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  Her lips parted. “I see you, sirrah,” she whispered, her hiss carrying to the farthest heights of the chamber.

  A blur struck at her from the gloom. The cloaked bodyguard attacked. She parried, blades clanging together, and the bodyguard withdrew. A shred of dark fabric fluttered to the floor.

  Siroun laughed, an eerie sound that shot ice down Adam’s spine. “I’m coming, sirrah. Face me!”

  The blur landed on the floor at the far wall, solidifying into a cloaked man. Soundless like a phantom, he pulled off his cloak and dropped it onto the floor. Chiseled, each muscle cut to perfection, he stood nude, save for muay thai shorts. His bare feet gripped the floor, his toes bore curved yellow claws. Colored tattoos blossomed across his legs, stomach, and chest, muted against the faint green tint of his skin. A striking cobra on one arm, a crouching monkey king on the other, tortoise on the abdomen, elephant on the chest, iguana under the right collarbone, tiger under the left. Faint outlines of scales, tattooed or real, shielded his shaved skull. His eyes were yellow like amber, luminescent with cold intensity, reptilian in their lack of feeling.

  The bodyguard raised a knife with a yellow blade that looked as if it were carved from an old bone.

  Siroun looked at him. “You need to turn now.”

  He leaped across the room. They clashed and danced across the chamber, preternaturally fast, slashing, parrying, kicking, and finding purchase on the sheer walls.

  Pain clenched Adam’s thigh, ripping a deep, guttural moan from him. His body had finally overcome the poison. The cut was deep—the blade had grazed the bone.

  Adam began dragging himself toward the spell shielding Sobanto. Fifty feet. He pulled, gripping the slick floor with his fingers, ignoring the jolts of acute pain rocking his thigh.

  For the space of a breath, Siroun landed on the floor next to him, barely long enough for him to register a bloody gash across her forearm, and leaped away again, sailing across the chamber. He crawled by the drops of her blood, fixated on the blue beam of light.

  Only fifteen feet.

  Fourteen.

  He saw the tattooed bodyguard loom before him. The man’s skin burst, and a monstrosity exploded out, huge, scaled, armed with enormous crocodilian jaws and a massive reptilian tail.

  A werereptile. That was impossible. Reptiles were cold-blooded. No shapeshifter could overcome that.

  The werecrocodile laughed at him, the feral grin of a predator displaying nightmarish fangs. And then Siroun crashed into the bodyguard. The yellow knife struck twice, biting deep into her side. They broke free and halted six feet apart.

  The shapeshifter’s yellow eyes focused on crimson drenching Siroun’s side. “You’re finished,” he said, his voice a deep roar disfigured by his jaws.

  Siroun smiled. A pale red flush crept on her cheeks and spread, flooding her neck, diving under her clothes, reaching all the way to her fingertips. Heat bathed Adam. “Not yet,” she whispered, and charged, sweeping the bodyguard from the floor like a gale.

  Adam focused on the blue beam. His entire side was on fire, and he clenched his teeth, clutching on to consciousness. He could feel the soft welcoming darkness hovering on the edge of his senses, ready to swallow him whole.

  His fingers touched the stone. A burning pain laced his skin, as if he’d stuck his hand into boiling water. Adam clenched the stone.

  The room swayed. He was losing it.

  He snarled and fed his magic into his hand. Ice sleeked his skin, welcoming, soothing. Adam strained, using every bit of his strength, and yanked the stone free.

  The ward blinked and vanished.

  A hoarse scream ripped through the chamber. Across the floor, a body fell from the ceiling, but Siroun was faster still, and she landed a fraction of a heartbeat before it hit the ground, in time to catch the falling man. The body in her arms boiled and collapsed back into its human form.

  Gingerly, she carried the prone form, as if he were a child, and lowered the bodyguard by Adam’s feet. The shapeshifter’s face lost its feral edge. His tattoos bled colored ink in dark rivulets, the images draining slowly from his skin.

  Siroun kissed her fingertips and touched the man’s forehead. Her eyes were luminescent and warm. Not a trace of bloodlust remained.

  “You fought well,” she whispered.

  In the chair, John Sobanto drew a long, shuddering breath. His eyelashes trembled. Sobanto’s eyes snapped open. “You turned off the field and broke the wards,” he said. “She is coming.”

  * * *

  The lawyer was looking at Adam. She looked, too. He was bleeding. His big hands trembled. Breaking the ward had taken too much magic. His body didn’t have enough strength to regenerate. She had to get him out of there.

  “Who’s coming?” Adam said. “Your wife?”

  “She isn’t my wife anymore,” Sobanto whispered.

  A sharp shriek rolled through the silence. Siroun felt the knot of foul magic at the far end of the house rip apart. A presence spilled out, the force of its fury lashing her like a splash of boiling lead. Siroun recoiled, snarling.

  The entity moved toward them, slicing through the walls and doors, churning with magic and malevolence so dark she had to fight to keep clear. There was nothing they could do to stop it.

  She spun to Adam. “We don’t have much time. Kill him now.”

  “We can’t. We don’t know if he is guilty.”

  They had to follow the protocol. The case was no longer cut-and-dried. She had to buy them time. Siroun swallowed. “Hurry, Adam.”

  He turned to Sobanto.

  She thrust her mind into the path of the entity and struck. Her blow did little damage, but it was too enraged to ignore her. Siroun fled, zigzagging back and forth, and the presence followed, chasing the shadow of her mind.

  “What did you see in the hallway?” Adam asked.

  Sobanto swallowed. “Our son. I saw her hang our son.”

  “Did you attack her?”

  “Yes. I grabbed her by her throat. I tried … I meant to pull her off him. I didn’t know. She died. I killed her. I found a note. It said she sacrificed herself and her body would now belong to a god. It said I would pay for everything.”

  The entity lashed at Siroun. She barely avoided it. “Why?” she snarled. “Why does she hate you?”

  “I don’t know. We had a good marriage, considering the circumstances.”

  “The circumstances?”

  “Hurry, Adam.” She forced the words out. “I cannot elude her much longer.”

  Sobanto hesitated.

  “We have little time,” Adam told him.

  The lawyer closed his eyes. “I bought her. From the Blessings of the Night coven.”

  The wraith bit into Siroun’s defenses. Sharp needles of pain stabbed her lungs; for a moment, she could not breathe. She ripped herself free.

  “You bought her?” Adam asked.

  “They needed a lawyer. They were facing criminal charges, and they had no money. I needed somebody to analyze the behavioral patterns of the jury and my opponents. We made a deal.”

  “Why did you marry her?”

  “I wanted my children to have what she had. I’m deficient. I don’t relate to people, not the way she could. And she was beautiful.”

  He had bought her, like a purebred dog.

  “She chose the juries for you,” Adam said. “She monitored them through the trial, and you claimed the credit.”

  “I didn’t abuse her!” Desperation rang in Sobanto’s voice. “I denied her nothing. Best clothes, best jewelry, the best of everything.”

  “Why didn’t she just leave?” Adam asked.

  “She was bound to me by the coven.”

  The entity clamped her. Pain ripped through Siroun. Emotions twisted her into a knot, echoes of a woman lost. At once she was lonely, longing, caught between the need to please and revulsion, bitter, empty, watching life passing by, unable to escape, growing tired, growing old, growing stupid, knowing she was not loved,
would never be loved, would never be free …

  She cried out and tore herself free again. She could barely stand. “He’s telling the truth,” she said.

  “Why does she hate him?”

  “Because he did not love her. He is a sociopath, Adam. He’s incapable of giving her what she wanted. She thought when their son was born, he would feel something, but he doesn’t. End it. We must kill him, or the thing that has her body will rip him to pieces. It’s almost here.”

  “Kill me,” Sobanto said suddenly. “I want to die. I just don’t want her to have me.”

  Adam raised his chin, his face, blanched of all blood, strangely proud, almost regal. “We have no claim on this man. He served as an instrument in his wife’s suicide. On behalf of the POM Insurance, I, Adjuster Adam Talbot, resign all rights to retribution, as specified by Part 23, paragraph 7 of the POM policy manual.”

  Sobanto’s face finally showed emotion: stark, all-consuming fear.

  The creature that used to be Linda Sobanto burst through the doorway, a boiling cloud of black, streaked with violent scarlet. The cloud churned, and a woman’s face congealed from its depth. She opened her mouth. Sobanto took a step back, his hands raised before him. The cloud lunged …

  And howled in fury.

  Siroun twisted her knife, turning it all the way around Sobanto’s neck. The resistance against her blade was so slight, she barely felt it.

  A thick stream of blood slid across the blade to drip on the floor. Sobanto opened his mouth. Blood gushed. Siroun withdrew the blade. He stayed upright for another moment and crumpled to the floor.

  The entity screamed. The crimson within her flared and streaked apart, ripping the darkness into pieces. The darkness folded on itself, sucked into a tiny point, and vanished. Quiet reigned.

  Adam crashed to the floor.

  She crouched by him and brushed the blue hair from his face.

  “We had no claim,” he murmured.

  “I know,” she said, and wiped a smudge of blood from his lips. “Rest now. Let your body heal. Once the wound closes, I will get you out of here.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “Linda made a bargain: her body for the life of her husband. The transfer would not be complete until the creature that took her form killed Sobanto. If it took his life, it would no longer be a cloud, Adam. It would be an old god made flesh. It wouldn’t harm me because of what I am. But it would kill you.”

  She leaned over him and kissed him gently on the forehead. “I couldn’t let it kill you.” After all, you’re all I have.

  * * *

  Author’s Bio:

  Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team of Andrew and Ilona Gordon. They reside in Oregon with their two children, three dogs, and a cat. They’ve coauthored two series, the bestselling urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and the romantic urban fantasy of The Edge. Enjoy reading more about them at www.ilona-andrews.com.

  BIGFOOT ON CAMPUS

  by JIM BUTCHER

  The campus police officer folded his hands and stared at me from across the table. “Coffee?”

  “What flavor is it?” I asked.

  He was in his forties, a big, solid man with bags under his calm, wary eyes, and his name tag read DEAN. “It’s coffee-flavored coffee.”

  “No mocha?”

  “Fuck mocha.”

  “Thank God,” I said. “Black.”

  Officer Dean gave me hot black coffee in a paper cup, and I sipped at it gratefully. I was almost done shivering. It just came in intermittent bursts now. The old wool blanket Dean had given me was more gesture than cure.

  “Am I under arrest?” I asked him.

  Officer Dean moved his shoulders in what could have been a shrug. “That’s what we’re going to talk about.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he said in a slow, rural drawl, “you could explain to me why I found you in the middle of an orgy.”

  “Well,” I said, “if you’re going to be in an orgy, the middle is the best spot, isn’t it.”

  He made a thoughtful sound. “Maybe you could explain why there was a car on the fourth floor of the dorm.”

  “Classic college prank,” I said.

  He grunted. “Usually when that happens, it hasn’t made big holes in the exterior wall.”

  “Someone was avoiding the cliché?” I asked.

  He looked at me for a moment, and said, “What about all the blood?”

  “There were no injuries, were there?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then who cares? Some film student probably watched Carrie too many times.”

  Officer Dean tapped his pencil’s eraser on the tabletop. It was the most agitated thing I’d seen him do. “Six separate calls in the past three hours with a Bigfoot sighting on campus. Bigfoot. What do you know about that?”

  “Well, kids these days, with their Internets and their video games and their iPods. Who knows what they thought they saw.”

  Officer Dean put down his pencil. He looked at me, and said, calmly, “My job is to protect a bunch of kids with access to every means of self-destruction known to man from not only the criminal element but themselves. I got chemistry students who can make their own meth, Ecstasy, and LSD. I got ROTC kids with access to automatic weapons and explosives. I got enough alcohol going through here on a weekly basis to float a battleship. I got a thriving trade in recreational drugs. I got lives to protect.”

  “Sounds tiring.”

  “About to get tired of you,” he said. “Start giving it to me straight.”

  “Or you’ll arrest me?” I asked.

  “No,” Dean said. “I bounce your face off my knuckles for a while. Then I ask again.”

  “Isn’t that unprofessional conduct?”

  “Fuck conduct,” Dean said. “I got kids to look after.”

  I sipped the coffee some more. Now that the shivers had begun to subside, I finally felt the knotted muscles in my belly begin to relax. I slowly settled back into my chair. Dean hadn’t blustered or tried to intimidate me in any way. He wasn’t trying to scare me into talking. He was just telling me how it was going to be. And he drank his coffee old-school.

  I kinda liked the guy.

  “You aren’t going to believe me,” I said.

  “I don’t much,” he said. “Try me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “My name is Harry Dresden. I’m a professional wizard.”

  Officer Dean pursed his lips. Then he leaned forward slightly and listened.

  * * *

  The client wanted me to meet him at a site in the Ouachita Mountains in eastern Oklahoma. Looking at them, you might not realize they were mountains, they’re so old. They’ve had millions of years of wear and tear on them, and they’ve been ground down to nubs. The site used to be on an Indian reservation, but they don’t call them reservations anymore. They’re Tribal Statistical Areas now.

  I showed my letter and my ID to a guy in a pickup, who just happened to pull up next to me for a friendly chat at a lonely stop sign on a winding back road. I don’t know what the tribe called his office, but I recognized a guardian when I saw one. He read the letter and waved me through in an even friendlier manner than he had used when he approached me. It’s nice to be welcomed somewhere, once in a while.

  I parked at the spot indicated on the map and hiked a good mile and a half into the hills, taking a heavy backpack with me. I found a pleasant spot to set up camp. The mid-October weather was crisp, but I had a good sleeping bag and would be comfortable as long as it didn’t start raining. I dug a fire pit and ringed it in stones, built a modest fire out of fallen limbs, and laid out my sleeping bag on a foam camp pad. By the time it got dark, I was well into preparing the dinner I’d brought with me. The scent of foil-wrapped potatoes baking in coals blended with that of the steaks I had spitted and roasting over the fire.

  Can I cook a camp meal or what?

  Bigfoot showed up half an hour af
ter sunset.

  One minute, I was alone. The next, he simply stepped out into view. He was huge. Not huge like a big person, but huge like a horse, with that same sense of raw animal power and mass. He was nine feet tall at least and probably tipped the scales at well over six hundred pounds. His powerful, wide-shouldered body was covered in long, dark brown hair. Even though he stood in plain sight in my firelight, I could barely see the buckskin bag he had slung over one shoulder and across his chest, the hair was so long.

  “Strength of a River in His Shoulders,” I said. “You’re welcome at my fire.”

  “Wizard Dresden,” River Shoulders rumbled. “It is good to see you.” He took a couple of long steps and hunkered down opposite the fire from me. “Man. That smells good.”

  “Darn right it does,” I said. I proceeded with the preparations in companionable silence while River Shoulders stared thoughtfully at the fire. I’d set up my camp this way for a reason—it made me the host and River Shoulders my guest. It meant I was obliged to provide food and drink, and he was obliged to behave with decorum. Guest-and-host relationships are damned near laws of physics in the supernatural world: They almost never get violated, and when they do, it’s a big deal. Both of us felt a lot more comfortable around one another this way.

  Okay. Maybe it did a wee bit more to make me feel comfortable than it did River Shoulders, but he was a repeat customer, I liked him, and I figured he probably didn’t get treated to a decent steak all that often.

  We ate the meal in an almost ritualistic silence, too, other than River making some appreciative noises as he chewed. I popped open a couple of bottles of McAnnally’s Pale, my favorite brew by a veritable genius of hops, back in Chicago. River liked it so much that he gave me an inquisitive glance when his bottle was empty. So I emptied mine and produced two more.

  After that, I filled a pipe with expensive tobacco, lit it, took a few puffs, and passed it to him. He nodded and took it. We smoked and finished our beers. By then, the fire had died down to glowing embers.

  “Thank you for coming,” River Shoulders rumbled. “Again, I come to seek your help on behalf of my son.”

  “Third time you’ve come to me,” I said.