Dead Beat recap

With Murphy away, the vampire Mavra blackmails Harry - evidence that would destroy Murphy's career against the recovery of The Word of Kemmler, the lost book of history's worst necromancer. Kemmler's surviving disciples - zombie-raising Grevane, the body-stealing Corpsetaker, and the hooded, hugely powerful Cowl - converge on Chicago to use the book for the Darkhallow, a Halloween ritual to devour the city's dead and ascend to godhood. Aided by his brother Thomas, the skull-spirit Bob (who once served Kemmler himself), his Foo dog Mouse, and the timid, polka-loving medical examiner Waldo Butters, Harry fights zombie hordes, survives the Denarian Cassius's ambush and death curse, summons the Erlking's wild hunt into his enemies' path, and finally admits the shadow of the fallen angel Lasciel has been living in his mind since Death Masks. On Halloween night he animates Sue, the museum's T. rex skeleton, rides her into battle, and breaks the Darkhallow: Grevane dies, Harry kills the Corpsetaker - who had body-swapped with Warden-Captain Luccio, leaving her in a young stranger's body - and Cowl vanishes in the collapse. The gutted White Council drafts Harry into the Wardens, and Murphy is safe.

Previously: Harry Dresden learned that Thomas Raith, the White Court vampire who kept saving his life, is his half-brother - both sons of Margaret LeFay, whom the White King, Lord Raith, murdered. Harry and Thomas survived Raith's trap; their mother's death curse had secretly left the king powerless, and Lara Raith now rules the White Court behind her father's figurehead throne. Thomas, cut off from his family, moved into Harry's apartment. The costs are mounting: Harry's left hand was burned nearly useless in a daylight raid on the Black Court vampire Mavra's nest - a raid made with Murphy and the mercenary Kincaid - and he learned his old mentor Ebenezar McCoy is the Blackstaff, the Council's secret assassin. Harry still hides the shadow of the fallen angel Lasciel, taken into his mind when he grabbed her coin to save a child; the coin lies buried under his lab. The wizards' war with the Red Court grinds on, and the Wardens are being bled dry.

With Murphy on holiday with Kincaid, Mavra of the Black Court comes to collect her grudge in a new currency: blackmail. She holds evidence that would send Murphy to prison, and her price is The Word of Kemmler - the lost final text of Heinrich Kemmler, the necromancer so terrible the White Council killed him seven times - delivered within three days. Harry starts hunting the book and immediately trips over the competition: Grevane, a disciple of Kemmler, is in Chicago with an entourage of zombies, tearing through anyone connected to the text. At the morgue, medical examiner Waldo Butters shows Harry bodies that mark the killers' trail, and promptly gets dragged along when the trail doubles back onto them. Bob the skull, it emerges, knows Kemmler's work uncomfortably well.

The field grows crowded: besides Grevane there is the Corpsetaker, an ancient horror who swaps minds with victims and wears their stolen bodies, and Cowl, a hooded necromancer whose raw power exceeds anything Harry can match head-on - each disciple hunting the Word, each planning to use it on Halloween night for the Darkhallow, a ritual that would devour the spirits of the city's dead and elevate its caster to godhood. Harry learns Bob's buried history - the skull once served Kemmler himself - and recovers a darker sub-personality of the spirit with great care. Attacks and reprisals escalate: zombies against wards, ghouls in the streets, and Harry, Thomas, Butters and Mouse increasingly under siege. The numbers say Harry cannot beat even one disciple in open battle, let alone three.

Harry works the angles instead of the head-on fight. Deciphering Kemmler's methods with Bob, he identifies what the Darkhallow needs - and what might wreck it. An old enemy resurfaces: Cassius, the ex-Denarian stripped of his coin in the Shroud affair, ambushes and tortures Harry; the fight ends with Cassius dying at bay - Butters and Mouse proving braver than either believed - and spending his last breath on a sorcerer's death curse: die alone. Battered, Harry makes a dangerous play for position: using the disciples' own lore, he arranges to summon the Erlking, the lord of the wild hunt whose presence on Halloween the necromancers themselves mean to exploit, and to drop the hunt into his enemies' path rather than let them harness it.

The pieces converge on Halloween night. The summoning gambit half-works and half-explodes: the Erlking's wild hunt is loosed into the necromancers' game, the disciples turn on one another as the Darkhallow's hour approaches, and the city's dead begin to rise across Chicago. In the chaos Harry finally names the thing he has been refusing to see: the too-helpful presence shaping his perceptions - including a woman he believed real - is the shadow of Lasciel, alive in his mind since the day he grabbed her coin, patiently angling for him to dig the real thing up. Knowing his enemy within, Harry accepts the shadow's knowledge on his own terms and commits to the maddest plan of his career: if the ritual needs ancient dead power, he will bring older and bigger dead than anyone - starting at the Field Museum, where a Tyrannosaurus skeleton named Sue is about to get a new job. The Wardens, led by Captain Luccio, arrive in the city, bloodied by the war but ready to fight.

Riding the animated skeleton of Sue the T. rex - with Butters pounding the polka rhythm that binds the spell - Harry smashes into the Darkhallow. The ritual collapses without an ascendant: Grevane and the Corpsetaker turn on each other and Grevane dies; Cowl is buried in the implosion of his own working, his death never confirmed. Harry discovers the Corpsetaker's final theft - the necromancer had swapped bodies with Captain Luccio - and shoots the impostor wearing Luccio's old flesh, leaving the real Luccio permanently housed in the young body the Corpsetaker had worn. With the crisis broken, Mavra's hold over Murphy is finished. The gutted White Council, seven Wardens dead for every one recruited, does the unthinkable: it drafts Harry Dresden into the Wardens as regional commander for the central United States. Harry ends the book in a gray cloak he never wanted, with a brother on his couch, a polka-powered friend for life, and a fallen angel's shadow still waiting in his head.

The Darkhallow fails. On Halloween night, with the city's dead walking, Harry disrupts the ritual that would have made one of Kemmler's disciples a god: the vast well of spiritual power is never claimed, and the storm of necromancy breaks. Grevane and the Corpsetaker fall out and fight among themselves; Grevane dies in the chaos, and Harry personally shoots the Corpsetaker after realizing the mind-swapping necromancer had stolen the body of Warden-Captain Luccio - leaving Luccio alive but permanently housed in the young body the Corpsetaker had been wearing. Cowl is buried in the collapse of his own ritual, no corpse ever confirmed. Harry's improbable cavalry is the book's signature image: using Kemmler's own methods, he animates Sue, the museum's Tyrannosaurus skeleton, and rides her into the battle with Butters drumming the polka beat that sustains the spell. The fallen Denarian Cassius dies in an earlier ambush, spitting a death curse at Harry: die alone. In the aftermath, the decimated White Council drafts Harry into the Wardens as regional commander for the central United States - the wizard cops who once watched him for a chance to execute him now issue him a gray cloak - and Luccio's own sword-forging talent is lost with her old body. Mavra's blackmail hold over Murphy is broken, Butters has found his courage, and Harry has admitted at last that the shadow of Lasciel lives in his head - an enemy inside the walls, still there as the book closes.