Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1)

by Brad Magnarella

  “Is that a … cat?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, struggling to hold the spell together. “Name’s Tabitha.”

  “Good gawd!” The fit of laughter that seized Dempsey sounded like dry heaving.

  Dipinski gave a mean smirk. “You’ve got a real chubber there, Croft.” Apparently, my plus-sized cat trumped a man flickering in and out of existence. As noted, not the sharpest tacks.

  “Chubber?” Dempsey said, coming up for air. “That’s the biggest fucking cat I’ve ever seen!”

  That got Dipinski giggling.

  Tabitha dropped from the divan, ears pinned.

  “Hey, look, fellas,” I whispered, trying to close the door enough to block her from their view and vice versa. “The cat gets a little weird around … you know … people she doesn’t know.”

  Dipinski wiped an eye with a finger. “Bet that’d change if I showed up with a Christmas ham.”

  Their laughter verged on hysterical now.

  “You’d better bring the whole damn pig!” his large partner wheezed.

  “You’ll do nicely,” Tabitha hissed from right behind me.

  “All right, thanks for stopping by.” With what energy remained in my failing projection, I slammed and locked the door on the officers before Tabitha could sink her claws into them.

  The image buckled and broke apart. I fell from the circle and landed seat-down in the dirt, blinking around at the sudden darkness. The scent of burnt copper hung in the cool air.

  I sat a moment, waiting to see whether Thelonious would be paying our world a visit. But though the creamy light moved briefly around the edges of my thoughts, I had retained enough power to prevent him from breaking through. And expended just enough to keep my ass out of the clink.

  I rose shakily, collected my singed keys, and swept the bottom of a shoe over the smoking circle. Some night. Two dead conjurers, two escaped shriekers. And I had a bad feeling that no matter what those two buffoons reported to Detective Vega, that image of me fleeing was going to remain stuck in her head. I wasn’t sure what the implications would be. Certainly nothing good. If I’d had poorer outings as a wizard, none came to mind.

  I returned to the street in a sulk, too slow to hail the on-duty cab motoring past. A moment later, the light over the metro entrance turned off. Sighing, I aimed myself south and started for home.

  17

  “I am so sorry,” I said as I slipped into the seat opposite Caroline Reid at the small deli table.

  She was sitting arrow straight, which was her peeved posture. I seemed to make her do that a lot. In my defense, I trudged sixty blocks last night before finally snagging a cab. Back home, I had to calm Tabitha, who had been deep into scheming Dempsey’s and Dipinski’s murders, update the Order on the shrieker situation, and then shower and treat my injuries.

  By the time I crawled into bed, it was almost four a.m.

  “I don’t get it, Everson,” Caroline said. “You arranged this meeting.”

  “I know, I know, but—”

  “You needed my help.”

  “Right, and I—”

  “And yet where would you be if I hadn’t called?”

  The correct answer was still in bed. It wasn’t my alarm, but the brassy ring of the telephone that had awakened me, Caroline wanting to know where in God’s name I was. That had been an hour ago.

  “Look …” I took a breath. “I know this is no excuse, but I had a rough night.”

  “You seem to have a lot of those. And while you were out doing … whatever it is you do, I was home working on this.” She hefted up a thick manila folder and gave it a shake. “For you.”

  “And I appreciate that. I really do.”

  Lips compressed, she dropped the folder in front of me and stood.

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  “I have office hours in fifteen minutes.” She fixed her purse strap over a shoulder. “Some of us take our responsibilities seriously.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “No, in fact. And you lied to me.”

  “Lied?” I was honestly at a loss. “About what?”

  “Your meeting with Snodgrass. I know about the hearing.”

  Oh. Which meant she also knew about my probationary status.

  When I didn’t say anything, she shook her head and turned to leave.

  “Wait.” I caught her slender wrist. It was a bold move given the hole I was already in, but she stopped. When she faced me, the hardness in her blue-green eyes told me I had roughly ten seconds to make my appeal.

  “Okay. I was arrested last summer,” I said, releasing her carefully. “Wrong place, wrong time. Throw in a stressed public safety system, and I got two years probation on no evidence. I kept it from the college, probably the wrong move, but Snodgrass found out. As things stand, I’m in a tough spot, true. But,” I tapped the folder, “if I can point the NYPD in the direction of the cathedral murderer, my remaining probation gets halved. And with that, I can at least make a case to the board. I think they’d look favorably on a professor using the tools of his profession to help solve a crime. Good recruiting pitch, too.”

  Carolina snorted dryly. But in her softening stance, I could see that if she didn’t believe me, she really wanted to. That was a start. She let me guide her back to the table and scoot her chair under her.

  “What are we going to do with you?” she asked tiredly.

  “Well, this will definitely help.” I indicated the folder as I sat.

  “Not that.” She reached forward and brushed my sleeve. “Your coat’s inside out.”

  I looked down. Damn.

  “And what’s with the bandages?”

  A waiter came over, sparing me from having to explain my injuries. I fixed my coat and ordered a coffee. Caroline asked for a refill of hers.

  “Shall we?” she asked, clearing her throat and opening the folder of what she’d compiled. “I have about five minutes before I’ll be late.” When she scooted nearer, her clean scent washed around me. “I came up with two names. Fist, Arnaud Thorne, CEO of Chillington.”

  The groan in my thoughts must have seeped out because Caroline looked up. “Know him?”

  “By reputation,” I replied, which was mostly true. Arnaud Thorne epitomized the worst of investment banking. Cold, soulless, rapacious—the standard tags. His was one of a cabal of firms that had secured a nice pre-Crash profit betting against New York municipal bonds, undermining the city’s ability to pay its mounting debts. In the Crash’s smoking aftermath, the same firms swooped down on City Hall. Headed by Arnaud, they offered to manage the very debt they’d rendered worthless—but at crippling interest rates. They now had their teeth fixed firmly in New York’s jugular, ensuring themselves a steady stream of tax dollars for the next fifty years. New York, in turn, had become their mindless slave.

  All very fitting considering the same investment bankers were vampires.

  “Why Arnaud?” I asked.

  “Because St. Martin’s Cathedral sits on prime real estate,” Caroline replied, turning some pages over. “Here are the lawsuits Chillington Capital filed to have the cathedral’s downtown block converted to commercial. The church and a collective of preservation groups fought back. When the lawsuits failed, Arnaud shifted his sights to the rector. I have it on reliable authority the two met last month. Arnaud offered Father Richard a small fortune to convince the diocese to abandon the downtown location. Richard said no.”

  “And yesterday morning he’s found beaten to death,” I finished.

  Holding a knuckle to my lips, I leafed through the evidence. Vampires valued material assets but mostly as a means of self-preservation and control. Arnaud’s interest in the property probably had more to do with the fount of ley energy it sat on—energy he could tap. I doubted Arnaud had committed the murder himself, though. He would have lost his powers at the threshold, if not been incinerated. Vampires didn’t fare well in holy spaces. And St. Martin’s was about as holy as they came.
Of course, he could always have hired a thug to do the job.

  Still, I needed a connection between Arnaud and the message on the rector’s back. With last night’s hoopla, I hadn’t had time to research Black Earth or what it might mean.

  “Who’s the other one?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

  “Wang Gang.”

  “Wang Gang?”

  “He also goes by Bashi. He took over the Chinatown crime syndicate two months ago.”

  Something squeezed my stomach. “The White Hand?”

  She nodded. “The former boss died in July.”

  “I did hear about that. Natural causes, right?” I’d read about it, actually, an image of the man’s crinkly face and wispy white hair appearing beside the article. It hardly seemed fair that someone responsible for so much fear and death should be allowed to drift peacefully from his mortal coil.

  Caroline continued. “Following a bloody struggle, the youngest son emerged on top. But where his father kept a kind of order, Bashi has spent his first weeks as boss sowing chaos, exacting revenge for every perceived slight.”

  “And one of his beefs was with the church?”

  “St. Martin’s took in ten girls last year who escaped a White Hand brothel. The young women had seen their handlers paying uniformed police officers and so feared going to the law. St. Martin’s gave them sanctuary until they could be spirited from the city. Let’s just say Bashi took it as a personal affront when he found out. Before becoming boss, he was in charge of the prostitution rings.”

  “And the church didn’t stay quiet,” I said, recalling another news item I’d read.

  “No,” Caroline affirmed. “The church took the lead in trying to end the exploitation. Father Richard organized a community task force, offered money to informants, put pressure on the police department to crack down.”

  I nodded grimly. The story fit with murder as revenge. And because the White Hand was a mortal organization, the threshold wouldn’t have been an obstacle. What didn’t fit, however, was the message. When the White Hand left their mark on a crime scene, it wasn’t in early Latin.

  I flipped through photo-copied articles on Wang Gang and the White Hand until I arrived at the back of the folder. “So these two?”

  “In New York, every office comes with a dozen or more spokes of conflict, but from what I was able to find, Arnaud and Bashi look the most damning.”

  Or damned, in the first case, I thought.

  “What about within the church?” I asked. I was thinking about what Detective Vega had said about everyone inside being a suspect.

  “St. Martin’s wasn’t afflicted with the political or liturgical conflicts you sometimes see in powerful religious institutions. At least not openly. Fathers Richard and Victor worked well together as rector and vicar.” Not realizing Father Vick had been promoted to vicar, I made a sound of interest. Vick the Vicar. “Father Richard was well-regarded within the church hierarchy and larger inter-faith community, popular with his parishioners…”

  I must have been watching Caroline with a little too much admiration because her cheeks began to color. She checked her watch, as though to give her eyes something to do.

  “Now I really do have to get going,” she said.

  Shoot, I thought. “Just one more question. Have you ever heard of ‘Black Earth’? Maybe the name of a fraternal organization, an underground society, something like that?”

  If it existed, there was a good chance Caroline would know. She maintained an eclectic network of contacts throughout the city. Whether her contacts were cultivated for research purposes or something more, I wasn’t sure and had never asked. Sometimes the best way to safeguard one’s own secrets was to allow your friends theirs.

  But a comma-shaped wrinkle was forming between Caroline’s brows. “Not ringing a bell. I can ask around.”

  “No, no, please don’t.” The last thing I wanted was for her to draw the attention of a dangerous group, especially if it had a supernatural bent. “More of a tangential question, really.” I forced a chuckle. “Not related to this here.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said, sounding unconvinced.

  I stood up as she did, dropping a few bills on the table and tucking the thick folder under my arm. It suddenly occurred to me neither of us had eaten. Geez, and here I’d offered to treat her. “Oh, hey, can I get you a salad or sandwich from the cooler to take back with you?”

  “No worries. I packed a backup lunch.”

  “Backup…?”

  When she patted my unshaven cheek, it was as though to say, I know you by now.

  “Okay, well, I owe you,” I said lamely.

  She gave a smile that could have been interpreted any number of ways and made her way toward the front of the deli. The afternoon light through the windows, though muted, enveloped her in a lovely aura, capturing my feelings for her in that moment. I opened my mouth, not knowing what I was going to say. But when it came to me and Caroline, there were only three words.

  “Sorry!” I called. “Thanks again!”

  18

  An hour later, having decided to begin with the vampire Arnaud, I was on a subway pulling into the heart of the Financial District.

  I exited with a bevy of men and women in professional attire. Past the turnstiles, steel barriers herded us toward a checkpoint. We were inside the Wall. I watched those ahead of me showing their passport-like IDs. At a table beyond, an armed guard was rifling a man’s briefcase while a second guard performed a rough pat down of a harrowed-looking woman.

  I swallowed and fingered the police ID I had, ahem, forgotten to return to Detective Vega. I was still debating whether or not to use it when my turn came up.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” a guard grunted, holding out a hand. He wasn’t your typical paunchy retired cop. With his walnut-knotted frame and shaved head, the man looked like a special ops agent. They all did. And why not? The titans of finance could afford the most lethal.

  Almost reflexively, I jerked the NYPD card from my pocket. The guard snapped it from me and held it in front of his shield sunglasses—worn underground as well, apparently. Through the window of a booth to his left, I could see someone inspecting an X-ray scan of my body.

  “What’s your business?”

  “The, uh, St. Martin’s case.”

  “This doesn’t say who you are,” he growled.

  I fumbled for my wallet. “Everson Croft, Special Consultant to the NYPD.” I finally managed to free my Midtown College ID, which I held up as well.

  The guard wasn’t interested. He slapped the NYPD card against my chest, hard enough to alter my heart rhythm, and shoved me toward the inspection station. I stumbled against the metal table, where I was rudely deprived of my cane. I watched the guard inspect either end and then try to pull it apart. Good luck, buddy. A family charm held it closed. More worrisome, though, were the hands prodding my personal areas and digging into my pockets.

  “What’s all this?” the guard asked when he’d finished.

  I looked at the items lined up across the table and cleared my throat. “Well, that’s for hydration, of course.” I indicated the Evian bottle of holy water. “This is a mineral supplement,” I said of the vial of copper filings. “Supposed to be good for circulation. My notepad’s there. And that…” My eyes shifted to the small bag of rice. “Well, after I finish up here, I’m going to try to make it to a wedding. You know, shower the happy couple when it’s over.” I gave a small eye roll to suggest I thought the practice as silly as they probably did.

  Neither guard cracked a grin. For several troubling seconds, their shielded gazes remained fixed on my face. Then, as though coming to some sort of psychic agreement, they gave a simultaneous nod.

  “Get your shit and get out of here,” the nearer one grunted.

  I obliged and was soon hurrying up the steps, just as thankful to be past the checkpoint as I was to be above ground. On street level, giant skyscrapers funneled powerful winds down Broadway. My
coat flapped like wings. Tilting my head back, I spotted the landmark building that housed Arnaud’s offices. He owned the entire tower, as well as several others in the Financial District.

  Five minutes later, a pair of young men in brass-button suits were opening the building’s front doors for me. Vampires didn’t mess with wards. They kept blood slaves instead—as much for a food supply as security. I nodded at their ageless faces and stepped from the batting winds.

  The deep lobby felt like a tomb. The young woman at the crescent-shaped reception desk smiled a little too earnestly as the doors closed behind me, sealing out the sun and inducing a bone-deep chill.

  “Welcome,” she called in a lilting southern accent. “How may I help you?”

  “Good afternoon.” I walked up and stood the NYPD card on her marble desk. “I’d like to have a word with Arnaud, if I may.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “For police business?”

  “All meetings require an appointment, sir, official or otherwise.”

  I knew Arnaud had leverage in this city, but wow. “All right, let’s make one for say … fifteen minutes from now?”

  She tilted her head in a show of forbearing. White-blond hair that had been brushed to a sheen fell over the shoulder of a pale scoop-neck blouse. She was beautiful in a way that wasn’t quite right. Too porcelain. I suspected I had only to remove her stylish choker to discover the puckered cause.

  “Appointments can only be made by phone,” she said, “and require three to five days for approval.”

  “Three to five days?”

  I didn’t have three to five days. I had exactly one. I studied the receptionist in thought. It wasn’t hard to imagine the young debutante she had been, stepping from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, suitcase in hand, dizzying dreams of theater in her head. Fury at Arnaud and his fellow parasites burned in my blood. If I’d had the power to restore that young woman, believe me, I would have.

  Though the receptionist continued to show her perfect teeth, her smile seemed less inviting now, more menacing. In my peripheral vision, I noticed several young men I hadn’t seen upon entering. They drew nearer, making it so my only move would be toward the door I had entered by.