Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 37

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Harry is angrier than he expects to be at Kyle's attack, which he attributes to the influence of eating Kravos. In a fit contrariness so quintessentially Harry that it's honestly reassuring, rather than immediately reducing Kyle to a greasy spot on the floor, a fate he has uneqivocally earned several times over, Harry gives Kyle the chance to walk away. Kyle declines, validly reasoning that this is probably a bluff on Harry's part, although he says something about "no more illusions" and I'm not actually sure what he's talking about. So far as I can recall, Harry hasn't even used regular deception in dealing with the vampires this book, much less illusions. Kelly rushes Harry, but he throws her into the far wall with a blast of wind. Kyle goes for Harry's throat, but Susan steps in and throws him into the wall... with her bare hands. Maddened by pain and injury, they start attacking each other. I'm almost sure this is supposed to be symbolism, but I'm not quite sure of what. I do, however, quite like that Harry was the one to throw Kelly into the wall while Susan got Kyle - it's a small thing, but Kelly has consistently been the more active problem for Harry, and it's good to see that Named Minor Antagonist Barbie and Ken here weren't positioned to avoid Harry Hitting a Girl or Susan doing anything that might strike a misogynistic reader as emasculating. That kind of thing is very easy to fall into by accident, which gives the impression it was deliberately avoided here. Harry uses one of Kravos's spells to set them on fire, including an incantation he presumably got from Kravos's memories. "Satharak na-kadum" yields no search results not related to the Dresden Files, so I've got nothing on the meaning, but there's a Satharak Industries in Tamil Nadu, India, so the language here is maybe meant to be Tamil? Classical Tamil, as the name implies, stands alongside Classical Greek, Latin, and Hebrew among the, y'know, classical languages, making it an appropriate and respectable choice for a spellcasting language, but one of the things we're gonna be keeping an eye on, largely starting with the next book when the world of wizards, specifically, starts opening up to the reader, is what languages are used this way, and by whom, and the grossest human magic user we've met so far using Tamil while Harry uses Latin does not look like a great start. Although Victor Sells seems to have used a quasi-Latin very similar to Harry's, so there's that. 

As Kyle and Kelly burn to death, their screams sound like tearing sheet metal, but also like terrified children. I have to figure at least some of that is Harry's own guilt about the human kids who (might have) died when he let loose at Bianca's party. They take their time about dying, too, especially compared to my recollection of other times Harry kills Red Court vampires with fire. Maybe Kravos's notion of a fire spell is meant to cause more suffering, maybe it just doesn't get as hot. You can't do anything with magic that you don't believe in, even when you're borrowing someone else's power, but it's understandable that Harry would want any Reds here, and maybe these two in particular, to hurt before they died. I don't think he would have done it like that if he'd been making a more considered choice. He doesn't feel great about it, but tries to remind himself that they're vampires, monsters. Susan, meanwhile, has to take a second to remind herself that she isn't a vampire, after using her new superstrength like that. 

They proceed through the basement, through a room with a drain in the floor, which holds the corpses of some of the human kids from the party, and some of the missing homeless people we were told about back in Chapter 12. Harry extends his magical senses to confirm that they're all beyond saving. They show no lividity, indicating that they were exanguinated - and that Harry examines them rather more thoroughly than is described, since none of them are naked as far as we're told, and you have to check the skin for that. Either he looked under someone's clothes, or a body was left facedown and he lifted it or turned it over to check the face. A hose off to one side drips water, indicating that it was used to clean up after the vampires fed. I like how this detail underscores the vampires' evil and their own fundamental inhumanity at the same time. There's something almost industrial about this approach to eating - it lacks the sexy predator intimacy fiction so often ascribed to being fed upon by a vampire. It's tidy, sort of, it's efficient. It shows how little regard the vampires have for their human prey. But it's also not how people eat. This is how you feed wild carnivores in captivity. It situates the vampires as not just inhuman but subhuman, and simultaneously establishes that they see actual humans as something even less than that. Harry announces that he'll stop them, that he can't just stay out of it after what he's seen. 

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Justine tries to argue with him, but he dismisses her when his wizard senses pick something up across the room. His shield bracelet, his blasting rod, and Bob the skull are all on a shelf tucked into an alcove, with his staff wedged into a corner, where Bianca stashed them after being warned by Bob that if she or her people messed with them, they might explode. I don't know by what exact mechanism Bob determines whether someone is his new owner when he's out of Harry's immediate physical control, but she doesn't seem to have gotten him out of the backpack, so he must have acted pretty fast there. Bob observes that Harry looks grim, despite wearing boxers with yellow duckies on them, and that his aura looks like Kravos's, although Harry doesn't let him finish that part. Harry puts on the bracelet and grabs the rest of his gear, handing Bob to Justine. Since Bob is Bob and Justine is naked except for Susan's cloak, he starts making comments, but banter time is cut abruptly short when they realize Susan has disappeared. 

Justine says the vampires are here, that they just can't see them. Bob says "What's this 'we' stuff, kimosabe'" and scans for veils. Now, to be clear, this is the kind of thing people did absolutely just like, say, in the year 2000. Period typical racism or whatever. But could we not. Could we just...could we not? Like if I wanted to be really, really generous I could make the case that the magic skull with no grasp of good and evil and a limited grasp of the difference between fiction and reality probably doesn't really know what racism is and would struggle to understand why he shouldn't do it, much less extend that understanding to adjusting his tendency to communicate in pop culture references. But that's the kind of thing a book has to actually do, and ideally interrogate, not just leave as a possible interpretation, in order to get credit for it. Anyway, Bob doesn't see any veils, and didn't see Susan leave or anyone come in to take her. Harry starts talking it through, and rapidly realizes that it doesn't actually make sense for them to have snuck in, taken Susan, and not, for example, murdered him or also taken Justine, especially now that Susan has superstrength and can make herself rather difficult to drag off, should she be so inclined. Justine volunteers that Bianca could have mind controlled Susan into leaving under her own power, as this is how she got her into the laundry room. This suggests that Bianca has at least some ability to use magic, which is not an encouraging proposition. For the moment, there's nothing for it but to keep walking. 

They reach the stairs, with open doors at the top leading outside. There might as well be a glowing neon sign at the top of those stairs reading TRAP, but Harry's newly restored strength won't last forever, and waiting until dawn will just move the fight inside, so he leaves Bob with Justine, telling him to help her if he can, and starts climbing. At the top, Bianca waits for him, with Susan kneeling at her side, a dozen vampires in their true forms arrayed behind her, and about half as many mildly enthralled men with machine guns in front. Harry laughs, and says she must think he's very dangerous, to do all this just for him. She confirms that she does, and tells the gunmen to open fire. 

So this didn't come together quite as fast as I'd hoped, but at least it wasn't an entire month this time. I'm still getting back up to speed after being sick, and honestly I've been a little distracted trying to get the latest chapter of my fanfic up before Season 3 of Wheel of Time is released on the 13th. The next post here will probably be me finally doing my second Likes and Reservations post for Season 2, so you may not get another Dresden post until after the ides of March, but we'll see. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!