The Necromancer's Gambit: The VC
Nicolas Wilson
“Theresa Fort?” Rook asks back in the car.
“Fort, synonym for a castle. Tthe last letter in fort, T, is the first letter of your new first name, which friends usually shorten to ‘Tress.’ Should make for a simple mnemonic. It’s shaping up like Baldur’s declared war on the Gambit, so I figure it’s about time for your first nom de guerre. I’ll have Bishop get you some documentation, so the detective can have fun chasing it down a blind alley.”
She glances back in the rearview. “Yeah, speaking of, we going to ditch her?”
“You can’t outrun a radio. And we just left the beehive; if we piss off the queen bee this close we’ll end up like Macaulay Culkin in My Girl.”
“That… seems a little esoteric.”
“Maybe, but less esoteric than if I’d referenced the boy from My Girl 2.”
“There was a My Girl 2?”
“Exactly my point.”
“And how does he die?”
“I don’t know if he does, since I haven’t seen it- which strengthens my point. I just know he was in Last Action Hero- for which he can’t die onscreen enough times.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hate LAH. Arnold being oddly self-aware and maybe even self-critical. If it had been a slightly better movie, it could have had real ironic value.”
I pull up to the VC apartment building, called the Brownstone. It’s got the right basic color, but it’s not built out of rocks from the other Portland- that much I can tell you. It’s a big, blocky rectangle, purposely in some disrepair to keep people from being too curious. The windows are all barred and covered in heavy drapes.
Vergara basically steps on me as I’m getting out of my car, she’s that eager. “Wait. You can’t come in yet.” She flashes her badge at me. “I’m not the door man; I’m saying it’s ill-advised. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept of a CI.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, if you kick in that door, your going to cost me a good informant- several, in fact. And since I kick most of my information back up to you, you’d be cutting off your own nose just to spite my-”
“Okay, I get the point. Three minutes. Then everybody still standing around gets their name in my little black book.” She taps her notebook on the air.
Rook follows me through the doors, barely able to hold her questions til they close. “Three minutes? That enough time to clear out the VC?” She looks back at Vergara through the pair of tinted windows in the doors.
The hallways even less welcoming than the outside of the building; again, by design. If you expect to get stabbed the moment you walk into a building, odds are you’re going to stay the hell away. “Not even close. She’s gonna lose about an hour; it’s a little spell I’ll teach you when we get some free time. Getting her to agree to the three minutes- that was my way in. The moment she’s alone, it’ll hit her- time will pass, and she’ll be conscious for it, she just won’t realize time is passing as quickly as it it.”
“That sounds like a nasty spell.”
“It can be- and it’s one of the reasons we don’t use real names, not even with each other. But this is your first time in a colony, right? Colonies are matriarchal societies. It’s a throwback to when there was still a bloodline, and females were the only place new vampires came from. So Guido- the guy we’re meeting isn’t anywhere near the real power in the VC- he’s just the incredibly nasally voice on the other end of our phone.”
I motion for Rook to follow me through a second set of doors, these with no windows whatsoever. Guido’s short, balding, pudgy, about as far from a vampire stereotype as I can imagine, and one of the worst bodies I can picture getting stuck in for a few thousand years. “We’ve got a problem, Guido.”
“An understatement,” he says, and crosses his arms in lieu of pacing.
“No; I mean beyond whatever has you in conniptions. A Portland Police detective is waiting outside to see the body.”
“You brought the police here?”
“She tracked me down because of that other thing; and when you wouldn’t stop calling, she got suspicious. So here we are. She’s probably going to need a tenant list. I’ll try and dissuade her from questioning your people, but there’s only so much I can do on that front.”
“I… understand.” His little mind starts working quickly, and I can see him disappearing into a web of contingencies, plans for moving the colony to another building- maybe one for murdering police.
“Focus. If it comes to it, I’ll make some noise so we can Harriet Tubman your people away. But it shouldn’t; I’ve worked with this cop before, and besides asking too many questions I can’t reasonably answer, she’s good people.”
“Just see to it she doesn’t ask any of those questions about mine. But this hunter that’s in the city- he’s a member of the Order of San Michele. I don’t expect him to honor the treaties- the Order never does. You can tell him he has our blessing to do what he will with whatever rogues he may find, but remind him that we are at peace.”
“For all the good it’ll do you. Yeah. I’ll rattle his cage- but all the same, you should pull your people into the colony. They won’t be safe if he’s hunting.”
“Indeed.”
“Have you got supplies?”
“We have livestock enough to weather a storm- provided it’s brief. Though if we’re forced to relocate that could complicate things.”
“Like I said, we can cover your ass if that happens. One Order jackass isn’t going to come at both the colony and the Gambit at the same time.” I say a little silent prayer he isn’t listening too closely to my pulse, because I’m lying through my shorts- but I can’t tell him the Order prick was probably in on the hit on Castle. There’d be no consoling him then.
I feel a chill. And I turn to see a woman dressed in red enter the room. Her skin’s dark, her hair darker; she seems to float across the room, rather than walk. Her name is Sara, but she’s likely to stab anyone who calls her that. It’s her old name, her human name. “The upir you’re searching for is a Ukrainian émigré named Vadim. We have long suspected him; I just texted you with information on where he sleeps- on the outskirts of the suburb of Camas.”
“So he’s a warlock and a rogue- and maybe a redneck. But if you knew about him, why wasn’t he dealt with before one of my people ended up dead?”
She flashes her fangs at me, then closes her mouth, and considers. “Do you like killing people?” The question shuts me up. “I don’t. And when we catch a warlock, that’s what we do. What we have to do. By treaty. So unless you’re willing to deputize a warlock- who by their nature are untrustworthy as they’ve already broken our laws- we have no choice. So I let sleeping dogs lie, as I can.”
“Your dog’s away now- and rabid.”
“That’s unfortunate. Do you require assistance putting him down?” She says it like I’m asking for a favor- rather than accusing her of not doing her damn job; she’s probably just trying to provoke me- there are pretty strict rules for when a vamp can attack a Gambit rep.
“Rook, this is Scarlat, a Conservator of the Peace. They do what I do- at least when they deign to do it.” She glares at me a moment, before acknowledging the introduction. Rook nods, and Scarlat smiles at her the way a dog smiles at a steak- though she’s probably just trying to unnerve her. To Rook’s credit, she doesn’t even seem to acknowledge it, though all it really takes is the slightest change in pulse to let a vamp know they’re under your skin.
“By treaty they’re the only vamps who can learn magic. Some of the older members, mostly on the council, were grandfathered in because of what they already knew, but they’re the only ones who can study it. They were the terms of our détente.”
Guido steps between us and the Conservator. “But I’m afraid Ms. Scarlat’s skills are required elsewhere at the moment.” She eyeballs him; she wasn’t expecting to get benched. But she can’t fight him, either, not in front of us, so she leaves. Once she’s clear of the doors, Guido elaborates. “We’re aware of the… challenges facing your Gambit. We don’t want to be seen as weak, in the event”
“That we get our asses handed to us, right,” I say.
“So we’re keeping our participation in this on the down low.”
“Nobody has to know.”
“Rook.”
“Sorry,” she says. “But come on. How could I not?”
“That takes care of our less pressing business. But the reason I called you so incessantly, is a body has been dumped in the Brownstone.”
“Shouldn’t be the first time that’s happened- and that’s hardly inside my jurisdiction.”
“And if it were just a gluttonous vampire’s overeaten meal, we would dispose of it, and punish those responsible. Except, that, as you so eloquently put it a moment ago, vampires are not allowed magic, and this body wreaks of the taint of your art.” He walks back behind a receptionist’s desk, by the light switches, then points. “The body is in the alcove,” he says, and turns on the lights.
I walk to the spot he indicated. The vamps are using little 10 watt compact fluorescent bulbs- maybe their longevity makes them more environmentally conscious, or maybe they’re just cheap asses- but it makes it harder to see. But I can make out a body, a woman, caked in blood. There isn’t so much of a drop of it anywhere but the body. “There’s no blood,” I say, “so she wasn’t murdered here.”
“Or the vamps licked it up,” Rook snickers; it’s a moment before she realizes Guido’s still in earshot, then turns red as blood rushes to the surface of her skin- which is not what you want to have happen in a colony.
Guido’s suddenly hovering over her shoulder, showing a lot of fang. “Would you, presuming you found a milkshake splattered across the lobby of your apartment building?” Then he smiles. “Were it freshly spilled blood, I might be tempted. But blood is special- delicate; you wouldn’t drink an expensive champagne at room temperature, would you? Actually, judging from your clothing, you might.”
“I forget how much of a connoisseur you are. Now fuck off, Guido, we’ve got work to do.”
I kneel next to the body. She’s laying on her side, in a recovery position, with her face pointed towards the wall. I’m trying to get a closer look at the wounds, when I catch myself humming. “Goddamn you,” I tell Rook. “I’m going to have R. Kelly stuck in my head for the rest of the night.”
She starts humming where I left off. “Me, too. Mutually assured destruction, I guess. But he mentioned the Order?”
“San Michele. Technically Catholics, but their extracurricular activities have no sanction. Not that there aren’t sanctioned Catholic hunters; after all, the current Pope has performed exorcisms. But San Michele is different. Pretty fanatical. And they don’t play well with others.”
“And what was that creepy shit he said about ‘livestock?’”
“For just such an occasion, colonies have been known to pay local citizens a stipend. They can be called in to the colony to donate blood in case of an emergency.”
“So like Dominos for blood.”
“Basically. Only you can’t get a side of chicken wings.” There a hundred small cuts on the body; it reminds me of the bomb inside Castle. But I can’t just hand Vergara a hunch, especially not a hunch this messed up. So I get a pair of tweezers out of my pocket, and go digging in the most shallow looking cut on her upper arm. Out of the cut I pull a small bit of leather with a few runic symbols burned into it. I poke a couple of other wounds, and even in the low light I can make out rigid implants, a few that look like they’re written on paper. That all but confirms what I thought. “How familiar are you with a Black Dahlia?”
“Elizabeth Short? Killed and cut in half in LA back in the 40s? The mutilation caused a sensation.”
“Right- she’s the one everybody knows of. Dahlias pain batteries, absorbing all the misery of their death for use in spells. The standard, anymore, is to combine it with a binding spell, keeping the person from completely dying.”
“Rechargable pain batteries. That’s morbid.”
“Most Dahlias are kept quiet. The suffering and abuse it takes to build one, it’s easier to do away from distraction or interruption. Short was a special case. She was released to the public as an antenna. She caused and absorbed panic and sensation, in one big burst of energy. Short and red lipstick murders were part of a plan to build the magical equivalent of an H bomb. But typically, a Dahlia gets shuffled away, hidden; for the energy created by her pain to be used at a mage’s leisure.”
“That’s… fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
“And sexist.”
“It’s not sexist- at least not directly. The sexism comes into play in that because women still aren’t given the same regard as men, they’re more likely to be abused coming up- the statistics are pretty much unequivocal on that point. And because of that, they tend to have blind spots that make it easier for abusers to manipulate them. And the Black Dahlia is ultimately about abuse; and unfortunately, women are still more likely to be the victims of that kind of violence. But… I think Castle was being set up as a Black Dahlia.”
“What?”
“I think that’s what the bind they left in him was about.”
“So you think this is the same people?”
“Almost certain.” There’s something familiar in the curve of the dead woman’s cheek. But I try not to focus on that. “See the cut, ear to ear by way of the mouth, it’s called a Glasgow smile.”
“Like the Joker in Dark Knight?”
“And Short. In the creation of a Dahlia, the smile is thought to be related to Anubis- possibly a reference to the mouth of a jackal. Anubis is often conflated with Hermes, who used a spell to close Argus’ eyes to kill him. Add to that his role as a psychopomp-”
“A what?”
“He conducts the souls of the dead to the afterlife- or, in this case, he’s warned off a soul, leaves it where it lies. Virtually every region and religion has their own versions of that. Of course the smile could be a reference to snakes, who can unhinge their jaws, and are linked with Hermes through his staff, the caduceus. It was also his golden sword that killed Medusa, who turned men to stone- a kind of living death. Honestly, tracing the original connections of magic is a scholar’s work, but it’s a tell-tale.”
I start to think I recognize the jaw; this isn’t the maddening déjà vu of her cheek, which could have been any of half a dozen cheeks I’ve touched. A shiver goes through me, as I stop being able to keep the thought out of my head any longer: I know the woman.
I grab the shoulder of her shirt and pull, ever so slightly, until her head rolls over enough I can know for sure. “Elise,” I say.