Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 17

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Content Note: Opioid use. If you have a complicated or unpleasant history with your own, or someone else's, use of opioids, you will likely have some feelings about the events of this chapter. 

Harry did drive himself home, which is such a bad idea I literally can't even. Red Court vampire venom is basically heroin. Don't drive when you're on heroin. He gets home, somehow, and we get a rundown of the effects of the venom as he's experiencing them. He feels numb and light "all over", and is feeling euphoria that later gets broken down into "pounding happiness" and "giddy delight". Also when he moves his eyes, everything goes blurry until he refocuses, indicating some difficulty with his vestibulo-occular reflex. That's one of the fastest reflexes in the body, so if it's slowed enough to notice, his other reflexes are probably in even worse shape. Of course, that could be from the concussion Kyle gave him. 

He goes to lie down, which is really the only reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. Mister gets up on the bed and starts walking around Harry's head. Harry apparently doesn't remember that Bob is currently possessing Mister's body, and thinks the cat is just trying to make Harry get up and feed him, which Harry is not really inclined to do. Bob/Mister bats at the burn on Harry's throat, which hurts, and this provides adequate motivation for Harry to get up, throw some cold cuts in the cat's food dish, and stumble into the bathroom to check himself for injuries. His pupils are dilated all the way out, and the places where he got drooled on look sunburned, but he doesn't have a visible bite mark, which is good, because a bite would create a link between him and Kelly, allowing her to get into his head and do what is ever-so-helpfully described here as "usual mind control enchantment", and never elaborated on, ever, so far as I can recall. Red Court vampires can potentially control people they've fed upon, even if their victims don't become addicted to the venom. Probably no big deal. Harry also notes that this is a violation of the laws of magic, which is isn't, since those are only for humans, but I think that can be forgiven considering the state of his brain right now. 

He goes back to bed, and starts trying to "focus", blocking out the effects of the venom so he can think his way through the case. This is solid supporting evidence that Harry has been working way the hell too hard for way the hell too long. While I can understand, on general principles, wanting to resist just lying there in a drugged stupor when that wasn't how he intended to spend his time, and yes, the Nightmare is still out there and will likely kill or torture someone else tonight if it isn't stopped. Too, there remains the issue of elevated ghost activity - any number of spooky and unpleasant things might happen if Harry isn't personally there to stop them. But he's gotta know that he's not going to accomplish anything productive tonight anyway, and while we are shortly to learn that it's not safe for him to go to sleep right now, he doesn't know that yet. Chalk it up to the concussion, I guess. I think at this point most people know that a concussion (that's any head injury that causes you to see starts or a bright flash, feel dazed or dizzy, or lose consciousness for even a few moments) can affect your executive function, but we tend to think of executive function as the thing that lets you start your homework or avoid acting on impulses. It also includes your ability to realize that your current course of action is unproductive, and decide to do something else. So it's not like, highly unexpected that someone with a concussion might stay kind of stuck on accomplishing whatever they were working on when they were injured, even if a little thought should make it obvious that it's no longer a good idea. 

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So Harry considers what he knows about Lydia. She left the church, and the protection of holy ground, but why? She appears to be connected to the Nightmare, somehow, but there's nothing to connect her, or the Nightmare, to Malone, or Bianca for that matter. The Nightmare could be working with Bianca, but then why would she send Kelly and Kyle to kidnap Lydia? Harry seems to be forgetting that Lydia's kidnapping was a trap, for him, and if Bianca were working with the Nightmare, and it can possess Lydia, it wouldn't have been hard to fake the whole thing in order to get Harry out to that old factory. He does not, however, forget that Lydia's pulse was a fairly human normal sixty beats per minute, and if she was drugged with vampire venom, that doesn't actually make sense, nor is there any explanation for the Nightmare's being able to possess her when she was still wearing that talisman. 

Unfortunately, pain blocking techniques don't actually work all that well, or all that long, against, y'know, basically heroin, and Harry keeps getting distracted thinking about how nice it would be to let it take him under, until eventually these thoughts actually address him by name and start speaking in the imperative. While he's not explicitly mentioned here, it seems pretty obvious that this is Inner Harry, Dark Harry, who is generally on board with things that feel good, and is also aware that they're drugged, concussed, injured, overworked, and in desperate need of sleep. Harry feels his defenses crumbling, and panics, which increases his heart rate and thus how intensely he's feeling the venom, vicious cycling until he loses consciousness. 

And so we finally get to find out what happened with Kravos, via flashback dream. We've got Murphy, Stallings, Rudolf, and Malone, from SI, plus Harry to lock down the sorcerer's magic, and Michael to deal with his pet demon. The plan, basically, is to round up his followers, who should be drugged out and pretty helpless, and then have Harry do his thing so Kravos can't do his thing, allowing SI to take him on as four humans with guns against one human who might have like, a ritual dagger. If the demon is there, everyone is to stay back and let Michael deal with it. If he goes down, they're to throw holy water at it and run away. Incidentally, this is, I think, the first time we get "sorcerer" defined as a magic user who focuses on destructive magic, potentially as powerful as a wizard, but a lot more specialized and commensurately less flexible. This is also where we get Dark Sorcerer Ken. In light of the recent Barbie movie, I feel like I should have a "She's everything, he's just Ken" joke here, but honestly I got nothing. 

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This was a good plan, and in real life it went off without a hitch. In the dream, only the first part goes how it's supposed to. Harry's spell to contain Kravos's magic not only fails but somehow turns on him, binding his power instead. The demon kills Michael and then the SI team, except Rudolf, who runs away, although it lets Malone empty his shotgun into it first. Harry realizes that it's a dream, but frightened and unprepared, he isn't able to alter it's course. He says "This isn't the way it happened." and the demon says "That was then. This is now.", our first indication that this is something more than an ordinary nightmare, before biting a chunk out of Harry's stomach. 

Mister/Bob scratches Harry's face, waking him up. He's curled up in a corner of his bedroom, screaming and throwing up, which is a pretty valid reaction from where I'm standing. He briefly senses a dark presence, but it's gone before he can focus on it. He's terrified, and he feels violated and vulnerable, so he goes down to the lab, gets inside his summoning circle, activates it, and then curles up again and just cries for a while, while Mister/Bob prowls around the outside, purring. Man, it feels so weird to say at this particular moment, but I am going to miss Harry being this emotionally healthy. He's having a very bad time of it just at present, but he's handling it really well, for values of handling it well that include getting into a safe place and then letting himself feel his feelings. 

Bob removes himself from the cat and returns to the skull, so he can talk to Harry. Once he's confirmed that Harry can hear him, he says he saw the Nightmare, that he tried to help but Harry wouldn't wake up. He seems genuinely sympathetic her, and says "I'm sorry" when Harry asks what he's talking about, although I don't know if he's apologizing for not being able to help faster, or for bringing this up when Harry is traumatized and disoriented. He thinks he knows what just tried to kill Harry. 

So yeah. Plot's finally underway, kinda. If I remember rightly, we're about to get the "ghost of a demon" theory that Harry runs with for like half the book. Until then, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!