I'd told Karl I wanted to check my voicemail, and why. He said he'd start going through the files, to see if he could find a connection between Sligo and Jamieson Longworth. Then he reminded me that sunset was about an hour away. "You've got an appointment, in the parking lot," he said.
"Yeah," I said, "if she shows up."
"She seemed pretty definite about it this morning. Think she'd change her mind?"
"No, I'm just hoping that Longworth's threat turns out to be empty bullshit, that's all."
"Yeah, I know," he said. "Don't forget, I'm going down with you when it's time. Help you wait."
I nodded my thanks. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
"To access your voicemail messages, please press 8." The computer's recorded voice was as polite as ever. I touched 8.
"Please enter your four-digit extension number."
4294
"Please enter your security code."
3475833
"You have eight new messages. These are your options while listening. To listen to a message, press 5. To go back to the beginning of a message, press 7. To delete a message, press 2 twice. To save a message, press 4. To advance to the next message, press 3. To end this session, press 9 twice. Ready."
5
"Going to the first new message."
"Sergeant, this is Sonia, over in Human Resources. Your leave record for last month hasn't been-"
22
3
"Stanley, this is Father Cebula at St Casimir's. We've got the annual Corpus Christi banquet coming up-"
22
3
"Hey, Stan – Lacey. What do you get when you cross a female ogre with a werewolf? You-"
4
3
"Mr Markowski, this is Rob at Nationwide Insurance. I see you've got a birthday coming up soon, and I'd like to talk-"
22
3
"Sergeant, this is Ben Prescott, calling from my lovely new digs – let's see, it's room 333. The material I asked my assistant at G-town to send me arrived via FedEx early this morning, including the remaining fragments of the Opus Mago that I had yet to translate. I went right to work, and I'm pleased to say that it went faster than I'd anticipated. Maybe my brain is a little sharper from its long rest while I was comatose.
"I should probably wait until you get over here to fill you in on what I've been able to make of this, but I'm pretty excited – and more than a little disturbed, frankly. Anyway, I thought I would get the gist of it to you now, in case that curse we talked about earlier turns out to be real, ha ha.
"Most of what I've learned about this spell you're interested in deals with the final stage. By the way, the fifth sacrifice, the final vampire killing, is supposed to take place as part of the actual ritual. The other four are prologues, as it were.
"All right, let's see here. The book specifies that the spell must take place near water. Still water, that is not of the sea. Meaning, not salt water. The other requirement is that the ritual be carried out on the first night of the full moon, at the 'turn of time' – which, given the context, I would say refers to midnight.
"Um, that's followed by a long incantation the practitioner is supposed to recite, that's probably of little interest to you… Okay, here's something: I expect you'll want to know what all of this is in aid of – the purpose ofthe spell, as it were. Well, that would be, in a word: transformation. If the ritual, which is supposed to be one of extreme difficulty, by the way, is carried out in the proper manner, all the magical I's dotted and T's crossed, and so on, the vampire/wizard conducting-"
"The disk space allotted for this message has been filled. To listen to the next message, press 3."
Goddamn motherfucking cocksucker shit!!
3!
"Advancing to the next new message."
"Prescott again, Sergeant. Sorry about that. Longwindedness is an occupational hazard of academe.
"All right, now, where was – oh, right. Transformation. According to this, the practitioner will be transformed into… this next word is a double compound, and the grammar is confusing, but I've rendered it as 'a creature of both night and day.' The fragment says the one casting the spell will 'walk under the sun without fear.' I suppose if you were a vampire, that would be a pretty desirable thing, wouldn't it?
"Oh, and it gets better – better, I mean from the perspective of the vampire. It says that, after the transformation, the practitioner will 'fear not holy things, nor fire, nor sharp branches.' Would that be wooden stakes, do you suppose? I guess that would make the guy some sort of 'super-vampire,' wouldn't it?
"That goes on for a while, then four lines further down it says that this one who 'walks under, or beneath, the sun without fear,' can drink the blood of others and thereby make them 'brothers, or brethren, like himself.'
"I'm not sure what to make of that one – you're probably a better judge than I, since you deal with this kind of thing all the time. I mean, everybody knows that vampires can reproduce by exchanging blood with one of their victims, presumably willing ones. Nothing new there. Or could it mean that once transformed, this 'super-vampire' can make others like himself, just by biting them? I suppose the blood exchange is assumed there, too.
"Quite the spell this guy's got here. No wonder it's supposed to be so hard. He turns himself into a vampire without vulnerabilities, then can pass that on to others in the usual vampiric way? Sounds like a bad James Bond movie, if that's not redundant, but with fangs. You could create a whole army of – Jesus Christ, what the fuck? Who are you? How'd you get in here? Stay back! The… the power of Christ compels you! Get away from me, get away get awayyyyy…"
Then there was nothing but the screaming.
99
"Session terminated. Goodbye."
" How'd you get in here? Stay back! The- "
"You can stop there and log out," I said to McGuire. "The rest is… just screaming." I tried to keep what I was feeling out of my voice, and off my face. I'm a cop – we're supposed to be good at that.
I may not have succeeded completely, because McGuire looked at me closely before he disconnected from my voicemail. I'd told him about Prescott's messages, so he'd asked me to retrieve them again but from his phone, to play over the speaker.
I glanced over at Karl, who was in McGuire's other visitor's chair. He looked like a guy with a bad stomachache – but whether that was from Prescott's discovery or from his screams, I didn't know.
McGuire was staring at the phone as if it were his worst enemy. He didn't look away from it as he said, "Super-vampire, huh?"
"It sounds kind of stupid when you call it that," I said. "But, still…"
"Yeah," McGuire said. "But, still…"
"And first night of the full moon," Karl said.
I hadn't had to look it up – none of us had. Everybody in the Supe Squad always knows when the full moon is due.
"Tonight," I said.
A good piece of the squad room's west wall is taken up with a map of the city and surrounding area. McGuire, Karl, and I stood looking at it, and what we saw did not make us happy.
All those lakes.
"Fuck," Karl said.
All those ponds.
"Fuck," McGuire said.
All those swimming pools.
"Motherfuck," I said.
"There's no way we're going to get surveillance of all those bodies of water," McGuire said. "We couldn't do it even if we knew what to look for, which we don't – or even if we had the entire U.S. Air Force at our disposal, which we sure as shit don't."
"So we can't find him by air," I said. "That's a fact. We'll have to approach it some other way."
"If you've got any ideas, you'll find me an eager audience," McGuire said.
I just shook my head, but Karl said, "There is one thing."
McGuire and I both turned to stare at him.
"Seems to me that Stan here has an appointment with a certain young lady, in about…" Karl looked out the window, at
the setting sun. "…ten minutes or so. She said something just before dawn today, gave us the impression she might know where Sligo's daytime crib is."
McGuire looked at me with raised eyebrows. "You've got a snitch – somebody who'll give up Sligo?"
"Not exactly," I said. "But sort of."
"Who do you-" McGuire started, then I saw the light dawn. "Oh. You mean…" He flipped a glance toward Karl.
"It's all right," I said. "He's met Christine." There are some secrets you shouldn't hide from your boss, and Christine was one I hadn't kept from McGuire. I'd trusted him to keep his mouth shut about her, and he always had.
"We were talking to Christine this morning, and it occurred to me to ask her about Sligo. It seemed like she knew something, but then she had to leave, pretty quickly." I made a head gesture toward the window, where a sliver of sun could still be seen.
"You know," Karl said, "it occurs to me that even if she can give us Sligo's resting place, the motherfucker'll be gone by the time anybody could get there, and we can't wait until he comes back for beddy-bye at dawn. It'll all be over by then, one way or another."
"But if we know where he's been, maybe we can figure out where he went, if we move fast," I said.
McGuire nodded. "Then you'd better get your ass downstairs," he said. "Don't you think?"
Karl and I stood quietly near the fence in the gathering dark, listening to the crickets and trying not to think about the ugly death of Benjamin Prescott, PhD. I don't know about Karl, but my efforts weren't exactly a howling success – more like a screaming failure.
"So," I said after a while, "how 'bout those Mets, huh?"
Karl doesn't follow baseball, and neither do I. He likes hockey, and I've been a Knicks fan since I was a kid and got to watch the team hold their pre-season training camp at the U.
That thing about the Mets is just something I say to fill awkward silences, and Karl knew it. He came back with his standard response: "Get a couple of good trades, and they could go all the way this year."
We waited some more, not talking to ntil Karl said, "I'd say it's full dark, Stan."
"Yeah."
"Probably has been, the last ten minutes or so."
"Yeah."
We listened to the crickets for a while longer.
Karl said, "Could be she's not coming, Stan."
"Yeah."
More crickets.
"Maybe we oughta go back inside, tell McGuire."
"Okay." I still didn't move.
"Could be lotsa reasons she didn't show," Karl said. "Doesn't have to mean she's in trouble."
I whirled to face him, and my voice was ugly when I said, "Jesus, what do you think, Karl? That maybe she found herself a nice boyfriend? That she couldn't make it because tonight's the junior fucking prom?"
Karl didn't tell me to go fuck myself. He didn't even turn and walk away. He just stood there, looking at me. It was too dark to see his expression, but his posture didn't look like somebody who's pissed off and ready to fight.
I stood there and listened to myself breathe for a while, a sound I used to be pretty fond of.
"I'm sorry, man," I said quietly. "I got no right to talk to you like that. I guess I'm just…"
"I know," Karl said. "Forget it." He gave me a few more seconds, then said, "You feel like going inside now?"
"Yeah, might as well," I said. "She isn't coming."
We went back to the squad and found that we had a visitor.
It was Vollman.
I turned to Louise the Tease. My voice rising, I said, "I thought I told you-"
Vollman held up a hand, palm toward me. "Please, Sergeant, do not chastise this beautiful young woman. I have literally arrived within the last minute."
I looked back at Louise, who nodded quickly. "I was just looking up your cell number," she said. "Honest."
"Okay. Sorry, Louise," I said.
I politely asked Vollman to accompany us back to our part of the squad room. I was going to be very courteous to the old vampire/wizard – right up to the moment when I found an excuse to pound a two-foot stake deep into his aged, undead heart.
I was in kind of a bad mood.
As we approached our desks, McGuire came to his office door and looked our way. I shook my head, but then used it to gesture in Vollman's direction. McGuire nodded and went back to his desk. He'd understood what I meant: we'd missed one source of information, but just gained another one. Maybe.
Everybody sat down, Karl and me facing Vollman from maybe ten feet apart. He looked pretty much the same as last time, although the shirt was different – a pale green number with little roses all over it that had probably been the height of fashion just after the war. The Civil War, I mean.
"Been a while, Mr Vollman," I said. "We were beginning to think you didn't like us anymore."
The old face grew a tiny little smile. "Two charming young gentlemen such as yourselves? The very idea is absurd."
Never try sarcasm on a five hundred year-old vampire.
"We haven't got time to fuck around," I said, "so I'm going to take a risk and be totally honest with you about the situation we're facing here – as much as we know of it. I say it's a risk, because I'm pretty damn sure you haven't been honest with us, so far."
Vollman's bushy eyebrows made a slow climb toward his hairline.
"I'm not saying you atively lied to us, but you've withheld information, for reasons of your own. I'm pretty sure if we knew everything you could have told us a week ago, we would have closed this case already, and a pretty good man would have been spared a really ugly death."
"Indeed?" Vollman said softly. "I am sorry to hear of that."
"Maybe you are, maybe you're not. For all I know, you think of humans as nothing more than blood bags with legs. Some vamps do, I know."
Vollman frowned at that, but kept quiet.
"But it doesn't matter," I said. "Because a wizard named Sligo, who is also a vampire – you know, like you – is probably going to attempt a complex and nasty ritual at midnight, near some body of still water."
"And if he pulls it off, the result could be very, very bad," Karl said.
" Very bad is an understatement," I said. "The bastard will have the power to create a whole new race of vampires that'll be invulnerable to everything – sunlight, stakes, crucifixes, the whole nine yards."
"And that will fuck up the world for everybody, Mr Vollman," Karl said. "Old-style nosferatu like you will probably become an endangered species – just like humans."
Vollman nodded gravely. "I will give you my pledge to listen closely to all that you gentlemen have to say. Beyond that, I can make no promises."
I sat there, and if looks could kill, the old bastard would have a long sharp piece of polished oak sticking out of his chest right that second.
I wasn't sure what I hated more – the old vamp, or the fact that at this moment, we needed him. Needed him bad.
Vollman let out the little smile again. "I understand, Sergeant. You despise me, and you despise having to depend on me – for anything, even information. It is a very… human reaction, and one that I am not unused to."
I blinked a couple of times, and my voice was husky with anger when I said, "You read minds, do you? I wasn't aware that was one of the vampire talents."
"Not minds, Sergeant – merely faces." Vollman shrugged. "I wonder if it has occurred to you that I am here this evening precisely because I am, however unfortunately, dependent on you." He leaned forward in his chair, and I swear I heard those old bones creak. "And in at least one respect we are in agreement, gentlemen: we do not have time to fuck around."
He sat back, hands folded in his lap, waiting.
I took one very deep breath, and tried to imagine that all the hatred and fear and frustration would leave my body with the air I was going to expel. Then I breathed out, told myself that it had worked, and got down to business with the vampire.
Karl and I took turns running it down for him, as q
uickly as we could without leaving out any essential facts. Once it was all out there, I said, "So we've got to find Sligo, and stop him, before midnight which is-" I checked my watch "-about four and a half hours from right now." It occurred to me that my last sentence sounded like something from a bad Fifties horror movie, accompanied by a melodramatic soundtrack riff. In my job, reality is sometimes like a bad movie – and sometimes it's worse. At least the movie usually has a happy ending.
Vollman had been leaning forward in his chair, folded hands between his knees, looking at whichever of us was speaking. Now he sat back, intertwined fingers beneath his chin, the classic pose of Man Thinking. I wondered if he'd been on the stage at some point during his long life – no matinee performances, of course.
Now he lowered the hands, signaling that he had reached decision. "I told you once," he said, "that I had become a vampire, unwillingly, in the year 1512. That was the truth. I neglected to mention that, at the time of my… transformation, I had a son, Richard." He pronounced it Reek-ard, the way the Germans do.
"I had raised him myself," Vollman went on. "His mother died in childbirth, not an uncommon occurrence at that time. I was a skilled wizard, and might have saved her, but she gave birth earlier than expected, while I was away on business.
"So, I raised the boy alone, with the assistance of a series of paid wet nurses, nannies, and tutors. When he reached his majority, he told me that he wished to learn the art of magic, under my tutelage."
Vollman made a wry face. "What father would not be pleased to find that his son wished to emulate him by choosing the same profession? So I began his instruction – which, to do properly, takes several years. We were already well along, when I fell victim to attack by a nosferatu. And you should understand this about our kind, Sergeant, if you do not know it already: an honorable vampire, when he turns another, becomes in effect a Father in Darkness, incurs certain obligations. He must stay to teach the newborn nosferatu how to live his new, and very different, life."
"From what I've heard," Karl said, "it doesn't always happen that way."
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