Dresden Files Crossover Snippet (Patreon)

One of these days, something was going to happen in Chicago and the White Council wouldn’t assume I was either the cause of it or knew who was. Apparently there was someone running around Chicago killing with magic, and thus breaking the First Law of Magic. The last time a wizard was using magic to kill people in town, he was using a demon to do the dirty work. But he was in jail, and was the first thing I checked when the local Warden, a sour old wizard named Morgan, came to demand I give up whoever’d been doing the latest round of killing.

Kravos, the jailed wizard, was still in prison, but from what little I’d gathered these killings weren’t his style. Kravos’s killings were ritualistic, designed to power spells. From what I’d been able to piece together, these new victims didn’t have much in the way of any marks on them. They just… died.

I’d talked to Murphy, the head of Chicago PD’s Special Investigations (AKA the “weird shit” department), about getting to the morgue so I could have a look at the latest body before it went to a funeral home. She’d been a little off about it, but pulled some strings so I could take a look. Apparently people randomly dropping dead without any sign of injury or other cause of death hadn’t been seen as worth SI’s time, go figure. So here I was, at the morgue, looking down at the body of a dead man with only a towel over his privates for modesty.

I frowned down at the body on the metal slab, confusion bubbling away at me. A man, late twenties, almost cliche prison gang tattoos covering his torso and upper arms, hair shaved off and far too many piercings covering his face. He looked like any random gangster, so why was he targeted? I wasn’t feeling any traces of a spell, his neck was intact which eliminated the local vampires, no bullet holes, the report the mortician read off said he hadn’t been poisoned, pretty much any other kind of magical means of killing would have left a trace on the body.

For lack of anything else, I lifted up one of the eyelids and now I was onto something. ‘The window to the soul’ is what they say about eyes, and with wizards that’s more than a pretty phrase. When a wizard looks you in the eye for long enough, a second or two, he gazes into your soul, seeing you as you are. Warts and all. The reverse is also true, you see the wizard’s soul just as much as he or she sees yours. Soulgazes, as they’re called, don’t trigger on the dead, but when there’s a dead body with the eyes burned out, like smoldering charcoal, you know there’s some sort of soul based magic going on.

“Harry,” Murphy’s voice pulled me back to the present. “Are you done?”

“Almost, I want to check one more thing,” I answered.

Closing both eyes, both to focus and to block out the physical, I opened my Third Eye. Immediately, it was as if a thick veil was lifted, and I saw things as they were. Focusing on the body, I recoiled from it, the shock making me slam my Sight shut as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t just the eyes that had been burned, the man’s soul was gone. Not in the sense of being dead, I mean that the man’s soul had been burned away. The amount of power that sort of thing required, even for a normal person who couldn’t effectively fight back…

“Harry?!” Murphy asked, her hand coming to my back as I sucked in air, trying to comprehend what I’d just witnessed.

I could still see it, just as clearly as I had when gazing with my Third Eye. Things seen with the Sight can’t be forgotten. Ever. Until the day I died, I’d remember seeing how something had carved out a man’s soul through his eyes. I needed… I needed to talk to Bob, this was beyond anything I’d seen before.

“I’m okay,” I said, the lie sounding pitiful even to my own ears. I swallowed past the lump that had formed in my throat. “Just saw something I wasn’t expecting.”

Murphey stared at me, her eyes hard and determined, “We talking Selles, Denton, or Kravos level?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. That’s what made me nervous. I’m a wizard, like Batman give me information and time to plan and I can take out damn near anything. But in dealing with the unknown…

To be fair I was better at improvisation than a lot of wizards, but regardless no wizard liked dealing with unknowns. Especially when said unknown leaves bodies looking like that.

[hr][/hr]

“Wake up, Bob!” I snapped as I climbed down the step ladder into my lab. “I got something freaky I need to pick your brain on.”

Orange lights lit in the eye sockets of Bob, the skull housing a spirit of knowledge that served as both lab assistant and magical encyclopedia, as the featureless skull somehow gave the impression of yawning.

“What is it this time Harry? Do you at least have some new romance novels?” Bob asked.

“Over a dozen people dead with their souls quite literally burned out of their bodies, and no,” I answered, making Bob perk up in interest.

“‘Burned’? Not shredded, devoured, or torn?” Bob asked, sounding more intrigued than the last half dozen things I’d worked on with him combined.

“Yeah, the only outward sign was the eyes. Like burned logs from a campfire that had gone out. When I looked with the Sight, the entire soul looked like that, only worse,” I explained as I lit the candles and checked the copper summoning circle in the corner.

“Well now, that is interesting. I assume this is what’s gotten the White Council breathing down your neck?”

“Yep, now what can you tell me? What sort of spell can burn the soul like that?”

“‘What sort of spell’, you say it like it’s so simple. Harry, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t know everything about magic.”

I glared at Bob, “Do you, or don’t you know anything about what’s going on?”

The lights of Bob’s eyes flickered, and he sighed, “Speaking bluntly Harry, from what little you’ve told me I haven’t the foggiest idea of what’s responsible. It doesn’t match any sort of dark magic I can think of, nor does it match the modus operandi of any demon, seadhe, or other supernatural creature. I suppose it’s possible that we’re dealing with something entirely new, that hasn’t had a chance to propagate itself into my usual haunts.

“That having been said, I do have some contacts I could check in with…”

This time I sighed, rubbing at my stubble covered chin with my right hand. I knew what Bob was asking, and I was hesitant. The last time I let him out for any serious length of time, he ended up causing an orgy at the university.

“Twelve hours, you focus entirely on finding out everything you can about this and I’ll get you a vintage Playboy,” I eventually said. I still had no idea why Bob, a literal spirit in a skull, was so interested in porn. To be honest, I don’t think I want to know.

“Agreed!” Bob chirped, before the lights in his eye sockets faded.

I took a breath. I needed more information, and there were a few… ‘people’ I could call upon to ask for said information.

[hr][/hr]

“You finished Chauncy?” I asked the chitinous demon as it slammed its crab-like pincers into the barrier of my summoning circle. I’d summoned the demon in the past, he was a popular one for wizards to summon when they needed information.

“You know the rules, Harry Blackstone Dresden,” Chauncy replied in a textbook Oxford accent as he pulled out a pair of wire rimmed spectacles with his pincers and placed them on his beak. “When a demon is summoned, we’re to attempt to break the circle. Now, what do you wish to ask about this time? Perhaps you wish to continue our discussion about your mother?”

“There are several people dead with their souls burned out through their eyes. What do you know about them?”

Despite lacking eyebrows, Chauncy gave the impression of raising one before he answered, “You expect me to give you information for free? For shame, Mr. Dresden.”

“I’m not sharing any more of my name, so take that off the bargaining table.”

Chauncy shrugged, “I didn’t expect you to, and what little I can tell you isn’t worth the hassle it would cause if I did convince you. What else do you have to offer?”

“Not invoking your name,” I bluffed. I was on thin ice with the White Council, and even that could have them decide to do away with me.

“We both know that’s an empty threat. But, fortunately for you, there are others who are willing to front the cost of this information. Pay attention Mr. Dresden, you will want to take notes for this.”

Before I could ask what Chauncy meant about others fronting the cost, he began speaking. Grabbing a pencil and a notebook, I quickly jotted down what he told me. Several souls that should have arrived in the Nevernever hadn’t (I’d be willing to bet they were the victims of this case) and five weeks ago there’d been weird ‘demon-flavored’ fluctuations in the Nevernever.

Chauncy either couldn’t or wouldn't elaborate on the fluctuations, and the time limit I'd given Bob was coming to a close. With that in mind, I ended the summoning, sending the faux British demon back to the Nevernever. I waited a few minutes before I broke the circle, just to be safe. I then went through the process of cleaning the interior of the copper circle of any residual energies from the summoning.

There wouldn't be much, but it gave me time and something to do while I pondered what Chauncy had told me. Something had happened, something that caused the Nevernever to ripple like a pond after a rock had been thrown into it. But no one on the White Council seemed to have any awareness of it, or they would have accused me of it at the same time they approached me about the killings.

“‘Demon-flavored’,” I muttered. “What the hell did Chauncy mean by that?”

I’d get the chance to ask Bob soon enough, as the orange lights in the eye sockets of his skull flickered and lit up, “Well this is certainly an interesting pickle you’ve found this time Harry.”

“I got a little bit of info myself, including a probable time frame. What did you find?”

“Nothing concrete, or rather nothing to narrow down what it is you’re dealing with. I spoke to a few associates, and managed to get something akin to a witness to one of the killings,” Bob said as his eye-lights gave the impression of the spirit settling into the skull, like a person settling into a favorite chair.

“What do you mean, ‘akin to a witness’?” I asked.

“A rather dull spirit over by the Pullman District pointed me to a spot in the Nevernever that seemed to have taken to reflecting the killing. Not sure what help it will be, as the reflection lacked facial features of either of the men involved. The strange part was the apparent killer held the victim against a wall and just… stared at him.

“Had you come to me with this, I’d have been inclined to believe you were dealing with some manner of gorgon. But from what you’ve described of the body, it’s something different. Have you had any luck?”

“Weird fluctuations in the Nevernever five weeks ago, source said they were ‘demon-flavored’ but nothing more than that,” I told Bob as I thought about what he’d told me. “Could it be a variant of a soulgaze?”

Bob hummed thoughtfully, “It’s possible, I suppose. Though it would be stupidly risky. Weaponizing the soul carries many risks, and pure soul-based magics don’t have the kind of oomph to make it worth it. About the only effective way of utilizing the soul in attacks is soulfire, which enhances other magics, it doesn’t do anything on its own.”

“What if our killer used soulfire as part of a soulgaze?”

I got the impression of Bob freezing still, despite him being nothing more than a skull, before he said in an almost shaky voice, “If some suicidal wizard were to infuse soulfire into a soulgaze, then part of the wizard’s soul would be injected into the person they’re sharing the soulgaze with. The problem with that, Harry, is that soulfire creates. It doesn’t destroy. But hellfire, that’s probably what’s happening.”

“So we’re probably looking at a warlock that is combining a soulgaze with hellfire. Now we just need to figure out what criteria he has in choosing his targets.”

It was getting late, so I called Murphy and asked if she’d be able to get a list of the victims for me. I’d need to take a look at the list of victims to see what they had in common, then I could use that to figure out who the killer would be targeting next.