And now for the much delayed and belated second chapter of Chaos Reigns. I'm so sorry that it took so long, but here it is now, and less than two days after the last chapter of COS, you lucky things.

I reiterate, if you have not read up to at least chapter 58 of COS, turn back now, lest ye be spoiled.

During the chapter, the age difference between Wanda and Dresden is touched on. Going by the best Dresden Files timeline I can find, Dresden's about 29/30 at this time (between BloodRites and DeadBeat). Wanda's 45 (though she does not look it), meaning that she was 15 or thereabouts when Dresden was born.

Now, by all means… enjoy.

"So, this is some sort of... tank?" Bruce asked, walking around the wide, powerful looking machine. Alfred had driven him down to Applied Sciences and while he had been determined to sulk all afternoon, this vehicle had driven all thoughts of doing so out of his head.

"That it is, Mister Wayne," Fox said. "It's called the Tumbler."

"I thought we didn't do weapons," Bruce said, frowning.

"It's not really a weapon, as such," Fox said. "It's intended as a multipurpose all-terrain vehicle, for SHIELD, the Army and the UN Peacekeepers, though we've had some interest from MI13 as well."

"Multipurpose?"

Fox elaborated. "The Tumbler can drive over just about any solid surface, its bomb proof from above and below, it can reach speeds of two hundred miles per hour on a flat surface and it can outrun every single extant model of tank or armoured car on an uneven one. That's how it got its name," he said. "It's hardened against EMP's." He glanced at Bruce. "We also incorporated your notes on hardening it against magical interference. Just in case." He smiled. "You did good work there."

Bruce shrugged. "I've got a good teacher," he said.

"You do," Fox agreed. "But last time I checked, he's never been very good at working with technology. Mostly, he doesn't even try. That means that it was all your work." Bruce shuffled his feet awkwardly. "Take it from me," Fox continued. "That work seriously impressed both me and him. Don't go selling yourself short, Mister Wayne. Others will be more than happy to do that for you."

Bruce frowned, then nodded.

Fox, seeing that his advice had been taken on board, nodded in satisfaction and returned to the Tumbler.

"The front is particularly heavily armoured, allowing it to shrug off even the heaviest artillery fire and to serve as a battering ram to break through obstacles and barriers," he said. "When it can't build up sufficient speed to do that, there's also the option of rocket propelled demolition charges. It can even jump, powered by a jet booster on the back, which can also be used to give it an instant speed boost. This means that it can be used for everything from escorting supply and refugee columns to serving as a bridging vehicle to extracting soldiers or civilians from a warzone too dangerous for a helicopter, a quinjet or even one of the Army's Falcon wing-packs, to get close. You could even use it to clear mines, if you wanted."

"Whoa..." Bruce said softly. "Not exactly discreet, though."

"Well, discretion isn't generally the point, though sometimes it is helpful. And two and a half tons of tank aren't exactly easy to hide, even with a desert camouflage paint job," Fox said, and smiled. "Which is why it isn't a paint job."

"What?"

"For this part, we went a little more sci-fi," Fox said, pulling out a remote control and pressing a button. The small tank disappeared.

"Holy shit," Bruce said, stunned. The Tumbler was completely invisible. "How did you do it?"

"Well, I must confess, it's not quite the Iron Man armour. The technology isn't entirely new," Fox said. "We used the same retro-reflective panels that SHIELD's Helicarrier and Quinjets do." He pressed another button, and the Tumbler reappeared.

"Wouldn't those be quite fragile?" Bruce asked. "I mean, even one glancing hit..."

"That they are," Fox said. "And that's where we made a few tweaks." He went to the table, picked up a hammer, showed it to Bruce, then brought it down smartly on the Tumbler's side. There was a cracking sound, and abruptly, the camouflage pattern vanished from a small part of the machine, leaving behind what looked like broken solar panels. Then, before Bruce's astonished eyes, the cracks smoothed away, and in a moment, the previous colour scheme had reasserted itself. "Now, they're self-repairing. And..."

He pressed another button. The camouflage pattern shifted and blurred, before being replaced by a broadly navy blue colour scheme, with SHIELD's eagle insignia emblazoned on the side.

"You can even change the desktop theme," he said. He turned to Bruce. "So. What do you make of it?"

Bruce stared at it for a long moment, then turned to Fox. "It's amazing," he said quietly, then smiled. "I've just one question."

"And what's that, Mister Wayne?"

"Does it come in black?"

OoOoO

The four of us piled into Murph's car, with Murph driving and Wanda in the front to give directions. This meant that Thomas and I were left to jostle in the back.

"Couldn't you keep your staff between your legs?" Thomas complained, brushing the offending item. "Or in the trunk?"

"It's too long," I said.

"Well, that's something I didn't know," Wanda said, mischievous voice floating back from the front seat.

"Don't be too impressed," Murph said. "Dresden often exaggerates."

I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it as what I'd said sunk in. I flushed. Another Freudian slip. Clearly they were on a special today.

Thomas snickered and I bopped him over the head with my staff. In response, he jabbed me in the kidneys, because we're brothers. It's what we do.

"Kids, stop fighting and play nicely," Wanda laughed.

"But mom," Thomas said, in his most faux-petulant voice, one totally at odds with his cheeky grin. "He started it."

I replied the only way I could. "I did not."

"Yes you did."

"Did not!"

"Did!"

"Did not!"

"Did!"

"Did not!"

"Good god, you two make Bruce look grown up," Murph complained. "Can't you just behave?"

Thomas and I shared a look then, in poker faced unison, we said, "No."

Murph sighed and gently thumped her head against the steering wheel. Wanda, meanwhile, just laughed.

Like I said. We're brothers, it's what we do.

All silliness quickly faded, however, once we got to the site. It was a grim building on Chicago's South Side, in an area that just reeked of poverty, bitterness and desperation. Any hope had fled this place a long time ago, and the powers that be had not yet marked it out for gentrification in the way they had a number of the surrounding neighbourhoods. Anyone coming to live here, in short, likely had no place else to go. It was the sort of place that attracted predators, some human, some not. So, really, the fact that the N'Garai had holed up here wasn't much of a surprise and I braced myself for any number of nasty sights.

In retrospect, I should have braced harder.

The door was unlocked and Wanda and I made our way inside. At the same time, Murph surveyed the area and called in her officers to set up a perimeter and Thomas watched her back, just in case one of the N'Garai tried to jump her while she was making the call.

Almost as soon as we opened the door and stepped into the dilapidated concrete building we were assaulted by the sickly sweet smell of rotting meat, which lay over the usual scents of dust, dirt and disuse like a thick blanket.

In the next room, a dilapidated bedroom, was a scene of carnage.

It wasn't the first dismembered body, or group of bodies, I'd seen, but it was certainly one of the nastier ones. The guts, bones and other chewed and cast off bits from a lot of different bodies had all been mixed together into one fetid pile large enough to fill a small bathtub.

The smell of rot and decay was overpowering, reaching in and switching on my gag reflex. I retched, grabbing the doorway for support. I've seen plenty of dead bodies, and after a while, you get used to them. Emotionally speaking, they don't affect you as much. Well, it's either that or you get better at compartmentalising. To be honest, I'm not quite sure. But no amount of experience is going to make the smell any less foul.

I wiped my mouth and looked up as I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"You okay?" Wanda asked gently, apparently not bothered by the smell, which made one of us. Either her amount of experience did make her immune to the effects of a stench so bad that you could smell it with your teeth, or she simply couldn't smell it, or she was somehow using magic to filter the air around her. Ebenezar mentioned it once, when I was mucking out the stables on his farm and complained about the smell. Apparently it's a wanded trick, but if any wandless Wizard could pull it off, it would be the woman in front of me.

"I'll be fine," I said, grimacing.

Wanda nodded, and crouched down by the pile. She examined it for a moment, then nodded. "We're in luck," she said. "There's maybe ten N'Garai here. Certainly no more than a dozen."

"Counting the big one?" I asked.

Wanda shook her head. "The N'Garai are semi social creatures. While they can and often do hunt individually, if they can they bring their prey back to a single communal feeding site. The Mabdhara, by contrast, prefer to feed alone. They either hunt for themselves or make their underlings bring them prey."

"Social, huh?" I asked. "That doesn't sound like most demons I know. Fae, yes, though it varies from species to species."

"They're closer to the Fae in that they're a species unto themselves rather than simply a group of spirits that take on similar forms in the mortal world," Wanda said. "But unfortunately, they don't have the same vulnerability to iron." She chewed her lip thoughtfully and I had to push away an idle thought that it made her look rather cute. Now was really not the time or the place. "If they were, well... ball bearings and iron filings are cheap and a bit of blunt force telekinesis isn't exactly difficult."

"That's how I'd do it," I agreed. Well, actually, my method of choice had been a swarm of Little Folk armed with plastic handled box knives. Not pretty, but as past experience has proved, very effective. "And I'm guessing since we're talking here, we're not going to have our faces ripped off by a hungry demon."

Wanda shook her head. "They tend to be nocturnal, so they'll be holed up somewhere cool and dark for the day," she said, and her expression darkened. "It's just a personal theory, but I think that Chthon designed them to hunt at night."

"To make people even more afraid of the dark than they already are," I said. "That makes sense. It's even kinda clever. You know, from the point of view of a psychopath."

Wanda raised an eyebrow. "Is that a point of view that you're familiar with?"

"Every day, before my morning coffee," I said, and she laughed softly. "You?" I asked.

Wanda's expression turned dark and grim. "More than I would like," she said. She glanced at me. "Let's just say that my father is a piece of work."

Part of me was very curious as to who that father was. And I wasn't the only one. Wanda's mother was known to be a Maximoff, a Romani clan famous for producing powerful Wizards. Hell, if I remembered correctly, one or two were on the Council. No one, however, knew who her father was. Some went with the old Merlin story, with her being sired by Lucifer or some other Fallen Angel. Having met a few of Old Nick's stooges, I was pretty damn sure that this wasn't the case. Others suggested, rather more plausibly, that Strange himself was her father. Personally, I hadn't put too much thought into it – if nothing else, I didn't exactly have any stones to throw in regards to potentially dodgy parentage.

"My mother was too," I said quietly. "Or at least, that's what I've heard."

"I liked her well enough," Wanda said absently, standing up and examining the sunken building.

I blinked, before straightening up. "You knew my mom?" I asked, stunned.

"I met her, once," Wanda corrected. "She came to talk to Doctor Strange." She glanced at me. "She was pregnant with you, as it happens."

Well. This was awkward.

"Uh..." I said. "Okay." It was very easy to forget that though Wanda looked about my age, maybe even a little younger, she was actually half my age again.

Wanda smiled wryly. "I was fifteen," she said. "Weird?"

"No," I said, then, on seeing her raised eyebrow, amended my statement. "A little bit."

"Only a little?"

"My second teacher is something like three hundred years old," I said. "Fifteen years is nothing."

Wanda's voice grew drier. "Good to know that I remind you of a short, grumpy Scottish farmer," she said.

"What? No, I, uh, you, um," I began, stumbling over my words. Clearly, she'd done her homework on me.

Wanda snorted. "I know what you meant, Harry," she said, smiling. "I was just teasing you."

"Oh. Ah. Good," I said, trying to force my tongue into saying something other than incoherent mumblings. God, this was embarrassing. In hindsight, it was perfectly obvious that she was teasing me, but at the time... well. I think it should be fairly obvious that I didn't instantly clue to it.

She chuckled softly. "And in any case, I like Ebenezar," she said. "I've worked with him and I think he's a good man. It's an honour to be compared to him."

"Yeah," I said, slightly sourly. It hadn't been long ago that I'd found out that my mother wasn't the only piece of work in the magical side of my life. Ebenezar McCoy, my mentor, was the Black Staff, the White Council's assassin, authorised to break the rules of magic whenever the Council required it. And he'd been the one to teach me that all magic came from life, not just how to use it, but why. The irony was not lost on me.

Wanda studied me for a moment, a pensive expression on her face. But, whether it was because we were in a den of demons or because she decided against it, she didn't ask. Instead, she said, "Your mother was a good person, Harry. Not without her flaws, but a good person. And believe me, she loved you very much."

I was silent for a long moment, letting Wanda's words sink in. If you're not an orphan, it's probably difficult to understand, but I'd never known my mother. She'd died in childbirth, her death manufactured by Thomas' father as it happens. He'd paid for his part in it – he was alive, if you were using the strict biological definition, but he was a puppet on someone else's psychic strings. Considering he'd done exactly that to who knew how many women over the centuries, and tried to do it to my mother, I felt that he was more than welcome to it.

But that didn't change the fact that I'd never met her. The closest I'd come to doing so was an all too brief encounter with a sort of copy of her consciousness inside my brother's head (long story). Add that to the fact that my mom walked on the Dark Side for a while, meaning most of the people who knew her then aren't the sort that I'd want to have a heart to heart with, and I think you can understand why I savoured every little scrap of information I could find about her.

My face must have been an open book, because Wanda gave me a sad, knowing smile. "You aren't the only one who never knew their mother," she said. "And I'll tell you everything I know about yours." She glanced around. "Once we've finished demon hunting."

I nodded and got my game face on. "You said that there might be Mindless Ones," I said.

Wanda nodded. "They don't hunt," she said. "They just mindlessly destroy everything in their path." She paused. "Which, come to think of it, makes them very like frat boys. Maybe there's something to what you said earlier..."

"The Nevernever is affected by the part of the mortal world you enter it from," I said slowly.

Wanda nodded. "Well, the N'Garai won't be far, and the Mindless Ones probably won't be either. But if we can't find them..." She smiled slightly. "Then at least we'll know where to start looking." She turned to the dark corridor, and the smile faded, to be replaced with an expression of grim determination. "In the meantime, we'd better keep going."

OoOoO

We spent another twenty minutes poking around the building, but found nothing. Wanda didn't seem too surprised.

"If it was just a pack of N'Garai, I'd expect them not to stray too far from their feeding site," she said. "But with the Mabdhara commanding them, they've got a bit more strategic know-how. They'll have holed up somewhere else for the day. Not too far away, but far enough."

"We can't just wait until they bring someone in," I said.

"I know," Wanda said. "That's why we're going fishing."

"Fishing?" I asked, then got it. "You're going to set a lure."

Wanda nodded. "A little bit of blood mixed with a bit of olfactory misdirection – it's like ventriloquism of the nose," she said. "They'll think that they can smell a fresh kill, and, well, they're not very bright. If you, Karrin and Thomas all donate a drop, that should seal it. And, for the final flavour, a little bit of chaos magic," she said. "Like calls to like, after all."

"Blood works best, huh?" I asked.

"Yes, especially human blood," Wanda said. "It's like the Little Folk and milk and honey." She paused. "Though, to be honest, they're happy if it's just milk and sugar. I tried coffee once." She shuddered. "Never again."

I imagined one of the Little Folk on coffee and winced. The Little Folk, minor fae, tend to be hyperactive and easily distracted at the best of times. One on a caffeine rush didn't bear thinking about.

"I've found something that works better," I said.

"Really?" Wanda asked.

"Pizza," I said, and grinned at her astonished expression. "I thought so too, but they go crazy for it."

Wanda stared at me, dumbfounded, then shook her head and chuckled. "You learn something new every day," she said. "How did you discover that one?"

I grimaced. "Honest answer? I was tired, I couldn't be bothered to head out to get some groceries and I had some cold pizza lying around," I said.

"I'll bear that one in mind," Wanda murmured. "Now, I think we'd better get a move on."

In fairly short order, the donated blood, mine, Murphy's and Wanda's the usual red, Thomas' the slightly pinkish shade that marks out White Court blood from human, swirled in a silvery bowl that Wanda had apparently conjured out of thin air. The bowl was duly put in a circle and Wanda murmured the spell in a voice that made my stomach do backflips and broke the circle.

"Now," she said. "We wait."

So we did. We waited for several very boring, very nerve wracking hours. After all, you never knew whether at this very moment a demon was going to start trying to chew its way through your spine or not. It's like they say – the worst part is the waiting.

Then, as the sun started setting, something long and dark slipped out of the shadows. It was over six feet long, with a powerful tail that made it even longer, backwards facing knees on its powerfully muscular hind legs built for pouncing. It had long fore legs too, tipped with three fingered claws that looked almost like hands, which suggested that it was just as comfortable on two legs as four. Its head was long, almost like the head of a pick-axe viewed from the side, and a thick brow ridge that spiked out like a set of horns was set above cruel, hungry red eyes. In short, with its purplish, nodule hide, it looked like an Ice Age era relative of one of those creatures from the Alien films, bigger, badder and meaner.

It looked from side to side, then scuttled out towards the bowl, sniffing at it. Then, it let out a shrieking call that pressed the button in my head marked 'primal terror'.

A moment later, another dozen of the creatures slipped out, surrounding the bowl, sniffing. They seemed confused, and made it known with little shrieking calls.

"Harry."

I twitched at the soft whisper, then relaxed. It was Wanda.

"Get ready," she murmured. "The Madbhara will come out soon to investigate. When he makes his appearance, take out as many of the ones around the bowl as you can."

I took a deep breath and nodded, acutely aware that even with Wanda backing me up, if I missed one, the others would zero in on me and tear me apart.

Better not miss, then.

I slowly drew my blasting rod and began to summon up as much power as I could.

Then, I felt the ground shake and, careful not to release my focus, I glanced over to the shadows where the first of the N'Garai had emerged from. Now, something new emerged, just like the other N'Garai but considerably scaled up. Where the others were the size of a big cat or a large black bear, this one was closer to a bull elephant, with dull hide the colour of dried blood and its eyes… they gleamed with cruelty and hunger too, but there was something much more worrying there.

Intelligence.

This was the Madbhara, and it was every bit as bad as I had imagined.

It wasn't alone, either, flanked by two N'Garai and a baker's dozen of Hulk sized creatures that looked like crude stony statues, utterly devoid of any features beyond three blocky fingers on each hand and a red v-shaped slit where eyes should be. The Mindless Ones.

"Now," Wanda hissed.

I drew up the power and let it a loose with a shout. "FUEGO!"

A thick beam of roaring flame lashed out, bisecting two of the creatures around the bowl then, as I swept it to my right, did the same to another seven, tearing through them with a popping, boiling explosion of sound as burning bits went everywhere.

That left three others, which scattered, screeching their fury.

The Mindless Ones, meanwhile, had charged into battle, going straight through the house in their way without slowing down, along with the two N'Garai that had flanked the Mabdhara, all closing on Wanda.

As I caught my breathe, my heart nearly stopped.

But she, by the looks of things, didn't even blink. Instead, she flicked a wrist and murmured a couple of words. Red power leapt from her hand and pooled on the tarmac between her and the Mindless Ones, transforming a good ten metres by five into molten tar, bogging the giant creatures down.

The N'Garai, though, each performed the sort of corkscrewing leap I'd only previously seen in startled cats, avoiding the same fate, landing with similarly catlike grace and charging Wanda, one from each side. But again, she was equal to it, leaping into a forward roll, hands glowing again. I only realised what she'd done after she'd done it, it was that subtle – she shifted the vectors of the two demons, putting them on a collision course. A moment later, they crashed in a rolling, writhing and screeching ball of thrashing limbs and confusion, leaving a trail of dark-greenish blood behind them as their claws tore through each other's armoured skin.

A moment after that, Wanda sprang to her feet and with a move that looked like something out of Murph's katas, reached out and redirected a beam of crimson red energy that roared out the eye of one of the trapped Mindless Ones, directing it into the two N'Garai, who had yet to disentangle themselves. The resultant explosion sent bits of demon raining all over the street.

I, meanwhile, stared, gobsmacked. In less than thirty seconds, Wanda had taken out two seriously nasty demons and bogged down thirteen powerful constructs. And she'd barely lifted a finger. As I watched, dumbfounded she casually reached up and pulled her hair into a ponytail, deflecting a blast from one of the flailing Mindless Ones with an idle wave. Instead of hitting her, it shot back over their heads and turned the remains of the house that they'd bulldozed to rubble. My shields can tank a lot, and I was pretty sure that they could take one of those shots, if require. What I didn't think was that I could do it with the sort of absent mindedness that Wanda had displayed, as if waving away an errant wasp.

I shook my head and looked about for the three N'Garai that had scattered.

As if on cue, I heard the sound of gunfire from Murph's perimeter. But that sound was drowned out. No, it wasn't drowned out, it was simply absorbed and overlaid by something far more sinister.

The Mabdhara laughed.

Have you ever heard a demon the size of a garbage truck laugh? Well, until that moment, I hadn't either, and I could have gone through the rest of my life without the experience.

It was loud and deep, not a challenging bellow, but an amused chuckle, albeit scaled up and filtered through teeth that would have made a Tyrannosaurus feel inadequate.

Each chuckle shook the windows and me, right down to my bones.

That thing I said about laughter? How it was particularly creepy and wrong when coming from something this inhuman? I was experiencing it up close and personal.

Then, the shadows around it began to boil, flickering with crimson light and after a few moments, Mindless Ones began to pour out, thundering in neat lines like a co-ordinated earthquake. Joining them were more of the N'Garai, larger, meaner looking. If the N'Garai were ants, then the ones before, nasty as they were, had been workers. This were soldiers.

"Oh," Wanda said quietly. "Oh bugger."

Instinctively, I went back to back with her, a small part of me reflecting that if I was going to die, at least I was going to die in the company of a beautiful woman.

It's amazing the sort of things that the mind turns to when violent death is apparently imminent. Appropriate, no. Helpful, no. Comforting, somewhat.

Of course, I had no intentions of dying if I could avoid it. Nor, as it happened, did Wanda.

Fun fact: like most things of and not of this Earth, the N'Garai don't like being hit by lightning.

Wanda was chucking lightning bolts with an ease I'd only previously seen from a freaking Faerie Queen. This was both scary and extremely reassuring.

I played my part with a powerful wall of force that sent even a couple of Mindless Ones staggering back.

"Either bring them down at the ankles or aim for the eye-slit," Wanda said crisply.

I didn't have time to reply, as one of the giant constructs bore down on me, eye-slit glowing with enough power to leave a scorched patch of ex-wizard on the battered tarmac.

So, naturally, I did something very stupid.

You see, while the Mindless Ones are over ten feet tall, I am most of seven feet high. I can look down on guys in the NBA. And my staff, no innuendo intended, is very long indeed.

As it looked down at me, I stabbed it in the eye with my staff. This wasn't simply a defiant gesture the same way that my staff isn't simply a magical gun. It's a tool for manipulating forces and currently, I was using it to create a plug of force in the exact shape of its eye-slit.

So when the Mindless One tried to blast me, the blast couldn't make it past the plug. But it still had to go somewhere. And that somewhere was just about everywhere else. With a thunderous boom, the Mindless One's head exploded, launching bits rocklike flesh like shrapnel from a grenade, tearing into some of the more unfortunate N'Garai.

I let out a semi-drunken whoop. "WHO'S NEXT?!" I demanded.

Every single N'Garai and Mindless One turned and stopped, focusing on me. Then, as one, they charged, converging on me from all directions. In hindsight, that was the wrong question to ask.

Before I could raise any defences, however, I went shooting upwards like a cork from a bottle, flailing and trying hold onto my staff and other accoutrements. I might not survive a fall from this height, but dammit, if I was going to die as a splat on the tarmac, I was going to die as a wizardly splat on the tarmac.

"Relax," Wanda's voice said, amused. "Sorry for the abrupt introduction to aeromancy, but I needed to get you out of there."

I looked down and remembered that magic has to do business with physics. There is no free lunch. However, the price that has to be paid can, by a clever practitioner, be turned into a bonus.

For instance, where Wanda had briefly removed gravity's hold on me to get me up into the air, she'd increased it around the point where I'd been, drawing all the monsters in. For the moment, they were helpless.

Wanda waved a hand.

You know, I've lived in Chicago for most of ten years. I've seen many weird, wonderful and wicked things. Until this point, however, I had never seen a small volcanic eruption in the middle of the street.

"It was that or a tornado," Wanda said casually. "And I wanted to avoid a city wide panic. Besides, they're more James' thing."

"James?" I managed.

"Thor. When he was human, he was called James," she explained.

"Oh," I said, and resumed staring at bubbling pool of lava. "That is some very impressive vulcanomancy," I said eventually.

"Thank you," Wanda said. "But I couldn't have done it if it wasn't for your distraction. That was inspired.

"Uh…"

She snorted. "I know you didn't mean it," she said. "But a large part of this business is adapting to circumstances and turning them to your advantage."

"That's true," I said. "For instance, I can see that you missed a few of demons and they're heading for Murph's perimeter. Oh, and the Mabdhara's eating a police horse."

"What?" Wanda asked sharply.

I pointed. The Mabdhara was indeed eating a police horse, the legs of which were feebly twitching, while the forcibly dismounted cop was crawling away with what looked like a twisted ankle. "That saddle's got stuck in its teeth," I added helpfully.

Wanda cursed. "I'll rescue the cop and try and bring down the Mabdhara. You pick off the ones going for Karrin and her people."

"How?"

"Try not to scream."

"What."

I didn't manage anything more, however, before a powerful gust of wind swept me up and hurled me through the sky like I was on the world's weirdest and bumpiest water slide. The only reason I didn't scream was because it felt like the wind was blowing the scream back down my throat. A few seconds later, I hit a flat roof with a thump, dropping and rolling, thanking my foresight in training with Murph.

And what did you know, Wanda's aim had been near perfect. I was at the top end of a shooting gallery. I was standing on the roof of the building just in front of Murph's barricade. It had not fared well under the N'Garai's assault. The barricade fences had been smashed apart and tossed aside, while one cop car had been turned into a twisted heap of scrap metal and, when I looked closely, a few splayed and scattered limbs were visible. All three sights served as immediate reminders that these demons were powerful.

But they weren't invincible. Murph, blue eyes blazing with fury, stamped on the throat of a downed demon, firing three rounds into its head. The older SI officers were holding their ground too, drawing the demons into a deadly crossfire. However, the N'Garai could shrug off a lot and like any predator, they would go after any sign of weakness and fear. More than one young officer, looking for excitement and adventure in what had once been the dumping ground for officers with too much conscience or simple bad luck. Kids, only a few years older than Bruce, had stepped up to serve their city and been dismembered by creatures that simply didn't belong.

That. Made. Me. Mad.

So I stood tall and drew my blasting rod, sending power surging through the runes and sigils of it, lighting it up with a furious white hot light that blazed across the night time streets like a beacon.

No more.

Murph looked up and saw me. Hell, so did the rest of her boys. She and a few of the older ones, the ones who remembered the night the Loup Garou had got loose in their lock up and the way I'd responded, got down, the rest following on Murph's barked orders.

The N'Garai didn't take advantage, though, because they looked up to, not just seeing the light but sensing my power.

Good.

I wanted them to know that this was coming.

I levelled the rod and roared as loudly as I could, "FUEGO!"

White hot flame lashed out in a thick beam, splashing on the tarmac as it engulfed the first of the N'Garai. There were five others, but that didn't matter: the beam chased them down too, carving a molten line through the tarmac, the sheer heat vaporising whatever it touched. Tarmac, trash or terror of the night, nothing could withstand it.

Finally, the last was gone, and I looked down at the glowing street. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Murph and her boys slowly getting to their feet, eyes as wide as saucers as they stared at me. I probably looked quite impressive. Or terrifying. Or both – the line between the two isn't that thick.

Thankfully, the building had a fire ladder down the side, allowing me to make a reasonably dignified descent. Murph met me at the bottom. I arched an eyebrow at her. "What?"

She continued to stare at me.

"My hair looks weird, doesn't it?" I asked, a creeping feeling of foreboding running through me. I somehow doubted that an impromptu trip through the skies had done much for my hair.

She studied me for a moment, then smiled slightly. "Don't you ever change, Harry," she said. Her expression turned serious and she turned, leading me out of the alley. "You picked a good time to step in," she said. "We were in trouble."

It took a lot for her to admit that and I didn't try and cheapen it with platitudes. SI basically did the same job as SHIELD on a much smaller budget and proportionately less respect for it. That's changing now, but slowly and while they were good, very good – in fact, I'd go so far as to say that with the equipment they had, the only way they could be better was with specialised training – they sometimes ran into things they couldn't handle.

That was why Murph had started employing me. At first, it had just been to find things and provide an expert opinion on the spooky, but once she realised how good I was at handling supernatural threats that were, let us face the facts, out of SI's league.

The N'Garai, by the looks of things, were one of them and unless I was seeing things, had killed a few of Murphy's boys.

So instead of mumbling a platitude, I reached down (a long way down. Murph is a little bitty person. Also, she'd beat me to death with my own torn off arm if she ever heard me say that) and squeezed her shoulder.

For a moment, she reached up and took my hand in one of her own. Then she turned to me, eyes hard and professional again. "Are any more coming our way?"

I consulted my memory. "No," I said. "Most of them are… oh crap."

OoOoO

"Mister Fox, sir?" one of the Applied Science interns said.

"Yes?" Fox asked. "What is it?"

"You're going to want to see this, sir," the intern said, handing over a tablet. Bruce craned his neck to see over Fox's shoulder. It was a news report from downtown, where, in the words of the news, 'a battle royale' was taking place between Chicago's police force, some unidentified creatures, possibly mutated animals of some kind and what seemed to be large robots led by a giant animal like something out of a Godzilla film, and a small group of civilians who seemed to be assisting the Chicago police. One had been tentatively identified as Chicago's professional wizard, Harry Dresden.

"I see," Fox said. "Tell the board to make preparations to evacuate as many members of staff as possible and to help the authorities with disaster management and relief. And…" He trailed off as he heard an enormous engine start. Belatedly, he remembered that among Bruce Wayne's many talents was a knack for disappearing from right under even the most observant nose.

He turned and began to run, but it was too late.

The Tumbler leapt forward, thundering out of the garage.

"Um, sir?"

Fox sighed. "Notify city authorities. Tell them that the black… tank is not to be fired upon. Tell them… in fact, tell them not to stop it. I'll try and get through to Lieutenant Murphy, warn her of what's coming."

Lieutenant Murphy, however, wasn't in a position to pick up, and Bruce Wayne drove on to his date with destiny.

OoOoO

I set off at a sprint.

Wanda was, without a doubt, one of the most powerful practitioners I'd ever met, let alone seen in action. I'd seen her do some truly incredible things. And fact was, she was probably more powerful than I was by at least a factor of five, if not ten.

But power is worth absolutely fuck all when you're surrounded by demons and one gets in a lucky shot. And considering how strong the N'Garai, the weaker demons, were, I didn't even want to think about what one lucky shot from one of those would do to her.

As I went thundering towards her last position, however, I left myself open to being tackled by what felt like a speeding car. I went flying, head smacking against the tarmac as I rolled along the road like a dropped pencil. The only reasons I survived where the fact that my duster is extremely heavily enchanted and the fact that I'd managed to raise and interpose some of my shield on raw instinct.

Still. Just because I survived didn't mean that it didn't hurt like hell and I didn't have a large, slavering demon looking to dine on wizard about to do just that. Because it did and I did.

I tried to prop myself up and raise a defence, or unleash a counter-strike, but my head had been pretty rattled and I was having difficulty focusing.

The N'Garai prowled towards me, the ever present hunger in its eyes reaching new heights.

That was when my brother struck like a thunderbolt. He must have leapt fully sixty feet, landing on the demon's back, bearing it to the floor with incredible force, pinning it to the ground with his Cavalry Sabre. His skin glowing marble white, his eyes solid silver and waves of cold rolling off him, he then went to work, ripping the sabre free and moving a flashing blur of concentrated violence. The dark blood of the N'Garai went flying and the demon went insane. One or two of its blows struck, Thomas' pinkish red blood, a couple of shades too light to be human, mixing with its own, but it didn't stand a chance.

While the White Court is nominally the weakest of the major vampire courts, one that avoids straight combat by any means possible, preferring to use their prettiness, psychic manipulations and backroom dealing to handle their enemies without ever getting their hands dirty. Thomas is something of the exception to the rule. Less than a year ago, when well-fed, I'd seen him wrestle with a Black Court vampire, a creature easily as strong as one of the N'Garai, and force a draw, despite having just been shot. While he was nowhere near that well-fed now and he'd been fighting for some time, he was still more than capable of demonstrating exactly how dangerous a White Court Vamp could be.

The whole fight took less than five seconds. When it was over, the demon was diced pieces and Thomas wasn't even breathing hard. More worryingly, his demon, the source of his supernatural power, hadn't retreated yet.

"What took you?" I managed.

Thomas blinked, and his eyes darkened. He sneered. "I had better things to do than save wizards who can't even keep their eyes open," he said.

"Freaking lazy vampires," I said, taking his hand and getting to my feet. "Wanda."

"Was handling herself just fine last I saw," Thomas said and shook his head. "Man, I thought you were strong."

"I am," I said. "It's just that there's a difference between strong and…"

"Really strong?"

"Sure, let's go with that."

Thomas nodded, keeping half an eye on me, in case I was about to collapse. "Well, you don't need to worry about her," he said. "She's probably just fine."

Thomas' prediction was dead on, as it happened. When we found her, Wanda was battered, bloody and, oh yes. She was surrounded by corpses for at least three dozen feet in every direction.

She turned to look at us and grinned. "What took you so long?"

Thomas shot me a significant look. I ignored him.

"Demon or two," I said casually. "Nothing much."

At that moment, my balance temporarily gave out, and if it wasn't for Thomas I'd have gone down in a highly embarrassing heap.

"Nothing much?" Wanda asked, eyebrow raised.

"Nothing much," Thomas said, poker faced.

I sighed. "Is that all of them?" I asked, gesturing at the demons and constructs that littered the street. Some of them littered several different parts of the street. Others… well, I think at least one had dissolved.

Wanda's mood changed abruptly. "All of them except for the Madbhara. He's protected against magic," she spat, clearly angry with herself.

"Huh?"

"Short version, there's enough chaos in this world that he can use it to magnify his natural hex field," Wanda said grimly. "And disrupt our magic."

"Is there any way we can break through?" I asked.

"We can still hurt him indirectly," Wanda said. "And if we break his concentration, we can hit him with magic." She grimaced. "But we can't do both at once, not while preventing him from rampaging through Chicago."

"He doesn't look like doing that," Thomas said, peering at the now visible bit of the Mabdhara.

"He's taking his time," Wanda said. "He knows I can't hurt him and hold him in place, so he doesn't have to get urgent. So he's still eating that police horse."

"Then what?" I asked.

"Harry!"

I turned to see Murphy carefully making her way over the rubble, carrying a radio. "What?"

"It's Bruce," she said.

I swallowed a number of swear words and ground my teeth for good measure. "Tell him I don't have the time."

"I think you're going to want to hear this," Murph said steadily, and tossed me the radio. I fumbled the catch, then held it up to my ear.

"This is a real bad time, Bruce," I said.

"I know," he replied, the radio crackling.

I frowned. "How the hell did you get onto this frequency, anyway?"

"The Tumbler tuned me in."

What the hell was a Tumbler?

"The what?" I asked.

"Tumbler. It's... well, it's a sort of tank."

"A tank," I said flatly.

"With a jet engine on the back."

I gently thumped my head against the wall and sighed. "Bruce, I'm sure that it's very cool, but –"

"I know. I'm coming to help you."

"What? No!" I snapped. "Hell's Bells, kid, I sent you to Applied Sciences to get you out of trouble, not so you could tool up and come join us! Turn the... whatever it is the hell around and go home!"

"No, boss," he replied firmly. "I saw you on tv. You're pinned down, and that thing is shrugging off your magic."

"That's a problem that we're going to solve, Bruce," I said. "Not you."

"With respect, boss, it's my city too."

I opened my mouth to argue some more, then closed it, and sighed. This wasn't just Bruce not listening to me out of sheer contrariness. I could hear a quiet and unshakeable conviction in his voice.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked reluctantly. Whether I liked it or not, Bruce was growing up. I'd only been a year older than him when I'd ended up in my first life or death duel. That had been my own very literal trial by fire, and the consequences have haunted me ever since. I hoped that Bruce's wouldn't have the same effect.

"Ram the Mabdhara at top speed and hit it with the demolition charges that this thing is packing," Bruce said. "After that, I figured that it would be stunned enough for you and Wanda to put down."

"That could work," I said, then noticed Wanda beckoning.

"Pass it here," she said. I did, and she rested the radio between ear and shoulder with an air of long practice. "Bruce, this is Wanda. Can your machine calculate its ETA?"

After a moment, she got a crackly reply, and nodded. "Hang back, about... five minutes away," she said, tone brisk and commanding. "On my cue, come in at full speed. Trust me, you'll know what it is. Once you see it, hit the big monster with everything you've got. It should be stunned."

I heard Bruce give her an affirmative.

"Good," Wanda said. She turned to Murph. "Lieutenant, open up your barricade like a gate down West 31st Street. They'll want to be well clear when Bruce comes down there."

Murph nodded, taking the radio and snapping out orders.

Wanda, meanwhile, turned to me, puzzled. "I know that he's Bruce Wayne, but seriously, how did your apprentice lay hands on a jet powered tank?"

"He's friends with most of Wayne Enterprises' mad science division," I said.

"And he moves very quietly," Thomas added, from right behind my left ear.

I jumped and whirled on my brother. Bruce wasn't the only one who could sneak up on people. Thomas's brief smile suggested that he'd done it on purpose. But it was only a brief smile. He looked tired, and his clothes were streaked with his blood, a few shades too pale to be human, and, along with his Civil War era Cavalry Sabre, liberally spattered with the dark blackish-green blood of the N'Garai. There was some drying ectoplasm, too, from the Mindless Ones. While they didn't transform into the stuff on death, they did seem to bleed it.

He was holding himself slightly gingerly, too, and standing as close to him as I was, I could feel waves of cold radiating off him, even now. His eyes were very pale, and they kept drifting over to Wanda. Alone, any of that would have been worrisome. Put together and they were very not good.

White Court Vampires are capable of some incredible things, particularly if their demon, their Hunger, is well fed. But these days, Thomas wasn't well fed, even at the best of times. He only took a little from those he fed on, because taking more tended to run the risk of addicting them or even killing them. While great for his conscience and general morality, it meant that he had far less power to draw on, and an extended fight tended to drain him quickly, meaning that, in turn, he had to focus on keeping his Hunger under control, as it looked for the nearest person to feed on.

In this case, that was Wanda, who was perfectly aware of this and consequently watching Thomas out of the corner of her eye. She didn't seem afraid, but she was aware and holding herself ready. In truth, if they got into it, I'd be more worried about Thomas, but tangling with a vampire, any vampire, at close range is risky business.

"Thomas," I said, taking him by the shoulder. He focused on me, and his eyes darkened a few shades. "Go to Murph, get a radio, then go high. Tell her if you see any stragglers."

Thomas' jaw tightened, then he nodded sharply, scaling the rubble with feline grace.

Wanda watched him go, and not merely to take an opportunity to check out his ass (though she was probably doing that as well), as most women frequently did. She had a thoughtful expression on her face. "I'd heard stories, but I wasn't sure I believed them. He really is different," she said. "You trust him with Lieutenant Murphy?"

"He's trying to be better," I said. "And yes, I do. If nothing else, she's surrounded by other cops who know what they're dealing with. Also, if his Hunger did get out of control, I'd trust her to shoot him somewhere non-lethal."

Wanda nodded.

"Now," I said. "Bruce is coming in about..."

"Three minutes."

"Right," I said. "You sounded like you had a plan."

Wanda nodded. "Cover my back," she said, and her eyes began to glow with scarlet red energy. Her hands started moving, drawing lines of that same energy in the air. At first, it looked like each movement was entirely at random, with no connection to the others. Then, a pattern began to emerge, a complex weave of something that wasn't quite magic, but was maybe a close relative. To be honest, I had no idea what it was, and at that moment, I was reminded of how much I still had to learn.

This may sound weird for a man my age to say, but I'm still a baby by magical standards. Wizards can live for close to half a millennium – though that is pushing it – and don't reach full magical maturity until they hit a century. Even the wanded types, not quite as long lived, comfortably make it into their second century, some into their third. Unfortunately, we Wizards still age, albeit a bit more slowly. Ebenzar, for instance, looks like an active old guy in his sixties at the age of three hundred or so. The only exceptions I could think of were Doctor Strange, who was supposed to have looked about forty since the early seventeenth century, and possibly Wanda.

Even though I didn't know what kind of power she was using, I could feel it against my magical senses, humming like a nuclear reactor (and for all I knew, she could, somehow, be wielding nuclear power). I could make a fair guess that it was very, very powerful and about as dangerous.

With that in mind, I took a judicious step or two away from her and wondered what my part in the plan was. Following Wanda's order, I went to the doorway and drew my blasting rod, ready to pick off any N'Garai – though I was pretty sure that we'd got them all - and any Mindless Ones that wandered into view.

As it was, though, the Mabdhara seemed to be content with chowing down on the police horse it had nabbed. It was faintly nauseating and thoroughly disturbing – after all, with things going the way they were, it was entirely possible that a lot more of these things could be taking up residence on Earth. This could become a common sight.

Or, you know, common until the world was destroyed and consumed by a billion separate hell dimensions. Something along those lines.

"Unless you have a very good pair of sunglasses, you're not going to want to stand there," Wanda said, voice distant, as if she was concentrating very hard on something else. Which she kind of was.

"Do I want to know why?"

"Well, in approximately ninety seconds, a piece of space junk about the size of your car is going to hit the Mabdhara," she said, in that same distant voice. "And in my experience, there tends to be a bright flash on impact." After a moment, she added, "Oh, and you'll probably want to put your fingers in your ears."

Hells fucking Bells.

As I've mentioned, there were stories about Wanda. Being former Apprentice to the Sorcerer Supreme and now a fully-fledged badass in her own right meant that she was always going to attract them. Quite a few of them, as it happened. And some of them said that she could pretty much perform a miniature orbital bombardment, with pinpoint accuracy.

Until recently, I hadn't thought that this was even possible. Then a powerful Red Court Vampire called Don Paolo Ortega tried to cheat in a duel to the death between the two of us a couple of years back, and my old teacher responded by pulling a non-functioning Soviet satellite which we used to watch through the telescope on his farm – we'd even dubbed it 'Asteroid Dresden' – out of orbit and dropping it on Ortega's house, leaving behind a very large crater.

So, it was possible, but... well. Let's just say that my personal estimate of Wanda's power, already high, climbed sharply.

About a minute later, I saw a bright light appear in the night sky. It grew, faster and faster, until it was so bright that I had to narrow my eyes against the glow, and with it came a sound like a low flying fighter a jet, a powerful tearing roar, as if the air itself was being ripped apart.

The Mabdhara looked up and reared up on its hind legs.

I looked away and, following Wanda's advice, put my fingers in my ears.

There was a vast flash of light, visible even through my closed eyelids. A fraction of a second later came the sound of impact, less noise, more a shockwave that rocked the foundations of the building and threw me to the floor.

My ears ringing, I managed to push myself into a sitting position. I could see that the windows in the opposite building were smashed and the insistent wail of a thousand car alarms echoed through the streets outside. I looked over at Wanda, expecting her to be utterly exhausted by the vast expenditure of power.

Instead, she was getting to her feet and brushing herself down. She smiled at me, and offered me a hand up. Silently, probably staring at her in something approaching pure astonishment, I accepted, and got to my feet. She reached up and put her hands on my ringing ears, and murmured something. The ringing abruptly stopped.

"Better?" she asked, reaching up and pulling earplugs out of her own ears.

I nodded mutely.

She smiled and wiped her forehead clear of sweat, the only discernible sign of exertion on her face or, indeed, anywhere else.

Not that I was checking her out, you understand. I was just giving her a once over to make sure that she was okay.

"A little shell shocked?" she asked.

I nodded again. I kind of was. I mean... she'd just pulled something from orbit and dropped it on the Mabdhara's head. But that wasn't the most mind-blowing part. She'd made it look easy.

Leaving aside the sheer power required to pull something like that off, without a ritual or a magical artefact to help focus the energy, the calculations, the compensation for everything from the Earth's gravity to winds in the upper atmosphere to air pressure... it was improbable to say the least. I mean, Casaverde was, at least, a stationary target, and I'm pretty sure that Ebenezar had needed the observation logs to pick out Asteroid Dresden before he pulled it out of orbit, based on our phone conversation before the duel. Hell, if I hadn't just seen it – or more accurately, felt it – then I'd have thought that it was impossible.

And Wanda had barely broken a sweat.

Before I could dwell on this any further, I heard a loud, agonised sounding hiss. The Mabdhara was, astonishingly, still alive, at the bottom of a crater the size of a couple of swimming pools, spanning the intersection. But not, as it turned out, in very good shape. By the looks of things, it had absorbed most of the impact. It was missing one of its front limbs, and there was a large hole where at least half of its body should have been, with blood gushing everywhere. The rest of its body looked like someone had taken a hammer and a blow torch to it. This, in short, was a demon on its last legs.

It let out another hiss, and managed to drag itself to its feet, claws scraping through the growing puddle of muddy water. Well, sort of. It looked around, fury and terror mixing in its eyes, trying to identify what had laid it low. After a moment, it decided not to bother, and began hissing something in a strange, discordant language that made my ears hurt and the air around it ripple like a heat haze. Slowly, a portal began to open, and the stricken demon began to drag itself towards the escape route.

If it had made a break for it before Wanda's bombardment, I'd have let it go and called it a day, counting myself lucky that the demon had decided to cut and run.

But now... now, the tables were turned. The demon was on its last legs – literally – and I got the very definite sense that we could kill it, here and now. If it got away, on the other hand, it could come back some day, looking for revenge, and that was one rematch that I was not up for.

And what's more, it had caused the deaths of at least two dozen people. It deserved to die.

So I switched my blasting rod for my staff and snapped, "Disperdorus!"

The disruption spell shot out the tip of my staff, a spiralling bolt of green energy which streaked across the battlefield and slammed into the portal, collapsing it.

The Mabdhara let a window rattling roar of frustration. But that roar was drowned by another.

Both I and the demon turned to see a low, wide black shape rocketing up the street. As it passed me, an orange flame ignited at the back, accelerating the shape into a blur, shooting over the lip of the crater at speeds that would make a Formula 1 driver feel inadequate.

If the Mabdhara had been human, it wouldn't even have had time to swear.

Bruce's jet powered tank hit it in what remained of its midsection at about half the speed of sound, piercing what remained of its chitinous armour and smashing it into the side of the crater with an almighty crashing crunch, pinning it like a butterfly to a cork.

The demon let out a horrible wail of agony and fear, lashing out at the vehicle. Even so badly injured, it was still viciously powerful, ripping into the metal of the tank's armour.

Bruce, however, was equal to it, and a powerful explosion simultaneously jolted the tank backwards, out of reach of the demon general's claws, and cut the creature in half. That was probably the missiles he'd been talking about.

The demon let out another horrible wail, even louder this time.

I wasn't an expert on this particular breed of demon, but I was pretty sure that it was dying. Of course, dying demons can stick around for a while and cause one hell of a lot of trouble if they aren't put down, so I strode towards the crater. Wanda, clearly thinking the same, fell into step beside me.

"Do we need anything special to kill this thing?" I asked.

"Not really," Wanda said. "It's in too much pain to concentrate. But it will take a fair bit of firepower."

"I'll say," I said. While it wasn't in a particularly good state, this thing had taken some pretty powerful magic, a freaking orbital strike, been hit by a jet powered tank at ridiculous speeds and finally, what were probably some serious explosives, and it was still alive. Just about.

As we got close to the edge, I spotted a cable, sparks flying out of the tip, sticking out of the side, lying right in our path. Instantly, I stuck out an arm.

Unfortunately, I was internally budgeting for Thomas. Wanda is several inches shorter. So the arm went somewhere that it shouldn't. I felt smooth, rounded contours press against my forearm and hand. After a moment of comprehension, I realised where it was and yanked it away. "Sorry," I said awkwardly, glancing at Wanda. She had raised an eyebrow. "But look."

She followed my gaze to the cable and nodded. "Thanks for the warning," she said, eyes dancing with amusement. Had I imagined the slight emphasis she put on the word 'warning'?

I coughed, then nodded at the cable. "I've got an idea," I said. "If you can get Optimus Prime's grunge phase out of the big puddle."

Wanda snorted, then rolled her wrist. The huge black machine rose out of the muddy pool, before drifting onto the road and touching down as lightly as a feather.

"Nice."

"I try," Wanda said offhandedly. "And this idea of yours is...?"

"This," I said, hopping down into the crater and picking up the cable.

Instantly, raw, burning power surged into me, sending my muscles into a spasm. For a long, terrifying moment, I thought that I was going to die an excruciatingly painful and very embarrassing death. Then, with an effort of will, I managed to take control of the wild energy and direct it down my levelled staff, electricity pouring out the tip.

It didn't hit the Mabdhara.

Instead, it hit exactly what I was aiming for.

See, even redirecting a large proportion of Chicago's formidable electricity mains might not punch through this thing's formidable armour. I needed to get round it.

So I aimed at the water instead. The water in which the gaping wounds that Wanda's orbital bombardment and Bruce's explosive equipped battering ram had left behind dangled.

The demon let out a howl of pure agony, lighting up like a firework and thrashing in the pool, spraying water, mud and debris everywhere. I counted myself lucky to get away without a concussion, but my duster was going to need to some serious cleaning later.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the strain of redirecting the electricity became too much and I convulsively dropped the cable, leaving it spark and sputter by my feet. Feeling drained, I staggered, leaning on my staff and trying to ignore the smell of sizzling bacon.

"Is it down?" I asked.

"Looks down to me."

I glanced to one side to see Bruce hopping down into the crater. He had an impressed expression on his face, which faded slightly as he looked at me.

"You're going to yell at me now, aren't you?"

I had to admit that I was thinking about it. But ultimately, I shook my head. "No, Bruce," I said. "You did the right thing." I snorted. "And God knows I've done stupider for less reason."

"I did?" Bruce asked, surprised.

I nodded. "Besides," I added. "Between Alfred and your mom and dad, I think that the yelling thing should be well covered."

Bruce visibly wilted and I snickered.

"Harry?"

I looked up at the crater's edge and saw Thomas and Murph, both of whom looked relieved to see that I was alright.

"Oh look, it's the thing from the black lagoon," Thomas said. Relief is expressed in many ways.

"No," Wanda said absently. "He doesn't look anything like Alec."

"What?" I asked, puzzled.

"Long story," she said, wiping her face clean. "Though there's a lot of mud in it."

I winced. She was dripping with muddy water. "Sorry."

"I don't mind," she said. "It was rather impressive, actually. Ingenious improvisation."

"That death from above thing you pulled wasn't bad either," I said. "How did you do it? It wasn't magic."

Wanda smiled, eyes twinkling. "Well, a girl's got to have some secrets," she said playfully.

"What would it cost to learn them?" I asked.

Wanda's smile grew, then faltered.

"Wanda?"

She grimaced. "I've got two things I want to ask you, and I'm not sure which to ask first," she said.

My heart lurched.

"Well, maybe it could wait," I said.

"No," Wanda said. "I..." She sighed again. "Sod it. The other question can wait and I'm too old to dance around this like some kind of idiot schoolgirl." She wrapped her arms around me. "C'mere."

And with that, she pulled me down into a passionate kiss. For a moment, I was too stunned to do anything, then I leaned into the kiss, slipping my arms around her back and pulling her close, feeling the contours of her body mould themselves to my own. Everything faded away; the wet, the cold, the gritty mud, even the vague smell of scorched bacon – which, all things considered, was almost certainly coming from me – all of it simply became unimportant.

In the background, I vaguely heard Bruce whooping and Thomas letting out an ear splitting wolf-whistle.

Eventually, the two of us surfaced for air. "If the other question was anything like that one," I managed. "Then please give me a moment to catch my breath before you ask it."

Wanda laughed, a wide smile spread across her face. She wasn't the only one. I could feel myself grinning.

"And me without my camera."

I turned to see Murph, standing to one side, an impish twinkle in her eyes.

"The guys won't believe it otherwise," she continued.

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Bruce said, waving a radio and grinning a grin that wouldn't have looked out of place on the face of the Cheshire Cat.

I looked up at the crater and sighed. It was lined with cheering, jeering cops. I was never, ever, going to hear the end of this.

"Not all of them are teasing you, you know," Murph said. "You two," she said, then paused. "You four," she corrected, looking at Thomas and Bruce, both of whom preened slightly. "Helped save thousands of lives."

"We did?" I asked, surprised. I hadn't really thought about that.

Murph snorted. "Yes, you did, you enormous dork," she said. "Or did you think there wouldn't be any casualties from the Godzilla wannabe's rampage?"

"Not mention the little ones," Thomas said. "Those things were like Red Court crossed with velociraptors."

"Fast, strong and disgusting," Wanda commented. "Yeah, I can see that comparison working."

Murph's smile faded. "Yeah," she said.

The pile of chewed bones and the dead cops swam to the top of my mind and I reached out, gently squeezing her shoulder. She nodded and at Wanda's questioning look said, "I lost five of my guys. A couple of the N'Garai got through."

As she said that, I felt Wanda's hand brush against my own. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, then took it.

This did not go unnoticed.

"I'm sorry," Wanda said quietly.

Thomas said nothing, but bowed his head.

Murph shrugged. "It's part of the job," she said, in tones that strongly suggested that she wished it was otherwise.

There was silence.

"So," Thomas said, tone mischievous, clearly looking to lighten the mood – probably at my expense. "Tell me, Harry. Does this mean that I have to buy earplugs on the way back, or do I have time to get them with the grocery run tomorrow?"

I glowered at him and opened my mouth to say something snappy. Wanda, however, forestalled me by simply reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small box. She lobbed it to Thomas. "Knock yourself out," she said calmly.

I gave her a wide eyed look.

"You won't be needing them yet," she added, then gave me a sly glance out of the corner of her eye. "But in the not too distant future... who knows?"

Thomas stared at her for a long moment, then smiled. "Wanda," he said, a note of genuine respect in his voice. "I think that this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

"I think it might just be," Wanda said.

"Wow," Bruce said. "Boss, you are screwed." He paused. "Or, you know, will be. Soon."

"More than can be said for you, kid," I retorted.

"Ooh, burn," Murph said as Wanda started laughing.

"Hey, at least I'm not the one with smoking hair," Bruce said, nodding at me.

I blinked and glanced up. I couldn't see anything.

"It is a little scorched, Harry," Wanda said.

"And you're covered in mud and smell like overdone bacon," Thomas added helpfully. "Yet you still managed to get a girlfriend. I'm impressed."

I glared at him. "Come on," I said. "Let's go." I glanced at the remains of the demon. "The scenery isn't likely to improve."

"Indeed not," Wanda said, and the two of us, followed by the others, climbed out. As we did, I noticed her snap her fingers.

Almost instantly, Thomas let out a yelp, and fell flat on his face. His pants had fallen down, pooling around his ankles, neatly tripping him up, drawing a loud 'WAHEY!' from the crowd of cops. Thomas, for his part, pulled up his pants while swearing loudly, and gave Wanda a dirty look. She smiled sweetly, and he sighed ruefully.

"You have no idea how many times I've wanted to do that," I said, once I managed to stop laughing. I wasn't referring to that specifically; just a general desire to get one over my half-brother, but Wanda took it as such.

"Maybe I could teach you," she said.

"Huh?"

"The other thing I was going to ask you was if you wanted to be my apprentice," Wanda said.

I stared at her, wide eyed. "M-m-me?" I stammered. Suave and eloquent, that's me.

"Stephen, Doctor Strange, reckons he might not be Sorcerer Supreme for long, and he asked me to take an apprentice," Wanda said. "I don't have time to train someone up from the beginning and, well, you tick every box: quite young, smart, powerful, clever, thinks outside the box and you're a good person." She smiled slightly. "Though I wasn't expecting to, well..."

"Be attracted to me?" I asked.

"To be frank? No," Wanda said. "It wasn't that I thought there was going to be anything wrong with you, it was just..." She chewed her lip. "I haven't dated anyone for a while. So, aside from the occasional bit of frustration, it hasn't really come to mind, if you follow me."

I nodded slowly, taking it in. This... well, it was an honour, to put it mildly. But it also complicated things.

Master/Apprentice relationships are frequent, indeed in some cases preferred because teaching and learning magic is an intimate process. Some actually prefer it, due to the risks that dating carried when you were a Wizard, i.e. some monster or other playing the honey trap game. It's depressingly common, which is unsurprising, really.

Humans, magical or otherwise, crave intimacy. A desire to be touched is written into our very biology. And I'm not just talking about sex. Babies that aren't held during their first year have been proven to have severely stunted emotional and mental development. To touch and be touched by someone you care about is a fundamental desire, a need. It's very easy for someone or something to play on that, and supernatural predators have never been overly inclined to make things difficult for themselves.

But I wasn't entirely sure if... well. It would be odd going from treating Wanda like my girlfriend and equal to my teacher and superior. And then there was the matter of having a fight or worse, breaking up.

I voiced these doubts to Wanda, who looked pensive.

"You've got a point," she said. "And we haven't exactly known each other for long. And the two things don't have to come as one. If you just want to date and not be my apprentice – remember, it is just an offer, then that's fine. But..." She stopped, turned and looked at me. "I reckon that we can work around it. We start slow and work our way up. If and when there are problems, we take them as they come. But, at the same time, it takes two to tango." She gave me a look. It combined hope and a fear of rejection tempered by realism and resignation. "So. What do you say?"

I thought about it for a long moment. "On the apprentice thing, well... I'd love to learn, but I've got a job and an apprentice of my own," I said slowly. "So I'm not sure how much time I'd have to spare."

"I'm flexible," Wanda said.

My mind went somewhere very dirty, and it must have shown on my face, because she grinned a grin so wicked that I half expected to see Lucifer taking notes in the background.

"In more than one sense of the word," she added, then sobered. "But I can work a timetable." She smiled wryly. "Honestly, this would be the first time I've been on this end of the whole apprentice thing. The closest I've got is teaching a few kids new to their power the basics of control."

"Same," I said, then nodded. "Okay." I paused. "Would being your apprentice mean that there'd be some blowback onto my friends, you know, from things like that?" I gestured at the ex-demon in the crater.

Wanda was silent for a moment. "I'd like to say no," she said. "But, honestly? What I do, what you would be doing, is very dangerous. It comes with a lot of enemies and makes a lot more."

"Enemies," I muttered. "Don't have any shortage of those." I frowned slightly in thought. Timing wise, we could probably make it work. If I had my guess right, what Wanda would be teaching me would be building on and refining the skills I had already – particularly the latter. The deftness Wanda showed in her spell work compared to mine was like comparing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to a toddler's first finger painting.

There'd be a fair few new things to learn, but I'd already have my fairly extensive (for my age, at least) background knowledge to work from. Plus, teaching Bruce magical theory had helped me explore it better, understanding it much more than when I'd originally learnt it.

And leaving all else aside, I loved the Art. Not simply what I could do with it, like finding people or blowing things up, but exploring its limits, learning its intricacies and trying to understand it better. Every little crumb of knowledge was, to me at least, more valuable than gold.

I met Wanda's gaze. "Yes," I said. "But on one condition."

She didn't seem surprised. "A Soulgaze," she said, and nodded, murmuring under her breath for a moment. Her eyes seemed to flash for a moment, then returned to their normal grass green. "All right."

I looked into her eyes and, after a long moment, fell into them.

Wanda's mindscape was dark, lit by a dark red glow. I looked around for a moment, seeing nothing, then spotted Wanda herself. It was darker behind her than before her and she looked smaller than in real life, younger and less certain. She looked exhausted and was covered in cuts and bruises. Yet, at the same time, she was straight backed and there was a defiant look in her eyes.

She was slowly making her way through the dim path, following a dancing light. I looked at it, trying to get some sense of what was emitting that light, but try as I might, I could only get a sense of a pairing of glowing white eyes, a dark red swirling cloak and a smile like the Cheshire Cat.

Then, I heard a child start crying in the darkness behind her. No, not one child, I realised, but two. I saw Wanda's mind-self look behind her, a look of agonised consternation on her face. Then she closed her eyes and strode onwards, determined, but bitter.

In the darkness behind her, I saw shapes, some strange and inhuman, some recognisably humanoid and others... others that defied description. As I looked into it, I saw two resolve themselves out of the darkness, followed by a constant stream of indistinct whispers.

One was a man in his prime, tall and well built, in black and grey armour with a dark cape swirling out behind him. His face was hidden behind a helmet, but I could see grey hair and the wild eyes of a fanatic. He positively radiated power; power, authority and madness.

The other was Wanda herself, more like she looked now. But it was only a superficial resemblance. She was dressed in a long crimson off the shoulder red dress, a solid block of colour only broken up by a golden t-shape on which was inscribed a series of ancient and incomprehensible symbols. It seemed to shift and warp under my gaze, never staying as one thing for more than a moment, always shifting and always changing. Her hair floated around her head like a wavy halo, surrounded by a nimbus of crackling crimson-white energy, with more dancing around her hands.

If the other figure radiated power, then this version of Wanda radiated Power with a capital P.

And that Power... it was wrong.

But that wasn't the scary part.

The scary part was her expression.

It was utterly devoid of hope or any other positive emotion. There was only a kind of hollow grief, bitterness and above all, despair. It was the expression of someone who had lost everything, absolutely everything, someone who had no one to turn to, nothing to hope for, and had therefore just... snapped.

The pair of them hung just behind the main Wanda, who knew they were there. She stumbled, falling to the ground, and they two figures swooped closer. Almost instantly, though, she got to her feet and kept going down that lonely, empty path.

Then, the Soulgaze ended, and I fell back into my body. As I regained my bearings, I noticed Wanda looking at me with a kind of sad compassion.

That was new. Most people who get a good look at my soul tend to be unnerved at best. One ended up screaming about hell. I can only think of three who haven't: Thomas, Susan Rodriguez and Johnny Marcone. Wanda made four.

One of the previous three was my brother and had encountered a copy of our mother's consciousness in my head (like I said earlier, long story), another had become the woman that I had loved and lost, one never liable to be intimidated by anything, and the third... well. Gentleman Johnny Marcone had not become the kingpin of Chicago's crime and stayed that way by being easily rattled. While Wanda had likely seen far more horrors than even my head could generate, I had to wonder what she'd seen to inspire that expression.

"So," she said. "Yes?"

I leaned in and kissed her. "Yes," I said.

Wanda's smile could have lit up a city block.

"He saw sense, then? He didn't pull the misguided nobility thing on you?"

We both turned to see Murph, wearing a small smile. By the looks of things, she'd either overheard our conversation or guessed at it.

"He did see sense," Wanda said, then added wryly, "Whether it was good sense, however..."

Murph shrugged. "There's only one way to find out," she said casually. "Oh, and by the way, he may be annoying sometimes, but he's my friend. So if you hurt him, superpowers or no superpowers, I will break you."

"Murph," I yelped.

"No, it's okay," Wanda said, nodding. "Understood, Karrin."

Murph nodded. "Then we're good," she said. After that, she turned and grimaced at the crater and dead demon. "That's not going to be a fun one to explain to city government."

"I've got it," Wanda said casually, rolling her wrist and murmuring, "Reparo."

I stared in disbelief as the damage to the street repair itself, the crater disappearing like a dent in a Coke can.

I wasn't the only who was astonished, as Murph's jaw dropped and a number of loud swear words came from the cops who'd been covering the perimeter.

The demon corpse remained, and Wanda glanced at Murph. "Do you need the body for anything, Karrin?" she asked.

"No," Murph said faintly. Then, she shook her head. "Actually, we'll need to document it. And SHIELD might want to look at it."

"They usually do," Wanda observed, and nodded. "If you want it got rid of, ring me. You've got my cell number."

I blinked at her. "You can..."

"Use modern technology?" Wanda asked, then nodded.

"How?" I asked, befuddled. The thing about using magic is that it tends to screw with any technology more recent than World War II. Bruce figured out a solution – apparently he adapted EMP hardening technology to counter magical interference – and so have SHIELD.

But Bruce is frighteningly clever, knows magical theory extremely well, is pretty sharp on technology too and has the resources of Wayne Enterprises behind him. Even so, the method is fairly clunky. Plus, SHIELD is pretty much the most powerful organisation on the planet with entire buildings full of mad scientists working for them, churning out technology that looks like it escaped from a Star Wars film. Or at least, that's how I figure they do it.

But Wanda was implying that she didn't have to use any of these technological workarounds, and that was the really attention grabbing thing.

With a great deal of effort, I could work a suppression spell that basically suppressed my magic and the effect it has on technology. For reasons why this is a bad idea in the long term, medium term or anything other than a very short term, take a can of coke and shake it really hard. Open it. Once you've cleaned off the coke, imagine the same thing, but with the amount of coke constantly growing, while the effort of containment slowly weakens that very containment over time (because everyone gets tired eventually and concentrating on a very demanding spell is only going to accelerate that process). Oh, and imagine that that coke has the explosive properties of nitro-glycerine. Even more explosive and even messier. I'd looked into it and decided that it simply didn't work, so generally opted for getting old, rugged technology and bearing its many failures with good grace. Besides: I was used to candles.

Clearly, however, Wanda had managed it, and I would be lying if I didn't say that I wasn't curious about how.

"I can teach you how to do that, too," she said.

I nodded slowly. "I'd like that," I said. I don't feel an urgent need to get the latest in modern technology, but it would be nice to be able to, say, do my taxes with the aid of something more advanced than a freaking abacus. "That thing with the street, that was a wanded spell, wasn't it?"

Wanda nodded.

"I thought that you couldn't..."

"Do wanded spells if you were wandless and vice versa?"

I nodded.

"You can," Wanda said. "It's just difficult, at first, but easy once you get the hang of it. My godson is being taught wandless magic by his Uncle, and so are some of his friends." She hesitated for just a moment as she said friends. "After all," she continued. "If you think about it, both wanded and wandless magic wielders get their power from the same place. You just need to be trained out of your natural inclinations."

"Sounds like martial arts," Murph commented.

"There's a fair bit of crossover," Wanda acknowledged. She and Murph exchanged a speaking look, and Murph nodded slightly.

"Thomas is helping Bruce take his tank back, by the way," she said. "It's still running, somehow or other."

"Oh, cool," I said.

Wanda looked up at me. "You've probably got a lot of questions," she said.

That was putting it lightly. "Yeah," I said.

"I'll answer as many as I can. Now, if you like. Over a drink." She coughed slightly. "I don't know about you, but I'm parched."

I'm dense, but I'm not that dense.

I smiled. "I'd like that," I said. A cool drink with, dare I say it, my new girlfriend – and teacher – sounded great as first dates went.

I haven't always had the easiest run in life, and the world is getting darker every day, making bright moments all the scarcer and to be enjoyed that much more.

So we did.

And there you have it. To reiterate, this is set before chapter 59 of COS, which may leave you wondering why Wanda didn't tell Harry Thorson about the fact that she's dating Dresden. Well, first off, it's still early days, so she's a little unsure. Also, she's nervous of how he'll react. And really, she never got round to it, with cuddles and comfort after the mountain fight being higher up the priority list.

But yes, before you all ask, the two Harrys will meet. And it will be awesome.