Strange Magic

by Justin Gustainis

  “I haven’t got even the second-cousin of an idea,” Peters said. “But I do know this much—we’ve got to haul ass out of here within the next three minutes. Even if none of the neighbors are home from work yet, a bunch of people in this building, and maybe some outside, just heard five gunshots, and at least some of them are calling 911, if they haven’t already. Even New Yorkers aren’t that blasé.”

  Libby looked at him. “Why three minutes?”

  “Average NYPD response time to emergency calls is nine minutes. But ‘average’ means some were longer and some shorter. We don’t want to cut it too fine, you know? Like you said before, the cops might not give our witchcraft story a sympathetic hearing—they’d be more likely to lock us up and lose the key.”

  Libby rubbed the palm of her good hand over her face a few times, as if trying to wake up from deep slumber. “All right, then. We’ll get out quick as we can.”

  “How’s the hand?”

  Libby looked over the area where the thrown knife had caught her. “Not bad. A couple of cuts, and one’s kind of deep. But no permanent damage, I expect.”

  “Can you do some hocus-pocus and heal it?”

  She gave him a wry smile. “I wish. But you can’t use white magic to directly benefit yourself.”

  “Well, that kinda sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “You betcha. But several members of the Sisterhood live in the city. I’ll ask one of them to fix me up later.”

  “Great—but we can’t just walk out of here with you bleeding like that. People will notice, and we don’t want to be noticed—not now.”

  “Good point. Got a clean handkerchief on you, by any chance?”

  “Always. Want me to bind that up for now?”

  “Please.”

  While Peters was tying the white cloth around Libby’s two injured fingers, she said, “You’re the only man I know who still carries a handkerchief.”

  “What can I say? Mentally, I’m stuck in the Eighties. Hold still.” Half a minute later, he asked, “How’s that?”

  “Much better—thanks. You know, we’ve got to get the girl out of here, too.”

  “Why? The cops will take good care of her.”

  “If they find the girl, that leads them to her parents. They find the parents, and that leads to me. And once the cops get to me, they’re going to start asking some questions that I don’t have good answers for.”

  “I see your point,” Peters said. “Okay, I’ll cut her loose—you see if you can find her clothes. And if she had a purse or backpack, get that, too. No point leaving her ID behind.”

  “Right. But there’s something we need to do first.” Rummaging in her enormous black leather bag, Libby produced a Samsung Galaxy S5 and walked to where the pentagram was laid out on the floor. To the bound, naked girl she said, “It’s okay, Kayla—nobody’s going to hurt you now. Your parents sent us, and we’re here to take you home.”

  Turning to Peters, Libby said, “Set Kayla free, would you? Then take her to whatever passes for a bathroom in here, if it isn’t too gross. Let her sit down, maybe wrap a towel around herself, and drink some water. I’ll be along shortly.”

  Peters pulled out a folding knife with a six-inch blade and clicked it open. Before kneeling to cut the girl’s ropes, he looked at Libby. “What’re you up to?”

  “I’m pretty sure I can manage the camera one-handed, so I’m going to take some shots of the pentagram and the rest of the occult paraphernalia these people were using. I also see what looks like a spell book on that table behind you. I’ll get a few pictures of that, too.”

  “Okay with me, but if the cops ever get hold of your phone and match what’s in there with the crime scene photos, you could have some heavy explaining to do.”

  “I know, but don’t fret. I’ll be deleting everything I photograph within a few hours—right after I’ve shown it to Ashley.”

  Frown lines appeared on Peters’ wide forehead. “Why her?”

  Libby made a gesture in the direction of the pentagram. “It looks like these fools had in mind to summon a demon. Now, who do we know who’s better versed in that subject than Ashley?”

  “Nobody I can think of.”

  Three and a half minutes later, they were in the hallway, closing the apartment door softly behind them. Libby, her arm loosely around the waist of Kayla Holloway, watched Peters wipe his fingerprints off the doorknob and said, “Elevator or stairs?”

  “Stairs. We’re less likely to run into somebody who’ll remember us.”

  As they walked toward the stairway, Libby continued a process she had begun inside the apartment. She gently rubbed the back of Kayla Holloway’s neck with one hand while saying, very softly, “Everything’s fine, Kayla. Nobody’s going to hurt you, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. Let’s go home, now.”

  Before they returned the girl to the care of her parents, the three of them would spend several hours at Libby’s condo. Libby would devote considerable time and magical skill to helping Kayla forget most of what had happened to her since her abduction—especially the four men she had just watched die violently, and the man who had killed three of them. Later, she would also work some subtle magic with the girl’s parents, encouraging them to contact the police with the news that Kayla, it seemed, had been a runaway after all. But she had returned safely, and the authorities need not concern themselves further. Sorry to be a bother. In time, both the girl and her parents would forget that she had disappeared for a few days, and they wouldn’t even remember Libby Chastain’s name. Libby always insisted on being paid in cash, so there would be no paper trail leading from the Holloway family to her.

  Peters had traded guns with the bald man, wiping his own prints from the Kimber before wrapping the bald man’s dead hand around it. The gun had never been registered anywhere, and the man who’d sold it never even knew Peters’ name. With luck, the police would develop a theory that the bald man had killed the others before taking his own life.

  The fly in that particular ointment was the slug that had passed through the bald man’s skull before burying itself in the ceiling, since it had not been fired from the same gun that had killed the others. But there was a good chance that the bullet would be so deformed that ballistics tests would be impossible, anyway. Besides, it was not exactly unheard of for Homicide detectives to ignore the one inconvenient piece of evidence that would prevent them from closing out an investigation.

  Even if the case remained open, it would be filed under ‘Pending’ and eventually moved into the ‘Cold Cases’ drawer to be forgotten about forever. Probably.

  As the three of them started down the stairs to street level, Peters said quietly, “Just before he offed himself, the bald dude said something like, ‘You’ve just fucked your country up the ass.’ What the hell was that about?”

  “I don’t know,” Libby replied. “But I’d be very interested in finding out. Maybe Ashley can help us with that.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  QUINCEY MORRIS STOOD very still, wondering if he had been rescued from the metaphorical frying pan only to be cast into the proverbial fire. Muñoz had spoken truly—Morris had killed a number of vampires in his time, as had his father and grandfather before him, all of them following in the footsteps of the original Quincey Morris, who had died in far-off Transylvania, but not before helping to dispatch a certain Count Dracula.

  So why did this bloodsucker save me? Because he wanted to take revenge himself—maybe something a lot worse than leaving me to become a ghoul entrée?

  A human taking on a vampire—one on one, after dark—was virtual suicide, unless the human was very well prepared, for both offense and defense. Morris was not well prepared at all. He had come here to fight ghouls—not the bloodsucking undead.

  The blade of the saber, which was not coated in silver, was useless. The only sacred object that Morris had on him was the small silver crucifix that he always wore on a chain around his neck, but it was currently covered by h
is undershirt, a Princeton Tigers sweatshirt over that, and the jacket he had worn against the desert chill. The chances of him getting the crucifix into play before the vampire could cross the three paces separating them made Davy Crocket’s odds of surviving the Alamo look pretty good by comparison.

  For the second time in less than five minutes, Quincey Morris began to consider the wisdom of cutting his own throat.

  Although a vampire’s supposed ability to read the minds of humans is a myth, it seemed that Muñoz had correctly assessed Morris’s dilemma.

  “You need not contemplate either battle or suicide, Señor Morris. If I wished your death, all I need do was stand back while the ghouls made of you a meal. And if I had in mind for you a worse fate…” Muñoz’s toothy smile made a brief reappearance. “… that also would have been accomplished by now.”

  Translation: if I’d wanted to commit the ultimate irony of draining your blood and turning you into a vampire like myself, I would have already done it, dummy.

  Morris opened his hand and let the useless saber drop to the ground. “You make a good point, Señor Muñoz. So, what do you have in mind?”

  “As you Anglos say, that question has two answers, Señor—a short one, and a longer one. The short answer is, in a word, conversation. A rational discussion between two intelligent men, neither of whom is contemplating the slaying of the other—at least not at present. I feel you owe me that much, considering…” Muñoz made a gesture that took in the bodies of the ghouls. “… everything.”

  Morris nodded slowly. “Okay. Conversation seems reasonable—the non-hostile kind. You’re right—I do owe you that much, if not more. But I’m concerned about my friend, who headed off in that direction—” Morris pointed. “— with a ghoul in hot pursuit.”

  Muñoz looked at him curiously. “You still consider Sheriff Sturbridge your friend, after he ran away, leaving you to almost certain death?”

  “Yeah, I know.” Morris shook his head. “Maybe I’ll get pissed off about it later, but right now I just feel sorry for the guy. I pressured him into taking on something outside his capabilities. Dan’s no coward—he’s faced down more than a few humans who were armed and dangerous.” And a couple of years ago, he even helped me kill some vampires, Morris thought, but decided to keep that information to himself. “I just asked too much of him this time.”

  Muñoz inclined his head a few inches in a brief bow. “I admire your forbearance, Señor. In similar circumstances, I doubt I could be as forgiving. In any case, you need have no concern about the Sheriff—I dispatched the ghoul who was pursuing him before I arrived here. You will find your friend waiting where you parked your vehicle.”

  “I don’t know,” Morris said. “The frame of mind Dan’s in, he might get in the jeep and just start driving.”

  “That may well be his intention,” Muñoz said. “But an intention without the ability to carry it out is of no consequence.” He removed a small object from his pocket and tossed it to Morris. “You will wish to return this to him, I’m sure.”

  Morris had caught the thing by reflex, but now he looked closer at what he was holding—it was a distributor cap. Without this, Dan’s jeep was going nowhere. “You’re very thorough, Señor.”

  “Thank you. I try to be.”

  “You said a minute ago that your request had a second part. Mind if I ask what that is?”

  “Not at all. I hope to secure your services—for a matter that you would probably undertake willingly, were you made aware of it. In short, Señor Morris, fully realizing the incongruity involved, I wish to hire you. And the estimable Señorita Chastain, or course.”

  Morris blinked a couple of times as he tried to get his mind around the idea of a vampire as an employer, rather than a mortal enemy.

  After a few seconds he said, “Hire us to do what?”

  “Something that you have already done at least once already, or so I am led to believe.”

  “I’m too damn tired to play word games, Muñoz,” Morris said. “Just what is it you want Libby and me to do?”

  “What else, Señor? To save the world.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  ROOM 519 WAS three floors above Ted Burnett’s office in what they call the Original Headquarters Building at Langley, but he always took the stairs instead of using the elevator. This was about the only exercise he had time for these days, especially after initiating Special Project H, which was consuming more and more of his attention and energy.

  The room on the fifth floor had until recently been used as a conference room. Ted Burnett had commandeered it for his pet project because 519 was one of the cleanest rooms in a building that is chock full of clean rooms.

  ‘Clean’ in this sense has nothing to do with the amount of dirt on the carpet or how often the wastepaper baskets are emptied. Indeed, the rug in Room 519 is vacuumed only once a week, by a custodian with a security clearance who is under the direct supervision of an armed guard with an even higher security clearance. Each of the three wastepaper baskets in 519 has an attached shredder that renders anything run through it—and every discarded bit of paper goes through it—into finely chopped confetti that is then burned in a special incinerator by another custodian with a security clearance.

  In intelligence jargon (which is commonly called ‘spookspeak’ by its practitioners) a ‘clean’ room is one that is impenetrable to electronic surveillance of any kind, no matter how state-of-the-art such attempted eavesdropping might be. Its floor, ceiling, and windowless walls are lined with lead, its single door is guarded by both armed agents and a battery of security cameras that are monitored 24-7, and the room is ‘swept’ daily by experts whose equipment can detect even the most subtle of listening devices.

  Ted Burnett sometimes admitted, but only to himself, that such a degree of security might reflect more than a touch of paranoia. But he was also aware, as Joe Heller has famously observed, that being paranoid doesn’t mean that someone isn’t really out to get you.

  Doctor Hans Westin’s main worktable in Room 519 currently contained only a couple of legal pads, a computer terminal, and a spiral-bound notebook with a stained cover and pages that were beginning to darken with age.

  Ted Burnett flopped into a padded armchair that was a few feet from the worktable and said, “Well? Can you do it?” The use of conversational niceties was not part of Burnett’s otherwise impressive skill set.

  Westin tapped the pen he had been writing with on the pad a couple of times. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I can. Probably.”

  Burnett let the silence build for five or six seconds before saying, “‘Probably’ isn’t good enough, Doctor.”

  Westin refused to cower. He had dealt with bullies before, and this man was a classic case. Burnett could smell fear, like a Doberman—and would react in a similar fashion. But Westin was not afraid.

  “I’m afraid that ‘probably’ is the best that I can give you, at least at this stage.” He gestured at the worn notebook. “The math works, the physics works. As for the theological aspects...” He let his thin shoulders rise and fall in an elaborate shrug. “Theology is not my field. But based on what I do understand, yes—it works. In theory. But there’s no way to be certain that it will work in practice until I try.”

  “It worked once before,” Burnett told him. “Back in ’03. Although the result was more of a side-effect than part of the experimental design. Clayborn and his team were carrying out research in what he called the ‘space-time continuum.’”

  Westin glanced at the notebook again. “Yes, I gathered as much. A fascinating concept, and Clayborn had developed an entirely new way of approaching it. It would be very interesting, I think, to discuss it with him in detail.”

  “Not possible,” Burnett said. “Clayborn died in a laboratory accident not long after conducting the experiment in question. A great pity, really.”

  There was no compassion in Burnett’s voice, and Westin doubted that for this man pity would ever be anyth
ing more than an abstract concept.

  “If the... result of the experiment that you are so eager to recreate was merely a side-effect,” Westin said, “and Clayborn was not available for interview, how do you know that it worked at all? Were the other members of his team debriefed?”

  “His team?” Neither Burnett’s face or voice showed anything but polite inquiry.

  “Of course. Clayborn must have had a team working with him—there’s no way one man could carry out a procedure like this operating solo. Too many tasks had to be performed simultaneously, or in very close sequence.”

  “You’re right, Doctor. Unfortunately, Clayborn’s team died in the same laboratory accident that later claimed his own life.”

  “And the details of this... accident?”

  “Are classified, and available strictly on a ‘Need to Know’ basis.”

  “And you don’t believe that I have such a ‘Need to Know’?”

  “No, you don’t,” Burnett said. “If it were relevant to your present work, you would have been briefed on it. You haven’t received such a briefing because it isn’t relevant.” Burnett did not end this mini-lecture by saying “Case closed,” but his tone of voice sent the message as clearly as words would have.

  Destin tapped his pen some more. “I see—or, rather, I don’t. But I suppose it’s of no consequence. That does, however, bring me back to my original question. Why are you so certain the side-effect was, in fact, achieved in 2002?”

  “There was an investigation carried out by a minor government agency, the Office of Scientific Integrity.” There was a touch of mockery in Burnett’s voice, as if he found the phrase ‘scientific integrity’ to be mildly oxymoronic. “This case wasn’t their sort of thing at all, really—the agency’s usual brief was tracking down misuse of federal grant money, that sort of thing.”