Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

"I flunked the written."

His nostrils flared. "Not one of the Council's guard dogs. You are, in fact, more of my own persuasion."

"I really doubt that," I said.

Grevane had narrow, yellow teeth and a crocodile's smile. "Don't play games. I can smell the true magic on you."

The last person to talk about "true magic" had been necro-Bob. I had to fight off a shiver. "Uh. I guess that's the last time I buy generic deodorant."

"Perhaps we can make an arrangement," Grevane said. "This need not end in bloodshed-particularly not now, so close to the end of the race. Join me against the others. A living lieutenant is far more useful to me than a dead fool."

"Tempting," I told him in the voice I usually reserved for backed-up toilets. Butters got to me, and I bumped him toward the door with my hip. He took the hint instantly, and I sidestepped to the door of the room with him. I kept my eyes and my gun on Grevane, my readied bracelet drizzling heatless sparks to the floor. "But I don't think I like your management technique. Butters, check the hall."

Butters bobbed his head out and looked nervously around. "I don't see anyone."

"Can you lock that door?"

Keys rattled. "Yes," he said.

"Get ready to do it," I said. I stepped out in the hall, slammed the door shut, and snapped, "Lock it. Hurry."

Butters fumbled with a key. He jammed one in the door and turned it. Heavy security bolts slid to with a comfortably weighty snap an instant before something heavy and solid hit the door hard enough for me to feel the floor rattle through my boots. A second later the door jumped again, and a fist-sized dent mushroomed half an inch out of its center.

"Oh, God," Butters babbled. "Oh, God, that was Phil. What is that? What is happening?"

"Right there with you, man," I said. I grabbed him and started walking down the hall as quickly as I could drag the little guy. "Who else has keys to the door?"

"What?" Butters blinked for a second. "Uh. Uh. The other doctors. Day security. And Phil."

The door rattled again, dented again, and then went silent.

"Grevane's figured that out too," I said. "Come on, before he finds the right key. Do you have your car keys with you?"

"Yes, yes, wait, oh, yes, right here," Butters said. His teeth were chattering together so loudly that he could barely speak clearly, and he stumbled every couple of steps. "God. Oh, God, it's real."

In the halls behind us, metal clicked and scraped on metal. Someone was trying keys in a lock. "Butters," I said. I grabbed his shoulders and had to resist the urge to slap him in the face, like in the movies. "Do what I tell you. Stop thinking. Think later. Move now or there won't be a later."

He stared at me, and for a second I thought he was going to throw up. Then he swallowed, nodded once, and said, "Okay."

"Good. We run to your car. Come on."

Butters nodded and took off for the front of the building at a dead sprint. He accelerated a lot faster than I did, but I have long legs and I caught up pretty quickly. Butters stopped to hit the buzzer at the guard station, and I held the door open wide enough to let him out first. He turned right and ran for the parking lot, and I was only a couple of feet behind him.

We rounded the corner of the building, and Butters dashed toward a pint-sized pickup truck parked in the nearest space. I followed him, and after the silence of the morgue, the night sounds of the city were a blaring music. Traffic hissed by in an automotive river on the highway. Sirens sounded in the distance, ambulance rather than patrol car. Somewhere within a two-hundred-mile radius, one of those enormous, thumping bass stereos pounded out a steady beat almost too low to hear.

The light in the parking lot was out, making everything dark and hazy, but the scent of gasoline came sharp to my nose, and I seized Butters's collar and pulled. The little guy choked and all but fell down, but stopped.

"Don't," I said, and slipped my fingers under the pygmy truck's hood. It flipped up, already open.

The engine had been torn apart. A snapped drive belt hung out like the tongue of a dead steer. Wires were strewn everywhere, and finger-sized holes had been driven into plastic fluid tanks. Coolant and windshield cleaner still dribbled to the parking lot's concrete, and from the smell of it they were mixing with whatever gasoline had been in the tank.

Butters stared at it with wide eyes, panting. "My truck. They killed my truck."

"Looks like," I said, sweeping my gaze around.

"Why did they kill my truck?"

That heavy bass stereo kept rumbling through the October night. I paused for a second, focusing on the sound. It was changing, getting a little bit higher pitched with each beat. I recognized what that meant, and panic slammed through my head for a second.

Doppler effect. The source of the rumbling bass was coming toward us.

In the darkness of the industrial park's lanes a pair of headlights flashed on, revealing a car accelerating toward the Forensic Institute. The lights were spaced widely apart-an older car, and judging by the sound of the engine some kind of gas-guzzling dinosaur like a Caddy or a big Olds.

"Come on," I snapped to Butters, and started running to the lot next door, back to the Blue Beetle. We'd already been spotted, obviously, so I fired up my shield bracelet again, so that my hand looked like it had been replaced with a small comet. Butters followed, and I had to give the little guy credit-he was a good runner.

"There!" I shouted. "Get to my car!"

"I see it!"

Behind us the rumbling Cadillac swerved into the Institute's parking lot and lurched over a concrete-encased grassy median, sparks flying from its undercarriage. The car roared up onto the grass and skidded to a broadside stop. The door flew open and a man got out.

I got a half-decent glance at him in the backwash of the Caddy's headlights. Medium height at most, long, thinning hair, and pale, loose skin with a lot of liver spots. He moved stiffly, like someone with arthritis, but he hauled a long shotgun out of the car with him and raised it to his shoulder with careful deliberation.

I juked to one side so that I was directly between the driver and Butters, twisted at the hips, extended my arm behind me, and raised my shield. It flickered to life in a ghostly half dome just a second before one barrel of the shotgun bloomed with light and thunder. The shield flashed and sent off a cloud of sparks the size of a small house. I felt it falter through the damaged bracelet on my wrist, but it solidified again in time to catch the second blast from the gun's other barrel. The old man with the shotgun howled in wordless outrage, broke the barrel, and started loading in fresh shells.