Evil Dark (6 page)

  "Wouldn't surprise me," I said. "And if there is, I'm betting that Greer aced it. Probably the only 'A' he ever earned." I reached into a pocket for my keys. "His partner's not too bad, though. For a Feebie."

  Karl looked at me. "You think she's hot?"

  "I didn't say that. I just meant that she doesn't seem to be a revolving asshole like her buddy."

  "Revolving?"

  "From whatever angle the object is viewed," I said.

  "She likes you, though," Karl said.

  "Yeah, right," I said. "And where did that revelation come from, O wise man?"

  "Her heartbeat. It speeded up a little every time she talked to you."

  I didn't bother to ask him how he knew that. He'd just say, "It's a vamp thing – you wouldn't understand."

  "I probably just remind her of her ex-husband," I said. "And not in a good way, either."

  He shrugged. "Believe what you want."

  "Think you could use some vampire Influence on Greer, maybe get him to stop being such a prick?"

  "I'm a vampire," Karl said. "Not a miracle worker."

  I watched him unlock his ride. It's the same Ford Exorcist he's been driving the last couple of years, except now it's got tinted windows – in case he's late getting home from work some morning.

  It was Wednesday morning, and tonight would be our night off. I wouldn't have minded working, anyway, but McGuire will only authorize overtime if we're chasing a hot lead. And right now we had no leads – hot, cold, or room temperature.

  "See you Thursday," Karl said.

  "Dark and early." Karl slipped behind the wheel and I headed for my own car. The Toyota Lycan's got a new windshield – Karl shot out the old one while saving my life, a while back – but otherwise it's as old and dented as its owner. But it hasn't got any rust on it, and neither do I – so far.

 

Ten minutes later I walked into the kitchen, where a vampire sat at the table reading the morning paper. Vamps don't usually hang around my kitchen much, but this one lived here.

  "Hey," I said.

  "Hey, Daddy," Christine said. "I was beginning to wonder if I'd see you before I went downstairs."

  "Downstairs" means the basement, where she spends the day wrapped up in a sleeping bag. I've fixed it up a little down there since she came to stay with me. No need for the place to look like a tomb, even if it sort of is one.

  "Yeah, I'm running late," I said. "I was talking to some FBI assholes. It was so much fun, I didn't notice what time it was getting to be."

  "What's up with the Feds?" she asked. "Some werewolf knock over a bank, or something?"

  "No, it's a lot worse than that," I said. "I'll tell you about it tonight, but there's something I wanted to ask you about before you crash – who's replaced Vollman as the local Supefather?"

  She gave me a brief smile. "'Supefather' – that's cute. Well, I haven't met him yet, but I hear the new guy is a wizard named Victor Castle."

  I gave her half a smile of my own. "
Castle
? Seriously?"

  "That's what he calls himself. I hear his birth name was Castellino, or something, but I guess that isn't dramatic enough. He's supposed to be pretty smart, even if he does seem to lack a sense of irony."

  "He and I need to have a conversation, I think. Where's he hang out – do you know?"

  She folded the
Times-Tribune
and stood up. I saw she was wearing her usual bedtime outfit – gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt that mocked a certain milk ad by asking, in red letters, "Got blood?"

  "I have no idea," she said. "But I'll ask around tonight, if you want. Maybe make a few calls."

  "I'd appreciate it. Thanks."

  She gave me a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. "See you at sundown."

  We'd agreed that saying "Good morning" as she went to sleep sounded stupid, so I said, "Goodnight, baby."

  I made some breakfast, ate it, and went to bed. That night, I hung out with Christine for a few hours until she left for her job as a 911 dispatcher. Then I did some laundry, put the trash out at the curb, and cleaned Quincey's cage. Quincey's my hamster, and a good listener. I told him about the Feebies and the nasty case they'd brought us, and he seemed interested. But maybe he just likes the sound of my voice. I'm glad somebody does.

  I killed a few more hours reading a book about a group of scientists who accidentally opened a portal to Hell. Some thoroughly bad shit ensued, as you might expect. The author claimed it was fiction, and I hoped he was right. We had too many people around with access to Hell as it was.

 

On Thursday night I got to the squad room around 7.30pm. I was going through my emails when Karl came in and sat at his desk, which is pushed up against mine so they face each other. I looked up, and said, "Hi," and went back to my computer screen. Part of my mind must have noticed that Karl hadn't booted up his own computer because I raised my eyes again and found him looking at me, a strange expression on his face.

  "What?" I said.

  "I was talking to a CI of mine last night." Confidential informant is the official name for a snitch – somebody who'll pass on information in return for a favor, a few bucks, or just a chance to bank some good will with the cops.

  "You were working last night?" I said. "McGuire didn't OK any overtime, that I know of."

  "I wasn't working," Karl said. "I just ran into him over at Scavino's."

  Scavino's is a bar that attracts what you might call a mixed clientele. Humans, mostly, but some supes go there because nobody hassles them. Ed Scavino sees to that. He's married to a werewolf, which makes him tolerant by necessity, if not disposition.

  "Yeah, OK," I said. "So, you were talking to this guy, and…?"

  "And he told me about a whisper that's been making the rounds lately." Karl hesitated a second, which isn't like him. Then I found out why. "Word is, Sharkey's back."

  I give myself a little credit for my reaction – or lack of one. I didn't move a muscle for a good two or three seconds, except for my eyelids, which I couldn't stop from blinking rapidly. That happens when I'm scared.

  "Sharkey's dead," I said.

  "Yeah, I know," Karl said. "At least, I thought I did. But there was never a positive ID on his body, you know that. After the explosion, then the fire, what could you expect? The forensics guys didn't have a lot to work with."

  "He was seen going into that building, just before it blew. Nobody ever saw him come out." I don't know who I was trying to convince, Karl or myself.

  "Yeah – but, shit, getting in and out of places without being seen was Sharkey's specialty. He was like a fucking ninja, or something. That's why he got paid so much."

  "Being a dhampir probably helps with that," I said.

  "Yeah, probably."

  Sharkey killed for money, but calling him a hit man was like saying that Rembrandt was a painter. Sharkey was death on two feet. Half human, half vampire, and all lethal. To nobody's surprise, he was known as "the Shark," but I think they'd have called him that even if his name was Smith or Jones.

  About eighteen months ago, a gang of vamp punks had kidnapped the daughter of Joe Guaneri, a mob boss in nearby Pittston. He'd paid the ransom, but the vamps killed the girl, anyway. Her body was found drained dry.

  Even though the vamps didn't turn her, the family had buried the girl with a wooden stake through her chest, and stuffed the mouth of her decapitated head with garlic. I figured the funeral was one of those closed casket ceremonies.

  Guaneri had plenty of his own soldiers to call on for payback, but none of them had any experience against vamps. So he'd hired Sharkey, instead. Guess he wanted to get more than even.

  The vamp gang had taken over an abandoned public school building in Carbondale and made it their HQ. Even had a squad of armed humans to guard the place during the day. Being a dhampir, Sharkey could have gone in there at any time, day or night, but he'd waited until after sundown to make his move. Maybe he'd been told to be sure the vamps could see what was coming.

  Nobody knows if that bomb belonged to the vamps, or if Sharkey brought it in himself. I wouldn't have bet either way. On the one hand, a bomb wasn't really Sharkey's style – too impersonal, not enough time for the victims to scream. On the other hand, the explosion had not only leveled the building – it had taken out two civilians walking by outside. That sounded like the Shark – he was never real careful about collateral damage.

  Karl was right. Nobody had ever made a positive ID on Sharkey's body, or on any of the others. The forensics people estimated that twenty to twenty-five pounds of C-4 explosive had gone off inside that building. From what I hear, the biggest body part they found would still have fit easily inside a shoebox.

  That would've killed Sharkey, all right. Dhampirs have the strengths of a vampire, like speed, strength, and the power of Influence. But they have the weaknesses of a human. A bullet in the chest will kill a dhampir just like it would you or me. So will an explosion, like the one that leveled the old Roosevelt school. It had sure taken care of the vampires.

  When Sharkey wasn't seen or heard from after the blast, everybody figured he'd died inside the demolished school. Maybe we liked the idea because it was comforting. The peasants in Transylvania must've felt the same way when they heard Dracula was dead.

  But Dracula keeps rising from the grave – in the movie versions, anyway.

  "Have you given any thought to the possibility that your CI might be full of shit?" I asked Karl.

  "Sure," he said. "But he's been pretty reliable in the past."

  "He didn't say he'd seen Sharkey himself, though, did he?"

  "No, he was just telling me what was in the rumor mill."

  "Well, we've both been in this business long enough to know what rumors are worth. Remember the one that said a bunch of cannibals were eating people up around Lake Wallenpaupack?"

  The "cannibals" had turned out to be a homeless family, living in a tent and getting by on whatever they could catch. They had eaten squirrels, fish, rabbits, and a couple of feral cats, but no people, as far as we could tell.

  "Yeah, I know," Karl said, and shrugged. "You're right – the guy was probably full of shit."

  "Exactly," I said. We were like two kids whistling as we walked past the old haunted house. As long as you sounded happy, nothing bad could get you.

  It works pretty well, since there's usually nothing inside the "haunted house" to hurt you, anyway.

  But sometimes the ghosts are real, and whistling does no damn good at all.

• • • •

Pretend that there's a file folder somewhere, a big, thick one, labeled Real Bad Ideas. There's at least three things I can think of that belong in there – inviting a werewolf for a moonlight stroll, telling a witch she's got a fat ass, and pissing off an ogre.

  Especially that last one.

  Despite what you read in the fairy tales, most ogres are fairly mellow creatures. They're not green and cute, like that guy in the movies – Dreck, or whatever his name is, but they're not usually criminal types, either. Mostly they're just big, strong, and dumb, like the one Steinbeck wrote about in
Of Elves and Men
. But all the same, it doesn't pay to get one mad.

  I figured somebody had done just that, since the inside of Leary's Bar looked like something you'd find in Berlin at the end of World War II – just after the Russians had passed through. Six tables were smashed, along with ten or twelve chairs. The big mirror was just a memory. One of the ceiling lights had been hit so hard by something – or someone – that the big fluorescent bulb hung down at the end of some thick black wire, blinking and sputtering. I had no idea how many liquor bottles had been smashed, but the odor of alcohol was so strong in there that a couple of deep breaths would probably cause you to flunk a Breathalyzer test.

  If you needed additional proof of ogre outrage, there were always the three guys strewn across on the floor, who looked like they'd tried to wrestle a locomotive and come off second best. They were either unconscious, comatose, or dead.

  Then there was the girl – a barmaid, judging by her outfit. She looked to be scared about half out of her mind, and I didn't blame her, since the pissed-off ogre, back against the wall, was holding her with one massive paw wrapped around her waist, like a kid playing with a Barbie doll – and not playing real gently, either.

  A couple of uniforms were standing just inside the door, what they thought was a safe distance away. I looked over my shoulder and called to them, "Get Leary in here, will you? And find out what's keeping those damn ambulances."

  It was quiet inside what was left of the barroom. The only sounds came from the ogre, whose breathing sounded like midnight in a TB ward, and the waitress, who was crying softly.

  Keeping my voice low, I asked my partner, "Can you use Influence on him, get him calmed down?"

  "I doubt it," Karl said. "I'm not real good at that stuff yet. Anyway, there's not much of a mind there to work with, haina?"

  Karl's been my partner for just over a year and a half now, and a vampire for about three months. He's a good kid, even with the fangs.

  I nodded. My luck never runs that good, but it'd been worth a try. "You're a lot stronger than you used to be," I said. "If it comes to a rumble, can you take him?"

  Karl looked the ogre up and down. It took a while, since the guy was over seven foot from head to toe. You can find some NBA players that tall, but the ogre wasn't lean and quick, the way those guys are. He was built more along the lines of the Great Wall of China.

  "I dunno," Karl said. "Let's see if we can avoid finding out."