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Chapter 24

"How does a police detective afford a place like this?" Molly asked

We were sitting in the Blue Beetle on a quiet residential street in Crestwood It was late afternoon, with a heavy overcast The houses on the street were large ones Rudolph&039;s place, whose address I&039;d gotten from Murphy, was the smallest house on the block - but it was on the block It backed right up to the Cook County Forest Preserve, too, and between the old forest and the ave the whole area a sheltered, pastoral quality

"He doesn&039;t," I said quietly

"You mean he&039;s dirty?" Molly asked

"Maybe," I said "Or e hiet real stupid when it co homes Pay an extra quarter of a ht neighborhood Buy houses they damned well know they can&039;t afford to make the payments on" I shook my head "They should make you take some kind of iota-of-common-sense quiz before you make an offer"

"Maybe it isn&039;t stupid," Molly said "Everybody wants ho Maybe the extrafor theri co pool or fro"

"Not everyone puts as low a value on the material as you do, boss," Molly said "For theher price tag is significant"

I grunted "It&039;s still stupid"

"From your perspective," Molly said "It&039;s really all about perspective, isn&039;t it"

"And from the perspective of those in need, that extra quarter of a e addition for his house looks like an awful lot of lifesaving food andhouse in the suburbs hadn&039;t blown it all to artificially inflate his sociogeographic penis"

"Heh," Molly said "And their house is much nicer than your house"

"And that," I said

Mouse grumbled quietly in his sleep from the backseat, and I turned to reach back and rub his ears until he settled down again

Molly sat quietly for almost a minute before she said, "What else do we do?"

"Other than sit tight and watch?" I asked "This is a stakeout, Molly It&039;s what you do on a stakeout"

"Stakeouts suck," Molly said, puffing out a breath that blew a few strands of hair out of her eyes "How co this part? How coic stuff?"

"Murphy is keeping track of Rudolph at work," I said "I&039; his hoical place to bushwhack hiic because?"

"What do you suggest we do?"

"Tracking spells for Rudolph and Maggie," she said proot any of Rudolph&039;s blood? Hair? Fingernail clippings?"

"No," she said

"So, no tracking spell for hiie?" she said "I know you don&039;t have any hair or anything fro ht? Couldn&039;t you use your blood for that?"

I keptsteady, and prevented the flash of frustration I felt froht after I got off the phone with Susan when this all started"

Molly frowned "Why didn&039;t it work?"

"I don&039;t know," I said "Maybe it&039;s because there&039;s so more than simple blood relation involved Maybe there has to be a bond, a sense of fa spell uses to a so spells - God knows, they would have been forced to co the war" I shook my head wearily "Ormore than a couple of hundred linearspells that worked over a couple of thousand miles, but not frorasshopper Of course I tried that I wouldn&039;t have spent half a day su my contacts if I hadn&039;t"

"Oh," Molly said She looked troubled "Yeah Sorry"

I sighed and tipped my head back and closed my eyes "No problem Sorry, kid I&039;m just tense"

"Just a little," she said "Uht? I "

"Yeah," I said "We want to be visible"

"Why?"

"I&039;onna close my eyes," I told her "Just for a bit Stay alert, okay?"

She gave me a look, but said, "Okay"

I closed ed me and said, "Wake up, Harry We have corey late afternoon had settled into theI looked up into the rearviewto a halt as it parked on the street behind us The running lights went off as the driver got out

"Took hih," I muttered

Molly frowned at me "What do you mean?"

"Asked him to meet me here Didn&039;t knohere to find hih the back , and even Mouse lifted his head to look around "Oh," Molly said, understanding, as Mouse&039;s tail thuot out of the car and walked to meet my half brother, the vampire

Thomas and I were a study in contrasts I was better than six and a half feet tall and built lean He was a hair under six feet, and looked like a fitness enerally cut very short on the sides and in back, a little longer on top It tended to stick up any which ithin a fewordered by a comb Thomas&039;s hair was black, naturally wavy, and fell to touch his shoulders I wore jeans, a T-shirt, andcustom-fitted pants made from white leather, a white silk shirt, and a coarser silk jacket, also in white, decorated with elaborate brocade He had the kind of face that belonged on billboards Mine belonged on wanted posters

We had the same contour of chin, and our eyes resembled each other&039;s unave them to us

Thoht there next to me in some of the worst places I&039;d ever walked He saved my life more than once I&039;d returned the favor But that had been when he decided to fight against his Hunger, the vampiric nature native to the va control of his darker urges, integrating with Chicago&039;s society, and generally trying to act like a hu We&039;d had to keep our kinship a secret The Council would have used hiet at the White Court if they knew Ditto for the vahbad happened to hiht have seen him for a total of two, even three minutes since he&039;d been knocked off the life- force-nibbling wagon and started taking big hearty bites again

Tho just yesterday, looked e consultant, stat, little brother"

I said, "Guess what You&039;re an uncle"

Thoh "What? No, hardly, unless one of Father&039;s by-blows actually survived Which essentially just doesn&039;t happen a in midsentence and his eyes widened

"Yeah," I said

"Oh," he said, still wide-eyed, apparently locked into motionlessness by surprise It was a little creepy Hus when they&039;re standing still Thoht blue eyes went still, like a statue "Oh"

I nodded "Say &039;oilcan&039; "

Thoet to be the Tin Woodsman"

"What?"

"Neverinto too hter Susan never told me Duchess Arianna of the Red Court took her"

"Um," said Thomas "If I&039;d known that, maybe I would have been here sooner"

"Couldn&039;t say anything on the phone The FBI and the cops are involved, having been made into roadblocks to slow me down" I tilted my head down the street "The cop who lives in that house at the end of the street has been coerced into helping whoever is trying to stopto nab either his handler or his cleaner and grab every bit of information I can"

Thomas looked at me and said, "I&039;m an uncle"

I ran the palm of my hand over ht this was going to be another chat, with you all worried that the evil White Court had been abusing me I need to take a moment"

"Make it a short moment," I said "We&039;re on the clock"

Thomas nodded several times and seemed to draw hi forWhat&039;s her naie"

My brother paused for a couple of heartbeats, and bowed his head briefly "That&039;s a good naht so"

"So you&039;re looking for Maggie," he said "And you need my help?"

"I don&039;t know the exact date, but I know she&039;s going to be brought to Chich¨¦n Itz¨¢ Probably tonight, toht at the latest"

"Why?" Tho to do withher in a bloodline curse," I said "When they sacrifice her, the curse kills her brothers and sisters, then her parents, then their brothers and sisters and so on"

"Wait Maggie has brothers and sisters? Since when have you ever gotten that busy?"

"No, dammit!" I half shouted in frustration "That&039;s just an illustration for how the bloodline curse works"

His eyebrows shot up "Oh, crap You&039;re saying that it&039;s going to kill me, too"

"Yes, that is exactly what I&039; You tool"

"Uain "Wait What about the other Raiths? Are they in any danger through me?"

I shook ht," heto be You want ie back, like we did with Molly?"

"Not unless there&039;s no other choice I don&039;t think ould survive a direct assault on the Red King and his retinue on their home turf"

"Well, maybe you and I couldn&039;t, naturally But with the Council behind y - "

"Way behind er "So far behind me you wouldn&039;t know they were there at all"

My brother&039;s deep blue eyes flashed with an angry fire "Those assholes"

"Seconded, reed

"So what do you think we should do?"

"I need information," I said "Get me whatever you can Any activity at Chich¨¦n Itz¨¢ or a nearby Red stronghold, sightings of a little girl surrounded by Reds, anything There&039;s got to be so, somewhere that will show us a chink in their ar her, we can hit the place If I can learn soic around the site, irl and go Otherwise"

"Yeah," Thomas said "Othere have to take them on at Chich¨¦n Itz¨¢ Which would suck"

"It&039;s a couple of miles beyond suck"

Tho Lara for help? She can command a lot of firepower from the other Houses of the White Court"

"Why would she helpon that"

I grunted "I&039;er"

"You aren&039;t sure they aren&039;t, either," Thomas said "And anyway, if you don&039;t know, Lara won&039;t"

"Don&039;t be too sure," I said "No If I go to her with this, she&039;ll assume it&039;s a ploy motivated by desperation"

Thomas folded his arle"

"Oh?"

Thoht them up to frame his own torso the way Vanna White presents the letters on Wheel of Fortune "Incontestably, I&039;er She&039;ll want to protect me"

I looked at hied "I play for the tea bad happen toto make a lot of people upset And not in the helpful, &039;I sure don&039;t want to mess with her&039; kind of way"

"For that to work as leverage, the stakes would have to be known to the rest of the Court," I said "They&039;d have to knohy you were in danger from a bloodline curse aimed at me Then they&039;d all know about our blood relation Not just Lara"

Thoed "Still It ht be worth the effort to approach her She&039;s a resourceful woman, my sister" His expression sifted when it co obstacles She could probably help you"

Norht This tiht

Lara probably knew the Red Court as well as anyone She&039;d been operating arree or another, for years She was the power behind the throne of the White Court, which prided itself on its skills of espionage, th If anyone was likely to know so about the Reds, it was Lara Raith

The clock just kept on ticking Maggie was running out of time She couldn&039;t afford for me to be squeamish

"I would prefer not to," I said quietly "I need you to find out whatever you can, man"

"What happens if I can&039;t find it?"

"If that happens" I shookto die And so is my brother I can&039;t live with that"

Thomas nodded "I&039;ll see what I can do"

"Don&039;t see it Do it"

It cah it was a subtle motion "Okay," he said "Let&039;s - "

His head whipped around toward Rudolph&039;s house

"What?" I asked

He held up a hand for silence, turning to focus intently "Breaking glass," he murmured "A lot of it"

"Harry!" Molly called

I turned to see the Beetle&039;s passenger door swing open Molly e on to Mouse&039;s collar with both hands The big dog was focused on Rudolph&039;s house as well, and his chest bubbled with the deep, tearing snarl I&039;d heard only a handful of times, and alhen supernatural predators were nearby

"Someone&039;s there for Rudolph," I said, and launched o!"

Chapter 25

I looked like a cool guy leading the charge for about a second and a half, and thentheir dust If I hadn&039;t been a regular runner, Molly would have done the saradually By the time I had covered half the distance, Thomas and Mouse had already bounded around to the back, one around either side of Rudolph&039;s house

"Get gone, grasshopper!" I called, and even as we ran forward Molly vanished behind her best veil It took us another quarter of a minute to cover the distance, and I went around the side of the house Thomas had taken I pounded around the back corner to see that a large glass sliding door leading from a wooden deck into the house had been shattered I could hear a big, thu away inside the house

I took the stairs up to the deck in a single julass, wood, drywall, and siding that ca toward me I had an instant to realize that the projectile that had just coe and black and swift ca the hole to five tiinal size

The whatever-it-was stood within a step or two, and I was already sprinting I kept doing it I slapped one hand down and vaulted the railing on the far side of the deck I barely jerkedwith one huge, blindingly fast talon That deep beat grew louder and faster as I landed, and I realized with a shock that I could hear the thing&039;s rising heart rate as clearly as if it had been pounding on a druht I could run fro that fast I had a step or two on the creature, but it reclaimed them within half a dozen strides and swiped at my head with terrible speed and power

I whirled desperately, drawingout a burst of fla the spin The fire haht as well have hit it with a rubber chicken

I thought I was done for - until Mouse eed from the house onto the back deck, bathed in a faint ni, thirty-yard leap that ended at the attacking creature&039;s enor into the thing&039;s hide, and his uishable neck

The creature arched up in pain, but it never made a sound It tripped over me, too distracted to actually attack, but the iony froh

Mouse rode the creature down into the dirt, tearing and worrying it, his claws digging furrows in the flesh of its back His snarls reverberated in the evening air, and each shake and twist of his body see bluedead to rights, but nobody seemed to have told the creature that It twisted lithely, bouncing up froround as if e dog in a single, coround like a two-hundred-pound sledgehah-pitched sound of pain fro rod again, filling it with , "Get off !"

White fire slammed out of the rod and drew a line on the creature fro it ablaze Once again, it convulsed in silent agony, and the booher It fell, unable to hold on to Mouse, and writhed upon the ground

I tried to get up, but e of weariness that overtookand helpless to , his tongue dangling loosely froroan and twisted aardly to see Thole His clothes had been ripped to shreds, there was a piece offrom his abdomen, just next to his belly button, and half his face was covered in a sheet of blood a little too pale to belong to a human

"Thomas!" I shouted Or tried to shout The acoustics were odd in this tunnel within which I was suddenly sprawled "Get up, ave me a blank, concussed stare

The creature&039;sto relax, its body shuddering, the druot a better look at it than I had before

It was huge, easily the size of a full-grown bull, and it carried a stench with it that was similar in potency Or maybe that was because I had just overcooked it Its body was odd, sees or four with equal efficiency Its flesh was a spongy blackness, much like the true skin of a Red va the features of a huuar, and maybe a crocodile or wild boar It was pitch-black everywhere, including its eyes, its tongue, and its mouth

And, despite the punishain

"Thomas!" I shouted Or wheezed

The creature shook its head and its dead-black eyes focused onbriefly to swatout of its path Mouse landed in a tu to find his balance but unable to do so

I lifted ain as it cah juice left inbut smoke faintly

And then a stone sailed in from nowhere and struck the creature on the snout

"Hey!" called Molly&039;s voice "Hey, Captain Asphalt! Hey, tar baby! Over here!"

The creature and I turned to see Molly standinganother rock, and it bounced off the creature&039;s broad chest Its heartbeat began to accelerate and grow louder again

"Let&039;s go, gorgeous!" Molly called "You and , rolled her hips, andherself on the ass "Co tensed and then rushed forward, covering the ground with astonishing speed

Molly vanished

The creature s, with its huge talons balled into furious fists, slaht inches into the earth