57 pages • 1 hour read
Jim ButcherStorm Front
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 22-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
Harry runs into his office and finds Murphy on the floor by his desk, bleeding from a small wound. She is feverish, and the wound is swelling, indicating poison. He uses his office phone to call an ambulance. Semi-delirious, Murphy accuses him of setting her up and handcuffs him to her. A second later, a giant scorpion the size of a dog runs at him. Victor has somehow triggered an attack spell in his scorpion talisman.
Harry fights off the scorpion as Murphy becomes more delirious and finally passes out. He picks her up and escapes into the elevator. The scorpion climbs on top of the elevator and starts tearing through the metal to reach them. Harry uses a wind spell to shoot the elevator car rapidly up the shaft, smashing the scorpion between the car and the ceiling. Then, the elevator begins to fall, and Harry uses another wind spell to slow the plummet to the first floor. He tumbles out of the elevator, where EMTs have arrived. Harry carries Murphy to the ambulance outside. A storm is approaching, and Harry realizes that he is out of time.
Chapter 23 Summary
In the scramble, the EMTs do not notice the handcuffs, and with the help of the rain, Harry is able to wiggle Murphy’s smaller hand out of the cuff. As the EMTs tend to Murphy, Harry slips away, knowing that he must stop Victor before it is too late. He does not have his staff or his other tools. He is tired and injured and has already used an enormous amount of magic, but he also knows that he has no other option. He walks quickly to MacAnally’s to borrow Mac’s car. Mac hands his keys over without asking questions.
However, as Harry turns to leave, Morgan appears, saying that he has figured out how Harry is using the storms to power his spells. Harry tries to explain that he is not the murderer. When he tells Morgan that he is trying to stop the real murderer, Morgan refuses to listen and tries to hold Harry there. Harry hits Morgan with a chair, knocking him unconscious, and runs.
Chapter 24 Summary
Harry drives to Victor’s lake house. As he approaches, he uses his wizard’s sight to perceive the black magic and dark emotion that lie over the house “like Spanish moss with malevolent eyes” (289). He can feel the greed, lust, and fear in the house, and it makes him nauseous while also inexplicably calling to him.
He can feel the power of it, a power that he once rejected when his mentor tried to turn him to black magic, and he acknowledges the allure of this dangerous practice. He imagines what he could do with such power, reasoning that he could easily kill Victor now and get it over with. Then, he touches the silver pentacle still around his neck, which belonged to his mother, and remembers that he is not a murderer, no matter what people like Morgan might think. Determined to stop Victor without losing his own integrity, he walks toward the house.
Chapter 25 Summary
Harry tries the front door and is surprised when it opens. As he walks through the house, he sees dark “things with silent, glittering eyes and hungry expressions” clinging to the walls and watching (294). He hears a man chanting and a woman moaning with pleasure and follows the sounds. In the kitchen, he finds boxes filled with small vials of the ThreeEye drug and others with various ingredients. He realizes that Victor is “mass-producing what amount[s] to a magical poison” (296). He can hear Victor in the next room.
As thunder roars overhead, Harry barges into the room with a fire spell to find Victor standing in a magic circle near a balcony, deeply engaged in a ritual. Victor holds a rabbit that has a lock of Harry’s dark hair tied around its neck. The moment that Victor kills the rabbit, the ritual will also kill Harry. Meanwhile, the Beckitts are inside another magic circle, writhing with sexual energy to fuel the spell.
Harry makes a snide remark, plucks the empty film canister from his jacket pocket, and throws it. Though it has no power, its mundane substance is enough to disrupt the magic circle and cause Victor’s spell to explode outward, knocking them all off their feet. Furious, Victor throws more magic at Harry, and the two duel with magical fire and wind.
A gun fires over Harry’s head, and he sees both Beckitts standing naked and holding automatic weapons. Mr. Beckitt shoots, hitting Harry in the hip and throwing him to the floor. Then, the weapon jams. However, this gives Victor enough time to recover and shout a spell to bring several scorpions to life. They start out small but slowly grow as they chase Harry. He shuffles into the kitchen.
Chapter 26 Summary
Trapped in the kitchen, Harry fears that he may be out of options, but suddenly he recalls a simple spell. He shouts the incantation, and a kitchen broom jumps to life to start swatting at the scorpions, who have not yet grown large enough to fight it off. The broom chases the scorpions out of the kitchen, through the room, and off the balcony. The Beckitts shoot at Harry again, but he dodges.
Victor yells at them to stop shooting because they are destroying his ThreeEye lab, but it is too late. The vials are smashed, and the house is now on fire. Harry taunts Victor, claiming that the police, Johnny Marcone, and the White Council know about Victor and will all come for him whether he kills Harry or not. Victor demands to know how Harry found out about him, but Harry refuses to tell him. He does not want to put Monica in danger if Victor escapes.
Victor then summons the toad demon that he used to attack Harry before. However, when Victor speaks the demon’s true name aloud, Harry laughs at his opponent’s stupidity and lack of real training. Harry speaks the demon’s true name as well, releasing Victor’s hold on it. Harry explains that it is against the Fourth Law of Magic to bind another being to one’s will, so he broke Victor’s control but declined to take control himself. Now the demon can do what it wants, and they can all die together.
As the demon approaches, Victor attacks Harry. The two wrestle and tumble to the edge of the balcony. With nothing left to lose, Harry tells Victor that his wife was the one who betrayed him. Enraged, Victor flails just as the demon leaps and bites his throat. All three tangle together as they fall off the edge of the balcony. Harry uses the handcuff still hanging from one wrist to hook onto the balcony railing, and the demon and Victor both tumble off the edge. From the dark below, Harry hears the demon hissing and Victor screaming. Then, the scorpions that fell off the balcony also attack, tearing Victor and the demon to pieces. As Harry hangs by one wrist, his vision starts to go dark. Just before he passes out, he sees Morgan approaching with his sword drawn and thinks that he is about to die.
Chapter 27 Summary
Harry wakes up in the rain to find Morgan hovering over him. He realizes that Morgan just saved his life and gave him CPR. Morgan acknowledges that Harry was not the murderer and was willing to risk his life to stop the true killer. Morgan was therefore duty-bound to save him. Harry teases Morgan about admitting that he was wrong. Morgan adds that he will report to the White Council and that it is likely that they will remove the Doom of Damocles. However, Morgan promises that he will still be watching Harry, waiting for him to slip again.
Morgan disappears. Moments later, the police arrive, responding to the house fire. They arrest the Beckitts and are able to connect the couple to the ThreeEye drug ring. Marcone spreads the rumor that Harry was working for him in order to take out the leader of the ThreeEye drug ring and remove his competition. Although Harry dislikes being associated with Marcone in the public eye, he does not try to deny this story because it keeps him safe.
Harry is hospitalized and misses the meeting of the White Council. They commend him for his “valorous action” and remove the Doom of Damocles (319). Harry suspects that Morgan will never forgive him for being the “good guy” (319). Murphy, still stricken by the scorpion venom, remains in critical condition for several days. She visits Harry when she recovers. Though she claims not to remember anything about the attack in Harry’s office and rescinds his arrest warrant, their friendship turns cold, and Harry laments the fact that he has lost her trust.
The police place Monica and her children in witness protection. Bob returns from his 24 hours of freedom, having started a wild party at the University of Chicago. Susan publishes an article about the demon attack, and she and Harry later go on a second date. Harry still feels the draw of dark power and knows that he must fight this temptation, but he is determined to do whatever he can to help those who need it and make his corner of the world a little bit safer.
Chapters 22-27 Analysis
When Harry rushes to save Murphy, Butcher strategically delays the climactic final confrontation in order to emphasize Harry’s position as the underdog and deliver crucial character development for the next installment of the series. As Harry fights to save Murphy’s life from the giant scorpion in his office, the surface-level action of the scene is tempered by the more serious dynamics between the two erstwhile allies. Notably, Murphy has lost all trust in Harry’s integrity and credibility. In fact, before Murphy falls unconscious, she even accuses Harry of setting her up to be attacked, though she later does not remember this (or at least pretends not to). This interlude serves two important purposes for the plot of the novel and the future of the series. First, the struggle against the scorpion puts Harry at an even greater disadvantage before he goes to confront Victor, exhausting and injuring him further and emphasizing the tight window of time that remains before the next storm arrives to kill him. Perhaps even more importantly, the unresolved conflict with Murphy foreshadows additional difficulties and misunderstandings between the two in the next installment of the series, Fool Moon.
As the final fight commences, the interplay between the tightly plotted action sequences and Harry’s inner struggles reveals the culmination of the novel’s focus on Good, Evil, and Moral Ambiguity, for Harry must walk a fine line between fighting his enemy and giving in to the siren song of dark power. Ironically, even as Victor succumbs to his intense need for power and violence, he also reveals his lack of real training or finesse, and Harry takes full advantage of the antagonist’s mistakes in order to outsmart and outmaneuver him. Likewise, the fight reveals Harry’s own iron-clad integrity, as when he refuses to force his will on the demon after freeing it from Victor’s control. His sense of Personal Integrity and Responsibility is fully apparent when he is willing to give his own life in order to stop Victor from doing more harm. Thus, Victor and Harry serve as foils to one another, residing on opposite ends of the spectrum of morality. While Victor succumbs to darkness and evil in his pursuit of power, Harry is willing to relinquish power in order to do the right thing. However, although Harry makes the right moral decision, it is not without effort, and the instinctive pull of the black magic that surrounds him emphasizes that even he is not fully immune to The Addictive Nature of Power. This dynamic is introduced during the fight itself when Harry briefly considers succumbing to the allure of black magic and imagines the ways in which he could use such power to change his life, and the temptation also resurfaces in the final chapter when he frankly acknowledges that “the power is there [and] [t]he temptation is there” and that he must learn to live with it (322).
The tightly plotted fight scene also reveals Butcher’s keen sense of humor and irony, as Chapter 26 ends—quite literally—on a cliffhanger, with Harry left dangling from the edge of the lake house’s balcony. The novel’s resolution also makes a few choice comments on the nature of good, evil, and moral ambiguity; as the final chapter reveals Morgan’s role in saving Harry’s life despite his immense disdain for the protagonist, the Warden’s actions reveal his uncompromising view of the concepts of good and evil. Although Morgan would love nothing more than to see Harry slip up enough to warrant execution, he is so rigidly controlled by his personal moral code of right and wrong that he has no choice but to save Harry and acknowledge that Harry was the “good guy” in this particular scenario. Morgan is, if nothing else, at least consistent in his understanding of good and evil, and he holds himself to the same stringent standards that he requires of Harry.
To deliver an effective denouement, Butcher borrows from cinematic conventions, and the resolution of the novel resembles the ending montage of a movie as the narrative offers brief glimpses into the lives of every major player in the plot. While some characters find their lives irrevocably changed—such as the Beckitts and Monica—Harry’s own situation represents a relative improvement on the status quo, as the White Council finally lifts the Doom of Damocles, freeing him from years of probation. However, because his recent escapades have significantly damaged his friendship with Murphy, it is clear that this aspect of his life will undergo further development in the next novel. As each episodic adventure in the series enhances Butcher’s world building and reveals new aspects of Harry’s life, inconsequential details from individual cases eventually gain deeper significance. As the series develops, Victor’s activities will be placed in a whole different light, and antagonistic characters such as Mrs. Beckitt, Bianca, Morgan, and Johnny Marcone will reappear in more sophisticated contexts as Harry’s wizarding skills (and Butcher’s writing style) mature.
