Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files #8) - Jim Butcher Page 0,38

on the walla brief glimpse, a form, a shape, something that left an outline of itself on the wall where it had absorbed the agonized energy of the old mans suffering.

I fought to push the Sight away from my perceptions again, and staggered. That was the drawback to using the Sight. The Sight could show you a lot of things, but everything you saw with it was there to stay. It wrote everything you perceived with it upon your memory in indelible ink, and those memories were always there, fresh and harsh when you went back to them, never blurring with the passage of time, never growing easier to endure. The little demonic diorama of bad vibes painted over the white tiles of that bathroom was going to make some appearances in my darker dreams.

It looked like Id found the black magic the Gatekeeper warned me about. Just as well that I hadnt tried the dangerous spell with Little Chicago.

I took a couple of steps away, shaking away the flickers of color and sparkles of light on my vision that remained for a time when the Sight was gone once more. Rawlins had a hand under one of my elbows.

You all right, man? he rumbled a moment later, his voice very quiet.

Yeah, I said. Yeah. Thanks.

He looked from me to the closed door and back. What did you see in there?

Im not sure yet, I said. My voice sounded shaky. Something bad.

Almost too quietly to be heard, he said, This wasnt just some thug, was it.

My stomach twisted again. In my minds eye, I could see a malicious smile reflected in the eyes of the old man, the memory absolutely crystalline. Maybe not, I mumbled. It could have been a person, I think. Someone really sick. Orhellip; maybe not. I dont know. More words struggled to bubble out of my mouth and I clamped my lips resolutely shut until Id gotten my thoughts back under control.

I looked around me and realized that the hairs on the back of my neck were not crawling around at the memory of the energy Id just brushed.

They were reacting to more of it drifting through the air. Now. Nearby.

Rawlins, I said. How many other cops are here?

Just me now, he said quietly. He took a look at my face and then peered around, his heavy-lidded eyes deceptively alert, his hand on his gun. We got trouble?

We got trouble, I said quietly, shifting my staff into my right hand.

The lights went out, all of them at once, plunging the hotel into pure blackness.

And the screaming started.

* * *

Chapter Twelve

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No more than two or three seconds went by before Rawlins had his flashlight out and he flicked it on. The light flashed white and clean for maybe half a second, and then it dimmed down, as though some kind of greasy soot had coated it, until the light, though still bright, was so vague and veiled that it accomplished little more than to cast a faint glow to maybe an arms length from Rawlins.

What the hell, he said, and shook the light a few times. He had his hand on his gun, the restraining strap off, but he hadnt drawn it yet. Good man. He knew as well as I did that the hotel was going to have far more panicked attendees than potential threats.

Well try mine, I said, and got the silver pentacle on its chain from around my neck. A gentle whisper and an effort of will and the amulet began to emit a pure, silver-blue light that reached into the darkness around us, burning it away as swiftly as it pressed in, until we could see for maybe fifteen feet around us. Beyond that was just a murky vagueness not so much a cloud or a mist as a simple lack of light.

I gripped my staff in my right hand, and more of my will thrummed through it, setting the winding spirals of runes and sigils along its length to burning with a gentle, ember orange light.

Rawlins stared at me for a second and then said, What the hell is going on?

There were running footsteps and shouts and cries in the gloom. All of them sounded choked, muffled somehow. One of the two teenaged vampires stumbled into the circle of my azure wizards light, sobbing. Several young men blundered along a moment later, blindly, and all but trampled her. Rawlins grabbed the girl with a grunt of, Excuse me, miss. and