Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  “Okay, cloak, let’s see if we can make this work.”

  With a swirl, it went from a jacket to a full cloak, hanging down to ankle length, draped over the projection of the sword and scabbard behind me. It rippled for a moment, as though uncertain. I thought hard about an overcoat, picturing it in my mind. I don’t know if we have a psychic connection of some sort, but I do have an unnaturally loud mind when I choose to shout.

  The cloak responded, changing shape and cut and texture. A moment later, I was wearing a black overcoat. Glancing behind myself, there was no bulge or distortion where Firebrand should have been. I opened the coat, looking inside. Mary made a gagging noise and turned away.

  The inside was a silky-shiny black lining, as befit a high-quality—albeit monochromatic—coat. However, in the back of the coat there was a discontinuity. The scabbard disappeared into the cloth, as though through a tear. The edges weren’t like a tear in cloth, however. They seemed… organic, sort of. Imagine someone finishing a popsicle and still having the popsicle stick in their mouth. Or maybe a piece of pipe from a fence, sticking out of the tree that grew around it. The edges slithered slightly around the scabbard, not exactly sucking, not exactly licking. Tasting, perhaps. Touching and feeling and carefully holding without… without… doing anything.

  I shifted Firebrand’s hilt, tilting and swinging the scabbard. The… opening?… inside the coat moved with it easily.

  “Firebrand?”

  It’s just a hole, Boss. I don’t feel anything different.

  “Mary?”

  “Don’t talk to me. I’m trying not to throw up.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t look at it,” she insisted, still facing away.

  “Okay.” I closed the overcoat and walked around a little. I adjusted the scabbard more toward the vertical. It would be a slower draw, but the angle made the bulge of Firebrand’s hilt much less noticeable. I drew it, sheathed it, drew it again. I could work with this.

  “What do you think?”

  I think it’ll work. I doubt we can pull this off during the day, though.

  “Agreed. My cloak doesn’t like the daytime. I’ve never seen it do the hole to nowhere trick in the light. What it’s doing now is certainly related. Let’s not test it. Mary?”

  “Whatever you want. Just don’t do it where I can see it, please.”

  I wore the scabbard, but laid Firebrand in the back seat.

  Boss?

  “I’m making sure it can sustain this. If we wind up with a fraction of a scabbard, we’ll know not to put too much strain on it.”

  Ah. Testing to see how long it can keep going?

  “Not exactly, but I’d hate for it to make a choice between unravelling and cutting you in two.”

  When you put it that way, so would I.

  Bronze rolled to a stop on the access road to the mine. Mary got out and vanished into the hilly region around us. The scabbard was still intact—I’d say the hole was intact, but that sounds weird—so I sheathed Firebrand before we rumbled up the road to the mine entrance.

  One van, two cars, no other signs of people. At least, not by moonlight. Vampire eyes do not depend on light, so seeing a sentry inside the tunnel was simple enough. I also saw the glow of his living essence, as well as the aura of the charm around him, making him stand out like a candle in a cave. I didn’t recognize him.

  We parked. I got out and examined the other vehicles. One of them was still warm and the interior smelled of food—probably someone sent to fetch back something to eat. The other two were cold, unused for hours. It was hard to tell how many people might be inside. Three was the minimum. Judging by the cars, there could be as many as fifteen.

  I unlocked the grating and stepped inside to lock it behind me. An electric lantern came on.

  “Hold it right there! You’re covered. Hands up!”

  “Seriously?” I asked, but raised my hands. For answer, I heard the sound of a pump shotgun. I sighed. “Son, if you didn’t have a round chambered before I came in here, you’re an idiot. Men have died trying to do it when the fight started. You’re an even bigger idiot if you keep pointing it at me. I’m being polite, however, and making allowances for youth and exuberance.”

  “All right. Turn around.”

  I did so, slowly, so as not to antagonize Mister Jumpy. He had a sawed-off shotgun pointed at my legs. It wasn’t a bad idea. A headshot can put down just about any breed of vampire, but an effective headshot is tricky on a moving target. Legs, on the other hand… do some structural damage, impair the mobility, and make the second shot more likely to do serious harm to the head.

  “Hi,” I greeted him. “Where’s Theodore?”

  “He’s inside. Who are you?”

  “I’m his Mysterious Benefactor. It’s my mine and my facility. Now, either let me go talk to Ted or summon him. The night isn’t getting any younger.”

  “All right. Put your hands on top of your head. Move down the tunnel. Face the wall, in the corner with the support. Don’t move.”

  I sighed. It was going to be that kind of night.

  He locked the grating and escorted me down the tunnel. He had me lower my hands to open the boarded-up tunnel, but otherwise I kept them on top of my head. I realized the place needed some additional wiring. Something compatible with an old Army-issue phone pouch would do fine. A sentry at the grate, another at the boarded-up tunnel mouth, and a guard on the main hatch would be good places, but they needed a way to communicate to someone inside the facility. Diogenes and I were thinking in terms of containing something, not defending the place against an onslaught. Internal versus external. Ah, well.

  We made it to the hatch. My escort went inside without me. I sighed again—it didn’t help—and sat down on a large rock. The area in front of the hatch could use a couple more large rocks, I decided, if it was going to be a waiting area. Chairs might even be in order.

  Ted came out and inspected me by eye. Three others—my escort, a religious zealot, and another man—came out with him. Ted and I exchanged looks while everyone else pointed guns at me.

  “You know,” I said, quietly, “you should be wearing hearing protection. This is an enclosed space.”

  “Is this the sum of your objections, monster?” demanded the zealot. I recognized him from Diogenes’ medical wing. He wore a big cross around his neck and it shone brighter than the electric lanterns. Despite the blaze of white-hot light from the religious symbol, I could still make out the aura of charms protecting everyone. Grabbing someone with a hand—or biting them—would be painful, burning. Tendrils were out of the question. I could probably dispel the charms magically, but it would require some time to set up an appropriate spell.

  “No, I’m merely offering a caution. You don’t want me to start objecting.”

  “Fiend!”

  “Hold it,” Ted snapped, rounding on the zealot. “This is my operation. If we’re going to work together, you’re going to have to get this through your head. I’m in charge! Next time, maybe you’ll be in charge. When that time comes, I’ll take whatever flak you care to throw, but right now? My operation, my rules. Say you understand.”

  Zealot didn’t want to. He had to chew the words for a moment, jaw muscles jumping, before he could spit them out.

  “Good,” Ted replied, and turned back to me. “You’re here to examine the subject?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Sam, get back up front. You two, follow us.” Ted took a deep breath, held it, let it go. “And you, ‘Dave’… won’t you please come with me?”

  I stood up slowly, keeping my hands in plain view. I bowed slightly.

  “I am honored to be permitted to join you. I thank you for your hospitality.”

  We went inside. I didn’t like the thudding clang of the hatch closing, what with Zealot behind me. Still, my overcoat, while not bulletproof, might accidentally swallow him if he tried anything. Or would it? It was busy maintaining a portable hole f
or Firebrand to hide in. It seemed capable of doing so all night, but would this preclude any other actions? Or merely slow it down?

  Ted walked with me to the containment area and showed me into an observation room. The partly-silvered glass, along with the lighting, made us observers without being observed. I liked the setup on the observation windows. They were glass, yes, but eight inches thick. On the inside, there were bars. Even if a bloodsucker broke the glass, there was still a steel cage to get through.

  Yep, it was a bloodsucker. It was fastened down at every major joint by steel cable and wore an explosive collar. It wasn’t struggling at the moment, but it—he—wore a half-snarl and the look of a captive who doesn’t believe his danger.

  “I like it.”

  “So do I,” Ted admitted. “We haven’t done much. It’s been hard keeping people away from it, but you had something you needed to do and I didn’t know what would foul it up.”

  “I know you’re eager to start testing. I’ll get right on my portion of the project, if you like.”

  “I like. You don’t mind if we watch?”

  “You’ll watch no matter what I say. I don’t mind, though.”

  Ted, Zealot, and He Who Was Not Introduced stayed in the observation room. I went out and around and into the containment room. Not being strapped to a table, I felt fairly confident of my ability to leave the room whether they wanted me to or not.

  “You craven son of a bitch!” he screamed. “Release me, or suffer eternal torment!”

  “No, I don’t think so.” I smiled at him with fangs.

  “Traitor!” he responded. “I’ll have your eyes gouged out! I’ll have your fangs pulled! I’ll—”

  “You don’t even know who I am, do you?”

  “I know enough! I know you’re in league with humans!”

  Firebrand?

  He doesn’t have a clue, boss. He thinks you’re one of his kind, but doesn’t recognize you.

  That’s what I needed to know.

  “But not my name,” I replied, to the victim. “Good. I was wondering.”

  He began screaming more earnestly, using language I wouldn’t want my mother to hear. To be frank, it was language I didn’t want to hear, either. Since he seemed unlikely to be cooperative, I stuck a handy wooden stake in his heart. Several of the things were just lying around for anyone to grab, almost like fire extinguishers. Can’t imagine why.

  “Shut up,” I advised, once he was immobile. I brought out a crystal and studied him through it. I already prepared the crystal to record the imprint of the energy-pattern involved. I only hoped it wouldn’t also reduce the bloodsucker to dust in the process. Or make him catch fire. Or dissolve him into a pool of ichor. Or anything else. I never did it before, so it could be a little dicey.

  I started my spellcasting, drawing on a battery crystal as well as scraping up whatever power I could from the local environment. First, I drew an isolation matrix around the subject to reduce the noise level in the recording, like soundproofing. A second, connected circle for the crystal, serving the same purposes. Then a reflector, like a parabolic mirror, to concentrate and amplify everything. More spells to clean the signal and boost it, clean it again and boost it again. Then it was a matter of running pulses of power through the spells, copying the waveforms.

  I’ve already compared the psychic signature of an energy-state being to a full orchestral symphony. What I was doing here was listening to it on the radio, but it was a distant station and didn’t come in well. So I listened to it again and again, picking out more of the melody every time. With enough play-throughs, I would eventually have the whole score for the symphony. It helped quite a lot to have my experience with Valan. I got a pretty good read on him while preparing to stuff him into a bottle. The general pattern was the same, which helped me build a general framework upon which to hang the details.

  This was a lot easier for my altar ego. He simply made an imprint for me. With this faint extension of the Boojum, I was trying to pirate a copy. It reminded me of what I did with an old power crystal when copying the imprint of a little girl. Back then, I had only the latent images in a chair and a spoon. Here, I had a creature—or an object, depending on how you count a corpse—animated by the power of the entity I wanted. Of course, I also needed a much more precise pattern, one in wire-sharp focus rather than merely close enough.

  The process, unfortunately, was not a quick one. Worse, it required either an extraordinarily complex spell or constant supervision. Given my lack of a week or three to develop the appropriate magical algorithms, I stayed with the spell, monitoring and adjusting the signal fed through my amplifiers into the crystal.

  Four hours later, I thought I had a pretty good fix on the Boojum. While still not adequate for my universe-scanning application, it was more than enough for checking his fingerprints on anything he handled—priests, altars, other holy artifacts, lightning bolts from the sky, and the like. I wouldn’t mistake his work for that of another energy-state being. Another hour or two of refining the imprint and I might have a shot at my Boojum hunting spell.

  Ted came in while I was working. I was vaguely aware of people in the observation booth during the process. There wasn’t much to see without a major magical talent, intense training, or some combination of the two. I stood at one point of a triangle, the crystal sat quietly at another, and the bloodsucker made the third. With magical vision, it was obvious a spell was cycling. Without it, I was just standing there, hands outstretched, doing nothing. The crystal didn’t even glow.

  Ted cleared his throat. I started putting the spell on hold when he came in. A moment later, I had it in a state where it could be paused.

  “Yes, Ted?”

  “There are people who want to know what you’re doing and how long it’s going to take. Is this a week-long project? Or are you almost done?”

  “I think I can finish tonight.”

  “Good. Uh, what is it, exactly, you’re doing?”

  “If I give you a lesson in spells, I won’t finish tonight.”

  “Short form?” he suggested.

  “The force animating the corpse on the table is a projection of an entity. I’m making a detailed scan of it to identify its energy-pattern. It’s like a fingerprint. I’m lifting all its fingerprints from inside the corpse so I can identify it precisely. There are way too many entities of a similar nature, as well as free-floating energy that can interfere—like radio static—so I need an exact match to identify it from as far away as possible.”

  “Fingerprints.”

  “Magical ones,” I agreed.

  “All right.”

  “You look like a man with something on his mind.”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Okay. What else can I do for you?”

  “Nothing. You go ahead and get back to standing there.”

  “All right. Close the hatch, please.”

  “Oh, you bet.”

  He stepped out, closed the hatch, and I heard it lock. Well, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. First things first. I started up the scanning and amplifying and imprinting again, sharpening my image of the Boojum.

  With the major portion of the work done, I spared enough attention to listen a little. People were arguing in the observation booth. Mostly, it was a question of motivations. My motivations. Why does he want a bloodsucker? Is he lying? He says he wants to kill them, but does he? Is he doing anything in there? What’s he doing? What did he say? Can we trust what he says? Why go to all this trouble? He says there are other kinds of bloodsuckers and this type is the worst. They’re all the worst; they should all be killed—him, too! So why help us? Because he’s a devious bloodsucker! Can we use him? No! Kill him! But we do need to know more about them. We know how to kill them; that’s enough! I disagree.

  Blah, blah, blah. Religious zealots meet hard-headed pragmatists. If they ever succeed in forming an alliance, I have no worries about this world. The real trick will be to rein in the
religious zealots while the pragmatists sort out who needs to be deep-fried, who extra crispy, and in what order they need to be dunked in the boiling oil.

  From the sound of it, nobody was going to cross me until I was done. The general consensus was to wait until they could see a result or until I tried to leave. If I spent the day comatose and in their power, that was fine, too.

  Judging by the sounds of movement in the hall, they weren’t counting on the door to hold me.

  I went back to ignoring them and concentrated on my copy job.

  All things considered, it went pretty well.

  I spent most of the rest of the night getting every trace, every detail, every vague hint out of the incapacitated bloodsucker on the table. And, by extension, every bit of the energy signature of the entity empowering the dead guy. I even went to the trouble of filling his mouth with glue and un-staking him. The signal strength rose markedly once he was animate again, which helped enormously. I developed a better image in the last half-hour than in all my previous work. I should have tried un-staking him sooner, I suppose. Still, the project went well. I might even say extremely well. I put the stake back in, just to be tidy.

  Leaving was a trifle more… problematic.

  When I finally locked the crystal, sealing the final image and imprint, it was only the work of a moment to release my copying spells. It took considerably longer to build the next spell. I wasn’t sure if I would need it, but it’s better to have and not need than the other way around.

  Finally, I sat down on one of the steel stools and waved at the observation window. I waited for a few minutes. Ted unlocked the door and came in. I heard them breathing out in the hall and a couple of metallic noises reminiscent of guns cocking. Ted sat down as one of his sons—Ed, I believe—closed the door from the outside.

  “Morning, Ted. Thank you again for this.”

  “It’s not quite morning, yet.”

  “I know, but what’s a half-hour here or there?”