Chapter Twenty-seven

I hit the parking lot at a run, piled into the Blue Beetle, and started it up. Behind me I heard the building's fire alarm go off, a deafening ringing of emergency bells. In addition to the police, and probably an ambulance, a bunch of fire trucks were about to show up as well. It was going to be one hell of a mess to sort through, at least for the CPD. By the time they made sure the building had been evacuated, seen to Trixie's wound, and taken statements from everyone in the building I could probably walk to Havana. She'd bought me at least ten minutes and probably more.

"Bless you, Joan," I muttered. I slapped the old car into reverse and cleared out, heading for my apartment. I was on the highway and gone before any sirens started converging. I drove carefully and under the limit, since getting pulled over for a citation could be fatal, and tried to think unobtrusive thoughts. But I found myself mulling over the details of the malocchio.

Trixie Vixen had been in the room with me when the last curse came down, and while she was clearly involved, it hadn't come from her. She'd known about it in great detail, though, and she'd known enough about magic to screw up the hurried wards I'd raised around the studio. Couple that with bragging about her power, and I figured she'd been involved in the actual magic at some point-she probably had handled part of the ritual that brought the curse down.

It made sense. Trixie was a jumbo-sized self-obsessed drama queen, complete with melodramatic dialogue, tantrums, and smug confidence that she was the center of the universe. The deaths and near-deaths from the malocchio had given new depths to the term freak accident. Swarms of bees, bridge-jumping cars, and electrocution in a puddle of one's own blood were some pretty ridiculous ways to kill someone. And that frozen turkey thing had come straight out of a cartoon.

They would have been funny if it hadn't been for the deaths.

But the curse had been different today. No winding, slow buildup, no murder weapons manufactured by the Acme Corporation, and no spillover onto other people nearby. Unlike the others, Emma's death had been the result of a surgical strike of focused, violent energy. The earlier editions of the curse had been more like a stone-headed hatchet than a scalpel. Today's curse had been far stronger than the ones I'd felt before, too.

And Trixie was the lowest common denominator.

Any kind of magic spell requires certain things to happen. You have to gather in the energy for whatever it is you're trying to do. Then you have to shape it with your thoughts and feelings into what you want it to do. And finally you have to release it in the direction you want it to go. To use a rough metaphor, you have to load the gun, aim it, and pull the trigger.

The problem was that with a curse that powerful, you were talking about a very big gun. Even with a ritual supplying the power for it, controlling that power was a task that not just anybody could do. Aiming and pulling the trigger were easier, but handling them all at once would be very difficult even for some wizards. That's why for the big projects you need three people working together, and it's the basis for the stereotype of three cackling witches casting spells in concert over a cauldron.

Trixie stormed off the set before the curse had come at Inari last night, and she hadn't been in the studio when it happened twelve hours prior to that. But she had been there with me today. Trixie the Drama Queen's personality was stamped all over the near-insane deaths, but I was damned sure that she wasn't a wizard.

Therefore, she'd had help. Someone would need to manage the energy, while Trixie shaped the curse into some kind of ludicrous death scenario. And someone else had to pull the trigger, channeling the spell to its intended recipient-also something that required a little more skill and focus than I was willing to believe Trixie had. So it would take three of them.

Three stregas.

Three former Mrs. Arturo Genosas.

The curse that killed Emma had been different. It had been a hell of a lot stronger, for one thing, and it had come at her a hell of a lot faster. And the death it had brought down on her had been efficient and quick. If Trixie wasn't with them, then it meant that either one of the others had some serious skill, or they'd been able to find a replacement witch who had been content with making the murder swift, clean, and simple.

Four killers working together. I was the only one around who could get in their way, and they knew I was getting closer to them. Under the circumstances, they had only one logical target for the next iteration of the spell, twelve hours from now.

Me.

That was assuming, of course, that Mavra and the vampire scourge-or possibly the man I'd hired to help me kill them-didn't take me out first. Maybe they wouldn't get their chance. See? That's the power of positive thinking.

I got back to my apartment and got out of the car just in time to see Mister flying down the sidewalk as fast as he could run. He looked both ways before crossing the street, and we entered the apartment together. I started gathering things and shoving them into a nylon gym bag, then opened the door down to the lab. Bob flowed out of Mister, who promptly shuffled over to the fire and collapsed into sleep.

"Well?" I called down as I finished packing the bag. "Did you find her?"

"Yeah, I found her," Bob called.

"About time," I said. I went down the ladder in a hurry, and flicked several candles alight with a muttered word. I got out a roll of parchment about a foot and a half square. Then I spread it onto the worktable in the lab's center and set a fountain pen beside it. "Where?"

"Not far from Cabrini Green," Bob said. "I got a good look around the place."

"Good. You've got permission to come out long enough to show me what you found."

He made a sighing sound but didn't complain. The usual cloud of glowing orange motes of light slid out of the skull's eye sockets, though perhaps it was a little less bright and swirly than usual. The cloud of light surrounded the pen, and it rose up of its own accord, then began scratching a drawing of the lair on the parchment. Bob's voice, a little indistinct now, said, "You aren't going to like this."

"Why not?"

"It's a shelter."

"A homeless shelter?"

"Yeah," Bob said. "Does some rehab work with drug addicts, too."

"Stars and stones," I murmured. "How could vampires take something that public?"

"There's no real threshold on a public building, so they didn't need an invitation, I think they probably came in from Undertown, right into the shelter's basement."

"How many people have they hurt?"

Bob's pen flickered over the parchment. When I draw maps I usually end up with a series of lopsided squares and wavery lines and incomplete circles. Bob's drawing looked like it could have been done by da Vinci. "There were three bodies stacked up in a corner of the basement," Bob said. "A few of the shelter's staff had been made into rough thralls and are covering for them, sort of. Maybe half a dozen people hadn't been enthralled, but they were tied up and locked into a cedar closet."

"Any goons?"

"Big- time. Half a dozen Renfields, and each of them has a darkhound to boot."

"Renfields?" I asked.

"How in the world can you exist in this century and not know about Renfields?" Bob demanded. "You need a life, stat."

"I read the book. I know who Renfield was. I'm not familiar with the parlance for Renfield in the plural."

"Oh," Bob said. "What do you need to know?"

"Well. First off, what did they call them before Stoker published the book?" I asked.

"They didn't call them anything, Harry," Bob said in a tone of gentle patience. "That's why the White Court had Stoker publish the book. To tell people about them."

"Oh. Right." I rubbed at my eyes. "How do the vampires do their recruiting?"

"Mind- control magic," Bob said. "The usual."

"Always with the mental control," I muttered. "Let me make sure my facts are straight. Rough thralls just stand around looking blank until they get orders, right?"

"Yeah," Bob said, pen scratching. "Sort of like zombies, but they still have to go to the bathroom."

"So a Renfield is the fine version of thralldom?"

"No," Bob said. "A fine thrall is so controlled that they might not even know that they're a thrall at all, and it lasts long-term."

"Like what DuMorne did to Elaine."

"Uh, I guess so, yeah. Like that. That kind of thing takes a subtle hand, though. Enthralling someone also requires a lot of time and a certain amount of empathy, neither of which has been readily available to Mavra."

"So?" I said, getting impatient. "A Renfield is a...?"

Bob put the pen down. "It's the quick, dirty way for the Black Court to pick up some cheap muscle, Renfields have been crushed into total thralldom through brute psychic force."

"You're kidding," I said. "The kind of mental damage that would do to someone..."

"It destroys their sanity when it happens," Bob confirmed. "Makes them no good for anything but gibbering violence, but since that's pretty much what the vampires wanted to begin with it works out."

"How do you get them out of it?" I asked.

"You don't," Bob said. "The original Merlin couldn't undo it, and neither could any of the saints on record who have tried. A thrall can be freed, or recover over time. Renfields can't. From the moment their minds break they've got an expiration date."

"Ugh," I said. "What do you mean?"

"Renfields get more and more violent and deranged, and they self-destruct in a year or two. You can't fix them. For all practical purposes, they're already dead."

I went over the facts in my head, and admired how much uglier the situation had just become. Over the years I've learned that ignorance is more than just bliss. It's freaking orgasmic ecstasy. I glanced at Bob and said, "Are you sure about your facts?"

The cloud of orange light flowed tiredly back into the skull on its shelf. "Yes. DuMorne did quite a bit of research on the subject back in the day."

"Murphy isn't going to like this," I said. "Dismembering monsters with a chain saw is one thing. People are another."

"Yeah. People are easier."

"Bob," I growled. "They're people."

"Renfields aren't, Harry," Bob said. "They might still be moving around but they're pretty much gone."

"Boy, would it be fun to explain that to a courtroom," I said. I shuddered. "Or to the White Council, for that matter. If I take out the wrong person, I could wind up in jail-or in a White Council star chamber trial. Mavra's using the laws to protect herself against us. That's so backward."

"Screw the laws! Kill 'em all!" Bob said with weary cheer.

I sighed. "What about the dogs?"

"Your basic animal," Bob said. "But they've been infused with a portion of the same kind of dark power that the Black Court runs on. They're stronger, faster, and they don't feel pain. I once saw a darkhound rip its way through a brick wall."

"I bet they look like normal dogs afterward, huh?"

"And before-ward," Bob said.

"I guess if the cops are on my case when this is over, the SPCA can come along for the ride." I shook my head. "And on top of all that, Mavra is also keeping those hostages in the closet for food. She'll use them as human shields once fighting starts."

"Or as bait in a trap," Bob said.

"Yeah. Either way it makes things more complicated, even if we go in when Mavra and her scourge are sleeping." I looked at Bob's diagram of the lair. "Any security system?"

"Old electronic one," Bob said. "Nothing fancy. No problem for you to hex it down."

"Mavra will know that. She'll have sentries. We need to get past them."

"Forget it. Rough thralls and Renfields don't exactly make the most observant guardians in the world, but the darkhounds make up for them. If you want to sneak up, you'll have to be invisible, inaudible, and unsmellable. Don't count on a surprise attack."

"Dammit. What kind of weapons are they toting?"

"Uh, teeth. Mostly teeth, Harry."

I glared at him. "Not the dogs."

"Oh. The thralls have got some baseball bats. The Renfields have assault rifles, grenades, and body armor."

"Holy crap."

Bob leered at me from his shelf. "Awww. Izzums scared of the mean old machine guns?"

I glowered and flipped a pencil at the skull. "Maybe Murphy can figure out a way to do this without starting World War Three. Meanwhile, change of topic incoming. I need your opinion."

"Sure," Bob said. "Hit me."

I told him about the entropy curse and who I thought was behind it.

"Ritual magic," Bob confirmed. "More amateurs."

"Who sponsors ritual curses these days?" I asked.

"Well. In theory, a lot of Powers. In practice, though, the writings on most of them have been gathered up by the Council or the Venatori or someone else with some supernatural clout. Or else destroyed. It might take me some time to recall all the details."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I've got about six hundred years' worth of memories to sort through, and I'm exhausted," Bob said, his voice softer, as though coming from far away. "But you can be pretty sure that whoever is backing a death curse isn't real friendly."

"Tell me something I don't know," I said. "Hey, Bob."

"Hmm?"

"Is it possible to work some kind of spell that would last, I dunno, maybe twenty or thirty years?"

"Sure, if you spend enough money," Bob said. "Or if you're some kind of sentimental family sap."

"Sentimental? How's that?"

"Well, you can anchor magic to certain materials, right? Most of them are very expensive. Or you do the cheap kind like you use on your blasting rod and such, refresh them once in a while." The skull's eyes were growing rapidly dimmer. "But there are times when you can anchor it to a person."

"That isn't doable," I said.

"Not for you," Bob said. "Gotta be a blood relation. Blood in common, that kind of thing. Maybe if you had a kid. But I guess you'd need a girlfriend for that, huh."

I raked my hand through my hair, thinking. "And if you do it that way, the spell lasts? Even for that long?"

"Oh, sure," Bob said. "As long as the person you anchor it to is alive. Takes a tiny bit of energy off them to keep the spell from slowing down. That's why all the really nasty curses you hear about usually involve some family somewhere."

"So for instance," I said, "my mother could have laid out a curse on someone. And as long as I was alive, it would still be viable."

"Exactly. Or like that loup-garou guy. His own bloodline keeps the curse fueled." The skull's mouth opened in a yawn. "Anything else?"

I picked up the map and tucked it into a pocket. Bob was at the end of his resources, and I had no time to lose. I'd have to finish out this one on my own. "Get some rest and see what you can remember," I said. "I've got to clear out before the cops get here." I started to get up off my stool, and every muscle in my body complained to be moving again. I winced and said, "Painkillers. Definitely need painkillers too."

"Luck, Harry," Bob mumbled, and the glittering orange lights in the skull's eye sockets dimmed completely.

My body ached as I climbed back out of the lab. It was getting to be pretty good at aching, actually, by virtue of all the practice. I could ignore pain. I had a talent for ignoring it. That talent had been refined by the harsh lessons of life and the even harsher lessons of Justin DuMorne. But even so, the discomfort took its toll. My bed wasn't particularly luxurious, but it looked that way when I passed it on my way to the door.

I had my keys in my hand and my bag over one shoulder when the there was a rattling from the dim corner by the door. I paused, and a moment later my wizard's staff twitched, rattling again. It shuddered and twitched, thumping against the wall and the floor in staccato fits, too much rhythm to the sounds for them to be meaningless.

"Well," I muttered. "It's about damn time."

I picked up my staff, rapped one end hard on the floor, and focused my attention on the length of wood. I reached down through it, into the steady, heavy power of the earth beneath it, and then beat out my own short rhythm on the stone. My staff went still, then quivered sharply twice in my hand. I set out water and food for Mister, left, and locked my apartment behind me, then sealed the wards of protective energy around it.

By the time I was up the stairs, a heavy old Ford truck, a battered and tough-looking survivor of the Great Depression, pulled into the gravel parking lot at the side of the boardinghouse and crunched to a halt. It had Missouri plates. A gun rack at the back of the cab held an old double-barreled shotgun in its top slot, and a thick, stumpy old wizard's staff in the one beneath it.

The driver set the brake and swung open the door without letting the engine die. He was old but hale, a short, stocky man in overalls, heavy working boots, and a flannel shirt. He had broad hands with scarred knuckles, and wore a plain steel ring on each index finger. A few white hairs drifted around his sun-toughened scalp. He had dark eyes, a severely annoyed expression, and he snorted upon seeing me. "Hey, there, Hoss. You look like ten miles of bad-"

"Clich§ڳ," I interjected, smiling. The old man puffed out a breath of quiet laughter and offered me his hand. I shook it, and found myself newly appreciative of the calloused strength that belied the man's evident age. "Good to see you, sir. I was starting to feel a little swamped."

Ebenezar McCoy, senior member of the White Council, a sometime mentor of mine, and by all accounts I'd heard one hell of a strong wizard, clapped me on my biceps with his free hand. "You, in over your head? It's as if you're too stubborn to know when to run."

"We'd best get moving," I told him. "The police will be along shortly."

His frown knitted his shaggy white eyebrows together, but he nodded and said, "Hop in."

I got in the truck and slid my staff into the gun rack with Ebenezar's. The old man's staff was shorter and thicker than mine, but the carved sigils and formulae on it were noticeably similar, and the texture and color of the wood was identical. They'd both come from the same lightning-wounded tree, back on Ebenezar's land in the Ozarks. I shut the door and closed my eyes for a moment, while Ebenezar got the truck rolling.

"Your Morse is rusty," he said a few minutes later. "On my staff it sounded like you spelled it 'blampires.'"

"I did," I said. "Black Court vampires. I just shortened it some."

Ebenezar tsked. "Blampires. That's the problem with you young people. Shortening all the words."

"Too many acronyms?" I asked.

"Ayuh."

"Well, then," I said. "I'm glad you took the time to RSVP me. I have a problem that needs to stay on the QT, but is rapidly going FUBAR. I'm sorry to call you LD through AT amp;T instead of using UPS, but I needed your help ASAP. I hope that's OK."

Ebenezar grunted, shot me a sidelong look, and said, "Don't make me kick your ass."

"No, sir," I said.

"Black Court," he said. "Who?"

"Mavra. You know her?"

"I know it," he said, the pronoun mildly emphasized. "Killed a friend of mine in the Venatori once. And she was in the Wardens' files. They suspect she's got a little skill at dark sorcery and consider her to be very dangerous."

"It's more than a little skill," I said.

The old man frowned. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I've seen her throw raw power around, and put up the best veil I've ever seen through. I also saw her using some long-range mental communications with her flunkies."

The old man frowned. "That's more than a little."

"Uh- huh. She's gunning for me. Only, you know, without the guns."

Ebenezar frowned, but nodded. "She holding that mess at the Velvet Room against you?"

"That's how it looks from here," I said. "She's taken two swings at me. But I found where she's laired, and I want to take her down before she gets to three."

"Makes sense," he said. "What's your plan?"

"I've got help. Murphy-"

"The police girl?" he interrupted.

"God, don't call her a girl," I said. "At least not to her face. Yeah, her, and a mercenary named Kincaid."

"Haven't heard of him," Ebenezar said.

"He works for the Archive," I said. "And he's good at killing vampires. I'm going in with those two, but we need someone standing by to get us out in a hurry."

"I'm your driver, eh?" he mused. "And I suppose you want someone to lock down Mavra's power, if she's got access to that much magic."

"It hadn't occurred to me, really," I lied. "But hey, if you are bored and want to do that to pass the time while you keep the car running, I don't mind."

The old man's teeth flashed in a wolfish smile. "I'll keep that in mind, Hoss."

"I don't have anything to use as a channel, though," I said. "Are you going to be able to target her without hair or blood or something?"

"Yes," Ebenezar said. He didn't elaborate how he'd do it. "Though I doubt I can get her down to nothing. I can prevent her from working anything big, but she might have enough left in her to be annoying."

"I'll take what I can get," I said. "But we need to move right now. She's already taken several people."

"Vampires are that way," Ebenezar agreed in a casual tone, but I saw the way his eyes narrowed. He didn't care for monsters like Mavra any more than I did. I could have kissed him.

"Thank you."

He shook his head. "What about her death curse?"

I blinked.

"You'd thought of that, right?" he asked.

"What death curse?" I stammered.

"Use your head, boy," Ebenezar said. "If she's got a wizard's power, she might well be able to level a death curse at you when she goes down."

"Oh, come on," I muttered. "That's no fair. She's already dead."

"Hadn't thought of that, eh?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Though I should have. Been a busy couple of days, what with dodging all the certain death coming at me from every direction. Not a second to spare for thinking. We have precious little time."

He grunted. "So where we going?"

I checked the time at a passing bank billboard. "A picnic."

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