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Harry had never heard of the Watcher’s Council. That wasn’t a surprise; there were dozens of different organizations that fought some form of evil or another. Most of them were pretty small or limited in scope, so unless something like this happened he wasn’t bothered.
This meant, of course, that he had no idea who he was meeting at MacAnally’s while dressed in his Warden cloak. All he’d been told was to meet up with the representative from the Watcher’s Council as a Warden for an information exchange. Ebenezer had heard about it and had asked if Harry could also ask to get a copy of their book on the different types of vampires, because apparently there were somehow other types of vampires beyond the courts that he hadn’t even heard of. The main characteristic of these types seemed to be cutthroat competition, at least, which led to a deep lack of organizing between them. No court of any kind, because there was too much infighting to keep one going.
It was the kind of thing that Harry loved to hear. If only they’d manage to spread that attitude to the Red Court.
At least waiting at the pub wasn’t an incredible hardship. He’d come with a chunk of his gear, of course, but also with a paperback novel in his pocket. Without knowing who he was meeting he didn’t dare to add alcohol to the mix, but lemonade was a welcome addition to his day. It might only be the middle of May, but it was still a humid, swampy mess out there.
He was about one hundred and fifty pages in and contemplating ordering a steak sandwich when a man sat down in the chair across from him. “Warden Dresden?”
‘Unfortunately,’ he wanted to answer, but politics kept him polite. “You’re the Watcher’s rep?”
The man smiled. He was roughly Harry’s age, with black hair peppered with premature grey and an eye patch over his left eye. Despite how those things should have been combined, he mostly just looked like a normal guy. “That would be me. Are we free to talk here?”
Harry pointed at the posted Accords notice and waited while the man read them over. “All right, good to know. The food smells great, I’ll have to get something once we’re done.” The smile stayed on his face, but Harry could practically feel the other man pull up out of the friendly attitude and into something a little more serious. “Xander Harris. I’m one of the field operators for the vampire slaying teams. We don’t usually run into this Red Court BS. Sometimes we stumble onto the Stoker types, but usually we deal with a type of vampire that’s some weird mix of the two. Human corpse inhabited by a bloodthirsty demon, and the corpse is preserved as long as the demon stays inside. They follow the Stoker rules otherwise and sometimes they’ll go and mess with the family of the human body they’re wearing, but generally there’s very little impulse control or planning. More Anne Rice and chaos and bodies than anything else.”
“Let me guess, someone suddenly has a Plan.”
“Got it in one. Female vampire, around one hundred fifty years old, and completely insane. It’s what happens when a vampire tortures a devout psychic around the bend before turning her. She’s somehow decided to experiment with the different types of vampires and no one knows why.”
“But everyone knows it’s a bad idea.”
“Absolutely the worst one short of indiscriminately opening up doorways to every dimension at the same time, which I’ve also seen. She considers herself a Hell God, by the way.”
Harry was absolutely going to need to sit down with this guy over a few beers and swap stories, if they made it out of this intact.