Chapter Fifteen
Once home at the castle, I made a few calls and then it was straight to the lab, solo this time.
There were still things I didn’t want Fitz to become familiar with yet.
Familiar. Get it?
“Bob!” I called, once I’d lit a few candles. “Get in here.”
A blue light appeared on the wall, as if the white-painted cinderblocks that made up the lab’s walls were some kind of translucent crystal through which someone was shining a laser pointer.
It flickered around the room a few times, leaving a streak of fading blue light behind it, and then settled down onto the wooden shelf on the wall upon which rested a human skull, flanked by a pair of large candles and several paperback romance novels.
The blue light vanished and then the empty sockets of the skull kindled to life with twin orange-gold flames like candlelight. “How’s it going, boss?”
Bob the Skull was a spirit of intellect and had been my more-or-less faithful assistant since I’d recovered him from the ruins of Justin DuMorne’s burnt-down house where I’d spent my late childhood.
He’d worked with several generations of wizards and probably had more knowledge of theoretical magic, in total, than any wizard alive.
“What do you know about the Lurker in the Shadows?” I asked him promptly.
The flickering eyelights froze for a second. Then Bob asked, carefully, “Why do you want to know about that?”
I looked up at him with an arched eyebrow. “That bad, huh?”
“Yes and no,” Bob said. “I mean, if that thing wanted to end all life on Earth, it probably could. But it doesn’t.”
“Explain, please.”
“You’ve read Cromarty’s write-up?” Bob asked.
“Yeah. Seemed kind of poetical to me.”
“Cromarty wasn’t the chewiest crayon in the box, if you take my meaning,” Bob said, the skull’s chin bumping the shelf as he nodded. “He liked writing about all kinds of things he never actually had any experience with. Definition of an ivory-tower scholar, you know?”
“And here I was taking him seriously.” I sighed. “When am I gonna learn? Okay, tell me more.”
“Well, he liked dressing up like animals for recreation,” Bob said. “Not even shapeshifting, just dressing up, and—”
“Not about Cromarty, Bob. The Lurker. I know it’s connected to the Red Court.”
“Ah,” Bob said. “Well. It’s in the same family of blood-drinking demons as the one behind the Red Court. Less evolved, you might say.”
I frowned. “Wait a minute. There was a demon behind the Red Court?”
“More like a minor deity, by the time you came along,” Bob said.
“It had transcended any physical form, ’cause it had been building for a while.
Invading new humans when they were forced to consume possessed blood, causing them to thirst for more of it, taking full control of them when they killed, and then growing more powerful every time they drank.
No one ever learned its name, which is why it wasn’t stopped. Call it the Red Thirst.”
“Making me the Thirst Quencher,” I mused.
“Ultimately, I guess,” Bob agreed brightly. “Any-way. The Lurker is like the simpleton little brother of the Red Thirst. It’s bound to a physical form.”
“That black spongy stuff?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Bob said. “It’s like a physical parasite but it operates in much the same way.
Invade, set up shop in the stomach, and torment the host with thirst for animal fluids.
It assumes more and more control of the host as it drinks.
Doesn’t have to be human blood. Once it has done that, it spreads from the host’s stomach throughout the body and brain.
It gains control of the host’s nervous system, can make it stronger and faster, and can grant a kind of limited immortality. ”
“Wow,” I said. “Limited how?”
“You have to keep feeding it blood,” Bob said. “The more sentient, the better.”
“Uh-huh,” I mused. “I talked to it.”
“Oh,” Bob said. “That probably isn’t good.”
“Yeah, it tried to jump in to my mouth,” I said.
“Wow, very hentai.”
I rubbed at one eyebrow. “Bob, can we focus, please. It said something about being freed from its sibling.”
“Makes sense,” Bob said. “From the Red Thirst’s point of view, the Lurker was like the kind of relative you keep locked in the attic.
It took care of the Lurker, made sure it had enough to eat to stay alive and sometimes serve a useful purpose—but it also kept it from branching out more than was good for the Red Thirst. I mean, there’s only so much blood. ”
“The Red Thirst meaning the Lords of the Outer Night,” I guessed.
“It was a distributed consciousness,” Bob agreed. “But it would have placed the most of itself in them, yes.”
“So, when I set off the spell that nixed the Red Court,” I said, my heart suddenly sinking, “I set the Lurker loose.”
“I was never sure,” Bob said, “if the bloodline curse wouldn’t have taken out the Lurker too. And it seemed like you had enough on your mind already.”
“Okay.” I sighed. “So, this is partly on me.”
“Legally speaking, I don’t know if anyone could—”
I slashed a hand at the air. “I’m not speaking legally, Bob. I pulled that trigger. I’m the one responsible for the consequences.”
Bob fell quiet for a moment while I felt a dawning sense of sickening responsibility.
More consequences of choices made. I’d taken out the Red Court to save my daughter’s life, because it had been the only way to get that done.
But I’d knocked down a lot of fences in doing so—and the past few years had been largely about dealing with the things those fences had contained.
“Okay,” I said finally. “How fast can it spread?”
“Not fast,” Bob said mildly. “I mean, if that’s any consolation. It takes a lot of time for it to gain control—of humans, anyway. Animals are different.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “It’s been mostly inside of animals.” I told him about my encounters with the Lurker so far.
“It won’t be in nearly as many people,” Bob said.
“I mean, there’s always some percentage of folks who would be susceptible and fall easily, but as a whole, people are pretty unmanageable.
Even if they got infected by the Lurker, most could probably resist cravings for a long time by just eating their steaks rare.
It spreads slower than the Red Thirst. And anyone that’s fully possessed is going to have problems operating in even indirect sunlight. ”
“Yeah, I saw that part,” I said. “They looked like they were suffering from some kind of mange or something. Emilio doesn’t look like he’s at the peak of physical health either. So, we’re talking about a cult-level influence here, not a civilizational threat.”
“It could be one,” Bob said. “If it wanted to. I mean, it could spread through the animal kingdom fast, then kill everything and have done.”
“So, how come it doesn’t?”
The skull’s eyelights narrowed. “Not sure,” he said. “It’s a more-physical being. And it seems to want to inhabit mortals, even though it’s not super good at doing that. Maybe it just wants the human experience.”
I grunted. “Yeah. That tracks. It only seems to take animals to use as weapons for a specific purpose.” I took a deep breath. “Now for the big question. How do I kill it?”
“I don’t know that you can,” Bob said. “It’s also a distributed consciousness. It would be like trying to rid the yard of mushrooms. You can pluck them out as they pop up, but getting to the roots is a lot more complicated. You’d need to somehow collect and contain the Lurker’s actual biomass.”
I grunted. “What about getting a piece of it to use to create a channel?”
“Would call for a lot of power, boss,” Bob said mildly. “Like the kind the Red Court tried to build up with the curse you turned back on them.”
Meaning drastic measures like mass human sacrifice would be necessary. “Yeah, okay. I see the problem.” I pursed my lips. “What if we just went local? Cleansed the city, not the whole world?”
“Maybe doable with the castle’s ability to collect ley lines,” Bob said dubiously. “But still really difficult.”
“And if Emilio truly is a wizard-class talent, he might be able to counter it. Even turn it back on me. Which means …”
I narrowed my eyes thoughtfully.
“Ooo,” Bob said. “There’s some kind of intellectual process happening over there. I can see the hamsters running on their wheels.”
“The Lurker,” I said deliberately, “is used to being kept on a leash. It lacks confidence.”
“I suppose,” Bob said.
I smiled happily. “And I,” I said, “am the Thirst Quencher. And the Warden of Demonreach. I need you to send word to Alfred. Tell him to be ready for a new resident.”
I heard footsteps approaching the lab’s trapdoor. I pointed my finger at Bob and said, “Scram.”
The eyelights winked out and Bob’s blue-light form zipped into the wall and vanished.
“Dresden,” Bear said, from the hallway above. “Father Forthill called. He said he’s got material for you and he’s sending over a package by courier.”
“Cool,” I called back. “Meet me in the library when it gets here.”