Dead Beat(13)

"I'm taking you somewhere you'll be safe. Once I get you there, I'll figure out my next move. For now, ask me questions. I'll answer them."
Butters took a slower sip of his coffee and nodded. His hands looked steadier. "Who was that man?"
"He goes by Grevane, but I doubt that's his real name. He's a necromancer."
"What's a necromancer?"
I rolled a shoulder in a shrug. "Necromancy is the practice of using magic to muck around with dead things. Necromancers can animate and control corpses, manipulate ghosts, access the knowledge stored in dead brains-"
Butters blurted out, "That's impos-" Then he stopped himself and coughed. "Oh. Right. Sorry."
"They can also do a lot of really freaky things involving the soul," I said. "Even in the weird circles, it isn't the kind of thing you talk about casually. But I've heard stories that they can inhabit corpses with their consciousness, possess others. I've even heard that they can bring people back from the dead."
"Jesus," Butters swore.
"I kinda doubt they had anything to do with that one."
"No, no, I meant-"
"I know what you meant. It was a joke, Butters."
"Oh. Right. Sorry." He swigged more coffee, and started looking around at the streets again. "But bringing the dead to life? That doesn't sound so bad."
"You're assuming that what the necromancer brings them back to is better than death. From what I've heard, they don't generally do it for humanitarian reasons. But that might be a load of crap. Like I said, no one talks about it."
"Why not?" Butters asked.
"Because it's forbidden," I told him. "The practice of necromancy violates one of the Laws of Magic laid down by the White Council. Capital punishment is the only sentence, and no one wants to even come close to being suspected by the Council."
"Why? Who are they?"
"They're me," I said. "Sort of. The White Council is a …  well, most people would call it a governing body for wizards all over the world, but it's really more like a Masonic lodge. Or maybe a frat."
"I've never heard of a fraternity handing out a death sentence."
"Yeah. Well the Council has only seven laws, but if you break them … " I drew my thumb across my neck. "By the way, they aren't fond of regular folks knowing about them. So don't talk about them to anyone else."
Butters swallowed and touched the fingers of one hand to his throat. "Oh. So this guy, Grevane. He was like you?"
"He's not like me," I said, and it came out in a snarl that surprised even me. Butters twitched violently. I sighed and made an effort to lower my voice again. "But he's probably 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 they don't have much more intellect than your average animal. You have to outthink them-or the necromancer who is giving them orders. You could also cut off the necromancer's control of them."
"How?"
"Kill their drum."
"Uh, what?"
I shook my head. "Sorry. A zombie …  well, it isn't really a person with thoughts and feelings and such, but the corpse is used to being a person. To eating, breathing-and to a beating heart. That's how the necromancer controls them. He plays a beat or some kind of rhythmic music, and uses magic to substitute his beat for the zombie's heartbeat. He links himself to the beat, the beat to the zombie's heart, and when the necromancer gives a command, as far as the zombie is concerned it's coming from inside him and he wants to do it. That's how they can control them so completely."
"That book," Butters said. "Grevane kept drumming it against his leg. And then outside, that huge bass woofer in that Cadillac."
"Exactly. Make the beat stop or get the zombies out of earshot, and he loses control of them. But that's really dicey."
"Why?"
"Because it won't destroy the zombie. It just frees it from the necromancer's control. Anything could happen. It could just shut down, or it could start killing everyone it sees. Totally unpredictable. If I'd stopped him from drumming in the exam room, they might have killed us all. Or run off in different directions to hurt other people. We couldn't afford to take the chance."
Butters nodded, absorbing this for a minute. Then he piped up with, "Grevane said you weren't a Warden. What is a Warden?"
"Wardens are the White Council's version of cops," I said. "They enforce the Laws of Magic, bring criminals in for a trial, and then they chop off their heads. Sometimes they get enthusiastic and just skip to the chopping."
"Well. That doesn't sound so bad."
"In theory," I said. "But they're so paranoid that next to them, Joe McCarthy looks like a friendly puppy. They don't ask many questions, and they don't hesitate to make up their minds. If they think you've broken a law, you might as well have."
"That's not fair," Butters said.
"No. It isn't. I'm not real popular with the Wardens. I'm not sure they'd come out to help me if I asked them."
"What about other wizards on the Council?"
I sighed. "The White Council is already at the limits of its resources. Even if they weren't, the Council really, really likes to not get involved."