Lord of the Wings

by Donna Andrews

  “But if you stay here, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out if they’ve caught the stupid LARPers who tripped me,” Michael protested.

  “And it could be a while before Dr. Sengupta gets here,” Dad said. “You go handle your Goblin Patrol duties. I’ll keep you posted on everything that happens here, and you can tell me what you learn at the station.”

  They both looked so determined that I gave in.

  “Okay,” I said. “But call me the minute Dr. Sengupta arrives. Or if anything else happens.”

  “Absolutely,” Dad said.

  “Of course,” Michael said. “And now that your dad has given me some pain meds, I’ll probably just go to sleep anyway.”

  So an hour or so after I’d arrived, I walked out of the hospital and turned left, toward the police station, which was only a few blocks away. The parking lot where we’d left the car was only a few blocks beyond that, and once I got to the police station, I could probably beg a ride from someone if I didn’t feel like walking the rest of the way.

  We were a few streets from the town square, but the noise still carried. Rancid Dread, an inexplicably popular local heavy metal band, was playing a concert in the town square tonight. The high-pitched squealing of the Dreads’ guitars, and the incessant throbbing of their bass line carried easily, interspersed with the cheering of the crowds.

  But wait—should they still be playing? If the concert ran past its agreed-upon midnight end time, we’d hear from everyone within earshot—which could mean half the county.

  I pulled out my phone and glanced at the time. How could it possibly be just a little past eleven?

  On impulse, I took a slight detour past the town square so I could see how the concert was going over. Either distance was kind to the Dreads’ music or they had been practicing a lot more since the last time I’d been unable to avoid hearing them.

  Amazing to see hundreds of costumed revelers either dancing in the town square or sitting on the courthouse steps, apparently enjoying themselves. The Dreads were all dressed in Goth-style Halloween costumes and flamboyant facial makeup, so if you were stone deaf you might think, just for a moment, that you were at an early KISS concert. They had improved a bit—musically at least. And with the costumes on, they didn’t look nearly as weedy and disheveled as usual. Of course, their lead singer still enunciated so badly that it took me several bars to realize that they were doing a cover version of The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm.” Not a tune I could ever have imagined a heavy metal band playing until I heard the Dreads’ hideous version of it. And unfortunately it seemed to be one of their signature numbers.

  The song reached a crescendo, increasing in volume so much that I decided maybe I should continue assessing their progress from a few blocks away. I turned and collided with a human being almost the size of a Dumpster. Ragnar. Now that Blake’s Brigade was guarding the zoo, I’d reassigned Osgood and Ragnar to patrol the town square. Though I thought their shift had ended hours ago.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Are you still on duty?”

  “Is okay,” Ragnar said. “I am technically off duty now, but I do not think the town square should be unguarded. And I like to listen.”

  He sounded rather wistful.

  “By the way,” I said. “If you happen to see the annoying Lydia anywhere, let the police know.”

  “Is she a suspect?” From his expression, I suspected he would be neither surprised nor unhappy if she was.

  “No idea,” I said. “All I know is she’d better have a good excuse for disappearing all this time, or she will not be around to organize next year’s festival.”

  “Awesome,” Ragnar said. “And if she leaves, perhaps next year we can have a small haunted house in Dr. Smoot’s house and a big one in mine. And also perhaps by this time next year I will have another band to play with here in the square.”

  “I thought you were retired.”

  “Oh, not to make records with,” he said. “Just to play for fun.”

  He was still looking longingly at the stage. An idea struck me. I peered at the stage until I spotted one of my Goblin Patrol members guarding the steps at one side of it. I texted the goblin and gave him a few instructions.

  I watched as he darted over to Orvis Shiffley, the Dreads’ drummer. They exchanged a few words. Orvis surged forward from behind his drums, grabbed the microphone from the lead singer, and began to address the crowd.

  “I have some awesome news,” he said. “Right here in the audience tonight we have a living legend … a musician who’s been an inspiration to our whole band. And word is that maybe we could get him to play a few numbers with us. Ladies and gentlemen—Ragnar Ragnarsen!”

  I could tell from the expressions on the faces on the audience members near me that most of them either hadn’t ever heard of Ragnar or were under the understandable impression that he’d succumbed to drink, drugs, or fast cars, like the rest of his former bandmates. But they all applauded good-naturedly.

  “Me?” Ragnar looked at me as if asking permission.

  “The Dreads are asking for you,” I said.

  He lumbered off toward the stage, beaming like a grade schooler who has just been asked to hang out with the cool kids on the playground. By the time he reached the stage, the roadies—several of Orvis’s uncles and older cousins—had pushed a spare drum set out of the wings. No doubt they kept one in reserve, in case Orvis demolished the primary one with the fury of his solos.

  I waited long enough to verify that adding an unfamiliar and completely unrehearsed musician to their band didn’t appreciably affect the quality of the Dreads’ music. Only the decibel level. And Ragnar, who had been looking like a mistreated puppy, was in his element. I retreated from the town square and walked the few more blocks between me and the police station.

  Only a few police vehicles occupied the parking lot, and those appeared to be only touching down in between patrols.

  Inside the station, Jabba the Hutt had been replaced by a slender, balding, hollow-chested Superman whom I recognized as the relatively new civilian receptionist.

  “Ms. Langslow,” he said. “Shall I ask if the chief is available?”

  “He’s expecting me,” I said as I breezed past.

  If it ever came to leaping tall buildings in defense of the station, Superman wasn’t going to be much help. I was already halfway down the hallway before he gathered his wits together to protest.

  “Ms. Langslow.” Chief Burke was in his office, talking to Randall, and neither seemed surprised to see me. “Good. Horace is still out at the barn, but he should be back soon. I want him to photograph your wound. How is Michael?”

  “Simple fracture,” I said. “Dad’s staying with him.”

  “That’s a relief. So, Meg, to bring you up to speed, your assailant is a Mr. Norton Brewer, a nineteen-year-old computer science major at the University of Richmond. His parents have been contacted. They were unaware that he was here in Caerphilly and have agreed to let Festus Hollingsworth represent him for the time being. Festus is on his way. So is the county attorney. In the meantime—”

  “Chief?” It was Superman on the intercom. “I have some people here who want to see you.”

  “What people?” the chief barked.

  “They say they’re the elders of the Clan Raven,” Superman said. “It’s some kind of vampire thing.”

  The chief paused and looked at me and Randall. Randall shrugged. I nodded.

  “Escort them back here,” the chief said into the intercom.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s the group your prisoner belongs to,” I said when the intercom was off again. “He said Clan Raven were in charge of the decorations.”

  “Why don’t you move your chairs over here beside my desk,” the chief suggested to Randall and me. “Give them some room to get in.”

  And, probably not coincidentally, present a solid Caerphillian front to our visitors.

  The door open
ed and three black-clad people walked in—two men and a woman. For elders, they were pretty young—mid-twenties perhaps. They all hesitated in the doorway—for dramatic effect, or just because they weren’t entirely sure what to expect? They ended up standing in a clump in front of the chief’s desk.

  “Wes,” the chief said—to Superman, I assumed—“bring in three folding chairs for our guests.”

  Superman popped out.

  “Elders of Clan Raven,” the chief repeated. “Mind telling me the names I’d find if I asked for your driver’s licenses?”

  “Bill Higgins,” said the tallest. “I’m the leader of the clan.”

  “Celia Smith,” the woman said.

  “Tony Ruiz,” the other man said.

  Wes returned with three folding chairs, and conversation paused while the vampire elders set them up and sat down, being careful of their long black cloaks.

  “So, if everyone’s comfortable, would you mind telling me what you’re doing here in Caerphilly?” the chief said. “Because we’ve already figured you’re not just here to take in the festival.”

  “We’re all participants in a live action role playing game loosely based on a computer game called Vampire Colonies,” Bill said.

  “Oh, God, Vampire Colonies,” I muttered. “It would have to be Vampire Colonies.”

  The chief, Randall, and the vampire elders all looked at me in puzzlement.

  “That’s one of Rob’s games,” I explained. “The one that has a new version coming out shortly before Christmas.”

  “The one our other young friend was so eager to obtain?” the chief asked.

  He meant Justin Klapcroft, obviously. And just as obviously didn’t want to say his name in front of the elders, so I just nodded.

  “I didn’t know people were LARPing with it,” I said.

  “You know about Vampire Colonies?” Bill asked. He and his companions looked eager, as if they might have just discovered a kindred spirit.

  “I was a play tester for the original game,” I said. “The computer game—as I said; I had no idea people were LARPing with it.”

  “Ms. Langslow’s brother, Rob, is the founder of Mutant Wizards,” the chief explained.

  “Awesome,” Tony muttered. All three elders seemed ever-so-slightly awestruck at my proximity to greatness.

  “Thus, she is somewhat familiar with the game you’re playing,” the chief went on. “I, on the other hand, am not. Fill me in.”

  “Okay, so we’ve got people here from seven of the twelve clans in our version of the game,” Bill began. “Clans Raven, Wolf, Owl, Bat, Tiger, Cat and … um…”

  “Wombat,” Celia put in.

  “Yeah, Wombat,” Bill said. “They’re a little weird.”

  “The clans are semivoluntary associations of vampires under a leader,” I explained.

  “Semivoluntary?” the chief echoed.

  “If a vampire turns you into a vampire, you automatically become a member of their clan, but under some circumstances you can change clans,” Bill said.

  “Or get kicked out for bad behavior,” Celia muttered. Evidently she already had some idea what young Norton had been up to.

  “We decided the Halloween Festival would be a cool place to have our big annual Halloween LARP and masked ball,” Bill said. “So we sent out the word for the clans to gather.”

  “In the computer game, the elders transmit their commands telepathically,” I said. “How do you replicate that in your LARP?”

  “We use e-mail,” Bill said. “Tony runs our Listserv. And we’ve been playing a scenario where all the clans are trying to find a magical artifact that will give their clan great power.”

  “We’re not talking about a ring, are we?” Randall asked. Evidently he, like me, was thinking about the break-in at the Haunted House.

  “No.” Bill looked puzzled. “It’s a goblet.”

  “Which you’ve hidden someplace in Caerphilly?” the chief asked.

  “God, no.” Bill shook his head. “Do you realize what kind of a disaster that would be? We have three hundred and seventeen clan members here. Can you imagine if they all started tearing the town apart to look for the goblet? Give us credit for a little brains.”

  “Then where is this goblet?” I asked.

  “In the trunk of my car,” Celia said. “We’re going to hide it at the ball. Well, we were going to hide it.”

  “The ball,” the chief said. “Yes. Tell me about this ball.” I could tell he was impatient with the vampires and what no doubt seemed like a distraction from the important business of solving two murders. But until we were sure they had nothing to do with the murders …

  “We were going to hold our ball in that barn,” Bill said. “Someone from the Owl Clan arranged it—a student here at Caerphilly.”

  “Arranged it how?” the chief said.

  “I told you so,” Celia said.

  “We thought he’d gotten permission,” Bill said.

  “Maybe you thought so,” Celia muttered.

  “Unlikely.” Randall shook his head. “Caerphilly College was very explicit. No festival activities on the campus.”

  “He had a key,” Bill said.

  “Which he probably stole,” Celia said.

  While they bickered back and forth, the chief pushed a paper across his desk so I could see it. On it, he had written “Find out if your brother knows about what they’re doing.”

  “Okay to use your restroom, Chief?” I stood.

  “Second door on the left,” he said.

  I went out into the hall, looked around until I found some privacy. The unused interview room. I closed the door behind me—checking first to make sure it had a doorknob on the inside—and pulled out my phone to call Rob.

  “What’s up?”

  “Rob, did you know people were LARPing with your Vampire Colonies game?”

  “Yeah, they do that with all the games, but especially the vamp games,” he said. “We don’t formally encourage it or even acknowledge its existence. Legal insists. They worry that someone LARPing with one of our games will do something illegal or insane and we’d get blamed. Which is unlikely, of course, but that’s Legal for you.”

  Not for the first time I was glad Rob had such sensible people in his Legal Department.

  “Is there a scenario in the game involving some kind of powerful goblet?” I asked.

  “Yeah, the Goblet of Sorrow,” he said. “Any vampire who drinks from it can walk in sunlight unharmed for the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Why is it called the Goblet of Sorrow, then?” I asked. “Why not something like the Goblet of Joyfully Biting People in Broad Daylight?”

  “You know, I might share that suggestion with the developers,” Rob said with a chuckle. “Goblet of Sorrow is more elegant, and also bad things happen to humans who are unlucky enough to be around when the vampires have drunk from it. But why are you asking about it? Does this have something to do with the murders or the scavenger hunt?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I certainly hope not. But if anyone can find that out…”

  “Roger,” he said. “We’ll expand our search.”

  “Look for a group of LARPers from the Owl, Wolf, Cat, Bat, Tiger, Raven, and Wombat clans gathering in Caerphilly.”

  “Wombat clan?” Rob said. “That’s novel.”

  “They were planning to cap off their celebration with a Halloween Ball.”

  “And they didn’t invite me?” he said. “Ingrates! Anything else?”

  “All of this isn’t messing up your schedule for releasing Vampire Colonies II, is it?”

  “Nope,” he said. “We’re way ahead of schedule on that. In fact, doing all this research for you and the chief is kind of useful. We’re so far ahead, I was worrying that some of the programmers might start trying to suggest that we add in new features, which we don’t want to do this late in the process. So giving them something else to distract them from tinkering is priceless.”

&n
bsp; “Glad to oblige,” I said. “Keep me posted.”

  I went back to the chief’s office. Evidently in my absence he’d been trying to get the elders to explain LARPing to him. Not very successfully, I suspected, from the expression on his face.

  “And the Bats and the Owls have been feuding ever since,” Bill was saying. “So when you add that to all the sniping between the Cats and the Tigers, and the fact that the Wolves want to split into two clans, and the Wombats are … well, who knows what they’re up to. Probably something pretty strange. Things have been unsettled. So since along with being one of the oldest and largest clans the Ravens have a reputation for being diplomats, we’re hoping we can settle all this at the ball.”

  “And Halloween’s the perfect time to do it,” Tony added. “For vampires, Halloween’s kind of like what Christmas is to mortals.”

  “Only it doesn’t look as if we’re going to have a ball,” Celia said.

  Bill and Tony had grown quite animated during their enthusiastic (if unsuccessful) explanation to the chief, but now their faces fell.

  “Is that true?” Bill asked. “It’s off?”

  “Without permission from the college, I’m afraid you can’t use their barn,” the chief said. “And most of the other possible venues in town are already booked with other events.”

  “Yeah, we figured that out weeks ago,” Celia said. “That’s why we were so excited when Karl came up with the barn.”

  An idea struck me.

  “Chief,” I said. “Could I have a word with you?” I glanced toward the door to suggest that I wanted that word out of the elders’ hearing.

  Chapter 23

  The chief frowned for a moment, but then shrugged and stood up.

  “If you folks will excuse me for a moment.” He followed me out into the hall, closing his office door behind us.

  “This may sound stupid,” I said. “But maybe we should let them have their ball.”

  “Even if we had a place we could offer or suggest to them—why?”

  “There are over three hundred of them who were supposed to be at that ball,” I said. “So if they have to cancel, that’s another three hundred tourists turned loose on what we know will be the most chaotic night of the whole festival.”