Against the Dying of the Night

Harry Dresden, wizard for hire, gets called in on a job in Wales, where he runs afoul of Team Torchwood.

Many thanks to my beta and personal cheerleader jack_cole and also to the mods for organizing all this. Amazing work, all around

Ch. 1

The plane shook and I clutched the armrest tighter than I had been, which is saying something. The man in the seat next to me glared at me vaguely before turning his head to look out the window again. To my left was an empty aisle seat. I didn't know where Thomas had gone, and I remembered to hope that he wasn't off getting himself in trouble, but mostly I was just grateful to have the extra space to stretch my leg into.

There is nothing about airplanes I like: the cramped spaces, the grumpy people, none of whom I know, being thousands of feet in the air, and, of course, the fact that anything built after the 1950's tends to break down when I get near it. To say that I was panicked would have been a gross understatement. Magic and technology just don't mix, which is really too bad. Science has produced some pretty amazing advantages which I'll never be able to use. I know people who can use them for me (I've been known to have a pack of werewolves run internet searches when I need them), but it's not the same.

At least the food was edible. I had heard nightmare tales, but they seem to want to keep their international travelers happy, or as happy as you can get on an eight hour flight from O'Hare to Manchester, anyway, so the food was good, and it just kept coming. From the few conversations I could overhear, this plane wasn't as cramped as most, either, so I suppose I should count my blessings and be done complaining, but I'm not one for religion, and the complaining gave me something to do other than panic, which could potentially bring us crashing down into the Atlantic Ocean. I didn't know about everyone else, but I didn't particularly feel like recreating 'Titanic' that afternoon.

A stewardess rushed by, tripping over my feet to get to another passenger who had turned on her call button. The woman's face was slightly flushed, her eyes glassy, and suddenly I knew where Thomas had gotten off to. And gotten up to in the meantime. I rolled my eyes when my half-brother started tapping me on the shoulder and motioning to my legs, which were very much in his way. When he realized I wasn't going to move for him, he stopped his tapping and gesturing and started pouting instead. For my part, I would have been content to let him stand and pout for a while longer, but people- especially women- were starting to stare. I sighed and moved myself into a considerably less comfortable position so that Thomas could fold himself more gracefully into the cramped little space than I ever could into a throne.

As if noticing the attention of the other passengers for the first time, though I knew very well that he had been aware of them the whole while, he looked around with his best attempt at an innocent, wide-eyed gaze, and gave everyone a little wave. Then, as if to show that all had been forgiven, he pulled me close and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. I pushed him away in return. Having a vampire as a long lost half-brother really is more trouble than it's worth, sometimes. Not that anyone would look at us and peg us as brothers. We're both tall, dark of hair and eye, and that's about where the similarity ends. Thomas tends to put people in mind of those old Greek statues, the ones based on the physical ideal. He could wear clothes that would appear ridiculous on anyone else and make them work for him-the first time I had met him, he had been wearing white feathers, and nothing else. He had no need, nor any desire, for modesty. The man was beautiful, and so what if I was a little jealous? You'd think I would have gotten a few of those genes myself. Instead, in my habitual leather trench coat, I tend more to look like an extra from the set of 'The Road to El Dorado', especially when I have my staff with me (which I didn't right then. I had to check it back in Chicago. Apparently the airline industry looks down on large blunt instruments in the cabin these days.)

"Do you remember that talk we had before we left about avoiding trouble wherever and whenever possible, and how we need to avoid attracting too much attention to ourselves?" Petty? Me? No, certainly not. I was annoyed for perfectly legitimate reasons, and besides, I don't like seeing women taken advantage of, never mind that being with Thomas had probably been one of the most exhilarating experiences of her life. I'd seen people absolutely addicted to having sex with White Court vampires, destruction of their souls and all. The thought of it tends to set my teeth on edge, though now that I know Thomas, I suspect that it's likely more due to my own close call with Red Court vampire venom than anything else.

"Oh, come on, Harry, you can't really be angry, can you?" He looked disbelievingly at me, and I can't really blame him. I didn't believe me either.

But I was tense and damn well going to continue the argument anyway. I opened my mouth to reply, but snapped it shut again when the plane gave another involuntary wobble, this time longer and more violent than the last, and I had to fight down the urge to be sick.

"So that's what this is about." Curse his perceptiveness and damn that knowing smirk. "You know, Dresden, you really should have just told me you were scared. I wouldn't have left you all by your lonesome."

"Is the mocking really necessary?" The tension and the desire to vomit were beginning to exhaust me, and I just couldn't come up with a good comeback.

"Absolutely. I very much doubt you're the first wizard to have ever taken an airplane, and, look, ma, no disasters."

The man in the window seat had been watching our little show since Thomas had returned, but when Thomas had said 'wizard' he began staring openly. It was the slack jawed gaze of a man who didn't know quite what he had gotten himself into, but was sure it couldn't end well. It's a look I've been on the receiving end of many times, and under different circumstances I might have been amused. Wizards exist all over the world, but very few declare themselves openly, and no one but me has an ad in the yellow pages. I glared at him out of the corner of my eye and raised an eyebrow. The slack in his jaw disappeared, bring his lips together in such a way that they disappeared as well. He was thin and bony and reminded me tragically of a weasel or a squirrel. Thomas, of course, was oblivious.

"Now that I think about it, we're almost to the end of the flight, and nothing's broken down at all. How are you managing that?"

"I think you'll find that my little TV-" I tapped the offending object, set into the back of the seat in front of me, with my knuckle "-has long since passed, and I can't speak as to the quality of yours, either."

"Yes, but considering your car, I would have thought..."he made vague crashing gestures with his hands. Very subtle.

"Hey, lay off the Beetle. I figured out a way to contain the excess magic the last time I was asked to be on Larry Fowler."

"I remember hearing that that didn't go so well."

"That's funny, me too. Of course, I don't really think I have to worry about Ortega showing up."

"Ah. So, as long as no one threatens your friends and family and challenges you to a duel, we're fine."

"Seems to be."

"Good, good." That settled, Thomas pulled one of the many magazines out of the pouch in the chair in front of him and settled down for another meaningless round of reading without absorbing. I let him do it. I wasn't really in the talking mood anyway.

As soon as we were done talking, window seat man stood up and excused himself, and by excused himself, I mean that he tripped and stumbled over us until he reached the aisle, straightened his rumpled shirt, glared down his nose at us, and walked away. Lacking anything else to do, I watched him go. Instead of heading toward the bathroom as I had expected, however, he walked over to a man in another row. If my coat looked out of place, this other man's didn't fit in much better-a greatcoat, circa world war two. Even from as far away as I was, he cut an imposing figure. When he stood he would be about my height and he had considerably more muscle mass that I ever have or ever will, but that alone would not have made me look twice at him. The world is full of people like that. No, it was the way he carried himself, even while sitting: like someone accustomed to being in charge. I decided to call them Greatcoat Man and Weasel Boy, just for kicks. For years to come, I decided, these two would keep me occupied with their fantastic adventures when I was bored and didn't have any cases. There would probably be aliens and explosions, maybe time travel if they were exceptionally unlucky or if I was extraordinarily bored.

Weasel Boy leaned over to talk directly into Greatcoat Man's ear, but he kept glancing back at me and Thomas, so, really, it was no mystery as to what he was talking about. Greatcoat Man seemed amused, and I wish I could have listened in, or Listened in, but all the background noise from the plane's engines made my little trick useless.

The plane began to bank mere seconds before the 'fasten your seatbelt' light turned on and the announcement of our imminent landing was given, but it was enough. There was a little whining noise and the little girl in the seat behind me began complaining to her father as the video game she had been playing died. I ducked my head, shamefaced, as Weasel Boy climbed over me and back into his seat. There was no way for anyone else to know that my slipup had been the death of the small handheld device, but I still felt bad about it. Thomas just smirked at me and continued to pretend to read. Brothers, honestly.

From the time the plane landed to the baggage claim and out to where we were supposed to pick up our rental car was complete chaos to me. I'm quite certain that all I'll ever be able to remember are brief flashes of running into people and going in the opposite direction to the flow of traffic. Nothing too new there, I suppose. I'm just thankful Thomas was with me. He, at the very least, had been through Manchester International before, and could catch me before I ended up accidentally on a plane to Morocco or something.

When we got to the car rental place, however, it turned out that they didn't have one for us, or at least one that wouldn't break down in the middle of the highway. We probably could have gotten a nicer one than we had planned on in the first place and had it work just fine, and the old woman who had hired me was paying for expenses, but I knew exactly how tired I was. Nothing was going to last long. I didn't really want to have to go through the hassle of filling out all the necessary forms, either, so I just had Thomas call a cab. He bought bus tickets. I'm not quite sure I'll ever know why, but he looked quite proud of himself as he presented them to me. The man is absolutely ridiculous some times, but the bus was a better idea. I hadn't realized quite how far Cardiff was from Manchester. The taxi fees would have been more than my empty wallet could have borne.

We sat in back and didn't talk to anyone or each other. The flight had been long and back home the sun would just be setting. Of course, the sun was just barely getting started in England, and it was very confusing: I felt like I should be dead asleep in my bed every time I closed my eyes, and every time I opened them, it was midmorning.

This time, I got the aisle seat and Thomas had to sit by the window, so I was able to stretch out my legs. I did it more theatrically than was perhaps really necessary, but he didn't need to hit me as hard as he did. I rubbed the side of my head as I pulled the small slip of paper with the address we would be staying at out of my wallet, committing it to memory. I had seen pictures. It was a nice place. The woman who had hired me and her sister had stayed there as children, apparently, or somewhere near there.

The woman, Mary Cole, had approached me a week ago. She had been timid and cautious, but she knew what she wanted and despite the worry that I was, in fact, a madman, she came to me anyway. Mary told me that not long ago her cousin, Estelle, had passed under mysterious circumstances: She had drowned in her own yard, a yard entirely void of any sources of water. Estelle had been interested in fairies before her death, and the moment Mary mentioned that I decided to take the case-mostly just to stop her from going to an amateur. The fair folk are extremely dangerous, and sending someone who isn't prepared to deal with them could be a death sentence or worse. Mary's sister and twin, Elizabeth, still lived in London, and I was told that if I needed anything while in Wales, all I had to do was contact her and it would be taken care of.

I was dead asleep by the time we reached the Millennium Center in Cardiff, and didn't really get my mental feet under me until we were almost out of the center square. I was so disoriented that I tried to read the Welsh on the road signs instead of the English. Fortunately, Thomas kept his head about him and took me by the arm down a side street to our destination.

"Honestly, Harry, sometimes you're just so useless." He sounded as tired and annoyed as I felt, but I wasn't going to let him get away with that.

"Useless? That's interesting, because I was under the impression that I was the one hired to do a job."

"Hey, she met both of us."

"Only because you were in my office when she showed up. The ad does not say 'Dresden and Raith' the last time I checked."

"Psh, semantics."

"If you try and make like a private detective, Murphy will kill you."

He was silent for a moment, as if considering the possibility. "Very probably" was his only reply, but it wasn't much longer until we reached the entrance to the apartment building. We were on the second floor of four, which was fine with me: no elevators involved. An elevator was the last thing I needed after the hellish ordeal of the airplane. Bad memories, and a lot of additional fees I have to pay for my office.

With only a few hours left before nightfall (by which I mean there were more than a few, but I didn't really want to deal with being touristy, so I could pretend), I decided to get some rest. A tired wizard is a grumpy wizard, and a grumpy wizard is a wizard that makes mistakes. Thomas promised (or was it threatened?) to wake me not long after the sun had gone down and show me the sights, by which he meant local clubs and pubs. I decided to humor him. I hadn't planned on going to Estelle's place until the next day, anyway, so I might as well. I decided to wait until the next day, or at least later that night, to unpack my suitcase. That settled, I threw the offending baggage haphazardly into a corner of the room and fell into the bed. As I fell asleep, I was vaguely aware of Thomas moving around. Probably primping, the overgrown peacock.

At some point during my nap, my suitcase must have exploded. It was the only reasonable explanation. Well, that, or Thomas. Thomas is an explanation in and of himself. I considered being angry for a moment, but found that I didn't really care. As long as nothing was damaged and no one had died, it could be fixed. I could, however, be annoyed, and do it with great gusto. This sibling thing was kind of fun sometimes.

I rose and stalked into the next room, all billowing coat and angry wizard scowl. No harm in making Thomas think I was angry, after all. The sight of Thomas Raith, hair tied back with a purple and yellow bandana, struggling to iron one of my shirts is more than my affected wrath could bear, and I burst out laughing before I got a chance to say anything at all. Thomas only glared at me before going back to work.

When my laughter had finally subsided (more because my sides hurt than because I had finished being amused) Thomas put the iron aside, placing his hand on his thrown-out hip, looking every inch the infuriated housewife. "Look, this is all your fault," he said.

"My fault? Yes, of course, I remember now the time I told you that whenever we took transatlantic flights you would be doing all the laundry. How ever could I have forgotten?"

"Harry, I know times have been hard and everything, but, honestly, what you brought? No. Absolutely not. You would ruin my image instantaneously, and, as your older brother, I am obligated to introduce you to at least one willing female tonight."

"You're kidding, right?" I asked, but he shook his head, looking smug and pleased with himself. "Between you and Bob, I swear, it's a conspiracy."

"You've already agreed to go out, and now that I've figured out this stupid ironing thing, you have to go. As payment for a favor rendered."

"More like 'figured out this stupid irony thing,' and since when are we fairies? 'payment for favors rendered,' indeed," I said and received only a glare for my troubles. "Fine, fine, I'll go out. Where'd you learn to be such an irritating busybody, anyway?"

"Your bad influence, little brother" he said and threw the shirt at my face. It was warm and I was tempted to just leave it there for a while, but I got the feeling that Thomas wanted to get out as soon as possible, so I went back into the bedroom to change my clothes.

I hate to admit it, but the shirt, a formal black dress shirt, looked better that night than it had since I'd first bought it. I was already resettling my duster over my shoulders when I realized that I couldn't remember packing the top in the first place. Thomas had planned ahead, it seemed. I hoped vaguely that he hadn't planned any farther. Scheming vampires tend to make me nervous, even if I am related to them.

I walked out into the other room again, contemplating the pros and cons of bringing my staff with me. The cons were definitely in the lead, but there was always the little voice in the back of my head reminding me that the White Council was at war with the Vampire Courts, and I couldn't be too careful. To be conspicuous or not to be conspicuous, that is the question.

Thomas turned around, still buttoning a shirt that, dear lord, could nearly have been a twin to mine if it hadn't been for the fine scarlet embroidery around the cuffs and collar, and caught sight of me. This time, apparently, it was his turn to lose himself to uncontrollable laughter. I wasn't sure why until I caught sight of myself in a mirror.

"So," I said, "no coat, then?"

Thomas staggered over to me and grabbed my shoulder to support himself. He was very clearly trying to say something, but he couldn't get it out. I wasn't too concerned. I brushed him off so that he had to lean on a nearby countertop in order to keep himself from becoming prematurely horizontal.

I slid the worn fabric from my shoulders, feeling more exposed without its protective weight. The spellbound leather had saved my sorry hide on more than one occasion, and I usually only went without it during the hottest weeks of the summer. On the other hand, this also put an end to the staff debate, and to the blasting rod debate that went along with it. I made sure to place coat, staff, and rod close to the door in case I needed to grab them and run later, and made sure that my shield bracelet (damaged as it was), force ring, and mother's amulet were all secure. I was already feeling vulnerable, no reason to give anyone an open shot if I could avoid it.

I looked back to check on Thomas, who had recovered himself and had engaged in his own internal debate of how many buttons to button. Eventually, he decided on none and let the whole thing hang loose, providing a contrast to the tight black leather pants he was wearing. I caught a glint of silver from somewhere around his chest and knew he was also wearing the amulet he had inherited from our mother. I had never felt comfortable wearing it openly, and was amazed that Thomas did. He put the final touches on his appearance by letting his hair down from the bandana and tossing his fine dark curls around once or twice before looking over at me as if I was the one delaying him.

I opened the door for him, and he sauntered out, not waiting to see if I would follow him or not. I seriously considered not for a moment, but there was nothing for me to do there other than clean up the mess Thomas had made of my suitcase, and that was less than appealing, so I followed him.

Ch. 2

For whatever reason, when Thomas had press ganged me into going out with him, I had assumed there would be night clubs. I knew they existed in Cardiff. Somehow, they're impossible to get rid of, rather like cockroaches, but with more music and dancing, and less of the ability to have their heads cut off and continue living for several more days. At least, I'm fairly sure there's less of that. A theory to be tested at a later date. Never, for preference.

Instead, he led me into a tavern just off the Millennium Center. The place was so comforting and familiar that I nearly ordered an ale right off, but then I hesitated. This place was no McAnally's, and should not be treated as such. Then I ordered one anyway. If it was terrible, at least I would have a story for Mac when I got back to Chicago. Making sure I was set for the short run, Thomas clapped me on the shoulder before moving in on the nearest eligible bachelorette. The poor thing would never know what hit her. She looked tense, too, dark circles running under her gracefully slanted eyes--Japanese, I'm fairly sure. Maybe a night with Thomas would do her good, but I kind of doubted it.

If things started getting too strange, I decided that I would intervene. Thomas would understand, and if he didn't then it wasn't as if we didn't have ample time to work it out. That settled, I leaned my back against the bar, ale in hand. It was cold, which I knew Mac wouldn't like, but I could enjoy on occasion (so long as no one snitches to Mac on me. If he finds out, I'll be in trouble.) It was good, but not as good as home. I didn't really expect anything else, but it was nice to dream.

The barkeep put a large pitcher and some plastic cups on a tray and set it down near the woman Thomas was focused on. She turned, grabbed it, and made her way passed him with calm determination and on toward a table with another woman- short, with long brown hair and large dark eyes, and a man- his hair cropped close and his eyes downcast, already sitting there. Workmates, I guessed, out for a drink after a long day at the office. I'd done the same thing with Nick, back when I worked at Ragged Angel Investigations. Their clothes were pretty close to immaculate, but all of them had tired, worn eyes that bespoke warfare. I let out a small smirk as I sipped my drink, imagining cubicle workers ambushing their unsuspecting managers, their faces and clothes decorated with office supplies made to mimic aboriginal warriors.

I thought that it had been pretty clear that the woman wasn't interested in Thomas' advances, but he followed her anyway. A White Court vampire being turned down was a rarity indeed, and I was enjoying watching every second of the show. Eventually, he must have gotten himself an invitation (I was pretty sure it came from the man, who stood soon after and went out back to receive a call on his cell phone) because Thomas took a seat and poured himself a beer from their pitcher. Both women looked a little annoyed at that, but Thomas' charms were beginning to work on them, and they began to scoot a little closer to him, relaxing.

Promised show delayed, I began to look around the pub again. It was still a little early, so people were mostly sober. There was a larger crowd here than there ever was at McAnally's, especially these days, and it was a little disconcerting until I started looking around at the smaller groups. Family, friends, people out looking for a good time with someone to watch their back: nothing overtly sinister, and for me that was a rarity. I reveled in the feeling. Then I felt it.

A wizard's senses are hard to describe. What I was feeling was rather like what I imagine cats feel at the end of their whiskers if their whiskers have been inserted into an electrical socket. It was a sort of prickling, sharp but not painful, and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, coupled with an oily sort of chill. Before I was fully cognizant of what I was doing, I was running out the back door and into an alleyway. Never a good sign, that.

There was absolute silence for a brief, terrifying moment after the door back into the noisy pub and slammed shut and locked automatically behind me. Then I caught the soft sound of scuffling shoes followed by clanging as something hit a trash can and knocked it to the ground. I followed the sound around the corner of a large dumpster, and only hesitated a moment to assess the situation. The man who had gone outside with his phone was being attacked by someone. The someone wasn't terribly large, and I guessed that she must have gotten the jump on the fit man to give him so much trouble. It's a pity I didn't guess vampire.

I tried to pull her off of him, but she only batted me out of the way. I fell hard on my ass and let out a muffled curse. I think if it hadn't been for that, she likely would have gone back to what she was doing. Instead, she refocused on me as I struggled backwards and away, trying to regain my feet the whole time. I finally managed it, only to be trapped, my back against a rough brick wall. I looked over the vampire's shoulder at the other man, but he was quickly losing sensibility, shortly to be followed by consciousness if he was lucky. Either way, I was on my own.

This particular vampire was either very stupid or very young, and quite likely both, because she followed my gaze, giving me time to trigger the ring on my right hand, which stored kinetic energy every time I moved it. By triggering it, I would release it all at once, which I did, and sent her flying away from me, buying me enough time to draw my mother's pentacle from around my neck, but not enough to ready my shield bracelet or pour any faith into the pentacle before she recovered herself and jumped on me, this time bearing us both to the ground. She kept my arms fully pinned and useless. Her eyes were completely black, her mouth lolling open, narcotic saliva sliding over her teeth and lips as she lent closer to me. I shuddered as I felt the first drops hit my neck, which preceded her rough tongue by only seconds. I had only those few seconds to be terrified before the venom began working.

Assured that I wasn't going anywhere, she reached down and plucked my mother's amulet from my heavy, useless fingers. She considered it for a moment before dangling it above me. I wanted it back, but I wasn't quite sure why. Everything had turned out so strange. Every touch and movement was both absolute ecstasy and unreasoningly terrifying, and I couldn't remember how I had gotten where I was.

"Wizard Dresden," the woman on top of me grinned down at me and I groaned, trying to convince my body to crawl out from underneath her, but I could barely move my fingers, let alone the rest of me, "what an unexpected surprise. I didn't think to ever see you again, though I think the first time we met, you did not see me."

The woman's accent was vaguely French, and something about that struck me as funny, and I giggled without meaning to, a strained sound, and one that made her grin even wider. "You remember, though, I think. Poor, dearly departed Bianca. We all miss her acutely."

I was beginning to allow myself to slip beneath the warm, comforting layer of obliviousness that the vampire's venom allowed when the shot went off. Blood splattered all over me, warm and damp, pungent to the nose and startling to the tongue, before the vampire went limp and fell over me. I don't remember how I did it, but I managed to crawl out from beneath the body that would likely not be there for much longer and was halfway to my feet before I was pushed rudely back to my knees. I had the impression that I was supposed to put my arms behind my head, and I tried, I really did, but I just couldn't lift them.

I looked up at the man who was giving me the impossible orders. His coat was long and looked comfortable and warm. I looked at his face, but avoided his eyes. A soulgaze under those conditions could have sent me over an edge from which I might never return. He looked familiar, but I couldn't place him.

There was a scuffle near the door that I had come out in the first place, but it was hard to follow. I kept getting people confused. I'm pretty sure one of them was Thomas, but every time I tried to pick him out of the group I couldn't do it. I gave up, and leaned on my hands, which, in lieu of putting them behind my head, I placed on the ground. I was very seriously considering crawling into a corner and waiting to die when someone grabbed me roughly around the soldiers, throwing my head back uncomfortably. Whoever it was tried to talk to me, but I couldn't understand, and I tried to cringe away when whoever had captured my shoulders began to shake me, trying to get me to respond, I assumed. It didn't work, and as panic and adrenaline made my heart rush, their efforts became worse than useless, and I fell into something like unconsciousness.

Ch. 3

I only had a second to take a gulp of air before everything I had eaten in the last twelve hours made a hasty and violent exit. I was grateful that I was already on my side, so all I had to do to distance myself from the mess I was making was to raise myself on my hands and knees. Having vomit crusted all over your face and neck is never fun, and you never know when you need to make a good impression, something the mess would seriously get in the way of.

That finished, I backed up, still on my hands and knees, until I had my back to a wall. I was shaking and shivering uncontrollably, and all I wanted to do was curl into a little ball until it stopped. At some point unconsciousness had turned into dreaming, and old nightmares had come rushing back. My throat hurt in ways that had nothing to do with stomach acid.

I was in a room that felt only a little larger than a postage stamp. Three walls were made of stone, the fourth was glass with large circular holes and was smeared with streaks of something unidentifiable. The wall opposite me had a stone slab sticking out that I guessed was supposed to act as a bed. Then it dawned on me: someone had stuck me in a cell, a filthy, disgusting cell, but a cell nonetheless. And it wasn't a hastily constructed one, either. Those I could get out of, but whoever these people were, they had planned ahead, and to top it all off, they had taken my bracelet, ring, and amulet. I felt my stomach drop like a stone into my shoes.

My options, as I knew them, were as follows: call for help, wait until whoever had put me there came to retrieve me, or escape. Calling for help wasn't likely to do much good, and waiting was bound to get me bruised, bloodied, and potentially dead, which just left escape. I was getting good at escape.

With my limbs somewhat calmer, I was able to stand and go over to the door. If I was fortunate, there would be an easy way out of this: hinges, a poorly made lock. No such luck. There were hinges, but they were made of the same strong plexi-glass as the rest of the door, so no help there, and there was no lock. Near as I could tell, the doors were opened and closed using a set of switches near the door to what I could only assume was the outside world. Or a secret underground lair. So there was nothing too helpful on the subtle escape front, but if worst came to worst, I was pretty sure that I could melt a hole through the door. Noticeable, time consuming, and exhausting (especially without any foci) but it would do in a pinch.

I was just starting to look around outside my door (which was a very disconcerting sight: more cells like my own, dimly lit and outside my range of vision, but I could definitely see vaguely human shapes moving around inside them) when I heard footsteps running down stairs and getting closer. I backed away from the door and hastily tried to construct a shield around myself. Without my bracelet to use as a focus, it was more difficult than usual, but I managed a small one without it.

I jumped back further and shouted when Thomas hit the glass door with about the same velocity that cars hit small insects. At first I was surprised that the door didn't shatter, and then I was just surprised that he hadn't splattered all over it. Vampire guts: not a pleasant thought.

We stared at each other for several long moments, he with large, wide eyes, slack-jawed, concern shining through. I hope I managed a little more dignity in my dank, dirty cell, but I doubted I did. I hadn't expected to see any friendly faces, and that he was here and not at all tied up or locked in a cell spoke wonders for my captors' hospitality.

"Hello, Thomas, how are you?" I said amicably. It's a perfectly valid question, and he wasn't likely to get started on his own.

"Oh, my god, Dresden, they have aliens!" he panted at me.

"Clearly, you have finally snapped."

"No, really, and a pterodactyl!"

"Look, I've seen a lot of strange things, but extinct dinosaurs fall under the category of things I like to refer to as 'not possible.'"

"What, like most people would consider magic?"

"Yes, well, those people are wrong." It was weak logic, and I knew it. I moved my head so that I was now daring him to comment out of the corner of my eye, but he clearly didn't feel the need to say anything. He stepped back, crossed his arms, and settled for giving me an incredulous look instead.

"So, are you going to get me out of here?"

"No, I am." The voice, cultured, calm, and Welsh, caught me by surprise, and I jumped. Sometime during our conversation, the man I had attempted to rescue from the alleyway had entered and was watching us from the doorway. When he was sure I was watching him, he punched a button and the door in front of me swung open. As soon as I was clear, he hit another button and the door swung closed, which made me a little uncomfortable.

I was still watching the other man warily when Thomas crushed me in his arms. White Court vampires are physically the weakest of the vampire courts, but they're still stronger than humans, and the hug threatened to crush something internally, which I managed to convey with my eloquent gasping and flailing. Eventually he stepped back and looked me up and down, as if checking for obvious damage.

"Thomas, if anything was damaged, it was because of you, just now."

"Shut up. They told me that you got thrown across that alleyway like a little rag doll."

"Par for the course. You know that. I don't know why you're freaking out."

"So I'm not allowed to worry, now? I thought that was what family was supposed to do in your happy little human world."

I rolled my eyes and let him get on with whatever it was he felt he had to do, which seemed to involve spinning me around in circles, very quickly, which made me more dizzy than I was happy with. Eventually, I put my hand on his forehead and held him at arm's length, turning to face the other man.

"Harry Dresden." I extended my hand to him. "I assume you've met Thomas, then."

He took my hand before replying. "Ianto Jones. It's nice to see you awake. Sorry about the accommodations."

"I've had worse." The reply earned me a raised eyebrow, but it was true. I looked back at Thomas, who was, once again, pouting, even though both of us knew that if he really wanted to get to me, my arm would be no obstacle. I was glad he didn't push it, though; I needed that semblance of power right then, and I think he knew it.

"If you'll follow me," Ianto said, "I believe there are explanations to be had all around." He turned his body slightly, making it clear that he would wait until we preceded him from the room before going anywhere. I was only too happy to oblige. I dropped my arm as I started walking, and Thomas was on me again in a matter of seconds, checking for bruises. Checking for bruises mostly meant poking me until I winced, yelped, or swatted at him, but if he felt like he was being helpful, I wasn't going to stop him.

After walking up one or two flights of stairs--the kind that tends to rust and become unreliable after a few years of missed maintenance--we emerged into a large central area. I wasn't quite sure what to call it. It was vaguely circular in shape, with staircases leading up to different levels. Everything seemed to connect to everything else, but it was hard to find any direct routes from one place to the next, and there were very few closed off areas--nearly everything was out in the open. In the center of it all was what must have been a large water tower, which had water falling off of it from high above our heads and down into a pool where it gathered and, I assume, was drained someplace else. The air smelled earthy besides being damp, so I assumed that we were still underground.

And then a pterodactyl flew over head, screeching as it went. I nearly ran back down to my cell.

Ianto led us to a conference room, explaining that the rest of 'the team' had had to go out suddenly, and would be returning shortly, and that we should make ourselves comfortable. Their absence was also the reason I had been locked in a cell instead of being taken care of by their doctor, which suited me fine. As much as I didn't like waking up in a cage, I didn't want to accidentally blow out their equipment. I very much doubted I could have afforded to replace anything I broke in here. Then he left to get coffee. Thomas and I sat in comfortable silence for a while. I couldn't come up with anything to say at all, and I'm sure he had too many things to say at once and was just having trouble deciding which one to start with.

"You attacked a vampire." Apparently, in his confusion, he decided to start with the obvious.

"Yes."

"By yourself."

"Yes."

"With no backup."

"Generally, that's what 'by yourself' means."

"Harry, this isn't a joke. You could have died! You didn't even have a shield ready, don't try and lie. If you had she would never have gotten that close. It was sloppy, even for you. Did you expect her to just run away down the alley when she caught sight of you?"

"Look, I wasn't thinking. I wasn't expecting to run into any of the Red Court here."

"Of course not, it's not like there's an international war on, or anything, not like we don't tend to spread ourselves around the world."

"She mentioned Bianca."

That brought him to a dead, screeching halt, and I couldn't really blame him, it would have done the same to me.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"She's still, y'know..."

"Dead? Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"Oh, well...good."

We were silent for a moment longer before Ianto returned, mugs in hand. I could have worshipped him as a god for that. I buried my nose in my cup until it was about halfway gone (the coffee, not my nose, that is) before I remembered myself and sat up and sipped at the drink with a little more dignity. Ianto looked mortified; Thomas just shook his head at me.

"So, Ianto, are we supposed to talk to you, or do we wait until the others return?"

"We're supposed to wait for the Captain, at least."

The Captain. Military rather than airplane or boat captain, probably, which was just what I wanted to deal with. My head filled with images of big men with no necks and throbbing veins in their foreheads and a penchant for hating Americans. There are no words to describe how much I was looking forward to his return.

For lack of anything better to do, I watched Ianto busy himself about the room as I sipped my coffee. Eventually it dawned on me that he was here to guard us as well as to make sure we got ample supplies of caffeine. It was an amusing thought, considering he had been just as much under the influence of vampire venom as I had, and was doubtless still shaky on his feet. But as I continued to watch him, I decided that I was wrong-the way he spoke earlier implied that their doctor had seen to him before they had been called away. It was possible that he had found some way to counteract it with a stimulant of some kind. He glanced over at me, caught me watching him, and smiled, a tired sort of smile, and it dawned on me just how young he was. But vampires tend to be drawn toward the young and wounded, so that made about as much sense as the rest of the situation did.

"You know, Dresden, you've completely fouled up my plans. Again." I stopped contemplating Ianto and turned fully to face my brother.

"I'm sorry, what plans?"

"My plans to get you laid."

"Well, more power to me, then. I don't need your help."

"Clearly, you do. Look, how long has it been since Susan?"

I froze. He should have known better.

"Your own personal rain cloud is starting to spill over onto my parade. Your place needs a woman's touch, desperately. You're starting to scare people off, you know." He didn't, apparently.

"Thomas, drop it."

"At first, I thought, you and Murphy-"

"Thomas, shut up!"

"-but no, of course not. You're too stubborn to take the easy way out, aren't you?"

Exasperated and hurting more than a little, I surged to my feet with every intention of storming out the door we had come through. I spun and began walking only to find myself running full into someone coming the other way, spilling hot coffee over the both of us. I backed up quickly, putting my now nearly empty cup on the conference room table before attempting to shake some of the extra moisture off my scalded hand and arm and out of the now soggy sleeve of my shirt, cursing the whole time.

Ianto came out of nowhere with two towels, one of which he gave to me. I used it on the table first and then used it to soak as much of the coffee out of my shirt as possible. Not that a stain would show up on a black shirt, but it would get uncomfortable and sticky as it cooled. The Welshman continued on to the man I had run into. The towel was accepted, and Ianto left again, I assumed to get more coffee. Probably not for me, though; probably never again for me.

"Glad to see you're awake," the voice was warm, with an American accent, and I suspected that when I turned around, the man would be struggling not to laugh. I turned slowly this time, intending to apologize, but when I got a good look at the other man, I recognized him instantly and found myself able to say nothing at all. I had spilled coffee all over Greatcoat Man's greatcoat. Not an auspicious first meeting.

He chuckled at my speechlessness before continuing to walk around me, peeling his coat from his shoulders as he went. I was glad Thomas couldn't see my face from where he was sitting. I'm sure I looked ridiculous.

"Sit down." I sat before my brain even registered what was happening as my reptile mind took over. My first impression was right, this man was very used to being in control, and as I had no idea what was really going on, I decided to let him have it. This whole thing was adding up to a whole lot of trouble, and, well, we had had the talk about avoiding trouble wherever and whenever possible before we left.

I watched as Thomas' eyes moved frantically from him to me and back. He seemed about as unnerved as I felt, although I very much doubted he recognized Greatcoat Man from the airplane, but he was good at picking up on explosive situations. And running away from explosive situations, he was good at that, too. I suspected that it had something to do with being on his father's hit list for most of his life.

"Old flame, then, Harry?" Dealing with tension through sarcastic and largely unnecessary comments must be genetic. It's the only way I can possibly explain it. I treated him to one of my best wizardly scowls, but had no time to confirm or deny before Greatcoat Man was speaking again.

"Oh, I wish. You clean up spectacularly well, by the way. I'm Captain Jack Harkness. What do you want with Torchwood?" As he spoke, his face went from open and welcoming to dark and dangerous so smoothly that it sent shivers down my spine. He was sending me a clear and undeniable message: do not mess with me or mine. I could respect that, really I could, but I was pretty sure he had made some assumptions about my intentions that were completely wrong.

"Thank you, I picked out the shirt for him myself. By the way, I'm Thomas, and this is Harry Dresden." He shifted, trying to bring the Captain's full attention over to himself, but it seemed that Harkness had presence of mind for the both of us. "But before we can tell you what we want with 'Torchwood,' you'll have to tell us what Torchwood is, I'm afraid."

This threw the Captain off, something I got the feeling didn't happen very often. They probably didn't get very many people just wandering into their secret underground lair with dinosaurs or attempting to rescue their employees from supernatural predators. I wished I had a camera to document this momentous occasion before remembering that it was more than likely that any camera long in my presence would quit out of sheer annoyance, puff of smoke and all.

"Listen, Captain Harkness, sir, I don't know what you think we're doing here, but I was hired to do a job. I intend to do it and leave as soon as possible. I wasn't planning on complications like this, but who really ever plans for vampires?"

"You should," Thomas interrupted.

"Thank you, mother, that was completely unnecessary."

"Well, it's true."

I opened my mouth to respond scathingly, but Harkness interrupted before I could begin. "You're sure that it was an actual vampire?" He looked more curious now than before, almost fascinated, but he still watched us with untrusting eyes.

"Yeah, pretty damn sure." Subconsciously, I rubbed at my neck where the venom had fallen. "Nothing else I know that could do something like that." I looked up at him again, watching his face while still being careful to avoid his eyes-I definitely didn't want to soulgaze this man. I didn't know of anything or anyone else whose venom could do that, but he had his suspicions, I think. I was happy to let him have them, so long as he let me get on with my life. Thomas, though, wanted to know more.

"Why, what do you think it was?" I could have slapped him, I really could have. All he really wanted was a good laugh at the man's expense.

Harkness might have actually shared his thought with us if Weasel Boy hadn't walked in just then, carrying my amulet, bracelet, and ring. He smirked when he saw me, the tilt of his head as he handed them over to me telling me in no small terms what he thought of me.

"Here you go, Wizard Boy."

"Thank you, Weasel Boy." I hadn't planned on sharing that little nickname with anyone else, ever, but he rubbed me the wrong way. I figured he did the same thing to other people, and probably deserved it. I am the long arm of karma come a'knockin'.

"Harry, Thomas, meet Owen, Owen, likewise." Harkness was back to jovial again, and I felt myself beginning to relax a little. Insult Owen and endear yourself to the Captain- it was a trick I had to make sure to remember for later.

"We've met." Owen's smirk turned into a sneer as he turned and left the room.

Nice guy, that Owen, real nice. I busied myself with fixing my foci in their proper places. I did not like being without them at all these days.

"Look, you probably shouldn't tell us anything else. The way you're acting, I get the feeling not a lot of people know about you, not really, so we'll just go, get out of your hair, and we'll likely never see you guys again, how about that?" I stood and motioned toward the door, making it very clear that I wanted to leave. Harkness' expression darkened.

"You're in a hurry to leave all of a sudden."

"It's not really all that sudden, I promise."

He looked at me askance for a moment, and I got the oddest sense, like he was actually trying to catch my eye and start a soulgaze, but I looked down before anything could happen. I had been tricked into a soulgaze once before, and I was not going to be tricked again. Eventually he sighed and stood, motioning for us to precede him out the door. Clearly, these people didn't trust us not to remain behind and seriously mess with their ever so delicate conference table, likely with deadly results.

Before we could even leave the room, however, the long haired woman from the pub burst into the room, her face flushed and eyes frantic. She had to gulp down some air before she could speak, but her eyes remained fixed on Harkness until she regained control over herself.

"Jack, we're picking up strange weather readings again. It looks like they're coming from Estelle's place."

The Captain started forward suddenly, all thought of me and Thomas banished completely. I caught his arm as he went passed. I reflected that what I was about to do was the moral equivalent of committing suicide.

"Wait, do you mean Estelle Cole?"

The room went suddenly cold as both the woman and Harkness fixed hard, suspicious eyes on me.

"Way to go, Dresden."

I glared over my shoulder at Thomas, but he was already making cow-eyes at the woman and had no more time for me or my affronted pride.

"Hello again, Gwen." She stared at Thomas disbelievingly as Harkness blew past her, growling "Don't leave them alone" under his breath as he left, the door slamming behind him.

"Harry, you're being ridiculous. You did fine on the plane, I don't see why you're worrying now."

I glared at Thomas and shuffled closer to the impressive computer until he turned away and I shuffled back again. This was someone's idea of a sick joke, I was sure. Here I was, suspected of espionage in a top secret facility (Gwen had whispered that little bit of information in my ear when Harkness, tense and furious, hadn't been looking) and information that I needed was up on the screen of what looked like the very latest in technological advances. Fortunately, the monitor was huge, so I didn't have to get all that close.

"I've never seen anything like it," Tosh, the Japanese woman from the tavern, was saying as she gestured at the screen, "The patterns are all wrong, and the police are reporting that it's raining frogs!"

"What, again?" Everyone fell silent and turned to look at me, expressions ranging from irritation to incredulity to amusement. I sighed. "Look, it's uncommon, but it's been known to happen. If we're lucky, they're illusory and not real frogs at all. If they're illusions, it just means that someone's playing a trick. A rather elaborate and unnecessary trick, but nothing too dangerous, unless our amateur sorcerer gets it into his or her head to try for something bigger."

"And if they are real frogs?" Tosh looked both interested and nervous at the same time. I'm pretty sure she had caught the fact that I said 'if we're lucky.'

"If they're real frogs, then something big is going on in the Nevernever, world ending badness, probably, the whole shebang. At least, it was last time."

"The Nevernever? Fairy land? You have got to be joking." Owen turned away from me and started studying the screen once again. I didn't blame him for not believing me. Most people had more trouble with believing in the fair folk than they did in vampires and demons and all the other terrors of the night. I blame Tinkerbelle, personally.

"If fairies are involved," Ianto stepped back from the computer screens and looked at me contemplatively, though I had the feeling that he wasn't really seeing me, "that would explain why this is happening at Estelle's address."

The mood darkened again until Ianto looked up and met Harkness' eye. For some reason, the shared look calmed the imposing man. I was impressed.

"Gwen, Owen, let's go." The Captain turned and started to leave when he caught sight of me. I raised an eyebrow at him. "You'd better come too, but your boyfriend stays here." He jerked a thumb at Thomas and started moving away again.

"Brother."

"What?" I love that I have the power to completely derail people's trains of thought without even trying.

"Thomas is my brother," I stated, my voice flat. Harkness only raised his eyebrows, made a little 'hmph' noise through his nose, and continued walking out. Owen and Gwen followed him, and after a moment's hesitation and shared glance with Thomas, I did too.

These Torchwood people had too damn much technology I decided as I cowered away from their computer screens in the back of their SUV. And by SUV, I really mean assault vehicle. The thing might as well have been a tank, and it was still cramped in the back with all the extra gadgets. There was no possible way that they needed all of this junk.

The drive was a little longer than I had expected it to be, and just before we reached our destination, I gave up and the computer screens around me blinked out, probably never to turn on again. Gwen let out a small frustrated noise and the Captain sighed and set aside whatever it was that he had been holding in his hand. Only Owen glared at me. He was probably remembering the conversation he had overheard on the airplane.

We reached the late Estelle Cole's home and pulled into the driveway. The rain of frogs had stopped just after we left, and the sun had come out. I stretched and enjoyed the warmth of it before looking around. Things were going to get grim soon enough; I saw little harm in taking a moment to be grateful that I hadn't died last night and bask in the sunlight.

I looked around and wrinkled my nose at the froggy carnage. There weren't any surviving frogs, which meant we had to take a few back to get tested, but the little corpses made me pretty sure that whatever had happened hadn't been illusory.

Captain Harkness headed straight toward the front door of the house while Owen and Gwen went to the back of the SUV and pulled out huge briefcases. I fervently hoped that there wasn't additional delicate gadgetry in there that they needed, because it wasn't likely to last long. The more time I spent in the presence of these people, the more frayed my nerves became. I lengthened my stride to catch up to Harkness before the others could reach him. I laid a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

"Look, Elizabeth will be here in another couple of hours to let me in anyway. Why don't we just go around back and look there first? It's not likely that there's much of anything of interest inside."

"You don't believe that." I sidled my way so that I was between him and the door, blocking his easy entrance.

"Maybe, maybe not, but I do think we should check outside first. Fairies don't usually go indoors, and never at all if they're not invited." That, and if I went in uninvited, my power would be greatly diminished. If anything nasty was hiding inside, I did not want to have to deal with it with half a battery. Normally, with the person who had owned the house dead, it wouldn't have been a problem, but this place had been a home for years and was still owned by the family-the threshold would still be intact. I needed a family member to invite me in.

Harkness looked like he was going to say something scathing-probably something that would put an end to our argument with him getting his way.

"Oy! What's up with these frogs?" There is such a thing as perfect timing, and Owen had it in spades. "Last I checked, dead frogs don't just disappear."

I waggled my eyebrows at the Captain as I made my way over to Owen, who had been hidden from view by the monolith that was the SUV. I reached his side just in time to watch the last of the frogs within a ten foot radius of us disappear, others fading slowly away.

"Well, I guess that's that, then. Illusions." Satisfied, I started to turn away again, ready to head to the backyard regardless.

"Wait," Gwen was standing apart from us a little bit so that she could see more of the front and side simultaneously than we could, "not all of them are disappearing." She pointed, and, sure enough, some of the mutilated little bodies remained while the others disappeared.

"How cute, a path." I walked where the bodies, pulverized from the fall, led, muttering alternate lyrics to 'follow the yellow brick road' under my breath as I went. Any relief I had felt after assuring myself that the amphibians were illusions was swiftly disappearing, and I was already rounding the back corner of the house by the time it occurred to me that I was probably walking into a very obvious and poorly crafted trap.

The back garden really needed to be renamed. It was hardly a garden at all. I certainly would have called it a miniature forest. The density of the foliage made it difficult to see very much at all, and I hesitated to enter the first row of trees.

I half-turned back the way I had come, and noticed that the other three had followed me. Gwen and Owen had looks of disgust on their face, still surveying the landscape, but the Captain was watching me suspiciously, and I couldn't really blame him. I would watch me suspiciously, too. As far as he was concerned, I had probably lead them back here on purpose-it looked as much like a trap to him as it did to me.

Owen knelt down and picked up one of the little bodies by a precariously dangling limb. "Who would bother to do this to a frog?"

"Gravity, I think. It's just a theory, but I hear it's a good one." I pointed up, as if to illustrate my point.

"Yeah, right," he scoffed, threw the frog down, and stood up again, bringing him uncomfortably close to me, "like it can actually rain frogs. The police are idiots, they probably made a mistake."

"They may not know what they're seeing all the time, but they were just trying to do their job: they reported exactly what they saw." The slightly sick look had left Gwen's face, leaving only a tense, familiar sort of anger.

"I'm not saying they weren't trying. I'm just saying it's impossible, no matter what our 'wizard' friend says."

I could practically hear the air quotes when he said it. Time to end this before things got any uglier.

"We've seen stranger," the Captain said. I bit down anything I might have said as Harkness brushed passed me, intent on following the path once more. Gwen and Owen both looked properly abashed, and we all followed in the wake of the Captain.

The path led us directly to the center of the garden, from where the chaos of the greenery made much more sense. There was a small clearing-a very small clearing, there was hardly room for the four of us to stand abreast- where we stopped.

In front of us there was an empty pizza box surrounded by a barely noticeable, broken, ring of salt. I pushed passed the others and reached out, both with my hand and with more arcane senses. The back of my hand prickled as the hairs on it stood to attention, but I could sense nothing particularly unusual about this circle. I've used similar ones myself to attract various pixies and the like-pizza and all.

Still suspicious, I flicked the box open quickly and recoiled, wary of any waiting defenses, but nothing happened. In the center of the box was a small patch of some quickly evaporating liquid--ectoplasm, the matter of the spirit world--and an ornate invitation addressed to myself.

I recognized the invitation immediately. I had received one just like it only a few years ago. It had been one of the worst nights of my life. I retrieved it gingerly and held it away from me. I knew that it held no physical threat at this point, but I still didn't trust it.

I was vaguely aware of the three behind me talking amongst themselves, but whatever they were saying didn't really matter to me at that point. I was too busy remembering, my mind rushing through the implications of this new invitation. My thoughts were sharply arrested when the Captain pulled the card from my fingers and flipped it open.

"'Harry Dresden and guest are cordially invited'..." he flipped it over once or twice, a curious look on his face, "but that's all it says. So, Mister Dresden, what aren't you telling us?" He took me roughly by the elbow and led me, still too shocked to protest, toward the home of Estelle Cole.

We had crossed the threshold before I had an opportunity to protest. I felt it in my gut as much of my magic was stopped dead at the door. Not as much of it left me as would have if Estelle had been alive and well, but enough to make me uncomfortable.

The inside of the house was like many I had been in before-full of memories, trinkets picked up after years of travel, comfortable chairs, and warm feelings and smells that wouldn't fade for years and years to come, even if the house remained empty until it fell down. Murphy's house was kind of like that, in a way, if smaller. It was comforting, relaxing, even if I was being half-dragged through it by a madman I barely knew.

We reached the kitchen, and Harkness spun me around and forced me into a chair. And by 'forced' I really mean 'allowed my momentum to carry,' but the end result was the same. I considered fighting back, but was hesitant. With my power ripped from me by the threshold, I didn't know how long I could last, and I doubted that I could win a straight fist-fight with a man like the one facing me. His eyes were dark and he was breathing heavily, more out of anger than any exertion. He was a dangerous man, I knew that when I first laid eyes on him, and I had a feeling he knew more about magic than he was letting on, but at the same time, I doubted that he would go so far as to do me overt harm without due cause. I decided to sit and see what he would do.

He loomed for a while, probably to let his team catch up with us. As soon as they did, he told them to leave again. I kept half an eye on Harkness and half on the pair in the doorway to the kitchen. It was all too clear that Owen wanted to leave as quickly as possible, no questions asked, but Gwen hesitated, glancing between us. I couldn't tell whether she was more concerned for me or for her Captain, but in the end she left with Owen, which just left me and the madman.

"I asked you a question: What aren't you telling us?" What I wasn't telling him could fill volumes, but I doubted that he cared about my favorite flavor of ice cream or about the time I learned to play hopscotch so that I could beat a girl three years my senior who had made a friend of mine cry when I was seven.

He was doing a good job of being intimidating and in my space without actually touching me or threatening me in any way, and I was impressed. I leaned forward so that my head was resting on my hand, which was resting on my leg, and stared up at him balefully.

"You know, I really think our positions should be reversed." He was about to reply, but I would be damned if I let him get a word in edgewise before I was done. "I mean, I was hired to do a job. I intended to do it, as I told you before, and leave. End of story. Look into a death via mysterious circumstances. It was run of the mill until you got involved. Probably didn't even involve real fairies, most of them don't. Then, of course, comes the rain of frogs. So what do you have to say for yourself?"

For a moment or two, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it out of there alive. Then Harkness took a step back and regarded me critically. "She really was killed by fairies."

I sighed and rubbed my face, pinching my nose. I was moving straight from being one step away from a hostage situation straight into dealing with false experts, and on top of that, I still had to deal with the implications of the invitation. Sometimes, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

"How do you know it was the Fae?"

"I was there, just moments too late: she drowned on dry land."

I watched him carefully. As he spoke, his voice was hard and cold, but he was carrying himself like a wounded man. He had known Estelle Cole, had cared for her, of that I was sure, but in what capacity I did not know. I didn't think he was a suspect, but I had been fooled before.

I stood and placed a hand on his shoulder. I hoped that it was consoling, but it was probably more invasive. It's not like he knew me. I withdrew the hand as soon as it was clear that he had pulled himself back together.

"In that case, it wasn't necessarily fairies." I moved restlessly around the kitchen as I spoke. Sometimes it's easier to think when my legs are moving, and it wasn't like I had Bob there as a sounding board. "There are plenty of things that could do something like that. I could do something like that, using thaumaturgy. It would take a lot of energy-for most people to do it, they would have to borrow the power from somewhere. Hell, I would probably have to borrow some of it from somewhere. And to manage the accompanying storm as well? Assuming that the storm is accompanying it, and not the battery we're looking for--I've seen that before and it was pretty messy. And that's just assuming our attacker was human. We go beyond that, and there are all sorts of demons and things that could manage it. The Nevernever is not a happy place for mortals, but I have to be honest, unless it was one of the major Sidhe lords or ladies, I doubt she was killed by fairies."

"Why are you so sure it wasn't them?"

"It's not like them, doesn't fit the way they work, especially not the ones that were reported to have done it. They sound like wildfae to me, and wildfae don't have the power necessary to pack that kind of punch, or the drive to carry out the whole working even if they had a mind to do it."

"Then who are the Sidhe?"

"Major Fae badasses, they're kind of like the royal court of fairies. Powerful. They've been known to kill people using natural elements as their weapons, but usually the mortal in question has done something to offend them or made a deal with them then failed to hold up their end of the bargain. The deal is most common. They feature a lot in the really old fairy tales, the ones without the fluffy Disney endings."

"It wasn't them, then. Estelle was looking for proof that fairies exist. She had taken some pictures."

"Do you have them? Or know where she kept them?"

He lead me out of the room with a jerk of his head. Apparently the key to winning the heart of Captain Jack Harkness is sharing information. Gwen and Owen fell into startled step behind us as we emerged from the kitchen, stumbling and tripping (metaphorically, of course) over a heated conversation left undone.

We went into a sitting room near the front of the house. The pictures had been left on a low table in the center of the room, and Harkness handed them to me, along with the invitation that bore my name a second later. I tucked the invitation into the pocket of my duster before looking at the photographs. I barely stopped myself from growling in frustration at the first glance.

There have been plenty of drawings, pictures, paintings of fairies over the years, and no one ever seems to get them right. They were always small, but not too small, cherubic, with barely moving butterfly wings and immaculate clothing, and are usually female. These were just like those, and nothing like any of the wildfae, ever. Real pixies are small and lean, they like to fancy themselves great warriors, and if called into battle can be quite fierce (something I've found out first hand, though I was not on the receiving end of that little bit of excitement for once in my life.)

I shoved the pictures roughly back at the Captain, growled "These are not real fairies," and turned to leave.

"But they are real," the earnestness in Gwen's voice made me freeze in place, "we saw them. They took a little girl."

I rounded on Harkness, and this time, I was the one furious. "You didn't tell me they took anyone else."

"You didn't need to know." I had expected him to look a little bit abashed, but got nothing.

"Yes, I do. It drastically changes what we're looking for. You have to tell me everything if you want me to help you." I took a step farther into Harkness' personal space than either of us had expected, and Owen moved in immediately, separating us.

"Oy, back off, who says we want you to help us?"

"I want him to help you." We all froze immediately. Elizabeth Cole had arrived.

Ch. 4

In my line of work, I hear a lot of strange stories. I tell a lot of stranger ones. I've faced demons, warlocks, ghosts, fairies, vampires and werewolves of all varieties and overcome them all, or at least survived them. Through all of it, I have never encountered anything quite like Torchwood.

They couldn't tell me everything, and I'm quite sure that I didn't want to hear it all. It made sense, some of it, especially when I remembered what happened at Canary Wharf, remembered the Christmas before that. Not everything can be explained away with magic. Sometimes the strange lights and mysterious deaths really can be attributed to aliens.

The revelation that aliens constantly visit our planet with malicious intent (or dangerous incompetence, as the case may be) did not sit with me as well as I thought it would have. I live in a dangerous world, what's one more threat? The fact that I had no idea if I could defend myself and the people I care about using what little I knew was probably the source of my anxiety. Knowing that the Torchwood Institute had been put in place to defend the Earth against alien threats didn't ease the worry I was feeling at all. The people at Torchwood Three--the Cardiff branch of Torchwood--were all, as far as I could tell, mostly insane.

Estelle, it seemed, was a side note in one of their recent dealings, although she was more important to Torchwood's leader than any of the team were willing to admit out loud--I had seen the picture of a much younger Estelle Cole side by side with the exact same Captain Jack Harkness as stood before me on the mantle, and I didn't really want to consider the implications.

Fairies, or something masquerading as a fairy, had gotten into the habit of taking children. Typical Sidhe behavior, of course, except that these children were too old to be interesting to the Lords and Ladies, and Wildfae don't steal children with the intention of making them their own. Harkness had let them take a girl in exchange for the safety of the planet. Deals are also typical fairy fare. It was a bittersweet sort of story, a noble sacrifice sort of thing. I didn't like it at all.

They had never figured out precisely why Estelle had been killed, but they figured that it was because of the pictures that she had taken, and the fact that she was sharing them with others. I thought it sounded far fetched, but didn't say anything. It wasn't like I had an alternate thesis for them.

I set my teacup--Elizabeth, a full figured and well aged woman, had made everyone tea--down on the table next to the pictures of the faux-fairies and rubbed my forehead. I brought my hands away from my face, and the invitation rubbed awkwardly at my side at the motion. I pulled it out of the pocket I had put it in and held it in my hands, considering it.

"You know, after all that, I wasn't sure if I could help you." I paused, thinking. "But someone sure as hell knew I was going to be here, and I'm being paid, so why not?"

"That is an absolutely shitty reason. And I'm still not sure we need your help." Gwen kicked Owen from where she was sitting, and I had the immense pleasure of watching him jump and wince.

Harkness rose, keeping half an eye on Owen and Gwen as he did so as a wary parent might on rowdy children. "We should head back to the Hub, see if we can't find anything there."

We rose to follow him almost as one and said our goodbyes to Elizabeth Cole.

The first thing I did when we got back to the Hub beneath the Millennium Center was to find Thomas and pull him roughly aside from what he was doing--I realized belatedly that he was trying to simultaneously seduce Tosh and Ianto as well as stop himself from doing so. I shoved the invitation into his hands before pacing passed him, running my hand through my hair. The Torchwood crew was gathered around a computer a little ways away, but I didn't really care what they were up to.

Thomas didn't say anything at first. He just glanced down at the card and up at me, almost frantically.

"Shit." The curse was low, under his breath. "Are you sure she's not...not dead."

"Pretty damn sure." We both looked at each other, well aware that 'pretty damn sure' doesn't always mean anything when magic is involved. "It's not like there has been any increased ghostly activity lately, and in order to raise her from the dead, there would have to be something."

"Yeah, but that's just in Chicago. We're not in Chicago anymore."

"I know, I know. But this doesn't feel right. Bianca was a lot of things, but she was never as subtle as she could have been."

"He speaks from experience."

"Thank you, thank you so much. So, anyway, the fairies weren't fairies."

"Big surprise there."

"You knew?"

"I saw some CCTV footage after you left. These people, they record everything. My big tip-off was the transformation act. Not a fairy thing."

"It can be, just not like that."

"What are we looking at, then?"

"I'm not sure. I wish we had thought to bring Bob." Bob, my very own personal living (for a given value of living) encyclopedia takes up residence in a skull currently sitting uselessly in my basement. He doesn't get out much, and for the most part it's all for the better, but then there are times like these.

"Yes, because that would be easy to explain to customs."

"People can get through with swords. Michael can't get everywhere in his truck. And it's not like he's a bomb. I'd just order him to lay low until we got here."

"So why didn't we?"

"I didn't think that things would get complicated on us, obviously."

Thomas paused. "Murphy's law."

"What?"

"Murphy's law--whatever can go wrong, will go wrong."

"I wouldn't say that within earshot of Murphy, if I were you."

"I'm gorgeous, not suicidal."

I snorted and turned to watch the Torchwood team confer among themselves. They really were a ragged, mismatched group of people. As far as I could tell, there was very little actually holding the team together beside a lot of tension, almost like if one of them was removed, they would all spontaneously fly off in different directions and explode. I doubted they even really liked one another, from the way they were holding themselves, but they were loyal to each other. I thought about my ragtag group of allies, back home in Chicago. Mostly friends, most of whom I had met on the job and nearly gotten killed not long after, some family, two pets, and a few people I had to pay before they killed me.

I wondered whether all the trouble had followed me to Wales, or if everything was going to hell in my absence. There probably wasn't anything major going on that Murphy and the rest of Chicago PD's Special Investigations unit couldn't handle, or, failing that, Billy and the werewolves couldn't handle, or, failing that, Michael could handle. It was good to have friends.

Owen glanced over his shoulder at us, and I gave him a little wave when he caught my eye. After he had turned back to his conversation, Thomas nudged my elbow, and I glanced over at him.

"What," he spoke slowly, as if running the implications of what he's about to say through his mind, "were they doing in Chicago in the first place?"

I froze. I think part of me was terrified. Most of me was furious. Harkness was taking a step back and away from me before I even realized how close I had gotten. My throat ached with sudden strain, and I hoped that whatever I had been shouting hadn't made me sound like a gibbering lunatic. I tried to take another step forward, and belatedly felt the arms holding me back. The members of Torchwood may not have liked one another very much, but I was right about them being loyal.

I felt someone grab the collar of my shirt, and resisted only a little as Thomas pulled me away from a confrontation it was unlikely I would see the good side of.

"Well? Are you going to answer his questions?" Good old Thomas, protecting me and still focused on the end result. "It was no coincidence you were in Chicago just before we came here, was it?"

"That depends on what you mean by coincidence. We had no way to know you would come to Cardiff. Ever." The Captain fixed me with a steady look, softer than the ones he had given me before. I had no way of being sure, but it almost looked like he pitied me, the bastard.

"That wasn't an answer." I was still furious, but I forced myself to relax. Explosions and wiped hard drives wouldn't do anyone any good.

"It was, just not a very forthright one." Harkness stepped forward and wrapped an arm around my shoulders in a motion a little too familiar to be comfortable. "I don't particularly want to explain, but it looks like I'm going to have to tell you more if I want you to cooperate, and I do need you to cooperate with me."

Chills ran down my spine as Captain Harkness walked me bodily through the Hub. He and I glanced back at nearly the same time: me to check on Thomas, who looked thoroughly confused, but I never saw the look on Harkness' face, and have no idea what he was trying to convey to his team. Judging by the grim looks on their faces, it wasn't good.

About a week before we met, Torchwood received a phone call. This was unusual for them. Very few people had Torchwood Three's number. Fewer dared to use it. The voice on the other end of the line had been breathless, female, and terrified. She had asked for help, told them she was in Chicago, which Tosh had confirmed, and that something very strange was going on and that she had been told Torchwood could help her, that she didn't know what to do and was afraid for her life. It was exactly the sort of thing to lure me halfway across the world, and apparently it had been good enough for Jack as well.

When Owen and Jack had arrived at the address the woman had given them, they found it in shambles, fire damage everywhere. Police and firemen were not in evidence, but a man in a grey cloak was. They didn't know what a Warden was, but I recognized the description of the uniform, if not the description of the man, which was an early warning for me. There were so few Wardens left, it was hard not to know all the locals, especially for someone still on the top of their number one suspect list like me.

The Warden or pseudo-Warden tried to give them the brush off, and in the process 'accidentally' dropped a few clues to similar incidents. The Velvet Room was mentioned, I believe, and possibly an allusion to my old mentor, Justin DuMorne. Torchwood was good at what they did. When they got back to the hotel they were staying at, they called Toshiko, who found me right away. When Harkness told me that, I felt a cold stone drop into the pit of my stomach. The feeling only got worse when he told me that they had decided to follow me, and ended up following Murphy instead.

Murphy would probably kill me if I ever told her that I felt that I had to protect her. It's just something ingrained into my personality. Where there is a woman or a child involved, my lizard brain takes over, usually with destructive, over-dramatic result. Not that Murphy was in need of my protection. Magic or not, she could kick my ass any day of the week. I still didn't like the idea of unknown quantities watching her from the shadows, especially because of me.

They had followed Murphy because I was in lands unknown (a.k.a. running for my life through the Nevernever because I had been hired by a man to find his grandmother's old record player. It turns out that the man's grandmother had been a seriously powerful witch before she had been killed (it was unclear how) and had enchanted her player so that it wouldn't break down in her presence. When she hid it in the Nevernever before her death it created a 'heavier' space in the dream world, which had attracted all sorts of nasty creatures coveting it, none of whom were happy to see me walk away with it) and she was the last person to see me before my 'disappearance.'

After a few days, they figured they had gotten everything they could from following Murphy around (and Tosh had gotten everything from her computer) so they followed another lead: Michael. Also annoying as hell, but I knew there wasn't much they could have done to a Knight of the Cross. God frowns on such intervention, I'm told, and God's frowns often come in the form of plagues, lightning, and general destruction. I didn't hear about anything like that when I got back, so I figured they didn't get anything from him and moved on to Thomas.

And boy, when I got a hold of Thomas by myself again I was going to give him an earful. By the end of the week, Owen and Jack had been getting flustered following around my friends (they had also checked Billy's, Butters', and everyone else's personal and professional records, what contact they had had with me, medical files and police records. Anything and everything they could find. Jack never said exactly how much they had on any of us, but I gathered that it was plenty) so they became less covert. They went to a nightclub they knew Thomas frequented on a night they knew he would be there, and waited. They did all the things normal people do--drank, danced, and flirted. They purposely flirted with the same people Thomas did when he got there, and then Thomas flirted not only with one, but both of the agents from Torchwood, and that was why I was going to murder him one day.

He put enough of a White Court psycho-whammy on one of them (Jack never said whether it was him or Owen) to make Harkness suspicious, but they didn't have anything else to go on, and it was the day before they were supposed to leave again for Cardiff anyway, so they spent the day looking around all the sites of my suspicious activity to see if they had missed anything. That was also the day I got back from the Nevernever, met with Ms. Cole, and prepared to drag my bemused half-brother off to sun shiny Wales. It was a good thing they had only checked up on people that were fond of me; otherwise, I imagined that we would have been having an entirely different conversation. One in which I was doing most of the talking, and not because I wanted to, either.

It also helped that I hadn't actually burned anything down lately. And if I had killed someone, well, the White Council wasn't exactly a fan. It was unlikely I would have been around to have the conversation we were having if I had done, and I told the Captain so in no uncertain terms.

I rubbed my eyes and tried to think, but it all kept coming back to that first breathless phone call. "What was her name? The woman that called you?"

Harkness let out a sigh that sounded more relieved than anything else. "We don't know, but Ianto was able to find a picture." I glanced at it as I took the offered photograph, and my hand twitched as I recognized the woman there. She had been one of many, and I'm not sure what made her stand out in my memory now, but there she was, plain as day. I felt sick as I gave the photo back.

"I'm surprised you were able to get this. Vampires usually aren't so careless."

"Then we must assume that this was not simple carelessness." I jumped sideways into the hard wood of Harkness' desk, surprised by Ianto's sudden appearance. More surprised than I should have been. I cursed and danced away, rubbing at my thigh.

"We could arrange all that, you know." Mischief sparkled in Jack's eyes as I froze and went over what I had been saying. He laughed out loud as my face twisted in disgust. Ianto handed the captain a mug of something hot and set another on the accursed desk for me. They exchanged a look I couldn't decipher as Ianto left as silently as he had come, taking Jack's good mood with him.

Jack sipped his drink and sat, motioning for me to do the same. More shaken than I would ever admit, I was happy to do so, clasping my mug firmly like a lifeline.

"You recognized her, then?" I considered trying for a blank look and a change of subject, but it would do no good. I nodded an affirmative.

"Yes, I've seen her before. I recognized the invitation, too. You mentioned, before, that the pseudo-Warden mentioned the Velvet Room, that you looked into it?"

"Pseudo-Warden?" He raised his eyebrows quizzically, a clear invitation for me to go on, but I wasn't going to tell him more about the Council than I absolutely had to.

"The man in the grey cloak. It doesn't matter right now."

"It might, but we'll get back to that later. Yes, we looked into that. It was owned and run by a woman named Bianca. There was a party, things got out of hand, and a lot of people died, including the owner. It didn't seem too extraordinary."

"To most people, I don't suppose it would have." I sighed before continuing on. I told the Captain as much of what had happened that night as I could quantify, and glossed over everything else. I left out as much about Susan as I could. I didn't want Torchwood to get involved with her because they were curious. I couldn't do much to help her anymore, but I could protect her in this small way. I told him about Bianca, the fact that she was a Red Court vampire, about all the other vampires there, about the young lives that ended that night. I mentioned Michael, that I lost his sword in an act of rage, that I crossed into the Nevernever to get it back, making myself vulnerable to my fairy godmother, and had to poison myself to get out again. I told him of fire, and ice, and a storm like that in the heart of a sun.

Jack was silent a while after I had finished, and I took the opportunity to gulp down coffee. My mouth had gone dry in the retelling of the story, and my hands were shaking just a little bit.

"You seriously have a fairy godmother?" He was one breath away from laughing hysterically, I could hear it in his voice, but I only glared at him. It really wasn't funny.

"The woman in the photograph," I continued, ignoring his question, "was there at the party that night."

"Looks like someone's just trying to get to you. Probably for revenge."

"That was my first inclination, too. It's not like I haven't seen that before from these people. But some things just don't fit. What about Estelle? The faeries that aren't?" I knew my posture was probably coming across as 'frustrated and nearly defeated,' but I didn't really care how the Captain saw me at that point. I didn't have enough information, locked away in the Hub, and I couldn't help but worry that something big was coming that I wouldn't be ready for.

I saw Jack lean forward out of the corner of my eye and looked up at him. He was staring at me intensely, his blue eyes surprisingly bright in the shadow of his underground lair. "So maybe the two things aren't connected. The vampire is your problem. Estelle is ours."

"Then why were you called away to Chicago? Why was I asked to investigate Estelle's death? There's too much overlap for it to be coincidence." I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling and chewing on my lip as I thought. "I should probably alert the Wardens, tell them someone's impersonating them. They won't like it, even if they believe me."

"Why wouldn't they believe you? You're a Warden yourself, aren't you?"

I burst out laughing immediately. "Me? A Warden? Hell's Bells, no. They wouldn't ask me to be a Warden if I were the last wizard on earth. Currently, I'm their number one fall guy."

The Captain's face twisted in something that looked almost like wry, ironic amusement before straightening back into the amiable expression he had worn on and off the whole time we had been along in the room together. "You never know. What put you on their bad side?"

I almost told him, but stopped myself, looking at him askance. "You know, I think I've told you quite enough already. You really are good at getting people to talk. I have to wonder, though: do you really trust me all of a sudden, or is it just an act to get as much information as possible without me realizing it?"

A smile split Jack's face, brilliant and genuine, and his laugh was warmer than it had ever been in my presence before. "Both. I knew I could trust you from the moment you met me, but I needed to know how much you knew. I needed not to trust you. You never know who could be watching."

"So this whole time the suspicion's been an act?" If it had been, it had been a very good act. A frighteningly good act.

"No. Sometimes you do very stupid things with the best of intentions. I couldn't be certain that someone hadn't set you onto us the way they tried to set us onto you."

"You think that's why they lured you to Chicago? So that if you ever met me, you would get in my way? If that's true, then it's doubtful that it's just coincidence that Mary Cole asked me to look into her cousin's death. This is starting to smell of conspiracy."

"Speaking of Mary, what exactly do you remember about her? Or Elizabeth, for that matter?"

"I..." I had an image in my head of the both of them, but as I considered it, it started to shift around so that I couldn't remember any detail precisely. "I'm not sure, now. It's like I couldn't really focus on the details."

"Right, me too. Excuse me a moment." He stood and left quickly, leaving me to ponder.

The Captain had hardly been gone for ten seconds when Thomas came wandering in. He wasted no time in stealing my coffee away from me. I frowned at him, but didn't stop him.

"You know," he said after he had drained the mug, "these Torchwood folks really aren't half bad."

"Thomas, I need you to do something for me."

"It's all work with you, isn't it? Fine, what is it?"

"Call Michael, tell him that someone has been impersonating Wardens and that he needs to contact Morgan. Then ask him to go into my basement, get Bob, and then call me back."

"Ok, where, exactly, should I tell him to call? It's not like we have a fixed address."

"Tell him to call Torchwood. One of the team must have a number we can give him. You'll have to ask them."

He shrugged and sauntered away. I might have heard him mutter something about Tosh under his breath, but I wasn't sure, and was certain I didn't want to know either way. Thomas crossed paths with Captain Harkness as he returned just outside the glass doorway and I watched them exchange the strangest combination of macho, protective glances and come-hither looks that I have ever seen.

Jack came through the door waving a sheaf of papers in the air like a madman. "Mary and Elizabeth Cole do not, it turns out, exist." He threw the pile of what must have been evidence on the table beside me before sitting down again. I picked them up and leafed through them. He had copies of birth certificates, drivers licenses, medical and dental records, all covered with fine, neat handwriting in red pen pointing out the evidence of forgery.

"It looks like we're dealing with some sort of perception filter. We use one to conceal one of our exits. Useful, but frustrating to run up against."

Furious, I threw it all back down on the table, the lights in the room flickering dangerously as I stood and began to pace blindly through the room like a caged animal. I don't like it when clients lie to me. Sometimes it was harmless-people not wanting to have officially visited a wizard, and I could understand that. But this was the sort of thing that was likely to get me killed, whether intentional or not. It put me in a bad spot, and the carnage that followed generally had the Council looking at my life more closely than I was comfortable with.

Eventually, I stilled. "The big question at this point, I guess, is how the faux-faeries are connected to Red Court vampires out to get me, and how, in turn, that's all connected to you. I'm not likely to find out any of that until we get a call from my contact back home, so I guess we're stuck waiting for a little while."

"I guess so. Might as well go and see what the rest of the team is doing." He stood and made a gesture as if to sweep me along out of the room with him.

"'From the moment you met me.'" I stepped away from the Captain. I hadn't spent much time thinking about it before, but he had been very precise in the words he had chosen. "That's oddly specific. Not the first time we met, but the first time I met you. And that picture of you and Estelle--you're either very old and not aging, not even human, I'd guess, or you've traveled through time, and I'm sure I don't like the implications of that either."

Jack stopped all forward motion and spent some time contemplating the ceiling, as if deciding what to tell me.

"The next time we meet will be the first time I meet you, and the second that you meet me." As he spoke, he moved closer and closer to me, boxing me in uncomfortably. "I'll be traveling with two companions, a man and a girl, in a blue police box, and I'll know nothing about Torchwood. You must tell me nothing specific about the time we met, nothing about this place or my team. The man calls himself the Doctor, he's not human, and he's not from Earth. The girl is Rose, and she is. I'm only telling you this because when we met, when we meet, you already know. Do you understand?"

By the time he had finished speaking, his voice dark and intense and urgent, he had come claustrophobically close, our noses nearly touching, breath mingling. It made it impossible to look away from his eyes, and...and...

And nothing was happening.

He stepped back as he saw the realization hit me. Confused, lost, I reached out to touch everything around me as my mind reeled- him, me, the wall behind me, the table, chairs, and back again, panting and dizzy in a near panic. A soulgaze can be terrible, horrible, and monstrous, but when anyone locks eyes with a wizard, it is also an inevitability, a certainty in a world full of shadow monsters and a thousand painful deaths. I had never thought that I would miss it, but its absence had me shaking down to my very core, but it was more proof than anything he could have shown me that Jack Harkness and I had already met: a soulgaze between two people only happens once in their lifetimes.

I came back to myself to find the Captain supporting me, keeping me from falling. He looked worried, almost, before smiling and making sure I was back on my feet. Then he crossed quickly to the door, motioning with his head once he reached it that I should precede him down to the Hub.

Half an hour later, and we were all gathered in the conference room once again, seven of us circling the phone which had been set to speaker. I made a mental note to be careful not to short out the circuitry, but I was hopeful that the technology was old enough (by Torchwood standards, that meant not-quite-state-of-the-art) that it wouldn't explode right away in my presence.

"Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, Harry; it took longer than I thought it would to track down Morgan." Michael Carpenter's voice, like the man himself, was steady and reassuring. "And for the record, I'm not too comfortable doing what you've asked me to do."

"I know, and I'm sorry, but I didn't know who else to ask." I paused. "You really found Morgan and got back to me in a half an hour, and that's longer than you thought it would take?"

Thomas murmured something that sounded suspiciously like 'miracle man' under his breath, but when I turned to fix him with a warning stare, his face was good humored, so I turned around again.

"Harry, am I on speakerphone?" Apparently, Michael had heard Thomas as well.

"Yes, sir, you are." Jack broke in. "My name is Captain Jack Harkness, and we greatly appreciate any help you can give us."

"'Captain'? Harry, what exactly have you gotten yourself involved in now?" Michael sounded genuinely worried for me, and I appreciated the sentiment, even if his concern was largely misplaced.

"I'm fine, don't worry about it. I just need some information."

"Ok. I'm at your place now. I'm glad you gave me the spare key- You've upped your security since I've been over." We could hear the rattling of a key in a lock and a heavy door being opened. Then silence. "Harry, do you not have any electric lights at all?"

Thousands of miles away, I winced. I had forgotten about that part. He sighed heavily as if he could see my reaction.

"Never mind, I have a flashlight in my truck. While I'm getting it, why don't you tell me exactly where Bob is, and if I have to do anything to wake him up?"

"There's a doorway under some rugs. He's in the sub-basement through there. Just toss the carpet around until you find it, I'll fix it when I get back. He'll probably be awake and bored out of his mind."

"You keep a man in your sub-basement?" Gwen looked and sounded horrified, and as I looked around at the Torchwood team I realized that I hadn't explained to them exactly where we were going to be getting our information from. Tosh looked shocked but not worried; Owen was smirking, smug, as if he had suspected me of having the odd human being tucked away for nefarious purposes; Ianto's face was carefully blank, and Jack (as I should have expected) looked amused at the whole situation.

I was about to explain myself when Bob's voice came over the phone.

"Oh, Harry, you're back, and not de-oh, never mind. What's he done now? He's dead, isn't he? I knew it would happen some day. Oh, well, Morgan will be pleased."

"He isn't dead, he's in Wales, and he needs information."

"Wales? Augh! That's practically the same thing. I spent some time there about a century and a half ago. Complete bore--hardly anyone willing to--"

"I've heard quite enough, thank you." I could almost see Michael putting out his hand to stop the tirade of Bob stories that was sure to follow if he let the air spirit continue. "Harry, I'm putting you on speaker so that you can speak to him yourself."

"You can do that with a cell phone?" I looked around for confirmation, but everyone was busy looking at me like I was an idiot, which I supposed was a sort of confirmation. There was a brief beep and the quality of sound over the phone changed.

"Ok, go ahead."

"Bob?" I noticed the way I could hear my voice echo in the larger space. It was a little disconcerting.

"Hey, that's neat. Humans are really quite clever some times. I mean, you guys had me at sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Well, not rock and roll as such. They didn't have electric guitar back in Rome. But sex and drugs, certainly. Had some great times back in the Roman court. Boy, could those guys party."

"Yes, thank you. Back to the point, I need to know what you know about anything that either masquerades as wildfae or any faeries that take children and make them like themselves."

"'Make them like themselves'? It doesn't work like that, Dresden, and you know it." Great, Bob was ticked that I had cut him off. He was going to get more and more difficult as we went along.

"I know that, but maybe they don't. Whatever these things are, they've supposedly been taking children for years, and we aren't talking about Halflings, either. And they're strong enough to control weather patterns, strong enough to kill people."

"What, for no reason?"

"Certainly not for the normal reasons. Looks like they act to protect the children they want to take, usually little girls, or as an act of revenge."

"Revenge is typical faerie fare, you know that. Or you should, but then, there are a lot of things you should know that you don't."

"Except that this isn't elegant or ironic in any way. Besides, they don't fit any Sidhe description that I've ever come across. They sound straight out of a child's storybook."

"Dresden-." Bob sounded like he was about to go off on one of his tirades, but Michael interrupted him.

"So maybe they did come out of a child's storybook." He sounded half-distant, thoughtful. "Some wizards prefer working illusions as opposed to something real. You've told me yourself that it takes less energy and concentration to keep something like that going."

"No," the Captain's face had gone dark sometime during the conversation and I hadn't noticed. "They were real."

"The property damage alone was real enough," Tosh was busy shuffling papers around, as if she could show Michael the proof over the phone. As far as I knew, she could. "And the fact remains that they took that little girl and killed at least three other people."

"You're not alone? Who was that? She sounds hot."

"Thank you, Bob, this is not the conversation that we're having right now." I was starting to feel uncomfortable myself (it was irrational, but I was starting to feel the need to protect Toshiko from Bob) and was certain that it was worse for Michael, pious to his core.

"Why not? I'm the only one who can give you what you need, I don't see why you don't indulge me a little bit. What's she look like?"

"You're right, you are the only one who can answer my questions. I know nothing." It never hurts to inflate Bob's ego as we go along.

"Oh, all right. Anyway, he said that they could be illusions, not that they were necessarily out of phase or insubstantial. Like a rain of frogs-it can be illusory or-."

"We've already done the rain of frogs thing, Bob."

"You have? Then why do I need to explain this? Anyway, just because something isn't real doesn't mean it can't hurt you. Mostly, this just means that you're looking for a wizard instead of a group of wildfae, which is fine. You probably shouldn't be calling any more unnecessary attention to yourself from the Nevernever right now."

"Right now? How about ever." I glared over my shoulder at Thomas again, but I could hear Michael chuckle appreciatively.

"Thank you for the vote of confidence, guys, really." I groused, turning back around in my chair. "This probably means that we're looking for a vampire that's been taught to use magic, then, which never goes well."

"Wait," Gwen held up a hand as she spoke, "why does it need to be a vampire? It could be someone working with the woman you and Ianto met earlier, helping her."

"Under normal circumstances I would agree, and I'm not ruling that possibility out," I knew from experience that if I did that, it would be the one thing that would blindside me when it really mattered, "but it's not likely. There's a war on, and no wizard can really afford to be associated with vampires of any court right now."

"That doesn't seem to have stopped you." Owen gestured lazily at my brother, a slightly suspicious gleam in his eye.

"No, it doesn't, and it won't." Some people just get under my skin. Owen was turning out to be one of them.

"Yeah, if you start the war, you get special privileges." Thomas shrugged as he spoke. "Special enemies, too, it turns out."

"That's if this were about the war." I didn't have to look up to know that Jack was watching me with intense eyes while he was speaking. "The fact of the matter is that this is more likely a personal vendetta, a revenge kick. Small scale, but deadly, and we have to deal with it as quickly as possible so that more people don't end up dead. So if you two could maybe put this aside for another day, that would be great." By the time he was done talking, he had turned his attention fully on Owen. I felt like a chastised school child, and looking at the other man, I could tell that he did too. We let it drop by mutual consent.

"Harry," Michael's voice on the other end of the line broke the tension. "I have to get going. Business." From the tension in his voice, I could tell that he didn't mean that he had an appointment to fix someone's table.

"Right, ok. Thanks, Michael. Have a good trip, wherever you're going." I reached over and turned off the phone before Bob had a chance to start hounding me about letting him out of his skull for a joyride.

"So, the usual suspects, then?" Thomas sounded far too cheery, and I was getting more irritable by the second.

"What usual suspects? We don't actually have usual suspects."

"No, but we seem to suspect everyone."

"Thank you, Thomas, that was completely and utterly useless. The only people I can think of who would be capable of doing this are either Bianca, who is very deceased, and Mavra, who would have no interest in this."

"I know this probably isn't the time for this, but it's been bothering me." Ianto's voice and eyes were distant as he followed his train of thought. "How, exactly, did Torchwood get involved with you? I know there was that phone call, but what do we have in common, what connects us? That call wasn't accidental."

And that was when the bomb went off.

Ch.5

I coughed and sputtered, buried beneath heavy fallen debris. I couldn't hear much, but I could make out just barely the soft scraping noises of other people, perhaps in similar situations to my own, moving around. I hoped, in a vague sort of way, that they were all right.

Still choking on polluted air, I scrabbled and pulled at loose chunks of what once could have been either wall or ceiling. Claustrophobia is not usually a particular fear of mine, but being buried alive is no comfort to anyone. I thought that I was handling myself rather well in spite of it all, considering that I was probably the only person in the room with an empty grave waiting for them back home. Of course, it was probably just the shock of the situation, but a man can hope for a little credit for bravery every now and again, can't he?

Suddenly, everything shifted and debris that had settled in such a way as to give me some space to move about in came crashing down, making it impossible to move and nearly impossible to breathe. I cried out as something especially heavy and sharp fell askance on my leg. The shout cost me bitterly as I sucked in more plaster than air. I started coughing and couldn't stop, and I would have started panicking as bright sparks danced in front of my eyes and my vision began going dark around the edges if I hadn't already been there.

Above me, or maybe to the side of me, the faint noises that indicated that there was at least one other person moving about freely became louder. The next thing I knew, I was being hoisted bodily up into air that, if not clean, was at least breathable. Personally, I would have been perfectly content to curl up on the ground, relearning how to breathe and trying to get the taste of plaster out of my mouth, but someone clearly had different plans.

I was pulled roughly to my feet by my neck. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had assumed that my rescuer had been Captain Jack. Either my assumption was incorrect, or something had gone terribly wrong. The being, person, thing standing in front of me was nothing like I had ever seen before in my life, and I've seen things that would make most people's hair stand on end. Whatever it was, I couldn't make out its face clearly: it was wearing a helmet shaped in a way that reminded me oddly of some of the drawings in old holy texts of devils and demons combined with a cockroach. The helmet was made of the same material as the gauntlets covering its hands, a fact I became aware of as it moved its hands to the sides of my head, holding me still even though by this time I had regained enough of my senses to attempt to struggle. The material was cold like metal but gave off no shine. Contact with it sent a purely instinctive primordial chill through me.

Behind the creature I could see a field of debris and occasionally a body or two, some of them pulled unceremoniously through the upper layer of fallen stone as I had been, but there was no one conscious that I could see, and covered as everyone was with silt I couldn't tell who was who, or even if anyone else was alive. Abruptly, the thing shook me, knocking me off my feet, but it held me still at the height it wanted me at. My eyes snapped forward to where I assumed its own eyes were.

The soulgaze began so suddenly that I was hardly aware that it had begun. The creature and I stood as we had been, and suddenly the world fell away around us, leaving only darkness. Out of the abyss rose the stink of rotting things and nightmare sounds I could almost but not quite hear. As I watched, the face of the thing holding me captive began to shift grotesquely, the helmet collapsing in on itself as protrusions pushed their way through melting-wax skin. It became a face again, not human but not unrecognizable, and then it was changing again. In the infinite space the face changed again and again and again, horrifying and mesmerizing. Eventually, I could recognize human faces staring back at me, though none of them were familiar either. Faces exhausted, the bubbling, shifting flesh fell away, leaving a stark white skull behind, its teeth too sharp and still gleaming with saliva, its eyes dark and oddly magnetic. I felt myself growing tired and heavy in its hands, felt us falling, unless maybe it was just me.

I snapped out of the soulgaze retching, trying to claw away from my captor and completely unable to do so.

"Wizard," the thing's voice was deep, equal points gravel and oil, and slid into my mind in a way that seemed to surpass my ears. When it spoke, the scent of death came again to my nose and a thick, slimy feeling crawled its way over my nerve endings. "Brother, I will not have you. Mark me, though I spare you now, on strength of soul, it is not an act of mercy, and we will meet again."

Then it threw me to the ground so that my back was to it, and when I had, scrambling and desperate, turned myself around not a second later, the being was gone, nowhere to be found.

Recovering myself, I made my stumbling way to the nearest prone form. Up close, I could make out Ianto Jones' smooth Welsh features under all the layers of grime. Blood from no small number of cuts, all superficial, mixed with the dust and plaster, caking it to his skin. When I reached out to touch him to check his pulse, his eyes fluttered and opened, settling on me instantly. After the events of only moments previous, I was careful not to let our gazes meet.

I could see his throat working for a while before he managed to croak out a brief "What happened?"

"I'm not sure. An explosion, I think. I haven't checked on the others yet." He started to cast his eyes about for his teammates as I helped him to sit and eventually rise. By mutual, silent consent, he went to one fallen form, while I went to another. Ianto got to his body first, a point that was clearly accentuated when Owen, without looking at who was gently touching his shoulder, punched Ianto squarely on the nose. It was not an encounter I envied the young Welshman.

Turning back to the task at hand as the two men began to argue loudly with one another, I found Tosh waking gently beneath my hand where it was resting, checking her pulse at her throat. Then her eyes snapped forward and she sat up so abruptly that I snatched my hand away and startled backward, fearing a reaction like her coworker's. Instead, she just looked around frantically until she saw Ianto and Owen helping the last visible form, Gwen, into a sitting position. She sagged with relief when she saw them all up and about, and I was worried for a moment that she was going to fall back down to the ground. But she was stronger than that and barely needed my help at all to lever herself to her feet.

"Where's Jack?" Gwen's soft, half-choked on query cut through the room, leaving it silent in its wake. We all stood stock still, turning on the spot, hoping for any sign of him on the surface of the rubble. It was then that I also noticed the conspicuous absence of my brother.

"Shit," Owen took his anger out on a nearby stone, "probably got himself buried. Bloody typical of him: could be anywhere."

"Then we'd better start digging." Gwen knelt down as if to do so as she was talking, but Ianto caught her arm before she reached the ground.

"No, we might just be piling more rocks on top of him. We need to narrow down the search. I think there's something in the Archives. Tosh?"

Tosh shook herself out of her stunned reverie. "What? Yes, yes, I think there is. Just let me get it." She started to leave before she hesitated and turned back to me. She let her hand rest briefly on my upper arm in a move that surprised me. "Don't worry. We'll find them." She offered me a small comforting smile as she turned away again. Ianto followed her out the door, or what remained of it, offering a smile of his own, even though it came across more as a grimace than anything else.

I heard Owen mutter "Them?" under his breath, and then shout in alarm as Gwen swatted at his arm, but I didn't pay them much attention. I hadn't known Thomas for very long, and had known he was my brother for an even shorter span of time. For all that we didn't know each other and often didn't get along, he was still my brother, and the thought of losing him so soon after finding him often terrifies me. Every orphan dreams that somewhere in the world there's a family waiting for him, and even though the dream fades when you grow up, it never disappears entirely. Thomas had been, literally, a dream come true.

"We're back!" Tosh's voice was alight with excitement and optimism that I appreciated, even if I didn't feel it myself. "We couldn't find exactly what we were looking for, but these should do." Her and Ianto's arms both were laden with strange devices, the likes of which I had never seen before. Carefully, she and Ianto deposited the majority of their burdens on the ground at their feet. Tosh kept a small device that reminded me more of a Startrek-style Tricorder than anything else. So much for the unimaginable wonders of alien technology.

"What's that?" Even if I couldn't use it, that didn't mean my curiosity wasn't peaked.

"It detects thermal signatures. Jack and Thomas will be warmer than the environment around them, so they'll stand out on the screen." She pointed to illustrate her point. "Then, we know where to dig. Or, more accurately, from where to begin lifting rubble." She motioned at the discarded objects before moving away, keeping the device pointed at the ground, searching.

"These," by way of illustration, Ianto hefted one of a number of small, octagonal shaped devices in his hand, the rest of them lying temporarily useless on the floor, "we'll position around the area of debris we want to have moved. The area defined by them can be transported to any place within a finite distance about the space of this room, or what this room was. We'll choose a corner where no one is standing, put the removed layer there, and everything beneath will be exposed." Ianto's explanation followed cleanly on the heels of Tosh's and finished just before her surprised and gratified shout drew everyone's attention back to her.

Everyone moved immediately to action, eager to rescue and reclaim the missing members of our party. It didn't take long for the markers to be put in to place, and even I could help with that. What took longer, and what no one could help with, was the calibration of the transport regulator, which Tosh did alone. The wait was maddening after we had found both Jack and Thomas, and Ianto quietly assured me that we had found both of them, even going so far as to show me, if from a distance, that there were two separate and distinct heat signatures beneath our feet.

As soon as the chunks of ruined building had been removed, the sound of laughter and pleased moans floated out of the newly created hole. From a distance, everyone on the surface glanced askance around at each other. Eventually, Owen must have decided to do the gallant thing and throw a rock in on the pair. All sound ceased. Then the laughter resumed, more uproarious than it had been before. The bodies of Thomas and the Captain soon followed the sound out of the pit to be greeted warmly, if a little awkwardly on the part of everyone but the rescued party.

Clambering over the unsteady ground, Jack led us out of the ruined room. As we began to file out behind him, though, Tosh signaled me to wait. As the rest of the group left us behind, I saw Thomas throw a concerned glance over his shoulder at us, but waved at him to follow the others. Tosh had my full attention the moment everyone else had left the room, but she waited just a little while longer, as if making sure everyone was out of hearing range.

"There was someone, something else here." She looked up at me, and even though she was clearly schooling her features to project calm, I could detect an undercurrent of worry in her words. "What was it? I could feel it looking through my mind. It felt...wrong."

"I'm not sure what it was." Its presence had been bothering me as well, but I offered Tosh a brief reassuring smile anyway. "Honestly, I don't think it was one of mine. Perhaps you have something on file, a record of something similar?"

"Maybe." She hesitated, and I couldn't tell if she was going to continue the conversation or just walk away and leave it at that. "I just...for some reason I didn't want to tell anyone else about this. I didn't even really want to tell you, but I...knew...that you would understand, that it had touched you in the same way. It feels wrong to tell anyone else. But I suppose I'll have to, now: I don't think I can search through everything on my own."

Then she turned and left, and as she did I realized that if she hadn't talked to me about it, then I wouldn't have talked to anyone about it either. I tend not to share information more than is absolutely necessary for one reason or another, but this was necessary information. Absolutely vital, in fact. Whatever that creature was, whatever it had done, it planted an instinct in the back of my mind. The very thought disgusted me.

I kept my eyes to the floor as I left the room myself, making sure I didn't lose my footing. Lost in thought, I was still looking at the ground when I turned the corner to follow everyone else to a more central location in the Hub. Halfway down the corridor, I stopped. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see something huge staring back at me. Slowly, I lifted my head.

If you're one of those individuals never fortunate enough to suddenly find yourself staring into the beady eyes of a hungry pterodactyl, count your lucky stars. Whatever else happened, I certainly did not shout at the thing and then run as fast as I could until I caught up with Tosh and relative safety in numbers.

"They're called Quar'tar, from a small nameless moon orbiting Doolaer, a gas giant." Jack's voice rang out with the authority of an expert. "The air on their moon is so thin that it distorts sound, so they developed telepathy as a way to communicate effectively. Unfortunately, as a side effect, they also began feeding on each other's minds. There aren't many Quar'tar left. They've only got about another century or so before they're gone."

"How does that work, exactly? I understand feeding on life forces, but on someone else's mind?" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thomas cross his arms protectively across his chest when I spoke.

"It's actually similar to that. Almost exactly the same, in fact. The only difference is that feeding on someone's life force, like feeding on someone's blood, will kill the person. When the Quar'tar feed on an individual's mind, they take memories, personality, instincts, electrical impulses, but leave the body behind, usually catatonic."

"There have been a few recorded cases of Quar'tar attacks since Torchwood was founded." Tosh was reading from her computer, as far away as she possibly could be at my insistence. "There's not much empirical data for me to go on, but it's been remarked that although the Quar'tar remain the same to look at after they've fed, so long as you're looking directly at them, the other senses seem to perceive them differently. The exact words used are 'existential camouflage.'"

In the back of my mind, the phrase 'strength of soul' echoed. Frowning, I spoke. "I don't think the mind is the only thing these things are taking. If it were, then we'd be able to perceive them normally after they've fed, and the one that was in here wouldn't have spared me."

"I don't know, maybe it just didn't want to spoil its appetite with junk food." Thomas smirked at me, clearly enjoying this topic of conversation more than the subject of life-force devouring. "Harry Dresden: calories from smart: zero."

I tossed a glance over my shoulder at him before turning back to the topic at hand.

"It doesn't much matter, I think." Gwen looked pensive. "The way you and Tosh described it, the Quar'tar seemed to be looking for something. It hit a roadblock with Tosh, and it didn't want you. So it must have been looking for someone else."

"Yeah, anyone else, probably," Owen said. "The fact that he didn't eat Dresden's brains just means he's working with our vampire. Probably couldn't get to Tosh because of that thing with Mary."

Tosh muttered "Yeah, probably" under her breath, but I didn't miss the way Gwen kept shooting concerned glances Jack's way.

"I guess we know why you were called in anyway." My attempt at levity grated in the heavy atmosphere. "We were probably meant to be at each others' throats by now while our real enemies picked us off."

"Harry," Thomas said, "never try to lighten the mood again. You're terrible at it. Still, it is an unusual bit of good fortune for us, I suppose."

"Now if only we had a way of getting to them before they got to us." Jack laughed bitterly. "That would be a real spot of luck."

Silence reigned as everyone thought furiously. As strong as our enemies appeared to be, the only way we could hope to overcome them was by doing something they didn't expect, besides not killing each other. Vampires, and I have to assume psychotic mind-eating aliens, are fairly confident in their power over humans, and occasionally, that makes them sloppy. There had to have been something we missed.

There had been ectoplasmic residue at Estelle Cole's home when the invitation was left behind.

I jumped, causing several people around me to start as well. Everyone looked at me. "I need the number for a late night pizza place."

Ch. 6

"This is complete rubbish." I could see Owen pacing irritably out of the corner of my eye. It was lucky that I didn't need much concentration to do what I was doing, or he would have been distracting enough to interfere with my magic. "I mean, vampires I could accept. They're similar enough to haemovores, and we've seen plenty of them, on and off. But magic summoning circles? Please."

"It's not a summoning circle," I finished fashioning the outline of the shape in question out of leaves and brambles and whatever else I could find nearby. "It's a binding circle, completely different."

As I went about preparing the circle for what I needed it to do, I could hear Jack explaining to Owen about the history of the circle as seen in religious and mystical ceremonies, how the shape could be used in more modern designs and how it was used to contain energy even in alien designs. I was