Death Blows: The Bloodhound Files-2 (5 page)

“It’s just a treadmill,” Eisfanger says.

I glare at him from the other side of a worktable littered with parts. “I can
see
that. What I want to know is, does this particular treadmill have any particular
mystic
significance?”

Eisfanger looks trapped halfway between confused and wary. “You think this is a . . .
magic
treadmill?”

“Sure,” says Charlie. “And get a move on, will you? We’ve got Satan’s Conveyor Belt waiting to be processed.”

I give my partner a look that could blister skin. Too bad his is made of plastic. “Don’t use that tone with me,” I say to Eisfanger. “You’ve got all
kinds
of weird-ass magic thingies here—why not a treadmill?”

“Well, it’s esoteric enough,” he admits. “I mean, I’ve never even seen one outside of a lab.”

“Where I come from they’re a substitute for running outdoors.”

“But—”

“Don’t make me explain it, all right?”

He shrugs. “In any case, I’ve gone over every component, and none of them is mystically charged in any way. They were all a little bored, actually; the machine used to belong to an NFL franchise, was used for testing. It’s been dormant for at least six weeks.” He picks up a gear and examines it critically.

“I’ve already contacted the team. They say they got rid of some old equipment a few months ago—I think our killer got it from the dump.”

“No prints?”

“No. And according to the machine itself, the last person to actually use it was Tyrone Bates—starting quarterback for the Memphis Lunar Knights.”

“I hear he’s got a hell of an arm,” Charlie says. “But I doubt if he’s much on calling up lightning bolts.”

“How about the skeleton?” I ask.

“Postmortem just came back.” Eisfanger picks up a beige file folder and hands it to me.

I open it and scan the first page. “You were right about the calcium being replaced by copper . . . and they found traces of silver just where you thought they might.”

Eisfanger nods, allowing himself the smallest amount of smugness.

I read more, and frown. “Lightning strike confirmed, origin pending. No other chemicals found.” The only other thing in the report that seems unusual is Aquitaine’s date of birth: 1152.

“He was eight and a half centuries old,” I say. “Even among pires, that’s pretty impressive, right?”

“Sure,” says Charlie. “But these old-timer cases can be a real pain. Pires that ancient have enemies older than the country they’re living in. And the older the pire—”

“The craftier and meaner, I know. So you think the killer’s another pire?”

Charlie shrugs. “Maybe yes, maybe no. Packs have been known to keep blood grudges going for generations, and thropes live about three hundred years anyway.”

“Terrific.” Even if I caught the killer, it would be like a fruit fly trying to convict a redwood. Come dance on my great-great-granddaughter’s grave when you get out.

“How about the robe?” I say.

“Ah. Now
that’s
much more interesting.” Eisfanger beams and leads us over to another table where the robe is spread out. There are no crescent moons or stars among the symbols woven into it, but there’s no doubt the runes are arcane; they almost seem to pulse with power.

“At first I thought this was just a really good replica of a Doctor Transe costume,” Eisfanger says.

“That was before I started running tests. I—I think this is the real thing.” He sounds embarrassed. “I mean, I think Saladin Aquitaine
was
Doctor Transe.”

“You know about the Bravo Brigade?”

He scratches the bristly white stubble of his hair. “Well, sure—but they were called ‘mystery men’

back then, not ‘superheroes.’ Everybody had a copy of that comic when I was a kid. Not for long, though—the government recalled them, said there was some kind of health problem with the ink. Silver contamination, I think. They bought them back for twice the cover price.”

That more or less dovetailed with what Neil had told me, though he hadn’t mentioned the cover story—

I guess he assumed I’d already heard it. “So tell me about Doctor Transe.”

“He was their sorcerer. Large-scale animist stuff—he could talk to thunderstorms, mountains, oceans.”

“Can’t other animists do that?”

“Sure, but not like Transe. He could condense time, for one thing—a conversation with a geological feature that would normally take years, he could do in minutes.”

Which would explain his success as a surveyor. “How about oceans or weather patterns?”

“The problem there isn’t time—it’s scale and complexity. Like an ant trying to talk to an elephant in a hundred different languages simultaneously.”

I nod. “So he was some sort of genius?”

“Maybe, but he also had help. He carried a mystic gem known as the Balancer, supposedly able to juggle and even merge magical energies. In the comic, he uses it to transfer all the power Wertham has stored into a volcano.”

“So why do you think Aquitaine was Transe?”

“I talked to the robe. You wouldn’t believe some of the things it told me . . .” He shakes his head, grinning. “Incredible stuff. Just scraps, traces left over the years, but whoever wore this has been places and seen things I never even knew existed. Other dimensions, other planets, other times.”

It sounded eerily like Neil’s description of comic books. “We didn’t find any gem, though,” I say.

“Neither did my team,” says Eisfanger. “I went back after you found the robe. Scanned the whole place with more sensitive equipment. Nothing.”

“I wouldn’t say that. I think we’ve just uncovered a motive—a damn strong one, too.”

“Sure,” says Charlie. “Blame the rock. You got a perfectly good suspect in the treadmill, but as soon as a mineral enters the picture you’re ready to lock it up and throw away the key.”

“We’ll have to find it first,” I say. “But at least now I have a list of suspects—though they’re not going to be easy to track down.”

“Who?” Eisfanger asks.

“The rest of the Bravo Brigade. Plus any surviving members of the Kamic cult—oh, and possibly Fredric Wertham himself.”

I sigh. “This is
great
. Y’know, dealing with magic, vampires, and werewolves on a daily basis was getting kind of stale—but now I’ve got a homicidal superpowered
lunatic
to catch. Happy, happy me . .

.”

THREE

The first person I talk to is Gretchen. I find her in her own office—one considerably bigger than mine—and close the door before I sit down. There’s no easy way to broach the subject, so I just dive right in. “Gretch, were you aware that Saladin was also Doctor Transe?”

I think it’s the first time I’ve ever actually seen her show surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“Doctor Transe. The sorcerer from the
Bravo Brigade
comic book.”

She frowns and thinks hard about it for all of a second, which is how long it takes her to completely revise an entire set of assumptions and replace them with new data. Gretchen’s brain scares me a little.

“Ah. That would explain certain things. No, I never knew—never even suspected.” The look on her face now is more fond reminiscence than betrayal. “He was an extraordinary man. I don’t suppose I should be that surprised.”

“You’re not angry he kept it from you?”

She sighs. “Considering what I do for a living, it would be like the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn’t it? I suspect I kept many more things from him than he did from me—though, as secrets go, this is impressive. Do you think it’s why he was killed?”

“Too early to say—but that’s the direction I’m headed in.”

She nods. “You’ll keep me apprised?”

“Of course.”

The next person I visit is Dr. Pete.

Dr. Pete was my physician when I first got here. He helped me deal with RDT—Reality Dislocation Trauma—and even got my heart restarted once while I was kind of busy saving the world. My heart’s had some nasty things done to it, but Dr. Pete’s the only one who’s actually stabbed it with something large and pointy. I don’t hold it against him.

It’s kind of hard to hold anything against Dr. Pete—he’s just a plain nice guy. Well, nice thrope, actually, but so’s his whole family. He took me to visit them once, and while we were there he showed something else: his comic book collection. I figure he might actually have a copy of that
Bravo Brigade
issue, and if so I want another look at it.

I go to his office, but he isn’t there. His receptionist—a female thrope with short blond hair and overlong eyelashes—tells me he’s at the clinic.

“The government clinic?” That was where the NSA had put me when I first arrived.

She blinks once, slowly. I feel a gentle breeze wash over me. “He doesn’t do any work for the government,” she says. Blink. It’s like being fanned by tiny palm leaves. “He’s at the anthrocanine clinic on Pike Street. It’s more of a shelter, really, but Dr. Adams provides free medical aid twice a week.”

I get directions, thank her, and leave. I wonder if she’s as dumb as she seems, and doubt it. Or maybe Dr. Pete just hired her to save on air-conditioning.

The clinic’s in a rough part of town, just close enough to the touristy section to make the authorities nervous and ensure a continuous patrol of the membrane between them. On one side are lots of trendy restaurants, kitschy souvenir shops, and an open-air produce market; on the other, decaying waterfront buildings, weedy empty lots, and boarded-up storefronts. It’s funny how many cities I’ve seen that pattern in—it’s like some kind of Skid Row tourism virus, sprouting postcard stands and T-shirt shops in the tracks of winos and shopping carts.

The clinic itself is in an old logging warehouse, a freshly painted sign tacked over a scratched and dented metal door. I park, hope my car is still there when I get back, and walk up to the entrance. A few thropes loitering in were form at the corner sniff in my direction, their yellow eyes glowing with hostility, but I’m wearing some artificial wolf pheromone Cassius supplied me with; it tells them I’m an alpha female, not to be messed with. Which is true, but it’s a lot less stressful to spray some AWP

on than have to constantly prove it.

The noise—and smell—when I open the door is impressive. Barking and howling and whining and oh my God, the stink. Wet dog and doggy-do and dog that’s rolled in something dead. With just a hint of skunk for added impact.

I can’t see any actual dogs, just a wire-mesh door set into the far wall, but I recognize the teenager at the counter that blocks access. It’s Alexandra, Dr. Pete’s niece. She and I have become Internet friends—we share similar tastes in music—but I rarely get to see her in person.

Of course, seeing Alexandra can sometimes be disturbing. She’s into a fad called corpsing, which uses a charm to temporarily let parts of your body decompose; the first time we met, I could see her brain. She seems to currently be intact, studying a textbook on the counter, and looks up when I come in.

“Hey, Jace!” she says, smiling. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for your uncle. He here?”

“Yeah, he’s in the back, getting ready for the changeover.”

“I didn’t know you volunteered here.”

She grimaces. “Volunteer? More like
sentenced
. I got busted breaking curfew and this is my punishment.” She shakes her head. “If any of my friends come in here, I am just gonna
die
.”

Ah, the teenage werewolf. Vulnerable to silver, wolfs-bane, and embarrassment. “Not doing the rotting corpse thing anymore?”

She rolls her eyes. “Uncle Pete won’t let me do it here—worried that one of the inmates is gonna eat one of my eyeballs or something. So what? I mean, it’s not like it won’t grow back.”

Talking to Alexandra is always interesting. Any time I feel like I’m starting to adjust to this world, I can count on her to remind me there are depths of weirdness I haven’t explored yet. Adolescence is another universe all by itself.

And then the naked dwarf throws himself against the wire mesh.

The
happy
naked dwarf. His eyes are bright and merry, a huge smile on his face. “Yippee!” he shouts.

“Yippee! Yippee!” He clutches the wire mesh in both hands, staring at Alexandra and me like we’re his best friends in the world. “Yippee!”

“That’s Bo,” Alexandra says. “He’s always the first to change—’cause he’s so little, I guess.”

The barking is dying down. Bo is still yelling “Yippee!,” but now other voices are joining in: a deep bass calling out, “Hey! Hey! Hey!”; a woman shrieking, “Yeah!” over and over; and a lot of different variations on “Food!,” “Eat!,” and “Hungry!”

Alexandra looks glum. “Sun’s down. Don’t listen to them—we fed them an hour ago. Changeover always makes them hungry, but it’s not worth the mess they make to feed them again. You sure you want to go in there?”

The naked dwarf abruptly spins and runs away. “What the hell,” I say. “I love making new friends.”

I come around the counter and she hits a button, buzzing open the electric lock on the door. I make sure it shuts securely behind me.

There’s a huge room on the other side, lined with pens and lit by overhead fluorescents. Dr. Pete is down at the far end. He and a tall, bulky man in a black T-shirt and sweatpants are trying to get Bo to put on a pair of boxers.

I walk the length of the room, glancing in the pens. Each of them contains a naked man or woman, of varying ages, sizes, and races. Some glare at me sullenly, some wave eagerly, some ignore me completely. By the time I get to Dr. Pete, I think I have a pretty good idea what’s going on.

Bo runs up to me, finally wearing the boxers, and does his best to sniff my crotch. He doesn’t seem to take it too hard when I push him away. “Hey, Doc. What’s the deal with the reverse thropes?”

Dr. Pete runs a hand through his shaggy brown hair and gives me a rueful smile. I still think he looks a little like a young Harrison Ford, though today his eyes have the tired wisdom of a Humphrey Bogart.

“Anthrocanines. Dogs who have the lycanthropy gene, usually passed on by an ancestor who was bitten by a thrope. Infected dogs pass on their genes in two ways—to people through bites or scratches, and to their own offspring. But dog weres don’t transform into wolves—they change into humans. As long as the sun’s down, anyway.”