Hard Spell (13 page)

  "Why do I feel weird about doing IM with a vampire?" I said out loud. "I mean, what would Dracula say about this shit?"

  "Probably, 'I vant to haf a chaaat vith you... in real time,'" Karl said, doing a pretty fair Bela Lugosi.

  I sent Vollman my AOL identification. After a few seconds, the computer made that annoying zziiiing sound, and a chat window opened.

  Inside the window was "
VollWiz:
Are we connected?
" The rest of the conversation (if you can call it that) went like this:

  Supecop1:
Yes, I'm here.

  VollWiz:
Does this latest murder bear similarities to the
first one?

  Supecop1:
Some. There was cryptic stuff carved into
the victim's chest.

  VollWiz:
The same as last time?

  Supecop1:
No, different symbols. Looks like the same
alphabet, though.

  Vollwiz:
Can you send me a copy?

  Supecop1:
My keyboard doesn't have the symbols. I
doubt they make a keyboard that does.
 

  About half a minute went by. Then:

  Vollwiz:
Do you have a text scanner available?

  I knew what Vollman was getting at, and it annoyed me that I hadn't thought of it myself.

  I pulled my notebook out and found the page where I'd copied the message found on Willbrand's corpse. Handing it to Karl, I said, "Do me a favor and run the scanner over this, will you? Put it on a thumb drive for me."

  "Right," he said, took the notebook, and headed out room. I turned back to the keyboard and typed:

  Supecop1:
I should be sending that to you shortly.

  VollWiz:
Very well. Now, as to cause of death: I have
heard it was a gunshot. Can you confirm that?

  Supecop1:
Where do you get your information, anyway?

  Vollwiz:
Please, Sergeant – let us not waste each
other's time.

  I stared at the screen while trying hard to keep control of myself. I didn't have to take shit like that from some bloodsucker, even if he was also a wizard.

  By the same token, telling Vollman to go fuck himself wasn't going to get these cases cleared.

  It would sure be fun, though.

  I took in a deep breath, and let it out slow.

  Supecop1:
Yeah, he died of a gunshot wound. If you
know that, I guess you know he was one of you... people.

  Vollwiz:
If you mean he was undead, yes, I was
aware of that. May I assume that the bullet that killed
him was silver?

  Supecop1:
No, you may not. Lab report says the slug
was made of charcoal. It's like he was trying to barbecue the guy from inside. You ever hear of that?

  Vollwiz:
In fact, I believe I have.

  Supecop1:
I thought I was pretty well up on the ways
to kill a vampire.

  At the last second, I'd added "ire" to that last word. Some vamps don't like being called vamps.

  Vollwiz:
I'm sure you are, Sergeant. And this method
of murder is not inconsistent with the knowledge you possess. Consider: what IS charcoal, anyway?

  I figured out what he was getting at in about three seconds, then spent another ten feeling stupid.

  Supecop1:
Charcoal's super-compressed wood, isn't it?
Wood – as in wooden stakes.

  Vollwiz:
Exactly. It is an uncommon method to kill one
of my kind, but effective. As you have seen yourself.

  Supecop1:
Yeah, I guess I have.

  Vollwiz:
Have there been any other developments in
the case?

  Supecop1:
Yeah. I may have a name for the perp. I
guess you could call that a new development. It's hard to be sarcastic online. Unfortunately.

  Vollwiz:
Indeed? That is most interesting. Congrat
ulations.

  Supecop1:
Don't pop any corks just yet. There's no way to know for sure whether it's our guy, but I like him for it. From what I hear, he's: 1. a wizard. 2. new in town. 3. acting secretive – pretending to be somebody else, etc.

  Vollwiz:
I agree, he sounds like a promising candidate. What is his name?

  Supecop1:
Calls himself Sligo.

  No response. I watched the empty screen for a while, then typed:

  Supecop1:
You still there?

  Still no answer. I was starting to wonder whether the connection had been broken, when this appeared:

  Vollwiz:
Are you absolutely certain?

  Supecop1:
Certain that's the guy? Hell, no. Certain that's what my informant told me? Yeah, I'm sure, since I don't have wax in my ears, oranything.

  Karl appeared over my shoulder, holding a thumb drive. I attached it to the computer, downloaded the file, then sent it to Vollman's email address as an attachment.

  Supecop1:
I just sent the file with the symbols I copied from our latest vic. It's pretty accurate, I think.

  I waited. Nothing, for maybe two minutes, then this appeared:

  VollWiz:
I will be in touch with you later.
 

  Then the chat connection was broken.

"Motherfucker," I heard Karl mutter from behind me.

  "Yeah, I know," I said. "But at least he's given us a way to find out where he hangs his cloak, and that's something we've been wanting to know."

  I looked up the customer service number for AOL and called them. It took the better part of an hour to find a supervisor with the authority to look up a customer's mailing address, and to convince her that I had the authority to ask for it.

  Finally, I heard her say, "Very well, Sergeant. What is the email address you have?"

  "It's V-o-l-l-m-a-n-e-x at aol.com."

  I heard her keyboard clacking in the background. Then silence. Then more clacking, followed by another stretch of silence.

  "I'm sorry, Sergeant," the supervisor said, "but we have no account listed under that address."

  "Has it been cancelled recently? Say, within the last hour or so?"

  "No, sir. We have never had an account under that name. It simply doesn't exist."

I hung up the phone and said to Karl, "Fuck Vollman and the hearse he rode in on. I'm getting tired of that old bastard and the way he keeps jerking us around. It's time we started acting like goddamn detectives, for a change."

  "Sounds good to me," Karl said. "You got any particular kind of detecting in mind?"

  "Yeah, I do. Sligo, or whoever the perp is, has offed two guys so far, right? Why those two? Were they picked at random, or–"

  "Or is there a common factor?" Karl said. "Some pattern he's following."

  "Exactly. Why don't you get on that, see if you can find anything about the vics that stands out."

  "Okay. What are you gonna be doing?"

  "See if I can find out more about this forbidden book," I told him. "Vollman said there were only four copies in existence. Let's see if he was right."

  Karl went over to his own desk, and I turned back to my computer and brought up Google. I typed in
Opus
and
Mago
and clicked "Search."

  A few seconds later I was looking at the first hundred of my 28,343 hits. A lot of them involved classical music, although several seemed to refer to some penguin in a comic strip.

  Realizing where I went wrong, I went back to the search screen. This time, I put quotation marks around
Opus Mago
so the search engine would read it as a phrase.

  Eight hits. That was more like it.

  Seven of the references were duds. Five of them lumped the
Opus Mago
in with fictional works like the
Necronomicon
, the
Lemegeton of Solomon
, and the
Grimorium Verum
. Shows what they know. Two other hits brought me to bogus black magic sites, constructed by obvious wannabees who'd probably run screaming for their mothers if they ever got close to the real thing. It didn't take me long to figure out that these morons didn't know the
Opus Mago
from the
Kama Sutra
.

  The one hit left was a news item saying that a prossor at Georgetown University had translated some fragments of the
Opus Mago
, which the article said was one of the oldest and most obscure works in the black arts. Dr Benjamin Prescott was described as "one of the foremost authorities on the ancient grimoires." Then I read that Prescott had refused to allow his translation to be published. Anywhere. Ever.

Georgetown University, I found out, is a big place – especially if you're trying to find your way around by using their website. I finally learned that Professor Prescott's office was located in the Department of Theosophy, and even persuaded a campus operator to connect me to his direct line.

  That's where my luck ran out. I'd been hoping against hope that I'd find Prescott working late in his office, but all I got was an answering machine.

  I left a message saying who I was, but not what I wanted. I asked him to call me back the next night, anytime after 9:00. Then I got his email address from the campus directory, and sent him the same message that way.

  The professor could read the email at any time – whenever he felt like checking his account. And if he was one of those people who didn't do that regularly, he'd probably get my phone message tomorrow. Assuming he wasn't off on a research trip to Transylvania, or someplace.

The rest of the evening was typical of a night shift for the Supe Squad, if you'd want to call anything we deal with "typical."

  A ghost was haunting one of the girls' dorms at Marywood University. Marywood's coed now, but it used to bill itself as the Largest Catholic Women's College in America. Some guys at the U (a Jesuit school that used to be all-male, back in the day) used to say "Mary would if Mary could, but Mary goes to Marywood."

  I hear that Marywood girls are a little different, these days.

  A haunting isn't necessarily a big deal, but the pesky spirit was hanging around the bathrooms and ogling the young lovelies as they stepped out of the shower. Some of the girls were terrified; others were downright offended, since the ghost liked to make comments about their attributes. Not all of his observations were kindly.

  Turned out the spook was the spirit of an old guy who'd been a janitor at the school for years. He'd come back to live out some of his fantasies.

  We sent for an exorcist. Several Jesuits at the U are qualified and on call. Father Martino compelled the old guy's ghost to depart the premises, and imposed a geas on him against returning. Before he was expelled, I suggested he start haunting one of the city's strip clubs, where nobody would much care how much skin he looked at. He seemed to think that was an idea with some merit.

Then we got a call that a female vamp was using Influence on some of the customers at
Susie B's
, our local lesbian bar. A lot of vampires have powers of fascination. That "Look into my eyes" stuff you see on TV is real, although it's exaggerated – like everything else on TV. Despite what you hear, Influence can't take away somebody's free will – but a proficient vamp can weaken it quite a bit. And sometimes, that's all they need.

  Karl and I dropped in at the bar and talked to the owner, Barbara Ann, who'd called in the complaint. She wasted no time pointing out the bloodsucker among her clientele. "She's the one at the corner table sitting by herself – but she won't be alone for long," Barbara Ann said.

  We went to have a word with the young lady (who was probably neither very young nor much of a lady), ignoring the hostile glances from some of the other customers. Men aren't popular in
Susie B's
, and cops even less so.

  The vamp said her name . Hucretia. It might even have been true – she had an old-country Italian look about her: midnight black hair, with eyes to match, pale skin, and red, red lips. Nice tits, too – for a vamp.

  I was surprised that she found it necessary to use Influence in order to get laid – here, or anyplace else. Of course, she was probably in the habit of using her beautiful mouth for more than cunnilingus. Most ladies who'll happily spend a few hours trading orgasms with another woman will draw the line when it comes to giving up a few pints of the red stuff.

  Karl and I took turns explaining to Lucretia that the law prohibits the use of Influence to secure consent for any kind of transaction, whether sexual, commercial, or vampiric.

  "I really don't know what you're talking about, officers," she said, all wide-eyed innocence. "I wouldn't do a thing like that.
Now I think you should both leave
." Her words seemed to echo inside my head, and Lucretia looked right at me as she said them, those coal black eyes burning into mine irresistibly...

  She must have been pretty old. Her Influence was strong. I actually felt my feet begin to move under my chair, before my will reasserted itself and made them stop. If I'd had any doubts that Miss Lucretia been using her power improperly, they'd just been staked, but good.