Either she's been working out, or else she's started using some kind of cosmetics on her arms. She still had some baby fat when she got the tattoos, and that's always bound to make any kind of changes more noticeable, and-"
"Not her," I growled, images of genuine mayhem floating through my agonized brain. "Me." "Me."
"Oh," Bob said. "Something hit the model, hard. There was an energy surge. Boom. The psychic backlash lit up your mental fusebox." Bob said. "Something hit the model, hard. There was an energy surge. Boom. The psychic backlash lit up your mental fusebox."
"How bad?"
"Hard to say. How many fingers am I holding up?"
I sighed. "How bad is Little Chicago, Bob?"
"Oh. You've got to be more specific with this stuff, Harry. Could be worse. A week to fix, at most."
I grunted. "Everything's too loud and bright." I tested my arms and legs. It hurt to move them, an odd and stretchy kind of pain, but they moved. "What happened, exactly?"
"You got lucky, is what. Something you met out there threw a big blast of psychic energy at you. But it had to come at you through your threshold and the model. The threshold weakened it, and Little Chicago shorted out when the blast hit, or..."
"Or what?" I asked.
"Or you wouldn't have that headache," Bob said. Then his eyelights winked out.
Molly's boots clumped back down the stairs. She set down on the table a couple of fresh candles she'd brought, took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and then very carefully used the same spell I did to light them.
The light speared into my brain and hurt. A lot. I flinched and threw my arm across my face.
"Sorry," she said. "I wasn't thinking. I couldn't even see you down here, and..."
"Next time just shove some pencils into my eyes," I muttered a minute later.
"Sorry, Harry," she said. "The aspirin?"
I held out a hand. She pressed a bottle of aspirin into it, and then pressed a cold glass into my other hand. I opened the aspirin with my teeth, dumped several into my mouth, and chugged them down with the water. Exhausted from this monumental effort, I lay on the floor and felt somewhat sorry for myself until, after several more mercilessly regular minutes, the painkiller started kicking in.
"Molly," I said. "Were we supposed to have a lesson today?"
"No," she said. "But Sergeant Murphy called our house, looking for you. She said you weren't answering the phone. I thought I should come over and check on you."
I grunted. "Good call. Any trouble getting through the wards?"
"No, not this time."
"Good." I opened my eyes slowly, until they started getting used to the glare of the candles. "Mouse. Mouse probably needs you to let him out."
I heard a thumping sound, and squinted up the stairs. Mouse was crouched at the top, somehow managing to look concerned.
"I'm fine, you big pansy," I said. "Go on."
Molly started up the staircase, and then froze, staring back down at Little Chicago.