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Silver Thefts
I knew everything was going too well.
Everything was going too well, until last week, when, out of the blue, a whole bunch of stores got hit. Not just any store, but kitchenware stores. Or rather I should say fine dining stores. Of course, there's not much to take, unless you have a real hankering for some stainless steel cookware, but the thieves managed to make out rather well for themselves. For example, they stole about a hundred thousand dollars, all told, in fine silver.
Oh lordy lordy, as some people might say.
Of course, the mere mention of mass theft of silver hit a certain local community the same way that you might treat reports that your neighbors were accumulating a massive depot of weapons of mass destruction. So a couple of us headed down to the Gaslamp to talk to some of the locals.
“Nope,” said Gustavus, the local werewolf representative, “Nobody's tried to mess with us in years. And we like to keep it that way.”
“And you have no idea who might have done it?” I asked.
“Sure don't,” Gustavus said.
Which is sort of like asking one of the Hatfields if they know who knocked down their fence.
“Sure don't sheriff,” they'll say, talking out of one side of their mouth, “but me and the boys are going to take some shotguns and go down to McCoy territory and see if we can't find us a yellow-bellied fence-pushing sap-sucker.”
“Right,” I said, as we left the brightly lit Eastern European restaurant that served as the headquarters for the local werewolf gangs. I noticed on the way out that the chefs were using even more garlic then usual, “Looks like we're going to have to go talk to the you-know-whats.”
“Actually, I don't,” Amanda told me.
“The Vampires,” Sam, who was coming along, told her. Sam had been dragged along almost forcibly on this particular outing. She was still absentmindedly wearing one oven mitt, and had threatened poor Daren with all manner of unspeakable tortures should he forget to take her cookies out of the oven when the timer rang.
“Why?” Amanda asked.
“Because vampires hate werewolves,” I said.
“So? I hate werewolves too,” Amanda pointed out, “Well, ever since that Brian guy kept trying to find out if I was interested in beastiality.”
“Right, which is why you're second on my list of suspects,” I told her.
“That was a joke, right?” she asked.
Which it was, but I was not about to tell her that. She was actually fourteenth on my list.
In San Diego, the vampires live in old money territory, near La Jolla, in a fine old mansion on the hill that houses the highest of all the vampire clans in the region, the Grasu family. They lived in a three story white-painted mansion that must have cost something in the tens of millions, even in today's housing market, secreted behind an iron fence covered with ivory (and conveniently tipped with painted silver), hidden from public view by a wall of bushes, thick walls, and a continual parade of servants, most of whom survived their tenure. We were escorted inside in stoney-faced silence by a group of black-clad men and women who tried to make it aware that we could be rubbed out at any time, an effect that was totally ruined when Sam let out a squeal at the first cat she saw and engaged in a two minute cat stroking ritual.
Unfortunately, we arrived just as the vampires were finishing a feeding frenzy.
Georgia Grasu, current matron of the family, was waiting for us on a sofa in the main sitting room that was so large that Hannibal would have had to have crossed it on elephants, and so deeply cushioned that he probably would have lost the elephants in the process. In the middle of that sea of whiteness sat the Lady Grasu, slim and tall, her cavernous features and the luster of her dark hair adding to the severe black dress that she wore, making her look as forbidding as a runaway avalanche. On her slim, long fingers, the rings that she wore glittered with a light that could only be described as cold, as if the air around her had chilled to the point where ice had crystallized around her hand. When she opened her mouth to speak, you could see the razor-sharp teeth in almost perfect contrast to the dark, blood-stained interior of her mouth.
“Dude, you guys look really...you know...not mellow,” she slurred, pointing in our direction, “you should come, take a break and chill out.”
“Oh Jesus Christ,” I muttered, “Not this again.”
Vampires have a pathological need to feed, a desire that drives them. Blood to them is like a narcotic, a substance on which they depend in every sense of the word. A vampire without blood becomes listless, limp, unable to process the stimuli of the world around him. A vampire who has just fed is full of life and energy, and searching for someone to take that all out on. A vampire who loses control feeds endlessly, going from one victim to another, becoming little more then an animal searching for the next prey, a maddened creature searching for the next thrill, the next rush.
Unless the animal in question has an extremely high fat-to-muscle content, like a fatted calf, or certain kinds of kobe beef, or even the average American. Then apparently blood acts more like pot.
“You know...you know...I think we have enough silver,” Lady Grasu smiled vacantly at my direction, holding up her hand, “Isn't it...like, pretty and stuff.”
“So you're sure you have no idea who took all that?”
“Wasn't us. If we had silverware, we'd have forks. And then, you know, I could stick it in something. Like a sausage. A blood sausage. I'd really dig a sausage right now.”
The crown matron of the San Diego vampires broke out into non-cackling laughter for a very long minute before we sulked out the front door.
“That was a waste of time,” Amanda said.
“Maybe. But I don't think she stole the silver, or had it stolen. They've got enough that they could outfit an army. And I don't think she knows who actually did it.”
“Are you sure?” Amanda asked.
“Yes. She may have looked pretty far gone, but she wasn't nearly as bad as she acted. I think she honestly doesn't know what's happening.”
Behind us, Lady Grasu's voice spiraled up into the upper octaves. “Someone bring me a blood sausage. And a fork to stab it with.”
“Maybe,” I said, as I felt Amanda's glare cutting into me.
We got back to the car. We opened the doors to the car. And there, not entirely to my surprise, was Lady Grasu, waiting for us.
“Like, I just remembered something,” she said, having sprawled herself over both the driver's and passenger's seat, “something about silver. And werewolves and stuff. There was this guy, who was totally uncool, kept wanting something about an alliance to go stab werewolves with silver. He kept talking like a totally whacked out dude.”
It was a bit strange to see the normally elegant Georgia Grasu hanging out the driver's side of our car, talking while her head was upside-down. It was even stranger to have her actually be helpful for once. I decided that I would check and find out what she had been feasting on and arrange for it to be sent to her more often.
“Did this uncool guy have a name?” Sam asked.
Which was how we found ourselves, once again vampire-less, at a rather slummy sort of abode in Clairemont Mesa. This is actually sort of interesting. There are many apartment complexes in the region that are obviously old, and did not have much in the way of either frills or imagination put into their construction, but this one seemed geared to a low-class audience. Not even systematic neglect could account for that kind of reduction in value, or class.
And, of course, nobody was home. There's usually a moment in police procedurals when they kick open the door into the suspect's apartment, and either there is a great deal of screaming, or the place is empty (except, of course, for the possibly vital clue. In this case it was easier. Sam simply looked at the door and it opened.
“It's empty,” she said, as the door swung all the way out to greet us.
“Well, that helps things along,” I muttered. I sure did not want to try and get answers out of a recalcitrant suspect right now, nor did I really want to drag them all the way back to headquarters. Now we only had to hope that they had followed the police drama rules, and left the critical clue somewhere where we could find it.
“Found it,” Amanda said, about three seconds after entering the kitchen.
“Oh good,” I said, snagging a twenty dollar from the coffee table in the living room. That was about the only thing I could see in the room that was not covered by either a thick layer of dust, a thick layer of grime, or a thick layer of fast food wrappers. Mr. David Welling was not leaving much of a beneficial impression on me. About the only thing I could tell was that he had a fondness for McDonald's, and he liked the color black. By which I mean he really liked the color black. From what I could tell. Maybe his dust bunnies were just going through a goth phase.
The kitchen table was also cluttered, in that weird way that disorganized people tend to do, with everything except food. In fact, it looked like nothing more than a flat file cabinet, except without the filing part, sort of like they had dumped all the papers they could find right on the table. The ones on top featured both red and black heavily, as well as inverted pentacles. The words “Satan” and “Black Mass” were prominent on each of them. So was an address.
“I hate the Satanists,” Sam was clutching her arms to her sides, either resisting a sudden explosion of the willies, or resisting the internal urge to begin cleaning the place up. “They're always so...gloomy.”
“That wasn't the word I would have picked,” I glanced at the art on another one of their fliers. The artist certainly was not about to make his living drawing porn – that was for sure.
“We better check it out,” I sighed, taking note of the location of the black temple. Then I looked up at the suspicious sound of something squirting. A bottle of Lysol had magically appeared in Sam's hand, and she had begun to squirt it into the grime infested sink.
“Leave it alone,” I said.
“If she finds the scrub pads, we'll never get her out of here,” Amanda predicted.
“Let's go,” I said.
The Satanic High Temple of Greater San Diego, such as it was, turned out to be large. It also turned out to be abandoned. Or it should have been. There's a cluster of old warehouses out on the eastern fringe of the city, near the beginnings of the mountain-desert region, and this just happened to be one of them. That was interesting. Someone here was thinking big. They were also thinking rather grungy, but given the state of the previous apartment, that was hardly a surprise.. If you start having no taste, you end having no taste, or so I guessed.
In an attempt to overcome what might be considered industrial grunge (in a good light), or just grunge (in every other type of light), someone had taped a few of the black and red flyers to the door, along with a sign that appeared to have been printed out on a printer at Kinkos, telling us “You Need Too Be This Bad To Enter This Building”. With geometric exactness, Sam pulled a pen out of her pocket and crossed out the extra “o” on the “Too”. Then we opened the door.
The building had been a warehouse. Someone had tried to change that into something more complicated through copious use of sheet metal walls, that now cut the formerly large empty space into a dozen other spaces, small partitioned rooms the size of large classrooms. The entryway was filled with the smell of rust, rot, and the stale aftereffects of the many cans of beer that were strewn, empty, around the floor. It was lit by a large, industrial lamp that had been made to illuminate a fraction of a vast, empty space, and was now busy making sure that you could see even with your eyes closed. Curiously, it was on.
“Someone home?” Amanda asked.
“Can't tell,” Sam said.
“That doesn't bode well,” I looked around. There was graffiti on the walls, although it was hard to tell, but none of it looked particularly potent, probably meaning that the sheet metal had been stolen from somewhere like a railyard. Out of curiosity I touched what was either a clever acronym, a funny set of initials, or the result of a would-be artist having a mental spasm attack. Not even a spark.
“Sam, you getting interference?”
“Yes,” she answered, “somewhere up ahead. It doesn't feel very nice either.”
“See if you can figure out who or what it is. Amanda, why don't you try and get some kind of a feeder out ahead of us?”
“What are you going to be doing while I do that?” Amanda asked.
“I'll be watching you,” I said.
“I've got a better idea then. Why don't I sit here and watch, while you do it?”
“Don't be ridiculous,” I sighed, “I can't do magic. You've been working for this long and you haven't figured that one out yet.”
“Wait. You can't do magic?”
“No,” I said, “Now will you kindly get down to business and get things done?”
“But if you can't do magic-” she began.
“It's not that polite to pry dear,” Sam said, touching her gently on the shoulder. Amanda relented for a moment and actually managed to do what she was supposed to do, which in this case included doing her damn job. I was somewhat gratified.
“Nothing,” Sam said after a moment. Her hair was slightly out of place now, a problem she corrected with a casual flip of the hand. “Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Oh, except this place smells like fish.”
“You aren't seriously telling me that they bought this crap from Vinnie the Shark, are you?” I asked.
“Seems like it.”
“Vinnie the Shark sells metal siding?” Amanda asked.
“Apparently so,” now I noted the faint, briny smell that was out of place in the desert, and was definitely underlying the smell of stale beer. Well, that was something new I would have to think about. Maybe we could make money by selling it to him.
“And there are people here,” Amanda said.
“Any more details you would like to add?” I asked sarcastically.
“Yeah,” she jerked her fingers toward the rather irregular door that had been cut in the wall, which had probably started life rectangular, but was now distinctly oblong trapezoidal, “the interference here is too much for me to be able to detect them, but they utterly fail at stealth.”
Before the sentence ended, three people in black robes leapt out of the darkness on the other side of the door, and grabbed Amanda, who was the closest, as well as being the one who had her back turned towards them.
I ducked as the second one hurtled through space where my head would have been. The third one crashed head-first into one of the walls, seriously buckling the wall at the same time. The first one was lying on the ground making bubbling noises deep in his throat as Amanda absent-mindedly twisted her arm like a pretzel.
“Friendly welcome,” I said, taking special care to step on the one who had already crashed into the wall. He made a funny noise.
“Well, we are sort of barging in,” Sam pointed out.
“You have a better idea?” I asked.
“We could knock politely,” she suggested.
“Shall we just go in so I can skip the prospect of the two of you spending fifteen minutes quarreling over whether or not it's time to observe the niceties?” Amanda asked.
The next room was larger, and nearly circular, or as close as you could bet when you were doing your best to bent flat sheet metal with your bare hands and a few weighted crates. It was also much darker. The only light came from what seemed to be a central torch, rigged up with the help of a large propane tank in a haphazard fashion involving enough duct tape that it was a wonder the entire thing had not yet exploded and killed us all. The interior was probably supposed to look like it had been covered in arcane characters written in blood – but instead it looked like it was covered in obscure characters written in red spray paint.
“Not much of a Satanic High Temple,” Amanda said in distaste, stepping over what might have been evidence of an orgy, or evidence that someone desperately wanted visitors to think that there had been one.
“No wonder the Catholics haven't come to shut it down,” Sam said, looking at the ceiling, “These aren't Satanic symbols.”
“What are they?” Amanda asked.
“Dialan,” she answered.
There was a moment of silence. This is the moment, in the movie, after someone has heard the click, and felt the change as the suspicious looking stone in the floor has depressed itself, but before the trap door opens and everyone begins to hurtle down into the darkness. The universe itself seemed to be holding its breath, as if it had not already seen the script.
“Sam, is this a pylon?”
“Confirmed,” her voice had gone flat, emotionless, so bleak that you probably could have used it for a perfect metaphor for the entirety of Russian literature. I knew what the next question out of her mouth would be, so I moved to forestall it.
There are certain jobs that we all have, besides our nominal daily ranks, relating to either our interests or what we decide to do in our free time. Sometimes it matters more then other times. Sam, for instance, is a director in the Diplomatic Board, and as such has certain responsibilities and privileges beyond those of most of the rest of us when it comes to taking vacations in weird places or going to meet the local ambassadors when they throw a cocktail party. I have a different field.
“Sam, this constitutes a direct order from the Strategic Director for the western district. You may consider this an instruction from the Strategic Directorate. I am approving a full release. The gloves come off.”
“Understood,” Sam had stepped free of the two of us, in such a position that she would be sheltered by the two of us from the nearest places of concealment, and such that she could unleash herself without having to worry too much about us. “What do you need?”
“I need this god-damned building taken down. But first I want to go have a word with the instigator.” This explained everything, unfortunately. Someone wanted a distraction while they built this thing, and used it, and what better distraction could there be then a minor war between the vampires and the werewolves? Start a fight with one, spread it to the other, and keep the rest of us busy until it was far too late.
“Where is he?” Sam asked.
“Let's try that door,” Amanda had fallen into her fighting stance, and was now glancing around even as she pointed, “the one with all the pentacles over it. That's the one I'm leaning towards.”
“Deal,” I said.
It was a dark doorway. Whoever had arranged for it had put a layer of black cloth over the entrance to conceal whatever was inside. Which turned out to be the High Altar. Such as it was. Torches burned on both sides of a slab of something that might have passed as stone if the light was not good enough to show you that it was just a pair of old doors, glued together and spraypainted with texture. In that matter, the large overhead light was sort of self-defeating.
There was only one man standing there, behind the altar. I did not even need to get close to him to learn that he was a dangerous man. There was something about the way the air smelled, the way it swirled, that told me about that.
“The Lord of Darkness warned me that there would be interference,” he said.
He was a plain looking man, not entirely different from the man you would expect to see behind the cash register or the film counter at one of those older specialty stores, the kind of man who could probably have grown up, and possibly lived his whole life in a certain neighborhood, at a certain store, without actually having left his mark anywhere. There was nothing odd about him except for his eyes. It's always the eyes. Why do people think that red is cool? I mean, seriously, have none of them ever thought to themselves “Gee, if I want to go with this Lord of Darkness crap, then maybe I should be the kind of person who can slink in through the darkness and hide in shadows, and not wear frickin' red contact lenses so that everyone and their mother is staring at me? Is there some sort of weird requirement that I don't know about in their contracts?
Maybe it's like necromancers and black nail polish. Although I think that is just a result of all necros being emo.
“And I suppose this Lord of Darkness chap instructed you to build a High Temple out of sheet metal and corrugated cardboard?” I asked, “And lo, sayeth the Lord of Darkness, buildeth me a great temple, and buildeth me that temple out of cheap metal that thou shalt buyeth from Vinnie the Shark for one dollar a square yard. And it shall be twenty cubits by forty cubits, for I knowest that thou knowest not what a cubit is, and thou art too stupid to use The Google. And it shall smell vaguely of stale beer.”
“How did you know what Vinnie the Shark charged me?” he asked.
“I didn't, but it smelled like fish, and I know Vinnie,” I crossed my arms across my chest, “Now do you have an explanation you would like to give before you get your ass kicked, or should we switch straight to the main event?”
“You can't know what it's like to be touched by his mind,” Mr. Welling was either undergoing religious ecstasy, or constipation. It was sometimes hard to tell. “You can't know what it is to touch his glory.”
“You didn't actually...touch his glory, did you?” I asked, not knowing a good way to make that not sound filthy.
He did not appear to notice my question, “He comes to me in dreams and brings me up high and teaches me the deep, dark secrets of the universe. He teaches me the way of the universe, the true way, not this pathetic morality that you still cling to. The strong triumph. The weak are triumphed over. That is the way, the truth, and the-”
“But all living things live in harmony,” Sam said.
Few things can bring an evil warlock in full array to a stop faster then Sam making an innocuous comment, especially when she uses that voice that sounds like she's about to cry. It is somewhat like watching a train run into a cat on the tracks, and watching the train get completely pulverized while the feline nonchalantly walks away. I have no idea how she does it, but she does it.
“All living things live in harmony and peace with each other,” she continued, stepping in front of me. I took two steps back. Then I noticed that she had dropped her oven mitt without noticing, and took another two steps after that.
“It's the way of things. The universe is natural, and nature is like rabbits and deer playing in the fields under the sun, like Bambi.”
Mr. Welling attempted to contain all possible connotations and variations of the word scorn into one glare and send it in her direction, only to have it evaporate against her sunny disposition.
“And what, pray tell, are you?” he asked.
“Me?” Sam sounded flattered that people were talking about her, “I'm a Priestess of the Sun, the High Priestess of my Coven.”
Behind Welling a dark shape was beginning to grow, pouring out of him like smoke out of a fire, appearing in wisps from the seams of his clothes, from his hair, and from out of the ground itself. It looked like a dark lion, mouth filled with red flames.
“And this is your idea of nature?” he asked, “This, then is your idea of how the world is? Does not the wolf slay the deer? Does not the rabbit fall victim to overeating, to predators, to humans? Does not nature run red in tooth and claw?”
The creature behind him certainly was. It was tall now, twenty meters tall at least, eyes sparkling red, red running off of teeth and claws to match the words. It was not Welling who was dangerous. He was merely the tool, the vessel, for that which this pylon was supposed to contain and release. Normally this would be the job for an entire assault company. I did not have one.
“Yes, but...that's bad. I mean, that's why there is a sun, to bring light to the shadowy places, harmony to the disharmonious, and balance to the world. And that's why I'm here,” Sam was glowing bright, bright enough that I was having trouble looking at her, “And if you're going to keep talking about darkness and all that, I'm going to stop you.”
“That's our cue,” I said, grabbing Amanda by one shoulder, “Time to go.”
She sounded like she was about to object to something, but I didn't give her time to, grabbing her and roughly shoving her in the direction of the exit. Sam was glowing so brightly now that I was having trouble seeing anything but her and her reflection.
“We can't just leave her,” Amanda protested.
“Sam is a High Priestess of the Sun, a follower of the Sun Ascendant. She can take care of herself.”
“But-” Amanda began.
The light behind us was beginning to get even brighter, and there was a deep throaty roar as whatever it was behind Welling lashed out, followed by a crackling sound as the two met.
“She is a follower of the Sun Ascendent. She brings the light of the sun where it would not normally reach. That, in case you haven't noticed, is here.”
“Is that really going to be enough?”
I grabbed her by the collar, “What is the sun?”
“It's that bright thing in the sky.”
“Not that jackass. The sun is a fusion reactor without a safety switch, and she's bringing its fires here. If you can still talk, you're not running fast enough.”
There is something to be said for panic. The entire building was glowing by the time we were out. It was still glowing by the time we got back in the car and started driving away. It was not glowing by the time we got down the block, although it was at a substantially higher altitude as far as I could tell, the car being upside-down and all.
“I hate my life,” Amanda grumbled, dragging herself out of the car.
“I do hope Daren didn't let my cookies burn,” Sam said, walking up to us like nothing had happened. She was not even singed, unlike the two of us.
“Did you really have to do this?” Amanda asked, brushing herself off.
“Yes,” Sam answered.
“Why?” she asked. Then she peered at us closer, “What's got under your skin?”
“That was a pylon, a spell anchor,” I was already deep in thought, “And the spells on it were Dalian in nature.”
“So?”
Sam continued that line of thought, “The Dialan school was a strong runic school. But they're not around anymore. They were conquered a decade ago. By the Domina.”
I could watch the threads come together into pure horror in Amanda's eyes, “Oh shit.”
“That doesn't even begin to cut it,” I said.
“So much for the Hartfeld doctrine,” Sam said.
“It was never intended to last,” I snapped. I did not like the Hartfeld doctrine either, but it had worked. So far. Until now.
“Think we stopped them?” Amanda asked.
“Not a chance. There's never only one,” I looked up at the sky. There were no clouds up there, which prevented me from seeing strange shapes in them that were not there. “There's always more.”
“How much more?”
“The Domina just moved a carrier group within five jumps of here,” I stated, recalling what had been in the morning briefing. “That's a full planetary invasion force all by itself.”
“Company's coming,” Amanda muttered.
“I hear that the Bahamas are nice this time of year,” Sam said.
“And remote,” Amanda added.
“Remote enough to hide us from Charity?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then I'll take my chances with the invasion. At least if it comes on Halloween, it will keep me from dealing with the usual stuff.”
“And all it took was the threat of serious genocide,” Amanda grumbled.
“Hey,” I shrugged, “It's a living.”
Or perhaps not. I'm having a sudden urge to get very sick, just in time for Halloween.
Everything was going too well, until last week, when, out of the blue, a whole bunch of stores got hit. Not just any store, but kitchenware stores. Or rather I should say fine dining stores. Of course, there's not much to take, unless you have a real hankering for some stainless steel cookware, but the thieves managed to make out rather well for themselves. For example, they stole about a hundred thousand dollars, all told, in fine silver.
Oh lordy lordy, as some people might say.
Of course, the mere mention of mass theft of silver hit a certain local community the same way that you might treat reports that your neighbors were accumulating a massive depot of weapons of mass destruction. So a couple of us headed down to the Gaslamp to talk to some of the locals.
“Nope,” said Gustavus, the local werewolf representative, “Nobody's tried to mess with us in years. And we like to keep it that way.”
“And you have no idea who might have done it?” I asked.
“Sure don't,” Gustavus said.
Which is sort of like asking one of the Hatfields if they know who knocked down their fence.
“Sure don't sheriff,” they'll say, talking out of one side of their mouth, “but me and the boys are going to take some shotguns and go down to McCoy territory and see if we can't find us a yellow-bellied fence-pushing sap-sucker.”
“Right,” I said, as we left the brightly lit Eastern European restaurant that served as the headquarters for the local werewolf gangs. I noticed on the way out that the chefs were using even more garlic then usual, “Looks like we're going to have to go talk to the you-know-whats.”
“Actually, I don't,” Amanda told me.
“The Vampires,” Sam, who was coming along, told her. Sam had been dragged along almost forcibly on this particular outing. She was still absentmindedly wearing one oven mitt, and had threatened poor Daren with all manner of unspeakable tortures should he forget to take her cookies out of the oven when the timer rang.
“Why?” Amanda asked.
“Because vampires hate werewolves,” I said.
“So? I hate werewolves too,” Amanda pointed out, “Well, ever since that Brian guy kept trying to find out if I was interested in beastiality.”
“Right, which is why you're second on my list of suspects,” I told her.
“That was a joke, right?” she asked.
Which it was, but I was not about to tell her that. She was actually fourteenth on my list.
In San Diego, the vampires live in old money territory, near La Jolla, in a fine old mansion on the hill that houses the highest of all the vampire clans in the region, the Grasu family. They lived in a three story white-painted mansion that must have cost something in the tens of millions, even in today's housing market, secreted behind an iron fence covered with ivory (and conveniently tipped with painted silver), hidden from public view by a wall of bushes, thick walls, and a continual parade of servants, most of whom survived their tenure. We were escorted inside in stoney-faced silence by a group of black-clad men and women who tried to make it aware that we could be rubbed out at any time, an effect that was totally ruined when Sam let out a squeal at the first cat she saw and engaged in a two minute cat stroking ritual.
Unfortunately, we arrived just as the vampires were finishing a feeding frenzy.
Georgia Grasu, current matron of the family, was waiting for us on a sofa in the main sitting room that was so large that Hannibal would have had to have crossed it on elephants, and so deeply cushioned that he probably would have lost the elephants in the process. In the middle of that sea of whiteness sat the Lady Grasu, slim and tall, her cavernous features and the luster of her dark hair adding to the severe black dress that she wore, making her look as forbidding as a runaway avalanche. On her slim, long fingers, the rings that she wore glittered with a light that could only be described as cold, as if the air around her had chilled to the point where ice had crystallized around her hand. When she opened her mouth to speak, you could see the razor-sharp teeth in almost perfect contrast to the dark, blood-stained interior of her mouth.
“Dude, you guys look really...you know...not mellow,” she slurred, pointing in our direction, “you should come, take a break and chill out.”
“Oh Jesus Christ,” I muttered, “Not this again.”
Vampires have a pathological need to feed, a desire that drives them. Blood to them is like a narcotic, a substance on which they depend in every sense of the word. A vampire without blood becomes listless, limp, unable to process the stimuli of the world around him. A vampire who has just fed is full of life and energy, and searching for someone to take that all out on. A vampire who loses control feeds endlessly, going from one victim to another, becoming little more then an animal searching for the next prey, a maddened creature searching for the next thrill, the next rush.
Unless the animal in question has an extremely high fat-to-muscle content, like a fatted calf, or certain kinds of kobe beef, or even the average American. Then apparently blood acts more like pot.
“You know...you know...I think we have enough silver,” Lady Grasu smiled vacantly at my direction, holding up her hand, “Isn't it...like, pretty and stuff.”
“So you're sure you have no idea who took all that?”
“Wasn't us. If we had silverware, we'd have forks. And then, you know, I could stick it in something. Like a sausage. A blood sausage. I'd really dig a sausage right now.”
The crown matron of the San Diego vampires broke out into non-cackling laughter for a very long minute before we sulked out the front door.
“That was a waste of time,” Amanda said.
“Maybe. But I don't think she stole the silver, or had it stolen. They've got enough that they could outfit an army. And I don't think she knows who actually did it.”
“Are you sure?” Amanda asked.
“Yes. She may have looked pretty far gone, but she wasn't nearly as bad as she acted. I think she honestly doesn't know what's happening.”
Behind us, Lady Grasu's voice spiraled up into the upper octaves. “Someone bring me a blood sausage. And a fork to stab it with.”
“Maybe,” I said, as I felt Amanda's glare cutting into me.
We got back to the car. We opened the doors to the car. And there, not entirely to my surprise, was Lady Grasu, waiting for us.
“Like, I just remembered something,” she said, having sprawled herself over both the driver's and passenger's seat, “something about silver. And werewolves and stuff. There was this guy, who was totally uncool, kept wanting something about an alliance to go stab werewolves with silver. He kept talking like a totally whacked out dude.”
It was a bit strange to see the normally elegant Georgia Grasu hanging out the driver's side of our car, talking while her head was upside-down. It was even stranger to have her actually be helpful for once. I decided that I would check and find out what she had been feasting on and arrange for it to be sent to her more often.
“Did this uncool guy have a name?” Sam asked.
Which was how we found ourselves, once again vampire-less, at a rather slummy sort of abode in Clairemont Mesa. This is actually sort of interesting. There are many apartment complexes in the region that are obviously old, and did not have much in the way of either frills or imagination put into their construction, but this one seemed geared to a low-class audience. Not even systematic neglect could account for that kind of reduction in value, or class.
And, of course, nobody was home. There's usually a moment in police procedurals when they kick open the door into the suspect's apartment, and either there is a great deal of screaming, or the place is empty (except, of course, for the possibly vital clue. In this case it was easier. Sam simply looked at the door and it opened.
“It's empty,” she said, as the door swung all the way out to greet us.
“Well, that helps things along,” I muttered. I sure did not want to try and get answers out of a recalcitrant suspect right now, nor did I really want to drag them all the way back to headquarters. Now we only had to hope that they had followed the police drama rules, and left the critical clue somewhere where we could find it.
“Found it,” Amanda said, about three seconds after entering the kitchen.
“Oh good,” I said, snagging a twenty dollar from the coffee table in the living room. That was about the only thing I could see in the room that was not covered by either a thick layer of dust, a thick layer of grime, or a thick layer of fast food wrappers. Mr. David Welling was not leaving much of a beneficial impression on me. About the only thing I could tell was that he had a fondness for McDonald's, and he liked the color black. By which I mean he really liked the color black. From what I could tell. Maybe his dust bunnies were just going through a goth phase.
The kitchen table was also cluttered, in that weird way that disorganized people tend to do, with everything except food. In fact, it looked like nothing more than a flat file cabinet, except without the filing part, sort of like they had dumped all the papers they could find right on the table. The ones on top featured both red and black heavily, as well as inverted pentacles. The words “Satan” and “Black Mass” were prominent on each of them. So was an address.
“I hate the Satanists,” Sam was clutching her arms to her sides, either resisting a sudden explosion of the willies, or resisting the internal urge to begin cleaning the place up. “They're always so...gloomy.”
“That wasn't the word I would have picked,” I glanced at the art on another one of their fliers. The artist certainly was not about to make his living drawing porn – that was for sure.
“We better check it out,” I sighed, taking note of the location of the black temple. Then I looked up at the suspicious sound of something squirting. A bottle of Lysol had magically appeared in Sam's hand, and she had begun to squirt it into the grime infested sink.
“Leave it alone,” I said.
“If she finds the scrub pads, we'll never get her out of here,” Amanda predicted.
“Let's go,” I said.
The Satanic High Temple of Greater San Diego, such as it was, turned out to be large. It also turned out to be abandoned. Or it should have been. There's a cluster of old warehouses out on the eastern fringe of the city, near the beginnings of the mountain-desert region, and this just happened to be one of them. That was interesting. Someone here was thinking big. They were also thinking rather grungy, but given the state of the previous apartment, that was hardly a surprise.. If you start having no taste, you end having no taste, or so I guessed.
In an attempt to overcome what might be considered industrial grunge (in a good light), or just grunge (in every other type of light), someone had taped a few of the black and red flyers to the door, along with a sign that appeared to have been printed out on a printer at Kinkos, telling us “You Need Too Be This Bad To Enter This Building”. With geometric exactness, Sam pulled a pen out of her pocket and crossed out the extra “o” on the “Too”. Then we opened the door.
The building had been a warehouse. Someone had tried to change that into something more complicated through copious use of sheet metal walls, that now cut the formerly large empty space into a dozen other spaces, small partitioned rooms the size of large classrooms. The entryway was filled with the smell of rust, rot, and the stale aftereffects of the many cans of beer that were strewn, empty, around the floor. It was lit by a large, industrial lamp that had been made to illuminate a fraction of a vast, empty space, and was now busy making sure that you could see even with your eyes closed. Curiously, it was on.
“Someone home?” Amanda asked.
“Can't tell,” Sam said.
“That doesn't bode well,” I looked around. There was graffiti on the walls, although it was hard to tell, but none of it looked particularly potent, probably meaning that the sheet metal had been stolen from somewhere like a railyard. Out of curiosity I touched what was either a clever acronym, a funny set of initials, or the result of a would-be artist having a mental spasm attack. Not even a spark.
“Sam, you getting interference?”
“Yes,” she answered, “somewhere up ahead. It doesn't feel very nice either.”
“See if you can figure out who or what it is. Amanda, why don't you try and get some kind of a feeder out ahead of us?”
“What are you going to be doing while I do that?” Amanda asked.
“I'll be watching you,” I said.
“I've got a better idea then. Why don't I sit here and watch, while you do it?”
“Don't be ridiculous,” I sighed, “I can't do magic. You've been working for this long and you haven't figured that one out yet.”
“Wait. You can't do magic?”
“No,” I said, “Now will you kindly get down to business and get things done?”
“But if you can't do magic-” she began.
“It's not that polite to pry dear,” Sam said, touching her gently on the shoulder. Amanda relented for a moment and actually managed to do what she was supposed to do, which in this case included doing her damn job. I was somewhat gratified.
“Nothing,” Sam said after a moment. Her hair was slightly out of place now, a problem she corrected with a casual flip of the hand. “Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Oh, except this place smells like fish.”
“You aren't seriously telling me that they bought this crap from Vinnie the Shark, are you?” I asked.
“Seems like it.”
“Vinnie the Shark sells metal siding?” Amanda asked.
“Apparently so,” now I noted the faint, briny smell that was out of place in the desert, and was definitely underlying the smell of stale beer. Well, that was something new I would have to think about. Maybe we could make money by selling it to him.
“And there are people here,” Amanda said.
“Any more details you would like to add?” I asked sarcastically.
“Yeah,” she jerked her fingers toward the rather irregular door that had been cut in the wall, which had probably started life rectangular, but was now distinctly oblong trapezoidal, “the interference here is too much for me to be able to detect them, but they utterly fail at stealth.”
Before the sentence ended, three people in black robes leapt out of the darkness on the other side of the door, and grabbed Amanda, who was the closest, as well as being the one who had her back turned towards them.
I ducked as the second one hurtled through space where my head would have been. The third one crashed head-first into one of the walls, seriously buckling the wall at the same time. The first one was lying on the ground making bubbling noises deep in his throat as Amanda absent-mindedly twisted her arm like a pretzel.
“Friendly welcome,” I said, taking special care to step on the one who had already crashed into the wall. He made a funny noise.
“Well, we are sort of barging in,” Sam pointed out.
“You have a better idea?” I asked.
“We could knock politely,” she suggested.
“Shall we just go in so I can skip the prospect of the two of you spending fifteen minutes quarreling over whether or not it's time to observe the niceties?” Amanda asked.
The next room was larger, and nearly circular, or as close as you could bet when you were doing your best to bent flat sheet metal with your bare hands and a few weighted crates. It was also much darker. The only light came from what seemed to be a central torch, rigged up with the help of a large propane tank in a haphazard fashion involving enough duct tape that it was a wonder the entire thing had not yet exploded and killed us all. The interior was probably supposed to look like it had been covered in arcane characters written in blood – but instead it looked like it was covered in obscure characters written in red spray paint.
“Not much of a Satanic High Temple,” Amanda said in distaste, stepping over what might have been evidence of an orgy, or evidence that someone desperately wanted visitors to think that there had been one.
“No wonder the Catholics haven't come to shut it down,” Sam said, looking at the ceiling, “These aren't Satanic symbols.”
“What are they?” Amanda asked.
“Dialan,” she answered.
There was a moment of silence. This is the moment, in the movie, after someone has heard the click, and felt the change as the suspicious looking stone in the floor has depressed itself, but before the trap door opens and everyone begins to hurtle down into the darkness. The universe itself seemed to be holding its breath, as if it had not already seen the script.
“Sam, is this a pylon?”
“Confirmed,” her voice had gone flat, emotionless, so bleak that you probably could have used it for a perfect metaphor for the entirety of Russian literature. I knew what the next question out of her mouth would be, so I moved to forestall it.
There are certain jobs that we all have, besides our nominal daily ranks, relating to either our interests or what we decide to do in our free time. Sometimes it matters more then other times. Sam, for instance, is a director in the Diplomatic Board, and as such has certain responsibilities and privileges beyond those of most of the rest of us when it comes to taking vacations in weird places or going to meet the local ambassadors when they throw a cocktail party. I have a different field.
“Sam, this constitutes a direct order from the Strategic Director for the western district. You may consider this an instruction from the Strategic Directorate. I am approving a full release. The gloves come off.”
“Understood,” Sam had stepped free of the two of us, in such a position that she would be sheltered by the two of us from the nearest places of concealment, and such that she could unleash herself without having to worry too much about us. “What do you need?”
“I need this god-damned building taken down. But first I want to go have a word with the instigator.” This explained everything, unfortunately. Someone wanted a distraction while they built this thing, and used it, and what better distraction could there be then a minor war between the vampires and the werewolves? Start a fight with one, spread it to the other, and keep the rest of us busy until it was far too late.
“Where is he?” Sam asked.
“Let's try that door,” Amanda had fallen into her fighting stance, and was now glancing around even as she pointed, “the one with all the pentacles over it. That's the one I'm leaning towards.”
“Deal,” I said.
It was a dark doorway. Whoever had arranged for it had put a layer of black cloth over the entrance to conceal whatever was inside. Which turned out to be the High Altar. Such as it was. Torches burned on both sides of a slab of something that might have passed as stone if the light was not good enough to show you that it was just a pair of old doors, glued together and spraypainted with texture. In that matter, the large overhead light was sort of self-defeating.
There was only one man standing there, behind the altar. I did not even need to get close to him to learn that he was a dangerous man. There was something about the way the air smelled, the way it swirled, that told me about that.
“The Lord of Darkness warned me that there would be interference,” he said.
He was a plain looking man, not entirely different from the man you would expect to see behind the cash register or the film counter at one of those older specialty stores, the kind of man who could probably have grown up, and possibly lived his whole life in a certain neighborhood, at a certain store, without actually having left his mark anywhere. There was nothing odd about him except for his eyes. It's always the eyes. Why do people think that red is cool? I mean, seriously, have none of them ever thought to themselves “Gee, if I want to go with this Lord of Darkness crap, then maybe I should be the kind of person who can slink in through the darkness and hide in shadows, and not wear frickin' red contact lenses so that everyone and their mother is staring at me? Is there some sort of weird requirement that I don't know about in their contracts?
Maybe it's like necromancers and black nail polish. Although I think that is just a result of all necros being emo.
“And I suppose this Lord of Darkness chap instructed you to build a High Temple out of sheet metal and corrugated cardboard?” I asked, “And lo, sayeth the Lord of Darkness, buildeth me a great temple, and buildeth me that temple out of cheap metal that thou shalt buyeth from Vinnie the Shark for one dollar a square yard. And it shall be twenty cubits by forty cubits, for I knowest that thou knowest not what a cubit is, and thou art too stupid to use The Google. And it shall smell vaguely of stale beer.”
“How did you know what Vinnie the Shark charged me?” he asked.
“I didn't, but it smelled like fish, and I know Vinnie,” I crossed my arms across my chest, “Now do you have an explanation you would like to give before you get your ass kicked, or should we switch straight to the main event?”
“You can't know what it's like to be touched by his mind,” Mr. Welling was either undergoing religious ecstasy, or constipation. It was sometimes hard to tell. “You can't know what it is to touch his glory.”
“You didn't actually...touch his glory, did you?” I asked, not knowing a good way to make that not sound filthy.
He did not appear to notice my question, “He comes to me in dreams and brings me up high and teaches me the deep, dark secrets of the universe. He teaches me the way of the universe, the true way, not this pathetic morality that you still cling to. The strong triumph. The weak are triumphed over. That is the way, the truth, and the-”
“But all living things live in harmony,” Sam said.
Few things can bring an evil warlock in full array to a stop faster then Sam making an innocuous comment, especially when she uses that voice that sounds like she's about to cry. It is somewhat like watching a train run into a cat on the tracks, and watching the train get completely pulverized while the feline nonchalantly walks away. I have no idea how she does it, but she does it.
“All living things live in harmony and peace with each other,” she continued, stepping in front of me. I took two steps back. Then I noticed that she had dropped her oven mitt without noticing, and took another two steps after that.
“It's the way of things. The universe is natural, and nature is like rabbits and deer playing in the fields under the sun, like Bambi.”
Mr. Welling attempted to contain all possible connotations and variations of the word scorn into one glare and send it in her direction, only to have it evaporate against her sunny disposition.
“And what, pray tell, are you?” he asked.
“Me?” Sam sounded flattered that people were talking about her, “I'm a Priestess of the Sun, the High Priestess of my Coven.”
Behind Welling a dark shape was beginning to grow, pouring out of him like smoke out of a fire, appearing in wisps from the seams of his clothes, from his hair, and from out of the ground itself. It looked like a dark lion, mouth filled with red flames.
“And this is your idea of nature?” he asked, “This, then is your idea of how the world is? Does not the wolf slay the deer? Does not the rabbit fall victim to overeating, to predators, to humans? Does not nature run red in tooth and claw?”
The creature behind him certainly was. It was tall now, twenty meters tall at least, eyes sparkling red, red running off of teeth and claws to match the words. It was not Welling who was dangerous. He was merely the tool, the vessel, for that which this pylon was supposed to contain and release. Normally this would be the job for an entire assault company. I did not have one.
“Yes, but...that's bad. I mean, that's why there is a sun, to bring light to the shadowy places, harmony to the disharmonious, and balance to the world. And that's why I'm here,” Sam was glowing bright, bright enough that I was having trouble looking at her, “And if you're going to keep talking about darkness and all that, I'm going to stop you.”
“That's our cue,” I said, grabbing Amanda by one shoulder, “Time to go.”
She sounded like she was about to object to something, but I didn't give her time to, grabbing her and roughly shoving her in the direction of the exit. Sam was glowing so brightly now that I was having trouble seeing anything but her and her reflection.
“We can't just leave her,” Amanda protested.
“Sam is a High Priestess of the Sun, a follower of the Sun Ascendant. She can take care of herself.”
“But-” Amanda began.
The light behind us was beginning to get even brighter, and there was a deep throaty roar as whatever it was behind Welling lashed out, followed by a crackling sound as the two met.
“She is a follower of the Sun Ascendent. She brings the light of the sun where it would not normally reach. That, in case you haven't noticed, is here.”
“Is that really going to be enough?”
I grabbed her by the collar, “What is the sun?”
“It's that bright thing in the sky.”
“Not that jackass. The sun is a fusion reactor without a safety switch, and she's bringing its fires here. If you can still talk, you're not running fast enough.”
There is something to be said for panic. The entire building was glowing by the time we were out. It was still glowing by the time we got back in the car and started driving away. It was not glowing by the time we got down the block, although it was at a substantially higher altitude as far as I could tell, the car being upside-down and all.
“I hate my life,” Amanda grumbled, dragging herself out of the car.
“I do hope Daren didn't let my cookies burn,” Sam said, walking up to us like nothing had happened. She was not even singed, unlike the two of us.
“Did you really have to do this?” Amanda asked, brushing herself off.
“Yes,” Sam answered.
“Why?” she asked. Then she peered at us closer, “What's got under your skin?”
“That was a pylon, a spell anchor,” I was already deep in thought, “And the spells on it were Dalian in nature.”
“So?”
Sam continued that line of thought, “The Dialan school was a strong runic school. But they're not around anymore. They were conquered a decade ago. By the Domina.”
I could watch the threads come together into pure horror in Amanda's eyes, “Oh shit.”
“That doesn't even begin to cut it,” I said.
“So much for the Hartfeld doctrine,” Sam said.
“It was never intended to last,” I snapped. I did not like the Hartfeld doctrine either, but it had worked. So far. Until now.
“Think we stopped them?” Amanda asked.
“Not a chance. There's never only one,” I looked up at the sky. There were no clouds up there, which prevented me from seeing strange shapes in them that were not there. “There's always more.”
“How much more?”
“The Domina just moved a carrier group within five jumps of here,” I stated, recalling what had been in the morning briefing. “That's a full planetary invasion force all by itself.”
“Company's coming,” Amanda muttered.
“I hear that the Bahamas are nice this time of year,” Sam said.
“And remote,” Amanda added.
“Remote enough to hide us from Charity?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then I'll take my chances with the invasion. At least if it comes on Halloween, it will keep me from dealing with the usual stuff.”
“And all it took was the threat of serious genocide,” Amanda grumbled.
“Hey,” I shrugged, “It's a living.”
Or perhaps not. I'm having a sudden urge to get very sick, just in time for Halloween.
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