Bob made a spluttering sound. "Harry, that's a dangerous proposition. No, scratch that, it's an insane insane proposition. Even assuming you have the will to trap something like the Erlking in a circle, and even if you keep him there all night, he is proposition. Even assuming you have the will to trap something like the Erlking in a circle, and even if you keep him there all night, he is not not going to let that kind of insult go. He'll come back the next night and kill you. If you're lucky." going to let that kind of insult go. He'll come back the next night and kill you. If you're lucky."
"I can worry about that after I've done it," I said.
"Wait," Butters said. "Wait, wait. I mean, will it really matter? These guys don't have the bad magic book, right? Without that book, all they can do is call up the spirits. They can't, you know, eat them. Right?"
"We can't assume that they don't have it," I said. "Grevane might have found it."
"But the other two couldn't, right?" Butters said.
"Even if they haven't, they'll still be there," I said. "They can't afford to assume that their rivals haven't gotten the book. So they're going to show up with everything they have to try to prevent one of the others from going through with the ritual."
"Why?" Butters asked.
"Because they hate each other," I said. "And if one of them goes all godly, he's going to enjoy crushing the others. It will probably be the first thing he does."
"Oh," Butters said.
"That's why I need you to do something for me, Thomas."
My brother nodded. "Name it."
I grabbed a blank piece of paper and a pencil and started writing. "This is a note. I want you to take it down to the address I'm writing down and get it to the Wardens."
"I'm not going anywhere close to the Wardens," Thomas said.
"You don't have to," I said. "They're at a hotel. You'll leave it at the desk and ask the clerk to take it to them. Then clear out fast."
"Are they going to trust a note?" Thomas asked, skeptical.
"I told them to expect a messenger if I couldn't get there myself. They know about the Erlking. That I'm trying to sidetrack him. They need to know where the heirs of Kemmler are going to be so that they can take them down."
"Five of them," Thomas said quietly. "They'll be outnumbered by one."
I grimaced. It would be worse than that. Ramirez had looked like he could handle himself, but the two rookies couldn't have stood up to any of the heirs or their companions, from what I'd seen. "Once I've secured the Erlking, I'll be along as quick as I can. Besides that, they're Wardens," I said. "They'll take down Kemmler's flunkies."
"Or die trying," Thomas said. He grimaced. "How should I get down there?"
I went to another kitchen drawer and rummaged in it until I found Murphy's spare keys. I tossed them to Thomas. "Here. Her motorcycle is in the shed."
"Right," he said, but his expression was wary. "She going to mind me stealing her bike?"
"It's in a good cause," I told him. "The streets are bad, and the Wardens need to get moving soonest. Go."
Thomas nodded, pocketed the keys, and shrugged into his leather jacket. "I'll get back here as soon as I'm done."
"Yeah," I said quietly. "Thomas. To the Wardens you're nothing but a White Court vampire. If they see you, they'll be out for blood."
"I understand," he said. His voice was a little bitter. "If I'm not back in time, Harry...good luck."
He offered his hand, and we traded grips, hard. My hand must have been cold with nerves, because his felt warm. Then he let go of my hand, nodded to Bob and Butters, and headed out into the rain. A minute later Murphy's Harley grumbled in the backyard, and then purred off into the rain and gloom.
I sat there in silence for a minute, then got up and went to the stove. I got the teapot out, filled it up, and put it on the gas burner to boil. It took me a minute to find Murphy's collection of teas, and it was gratuitously complex. I mean, come on, how many different types of tea do you really need? Maybe I'm prejudiced, because I take my tea with so much sugar that the actual flavor is sort of an aftertaste.
I found some in instant bags that smelled vaguely minty. "Tea?" I asked Butters.
"Sure," he said.
I got out two cups.
"What's next?" he asked.
"Hot tea," I said. "Staying warm. Then I go out in the rain and call up the Erlking. You're staying inside while I do."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because it's going to be dangerous."
"Well, yeah," he said. "But why inside the house? I mean, this supergoblin can just rip the walls apart, right?"
"Strong enough to do it, probably," I said. "But it can't. The house is protected by its threshold."
Butters looked at me blankly. "Which means what?"
I leaned a hip on the counter and explained. "A threshold is a kind of energy that surrounds a home. It's..." I frowned, thinking how to explain it. "It's sort of like the home has a positive charge to it. If outside magic wants to come in, it has to neutralize that charge first. Big, tough things from the Nevernever need a lot of power just to stay in our world. They don't usually have enough to take out a threshold and still have enough juice to be dangerous."
"It's like that vampire thing?" he asked. "They can't come in if you don't invite them?"
"Pretty much, yeah. If you invite something in, your threshold won't affect it. But other magical beings and energy have trouble with it. It's a solid defense."
"Didn't help your place much," Butters observed.
"My place is a rental apartment," I said. "And except for the past several months, it's been just me living there. Doesn't give it the same kind of energy as you'd find in a long-established home."
"Oh. Is that what they mean by 'safe as houses,' then?"
I smiled a little. "A house doesn't make a home. When the place has got history, family, emotions, worries, joys worked into the wood, that's when it gets a solid threshold. This house has been in the Murphy clan for better than a hundred years, and lived in for every one of them. It's solid. You'll be safe in here."
"But it's not going to get loose once you call it up," Butters said. "Right?"
"That's the plan. But even if it did, you you aren't the one who is going to piss it off. There won't be any reason for it to come after you." aren't the one who is going to piss it off. There won't be any reason for it to come after you."
"Oh, good," he said. He blinked at me and said apologetically, "Not that I want it to come after you, you, Harry." Harry."
"I don't blame you," I said.
Butters nodded. "Why zombies?" he asked.
"Huh?"
"Sorry. Changing topics. New question. Why do all these necromancer types use zombies?"
"Not all of them do," I pointed out. "Corpsetaker had called up a bunch of semicorporeal ghosts. Specters."
"But human," Butters said. "Zombies look human. Specters look human. Why not whistle up a pack of decayed rats? Or maybe semicorporeal mosquitos? Why use people?"
"Oh," I said. "It's got to do with a kind of metaphysical impression that any given creature leaves upon its death. Sort of like a footprint. Human beings leave larger footprints than most animals, which means that you can pour more energy into reanimating them."
"They make stronger goons," Butters clarified.
"Yes."
"How come Grevane had fresh corpses when he came to get me, but he attacked your house with old ones? I mean, I saw those things up close." He shivered. "Some of them must have dated back to the beginning of the twentieth century."
"Same reason they animate humans instead of animals," I said. "Older corpses leave a deeper metaphysical imprint. They're harder to call up, but once you get them here they're easier to control, stronger, more difficult to damage."
"Old corpses get you stronger undead flunkies," he said.
"Right," I said. I could see the wheels turning in Butters's head as he processed the information. He looked like he was busy lining up dozens more questions spawned by the answers to the first few, and I had a feeling he would pursue them with relentless curiosity.
"Okay. But what if-"
"Butters," I said as gently as I could. "Not now. All I want to do is have a quiet cup of tea." An inspiration hit me. "Ask Bob," I told him. "Bob knows a hell of a lot more than I do, anyway."
"Oh," Butters said. He looked from me to the skull. "Um. Yeah, I guess Thomas was talking to it."
"He!" Bob said indignantly. "I am very much a he! I'm not some kind of freaking animatronic Tinkertoy!"
"Right," Butters said. "Um. Sorry. Bob. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?"
"It's a waste of my vast intellect and talent," Bob sneered.
"Do it, Bob," I told him.
"Oh, man." The orange lights in the skull's eye sockets rolled. "Fine. I haven't got anything better to do than to teach kindergarten."
"Great!" Butters bubbled, and sat down at the table. He grabbed some more paper and a pencil. "Well, how about we start with..."
I fixed myself a cup of tea and one for Butters. I put the cup down near him, but he took little notice of it. He was deeply involved in a conversation with Bob.
I slipped out into the living room and put my aching leg up on the table, then settled back onto the couch with my tea. I sat in the gloom, sipping hot, sweet mint something-or-other and tried to order my thoughts. I was tired enough that it didn't take too long.
I was about to call up a peer of Queen Mab and try to trap it for an entire night. A garden spider had about as much chance of trapping a Bengal tiger. Except that the Bengal tiger probably wouldn't bother to squash the spider for daring to make the attempt. The Erlking would.
That made the whole notion more stupid than most of my plans, but I didn't have too much choice in the matter. The presence of the Erlking in the area would drastically increase the number and the potency of the undead that the Kemmlerites were planning to summon tonight. If I could block the Erlking's presence from Chicago, it would take a big chunk out of the powers the necromancers would summon. Grevane and company were formidable enough without calling up an army of superzombies and uber-ghosts. If I could stop that from happening, it might give Luccio and her Wardens a real chance to defeat them.
If I wasn't fast enough to call the Erlking before one of the Kemmlerites, or if he escaped my hold and ran loose through Chicago, people would die. The Erlking would summon the Wild Hunt into a lightless Chicago Halloween night, and anyone they caught in the open would be torn to shreds.
Lightning flickered outside, somehow too dark and dull to be natural. A beat later, thunder ripped through the evening air, shaking the little house. The wind started to pick up, and the steady beat of rain on the windows surged and retreated with its restless gusting.
I didn't feel like a wizard. I didn't feel like a deadly and powerful Warden. I didn't feel like the supernatural champion of Chicago, or a fearless foe of evil, a daring summoner able to cast his defiance into the teeth of a supernatural titan, or an enlightened sage of the mystic arts. I felt like a scarred, battered, aching, one-handed man with few pleasant prospects for the future and a ridiculous pair of pants with one leg slashed off.
Mouse padded over to me through the dimness. He chuffed softly at me, and then laid his head down on my leg. My eyes were closed, but I could hear his tail thumping softly against the couch. I rested my bad hand on Mouse's head and petted him awkwardly. Mouse didn't mind. He just leaned against me, loaning me the warmth of his fur and the silent faithfulness of his presence.
It made me feel better. Mouse might not have been the smartest creature on earth, but he was steady, kind, loyal, and was possessed of the uncanny wisdom of beasts for knowing whom to trust. I might not have been a superhero, but Mouse thought that I was pretty darned cool. That meant something. It would have to be enough.
I set my teacup down, took my foot off Murphy's coffee table, and rose. I picked up my staff without looking at it, took a deep breath, and clenched my jaw.
Then I marched into the kitchen in a lopsided stalk. "Butters," I said. "Stay here with Bob and Mouse. Watch my back. If you see anyone trying to sneak up on me, give a yell."
"Right," he said. "Will do."
I nodded to him and went out into the rain to test my will against the legendary lord of the Wild Hunt.
Chapter Thirty-three
The rain had plastered my hair to my head by the time I got all the material for the summoning out of the Beetle's trunk. I stuffed it all into a gym bag and then walked out to the middle of the backyard. It wasn't quite too dark to see-not yet. But I didn't want to make any mistakes, so I used the last of the chemical light sticks Kincaid had given me before our raid on Mavra's scourge the year before. I snapped it and shook it up, and green-yellow light spread out in a little pool around me. The rain limited how much it could spread, and it created the illusion that the entire world had shrunk to a ten-foot circle rain and grass and green-golden light.
I started with the circle where I intended to trap the Erlking. The coil of barbed wire still gleamed with its factory finish. I uncoiled enough of it to give me several small holes in my fingers and to join into a circle about seven feet across. Though it wasn't cold iron in the technical sense, it was very much what the faeries meant when they said "cold iron"-the wire had plenty of iron in it, and cold iron was the bane of the faerie world.
I laid the barbed wire out, straightening it slightly as I went, and tacked it down into the damp earth with horseshoe-shaped metal staples as long as my little finger. I double-checked every staple, and then clipped the barbed wire from the larger roll and used a pair of pliers to twist the loose ends together. After that, I marked out the points of an invisible five-pointed star within the circle, and placed several articles with an affinity for the Erlking; a heavy collar one might place on a hunting hound, a whetstone, a small bowie knife, flint and steel, and several steel arrowheads.
Then I placed my own affinity items opposite those of the Erlking's, outside the circle; a used copy of The Hobbit, The Hobbit, the splintered end of my last blasting rod, my .44, a parking ticket I hadn't paid yet, and finally my mother's silver pentacle amulet. I stepped back and went over the circle again, making sure that it was fixed solidly and that nothing had fallen across it. the splintered end of my last blasting rod, my .44, a parking ticket I hadn't paid yet, and finally my mother's silver pentacle amulet. I stepped back and went over the circle again, making sure that it was fixed solidly and that nothing had fallen across it.
In the back of my mind somewhere, I was aware of the approach of sunset. I don't know how I knew it, really. It was already darker than most nights, and I certainly couldn't judge when the sun would be down with all those rain clouds in the way-but that didn't seem to matter. I could feel the sunlight still gliding down to be trapped in the overcast, could feel its presence and warmth with some part of my mind that wasn't entirely beholden to mere physics. I could feel it fading, and felt the concurrent stirring of the magical forces of night as it did.
The energy of night was far different than that of the daylight-not inherently evil, but wilder, more dangerous, more unpredictable. Night was a time of endings, and this night, Samhain, All Hallow's Eve, was particularly so. On this night, the forces of the spirit world, the wild things that haunted the Nevernever, drawn to death and decay, would flit freely back and forth. Spirits would turn restless in their graves and wander the world, mostly unseen by mortal eyes. The wild beasts could feel the night coming, and their metropolitan cousins could sense the knife-edge of danger and energy in the air. Dogs began to howl in the neighborhood around me, first one, then two, then dozens, and their long, low, mournful howls rose up in a haunting tide.
Dark was only moments away, and I stripped the black leather glove from my bad hand and knelt by the barbed-wire circle. Then I leaned down and pressed my left palm, all scarred but for the shape of Lasciel's sigil like a living brand on my skin, against the nearest tine of barbed wire, pressing my flesh down with careful deliberation. I didn't feel the wire cut me, but there was a trickle of warmth over a portion of the sigil, and my blood-black in the greenish chemical light-slipped down over the barbed wire, mixing with my will to send energy coursing into the cold-iron prison I had built.
The prison was built and the trap was set. I wished that there had been more time to assemble the articles I'd needed. If there had been months to prepare, I could have worked with Bob to figure out the best way to do the job. The materials might have been rare and expensive and difficult to attain, but it was within the realm of possibility to build a circle from which even a being like the Erlking could not lightly escape.
But there hadn't been time, and if my quickie-mart Alcatraz was going to do the job, it would need all of my focus and determination.
So I shut my doubts into a closet in the back of my mind, along with my fears. I knelt in my coat in the rain, staff still in my right hand, and took slow, deep breaths. I envisioned myself drawing in power with each breath, and exhaling weakness and distraction. I felt the magic stirring around me and within me as I did, and I started building up my will, gathering my strength for use, until the wet grass seemed to sparkle with too many points of green-gold light and the hairs on my neck rose up on end.
I took in a final deep breath, and on the exhale night fell.
I opened my mouth and began to call out in the steady cadence of the summoning. My voice rang hollow in the wind and rain, muffled but strong, and I poured some of my will into the words, until the power in them began to make the air ripple around them as they flowed from my lips. There, in the darkness, I reached into the spirit world to call up one of the deadliest beings of Faerie.
And the Erlking answered.