“You’ve been here before, so you know where everything is, Quincey,” she said, while walking around turning lights on. “Make yourself at home, while I see who’s been demanding my attention the last couple of weeks.”
Morris made himself a weak Scotch and water before flopping onto the couch in Libby’s spacious living room. She had several magazines strewn across her coffee table. Among these, Morris was glad to see, was the latest issue of Cemetery Dance, which he tended to view as a news magazine. Libby picked up the pile of mail that had accumulated in her absence and sat down next to her telephone answering machine. She pressed “Play” and gave half her attention to the recorded messages while sorting through her mail, much of which ended up in a nearby wastebasket.
The fourth message, however, quickly engaged her interest.
“Elizabeth, this is Garth Van Dreenan. You may remember me from that nasty business in Mozambique we dealt with several years ago. I am in New York temporarily, and I wish to ask your help on a matter of considerable importance. I would be most grateful if you would call me as soon as you can, at one of the following numbers.” There followed a series of phone numbers. The first one Van Dreenan’s voice identified as his cell phone, the second as his room at the Holiday Inn, and the third as the FBI’s New York City field office. The answering machine then produced a mechanical voice announcing that the call had been received at 2:18pm the previous day.
Libby Chastain finished scribbling the numbers on the back of an envelope, then turned the answering machine off. She noticed that Morris was looking at her.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he said. “But it was hard not to.”
“No, that’s all right,” she said. “Garth is with the South African Police, their Occult Crimes Unit.”
“Thought I recognized the accent. I’ve heard of the Occult Crimes Unit, too.”
“Garth’s a good guy,” she said. “He brought me in to help out with a case he was working a while back, and we eventually ended up in Mozambique.” She made a face, as if tasting something bitter. “It turned pretty messy.”
“Do I want to know anymore about that?”
“No,” she said after a brief pause. “You probably don’t.”
“Fair enough.”
She tapped her pencil on the envelope she was holding. “Garth picked a bad time to need help from me. But maybe it’s something that I can take care of quickly. Failing that, let’s hope it can wait.”
She picked up her phone and started with the first number.
“SO YOU SEE,” Van Dreenan said, “in order to locate Cecelia Mbwato, I will need some magic of my own.”
Libby nodded slowly. “You realize that the kind of locater you’re talking about won’t work over great distances. Probably not more than a few miles.”
“I understand that,” Van Dreenan said. “I plan to put myself in her general vicinity. Of course, for me to do that, she must kill again. That is the only way to know where she is, or, at least, has recently been. Rather a macabre dilemma, I recognize.”
“I think I know how you feel,” Quincey Morris said. “Friend of mine has a son with cystic fibrosis. The boy’s only hope was a lung transplant, from a donor the right age and general size. My friend hoped and prayed for that transplant, even knowing that if it was going to happen, somebody else’s child had to die. It bothered him some.”
“Life can be cruel,” Van Dreenan said.
“It can, for sure,” Morris said. “But I’ll say to you what I said to him. You’re not taking anybody’s life. That’s outside your control. All you’re doing is trying to use the means available, to save somebody else’s life.”
“You said she’s killed four?” Libby asked.
“Four, yes,” Van Dreenan said.
“Then there’ll be one more,” Libby said. “You know why as well as I do, Garth.”
“Indeed,” Van Dreenan said glumly.
“Powerful number, five,” Morris said. “Especially in black magic.”
“As much in the African variety as in the European,” Van Dreenan said. “Cecelia Mbwato must have something very nasty in mind. And if she does commit one more murder, that will probably be my last chance to... apprehend her, and I want to be ready.” He looked at Libby. “That is why I am here, Elizabeth.”
Libby picked up the small plastic bag that was resting on her coffee table and held it up to the light. “You’re sure this hair is Ms. Mbwato’s?”
“As sure as I can be,” Van Dreenan told her. “It was taken during a police raid on her home last year. She lived alone and had, of course, long since departed, but she left some items behind—including a hairbrush that had her fingerprints, and only hers, all over it.”
Libby shook the bag slightly, watching the curled black hairs bounce around. “I’m surprised the FBI doesn’t want this,” she said. “For DNA analysis, or whatever.”
“They do want it,” Van Dreenan said. “But the police back home were able to get a rather substantial sample from that brush, and I persuaded one of my colleagues to rush some to me, in two separate bags. The FBI lab has what it needs to work its magic.”
Libby stood up, still holding the plastic evidence bag. “Well, let me see if I can work some of my own. This may take a little while.” She looked at Morris, “Quincey, do you mind keeping Garth company while I try to assemble this thing?”
“My pleasure,” Morris said. “I figure the two of us ol’ boys have quite a few interests in common. Failing that, I guess we can always watch soft porn on your Pay-Per-View cable.”
Libby left the room, smiling and shaking her head. When she was gone, Van Dreenan looked at Morris. “I understand soft porn,” he said, “but what is this Pay-Per-View cable?”
NINETY MINUTES LATER, Van Dreenan was gone and Libby and Morris sat down to dinner. Libby was a vegetarian, so dinner consisted of a casserole made of rigatoni, three kinds of cheese, and portabella mushrooms. Although Morris was descended from a long line of Texas beef-eaters, his wide travels had given him an appreciation for a variety of cuisines. He thought the casserole delicious, and said so.
“I have a bottle of Chablis that would go with this very nicely,” Libby said, “but maybe that’s not such a good idea, under the circumstances.”
“I know what you mean,” Morris said. “Getting mellow on that wine could make us slow, and it seems I recollect an old saying that makes a clear distinction between the quick and the dead.”
“Maybe I should make coffee.”
“Good idea.”
They ate in silence for a while until Libby said, “What are we going to do if Barry Love can’t come up with some kind of lead for us?”
Morris chewed another mouthful of casserole and swallowed before shaking his head. “Damned if I know, Libby,” he said softly. “Damned if I know.”
CHAPTER 22
IT WAS A few minutes before ten o’clock when they returned to the lobby of the old office building.
Libby was reaching for the button to summon the elevator when Morris gently grabbed her arm and said, “Let’s take the stairs.”
As they started up the chipped and creaking steps, Libby asked tensely, “Something?”
“Maybe.”
“What?”
Morris shook his head. “Wait.”
When they reached the second landing, Morris said, very quietly, “Do you smell that?”
Libby took a long sniff and made a face. “That’s not cat pee. Unless the cats around here have started drinking sulfur water.” Her voice was as hushed as Morris’s had been. “I don’t recognize it. Do you?”
“Could be I do. Come on.”
As they climbed, the smell grew stronger. Pausing at the fourth floor landing, Morris asked, “Got your gear with you?” He was looking upward, toward the fifth floor, where Barry Love had his office.
“Of course,” Libby said. She was already slipping the catch on her large handbag.
“Anything in there that’
ll stop a demon?”
Libby’s eyes widened. “A demon? Why do you think—?”
That was when the door to the fifth floor landing burst open to reveal something out of a nightmare.
It had the body of an orangutan and the head of a hyena—except for the jaws, which would have looked at home on one of the larger species of crocodile. It crouched on the landing looking down at them, and from its mouth came the sound that a Doberman makes just before it goes for your throat.
Libby Chastain’s disciplined mind quelled the panic that was trying to rise within her. She kept her eyes on the demon while quickly sorting by touch through the objects in her bag. After a few seconds that seemed much longer, her fingers closed around the vial she had been seeking. She nudged the stopper off with her thumb.
“Whatever you do, don’t run,” Morris said tightly. “It expects that—that’s why it’s waiting. Damned thing will jump on your back, then reach around and tear your throat out from behind.”
Morris took from his pocket a small bottle that bore the label of a health food store. The contents rattled as he twisted off the cap.
Libby risked a quick glance in his direction. “What’s that?”
“Sea salt. They don’t like it. Something to do with Solomon’s bottle, when it was cast into the sea with a demon imprisoned inside. Have you got something ready?”
“Yes. It’s—”
“Never mind, save it—we’ll probably need it. This one’s mine.”
“This one?”
“They travel in packs. This ol’ boy’s probably not alone.”
The prospect of more of these creatures made Libby swallow hard. “So, how do we play this?”
“Like Sam Houston at San Jacinto—we charge. Come on!”
And with that he was pounding up the stairs. Libby pulled the vial from her purse and followed, offering a quick prayer to the Goddess as she ran.
When Morris was two steps below the snarling demon, he flung a handful of the sea salt up toward the hideous face. “Be thou bound, Hellspawn, as with Solomon’s seal!” he shouted. The demon threw its paws up to its face and staggered back, making a sound very much like a whimper. Morris immediately took the last two steps and closed in, wrapping one strong hand around the creature’s massive snout, which rendered the killer teeth briefly useless. With his other hand he grabbed a handful of loose skin and fur along the demon’s back.
Then, in one smooth motion, he pivoted and threw the squirming monstrosity over the railing. Its enraged screams echoed through the stairwell until they were abruptly cut off by a wet sound of impact, five floors below.
“Is it dead?” Libby asked.
Morris shrugged. “Maybe. Out of action, anyway.” He shook the bottle of sea salt, as if checking how much was left.
“I thought demons were immortal and couldn’t be killed.”
“Killed might be the wrong word, but they can at least be sent back where they came from. Especially if you destroy the physical body they’re manifesting in. Listen, we have to—”
From the other side of the door came the boom of a gunshot, then another.
“Shit!” Morris said. “They’re after Love, too. We’ll have to play this by ear. Keep one thing in mind,” he told Libby. “Demons aren’t smart, most of them, and they don’t adapt quickly. Keep them off balance, and you’ve got a chance.”
He took Libby’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Once we go through that door, we’re like an egg on a hot griddle. If we stay put for more than a second or two, we fry. Maybe literally. Okay?”
Libby Chastain’s mouth was set in a thin line of concentration. She nodded once.
“All right,” Morris said. “Let’s go.” He took a deep breath, then yanked open the door to the fifth floor.
What greeted them could have been a scene right out of Dante, if only the great poet had written The Inferno while tripping on LSD.
The door to Barry Love’s office was open, and something that looked like a puke-colored Teletubby with fangs lay in the hallway, dead in a pool of its own slime. Its guts were being eaten by another demon that resembled a naked human dwarf, except it had the head of a goat, and a living snake in place of a penis. Two other monstrosities were peering cautiously into Love’s office from either side of the doorway. One looked something like the Creature from the Black Lagoon except that it had the breasts of a voluptuous woman. The other was dressed like a Nazi storm trooper, except that under the peaked cap was the head of a boar, complete with sharp-looking tusks.
The two demons at Love’s door ducked back suddenly, and an instant later came a shot that blew a piece of the doorframe into splinters. Morris wondered how many rounds Barry Love had left, and whether his bullets were silver.
Then the dwarf-thing noticed them standing near the hallway door. It pulled its head from its cohort’s intestines and bellowed something in a language that neither Morris nor Chastain recognized. Then it bared its fangs and charged.
Libby Chastain stepped forward as the demon ran at them. “Mine!” she said to Morris. “Go on!”
As the dwarf-thing closed in on Libby it growled, in English, “Gonna eat your cunt first, bitch!”
Libby smiled tightly and said, “Eat this!” She raised her right hand, palm up, to reveal some violet-colored fine powder. Extending her hand, she blew hard on her palm, spraying the powder all over the approaching demon. She then said a quick phrase in Latin and the dwarf-thing instantly froze in place, an expression of astonishment on its goatish countenance. Libby then made a complex sign in the air with two fingers of her right hand and cried out, “Ignis!”
The demon immediately burst into flame, screaming horribly.
White magic can’t be used to harm people, but it works just fine on Hellspawn.
Burning demon flesh gives off an odor so putrid and vile that it can induce vomiting in humans who aren’t used to it. Libby, who had little experience with demons, was caught unprepared by a wave of nausea that hit her like a punch to the solar plexus. She was, for a few seconds, defenseless.
While Libby was dealing with the dwarf-demon, Morris went for the two creatures that had positioned themselves outside Barry Love’s office door. He had already poured the remaining sea salt crystals into his left hand and dropped the bottle. With his right he pulled out a switchblade knife that was illegal in twenty-eight states. Thumbing the button on the handle produced a six-inch blade that glittered brightly even in the corridor’s uncertain light. The sharp steel was silver-plated, and the weapon had been blessed years ago by the Archbishop of Albuquerque, after Morris had rendered the archdiocese a singular and very discreet service.
Keep moving, don’t stop, Morris was thinking. We stop we fry. We fry, we die.
The two demons were waiting for him, so Morris decided on misdirection. He made a sudden head fake toward Barry Love’s office door. When the creatures started moving that way, Morris suddenly threw the sea salt into the face of the pig-faced storm trooper and was rewarded with an outraged bellow. He slashed at the lagoon creature with his blade, but the green monstrosity was quicker than it looked. Webbed fingers locked around Morris’s knife hand, and the demon’s fangs went for his throat. Morris blocked the horrid face with a forearm, and the two of them staggered into Barry Love’s office and fell hard onto the cheap carpet.
Despite his effort to twist as they went down, Morris ended up on the bottom. He kept trying to use the knife on the creature while protecting himself, but demons are strong. The scaly, amphibian face was pushing inexorably against Morris’s forearm, the sharp teeth drawing closer to his throat, when Barry Love placed the barrel of a Colt .38 revolver against the thing’s head and blew the contents of its skull all over the nearest wall.
Love helped Morris to his feet. “Sorry that took me so long,” he said. “I was watching the door to see if any more of them were going to try a rush while we were distracted. Where’s your girlfriend?”
“She’s not my—” Morris beg
an, but then there was a cry from the corridor outside. It was quickly stifled, but he knew that voice. “Libby!”
Morris rushed into the hallway, Barry Love close behind him. The sight that greeted them caused each man to come to a sudden stop and then to become very still.
The storm trooper demon with the boar’s head clutched Libby Chastain from behind and was using her for a shield. One hairy hand was clasped tightly over Libby’s mouth. The other held a Nazi ceremonial dagger, its needle point just touching Libby’s throat. If a boar’s face can be said to grin, then this one was doing so.
“So the game has changed,” the demon said. Its voice was raspy and nasal, reminding Morris of the late Peter Lorre. “But now I hold the best cards, including, it would seem, the Queen.” It dug the dagger’s point in a little, causing a drop of blood to make its way down the column of Libby’s throat. “You will drop your weapons! At once!”
“You’ve been watching too much TV,” Barry Love said conversationally, as he took a slow step to his left. “Or do they have TV in Hell?”
“Yes, but only The Jerry Springer Show,” the demon told him. “Now cast away your weapons, or watch me gut her!”
Morris thought he knew what Love was doing. He moved a little to the right as he asked, “What happens if we do as you ask? Will you let her go?”
“All you need know is what happens if you do NOT do as I say!” the demon bellowed. “And stand still, both of you!”
“Libby,” Morris said, locking eyes with her, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of this.” He paused a beat before continuing, “And whatever you do, don’t faint.”
He thought he saw understanding in Libby’s eyes, and knew he was right a moment later when she suddenly sagged at the knees, making herself dead weight.
Demons are strong, but not smart. The boar storm trooper was not prepared for the sudden shift in Libby’s weight, and she was slipping toward the floor before the creature could adjust its grip to prop her up.
Suddenly, the demon’s great ugly head was unprotected.
Black Magic Woman (Morris and Chastain Investigations) Page 19