Side Jobs

made of bone, and it couldn’t maintain its grip on the girl without them.

It took a lot of stomping, but I was finally able to pull the girl free. I tried to get Ennui to her feet, but her weight came down on her broken ankle, and from there it came down on my wounded shoulder. I went down to one knee, and it was all I could do not to fall.

I almost didn’t notice when my brother flew through the air just over my head, smashed out what had to be the last remaining pane of glass at the mall entrance, and landed limply in the parking lot.

I felt Drulinda’s presence coming up behind me.

The vampire let out a dusty laugh. “I thought it was just some poor pretty boy to play with. Silly me.”

I fumbled with the canister for a second, and then whirled, flinging its contents at Drulinda in a slewing arc.

The vampire blurred to one side, dodging the garlic with ease. She looked battered and was covered with dust. Her undead flesh was approximately the consistency of wood, and so it wasn’t cut and damaged so much as chipped and crushed. Her clothes were torn and ruined—and none of that mattered. She was just as functional and just as deadly as she had been before the fight.

I dropped the canister and drew forth my pentacle amulet, lifting it as a talisman against her.

The old bit with the crucifix works on the Black Court—but it isn’t purely about Christianity. They are repelled not by the holy symbol itself, but by the faith of the one holding it up against them. I’d seen vampires repulsed by crosses, crucifixes, strips of paper written with holy symbols by a Shinto priest—once even a Star of David.

Me, I used the pentacle, because that was what I believed in. The five-pointed star, to me, represented the five elements of earth, air, water, fire, and spirit, bound within the solid circle of mortal will. I believed that magic was a force intended to be used to create, to protect, and to preserve. I believed that magic was a gift that had to be used responsibly and wisely—and that it especially had to be used against creatures like Drulinda, against literal, personified evil, to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. That was what I thought, and I’d spent my life acting in accordance with it.

I believed.

Pale blue light began to spill from the symbol—and Drulinda stopped with a hiss of sudden rage.

“You,” she said after a few seconds. “I have heard of you. The wizard. Dresden.”

I nodded slowly. Behind her, the fire from my earlier spell was spreading. The power was out, and I had no doubt that Drulinda and her former security-guard lackeys had disabled the alarms. It wouldn’t take long for a fire to go insane in this place, once it got its teeth sunk in. We needed to get out.

“Go,” I mumbled at Ennui.

She sobbed and started crawling for the exit, while I held Drulinda off with the amulet.

The vampire stared steadily at me for a second, her eyes all milky white, corpse cataracts glinting in the reflected light of the fire. Then she smiled and moved.

She was just too damn fast. I tried to turn to keep up with her, but by the time I did, Ennui screamed, and Drulinda had seized her hair and dragged her back, out of the immediate circle of light cast by the amulet.

She lifted the struggling girl with ease, so that I could see her mascara-streaked face. “Wizard,” Drulinda said. Ennui had been cut by flying glass or the fall at some point, and some blood had streaked out of her slicked- back hair, over her ear, and down one side of her throat. The vampire leaned in, extending a tongue like a strip of beef jerky, and licked blood from the girl’s skin. “You can hide behind your light. But you can’t save her.”

I ground my teeth and said nothing.

“But your death will profit me, grant me standing with others of my kind. The feared and vaunted Wizard Dresden.” She bared yellowed teeth in a smile. “So I offer you this bargain. Throw away the amulet. I will let the girl go. You have my word.” She leaned her teeth in close and brushed them over the girl’s neck. “Otherwise . . . Well, all of my new friends are gone. I’ll have to make more.”

That made me shudder. Dying was one thing. Dying and being made into one of those . . .

I lowered the amulet. I hesitated for a second, and then dropped it.

Drulinda let out a low, eager sound and tossed Ennui aside like an empty candy wrapper. Then she was on me, letting out rasping giggles, for God’s sake, pressing me down. “I can smell your fear, Wizard,” she rasped. “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

She leaned closer, slowly, as she bared her teeth, her face only inches from mine.

Which was where I wanted her to be.

I reared up my head and spat out a gooey mouthful of powdered garlic directly into those cataract eyes.

Drulinda let out a scream, bounding away in a violent rush, clawing at her eyes with her fingers—and getting them burned, too. She thrashed in wild agony, swinging randomly at anything she touched or bumped into, tearing great, gaping gashes in metal fences, smashing holes in concrete walls.

“Couple words of advice,” I growled, my mouth burning with the remains of the garlic I’d stuffed it with as she’d come sneaking up on me. “First, anytime I’m not shooting my mouth off to a clichéd, two-bit creature of the night like you, it’s because I’m up to something.”

Drulinda howled more and rushed toward me—tripping on some rubble and sprawling on the ground, only to rush about on all fours like some kind of ungainly, horrible insect.

I checked behind me. Ennui was already out, and Thomas was beginning to stir, maybe roused by the snow now falling on him. I turned back to the blinded, pain-maddened vampire. We were the only ones left in that wing of the mall.

“Second,” I spat, “never touch my brother on his fucking birthday.”

I reached for my will, lifted my hand, and snarled, “Fuego!”

Fire roared out to eagerly engulf the vampire.

What the hell. The building was burning down, anyway.

“FREAKING AMATEUR VILLAINS,” I muttered, glowering down at the splatters on my car.

Thomas leaned against it with one hand pressed to his head, a grimace of pain on his face. “You okay?”

I waved my left arm a little. “Feeling’s coming back. I’ll have Butters check me out later. Thanks for loaning Molly your car.”

“Least I could do. Let her drive Sarah and Ennui to the hospital.” He squinted at the rising smoke from the mall. “Think the whole thing will go?”

“Nah,” I said. “This wing, maybe. They’ll get here before too much more goes up. Keef and his folk should be all right.”

My brother grunted. “How are they going to explain this one?”

“Who knows,” I said. “Meteor, maybe. Smashed holes in the roof, crushed some poor security guard, set the place on fire.”

“My vote is for terrorists,” Thomas said. “Terrorists are real popular these days.” He shook his head. “But I meant the larpers, not the cops.”

“Oh,” I said. “Probably, they won’t talk to anyone about what they saw. Afraid people would think they were crazy.”

“And they would,” Thomas said.

“And they would,” I agreed. “Come tomorrow, it will seem very unreal. A few months from now, they’ll wonder if they didn’t imagine some of it or if there wasn’t some kind of gas leak or something that made them hallucinate. Give it a few more years, and they’ll remember that Drulinda and some rough-looking types showed up to give them a hard time. They drove a car through the front of the mall. Maybe they were crazy people dressed in costumes who had been to a few too many larps themselves.” I shook my head. “It’s human nature to try to understand and explain everything. The world is less scary that way. But I don’t think they’ll be in any danger, really. No more so than anyone else.”

“That’s good,” Thomas said quietly. “I guess.”

“It’s the way it is.” In the distance, sirens were starting up and coming closer. I grunted and said, “We’d better go.”

“Yeah.”