Hard Spell (33 page)

  "It's all right," I said. "He's met Christine." There are some secrets you shouldn't hide from your boss, and Christine was one I hadn't kept from McGuire. I'd trusted him to keep his mouth shut about her, and he always had.

  "We were talking to Christine this morning, and it occurred to me to ask her about Sligo. It seemed like she knew something, but then she had to leave, pretty quickly." I made a head gesture toward the window, where a sliver of sun could still be seen.

  "You know," Karl said, "it occurs to me that even if she can give us Sligo's resting place, the motherfucker'll be gone by the time anybody could get there, and we can't wait until he comes back for beddy-bye at dawn. It'll all be over by then, one way or another."

  "But if we know where he's been, maybe we can figure out where he went, if we move fast," I said.

  McGuire nodded. "Then you'd better get your ass downstairs," he said. "Don't you think?"

Karl and I stood quietly near the fence in the gathering dark, listening to the crickets and trying not to think about the ugly death of Benjamin Prescott, PhD. I don't know about Karl, but my efforts weren't exactly a howling success – more like a screaming failure.

  "So," I said after a while, "how 'bout those Mets, huh?"

  Karl doesn't follow baseball, and neither do I. He likes hockey, and I've been a Knicks fan since I was a kid and got to watch the team hold their pre-season training camp at the U.

  That thing about the Mets is just something I say to fill awkward silences, and Karl knew it. He came back with his standard response: "Get a couple of good trades, and they could go all the way this year."

  We waited some more, not talking to ntil Karl said, "I'd say it's full dark, Stan."

  "Yeah."

  "Probably has been, the last ten minutes or so."

  "Yeah."

  We listened to the crickets for a while longer.

  Karl said, "Could be she's not coming, Stan."

  "Yeah."

  More crickets.

  "Maybe we oughta go back inside, tell McGuire."

  "Okay." I still didn't move.

  "Could be lotsa reasons she didn't show," Karl said. "Doesn't have to mean she's in trouble."

  I whirled to face him, and my voice was ugly when I said, "Jesus, what do you
think
, Karl? That maybe she found herself a nice
boyfriend
? That she couldn't make it because tonight's the junior fucking
prom
?"

  Karl didn't tell me to go fuck myself. He didn't even turn and walk away. He just stood there, looking at me. It was too dark to see his expression, but his posture didn't look like somebody who's pissed off and ready to fight.

  I stood there and listened to myself breathe for a while, a sound I used to be pretty fond of.

  "I'm sorry, man," I said quietly. "I got no right to talk to you like that. I guess I'm just …"

  "I know," Karl said. "Forget it." He gave me a few more seconds, then said, "You feel like going inside now?"

  "Yeah, might as well," I said. "She isn't coming."

  We went back to the squad and found that we had a visitor.

  It was Vollman.

I turned to Louise the Tease. My voice rising, I said, "I thought I
told
you–"

  Vollman held up a hand, palm toward me. "Please, Sergeant, do not chastise this beautiful young woman. I have literally arrived within the last minute."

  I looked back at Louise, who nodded quickly. "I was just looking up your cell number," she said. "Honest."

  "Okay. Sorry, Louise," I said.

  I politely asked Vollman to accompany us back to our part of the squad room. I was going to be very courteous to the old vampire/wizard – right up to the moment when I found an excuse to pound a two-foot stake deep into his aged, undead heart.

  I was in kind of a bad mood.

  As we approached our desks, McGuire came to his office door and looked our way. I shook my head, but then used it to gesture in Vollman's direction. McGuire nodded and went back to his desk. He'd understood what I meant: we'd missed one source of information, but just gained another one. Maybe.

Everybody sat down, Karl and me facing Vollman from maybe ten feet apart. He looked pretty much the same as last time, although the shirt was different – a pale green number with little roses all over it that had probably been the height of fashion just after the war. The Civil War, I mean.

  "Been a while, Mr Vollman," I said. "We were beginning to think you didn't like us anymore."

  The old face grew a tiny little smile. "Two charming young gentlemen such as yourselves? The very idea is absurd."

  
Never try sarcasm on a five hundred year-old vampire.

  "We haven't got time to fuck around," I said, "so I'm going to take a risk and be totally honest with you about the situation we're facing here – as much as we know of it. I say it's a risk, because I'm pretty damn sure you haven't been honest with us, so far."

  Vollman's bushy eyebrows made a slow climb toward his hairline.

  "I'm not saying you atively lied to us, but you've withheld information, for reasons of your own. I'm pretty sure if we knew everything you could have told us a week ago, we would have closed this case already, and a pretty good man would have been spared a really ugly death."

  "Indeed?" Vollman said softly. "I am sorry to hear of that."

  "Maybe you are, maybe you're not. For all I know, you think of humans as nothing more than blood bags with legs. Some vamps do, I know."

  Vollman frowned at that, but kept quiet.

  "But it doesn't matter," I said. "Because a wizard named Sligo, who is also a vampire – you know, like you – is probably going to attempt a complex and nasty ritual at midnight, near some body of still water."

  "And if he pulls it off, the result could be very, very bad," Karl said.

  "
Very bad
is an understatement," I said. "The bastard will have the power to create a whole new race of vampires that'll be invulnerable to everything – sunlight, stakes, crucifixes, the whole nine yards."

  "And that will fuck up the world for everybody, Mr Vollman," Karl said. "Old-style
nosferatu
like you will probably become an endangered species – just like humans."

  Vollman nodded gravely. "I will give you my pledge to listen closely to all that you gentlemen have to say. Beyond that, I can make no promises."

  I sat there, and if looks could kill, the old bastard would have a long sharp piece of polished oak sticking out of his chest right that second.

  I wasn't sure what I hated more – the old vamp, or the fact that at this moment, we needed him. Needed him bad.

  Vollman let out the little smile again. "I understand, Sergeant. You despise me, and you despise having to depend on me – for anything, even information. It is a very... human reaction, and one that I am not unused to."

  I blinked a couple of times, and my voice was husky with anger when I said, "You read minds, do you? I wasn't aware that was one of the vampire talents."

  "Not minds, Sergeant – merely faces." Vollman shrugged. "I wonder if it has occurred to you that I am here this evening precisely because I am, however unfortunately, dependent on
you
." He leaned forward in his chair, and I swear I heard those old bones creak. "And in at least one respect we are in agreement, gentlemen: we do not have time to fuck around."

  He sat back, hands folded in his lap, waiting.

  I took one very deep breath, and tried to imagine that all the hatred and fear and frustration would leave my body with the air I was going to expel. Then I breathed out, told myself that it had worked, and got down to business with the vampire.

Karl and I took turns running it down for him, as quickly as we could without leaving out any essential facts. Once it was all out there, I said, "So we've got to find Sligo, and stop him, before midnight which is–" I checked my watch "–about four and a half hours from right now." It occurred to me that my last sentence sounded like something from a bad Fifties horror movie, accompanied by a melodramatic soundtrack riff. In my job, reality is sometimes like a bad movie – and sometimes it's worse. At least the movie usually has a happy ending.

  Vollman had been leaning forward in his chair, folded hands between his knees, looking at whichever of us was speaking. Now he sat back, intertwined fingers beneath his chin, the classic pose of Man Thinking. I wondered if he'd been on the stage at some point during his long life – no matinee performances, of course.

  Now he lowered the hands, signaling that he had reached decision. "I told you once," he said, "that I had become a vampire, unwillingly, in the year 1512. That was the truth. I neglected to mention that, at the time of my... transformation, I had a son, Richard." He pronounced it
Reek-ard
, the way the Germans do.

  "I had raised him myself," Vollman went on. "His mother died in childbirth, not an uncommon occurrence at that time. I was a skilled wizard, and might have saved her, but she gave birth earlier than expected, while I was away on business.

  "So, I raised the boy alone, with the assistance of a series of paid wet nurses, nannies, and tutors. When he reached his majority, he told me that he wished to learn the art of magic, under my tutelage."

  Vollman made a wry face. "What father would not be pleased to find that his son wished to emulate him by choosing the same profession? So I began his instruction – which, to do properly, takes several years. We were already well along, when I fell victim to attack by a
nosferatu.
And you should understand this about our kind, Sergeant, if you do not know it already: an honorable vampire, when he turns another, becomes in effect a Father in Darkness, incurs certain obligations. He must stay to teach the newborn
nosferatu
how to live his new, and very different, life."

  "From what I've heard," Karl said, "it doesn't always happen that way."

  "Sad, but true, Detective," Vollman said. "But, in defense of my kind, how many humans do you know who behave honorably – at all times?"

  "Well, you've got–" Karl began.

  "Guys, excuse me," I said. "Mr Vollman, this is fascinating, and I mean that. But the clock is ticking, and if you could possibly move this along...?"

  Vollman nodded. "I enjoy intelligent conversation, but you are correct, Sergeant, this is not the time." He leaned forward again.

  "Because my Father in Darkness did not mentor me in the ways of the undead, I did not learn to control my appetite for blood. Because I had not learned control, I fed indiscriminately. One of those upon whom I fed, to my everlasting shame, was my own son, Richard. And because my bloodlust was seemingly without limit at that stage, I fed on him until he was near death – at which point, overcome with remorse, I decided to make him
nosferatu
, like me."

  Vollman stopped speaking, and his eyes lost some of their focus, as if he was examining some bleak inner landscape. I knew that territory very well. I've lived there for years.

  "All right," I said, keeping most of what I felt out of my voice. "you made your son a vampire. What then?"

  "Unlike my own Father in Darkness, I fulfilled my responsibility to the one I had created. Although, in truth, because I was myself so inexperienced as
nosferatu
, there was much I did not know. But I did my best, even though my son, who was now also my Son in Darkness, hated me."

  "The two of you fought, you mean?" Karl asked him.

  "No, never," Vollman said. "He was too smart for that. But I knew my own son. In every word, every gesture, he showed how much he despised me. And I cannot in truth say that I would blame him."

  I noted his shift to present tense, but didn't say anything about it. Instead I asked, "So, you taught him how to be a vampire – and a wizard, too?"

  "I did not finish his course of instruction in magic," Vollman said, "although I had taught him a great deal by the time he attempted to kill me."

  "How'd he do that?" I asked. "Come at you with a wooden stake?"

  "No, he would not have been so foolish. I was stronger than he, you see. Stronger as a ma a vampire, and a wizard. Instead, he hired men. Thugs, really. As I determined later, he paid them well – with money stolen from me – to carry out three tasks." Vollman ticked them off on his fingers. "To transport an armoire containing his insensate form to a location far away; to seek out my resting place and drive a stake through my heart; and, finally, to burn down my home, which was also my magical laboratory."

  Vollman made a face like he wanted to spit on the floor. "The first and last of those tasks they accomplished very well. They spirited my son away, and before leaving, set fires that turned my home, and all my work, to ashes."

  "Obviously, they didn't manage to kill you," Karl said. "How come?"

  "Because I did not spend the daylight hours in the basement of that house, as I had given Richard reason to believe. I was not, even then, a complete fool."

  "I've got a feeling I know where this is going," I said, "but it would be good if we could get there soon."

  "Of course," Vollman said. "My son, I have since learned, journeyed throughout Europe, studying magic, learning the ways of the undead, and sucking the blood of innocents. In time, he found his way to Ireland, where he stayed for many years – a strange choice, in a place where the Church is so strong. And there he took for himself the name Sligo."

Neither Karl or I exactly fell out of our chairs at that point. Like an inept comic, Vollman had telegraphed his punchline from some distance away. Still, his admission raised a lot of questions. With the time factor we were facing, I tried to decide which ones I needed answered right now.

  "Why did you wait until now to share this interesting information with us?" I asked. "Didn't you
care
that vampires were being killed? Shit, and people accuse
me
of being callous."