Vintage Soul (7 page)

He placed his hand on the brick wall beside the fireplace and whispered the incantation that released the security spell.
 
The warmth from the dancing fire increased, and Donovan stepped closer.
 
He didn't see Cleo, who had leaped up onto the desk chair and sat, paws on the surface of the desk, watching the feather twitch in lazily in the air.
 
Cleo's tail whipped back and forth in time, and her muscles quivered.

Donovan leaned down.
 
There was something tucked in behind the grate that held the logs in the fireplace.
 
It was dark and flat, like a piece of cloth, or paper.
 
There was just enough room on the side of the fire for him to reach one arm around behind, but he had to be very careful not to get too close to the flames.
 
He knew his hair could catch in an instant, and he wasn't used to dealing with the open flame.

Just as his groping fingers neared the object behind the fire, Cleo leaped.
 
There was a surprised yowl as the protections Donovan had set on the circle repelled her, sending her crashing to the side, knocking Johndrow's letter, the pendulum on its stand, and two of the small braziers askew as she scrabbled for purchase on the desktop.

Donovan spun, narrowly missed whipping his hair into the fire, and gasped.
 
When the braziers tipped, the circle fragmented.
 
Released from the circle, but not from the enchantment, the feather shot across the room at dizzying speed.
 
Donovan rolled aside as it passed, narrowly missing his cheek.
 
The feather passed through the fire, burst into flame, and drove into the object behind the grate with such force that it shattered in a flash.
 
Donovan made a grab for the object, but he was too late.
 
It was nothing but a small heap of ash by the time his fingers reached it.
 
He brushed this out without much hope and collected it on a scrap of paper, but it was difficult to tell if the ashes came from burned paper, leather, cloth, or flesh, and he knew at least part of what he'd gathered was the remnant of the feather itself.

“Damn it, Cleo,” he complained, clambering back to his feet.
 
“That might have been important.”

Cleo glared at him from the corner of his desk.
 
She was seated in the exact spot where the small pendulum usually dangled on its stand.
 
She looked indignant, and Donovan, despite his irritation, laughed.
 
He bent down, picked up the pendulum, and examined it carefully.
 
Nothing seemed broken, and once he'd straightened the metal stand a bit, it was as good as new.
 
He shooed Cleo off the desk and returned the instrument to its proper place.

He leaned down to retrieve Johndrow's letter, remembering what he'd been doing when things had gone south, and before he could stand straight again, he stopped, still as stone.
 
He thought of the missing vampire, Vanessa, and then of the contents of the stolen book.
 
He'd read it only once, and it had been many years in the past, but the minute the pieces fell into place in his mind, he knew he was correct.

“Oh my god,” he said softly.
 
“The
Perpetuum
Vitae Serum; he's after Le Duc's formula.
”

He scooped up the letter, scanned its contents again, and then dropped it on his desk.
 
Next he strode back over to the bookshelves and slid a large, leather bound tome from a shelf at shoulder height.
 
He carried it back to his desk, opened it, and began to skim the index quickly.
 

It didn't take long to find what he was looking for.
 
It was a reference to Jean-Claude Le Duc's life.
 
In fact, it was the very reference that had sent Donovan off in search of the journal that had just been stolen.
 
It was short, but there was enough detail to confirm his fears.

“Jean-Claude Le Duc,” it read, “spent his entire life in search of a single spell.
 
Rumor has it that he succeeded in developing a potion that would grant the recipient eternal life, but that he died trying to acquire all the proper ingredients.
 
Among the things he gathered were certain crystal formations, ashes from the grave of a particular type of priest, and several more standard items.
 
The final ingredient proved his undoing, as it apparently involves draining the blood of a vampire of a certain age.
 
Le Duc was killed by vampires in 1832, and was not brought back as one of the undead, as far as any record can be found.
 
His journal contains his studies, but to date no one has attempted this particular magic to our knowledge.”

There was more, but Donovan had read enough.
  
Cleo leaped up to the desk again, more delicately this time, and sat, regarding him.

“This is a bad one, girl,” he said.
 
“It may be the worst yet.
 
I'd better get started, eh?”

As Cleo batted at the cord, Donovan took up the phone and dialed Johndrow's number.
 
It was shaping up to be a very long night.

Donovan reached Johndrow's assistant on the third ring, and was patched straight through.
 
His call was obviously expected, and though Johndrow kept his voice calm, tension crackled at the edges of his words.
 
It was the first such breach in the other's icy persona that Donovan had ever detected, and he knew from this that things had not improved since the note had been penned.
 
He almost wished he didn't have to deliver worse news of his own.

“You'll look into it then?” Johndrow said immediately.
 
“I knew you would, but I was worried you'd be tied up with something else, or …”

“I would look into it even if you hadn't asked me,” Donovan replied, measuring his words carefully.
 
“I've had a visitor of my own.
 
I think there's more to this than a simple kidnapping.”

“What do you mean?” Johndrow asked.
 
“I had a hard enough time convincing certain of the elders that Vanessa didn't take off on her own.
 
How could you already know something?”

“Because,” Donovan said, “whoever took her was here, as well.”

There was a momentary silence, and then Johndrow asked. “You were robbed while you were away?”

“No,” Donovan replied.
 
“I was here, right in the room, when it happened.
 
All that was taken was a single book.
 
I didn't get a good shot at the intruder, though Cleo tore a few tail feathers out of his familiar.
 
It was a crow, a very large one, maybe a raven.
 
I've never seen it before.”

There was silence on the line again, and Donovan knew that Johndrow was considering the wisdom of putting his faith into someone who'd already come face to face with the one he sought – and had not come out on top.
 
It was a natural reaction, but still irritating.

“It took all he had to get a breach large enough for his bird to enter,” Donovan said.
 
“If I'd been ready for him, we'd have caught the thing and put an end to it.
 
As it is, he made it in through the fireplace, and he escaped with an old journal.”

“A journal?” Johndrow said.
 
“What does a journal have to do with Vanessa?
 
How do you know it's the same person at all?”

“It wasn't just any journal,” Donovan answered.
 
“It belonged to a French alchemist named Jean Claude Le Duc.
 
He was a very single minded man – the volume is not a thick one.
 
It is concentrated on the formula for a single spell, and Le Duc never lived to see that spell put into use.”

“What spell?” Johndrow asked.
 
“That name is familiar, but I can't quite place it.”

“It should be familiar,” Donovan said.
 
“The formula is for the
Perpetuum
Vitae potion, and the ingredient that caused Le Duc's death?”

There was a hiss on Johndrow's end of the line.
 
“The blood drained from a vampire,” he whispered.
 
“From a very old vampire.”

“Vanessa fits that description,” Donovan said, softening his tone.
 
“She's in more danger than you realized.”

“But surely,” Johndrow said, “There are other difficult items on that list.
 
Could he have gathered them all without drawing attention to himself?”

“It might have been a problem to find that out,” Donovan replied, “if technology hadn't become so advanced.
  
I scan all of the books I acquire into my computer before putting them on the shelves.
 
It allows me to preserve very old and fragile texts, and to protect against an emergency.
 
I have a copy of the formula, and I don't believe he's quite got everything he needs.
 
We have some time, though not a great deal of it.
 
The blood must be extracted immediately preceding the mixing process, so we can expect he is keeping Vanessa – alive -- until he's ready.”

“What does he need?” Johndrow asked.
 
“If I knew…”

“Let me handle that,” Donovan cut in.
 
There was silence on Johndrow's end.

“This is what you are hiring me to do,” Donovan continued.
 
“I will have a better chance of tracing this without others blundering around muddying the waters, and despite what just happened here, I have the better chance of saving her once I've found her.
 
Even if you managed to track him, what would you do?
 
I have your letter – I know what happened with Kline.”

“What happened with Kline is the reason I don't feel comfortable trusting this to only one man,” Johndrow replied.
 
“Kline's people have resources, and I can call in my own people…”

“Kline's people are not trained to work in the field,” Donovan replied calmly, “and your own people aren't trained for this type of work at all.
 
Let's be honest,
Preston
, it's been a long time since any of your kind has needed to march into real battle.
 
Even the elders, yourself included, are decades from the last serious conflict.
 
This is what I do, let me handle it.”

“I will give you two days,” Johndrow replied.
 
“I won't lose her through foolish trust.”

“I understand,” Donovan replied.
 
“I don't want this guy succeeding any more than you do, though admittedly for selfish reasons.”

“Keep me informed, Mr. DeChance,” Johndrow said softly.
 
“Don't leave me sitting at home and wondering.
 
Idle hands, you know…”

“I'll be in touch,” Donovan replied.
 
He hung up the phone and stared at the wall.

He slid the computer's keyboard and mouse back into place and tapped the keyboard.
 
When prompted, he logged in and watched as the machine loaded.
 
He smiled as mechanical drives whirred, lights flashed, and complex patterns of logical numbers whirled through machine.
 
Men could say what they wanted about magic not existing, but they understood the concepts of ritual and reaction quite well. Their methods were slow and relatively crude, but the outcome was solid and workable.
 
The Personal Computer was one of the finest magical achievements of the age.

Once the logon sequence ended he opened the encryption software he used to scramble the more esoteric texts he'd scanned.
 
The computer had more than standard firewall protections, and a number of enhancements that had nothing to do with microchips or wires.
 
A series of symbols rotated into place on the screen, and in the center a large gold colored disk spun lazily.
  
At each point corresponding with the correct pattern, Donovan tapped the button on his mouse, and the disk slowed, stopped, and then spun the opposite direction.
 
After seven flip-flops, there was a sound like a key sliding into a lock, and the disk spun inward, disappearing from the screen.
 
What appeared was a single folder, and Donovan opened this quickly.

He flipped through the directories until he found one titled “Journals” and opened this, then chose Le Duc's manuscript.
 
The pages had been scanned in at very high resolution, and the program he viewed them in had singularly amazing magnification properties, as well as a translation algorithm Donovan had designed himself.
 
Alchemy in the twenty-first century, he liked to call it.
 
An electronic philosopher's stone.