Occult Detective

by Emby Press

  Annette Anson frowned, unsure whether this strange young man was trying to make a fool of her.

  “I’d have referred this to my own lawyers, except when they say they charge an arm and a leg they’re not always kidding.” The floppy-haired young man hastily heaved a stack of dog-eared case files off a rickety office chair so that Annette had somewhere to sit. Then, thinking more, he wedged a folder under one of the legs. “Now you can hit me,” he told her. “Preferably with the summons, not literally.”

  “I’m not here about that. I’ve never even heard of… whatever it is you were babbling about. I’m here because I need an expert.” She eyed the worried-looking consultant with mounting doubt.

  “Ah. Well, you’re not catching me at my best,” Vinnie told her. “Well, maybe you are, but I really am an expert in, er, some things. Not filing, obviously. Or chair repair. Or, you know, making a good impression.”

  Annette pushed on. “I encountered something that bothers me. Something weird. So I asked around and found you were on a list put out by a government special advisor called Sir Giles Dendene.”

  Vinnie’s brows rose. “Really? That’s pretty decent of the Thaumaturgist Royal.”

  “It was a list of people to shun at all costs,” she clarified. What was a Thaumaturgist Royal anyhow? “Sir Giles managed to patronise me into deciding you were a better alternative.”

  “Ah, well, that’s Sir Giles for you. Did he, er, mention ectoplasm stains on the walls of the National Gallery at all?” checked Vinnie anxiously. “Never mind. What’s the problem?”

  *

  Mrs Blythely wasn’t sure about the young specialist Miss Anson had brought into the Williams case. “Are we quite certain that this consultant has had the appropriate police checks?” she checked. “I’m not actually certain that…” she examined the rectangles in her hand, “that a Bean & Donut Diner loyalty card and a Central London Underground Pass constitute appropriate authority.”

  “Vinnie, this is Mrs Blythely of Finchley Social Services. She’s looking into the safety and well-being of young Beyoncé Williams, the girl who claims that she’s becoming a vampire.”

  “We’re not at home to Mr. Superstition,” insisted the harassed social worker, “while of course absolutely respecting the ethnic and cultural traditions of a modern multi-faith polyglot society and the individual belief systems and life choices of contemporary civilisation.”

  Vinnie looked over Mrs Blythely’s shoulder at the moody sallow-faced teenager sitting in the window seat. The girl had a black choker round her neck and black nail polish on her fingers. “Perhaps while you’re showing Mr. Superstition the door, I could have a word with Miss Williams – I mean Ms. Williams. I’ll try not to disrespect her individual belief systems and… whatever else it was you just said.”

  “I suggest you let Vinnie talk to her,” Annette encouraged the care worker. “He might be able to help.”

  Vinnie bypassed Mrs Blythely and approached Beyoncé. He suspected that possibly she was really Jane or Jill or something, but since he was actually called Vincent Arcanus Greymalkin de Soth he wasn’t going to argue with anyone’s self-naming choices. “Hello,” he said.

  Beyoncé gave him a look of disinterested contempt.

  “How are you becoming a vampire?” Vinnie asked her curiously.

  Beyoncé frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there’s a wide range of options. Demonic pact, divine curse for misdeeds in life, conversion from lycanthropy, burial custom error, latent genetics, or was it just the usual fluid exchanges with a practicing undead?” the young occultist clarified.

  “Ripper,” the girl clarified. “Ripper drinks my blood.”

  “And Ripper’s a vampire?”

  “Well duh!”

  “And… how do you know he’s a vampire?” Vinnie checked. After all, in a city where Beeping Reg kept pulling the old alien abduction pickup on unsuspecting college girls anything was possible.

  “Because he doesn’t reflect in mirrors. And ’cause he drinks my blood.”

  “Good tells,” admitted the occultist. “So how often does this… drinking happen?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Well technically, since I’m charging Ms. Anson’s paper an hourly fee – subject to her editor’s approval – it probably is my business. So explain – slowly as you like.”

  Annette wasn’t happy with Vinnie’s ticking meter. “We’re trying to help you, Beyoncé. Work with us.”

  “If you don’t let Ripper come and get me he’ll slaughter you all,” the goth-girl warned.

  “Now, Beyoncé, that’s no way to talk,” Mrs Blythely chided. “We’re not at home to Mr. Threats.”

  “And if we were, we shouldn’t invite Mr. Threats in across the threshold,” Vinnie added for clarification.

  “Who is this Ripper person?” Annette demanded. “Did you meet him online?”

  “Ripper’s eternal,” Beyoncé declared. “Ripper will make me eternal.”

  “Well, the theology on that varies,” Vinnie admitted. “He could certainly make something that looks a lot like you eternal.”

  “This Ripper person might well be a sex offender,” Mrs Blithely worried. “I should call in Counselling.”

  “I think you need it,” Annette admitted.

  Vinnie focussed on the main problem. “Okay, Beyoncé. Next diagnostic question. This vampire of yours. Does he tend towards being moody and sparkling at all?”

  “No,” the girl answered, puzzled.

  “Shame. Because then all I’d have had to do was give his name to the other undead and they’d have taken him to a back alley and sorted him out.”

  “Using intervention therapy?” suggested Mrs Blythely.

  “Using a chair leg and kerosene. And possibly a good deal of sarcasm.”

  Annette stirred. “So to be clear, Mr De Soth, you’re claiming that not only are there actual vampires but that they have professional standards?”

  Vinnie shrugged. “It’s a PR thing. Um, I’m not about to become a three column exposé in some newspaper, am I?”

  “Perhaps later. I’m still putting together my shocking piece on the lapses of the Finchley Social Services system.”

  “What?” gasped Mrs Blythely. “But you said…”

  “I am totally at home to Mr. Tell The World How Crap Your Department Is,” Annette promised her. “First, let’s try and help this poor girl who’s caught in your system. Beyoncé, there are some people out there who claim to be vampires. Real-life blood-drinkers. It’s a lifestyle choice, I suppose. But when it involves underage girls it’s a crime.”

  The troubled teen shook her head violently. “Ripper’s real. He is of the night. He rules the darkness and all mortals are his lawful prey.” She sighed. “He is so friggin’ cool!”

  Vinnie returned to the point. “Beyoncé, listen. This is very important. How many times have you drunk Ripper’s blood?”

  Beyoncé blushed.

  “I need to know,” the young occultist persisted.

  Beyoncé looked away. “I’ll get the hang of it. It just tastes so icky that I always spit it out. But tonight…”

  “Don’t be ashamed. It’s great that you’re sanguine-intolerant. That’s what keeps saving your life,” Vinnie comforted her.

  Annette had caught something else though. “Wait. Did you say tonight? This Ripper’s coming here, to… drink you or whatever, and he’s going to do it tonight?”

  Beyoncé nodded. “And if you try to stop him he’ll kill you.”

  Mrs Blythely made a note on her PDA. “That would certainly be against our code of customer/staff conduct,” she warned.

  *

  At midnight, the vampire let himself into the youth hostel where Beyoncé was lodged. He used a key from his own time there.

  “Hi,” Vinnie greeted him. “You must be Ripper.”

  Beyoncé waved apologetically from the overstuffed sofa where she sat with Annette and Mrs
Blythely. “I told them to leave me alone, Ripper, really I did. But they wouldn’t.”

  Ripper smiled a fanged smile. “They’ll wish they had,” he promised.

  The vampire wore black leathers and a Metallica t-shirt. Vinnie winced. “How long have you been undead, Ripper?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t matter, meat,” the vampire snarled. “You’re between me and my babe.”

  “Bride. They’re called brides,” Vinnie clarified. “You ready to be his lawfully deaded wife, Beyoncé?”

  The girl looked disconcerted for the first time. “Married? I’m only fifteen.”

  “I never said married,” Ripper insisted. “I only want her blood. And, y’know, sex.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not allowed,” insisted Mrs Blythely. “I have a pamphlet about it somewhere here.”

  “And who’s going to stop me?” Ripper leered. “Who can stop me from tearing all of you to bits?”

  Vinnie help up his hand. “Um, I’m a de Soth. I might.”

  “Who?”

  “A de Soth? Of the ancient line of de Soths? One of the Eight Families? We get three whole chapters in the Codex Pandemoniac? I have my own footnote on page 1,807 in the latest edition?”

  Ripper looked blank.

  Vinnie tried harder. “Big nasty wizards? Necromancers-R-Us? Soul-binding demon-raising nightmare sorcerers from the dawn of time? Except me. I’m the white sheep if the family. But seriously, you’ve not heard of us? Wow, you are new!”

  “I have every sympathy for the needs of young offenders, Mr. Ripper,” Mrs Blythely assured the vampire, “recognising the tragic cultural forces at work on their traumatic lives, but if you drink any of Beyoncé’s blood I shall have to report you to your probation officer.”

  Annette reached into her purse and prepared her taser. She wasn’t sure if it would take down a vampire, but it was comforting to know it would certainly floor Mrs Blythely.

  “Now I’m going to kill you all,” Ripper promised. “I am darkness, and blood, and horror, and death. I am power. I am the night. I am vampire!”

  Vinnie stuck his hands into his pockets. “Do you know who Don Calmet is, then?”

  Ripper delayed his lunge, confused. “I don’t know any guys named Don.”

  Vinnie sighed. “Don Augustin Calmet, 1672-1757. Wrote a twenty volume bible commentary. But he also wrote Dissertations sur les Apparitions des Anges, des Démons et des Esprits, et sur les Revenants et Vampires.”

  Ripper and Beyoncé looked at him blankly.

  “Dissertations on the Apparitions of Angels, Demons, and Ghosts, and on the Revenants and Vampires,” Vinnie translated. “Sold out in 1746 and was republished and expanded in 1749 and 1751. It gathered together vast amounts of lore from all kinds of obscure sources. Even had certified accounts of vampire autopsies. Major best-seller, a century and a half before Bram Stoker hit it big.”

  “Who?” puzzled the vampire.

  “Author of Dracula?” Annette prompted, appalled by the modern educational system.

  “The book of the film?” Beyoncé ventured. “That film Bram Stoker’s Dracula!”

  Vinnie sighed. “Lord protect us from undead and would-be undead who get all their vampire factoids from the internet and True Blood. Look, any serious vampire who knows anything has heard of Don Calmet, just like any newbie who’s hardly found his fangs yet can’t spell Nosferatu.” The young occultist pointed to Ripper. “That’d be you.”

  “I’m going to kill you now,” Ripper told him.

  “Can you even turn into bats or rats?” Vinnie challenged. “Even one bat or rat? Or a wolf? Or mist? Can you crawl up walls like a spider? Control vermin and the lower animals? Command disease? Summon storms?”

  “What?” Ripper shrugged. “Why?”

  “Vampires today!” Vinnie scorned. “And how many attempts has it taken you to change Beyoncé here into your bride? What is it, performance anxiety?”

  “He never said bride,” Beyoncé clarified urgently.

  “I bet you don’t do the coffin thing, right? Or the graveyard soil?”

  Ripper shook his head. If he’d had blood circulation he’d have flushed with anger by now.

  “If you don’t stick to the old forms you never grow in power and you’ll never be able to shapeshift or charm or do any of the good stuff,” Vinnie warned him. “Really Mrs Blythely needs to get them to do a pamphlet for new vampires. Maybe with a helpline.”

  “I could mention it in my next evaluation,” the social worker offered. “Although with budget cuts as they are I don’t know if we’d be able to translate it into the Eastern European languages properly.”

  Annette interrupted. “Vinnie, aren’t we supposed to be saving Beyoncé from her corpse boyfriend, not offering him handy tips and tricks?”

  “Sorry. It’s just when I think how many hours a day I had to study Don Calmet, and Montague Summers, and the Lesser Key of Solomon, and De Vermis Mysteriis and all that stuff, it really makes me cross when undead can’t be bothered to do their homework!”

  Beyoncé looked even more disconcerted. “There’s homework?” She looked at Ripper accusingly. “You never said there’d be assignments.”

  “There isn’t, babe. He’s just messing with us. Messing with our heads. I’ll just kill him and…”

  “Make very sure you kill me properly and don’t turn me into an undead,” Vinnie warned him.

  Ripper sneered. “Why?”

  “Because I would be very good at it,” Vinnie warned. “You know what I’d do?”

  “What?” demanded Ripper reluctantly.

  “Well, you know that vampires can grow massively more powerful by drinking the blood or eating the ashes of older vampires?” the occultist began.

  “No,” Ripper said; but he sounded interested.

  “Right. Well they can. Gives them all kinds of extra options, like… like levelling up on Grand Theft Auto. With a cheat code. So if I was an undead, that’s what I’d do. Find some old vamp’s ashes, scoff them down, become powerful. Repeat as necessary. Rule the world.”

  “Um, Vinnie…” Annette said warningly.

  “That’s what I’m gonna do!” Ripper decided. “You’re gonna find me those ashes, dude – I mean mortal. Take me to vamp dust – now – or I’ll tear these chicks’ throats out.”

  “Not a chick,” Annette told him severely. “I’m not going to be objectified by someone who doesn’t know who Bram Stoker is.”

  “And I’m not giving you what you want,” Vinnie warned him. “Last thing we need is an ultra-powerful teenage street-punk with the power to do anything to anyone.”

  Ripper chuckled. “That’s too bad… because I didn’t come here alone.”

  There was movement at the doorstep. The rest of the vampire gang trouped in. There were around thirty of them, young thugs and goth girls. Ripper had been busy.

  “This is going to have to go in my report,” warned Mrs Blythely.

  *

  Annette Anson shone a torch around the old brick tunnel. “Where are we now?”

  “We’re beneath Brompton Road underground station,” Vinnie told her. “Deep under it.”

  “There is no tube station on Brompton Road,” the reporter objected.

  “Well, not now,” Vinnie answered. “But there was up to 1934. In World War Two they used the platforms as a base for co-ordinating anti-aircraft operations. Now it’s all sealed off above, but the older routes under Knightsbridge link up via the Templar passages and the ghoul tunnels.”

  “Ghoul tunnels?” Annette fretted.

  “Not likely to be a problem while we’ve got a swarm of teen vampires with us. This old stairwell should take us down below the station into the plague-pit workings and from there to Sir Knyvett’s sepulchre.”

  “Who?”

  “The knight of Knightsbridge. Some people claim the location got its name from him. He was attacked by thieves as he crossed the River Westbourne and he slew them all – at least according to some sou
rces. The burial chamber off the deep sewers might well be much older than the legend. Nobody seems to know.”

  Ripper and his gang were not interested in lectures on history. “You better get us to where we’re going fast, man,” he warned. “We’re getting hungry.”

  “I’m not marrying you, Ripper,” Beyoncé warned.

  “We’re not at home to Mr. Paedophilia,” explained Mrs Blythely. “In fact Mr. Paedophilia is required to be properly registered and stay a statutory 200 meters away at the very least.”

  Each of the humans was dragged along by a pair of vampires. Vinnie steered his pair under an old arch to a tunnel of even older construction. He pointed to the sealed entrance. “You need to bust through that bricked-up doorway,” he told Ripper. “Shouldn’t be a problem for a full-strength vampire.”

  Ripper gestured for some of his boys to kick the barrier down. They struggled.

  “What is that place?” Annette questioned Vinnie. “The tomb of that Sir Whoever?”

  “Maybe once. But it was repurposed in Napoleonic times, back when there were still a few people who knew how to lock away supernatural things – the Thaumaturgist Royal of the time, for one.” He turned to the straining vampires. “Come on, lads. Put your backs into it!”

  “You heard him!” Ripper demanded of his crew. “Break down that punk-ass wall!”

  “Screw you, man!” a youth with the unfortunate street-name of Scab shouted back. “This thing was built to last. I don’t see you kicking it down with us, Ripper!” The undead continued their efforts.

  “How many undead have you made?” Vinnie asked Ripper confidentially. “You do know that every time you create one it weakens you a little bit? And the undead you spawn are successively wimpier as well?”

  “We aren’t wimpy!” shouted Scab, from the archway.

  Vinnie shrugged. “You also know that your control over them gets thinner the more minions you have? And that if one of them breaks control and drinks you, they get to be boss?”

  “Shut up!” Ripper warned the jobbing occultist. “Just shut your mouth about that!”