Hard Spell Justin Gustainis

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There were sirens in the distance and drawing closer – lots of them. Spencer had joined us, the big rifle case in one hand, after Dooley had given him the all clear. He was instantly exchanging high fives with the rest of the team, except for Heidi Renfer, who stepped so far out of character as to kiss him on the mouth, hard.

I knew she and Spencer would be kidded by the team about that kiss, along with Spencer's rescue of the "damsel in distress," for years to come. But they'd both get over it. And I was glad that Karl's cousin hadn't died today.

The first thing Dooley had done after the shot was to quickly check Heidi's back for a gunshot wound, although the fact that she was still standing under her own power was a good sign. Her Kevlar body armor had stopped the round from penetrating the skin, although she was going to have a painful bruise between her shoulder blades later.

"I figured her armor would stop the round," Dooley said to me, as we stood a little ways off, watching the SWAT team, along with Karl, congratulating Spencer. "Especially after being slowed by the window and Longworth's body. The odds were good."

"And what if the odds didn't pay off today," I said, "and the bullet kept on going? What then?"

"She still might've survived, if it missed a vital organ. Besides," he said, and his hard eyes bored into mine, "what odds would you give her if we just let Longworth take her out of here? Huh?"

I looked away from his stare. "Between slim and none," I said. I felt a deep sigh come out of me before I said, "I'm not questioning your order, Lieutenant. It was the right call, and I'd have made the same one myself, in your position. It's just that I'd have preferred him alive to question, that's all. But I agree the situation didn't make that possible."

"Yeah, okay, then. All right." Dooley's lean face softened a little. "Question him, you mean, about that shit he was talking – about you losing a loved one? You worried about somebody, Stan? Because I can get twenty-four-seven protection assigned as soon–"

I held up a hand. "No, that's all right. It wouldn't work in this case, although I appreciate the offer – I do."

Dooley looked at me for a bit. "Who are we talking about, anyway, Stan? I know about, uh, your wife, God rest her. You seeing somebody these days? Is that who you think Longworth was talking about?"

"No, no girlfriend," I told him. "The only realistic candidate... is my daughter Christine."

The silence was even longer this time. I listened to the sirens reach a peak, then stop outside the building. "I remember Christine," Dooley said. "And I also thought I remembered that she, uh, had died a while back."

"You're right," I said. "She did."

Given the Longworth family's social prominence (and big fat bank account), the chief had sent a captain down to supervise the cleanup. I bet Internal Affairs was going to spit blood over that.

Captain D'Agostino brought a team of eight detectives with him. He said it would be a while before they got to me, so I spent the time wandering around the condo, being careful not to touch anything or disturb the forensics techs.

Like the rest of the place, Jamieson Longworth's bedroom didn't look especially lived in. It contained a king-sized bed (where I gus he fucked all those nice girls his mom had mentioned), some new-looking furniture, and a big, elaborate computer, but not much of his personality was imprinted on the room. Considering what I knew about his personality, the room should've considered itself lucky.

I wandered over to the huge computer desk that looked like it was made out of teak. It had drawers, cubbyholes, paper trays, and even a cup holder. Wouldn't want to spill any cappuccino on the keyboard, would we?

The machine itself was a Dell PC that I assumed was top-of-the-line. It looked like it had everything but warp drive, and I decided not to bet against that feature either. I would have loved to go through its files to see if I could shed any light on Longworth's threats, but Captain D'Agostino would probably boil me in oil for messing around with his crime scene.

I'd have to see about getting access to the computer through channels later, assuming it was even impounded as evidence and the Longworth family didn't demand its return immediately. The Longworths, I was learning, tended to get what they wanted. But even they couldn't fetch sonny-boy back from Hell, where I hoped he and some especially sadistic demon were having a nice chat right about now.

Some scraps of paper and index cards were strewn around the keyboard and mouse pad, and I bent over them to see if Jamieson Longworth had obligingly left all his secrets written down for me, just like on TV. I took out my pen and used its blunt end to move some of the stuff around a little for a better look, but all I learned was that Longworth wanted to remember to "Call Mom," had a dentist appointment next week he was unlikely to keep, and was running low on pineapple juice and cottage cheese.

From the living room, somebody called my name. I started a little, and my hand brushed the computer's black and silver mouse, where it lay on a rubber pad that had "Carpe Noctem" printed on it in spooky-looking letters. The machine must have been in sleep mode, because that slight movement of the mouse woke it up. I heard my name again, and it sounded like the voice's owner was closer now, and getting pissed.

As I straightened up, I saw that the monitor was now showing a professional-looking photo of a small stone building with water around it. It looked like it belonged on a calendar from Ireland, or someplace. You'd think Longworth's tastes would run more toward splatter porn. Go figure. I didn't recognize the image on the screen, but there was something…

"What are you doing, Detective?"

One of D'Agostino's guys, in a blue pinstripe suit and hundred-dollar haircut that made him seem more like a corporate lawyer than a cop, stood in the door. He looked like he'd caught me buggering a donkey right here in the bedroom.

"Just killing time," I said. "Sorry I didn't hear you at first – daydreaming, I guess."

He stepped into the room and glanced at the computer screen, then looked at me hard for a few seconds. But when I didn't turn into a weeping puddle and confess to the Lindbergh kidnapping, he jerked his head back in the direction he'd come from. "Come on – you're up."

"You bet," I said, and followed him out of the room. The photo on Longworth's monitor wasn't either significant or sinister. Just a little pastoral art, unlikely as that might be. But I was irritated that it had some kind of association for me that I couldn't put a finger on.

I didn't get to dwell on it for long. I soon had other irritations to replace it, all of them wearing expensive suits and power ties.

I didn't have a lot to talk about, since my role in both the raid and the shooting was one of observer. I told two of D'Agostino's detectives what I'd seen, and agreed to provide sworn testimony at any proceedings, departmental or legal, that might stem from today's tragic events. Then I got to say the same thing to two more of them. Then two more. Karl, I found out later, went through the same fucking round-robin. Then, when they finally ran out of idiotic questions, and big words to ask them with, they cut us loose.

"I wonder who's gonna get the job," I said to Karl, as we walked back to the Rite-Aid lot.

"Who, Dooley's? He won't get fired, Stan. I don't care who the fucking kid's family is. It was a righteous shoot, with lots of witnesses."

"No, I mean the job of bringing the bad news to Mrs. Longworth. Glad it won't be us."

We'd walked another three or four paces before Karl said, "Maybe they can tell her it was done by werewolves."

Karl had made a light on yellow that I hadn't, so he was just getting out of his car as I pulled into the police department lot. He walked over and waited while I locked the Toyota. "You heard what Longworth said back there," I said.

"About your loved ones? Yeah, I heard the fucker. You think he meant Christine?"

"I don't see who else he could've been talking about. I mean, I kinda like you, Karl, but you don't really qualify as a 'loved one,' you know?"

"I guess that means no flowers on Valentine's Day," he said. "How about Lacey?"

"No, she doesn't quite make the list, either."

"Okay, so it's Christine," Karl said. "You got a plan?"

"Not much of one. But I'm for damn sure gonna be right here, come sunset."

We started walking slowly toward the station house.

"Think I'll tag along, if that's okay," Karl said.

"Sure, the more the merrier," I said, then, "Thanks, man."

"No prob. Anyway, if you don't mind me saying so, I think Christine's kinda cute."

"For a vamp, you mean."

"For anybody. So, okay, assume she shows, what then?"

I shrugged. "I'll find out if she knows anything about Sligo. Then I'll tell her what I find out, which doesn't amount to a hell of a lot. Suggest she move her daytime resting place, just as a precaution. Remind her to watch her back. Stuff like that. Just... fatherly advice." My voice might have gotten a little funny as I said those last two words.

Fatherly advice? I haven't talked about Christine that way since she was changed. Since I had her changed.

"Think she'll believe you?"

"I've got no reason to lie," I said. "She'll understand that."

"Okay, sure. But what if she doesn't show at sundown?"

"I'm still working on that part of the plan."

We'd kept McGuire informed by radio of where we were and what we were up to, but I wanted to fill him in on some of the details before Karl and I hit the streets again.

As we walked into the squad's tiny reception area, I asked Louise the Tease if there'd been any word from Vollman.

She shook her head, the blonde curls bouncing a little. "Not a peep since last week."

To look at the hair and that body of hers, you'd never guess that she's a member of Mensa, but I knew she had been for years. She's also deadly at Scrabble, I hear – plays in tournaments, and stuff.

"If he calls when I'm away from the squad," I said, "give him my cell phone number, patch him through on the radio, or do whatever else it takes. I have got to talk to that creepy old bastard, and the sooner the better."

"Will do," she said. Then she glanced toward the squad room door and said, "Those two witch sniffers are in with the lieutenant."

An icy finger traced its slow way down my spine. "They haven't found Rachel, have they?"

Louise shook her head. "I'm pretty sure not. I think that's what they're in there bitching about."

"Okay, good."

I turned to Karl. "Let's go in, sit down, and catch up on paperwork or something." We still call it paperwork, although most of that crap is digital now. "Once those two bozos leave, we can talk to McGuire."

"Works for me."

I went into the squad room and could see, through the glass panels in McGuire's office, the two witchfinders in there with him. They were standing, and the older one, Ferris, was gesturing the way people do when they are seriously pissed off. The other guy, Crane, didn't look real cheerful, either, and that was fine with me. The unhappier those assholes were, the better I liked it. Or so I thought.

Aquilina and Sefchik were at their desks, the ongoing argument apparently suspended for the time being while they each worked at their computers. They looked up as Karl and I came in, nodded "Hi," and went back to work.

Any hope I had of doing the same was crushed when McGuire appeared in his office door, pointed at me, and made a summoning motion. Guess I wouldn't have to wait to see the boss, after all.

As I walked through the door, McGuire said, "The reverends here have filed a complaint about the lack of cooperation they say they've received from the department as a whole, and our unit in particular. Therefore, Sergeant Markowski, I'm appointing you liaison, so that – what's the matter?"

Ferris and Crane were looking at me as if I'd come in covered in shit. A kind of horrified fascination was in their stares; they recoiled as if I might get it all over them, and even the way they were sniffing gave some credence to the metaphor.

"Anathema," breathed Crane, the younger one, who then said it again, louder: "Anathema!"

"Cursed of God," Ferris said slowly, nodding, then he pointed an index finger at me like it was a loaded gun and he was getting ready to open fire. "Abomination!"

I looked at McGuire if he knew what the fuck was going on, but he seemed as baffled as I was. I opened my mouth to demand some answers, but before I could speak, Ferris turned to McGuire and said, "This man" – still pointing at me – "reeks of accursed black magic. He has been consorting with the minions of the Evil One, and I demand to know why you have allowed such a person to remain not just in this city, but on the police force, for the love of Almighty God!"

I noticed that Crane was nervously touching something through his suit coat. It appeared to be underneath the material, near his right hip.

He's packing? There's metal detectors at every door to the building, the best ones they make – no way could he get in here with a gun.

Or could he?

"All right," McGuire said, "let's everybody just calm down." I assume he meant the reverends, since I hadn't had the chance to get a word in yet.

Once Ferris and Crane had stopped acting like nuns at a strip club, McGuire said to me, "Stan, you got any idea what these... gentlemen are talking about?"

"That's what I came back here to tell you about, boss," I said. "I was approached by Rachel Proctor today – or, rather, Rachel's body with that bastard Kulick in chage."

Crane made one of those snorts that means "Likely story," but at least he didn't start yelling again.

"I'd like to hear about it now," McGuire said. Looking toward the witchfinders, he went on, "without interruption."

They didn't like that, but at least the two of them kept their mouths shut while I ran down my encounter with Rachel/Kulick. As far as I was concerned, I was reporting to McGuire; the witchfinding assholes could listen if they wanted to.

When I'd finished, McGuire asked, "Got that amulet on you?"

"It's half an amulet," I said, "but yeah."

"Let me take a look."

I dug it out and handed it over. McGuire rubbed the metal gently between his fingers, as if he was expecting a genie to appear. "So Kulick gave you his true name, along with this little trinket."

"Had to," I said. "The spell wouldn't work, otherwise."

"You're supposed to hold this, say the name five times, and poof he appears?"

"I don't know if there's a poof involved, but that's about the size of it. Except he'll still be in Rachel's body when he shows up."

"Ridiculous!" Ferris said, as if he couldn't hold himself in any longer. "Lieutenant, your man has obviously fabricated this fairy story to conceal his own involvement with the witch, Proctor. He is probably in league with her – even after she murdered one of his brother officers, and drove the other insane."

He actually said "in league with her." I didn't think anybody talked like that any more.

"Oh, I don't know," McGuire said slowly, and I could tell he was working to keep his temper under wraps. "The sergeant's story is consistent with the other facts we have, such as they are. And he's had an exemplary record of service in this unit. I'm inclined to believe him."

That was the first time he'd ever called me "exemplary" – in a good way, that is.

Ferris glared at McGuire. "All right, Lieutenant. Your faith in your subordinate is touching – so, let us test it."

He looked at me. "Take hold of the amulet, then recite the so-called true name of this wizard-in-awitch's-body. Make him appear here, in this office. Right now."

"Can't do that," I told him.

"Can't, or won't?"

"Both," I said. "If I bring Kulick here, where Sligo obviously isn't, he's gonna be pretty pissed off. He's a powerful wizard, and there's no way to know what spells he's got prepared and ready to go. He could wreck this whole place – and us along with it. I think we can maybe use this thing to trap him, but it's gonna take careful preparation to control him once he shows up."

"What a steaming pile of self-serving–" Crane began, but I kept talking, right on over him.

"Besides, if we tried to take Kulick into custody now, Rachel could be hurt, even killed. I'm not willing to risk that – not even for two people I like and respect the way I do you guys."

I wondered if these clowns even understood sarcasm.

"An interesting story," Ferris said. "It neatly covers all your transgressions – or it would, if Reverend Crane and I were just a little more gullible."

Ferris turned to McGuire. Speaking formally, as if making a public proclamation, he said, "Lieutenant, we believe this man to be willfully withholding information vital to our investigation, which we are undertaking as lawfully constituted witchfinders. We shall therefore take him into our custody and question him at lengntil we are satisfied that he has spoken the truth of this matter."

I felt my testicles try to pull up into my body. I'd heard stories about the "questioning" techniques of witchfinders. Word was, they were modeled on the Spanish Inquisition – which was one of the reasons I didn't want Rachel falling into their bloodstained hands.

Crane reached under his suit coat, and produced a pair of police-grade handcuffs. So that's what he'd been fondling under there. Then he gave me the nastiest smile I'm seen in quite some time. Maybe he did recognize sarcasm, after all.

"Question him?" McGuire said. "Is that a polite term for 'torture'?"

"Torture?" Ferris pretended indignation. "Heaven forefend, Lieutenant. We simply apply proven methods of... vigorous interrogation."

"Taken from the Malleus Maleficarum?"

The Hammer of Witches is a fifteenth century book describing how to torture confessions out of witches. The two guys who wrote it, Kramer and Sprenger, knew nothing about real witchcraft. They were just a couple of sick fucks who liked listening to women scream.

"The source of our methods is irrelevant," Ferris said loftily. "They are all quite legal."

"So's waterboarding, in some circles," McGuire said. "Doesn't make it right." Without taking his eyes from Ferris, McGuire said to me, "Detective Sergeant Markowski, do you willingly agree to accompany these men, and undergo interrogation at their hands?"

I tried to speak, but failed. So I cleared my throat and tried again. "No, Lieutenant, I'd really rather not."

"It seems the sergeant doesn't want to go with you, gentlemen," McGuire said. "And I'm afraid I couldn't spare him, anyway. His caseload is far too heavy."

Ferris drew himself up. "It is not your choice to make, Lieutenant. This man is coming with us. We have the full authority of the law behind us."

McGuire stood up slowly. He pushed his chair back, came around his desk, and stood next to me. He folded his arms across that barrel chest and said, "No, Reverend – you've got the full authority of the law in front of you."

"It's over here, too," a familiar voice said. Karl was in the doorway, and he slowly pushed back the right side of his jacket to reveal the holstered Glock on his belt. He held the jacket back with his forearm, and just stood there, like an Old West gunfighter ready to take care of business.

Karl gestured in the direction of the squad room. "And I think there's some more of it out there, too."

I slowly turned my head to look through the glass. Sefchik and Aquilina were both on their feet and facing us, maybe ten feet apart. As I watched, Aquilina slipped off the blazer she wore on the street to reveal the wide brown leather belt underneath, and the holstered automatic on her right hip. She dropped the blazer on a nearby desk then just stood there, hands on her hips, calmly looking at us. Sefchik left his suit coat on, but he slowly and deliberately hooked his thumbs in his belt, and kept them there, close to the gun you knew he had under the coat. He stood looking our way, too.

I glanced at McGuire and saw a tight smile appear on his face. "Don't let us detain you, gentlemen. I'm sure you have a number of important appointments – elsewhere."

Ferris's pale face had turned dark red, and I noticed that Crane had lost that mean smile of his. "This is – this is–" Ferris seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. He stopped, swallowed a couple of times, then said, more calmly, "Stay near your phone, Lieutenant. You'll be hearing from your superiors, shortly. Enjoy your rly retirement from the police force."

Ferris looked at the handcuffs Crane still held and snarled, "Put those away and come on!" Then he stalked toward the office door, and Karl moved away to let him pass. Crane dropped the cuffs in his suit pocket and hurried after him. I saw that Aquilina and Sefchik didn't bar their way, but they didn't step aside, either.

My chest was tight, and I took a big, deep breath to loosen it a little. "Thank you, sir," I said to McGuire, which may have been the first time I ever called him that.

I looked through the glass at Sefchik and Aquilina and nodded at each of them. They returned the nod. Aqulina put her blazer back on, then she and Sefchik returned to whatever they'd been doing.

I turned back to McGuire. "Are you screwed, Lieutenant?"

He went back behind his desk and sat down again. "Maybe, but I don't think so. I know several city councilmen who are none too happy with this witchfinder bullshit, and a couple of local religious leaders who feel the same way. I'll make sure the mayor and the chief both hear from them. Now get out of here, both of you – I've got some phone calls to make."

"I don't know about you," I said to Karl, "but I've probably got a shitload of messages that've come in since yesterday. Email and voicemail both."

"Yeah, I've got a bunch, too." I didn't know if that was true, or if he just understood that I wanted to spend a few minutes letting my guts unclench. "Might as well take ten or fifteen, catch up a little," Karl said.

"When do you figure the department's going to start issuing those fancy phones where you can check all that stuff from anywhere?"

He pretended to think about it. "Dunno. What's the latest estimate for Hell freezing over?"

"Beats me," I said. "But if it does, I bet we'll catch the complaint."

Karl laughed and turned toward his desk.

"By the way..." I said.

He looked back at me.

"Thanks," I told him. "For... you know. Thanks."

He gave me a fat grin. "Ahh, I fuckin' loved it. Felt like John Wesley Hardin there, for a minute."

"Is that better than 'Bond, James Bond'?"

"No," he said, "but it ain't half bad, neither."

I started with my email but only got through about half a dozen messages when McGuire came to the door of his office.

"Sefchik! Aquilina!" he called. "You got one!"

Once I knew that it was somebody else's problem, I brought my focus back to the computer monitor. But you know how it is: if somebody uses your name, even in a conversation that you're not really listening to, you're going to notice. The name that caught my attention wasn't my own, however. It was Mercy Hospital.

It's impossible to measure stuff like this, but after the hospital's name was mentioned, I'd say the conversation at McGuire's door had maybe 25 percent of my attention. Then I heard patient was incinerated, and that brought my focus up to around 75 percent. But it was the word dismembered that got me to my feet.

I walked quickly to where the three of them were standing. "Don't mean to kibbitz, boss, but did you say something about burning and dismemberment? At Mercy Hospital?"

From the corner of my eye, I saw Karl get up from his desk and head over.

McGuire stared at me for a couple of beats, then said, "Yeah, it's at Mercy. There's a report of a patient in his room found burned to a crisp, arms and legs hacked off. Since there was no fire damage elsewhere in the room, the first responders are thinking black magic as a COD."

My guts, which had just started to relax, were a big clenched fist again. "Did you get a name on this patient?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"No name," McGuire said. "Just the room number: 333."

I glanced at Karl. His expression said he was thinking the same thing that I was.

"Boss, can you let Karl and me take this one?" I turned to Aquilina and Sefchik. "That okay with you guys?"

Aquilina said, "Sure," and Sefchik shrugged. They didn't much care – there would be other calls; they'd catch the next one.

"What's your interest?" McGuire asked me.

"I'm thinking that the vic might be–" I took a second to swallow, even though my mouth was suddenly very dry. "–Benjamin Prescott."

"Prescott?" McGuire's eyebrows dipped in a frown. "Oh, that professor, right? The one who was choking, and you two got to be heroes over. I thought he was in a coma."

"No, he's out of it, and doing some translation work for us. On the Opus Mago."

"Then what the fuck are you two standing here for?" he said. "Get moving."

It's not unusual to find flashing red lights around the back of Mercy Hospital. That's where the ambulances deliver emergency cases to the ER. But flashing lights clustered around the hospital's front entrance – that's something you don't see every day.

I took some doctor's parking space, then Karl and I made our rapid way toward the front door. I made sure that the ID folder with my shield on it was hanging over my breast pocket, since I was in no mood to be stopped by some rookie who didn't know us by sight.

I'd planned to stop at the information desk and get the name of the patient who'd been in room 333, but the harried-looking woman behind the counter was trying to talk to five people at once, and every one of them look pissed off, or scared, or both.

At the elevators, I mashed the call button and we waited for a car to show up. About half a minute later, I was about to say "Fuck it" and look for the stairs when one set of elevator doors slid open with a muted ping.

The only one inside was a middle-aged nurse who quickly left the car before Karl and I got in. I got a glimpse of her face as we passed each other. Being strong, controlled, and emotionally resilient are all part of every nurse's unofficial job description, which is why I was surprised to see that this one had almost certainly been crying.

The elevator brought us to the third floor, and a sign said that those with business in rooms 320 to 340 should turn left. We did, and a hundred feet farther down rounded a corner and that's when I knew we were in the right place – or the wrong one, depending on how you look at it.

Part of the hallway was blocked off by yellow crime scene tape in two places, with one room in the middle. I didn't really need to look and see if it was 333, but I did, and it was.

A uniform named Klein was stationed at the barrier. He nodded at me and lifted the tape up so we could duck under it.

I waited for Karl to say "What do we got here?" but he didn't. I glanced at him and saw that his face was pinched and gray, and we hadn't even been inside the room yet.

A few yards down the hall, another uniform was interviewing a nurse who kept waving her hands around as she talked. I walked up to them. "Excuse me," I said. "Anybody know the name of the vic?"

The cop, a redheaded beanpole named Sadler, flipped bck a page in his notebook. "Prescott, Benjamin R," he said. "Moved down here from the ICU earlier today."

I wish I could say that the news surprised me, but by then the surprise would have been if he'd said a different name. My guts weren't clenched, the way they'd been with the witchfinders. Instead they were cold, freezing cold, as if a big ball of ice had formed there and was planning to stay a while. Like maybe the rest of my life.

I asked Sadler, "Witnesses?"

"Nah. Couple of nurses heard screaming and ran over, but the guy's door was locked – from the inside. One of them had to go back to the nurse's station to get a master key. When they got the door open, nobody was in there but the vic, or what was left of him." He shook his head. "Sounds like your kind of thing, huh?"

"Yeah, sure. My kind of thing."

I turned away and went to the doorway of room 333 and stood there while a couple of forensics techs inside went about their business.

I let my gaze wander around. Standard-looking hospital room: green walls, patterned linoleum floor, a single window open wide; I didn't know if the window had been like that earlier, or if a cop was hoping to let out some of the stench. If that was the point, it hadn't worked real well so far. The sickly-sweet smell of burned flesh was so thick, you could almost see it in the air.

The rest of the room was pretty much what you'd expect. Narrow bed with mechanical stuff underneath it for raising and lowering; a small wooden armoire; a nightstand; one of those rectangular tables on wheels that they use for meals; a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs.

There were a couple of differences from the average hospital room, though. Like the four bloody, naked limbs – arms and legs, two of each – stacked neatly in one corner, and the charred thing that lay in what was left of the bed.

Some of Prescott's abundant body fat had been liquefied by the intense heat. You could see it, runny and yellowish, sticking to parts of the bed frame. There were a couple of congealed pools of it on the floor, one on each side of the bed.

I stepped closer to the monstrosity on the bed. Might as well drink from this cup all the way to the bottom. A quick look at what had once been Prescott's head didn't tell me anything useful. A really hot fire will explode a corpse's eyeballs, so there was no way to tell whether the empty sockets that stared accusingly at me had been victims of the fire, or maybe the claws of something right out of Hell. I couldn't bring myself to check Prescott's crotch, to see if his balls were still there. I just couldn't.

Apart from some scorch marks on the wall behind the bed, the rest of the room had been untouched by the flames. The blaze had been localized and focused, no doubt because that's what a very old and deadly curse had specified.

The curse that I had invoked.

Sure, Prescott did the translating, but that's not what caused the curse to kick in – it's revealing to somebody what you've learned that does it.

Which is exactly what I asked Prescott to do.

Which is why Prescott died, in agony and horror.

I think Karl said something to me, but I waved him off. I stood there, looking at the remains of what had been a pretty good man and wondered if he'd damned Stan Markowski in his final moments. If he did, I wouldn't blame him.

But even he couldn't have damned Stan Markowski nearly as hard as I was right now.

After a while, I went back to acting like a cop. What else was I gonna do?

As I turned, my foot knocked againstomething metal. A wastebasket. I looked and saw some used Kleenex, the remains of a tube of Life Savers, a bent straw, a couple of used cotton balls. And a big FedEx overnight envelope. It was addressed to Prescott, care of the hospital, with a return address at Georgetown University. Looked like his assistant back on campus had sent the stuff that Prescott wanted. Like the remaining untranslated pages of the Opus Mago.

Then what the hell happened to them?

I turned to one of the forensics guys, Billy Santoro. "You come across any paper around the corpse, maybe something written in a foreign language?"

"No, no papers, Stan. Some ashes that might've been paper, but nothing that's got any hope of recovery. Fire was just too hot, you know?"

"How about a laptop?"

"We found something, was probably a laptop once. But now it's just a bunch of warped metal and melted plastic. You can look at it, if you want."

"No, I guess not. Thanks."

Well, so much for that brilliant idea. If Prescott had learned anything useful from the Opus Mago fragments, it had died with him. Even if my hunch had panned out, what would I do with a bunch of papers written in Ancient Sumerian?

Find another translator, who can get dismembered, blinded, and burned alive for his trouble? One's not enough?

I looked at the corpse one more time. Just punishing myself, I suppose. I didn't need to see it again – that charred mound of gunk and bone was going to have a starring role in my nightmares for a long time to come.

As I turned away, something glittered in the corner of my vision.

It came from the corner where Prescott's severed arms and legs were stacked. They hadn't bled much, without a heart to provide pumping action. I walked over, and tilted my head a little. There it was again.

I squatted next to the pile of flabby, pale flesh, careful not to touch anything. I looked closer.

A cell phone. Prescott had been holding the phone in his hand when the arm was severed. Not surprising, then, that his big paw was squeezed tight around it.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that Billy was still taking samples of Prescott's ashes and putting them into small plastic bags.

"You do these yet?" I asked him. "The arms and legs?"

"Not yet," he said. "Thought we ought to concentrate on the torso first. We'll get to the rest of him pretty soon. I figure there's no hurry."

"No. No hurry at all."

He went back to work. Using my body to hide what I was doing, I slowly leaned forward, got two fingers around the phone, and carefully worked it loose from Prescott's grip.

I knew I was tampering with evidence in a homicide investigation. But the cause of death wasn't exactly in dispute, even if nobody but me and Karl would ever know for sure what had happened here.

I slipped Prescott's phone into an inside pocket of my suit coat, then stood up. Walking over near the window for better light, I casually pulled the phone out again. As far as anybody could tell, I was messing around with my own phone, just like millions of people do every day.

I opened the phone and, with a little work, found the list of outgoing calls. The last one Prescott ever made had been to a number I knew well – it was my phone, at the squad room. Length of call: 11:46.

Sweet Mother Mary on a motorcycle.

"Come on," I said to Karl, who'd been staring at the body from another corner of the room.

"Where we goin'?"

"Back to the squad, so I can check my voicemail."

As I drove us out of the hospital parking lot, Karl said, "It's my fault."

I turned and looked at him, and his face reminded me of a man I'd once seen at the funeral of his three children. They'd been murdered by his wife, before she killed herself.

"What the fuck are you talking about, Karl?"

"Prescott. What happened. It's my fault."

"You're wrong about that, partner. You are totally fucking off base. I'm the one who roped him into all this shit."

"Doesn't matter. You told me, Stan! You said to get additional warding for his room. I called two witches I know. One's moved out of town, I left a message with the other one's answering service. She didn't call back, and I forgot, Stan. I should have tried somebody else, even looked in the fucking Yellow Pages, if I had to."

"Karl, listen, you didn't–"

"But I just forgot. With people dropping dead bodies on us and Internal Affairs and the SWAT raid, and the rest of it..."

"Listen, man, don't be–"

"It could've made the difference, Stan! It could. If the protection was stronger, the fucking curse might not have been able to get him. Instead, he went out as hard as any motherfucker I ever saw, or even heard of. The dude was trying to help us, and for that he had his fucking eyes gouged out, and got his arms and legs chopped off, and then he was burned alive..."

Karl buried his face in his hands and started to cry.

If I wasn't driving, I just might have joined him.

• • • •

Back at the squad, we reported to McGuire what we'd seen, what we knew, and what we suspected.

He sat back and ran a hand slowly over his big jaw. "All right," he said. "I'll assign a couple of other detectives to it, just so we can say we investigated and filed a report. I'll need you to brief them before they go out, so that they don't waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel."

Fine. Now I'd have to explain to a couple of other cops just how bad I had fucked up. McGuire was right to do that – I just wasn't looking forward to it.

"You figure this was Sligo, shutting Prescott's mouth?" McGuire asked. "He's got a copy of the Opus Mago. He'd probably know about the curse, and how to make a murder look like one."

I thought about that, then shook my head. "No, if it was him, he'd want us to know it – he wouldn't try to hide his work by imitating the curse, the arrogant prick."

"Besides," Karl said, "it happened in broad daylight. Sligo's a vamp, remember?"

"Yeah, you got a point there." McGuire looked closely at me, then gave the same scrutiny to Karl. "You guys need some time off?" he asked quietly.

Considering everything that was going on right now, he was being extremely generous. But there was no way I wanted to spend the next few days sitting around my house thinking – or worse, drinking myself stupid.

I looked at Karl, who gave me a small headshake. His face had lost a little of the stricken look it had worn at the hospital, but only a little.

"We'd just as soon keep busy, boss, but thanks," I said.

McGuire took a case file from a stack sitting on his desk and put it on his blotter. Opening it, he said, "Then get back to work and catch this motherfucker, before he kills anybody else."

e susiv>

I'd told Karl I wanted to check my voicemail, and why. He said he'd start going through the files, to see if he could find a connection between Sligo and Jamieson Longworth. Then he reminded me that sunset was about an hour away. "You've got an appointment, in the parking lot," he said.

"Yeah," I said, "if she shows up."

"She seemed pretty definite about it this morning. Think she'd change her mind?"

"No, I'm just hoping that Longworth's threat turns out to be empty bullshit, that's all."

"Yeah, I know," he said. "Don't forget, I'm going down with you when it's time. Help you wait."

I nodded my thanks. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

"To access your voicemail messages, please press 8." The computer's recorded voice was as polite as ever. I touched 8.

"Please enter your four-digit extension number."

4294

"Please enter your security code."

3475833

"You have eight new messages. These are your options while listening. To listen to a message, press 5. To go back to the beginning of a message, press 7. To delete a message, press 2 twice. To save a message, press 4. To advance to the next message, press 3. To end this session, press 9 twice. Ready."

"Going to the first new message."

"Sergeant, this is Sonia, over in Human Resources. Your leave record for last month hasn't been–"

"Stanley, this is Father Cebula at St Casimir's. We've got the annual Corpus Christi banquet coming up–"

"Hey, Stan – Lacey. What do you get when you cross a female ogre with a werewolf? You–"

"Mr Markowski, this is Rob at Nationwide Insurance. I see you've got a birthday coming up soon, and I'd like to talk–"

"Sergeant, this is Ben Prescott, calling from my lovely new digs – let's see, it's room 333. The material I asked my assistant at G-town to send me arrived via FedEx early this morning, including the remaining fragments of the Opus Mago that I had yet to translate. I went right to work, and I'm pleased to say that it went faster than I'd anticipated. Maybe my brain is a little sharper from its long rest while I was comatose.

"I should probably wait until you get over here to fill you in on what I've been able to make of this, but I'm pretty excited – and more than a little disturbed, frankly. Anyway, I thought I would get the gist of it to you now, in case that curse we talked about earlier turns out to be real, ha ha.

"Most of what I've learned about this spell you're interested in deals with the final stage. By the way, the fifth sacrifice, the final vampire killing, is supposed to take place as part of the actual ritual. The other four are prologues, as it were.

"All right, let's see here. The book specifies that the spell must take place near water. Still water, that is not of the sea. Meaning, not salt water. The other requirement is that the ritual be carried out on the first night of the full moon, at the 'turn of time' – which, given the context, I would say refers to midnight.

"Um, that's followed by a long incantation the practitioner is supposed to recite, that's probably of little interest to you... Okay, here's something: I expect you'll want to know what all of this is in aid of – the purpose ofthe spell, as it were. Well, that would be, in a word: transformation. If the ritual, which is supposed to be one of extreme difficulty, by the way, is carried out in the proper manner, all the magical I's dotted and T's crossed, and so on, the vampire/wizard conducting–"

"The disk space allotted for this message has been filled. To listen to the next message, press 3."

Goddamn motherfucking cocksucker shit!!

"Advancing to the next new message."

"Prescott again, Sergeant. Sorry about that. Longwindedness is an occupational hazard of academe.

"All right, now, where was – oh, right. Transformation. According to this, the practitioner will be transformed into... this next word is a double compound, and the grammar is confusing, but I've rendered it as 'a creature of both night and day.' The fragment says the one casting the spell will 'walk under the sun without fear.' I suppose if you were a vampire, that would be a pretty desirable thing, wouldn't it?

"Oh, and it gets better – better, I mean from the perspective of the vampire. It says that, after the transformation, the practitioner will 'fear not holy things, nor fire, nor sharp branches.' Would that be wooden stakes, do you suppose? I guess that would make the guy some sort of 'super-vampire,' wouldn't it?

"That goes on for a while, then four lines further down it says that this one who 'walks under, or beneath, the sun without fear,' can drink the blood of others and thereby make them 'brothers, or brethren, like himself.'

"I'm not sure what to make of that one – you're probably a better judge than I, since you deal with this kind of thing all the time. I mean, everybody knows that vampires can reproduce by exchanging blood with one of their victims, presumably willing ones. Nothing new there. Or could it mean that once transformed, this 'super-vampire' can make others like himself, just by biting them? I suppose the blood exchange is assumed there, too.

"Quite the spell this guy's got here. No wonder it's supposed to be so hard. He turns himself into a vampire without vulnerabilities, then can pass that on to others in the usual vampiric way? Sounds like a bad James Bond movie, if that's not redundant, but with fangs. You could create a whole army of – Jesus Christ, what the fuck? Who are you? How'd you get in here? Stay back! The... the power of Christ compels you! Get away from me, get away get awayyyyy..."

Then there was nothing but the screaming.

"Session terminated. Goodbye."

"How'd you get in here? Stay back! The–"

"You can stop there and log out," I said to McGuire. "The rest is… just screaming." I tried to keep what I was feeling out of my voice, and off my face. I'm a cop – we're supposed to be good at that.

I may not have succeeded completely, because McGuire looked at me closely before he disconnected from my voicemail. I'd told him about Prescott's messages, so he'd asked me to retrieve them again but from his phone, to play over the speaker.

I glanced over at Karl, who was in McGuire's other visitor's chair. He looked like a guy with a bad stomachache – but whether that was from Prescott's discovery or from his screams, I didn't know.

McGuire was staring at the phone as if it were his worst enemy. He didn't look away from it as he said, "Super-vampire, huh?"

"It sounds kind of stupid when you call it that," I said. "But, still..."

"Yeah," McGuire said. "But, still..."

"And first night of the full moon," Karl said.

I hadn't had to look it up – none of us had. Everybody in the Supe Squad always knows when the full moon is due.

"Tonight," I said.

A good piece of the squad room's west wall is taken up with a map of the city and surrounding area. McGuire, Karl, and I stood looking at it, and what we saw did not make us happy.

All those lakes.

"Fuck," Karl said.

All those ponds.

"Fuck," McGuire said.

All those swimming pools.

"Motherfuck," I said.

"There's no way we're going to get surveillance of all those bodies of water," McGuire said. "We couldn't do it even if we knew what to look for, which we don't – or even if we had the entire U.S. Air Force at our disposal, which we sure as shit don't."

"So we can't find him by air," I said. "That's a fact. We'll have to approach it some other way."

"If you've got any ideas, you'll find me an eager audience," McGuire said.

I just shook my head, but Karl said, "There is one thing."

McGuire and I both turned to stare at him.

"Seems to me that Stan here has an appointment with a certain young lady, in about..." Karl looked out the window, at the setting sun. "...ten minutes or so. She said something just before dawn today, gave us the impression she might know where Sligo's daytime crib is."

McGuire looked at me with raised eyebrows. "You've got a snitch – somebody who'll give up Sligo?"

"Not exactly," I said. "But sort of."

"Who do you–" McGuire started, then I saw the light dawn. "Oh. You mean..." He flipped a glance toward Karl.

"It's all right," I said. "He's met Christine." There are some secrets you shouldn't hide from your boss, and Christine was one I hadn't kept from McGuire. I'd trusted him to keep his mouth shut about her, and he always had.

"We were talking to Christine this morning, and it occurred to me to ask her about Sligo. It seemed like she knew something, but then she had to leave, pretty quickly." I made a head gesture toward the window, where a sliver of sun could still be seen.

"You know," Karl said, "it occurs to me that even if she can give us Sligo's resting place, the motherfucker'll be gone by the time anybody could get there, and we can't wait until he comes back for beddy-bye at dawn. It'll all be over by then, one way or another."

"But if we know where he's been, maybe we can figure out where he went, if we move fast," I said.

McGuire nodded. "Then you'd better get your ass downstairs," he said. "Don't you think?"

Karl and I stood quietly near the fence in the gathering dark, listening to the crickets and trying not to think about the ugly death of Benjamin Prescott, PhD. I don't know about Karl, but my efforts weren't exactly a howling success – more like a screaming failure.

"So," I said after a while, "how 'bout those Mets, huh?"

Karl doesn't follow baseball, and neither do I. He likes hockey, and I've been a Knicks fan since I was a kid and got to watch the team hold their pre-season training camp at the U.

That thing about the Mets is just something I say to fill awkward silences, and Karl knew it. He came back with his standard response: "Get a couple of good trades, and they could go all the way this year."

We waited some more, not talking to ntil Karl said, "I'd say it's full dark, Stan."

"Yeah."

"Probably has been, the last ten minutes or so."

"Yeah."

We listened to the crickets for a while longer.

Karl said, "Could be she's not coming, Stan."

"Yeah."

More crickets.

"Maybe we oughta go back inside, tell McGuire."

"Okay." I still didn't move.

"Could be lotsa reasons she didn't show," Karl said. "Doesn't have to mean she's in trouble."

I whirled to face him, and my voice was ugly when I said, "Jesus, what do you think, Karl? That maybe she found herself a nice boyfriend? That she couldn't make it because tonight's the junior fucking prom?"

Karl didn't tell me to go fuck myself. He didn't even turn and walk away. He just stood there, looking at me. It was too dark to see his expression, but his posture didn't look like somebody who's pissed off and ready to fight.

I stood there and listened to myself breathe for a while, a sound I used to be pretty fond of.

"I'm sorry, man," I said quietly. "I got no right to talk to you like that. I guess I'm just …"

"I know," Karl said. "Forget it." He gave me a few more seconds, then said, "You feel like going inside now?"

"Yeah, might as well," I said. "She isn't coming."

We went back to the squad and found that we had a visitor.

It was Vollman.

I turned to Louise the Tease. My voice rising, I said, "I thought I told you–"

Vollman held up a hand, palm toward me. "Please, Sergeant, do not chastise this beautiful young woman. I have literally arrived within the last minute."

I looked back at Louise, who nodded quickly. "I was just looking up your cell number," she said. "Honest."

"Okay. Sorry, Louise," I said.

I politely asked Vollman to accompany us back to our part of the squad room. I was going to be very courteous to the old vampire/wizard – right up to the moment when I found an excuse to pound a two-foot stake deep into his aged, undead heart.

I was in kind of a bad mood.

As we approached our desks, McGuire came to his office door and looked our way. I shook my head, but then used it to gesture in Vollman's direction. McGuire nodded and went back to his desk. He'd understood what I meant: we'd missed one source of information, but just gained another one. Maybe.

Everybody sat down, Karl and me facing Vollman from maybe ten feet apart. He looked pretty much the same as last time, although the shirt was different – a pale green number with little roses all over it that had probably been the height of fashion just after the war. The Civil War, I mean.

"Been a while, Mr Vollman," I said. "We were beginning to think you didn't like us anymore."

The old face grew a tiny little smile. "Two charming young gentlemen such as yourselves? The very idea is absurd."

Never try sarcasm on a five hundred year-old vampire.

"We haven't got time to fuck around," I said, "so I'm going to take a risk and be totally honest with you about the situation we're facing here – as much as we know of it. I say it's a risk, because I'm pretty damn sure you haven't been honest with us, so far."

Vollman's bushy eyebrows made a slow climb toward his hairline.

"I'm not saying you atively lied to us, but you've withheld information, for reasons of your own. I'm pretty sure if we knew everything you could have told us a week ago, we would have closed this case already, and a pretty good man would have been spared a really ugly death."

"Indeed?" Vollman said softly. "I am sorry to hear of that."

"Maybe you are, maybe you're not. For all I know, you think of humans as nothing more than blood bags with legs. Some vamps do, I know."

Vollman frowned at that, but kept quiet.

"But it doesn't matter," I said. "Because a wizard named Sligo, who is also a vampire – you know, like you – is probably going to attempt a complex and nasty ritual at midnight, near some body of still water."

"And if he pulls it off, the result could be very, very bad," Karl said.

"Very bad is an understatement," I said. "The bastard will have the power to create a whole new race of vampires that'll be invulnerable to everything – sunlight, stakes, crucifixes, the whole nine yards."

"And that will fuck up the world for everybody, Mr Vollman," Karl said. "Old-style nosferatu like you will probably become an endangered species – just like humans."

Vollman nodded gravely. "I will give you my pledge to listen closely to all that you gentlemen have to say. Beyond that, I can make no promises."

I sat there, and if looks could kill, the old bastard would have a long sharp piece of polished oak sticking out of his chest right that second.

I wasn't sure what I hated more – the old vamp, or the fact that at this moment, we needed him. Needed him bad.

Vollman let out the little smile again. "I understand, Sergeant. You despise me, and you despise having to depend on me – for anything, even information. It is a very... human reaction, and one that I am not unused to."

I blinked a couple of times, and my voice was husky with anger when I said, "You read minds, do you? I wasn't aware that was one of the vampire talents."

"Not minds, Sergeant – merely faces." Vollman shrugged. "I wonder if it has occurred to you that I am here this evening precisely because I am, however unfortunately, dependent on you." He leaned forward in his chair, and I swear I heard those old bones creak. "And in at least one respect we are in agreement, gentlemen: we do not have time to fuck around."

He sat back, hands folded in his lap, waiting.

I took one very deep breath, and tried to imagine that all the hatred and fear and frustration would leave my body with the air I was going to expel. Then I breathed out, told myself that it had worked, and got down to business with the vampire.

Karl and I took turns running it down for him, as quickly as we could without leaving out any essential facts. Once it was all out there, I said, "So we've got to find Sligo, and stop him, before midnight which is–" I checked my watch "–about four and a half hours from right now." It occurred to me that my last sentence sounded like something from a bad Fifties horror movie, accompanied by a melodramatic soundtrack riff. In my job, reality is sometimes like a bad movie – and sometimes it's worse. At least the movie usually has a happy ending.

Vollman had been leaning forward in his chair, folded hands between his knees, looking at whichever of us was speaking. Now he sat back, intertwined fingers beneath his chin, the classic pose of Man Thinking. I wondered if he'd been on the stage at some point during his long life – no matinee performances, of course.

Now he lowered the hands, signaling that he had reached decision. "I told you once," he said, "that I had become a vampire, unwillingly, in the year 1512. That was the truth. I neglected to mention that, at the time of my... transformation, I had a son, Richard." He pronounced it Reek-ard, the way the Germans do.

"I had raised him myself," Vollman went on. "His mother died in childbirth, not an uncommon occurrence at that time. I was a skilled wizard, and might have saved her, but she gave birth earlier than expected, while I was away on business.

"So, I raised the boy alone, with the assistance of a series of paid wet nurses, nannies, and tutors. When he reached his majority, he told me that he wished to learn the art of magic, under my tutelage."

Vollman made a wry face. "What father would not be pleased to find that his son wished to emulate him by choosing the same profession? So I began his instruction – which, to do properly, takes several years. We were already well along, when I fell victim to attack by a nosferatu. And you should understand this about our kind, Sergeant, if you do not know it already: an honorable vampire, when he turns another, becomes in effect a Father in Darkness, incurs certain obligations. He must stay to teach the newborn nosferatu how to live his new, and very different, life."

"From what I've heard," Karl said, "it doesn't always happen that way."

"Sad, but true, Detective," Vollman said. "But, in defense of my kind, how many humans do you know who behave honorably – at all times?"

"Well, you've got–" Karl began.

"Guys, excuse me," I said. "Mr Vollman, this is fascinating, and I mean that. But the clock is ticking, and if you could possibly move this along...?"

Vollman nodded. "I enjoy intelligent conversation, but you are correct, Sergeant, this is not the time." He leaned forward again.

"Because my Father in Darkness did not mentor me in the ways of the undead, I did not learn to control my appetite for blood. Because I had not learned control, I fed indiscriminately. One of those upon whom I fed, to my everlasting shame, was my own son, Richard. And because my bloodlust was seemingly without limit at that stage, I fed on him until he was near death – at which point, overcome with remorse, I decided to make him nosferatu, like me."

Vollman stopped speaking, and his eyes lost some of their focus, as if he was examining some bleak inner landscape. I knew that territory very well. I've lived there for years.

"All right," I said, keeping most of what I felt out of my voice. "you made your son a vampire. What then?"

"Unlike my own Father in Darkness, I fulfilled my responsibility to the one I had created. Although, in truth, because I was myself so inexperienced as nosferatu, there was much I did not know. But I did my best, even though my son, who was now also my Son in Darkness, hated me."

"The two of you fought, you mean?" Karl asked him.

"No, never," Vollman said. "He was too smart for that. But I knew my own son. In every word, every gesture, he showed how much he despised me. And I cannot in truth say that I would blame him."

I noted his shift to present tense, but didn't say anything about it. Instead I asked, "So, you taught him how to be a vampire – and a wizard, too?"

"I did not finish his course of instruction in magic," Vollman said, "although I had taught him a great deal by the time he attempted to kill me."

"How'd he do that?" I asked. "Come at you with a wooden stake?"

"No, he would not have been so foolish. I was stronger than he, you see. Stronger as a ma a vampire, and a wizard. Instead, he hired men. Thugs, really. As I determined later, he paid them well – with money stolen from me – to carry out three tasks." Vollman ticked them off on his fingers. "To transport an armoire containing his insensate form to a location far away; to seek out my resting place and drive a stake through my heart; and, finally, to burn down my home, which was also my magical laboratory."

Vollman made a face like he wanted to spit on the floor. "The first and last of those tasks they accomplished very well. They spirited my son away, and before leaving, set fires that turned my home, and all my work, to ashes."

"Obviously, they didn't manage to kill you," Karl said. "How come?"

"Because I did not spend the daylight hours in the basement of that house, as I had given Richard reason to believe. I was not, even then, a complete fool."

"I've got a feeling I know where this is going," I said, "but it would be good if we could get there soon."

"Of course," Vollman said. "My son, I have since learned, journeyed throughout Europe, studying magic, learning the ways of the undead, and sucking the blood of innocents. In time, he found his way to Ireland, where he stayed for many years – a strange choice, in a place where the Church is so strong. And there he took for himself the name Sligo."

Neither Karl or I exactly fell out of our chairs at that point. Like an inept comic, Vollman had telegraphed his punchline from some distance away. Still, his admission raised a lot of questions. With the time factor we were facing, I tried to decide which ones I needed answered right now.

"Why did you wait until now to share this interesting information with us?" I asked. "Didn't you care that vampires were being killed? Shit, and people accuse me of being callous."

Vollman studied me before speaking. "I do not think either one of us is callous, Sergeant. But I was forced to make a choice. If I helped you, and you found my son, you would probably kill him. He might well leave you no choice. And even now, after everything, I would have preserved his life, if I could."

"So you did nothing," I said.

"On the contrary. Ever since you gave me the name Sligo, I have been searching for him, day and night. Well, night, at least. I have used my considerable influence among the local community of supernaturals. But all my efforts have turned up nothing – he has learned how to hide himself well."

"Say you had found him on your own," Karl said. "What then?"

Vollman shifted a little in his chair. "I would have stopped him from completing this insane ritual – without killing him, if at all possible."

"But here you are," I said. "What's changed?"

"What has changed is the passage of time," Vollman said. "Like you, I believe that tonight is when he will attempt to consummate the ritual, and that cannot be permitted. Should he fail, he will almost certainly die. And if he succeeds, as you have pointed out, Sergeant, many others will die, in the near future."

"So now you wanna work with us," I said, "and about fucking time, too. But knowing that Sligo is your son doesn't help us catch him. I'm not clear about what you're bringing to the table."

Vollman studied his hands for a few moments. "In truth, not as much as I had hoped," he said. "I had planned to share with you the information contained in the Opus Mago about the ritual – its purpose, and its requirements. I was going to tell you that tonight is when he will probably make the attempt – at least, I can think of no reason why he would wait another month, given the ever-present risk of discovery."

He looked up then. "But it seems you already have the information that you need about that evil book. Courtesy, I assume, of the professor who was killed at the hospital today."

"You got that right," I said. "So, I'm asking you again – what have you got to offer?"

"As we speak, my agents are combing the city, and its environs – not only in search of my son, but of any information about the planned ritual. If any of them learns something useful, they will contact me at once."

Vollman reached into a pocket and produced a cell phone. "Even nosferatu," he said, "must change with the times."

"And anything these guys tell you, you're gonna share with us?" Karl sounded skeptical, and I can't say that I blamed him.

"Yes, I will," Vollman said. "Things have gone too far for gentle methods. He must be stopped, even if it means his life. And I am no longer sure I can do it alone."

"And what are you asking from us?" I said.

"Any information you may uncover in the interim – and of course, your vigorous efforts to prevent this tragedy from happening. Which you would have exercised, anyway."

"All right, Vollman, we'll work with you," I said. "But I want something more."

"What might that be?"

"My daughter, Christine, is one of... you."

"Yes, I was aware of this."

"Do you know where she is tonight?"

"I do not attempt to keep track of all the city's creatures of the night," Vollman said. "But I can find out, if it is important. I assume it is, or you would not be asking."

"A threat was made against her," I said, "by a guy named Jamieson Longworth, now deceased. We believe he was somehow mixed up with your son."

"Indeed?" Vollman's tone was frosty. "Had I possessed that information earlier, I might have been able to use it and locate my son, thus saving us all considerable time and trouble."

"We only got the information that allowed us to figure it out yesterday," I told him, trying not to sound defensive.

"And you didn't exactly make yourself easy to find, did you?" Karl said.

"Point taken." Vollman inclined his head forward a little. "Very well, Sergeant. I will have your daughter Christine located. What then? Do you wish her brought here?"

"No, I'm expecting to be pretty busy. Just get her someplace safe, at least for tonight."

"I can do that," he said, "and I will." He stood up. "I should lend my efforts to the hunt for my son. There are those in the city who will not share information with my minions, but who might nonetheless talk to me–" Vollman gave us a humorless, fang-filled smile, "–especially if I ask nicely."

"We should trade phone numbers before you go," I said. "We can't afford any communication delays tonight."

"I agree entirely," he said.

The three of us exchanged cell phone numbers. I wrote Vollman's down, then looked up to tell him "Stay in touch."

He was gone.

"I hate it when he does that," I muttered.

"I don't know," Karl said. "I think it's kind of cool."

Over the next few hours, I looked at that wall map so many times I'm surprised I didn't burn a hole through it. Karl downloaded and printed some aerial photos from Google Earth and had them spread out on a table. My eyes just about wore them through, too.

We'd piv> he word out to every snitch we knew, human and otherwise. Anybody who could come up with reliable information about where Sligo was going to perform the ritual tonight would earn so much goodwill with us that he could probably knock off a dozen liquor stores without fear of arrest – although we didn't put it quite that way.

The other detectives in the squad knew the situation now, and they'd promised to work their own sources hard and to call in if they picked up anything useful.

Everybody was out on the street, except Karl, me, and McGuire. All three of us were so far past overtime that we probably weren't even getting paid anymore.

The silence in the squad room was like a vice pressing against my skull, squeezing tighter every minute. I willed one of our phones to ring, no matter who was calling – Vollman, one of the squad, a snitch, or even Christine letting me know that she was shacked up with a cute A-positive in Dunmore and wouldn't be home until dawn.

McGuire was at his desk, doing paperwork or pretending to. Karl stood in front of the wall map, staring like a desert traveler hoping for an oasis to appear. I was pacing around the room like an expectant father – exactly what I had done when Christine was born. I looked at my watch, for the thousandth time: 10:03.

"I bet the motherfucker is going to pick a yard with a big old swimming pool," Karl said, without taking his eyes off the map. "Then, once the spell's done, he can jump in and take a dip. Cool off a little. Black magic is hot work, I hear."

"The arrogant prick probably doesn't even–" and that was as far as I got.

I stopped pacing and stood utterly still, while images and sounds flashed through my brain:

–Sligo, swimming, with a conical cap on his head, like the wizard in Fantasia...

–Prescott's voice saying, "Still water, it has to be still water"...

–The photo on Jamieson Longworth's computer of a square, stone building near-surrounded by water...

–My cousin Marty, when I was fourteen: "Come on, Stan. Nobody goes up there, and the lock on the gate is a joke. You, me, and those two chicks from down the street. Whatdaya say? We'll have a cool swim on a hot night, and maybe we'll even get to see 'em naked!

"Well, fuck my ass and call me Shirley," I said softly.

"Stan?" Karl's voice. "Stan? Can you hear me? What is it, man?" I think he might have been speaking for a while.

I turned to face him. "Lemme borrow your pen."

I took the pen, ignoring the look on Karl's face, and went to the wall map. It took me only a few seconds to find the dot I was looking for. I circled it once, then again, and again, and stepped back. "That's where he is," I said. "Right there. He's right fucking there."

Speaking as fast as I could without becoming incoherent, I told McGuire and Karl what I had just figured out: Sligo was going to cast his spell in the pump house on top of the dam at Lake Scranton.

"He wants still water, and there's a shitload of it up there, and the place is isolated. It's not supposed to be for swimming – that's where the city drinking water comes from. But my cousin Marty and me and a couple of girls went skinny-dipping there one summer when I was fourteen. I saw the pump house close up, although we didn't go inside – it was locked. And the pump house is what's in that photo on Jamieson Longworth's computer – sure as I'm fucking standing here."

"That's good enough for me," McGuire said, and picked up the phon/div>

"Who're you calling?" I asked.

"SWAT. Dooley's supposed to be on call, twentyfour-seven."

"Good," I said. I went to my desk and started rummaging through the pile of papers on top of it.

"What're you looking for?" Karl asked me.

"That phone number Vollman left us. Here it is."

A few seconds later, I was listening to the phone ringing in, I hoped, Vollman's pocket. It rang. And rang. Then after the seventh ring, one of those synthesized computer voices that I hate said, "No one is available at the moment to take your call. Please leave your name and number, and your call will be returned as soon as humanly possible."

I wondered whether "humanly" was Vollman's idea of a little joke.

At the beep, I said, "Vollman, this is Markowski. It's going down at the pump house, at the top of the Lake Scranton Dam. I need to know if you've located Christine, because that's gonna determine our tactics. Call me, or get over here, fast!"

Karl had just finished checking the loads in that big Glock of his. He looked at me. "Determine our tactics?"

"If we know Christine's safe, we can go in there with all guns blazing – or SWAT can. But since she's still missing… don't you think Jamieson Longworth would get a giggle in Hell, knowing that Christine was going to be Sligo's final vampire victim?"

"But we don't know for sure that Longworth and Sligo were even in cahoots, Stan."

"Do you believe in that many coincidences?" I asked.

That brought a little smile to Karl's face. Before I could ask what was so damn funny, he said, the way you do when you're quoting somebody, "'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.'"

"Who said that? Although he's right, whoever it was."

"Auric Goldfinger – to James Bond."

McGuire came out of his office, scowling. "Problem. Big one. The SWAT unit, every one of them, is on administrative suspension, pending investigation into possible wrongdoing in the death of one Jamieson Longworth."

"What kind of fucking bullshit is that?" Karl said.

"Mrs. Longworth again," I said to McGuire.

"Yeah, most likely. Dooley says the union's fighting it, on the grounds that SWAT's vital to public safety – but they're not gonna get it overturned in– " he looked at his watch, "–the next eighty-five fucking minutes."

"If this is a nightmare, I hope I wake up soon," I said quietly. "We don't have SWAT, we don't have a warrant for the fucking pump house–"

"Isn't that city property?" Karl asked. "Don't need a warrant for that."

"No, the water company owns it," I said. "Don't interrupt me when I'm bitching – no SWAT, no warrant, no Vollman..." I stopped, and just shook my head.

"You've got these, though." McGuire held out a key and a slip of paper.

"What?" I asked impatiently.

"A master key, which will open any office in the building, including SWAT's, and–" he held out the paper to me, "–the combination to the SWAT weapons room. The key is from me, who will have no idea how you got it. The combination's courtesy of Dooley, who says 'Kick some ass for us, too.'"

I took the paper and key and looked at Karl. "You heard the man – let's go kick some ass."

It was quiet in the part of the building that SWAT called home, so nobody asked us what the hell we were doing. Just as well. The mood I was in, if somebody had, I might have shot them.

As Karl unlocked the SWAT team's door, I said, "You know, vampires and wizards and shit – that's weird enough. But now, we're in the middle of a fucking 'buddy cop' movie."

Karl pushed the door open and felt around for the light switch. "Is that what it is? Sure hope you're right, Stan."

"Why – you like that stuff?"

"Yeah, but that's not why I said it."

"I think the weapons room is back there," I said, pointing. "Okay, I give. Why do you want this to be a buddy cop movie?"

"Because the good guys always win," he said, as we walked to the back of the big room. "And neither of the cops ever gets killed. Maybe a flesh wound, arm in a sling in the final scene – but nothing worse. I could handle that. Here – gimme that combination."

Consulting the paper, Karl carefully turned the big dial back and forth a few times, then tried the handle. The steel door unlocked with a click. I gave the handle a pull, and the door opened smoothly on well-oiled hinges. A couple of bright florescent lights in the ceiling came on automatically.

"Holy fuck," Karl said softly. "Will you look at this shit!"

We were bleeding time faster than a vampire's victim loses blood, so within ten minutes of opening the SWAT unit's weapons room, Karl and I were in the parking lot, heading for a brown Plymouth – the car the department had assigned us to replace the one with the man-sized dent in its roof

We walked as fast as we could with all the stuff we were carrying. Stopping behind our new ride, I was fishing for the keys when I heard the sound of a car door opening in the row behind us, then heard it again. Part of my mind noticed that I didn't hear those doors slam shut.

I wasn't worried. Jamieson Longworth was dead, and his buddy, Sligo, was up at Lake Scranton, getting ready for the biggest night of his life – which I hoped would also be his last.

I should have worried.

I realized that when I heard, from behind us, the distinctive clickety-clack of a shotgun being racked.

Both of Karl's arms were full; so was one of mine, while my other hand was deep in my pants pocket, digging for the car keys. We had no chance at all.

Then a familiar man's voice told us, "Stand very still, gentlemen."

We froze like Gorgon statues.

After a few seconds, he said, "Good. Now, without unburdening yourselves, turn this way. Slowly."

Once I'd heard that voice, I was pretty sure we were fucked. Then we turned around, and I knew it for certain.

The Reverends Ferris and Crane, still wearing their elegant gray suits, stood thirty feet away, next to the open doors of a big black Caddy. Crane held the shotgun barrel pointed right at Karl and me, and we were so close together, I knew one blast would nail us both. The nasty smile was back on Crane's schoolboy face. The Reverend Ferris was smiling, too, and it wasn't hard to guess why.

"How good to see you both again, Detectives," he said. "Reverend Crane had started to wonder if you were ever going to join us out here, but I reminded him that the Lord provides those who serve Him with what they need, all in due time. And here you are."

"We have unfinished business," Crane said. I guess he felt he should contribute something besides firepower.

"Indeed we do." Ferris looked as happy as a little boy with a new kitten – a kitten he planned to tor ture to death, as soon as he could get it alone. "The sergeant has some questions to answer for us. And do you know, Detective Renfer, I believe I smell the taint of witchcraft on you, too. I'm afraid you'll have to come along with us, as well."

I thought about the surveillance cameras trained on the parking lot. Although always recording, they weren't monitored regularly. It would be hours before anybody inside the building learned that we had been abducted by the two witchfinders. By then, of course, it would be too late. For everybody.

Ferris's smile faded, to be replaced by a solemn look, the kind you associate with a hanging judge. His voice was all business as he said, "All right then: one at a time, you will bend forward slowly, and deposit that junk you're carrying on the ground. You won't be needing it, I'm sure. Detective Renfer first. Now."

Karl bent over and gently laid down his share of what we'd taken from the SWAT weapons room. But I saw that as he straightened up, he managed to take a half step away from me. The reverends apparently didn't notice.

"Very good," Ferris said. "Now you, Sergeant Markowski. Slowly."

As I finished putting my stuff on the cracked asphalt, I managed to emulate Karl with a sneaky half step in the other direction.

One thing I knew for certain: we were not getting into the Caddy with these two righteous sadists. What would happen to Karl and me would be bad enough. But if nobody stopped Sligo, and his spell was successful…

Karl and I would have to make our stand here, win or lose. And the next thing we needed to do was get more distance between us. I took another slow half-step to my right.

"Stand still!" Crane barked. "Don't move!"

"I'm sorry, Reverend," I said. "I didn't mean to be disobedient, but you didn't say anything about standing in place, before."

As I spoke, I saw Karl move a little further to his left. The shotgun barrel shifted in his direction, and I took the opportunity to slide my feet a little more to the right. Crane turned the gun back on me.

"I said don't move, damn you!" While Crane yelled at me, I saw, from the corner of my eye, the additional step that Karl got in.

"Stay still, or I'll shoot you right here!" Crane said, hysteria rising in his voice.

"I would do what Reverend Crane says," Ferris said sternly. "Taking you for questioning is our ideal outcome, but if we must leave your corpses here, that is acceptable, as well. Sinners must pay for their sins, one way or another."

Karl and I had gained what we wanted. We were now too far apart for a single blast from that shotgun to get us both. One of us would live to put three or four rounds into Crain's chest before he could rack another round into the firing chamber. And since Ferris appeared unarmed…

"What makes you so certain that we're sinners, Reverend?" I asked. "Isn't there something about letting he who is without sin cast the first stone?"

I didn't dare look toward Karl now, but I was sure he'd taken advantage of the couple of seconds their attention was on me to push his jacket back a bit on one side, making for quicker access to his holstered weapon.

"Yeah, Reverend, are you guys that pure yourselves?" Karl said loudly, and when they looked his way, I moved my right forearm back slowly, taking the suit jacket with it. The fabric was almost clear of the holster now.

The clock was ticking towards midnight, and we had exactly zero time to waste with these clowns. At least one of us had to get to Lake Scranton, and fast.

Might as well thre dice, and see whose number came up.

I was tensing my gun arm as Ferris snapped, "I have no intention of debating theology with the likes of you." He produced two pairs of handcuffs. "Now, you are going to–"

There was movement in the air behind them, something so fast I couldn't tell what it was. Then a shadow appeared directly behind Crane, a black form that reached out and grasped Crane's jaw in one hand, his head in the other, and twisted, hard. Crane was dead before he even knew he was dying.

The shadow blurred again, flowing over the roof of the Cadillac and the dark figure became Vollman, in front of Ferris now, grasping his throat with one hand, lifting the witchfinder off his feet, seemingly without effort…

"Vollman!" I managed to yell. "Don't!"

The words were barely out of my mouth as Vollman shook Ferris hard, once, the way a terrier shakes a rat – and with similar results. I didn't hear Ferris's neck break, but I saw the way his head lolled before Vollman dropped the limp form to the ground.

Vollman quickly walked over to us and said, "I received your message, and came here as quickly as I could. Fortunate that I did not arrive a minute later – I need both of you alive tonight."

Karl was unlocking the trunk of the Plymouth. I stood there, torn by more conflicting impulses than I've ever had to deal with at the same time.

If you want to imagine one of those internal dialogues that people in the movies sometimes have – you know, with an angel perched on one shoulder and a devil on the other – mine would have gone something like this:

Angel: You've just seen Vollman commit murder. Maybe not with Crane, but Ferris was unarmed. That's murder – arrest him!

Devil: Vollman just saved your life – either yours or Karl's. You were about to throw the dice, remember? You knew that either you or Karl was gonna catch that shotgun load right in the chest. And Ferris might even have had a piece under his coat. If he'd gone for it, one of you would have had to kill him, anyway.

Angel: It doesn't matter – the law's the law. Besides, Vollman's a vampire, an evil creature of the night. He doesn't deserve a break.

Devil: Aren't you getting ready to risk your life at least partly to save a vampire you think is in danger, who happens to be your daughter – the daughter who's a vampire because of you?

Angel: Be pragmatic. Remember the surveillance cameras! They've recorded what Vollman just did – and that you were there, and saw it. If you don't arrest Vollman, you'll be charged as an accessory to murder, you and Karl both.

Devil: They only check the video if something's reported as happening in the parking lot. If nothing's reported in seventy-two hours or so, they wipe the memory and reuse the hard drive space.

Angel: Well, when somebody finds those two bodies, don't you think that would count as "something happened"?

Devil: So, make sure the bodies aren't found. Vollman can probably help you there.

Angel: Do that, and you're making a deal with the devil, Stanley.

Devil: Wouldn't be the first time, Stan. And besides, you need this particular devil on your side, tonight, up at the dam. And the clock is ticking, dude, toward midnight and the End of the World as We Know It.

Angel: It's not really that bad.

Devil: It's fucking bad enough!

All this took place in maybe three seconds. Standing there, as never know the convoluted mental process that led to me telling Vollman, "Those bodies are going to be a problem, if they're found."

Vollman thought for a moment. "Very well – I will attend to it. Finish loading your equipment – and hurry!"

Karl and I put the SWAT stuff into the trunk as fast as we could. We closed the trunk lid and turned to find Vollman standing there. "The bodies are in the trunk of their vehicle. I have left the keys in the ignition. One of my people will move it before dawn, and those two fools will not be seen again. Satisfied?"

I wanted to ask Vollman how one of his "people" was going to get in to what was supposed to be a secure parking area. The witchfinders probably had a pass from the mayor's office, but... what came out of my mouth instead was, "Fine. Get in."

Lake Scranton is at the southern edge of the city, just off Route 307. Seen from the air, it resembles a bat with its wings spread wide. It's an artificial lake, created by diverting a tributary of the Lackawanna River, then building a dam to hold the water in. The distance around the perimeter is something like three and a half miles and the dam, with the pump house on top, is at the lower edge of the bat's left wing.

You'd think the pump house would be dead center on the dam. But it actually sits about two hundred feet from the northern end, with another couple of thousand feet of dam beyond it until you reach the other shore. The stone and cement platform it's built on is perpendicular to the top of the dam, so the little building appears to be sitting on top of the water.

If you were interested, for some reason, in launching an attack on the pump house, you could come in either on the short side, with two hundred feet of concrete dam to cross, or the long side, which is about ten times the distance. If you were a team of Navy SEALs, you'd probably come in by water, climb to the top of the dam with ropes and grappling hooks, and catch everybody in the pump house by complete surprise.

I could have used me a team of Navy SEALs, right about then.

One thing that I didn't need any commandos to teach me: you plan for the enemy's capabilities, not his intentions – because you can sometimes figure out the first, but never be sure about the second.

As we followed the short stretch of Route 307 that would take us to the dam, I asked Vollman, "What kind of spells is he likely to have prepared? Any idea?"

Despite what you see in the movies, wizards and witches can't just wave their hands and make magic happen. It looks that way sometimes, but in fact any hand waving or magic words are used to activate pre-prepared spells. And those take some time, effort, and skill to get ready.

It's kind of like using a gun: you have to load it to make it dangerous. And although you have your choice of ammunition, the piece will hold only so many bullets, and you can only carry so much ammo with you.

"Impossible to know," Vollman said from the back seat. "He is so sure of his own invincibility, that he may have prepared nothing at all, on the assumption that he will face no opposition tonight."

"But we can't count on that,"

"No," Vollman said, "of course not. I only mention it as a possibility."

Enemy capabilities: unknown. Terrific.

We were approaching the exit that would take us to the access roads for the dam. "Does it matter which side we go in on?" I asked Vollman. "The short end or the long end?"

"The faster our final approach, the less chance of detection," he said. "I see no advantage to the long way."

"Sit is, then."

I turned off the lights as we followed the narrow access road that led to the dam. No point in begging to be noticed. Anyway the full moon, shining down through the scattered wispy clouds, gave all the light I needed.

It was a beautiful night. I wondered how many of us would survive it.

"Vollman," I said, "can you scry the place before we go in – find out the layout, so we know what to expect?"

He didn't respond right away, and I glanced over my shoulder in time to see him shake his head slowly. "I can do so," he said, "but as soon as I commence, Richard will sense the presence of magic close at hand. He will then be alerted to our whereabouts."

Karl turned in his seat and looked back at Vollman. "If you don't scry, or use some other kind of magic, is he gonna know we're coming, anyway?"

"Ordinarily, I would say 'yes.' Wizards are very sensitive to the presence of potential enemies. But tonight he is giving so much of his attention and energy to the ritual, he may be too preoccupied."

"May," Karl said sourly.

"May is the most accurate assessment possible under these circumstances," Vollman said. "I regret that I cannot offer you certainty, Detective. For all our sakes."

There was silence as I braked the Plymouth to a slow halt about fifty feet from the chain link fence and gate that guarded this end of the dam.

Then Vollman said, "But one thing that I can do is to counter any magic he uses against you, allowing both of you the freedom to disrupt the ritual and, if necessary, effect the rescue of Miss Markowski."

"Well, that's a relief," Karl said, with no sarcasm at all.

"It might be best," Vollman said, "if I were to remain out of sight for as long as possible. I can counter his spells from outside that little building as well as I could from within it."

"So you can stop his magic," I said. "Can he stop yours?"

"That depends on whose is the stronger."

"And that's you, right?" Karl said.

"As they say in those awful television programs I sometimes find myself watching, There is one way to find out."

Karl and I had each taken from the SWAT armory a pump shotgun, a selection of ammunition, and several of the "Splash-bang" grenades we'd seen the team use at Jamieson Longworth's place. We hurriedly loaded the shotguns, making our best guess as to what we would need in there.

"Double-ought buckshot for the door," I said. I once saw a guy use some to make a very large hole in a brick wall.

Karl rummaged through the boxes of shotgun ammo. "Zap the lock? Like the SWAT guys did?"

"The door's probably made of iron," I said. "We take the hinges. It's more certain."

Karl looked at Vollman. "Can't you take the door down for us, with magic?"

"I could," Vollman said. "But since you have the means on hand yourselves, it is perhaps best that I conserve my energies."

That was Vollman's fancy way of saying "Save my strength." It didn't exactly inspire confidence.

The shotguns held five shells apiece. "For the rest, load whatever you want," I said. "We don't know what we'll be dealing with in there. And don't assume you'll get the chance to reload, because you probably won't."

I loaded two shells filled with blessed silver pellets, then one of garlic-soaked rock salt, then another double-ought buck, and one more silver for luck. I didn't pay attention towhat Karl picked.

Once we reached the chain link fence at the dam's entrance, I saw that the gate was secured with a chain and a big Yale padlock. Maybe Sligo had come in the long way; or it could be he just floated over it.

A shotgun blast would take care of the lock, but I didn't want to announce that we were here until I had to. I looked at Vollman and said, barely above a whisper, "Can you...?"

The old vampire nodded, took hold of the lock, and said something under his breath. It sprang open, and I watched him remove and toss it aside. I was sure glad he was willing to expend the energy.

The three of us began the short walk along the top of the dam to the pump house. Ahead, I could see light coming from behind the two windows, brightly illuminating the cracks of the tightly closed shutters.

I kept waiting for all hell to break loose, although I had no idea what form it might take – alarms, devil bats, automatic weapons fire – who knew what kind of shit Sligo might have prepared?

With every step I heard from my guts, which were caring on an ongoing monologue with my conscious mind. This is a bad idea, Stan. We could die here, Stan. Get us out of here, Stan – before it's too late.

I kept putting one foot in front of the other. Call me brave, optimistic, or stupid. I was leaning toward the third explanation, myself.

Nothing happened. I didn't know if Sligo was indifferent or careless, but for most of the short walk all we heard was the chuckling of water in the dam and a few night birds in the trees behind us.

Then inside the pump house a woman started screaming, and suddenly I was running.

Karl was only a couple of steps behind me when I reached the door. As I'd figured, it was steel. I tried the knob, in case Sligo was really confident, but it seemed he'd at least locked the door.

I backed up as far as I could, looked at Karl and pointed at the lower hinge. Then I said, "On three," and took careful aim at the upper one. Inside, the screaming continued.

Part of my brain was wondering if I was going to get a face full of ricocheted buckshot as I said, "One, two–"

The two shots melded into one big boom. The hinge I'd fired at was in pieces, and a quick glance showed me that Karl's was, too. The metal itself had buckled around the impact areas.

I grabbed the edge of the door where it was protruding and yanked, hard as I could. That pulled it loose from the frame a little. Then Karl got a grip further down, and together we tore that thing free and slammed it to the concrete at our feet with a clang that I could feel more than hear, since I was temporarily deaf from the shotgun blasts.

As soon as the door came down I became almost blind, as well as deaf. My God, it was bright in there, and my eyes were still adjusted to the semi-dark of outside. But if I stayed put, I was a dead man, so I dived at an angle where I hoped the doorway was, rolled, and came up on one knee – which hurt a lot more than it used to. I felt more than saw Karl do something similar in the other direction.

If Sligo threw any magic at us in the next few seconds, we'd never know it until too late. But either Vollman was on top of his game, or Sligo wasn't, since nothing came our way as my eyes adjusted. Now I could see that the glaring light came from at least a dozen glowing globes hanging from the ceiling, supplemented by several portable spotlights whose glare bounced off the walls and ceiling every which way. Sligo must have installed all of this; I was pretty sure it wasn't part of the original pump house blueprintally c>

I didn't take time to gawk around, but your eyes can take in a lot of information really fast, especially if you're as keyed up as I was. As I scanned the room in search of something to kill, I was dimly aware that the usual spellcasting paraphernalia was all over the place: incense burners, gongs of different sizes, tall candles in metal holders, the whole nine yards. But the real show was up front.

The building seemed at least twice as big as you'd think from looking at the outside, which I assumed was more of Sligo's magic. At the far end of the room, three long tables were set up, forming an open rectangle with the open end facing the back wall. They were covered with cloths of black and red with arcane symbols woven into them, and on top of those were all the tools and toys the modern occultist can't seem to do without: bowls, flagons, more candles, knives, and so forth. But you could tell the middle table was special. That was where he'd placed, in an ornate brass holder, a thick, oldlooking book with a cracked leather cover.

Looked like I'd found the Opus Mago at last.

Taking in all that took only a few seconds, and then my attention was riveted to what was dangling from the ceiling. Or rather, who.

A length of chain was suspended over the middle of the open rectangle, tied around a rafter. From the chain hung, head down, the nude, bleeding form of a woman. Her legs were tied at ankles and knees with rope that sparkled in the light, as if shot through with some kind of metal filings. The same stuff had been used to bind her wrists, and a length of it ran from there to attach tightly to a ring affixed into the stone floor.

The woman had fallen silent when Karl and I burst in, but it wasn't hard to figure why she'd been screaming. She looked to be bleeding from three points, in a line between her groin and breasts. The wounds were three symbols carved into her body, probably by the silver-bladed knife in the hand of the man who stood nearby. He was giving Karl and me the kind of look that most men reserve for Jehovah's Witnesses who show up during the Super Bowl.

I assumed the man was the one I'd started calling the Evil Wizard Sligo. But the woman I knew for certain: it was Christine.

I brought the shotgun up to aim, but Sligo took two fast steps sideways that put Christine's body between him and my gun barrel, using her as a shield. Well, nobody said that Evil Wizards have to be brave. Off to my left, I saw Karl moving forward slowly and at an angle, probably maneuvering for a clear shot. I shuffled to the right, with the same idea in mind.

Then Sligo shouted a couple of words in a language I didn't recognize and brought enough of himself out from behind Christine to make a quick throwing motion in my direction, before ducking back.

Motherfucker throws like a girl.

But I guess form doesn't count for much in magic, because an orb of fire about the size of a beach ball appeared in midair, moving fast and coming right at me. I had just enough time to realize that I was about to die when the fireball dissolved into nothing, about twenty feet from me.

It seemed that Vollman was on the job.

I took another couple of slow steps, waiting for Sligo to expose enough of himself for a shot that wouldn't endanger Christine.

Don't look at her. Focus. Focus on sending this bastard to Hell, then you can help her. Focus.

Sligo stuck his head out from the other side of Christine's dangling form and repeated the throwing motion, with the identical result. The ball of fire flew at Karl, but dissipated before it reached him.

Sligo wasn't done yet. He made a cryptic gesture at me while muttering something I couldn't hear, and then a dozen knives were in the air, as if they'd been thrown by twelve expert hands, all right at me.

But then that wave of edged steel suddenly parted, and I heard the knives bounce and clatter harmlessly off the stone wall behind me.

I was closer to the altar now.

He sent Karl a swarm of what looked like hundreds of bees, buzzing like a madman's dream – I assumed they were the African killer variety. By the time they reached Karl, the vicious insects had been transformed into drops of water. The only harm he suffered, far as I could tell, was getting a little of it in his eyes.

Then Sligo dispatched a blast of hurricane-force wind at both of us, which, just for an instant, was strong enough to drive me back a step, before it turned into a gentle breeze.

Go, Vollman.

I'd made a couple more steps forward when Sligo's arm snaked out from behind Christine. His hand held the silver-coated dagger, and he placed the point right over her heart.

"Hold! Both of you!" he yelled. I stopped at once, and saw Karl do the same.

After a few seconds, Sligo slid out from behind Christine, but the dagger point never lost contact with her flesh. I noticed she was still bleeding from the three wounds he'd inflicted on her earlier.

Now I got my first good look at Sligo, aka Richard Vollman. He didn't look anything special, but I knew from experience that Evil Wizards are rarely nine feet tall, and they hardly ever have horns and a tail. Sligo looked to be about twenty, which I guess was his age when Dad lost control of his appetite and turned him. Apart from the hair, which was the same slicked-back widow's peak as his old man, I didn't see much family resemblance. He was slim, maybe six feet, dressed in tight jeans and a white dress shirt with the sleeves folded back a couple of times. Guess he hadn't figured that becoming the world's first super-vampire was a fancy dress occasion.

Sligo was breathing like someone who's just sprinted a hundred yards. He pointed a finger at me, and I noticed his hand was shaking a little as he said, "You! How is it that a couple of miserable fucking blood bags like you two can suddenly work magic? If you had the Talent, either of you, I'd have smelled it on you earlier. How?"

Then a voice I recognized spoke from behind me.

"They do not perform magic. But I do."

Sligo's eyes widened for an instant, before narrowing into slits.

"I should have known." He nodded slowly. "I should have known you'd interfere, even find some pathetic warmbloods to do your bidding."

Sligo gestured with his free hand toward the central altar, the book resting atop it like a big, poisonous toad. "But not this time, old man. You can't stop me! And when the transformation is complete, the first thing I'm going to do is come for you – at high noon. I'll find you, cowering from the sun in your pathetic box of earth, and then I'll drag you outside and watch you burn!"

"No, Richard," Vollman said. His voice sounded as full of sorrow as his son's was full of hate. "It must stop here. It must stop tonight."

Vollman walked briskly forward, spreading his arms like wings. Sligo withdrew the knife from Christine's breast and began to walk toward his father.

I realized he'd just given me a clean shot, and I wanted to end this fucker's life more than I wanted my next breath, and I brought the gun up to kill him, but Sligo, even while moving toward his father, made a complex gesture in the air – and this tme Vollman was too preoccupied to block the spell.

What I can only describe as a blast of pure magical energy blasted me off my feet and sent me careening backward, like somebody in a wind tunnel – until I was stopped by my impact with the pump house wall.

Karl was hit by the same force, but his luck was even worse. Instead of slamming flat into the rear wall as I was, his body slammed into one of the broad stone pillars that held up the roof, and I thought I saw his spine bend backward with the impact just before the wall of the pump house hit me like a train.

I'd had enough sense to try to break my impact the same way you break a fall in judo: arms spread, palms flat and a little behind me. Maybe it helped a little, I don't know. But that stone wall hit me harder than I've ever been hit in my life and the shock and sorrow I felt for Karl was lost in the wave of unconsciousness that grabbed me and squeezed me and bore me down into the blackness.

I don't know how long I was down there in the dark. I opened my eyes and tried to get them to focus. I was sitting on the stone floor, my back against the wall that had so abruptly stopped my little journey through the air. I hurt in places I hadn't even known I had.

My vision came back into focus slowly. The first thing I saw were my hands. One was in my lap, and the other was limp on the floor next to me. Both palms were scraped and oozing blood. I remembered something about trying to break my fall, except I hadn't been falling, exactly. Something about judo. Whatever my bright idea had been, it didn't seem to have worked real well.

I tried to raise my head, and my vision blurred again. A word floated out of the part of my brain that was still functioning: concussion.

Every street cop gets knocked around some while on the job, and I'd been concussed before, according to a couple of ER doctors. But this concussion, if that's what it was, compared to the earlier ones the way a car crash is like falling off your tricycle.

I tried to keep my head from flopping back down, and succeeded, more or less. When I could see again, I found that I was looking at Karl. He was lying on his side, maybe fifty feet to my left, one arm outstretched, fingers hooked into a claw. The middle of his body was blocked from my vision by the pillar that he'd slammed into. Karl didn't move at all, and I was too far away to tell if he was breathing.

I turned my head, which not only caused another loss of focus but brought on a wave of vertigo that was more like a tsunami. I'd have puked, if there'd been any food in my stomach. When had I last eaten – breakfast? Was that today, or yesterday?

After a while I thought I could see again, but maybe I was just hallucinating. At the far side of the room, in front of that three-sided altar, two figures were struggling. They should have been Vollman and Sligo – I mean, who else could they be?

But what I was seeing, or imagining, didn't look like the two vampire/wizards – not as I remembered them. My brain must have been scrambled but good, because it seemed like I was looking a couple of Roman-style gladiators, shuffling around on the blood-soaked dirt of some arena, hacking at each other with big, heavy swords and defending with manhole-size shields. Roman fucking gladiators – but their faces were those of Vollman and Sligo.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to take in any more evidence that I'd gone totally fucking insane. But then I opened them again, and found that I was still seeing things that weren't there – that couldn't be there.

How else to explain that dusty Western street, with Sligo and Vollman dressed in outfits that belonged in some particularly gritty Spaghetti Western? They stood maybe thirty feet apart, eyes narrowed, tense hands hovering over the handles of their holstered guns, while the wind blew a single, forlorn tumbleweed between them.

I went away again for a while, and when I returned, it looked like the Western theme was still clinging to my subconscious. That would explain why I could see Sligo, in breechcloth and war paint, razor-edged tomahawk in one hand, locked in combat with a saber-wielding U.S. Cavalry trooper who looked an awful lot like his old man.

I closed my eyes once more, and started to wonder if maybe I'd died from hitting the wall, and Hell was a series of bad TV reruns. When I looked again, at least the channel had changed, because a U.S. Marine resembling Sligo was desperately trying to drive the bayonet on his M-1 through the body of Vollman, who was dressed as a soldier of the Rising Sun, a samurai sword held high in both hands.

This series of fantasy visions seemed to go on forever, lending further support to my I'm-deadand-in-Hell theory. I remember Vollman and Sligo, in gray and blue, respectively, going at each other on a Civil War battlefield, then it was on to a bloody no man's land of World War I, followed by a vicious gang fight in some urban jungle, and I'm pretty sure we all ended up at the Alamo, with Mexican soldier Vollman contending viciously with Sligo, who was wearing a coonskin cap and swinging a Kentucky rifle like a club. Then, mercifully, I passed out again.

I was brought back to reality, if that's what it was, by the scream. I forced my eyes open and saw Sligo, dressed as he'd been when we first broke in, standing over the still form of Vollman. There wasn't a mark on either one of them that I could see.

The scream was coming from Sligo. Fists clenched, head thrown back, face gleaming with sweat, he stood over the body of the father he'd hated for so long. It went on for what seemed like long time, the scream did; it combined elation with rage and, if I'm not mistaken, a pretty fair dose of grief, too. All in one great bellow.

Then he was done. Panting, he wiped his face with his sleeve, then looked at his watch. At once, he turned back to the altar.

I tried to concentrate on what he was doing. At the moment, I didn't give a shit if he became a super-vampire or the world tiddlywinks champ, as long as he didn't do anything more to hurt Christine. But I kept remembering that the other four vampires who'd been material for this ritual all had to die. First he'd carved his magical symbols on them, as specified by the Opus Mago, then he'd killed them. I assume the book said to do that, too.

Sligo stood behind the altar and went through the ritual. He read aloud from the Opus Mago sometimes, he rang bells, mixed powders and liquid in bowls, burned incense, and generally looked like he was having a great old time. Big fucking deal.

Then he picked up the silver-bladed knife.

That finally galvanized me into action. Or as much action as I was capable of, which turned out to be not much. I looked for the shotgun, but couldn't see where I'd dropped it, even in the glaringly bright light Sligo had brought to the pump house. I remembered the Beretta on my belt and fumbled for it, only to find the holster empty. Must have been knocked loose when I'd smashed into the wall. The pistol had to be on the floor close by, but every time I moved my head in search of it, the vertigo returned and my vision started acting funky again.

Sligo was holding the dagger reverently in both hands now, reading an incantation from the book in that incomprehensible language. Even in my fucked-up mental state, I figured it was only a matter of time before he'd stop chanting and start cutting – the cutting was going to be on my little girl.

I fumbled my hands into my jacket pockets, an operation that seemed to take an hour. I was searching for my phone, with the vague notion of calling 911. I couldn't find the damn thing, and part me knew it didn't matter, really. There was nobody I could call who would possibly get here in–

The fingers of my right hand brushed metal. Not the phone – something smaller, and much thinner. Round and curved on one side, jagged on the other. It felt like... part of a coin.

Kulick's amulet.

The one I was supposed to hold while saying his full name five times, once I'd found Sligo.

The one that he promised would bring him to me.

Well, I'd located Sligo, at last. Guess it was time to make the call.

I wrapped my fingers around that slim little halfcircle, and tried to remember. Four names. Okay, Kulick, I knew. First name was... George. That's two. The true name, his wizard name... it had sounded like something out of a science fiction novel. Trasis? No, Thraxis. George Thraxis Kulick. But there was another one, another name.

At the altar, Sligo had stopped chanting. Squinting, I could see that he had turned away from the book, and was facing Christine.

Herman? No, nothing so normal. Something a little weird, kind of like Herman, but...

Harmon.

George Harmon Thraxis Kulick

Say it out loud, dummy!

"George Harmon Thraxis Kulick."

Again.

"George Harmon Thraxis Kulick."

Three more. Hurry!

Sligo walked toward Christine, the dagger in his hands.

"Georgeharmonthraxiskulickgeorgeharmonthraxiskulickgeorgeharmonthraxiskulick!"

I couldn't see the altar anymore, because something was blocking my vision. A leg, a woman's leg in a skirt. It moved now, the woman stepping forward, away from me. I raised my head higher, fought the vertigo, made my fucking eyes focus.

It was Rachel. Or rather, it wasn't.

George Kulick had joined the party at last.

Rachel's head turned back, looked at me, and after a moment, nodded. Kulick's voice said, "A bargain made is a bargain kept. That's the law."

At the altar, Christine screamed.

Rachel Proctor collapsed bonelessly to the floor, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. The spirit of George Kulick had left her body, at long last, to go... where?

I made my eyes focus on Sligo, and almost wished I hadn't. He'd jabbed the silver blade into Christine's lower belly, bringing forth another scream, and now he was adjusting his grip, with the clear intention of pulling the knife upward toward Christine's breastbone, opening her up from groin to chest.

I closed my eyes. I couldn't watch, couldn't bear it. The only hope I had left was that she would die quickly, become truly dead, and go someplace where there was no more pain, and no more fear.

And for this I'd "saved" her from leukemia.

Christine, I couldn't protect you, and I'm sorry, baby, so sorry. But as long as I have breath in my body, I will dedicate myself to taking vengeance on this motherfucker, I swear it.

I guess I was crying, I don't know, but my head came up at the sound of another scream. Because this one was in a man's voice.

Sligo had withdrawn the knife from Christine's belly without cutting any further. He had dropped it on the altar, and was clutching both hands to the sides of his head, as he screeched "No! Get out! Leave me now – I command you!"

In my concussed state, it took me a few seconds to figure things out, but then I knew who Sligo was talking to: George Kulick.

And now I knew where Kulick had gone when he left Rachel – inside Sligo. He was taking possession of Sligo's body exactly as he had Rachel's – except that Kulick didn't hate Rachel when he'd assumed control of her. She'd been merely a tool. A tool for vengeance.

I don't know why Kulick was able to invade without any resistance, unless Sligo had used up all his psychic energy in destroying his father, and had none left to protect himself. But Kulick was in there now, and Sligo was clearly losing the battle for control over his own body. He dropped to his knees with the strain of trying to expel Kulick from inside him, then fell over on his face. But after, I don't know, a minute or two, Sligo's screaming and writhing stopped. He stood, slowly. I thought I could see something different in his face, but I was too far away and too fucked-up to say for sure.

I know for certain what happened next, though. Sligo's hand slowly reached out to the altar for the silver-bladed dagger. I had a moment's panic, thinking that he had somehow defeated Kulick, after all, and was planning to take the knife to Christine again.

I needn't have worried. He never even looked toward Christine.

That's not to say that the dagger didn't see a lot of use in the following few minutes – all of it upon the person of Richard Vollman, also known as Sligo.

I don't think I want to tell you all the things Kulick made Sligo do with that blade. In my job, I see a lot of blood and sadism, but this would have made Satan himself throw up.

Karl told me once about an article he'd read describing Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Paris. I gather that back in the day those sickos used to put on performances that were the ancestors of our modern-day splatter films. What was going on at the front of the pump house was like that – except none of the blood was fake. And there was a lot of blood.

After a while, I couldn't look any more. You'd think I would be full of vengeful satisfaction over what was happening to that motherfucker, who'd tried to kill me, my partner, and my little girl. At first, yeah, that's pretty much how I felt. But the things Sligo was being made to do to himself with that knife – before I looked away, I actually started to feel some pity for him. Not a lot, but some.

I assumed this was all going to end by Sligo plunging the silver dagger into his own black heart, achieving true death, and by then glad to get it. But I'd underestimated George Kulick's appetite for revenge.

Kulick didn't make Sligo kill himself. Instead, when the last full measure of vengeance, short of death, had finally been extracted, he forced Sligo to fling the dagger out of reach – probably so that he couldn't use it for self-destruction.

Then Kulick just – left.

I happened to be looking at the precise moment when George Kulick's spirit left Sligo's body. I saw a brief ripple in the air just over where Sligo lay on the blood-soaked floor, and I thought that might be Kulick's departure. Then Sligo started screaming, and I was certain.

I call it "screaming," but what Sligo was doing sounded more like loud croaking, and it just went on and on. It's hard to scream when you don't have a tongue, or lips or... well, you get the idea.

I don't know where Kulick went, except that he never returned. He'd saidsomething, back at the parking garage, about being intrigued by the afterlife. I guess he went off to see for himself.

Fuck both of them. I needed to reach Christine, who was still tied and hanging upside down from the ceiling, bleeding from the stomach puncture as well as the three symbols carved into her flesh. I had to get her loose, and find help for her. Hell, everybody left alive in that room needed help, including me. I tried to look for my cell phone, but every turn of my head brought the vertigo back. Fuck the phone, then.

Karl still lay in the position he'd landed in. It didn't look like he was still among the living , but I needed to know for sure. I tried to stand, and fell forward on my face. Tried again, with the same result. I'd decided to crawl, all the way to Karl and then to Christine, when I saw Rachel Proctor stir.

I hadn't even been sure she was alive.

Rachel moved her legs a little, then a little more. Then she gave the kind of groan you might hear from somebody waking up after a three-day bender. I managed to croak, "Rachel." Even that much made my head throb.

She started at my voice, then slowly rolled over until she was facing me, from maybe ten feet away.

Her eyes were open. They were Rachel's gray eyes, and they were open and they looked sane. I felt my heart lift a little, for the first time since I'd burst into this accursed place.

Rachel blinked a few times, then her gaze went vague, as if she was listening for something. "Kulick," she whispered, looking at me. "Is he really...?"

"Yeah, Rachel, he's gone… For good, I think."

"Thank the Goddess," she said, sounding like she meant it. She sat up slowly, and looked around the part of the pump house that was in her view. Fortunately, her back was to the altar area and the atrocities it contained, and she hadn't turned that way yet.

"Where are we, Stan?" she asked. "And why is it so damn bright in here?"

Sligo had stopped his inhuman bleating a little while ago. Maybe he'd passed out from blood loss. But now he gave another of those hoarse-sounding croaks that were his version of a scream.

"Aaah!" Rachel jumped, if you can jump sitting down, then started turning to look behind her. "What the fuck was–"

"Rachel! Look at me!"

She turned back quickly. "What is it Stan? What's wrong?"

"Don't look back there, yet. Please."

"Why? What's–" She started to turn again.

"Rachel!"

God, that made my head throb.

She looked at me again, eyes wide with concern.

"What, Stan? What's the–"

"Rachel, I'm not... tracking too well. I'm concussed, pretty bad. Maybe I can't... explain stuff as well as normal, okay?"

"Sure, but if you're concussed–"

"Will you fucking listen to me?" Bad idea, yelling. Oh, God, my head… "Sorry, I'm sorry, but there's something... behind you, that I don't... want you to see, yet. It's what's making that... sound. There's no danger, honest."

"All right, Stan. Whatever you say." Rachel spoke in the soothing tones you use with a lunatic. Who knows – maybe she was right.

"Short version: we're in the pump house, Lake Scranton Dam. Sligo... guy Kulick was after, was gonna do some big ritual, become a super-vampire."

"A what? A super... what?"

"Later. This is... short version, okay? When ick got here, he left your body... went into Sligo's. That's the guy... tortured Kulick, remember that?"

"Remember it? I lived it, through Kulick's memories."

"Right, sorry. Okay, so Kulick left you, then... possessed... Sligo. Took control. Then – payback time."

"You mean, he...? Oh, dear Goddess, no!"

"Yeah. He made Sligo... use a silver knife on himself. It's bad, Rachel – real bad. Then Kulick split... left Sligo still alive. That's him you hear. I think he's trying to scream."

"Stan, we've got to help the poor man–"

"Might not say... 'poor man,' if you knew… But we'll help him, in a minute. First, think you can help me... sit up?"

"Sure. Come on." Rachel got one arm around my shoulders and lifted. I assisted as much as I could, and then I was sitting up again. The vertigo came back, but then receded. Progress, I guess.

"Now, check on Karl," I said. "Please."

"Karl? Your partner?"

"Over there." I pointed. "Behind the pillar. I think maybe he's…" I couldn't finish the sentence.

Rachel said, "Can you stay upright by yourself?"

"Think so," I said. "If not, doesn't matter. Not far… to fall. Now go."

She hustled over to where Karl lay so still. I saw her press two fingers against his neck, frown, then try another spot.

No pulse. He's gone. Jeez, Karl, goddamn fucking–

"Stan? He's alive."

With an effort, I pulled myself out of my wallow. "What? You sure?"

"I'm getting a pulse, but it's weak, and fast. He's hurt bad, Stan. I think his... back is broken, and he's been bleeding from the nose and mouth. Internal injuries. He needs a hospital, and quick!"

"See if you can find my phone," I said. "It's around here... someplace. Gotta be. Must've been jarred loose, when I hit the wall."

Rachel started casting about the floor, looking. At least, it wasn't hard to see in there, with all of Sligo's fucking lights.

"I don't see it, Stan. Are you sure you had it with you?"

"Yeah, I had it... oh, shit." I just remembered that I'd slipped the phone into my right hip pocket. It was so thin, and I already hurt all over anyway, I didn't even notice I'd been sitting on the damn thing. I reached back and pulled it out with clumsy fingers.

The phone had taken the full impact of my body against the wall. It was nothing more than cracked and broken junk. "Fuck!" I threw it aside, then looked at Rachel.

"Can't you do some... I dunno... healing magic, get him stabilized, until we get... paramedics here?"

She shook her head sadly. "I've got none of my gear with me, Stan, and no spells prepared in advance. For the moment, I'm all out of magic. I'm sorry."

"Shit." I tried to think, but my head hurt so much, and the vertigo kept coming and going, coming and going.

"Rachel."

"Yes?"

"My weapon's... here someplace. Two weapons, actually – pistol and shotgun. See if you can find the pistol, okay?"

"All right."

Rachel got slowly to her feet, tottered for a few steps, then began to walk around this part of the room, eyes on the floor. "Okay, found it."

"Bring it over here, will you?"

In a moment she was kneeling next to me. She handed me the Beretta, and I checked the loads. Silver. Good. That was what I'd thought, but I wasn't trusting my memory for anything, at the moment. I replaced the clip, then worked the action to bring a round into the chamber.

"Stan," Rachel said, "whatever you're thinking about doing, think some more. Please. We can do better for Karl than that."

"It's not for Karl."

I motioned toward the front of the room. "See the girl suspended from the ceiling? She's bleeding. Passed out, maybe."

Rachel turned and stared. "Oh my Goddess, Stan. Who is she? We've got to–"

"We will. Or, you will. She's a vampire, but... not one of... bad guys. Supposed to be... sacrifice number five."

"The poor girl, she looks like she's hurt pretty bad."

"Motherfucker cut her and stabbed her. Name's Christine. She's my... daughter."

Rachel nodded. "This must be so awful for you, Stan."

"Don't... seem surprised."

She shrugged. "I heard the rumor about Stan Markowski's vampire daughter more than a year ago. The way you were always going on about how you hated vamps, I figured it just might be true. But not my business."

"She is now," I said. "Knife, over there, on the floor. Cut her down, careful. Like you said, she's hurt bad."

"I will be – but why the gun? Surely you're not going to...?"

"Christine? No way," I said. I hefted the Beretta. "You know how to use one...?"

"Yes, I went to the range a few times, with an old boyfriend. Why?"

"When you've seen... Sligo, you'll know why. He's a vamp, but... bullets're silver. Get as close as you can stand to get, put two in his head. Make sure."

Rachel shook her head slowly. "Stan, that can't be the only way to help him."

"Only help he deserves, the worthless fuck… Look, even if we could keep him alive, or undead, whatever – he'd hate us for it. Christ, I'm almost tempted." I shook my head, which was a mistake. "You'll know, once you've seen what's left of him."

She was silent, but her face was distressed.

"Rachel?"

"What?"

"You got no idea, how fucking awful… Hate to ask you, but I'm too fucked-up. Guy's been savaged. Everything you could do to somebody, without... killing him, everything – Kulick did it. Major fucking nightmare material, okay? You'll puke, probably. Normal. Then, use the gun. Two rounds... finish him, then help Christine. Will you do that, Rachel?" I swallowed, or tried to. "For me? For… them?"

I held out the Beretta, with a hand that shook bad. After a brief hesitation that didn't seem to last longer than two hours, she took it.

"All right, Stan. You know what's been going on, and I don't. I'll rely on your judgment, fucked-up though it may be."

"Good. My judgment... my responsibility. Mine – not yours. Go on, get it done. Christine needs you."

I must have passed out again, because I suddenly realized I was on my back, squinting against the lights bouncing off the white stucco ceiling, with no memory of how I'd got there. I tried to turn my head toward the altar, but the pain and throbbing started, worse than before. Maybe I'd whacked my skull again when I fell over. Moving just hurt too fucking much, so I lay there, staring at the white – and listening.

I couldn't have been out for long, because the next thing I heard was Rachel's voice. "Oh, dear fucking God... oh, fuck, noooo..." Then came the soundsf vomiting. I can't say I blamed her.

After a while, the vomiting noises stopped, to be replaced by the sound of a woman crying. Didn't blame her for that, either. But it didn't last long.

I heard footsteps, moving fast, as if someone were in a hurry. Then they stopped abruptly.

Even though I'd been expecting it, the sound of the shots startled me. I guess that adrenaline rush overloaded my stressed circuits, because I found myself fading away again.

Three. She fired three times. Wanted to be absolutely sure, I guess.

"Stan? Can you hear me? Stan?"

Rachel's voice brought me up from the depths, like a diver heading for the light and air. I opened my eyes to find her face a few feet above mine.

"Stan?"

"Yeah, okay."

"It's done, Stan. I mean... Sligo. I…"

"I know. I heard."

"And I got Christine down and cut her loose. The rope had silver worked into it, and she had burns where she was tied up."

"Fucker. Maybe you shouldn't have..."

"She's still bleeding, Stan, from where he cut her. I thought vampires healed quickly, from non-mortal wounds."

"Not when it's silver... or wood. Sometimes they heal, sometimes don't. Can still die, later. All depends..."

"On what? Depends on what?"

I let air out in a long, loud sigh. "Check Karl again, will you, Rachel? Please?"

She stared down at me for a little, then said, "Sure. Be right back."

And she was, too. "Stan?"

Her face was sad, on top of everything else she'd gone through.

"Dead?" I asked her.

"No, but his pulse is even weaker. I... don't think he's got long, Stan. I'm so sorry."

I nodded, which made my head hurt more, but I didn't care. I had to push through the pain and dizziness and nausea. I had something important to do.

I asked Rachel, "Can you move Christine? Bring her over here?"

She bit her lip. "She's dead weight, Stan, or very nearly. I can't carry her, and no magic to help. And the bleeding... if I even try to lift her..."

"I understand." I commanded my brain to work, to think. "Okay, here's what you do. Get one... those big altar cloths. Put it on floor, next to her. Roll her on to it, careful. Then grab the cloth. Drag it. Drag her. Okay?"

"I understand what you mean. The travois principle. I can probably do it, but, Stan, is it worth it, just to bring her over here? I could hurt her more."

"Don't bring... over here. Next to Karl."

Like I said, I wasn't tracking too well. But Rachel's face was close to mine, and I thought I saw it register surprise, then doubt, then what I'm pretty sure what was determination. Then she was gone, without a word.

I faded away again, but came back when Rachel's voice, very close, said, "Stan? It's done. I've dragged her over to where Karl is. I don't think I hurt her."

"Good. Thank you." I opened my eyes and looked at her. "Rachel, how many steps you figure it is, from here to there?"

She looked up, then back. "Five, maybe six."

"Okay. Help me up."

Rachel got me to a sitting position again, then I said, "No, all the way. Wanna stand up."

"Stan, I'm not sure–"

"Gotta tak to Christine. Quickest way over is walking. Too weak to crawl, anyway."

"Stan, don't be stupid. If you can't crawl, what makes you think you can walk six steps, even with help?"

"Because I have to."

I dropped heavily to my knees next to Christine, the impact sending new jolts of pain through me, especially my head. I wanted to keep going downward – all the way to the floor and blessed unconsciousness, where I wouldn't have to think any more. But I stayed there, swaying a little, kneeling next to my vampire daughter.

Christine was still naked. Every inch of her that I could see was either filthy, or bloody, or burned, or some combination. Blood was seeping out of the three carved symbols, and there was a slow but steady flow from the stomach wound.

I leaned over as far as I could without falling on top of her. "Christine? Can you hear me? Christine?"

Her eyes were crusted over with dried tears, but she blinked a few times, then opened them. "Daddy?"

"Hi, baby. Don't try to move. You've been hurt pretty bad."

"I know. Hurts inside. Burns. Daddy, that man, where–"

"He's dead, baby. True dead. He won't hurt you anymore."

She smiled at me. I hadn't seen that smile in a long, long time.

"I know enough," I said, "about vamps – vampires to realize that you need blood, a lot of it, and soon. If you're gonna have a chance to heal. Otherwise… " I let my voice trail off.

"We're s'pposed to heal. It's... our nature."

"Not when it was done with silver – and that's what the sick fuck used, baby. He cut you and burned you with silver, and it won't heal by itself. Not unless you feed."

"Guess you'd know," she said, so soft I could barely hear her. "I musta skipped that part... of the vampire manual." The smile returned, just for a second.

I made myself not break down, or pass out, or change my mind. I made myself continue.

"Karl, my partner, remember him?"

"Yeah, sure."

"He's over there."

She moved her head slowly and looked. "Is he...?"

"No, he isn't, not yet."

She turned back, and stared at me, confused and afraid and in pain.

I turned to Rachel, who was kneeling close by. She looked at me, then at Christine, then Karl. Then back at me. Biting her lower lip, she nodded.

I didn't need her permission, I knew that. But I was still glad to see that nod.

I looked down again at my daughter.

"Christine, honey..." My throat was clogged, and I had to stop and clear it. "Christine, there's something I want you to do..."

Time passed, as it has a way of doing. I gave depositions to half a dozen law enforcement agencies about certain events taking place at the Scranton Water Authority's pump house on a moonlit night in June.

I also gave a lengthy deposition to a Grand Jury that was considering whether to indict Rachel Proctor for the murder of two police officers. No indictment was handed down, since the "demonic possession" defense is widely recognized by the law in Pennsylvania, and most other states. Rachel is back at work as a consulting witch to the department. She keeps threatening to turn me into a toad, but she's just kidding around. I think.

A couple of witchfinders who had been making a nuisance of themselves around Scranton disappeared without a trace. McGuire's received a few palls from their boss, the Witchfinder General. Every time, he tells the WG that he's got no idea what happened to them. The last call, McGuire floated the theory that Ferris and Crane had decided to chuck the witchfinder business and open up a little antique shop in New Hampshire, someplace. Or maybe Delaware.

I spent four days in the hospital for treatment of severe concussion. I was released under strict doctor's orders to take it easy for a while. That worked out okay, since I spent the next three weeks on administrative leave while giving all those depositions.

Lacey Brennan came to visit me while I was in the hospital. Twice.

When the Powers That Be were as satisfied as they were likely to get that I hadn't broken any major laws, I went back to work with the Supe Squad. I've had to make some adjustments in my work schedule, though. Instead of a strict 9pm to 5am routine, McGuire lets me get my shift in between sunset and sunrise, no matter what times those may be. My partner needs to stay out of the sun, and he sleeps during the day, anyway. Despite the weird hours, we're still a pretty good team. We've cleared more than our share of cases, and busted a lot of bad supes.

I try to get home a little before sunrise every day, work permitting – so I can say "Goodnight" to my daughter before she heads down to the basement of our house for her day's rest.

Lots of changes, not all of them easy to make – but life is change, and adapting to it is one way of proving to yourself that you're still alive. And being alive feels pretty good.

My name's Markowski. I carry a badge.

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