Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter
Forty-Five
The protests got uglier when it got warmer.
I stood on the roof of the castle, and Bear loomed next to me. Across the street, there were maybe a hundred or hundred and fifty people, and the chanting was going nonstop, in shifts. The signs had gotten angrier, too.
The folks who lived across the street weren’t terribly happy about all the ruckus happening in their front yards. They were trying to form a kind of ad hoc homeowners association, and they’d written me asking me to take action to “ameliorate the situation.”
I’d spent time and creative effort in my reply, suggesting that they could help me move the castle stone by stone to another location, or that they might contact the protesters themselves, or that they might lodge a complaint with our alderman.
They’d tried to go through channels, which always worked so well with supernatural-related conflict.
CPD had a car parked down the block to monitor the situation, but if things got ugly, two patrol officers weren’t going to be able to do much.
“This is going in one direction,” Bear noted calmly to me.
“I know,” I said.
I leaned forward as Will came out of the front gate of the castle and walked across the street, smiling.
A reception committee of large and unfriendly types, including the former members of the Brothers of St. Brigid that Daniel Carpenter had removed from the organization, and the guy from Bock’s ceremonial group with the broken wrist, came forward to meet him.
Will spoke briefly with a couple who appeared to be what passed for the brains of the operation.
“What do you think will happen this time?” Bear asked.
“I think they’ll say no to a sit-down,” I said. “Again.”
She snorted out a breath through her nose. “I think that, too.”
“Gotta try,” I said.
“Because it’s kind,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Bear shook her head. “I’m from an older world than you, Dresden. The definition of kind has changed a lot over time.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it might have been kinder to run them off when there were only a few of them, when it could have been more easily controlled, and when fewer people might have been hurt. It might have been kinder to draw the boundary a hell of a lot sooner.”
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” I said.
“Times change,” Bear allowed. “People don’t. Anger doesn’t. Violence doesn’t. Instinct doesn’t. What you’re seeing here is pure territoriality.”
“They’re afraid,” I said. “They got hurt in the battle. See that couple Will’s talking to? I’ve dug into them a little. They had two little kids. Both were killed.”
The memory of a bloodied child’s stroller lying on its side, the night of the battle, flashed vividly into my head.
My heart pounded harder and I suddenly felt again the terror and rage of that night.
I had to take a slow breath and close my eyes for a second, fighting off the remembered emotion.
My stomach twisted with nausea, my mouth suddenly watering like I might be about to throw up, and adrenaline zinged into my system.
I bowed my head, breathing slowly and deeply.
“They’re in pain,” I said quietly after a moment. “Hard to blame them for that. And they haven’t gotten violent.”
“No,” Bear agreed. “Not yet.”
The woman of the couple started screaming at Will, turning to the others gathered on the sidewalk, leading them in hard, furious chanting. No occult, no strife, we just want a normal life!
Their fury was palpable. The crowd began to roll forward, toward Will, maybe half a step with each repetition of the chant.
I saw Will sigh and spread his hands in a gesture designed to show he meant no harm.
One of the bruisers stepped up.
Will turned to him. I couldn’t see the expression on the werewolf’s face, but the bruiser could, and his mask of determination faltered a little. He’d lifted a hand, maybe to push Will, but he dropped it again.
Will nodded and said something and then backed calmly away from the crowd.
At the midway point of the street, he turned and walked quickly back to the castle.
A couple of people started walking after him, but the patrol car down the street abruptly swung into motion, driving through before the protesters gathered momentum, hitting the sirens for a second to send out a warning whoop, whoop!
They backed off. Will made it back to the doors without further incident. A moment later, he emerged from the door to the roof and walked over to stand beside Bear and me.
“That went well,” I drawled.
Will sighed. “Tell me about it.”
“What did they say?”
“That they aren’t going to accept anything except everyone in the castle leaving. Everyone. Harry, we’re watching a violent mob being born.”
“Yes, we are,” Bear said matter-of-factly.
I sighed and rubbed at the not-quite-aching spot between my eyebrows.
“They aren’t interested in trying to work anything out,” Will said. “I can go to the alderman’s office again.”
“They aren’t the only angry protesters in town,” I said.
“Daley Plaza, Millennium Park, McCormick Place, Navy Pier, Midway—CPD is barely holding things together as it is.” I nodded toward the patrol car as it cruised slowly down the street, turned, and parked again, a way off.
“That’s all they’ve got available. I’ve talked to Stallings, too.
We’re small potatoes here. And we’re on our own. ”
“It’s only a matter of time before they start setting things on fire,” Bear noted.
“We aren’t there yet,” I said.
“And if we wait until it goes that far,” Bear said, “then you’ll have a couple of choices. Neither of them good.”
“Stop them,” Will said, “or burn.” He looked sick. “This isn’t good, Harry. What if we give them what they want? Clear everyone out, just for a while, so they can cool off?”
“And go where?” I asked. “Send the people I’m protecting where?
The refugee camps out in the suburbs and at the stadiums are overfilled and we’ve all heard about how bad the conditions there are.
” I clenched my jaw. “Dammit, the people here are here because they had nowhere else to go. We haven’t harmed anyone. And this is my home. I’m not leaving.”
Bear shook her head. “Either you flee the territory, or you have to prove yourself strong enough to keep it. You aren’t doing you, your people, or any of that mob any favors by refusing to act.”
“They’ve been hurt and scared enough,” I said. “That’s why this is happening. Adding more to it isn’t going to fix anything.”
“Standing around while they burn this place to the ground isn’t going to fix anything, either, seidrmadr,” Bear said quietly. “You’ve got a little more time, I think. But sooner or later, they’re going to make you choose.”
I clenched my jaw and said nothing.
These were exactly the same people I’d spent my life protecting. The ones who didn’t have power like I did. The ones who were afraid of the powers of the night, and right to be.
I wasn’t going to raise my hand against them unless I was given no other choice.
“Oh,” Will said. “Um. Might as well hear it all at once. We got a letter. The federal HBGB task force wants to come do interviews and test for chemical residue at the castle. We’ve got to schedule a time for them to come in before the end of May, and if we don’t, we might be evicted.
Also, if we do, we might be evicted, at least while they clean up hazardous materials. ”
“Which don’t exist.” I scowled. “I’m not leaving my home for a government mob, either.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Well. You also can’t just keep them out, apparently. State and federal lawmakers have given them a pretty broad range of authority. Which is what some of the other protests are about, actually.”
I took some more deep breaths. “I am beginning to become annoyed.”
Bear snorted.
“Right,” I said. “Glass half full. Set it up toward the end of May. Could be we get burned down by then and then we won’t have to deal with a government inspection, too.”
Will took a notebook out of a pocket and wrote in it. “Heh. Right.”
Bear tilted her head slightly, frowned, and then walked down the length of the castle’s roof. She leaned into one of the crenels, staring down the street for a moment, then looked over her shoulder at me and called, over the chanting, “Dresden.”
“Now what?” I muttered, and Will and I walked down the length of the roof to join her.
Another group of protesters was coming down the street, maybe forty or fifty of them.
“Yippee, more of them,” Will said.
I frowned and peered for a moment. I recognized those people.
Artemis Bock was at the front of the group, walking purposefully.
His inner circle was gathered around him, and a bunch of the others were the crowd from McAnally’s.
They, too, were carrying signs, though theirs were of a more peaceable nature.
Several of them read Coexist spelled out with a bunch of religious symbology.
Some were simply emblazoned with a peace sign.
More said Heal Together, and one read Do Not Throw Stones!
“It’s worse than more of them,” I groaned.
“Counterprotesters,” Bear confirmed.
Bock and his people came walking together down the sidewalk, singing some song with a call-and-response about seeing beauty, and filed together down the narrow sidewalk that started about two inches past the walls of the castle, taking up space there and turning to face the protesters across the street, putting themselves between that crowd and the castle.
“Oh God,” I said. “They’re here to help.”
“Um,” Will said. “What are we going to do?”
“I guess I’ll go talk to them.” I sighed.