by DD Barant
“I heard something about it, yeah.”
“But I don’t know why. We don’t have a case—or if we do, the sheriff won’t talk to me about it. Keeps saying he has his reasons, but won’t explain. I tell you, it don’t make any sense.” He pauses. “Thing of it is, he’s got an alibi, a pretty damn solid one. Sheriff says he’s lying, but I can’t see how. So when this Cassiar fellow came by and asked to talk to the boy, I thought I’d let him, just to see what would happen.”
“And what did?”
Silver frowns. “Sheriff just about blew a fuse. Told me nobody was allowed to see him until he gave the say-so, not even a lawyer. Then he threw this Cassiar out—but not before he threatened to arrest him, too. It’s not like the sheriff to act like this, and I just can’t figure it out. Mr. Cassiar said you might be able to shed some light on it.”
Me? I’m dumbfounded. Why the hell would Cassiar dump this in my lap, then disappear? What, am I supposed to bring Silver into our little counter-conspiracy? And why would Cassiar think I was any more credible than he was? Not that anything in our story is even remotely believable, anyway.…
I give Silver a brilliant smile. “It’s actually really simple. Sheriff Stoker has … a secret.” I pause.
“A secret?”
“Yes. Haven’t you noticed how private the man is?” I’m making this up as I go along, which feels a lot like tap-dancing on a high-wire while wearing a blindfold. “How he comes and goes sometimes with no explanation? Mysterious errands and so forth?”
“Well … come to think of it, he has been kinda withdrawn lately. On edge, too.”
“Uh-huh. Exactly. Well, Terrance knows what’s going on. And he’s threatening to spill the beans all over the cat he’s going to let out of the bag.” I’m on a roll now. “So the sheriff’s trying to convince him otherwise. Get him to see reason, show a little discretion, clam up. Understand?”
“Not really. What’s this big secret he’s trying to cover up?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you that. Are you trying to get me locked up, too?”
He looks at me like he can’t decide which one of his legs I’m pulling, and how hard. I drop the smile and stare back impassively.
“Look,” I say in a low voice, “don’t take my word for it. Do a little checking around—especially on the connection between Stoker and Old Man Longinus. You’ll see what I mean.”
“Longinus? What’s he got to do with—”
“That’s all I can say.” I hope it’s enough; I want to get his interest, but not tell him anything that could get me locked up. Having a cop on our side would be one helluva plus—if nothing else, it might help keep Stoker off our backs.
My phone chimes and I quickly dig it out, glad of the excuse to end the conversation. I’m hoping it’s Cassius, but it isn’t. It’s Gretchen Peters, the librarian. Wait. Librarian?
“Hello, Miss Valchek? I’ve been looking through the town records, and I’ve uncovered some very unusual facts. I really think you should see them.” She sounds a little nervous. “And as quickly as possible.”
“I can be there in a minute.”
“That’s fine. The library is closed, but I’ll unlock the door. I’ll see you shortly.” She hangs up.
I’ve walked a few steps away from Silver, the way you do when you’ve taken a call on a cell phone, and now I just keep walking as I hang up. “Gotta go!” I toss over my shoulder. “Remember what I told you!”
“But—” he says. I’m already halfway across the street.
The door to the library is open, just like she said it would be. I pull it open and go in.
My brain is trying to get my attention. Something about Gretch. Gretch? That seems awfully chummy. Since when do you call Miss Peters Gretch? She can hardly stand you.
Most of the lights in the library are off, but I can see a dim glow coming from the end of a long aisle. I head that way.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a library after hours. It’s a little unsettling, having a mundane, normally well-lit environment turned into something full of towering shadows. The passage seems awfully narrow, the shelves pressing in on me from both sides; I become uncomfortably aware that someone one aisle over could be watching me over the tops of the books. Someone could even reach through that gap with one long arm and grab me …
I make it to the far end without being ambushed. The light is coming from the open door of an office with a small plastic sign next to the jamb reading HEAD LIBRARIAN. I stick my own head in. “Gretch—uh, en?”
She’s seated at a cheap chrome and fiberboard desk, with a green-shaded lamp on it spreading a pool of light. Beneath it is a large metal tube, three feet or so in length, with roughly the diameter of a Mason jar.
“Good evening, Miss Valchek,” she says. “Please, sit down.”
I pull up a plastic-framed chair and do so, feeling absurdly like I’m about to be reprimanded for smoking in the girls’ room. “You sounded a little upset. Everything okay?”
“Yes, yes. Everything’s fine. But what I’ve discovered—well, it’s quite the find. I simply had to show you, straight away.” Her face seems a little flushed, and her eyes are practically shining; the look of an academic who’s successfully stalked and captured a prize piece of information.
I point at the tube. “I guess this is it?”
“Oh, yes. Just wait until you see.” She unscrews the cap on the end and carefully extracts a long, rolled-up piece of paper. Parchment?
She unrolls it, using four felt-padded clamps to secure it to the edges of the desk. I peer at it curiously. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“A very old map, Miss Valchek—can I call you Jace? Yes, a map made when this town was barely more than a few log cabins and tents. Hardly anything here at all … which is why this is so fascinating.”
It looks to me like someone’s gone to the trouble of marking out a bunch of streets, far more than you’d need in a settlement this size. Thinking ahead, I guess, or maybe just someone with grandiose ideas.
But then I notice something else: The streets aren’t exactly straight, nor are they arranged in an orderly grid. Some of them seem to run right through existing buildings. “Wait a minute,” I say softly. “These aren’t streets—”
“No. They’re tunnels.” I can almost taste her excitement. “Very, very old tunnels. In fact, I believe they were already here when the town was founded.”
I study the parchment a little closer. There are numbers marked here and there, and I realize they must be depth indicators. There are other marks, too, that I can’t decipher—but I recognize them just the same. They’re in the same unknown language Longinus’s book is written in.
Déjà vu surges through me, but not because of the symbols. It’s this situation: sitting in a room with this woman, studying vital yet arcane information. I know I—we—have done this before. “Any idea why the tunnels are there? What they were used for?”
She glances up, her eyes bright. She doesn’t seem quite so spinsterish any more. “That’s the intriguing part. They approach almost every structure in town—gathering places, residences—including the sites of buildings that didn’t exist yet.”
“So, a way to travel undetected from house to house? Secret entrances in basements, that sort of thing?”
“You’d think so, but no. They almost always stay below the level of the foundations, and when they do near the surface they skirt the buildings instead of going under them. It’s as if whoever roamed those tunnels wanted to be in close proximity to the residents, but not too close.”
I see what she means; the tunnels snake around Thropirelem like an invisible anaconda, but I don’t see any places where they intersect with the upper world.
Except one.
I tap the paper. “Look. The tunnel dead-ends right here. And the depth marking is only eight feet; that’s shallow enough to connect with a basement.”
She leans over to look herself. “I believe you’re correct. How
odd that I didn’t notice that myself…”
It’s funny, how smells can trigger memories. When she bends her head, some stray air current in the room carries a trace of her perfume to me. I remember it well, because I asked about it once and Gretch told me she had to have it imported from a little aromatherapy shop in London.…
Gretch.
I remember.
“I’d like to describe someone to you,” I say. “Someone I think you may know.”
Her head is still down as she peers intently at the map. “Mmm?”
“She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, an intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency. Born in London. Dry, razor-sharp wit. She has a child, Anna, whom she loves more than existence itself. She’d kill for Anna—in fact, she has. I was there.”
No reaction. She doesn’t even look up—but she’s suddenly very, very still.
“The father of her child was killed by a lunatic who nearly killed Anna, too. I prevented that. We’ve had a special bond ever since, which is probably why I’m Anna’s godmother.
“That woman’s name is Gretchen Petra. She’s a vampire. She’s you, Gretch.”
“I know,” Gretch says softly. She raises her head and smiles at me with two long incisors. Her eyes are as red as blood. “But that’s who I was, Jace. Not who I am.”
And then she has me by the throat.
ELEVEN
I can feel my trachea trapped between Gretch’s fingers and thumb, her fingernails cutting into the skin of my throat. It’s a hold that can let her rip out my windpipe with one quick squeeze and pull, a very professional immobilization technique. Not the kind of skill possessed by most librarians.
“Glurk,” I say. I can still breathe, but just barely. I grab her wrist with both hands, more from reflex than anything else. She has me cold.
“Eloquent as always,” she says. She sounds like Gretch, too, that combination of quiet amusement and self-assurance. “You have no idea how much I missed that. Which is to say, not at all.”
“Guh?”
“Oh, don’t sound so bewildered. You don’t really think I ever found you witty, do you? I’m British, dear girl. Your japes were never anything to me but the crude vulgarity of an unsophisticated and ill-tempered brat.”
“Nuh!”
“But I suppose I do owe you a debt of thanks. If not for you, I would never have known this world, never have known the freedom it confers. Being a pire here is very different, Jace; it’s stronger, wilder, less cerebral. My blood is practically singing. I must confess, I feel a bit giddy.”
She looks it, too. I’ve never seen Gretch drunk—though pires on her world can and do consume alcohol with the aid of a little sorcery—but she’s definitely under the influence of something. I know what, too.
She leans across the desk, pulling me a little closer. “I feel like I could do anything,” she whispers. “I could tear off a man’s head and bathe in the spray of his arteries. I could kill an army. I could conquer a world and drink the blood of its children.”
I believe her. Unrestrained by moral boundaries and with no real supernatural opposition, Gretch could probably turn this whole planet into her personal blood bank within a generation or two. Welcome to the new British invasion.
“You have no idea how glorious it is, Jace. My chains have been broken, my soul released; I’m free of the cloying morass of petty human considerations like compassion or pity. No inhibitions, no restrictions—”
I let go of her wrist with one hand. I give her a look that says, “Yeah, but…” and hold up my index finger.
She frowns. Emotional repression, when finally released, produces emotional lability; she’s riding high right now, but look out for those mood swings. “Oh? Very well, then—tell me what one thing still holds me back.”
She releases my throat, letting me talk. I gasp, then stumble back a step. It’s a temporary reprieve, I know; Gretch is at least as dangerous as Zhang or Isamu. Probably more so, because she’s smarter than either of them. And she’s fast enough to take me down before I get anywhere near the door.
I take a second to get my breath back, then say, “Precon—” cough “—preconditions.”
“What preconditions?”
“You’re not here to rule the world, Gretch.” My voice is hoarse and it hurts to talk. I keep going, though, because it’s the best weapon I have right now. “You’re a booby trap. Sorry.”
Her frown deepens. I don’t have to explain it to her—all I needed to do was stall out her emotional surge, then point her in the right direction. I just hope that Ahaseurus’s spells have degraded enough to let her mind become aware of them; her own ferocious intellect should take care of the rest.
“My … consciousness has been tampered with,” she murmurs. “I’m not whole. Access to memories is incomplete. Emotional responses have been significantly altered.…”
NSA training on Thropirelem—the real Thropirelem—includes anti-brainwashing techniques. Gretch helped develop some of them. Right now she’s evaluating how bad the damage is, attempting to isolate the worst of it with psychic firewalls, and activating deep-structure mnemonic repair protocols—
“Oh, dear,” she says mildly. “That’s a shame.”
“What?” I manage.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. You just think you do—”
She gives her head an impatient shake. “No, you don’t understand. I really, truly, do hate you. I’m incapable of doing anything else. My entire emotional baseline has been subverted and slaved to that one response. Quite an impressive job, really. I hate you so much I’m incapable of killing you. Making you suffer is far more important.”
“You—you can beat it, right?”
Her smile returns. “I’m afraid not. But there is good news: I’m not actually me. I’m a crude imitation, created through stolen memories implanted in a woman only recently turned into a pire. I can’t tell you by whom, though; those memories are missing as well. You’re absolutely correct about me being a trap: I’m here to make you doubt yourself, make you hesitate in crucial situations and/or wallow in guilt. Instead, I’m going to give you a single word of advice.”
“Which is?”
She opens a drawer and pulls out a pencil, then meets my eyes with a steely glare. “Don’t.”
She stabs herself in the chest.
With perfect precision, of course. The pencil slides under the breastbone and directly into her heart. Her body bursts into flames, just like Isamu’s did, and she slumps forward.
Onto the map.
I’m so horrified that I just freeze up. By the time my brain kicks into gear, it’s too late; I manage to find a fire extinguisher on the wall, but by then the map is gone. Whatever makes vampires self-immolate in this reality, it generates a lot of heat in a very short period of time.
Once I’m sure the fire’s out, I go out into the darkness of the library. I slump down at the end of a row, put my head in my hands, and let the tears out.
I know it wasn’t really Gretch. I know she did the best, smartest thing she could have. But right now, I don’t care; I miss her. If anyone could have found a way to get me out of this damn place, it was her, and now she’s gone.
Congratulations, Ahaseurus; guess this round goes to you.
* * *
I go home. I’m tired and depressed and all I want is a bottle of scotch, my dog, and a little TV. If Jimmy Zhang is hanging around waiting for me, I’ll get the chance to see how effective my improvised shotgun loads are.
But the only thing that greets me is my dog’s excited barking. I go in, pack a bag, then take Gally out to the car and leave. As much as the comforts of home are calling, this isn’t home. It never was.
I drive straight to Charlie’s place.
He’s already at the door when I jump out of the car. “No good, huh?” he says.
“No. See that storm cloud overhead? Apparently it’s keeping an eye on me. I try to leave an
d I turn into a lightning rod.” Galahad bounds out of the truck and follows me up the steps. “Cassiar talked to Terrance, and he’s got a solid alibi the sheriff is ignoring. Deputy Silver verified it, and it’s confusing the hell out of him. Cassiar back yet?”
“Not yet.”
We all go inside. I toss my bag down on the sofa and dig out my DVDs. I probably only need the one, but I brought them all just in case. “Oh, and Miss Peters, the librarian? She showed me an old map of a tunnel system beneath the town she found in the archives. Then she grew fangs, threatened to take over the world, and killed herself.”
Charlie looks at me blankly, then slowly shakes his head. “That’s it. You’re not allowed to go out anymore.”
“Buckle up, Charlie. This ride’s barely around the first curve.…”
I put the DVD in. I don’t know if Charlie’s TV will work like mine, but now’s the time to find out. I go to the scene menu, looking for the one with the Sword of Midnight, and find a scene that wasn’t there before: It’s titled Azura, and has a picture of her face. I select it and hit PLAY.
The image fills the screen but stays frozen. “Azura?” I say. “You there?”
“Maybe she’s in the john,” Charlie says. He’s eating an apple, which Galahad is regarding with the same kind of expectant admiration he shows all food. “Sorceresses do that, right?”
“I don’t know. Let me check my recently unlocked memories for detailed information on magic and/or peeing and get back to you.”
The image abruptly stutters and comes to life. “Jace! I was starting to worry.”
“Starting? Better put it in gear, Blondie—you’re about three crises behind on the it’s-time-to-freak-out train.” I let her know what’s happened since the last time we spoke.
“Too bad,” she says when I tell her about Gretch. “She could have been an important ally. But on that front, I have some good news.”
“The last time someone said that to me, she committed suicide with a sharpened number two pencil. Don’t do that, okay?”
“You have my word. I have a much better idea, anyway. How would you like a few old friends to drop by?”