Hard Spell ocu-1

by Justin Gustainis

  "I want pretty much the same thing," I said. "Without the histrionics."

  His eyes narrowed. "Why? Because it is just another case you must solve?"

  "That would be enough," I said. "But it's a lot more. Sligo is planning to work a spell from the Opus Mago to do… I don't know what. But it's gotta be pretty powerful, because the recipe calls for five dead vampires. That ring any bells with you?"

  He shook his head, which was now Rachel's head. "My responsibility was not to read the book, even if I could have, but to safeguard it."

  I thought about saying, Yeah, and you did a hell of a job. But a cheap shot like that would just piss him off, and I expect he'd been thinking about it, anyway. Maybe that was part of what was fueling his rage: the knowledge that Sligo had made Kulick betray his trust.

  "Well, he's got something big and bad in the works, and I have to stop him," I said. "Oh, and he keeps trying to kill"

  He made with the eyebrows again. "Does he, indeed? How many attempts?"

  "Two – so far."

  "And yet, here you are before me. Good – that means you are resourceful. You will be a useful ally."

  "I'm not your ally, pal – not until you let go of Rachel." And not even then, fuckwad – but I thought it best to keep that last thought to myself.

  Kulick/Rachel looked at me as if he'd suddenly realized he was conversing with the village idiot. "What would you have me do? Simply leave this body and float away into eternity, my revenge unfulfilled? I am curious about what comes after this life, and I shall satisfy that curiosity, once I have exacted vengeance. But for now, this woman is useful to me, and I will not leave her. But you can speak to her, if you wish."

  The face changed in small ways, to become completely Rachel's. She blinked a couple of times, then said urgently, in Rachel's voice, "Kill me, Stan – do it now! It's the only way. He's got to be stopped, before he destroys-"

  Her mouth closed, and after a moment the face began its subtle transformation again.

  "'Kill me, Stan'?" The deeper voice was mocking. "Is that what you intend to do – assuming I would permit you?"

  I didn't know whether I had it in me to carry out Rachel's plea or not, but I couldn't do it now, anyway – Kulick was ready for me to try. He probably had a defensive spell set to go at an instant's notice.

  "No," I said, keeping most of what I felt out of my voice.

  "Good," he said, putting a tiny smile on Rachel's face. "Then we are allies, after all."

  He reached into the pocket of Rachel's wide skirt and removed something shiny that he tossed to me.

  It looked like half an amulet. Whole, it would be the size of a half-dollar. It had words engraved on it that looked like ancient Greek, and part of a symbol that I didn't recognize.

  "It is imbued with a finding spell," Kulick said. "I retain the other half. When you have located this Sligo, or whatever his name might be, hold this between your thumb and forefinger. Say my full name – George Harmon Thraxis Kulick – aloud five times. At the fifth utterance, I will join you."

  I studied the half-amulet a second longer, then slipped it into my pocket. "All right," I said. "Anything else?"

  Kulick stared at me with those insane eyes. "Give me what I want, and I will return this woman to you, unharmed. But you may think to deny me my vengeance, perhaps by refusing to use that amulet at the crucial hour. Understand this, policeman: if Sligo escapes, or dies by any hand but mine, I shall have no further use for this woman's body."

  He touched one of Rachel's breasts, and I wondered if he was enjoying feeling himself up.

  "I will depart her, to see what awaits me on the other side. But before I do, I will soak her in gasoline. And my last act in this vessel will be to light a match. Do we understand each other?"

  God almighty, just let me kill this fucker right now. All I said was, "Completely."

  Then the ugly image of Rachel burning stirred my memory of something else. "You should know, there are a couple of witchfinders in town, hired by the mayor. I guess you realize what'll happen, if they get their hands on you – her."

  A smile crossed the face that was and was not Rachel's. "Witchfinders? How quaint. Well, if they should succeed in locating this particular witch, they will have scant time to wish that they had failed to do so."

  Rachel's bod detached itself from the retaining wall and headed toward the elevator. "Goodbye, detective," Kulick's voice said. "I'm sure that you will be in touch."

  Once the elevator doors closed, I dashed for my car and headed for the exit. Driving as fast as I could without the telltale noise of tires squealing, I made it to the exit gate and showed my badge to the sleepy-looking teenage attendant. "Open it! Now!"

  As soon as I'd made my turn out of the garage, I was scanning the street for Rachel. If I could follow her to where she and Kulick were holed up, I might… oh, hell, I didn't know what I could do. But knowledge is power, and I'd had damn little power in this situation from the beginning.

  I didn't gain any more this time, either. I circled the block twice, then checked the side streets and alleys, with no sight of Rachel.

  It was then I realized that the phone in my coat pocket was vibrating, and had been, off and on, for quite some time.

  As I pulled into the nearest parking space, I realized that I had actually gained two things from the encounter on the roof. One was that I now held half of an amulet with a finding spell connecting me to George Kulick. I don't know much abut finding spells, but I was betting the connection ran both ways. A good witch could tell me whether that was true, and what to do if it was.

  The second thing is that the bastard had given me his true name: George Harmon Thraxis Kulick. "Thraxis" must have been the name he took when they put that tattoo on his hand. It had to be legit, or the finding spell wouldn't work. Names are important in magic, I knew that much – and now I had his.

  I opened my phone and put it to my ear. "Markowski."

  "Stan, are you all right?" It was Karl's voice.

  "Yeah, I'm okay. Sorry I'm late getting in to work, but something pretty weird happened."

  "I was startin' to get worried, since you'd made a big deal of wanting to start our shift at 1:00, and it's almost 2:00. When you didn't check in by 1:30, I started calling you, but got no answer – until now, anyway."

  "I didn't have a chance to call in," I said. "I encountered something interesting on the way to work – look, I'll tell you when I see you."

  "Something about our case?"

  "Yeah, kinda. I don't want to discuss it on the phone, okay?" Not with the witchfinders after Rachel, I didn't.

  "Okay, sure. As long as everything's cool."

  "I'm fine, Karl. See you at the squad in ten minutes."

  "No, you won't."

  "Say again?"

  "I'm in our new unmarked car – well, new for us, anyway – on the road, trailing behind the SWAT van."

  "What? Why? What happened?" I asked.

  "The arrest warrant for Jamieson Longworth finally came through, that's what happened. Since the little bastard may have been associating with a black magician, McGuire figured that SWAT ought to serve it. But I wanted to be there when they do, and I figured you would, too."

  "Fuckin' A right, I would."

  "So I'll meet you at the staging area, which is gonna be one block south of Longworth's crib, at the Rite-Aid lot. You remember the address?"

  "It's 157 Spruce, right? I'm on my way."

  "Ten-four."

  Ten-four. Yeah, Karl loves shit like that.

  I turned into the parking lot of the Rite-Aid drugstore just as the black, windowless SWAT van was coming to a stop. I parked nearby and walked over.

  Scranton PD can't afford to maintain a full-time Sacred Weapons and Tactics unit. It just isn't needed often enough to be cost-effective. So, when there's a mission, the commander has to send out a call-up. All SWAT-trained officers on duty, and several affiliated members of the clergy, leave whatever they're doing to
convene at police HQ. There they strap on their gear, receive a situation briefing, and get their orders.

  SWAT doesn't roll for just any dicey set of circumstances. Black-and-white units can handle 90 percent of what happens, and if there's an extraordinary situation involving human perps, they send the TRU (Tactical Response Unit). But if you've got a barricaded ogre, or a hostage situation with werewolf involvement, or you have to serve a warrant on a powerful witch or wizard, then the SWAT team will get the job done. One way or another.

  The back of the van opened and a tall, lean guy in black fatigues and a matching baseball cap stepped out. Lieutenant Frank Dooley has been SWAT commander for the past four years. To look at him, you'd never know that he did a year and a half at the seminary before realizing he had a different vocation. Come to think of it, the outfits of both jobs are pretty similar, give or take the hat.

  I saw Karl come around the van from the other side. Inside, several black-clad figures were moving around putting on spell-dispelling body armor, checking their weapons, and probably saying lastminute prayers. Even the non-clergy SWAT guys are a religious bunch. I guess they have to be.

  "I devoutly wish we had better intel about what we're likely to be facing in there," Dooley said to Karl and me.

  "I told you what we know, Lieutenant," Karl said. "I admit it ain't much."

  Dooley unbuttoned the flap on his breast pocket and pulled out a notebook. He opened it, flipped past a couple of pages, then frowned at the page he'd stopped at.

  "Condo's owned by one J. Longworth." He looked up. "Any relation to the Longworths? The rich ones?"

  "Their son," I told him.

  "Oh, good," he said with a smile. "I just love busting me some rich bitches." Dooley grew up shantytown Irish, and never quite got over his resentments. "Hmmm. Cultist." He was looking at the notebook again. "Busted for summoning demons and murder of a known prostitute." He looked at me. "That what you figure we're likely to be up against? A demon?"

  "No reason to think so," I said. "But Longworth is believed to have been associating with a vampire/wizard named Sligo. There's no way of knowing if he's taught young Jamieson any tricks, or even if he's in there with him. But both those things are possible."

  "Um." Dooley wrote something in the notebook and put it away. "If the wizard's also one of the undead, we know what he'll be doing at this hour." He glanced up at the sky, where the sun was shining through a nearly cloudless sky. "And we've dealt with wannabe wizards before, too. Excuse me." He turned and went back into the van.

  "Took that warrant long enough to come through," I said to Karl.

  "McGuire thinks that Mrs. Longworth tried to stop it. Maybe she put out the word that any judge who signed the arrest warrant on sonny-boy was going to be running against a very well-funded opponent next time out."

  "Olszewski would've signed it," I said. "He doesn't give a shit. Anyway, he's what Rachel calls my paisan."

  "You're probably right. But his mother, who's in Florida, had a heart attack, or something. He just got back last night – and signed the warrant this morning."

  "Speaking of Rachel reminds me," I said, "you need to w what went down while I was on my way to work today."

  I took Karl aside and gave him the short version of what had happened at the parking garage.

  "Well, doesn't that just suck dog cock," he said. "You either tell him where Sligo is, assuming we ever find the motherfucker, or he turns Rachel into a human torch."

  "Yeah," I said, "but there's a couple of other-"

  I stopped because Dooley had come out of the black van again, and this time the rest of his team followed him. SWAT was ready to rock and roll.

  The first black-clad figure out after Dooley was Heidi Renfer, who was Karl's cousin. She had the same long, lean build, although I sometimes wondered if her supe-proof vest had to be custom-made to accommodate those formidable breasts. She was carrying a Benelli combat shotgun as her primary, and I knew it was loaded with a mixture of doubleought buck, rock salt, and BB-sized balls of silver, all blessed by a priest.

  Like everybody on the team, she wore a set of vision-enhancing/protective goggles around her neck and a wide belt encircled her hips. The belt held the holster for her backup weapon – Heidi favored a big. 50 magnum Desert Eagle loaded with explosive rounds. It also held a can of Supe Repellant Spray (silver nitrate suspended in holy water), silverplated handcuffs made of cold iron, a tactical radio, and a couple of pouches that might contain anything – from extra ammo to field dressings imbued with a healing spell.

  Heidi smiled and waved at Karl, but ignored me, which good-looking women have a habit of doing. Give or take Lacey Brennan.

  Next out was a blocky guy in his thirties named Van Cleef. He looked like he had barely made the minimum height requirement of 5'8". Seeing him next to Heidi Renfer's 6'1" was enough to make you smile, but something about Van Cleef's face discouraged you from making jokes about it to him. Maybe it was the long puckered scar that ran from his forehead almost to his chin. He had an H amp;K MP5 assault weapon slung over his shoulder and carried the big door-busting sledge that was a vital part of SWAT's equipment. I'd heard that, during a breach, he always volunteered to be the first one through the door, and the others were happy to leave that hazardous job to him. I'm pretty sure if he was 6'4", he wouldn't feel he had so much to prove.

  He was followed by a Jesuit named Garrett who taught theology at the U. Garrett could have served on the prayer team and done a lot of good that way, but he'd volunteered for the combat training, and come out near the top of his class.

  A lot of Jesuits are badasses – I think it's part of their image. Their founder, St Ignatius of Loyola, was a soldier before he got religion, and the Jebs have never completely abandoned that military mindset.

  Garrett carried a mini-flamethrower strapped on his back, the nozzle held in one asbestos-gloved hand. Some supes are vulnerable to silver, others to holy water or garlic, or cold iron. But fire will stop practically anything.

  Then came Shiro Kyotake, who was born in Yokahama and speaks better English than I do. He studied the sword under a master in Japan and was the team's edged-weapons specialist. There aren't too many supe species that can survive decapitation, and Shiro can take the head off an ogre so fast the thing will be almost too surprised to fall down. He makes jokes about being descended from a long line of ninjas. But I've seen him at work with that long, curved blade, and I'm not sure he's really kidding. And he can throw a knife better than anyone I've ever seen.

  After that came someone I didn't know. Make that two someones. The human, who was dressed like the rest of the team, had wavy blond hair cold irona muscular upper body. I couldn't see his eyes, since they were hidden behind a pair of wraparound sunglasses. The backup weapon in his belt holster looked like a Colt Python. 357 Magnum, the only revolver I'd seen among this crew. The guy wasn't carrying a heavier weapon, but I knew he wasn't unarmed. His primary was the dog.

  Instead of a leash, the blond guy had attached to the animal's collar a four-foot length of chain that would not have looked out of place attached to a tow truck. He had the other end wrapped a couple of turns around his left hand, which was encased in a heavy leather glove.

  Far as I know, the dog breed that comes closest to resembling what I was looking at is the Neapolitan mastiff. A cousin of mine used to own one, although he always used to say that it owned him. The SWAT dog, which must have weighed close to two hundred pounds, had the same black fur, floppy ears, and wrinkled face that you find with Neapolitans. But this animal also had a tuft of red fur that ran from its neck along the spine and all the way to its tail. Its teeth looked to be about twice as long as an ordinary dog's, and three times as sharp. And I saw that the eyes atop its huge muzzle glowed bright red, which you never see on anything that comes from this world.

  Without taking my eyes off this apparition, I quietly said to Dooley, "Since when did you guys start using a Hellhound?"

  "She's been o
n the team about six weeks now," he said.

  " She?"

  "Yeah, you have to use females," he said. "The males are just too big and dangerous."

  I tried to imagine one of these things that would be even larger and more frightening than what I was looking at now.

  "Kind of an experiment," Dooley went on, "but it's working out pretty well, so far. They can sniff out any species of supe, no matter what kind they are, or where they try to hide. We were using electronic detectors before, and the fucking things just weren't reliable. But Daisy never lets us down."

  " Daisy."

  Dooley shrugged. "That's what Sam named her," he said. "He's her handler. Bought her from some wizard and raised her from a pup."

  "I'm sure he did." And I bet she gets to go outside whenever she fucking well wants, too.

  The last SWAT team member out of the van was Spencer, one of the few African-Americans on the Scranton PD. I don't think it's racism – the Wyoming Valley just doesn't have a real big black population. Spencer was a sniper, a skill he'd picked up in the Marines, and the USMC Scout Sniper Program sets their standards high. I'd once asked him if that was why he'd been drawn to SWAT and he'd replied, "Nah, don't you read the comics, man? You ever seen a bunch of badass superheroes like this without a brother on the crew? Shit, it'd be unAmerican." Spencer likes to talk street, but I knew that both his parents were doctors. He went to some exclusive prep school before graduating to join the Marines, much to Mom and Dad's disappointment. He's about as ghetto as the Prince of Wales.

  After the tactical people came the prayer team. Their job it was to counter any black magic that was operating, or might be invoked, within the team's perimeter. Reverend Greene was a Baptist minister, O'Connell was another Jesuit from the U, and Rabbi Zimmerman could usually be found at Temple Beth Shalom, until there was a SWAT call-up. A Buddhist monk, Quan Tranh Han, had been part of the team until last year, when he died of cancer.

  As members of the Supe Squad, Karl and I were authorized to go along on the raid, as long as we didn't get in the way. As Dooley liked to say, "We'll send for you when it's safe."