I walked close to the bed and put my hand out to shake. "Stan Markowski, Scranton PD, pleased to meet you." I gestured behind me. "And this is my partner, Karl Renfer. He's the one who did the Heimlich on you." Karl came over and shook hands.
"WellI'm grateful to you both," Prescott said. "Thank you for saving me. Thank you very, very much."
Strokes sometimes change people's personalities. If that's what happened here, I figured I was going to like Prescott 2.0 better than the original version.
"What's the last thing you remember?" I asked him. "At the reception, I mean."
Prescott shook his head slowly. "I remember shaking hands and smiling at a lot of people, all of whose faces are just a blur to me now… And I remember there was a bowl of iced shrimp nearby that I was hitting pretty hard. I love shrimp – or, at least I used to. They tell me that's what I was choking on. Must've swallowed too fast." He frowned. "I'm not sure that shrimp, iced or otherwise, will ever be on the menu for me again. We'll see."
"Detective Renfer and I were close by, because we hoped to have a word with you, about a case we're working on," I said, with a straight face. "But you… got into trouble… before we had the chance."
I saw Prescott's eyes narrow as he looked at me.
Uh-oh. It is starting to come back to him?
"Markowski…" he said thoughtfully. "We had a phone conversation, didn't we, a few days before I came north?"
"Yes, sir, that's right. We did."
"I don't remember what we talked about, but I have the vague impression that I was pretty snotty to you." The frown of concentration gave way to a smile. "If so, please accept my apologies. I'm often rude to people, I'm afraid." He was silent for a couple of seconds. "Maybe it's time I stopped."
Karl and I looked at each other. The raised eyebrows he was showing were reflected on my own face.
"Well, I gather it's been a while since your last attempt to talk to me, Detective," Prescott said, "but if it's not too late to help your case, let's give it another try. I believe I owe you, and" – he made a gesture that took in the whole room – "my secretary seems to have cleared my calendar for the rest of the morning."
He started coughing then, a dry hack that sounded loud in the small room. I started toward the nightstand next to his bed, but he waved me away, reached over himself and grabbed a red plastic tumbler full of ice water. After several long sips through the bent straw, he put the tumbler down. The coughing had stopped.
"Sorry," he said. "Throat's still a little raw." Prescott leaned back against the pillows behind him. "So, what is it you wanted to know about?"
"A book that you've translated," I said. "Parts of it, anyway. It's called the Opus Mago."
Prescott looked at me and blinked a couple of times. Then he slowly turned back toward the nightstand, got the tumbler again, and took a long sip of water. I didn't know if he was still thirsty or just buying time.
He put the tumbler back. "Well," he said. "I suppose that explains my rudeness over the phone earlier, not" – he waved a hasty hand – "that it constitutes an excuse."
Prescott stared at me some more. Then he gave a long sigh and said, "Can you tell me why you need to know about this… book? Forgive me if it's ground we've already covered, but…" He made a gesture toward his head.
"No, that's not a problem," I said, then ran it down for him again – the symbols on the corpses, what we'd learned from Vollman, all of it.
Prescott had been studying the backs of his hands during most of my recitation, and he was still looking at them when he said, "I owe my life to both of you. It could have all ended for me on the floor of that banquet room, and what an embarrassment that you'hat would have been."
He looked up then – first at Karl, then at me. "So, in a very real sense, every moment of my life from that point forward is a gift from the gods." A smile came and went. "By way of the Scranton Police Department. And, despite my other failings, I'm a man who pays his debts."
He looked at his hands again, then back at me. "All right, Detective. It doesn't amount to much, but I'll tell you what I know about the Opus Mago."
"Although the book was published in 1640, by a man who was burned at the stake for his trouble, most of its contents are far older. The pages I worked with have passed through who knows how many hands, over who knows how many centuries. Nothing is numbered, so it's difficult to tell what order they are supposed to be in. So I just picked one, more or less at random, and began work.
"It was slow going. Despite the Latin name by which it's known today, most of the book is written in an obscure dialect of Ancient Sumerian that, if I may flatter myself, very few scholars are capable of working with.
"The fragment that came into my possession consists of sixteen pages. I got through six, then stopped. Of the material I did translate, I believe some of it does pertain to this spell or ritual that you've described, which some madman is apparently trying to perform.
"The section I worked on reveals that the total number of sacrifices required is five, and that they all be vampires – although the term used in the text is ghosts who suck blood. And the fifth, final sacrifice must take place as the ritual itself is being performed. A sort of culmination of the vampire bloodletting, if you will. I also get the impression, although the text is ambiguous on this point, that the rite can only be performed successfully by someone who is a worker of magic – which is the Ancient Sumerian term for wizard, and also a ghost who sucks blood. Someone who combines the attributes of both wizard and vampire, if such a thing is even possible."
I looked at Karl, who returned my gaze and probably my expression. "Oh, yeah," I said. "It's possible, all right."
Vollman.
"And that's as much as I know, based on the fragments I've translated," Prescott said.
"Why did you stop?" Karl asked him.
Prescott studied the backs of his hands again, as if he hoped to find the answers to all of life's mysteries written there. Eventually, he looked up.
"I stopped at the sixth page, because of a passage I found there, near the bottom. I believe I can recite it verbatim – God knows I've read it enough times. My little cerebral episode hasn't erased that part of my memory, more's the pity."
Prescott closed his eyes, and when he spoke it was in a different tone from his usual conversational voice.
"Let any man who reveals the secrets of this sacred book to strangers be accursed for all time. He shall be blinded, then castrated, then dismembered, then burned, to serve as instruction and example to any who would dare let these words become known to those uninitiated in our rites."
Prescott opened his eyes again and spoke in his normal voice. "Scary stuff, huh?"
"I guess you took it pretty seriously, then," I said.
"Detective, this is a world in which we find werewolves, vampires, witchcraft, goblins, and I don't know what else. What's in that book is a curse, and yes, I took it seriously."
I nodded. "And yet you just told us everything you found there – all that bears on our case, anyway."
Prescott leaned back and spread his hands. "I'm on borrowed time, remember? By rights, I should be dead and buried by now. That, or a vegetable hooked up to some machine for the next thirty years, until my heart gives out." He put his hands back in his lap. "Besides, it looks as if you've got something pretty nasty brewing here in Scranton. I can't sit by and let it happen – not if I have information that will stop it."
I started to speak, but he held out his hand, like a traffic cop. "I know what you're going to say. What I've given you won't stop what's being prepared by this lunatic Sligo. And you'd be right. But maybe there's something in the rest of the Opus Mago fragment that will."
"Look," I said, "I appreciate the offer, more than you know. But even though you woke up from the coma, you're probably still a sick man. Flying back to Washington-"
"I have no intention of flying back to Washington, at least, not in the near future. The good Dr Santangelo made it
very clear that he wants me to stay under observation, for at least a week. And since I have no desire to suffer another stroke, I'm inclined to agree with him."
Prescott ran a hand slowly through his greasy hair. "But if I call my research assistant at G-town and describe what I need, she'll get it all together, and send it FedEx overnight. That's likely to be expensive as hell-" he grew a little smile "-so I'll let the university pay for it."
The smile became a grin, even if it seemed a little forced. "By tomorrow, or at latest the day after, I should have those fragments here – or rather in my regular hospital room, where I gather I'm headed shortly. I will also have her send the proper dictionaries and any other research tools I can't get off the Internet. I assume they have wi-fi here at the hospital?"
"If they don't, I will personally have it installed for you," I said.
"This kind of work is slow going," he said, "but I'll push as hard as I can, given-" he made the gesture toward his head again "-everything. I know there's a time factor, so we'd best not waste any. In fact, my phone should be in my jacket pocket, which is probably hanging in that little closet over there. If one of you gentlemen would be so kind…"
• • • •
As we pulled out of the hospital parking lot, Karl said, "I'm not too well up on curses. Missed the two lectures on them at the academy, because I got the flu, and never made them up. There was some stuff I was supposed to read on my own, but you know how it is."
"Yeah, I do. There's always something else to think about."
"If the curse Prescott told us about is the real deal, who's gonna carry it out? I mean, the fucking pages aren't gonna grow arms to cut him up and burn him with, are they?"
"Probably not," I told him. "A curse – a real one, not the crap that some gypsies deal in – usually involves a pact with a demon, one that's pretty low in the infernal pecking order. The lower they are, the weaker, and that much easier to summon and control."
"Yeah, I didn't miss Demonology. I know that part."
"Okay, then. So a curse, if it's legit, sets up preconditions for the demon to operate under. It's like one of those old mummy movies you see on TV late at night. A bunch of archeologists find Ramah-HoHaina's burial chamber, and go in for a look-see. And the usual looting, of course."
"'Course," Karl said. "Can't have a mummy movie without looting."
"So, say that back when old Ramah-Ho-Haina dies, the burial party includes a pretty powerful wizard. He puts a curse in place that automatically summons the demon if anybody messes with omb. Doesn't matter if it takes like three thousand years to kick in – demons don't give a shit, they're not going anyplace."
"Yeah, I've seen those movies," Karl said. "The evil spirit follows the scientists home, then does a number on them, one by one."
"Right, and the kind of number it does is one of the things that the wizard set up thousands of years ago."
"So Prescott could be letting himself in for some serious shit, helping us."
I shrugged. "Maybe. Just because some dude writes down that there's a curse doesn't mean there really is one. Still, we better assume the worst."
"But, the hospital's already protected, Stan. It's gotta be. People die in there all the time, and they sure don't want demons hanging around, waiting to grab up somebody's soul."
"Sure, it's protected. But I don't want to take any chances with something like this. We need to get some additional wards placed around Prescott's hospital room. Normally, that would be Rachel's job."
"Yeah, I know. So, we'll have to subcontract it out," Karl said. "I know a couple of first-class witches…"
"Call one of them," I said. "Now."
"We don't have authorization yet, Stan."
"Fuck it – I'll pay for it myself, if McGuire's feeling stingy. Now call, will you?"
Karl opened his phone, but then stopped to look at me. "You really worried about this curse thing?"
"Some," I said. "But it's more than that."
Karl was squinting at his phone's directory. "Like what?"
"I'm thinking about what might happen if Sligo gets wind of what Prescott's up to."
Karl thought for a moment. "He'd probably want to do something about it, wouldn't he?"
"Yeah. Shit, I would, in his place."
"And since we know that, if we were ready for him…"
"Uh-uh. No way, no how. I'm not using the guy as bait. We fuck it up, and Prescott's toast. There's got to be another way to get this fucking Sligo."
"Hope we think of it soon," Karl said, and began to tap in numbers.
At certain times of the day, getting around Scranton is quicker if you use side streets and stay away from the main thoroughfares, such as they are. That's what I was doing, and I managed to get the speed up to about forty while Karl tried to track down a witch who had apparently changed her phone number a couple of times.
A hundred feet or so ahead, a black cat was just starting to lead three of her kittens across the wide street. I'm fond of animals, so I figured I'd better speed up a little – that way, I'd be past them and gone before they reached my side of the road. I could've just slowed down and let then go first, but that would mean a black cat – hell, four of them – would be crossing my path. I'm not superstitious or anything, but I still thought that was a bad idea.
Turned out I was right.
Because if I hadn't speeded up right about then, the dead body that fell on top of us would have gone right through the windshield, instead of just putting a humongous dent in the roof.
Close to two hundred pounds of dead weight moving that fast – it might well have killed one or both of us if it had gone through the glass, or at least hurt us pretty bad.
But we were fine. Being scared shitless doesn't count. Or so they tell me.
I've been around plenty of crime scenes, but this was the first time I found myself the focus of one. Since there was igh place nearby – either manmade or natural – that the guy could have jumped, fell, or been pushed from, the first uniforms on the scene started kicking around the idea that maybe I'd hit a pedestrian who'd been crossing the street – him hard enough with the front bumper to toss his body onto the car's roof. The pricks.
The doc from the M.E.'s office put the kibosh on that pretty soon, though. Even without an autopsy, body temperature showed the dude had been dead for at least two hours.
The M.E.'s guy wasn't a guy this time, but a gal. Instead of Homer, they'd sent a thin, I mean really thin young woman named Cecelia Reynolds. Fine with me – she's as good at pathology as Homer, maybe better. I'm always telling her, in a kidding way, to go eat a cookie, and she usually responds, in an equally joking way, by telling me to go fuck myself.
I was explaining, to the third pair of my brother officers – these two from Homicide – what had happened to Karl and me, when Cecelia called me over. She was squatting over the dead guy, who had come to rest on the asphalt after sliding off the car's roof.
"We're just about to bag him," she said to me, "but I thought you'd be interested in this."
Cecelia tugged on a fresh pair of latex gloves. "It was just a hunch I had," she said, "and turns out, I was right." She leaned forward and used her fingers to peel back the corpse's upper lip.
Fangs. Two nice long, sharp vampire canines.
"Thanks, Cecelia," I said after a moment. "And, listen: I realize you can't undress him here, but when you get him on the table, I'm betting you'll find some weird symbols, probably three of then, carved into the body someplace. If you do, I'd be real grateful if you'd give me a call, okay?"
She looked at me for a couple of seconds before nodding slowly. "Okay, Stan, I'll be sure to do that."
I straightened up and headed back to the Homicide cops to answer more questions. There wasn't any doubt in my mind that Cecelia would find three more of the arcane symbols carved into the dead guy. Because now that I knew he was a vamp, I was also pretty sure I knew something else about him, too.
He was the fourth s
acrifice.
• • • •
Whenever a cop is involved in anything where somebody gets killed, whether it's an officer-involved shooting or something more unusual, like having a dead guy drop out of the sky on you, Internal Affairs takes over – and the only reason we don't call them Infernal Affairs is that we don't want to be insulting to Hell.
I had to relate the details of my current case, over and over, to a couple of IA cops named Famalette and Sullivan. Karl was going through a similar routine down the hall with another pair from the Rat Squad. Maybe my two interrogators figured I'd get sick of the repetition sooner or later, and confess to something, just to make it stop.
But they didn't get any confessions out of me, because I hadn't done anything. And I kept bringing the conversation back to the central fact that the undead guy had been truly dead for at least two hours before he ended up on top of my car, however the hell he got there.
"How do you know the vamp had been iced two hours earlier?" Famalette asked, as if he'd just caught me in a slip-up. He had a rubber band wrapped around the spread fingers of one hand and he kept twanging it with the other. I think Internal Affairs training must include lessons on how to be annoying.
"Because the M.E. doc said so. What's her name – Reynolds."
"The M.E.'s report hasn't even been filed yet," Famalette said, in an a-ha tone.
"She told me at the scene. She knew from the body temp."
"What's she doing revealing confidential information like that to you?"
"She thought I'd be interested," I said, "since I'm the one who had the dead guy dropped on top of him, and all. Well, me and my partner. And who says it's confidential?"
"All M.E. reports are confidential, Markowski, you oughta know that," Famalette said.
"Yeah, but the M.E. report hasn't been filed yet – you said so, yourself."
His face started going red, and he turned away.
"You real chummy with this chick from the M.E.'s office?" Sullivan asked me. He had a Brillo pad of curly hair that reminded me of that singer from the Seventies, Art Garfunkel. I hoped that he wasn't going to break into "Bridge Over Troubled Water" – although even that would have been better than the crap I'd been listening to for the last two hours.
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