by Tanya Huff
Anne put down her sandwich early on and never picked it back up again.
“The press started this,” Vicki finished. “It’s up to the press to end it.”
“Why call me? There were reporters at the scene.”
“Because you told me once that the difference between a columnist and a reporter is that the columnist has the luxury to not only ask why but to try to answer it.”
Anne’s eyebrows went up. “You remember that?”
“I don’t forget much.”
The two women looked down at the notes and Anne snorted softly. “Lucky you.” She scooped them up and at Vicki’s nod stuffed them in her backpack. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m not making any promises. There’s screwballs all over this city and not all of them read my stuff. I suppose I can’t ask where you got this information?” Much of it had been minutia not normally released to the press. “Never mind.” She stood. “I can work around it without mentioning Celluci’s name. I hope you realize that you’ve ruined my Sunday?”
Vicki nodded and crushed her empty cup. “Happy Easter.”
“Henry Fitzroy is not able to come to the phone at the moment, but if you leave your name and number and a reason for your call after the tone, he’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you. If that’s you, Brenda, I’ll have it done by deadline. Stop worrying.”
As the tone sounded, Vicki wondered who Brenda was and what it referred to. Then she remembered Captain Macho and the young lady with the heaving bosoms. The concept of a vampire with an answering machine continued to amuse her even as she recognized its practicality creatures of the night, welcome to the twentieth century. “Henry, it’s Vicki. Look, there’s no point in me coming over tonight. We don’t know anything new and I certainly can’t help with your stakeout. If something happens, call me. If not, I’ll call you tomorrow.” She frowned as she hung up. Something about talking to machines made her voice sound like Jack Webb doing narration for old Dragnet episodes. “I had a cheese danish,” she muttered, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Friday had a cruller.”
Grabbing up her jacket and her bag, she headed for the door. When Celluci left the station, he’d be expected at his grandmother’s to spend Easter Sunday with assorted aunts, uncles, cousins, and offspring. It happened every holiday and there wasn’t an excuse good enough to get him out of it if he wasn’t actually working. If he couldn’t get what he needed from them, and, given what had happened to Anicka Hendle, she doubted he could—however supportive and loving his family was, they didn’t, couldn’t understand the anger and the frustration—he’d be over no earlier than eight. She had time to go through at least a division’s worth of occurrence reports this afternoon.
As she locked the door, the phone began to ring. She paused, staring into the apartment through the six inch gap. It couldn’t be Henry. It wouldn’t be Celluci. Coreen was still out of town. It was probably her mother. She closed the door. She wasn’t up to the guilt.
“. . . as well as all cables, a power bar, and a surge suppressor. In short, a complete system.” Vicki tapped the occurrence report with the end of her pencil. What she knew about computers could be easily copied onto the head of a pin and still leave room for a couple of angels to tango but, if she read these numbers correctly, the system that had been lifted out of the locked and guarded computer store made her little clone back at the apartment look like an abacus.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Winged Victory.”
Vicki’s lips drew back in a snarl. She shifted the snarl a millimeter at both ends, almost creating a smile. “Staff-Sergeant Gowan, what an unexpected pleasure.”
Not bothering to hide his own snarl, Gowan snatched the reports up off the desk and swung his bulk around to face the duty sergeant. “What the fuck is this civilian doing here?” He shook the fistful of papers. “And where did she get the authorization to read these?”
“Well, I . . .” the duty sergeant began.
Gowan cut him off. “Who the fuck are you? This is my station and I say who comes in and who doesn’t.” He shoved his gut in Vicki’s direction and she hurriedly stood, before he moved the desk so far she was trapped behind it. “This civilian has no fucking business being anywhere near this building, no matter what kind of a hot-shit investigator she used to be.”
“Don’t give yourself a coronary, Staff-Sergeant.” Vicki shrugged into her jacket and slung her bag over her shoulder. “I’m just leaving.”
“Fucking right, you’re leaving, and you won’t be back either, Nelson, remember that.” The veins in his throat bulged and his pale eyes blazed with hatred. “I don’t care who you had to blow to get your rank, but you don’t have it now. Remember that, too!”
Vicki felt a muscle jump in her jaw with the effort of maintaining control. In her right hand, the pencil snapped, the crack of the splintering wood ringing through the quiet station like a gunshot. The radio operator jumped, but neither she nor the duty sergeant made a sound. They didn’t even seem to be breathing. Moving with brittle precision, Vicki dropped both pieces of pencil in the waste basket and took a step forward. Her world centered on the two watery blue circles under silver-gray brows that glared down at her. She took another step, teeth clenched so tightly the force hummed in her ears.
“Go ahead,” he sneered. “Take a shot at me. I’ll have you cuffed so fast your ass’ll be in holding before your head knows what happened.”
With tooth and claw, Vicki managed to hold onto her temper. Losing it would accomplish nothing and, as much as she hated to admit it, Gowan was right. Her rank no longer protected her from him nor from the system. Maneuvering somehow through the red haze of her fury, she managed to get out of the station.
On the steps, she began to tremble and had to lean against the brick until it stopped. Behind her, she could hear Gowan’s voice raised again. The duty sergeant would be catching the force of his anger and it infuriated her that there was nothing she could do to stop it. Had she known the staff-sergeant would be dropping in at the station on his day off, not even the hordes of hell could’ve gotten her out there.
Desperate to be a detective, Gowan had never made it out of uniform. Ignoring the fact that in many respects the staff-sergeants ran the force, he wanted to be an inspector so bad he could taste it, but he’d been passed over twice for promotion and knew he’d never make it now. He hated Vicki on both counts and hated her more because she was a woman who’d beaten the boys at their own game and he hated her finally and absolutely for having him reprimanded after having come upon him roughing up a kid in the holding cells.
Vicki returned the sentiment. Power always attracts those who will abuse it. She’d never forgotten that line from the orientation lecture at the police academy. Some days, it was easier to remember than others.
Too strung out to take transit, she flagged down a taxi, thinking, and damn the twenty bucks it would probably cost to get her home.
The afternoon hadn’t been a total loss. She’d call a friend who knew computers with the information on the stolen system and see if he could pinpoint what a setup like that would be used for. Just about anything, she suspected, but it never hurt to ask and maybe they’d pick up another handle on the demon-caller.
She hunched down into the stale smelling upholstery as the rain splattered against the taxi’s grimy windows. After all, how many hackers with black leather jackets, assault rifles, and their own personal demons can there be in Toronto?
Celluci showed up just after nine.
Vicki took one look at his expression and said, “They treated you with kid gloves.”
“Like they were walking on eggshells,” he agreed, scowling.
“They mean well.”
“Don’t tell me what they mean.” He threw his coat over a chair. “I know what they mean!”
The fight that developed left them both limp and wrung out. When it was over, when its inevitable aftermath was over, Vicki pushed damp hair off Celluci’s forehead and ki
ssed him gently. He sighed without opening his eyes, but his arms tightened around her. Snagging the duvet with the tip of one finger, she tugged it over them both, then stretched again and flicked off the light.
There was a very good reason a lot of cops turned to substance abuse of one kind or another. Throughout the four years of their relationship, until Vicki had left the force, she’d acted as Mike Celluci’s safety valve and he’d done the same for her. Just because the situation had changed, that didn’t need to. She didn’t know what he’d done during the eight months they hadn’t been speaking. She didn’t want to know either.
Shifting his weight a little, she closed her eyes. Besides, all things considered, she’d just as soon not sleep alone. It would be nice to have someone warm to hold on to when the nightmares came.
The trees surrounding the graveyard bent almost double in the wind, their silhouettes wild and ragged. Henry shivered. Three nights of waiting had left him edgy and longing for a confrontation of any kind. Even losing would be better than much more of this. Demonic lore left large pieces to the imagination and his imagination obligingly kept filling them in.
The path of power, still waiting for an anchor, pulsed sullenly, damped down by Easter Sunday and the symbolic rising of Christ.
Then it changed.
The pulse quickened, the darkness deepening into something other than night.
Somewhere, Henry knew, the pentagram had been drawn, the fire had been lit, and the call had begun. He tensed, senses straining, ready to close his own pentagram at the first sign. This was it. The lesser demon then, if he couldn’t stop it, the greater and with it the end of the world. His right hand rose in the sign of the cross. “Lord, lend your strength,” he prayed.
The next thing he knew, he was kneeling on the damp ground, tears streaming from light sensitive eyes as afterimages danced in glory on the inside of his lids.
The third drop of blood hit the coals, and the air over the pentagram shivered and changed. Norman sat back on his heels and waited. This afternoon, he’d found where Coreen lived—the student records at York had been almost insultingly easy to hack into. Tonight, there would be no more mistakes and she’d pay for what she’d done to him.
The throbbing in his head grew until it seemed the entire world thrummed with it.
He frowned as the shimmering grew more pronounced and a hazy outline of the demon appeared. It almost seemed to be fighting against something, lashing out against an invisible opponent. Its mouth opened in a soundless shriek and abruptly the pentagram was clear.
At that same instant, the coals in the hibachi blazed up with such power that Norman had to throw himself backward or be consumed. The throbbing became a high-pitched whine. He clawed at his ears, but it went on and one and on.
After three or four seconds of six-foot flames, the tempered steel of the hibachi melted to slag, the flames disappeared, and a gust of wind from the center of the pentagram not only blew the candles out but threw them against the far wall where they shattered.
“That isn’t p-possible,” he stammered into the sudden silence. His ears still rang with echoes, but even the throbbing had died, leaving an aching emptiness where it had been. While a part of his mind cowered in fear, another disbelieved the evidence of his eyes. Heat enough to melt the cast iron hibachi should have taken the entire apartment building with it.
He reached out a trembling hand and touched the pool of metal, all that remained of the tiny barbecue. His fingertips sizzled and a heartbeat later he felt the pain.
It hurt too much to scream.
When his sight finally returned, Henry dragged himself to his feet. He hadn’t been hit that hard in centuries. Why he hadn’t assumed it was the Demon Lord breaking through he had no idea, but he hadn’t, not even during that first panicked instant of blindness.
“So what was it’?” he asked, sagging against a concrete angel and brushing mud off his knees. He could just barely feel the power signature of the naming. It had retreated as far as it could without returning to hell altogether. “Any ideas, mister, miss . . .” he asked, turning to read the name off the headstone. Carved into the stone at the angel’s feet was the answer.
CHRISTUS RESURREXIT! Christ is risen.
Henry Fitzroy, vampire, raised a good Catholic, dropped back to his knees and said a Hail Mary—just in case.
Eleven
Coreen slipped through the double doors moments before the class was about to begin and made her way across the lecture hall to a cluster of her friends. Her eyes had the fragile, translucent look of little sleep and much crying. Even the bright red tangle of her hair seemed dimmed.
The cluster opened and let her in, seating her in the safety of their circle, offering expressions of shock and sympathy. Although Janet had been a friend to all of them, Coreen had seen her last and that gave her grief an immediacy theirs couldn’t have.
None of them, Coreen least of all, was aware of the expression of hatred that crossed Norman Birdwell’s face every time he glanced in their direction.
How dare she still live when I said she was to die.
The throbbing had returned sometime during the night, each pulse reassuring Norman that the power was still his, each pulse demanding that Coreen pay.
Coreen had become the symbol for everyone who had ever laughed at him. For every slut who’d spread her legs for the football team but not for him. For every jock who pushed him aside as if he wasn’t there. Well, he was there, and he’d prove it. He’d turn his demon loose on the lot of them—but first Coreen had to die.
Very carefully, he moved his bandaged hand from his lap to the arm of the chair. After spending a virtually sleepless night, he’d stopped by the student medical center before class. If that’s what his student funds paid for, he wasn’t impressed. First, they’d made him wait until two people who’d arrived before him went in—even though he was obviously in more pain—and then the stupid cow had hurt him when she’d taped down the gauze. They hadn’t even wanted to hear the story he’d made up about how he did it.
Briefcase awkwardly balanced on his knees, he pulled out the little black book he’d bought in high school to keep girls’ phone numbers in. The first four or five pages had been raggedly torn out and on the first remaining page, under the word Coreen, he wrote, the Student Medical Center.
From here on, Norman Birdwell was going to get even. He didn’t understand what had gone wrong the night before. He’d performed the ritual flawlessly. Something had interfered, had stopped the demon, had stopped his demon. Norman frowned. Obviously, there were things around stronger than the creature he called to do his bidding. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. How dare something be able to interfere with him.
He could see only one solution. He’d have to get a stronger demon.
After the lecture, he made his way to the front of the class and planted himself between the professor and the door. Over the years he’d learned that the best way to get answers was to block the possibility of escape.
“Professor Leigh? I need to talk to you.”
Resignedly, the professor set his heavy briefcase back by the lectern. He tried to be available when his students needed him, recognizing that a few moments of answering questions could occasionally clarify an entire semester’s work, but Norman Birdwell would corner him for no better reason than to prove how clever he was. “What is it, Norman?”
What was it? The throbbing had grown so loud again it had become difficult to think. With an effort, he managed to blurt out, “It’s about my seminar topic. You said earlier that as well as a host of lesser demons there were also Demon Lords. Can I assume that the Demon Lords are the more powerful?”
“Yes, Norman, you can.” He wondered briefly what the younger man had done to his fingers. Probably got them caught in a metaphorical cookie jar. . . .
“Well, how can you tell what you’re going to get? I mean if you call up a demon, how can you ensure that you’re going to get a De
mon Lord?”
Professor Leigh’s brows rose. This sounded like it was going to be one hell of a seminar. So to speak. “The rituals for calling up one of the demon kind are very complicated, Norman. . . .”
Norman hid a sneer. The rituals were nonspecific but hardly complicated. Of course, he’d never be able to convince the professor that. Professor Leigh thought he knew everything. “How do they differ for a Demon Lord?”
“Well, just for starters, you need a name.”
“Where do I find one?”
“I am not going to do your research for you, Norman.” The professor picked up his briefcase and headed for the door, expecting Norman to move out of his way. Norman stayed right where he was. Faced with a shoving match or surrender, Professor Leigh sighed and surrendered. “I suggest you have a word with Dr. Sagara at the University of Toronto’s Rare Book Room. She might have something that can help.”
Norman weighed the worth of that information for a moment then nodded, stepping back against the blackboard. It was less than he wanted, but it was a beginning and he still had ten hours until midnight.
“Fine. I’ll call Dr. Sagara and tell her you’ll be coming down.” Once safely out in the corridor, the professor grinned. He almost wished he could be there to see the irresistible force come up against the immovable object. Almost.
A few flakes of snow slapped wetly against his face as Norman stood waiting for the bus. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, glad he’d worn his sneakers—cowboy boots, he’d discovered, had next to no insulation against the cold. The black leather jacket kept him reasonably warm, although the fringe kept flapping up and whipping him in the back of the neck.