Blackout

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Well, I appreciate it. You’ve been immensely helpful to us.”

  “So you’ve said.” Landesberg sounded bitter now. “And I guess it is the right thing to do, since none o’ the guys I tell you about ever become repeat offenders. But—”

  At Landesberg’s hesitation, Bernard looked up from the witness statements, which were barely legible, thanks to a poor copy machine and a weak typewriter ribbon. “But what?”

  “I took an oath, Bernie.”

  “As did I. What you’re doing right now allows me to fulfill mine so you don’t have to break yours.”

  “How you figure that?”

  Bernard set down the papers. “The NYPD is barely able to handle the crimes it was designed to solve. The prisons are so overcrowded the mayor’s releasing inmates, there’s a killer on the loose that no one can find, and from what one reads in the papers, your negotiations with the city are not going well.”

  Landesberg shrugged as he took a final drag on his cigarette and then stubbed it out in the ashtray with the others. “That’s just the usual union garbage.”

  “Yes, usual—and you’re barely handling it. You’re not equipped to fight vampires or werewolves or demons. The Slayer, however, is. For centuries, the Slayers have been tasked with protecting humanity from creatures so foul that they can’t ever know about them. This city is in a poor enough condition at the moment—do you really think a populace that is paralyzed with fear over the Son of Sam, crippled by poverty and joblessness, and hamstrung by poor civil services is ready to find out that there are vampires preying on them?”

  Snorting, Landesberg said, “Hell, I’m not ready to find out, and I figured it out three years ago when your girl was around for half the NYPD’s open cases.”

  Bernard looked back down at the file. Nikki had generally been good about covering her tracks. Indeed, had Landesberg not been the detective in charge of Nikki’s grandmother’s murder investigation, with its talk of vampires, he might not have made the connection in the first place.

  But make it he had. In truth, Bernard was grateful, both that he did figure it out, and that his place in the NYPD was sufficiently insecure to prevent him from telling his superiors. Bernard suspected that the latter had more to do with Landesberg’s lack of political skills than his ethnicity, but either way, it benefited Bernard and Nikki to have someone on the force who believed in what they did and gave them the chance to take care of it before any of the constabulary got hurt.

  “Oh, one other thing—we got a possible description. Last place the girls were seen alive was CBGB’s, and the bartender saw them going out with someone. Sketch artist did a doodle—it’s at the bottom of the file.”

  Nodding, Bernard riffled through the papers until he got to the sketch.

  When he saw the face, he almost dropped his soda glass.

  “What is it?” Landesberg asked.

  “Nothing—just thought I recognized the chap for a second.”

  “You know who he is?”

  “Not at all—just reminds me of someone I knew back in England. Couldn’t be the same fellow.”

  Bernard had no idea if Landesberg believed him, but at the moment he didn’t care. If this sketch was accurate, Nikki was in serious trouble.

  Because if the witness who gave the artist the description was to be believed, William the Bloody was in town.

  * * *

  Nikki walked confidently up Tenth Avenue, her leather coat billowing behind her. She wore a light cotton T-shirt under it so she wouldn’t be completely sweaty in the eighty-plus-degree temps and crappy humidity. But she had to wear the coat. Without it, she was just some chick walkin’ down the street.

  With it, she was the Slayer, and nobody messed with her. At least, they didn’t twice.

  Usually folks just crowded past one another when they walked down the street, but as soon as they saw Nikki, they got out of her way. Even people who didn’t know her, knew better than to get too close to her. She was dangerous.

  And that was how she liked it.

  A little kid ran up to her. “What’s happenin’, Big Mamma Jamma?”

  Grinning, Nikki stopped walking and knelt down to look him in the eye. The boy’s name was Hank, and his aunt and uncle ran a small delicatessen on Tenth Avenue and 45th Street. Hank, who was only twelve, helped out in the store, and he heard things and sometimes passed them on to Nikki. Of course, like most of her contacts, he didn’t know Nikki’s name; that was why he used the nickname, which was straight out of Cleopatra Jones.

  “Not much, little man,” she said. “You got some-thin’ for me?”

  “Yeah—those mean fangy dudes’re shakin’ down my uncle’s store again.”

  Nikki frowned. Despite her warnings to his henchvamps, Reet was still trying to expand his protection racket, using bloodsuckers to force people to pay up or get their places of business trashed. “They say when they comin’ back to collect?”

  “Tonight—’bout nine thirty.”

  She put her hands on Hank’s shoulders. “Sugar, I want you to go and tell your aunt and uncle that they don’t gotta pay nothin’, you dig? The Slayer’ll take care of it.”

  Hank broke into a huge grin. “Outta sight!”

  “You know it.”

  “Hey, can I ask you somethin’?”

  Nodding, Nikki said, “Sure.”

  “You ever meet Dracula?”

  At that, Nikki had to laugh. “Yeah, I met that fool once. ’Bout two years ago now.”

  Hank’s eyes went all wide. “Fool? But Count Dracula’s the baddest mother on the block! You ever seen his movies?”

  “Yeah, I seen ’em. Movies ain’t real life, and the real Drac ain’t got nothin’ on William Marshall.” She stood up and held out a hand, palm up. “Now gimme five.”

  He slapped her palm with his. “Right on, Big Mamma Jamma!” Then he ran off.

  As Nikki continued down the street, she put thoughts of Dracula out of her mind. Reet was her main problem. Nikki had been the Slayer for four years now; Reet and Dracula were two of the only three bloodsuckers she hadn’t been able to take care of for good. She’d chipped away at Reet’s organization, dusted a ton of his boys, messed up a whole lot of his schemes, and saved a lot of people he might have killed otherwise, but in the end, Reet was still the main man in Harlem, and there wasn’t a damn thing Nikki could do about it.

  She even knew where he was most of the time: That damn building on Lenox, right around the corner from the apartment where she and Robin used to live with Gramma. But the place had tighter security than Fort Knox, plus half the fuzz in Harlem was on Reet’s payroll—he practically owned the damn 28th Precinct. She got anywhere near the building, she’d be under arrest in no time flat. The mission was what mattered, and she couldn’t do the mission if she was in jail—or if she was a fugitive who broke out of Rikers Island or Sing Sing or wherever they’d send her.

  So Reet’s HQ was off-limits. That just left his racket, and Nikki could damn well do damage there.

  However, she wouldn’t need to set up at the deli until after sunset, which wouldn’t be for a couple of hours, so Nikki kept walking until she reached the large newsstand on the corner of 44th Street. This late in the day, there weren’t very many newspapers left. The Times was all gone, but there were still a few copies of the Daily News and the Post.

  Sitting in his usual spot on the stool in front of the newsstand, leaning thoughtfully on his cane, was Blind Willie, his Seeing Eye dog, Bartholomew, lying down on the pavement at his side, eyes closed. Willie wore the same army fatigues he always wore—he told Nikki once that he had joined the army so he wouldn’t have to figure out what to wear every day—but he’d taken the button-down shirt off because of the weather, just sitting in the green undershirt smoking a cigarette. Creeping out from under his large sunglasses, some scarring could be seen on his face, courtesy of a grenade that went off near him in Korea. He used the money he got from the army to buy this newsstand, and he’d b
een running it ever since, becoming a fixture in a neighborhood he’d never again be able to see.

  But he made up for it with what he heard.

  “What’s happenin’, Willie?”

  “Good to hear your voice, baby girl,” Willie said, still staring sightlessly straight ahead.

  Nikki reached into her pocket and pulled out two dimes, dropping them into the dish that sat on the ledge of the newsstand next to the candy bars, right in Willie’s reach, and grabbing the last copy of the Daily News. “Good to see you, sugar. You hear anythin’?”

  “Lotsa things. Martha Johnson’s oldest got himself a scholarship to Morehouse down in Atlanta—but he’s goin’ to John Jay instead. Wants to become police.”

  Nikki gave a snort to that.

  Willie took a drag on his cigarette. “Yeah, I hear you, baby girl, but that boy’s stubborn as a mule. Can’t see what’s good for him.”

  “It’s a shame. Last thing we need’s more fuzz.”

  “I heard that.” Willie nodded. A teenage girl walked by, grabbed a Post, dropped coins in the bowl, and moved on without even acknowledging Willie or Nikki. The vendor went on, “Hank’s worried about his uncle’s deli.”

  “Yeah, I already talked to him. I’m on it.”

  “Good to hear, baby girl, good to hear. Lessee, what else?”

  Nikki tucked the paper under her arm and waited patiently. Willie generally took a long and winding road to his point, but he got there eventually. Nikki figured he just liked having someone to talk to—most folks just talked at him all the time, or didn’t even know he was there, like that girl just now—and she was willing to be his listener, long as he eventually gave her something she could use.

  “The Sookdars are havin’ another baby—that makes, what, seven? Gonna get mighty crowded in that pad o’ theirs.” He finished his cigarette, dropped it onto the pavement, stepped on it, pulled another out of his camo pants pocket, and lit it. “And then there’s a new girl workin’ Forty-ninth and Eleventh—takin’ Miranda’s place. Only, from what I hear tell, she ain’t no she, you dig? She’s a whatcha call—transvestiture.”

  “Transvestite, actually.” Nikki didn’t have much schooling, but she knew enough.

  “Whatever you call it, Sue was complainin’ that he’s better-lookin’ than her.”

  “Don’t take much.” Sue was a hooker, and she was almost the fourth victim of that vampire who had been trying to be the second coming of Jack the Ripper. The street life had not been kind to her face, which Nikki didn’t think was much to begin with.

  “Oh, and I heard there was a new vamp on the scene.”

  Finally. Blind Willie knew all about vampires and such. He didn’t know her name or where she lived, either, but somehow he knew about Slayers already—he said something happened in the war but never gave specifics—and passed on anything he heard to her. He didn’t have info for her very often, but when he did, it was always a good tip, even if it usually took him half an hour to get there.

  Willie added, “Ain’t one o’ Reet’s, neither. He’s English.”

  “English, huh? He black or white?”

  Grinning, Willie asked, “They got black folks over there?”

  Shuddering, Nikki thought back to her cruciamentum, a brutal trial by fire that the Watchers threw at her on her eighteenth birthday. She’d met several of Crowley’s fellow Watchers on that awful day, all of them as British as Crowley, and one of them was a brother. Not that she’d willingly call any of them “brother” after what they did to her. That was another reason why she preferred to rely on the streets instead of Crowley’s people for info.

  “Yeah, a few.”

  “Well, this ain’t one of ’em. He one o’ them punk honkies like they got there.”

  Rubbing her chin, Nikki asked, “You sure he ain’t one o’ Reet’s? I wouldn’t put it past him to bring in foreign muscle.”

  “Nah, I know he ain’t, on account o’ it’s Reet’s folks I found out from. They lookin’ for him.”

  Nikki nodded. That fit Reet’s MO—if there was a new bloodsucker in town, that vamp got either recruited or staked.

  “Right on, Willie, thanks. I’ll keep an eye out for this punk British honky bloodsucker dude.”

  “You do that, baby girl. And you’re welcome.”

  Nikki reached into her pocket and pulled out a dollar bill to toss into the bowl.

  Willie shook his head and started petting Bartholomew with the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette. “You don’t gotta be doin’ that, baby girl. You don’t owe me nothin’.”

  “Ain’t about owin’, Willie. Thanks.”

  She headed over to the phone booth on the corner. Crowley was probably still with that cop pal of his, but she could leave a message with A.J. After being reassured that Robin was okay, she said that she’d be remonstrating with some bad guys tonight and would therefore be home late. A.J. assured her he’d pass on the message.

  That done, she headed toward Tenth and 45th. She had a couple of henchvamps to get out of the protection racket.

  Chapter Seven

  New York City

  July 8, 1977

  9:45 p.m.

  From his vantage point on the filthy rooftop across West 45th Street, Spike watched the Slayer in action.

  This was Spike’s first trip back to the Yank side of the pond since Woodstock eight years past, and his first time back in the city proper in a lot longer than that. He had to admit to being pretty disgusted with the filth. True, the streets of urban England in the late nineteenth century, where he’d spent his human life, weren’t models of cleanliness, but they also had lower standards then. There was no reason for there to be so much garbage around in the late twentieth century. The heat and humidity didn’t help—the tar on the roof was halfway to a liquid, even with the sun having gone down, and Spike’s black boots were sinking into it.

  But that wasn’t Spike’s primary concern—rather, it was the girl in the alleyway on 45th a few meters in from Tenth Avenue, behind a chip shop of some sort, beating the living daylights out of two of Spike’s fellow vampires.

  Girl, hell—that’s a full-blown woman, that is. The most recent Slayer had, by the looks of her, made it into her twenties, which was no small feat. Most Slayers didn’t live to twenty-five.

  The two vampires were of the standard big-and-stupid variety. In fact, Spike had dubbed them Big and Stupid. Right now, Big was trying to grab the Slayer, but she ducked under his lunge so fast her coat flapped up into Big’s face. Then she kicked him hard with her outsize shoe right in the knee.

  While Big hobbled about, Stupid got up from the Dumpster the Slayer had tossed him onto and jumped on top of her. The Slayer rolled with it and they both crashed into a metal garbage can. Stupid recovered faster and picked up the garbage can, holding it over his head as if to slam it down on her.

  That trick never works, Spike thought, shaking his head. The biggest flaw with most vampires, and Spike had to admit to being guilty of it himself all too often, was theatrics. It was one thing if you were good at it, like Angelus—whatever Spike thought of his grand-sire, the old bastard knew how to stage a beautiful killing—but when you were just some ponce with fangs, it was more often not worth the effort.

  Case in point: If Stupid had just stepped on the Slayer’s face, the fight would be finished, but no, he had to go and show off by hefting the sodding can.

  Result? The Slayer had plenty of time to kick Stupid in his goolies, causing him to lose his grip on the can, which then came crashing onto the vampire’s own head.

  Out of the blue, Spike wondered how Angelus was doing. He hadn’t seen the Irish vamp since that to-do on the German U-boat during the war. Not that Spike missed him overmuch. Best thing that ever happened to him and Dru was to cut themselves off from Darla and Angelus back in China. Both of them had been acting bloody peculiar in any case.

  Besides, that had been when Spike bagged his first Slayer.

  Best day of his life
, that was, and he’d been trying to reexperience it ever since. It had been just shy of a century past when Angelus had first told him about the Slayer, the girl chosen to be the killer of vampires and demons and things that go biggledy-boggledy in the night. Took two decades, but Spike had finally come across one during the Boxer Rebellion. Spike, Dru, and Darla had gone to Peking at the latter’s request. Religious insurgency always got the old witch’s blood boiling, and Dru and Spike went along for kicks. Angelus, who’d gone AWOL since they’d massacred that gypsy tribe two years earlier, had finally turned up to join them as well.

  After Spike had taken down that Slayer, though, Angelus had disappeared, and Darla had soon followed—leaving Spike and Dru free to roam and find more Slayers to kill.

  But it hadn’t happened. Oh, Spike had found plenty of Slayers, but half of them had died by the time he was able to catch up to them, and the rest had managed to beat him back. There was one occasion when he and Dru, at the behest of a demon, killed a whole pack of potential Slayers to winnow the field, as it were. And other times he had been distracted with more entertaining matters. Fact was, he hadn’t gone on a serious Slayer hunt since the fifties.

  Now, though, he had time on his hands. He and Dru had had yet another row. Most of the time, Spike could handle Dru’s eccentricity, but sometimes it got to be too much, and he’d lose it. He generally regretted his fits of temper, but Dru wasn’t always so forgiving. This particular time—right after they had massacred an entire theater company in Paris—she had reminded him that she had only made him as a plaything for herself, and that meant he should do as she said.

  Spike hadn’t taken kindly to that. He was his own man, not some bint’s plaything, even if that bint was the vampire he loved.

  So he had buggered off to England, found himself a Watcher to intimidate, and learned everything he could about the most recent Slayer.