Blood Rites df-6

by Jim Butcher

  "Hell's bells, Murph!"

  She laughed at me. "You're cute when you're embarrassed. I thought breast implants were required industry equipment. Like hard hats and steel-toed boots for construction workers."

  "Not according to Genosa," I said. "He's quoted here saying that natural beauty and genuine desire make for better sex than all the silicon in California."

  "I'm not sure whether I should be impressed or a little nauseous," Murphy said.

  "Six of one and half dozen of another," I said. "Bottom line is that he's not your average pornographic artist."

  "I'm not sure that's saying much, Harry."

  "If you'd said that before I met him, I'd probably have agreed. But I'm not so sure now. I don't get any nasty vibe off him. He seems like a decent guy. Taking some measure of responsibility. Challenging the status quo, even if it hurts his profits."

  "I'm pretty sure there's no Nobel prize for pornography."

  "My point is that he's applying some measure of integrity to it. And people are responding well to him."

  "Except for the ones trying to kill him," Murphy said. "Harry, this is cynical, but people who choose a life like that draw problems down onto themselves sooner or later."

  "You're right. That is cynical."

  "You can't help everyone. You'll go insane if you try."

  "Look, the guy is in trouble and he's a fellow human being. I don't have to love his lifestyle to want to keep bad things from happening to him."

  "Yeah." Murphy sighed. "I guess I know this tune."

  "Do you think I could convince you to-"

  The skin on the back of my neck went cold and clammy, tingling. I turned to the office doorway in time to see the lights in the hall flick out. My heart pounded in sudden apprehension. A shadowy figure appeared in the office door.

  I picked up the first thing my hand found, Genosa's heavy glass ashtray, and flung it hard at the figure. The ashtray rebounded off the inner edge of the door and struck whoever it was. I heard a voiceless gasp of air. At the same time something hissed past my ear. A sharp thumping sound came from the wall behind me.

  I shouted at the top of my lungs and ran forward, but my foot tangled in the phone cord. It didn't tug me into a pratfall, but I stumbled, and it gave the shadowy figure time to run. By the time I'd recovered my balance and gotten to the hallway, I couldn't see or hear anyone.

  The hall itself was dark, and I couldn't remember the locations of either light switches or doors, which made a headlong pursuit less than advisable. It occurred to me that I made a wonderful target, leaning out of the door of the dimly lit office, and I slipped back inside, shutting and locking the door behind me as I went.

  I looked at whatever had thumped into the wall behind me, and found, of all the stupid things, a small dart fixed with exotic-looking yellow feathers fringed with a tinge of pink. I tugged the dart out of the wall. It was tipped with what appeared to be bone instead of metal, and the bone was stained with something dark red or dark brown. I had the feeling it wasn't Turtle Wax.

  A poisoned blowgun dart. I'd been ambushed before, but that was pretty exotic, even for me. Almost silly, really. Who the hell got killed with poison blowgun darts these days?

  A buzz of noise came from the dropped receiver of the phone. I picked up an empty plastic cigar tube from next to Genosa's humidor and slipped the dart into it, then capped it before I picked up the phone.

  "Harry?" Murphy was demanding. "Harry, are you all right?"

  "Fine," I said. "And it looks like I'm on the right track."

  "What happened?"

  I held up the cigar tube and peered at the dart. The poisoned tip gleamed with its semi-gelatinous stain. "It was pretty clumsy, but I think someone just tried to kill me."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Get out of there, Harry."

  "No, Murph," I said. "Look, I think it was just someone trying to scare me, or they'd have used a gun. Can you get to those records today?"

  "If they're matters of public record," she said. "We've got the time difference on our side. What are you hoping to find?"

  "More," I said. "This whole thing stinks. Hard to put a puzzle together when you're missing pieces."

  "Get in touch if you learn something," Murphy said. "Magic or not, attempted murder is police business. It's my business."

  "This time for sure," I said.

  "Watch your ass, Bullwinkle."

  "Always. Thanks again, Murph."

  I hung up and flipped through the next several pages of Genosa's scrapbook, expecting nothing but more articles. I got lucky on the last few pages. He had big, glossy color photos there-three women, and I recognized two of them.

  A subtitle beneath the first picture read, Elizabeth Guns. The photo was of Madge, Genosa's first wife. She looked like she'd been in her mid-twenties in the picture and she was more or less nude. Her hair was enormous and stiff-looking, an artificial shade of deep scarlet. She probably had to take off her makeup with a Zamboni machine.

  The next photo read, Raven Velvet, beneath a picture of a nearly Amazonian brunette I didn't recognize. She had the kind of build that fairly serious female athletes can get, where the muscles are present, defined with obvious strength, but softened and rounded enough to look more pretty than formidable. Her hair was cut in a short pageboy, and at first I thought her features were really quite sweet, almost kind. But her expression was an unsmiling, haughty stare at the camera. Ex-Genosa two, I supposed. He'd called her Lucille.

  The last picture was of the third former Mrs. Genosa. It was subtitled, Trixie Vixen, but someone had written across it in black permanent marker, ROT IN HELL, YOU PIG. There was no signature to tell who was responsible. Gee. I wonder.

  I flipped through the album once more but didn't see anything new. At some point I realized that I was delaying going down to the set. I mean, yeah, there were probably going to be naked girls doing a variety of interesting things. And I hadn't gotten laid in a depressing number of months, which probably made it sound a little more interesting. But there's a time and a place to enjoy that kind of thing, and for me in front of a bunch of people and cameras was not it.

  But I was a professional, dammit. And this was the job. I couldn't bodyguard anyone if I wasn't close enough to them to act. I couldn't figure out the source of the dark mojo without figuring out what was going on. And to do that, I needed to observe and ask questions-preferably without anyone knowing that's what I was doing. That was the smart thing, the professional thing. Conduct covert interviews while icons of sensual beauty got it on under stage lights.

  Onward. I screwed up my courage, so to speak, and slipped warily out of the office and down the dimly lit hall to the studio.

  There were a surprising number of people there. It was an enormous room, but it still looked busy. There were a couple of guys on each of four cameras, and there were a few more on hanging scaffolds that supported the stage lighting. A crew was working on the lighted set, which consisted of a bunch of panels made to look like an old brick wall, a couple of garbage cans, a trash bin, some loading pallets, and random bits of litter. Arturo and the beflanneled Joan were at the center of the activity, speaking to each other as they moved around placing cameras to their liking. Colt-legged Inari drifted along behind them marking positions on a chart. The notch-eared puppy followed her clumsily around, a piece of pink yarn tied around his neck and one of the loops of Inari's jeans. The puppy's tail wagged happily.

  I was supposed to be doing the assistant thing after all, so I walked over to Genosa. The puppy saw me and galloped headlong into my shoe. I leaned down and scratched his ears. "What should I do to help, Arturo?"

  He nodded at Joan. "Stick with her. She can show you the ropes as well as anyone. Watch, ask questions."

  "Okeydoky," I said.

  "You've met Inari?" Arturo asked.

  "Bumped into her already," I said.

  The girl smiled and nodded. "I like him. He's funny."

  "Looks aren'
t everything," I said.

  Inari's laugh was interrupted when her pants beeped. She reached into them and drew out an expensive cell phone the size of a couple of postage stamps. I scooped up the puppy and held him in the crook of one arm, and Inari untied his makeshift lead and handed it to me before walking a few steps away, phone to her ear.

  A harried-looking woman in sweeping skirts and a peasant blouse came half running across the studio floor, straight to Joan and Arturo. "Mr. Genosa, I think you'd better come to the dressing room. Right now."

  Genosa's eyes widened and his face went pale. He shot me a questioning glance. I shook my head at him and gave him a thumbs-up. He let out a slow breath, and then said, "What is happening?"

  Joan, behind him, checked her watch, rolled her eyes, and said, "It's Trixie."

  The woman nodded with a sigh. "She says she's leaving."

  Arturo sighed. "Of course she'd say that. Shall we, Marion?"

  They left, and Joan scowled. "There's no time for that prima donna."

  "Is there ever?"

  Her frown faded, replaced by simple weariness. "I suppose not. I just don't understand the woman. This project means as much to her future as to everyone else's."

  "Being the center of the universe is a big job. Maybe it's weighing on her nerves."

  Joan threw her head back and laughed. "That must be it. Let's get moving."

  "What's first?"

  We went to one of the other sets, this one dressed up like a cheap bar, and started going through boxes of random bottles and mugs for a more detailed appearance. I set the puppy down on the bar, and he waddled up and down the length of it, nose down to the surface and sniffing. After a few moments I asked, "How long have you known Arturo?"

  Joan hesitated for a second, then continued dressing up the set. "Eighteen or nineteen years, I think."

  "He seems like a nice man."

  She smiled again. "He isn't," she said. "He's a nice boy."

  I lifted my eyebrows. "How so?"

  She rolled one shoulder in a shrug. "He lives on the outside of his skin. He's impulsive, more passionate than he can afford to be, and he'll fall in love at the drop of a hat."

  "And that's bad?"

  "Sometimes," she said. "But he makes up for it. He cares about people. Here, you get that top shelf. You don't need a stepladder."

  I complied. "Soon I'll move up to putting stars and angels on the tops of Christmas trees. Me and that yeti in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

  Joan laughed again and answered me. Her words became indistinct and toneless, like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons. My heart began to race, and a stab of both food hunger and lust went through my stomach on its way to the base of my spine. My head turned of its own volition, and I saw Lara Romany enter the studio.

  She'd done her hair up in a style belonging to ancient Greece or Rome. She wore a short black silk robe with matching heels and stockings. She slid over the floor with a kind of fascinating, serpentine grace. I wanted to watch without moving. But some stubborn part of me shoved my brain into an intellectual cold shower. She was a life-draining vampire. I'd be stupid to let myself keep on reacting that way.

  I tore my eyes off of her, and realized that the puppy had come to the edge of the bar near me. He was crouched, his eyes on Lara, and was growling his squeaky little growl again.

  I looked around, and kept my eyes from moving back to her only by an effort of will. Every man in the room had become still, eyes locked onto Lara as she walked.

  "The woman is Viagra with legs," Joan muttered. "Though I've got to admit, she knows how to make an entrance."

  "Um. Yeah."

  Lara took a seat in a folding chair, and Inari hurried over to kneel beside it in conversation. The electric sense of desire and compulsion faded a little, and people started moving about their tasks again. I helped Joan out, and kept the puppy near me, and in half an hour the first scene started shooting with Jake Guffie and a somewhat sullen-looking Trixie Vixen on the alley set.

  Okay, let me tell you something. Porno sex is only loosely related to actual sex. The actors are constantly getting interrupted. They have to keep their faces turned in the right direction, and the body angling they have to do for the camera would make a contortionist beg for mercy. Every once in a while someone has to touch up their makeup, and it isn't only on their faces. You wouldn't believe where all it goes. There are lights shining in their eyes, people with cameras moving all around, and on top of all that, Arturo was giving them directions from behind the cameras.

  Granted, my own sexual experience is somewhat limited, but I had never found any of that necessary. It was embarrassing for me to watch. Maybe in the editing room the scene would turn into something sensual and alluring, but on the set it mostly looked awkward and uncomfortable. I found excuses to look at other things, working hard to make sure one of them wasn't the lovely vampire. And I kept my eyes peeled for more deadly magic.

  Maybe an hour into the shoot, I glanced aside and saw Inari pacing back and forth, a phone at her ear, speaking quietly. I closed my eyes, concentrated, and started Listening to her.

  "Yes, Papa," she said. "Yes, I know. I will. I won't." She paused. "Yes, he's here." Her cheeks suddenly flushed pink. "What a terrible thing to say!" she protested. "I thought you were supposed to chase the boys off with a shotgun." She laughed, glanced across the studio and started walking away. "Bobby, Papa. His name is Bobby."

  Aha. The plot thickens. I followed Inari's glance across the studio and saw Bobby the Sullen sitting in a folding chair near Lara, wearing a bathrobe. His impressive arms were folded over his chest, and he looked pensive and withdrawn. He paid no attention whatsoever to the shoot-or to Lara, for that matter. Inari, meanwhile, had moved a little beyond the range of my focused sense of hearing.

  I frowned, pondered, and kept on the lookout for incoming black magic. Nothing untoward happened, beyond an audio monitor spitting sparks and dying when I walked too close to it. They shot three other scenes after that one, and I made sure not to notice much. They involved three, uh, performers I didn't recognize, two women and another man. They must have been the crew Joan said would follow Trixie's example by showing up late.

  Of course, one of the people who had been on time was now in an ICU, and lucky to be there instead of the morgue. Punctuality was no protection against black magic.

  Sometime a bit before midnight, the puppy was asleep in a bed I'd made him out of my duster. Most of the food (without meat, it seemed blasphemous to call it pizza) had been devoured. Trixie had flown into a tantrum an hour before, ranting at one of the cameramen and at Inari, and then stormed out of the studio wearing nothing but her shoes, and everyone was tired. The crew was setting up for a last scene-consisting of Emma, Bobby the Buff, and Lara Romany. I felt myself growing tense as Lara rose, and I withdrew to the back of the studio to get my thoughts together.

  There was a movement from the darkness at the rear of the studio, only a few feet away, and I hopped back in a reflex born of surprise and fear. A shadowy figure darted out of a corner and headed for the nearest exit. My shock became a realization of a sudden opportunity, and I didn't stop to think before I went racing after the figure.

  It hit the door and darted off into the Chicago night. I snatched my blasting rod from my backpack as I ran by and sprinted into pursuit, bolstered by anger and adrenaline, determined to catch the mysterious lurker before any more of the crew could be attacked.

  Chases down dark Chicago alleys were getting to be old hat for me. Though technically, I suppose, we weren't in Chicago proper, and the broader, more generous spaces between the buildings of the industrial park could hardly qualify as alleys. Foot chases still happened often enough that I had taken up running for practice and exercise. Admittedly, I was usually on the other end of a foot chase, mostly due to my personal policies on hand-to-hand combat with anything that weighed more than a small car or could be described with the word chitinous.

  Whoever I
was after was not overly large. But he was fast, someone who had also practiced running. The industrial park was lit only sporadically, and my quarry was running west, away from the front of the park and into, of course, totally unlit areas.

  With each step I got farther from possible help, and stood a higher chance of running into something I couldn't handle alone. I had to balance that against the possibility that I could stop whoever had been attacking Genosa's people before they could hurt anyone else. Maybe if it hadn't been mostly women who were hurt, and maybe if I didn't harbor this buried streak of chivalry, and if I were a little smarter, it wouldn't have been such an easy choice.

  The shadowy object of my pursuit reached the back of the industrial lot and sprinted across twenty feet of almost pitch-black blacktop toward a twelve-foot fence. I caught up to him about halfway across, just managing to kick at one heel. He was running all out, and the impact fouled his legs and threw him down. I dropped my weight onto his back and rode him down into the asphalt.

  The impact nearly knocked the wind out of me, and I imagine it did worse to him. The grunt as he hit came out in a masculine baritone, much to my relief. I'd been thinking in terms of "him" because if I'd been thinking "her" I don't think I could have kept myself from holding back in the violence department, and that's the kind of thing that can get you hurt, fast.

  The guy tried to get up, but I slammed my forearm into the back of his head a few times, bouncing his face against the asphalt. He was tough. The blows slowed him down, but he started moving again and suddenly twisted with the sinuous strength of a serpent. I went to one side; he got out from under me and immediately leapt for the fence.

  He jumped four or five feet up and started climbing. I pointed my blasting rod at the top of the fence, drew in my will and snarled, "Fuego."

  Fire lashed across the top of the fence, bright and hot enough that the suddenly expanding air roared like a crack of thunder. Metal near the top of the fence glowed red, running into liquid a few feet above the man's head. Droplets pattered down like Hell's own rain.