“Mr. Kincaid…” It sounded like I was an undergrad again, his tone icy cold, eyes going half-lidded. “This is why you remain such a disappointment.”
“I did your job, Doc. I got Minirth’s killer. Tracked her and a pack of ghouls halfway across the city, got people killed, got monsters killed, alla that, you don’t ask me a damned thing about. But the chip? The chip, here, you want. You want it real bad.”
“I’m merely curious, Mr. Kincaid. Fascinated. It is the mark of an academic to—”
“To ignore a dozen or more deaths, to ignore the murder of your friend, and to only worry about what files he left behind after he was killed?”
“It is the mark of an academic, a proper thaumaturge, to care about knowledge, Mr. Kincaid. To care about the natural laws and ways to circumvent them, to—”
“Natural laws like aging?” I couldn’t help but take the jab, see if he’d rise to it.
“To find ways around the limitations of the physical sciences, and to manipulate the magical power that some of us are lucky enough—lucky enough, Mr. Kincaid!—to have been born with. A proper Hermetic doesn’t sully his power with computers and mechanical eyes and ears and nonsense filling his head, no, a proper Hermetic focuses on—”
“Power?”
“—on what he can do with his abilities, Mr. Kincaid, to change the world! To make it better! Not just to run off to some, some, gun-waving Lone Star nonsense, but to—”
“Cops don’t make the world better?’
“—to learn things, to teach others, to do research and add to the knowledge of the human race! Not to squander their power in the gutter, waving around a gun and a badge, mucking about in the slums like they’re nobody, or nothing at all!”
I let him have his little rant. It was an old one. He’d been singing the tune for a long time, ever since some of my first aptitude tests, some of my first exams. He’d been disappointed, disgusted that I was a Lone Star hire, there on scholarships, destined for combat duty. He’d fought with Minirth over it—good old Chris, who’d just wanted me to do whatever I could, so long as I did it well—all through my years at U-Dub, he’d bickered and badgered, tried to push me toward theoretical works, not practical.
“Look at yourself, Mr. Kincaid! Look at what you could be capable of, if you only just tried! You Initiated so fast, even here, in the program, but you always just moved on to the next metamagical technique, always went to Christopher’s next lecture, always wanted to pick up a new trick instead of focusing on your overall ability, your synergistic, magical whole!”
I stubbed out my cigarette, wishing it was in his eye, not an ashtray. I was sure, now. Sure the tone was about to change, sure the conversation was about to take a turn toward the bloody. Halfway to force the issue, halfway just to shut him up, I cast a spell.
“What are you doing?”
“You know,” I said, leaning back in the chair to get comfortable while I could. The spell fizzled, worthless, inconclusive.
“Was that a detection spell, Mr. Kincaid?”
“You don’t need to understand the Enochian to know that, Doc. You’re a better wiz-worm than that. You know full well what I cast.”
“Why on earth would you…how dare you? How dare you cast that spell in this home, after what happened to Christopher?”
“Relax, Doc. Results were negative. I didn’t sense a single vampire. Not a sanguisuga europa to be seen.”
“And why was that a concern?”
“No, not a vampire. Not like Nimbus. ‘N,’ in Minirth’s notes.”
“Yes, the…the gutter trash, the one in the sewers, living like an animal. She attacked you, she killed Christopher, she—”
“But that’s a really specific spell, Doc, the version you gave me. I needed to research something else from the archives to track ghouls, for instance. Yours only picked up the Ghilany Vrykolakivididae strain of HMHVV, precisely. Every strain of the human-metahuman vampiric virus, it’s a little different, after all. Minirth studied that. He taught me that. Hell, I think he was the one who taught you that.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with—”
“The virus changes the proper scientific classification of the target, doesn’t it? Some Aussie with ‘Detect Koala Bear,’ he’s gonna be hosed if there’s a Drop Bear sneaking up on him, right? Different strains of the virus, too, interacting with different branches of metahumanity, they give you a different outcome, right? Different monster every time. Trolls can go dzoo-noo-qua or fomóraig, can’t they, depending on the strain? And the wrong spell, if the spell’s that specific, won’t help you one tiny bit in identifying them.”
“That’s enough, Mr. Kincaid. I hardly need a lecture from—”
“HMHVV I, HMHVV II, all different. Dwarves flip the script a little bit, though, huh? One strain makes ’em go Goblin, homo bestius, not the brightest, but another strain makes ’em smarter, makes ’em a Gnawer instead. It’s a funny old world.”
“Mr. Kincaid, I will hear no more off—”
“Elves get hit differently, too. Harvesters are creepy little fucks, hardly a life worth living. A Banshee, though, strain one? Noxplorator letalis, they’re still smart, they renew their magic, they live forever.”
My elbows rested lightly on the armrests, hands close to my belt, my gun, my wand, my knife. He was beaten. He knew it, I think, knew I’d figured it out. Knew I’d trapped him.
“You weren’t sure, Doc, were you? What would happen if an elf got the third strain of HMHVV?”
“It’s…it’s a waste, Mr. Kincaid. A terrible waste. What Nimbus did to you, so much of your potential gone, it’s slovenly and sloppy and shameful.”
“Was that what you wanted, all along? Me, Infected?”
“Or Christopher! Him, too! You’d get your power back. Your potential! And if you did, I’m sure that you would take your studies more seriously. Your ally spirit, Mr. Kincaid! Her formula! You showed such ability, such flair, before Lone Star took you away!”
“Jesus. You fucking weirdo. Was that why you framed her for it? Why you used your illusions to look like her when you left Chris’ office, why you left me that trail of bread crumbs to follow? Because you wanted me to see her, to track her down, to get bit by her, turn banshee?”
“I was doing you a favor, Mr. Kincaid.”
Well, his lack of denial confirmed my little illusion theory. I’d been on a tail-chaser the whole time, wasting my time and getting people killed in sewers. I did my best to hide my anger, just pressed on with questions, keeping at him.
“That wasn’t why you killed him, though, was it? That was why you used his murder to get me to go after her, sure. Because you weren’t sure, you didn’t know what would happen if an elf got strain three. That’s why you wanted her to do it, wanted me get infected by her, instead. But why kill him? He was your friend, your—”
“He was researching something he shouldn’t have. At first, I toyed with him, helped him with it. I read over his shoulder while he checked findings, read journals, compiled his data. Then it wasn’t fun. It was…troubling.”
“Troubling. Academia’s cutthroat, Doc, but murdering him because you didn’t like his writing? Killing him to keep it from getting out? Using his murder to…to…what, steer me toward getting Infected, as icing on the cake?”
“I couldn’t risk it, the prior results were inconclusive, the scientific community is split as to the certainty of what a strain three infection does to you homo sapien nobilis, and—”
“That was the ‘N’ in his record book. Not her, not Nimbus. You, looking like Nimbus on your way out, smiling for the camera. N. For Nosferatu.”
His illusions bled away as he stood, the posturing old man’s vanity spells revealing something worse than thinning gray hair, something worse than wrinkles. His hair was gone, smooth as a ghoul, impossibly, inhumanly bald. He wasn’t just tall Dr. Reynolds, no, he was scarecrow-thin, gaunt, all bony angles and a lack of internal organs. His teeth weren’t fall
ing out, weren’t dentures or implants, they were fangs, incisors long and sharp and lethal as Nimbus’ had been.
“When were you certain, Mr. Kincaid?”
He drew himself up tall, clouds parting just so for the moonlight to stream in through the window behind him, framing him. He looked powerful. He looked unafraid. He looked exactly like he wanted to.
“Your smoke.” I nodded to the ashtray, to his cigarette butt, one I’d gotten from Flip and Belial as payment for services rendered.
“Laés. Imported, straight from the source, payment for another gig. When it didn’t knock you out, I was pretty sure. Immunity to pathogens and all, right out of the field guide for Infected.”
“Indeed.”
I stayed in the chair. It was a comfy chair. He loomed over me, backlit, predatory, the most powerful strain of HMHVV mankind had yet encountered.
“So what now?” I tried to sound casual instead of mad, sad, terrified, murderously angry. “You out to kill me, or bite me?”
“Maybe,” the Nosferatu smiled, teeth gleaming, “A little bit of both.”
CHAPTER 44
He opened by kicking his desk at me, into me, halfway through me. It slammed into me high in the chest—I probably should’ve gotten out of the chair, in retrospect—and sent me sprawling, tangled beneath it. I strained and kicked, shoved, twisted; it was too heavy for me to shove off gracefully.
Reynolds casually lifted it off, a backhanded swipe sent it partway through the wall, just an incidental part of his grabbing me, hauling me to my feet by the upper arms.
“You see, Mr. Kincaid? How powerful this form is? Think of what you could do with this body!”
I headbutted him. It hurt. He flicked me away, offended more than injured.
“Let me help you, damnit! Let me help the rest of the Order! We needn’t be graying old men, tottering toward our graves! We can live forever!”
My wand leaped to my hand—fucking Adversary, I could use a little help here—and poured everything I had into a hot-cast combat spell. He crossed the gap between us with a single step, gangly arm reaching out and palming my wand. I channeled mana anyway, felt a fresh wave of exhaustion weaken my knees, but got the reward of seeing a bomb go off in the palm of his hand, light seeping out between his knuckles, bones back-lit by the blast of light I’d loosed.
Sunlight, that is.
He howled in pain and rage, right arm a stump just below the elbow. His left lashed out—yeah, I’d made him mad—and I went flying, left arm breaking from the impact, wand lost as the room slammed sideways around me and I pounded my head into, partway through, the wall plaster.
“Nguh.” I tried to get to my feet, but then he was on me again, his good left hand clawing, groping, gouging at my face. I braced my legs against him and pushed for all I was worth, staving him off, using my elf-long limbs to try and counter his misshapen Nosferatu build, and kind of coming up even.
I groped at my hip and came up with my knife—mono-blade sharp, soaked in combat magic—and a few good cuts drove him back. I couldn’t slash for arteries and veins, not meaningfully, but I could just hack at him, dig in the blade, make it hurt.
He lunged backwards, hissing at me, in that second every bit as feral as Bones or Nimbus. His wounds smoked, magic hurting him as much as it did everything else in this fucked-up Sixth World…but me without much magic to spare.
Ariana wasn’t here to save me. Adversary wasn’t smiling on me. My wand was gone, somewhere in the madness of the room, and without that focus I could barely cast a fishing line. My Corpsman yelled at me as I transferred my knife—the only thing keeping him at bay—over to my broken left arm, still trying to hold it high, to keep it between us. Bones grated, and I felt them do so, Sideways or not.
The flashing weapon focus warded him back, gave me a wall of pain between us. I dragged myself up the wall to my feet, he paced like a tiger, back and forth, casting a long shadow from the moonlit window behind him.
I hauled my Colt out, feeling like it weighed fifty pounds.
He laughed.
“Now you’re just being ridiculous, Mr. Kincaid.” He crossed his arm-and-a-half, looking smug, self-righteous, certain that I’d just failed an exam that I’d, perhaps, started off with promise.
I lined up the sights, the gold-winking smartlink targeting pip, and squeezed the trigger a few times.
He twisted, inhumanly fast, slicker’n Sammy Bones and ten times as lethal. The bullets sailed past him, smashed into the window frame, the wall, the glass. They were expensive rounds, I’d loaded heavy after the sewer job. Explosive ammo, every squeeze of the trigger cost me close to ten nuyen.
Not a one hit him, not a one blasted a crater in his Infected flesh. They peppered the wall behind him, blasted out glass, punched holes in the brick. Moonlight and Seattle clouds poured into the silence that followed the rapid fire, the sharp reports in such an enclosed space.
He smirked while my slide locked back, Colt empty.
“Really, Mr. Ki—”
I threw the big pistol in his stupid face, buying myself a second to transfer the weapon focus back over to my good right hand.
“Enough!” he roared, sending out a wave of magical authority, sorcerous command, pure emotive rage. It was a powerful compulsive effect, and I froze, locked tight.
I wondered if it was the thing he’d used to drive Chris Minirth to his heart attack. Drain him of blood, weaken him, take away his power, then attack him with waves of emotion until he died? That might’ve been it. I couldn’t muster up the breath to ask.
“I have had enough of your insolence, Mr. Kincaid!” He waved his stump at me like it was evidence, eerie mist swirling around the ruin of his arm.
“Enough of this rudeness, this refusal of my gift! You are squandering your potential with your petulance, just as Christopher did with his own refusal! You are a shadow of what you could be, and the inefficiency of that simply rankles. That you would even think—even for an instant—that something so crass as your ridiculous little gun could threaten me, is—”
“Wasn’t…aiming…f’r you,” I said, locked jaw barely moving, but able, only just by the skin of my teeth, to growl out one last retort.
The mist coalesced.
Martin de Vries, vampire and vampire slayer, swung an oversized kukri, simply, brutally. Dr. Reynolds’ head tumbled off his body while he was still gloating at me.
“Took yer…fu’king time,” I slurred, sliding back down the wall, letting my legs go weak.
“Most people say ‘thank you,’ detective.”
“Yeah, you probably should.”
“I?”
“Got you th’fucker, didn’t I? Told you where he’d be, took care of the wards, got you an opening, had him distracted?”
“Yes, you clearly had him right where you wanted him.” De Vries looked at the ruin of the office, at my bloody face, my worthless arm, my torn, bloody clothes and the patchwork of ugly bruises they revealed.
“Damn straight I did.” I reached for my pack of Targets, jostled them to make sure I didn’t get another laés-laced one, and fumbled to light up.
“That’s a filthy habit, detective, that will kill you someday.” De Vries gestured, casting two spells at once like a jerk-ass. The smoke lit up, and I was levitated, gently lifted, held in mid-air while he righted the chair. I drifted over to it and he lowered me into it. It was a comfy chair.
Downtown being downtown, I heard sirens already.
“Yeah. But not tonight. Thanks, Marty. You should go.”
“You’ll be well enough?”
“Sure.”
So he did, fading back into mist, all antihero-ghostly, streaming out through the ruined wall and window, back into the night where he belonged.
Leaving me alone, bloody weapon focus handy, beheaded Nosferatu lying there, everything lining up just right for me to get the full UCAS bounty on one of mankind’s most dangerous predators.
CHAPTER 45
“I’
m…ngh…I’m here as part of my ongoing, licensed investigation into the death of one Christopher Minirth, a prof at U-Dub.”
“Uh huh.” With three or four uniforms milling around, the Knight Errant detective had to pretend to pay attention, but just a little bit. He had clean shoes. Puyallup brats like me, we don’t trust folks with clean shoes.
“Check your records. Minirth died in his office. Documented as a heart attack, no investigation. So I got hired—” I was out of breath, but he cut me off anyway.
“Hired by the man you just killed?”
“Yeah, but I’m getting to that. That’s also why you mooks didn’t look into it as a murder. I got hired, I looked into it. There’s this whole vampire, red herring thing, it’s a mess.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But as it turned out—” I grunted, squirmed a little, tried to get comfortable while they interrogated me. “It was Reynolds who’d killed him.”
“That’d be one Dr. Theodore Reynolds, ThD, who hired you to investigate it, and whose head is over there, and whose home you’re in, soaked in blood?”
I’ll admit, things weren’t going as neatly as I’d hoped.
“Yup, that’s him.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“What’s wrong with—do they not train you guys any more? C’mon. Besides his head being cut off, you mean? He’s Infected. Knight Errant’s got to have some fucking spell-slingers, get someone like a Dip down here, and they’ll tell you he’s a Nosferatu.”
“Uh huh.”
I tried to catch my breath, grouchy and tired.
“Look, right, okay. Sorry for the, the outburst or whatever, all right? Anyway. Reynolds is why you overlooked the killing, why you wrote it off as an accident. He’s a member in good standing of the Hermetic Order, he was right there when you scoped the scene of Minirth’s death. He told you the astral was clean, you took his word for it, because he just magically whammied whatever cops were on-site and just told you it was fine.”
Shadowrun: Shaken: No Job Too Small Page 25
