Hard Spell

by Justin Gustainis

"And you thought that why, exactly?" I asked.

  "Has the knife itself been found?" Vollman asked, instead of answering my question.

  "Not so far," Karl told him. "Homicide had uniforms searching a five-block radius. They checked all the usual places where somebody would dump something – sewer grates, dumpsters, trash cans, like that. Nada."

  "Look," I said. "We both know you don't need a silver-plated knife to kill a vampire, although it seems to do the job pretty well. So the silver must have some other purpose."

  "A ritualistic purpose. Gotta be," Karl said.

  "And you knew it," I said. "That's why you told us to check for foreign substances in the wound. I want to know what you know about this, Vollman."

  The vampire/wizard looked at his hands for a long moment. They had long, thin fingers and the skin was free of the brown spots you associate with old folks. Guess vamps don't have liver problems. And for them, sun damage is never an issue – except when it's terminal.

  "I know little," he said finally. "But I suspect much, and fear even more."

  I slammed my open hand down on my desk. "Why don't you cut out the cryptic bullshit and tell us something straight out, just for a change?"

  Vollman raised his head and looked at me. He didn't seem to change expression, but I was suddenly very aware that I was sitting opposite a five hundred year-old monster who's probably killed more people than I've had meals.

  But I've faced down creatures as scary as Vollman before. I didn't blink or look away. I wan't afraid of him – or so I told myself.

  The old man held my gaze, then nodded, as if he had just confirmed something. "Very well, Sergeant. But what I know does not, regrettably, amount to a great deal."

  Vollman settled himself in his chair before going on. "The symbols you showed me were, in fact, from the language of ancient Sumeria. They do not constitute a word, but rather seem to form the first three letters of the name of an ancient god."

  "What god?" Karl asked him.

  Vollman looked uneasy for the first time since I had met him. "I would prefer not to say the name aloud. This is a powerful and quite malevolent deity. It probably makes no difference whether its name is spoken, but I have learned something of prudence in my long life."

  I knew what he meant. There are some names it's better not to say out loud, if you don't have to. Speaking of the devil doesn't necessarily make him appear – but it might.

  "All right," I said. "Would you be willing to write it down for us, instead?"

  "Yes," he said. "That I am prepared to do."

  I found a pad in one of my desk drawers and handed it to Vollman, along with a pen. After a moment's hesitation, he wrote something on the pad and passed it back to me.

  He had written the word "Sakosh."

  It meant nothing to me. I showed the pad to Karl, who glanced at the name, looked back at me, and shrugged. He'd never heard of it, either.

  I tossed the pad on my desk. "So, somebody killed a vampire last night with a silver blade, then carved the name of some old Sumerian god on the guy's forehead. What's this got to do with the Opus Mago and George Kulick?"

  "Perhaps nothing," Vollman said. "But I hold very little faith in coincidence."

  "Me, too," I said. "So?"

  "So, the man in the alley was clearly a sacrifice, yes?"

  "Fair assumption," I said.

  "A sacrifice is used in magic to give power to a spell or incantation."

  "Right."

  "Most magical rituals that involve sacrifice call for the death of an animal. The sacrifice of a human being is used only in the blackest of the black arts, when some great evil is being contemplated."

  "Agreed."

  Vollman looked at Karl, then back at me. "Then ask yourselves this question, which has been haunting me for the last several nights: how monstrous must a spell be that requires the sacrifice of a vampire?"

  There was a silence that Vollman finally broke by saying, "And remember the Opus Mago is a forbidden book precisely because it contains spells to be used for invoking the most potent of the dark forces, which are precisely the kind of powers that would require such an... extreme... sacrifice."

  "So your theory," Karl said, "is that whoever stole the Opus Mago plans to carry out one of those blacker than-black rituals, and that the guy who got his throat cut is supposed to kick-start the process."

  Vollman nodded. "That is the conclusion that I have reached, based on the available information."

  Karl's chair creaked as he leaned forward. "So how do we find the guy who's doing this shit?"

  "If I knew that…" Vollman shrugged instead of finishing the sentence.

  "If you knew that, you wouldn't need us," I said. "That's the most honest thing you've ever said to us, even if you didn't really say it."

  Vollman didn't respond to my dig. Istead, he asked politely, "Have your police colleagues produced any useful leads in the case of George Kulick?"

  "Not a damn thing," I said. "No witnesses, no murder weapon, and the forensics stuff is pretty much useless."

  "They found some stray hairs on the corpse," Karl said, "but whether they come from the perp or from the vic's girlfriend, or his mother, or whoever, we don't know. And a DNA match won't work until they have a suspect to match it to."

  "I was just remembering something you said the other day," I told Vollman. "Whoever would mess around with the Opus Mago would have to be a wizard of 'supreme arrogance,' or something like that. I had the impression that you believe most practitioners of the Art wouldn't be caught dead with that book, so to speak."

  "You are correct," Vollman said. "Even I have not read it – apart from a quick perusal, to verify its authenticity."

  "You wouldn't read it," Karl said. "Okay, who would?"

  Vollman raised his hands a few inches before dropping them back in his lap. "I have no idea."

  "But among the local supes you're the man," Karl said. "You told us so yourself. So you ought to know which of the practitioners would have the stones to try a spell from this book."

  "I ought to know, yes, and I do," Vollman said. "The answer to your question is, 'no one.'"

  "None of the local wizards, witches, sorcerers, or wannabees would give it a try? You're sure?" Karl was like a terrier with a rat. He gets that way sometimes.

  "Quite certain. The person in this area with the greatest chance of surviving such an attempt is, frankly, myself. And I would not venture such insanity."

  "So it's an outsider," I said. "Somebody who came here for the express purpose of stealing the Opus Mago and making use of it."

  Vollman thought about that for a while, or pretended to. Finally, he said, "You must be correct, Sergeant. I can think of no other explanation."

  "Why here?" Karl asked. "Why Scranton?"

  "Remember, there are only four copies of the Opus Mago known to remain in existence, Detective," Vollman said. "Kulick was the guardian of one of them. There were only so many places the thief could strike."

  "Where are the other three?" I asked him.

  Vollman counted them off slowly on his fingers as he spoke. "One is in London," he said, "in a secure vault at the British Museum. Another is in Cologne, Germany. The third is held in Johannesburg, South Africa. And the fourth is – was – here."

  "Are the other three copies still where they're supposed to be?" I was wondering whether Scranton was the thief's first stop, or his last.

  "I have made inquiries within the last few days," Vollman said. "Yes, all three are still in place." He held up a hand, palm toward me, for a moment. "And if I may anticipate your next question, no attempts have been made to steal the other copies."

  "So, whoever it was wanted the book, he picked Scranton as the best place to rip it off," Karl said. "Maybe because he heard the Opus Mago was guarded by just one guy and a dinky little floor safe."

  Vollman stirred in his chair a little, as if the accusation in Karl's voice had made him uncomfortable.

  "He came he
re for the book, then stuck around," Karl went on. "Why would he do that?"

  "Perhaps he is in a hurry," Vollman said. "He wants to waste no time in putting one of the spells into practice."

  "It would be good if we knew what ll was," I said to Karl. "Might give us a better idea of what we're dealing with."

  I turned to Vollman. "We know about the silver knife, and about the name of–" I stopped, and tapped the pad on my desk, where he had written the ancient god's name. "–this guy here. Is that enough to go on, for somebody to look in one of the other copies and work backwards?"

  Vollman sat there for a while, frowning. Then he said, "I can ask. You understand, I have no authority over those people. But if I explain what is at stake here, it may be that one of the other caretakers can be persuaded to search through his copy of the Opus Mago. Perhaps, given what we know, he can determine the exact nature of the spell that is being undertaken by this lunatic, whoever he may be."

  "Or 'she,'" Karl said.

  Vollman dipped his head in acknowledgment. "Or she."

  "If you can do that right away, it would be a very good thing," I said. "And in the meantime, Detective Renfer and I will talk to some of our contacts in the supernatural community."

  Vollman looked at me. "To what end?"

  "To see if there's a new wizard in town."

  In Scranton, there's no shortage of what my mom used to call beer gardens. There are straight bars and supe bars. That doesn't mean a supe can't walk into any joint in town for a beer (or a Bloody Mary – with or without real blood), assuming he's of age and has the money to pay for it. Discrimination's against the law. Anyway, no bartender's going to refuse to serve somebody who might come back during the next full moon and tear his throat out.

  But most supes prefer the company of their own, and the biggest supe bar in town is Renfield's on Wyoming Avenue. I'd been there plenty of times before.

  The place was busy when Karl and I walked in a little after 3am. Supe bars usually stay open all night and close at dawn, for obvious reasons.

  You'd think we might get a hostile reception in a place like that, but you'd be wrong. Cops on the Supe Squad spend as much time investigating crimes committed against supes as we do on crimes with a supe perpetrator, and the supe community knows that. If a cop is fair in his dealings with them, the supes remember.

  And if he's not fair, they remember that, too.

  I try to be fair, even when dealing with vamps. You can't let your personal views get in the way of your work – it's not professional. And I'm always professional. Well, almost always.

  We got nods of welcome from a couple of ogres sitting in a corner, and a quiet wave from a werewolf we knew. The rest of the customers ignored us, or pretended to.

  Elvira was tending bar, like she usually does on weeknights. That's not her real name, of course. But she's tricked out like that vamp wannabe who got famous hosting bad horror movies on TV. Why an attractive human would want to look like a vamp is beyond me, but I guess a girl's gotta make a living. Like the original, our Elvira's got boobs big enough to look good in the low-slung dress that's part of the get-up, and I bet that cleavage of hers is good for a lot of tips.

  When she slinked over, I ordered a ginger ale for myself and a seltzer for Karl. That thing about no booze on the job may be a cliché, but it's also a rule.

  Besides, if I was going to drink, I wouldn't do it in a supe bar, despite my good relations with most of the locals. There's always the chance that I'd get careless and have one too many.

  A circus animal trainer may get along pretty well with the lions, tigers, and leopards in his act, but he'd be a fool to turn hs back on them.

  Elvira was back within a minute. She placed our drinks in front of us, and I dropped a twenty on the bar. As she reached for it, I placed my hand on top of hers. Nothing painful – I just wanted to get her attention.

  She looked at me through all the mascara and eyeliner that surrounded her baby blues. "What?"

  "Seen any new faces, the last week or so?"

  She wrinkled her forehead in thought. "Gosh, no, I don't think so. You guys lookin' for somebody in particular?"

  I nodded. "A practitioner, gender unknown. New in town, and a real heavy hitter."

  "I haven't heard about anybody like that, Stan," Elvira said. "Honest."

  "Put the word out, will you?" I said. "Quiet, no drama. But make it clear that if anybody can give me a line on this new spellcaster, I'd owe them a heck of a big favor."

  Yeah, I really said "heck". I'm no Boy Scout, but it's not smart to say words like "hell" in a supe bar. You never know what might be listening.

  Elvira promised to let her customers know that I was in the market for information, and I told her to keep the change from my twenty.

  I turned around and leaned my back against the bar. It was the signal that I was open for business, if anybody had any. I've found it's better to let supes approach me, rather than the other way around. Some of them spook easy, you might say.

  Off to my left, Karl was deep in conversation with the LeFay sisters, a couple of young witches from up the line in Dickson City. He could have been asking about our wizard, or trying to set up a threesome for later. Either way, it didn't look like he was having much luck.

  A few minutes later, I realized that Barney Ghougle had slipped onto the stool to my right. I hadn't seen him approach, but then nobody beats a ghoul for sneaky.

  Everybody calls him Barney Ghougle, even him. His real name is something unpronounceable, except by another ghoul. Barney looks kind of like Peter Lorre used to, back when he was a young actor making films in Germany – like M, where Lorre played a degenerate child murderer. The resemblance ends there, though. I'm sure Barney would never hurt a kid.

  Which doesn't necessarily mean he wouldn't eat one, if it was already dead.

  I nodded in his direction. "Hey, Barney."

  "Sergeant," he said in that raspy voice of his. "And how are you this fine evening?"

  Even from several feet away, his halitosis made my nose wrinkle. Ghouls have the absolute worst breath in the world.

  "I'm a little frustrated, to tell you the truth," I said.

  "Indeed?" He took a sip of what looked like a double bourbon on the rocks. "Perhaps I might be able to assist you in some way, if I knew the cause of your distress."

  Barney talks like that because he's a mortician, and I guess somber formality helps when you're dealing with the grieving. I hear that his funeral home is pretty successful, but I'd never do business with him. I like my relatives to be buried with all their parts intact.

  "Maybe you can help," I said. "I'm trying to get a line on a practitioner."

  He nodded sympathetically. "There are so many," he said. "And yet I would have thought you knew them all. The local ones, at least."

  "That's just it," I told him. "This one might not be local. He, or maybe she, could be new in town, say within the last week or two. Somebody who's major league, or thinks he is. The kind who takes on the really hard spells."

  I turned and looked at him. "Sounds like there might be a 'but' lurking in there someplace."

  "How well you know me," he said with a tiny smile. "I was, in fact, about to say that I may have heard something about a new arrival to our fair city, a visitor who would seem to fit your description."

  He didn't say anything else. The silence between us dragged on for a while.

  "All right," I said with a sigh. "What do you need?"

  Barney took another sip of his drink before answering. "My brother," he said, not looking at me.

  "Algernon? Don't tell me he's been busted again."

  The little ghoul nodded glumly.

  "Same thing?" I asked. "Indecent exposure?"

  Another nod. "It is really most embarrassing," he said.

  I knew he meant it. Among ghouls, eating the flesh of the recently dead was no big deal, but having a relative who likes to wave his weenie around in front of the living is a sca
ndal. Especially if he keeps getting caught.

  "Who filed the complaint?" I asked. "Do you know?"

  He nodded slowly. "Some woman in Nay Aug Park. I gather she was on a bench, tossing peanuts to the squirrels, when Algernon approached her and asked if she'd like to see some real…" He let his voice fade out, with a despairing gesture.

  "I'll find out who she is," I told him. "See if maybe I can persuade her to change her mind about pressing charges. You may have to part with a few bucks to make her happy."

  "Which I would do, gladly," Barney said. "Thank you."