The Chicago Clan

Chpt. 1: Second City

By Inspiration

Disclaimer: Gargoyles the animated series, including the Goliath Chronicles, is originally the property of the Walt Disney Company and distributed by Buena Vista Television, and originally created by Greg Weisman. Characters of the Dresden Files book series, such as Harry Dresden, Bob the Skull, and the Streetwolves gang upon whom my characters are inspired from, are the property and creation of author Jim Butcher (who is rumored to have been a Gargoyles fan). No infringement is intended, and not authorized by the copyholders. All original characters are the property of Inspiration. The stories written here are only for entertainment and fun of creativity and no profit is made off of any stories of the writer's fan fiction.

Chicago.

An old city by American standards, and one of the most successful cities of business in the world. Like any American city, it's diverse and filled with life with the many kinds of restaurants and shopping and various tourist destinations that you can find alongside the big businesses.

However, like any big city it can also be, need I say it, a retched hive of scum and villainy.

But it's my city, and it's my job to protect the good people of this great city from the darker and uglier forms of that scum and villainy that dares to prey upon them.

You may not see them now, but if you're not careful they will come at you in the dark and you will never know what hit you until it's too late. They are the stuff of nightmares, things that go bump in the night that you try to tell small children that they don't exist under the bed or in the closet.

But they do exist.

They are the nightmares of legends of the ancient world that people no longer believe in, or at least claim to.

Believe in them or not, that's up to you. But there can be no denying by those like me that the supernatural still exists even in the modern world today.

Hi, my name is Harry and I'm a wizard.

No, not that Harry.

I don't wear glasses and I'd look ridiculous in one of those Hogwarts school uniforms. But then people are always saying I look ridiculous in my long duster which they say belongs on the set of _Eldorado_.

But, hey I love this duster.

It's a long dark brown jacket that comes down to the middle of my lower thighs, with a long mantle over it down to my elbows, plus plenty of large pockets for me to carry necessary magical tools I may need.

Under it I'm simply wearing faded jeans, a grey polo shirt, and work boots.

I'm also a lot taller than the average man, about 6 feet 9 inches, and my build is pretty average and wiry with abs of plastic. I don't use mirrors very often, but I know that have short dark brown hair and brown eyes. My face is a bit long with sharp cheeks, a sharp chin, a long nose, and day old stubble growing on my face from not shaving today.

As a wizard, I always carry a small arsenal of magical tools with me such as a six foot tall oak staff with magical symbols on it, a foot and half long blasting rod as thick as my first two fingers, and I always wear a silver pentacle necklace I inherited from my mother, a shield bracelet made from what look like miniature Medieval shields, and a silver ring on my right middle finger that saves a little energy each time I moved my arm.

Anyway, I also happen to be a private investigator.

I look into things that most people can't explain and try to put their minds at ease, and for the bigger supernatural problems I'm a paid consultant for the Chicago Police Department, mostly the Special Investigations Unit.

As glamorous as it sounds, it doesn't always pay much because there are plenty of people who believe me to be a charlatan. I've gotten plenty of cases where people would call me out to their homes to have me perform an exorcism where there was nothing for me to exorcise, or I would get crank calls from anonymous strangers who would call me a crackpot or other colorful names.

But don't worry, I'm used to it and I really can't blame them. There aren't a lot of people who believe in the existence of wizards or the supernatural anymore and maybe on a big level it's better that way, because I have seen just how scary it really is.

One of those times may be happening right now.

I had gotten a call earlier today about a break in at a financial firm building not far from where I work. It seemed like a typical average case for the police, but when they found a few unusual things about the case they called in their Special Investigations.

The SI is the city's answer to finding out the real causes of things that seem out of the ordinary, cases that fall between the cracks or out of the line of other official departments; unfortunately it's also considered a wasteland for burnt out cops or others that didn't like the rules of their old departments, so it's where they get sent to be out of the way and deal with the cases that no other departments want to deal with.

When things get really 'out there' they call in Chicago's only professional practicing wizard in the phonebook, me.

Sometime last night the lobby of the financial firm had been broken into by unknown creatures, no doubt I'm sure something of the Nevernever, the ancient spirit world of myth and legends. They were described as looking like a cross between monkeys and scorpions with black acidic spittle. They went on a rampage in the lobby and attacked the night security guard on duty at the time, who was lucky to have escaped with his life.

Of course it turns out he had help.

A second party of unknown creatures swooped in to the rescue and saved the security guard before the place became an insurance company's nightmare.

At first it may sound like a typical matter of creatures fighting naturally for territory, except that these weren't natural creatures, and as a private investigator I know that something more is going on here.

I decided to start with a quick interview with the security guard and have a once over with what he may have seen last night and get a better idea of what he saw.

Another idea going through my head that I would need to do, but I really don't wanted to, is speaking to the owner of the financial firm building, John Marcone.

I know it sounds innocent enough but trust me; Marcone is someone I would rather avoid like the Plague.

No, scratch that, I would rather get the Plague than deal with Marcone.

John Marcone is among Chicago's wealthiest and most successful businessmen, but that's just a mask of legitimacy to cover his real character. He's really Gentleman Johnny Marcone, the most powerful crime lord in Chicago's underworld; a ruthless tyrant and a predator of the mortal world in his own right. But what he does is a double edged sword, for alongside the bloodshed on his hands he also keeps the worst of Chicago's crimes down to a minimum in the name of 'good business,' which has also kept him under the radar of the police for years now.

He can call it whatever he wants, but I know him for the scum that he really is.

Although he has no magical abilities, and wizard or not, he scares the hell out of me because I have soulgazed into him.

I feel lucky for now that we have an understanding to stay out of each other's way, but if it will come to me confronting him again on this new case I'll have to be prepared.

I took a taxi to Cook County Hospital from the financial building, which took a great chunk of any cash I have on me at the moment.

I would have taken my trusty *Blue Beetle* instead, but at the moment it's inconveniently in the shop.

Again.

It's been reliable to me a long time and can run eight days out of nine but can still die on me at the worst of times.

Wizards have a natural aura of magic around them, a kind of mystical living field that surrounds an individual and can be felt more easily by others when we feel strong emotions.

It's one of the down sides of being a wizard that I have to be more cautious about, wizards and technology almost always don't get along so well, which is why it always makes me nervous about entering a place like a hospital.

If I'm around anything made after World War II, I may unintentionally make it go wonky or caput. And in a place like a hospital, I may accidentally make Grandpa's oxygen supply shut down or ruin a heart monitor in the middle of a difficult heart surgery.

Don't ask me why or how it works, I'm still not sure. All I know is that wizards naturally have this kind of energy with their magic that surrounds them in a kind of Murphy's Law aura that modern technology can't tolerate.

It's why I took the stairs to the injured security guard's hospital room instead of an elevator.

Not that I don't trust elevators to a point, it's just that only a few years ago I had a bad experience with the one at my office building where I work. All I know is that it involved a giganto scorpion and a mysteriously strong gust of wind that sent it plummeting to a crash from several floors up.

Seriously, that's all I know about it.

When I finally made my way up to the fifth floor of the hospital my legs felt a little like rubber. I'm not out of shape or anything, and I am used enough to climbing stairs, it's just still such an effort to climb a long way up even for someone with legs as long as mine.

I then made my way to the security guard's hospital room, a man named Albert Bottomfield. I know, it's taking me everything right now not to snicker too much.

I gave a knock at the room he was said to be in.

"Yeah, what's it? Come in," I heard an annoyed groggy voice say.

I slowly opened the door to his room, not wanting to irritate him any more than I should.

In the hospital bed was who I presumed had to be the security guard. He was an averaged sized man with a bit of a belly from what I could make out from beneath the soft crisp blankets. His face was round with a bit of the beginning of aging wrinkles with a balding head that still had wispy hair down the crown of his head and going a bit grey at the temples of his dishwater blond hair. He had to be at the beginnings of middle age, a fatherly type that had become comfortable with his job and family in life. He was propped up in the bed by several hospital pillows, his right arm was wrapped in an arm sling across his chest and he was hooked up to all of the usual medical machines that monitor his condition from the drips in the IV bag to the 'beep, beep' of the heart monitor.

He looked at me wearily with amazingly piercing hazel brown eyes that spoke of years of experience, the right one a black eye and slightly swollen and bloodshot, but at the beginnings of slow healing. His left cheek had a slight burn mark across it and several on his visible left arm as though he had unintentionally touched chemical acid.

"What do you want?" he demanded. His voice was husky and deep with a kind of comedic tone to it that made you think of a lovable and goofy cartoon character that would be your dad.

"Mr. Bottomfield? I'm Harry Dresden, a consultant with the Chicago police," I gently began, "I was hoping to ask you a few questions about last night."

"I already told the cops everything I knew," he snapped tiredly.

"I know," I tried to calmly assure him, "It's why they brought me onto the case. I just wanted to know more about it from you. I promise it won't take up too much of your time."

I could tell from the way he looked at me and how the drugs must have made him all groggy and moody, that this must've been the last thing he wanted to do. I also must be his most unusual hospital visitor and one he would not normally see.

"Fine, what do you wanna know?"

"May I sit down?"

He gesture to a chair near the door which I then brought up to a safe distance from his bed.

"Dresden. Why does that name ring a bell."

I was about to say something witty as he said, "Never mind, ask your damn questions."

"I was told about what had happened, I want to know if you can remember anything else that you didn't tell the police. Something that you can remember now that was forgotten when you gave the police your statement about the break in."

"You think I'm crazy."

"No."

" 'S okay, I do. For all I know it was just a gang of a bunch of kids pulling some kind of prank or college dare on each other and it got out of hand, and me an innocent by stander. Or I was hallucinating from some kind of weird leaking gas in the air."

"Or maybe you actually saw scary monsters."

He gave me a groggy dirty look, but I just smiled a little at him. He then gave me basically the same story that Lieutenant Murphy had briefed me of earlier today.

"I swear I thought they were gonna eat me," he then said to my surprise, "Those disgusting drooling sharp teeth and ugly twisted faces with those hungry empty black eyes. They snapped at me, almost tore my foot off, I'm lucky I still have my face thank God it wasn't burned off. And then these . . . blue angels or demons or whatever swooped in roaring like lions or somethin' and started fighting the other monsters. I was sure that they were fighting over me as their next meal, even when they told me to run. I tried but my ankle had been sprained, which was when one of them grabbed me by my belt and threw me into the janitor's closet. I don't know how she got so strong, but she must work out."

"How do you know it was a 'she'?" I asked.

"Do I look like an idiot to you, stretch? As dark as it was I know a lady's shape and voice when I hear it. Whatever they were I now think they were trying to help me, or maybe I'm on their menu for a midnight snack for them instead of for the other monsters later. All I know is that something weird and creepy happened to me last night and I thank God I'm still alive, I have a family to support, kids to put through school."

"Can you tell me what they looked like, the other monsters?"

"All I can remember are giant bat wings and long lizard tails like they were something from one of Dante's inner Hell circles, and had sharp claws and fangs and blue skin like they were suffering from frostbite or something. After she threw me into the closet I asked why they were doing this and all I got from her was 'Because we protect.' I have no idea what that means. That's all I can tell you."

"What do you remember about the slippery clear goo?"

"I dunno what the stuff was, I thought water had leaked from somewhere or at first that it was some kind of weird blood, but it just seemed to disappear a few minutes before the cops got there, even the stains that I swear were on my uniform."

"Ectoplasm," I thought aloud, "The essence of the Nevernever that those ghouls used to create bodies for themselves in the physical world."

"Ecto-what? What are ya, some kinda Ghostbuster?"

"Kind of."

I got up from my seat and left a card with my office address and number and answering service on a side table for him.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Bottomfield. If you can remember anything else this is how you can reach me."

I was about to leave when he blurted out, "Oh here's something! Since last night I heard that I ain't the only one that's had this happen to, the others were too."

"What others?" I was suddenly panic struck.

"I've been told that I wasn't the first, that other people have been attacked by monsters like the ones I saw. I dunno who they are but I heard rumors that some are worse off than me, one of 'em may have died already."

"Hell's bells," I breathed, "So some brainless dark wizard just summons ghouls from the Nevernever all willy nilly just to attack innocent people for his own sick amusement."

I gripped my staff hard in my hand for a moment at the thought of someone using magic in such a perverted way that I almost didn't hear the bedridden security guard start to say over my grinding teeth,

"Wait. Dresden, ghouls, wizards? Ain't you that guy from that TV show?"

I just looked at him as I said to my annoyance, "I don't watch TV."

I then just made my way out of the room and out of the hospital.

There is work to be done, and I have to find out who these other victims are and who is summoning these demons to the human world as well as who or what these other creatures are that claimed to protect.

And if they do, what exactly are they claiming to protect?