PsyCop 1: Among the Living

by Jordan Castillo Price

  As I thumbed through my Camp Hell textbooks yet again, I wished that I’d made a friend or two there, someone I could call and ask, just theoretically, what kind of supernatural beastie sucks out people’s souls while they screw.

  And then it hit me. A succubus.

  I flipped my book open to the index and found a half dozen references to it.

  Succubus: Lascivious female demon who takes the form of a comely young lady; said to possess mortal men as they sleep and to sup on their essences. According to one legend the succubus and her male counterpart, the incubus, were fallen angels.

  Sup on their essences? I glanced at the date of the text and found it was written in 1964. Queer. And not in the way I like. None of the other passages were particularly enlightening, either.

  So it was possible we were dealing with…what? A gay incubus, or a male succubus? Maybe. If I could just get in touch with the archivists at the Twelfth, I could give them my impressions. They had access to stuff that was written sometime after the dark ages, unlike me. Even databases. They’d know the latest research on entities that used to be called demons.

  Because there had to be some sort of modern take on the demon. Red men with pointy ears and pitchforks: unlikely. Powerful psychic beasties that could pop all the blood vessels in your eyes by hitting the right note? Well, we had to call it by some name, and incubus was as good as any.

  But I was off the case. The archivists at the Twelfth probably couldn’t even talk to me. I glanced up at the clock. It was nearing seven p.m. They would’ve gone home by now anyway, I told myself. And I called Jacob’s cell phone again.

  “Marks.”

  “Oh! It’s uh…you picked up.”

  “Hold on.” I heard him cover the phone with his palm and excuse himself. A moment later, he was back. “Thank God, Vic. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. But Warwick took me off the case.”

  Jacob’s voice was an urgent whisper. “It came down from the Police Commissioner. They’ve been going over my statement with a fine-toothed comb all day. It’s out of the bag that we used a psychic without a federal license to locate the crime scene, but I think that since we caught the guy in the act, they’re gonna find a way to let it slide.”

  “But what about Gutierrez? Warwick said she was in custody.”

  Jacob sighed. “I can’t talk now—this place is crawling with the Commissioner’s elite officers. Meet me where we had dinner on Tuesday and I’ll fill you in. Same time.”

  “Okay. But, Jacob…?”

  “Gotta go. See you then.”

  In an attempt to clean up, I went into the bathroom and started shaving. The shaving cream stung as I smoothed it on, and even though I opened a new razor, it seemed to keep catching on scabs and hunks of dried blood as I dragged it over my cheeks. By the time I was through, I came to the realization that the stubble would’ve looked much better. And then I stuck a dozen little bits of toilet paper to my face. I wondered if SaverPlus sold welding masks.

  I had half an hour to kill, so I got on the phone with the Fifth and tried to call around and find someone who could tell me where they were holding Gutierrez. An older cop who worked the night desk, one of Maurice’s friends, told me she wasn’t there—but that was as much as he knew.

  Too bad I didn’t have a touch of the sí-no or I would’ve tracked her down myself. But what did I have? I was a fifth-level medium. That was almost as high as you could go. There were a few level-6s scattered around and a single level-7, an old lady in France who could actually command spirits. But she’d died in her sleep a couple of years back and become one of those spirits herself.

  So I could hear, and sometimes see, the dead. And they seemed to sense it and be sure they talked my ear off. Thing was, they never knew shit.

  I needed to get going to make it to the restaurant by eight, so I slipped into the goofy new blazer and set out. The GPS managed to lead me, yet again, into the worst snarl of traffic I’d seen since the time I was late for a root canal. Eventually, I crept by an accident. A couple of glowing blue spirits gawked from the side of the road, but since they were dressed like they’d come right out of an off-Broadway production of Grease, I figured they weren’t a result of the accident that they were rubbernecking.

  I turned down an alley, out onto a main thoroughfare and picked up some real speed. Maybe Jacob would know where Gutierrez was. He’d help me get her out, or at least get me in there to talk to her, tell her it was gonna be okay.

  I got to the restaurant ten minutes late, a miracle considering traffic, and didn’t spot him anywhere. For once I wasn’t the latest one. The maitre d’, a thin Midwestern guy with steely gray hair, seated me. I wolfed down a bread stick, and then another, and then I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything yet that day.

  Eight twenty and still no Jacob. I ordered an iced tea. I flipped open my phone and tried his number, just to gauge when he’d get there. Maybe I could start with an appetizer. Maybe I could even finish it before he got there and order another one like I hadn’t just inhaled one by myself. I’d have to pick up the check then, but fair is fair.

  His cell went directly to voicemail. “Hey, Jacob. It’s Vic. Let me know how long you’re gonna be. I might need to start without you. Bye.”

  I ordered some soup—nothing that would stain my blazer too obviously—and scarfed down half the bowl. Jacob was probably talking to his sergeant, or maybe to Carolyn. Had her statement been taken separately from his? Likely, since the three of us had come up looking fishy. In retrospect, I was glad I’d overslept.

  The iced tea caught up with me, and I flagged the maitre d’ over so that he could tell Jacob I was there, in case he showed up while I was in the bathroom, which Murphy’s Law said he would. “White male, olive complexion, six two or three, well built, black hair, brown eyes, short goatee.”

  The maitre d’ frowned in thought. “One moment,” he said, and flipped open his reservation log. “Jacob Marks. He was here earlier, sir. He left.”

  “Shit! Uh, sorry. How long ago?”

  “Shortly before you arrived.”

  “Did he leave a message for me?”

  The maitre d’ shook his head. “I’m very sorry.” He turned to greet some new customers that had walked through the door, but I caught him by the sleeve.

  “Did it seem urgent?” I asked him. “Was he on his phone, in a hurry?”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, and turned toward the customers.

  I grabbed him more forcefully and wished to God I had my badge. “Look. I’m a cop, and this is police business. What else can you tell me?”

  The maitre d’s eyes showed white all around. “He left with someone. A young man.”

  “What did he look like? Describe him.”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Height, weight, race, hair color.”

  “Thin. Athletic. Blonde. He looked a little bit like Brad Pitt, actually.”

  Or maybe he looked an awful lot like Brad Pitt. And George Clooney and David Bowie. I hardly remembered letting go of the maitre d’. I was back in my car with the flashing light on the roof and absolutely no idea where I was headed.

  I fishtailed into traffic and tried to think. Every crime had happened at the victim’s house. And there’d been one every night, or every other. The incubus got around.

  I swerved down a side street and headed toward Jacob’s. I shut the GPS off and then flipped open my phone. “Information? Connect me to Carolyn Brinkman.” Electronic noises came through as I begged that her home number was listed. “Douglas and Carolyn Brinkman,” the computer voice said after an excruciating pause. “To connect, press or say one, now.”

  “One,” I barked, and after some more weird, muted digital sounds, Carolyn’s phone started to ring. “Thank God,” I said. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

  Instead, a man answered. “Hello?”

  I swerved around an overturned shopping cart that was laying in the road for no apparent reason.
“Carolyn—I need to speak to Carolyn.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Detective Victor Bayne. It’s an emergency.”

  “Look, Mister Bayne, I know things look bleak, but you’ve got to see it from Carolyn’s point of view. She’s sorry about what happened, but it wasn’t her fault. The poor woman can’t lie.”

  “What? Yeah, I know about her talent. But I’ve gotta talk to her. It’s about Jacob.”

  “She’s finally calmed down enough to get some sleep, and she’s on enough Neurozamine to obliterate The Amazing Kreskin, so she’s not going anywhere tonight.”

  Jesus H. Christ on a bike. Coolhand Carolyn had doped out on us. Shit. That was usually my department. Jacob had told me on our first day together that Carolyn never took meds. I assume she hadn’t been lying to him, considering Carolyn’s double-edged talent.

  “Look…ah, I get it. I’m a Psych, too.”

  Her husband sighed. “Then you know how hard it is. I’m sorry, Detective. But this business with Jacob will have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Can I at least come and get her gun?” I asked. But the line was already dead.

  You’d think I would’ve had some reason to buy a gun other than my service weapon during the last twelve, fifteen years. Then again, you’d think I owned more than one or two sportcoats, too. Shit.

  But I knew someone who did have a gun, someone I’d been dying to see. I hit memory dial one, Maurice’s cell phone.

  “Hallo.” A crowd noise swelled around Maurice, and I tried to imagine him among a sea of humanity, but couldn’t place where he might be.

  “Where are you?”

  “Fort Lauderdale. Don’t you remember? I told you on Sunday. I’m at the casino.”

  Shit. Oh shit. No. He couldn’t be in Florida. I needed him here.

  “Good thing you ain’t a precog or I wouldn’t even be able to talk to you in here. Nichelle just won five thousand nickels on a slot machine. You believe that? That’s only two hundred fifty bucks, though. You say five thousand nickels, it sound like some huge jackpot.”

  The first vacation Maurice has been on since his fucking honeymoon and I call him, hardly able to restrain myself from begging him to hop the next flight home. What good would it do, other than spoiling his good time? It wasn’t as if he could get back here any sooner than tomorrow morning. And by then it’d be too late.

  I tapped my brake as I flew through a stop sign. “Look for a slot machine with a…a star,” I said, pulling a psychic prediction out of my ass even though Maurice and I both knew I was about as precognitive as he was. “And don’t let anyone know I told you.”

  “A star, huh?” Tinny ringing, jingling noises filtered through the murmur of the crowd. “You’re all right, Bayne.”

  “Gotta go,” I said, and hung up before Maurice could figure out how stressed out I was. The fact that he could barely hear me had worked to my advantage, but I wasn’t gonna push it.

  How much of a lead did Jacob and the incubus have on me? Maybe half an hour, but maybe less. They were probably driving like normal humans, not like me. I turned onto Jacob’s street and swung into a spot by a hydrant, bumped the car in front of me and left the rear end of my car sticking out at an angle as I ran toward Jacob’s condo building for all I was worth.

  As I wrenched the vestibule’s outer door open, a low, thudding vibration tickled the base of my skull.

  Technopop.

  Chapter 14

  I nearly rang Jacob’s doorbell and then realized he might not be able to answer. I rang every neighbor’s bell instead. “Police,” I shouted to the first one who answered. “I’m here about the noise complaint.”

  They buzzed me right in.

  Some little part of me must’ve been holding on to the hope that Jacob wasn’t really with the incubus. That all the clues I was seeing—that he’d left the restaurant with Brad Pitt, that the same inane electronic beat buzzed through the floorboards of his condo and out into the hall—actually added up to something else. But when I put my hand on his doorknob and the door swung open, unlocked, my stomach clenched up and I felt numb all over. Because the unlocked door was just like every other scene.

  I took in the entryway, the broad living room and the archway leading to the kitchen in one glance. Jacob’s jacket was in a pile on the sofa, and his holster lay on top of it.

  I grabbed his gun.

  The stereo was right there. I could’ve turned it off and bought myself some space to think. The incubus probably already knew I was there, or would know before I had a chance to blow it away. But something about the music seemed inevitable, like I needed that throb to shift myself into the incubus’ plane well enough to kill it.

  They’d be in the bedroom. Because that’s where all the other victims had been. I ran full-tilt toward the bedroom door, because if there even was a remote chance that I hadn’t yet been detected, that damn music covered the sound of my approach. I held the gun at face level—none of that vertical-beside-the-head stuff you see on TV. That fucker took Jacob, and I was gonna nail him right between the eyes.

  I hoped they weren’t too intertwined. I’m not all that good of a shot.

  I rounded the corner and—thank whatever powers there are to thank—the incubus was in the midst of peeling off Jacob’s shirt. He himself was still fully clothed. Jacob wasn’t moving on his own, but if the incubus hadn’t gotten to third base with him yet, I still had hope.

  If it was possible, the creature looked even more like David Bowie tonight, as if my brain had had a chance to peg him into some sort of category and was going all the way in reassuring itself that he fit. He was Ziggy Stardust, down to the glittery spandex outfit and the lightning bolt on the cheek.

  “Freeze,” I said, in a voice that would’ve sounded firm and clear in a normal situation. The music totally covered it, but I had a feeling the incubus could filter things like that out. “Police.”

  He looked up at me and started a little. Maybe he hadn’t known I was there. Maybe I could’ve gotten right on top of him and squeezed off a few rounds before he’d been able to turn into spaghetti and fly out the window. Shit.

  With just his head turned toward me, he started to open that black, empty mouth of his. I pulled the trigger. The shot sounded like a pathetic snap that hardly carried over the blaring music. I hit him…I think. I didn’t see any blood, any bullet holes in either him or the wall, but he thought better of pulling that sonic scream crap on me again and turned to face me fully.

  Jacob remained limp on the bed. I didn’t have time to watch him and see if his chest would rise and fall, but I told myself he was just asleep—some kind of psychic trick the incubus had managed. Because the texts said that incubi struck while their victims were asleep, and damn it, something in that worthless book had to be true.

  The incubus saw me glance at Jacob and smiled. His lips were closed, stretched over the blackness even more thinly. He reached toward Jacob. I squeezed off another round, aimed at his arm. A black bullet hole appeared in the wall behind him.

  Ziggy Stardust thought that was funny. He stretched his arm closer to Jacob, going in slow motion to savor my reaction to it all the longer.

  I was getting nowhere fast with the gun. I didn’t fling it aside or anything melodramatic like that. Heck, I might still need it. But I used another weapon that I supposedly had in my arsenal, at least according to Camp Hell.

  I shot a blue bubble of protection from a space between my eyes and above, a little outside my physical body. Third eye, pineal gland, seventh chakra, it’s all the same. When you’re psychic, it’s where all your weird shit lives.

  The bubble was so strong I actually saw it. Maybe nobody else would’ve, but I saw it in the same way I’d seen the dead baby in my basement or the spirits hovering around the accident. It sealed Jacob up tight. I let go of it, and it stayed there.

  Take that.

  The incubus saw it, too. He poked at the bubble and it stretched a little, but held. He
looked back at me, his eyebrowless forehead hitched in the middle to show me his displeasure. He grabbed at Jacob more forcefully, but his hand glanced off the bubble.

  I knew what I needed to do. Send him toward the light. I took a deep breath and then shot a sphere of light out toward him. It encircled him like a psychic spotlight, glowing beautiful and pure.

  He touched it, and it shattered.

  He smiled, showing Bowie-esque teeth a little square and crooked, but I could still feel the blackness lurking there behind them. “Aren’t you just a breath of fresh air?” he said in a melodious English accent, his voice carrying effortlessly over the grinding cacophony of the electropop. “And what’s that little trick you just tried to pull?”

  I leveled the gun at his face.

  “Now, now. Why so jumpy? I just want to talk. There’s no harm in talking, is there?”

  Probably. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply.

  Instead, I made another white bubble, and I imagined it was a hundred times stronger, swirling with layer upon layer of psychic energy, impenetrable. And I flung it.

  It engulfed him, pearlescent white whirling around him like a cloud cover. It held for a moment. And then it shattered.

  “How did you do that?” it asked. “You’re mortal. I can smell your soul. Come on,” he coaxed, easing forward, “Let me get a better look at you.”

  I backed up a step. That was a good white bubble, a damn good one, and yet the incubus was just too strong for it. It was a stupid idea anyway, trying to scare off a demon by putting him in a bubble like Glenda the Good Witch. What I needed was a house to drop on him.

  He took a dainty step forward, then another. “You don’t need to be afraid,” he said. “We’ll just get to know each other a little better. I can make you feel very, very good. You’re such a fascinating chap—I promise I won’t kiss you until you grow tiresome.”

  He was on me now, his pale, slender hand reaching toward me. I didn’t know how I’d respond to physical contact with him, since it was possible he’d trip some psychic synapse in me, maybe short me out. “Your pickup lines need a lot of work,” I said, and then I pulled an image from the cop portion of my brain. I imagined something black, thick and suffocating, a shape that was man-sized, yet vague and featureless. I wrapped him up in a psychic body bag and zipped it up tight. And then I imagined it was totally lined with mirrors and sent that idea blasting toward him.