The 5th Witch

by Graham Masterton

  Annie used her feathered stick to lift the hem of Michelange DuPriz’s dress. There was nothing underneath but bones and ash.

  The police officer shook his head. “Unbelievable. I saw a nine-year-old kid who fell into a pig-feed machine. I saw a woman who got herself plastered all over in burning asphalt. But I never saw nothing like this before.”

  Dan laid a hand on his shoulder. “With any luck, officer, you’ll never see anything like this again.”

  They went for Miska Vedma next. The following day, at about a quarter to one, two detectives spotted Vasili Krylov’s Porsche Cayenne parked outside Traktir, a Russian restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. One detective took a quick look inside, then called Dan.

  “Bill McNab here, sir. Vedma and Krylov are having lunch. The Zombie was there for a couple of minutes, but he split. The White Ghost is there, too, along with that other woman we’re supposed to be looking out for. Black hair, red dress, big tits. And some other old crow, looks about a hundred, wearing a hat like a turkey vulture just landed on her head.

  “Go on.”

  “It’s hard to tell, but they’re definitely riled up about something. Krylov keeps stabbing his finger at the woman with the turkey vulture on her head, and the one with the black hair keeps flinging her arms around.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Vedma’s having the Darnitsky salad, and Krylov’s ordered the kharcho. Well, so the owner told me.”

  “Okay, just sit on them, will you, and keep me posted. Most of all, I want to know if Krylov and Vedma leave the place alone, without the other two women, and where they go.”

  Dan turned to Annie. “Our witches are having a council of war. Sounds like they’re pretty upset, too.”

  Annie was eating a bowl of homemade muesli with nasturtium leaves in it and reading Russian Word Charms. “Good,” she said. “We need to rattle them. They’ll be more inclined to make mistakes.”

  “Do you think they know it was us who took out Michelange DuPriz?”

  “Oh, they must. Rebecca Greensmith will have scried it by now.”

  “Scried it? What does that mean?”

  “Well, Michelange DuPriz wouldn’t have come home, would she, and neither would her bodyguard, so Rebecca Greensmith would probably have tried to find out where she was. Most likely she looked into a mirror or a bowl of water. That’s called scrying. You can do it with crystal balls, too.

  “She would have discovered that Michelange DuPriz is dead—but more than that, she would have found out that a loua has taken her spirit off to the netherworld as his reward for killing her. The only person who could have done that to her is me.”

  She lifted another spoonful of muesli. “The thing is, Michelange DuPriz belongs to the rada now, in eternal servitude and eternal silence—so Rebecca Greensmith wouldn’t have been able to ask her what I did to her or how.”

  Dan’s cell phone rang at 3:25 P.M.

  “Detective Fisher? They’re still at Traktir, but the White Ghost has split, and so have the woman with the black hair and the other old biddy. Krylov’s sitting at the table with five of his Russian buddies, drinking vodka. Vedma’s in the bar talking to some younger guy.”

  “Any idea who he is?”

  “He looks like some kind of entrepreneur to me. Expensive suit. Purple silk necktie. One of these Russians who can fix you anything from a Ferrari to a front-row seat for the Dodgers.”

  “Listen to me carefully—is there a mirror in the bar?”

  “Sure…all along the back wall.”

  “Where she’s sitting now, is Miska Vedma reflected in that mirror?”

  “Er…yes, she is. How is that relevant, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Meantime, I’m on my way. Krylov doesn’t look like he’s leaving anytime soon, does he?”

  “He just ordered another bottle of Stolichnaya, so I doubt it.”

  Dan put down the phone and said, “Okay, Annie. Action stations. Operation Vedma is a go.”

  Annie picked up her bag. “You’re happy with your trick?” she asked.

  “Not really. But even if it goes wrong, it should distract her, shouldn’t it?”

  “Try and do it right, please. Miska Vedma is a highly accomplished witch, and she can probably use all kinds of Russian magic that I’ve never read about and won’t be prepared for.”

  “You still don’t have to do this,” Dan told her. “You can back out anytime you like.”

  “You know that I can’t. More than that, you know that I won’t.”

  Dan looked at her narrowly. “This is more than just a crusade for you, isn’t it? You’re loving it, beating those witches at their own game.”

  Annie picked up Malkin and gave her a kiss on her tiny pink nose. “Maybe,” she admitted. “See you later, Malkin. Don’t do any uh-uhs on the rug this time.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  When they walked into Traktir, they immediately saw Vasili Krylov and his friends sitting around a table in the left-hand corner, knocking back shots of Stolichnaya and talking loudly in Russian. Dan knew at least two of them: a pimp from West Hollywood with crisscross scars on his cheeks and a hairy-handed drug dealer from the Fairfax District.

  On the opposite side of the restaurant, perched at the bar, was Miska Vedma, wearing a short silver dress. Her hair was brushed up and gelled, like blond flames. She was listening intently to the young man in the smart suit and the purple necktie. Dan recognized him as Boris Slutsky, not an entrepreneur at all, but a particularly vicious and sadistic enforcer for Vasili Krylov’s extortion rackets.

  The detective who had alerted him to Miska Vedma’s presence here was sitting by himself in the right-hand corner with a plate of grilled pork chops and boiled potatoes in front of him, pretending to read a copy of the Russian-language newspaper Panorama. Dan and Annie sat down opposite him.

  “Good work, Detective McNab. How’s the food here?” Dan asked.

  “Terrific. Pity you got here before I had the chance to finish it.”

  Dan looked around the restaurant, sizing up distances and lines of fire. “This young lady and I are going to be taking out Miska Vedma. Or trying to. What I need you to do is cover us—so that means looking out for Vasili Krylov over there and also the guy Vedma is talking to. His name’s Boris Slutsky, and he’s probably armed and certainly dangerous.

  “In other words, if there’s any sign of trouble, I don’t want you thinking twice. Just ice the bastards.”

  Detective McNab raised his eyebrows, but he said, “Okay. If that’s the way you want to play it.”

  Dan looked toward the bar. Miska Vedma was half turned away from him, so she couldn’t see him, but she suddenly sat up very straight and frowned, as if she could sense that something was wrong.

  “Just hope she hasn’t made us,” said Dan.

  “She might have sensed my aura,” Annie whispered. “Remember, I have Michelange DuPriz’s aura in me now, as well as two of Rebecca Greensmith’s.”

  “In that case, we’d better go in now. Do you have everything ready?”

  Annie lifted up her bag. “It’s all in here. Let’s do it.”

  Dan stood up. A waiter was crossing the restaurant, holding a tray of razguiya sandwiches and chicken taboka. Dan fell into step with him and walked beside him toward the bar, so that Miska Vedma wouldn’t be able to see him coming.

  As the waiter passed behind her, Dan stopped and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and snapped, “What?”

  Dan held up his right fist and then opened his fingers. There was an ear-splitting explosion, and a cloud of white smoke rolled out of his hand. Everybody in the restaurant gasped, and some of them ducked for cover. Dan held up his left fist, and Miska Vedma said, “What are you doing? What is this? Idiot! Go away!”

  Dan opened his left fist, and there was another explosion and another cloud of white smoke.

  Miska Vedma pointed at him angrily, and her
eyes were as colorless as cold water. But even as she did so, she jolted, as if somebody had pushed her from behind. She jerked her head from side to side, trying to see what had struck her, but then she jolted again and almost fell over.

  Boris Slutsky stood up and reached under his coat. Dan went for his gun, too, but Detective McNab was even quicker. There was a deafening shot and Boris Slutsky was knocked off his bar stool onto the floor and lay there with his legs quivering like a fallen pony.

  Two of Vasili Krylov’s party stood up, too, but Detective McNab shouted, “Police! Hands where I can see them! Don’t even breathe!”

  Miska Vedma was shuddering violently, as if she were freezing cold. She kept looking from left to right, her eyes darting from side to side, but it was only when Annie appeared that she realized what was happening to her.

  Annie’s face was covered by an expressionless white mask. It had a slit for a mouth and two almond-shaped holes for eyes, and it was surrounded by dry gingery hair with white silk poppies woven into it. She slowly approached Miska Vedma, both hands raised in front of her, and as she came nearer Dan could hear her whispering.

  “Mirror, glass, and water bright. Take this woman from my sight. Mirror, glass, and water clear. Take her far away from here. Take her far beyond your face. To that cold and soulless place. Skin and bone and fleshly matter. Take her, break her, make her shatter.”

  Miska Vedma let out a scream and flailed her arms. The mask that Annie was wearing was the face of a Rusalka, a Russian water witch who could trap her victims behind any shiny surface—a pool, a window, or a mirror.

  But while Miska Vedma appeared to be helpless, her reflection in the mirror behind the bar had swiftly walked away from the position where her real self was standing and circled around the tables until she was coming up behind Dan with both of her hands raised to seize him around the neck.

  “Dan!” Annie warned.

  Dan swung around, but there was nobody there—nobody he could see, anyhow. But Annie shouted, “Take a step sideways, now!”

  He did as he was told and dodged and feinted, as he used to do in college football. He actually felt Miska Vedma stumble past him, and when he turned toward the mirror he could see that her reflection was only two feet away from his, and that she was reaching out with her clawlike fingers as if she wanted to scratch out his eyes.

  He ducked again and again, but then he felt fingernails rake across his lips, and a hand snatching at his hair. He twisted around, striking at the air with his gun, but there was no point in shooting at a witch he couldn’t see.

  Annie came toward him as he struggled with his invisible opponent. She was carrying two blue glass globes in her hands, and she held them up in front of him. Miska Vedma had jumped onto his back now and was biting at his ears and wrenching out his hair and digging her bony knees into his sides.

  “Go, witch, go, from out my sight! Where right is left and left is right! Join the wicked and perverse! In the world where all’s reversed!”

  Miska Vedma screamed so shrilly in Dan’s ear that he was almost deafened. “You think you can play with me, child? You think you can pretend to be a Rusalka? My grandmother was a Rusalka!”

  She clutched Dan’s throat and clawed at his Adam’s apple. The strangest thing was that the real Miska Vedma was nowhere near him. The real Miska Vedma was standing furious but motionless beside the bar, at least eight feet away, with her fists clenched. Only her reflection was wrestling with him and tearing at his face.

  But Annie half turned and lifted one of the blue glass globes. She drew her arm back, and Dan realized that she was going to throw it.

  “Nooooo!” cried Miska Vedma, and as Annie hurled the globe toward the mirror, she scrambled off Dan’s back, and Dan could see her reflection diving toward the globe with one hand desperately outstretched.

  Miraculously, when it was only a few inches away from the mirror’s surface, she caught it. She didn’t turn around, but she raised the globe high and shook her fist, and her reflection stared out at them in utter triumph. Just as the second globe hit the mirror right next to her.

  The mirror was twenty feet wide by six feet high, and it exploded as if it had been hit by a bomb. Thousands of shards of silvered glass flew everywhere, glittering and sparkling. Diners in the restaurant raised their hands to protect their eyes, but even so Dan saw one woman with a coronet of splinters stuck in her forehead.

  Dan heard a sharp, crackling voice. It sounded like a radio message from very far away—from Russia, from the steppes, from the coldest reaches of a country where magic ran with the whitest of wolves.

  Miska Vedma, standing beside the bar, began to break into pieces, as if she were made of nothing but glass. One of her arms dropped to the floor and then half her face. Her legs snapped in half just below the knees, and the rest of her body fell backward onto the floor and smashed into smithereens.

  Traktir went very quiet. Detective McNab was already on his radio calling for backup and at least three busses. Annie untied her mask and stood over Miska Vedma’s remains, and—strangely—the expression on her face was almost regretful.

  Vasili Krylov came over with two of his bodyguards close behind him.

  “You don’t think you’re going to get away with this, Detective?”

  “I was under the impression we just did. RIP witch number two.”

  “Vasili Krylov never forgets, Detective.”

  “Give you something to remember, then, when you’re sitting in San Quentin.”

  “I will kill you, Detective. I promise.”

  He went down on one knee on the floor and picked up one of Miska Vedma’s broken-off fingers. It was actually made of milk-white glass, with a silver ring on it.

  “This woman, I was going to make her my bride.” He looked up, and Dan actually saw tears in his eyes.

  “Not a good idea, marrying witches,” Dan told him. “Didn’t you ever see Charmed?”

  Lida Siado was more difficult to find on her own. Dan had two uniforms sitting outside Orestes Vasquez’s mansion round the clock, but she didn’t appear until the following morning, and when she did, she was accompanied by Rebecca Greensmith and four heavies.

  Annie wasn’t concerned about the heavies—she knew plenty of spells for gnarling their muscles into agonizing knots. But she was worried about Rebecca Greensmith.

  “She knows what we’re doing, and she’s constantly scrying to find out where we are. It wouldn’t surprise me if she tried to lay some kind of a trap for us.”

  Dan had been peering into a circular mirror framed with tiny seashells, inspecting the livid red scratches on his neck. He nodded toward the book she was reading, a large illustrated treatise on Uitoto Myths & Legends. “How were you thinking of offing Lida Siado?”

  Malkin came padding across the rug and started to lick Annie’s fingers with her tiny pink tongue. “It’s the salt,” she said. “She always comes and licks my fingers after I’ve been witch testing.”

  “It’s those goddamned creatures that Lida Siado conjures up—those are what really scare me. Like the one that killed poor Ernie.”

  “Kukurpas, yes. They’re horrible. But the Uitoto magic men found ways of destroying them.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, one way was to feed them poisoned babies. Another way was to trick them into a hut and then set fire to it, but the hut had to be smeared with anaconda fat, so that the fire was very fierce.”

  Dan pulled a face. “I don’t think either of those alternatives is very practical, do you?”

  Annie said, “With any luck, we won’t need them. But I have to neutralize Lida Siado before she has a chance to drum up the Night Wind.”

  “And you’re going to do that how?”

  “I’m going to try to drum up a spirit of my own. A Uitoto spirit. I’m not sure that it’s going to work. Even if I can manage to make it appear, it won’t be easy to handle or to dismiss. But Lida Siado is so powerful, even without Rebecca Greensmith,
and I can’t think of any other way.”

  “Okay,” said Dan. “After Miska Vedma, I think I’m game for anything.”

  It was 6:47 P.M. when the phone rang.

  “Officer Stavrianos here, Detective. Lida Siado and the White Ghost just left the house with three bodyguards and three albino Great Danes.”

  “No old lady?”

  “That’s why I called you, sir. No old lady, for definite. Looks like they’re headed due west.”

  “Thanks, officer. Keep a tail on them, and keep me updated.”

  Dan said, “Orestes Vasquez and Lida Siado are driving westward with three large dogs but without Rebecca Greensmith.”

  “Oh, God,” said Annie.

  “I’ll bet you fifty bucks I know where they’re going. One of the White Ghost’s favorite restaurants is Ocean Avenue Seafood, in Santa Monica. They’ll take the dogs for a run on the beach, and then they’ll have dinner.”

  Annie stood up and straightened her short black linen dress. “I just hope I’m ready for this. The summoning ritual…it’s very complicated, and I don’t even know if I can pronounce the words right.”

  Dan shrugged on his sand-colored coat and picked up his gun from the side table. “Only one way to find out.”

  Annie took her soft woven bag and a small split-drum, similar to the drum that Lida Siado wore around her neck, except that this one had a single eye painted on the front, and the back was curved and tapered and scaly like an alligator’s tail. It must have had dried beans or beads inside it, because it made a maracas-like rattle when she slung it around her shoulders.

  “That’s all you’re taking?” Dan asked.

  “Hopefully, that’s all I’m going to need.”

  “No poisoned babies? No inflammable huts?”

  Annie smiled and shook her head, but Dan suddenly said, “Maybe that gives me an idea. Let’s call in at the station before we head for the beach.”

  “You’re going to pick up a couple of poisoned babies?”

  “Just some extra protection, that’s all—in case Uitoto magic doesn’t quite cut it.”