Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files 8)

"Who do you think 'they' is?"

"Uhhhhhh." I rubbed at my face, hoping the stimulation might move some more blood around in my brain and knock loose some ideas. "Not sure. My head hurts. I'm missing some details somewhere. There should be enough for me to piece this together, but damned if I can see it." I shook my head and fell quiet.

"Where to?" Thomas asked.

"Hospital," I said. "We'll drop Rawlins off."

"Then what?"

"Then I pick up the trail of those phages, and see if I can find out who summoned them." I told him briefly about the events of the afternoon and evening. "If we're lucky, all we'll find is some maniac's corpse with a surprised look on his face."

"What if we aren't lucky?" he asked.

"Then it means the summoner is a hell of a lot better than I am, to fight off three of those things." I rubbed at one eye. "And we'll have to take him down before he hurts anyone else."

"The fun never ends," Thomas said. "Right. Hospital."

"Then circle the block around the hotel. The spell I diverted the phages with had the tracking element worked into it. Sunrise will unravel it, and we don't know how long it will take to follow the trail."

I directed Thomas to the nearest hospital, and he carried the unconscious Rawlins through the emergency room doors. He came back a minute later and told me, "They're on the job."

"Let's go, then. Otherwise someone will want to ask us questions about gunshot wounds."

Thomas was way ahead of me, and the van headed back to the hotel.

I got the spell ready. It wasn't a difficult working, under normal circumstances, but I felt as wrung out as a dirty dishrag. It took me three tries to get the spell up and running, but I managed it. Then I climbed into the passenger seat, where I could see evidence of the phages' passing as a trail of curling, pale green vapor in the air. I gave Thomas directions. We followed the trail, and it led us toward Wrigley.

Not a whole hell of a lot of industry was going on in my aching skull, but after a few minutes something began to gnaw at me. I looked blearily around, and found that the neighborhood looked familiar. We kept on the trail. The neighborhood got more familiar. The vapor grew brighter as we closed in.

We turned a last street corner.

My stomach twisted in a spasm of horrified nausea.

The green vapor trail led to a two-story white house. A charming place, somehow carrying off the look of suburbia despite being inside the third largest city in America. Green lawn, despite the heat. White picket fence. Children's toys in evidence.

The vapor led up to the picket fence, first. There were three separate large holes in the fence, where some enormous force had burst the fence to splinters. Heavy footprints gouged the lawn. An imitation old-style, wrought-iron gaslight had been bent to parallel with the ground about four feet up. The door had been torn from its hinges and flung into the yard. A minivan parked in the driveway had been crushed, as if by a dropped wrecking ball.

I couldn't be sure, but I thought I saw blood on the doorway.

The decorative mailbox three feet from me read, in cheerfully painted letters: THE CARPENTERS.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

I'd sent the phages after Molly.

Chapter Thirty

I got out of the van, too shocked to see anything but the destruction. It made no sense. It made no sense at all. How in the hell could this have happened? How could my spell have turned the phages and sent them here?

I stood on the sidewalk outside the house with my mouth hanging open. The streetlights were all out. Only the lights of the van showed the damage, and Thomas turned them off after only a moment. There was no disturbance on the street, no outcry, no police presence. Whatever had happened, something had taken steps to keep it from disturbing the neighbors.

I don't know how long I stood there. I felt Mouse's presence at my side. Then Thomas's, on the other side of me.

"Harry?" he said, as if he was repeating himself. "What is this place?"

"It's Michael's house," I whispered. "His family's home."

Thomas flinched. He looked back and forth and said, "Those things came here?"

I nodded. I felt unsteady.

I felt so damned tired.

Whatever happened here, it was over. There was nothing I could do at this point, except see who had been hurt. And I did not want to do that. So I stood there staring at the house until Thomas finally said, "I'll keep watch out here. Circle the house, see if there's anything to be seen."

"Okay," I whispered. I swallowed, and my stomach felt like I'd swallowed a pound of thumbtacks. I wanted nothing in the world so much as to run away.

But instead, I dragged my tired ass over the damaged lawn and through the house's broken doorway. Mouse, walking on three legs, followed me.

There were sprinkles of blood, already dried, on the inside of the doorway.

I went on inside the house, through the entry hall, into the living room. Furniture lay strewn all over the place, discarded and broken and tumbled. The television lay on its side, warbling static on its screen. A low sound, all white noise and faint interference, filled the room.

There was utter silence in the house, otherwise.

"Hello?" I called.

No one answered.

I went into the kitchen.

There were school papers on the fridge, most of them written in exaggerated, childish hands. There were crayon drawings up there, too. One, of a smiling stick figure in a dress, had a wavering line of letters underneath that read: I LOW OU MAMA.

Oh, God.

The thumbtacks in my belly became razor blades. If I'd hurt them... I didn't know what I would do.

"Harry!" Thomas called from outside. "Harry, come here!"

His voice was tense, excited. I went out the kitchen door to the backyard, and found Thomas climbing down from a tree house only a little nicer than my apartment, built up in the branches of the old oak tree behind the Carpenters' house. He had a still form draped over his shoulder.

I drew out my amulet and called wizard light as Thomas laid the oldest son, Daniel, out on the grass in the backyard. He was breathing, but looked pale. He was wearing flannel pajama pants and a white T-shirt soaked with blood. There was a cut on his arm; not too deep, but very messy. He had bruises on his face, on one arm, and the knuckles on both his hands were torn and ragged.

Michael's son had been throwing punches. It hadn't done him any good, but he'd fought.

"Coat," I said, terse. "He's cold."

Thomas immediately took off my duster and draped it over the boy. I propped his feet up on my backpack. "Stay here," I told him. I went in the house, fetched a glass of water, and brought it out. I knelt down and tried to wake the boy up, to get him to drink a little. He coughed a little, then drank, and blinked open his eyes. He couldn't focus them.