The Succubus: A Lawson Vampire Novel (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  Traffic was a nightmare on 128 North getting back to the Turnpike, so I called Niles while I waited in the constant stop-and-go flow of insanity. I figured it was better to be speaking with someone than simply sitting there trying to find a decent song on the radio. I really need to upgrade and get satellite; at least that way, I could listen to all the 80s tunes I wanted. These days, I listened to either hip hop, 80s, or smooth electronic bands like Disclosure or The Weeknd. What passed as pop tunes sounded completely uninventive and boring with no real sense of lyrics.

  Niles sounded a lot more chipper than he had recently. I was guessing he’d gotten a good night sleep and I was jealous of him for that.

  “Where are you?”

  “On my way to MIT.”

  “Finally pursuing that degree in particle physics?”

  “Nah, the course timing clashed my macrame class. Next semester, for sure.”

  He laughed. “What’s new? Tell me you have something. Otherwise, I might get grumpy.”

  “Now you want me to lie just to make you feel good? What is this, a first date?”

  “So that’s a no then,” said Niles. He sighed. “We need progress on this case. The Council wants an update.”

  “Tell them I’m investigating the possibility that the killer is a woman operating under several assumed identities in order to stalk her targets and then later kill them.”

  “Is that actually your working theory?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what’s MIT got to do with this? Are you thinking she’s a scientist over there teaching a younger generation how to become serial killer?”

  “Funny. No. That Boston cop-“

  “Letourneau.”

  “Yeah, him. He’s got a friend who apparently is pretty good at ancient historical stuff.”

  “So he’s running those sigils past him?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nils sighed. “Part of me wishes you’d just smeared those off the wall.”

  “And left an obvious sign that I’d tampered with the room and with evidence? You’d be visiting me in jail right now and you’re not exactly my ideal for a conjugal visit, pal.”

  “I know, but what happens if his friend actually manages to piece something together?”

  “Then it’s better that I’m there to hear it firsthand. I don’t want Letourneau running a theory down and accidentally stumbling across a thread that leads him on to bigger and better things, as in discovering all about our people, if you get my drift.”

  “I get it,” said Niles. “Did you talk to Wirek?”

  “Yup. He wasn’t any help. Said the sigils looked like they went back much further than he’d ever known about. He talked about a primal sort of magic, the likes of which he hasn’t seen before.”

  “Spectacular,” said Niles. “Why is it any time something magical comes up, I find myself longing for a regular old terrorist to show up and make it easy on all of us?”

  “Because they’re easier to deal with than this shit. Take it from me: I hear the word magic these days and I want to resign.”

  “You really think a human might actually know more about this stuff than us? If the killer is one of our people then why wouldn’t we know about the magic involved?”

  “You’d have to ask Wirek. I’m just relating what he told me. But maybe some of this shit goes back before we even separated…evolutionarily speaking, I mean. What if this magic is the root of everything? Before humans and vampires and even lycans. What if this was the binary code that started all of it? If this woman has access to this sort of knowledge then I think we’ve really got to assume the worst.”

  “That she’s immortal?”

  “Immortal doesn’t mean invulnerable,” I said. “It just means she’s lived a long time and no one has figured out how to kill her yet.”

  “Well, you’d better figure it out. I don’t want a trail of bodies across this city. And I certainly don’t want some sort of magic disrupting our peaceful existence. We’ve got a good thing going, so figure this shit out and put an end to it.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  I hung up and sighed. The traffic had moved a whopping mile in the span of that entire conversation. I listened to the news on the radio but heard nothing of real importance. The humans were still busy screwing themselves over with political idiots and most of them had voted against their own self-interests without even realizing it. At this point, they deserved whatever they got. I stayed out of it as much as possible since I was usually traveling all over killing bad guys.

  I finally made it onto the Turnpike and shot in toward Boston in good time, exiting at the Allston exit to take the bridge over to Memorial Drive. The traffic at the exit was another nightmare and by the time I threaded my way across the bridge and onto Memorial Drive, the clock was nearly right at ten. But I found the address easily enough and slid into a space right behind Letourneau’s car.

  He was leaning against the hood drinking a coffee. “Started wondering if you were gonna stand me up or not.”

  “Traffic was shit,” I said as I shook his hand. “But thanks for asking me to come along.”

  “Least I can do for my friends at the Agency.” He smirked when he said it and I started wondering if maybe Letourneau was not necessarily buying my cover story. It was possible, of course, that he could have checked around and if he had a good contact down at Langley, he might be able to verify that I didn’t actually work there. Then again, in the world of covert operations, it was so murky that even if no one found a record of you, it didn’t necessarily mean shit. Plus, there were a ton of front corporations that worked in covert ops with plausible deniability, useful for when the government needed work done that couldn’t have its fingerprints all over the op. I’d keep the ruse up for now and see how deep Letourneau wanted to dig. For his sake, I hoped he was good at keeping his curiosity in check.

  “So who is this guy?”

  “Name’s Newby.”

  “Newby? Like ‘newbie?’

  “Yeah. He’s brilliant,” said Letourneau. “But he’s quite a character. So don’t freak out when you see him, okay? He does his thing and gets results. I don’t much care how he goes about getting those results. He’s been a huge help to me in the past.”

  “Fine by me,” I said.

  Letourneau tossed his cup in a nearby trash can and nodded toward a gray building close by. “That’s the place right there.”

  “Lead on then.”

  We walked inside and Letourneau showed his badge to the guard at the entrance and said I was with him. We got yellow VISITOR badges and made our way down to the basement via a new elevator. The entire building appeared to be new, with a cool modern interior. Although I wondered aloud why Newby had a basement office if he was so good at what he does.

  “A lot of the stuff he deals with are artifacts and need a constant room temperature so they don’t disintegrate or get damaged. The best place for him to work then is in a basement where the temperature can be strictly controlled. Even sunlight coming in through a window can cause irreparable harm to some of the documents he works with.”

  “That must get depressing after a while, though. I’d go nuts if I had to work every single day down in the basement of an office building.”

  “He’s got a pretty unique coping mechanism,” said Letourneau as the elevator doors slid back and we stepped out into a corridor.

  For a moment, I wondered what I was hearing. Then I grinned. Someone was singing. And the best part was the voice sounded amazingly good. This wasn’t singing in the shower quality, it was get-this-guy-a-recording-contract quality.

  “That’s his coping mechanism?”

  Letourneau grinned. “I told you he was a unique individual. Pretty good, right?”

  “Sounds amazing,” I said. “How come he doesn’t have a record deal some place?”

  “You’d have to ask him,” said Letourneau. “But I think he just enjoys doing his job too damned much to consider giv
ing it up.”

  “With that voice, he could moonlight in a club and still do his work here. It’s almost criminal that he’s not on the radio.”

  “He’d appreciate that. But let’s get in there and ask him all about these symbols, because frankly, I want to know why they showed up on my turf at a crime scene.”

  “You really think he’ll be able to help us out?”

  “From what I know about Newby, if he can’t figure this stuff out, there’s no one that can. He grew up all over the world with his dad who was a famous archaeologist. He’s been living and breathing this stuff since he could walk. Maybe even before that. He speaks a dozen languages fluently and probably another dozen partially. His work has been published in more scientific journals than I ever knew existed. MIT snatched him up when he was done with his PhD thesis. He’s one of the youngest full professors ever granted tenure here. So yeah, I think he might be able to help us.”

  “That’s quite the resume,” I said. “Is he expecting us?”

  Letourneau shook his head. “I’ve found surprising Newby is sometimes the best way to get his undivided attention. He knows when I show up out of the blue that I’ve usually got something interesting for him to pore over.”

  “He’s helped you before?”

  Letourneau nodded. “With a bit of translation work when we had an incident with a certain consul in Boston. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but thanks to Newby, we averted what might have been a diplomatic disaster. His intimate knowledge of cultural customs helped us immensely.”

  The singing stopped right then and the entire corridor fell silent. I glanced at Letourneau but he only smiled at me and held his finger up to make sure I didn’t say anything. Finally, I heard that same voice boom out a welcome.

  “Are you going to stay in the corridor all day or are you gonna show me what you brought this time, Letourneau?”

  22

  Newby turned out to not be some geeky-looking awkward white guy but a stylish African-American man who looked close to thirty, wearing salmon colored jeans, a designer T-shirt, and some of the coolest shoes I’d ever seen. An incredibly friendly bright smile was plastered across his face as we entered his office. Along with a whole assortment of maps and pictures of faraway and forgotten places, there were framed prints of Newby with a variety of recording artists and world leaders.

  Letourneau introduced us and Newby’s handshake turned into a hug that was a genuine embrace. Despite my reservations, I had to admit, it actually felt pretty good. When I stepped back, I couldn’t seem to help myself, I had a smile on my face as well.

  Newby gestured to a coffee pot toward the back. At least I think it was a coffee pot; I couldn’t really tell because it looked more like a piece of modern art. “You guys want some? I just made a fresh pot in anticipation of your arrival.”

  Letourneau frowned. “I didn’t tell you we were coming, dude.”

  Newby laughed. “You’ve been standing outside for about twenty minutes waiting for this guy to show up,” he nodded at me.

  “How in the world did you know that?”

  Newby pointed at Letourneau’s hands. “They’re red from the cold. Plus, you’ve been sniffling little bit which would also be indicative of someone who has been standing outside.”

  Letourneau looked at me and then back at Newby. “Have you been picking up tips from Sherlock Holmes or what?”

  Newby just stared at Letourneau. “What-a black man can’t be observant? Is that it?”

  Letourneau held up his hands. “Dude, no that’s not what I meant-“

  “Ah, I’m just fucking with you,” Newby cracked up and turned to his laptop, opened it up and switched screens. Instantly a surveillance array appeared. “I tapped into the security feed to see what was going on outside the building. The downside of being in the basement is not being able to see outside.”

  A whole lot of air rushed out of Letourneau’s body. “Jesus Christ, Newby…”

  I smirked in spite of myself. “He got you.”

  Letourneau glared at me. “Oh yeah, because you didn’t fall for it, too?”

  “Saw right through it,” I said with a wink at Newby. “Brilliant performance, by the way.”

  Newby leaned against a table. “That?”

  “No, the singing when we got off the elevator. That was some amazing stuff.” I pointed at the walls. “How’d you get hooked up with the likes of these folks?”

  He shrugged. “I do some song writing on the side. Lets me give space to my creative inclinations that are sometimes suppressed in my day-to-day job here at the school.”

  Letourneau shook his head. “So you actually started following through with it. Nice, dude.”

  “Got you to thank for it,” said Newby. “The last time we spoke, I came away from the conversation really thinking about what you said to me. You know, about the dreams and stuff. My music. So I started doing some writing. Got myself hooked up with a good musician and we put some demo track together, laid down the vocals, and then sent it to a friend of mine out in Los Angeles. Things moved pretty damned quick and lo and behold, some people liked my stuff enough to work with me.” He shrugged. “For right now, it’s mostly them buying the songs and redoing the vocals, but I’m on some backing tracks. I can’t commit to doing my own release just yet, but I’m working on it.” He smiled. “So thank you.”

  “You can thank me by telling us if what I brought you means anything. Because I can’t figure out what they are.”

  “They?”

  Letourneau pointed at the laptop. “Can I access the internet on that thing?”

  “Where are we, the South Pole? Of course you can,” said Newby. “Just open the tab and the browser should be up there. It’s a secure connection through the school, so if you’re pulling up BPD records, then you should be fine. We’ve got pretty decent security here because the computer whiz kids take it as a personal badge of accomplishment to keep all the research done here safe from hackers. I don’t know if it works or not, but what the hell, right?”

  Newby nudged me. “Coffee?”

  I shook my head. “Thank you, no. I don’t drink the stuff.”

  “Serious?” Newby glanced at Letourneau. “What’s he drink to stay awake then? Blood?”

  It was a joke, but my heart jumped in my chest anyway. I laughed at the comment, but it didn’t come out nearly as natural as I hoped it would sound. “I’ll take water if you’ve got it.”

  “Fridge over there by the back table, my man,” said Newby. “Help yourself.”

  I fished a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and then came back to where Letourneau was busy pulling up certain files from his server at Boston Police headquarters across the river in the city. I saw a series of photographs pop up on the screen and Letourneau leaned back away from the laptop. “Ever seen anything like this before?”

  Newby peered closer and then frowned. “The laptop screen is too small to make them out. Hang on a sec.” He reached over Letourneau and started typing, his fingers moved so quickly that they were a blur. Then I heard something click on across the room and saw a poster of a giant map filled with contour lines start to glow.

  “Yo, Lawson, do me a favor and move that map, would you?”

  “Sure.” I walked over and slid the map away, revealing that it had been draped over an enormous monitor that came to life and filled with the same images as were on the laptop.

  Newby came up behind me. “Much better. Now I can see what you want me to look at.” He slid on a pair of glasses that looked like they cost a small fortune and stared at the screen for several moments. Finally, he looked at us. “Where did you get these from?”

  I wasn’t sure how much information Letourneau was going to give him, so I let him take the lead. “Crime scene in Boston.”

  “I didn’t hear about this,” said Newby.

  “Damn right you didn’t. And you won’t. This is under wraps for the time being. But the details involve two unsolved
homicides. Both victims’ DNA was recovered at this scene, despite the murders happening elsewhere.”

  Newby walked over to another desk covered with maps and located his own coffee cup. He came back, stood in front of the monitor and stared at the photos some more while he drank his coffee. Finally, he put the cup down and looked at us. “These are old.”

  “We kinda figured that,” said Letourneau. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “I don’t just mean old like say, a few generations back. When I say old, I mean millennia. Way the fuck back. Like before we started recording shit and writing it down. This is base-level stuff. Primitive as shit. Back when things were…well, let’s just say, ‘blurry.’”

  “What the hell does that mean?” asked Letourneau.

  “I mean blurry,” said Newby. “Look at how the world is today. We got science. We got facts. I mean, you wouldn’t know it based on how much bullshit people swallow on a daily basis because they think the media lies to them nonstop and shit, but pretty much things are in focus. You know what you’re getting. There are clear demarcations between what we think of as fantasy and reality. Current political events notwithstanding.”

  “All right,” said Letourneau, “so what does blurry mean in that context?”

  “These things,” said Newby pointing at the screen, “are from a time when the world was very much less in focus. When things were a whole lot more convoluted, murky, and not set in stone. When what we would consider fantasy melded with reality. It hadn’t been…separated, I guess would be the right word…yet. Everything ran together as a sort of miasma of existence. This shit is from a time when things we would consider magical were given enough gravity as things we now consider to be fact. You feel me?”

  “Go on.”

  “This right here,” said Newby pointing at a sigil close to a batch of blood on the wall from the Luxe crime scene. “This one resembles the proto-Euphratean cuneiform - what we’d today refer to as Sumerian - for ‘demon,’ but it’s smeared a bit, so I can’t quite be sure. But here and here, these are more recent. This is Akkadian. Now, not a lot of people outside of academia know the exact timelines when we’re discussing these civilizations, but during a certain point, Sumerians and Akkadians were pretty much intertwined. Culturally speaking, they were getting it on quite a bit. Especially during the third millennium BCE. So seeing both what appears to be Sumerian cuneiform and more recognizable Akkadian script isn’t necessarily a weird thing. In fact, it would make sense to find them both in the same place.”