Death Masks (the Dresden Files, #5)

The fifth installment in the Dresden Files series follows Harry Dresden, a professional wizard and private investigator in modern-day Chicago. Harry appears on a daytime talk show where he learns his ex-girlfriend, Susan Rodriguez, is alive in Peru. Susan, a reporter partially transformed into a Red Court vampire during an incident that triggered a war between the vampires and the White Council of wizards, turned down Harry's proposal and left Chicago. Duke Paolo Ortega, a Red Court warlord, challenges Harry to a duel under the Unseelie Accords, agreements governing supernatural factions, and threatens to target his friends if he refuses. Harry agrees.

After the show, a professional assassin attacks Harry and Father Vincent, a Vatican researcher who seeks to hire him. Harry escapes, spotting enforcers for Chicago crime lord Gentleman Johnny Marcone among the gunmen. Vincent hires Harry to recover the Shroud of Turin, recently stolen by thieves called the Churchmice. Two surviving thieves, Anna Valmont and Francisca Garcia, likely brought the Shroud to Chicago for sale.

That night, Susan appears at Harry's apartment. She crosses his threshold freely, proving she has not fully transformed into a vampire, and warns that Ortega is among the Red Court's deadliest nobles. Her associate, Martin, arrives to collect her.

Lieutenant Karrin Murphy of Chicago PD's Special Investigations unit calls Harry to the morgue, where medical examiner Waldo Butters shows him a corpse carved in a grid pattern. The victim died from dozens of simultaneous diseases. Harry recognizes this as a plague curse and photographs an Eye of Thoth, an occult oath-mark, tattooed on the corpse's arm.

A demon attacks Harry shortly after. Three Knights of the Cross intervene: Shiro Yoshimo, an elderly Japanese swordsman wielding the holy Sword Fidelacchius; Sanya, a young Russian with Esperacchius; and Harry's friend Michael Carpenter, wielding Amoracchius. Michael beheads the creature and explains the Order of the Blackened Denarius: Fallen angels trapped in thirty silver coins who corrupt any mortal who touches them. He warns that the Denarians want to recruit Harry and urges him to abandon the case.

Harry refuses. After consulting Bob the Skull, a spirit of intellect, Harry summons an oracle who reveals the Shroud is on a pleasure craft called the Etranger. The oracle delivers the prophecy the Denarians concealed from the Knights: If Harry seeks the Shroud, he will perish, but if he does not, the Knights and Chicago will die.

The duel's emissary, the Archive, is a seven-year-old girl who carries all accumulated human knowledge, accompanied by a mercenary bodyguard named Kincaid. Harry nicknames her Ivy. She gives him until sundown to secure a second or forfeit his life. With Michael and Sanya away in St. Louis, Shiro volunteers.

Harry boards the Etranger and finds the Shroud, but Valmont catches him at gunpoint. Deirdre, daughter of the Denarian leader Nicodemus, bursts in and kills Garcia before taking a decoy strongbox. Valmont steals the Shroud and escapes as the ship sinks. Harry barely survives, salvaging a memo pad that points to a sale at the downtown Marriott.

Susan visits to tell Harry she is leaving permanently to fight the Red Court abroad; they agree their relationship is over. At McAnally's tavern, the duel is set as a contest of wills at Wrigley Field the following evening. Thomas Raith, a White Court vampire serving as Ortega's second, warns that Ortega never plays fair.

Harry and Susan attend Marcone's art gala at the Marriott to intercept the sale. Harry tracks the Shroud to a storage room where Valmont is selling it to Marcone when three Denarians attack. Nicodemus, who wears a grey hangman's noose, shrugs off bullets. In the fight, Susan reveals superhuman abilities and dark tattoos marking her as a member of the Fellowship of Saint Giles, an organization of half-turned vampires. Nicodemus's living shadow seizes Harry, strips him of the Shroud, and Nicodemus pistol-whips him unconscious.

Harry wakes bound under running water that grounds his magic. Nicodemus offers him a coin containing a Fallen angel. Harry refuses. Before Nicodemus can cut his throat, Shiro bursts in and offers himself in exchange, promising not to resist for twenty-four hours. Shiro gives Harry Fidelacchius to hold in trust. Susan helps Harry escape, but near his apartment, the snakeman Denarian launches an entropy curse that triggers cascading lethal accidents. Harry activates emergency wards, sealing the building.

Trapped inside, Susan's vampiric nature surges. Harry restrains her with enchanted rope, but their mutual desire overwhelms restraint. Afterward, Susan confirms their relationship cannot continue.

Harry realizes the fake Father Vincent is the snakeman Denarian Cassius when he notices the impostor lacks the Eye of Thoth tattoo the real Vincent shared with Father Forthill, a local priest. The Denarians intercepted Vincent, replaced him with Cassius, killed him to test the plague curse (making him the morgue corpse), and hired Harry to track the Shroud and distract the Knights. Harry, Michael, and Sanya confront Cassius, who surrenders his coin to exploit the Knights' code of redemption. Harry beats Cassius and extracts the plan: Nicodemus will unleash the plague curse at the airport that evening, then travel by train to St. Louis to spread the contagion.

At Wrigley Field, the duel uses mordite, a particle of congealed anti-life controlled by will. Harry gains the advantage, but Ortega pulls a hidden gun. Martin, positioned as a sniper on Thomas's tip, shoots Ortega. Red Court vampires swarm the stadium; Ivy wields the mordite and annihilates them. Ortega escapes, wounded.

Harry evacuates O'Hare with Murphy's help and finds Shiro in the airport chapel, tortured beyond recognition. Dying, Shiro reveals that Nicodemus used the hangman's noose to place a death-curse on Harry; Shiro took the curse in his place. Nicodemus's backup plan is a train to St. Louis: As long as he holds the Shroud, the plague grows.

Harry and Marcone, who paid for the Shroud and fears the plague will devastate his operations, pursue Nicodemus by helicopter to a freight train. Michael fights Nicodemus atop the train. Nicodemus shoots Michael, but the bullets are stopped by Kevlar that Michael's wife, Charity, secretly installed in his breastplate. Marcone cuts the Shroud from Nicodemus and leaps into the river. Harry discovers the noose is Nicodemus's sole vulnerability and nearly strangles him before Deirdre intervenes. Harry grabs Michael and jumps into the river. Marcone pulls them to shore using the Shroud as a rope.

A letter from Shiro reveals he had terminal cancer and knew he was dying before coming to Chicago. Harry tracks Marcone to a care facility where the crime lord lays the Shroud over a young woman in a vegetative coma. Harry strikes a deal: three days with the Shroud, then Marcone returns it to Father Forthill.

Susan calls from Central America to say goodbye. Harry's mentor, Ebenezar McCoy, a senior White Council member, drops a decommissioned satellite on Ortega's stronghold in Honduras. Nicodemus flips a Fallen angel's coin onto the Carpenter lawn near a toddler; Harry palms it, buries it in his lab, and seals it in a charged steel ring. Harry stores Susan's mementos and places Shiro's cane on his mantel, accepting responsibility for Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith.