by Garon Whited
That’s me, always taking the easy way out.
Flintridge, Wednesday, October 8th, 1969
Mary and Diogenes felt they had sufficient telephone access to complete the orderly withdrawal from Flintridge. Since we weren’t sure if LeSange would want to continue the hunt for us, it was best to be prepared.
On the other hand, if we were going to put the snatch on a local vampire, all of them were sure to be irritated with us. Mary pointed this out one afternoon while we sat in Bronze’s Impala, parked in the shade of the house and enjoying the air conditioning. We also had our various privacy spells running, just in case someone was trying to listen in with some local-vampire superpower.
We were back at the lair partly to be bait. If unpleasant people did, in fact, have a way to track us, we could either fight them or pull suddenly into the garage and disappear. If they waited until nightfall, we might even get a free shot at one of the local vampires! Mary thought it moderately likely the Black King would send someone.
“Look,” Mary explained. “LeSange just lost his wizard. Possibly his mentor and maybe his owner. He’ll either be overjoyed about it or grumpy as hell. Everything depends on their relationship, one way or the other. I don’t see him being blasé about it.”
“That’s fair, I guess.”
“Even if he’s pleased, we can’t trust to his goodwill. He may have face to save. We did kill the guy posing as his butler. It may require retribution if he’s trying to avoid appearing weak. Moreover, if he’s upset and pretending to be pleased, how do we tell? They’re soulless monsters. Can you see the happy or sad in a soulless monster?”
“Not that I’ve noticed, no. So what do we do?”
“We avoid LeSange entirely. We go back to L.A. and swipe a vampire there.”
“Hmm. He’s the Master of Las Vegas, not Los Angeles. We may get away with it.” A thought struck me. “I wonder who is in charge of Los Angeles? Do they have the same sort of social structure? Are they the same type of vampires?”
“Good questions. I have no idea. I do know LeSange has people—vampires—who have ‘talents,’ such as listening to conversations remotely, remote viewing, lie detecting, and so on.”
“So?”
“So, if there’s a Lord of L.A., he may have similarly-endowed minions.”
“Troublesome,” I agreed.
“Come to think of it,” she added, thoughtfully, “there is a slightly more complicated, possibly easier way.”
“Let the record show I am not comfortable with the diffident manner in which you said that.”
“It’s just a thought.”
“One of your thoughts.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, just a potentially dangerous thing. You like risking your life.”
“I do not.”
“Do so.”
“Do not.”
“Do so.”
“I don’t like risking my life,” she insisted. “I like getting away with it.”
“A technicality. I’m not sure it’s a valid one.”
“Picky, picky, picky. You want to hear my idea or not?”
“Yeeeesss…?”
She stuck her tongue out at me before continuing.
“Here’s the thought. We already know some vampire hunters.”
“I’m already not liking it.”
“Since we know some vampire hunters,” she persisted, “we could get them to catch one for us.”
“Why?”
“Because they know how to do this stuff, all the local pitfalls and problems, and they’ll take the blame.”
I had my mouth open for a snappy comeback until she mentioned the last part. If Mary and I snatched a vampire, whatever mystical tracking they used would key on us. It could be a problem if the Boojum was paying attention, and he very well might be. That could be trouble in any universe, even if we successfully withdrew from Flintridge. But the local hunters had to have defenses against these sorts of things. They had to. If they didn’t, the local vampires would have eaten them all by now.
Briefly, I wondered if I could get one of the local hunting clubs to teach me their anti-detection charm. Ours probably worked, but I had no way to test it to be certain. Then I dismissed the thought as overwhelmingly stupid. They wouldn’t teach me what the colors meant on a traffic light.
“Hmm,” I replied, brilliantly.
“All we have to do is identify a soulless monster for them. I’d think the chance to strap one down and take it apart would be appealing. All you need is to watch, right?”
“Well… essentially, yes. It’s a detailed scan of the—”
“So,” she cut me off, “they catch it, we dissect it, they learn stuff, we learn stuff, and everyone goes home.”
“I don’t need to dissect one, but I can see how it would be more interesting and informative to the mortal hunting parties. It’s a lot more effort on our part, though.”
“Think of it as purchasing their cooperation in exchange for a little effort.”
“I’ve gone to too much pointless effort for these idiots already. I’m not sure I want to.”
“Or think of it as setting them up to take the blame,” she suggested.
“That does have merit,” I agreed. “If it was so easy to capture one of the things, wouldn’t they have dissected one already?”
“Maybe they have,” Mary allowed. “On the other hand, if they only have practical knowledge from fighting them, a detailed analysis will have value.”
“How do we find out what they know?”
“What about your hunter family? The one with leukemia kid? They owe you.”
“We don’t get along.”
“You can be persuasive. Intimidating, terrifying, even charming when you try.”
I thought about it. They already had body armor. Some monomolecular-edged weapons, maybe some exploding bullets… or a net? With a launcher for it. Have they thought of crossbows for wooden stakes through the heart? Have they thought of wooden buckshot for possibly the same effect? Admittedly, some experimentation with the wooden buckshot will be required. It mustn’t jam in the barrel, and it has to survive being launched, to say nothing of whether or not a wooden bead inside a heart has the same paralytic effect as a table leg.
“You could persuade them,” Mary insisted. “Right?”
“Oh. Sorry. Woolgathering.”
“I doubt that.”
“I was thinking of how to persuade a bunch of vampire-killers to help a pair of vampires capture a third. This involves bribery. That led me to the thought of wooden ammunition, like crossbow bolts, and also to the idea of wooden buckshot. It’ll be tricky, but given the right type of wood, the right size pellets, it could be done. Assuming a wooden bullet in the heart has the same effect as a stake.”
Mary regarded me with an odd expression.
“What? I told you I was woolgathering.”
“Do you know what ‘woolgathering’ means?”
“Daydreaming? Sort of?”
“Sort of. Why are your daydreams so dangerous?”
“I dunno. I just live in this skull. I don’t pretend to understand what goes on in here.”
“That’s fair. Unsatisfactory, but fair,” she decided. “You think you can bribe a bunch of vampire killers into helping?”
“I think Diogenes can.”
“Remind them they owe you.”
“That’s the foot in the door. We couldn’t get the local weather report out of them without it.”
“Stubborn bunch?”
“Yes,” I sighed. “And I was hoping I was done with them.”
“We could find another bunch.”
“No, it would take too long. We’d have to find them, convince them we can be trusted—nothing will happen unless we can convince them to trust us, at least a smidgeon—negotiate the deal and the target, and then see what it will take to persuade them. At least with Ted and the Numbskulls, we can move right to the offer and the negotiations.”
“Okay. What do you need from me?”
“Their phone number.”
“I can get it. Can I borrow the car?”
The engine chuckled.
“Apparently so.”
I sat with Firebrand in one of the lair’s empty bedrooms. It kept watch while I sat in my headspace and did some serious thinking. By which I mean I thought at mental study speeds, rather than at more normal speeds. Mostly, I thought about the most efficient, effective, and practical ways to scan for a Boojum. Since it was daytime and a magic-poor world, I even stepped out of my headspace a few times to test a prototype spell. With fresh information from a test, I went back in each time and thought about it some more.
This kept me occupied for hours of outside time. My nascent detection spell had a real chance of helping me find the source, or sources, of the fake Lord of Light’s power. If there were few enough of them, it could make a material difference in many ways. If the Boojum was kept weak and relatively inoffensive, it would cease to be a personal problem—or, at least, a personal problem whose posterior might be kicked up to shoulderblade level. It might also weaken the current Church of Light enough to make a difference in the war, and I had no doubt Lissette was seriously considering a war.
But, mostly, I think I just wanted to give the Boojum a good smack in the chops. He had it coming and I finally found a way that might work.
I heard Bronze pull up outside. True, it could have been any other ’67 Impala, but it felt like Bronze. The door made the characteristic ka-chunk noise before Bronze rumbled her way into the garage. Mary entered the lair, found me, and sat down on the floor across from me.
“You’ve been busy.”
“So have you.”
“Yep. Got the phone number for the Numbskull family. Names, too. The eldest isn’t really Ted. His name is Theodore Reynolds. He also uses a number of aliases, only a few of which I’ve been able to track down. His boys are, eldest to youngest, Martin, Edward, and Charles. Martin and Charles are married to Mabel and Ethel. Martin and Mabel have Roger. Charles and Ethel have Edgar.”
“At last, a family roster. Any word on how Edgar is doing?”
“Apparently, he’s recovering with breathtaking speed. The neighbors are all ‘Praise God, it’s a miracle,’ but I suspect the whole Reynolds family is waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“You got their phone number from the neighbors?”
“Yep. I spoke to everybody on their street or sharing a property line. I also helped Diogenes do some eavesdropping with a parabolic microphone and a laser microphone.”
“You’re so good, you can steal information. That’s harder than snatching a diamond.”
“But less satisfying. Going to call them?”
“Yes, but I want to wait another couple of hours. It’ll be sunset on the East Coast then and I can claim to be in New York, calling across time zones. I’ll call through my Diogephone, here, in daylight. I’m hoping daytime activities aren’t as easily eavesdropped or spied on by the local vampire talents.”
“Good thinking. Can I try raising some cloaking spells?”
“Practicing in a low-magic world?”
“Yes. You did say practice would help.”
“I did, and it will. Go for it.”
Mary started drawing on the walls. I summoned up my willpower and centered myself for an unpleasant conversation.
“Hello?”—a woman’s voice
“Theodore Reynolds, please.”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Doctor Vladimir.”
“One moment, please.”
“Of course.”
I waited. I couldn’t tell what was happening. The telephones of 1969 weren’t exactly high-fidelity.
“Doctor?”
“Hello, Ted. Doing a follow-up. Edgar recovering well?”
“Yes. Yes, he is. One moment.”
There followed some shuffling and thumping. I thought I heard a door close.
“You said I’d never hear from you again.”
“And I thought you wouldn’t.”
“What do you want?”
“Two things,” I told him. “First, I do want to follow up on Edgar. He should be fine, but even the best spells and medical science can—very rarely—go awry. You can assure me he’s doing well?”
“Yes.”
“Good! I might check back again in a few weeks, but if there’s nothing now, I don’t think there will be anything at all.”
“I’m glad to hear it. What’s the other thing you wanted?”
“I’m going to grab one of those soulless bloodsuckers, strap him down to a table, and take him apart to see what makes him tick. Do you want to help?”
Dead silence.
“You want to catch a vampire?”
“Yes. I told you, the sort of vampire you deal with isn’t my sort. I want to examine one in some detail, test some wood-related ideas, try some other experiments, all that sort of thing. I hope to build a vampire detector, as well as find easy ways to kill them.”
He thought about it. I could practically hear him thinking. I wasn’t sure which way he would jump.
“We can’t keep it here,” he said, finally.
“I wouldn’t ask you to. What I would ask for is help catching it. I can contain monsters. I’ve done it before. But I need someone who knows what they’re doing to go in during the day, grab the thing, and get away with it.”
“What do we get out of this?” he asked.
“A reasonable question. I might answer that you earn some of my goodwill, which you are well aware is not something to be taken lightly. You also gain information on how their sort of vampire is put together, as well as how to take them apart. I’m sure your contacts in the community would be overjoyed at more information. But, in point of fact, I hate these black-hearted monsters enough that I’ll send a briefcase with the notes, diagrams, and explanations over to—to the organization that coordinates you guys. Even if you and I can’t come to an agreement.”
Ted—Theodore—was silent for several seconds, probably wondering how much I knew about the organization. I shouldn’t call it an organization. When you have several independent cells doing their own thing, it’s not too organized. Still, they could all work together when necessary, secretly directed by Lorenzo.
We ought to look into Lorenzo’s interests more carefully. He might have a vampire-hunting business all his own, with the independent operators called in like mercenaries for support jobs. Mental note.
On second thought, what do I care? Let Lorenzo do his thing however he does his thing. Not my circus, not my monkeys, not my problem.
“I’ll also entertain personal requests,” I added, when the silence grew long, “within reason. If you have something in mind.”
“Now you mention it, there is something I want.”
“I’m listening.”
“If we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to help.”
“Oh, I knew that. I have to find one and scope out the terrain. I also have to set things up to contain it for study.”
“I understand me and my boys—and some others—have to do the actual capture. You’re not going on a daylight raid.”
I didn’t disagree. He always believed I was a night creature. Correcting that impression could be troublesome.
“But you have equipment,” he went on, “to use against mortal servants. We need to be fast, and a gun battle in a vampire lair slows things down. Finding the vamp might take a while, too. They sometimes have hidden rooms, armored strongboxes for coffins, or even converted bomb shelters. I heard of one who laired in an old bank, remodeled it into a house, and the vault became his crypt.”
“Clever,” I admitted. “It won’t stop a determined force, but it might slow them down enough for nightfall.”
“It didn’t,” he told me. “If we’re going to do this, we might be held up during it. If we spend too much time on it, mortal authorities get involved
, from alarms, mortal servants, or just nosy neighbors. If you’ve got any influence, can you keep the cops from coming down on us while we search the place?”
“Has that been the major problem in previous attempts?”
“It’s hard to find their sleeping places, and they’re always guarded, usually hidden.”
“You do know the Black King of Las Vegas is set up in a major hotel, right?”
“Of course,” he sneered. “There are also vampires crawling all over the place. Ten? Fifty? One is bad enough. How many mortals are under their direct control, from a vampire’s gaze or just paid security? And all the police and fire departments ready to drop everything and rush over? Las Vegas is as bad as Santa Carla.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it in surprise. I held it to my ear again.
“Santa Carla actually has a vampire problem?”
“Yes. The place is infested.”
“I’ve heard, but I’ve never been there. Okay. I’ll do the legwork on the locations and give you a few layouts to choose from.”
“You can find them that easily?”
“Sure. Got a spell for it. It works pretty well at short range. That’s one reason I need a test subject: to fine-tune it for long-range detection.”
“Is it unreasonable to ask to be taught the spell?”
“It might take a while. A gadget is easier.”
“I’ll settle for that.”
“You want it as a standard compass, or would you rather have it as a surveyor’s glass? Oh, never mind—I’ll make both. The surveyor’s glass can let you triangulate at long range and you can use the compass to close in.”
“Uh, sure. That sounds good.”
“Once I find some lairs—wait. Where do you want me to look? Los Angeles?”
“I can work in Los Angeles. I have people I can call in to help, there. Me and the boys don’t see much direct action. Will that be a problem?”
“Not at all. But this is important, Theodore, so listen closely: I am trusting you this much because I know you a little and I think you want to be a fair and honorable man. Whoever you bring in on this, I don’t know them, I don’t trust them, and if they try to kill me, our whole deal will blow up. I want to hunt these monsters down and I’m willing to let you have what I learn so you and your friends can hunt them, too. It will all depend on you, though, to keep this joint operation from ending in disaster. Okay?”