Grave Peril (The Dresden Files #3) - Jim Butcher Page 0,52

pain for a few moments, and someone was screaming. I struggled up a moment later, peering around the inside of the building. Fire spread, a dull chewing sound on the floors above me, and through the missing section of wall I could hear sirens in the distance. There were smears of something black and greasy on the concrete floor, leading to the white van. The sunlight barely touched the back window of the vehicle. The side door stood wide open, and Kyle, his face still hanging in ragged strips, hauled something grotesquehis sister, her true form no longer shrouded by its mask of flesh. The vampire girl made keening sounds of agony while her brother pitched her into the back of the van. He slammed the door shut, a snarl rippling his split lips. He took a step toward me, then clenched his jaws in frustration, stopping just short of the sunlight.

"Wizard," he hissed. "You'll pay. I'll make you pay for this." Then he spun back to the van, with its dark-tinted windows, and leapt in. A moment later, the engine roared to life, and the van sped toward the garage doors, plowed through one of them, sending shards of wood flying, jounced into the street, and vanished from sight, engine racing.

I remained in place, stunned, burnt, hurting, my brain clouded. Then I stumbled to my feet, and staggered toward the hole in the wall, and out into the fading daylight. Sirens got closer.

"Damn," I mumbled, looking back at the spreading fires. "I'm kinda hard on buildings."

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Dark. It was getting dark. Had to get home. Vampires could come out after dark. Home, I thought. Home.

I started stumbling back toward the Beetle .

Behind me, as I did, the sun sank beneath the horizonfreeing all the things that go bump in the night to come out and play.

Chapter Seventeen

I don't remember how I managed to get home again. I have a vague image of all the cars around me going way too fast, and then of Mister's rumbling purr greeting me as I got into my apartment and locked the door behind me.

The vampire's narcotic saliva had soaked in through my skin in a matter of a second or three, spreading into my system in short order after that. I felt numb, light, all over. The room wasn't quite whirling, but when I moved my eyes, things almost seemed to blur a little, then to settle when I focused on something. I throbbed. Every time my heart beat, my entire body pulsed with a slow, gentle pang of pleasant sensation.

Something inside me couldn't help but love every second of it. Even counting the times I'd been juiced up in a hospital, it was the best drug I'd ever had.

I stumbled to my narrow bed and dropped onto it. Mister came and prowled around my face, waiting for me to get up and feed him. "Go away," I heard myself mumble. "Stupid furball. Go on." He put one paw on my throat, and touched the area of burned skin where the sunlight had struck the smear of Kelly Hamilton's saliva. Pain flared through me, and I groaned, forcing myself into the kitchen. I got some cold cuts out of the icebox and dropped them onto Mister's plate. Then I stumbled into the bathroom and flicked on the light.

It hurt.

I shielded my eyes and studied myself in the mirror. My pupils had dilated out nice and big. The skin on my throat, my cheek, was red and glowing, as though from falling asleep outside on a summer afternoonpainful, but not dangerous. I couldn't find any marks on my throat, so the vampire hadn't bitten me. I was pretty sure that was a good thing. Something about a bite being a link to a victim. If she'd bitten me, she could have gotten into my head. Usual mind-control enchantment. Breaking one of the Laws of Magic.

I stumbled back to my bed and sank down onto it, trying to sort out my thoughts. My lovely, throbbing body made this fairly difficult. Mister came nosing around again, but I shoved him away with one hand and forced myself to ignore him.

"Focus, Harry," I mumbled to myself. "Got to have focus."

I'd learned to block out pain, when necessary. Studying under Justin, it had been a practical necessity. My teacher hadn't believed in sparing the rod and spoiling the potential wizard. You learn very quickly not to make mistakes given