by Ari Marmell
Maybe I’d even mention that, if we crossed paths again. Bean sidhe might have more luck finding the old witch than I did.
Shaugnessy had wandered off, probably to snarl at someone else, and I’d planted my keister back at the table, but the form was still half empty, my mitt near frozen around the pencil. Thoughts kept chasin’ each other around in my brain like amorous squirrels, and I was too distracted to focus on the paperwork.
Orsola, Baskin, maybe even Ramona herself, with her hellish background… Who else? It itched at me, like a telephone or power line but all inside. I was missin’ something. I knew it, felt it, picked and prodded and tried to grab, but it wouldn’t come. A link I wasn’t seeing or a detail I’d forgotten, something I shoulda had in front of me plain as day, and it wouldn’t come. Why couldn’t I bring it to mind?
The bulb in the lamp, the one they swing around and shine in ginks’ faces when they’re sweatin’ em, was the first to go. It shattered with a sharp pop, almost like a tiny round goin’ off. The one overhead that actually lit the room started to dim, and I heard half a dozen blowers out in the bullpen ring at once, all just slightly outta synch. The windows of the room fogged over, rivulets drippin’ down to draw funny shapes in the condensation, even though the temperature hadn’t changed a single degree.
This… was not good.
I clamped down, breakin’ the pencil, and it all stopped as quick as it started. I heard the buzz of voices across the clubhouse come over confused, takin’ wild guesses about power surges in the lines and whatnot, worryin’ if anything had been damaged.
Me, I had bigger concerns. Yeah, like I mentioned, that’d been happenin’ more often in the past few months, maybe last couple years. But always, always when I was beyond furious, blood boilin’ to the point where I teetered right on the edge of losin’ control.
Not now. Sure, I’d been frustrated, but mostly I’d just been bewildered. And other’n that slight bit of aggravation, I’d been absolutely, completely calm. I’d been in total control.
And it happened anyway.
Rest of the paperwork was gonna have to wait. I hadda get gone, away from the precinct, get myself on the trail of whatever it was I was chasing.
Then hope to every heaven and hell that finding it and stopping it—Orsola’s hex, the influence of death, whatever—was enough to put right whatever was goin’ wrong with me, too.
CHAPTER FIVE
Pete wasn’t available, and I was in no mood to wait, so I let some random bull—Officer Netley, if I recall correctly, and I don’t much care if I don’t—play escort.
I mighta chosen differently if I’d known he was gonna drive us instead of takin’ the L, but by the time I tumbled to that little fact, we were already on our way. No real good reason I could come up with to refuse, and I was too rattled over what’d just happened in the clubhouse to wanna fiddle with his mind if I didn’t have to.
Nothin’ for it then but to climb into his radio car, brace myself against what was comin’, and muddle through it best I could.
He tossed me a queer look when I clambered into the back seat. “Occasional motion sicknesses” was the only answer I gave him, partly because I didn’t figure “I’m allergic to the damn engine and I wanna be as far from it as possible” would go over real well.
We drove. It itched and hurt and burned, like it always does. I managed.
You seen one hospital you’ve seen ’em all, so I ain’t gonna give you a full play-by-play of Cook County. It was all the usual; doctors and nurses in white, sick people in pain, smell of cleansers and soaps waging trench warfare against the stink of sweat and vomit and blood. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s mostly good folks tryin’ hard, and it’s a lot better’n facing a broken bone or flu without help, but that don’t make it a playground, savvy?
Anyway, the hospital proper wasn’t our destination. No, my buddy in blue flashed a badge here and there, and we made our way down.
Cook County Morgue.
Now this? This was not a good place.
I could yammer about the stark lighting, the cold tile and the colder steel drawers, the flat tables and ugly tools. Or maybe about the atmosphere, the pungent chemicals that made the hospital overhead into a fragrant patch of flowers in comparison. The artificial cold of the refrigeration? The lifeless eyes and limp flesh of the poor souls bein’ worked on, sawed open, and stitched up all across the broad room?
Nah. See, all that’s nothin’, just what you’d notice. You’re luckier’n me.
Death hung his hat in this room. Constant, unending death; sometimes violent, sometimes sickly, and far, far too often just plain ugly. The walls marinated in it; it bubbled and swirled in the drains. I could feel the ghosts, damn near couldn’t move against the throng of ’em. Unhappy spirits, grieving or enraged, the kind who might, given time, grow corrupt from gnawing on their own fury until they slipped Sideways to add to the flocks of the sluagh. Or worse.
A bad place. An Unseelie place.
The coroner himself was part of the reason for that. A goddamn elected official, more concerned with holding onto his job than gettin’ the pathology right; with makin’ the cops happy than with truth or answers or justice. Good way to really enrage a whole mess of ghosts already on short fuses. Fortunately, he wasn’t there at the time, which meant I didn’t have to exercise self-control I wasn’t sure I had to keep from sluggin’ him.
One of the assistants, after a few minutes of whining argument with Netley about revisiting the same stiff again, and whether or not I was allowed to be there, shuffled to the stacked rows of drawers and listlessly waved us over to join him. The metal slab slid out with a dull rumble and a brief but angry squeak.
I’d insisted my police chauffeur tell me all the details of the case on the drive over; gave me somethin’ to focus on besides the Hellspawned-toaster-on-wheels I was stuck in. Among those details was the fact that the body we were goin’ to see was the seventh the cops attributed to this same killer or killers. They hadn’t managed to stop word of the crimes from leakin’ to the press, but they’d at least kept the extent of the problem under their hats for now. No sense, Netley had said, in sensationalizing it or causing a panic, especially when they weren’t positive the deaths were all related. Same cause of death and same bloody mess, but no evidence that the victims had shared any other connection.
Yeah, I didn’t buy it either.
Point is, the poor sap I was lookin’ down at now was number seven, and if the others really had all been killed the same way, our problem was even bigger’n I thought.
See, unlike with the L King, this body’d been cleaned up, so I had a real clear view of the wound. His throat looked like he’d made a genuine effort at starting a new fashion trend of barbed-wire neckties.
No more question about it, no more dithering, no more hoping. We had a vampire. Hell, I could just about still feel the spiritual rot wafting off the corpse.
But I’d pretty much expected that. No, the problem was seven victims over the course of less than a few weeks. Savage and feral as they are, the nosferatu ain’t stupid. They don’t wanna attract attention, human or otherwise, anymore’n most creatures of the Otherworld.
Seven dead, so close together?
Odds were that was the work of more than just one vampire.
* * *
I stayed for a while, flipped through some other reports and checked a couple more bodies, just to compare wounds and make sure I was on the right track. Not fun, and ultimately not all that helpful. I couldn’t really even use the crime scenes to try’n pinpoint the vampires’ lair, not when dealin’ with hunters who can turn into bats and fog and feed however far from home they damn well please in the course of a night. Yeah, I ruled out the edges, but it still left me with well over half the city.
Like I said, not real helpful.
Sun was makin’ for bed by the time I moseyed my way outta there. I took the train back to my office, after politely but firmly refusing another ride
in the torture box. I mean, the L ain’t a barrel of laughs either, but after the flivver, it might as well’ve been a gentle massage.
Plus, it gave me time to think, though I didn’t come up with much. Knowing for sure that I was dealin’ with what I’d already suspected I was dealin’ with was a nice bit of confirmation, but it didn’t help at all with either the “why” or the “what to do about it.”
Then I got back to my place and the time for thinkin’ was over.
It washed over me soon as I stepped through the door, not even a wave but an avalanche. The cold, loamy smell of the grave. The stench of rotting meat. More than scents, they were emotions, a spiritual essence of corruption: the desperation of a suicide, the blood-wet heat of murder, the ache of famine and the dispassionate joy of a patient hunter.
Death and decay and terror and primal violation, draped over bone and wrapped in skin, squatting in a withered shell where a soul once shone.
Vampire.
I’ve always had plenty of swift, but I’m not sure I’ve ever drawn my wand fast as I did in that moment. I dove outta the doorway, hit the thin, trampled carpet and rolled back to my feet. I already had a slant on it, draped in shadow, waiting in the corner beside the filing cabinet. I sucked up what ambient luck I could manage in that split second of tumbling across the room and then I lunged, the L&G held underhand to stab, like a dagger.
Like a stake.
It ain’t exactly sharp, but it’s near unbreakable and I’m pretty strong. Maybe it woulda been enough. Maybe, if I’d had the time to draw on more luck than I did, or to pull that luck straight from the creature itself insteada the room around us, the blow woulda landed at all.
But I hadn’t, and it didn’t. The damned thing was fast, so fast. And a lot stronger’n me. The back of its hand hit me right below the wrist and my whole arm near went numb from the shock. I swear I felt bone bend a little, and the L&G flew from my fist to clatter against the wall before falling with a soft thump.
The vampire’d already moved, just a step or two, putting itself between me’n the wand, but I was headed another direction. I let myself fall backward to avoid the return blow I was expecting, but never actually came, and then rolled back to my feet once again. The dead thing was only a pace behind me, but it jumped away—more instinct, I figure, than actual worry—when I grabbed the edge of the Murphy bed, folded up against the wall, and hurled it down with a rattle and a crash right where my dance partner had been.
That gave me a second to reach inside the hollow behind the bed and pull out my trusty rapier. Steel wouldn’t paralyze the vampire the way wood, uh, would, but with a little luck (well, okay, a lot of luck), I could cut him up bad enough to keep him down until I could get my mitts on the wand again.
My first thrust sank deep into the meat of the vampire’s left arm, which earned me a hiss of dead breath ripe with the wet stench of a slaughterhouse. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance for a second; its right hand came up, a hammer of cold flesh, and the Damascus steel blade that’d served me so well for a couple centuries snapped like a goddamn lollipop stick.
Oh, now I was steamed! I stared into its blinkers, tryin’ to work fast; it ain’t near as easy to get into the mind of another Fae as it is a human, let alone one of the dead, let alone one who’s got its own mental whammy to throw back, but if I was quick enough…
It jumped back, clear across the office and only just missing the ceiling, before I could so much as tickle an idea. When it landed, it stared back at me but focused just past my left ear, not quite makin’ eye contact. No bunny, this one. I tightened my grip on the hilt of the broken sword, ready to throw it and then make a dash for the L&G…
“Oberon, stop.” Its voice was hoarse, the gravelly rasp of a thing speaking through stiff and shriveled vocal chords. “I do not come here for fight.”
And I did stop, mostly outta shock. Vampires ain’t unintelligent, but they’re savage. Beasts. Ravening hunger and burning fury and cold hatred. Many of ’em don’t speak at all, and I never heard of one actually talkin’, or doing much of anything other’n killing or fleeing, once somebody’d started a scrap.
I studied its mug, bein’ just as careful not to look into its eyes as it was bein’ about mine. It was wan, gaunt, same as all its repulsive kind. Flakes of old, dried blood stained the creases of its mouth, spotted its yellowed collar, from gods knew how long ago. No fangs, not the way you’re thinkin’; not the two neat little canines like Lugosi. No, every filthy, bloodstained tooth in its maw was jagged and broken, perfect for tearing skin and tissue. Not really any longer’n human teeth, but they looked it, since the gums had receded and the lips had shriveled, just as they would on any other corpse.
It looked, in short, not like some Eastern European nobleman or corporate high pillow, but like what it really was. What all vampires looked like.
A stiff that dragged itself outta the earth to drink people’s blood.
And apparently it wanted to jaw with me. Swell.
“You broke my rapier.”
“You stabbed me with rapier.”
“I… Yeah, okay. Fair.” I mean, I did make the first move. Sure, I’d had good reason to figure attacking was my best play—namely, that it was a friggin’ vampire—but I hadda give it that.
Still watchin’ for the tiniest funny move, I edged around the room to collect the Luchtaine & Goodfellow. Then, after makin’ a deliberate point of not holstering the thing, I leaned back against the wall.
“So, if you ain’t here to try’n rub me out, why are you here?”
“I am called Varujan.” It—he; I guess if we were at the point of tradin’ names and chinning like normal folk, I oughta go with he—also settled back against the wall, pretty much mirroring my stance across the room. “I come here to seek your assistance.”
All right, then. If I’d had a list of possible answers in the order I was expecting ’em, that woulda been somewhere around page never, right before “Will you marry me?”
So, bein’ the sharp private dick that I am, I replied with, “What?”
“I know of you, Mick Oberon, and what you do. You know this city, you know ways of both worlds, and you are detective. You are man to assist me.”
Oy. This was gonna be one of those days where I really wished I drank more than milk.
I wasn’t ready to believe so much as a word of it, but then, I was still thrown by the fact that I was hearin’ a word of it.
“Before we even get into this,” I said, partly because I needed to know, sure, but also stallin’ for time to think, “tell me why I shouldn’t just put my wand through your heart and saw your damn conk off with a shaving razor? There are eight people dead!”
“Eight is not so many.” Then, before I could blow up, “But I kill none of them.”
“Fuckin’ horse feathers!”
“No, is truth, Oberon. I am in Chicago only short while. Here, I do not yet feed.”
If the undead bastard’s plan was to make me trust anything he said, he was way, way off track.
“I’m not swallowing that, bo.” Yeah, maybe not the best expression to use with the nosferatu. Whaddaya want from me? “You walkin’ corpses ain’t exactly numerous. Even if I believe there’s more’n one of you in Chicago, you’re gonna find it real tough convincing me you ain’t all part of the same pack.”
I dunno, maybe I was lookin’ to pick a fight. There’s nothin’ about vampires that ain’t evil, unnatural. It felt wrong, made everything and everyone around it grimy with suffering and death. I was near choking on the rot in its aura. I’d be doin’ not just myself, but the whole world a favor if I put the damn thing down.
And then…
“But you have already encountered another. A vampire, but not of my kind. Not of my ‘pack.’ I smell this, a smear on your… essence. Yes?”
He wasn’t wrong. I’d just about blown it off, it was so ludicrous, but I hadn’t forgotten.
“It was bad fruit. A friggin’ watermelon.�
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“You have met many vampires who hunt with watermelons beside them, Oberon?”
I shook off the image of a bunch of nosferatu creeping through the woods with melons on leashes, like rolling green bloodhounds. I wasn’t ready to accept it as coincidence, them all appearing within days of each other, but I hadda at least consider the possibility that they weren’t all together, either.
“Fine. Spin me a yarn, Varujan.”
“Yes.”
He paused there, and the room went silent as… Well, you know. I mean, neither of us tensed, paced, fidgeted, even blinked. The undead gink didn’t even have a heartbeat.
“It begins some days ago,” he finally continued. “I am on freighter, crossing Lake Michigan. I have fed before boarding, so crew has no reason to suspect I am aboard. And I wish to keep it this way, yes? If they learn of me, or suspect anything amiss, this will be inconvenient.”
Oh, well. Glad to know he’s capable of choosing not to murder if it’s inconvenient.
“But after a time, I begin to hear… I am not sure how to say. A call. A summons. But it is not so much a sound at all. I hear in head, not in ears.”
He had my attention, now. If this was goin’ where I suspected it was, combined with everything Áebinn had been yammering about, we were all in dutch.
“I think, I can ignore this. The call, it is not so strong. But I have never felt anything like this before, and now I am curious. Obviously, I cannot leave the boat on my own…”
Interesting. Not that he couldn’t just cross the lake by himself; running water, vampires, all that. No, it’s that he just assumed I was already wise to the limitations of his kind.
“…so I cannot leave the crew alone anymore. The captain, he is easy to convince, and so we follow the call. And it brings us here, to Chicago.”
“And did you kill the captain after mesmerizing him?” I tried to keep my tone nice and friendly, but I won’t pretend I succeeded.
“This would draw attention I do not wish. I tell the captain to forget me.”
Well, that was nice to—