Hard Spell ocu-1

by Justin Gustainis

"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."

  Vollman studied me before speaking. "I do not think either one of us is callous, Sergeant. But I was forced to make a choice. If I helped you, and you found my son, you would probably kill him. He might well leave you no choice. And even now, after everything, I would have preserved his life, if I could."

  "So you did nothing," I said.

  "On the contrary. Ever since you gave me the name Sligo, I have been searching for him, day and night. Well, night, at least. I have used my considerable influence among the local community of supernaturals. But all my efforts have turned up nothing – he has learned how to hide himself well."

  "Say you had found him on your own," Karl said. "What then?"

  Vollman shifted a little in his chair. "I would have stopped him from completing this insane ritual – without killing him, if at all possible."

  "But here you are," I said. "What's changed?"

  "What has changed is the passage of time," Vollman said. "Like you, I believe that tonight is when he will attempt to consummate the ritual, and that cannot be permitted. Should he fail, he will almost certainly die. And if he succeeds, as you have pointed out, Sergeant, many others will die, in the near future."

  "So now you wanna work with us," I said, "and about fucking time, too. But knowing that Sligo is your son doesn't help us catch him. I'm not clear about what you're bringing to the table."

  Vollman studied his hands for a few moments. "In truth, not as much as I had hoped," he said. "I had planned to share with you the information contained in the Opus Mago about the ritual – its purpose, and its requirements. I was going to tell you that tonight is when he will probably make the attempt – at least, I can think of no reason why he would wait another month, given the ever-present risk of discovery."

  He looked up then. "But it seems you already have the information that you need about that evil book. Courtesy, I assume, of the professor who was killed at the hospital today."

  "You got that right," I said. "So, I'm asking you again – what have you got to offer?"

  "As we speak, my agents are combing the city, and its environs – not only in search of my son, but of any information about the planned ritual. If any of them learns something useful, they will contact me at once."

  Vollman reached into a pocket and produced a cell phone. "Even nosferatu," he said, "must change with the times."

  "And anything these guys tell you, you're gonna share with us?" Karl sounded skeptical, and I can't say that I blamed him.

  "Yes, I will," Vollman said. "Things have gone too far for gentle methods. He must be stopped, even if it means his life. And I am no longer sure I can do it alone."

  "And what are you asking from us?" I said.

  "Any information you may uncover in the interim – and of course, your vigorous efforts to prevent this tragedy from happening. Which you would have exercised, anyway."

  "All right, Vollman, we'll work with you," I said. "But I want something more."

  "What might that be?"

  "My daughter, Christine, is one of… you."

  "Yes, I was aware of this."

  "Do you know where she is tonight?"

  "I do not attempt to keep track of all the city's creatures of the night," Vollman said. "But I can find out, if it is important. I assume it is, or you would not be asking."

  "A threat was made against her," I said, "by a guy named Jamieson Longworth, now deceased. We believe he was somehow mixed up with your son."

  "Indeed?" Vollman's tone was frosty. "Had I possessed that information earlier, I might have been able to use it and locate my son, thus saving us all considerable time and trouble."

  "We only got the information that allowed us to figure it out yesterday," I told him, trying not to sound defensive.

  "And you didn't exactly make yourself easy to find, did you?" Karl said.

  "Point taken." Vollman inclined his head forward a little. "Very well, Sergeant. I will have your daughter Christine located. What then? Do you wish her brought here?"

  "No, I'm expecting to be pretty busy. Just get her someplace safe, at least for tonight."

  "I
can do that," he said, "and I will." He stood up. "I should lend my efforts to the hunt for my son. There are those in the city who will not share information with my minions, but who might nonetheless talk to me-" Vollman gave us a humorless, fang-filled smile, "-especially if I ask nicely."

  "We should trade phone numbers before you go," I said. "We can't afford any communication delays tonight."

  "I agree entirely," he said.

  The three of us exchanged cell phone numbers. I wrote Vollman's down, then looked up to tell him "Stay in touch."

  He was gone.

  "I hate it when he does that," I muttered.

  "I don't know," Karl said. "I think it's kind of cool."

  Over the next few hours, I looked at that wall map so many times I'm surprised I didn't burn a hole through it. Karl downloaded and printed some aerial photos from Google Earth and had them spread out on a table. My eyes just about wore them through, too.

  We'd piv› he word out to every snitch we knew, human and otherwise. Anybody who could come up with reliable information about where Sligo was going to perform the ritual tonight would earn so much goodwill with us that he could probably knock off a dozen liquor stores without fear of arrest – although we didn't put it quite that way.

  The other detectives in the squad knew the situation now, and they'd promised to work their own sources hard and to call in if they picked up anything useful.

  Everybody was out on the street, except Karl, me, and McGuire. All three of us were so far past overtime that we probably weren't even getting paid anymore.

  The silence in the squad room was like a vice pressing against my skull, squeezing tighter every minute. I willed one of our phones to ring, no matter who was calling – Vollman, one of the squad, a snitch, or even Christine letting me know that she was shacked up with a cute A-positive in Dunmore and wouldn't be home until dawn.

  McGuire was at his desk, doing paperwork or pretending to. Karl stood in front of the wall map, staring like a desert traveler hoping for an oasis to appear. I was pacing around the room like an expectant father – exactly what I had done when Christine was born. I looked at my watch, for the thousandth time: 10:03.

  "I bet the motherfucker is going to pick a yard with a big old swimming pool," Karl said, without taking his eyes off the map. "Then, once the spell's done, he can jump in and take a dip. Cool off a little. Black magic is hot work, I hear."

  "The arrogant prick probably doesn't even-" and that was as far as I got.

  I stopped pacing and stood utterly still, while images and sounds flashed through my brain:

  – Sligo, swimming, with a conical cap on his head, like the wizard in Fantasia…

  – Prescott's voice saying, "Still water, it has to be still water"…

  – The photo on Jamieson Longworth's computer of a square, stone building near-surrounded by water…

  – My cousin Marty, when I was fourteen: "Come on, Stan. Nobody goes up there, and the lock on the gate is a joke. You, me, and those two chicks from down the street. Whatdaya say? We'll have a cool swim on a hot night, and maybe we'll even get to see 'em naked!

  "Well, fuck my ass and call me Shirley," I said softly.

  "Stan?" Karl's voice. "Stan? Can you hear me? What is it, man?" I think he might have been speaking for a while.

  I turned to face him. "Lemme borrow your pen."

  I took the pen, ignoring the look on Karl's face, and went to the wall map. It took me only a few seconds to find the dot I was looking for. I circled it once, then again, and again, and stepped back. "That's where he is," I said. "Right there. He's right fucking there."

  Speaking as fast as I could without becoming incoherent, I told McGuire and Karl what I had just figured out: Sligo was going to cast his spell in the pump house on top of the dam at Lake Scranton.

  "He wants still water, and there's a shitload of it up there, and the place is isolated. It's not supposed to be for swimming – that's where the city drinking water comes from. But my cousin Marty and me and a couple of girls went skinny-dipping there one summer when I was fourteen. I saw the pump house close up, although we didn't go inside – it was locked. And the pump house is what's in that photo on Jamieson Longworth's computer – sure as I'm fucking standing here."

  "That's good enough for me," McGuire said, and picked up the phon/div›

  "Who're you calling?" I asked.

  "SWAT. Dooley's supposed to be on call, twentyfour-seven."

  "Good," I said. I went to my desk and started rummaging through the pile of papers on top of it.

  "What're you looking for?" Karl asked me.

  "That phone number Vollman left us. Here it is."

  A few seconds later, I was listening to the phone ringing in, I hoped, Vollman's pocket. It rang. And rang. Then after the seventh ring, one of those synthesized computer voices that I hate said, " No one is available at the moment to take your call. Please leave your name and number, and your call will be returned as soon as humanly possible."

  I wondered whether "humanly" was Vollman's idea of a little joke.

  At the beep, I said, "Vollman, this is Markowski. It's going down at the pump house, at the top of the Lake Scranton Dam. I need to know if you've located Christine, because that's gonna determine our tactics. Call me, or get over here, fast!"

  Karl had just finished checking the loads in that big Glock of his. He looked at me. "Determine our tactics?"

  "If we know Christine's safe, we can go in there with all guns blazing – or SWAT can. But since she's still missing… don't you think Jamieson Longworth would get a giggle in Hell, knowing that Christine was going to be Sligo's final vampire victim?"

  "But we don't know for sure that Longworth and Sligo were even in cahoots, Stan."

  "Do you believe in that many coincidences?" I asked.

  That brought a little smile to Karl's face. Before I could ask what was so damn funny, he said, the way you do when you're quoting somebody, "'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.'"

  "Who said that? Although he's right, whoever it was."

  "Auric Goldfinger – to James Bond."

  McGuire came out of his office, scowling. "Problem. Big one. The SWAT unit, every one of them, is on administrative suspension, pending investigation into possible wrongdoing in the death of one Jamieson Longworth."

  "What kind of fucking bullshit is that?" Karl said.

  "Mrs. Longworth again," I said to McGuire.

  "Yeah, most likely. Dooley says the union's fighting it, on the grounds that SWAT's vital to public safety – but they're not gonna get it overturned in- " he looked at his watch, "-the next eighty-five fucking minutes."

  "If this is a nightmare, I hope I wake up soon," I said quietly. "We don't have SWAT, we don't have a warrant for the fucking pump house-"

  "Isn't that city property?" Karl asked. "Don't need a warrant for that."

  "No, the water company owns it," I said. "Don't interrupt me when I'm bitching – no SWAT, no warrant, no Vollman…" I stopped, and just shook my head.

  "You've got these, though." McGuire held out a key and a slip of paper.

  "What?" I asked impatiently.

  "A master key, which will open any office in the building, including SWAT's, and-" he held out the paper to me, "-the combination to the SWAT weapons room. The key is from me, who will have no idea how you got it. The combination's courtesy of Dooley, who says 'Kick some ass for us, too.'"

  I took the paper and key and looked at Karl. "You heard the man – let's go kick some ass."

  It was quiet in the part of the building that SWAT called home, so nobody asked us what the hell we were doing. Just as well. The mood I was in, if somebody had, I might have shot them.

  As Karl unlocked the SWAT team's door, I said, "You know, vampires and wizards and shit – that's weird enough. But now, we're in the middle of a fucking 'buddy cop' movie."

  Karl pushed the door open and felt around for the light switch. "Is tha
t what it is? Sure hope you're right, Stan."

  "Why – you like that stuff?"

  "Yeah, but that's not why I said it."

  "I think the weapons room is back there," I said, pointing. "Okay, I give. Why do you want this to be a buddy cop movie?"

  "Because the good guys always win," he said, as we walked to the back of the big room. "And neither of the cops ever gets killed. Maybe a flesh wound, arm in a sling in the final scene – but nothing worse. I could handle that. Here – gimme that combination."

  Consulting the paper, Karl carefully turned the big dial back and forth a few times, then tried the handle. The steel door unlocked with a click. I gave the handle a pull, and the door opened smoothly on well-oiled hinges. A couple of bright florescent lights in the ceiling came on automatically.

  "Holy fuck," Karl said softly. "Will you look at this shit!"

  We were bleeding time faster than a vampire's victim loses blood, so within ten minutes of opening the SWAT unit's weapons room, Karl and I were in the parking lot, heading for a brown Plymouth – the car the department had assigned us to replace the one with the man-sized dent in its roof

  We walked as fast as we could with all the stuff we were carrying. Stopping behind our new ride, I was fishing for the keys when I heard the sound of a car door opening in the row behind us, then heard it again. Part of my mind noticed that I didn't hear those doors slam shut.

  I wasn't worried. Jamieson Longworth was dead, and his buddy, Sligo, was up at Lake Scranton, getting ready for the biggest night of his life – which I hoped would also be his last.

  I should have worried.

  I realized that when I heard, from behind us, the distinctive clickety-clack of a shotgun being racked.

  Both of Karl's arms were full; so was one of mine, while my other hand was deep in my pants pocket, digging for the car keys. We had no chance at all.

  Then a familiar man's voice told us, "Stand very still, gentlemen."

  We froze like Gorgon statues.

  After a few seconds, he said, "Good. Now, without unburdening yourselves, turn this way. Slowly."

  Once I'd heard that voice, I was pretty sure we were fucked. Then we turned around, and I knew it for certain.