A Pretty Good Day
Title: A Pretty Good Day
Pairing: A bit of Harry/Murphy, to brighten everyone’s day.
TV or book: Book!
Rating: Nothing too bad…if you’ve read the books or seen the show, this should be fine for you.
Spoilers: Up to Small Favor
Recipient: Tigerkat24
Request: “Well, that was a brilliant idea.” Harry and Murphy between a rock and a hard place.
Word Count: 6,240
Summary: Harry lets his emotions get the better of him, resulting in yet another disaster for him and Murphy to escape.
Author’s notes: I’ve gotta say, I loved this prompt. It was really fun to write for. The Harry/Murphy friendship/relationship is half the reason that I read this series. This fanfic ended up being a lot longer than I predicted, and a bit more serious too. Still, I hope I got enough humor in there as well. Tell me what you think!
“
Well, that was a brilliant idea.”
“You know what, Murph? Now is really not the time.”
As you can tell, I was a little bit annoyed. I don’t respond well to criticism when I’m annoyed. Well, actually, I don’t respond well to criticism at all. But I respond even less well when I’m tied to a chair along with one of my best friends, and am facing imminent death.
“This is entirely your fault, Dresden….I mean, Christ, what did you think you were doing?”
“Look, I’m sorry that I care enough about you to rescue you. I’ll try to start disliking you more, if that would make you feel better.”
“Ha. You’re funny, Dresden.”
“See, you’re already helping me with the process!”
Perhaps I should explain how I got into this situation before I subject you to more of my bickering with Murphy.
As far as business days go, today had been pretty good. I mean, I’d received considerably less death threats than usual. No assassination attempts at all, which was a pleasant change of pace for me. To top it all off, I had actually had a paying job, from a normal customer, that I was able to resolve without resorting to crude violence. Well, not much, anyway.
Hey, I didn’t say it was a perfect day.
When I returned to my apartment, I was actually feeling pretty good about myself. Sure, Luccio and I had sort of broken up…but hey, that was a couple of weeks ago. I was over it. Besides, we weren’t really that great a couple….something about the fact that she was old enough to have dated my great grandfather struck me as mildly disconcerting at times. The real kicker, though, was the fact that Murphy and Kincaid were no longer seeing each other.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t happy to see a relationship fail for Murphy…but on the other hand, I can’t say I ever expected her relationship with Kincaid to end well. I wasn’t able to get the exact details of why they broke up, but I was able to learn that there had been some sort of argument. To be honest, Murphy seemed too angry the week afterward for me to risk asking her. I was also able to learn that they had parted on civil terms; that Kincaid hadn’t done anything to actually hurt Murphy-something that’s a bit of a concern when demons are involved.
If I thought he had done anything to hurt Murphy, this would be another story altogether. People would still be finding tiny little pieces of Kincaid-shaped debris over neighboring counties….well, to be fair, there’s a good chance that there might be some Harry-shaped debris as well. Kincaid was no pushover. But Hell’s bells, I would have been angry enough to consider taking him on anyway. It wouldn’t be the first stupid fight I ever got into.
Luckily, though, that wasn’t the case. It was just an ordinary breakup-or as ordinary as it could be, given that Murph is a cop who specializes in fighting the supernatural and Kincaid is a semi-demonic hitman for otherworldly forces. The breakup was fairly close to mine with Luccio, and like me, Murph appeared to have gotten over it.
Why did all of this make me happy, you ask? To be honest, it was because a not altogether unpleasant surge of feeling struck me once I realized that Murph and I were once again both ‘available.’ I knew that there were still lots of issues between us, and they weren’t going to just disappear…but I figured it was worth a shot.
I responded to this surge of feeling by doing the mature thing, and locking myself away from human life in my apartment whenever I wasn’t actively working. I was definitely not ready to confront Murphy about our feelings again, not so soon after so many other things had happened. However, I was soon going to be deprived of any choice in the matter.
When I reached the door to my apartment and began to undo the wards, I paused. There was something…wrong. Barely a second after I noticed this, a large surge of black magic flew out of the wards and into my face. I didn’t have nearly enough time to bring up my shield bracelet, this thing was fast. I managed to throw myself out of the way in time to avoid it, but I needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t a hostile attack.
It was a message.
The small, quivering mass of energy hovered in the air a few feet above the sidewalk, invisible to the average passerby. It looked as though it were waiting for something…perhaps for me to touch it. Of course, this would be a stupid idea. Black magic is never used for anything friendly. That’s what makes it black. And forbidden. On top of that, somebody had planted this spell inside my wards, which was a very tricky process. Given how many powerful enemies I had who used dark magic, only a complete idiot would have gone anywhere near the thing.
Naturally, I reached my hand out to it and grabbed it.
Hey. In my defense, I took a glance at it with my Second Sight first. The Second Sight is the sense that all wizards have. It shows them the true essence of something, without any chance for deception or concealment. There is a price to pay, however-if you see something with the Second Sight, it will never fade away. Ever. It will always be as fresh in your mind as the day you saw it. Given how many nasty things are out there, this can drive some wizards to insanity. I’d been fairly lucky so far, but I’d still seen some really nasty things.
As far as black magic goes, this spell wasn’t actually that bad. It looked like a huddled ball of static, whispering messages and noises that were almost decipherable, but not quite. A sound would linger in the air, and for a brief second it would almost sound like a recognizable word, but then it would fade away into a blur of hisses and squeals. Around the edge was a black filth that seemed to ooze some sort of corrosive material that disappeared as soon as it touched the ground. That acid was the stuff that had allowed it to pierce the protections of my wards.
This spell was a message for me. I was meant to touch it, reaching through the acid and disabling it. It was rather elaborate for a message, but it served another purpose. To intimidate me, by showing that someone was powerful enough to plant a message directly into my wards, and evil enough to use black magic to do it. Whoever this person was, they obviously had never seen the people I have had to face before. If they had, they would have known that this was far from the scariest spell I’d ever seen. There was only a moment of hesitation before I plunged my hand into the acid-though for a brief moment, I felt a horrible surge of fear that there would be an excruciating pain in my hand, that it would be burnt and broken once again. Fortunately, my hand passed through the spell’s shell unharmed.
My mind was assailed by a string of images, noises, and feelings. It was as though somebody had taken a TV show, deliberately set the video and sound off sync, and then jumbled them up in whatever order they wanted. And then put the viewer on some sort of antidepressant drug while they watched it. The message was not designed to damage my mind, though-it was designed to give me a message in the most disturbing way it could.
In a brief flash, I saw a face-Murphy’s face. Before I could get anything else it had disappeared, but I saw enough to know she was angry. And scared. I then saw a few more images that didn’t seem to mean anything. A wheat field. A crimson sky. Then I saw an abandoned warehouse that I recognized as from one of the poorer districts of Chicago. It was horribly skewed, though, as though some terrible entity had decided to put a doormat down in front of it. A doormat that reeked of evil. Throughout the entire message, I had felt slight twinges of dread, but the finale was yet to come. I saw a perfectly clear image of that warehouse, at sunset-then it all faded to black. I felt a burst of pure terror, and heard a blood curdling scream of pain. In a voice that I recognized as Murphy’s.
The spell suddenly collapsed into itself and was gone. I fell onto my ass on the sidewalk, gasping and covered in sweat. I was attracting a few odd looks from those around me, so I hurried into my apartment. But not before looking at the sky around me-it was late afternoon. The sun would be setting in just an hour or two.
My body was on autopilot as I went around my apartment, picking up the gear I would need. I still hadn’t made a new blasting rod, but I had my staff…my shield bracelet…several rings with enough force to flip over multiple trucks….and my sword cane. Plus, my ever trusty amulet. I wasn’t thinking about any of these things, though. My mind was focused on a single fact.
They had Murphy.
I had always known that I had enemies out there who would be more than happy to use my friends as weapons against me, but I had always thought I would be able to stop them in time. Generally, I had. But this was something entirely different. They already had Murphy, and were using her to negotiate. This was a hostage situation-and there were about five million ways a hostage situation could get blown to hell without anyone even trying. Most of those ways involved a fairly nasty end for the hostage. An end that would only be less pleasant with the addition of black magic.
Bob blinked at me as I walked by him, and both Mouse and Mister trotted up to me expecting food. I ignored all three of them, but Bob called after me as I picked up my duster.
“Um…what is it, Harry?”
I ignored him as I made sure everything was securely attached. It wouldn’t do to drop my gear during a fight.
“You’ve got your ‘badass’ face on, Harry. What are you doing?”
I shifted my staff around in my hand, making sure the balance was right.
“You…you look pretty angry. What’s happening, Harry?”
I turned to look at the skull, blue flames in its eye sockets. As I looked, I picked up my phone and hit the speed dial to call Thomas’s apartment. The answering machine came up pretty quickly, and I waited impatiently for Thomas’s prerecorded message to stop. Immediately after the obnoxious beep, I began talking.
“Thomas, it’s Harry. Someone’s taken Murphy to some old warehouse in the crappy part of town, near the north side. They mean business, and they’ve got some nasty black mojo going on. I’m going in now, there’s no time to wait. Backup would be nice, if you get this message in time.” I hung up the phone, and strode towards the door. Bob’s voice called out after me.
“Oh….crap, Harry, that’s bad…wait, you’re going alone? Don’t you think that’s a little stu-hey, Harry!”
I ignored him and went to the Beetle. There wasn’t any time for talking right now. It was a time to kick some ass.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
When I pulled up to the warehouse, it looked empty. In a city as crowded as Chicago, it has always amazed me that people still manage to find completely empty buildings in which to carry out their nefariousness. It appeared to be an ordinary building, it wasn’t like there were any signs declaring “Evil Sorcerers Here.” God knows that would make my line of work easier. The only sign that I was at the right place was the tingling feeling in my stomach. But that was probably from the knowledge that Murphy’s life rested in my hands.
A lot of the initial burst of anger that had driven me out of the apartment had died once I got into the Beetle. As aggravating as Chicago traffic can be, it was hard to keep up my righteous fury once I had time to think about what was happening.
Murphy was in trouble. Murphy might die.
It was hardly a new concept. Murphy had been in danger before, and had come quite close to dying a couple of times. Many of those times were almost entirely my fault, in fact. But somehow this was….different. They were using her. They were using her as a weapon against me. They had all the cards, and the odds of getting out of this unscathed were not very good. I was…scared. Not so much scared for myself (though ‘not dying’ was fairly high on my list of priorities) as scared for Murphy.
I’ve been terrified for myself before, I won’t deny it. There have been times when the fear of dying has almost completely overridden any coherent thought. I know what fear is like. But fear for yourself is nothing, is nothing compared to fear for someone you care about.
Someone you love.
Okay, not what I needed to be thinking about at the moment. I definitely did not need distractions right now. I needed to go into this situation with a clear head if I wanted anyone to get out alive. Well, if I wanted me and Murphy to get out alive, anyway. I didn’t care quite so much about whoever else was involved.
No one came to greet me as I arrived, which I thought was fairly rude. After leaving the Beetle I made my way to the rusty looking door to the warehouse. Despite the fact that it looked as though it weighed a ton and hadn’t been used in a few decades, the door swung open with nary a sound.
As a rule, I don’t like it when my enemies are expecting me. It makes it a hell of a lot harder to surprise and kill them, which is generally my approach. I wouldn’t say I was nervous as I walked in-I would say that I was ‘apprehensive.’ In a totally manly way, with almost no chattering of teeth or shaking of knees.
The warehouse was mostly empty space, but in the middle there was a single light dangling from the ceiling. It did almost nothing to make me feel more comfortable about the place-in fact, that one spot of light only made the darkness around it feel more terrible.
The man sitting inside the circle of light did not help either.
He was sitting in a simple looking wooden chair, facing the door. Another chair was next to it, facing his chair. His legs were crossed idly, as though he were simply waiting for a friend to arrive. He appeared to be in his late thirties, with jet black hair and a pale complexion. He wore a simple grey suit that still managed to look fairly expensive, but no other adornments. As soon as I lay eyes on him, I knew that it was him who had sent the spell. Not through any use of Second Sight, just….instinct. Something about the man radiated cold, calculating malevolence. His smile was rather disarming, though.
“Ah, Mister Dresden,” he said cheerily. His voice echoed through the empty warehouse much longer than it really should have. “I’m glad to see you were able to make in time. Sunset is only....thirty three minutes away.” He took a glance at a watch that I could have sworn wasn’t on his wrist before. “Now that you’re here, perhaps we can get down to business.”
“Like hell.” My voice came out cold and fairly angry, which was to be expected. It also came out as strangely confident and strong, which was not at all how I was feeling at the moment. “Where’s Murphy?”
The man’s smile was beyond disconcerting now. It was creepy.
“Now, I don’t see any reason to bring your friend into this, do you?”
“Don’t see any-” Then it clicked. This warehouse was totally empty. There was no way he was hiding Murphy here. “Murphy….you don’t have her, do you?”
Now his smile was just mocking me, I knew it. His white teeth shone at me in the squalor of the warehouse as he grinned that inhuman grin.
“You’re sharper than you appear, Mister Dresden. The policewoman is fine.” He shrugged. “Or, at least, if anything happened to her it wasn’t me. I simply thought that she would provide excellent motivation to get you to agree to our meeting.”
“You bastard…” I raised my staff and pointed it at him. I never liked being manipulated, and I liked my friends being threatened even less. If I did not hear something extremely good in the next four seconds, this was not going to end well for the man I was talking to. “You threatened my friend, whoever you are. I don’t take kindly to that.”
The man finally rose in a serpentine motion, ignoring my staff as though it wasn’t even there.
“I’m sorry, Mister Dresden, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Rudolf, and I am here on behalf of a mutual acquaintance of ours.”
There was that damn grin again-wait. This time, I noticed something unusual. Some of his teeth were uncomfortably….pointy. Shit. Stars and stones, Hell’s bells, and shit.
This Rudolf was a vampire of some variety. That was bad.
“I’m assuming Mavra,” I said warily as I began to back away from the man-or rather, the thing.
“How did you guess?” He made no move to stop me.
“Well, the Red Court tends to have more thugs at hand than you seem to. And you’re not pretty enough to be in the White Court. Only a few options left. You must be from the Black Court.” I didn’t point out that I also held a temporary truce with the White Court. It didn’t do to spread that information around.
“Very good, Mister Dresden. I am impressed.” He took a slow, languid step towards me. “I can see now why Mavra dislikes you so.” He took another step, and I had to bite back every urge I had not to turn and bolt or incinerate him. “I am here on her behalf because-well, to be blunt, she has offered quite a reward for your head. Or any other part of your body, provided it has been severed from the rest. I hear she is partial to left hands.” The grin grew sickly. “No hard feelings, Mister Dresden, but I think the time for formalities has ended.”
I grew tense, and prepared to fight. Any second now he was going to pounce-and when he did, he would be fast. I would have only a second to fight him off, and if I was too slow he might-
I heard a horrible grating noise as the door to the warehouse behind me was kicked open. Already tense, I whirled around to face the new threat, unwillingly turning my back on Rudolf. I heard his hiss of surprise behind me. At the door, I saw a familiar face. It was Murphy, with her gun drawn.
For a moment, I saw her stare at me. Then her gaze focused on something behind me, and her gun rose as she opened her mouth to shout something. Then something that felt oddly like a sledgehammer plowed into the back of my skull, and things got hazy.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
When I woke up, I felt an excruciating pain in the back of my head. I wish I could say it was a new experience, but to be honest I’ve probably woken up to more head injuries than the average boxer. And at least boxers don’t have to deal with things that have fangs. Usually.
I blearily tried to get up, which is when I became aware of several things. First of all, I was sitting down on a chair, which was not necessarily a bad thing. Second, my hands were behind said chair and I was tied to it. That…that was generally bad. The third was that my hands were touching someone else’s hands…small, tough hands.
It nearly burst my skull open to try and turn my head, but I did. I wasn’t able to turn all the way around to see who was behind me, but my efforts were rewarded by a familiar voice coming from the chair behind me.
“Stop moving, Dresden, you’re making my head hurt.
It was Murphy, and she sounded rather annoyed.
“Are you okay, Murph?”
“Well, I was okay, until I got a call from Thomas. He sounded pretty frantic, said you’d gone off to rescue me…which was weird, since I was at home. Then, since you were an idiot and didn’t say which warehouse you were going to, Thomas and I had to split up to find you. Then as soon as I walk in, you turn your back on a vampire, letting him kick your ass and use you as a human shield. Then he knocks me out, and I wake up tied to you. So no, I wouldn’t consider myself okay at the moment, Dresden.”
It sounded like the rant had taken a lot out of her, because she didn’t say anything else for quite a while. I tried for a moment to think of a way to reply, but to be honest she was right. I had made about five rookie mistakes even coming to this place alone, let alone all the others I had made facing down Rudolf. She was right….I should know better than that. My judgment had gotten shot to hell, because I was mad about Murphy-which was exactly what this Rudolf guy wanted.
After a long moment, I finally brought myself around to speaking.
“In my defense, I was trying to help you.” Ouch. That sounded weak, even to me.
“Yeah, great job so far.”
“Your sarcasm is both unwanted and unappreciated, Murphy.”
“No, I’m serious…this is going really well.”
“Please, Murphy.”
“I mean it. Charging alone into an unknown enemy’s trap, great job.”
“I was going to fight him and kill him, obviously.”
“Well, that was a brilliant idea.”
So, yeah. That’s how I got to be in this lovely predicament. Tied to a chair, with Murphy tied to the one behind me. Both of us together inside a warehouse, with a presumably angry Black Court vampire who would be only too happy to kill us both. Speaking of which…
“Where exactly is our vampiric reindeer friend?”
“What?”
“The vampire. His name is Rudolf.”
“Oh. Getting chatty with him, were you?”
“You know me. I’m one of those old fashioned sorts. I like to chat with people before I let them assault me. Seriously, Murph, where is he?”
I felt her chair creak as she did something that might have been a gesture with her head. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see it.
“Somewhere over there….oh, wait, you can’t see. He’s just outside the door to the warehouse, on a cell phone. I heard him talking, something about renegotiating a deal.”
“Probably chatting it up with Mavra.”
I felt Murphy stop moving behind me.
“Mavra? Mavra, as in the vampire from the Red Cross building? The one who toasted your hand?”
“Yeah, that Mavra.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Well, shit. Isn’t she supposed to be dead?”
“I think she got better.”
There was another long moment of silence.
“Does that happen a lot?”
“What? The getting better?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I think we just weren’t thorough enough the first time.”
“Ah. We’ll have to fix that next time around.”
That was the Murphy I knew. Talking about the ‘next time’ as if there were no chance we wouldn’t get out of this. Like our victory was a certainty. Unfortunately, we both knew she was full of crap, and trying to stave of panic. I was able to relate. I managed to find her fingers with my own and give her a reassuring squeeze. After a short moment, she returned it. I gave a brief smile that Murphy was unable to see.
“You said that Thomas was here too, is he nearby?”
“I don’t know, we split up around-”
I once again heard the sound of the door opening, followed by extremely soft footsteps. Murphy had gone entirely still and silent. A moment later, I saw Rudolf in front of me, once again bearing that damn grin of his.
“Well, Mister Dresden. I must say, this is quite a pleasant surprise.” He leaned in near my face, quite closer than I was really comfortable with. “Madame Mavra was most pleased to hear that I had another guest for her. She remembers you, Miss Murphy.” He leaned away from me and walked in between Murph and me. I could feel his voice near my ear, cold and loud. “She said that she can’t wait to get her hands on the two of you…and that I’m to keep you alive.” Suddenly, a hand grasped my hair near the wound on my scalp, and I nearly screamed. I was unable to stifle a small gasp, though, and Murphy tensed. “She did say that I was allowed to take certain…other liberties, though.”
He released my hair, and walked around in front of me. From somewhere he had produced a most unpleasant looking knife…quite big and sharp looking. And big. And sharp. Did I mention that it was sharp? Murphy’s hands were once again squeezing mine, and I returned the favor almost unconsciously. Most of my focus was on the large, pointy object in Rudolf’s hand.
“Do you have any idea, Mister Dresden,” he said as he slowly strode towards me, idly spinning the knife in his hand, “Of how many vampires you’ve killed? How many of them were my friends? How many were my family?” All the lazy grace in his movements was suddenly thrown away as he dashed up to me, and placed the knife at my neck. “It is you that is the monster, Dresden,” he hissed, pronouncing my name like some unutterable profanity. “It is you that slaughters our families, and brings destruction wherever you go. And I am going to enjoy making you suffer.”
After an extremely tense moment, he leaned away, and pulled back the knife. He strode off to the side, and for a moment I felt relief. Then I realized that there was really only one other place he could be going. I felt a sudden increase in the pressure of Murphy’s grasp as he moved into her view. I don’t think Murphy liked the knife any more than I did.
“As for you, Miss Murphy,” he said, once more in his polite tones, “You’ve made quite a name for yourself too. You don’t seem to care who you slaughter, so long as you and your petty laws are upheld.” The sneer entered his voice once again. “You are given away by the company you keep, you hypocrite. Dresden is the sort of man who would hate to see one of his friends hurt…and we have plenty of time before Madam Mavra arrives…I suppose that I will start with you. Don’t feel cheated though, Dresden. You’ll get your turn.”
He didn’t say anything else, but I could imagine only too well what was happening behind me. That incredibly large knife was inching towards Murphy….not much time. Time for a trademarked Dresden-style solution.
“You know, I doubt that I’ve killed enough vampires to really impact you that much,” I said in what was as close to a sardonic tone as I could manage under the circumstances. “I think you’re just trying to get in with the cool crowd. Trying to catch Mavra’s good graces? What’s the problem, did none of the other vampires let you join in their reindeer games?”
He was silent for a moment. I don’t know if he didn’t get the reference or just didn’t appreciate my sense of humor, but he was not laughing. When he spoke, his voice was once again icy cold.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Dresden. You want to make me angry, so I’ll forget about the girl and go after you instead. Your intentions are admirable, but it is not going to work. I could never be upset over something so trivial as a pun on my name. When you die, I think the world will owe me a favor for depriving them of your comedic talents-or lack thereof.
Well, that pissed me off. It wasn’t enough that I was about to be tortured, he had to insult my jokes too. Fortunately, I was both too scared and desperate to really let that effect me at the moment.
“Well, I can’t say I understand why you want to get in with Mavra so badly-I mean, she isn’t much of a looker, is she? I guess if you’re into decomposing flesh, she isn’t that bad, but still-”
“Do not insult Madam Mavra, Dresden,” said Rudolf in a slightly more curt tone. “She is a greater being than you shall ever know, let alone be.”
Ah. It seemed I had struck a nerve. Murphy squeezed my hand in what I took to be an affirmative, as in ‘keep doing that, it’s working.’ I suppose it also could have been a warning, like ‘stop it, he’s going to kill us,’ but I prefer to remain optimistic.
“Gee, you must have more of a crush than I thought. Still, I guess I can’t blame you. I mean, after going through life with a mug like yours, even a frosty old bitch like Mavra has got to seem pretty-”
I didn’t get to finish the sentence. In a flash Rudolf was in front of me, knife in hand. Murphy seem to have realized what I was doing, for the pressure on my hands had let off. I heard a slight intake of breath from her side of the chair, as though she were about to say something. I was slightly distracted, though, by how Rudolf stabbed me in the shoulder.
Ow. Ow ow ow. That really hurt. I had felt worse, but still. Ow. I managed to make these feelings known to the world in general by a sort of hoarse shout that I wouldn’t quite classify as a scream, but came rather close.
“Harry, are you okay?” Murphy’s voice had lost its sarcastic tone. She sounded more worried that she normally did when she was being shot at.
I took a moment to regain my composure before answering. It wouldn’t do to think up a witty retort only to have it lost in a gurgle of pain.
“Well, Murph, I’ve got to admit that I’m a little annoyed. I mean, I did like this shirt. Blood is annoying to get out, and those damn dry cleaners are so expensive…”
There was a pregnant pause where I’m fairly sure that Murphy was trying to determine if I was insane or not.
“Um….Harry?”
“Sure, I’m fine,” I said blithely. “I’m afraid I may have damaged this gentleman’s fine knife, though. From what I hear, wizard blood tends to smell nasty after a few days.”
Rudolf scowled at me, but I wasn’t paying attention. You see, bantering accomplishes more than merely pissing off your enemies. It also provides an excellent distraction from things like pain. I was feeling a lot of pain, by the way. Knives hurt. Knives hurt a lot.
“Murph? You there, Murph? Geez, even the walking corpse is more responsive than you. If all audiences are as tough as you, I’m glad I gave up my promising career as a comedian for this glorious life of crime fighting.”
After a moment, Murphy finally responded.
“I’m glad you weren’t a comedian too, Harry. The world has enough problems already without having to listen to your idea of a joke.”
I smiled. She was getting into it the banter.
“Don’t worry Murph, it’s okay to be jealous of my considerable humoristic talents. I mean,” I said, breaking off for another choking gasp as the Rudolf pulled the knife out of me. “I mean, I’d be jealous of me too. Dashing good looks, superior wit, always getting to hang out with the pretty girls...’tis the life for me.”
My wound was bleeding now, and it was fairly nasty. I was trying not to look at it, but it didn’t feel like anything major had been punctured or severed. Still, there were more fluids leaving my body than I was generally comfortable with. Murphy’s hand found mine and squeezed it. I squeezed hers back, though my grip was slightly weaker than before.
“Aw, ‘the prettiest girls,’ Dresden? I’m flattered.” Murphy’s jovial tone sounded slightly more strained. She didn’t have as much practice being a smartass in the face of danger as I did, it was only to be expected. “Don’t think it will get you out of the ass kicking you’re going to get for trying to be a gentleman here, you chauvinist pig.”
I chuckled weakly. Rudolf appeared to be deciding the best place to next insert his large, sharp knife that was now an unpleasant shade of red.
“Gee, I should have remembered to let the lady go first. No, wait, that’s chauvinist too, isn’t it? Well, that’s a dilemma?”
I guess Rudolf must have been stewing this whole time, because he made a pretty violent motion with the knife. It looked like it was heading for my other shoulder this time, but its path was rather rudely interrupted by the bullet that caused Rudolf’s face to explode. There was a sudden silence in the stillness that followed, in which I had to both convince my shoulder to stop tensing up, and had to convince my hands that crushing Murphy’s wrist bones to a pulp was going to be counterproductive.
“I am now undisputed Lord and Master of Good Timing. Bow down before me.”
I still couldn’t turn around to see the door, but I recognized the voice.
“Congratulations, Thomas. I’ll be sure to send you a plaque as soon as I can. In the meantime, though, the bleeding….”
“Right, right.”
Thomas strode over to us fairly quickly, shotgun still in hand. Before getting to me, though, he stopped by the twitching remains of Rudolf and drew his cavalry saber. In a flash of steel, the vampire was decapitated. The bastard didn’t do us the decency of crumbling into ash, though. He seemed determined to leave a corpse.
After seeing to the dirty work, Thomas walked up to me. In a few deft movements he undid the ropes tying us to the chairs, hissing slightly when he saw my shoulder.
“Christ, that doesn’t look good, Harry.”
“I don’t think it got anything major, I’ll be fine.”
“We’re getting you to a hospital.”
“No,” I protested, “Hospitals. Bad. Life support. Life support and I don’t mix.”
He sighed in frustration, but then nodded.
“Fine. I’ll take you back to your apartment. Then I’m calling a doctor I know. He should be able to patch you up pretty well.”
I sighed, and nodded my agreement. Or maybe my head was just bobbing because I was tired from blood loss. Hard to say, really.
Murphy walked around to the side of me that wasn’t injured, and gently lifted me to my feet. I brought my head up to look her in the face, and saw a sort of fire in her eyes that was not entirely familiar.
“Well, I hope you’re happy,” she said. “Trying to go for the noble sacrifice only to have it pulled out from under you like that. Guess you’ll have to wait for some other time to be saving a damsel in distress. You pig.”
After she said that, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. In an almost reluctant tone, she whispered “Thanks, though.”
“Um…anytime, Murph.”
There was a noise coming from behind me, where Thomas was. It was oddly like snickering. The bastard.
The two of them helped me towards the door, and I was feeling pretty good about things. Sure, I had been stabbed, but there were….other good things that had happened today. There was a tingle on my cheek where Murphy had kissed it. As we passed by Rudolph’s body, I looked down and paused. Then I began laughing.
“What?” Thomas tensed slightly as he looked at the body, perhaps expecting it to still be alive.
“Nothing…it’s just…” I pointed at the bloody mess that had been Rudolf’s head. “He really does have a red nose now, doesn’t he?”
Thomas simply blinked at me, not understanding the joke. He probably wrote it off as shock, or something. Murphy stared, and then let out an enormous groan. She then punched me lightly in the arm and forced me to start walking again. Not that I minded.
“Christ, Dresden….thank God you weren’t a comedian.”
Yeah, it was a pretty good day.
He He
Pairing: A bit of Harry/Murphy, to brighten everyone’s day.
TV or book: Book!
Rating: Nothing too bad…if you’ve read the books or seen the show, this should be fine for you.
Spoilers: Up to Small Favor
Recipient: Tigerkat24
Request: “Well, that was a brilliant idea.” Harry and Murphy between a rock and a hard place.
Word Count: 6,240
Summary: Harry lets his emotions get the better of him, resulting in yet another disaster for him and Murphy to escape.
Author’s notes: I’ve gotta say, I loved this prompt. It was really fun to write for. The Harry/Murphy friendship/relationship is half the reason that I read this series. This fanfic ended up being a lot longer than I predicted, and a bit more serious too. Still, I hope I got enough humor in there as well. Tell me what you think!
“
Well, that was a brilliant idea.”
“You know what, Murph? Now is really not the time.”
As you can tell, I was a little bit annoyed. I don’t respond well to criticism when I’m annoyed. Well, actually, I don’t respond well to criticism at all. But I respond even less well when I’m tied to a chair along with one of my best friends, and am facing imminent death.
“This is entirely your fault, Dresden….I mean, Christ, what did you think you were doing?”
“Look, I’m sorry that I care enough about you to rescue you. I’ll try to start disliking you more, if that would make you feel better.”
“Ha. You’re funny, Dresden.”
“See, you’re already helping me with the process!”
Perhaps I should explain how I got into this situation before I subject you to more of my bickering with Murphy.
As far as business days go, today had been pretty good. I mean, I’d received considerably less death threats than usual. No assassination attempts at all, which was a pleasant change of pace for me. To top it all off, I had actually had a paying job, from a normal customer, that I was able to resolve without resorting to crude violence. Well, not much, anyway.
Hey, I didn’t say it was a perfect day.
When I returned to my apartment, I was actually feeling pretty good about myself. Sure, Luccio and I had sort of broken up…but hey, that was a couple of weeks ago. I was over it. Besides, we weren’t really that great a couple….something about the fact that she was old enough to have dated my great grandfather struck me as mildly disconcerting at times. The real kicker, though, was the fact that Murphy and Kincaid were no longer seeing each other.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t happy to see a relationship fail for Murphy…but on the other hand, I can’t say I ever expected her relationship with Kincaid to end well. I wasn’t able to get the exact details of why they broke up, but I was able to learn that there had been some sort of argument. To be honest, Murphy seemed too angry the week afterward for me to risk asking her. I was also able to learn that they had parted on civil terms; that Kincaid hadn’t done anything to actually hurt Murphy-something that’s a bit of a concern when demons are involved.
If I thought he had done anything to hurt Murphy, this would be another story altogether. People would still be finding tiny little pieces of Kincaid-shaped debris over neighboring counties….well, to be fair, there’s a good chance that there might be some Harry-shaped debris as well. Kincaid was no pushover. But Hell’s bells, I would have been angry enough to consider taking him on anyway. It wouldn’t be the first stupid fight I ever got into.
Luckily, though, that wasn’t the case. It was just an ordinary breakup-or as ordinary as it could be, given that Murph is a cop who specializes in fighting the supernatural and Kincaid is a semi-demonic hitman for otherworldly forces. The breakup was fairly close to mine with Luccio, and like me, Murph appeared to have gotten over it.
Why did all of this make me happy, you ask? To be honest, it was because a not altogether unpleasant surge of feeling struck me once I realized that Murph and I were once again both ‘available.’ I knew that there were still lots of issues between us, and they weren’t going to just disappear…but I figured it was worth a shot.
I responded to this surge of feeling by doing the mature thing, and locking myself away from human life in my apartment whenever I wasn’t actively working. I was definitely not ready to confront Murphy about our feelings again, not so soon after so many other things had happened. However, I was soon going to be deprived of any choice in the matter.
When I reached the door to my apartment and began to undo the wards, I paused. There was something…wrong. Barely a second after I noticed this, a large surge of black magic flew out of the wards and into my face. I didn’t have nearly enough time to bring up my shield bracelet, this thing was fast. I managed to throw myself out of the way in time to avoid it, but I needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t a hostile attack.
It was a message.
The small, quivering mass of energy hovered in the air a few feet above the sidewalk, invisible to the average passerby. It looked as though it were waiting for something…perhaps for me to touch it. Of course, this would be a stupid idea. Black magic is never used for anything friendly. That’s what makes it black. And forbidden. On top of that, somebody had planted this spell inside my wards, which was a very tricky process. Given how many powerful enemies I had who used dark magic, only a complete idiot would have gone anywhere near the thing.
Naturally, I reached my hand out to it and grabbed it.
Hey. In my defense, I took a glance at it with my Second Sight first. The Second Sight is the sense that all wizards have. It shows them the true essence of something, without any chance for deception or concealment. There is a price to pay, however-if you see something with the Second Sight, it will never fade away. Ever. It will always be as fresh in your mind as the day you saw it. Given how many nasty things are out there, this can drive some wizards to insanity. I’d been fairly lucky so far, but I’d still seen some really nasty things.
As far as black magic goes, this spell wasn’t actually that bad. It looked like a huddled ball of static, whispering messages and noises that were almost decipherable, but not quite. A sound would linger in the air, and for a brief second it would almost sound like a recognizable word, but then it would fade away into a blur of hisses and squeals. Around the edge was a black filth that seemed to ooze some sort of corrosive material that disappeared as soon as it touched the ground. That acid was the stuff that had allowed it to pierce the protections of my wards.
This spell was a message for me. I was meant to touch it, reaching through the acid and disabling it. It was rather elaborate for a message, but it served another purpose. To intimidate me, by showing that someone was powerful enough to plant a message directly into my wards, and evil enough to use black magic to do it. Whoever this person was, they obviously had never seen the people I have had to face before. If they had, they would have known that this was far from the scariest spell I’d ever seen. There was only a moment of hesitation before I plunged my hand into the acid-though for a brief moment, I felt a horrible surge of fear that there would be an excruciating pain in my hand, that it would be burnt and broken once again. Fortunately, my hand passed through the spell’s shell unharmed.
My mind was assailed by a string of images, noises, and feelings. It was as though somebody had taken a TV show, deliberately set the video and sound off sync, and then jumbled them up in whatever order they wanted. And then put the viewer on some sort of antidepressant drug while they watched it. The message was not designed to damage my mind, though-it was designed to give me a message in the most disturbing way it could.
In a brief flash, I saw a face-Murphy’s face. Before I could get anything else it had disappeared, but I saw enough to know she was angry. And scared. I then saw a few more images that didn’t seem to mean anything. A wheat field. A crimson sky. Then I saw an abandoned warehouse that I recognized as from one of the poorer districts of Chicago. It was horribly skewed, though, as though some terrible entity had decided to put a doormat down in front of it. A doormat that reeked of evil. Throughout the entire message, I had felt slight twinges of dread, but the finale was yet to come. I saw a perfectly clear image of that warehouse, at sunset-then it all faded to black. I felt a burst of pure terror, and heard a blood curdling scream of pain. In a voice that I recognized as Murphy’s.
The spell suddenly collapsed into itself and was gone. I fell onto my ass on the sidewalk, gasping and covered in sweat. I was attracting a few odd looks from those around me, so I hurried into my apartment. But not before looking at the sky around me-it was late afternoon. The sun would be setting in just an hour or two.
My body was on autopilot as I went around my apartment, picking up the gear I would need. I still hadn’t made a new blasting rod, but I had my staff…my shield bracelet…several rings with enough force to flip over multiple trucks….and my sword cane. Plus, my ever trusty amulet. I wasn’t thinking about any of these things, though. My mind was focused on a single fact.
They had Murphy.
I had always known that I had enemies out there who would be more than happy to use my friends as weapons against me, but I had always thought I would be able to stop them in time. Generally, I had. But this was something entirely different. They already had Murphy, and were using her to negotiate. This was a hostage situation-and there were about five million ways a hostage situation could get blown to hell without anyone even trying. Most of those ways involved a fairly nasty end for the hostage. An end that would only be less pleasant with the addition of black magic.
Bob blinked at me as I walked by him, and both Mouse and Mister trotted up to me expecting food. I ignored all three of them, but Bob called after me as I picked up my duster.
“Um…what is it, Harry?”
I ignored him as I made sure everything was securely attached. It wouldn’t do to drop my gear during a fight.
“You’ve got your ‘badass’ face on, Harry. What are you doing?”
I shifted my staff around in my hand, making sure the balance was right.
“You…you look pretty angry. What’s happening, Harry?”
I turned to look at the skull, blue flames in its eye sockets. As I looked, I picked up my phone and hit the speed dial to call Thomas’s apartment. The answering machine came up pretty quickly, and I waited impatiently for Thomas’s prerecorded message to stop. Immediately after the obnoxious beep, I began talking.
“Thomas, it’s Harry. Someone’s taken Murphy to some old warehouse in the crappy part of town, near the north side. They mean business, and they’ve got some nasty black mojo going on. I’m going in now, there’s no time to wait. Backup would be nice, if you get this message in time.” I hung up the phone, and strode towards the door. Bob’s voice called out after me.
“Oh….crap, Harry, that’s bad…wait, you’re going alone? Don’t you think that’s a little stu-hey, Harry!”
I ignored him and went to the Beetle. There wasn’t any time for talking right now. It was a time to kick some ass.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
When I pulled up to the warehouse, it looked empty. In a city as crowded as Chicago, it has always amazed me that people still manage to find completely empty buildings in which to carry out their nefariousness. It appeared to be an ordinary building, it wasn’t like there were any signs declaring “Evil Sorcerers Here.” God knows that would make my line of work easier. The only sign that I was at the right place was the tingling feeling in my stomach. But that was probably from the knowledge that Murphy’s life rested in my hands.
A lot of the initial burst of anger that had driven me out of the apartment had died once I got into the Beetle. As aggravating as Chicago traffic can be, it was hard to keep up my righteous fury once I had time to think about what was happening.
Murphy was in trouble. Murphy might die.
It was hardly a new concept. Murphy had been in danger before, and had come quite close to dying a couple of times. Many of those times were almost entirely my fault, in fact. But somehow this was….different. They were using her. They were using her as a weapon against me. They had all the cards, and the odds of getting out of this unscathed were not very good. I was…scared. Not so much scared for myself (though ‘not dying’ was fairly high on my list of priorities) as scared for Murphy.
I’ve been terrified for myself before, I won’t deny it. There have been times when the fear of dying has almost completely overridden any coherent thought. I know what fear is like. But fear for yourself is nothing, is nothing compared to fear for someone you care about.
Someone you love.
Okay, not what I needed to be thinking about at the moment. I definitely did not need distractions right now. I needed to go into this situation with a clear head if I wanted anyone to get out alive. Well, if I wanted me and Murphy to get out alive, anyway. I didn’t care quite so much about whoever else was involved.
No one came to greet me as I arrived, which I thought was fairly rude. After leaving the Beetle I made my way to the rusty looking door to the warehouse. Despite the fact that it looked as though it weighed a ton and hadn’t been used in a few decades, the door swung open with nary a sound.
As a rule, I don’t like it when my enemies are expecting me. It makes it a hell of a lot harder to surprise and kill them, which is generally my approach. I wouldn’t say I was nervous as I walked in-I would say that I was ‘apprehensive.’ In a totally manly way, with almost no chattering of teeth or shaking of knees.
The warehouse was mostly empty space, but in the middle there was a single light dangling from the ceiling. It did almost nothing to make me feel more comfortable about the place-in fact, that one spot of light only made the darkness around it feel more terrible.
The man sitting inside the circle of light did not help either.
He was sitting in a simple looking wooden chair, facing the door. Another chair was next to it, facing his chair. His legs were crossed idly, as though he were simply waiting for a friend to arrive. He appeared to be in his late thirties, with jet black hair and a pale complexion. He wore a simple grey suit that still managed to look fairly expensive, but no other adornments. As soon as I lay eyes on him, I knew that it was him who had sent the spell. Not through any use of Second Sight, just….instinct. Something about the man radiated cold, calculating malevolence. His smile was rather disarming, though.
“Ah, Mister Dresden,” he said cheerily. His voice echoed through the empty warehouse much longer than it really should have. “I’m glad to see you were able to make in time. Sunset is only....thirty three minutes away.” He took a glance at a watch that I could have sworn wasn’t on his wrist before. “Now that you’re here, perhaps we can get down to business.”
“Like hell.” My voice came out cold and fairly angry, which was to be expected. It also came out as strangely confident and strong, which was not at all how I was feeling at the moment. “Where’s Murphy?”
The man’s smile was beyond disconcerting now. It was creepy.
“Now, I don’t see any reason to bring your friend into this, do you?”
“Don’t see any-” Then it clicked. This warehouse was totally empty. There was no way he was hiding Murphy here. “Murphy….you don’t have her, do you?”
Now his smile was just mocking me, I knew it. His white teeth shone at me in the squalor of the warehouse as he grinned that inhuman grin.
“You’re sharper than you appear, Mister Dresden. The policewoman is fine.” He shrugged. “Or, at least, if anything happened to her it wasn’t me. I simply thought that she would provide excellent motivation to get you to agree to our meeting.”
“You bastard…” I raised my staff and pointed it at him. I never liked being manipulated, and I liked my friends being threatened even less. If I did not hear something extremely good in the next four seconds, this was not going to end well for the man I was talking to. “You threatened my friend, whoever you are. I don’t take kindly to that.”
The man finally rose in a serpentine motion, ignoring my staff as though it wasn’t even there.
“I’m sorry, Mister Dresden, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Rudolf, and I am here on behalf of a mutual acquaintance of ours.”
There was that damn grin again-wait. This time, I noticed something unusual. Some of his teeth were uncomfortably….pointy. Shit. Stars and stones, Hell’s bells, and shit.
This Rudolf was a vampire of some variety. That was bad.
“I’m assuming Mavra,” I said warily as I began to back away from the man-or rather, the thing.
“How did you guess?” He made no move to stop me.
“Well, the Red Court tends to have more thugs at hand than you seem to. And you’re not pretty enough to be in the White Court. Only a few options left. You must be from the Black Court.” I didn’t point out that I also held a temporary truce with the White Court. It didn’t do to spread that information around.
“Very good, Mister Dresden. I am impressed.” He took a slow, languid step towards me. “I can see now why Mavra dislikes you so.” He took another step, and I had to bite back every urge I had not to turn and bolt or incinerate him. “I am here on her behalf because-well, to be blunt, she has offered quite a reward for your head. Or any other part of your body, provided it has been severed from the rest. I hear she is partial to left hands.” The grin grew sickly. “No hard feelings, Mister Dresden, but I think the time for formalities has ended.”
I grew tense, and prepared to fight. Any second now he was going to pounce-and when he did, he would be fast. I would have only a second to fight him off, and if I was too slow he might-
I heard a horrible grating noise as the door to the warehouse behind me was kicked open. Already tense, I whirled around to face the new threat, unwillingly turning my back on Rudolf. I heard his hiss of surprise behind me. At the door, I saw a familiar face. It was Murphy, with her gun drawn.
For a moment, I saw her stare at me. Then her gaze focused on something behind me, and her gun rose as she opened her mouth to shout something. Then something that felt oddly like a sledgehammer plowed into the back of my skull, and things got hazy.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
When I woke up, I felt an excruciating pain in the back of my head. I wish I could say it was a new experience, but to be honest I’ve probably woken up to more head injuries than the average boxer. And at least boxers don’t have to deal with things that have fangs. Usually.
I blearily tried to get up, which is when I became aware of several things. First of all, I was sitting down on a chair, which was not necessarily a bad thing. Second, my hands were behind said chair and I was tied to it. That…that was generally bad. The third was that my hands were touching someone else’s hands…small, tough hands.
It nearly burst my skull open to try and turn my head, but I did. I wasn’t able to turn all the way around to see who was behind me, but my efforts were rewarded by a familiar voice coming from the chair behind me.
“Stop moving, Dresden, you’re making my head hurt.
It was Murphy, and she sounded rather annoyed.
“Are you okay, Murph?”
“Well, I was okay, until I got a call from Thomas. He sounded pretty frantic, said you’d gone off to rescue me…which was weird, since I was at home. Then, since you were an idiot and didn’t say which warehouse you were going to, Thomas and I had to split up to find you. Then as soon as I walk in, you turn your back on a vampire, letting him kick your ass and use you as a human shield. Then he knocks me out, and I wake up tied to you. So no, I wouldn’t consider myself okay at the moment, Dresden.”
It sounded like the rant had taken a lot out of her, because she didn’t say anything else for quite a while. I tried for a moment to think of a way to reply, but to be honest she was right. I had made about five rookie mistakes even coming to this place alone, let alone all the others I had made facing down Rudolf. She was right….I should know better than that. My judgment had gotten shot to hell, because I was mad about Murphy-which was exactly what this Rudolf guy wanted.
After a long moment, I finally brought myself around to speaking.
“In my defense, I was trying to help you.” Ouch. That sounded weak, even to me.
“Yeah, great job so far.”
“Your sarcasm is both unwanted and unappreciated, Murphy.”
“No, I’m serious…this is going really well.”
“Please, Murphy.”
“I mean it. Charging alone into an unknown enemy’s trap, great job.”
“I was going to fight him and kill him, obviously.”
“Well, that was a brilliant idea.”
So, yeah. That’s how I got to be in this lovely predicament. Tied to a chair, with Murphy tied to the one behind me. Both of us together inside a warehouse, with a presumably angry Black Court vampire who would be only too happy to kill us both. Speaking of which…
“Where exactly is our vampiric reindeer friend?”
“What?”
“The vampire. His name is Rudolf.”
“Oh. Getting chatty with him, were you?”
“You know me. I’m one of those old fashioned sorts. I like to chat with people before I let them assault me. Seriously, Murph, where is he?”
I felt her chair creak as she did something that might have been a gesture with her head. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see it.
“Somewhere over there….oh, wait, you can’t see. He’s just outside the door to the warehouse, on a cell phone. I heard him talking, something about renegotiating a deal.”
“Probably chatting it up with Mavra.”
I felt Murphy stop moving behind me.
“Mavra? Mavra, as in the vampire from the Red Cross building? The one who toasted your hand?”
“Yeah, that Mavra.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Well, shit. Isn’t she supposed to be dead?”
“I think she got better.”
There was another long moment of silence.
“Does that happen a lot?”
“What? The getting better?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I think we just weren’t thorough enough the first time.”
“Ah. We’ll have to fix that next time around.”
That was the Murphy I knew. Talking about the ‘next time’ as if there were no chance we wouldn’t get out of this. Like our victory was a certainty. Unfortunately, we both knew she was full of crap, and trying to stave of panic. I was able to relate. I managed to find her fingers with my own and give her a reassuring squeeze. After a short moment, she returned it. I gave a brief smile that Murphy was unable to see.
“You said that Thomas was here too, is he nearby?”
“I don’t know, we split up around-”
I once again heard the sound of the door opening, followed by extremely soft footsteps. Murphy had gone entirely still and silent. A moment later, I saw Rudolf in front of me, once again bearing that damn grin of his.
“Well, Mister Dresden. I must say, this is quite a pleasant surprise.” He leaned in near my face, quite closer than I was really comfortable with. “Madame Mavra was most pleased to hear that I had another guest for her. She remembers you, Miss Murphy.” He leaned away from me and walked in between Murph and me. I could feel his voice near my ear, cold and loud. “She said that she can’t wait to get her hands on the two of you…and that I’m to keep you alive.” Suddenly, a hand grasped my hair near the wound on my scalp, and I nearly screamed. I was unable to stifle a small gasp, though, and Murphy tensed. “She did say that I was allowed to take certain…other liberties, though.”
He released my hair, and walked around in front of me. From somewhere he had produced a most unpleasant looking knife…quite big and sharp looking. And big. And sharp. Did I mention that it was sharp? Murphy’s hands were once again squeezing mine, and I returned the favor almost unconsciously. Most of my focus was on the large, pointy object in Rudolf’s hand.
“Do you have any idea, Mister Dresden,” he said as he slowly strode towards me, idly spinning the knife in his hand, “Of how many vampires you’ve killed? How many of them were my friends? How many were my family?” All the lazy grace in his movements was suddenly thrown away as he dashed up to me, and placed the knife at my neck. “It is you that is the monster, Dresden,” he hissed, pronouncing my name like some unutterable profanity. “It is you that slaughters our families, and brings destruction wherever you go. And I am going to enjoy making you suffer.”
After an extremely tense moment, he leaned away, and pulled back the knife. He strode off to the side, and for a moment I felt relief. Then I realized that there was really only one other place he could be going. I felt a sudden increase in the pressure of Murphy’s grasp as he moved into her view. I don’t think Murphy liked the knife any more than I did.
“As for you, Miss Murphy,” he said, once more in his polite tones, “You’ve made quite a name for yourself too. You don’t seem to care who you slaughter, so long as you and your petty laws are upheld.” The sneer entered his voice once again. “You are given away by the company you keep, you hypocrite. Dresden is the sort of man who would hate to see one of his friends hurt…and we have plenty of time before Madam Mavra arrives…I suppose that I will start with you. Don’t feel cheated though, Dresden. You’ll get your turn.”
He didn’t say anything else, but I could imagine only too well what was happening behind me. That incredibly large knife was inching towards Murphy….not much time. Time for a trademarked Dresden-style solution.
“You know, I doubt that I’ve killed enough vampires to really impact you that much,” I said in what was as close to a sardonic tone as I could manage under the circumstances. “I think you’re just trying to get in with the cool crowd. Trying to catch Mavra’s good graces? What’s the problem, did none of the other vampires let you join in their reindeer games?”
He was silent for a moment. I don’t know if he didn’t get the reference or just didn’t appreciate my sense of humor, but he was not laughing. When he spoke, his voice was once again icy cold.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Dresden. You want to make me angry, so I’ll forget about the girl and go after you instead. Your intentions are admirable, but it is not going to work. I could never be upset over something so trivial as a pun on my name. When you die, I think the world will owe me a favor for depriving them of your comedic talents-or lack thereof.
Well, that pissed me off. It wasn’t enough that I was about to be tortured, he had to insult my jokes too. Fortunately, I was both too scared and desperate to really let that effect me at the moment.
“Well, I can’t say I understand why you want to get in with Mavra so badly-I mean, she isn’t much of a looker, is she? I guess if you’re into decomposing flesh, she isn’t that bad, but still-”
“Do not insult Madam Mavra, Dresden,” said Rudolf in a slightly more curt tone. “She is a greater being than you shall ever know, let alone be.”
Ah. It seemed I had struck a nerve. Murphy squeezed my hand in what I took to be an affirmative, as in ‘keep doing that, it’s working.’ I suppose it also could have been a warning, like ‘stop it, he’s going to kill us,’ but I prefer to remain optimistic.
“Gee, you must have more of a crush than I thought. Still, I guess I can’t blame you. I mean, after going through life with a mug like yours, even a frosty old bitch like Mavra has got to seem pretty-”
I didn’t get to finish the sentence. In a flash Rudolf was in front of me, knife in hand. Murphy seem to have realized what I was doing, for the pressure on my hands had let off. I heard a slight intake of breath from her side of the chair, as though she were about to say something. I was slightly distracted, though, by how Rudolf stabbed me in the shoulder.
Ow. Ow ow ow. That really hurt. I had felt worse, but still. Ow. I managed to make these feelings known to the world in general by a sort of hoarse shout that I wouldn’t quite classify as a scream, but came rather close.
“Harry, are you okay?” Murphy’s voice had lost its sarcastic tone. She sounded more worried that she normally did when she was being shot at.
I took a moment to regain my composure before answering. It wouldn’t do to think up a witty retort only to have it lost in a gurgle of pain.
“Well, Murph, I’ve got to admit that I’m a little annoyed. I mean, I did like this shirt. Blood is annoying to get out, and those damn dry cleaners are so expensive…”
There was a pregnant pause where I’m fairly sure that Murphy was trying to determine if I was insane or not.
“Um….Harry?”
“Sure, I’m fine,” I said blithely. “I’m afraid I may have damaged this gentleman’s fine knife, though. From what I hear, wizard blood tends to smell nasty after a few days.”
Rudolf scowled at me, but I wasn’t paying attention. You see, bantering accomplishes more than merely pissing off your enemies. It also provides an excellent distraction from things like pain. I was feeling a lot of pain, by the way. Knives hurt. Knives hurt a lot.
“Murph? You there, Murph? Geez, even the walking corpse is more responsive than you. If all audiences are as tough as you, I’m glad I gave up my promising career as a comedian for this glorious life of crime fighting.”
After a moment, Murphy finally responded.
“I’m glad you weren’t a comedian too, Harry. The world has enough problems already without having to listen to your idea of a joke.”
I smiled. She was getting into it the banter.
“Don’t worry Murph, it’s okay to be jealous of my considerable humoristic talents. I mean,” I said, breaking off for another choking gasp as the Rudolf pulled the knife out of me. “I mean, I’d be jealous of me too. Dashing good looks, superior wit, always getting to hang out with the pretty girls...’tis the life for me.”
My wound was bleeding now, and it was fairly nasty. I was trying not to look at it, but it didn’t feel like anything major had been punctured or severed. Still, there were more fluids leaving my body than I was generally comfortable with. Murphy’s hand found mine and squeezed it. I squeezed hers back, though my grip was slightly weaker than before.
“Aw, ‘the prettiest girls,’ Dresden? I’m flattered.” Murphy’s jovial tone sounded slightly more strained. She didn’t have as much practice being a smartass in the face of danger as I did, it was only to be expected. “Don’t think it will get you out of the ass kicking you’re going to get for trying to be a gentleman here, you chauvinist pig.”
I chuckled weakly. Rudolf appeared to be deciding the best place to next insert his large, sharp knife that was now an unpleasant shade of red.
“Gee, I should have remembered to let the lady go first. No, wait, that’s chauvinist too, isn’t it? Well, that’s a dilemma?”
I guess Rudolf must have been stewing this whole time, because he made a pretty violent motion with the knife. It looked like it was heading for my other shoulder this time, but its path was rather rudely interrupted by the bullet that caused Rudolf’s face to explode. There was a sudden silence in the stillness that followed, in which I had to both convince my shoulder to stop tensing up, and had to convince my hands that crushing Murphy’s wrist bones to a pulp was going to be counterproductive.
“I am now undisputed Lord and Master of Good Timing. Bow down before me.”
I still couldn’t turn around to see the door, but I recognized the voice.
“Congratulations, Thomas. I’ll be sure to send you a plaque as soon as I can. In the meantime, though, the bleeding….”
“Right, right.”
Thomas strode over to us fairly quickly, shotgun still in hand. Before getting to me, though, he stopped by the twitching remains of Rudolf and drew his cavalry saber. In a flash of steel, the vampire was decapitated. The bastard didn’t do us the decency of crumbling into ash, though. He seemed determined to leave a corpse.
After seeing to the dirty work, Thomas walked up to me. In a few deft movements he undid the ropes tying us to the chairs, hissing slightly when he saw my shoulder.
“Christ, that doesn’t look good, Harry.”
“I don’t think it got anything major, I’ll be fine.”
“We’re getting you to a hospital.”
“No,” I protested, “Hospitals. Bad. Life support. Life support and I don’t mix.”
He sighed in frustration, but then nodded.
“Fine. I’ll take you back to your apartment. Then I’m calling a doctor I know. He should be able to patch you up pretty well.”
I sighed, and nodded my agreement. Or maybe my head was just bobbing because I was tired from blood loss. Hard to say, really.
Murphy walked around to the side of me that wasn’t injured, and gently lifted me to my feet. I brought my head up to look her in the face, and saw a sort of fire in her eyes that was not entirely familiar.
“Well, I hope you’re happy,” she said. “Trying to go for the noble sacrifice only to have it pulled out from under you like that. Guess you’ll have to wait for some other time to be saving a damsel in distress. You pig.”
After she said that, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. In an almost reluctant tone, she whispered “Thanks, though.”
“Um…anytime, Murph.”
There was a noise coming from behind me, where Thomas was. It was oddly like snickering. The bastard.
The two of them helped me towards the door, and I was feeling pretty good about things. Sure, I had been stabbed, but there were….other good things that had happened today. There was a tingle on my cheek where Murphy had kissed it. As we passed by Rudolph’s body, I looked down and paused. Then I began laughing.
“What?” Thomas tensed slightly as he looked at the body, perhaps expecting it to still be alive.
“Nothing…it’s just…” I pointed at the bloody mess that had been Rudolf’s head. “He really does have a red nose now, doesn’t he?”
Thomas simply blinked at me, not understanding the joke. He probably wrote it off as shock, or something. Murphy stared, and then let out an enormous groan. She then punched me lightly in the arm and forced me to start walking again. Not that I minded.
“Christ, Dresden….thank God you weren’t a comedian.”
Yeah, it was a pretty good day.
He He