Blood Lite

We watched and waited while the flames caught the gas from the leaking fuel line and leapt higher and higher, engulfing the back of the car. He didn't have much time left to escape. Soon the whole chassis would be a fireball. Yes, he was wearing a firesuit, but that term is misleading. Those things are fireproof for all of eight seconds, and after that you might as well be wearing your pajamas. Fu

I grabbed a headset from the nearest crewman. "Champ!" I yelled, not caring who heard me. "Get out of there now! The flames are almost to your roll cage. Get out!"

There was a little crackle in my headset, and then the Champ's voice, calm as ever, like he was already a long ways away. He said, "I'd rather be dead."

Well, that was the end of our hopes for the current sea­son. The car burned up so much they barely got enough of the driver out to bury. Our team made all the sports magazines for a week or so after the tragedy, and a few fan groups made up memorial T-shirts of Victor Northstar, but we were right back to square one as a team.

After that, I gave up on the thought of bringing any more of the great ones back to race again. They just couldn't handle the carnival aspect of the sport these days. It ain't much about driving anymore. So we're scouring the east Te

Day Off

A Story of the Dresden Files

Jim Butcher

The thief was examining another trapped doorway when I heard something—the tromp of approaching feet. The holy woman was in the middle of another sermon, about attentiveness or something, but I held up my hand for silence and she obliged. I could hear twenty sets of feet, maybe more.

I let out a low growl and reached for my sword. "Com­ pany."

"Easy, my son," the holy woman said. "We don't even know who it is yet."

The ruined mausoleum was far enough off the beaten path to make it unlikely that anyone had just wandered in on us. The holy woman was dreaming if she thought that the company might be friendly. A moment later they appeared—the local magistrate and two dozen of his thugs.

"Always with the corrupt government officials," mut­tered the wizard from behind me. I glanced back at him and then looked for the thief. The nimble little minx was nowhere to be seen.

"You are trespassing!" boomed the magistrate. He had a big, boomy voice. "Leave this place immediately on pain of punishment by the Crown's law!"

"Sir!" replied the holy woman. "Our mission here is of paramount importance. The writ we bear from your own liege requires you to render aid and assistance in this mat­ter."

"But not to violate the graves of my subjects!" he boomed some more. "Begone! Before I unleash the nine fires of Atarak upon—"

"Enough talk!" I growled and threw my heavy dagger at his chest.

Propelled by my massive thews, the dagger hit him two inches below his left nipple—a perfect heart shot. It struck with enough force to hurl him from his feet. His men howled with surprised fury.

I drew the huge sword from my back, let out a leonine roar, and charged the two dozen thugs.

"Enough talk!" I bellowed, and whipped the twenty-pound greatsword at the nearest target as if it were a wooden yardstick. He went down in a heap.

"Enough talk!" I howled, and kept swinging. I smashed through the next several thugs as if they were made of soft wax. Off to my left, the thief came out of nowhere and neatly sliced the Achilles tendons of another thug. The holy woman took a ready stance with her quarterstaff and chanted out a prayer to her deities at the top of her lungs.

The wizard shrieked, and a fireball whipped over my head, exploding twenty-one feet in front of me, then spread out in a perfect circle, like the shockwave of a nuke, burning and roasting thugs as it went and stopping a bare twelve inches shy of my nose.

"Oh, come on!" I said. "It doesn't work like that!"

"What?" demanded the wizard.

"It doesn't work like that!" I insisted. "Even if you call up fire with magic, it's still fire. It acts like fire. It expands in a sphere. And under a ceiling, that means that it goes rushing much farther down hallways and tu

"Fireballs used to work like that," the wizard sighed. "But do you know what a chore it is to calculate exactly how far those things will spread? I mean, it slows every­thing down."

"It's simple math," I said. "And it's way better than the fire just spreading twenty feet regardless of what's around it. What, do fireballs carry tape measures or something?"

Billy the Werewolf sighed and put down his character sheet and his dice. "Harry," he protested gently. "Repeat after me: It's only a game."

I folded my arms and frowned at him across his din­ing room table. It was littered with snacks, empty cans of pop, pieces of paper, and tiny little model monsters and adventurers (including a massively thewed barbarian model for my character). Georgia, Billy's willowy bru­nette wife, sat at the table with us, as did the redheaded bombshell Andi, while lanky Kirby lurked behind several folding screens covered with fantasy art at the head of the table.

"I'm just saying," I said. "There's no reason the magic can't be portrayed at least a little more accurately, is there?"

"Again with this discussion." Andi sighed. "I mean, I know he's the actual wizard and all, but Christ."

Kirby nodded glumly. "It's like taking a physicist to a Star Trek movie."

"Harry," Georgia said firmly. "You're doing it again."

"Oh, no I'm not!" I protested. "All I'm saying is that—"

Georgia arched an eyebrow and gave me a steady look down her aquiline nose. "You know the law, Dresden."

"He who kills the cheer springs for beer," chanted the rest of the table.

"Oh, bite me!" I muttered at them, but a grin was dilut­ing my scowl as I dug out my wallet and tossed a twenty on the table.

"Okay," Kirby said. "Roll your fireball damage, Will." Billy slung out a double handful of square dice and said, "Hah! One-point-two over median. Suck on that, henchmen!"

"They're all dead," Kirby confirmed. "We might as well break there until next week."

"Crap," I said. "I barely got to hit anybody."

"I only got to hit one!" Andi said.

Georgia shook her head. "I didn't even get to finish casting my spell."

"Oh yes," Billy gloated. "Seven modules of identify­ing magic items and repairing things the stupid barbarian broke, but I've finally come into my own. Was it like that for you, Harry?"

"Let you know when I come into my own," I said, ris­ing. "But my hopes are high. Why, this very morrow, I, Harry Dresden, have a day off."

"The devil you say!" Billy exclaimed, gri

I shrugged into my black leather duster. "No appren­tice, no work, no errands for the council, no warden stuff, no trips out of town for Paranet business. My very own free time."

Georgia gave me a wide smile. "Tell me you aren't going to spend it puttering around that musty hole in the ground you call a lab."

"Urn," I said.

"Look," Andi said. "He's blushing!"

"I am not blushing," I said. I swept up the empty bot­tles and pizza boxes, and headed into Billy and Georgia's little kitchen to dump them into the trash.

Georgia followed me in, reaching around me to send several pieces of paper into the trash, too. "Hot date with Stacy?" she asked, her voice pitched to keep the conversa­tion private.