Dead Beat by Jim Butcher Page A

wizard, yeah."
    "Who is he? What does he want?"
    I blew out a breath. "He's most likely a student of this badass black magic messiah named Kemmler. The Council burned Kemmler down a while back, but several of his disciples may have escaped. I think Grevane is looking for a book his teacher hid before he died."
    "A magic book?"
    I snorted. "Nah. Trinkets aren't too hard to come by. If my guess is correct, this book contains more of the knowledge and theory Kemmler used in his most powerful magics."
    Butters nodded. "So… if Grevane gets hold of the book and learns, he gets to be the next Kemmler?"
    "Yeah. And he mentioned that there were others involved in this business too. I think word of the presence of Kemmler's book came up, and his surviving students are showing up to grab it before their fellow necromancers do. For that matter, just about anyone involved in black magic might want to get their hands on it."
    "So why doesn't the Council just grab them and… ?" He drew his thumb across his throat.
    "They've tried," I said. "They thought the disciples had all been accounted for."
    Butters frowned. Then he said, "I guess wizards can go into denial about uncomfortable things too, huh?"
    I barked out a laugh. "People are people, man."
    "But now you can tell this Council about Grevane and this book, right?"
    My stomach quivered a little. "No."
    "Why not?"
    Because if I did, Mavra would destroy my friend . The thought screamed across my brain in a blaze of frustration that I tried to keep concealed.
    "Long story. The short version is that I'm not real popular with the Council, and they're pretty busy right now."
    "With what?" he asked.
    "A war."
    He scrunched up his nose and tilted his head, studying me. "That's not the only reason you aren't calling them, is it?" Butters said.
    "Egad, Holmes," I told him. "No, it isn't. Don't push."
    "Sorry." He finished the coffee, then made a visible effort to cast around for a new conversational thread. "So. Those were actual zombies?"
    "Never seen one before," I said. "But that seems like a pretty good guess."
    "Poor Phil," Butters said. "Not a saint or anything, but not a bad guy."
    "He have a family?" I asked.
    "No," Butters said. "Single. That's a mercy." He was silent for a second, then said, "No. I guess it isn't."
    "Yeah."
    "If those guys were zombies, how come they didn't want brains?" Butters said. He held both arms stiff out in front of him, rolled his eyes back in his head, and moaned, "Braaaaaaaaaaaains."
    I snorted. He gave me a weak smile.
    "Seriously," Butters said. "These guys were more like the Terminator."
    "What's the use of a foot soldier who can't do anything but hobble along and moan about brains?"
    "Good point," Butters said. He scrunched up his nose in thought. "Don't I remember something about sewing a zombie's lips shut with thread to kill them? Does that work?"
    "No clue," I said. "But you saw those things. If you want to get close enough to find out, be my guest, but I'll be observing it through a freaking telescope."
    "No, thank you," Butters said. "But how do we stop them?"
    I sighed. "They're tough, but they're still flesh and bone. Massive trauma will do it sooner or later."
    "How massive?"
    I shrugged. "Run them over with a truck. Chop them to bits with an ax. Burn them to ashes. A gun or a baseball bat won't do it."
    "This may come as a shock to you, Harry, but I don't have an ax with me. Is there something else? Maybe something that isn't so Bunyan-esque?"
    "Plenty," I said. "If you can cut off the flow of energy into them, they'll drop."
    "How do you do that?"
    "You'd have to ground them out. Running water is the best way, but there needs to be a lot of it. A small stream, at least. I could also probably trap one in a magic circle and cut off any energy from getting to it. Either way, they'd just fall over, plop."
    "Magic circles," Butters shook his head. "And nothing else?"
    "Keep in mind that they aren't intelligent," I said. "Zombies follow orders, but