Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 29

Photo by Galal Garwan on Unsplash

Harry reflects on the nature of being alone, and the difference between working alone on purpose and unexpectedly losing your backup. He thinks about how the word "alone" is too small for the idea it conveys, like the words "fear" or "trust". Those are interesting comparitors. People almost always go to "love" in these kinds of discussions. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, beyond the fact that it matches where his head it at right now. Trust is Harry's biggest barrier to working with other people, like Tera and the Alphas, and to being with other people, like Susan. Fear is in some sense, in some contexts, its opposite. This is also where we find out that Harry is probably in the top 100 most powerful wizards in the world. It was established quite a while ago, back in his conversation with Kim at the beginning of this book, that he's strong for his age and level of training, but this is a new level of context. Technically, we're told that he's "usually" at that level, reminding us how depleted Harry currently is, but also more or less establishing that since he was able to hex down the camera, we can expect that his magic will come all the way back eventually. 

Harry notes that the smart thing to do, were he physically up to it, would be to go back over the wall, get in the can, and ask Susan to drive somewhere far away. But he's not comfortable walking away from a challenge he issued, nor leaving his new allies to their fate - and in any case, he can't get over the wall. So he sneaks to the wedge of the "woods", to where he can see the rest of the estate. We get like, a sentence of description of the house, and considerably more on the lawn and gardens, which makes sense since that's where the final confrontation is gonna go down. 

Harry sees Billy come running out of the trees, but before he can react, the dot from a laser sight appears on Billy's flank, and a second later he's hit with a tranquilizer dart. Harry can only watch as he collapses, and Denton's team emerges from the trees. Harry notes that, based on the way he's moving, Denton's restraint is gone. But he continues to keep the rest of his team under control, easily breaking up a fight between Harris and Wilson as they count the fallen Alphas. Harris isn't doing so good without his belt, and Wilson called him an idiot for having lost it in the first place. When they've confirmed six wolves down, Marcone and Hendricks come out from behind the Decorative Fake Ruins, revealing that Marcone was the one who shot the Alphas, and that he doesn't know the hexenwulfen are here to kill him. 

Marcone tells them about the camera that went down, and that it almost certainly means Dresden is here, even though they haven't seen him yet. Denton is, for reasons I don't fully understand, very sure that they've caught everyone, and that if Dresden isn't one of the unconscious wolves on the lawn, he isn't here at all. Denton is about as dismissive as he can get away with. Benn, meanwhile, wants to kill the Alphas now, while they're helpless, and when Marcone tells her now, that they need to wait for MacFinn to show up and let him take them out, to make things look right for the medical examiner, her control slips and she reaches for her wolf belt. Denton calms her down, but it's a near thing, and her snarled insults likely tip Marcone off to the fact that they're not on his side, if he didn't already know. I notice that if things had gone to plan for our antagonists in this book, Butters's career would have gotten complicated a whole book earlier. Although of course, if that had happened, neither Dresden nor we would ever have known about it, since everyone would have died. 

Photo by Cosmin Gurau on Unsplash

Marcone tells the hexenwulfen to find Dresden, and reminds them that he wants Harry taken alive. He directs them to search the woods, pointing the laser dot from his gun almost exactly at Harry's position. 

This is yet another short, interstitial chapter with a lot of tension and very little action. If I remember right, it was less frustrating when I was actually reading this book, rather than going through it at a rate of slightly less than one chapter a week. This post is 4 days later than it ought to have been, because Laptop Switchy Day didn't quite go to plan. (Yes, I'm still on library laptops. If you want the greater consistency that would come from my actually owning my own computer, you can help us get there faster by supporting me on Patreon.) I'll follow up with Chapter 30 just as soon as I can, now that I don't have a giant paper looming. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!