reading

But first, a few words from my partner.

“So now him and this killer ogre are on top of the railroad car, dukin’ it out, haina? Bond can’t do any fancy karate moves with the train going forty miles an hour, but he’s holding his own, against this thing that’s about twice his size. You know how big fuckin’ ogres can get.”

“Yeah, I sure as hell do. So do you, comes to that.”

Karl Renfer took a sip of lightly microwaved Type A.

“What Bond doesn’t know, cause he’s facing the wrong way, is that the train’s coming up fast on a tunnel…”

Police union rules say we’re allowed one coffee break per shift, along with half an hour for dinner. Karl and I were taking the coffee break in our usual spot, Jerry’s Diner, although I was the only one at our table actually drinking coffee – Karl’s beverage preferences are a little different.

It was just past 1am. Being open twenty-four hours, Jerry’s place gets a fair amount of undead trade, so the menu includes Type A, Type O, and an AB negative plasma that Karl says is overpriced. I was content – if that’s the word – with a cup of the dark roast that Jerry’s is infamous for. It’s not too bad with cream and sugar – a lot of cream and sugar.

Yesterday had been our day off. Karl had spent part of it checking out the new James Bond movie, Skyfang, and I was half-listening while he told me about it.

I gathered that Daniel Craig was fast replacing Sean Connery as Karl’s favorite actor to play Agent 007. I could see his point. Yeah, I watch those movies, too – but unlike Karl, I only see them once.

We agreed that Craig was the first actor to play the role who looked like he might actually be a professional killer – and that’s what Bond is, when you get down to it. I’ve known a few real life-takers in my time, and thought that Craig had the attitude down cold, so to speak. Even if he did have a better tailor.

It was just another Wednesday night, maybe a little quieter than usual. But that was before those two fucking elves came in and started waving guns around.

One of them used a chair to climb onto a vacant table and started yelling, in that high voice they have, “Nobody move! Everybody freeze!”

Good luck with that, shorty. Instead of acting like statues, everybody in the diner turned to see who the hell was making all the noise. Maybe that’s what the elf had really wanted, anyway.

He looked typical for the species – around 4’6”, with the blond hair and pointed ears that they all have. I’ve seen a few try to pass for human by dying their hair and wearing it long enough to cover the ears, but they can’t do much about the fact that elves are what the PC crowd calls “vertically impaired”.

This one was wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt that said “College Misericordia” on the front. The part of my mind that wasn’t focused on the Colt Python he was holding in both hands wondered if he might’ve come by the shirt honestly.

Even if he had attended Misery – as everybody calls it – I assumed the elf was a dropout. College Misericordia doesn’t graduate thieves – at least not deliberately. It’s true there are quite a few lawyers and politicians among their alums, but you can’t blame the college for that.

The elf’s partner in crime was wearing a navy blue sport shirt and khakis. They fit him pretty well – you can find clothing in all sizes these days, from Pixie Extra Tiny to Ogre XXXXXL. This guy was pointing some kind of automatic at Donna, the cashier, who’d gone pale enough to pass for a vampire’s girlfriend.

“Open the register!” the elf yelled. “Put the cash in this – just the bills, no coins!” He tossed her one of those fabric tote bags that the crunchy granola types do their grocery shopping with. Donna fumbled the catch, and the bag fell to the floor at her feet. I thought the elf was going to have a coronary. “Pick it up, bitch! Put the money in it quick, before I blow your fucking head off! Do it!”

His buddy was still on the table, sweeping the room back and forth with the barrel of that big pistol. The Python fires a .357 Magnum cartridge, and it’s got quite a kick – I wondered if it had knocked the elf on his ass the first time he fired it. Assuming he ever had fired it.

“Hands on the table!” he screeched at the customers. “Nobody move!”

Even from twenty-some feet away, I could see that the elf’s eyes were bloodshot and bulging. I wondered if there was something coursing through his system besides adrenaline. If he’d been human, I’d have figured him for an addict of some kind. But apart from the fucking goblins – who’ve shown an unfortunate fondness for meth – human recreational drugs don’t have any effect on supernaturals. Just as well – some of them give us more than enough trouble as it is.

Donna had finally got all the cash from the register into the canvas bag. The elf snatched it out of her hands, then turned and trained his gun on the customers, just like his buddy on the table was doing.

“OK now, listen up!” Like we were gonna ignore him, under the circumstances. “I’m goin’ around the room now. When I get to your table, the men are gonna reach for their wallets slow and put ’em in the bag here. Then the bitches are gonna dump their purses out on the table, so I can see what you got inside. Anybody doesn’t do what they’re told, or who gives me any shit – I am gonna fuckin’ kill you and everybody with you, too!”

He glanced toward the other elf, who was still on the table, nervously traversing the room with his gun.

“You cool, man?”

I thought he looked about as calm as Jell-O in an earthquake.

“Yeah, I’m cool. Go get the fuckin’ money. I gotcha covered.”

I wondered just how often these two losers had watched Red Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino’s got a lot to answer for.

“What’re you packing?” I murmured, just loud enough for Karl to hear me.

“Straight silver. You?”

“Silver and cold iron, mixed.”

Silver bullets are good against some kinds of supes, like vamps and weres. But they’re useless on any members of the faerie family – including goblins, trolls, orcs… and elves. Karl’s gun would be useless if the shit hit the fan in the next few minutes.

Cold iron, on the other hand, will take out any member of the faerie clan. The mixed load in my Beretta meant I’d have to double-tap each elf, to make sure he’d catch a bullet that would hurt him.

But our situation here was kind of complicated.

Cops are expected to protect the public at all times. That’s why we all pack a gun when we go out, even off-duty. But the public, especially the portion of it currently inside Jerry’s Diner, wouldn’t be well served by a bloodbath.

Being undead gave Karl an edge that the elves didn’t know about. He’s faster than a human, and he’d be invulnerable to the bullets in the elves’ guns – assuming all they were packing was lead. But they might have loaded some silver rounds, too.

Since we didn’t know what the elves’ ammo was, the smart move was for Karl and me to sit there like chumps and let those two little fuckers rob us, instead of risking a gunfight with all these civilians so close.

But that posed a problem, too, and it was going to arise when the elf with the bag got to our table. Even if Karl and I were meek as mice, once we reached for our wallets the guns on our belts would become visible. God only knows what the elf, who was close to the edge already, would do when he saw our weapons. He might start shooting out of sheer panic.

Besides, anything somebody else did could set one of these twitchy bastards off – anything. One of the customers could sneeze, or faint, or scratch an itchy armpit. Even worse, somebody might get a phone call.

Karl and I were going to have to take action before something happened to push the situation out of control. We had to find some way to take these two assholes down, without anybody getting killed – especially us.

We didn’t have long to think about it, either. The elf was just three tables away now.

Then inspiration struck. At least, I hoped it was inspiration and not a sudden attack of stupidity.

There were salt and pepper shakers on every table. When I was sure the two elves were looking elsewhere, I palmed the salt shaker and used my thumbnail to pry off the plastic stopper. About three ounces of salt flowed into my palm. I closed my fist, trying to hang on to as much of it as possible.

Some species of supes are repelled by salt. Others aren’t. But nobody likes it when you throw the stuff in their eyes.

I was looking at Karl again. Vampires have super-acute hearing, so I knew he’d hear me when I whispered, “Double play. When I say ‘Please’, take out the one on the table.” Karl gave me a slight nod.

It wasn’t long before the elf with the bag was standing in front of us. “Alright, come on, wallets,” he said tightly. “In the fuckin’ bag – let’s go.”

I slowly turned toward him, then made my face scrunch up like I was about to cry. Like a third-grader who’s been called to the principal’s office, I said, “Pleeease.”

Before the elf could do more than gape at me, Karl’s chair went over backwards as he came out of it vampire-fast. Half a second later, he was up on the table with the other elf before the little bastard even knew it.

The elf standing in front of me looked up toward his pal – he couldn’t help himself. That’s when I threw the fistful of salt into his eyes.

He screamed, dropped the bag, and brought his free hand up to cover his burning eyes. I reached over and grabbed his gun hand. Pointing the automatic away from me, I slammed his wrist down on the table, disarming him. With my other hand, I punched him in the throat.

I heard a scream from the other elf and looked up. Karl had the Magnum now, while the elf was holding his gun hand against his chest, moaning. No surprise there – a broken wrist hurts like hell.

My guy had gotten off easy. He was on the floor, eyes streaming, as he clutched his throat with both hands and tried to remember how to breathe.

I stood up and pulled out the leather folder holding my badge and ID. “Police officer! We’re both police officers! Relax, folks, it’s all over.”

We read both prisoners their rights, put them in cuffs – much to the discomfort of the elf with the broken wrist. – and called for backup. I was going to be spending the rest of my shift back at the station house. I looked forward to interrogating these two idiots once they’d been processed into the system. I wanted to know why elves – who, despite being shiftless and stupid, are normally peaceful creatures – were trying to take down Jerry’s Diner.

I never did finish my coffee. Small loss, really.

Karl hadn’t complained about taking the damaged elf to the hospital. He wouldn’t be allowed to take part in any interrogation, anyway. The Supreme Court had ruled in Barlow v. Maine almost forty years ago that anything a suspect said in the presence of a vampire – police officer or not – was inadmissible, since there was no way to establish whether vampiric Influence was used to induce cooperation.

Cops have learned to be careful about this kind of stuff. Nobody wants to see some scumbag’s conviction overturned because his lawyer claims there was a vampire three doors down the hall while the scumbag was answering questions.

That meant the other elf was all mine – sort of. The Scranton PD policy says that no detective is ever supposed to be alone in an interrogation room with a suspect. A lot of other police departments around the country have the same rule. In years past, some cops had been careless or stupid and actually been taken hostage by supposedly harmless prisoners. So now you’re supposed to have at least two detectives present to carry out an interrogation.

Since Karl was at the hospital with the elf he’d maimed, I’d have to get another detective to join me while I talked to our suspect, who hadn’t yet asked for a lawyer. His name was Thorontur Carnesin, according to his driver’s license.

Yeah, lots of them have driver’s licenses. You won’t be surprised to learn that they mostly drive subcompacts.

When I looked inside the Occult Crimes squad room, the only detective around was Marty Sefchik. I knew his shift would start in about an hour – which was when his partner, Carmela Aquilina, usually showed up. Unlike Carmela, Sefchik often came in early. I heard he and his wife didn’t get along so well.

Sefchik was looking at the early edition of the Times-Tribune, but he looked up when I appeared in the squad room door.

“Hey, Stan, what’s up? I hear you and Karl almost got taken off the count by a couple of fuckin’ trolls with slingshots or something.”

“They were doing a little better than slingshots, asshole,” I told him. “One had a 9mm Walther, and the other bastard was packing a Colt Python.”

He whistled. “Serious iron.”

“Uh-huh. And they were elves, not trolls.”

“Get the fuck outta here – elves? When did they get all badass?”

“I don’t know, but I was just about to ask one that very question. Wanna sit in?”

“Fuck, yeah. Gotta be more fun than the paper.”

“Almost anything is. OK, come on.”

Thorontur Carnesin had been sitting bent over, with his head resting in the crook of his shackled arm. But he sat up quick enough when we came in. Sefchik and I each pulled up a chair across the table from him.

The elf didn’t look too good. I wasn’t surprised that he had the reddest eyes this side of Transylvania – not after the salt I’d thrown in his face. But he was sweating, and it wasn’t warm in the room, which gets AC pumped in just like the rest of the building. I also noticed some tremor in his hands that hadn’t been present in the diner. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to hold the damn gun steady.

If this had been a human, I’d have said he was strung out – needing a fix of something and needing it bad. But supes don’t do drugs. Give or take the fucking goblins.

“How ya doin?” I said. “We’ve met before, although we weren’t introduced. I’m Detective Sergeant Markowski, and this is Detective Sefchik.”

“Yeah, hi,” the elf said. His right hand actually moved a couple of inches from the shackle, as if he’d intended to shake hands. I guess he bore no ill will for what happened in Jerry’s Diner.

The fact his right hand was shackled meant he was a leftie, like a lot of elves are. We always leave their pen hand free, in case they feel like writing a confession.

“You’ve been advised of your rights,” I said. “I know that, since I’m the one who did it. You understand that you don’t have to talk to us without a lawyer present.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know. It’s cool.”

“Your name’s Thorontur,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“People call you ‘Thor’?”

“Yeah – how’d you know?”

“Lucky guess,” I said. “Mind if we call you that? It’s less of a mouthful than ‘Thorontur’.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. Listen, dude, you gotta–”

“Don’t call me ‘dude’. It’s ‘Detective’,” I said.

“OK, sorry. Thing is, I’m feelin’ real bad, OK? I gotta see a doc, have him give me somethin’.”

“We might be able to help you with that,” Sefchik said. “But, we call a doctor, you know, first thing he’s gonna ask is what’s wrong with the patient. So, how’re you feeling bad, exactly? You got the flu, or something?”

“Naw, it ain’t that. I need some meds, you know?”

A junkie. The little bastard was acting just like a human going through withdrawal. And that just wasn’t possible.

“What kind of medication are we talkin’ about, Thor?” I said. “You under a doctor’s care right now?”

“No, dude,” he said. “It’s just that–”

My right palm slapped the table, hard. “I told you not to call me ‘dude’. I’m not gonna tell you again.”

Thor jumped a little, which is what I’d intended. “Sorry, uh, Detective,” he said. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. It’s just how I talk, you know?”

“Not in here, you don’t,” I said.

I was acting like a real hardass because I wanted psychological domination over this guy. Something very fucked up was going on here, and I wanted to know everything about it. Everything.

“Yeah, OK, Detective. Whatever you want.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Thor. Because what I want to know is what’s up with you, and I want it without a lot of bullshit.”

I sat back in my chair to give him a little space.

“You claim you need some kind of medication,” I said. “What exactly is it you think you need – and why?”

“Hell, I don’t know the scientific name, or nothing, man – uh, Detective. We call it Slide.”

“We? Who’s we?”

“Me and Car. And some other dudes we know.”

“Car’s the guy who was with you in the diner tonight? The one standing on the table?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“What his real name?”

“Caranthir Helyanwe. But most of us just call him Car.”

“So, you and ‘Car’ and your buddies take this stuff called ‘Slide’,” I said, “and now you’re hooked on it?”

Drug-addicted elves. Shit.

“Nah, I ain’t hooked on nothing. I can quit whenever I want.”

The elf even talked like a fucking junkie.

“OK, you can quit whenever you want,” Sefchik said. “So why don’t you just quit it now?”

Thor licked his lips. “It ain’t that I need it, OK? But I ain’t had any in a while. I just like the stuff – that’s all.”

“A while – how long ago is that, exactly?” I asked. “When did you last have some of this Slide?”

The tongue ran over his cracked lips again. “I dunno. Couple days ago, I guess.”

“And you like this stuff so much,” Sefchik said, “that you and your buddy were willing to stick up a fucking diner just to get money for some?”

Another shrug. “Slide ain’t cheap.”

“What’s it do for you, anyway?” I asked him.

He looked at me as if I’d just spoken in Polish. “Say what?”

“He means,” Sefchik said, “How do you feel when you’re using it?”

“It hits you in, like two stages, man… uh, Detective. At first, it’s like fireworks are goin’ off inside your head, you know? There’s flashes of light, all different colors – some that ain’t even been invented yet.”

“How long does that usually last?” Sefchik asked.

“Oh, m… Detective, I don’t fuckin’ know. I never looked at my watch – hell, I probably couldn’t have seen it, anyway, with all the colors goin’ off inside my head.”

“So, there’s two stages,” I said. “What happens after the flashing lights?”

“After that, you just feel gooood, you know? All relaxed and happy and shit. It’s like you just got laid, but about ten times better.”

“And how long does that go on for?” I asked him.

“Like I already told you–”

“I know,” I said. “You don’t check your watch. But give me a ballpark estimate – an hour, three hours, half a day, all day?”

He wiped a shaky hand over his face. “I dunno, maybe three hours, could be a little more. But that’s about right, I guess.”

Sefchik frowned. “How much per pop?”

“Twenty-five bucks.”

“How do you take it?” I asked him.

Thor turned his sweaty face toward me. “Huh?”

I will not hit the suspect in the head. I will not hit the suspect in the head.

“Do you snort the shit, inject it, smoke it, stuff it up your ass – what?” I said.

“Me and Car mostly smoke it,” he said. “But I know a couple guys who say snortin’ gives you a bigger blast. I dunno; I never tried it that way. Look – can you guys, uh, Detectives help me out here? I need to see a doc pretty bad. I feel like I’m gonna jump out of my fuckin’ skin or something.”

I got to my feet. “Detective Sefchik and I are gonna step outside for a couple of minutes.”

Sefchik stood up too and followed me to the door.

“You guys gonna call the doctor?” Thor asked. The need in his voice was unmistakable.

“We’ll think about it,” I said.

“Cause if you ain’t, then I want a fuckin’ lawyer in here! He’ll get me to a doc. This is fucking inhumane treatment! I got my–”

Then we were in the hall, and I closed the door behind us, cutting off Thor in mid-rant. Sefchik looked at me, his face a study in disbelief.

“Elf junkies?” he said. “Is this asshole fucking kidding?”

“Does he look like he’s kidding?”

Sefchik shook his head a couple of times. “I knew fucking gobs could get hooked on meth, and that’s bad enough – but elves? What’s next – werewolves shooting heroin? Vamps on speed? Makes my head hurt, just tryin’ to think about it.”

“Yeah, I know just what you mean.”

“So, why’d you take a break?” he asked me. “Just want to vent a little? Not that I blame you.”

“Nothing wrong with venting,” I said. “But the main reason is I have to make a phone call, and I don’t want my man Thor listening in on it.”

“Hey,” I said. “Where are you?”

“We’re still in the waiting room at the ER. You know how it is – they give you a quick once-over, and if you’re not actually dying, you can go sit and wait for a few hours. I figure an elf’s busted wrist isn’t real high on their priority list tonight.”

“There’s a couple of things I’d like you to do while you’re down there.”

“Like what?”

“When they finally get your little buddy into a treatment room, make sure the docs get a blood sample and send it to the lab.”

“Lookin’ for what, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Anything that shouldn’t be in an elf’s blood, I guess.”

“I’ll take care of it. What else you need?”

“Since you’re gonna be waiting a while, why don’t you ask your pal about something called Slide.”

“What the fuck’s that?”

“I’m not positive, but I think it might be a drug that elves can get hooked on.”

“Well, fuck me,” Karl said. “You sure about this stuff?”

“No, I’m not. That’s why I want you to talk to Car about it. You know that’s his name, right?”

“Yeah, he told me. Guess he got tired of me saying, ‘Hey, you’.”

“Later on, I want to compare whatever you get from him with what I already heard from his partner, Thor.”

“Thor, you said? Like that old pixie joke, ‘I’m tho thor, I can hardly pith’?”

“That’s the one. And listen, if you have to use a little vampire mojo to get him talking about Slide, that’s OK.”

“Seriously? I don’t even know if it’ll work, Stan – but if it does, anything I get from him’s gonna be inadmissible in court. You know that.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t want this for the DA’s office – I want it for me, so I can maybe figure out what the fuck is going on here.”

“OK, I’ll see what I can do. We’re gonna be here a while, anyway.”

“Good. Besides, if Influence doesn’t get you anywhere, you can always flash your fangs at him.”

“I’ll keep that in reserve, just in case.”

I checked my watch: 4.22. Sunrise would be about ten after seven.

“Listen, if you’re still there an hour from now, give me a call,” I said. “I’ll bring one of the other detectives over, or even a uniform, if I have to. He can take over custody of Car, and I’ll give you a ride back here, so you can head home in time.”

“Thanks, Stan, I appreciate it.”

“No problem. OK, I gotta go back and see Thor. He was yelling about a lawyer when I left him, and I sure wouldn’t want to violate his constitutional rights by denying him timely access to counsel.”

“Heaven forbid. Alright, I’ll talk to you later, dude.”

“Don’t call me dude.”

I took him back down to Booking, where they’d put him in a holding cell and give him a phone, just like the law requires. I was pretty sure that once his lawyer got here, Thor wasn’t going to be nearly as chatty as he had been upstairs.

If Thor was a human going through withdrawal from heroin, a doctor might actually have done him some good – and we’d provide one. That’s the law, too. Some junkie bouncing off the walls because his dopamine receptor cells were going crazy wasn’t exactly a new phenomenon around here.

A doc wouldn’t give a prisoner any heroin, but a dose of methadone wasn’t out of the question, or maybe a strong sedative. Even if we had a fucking goblin going nuts because he can’t get any of the meth he’s hooked on – the medical community knows how to handle that, too.

But an addicted elf? Hooked on a drug that nobody’s ever heard of? No doctor could be sure that any drug he gave Thor might not interact with the stuff already in his system and kill the little bastard. So Thor was going to have to sweat it out, literally, until a specialist in elf medicine could get a look at him.

I went back to the squad room and got started on the paperwork stemming from the arrest of the two elves at the diner. I was almost done when Karl called around 5.30, saying he was still stuck at Mercy’s ER. Car hadn’t even made it into a treatment room yet.

“OK, I’ll find somebody to take over for you,” I said. “We oughta be there in ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Roger that.” Karl loves that kind of talk.

Sefchik had started his shift by now, and he and Aquilina were out on the street somewhere. But McLane and Pearce were in the squad room, drinking coffee and waiting to handle the next call that came in. Lieutenant McGuire was in his glass-enclosed office at the back, and I told him that Karl was stuck over at the ER with sunrise fast approaching. McGuire said I could run over there and take one of the other detectives with me to relieve Karl.

Ten minutes later, Pearce was at the ER, handcuffed to Car, and Karl was riding shotgun in my Toyota Lycan as I headed back to the station house. I had a lot to tell him. Turned out, he had a few items for me, too.

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself, Stan. You were going on what you’d been taught at the academy, and they taught me the same thing: supes don’t get hooked on drugs, apart from goblins, I mean. Now it looks like some motherfucker has come up with a new kind of drug, and that throws all the old knowledge into the wastebasket.”

“A game changer,” I said.

“Uh-huh – like the old game wasn’t tough enough already.” Karl shook his head. “Well, I got a couple of things from talking to my buddy Car that I can add, and one of them’s gonna blow your mind. I know it did mine.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said.

“I’ll start with the other one. Car told me that there’s another street name for Slide, and he thinks this one came first. He says some of his homies call it HG.”

I didn’t take my eyes off the road to stare at him, but I wanted to. “HG,” I said. “Seriously.”

“That’s what Car said.”

“It sounds like some old-time movie director – Ready when you are, HG!’’

“Turns out, I can give you a better idea of its etymology,” Karl said.

“Etymology.”

“Yeah – it means the study of word origins.”

I looked sideways at him. “You been looking at those copies of Reader’s Digest I keep in my desk?”

I saw his shrug from the corner of my eye. “I sneak one every once in a while.”

“OK,” I said. “So, enlighten me as to the, uh…”

“Etymology.”

“Yeah. The etymology of ‘HG’.’”

“Car says he’s pretty sure it stands for ‘Hemoglobin-Plus’, on account of hemoglobin being the basic ingredient.”

“Hemoglobin plus what?” I asked him.

“Car didn’t know. He says nobody does.”

“With a guy like Car,” I said, “nobody probably consists of him and three other losers like him.”

“Probably. We’re gonna have to start working our street contacts, see if somebody out there knows more about this stuff.”

“OK, so the name is one piece of news,” I said. “What’s the other item – the one that’s gonna blow my mind?”

“Thing is, it could be just bullshit – considering Car was the source and all.”

“Fine – I’ll keep that in mind. It might keep my skull from imploding. So what is it?”

“Car says he knows a vampire who’s hooked on the shit, too.”

I told him what Karl and I had learned from the two junkie elves. He was as disbelieving as I’d been, at first. But he agreed with me that it was something the unit needed to know more about. He said each shift of detectives would be told to ask their snitches about Slide and exactly who might be addicted to it.

When I got home, Christine’s car was parked in the driveway. Since the sun was already well above the horizon, I knew she’d be in her basement bedroom by now, wrapped in a sleeping bag and literally dead to the world until dusk. I’d talk to her then.

I went upstairs and traded my detective outfit for a sweatshirt and jeans. Time was, I’d head off to sleep right after getting home from work, but lately I’ve got into the habit of unwinding for an hour before I go to bed. I have fewer nightmares that way.

I went into the spare bedroom and checked on my hamster, Quincey. His water bottle was mostly full, but the bowl was empty. I filled it with food pellets and put it back in his cage. That woke him up – hamsters are nocturnal, just like vampires and some cops I know. When he came over to the bowl, I rubbed his head with my index finger for a little while. He likes that.

Then I went to sleep – and had bad dreams anyway.

“Good morning, Daddy.”

It wasn’t morning, but we’d agreed that starting the day with “Good evening” sounded stupid – especially when I said it using my Bela Lugosi imitation.

Christine wore the outfit she usually slept in – sweatpants and a T-shirt. Today the shirt said in front, “Thousands of vampires go to bed hungry.” As she went to the fridge, I saw that the back read, “Give generously when the vampire comes to your door window.”

She got at least a dozen different “vampire-centric” shirts, and I’d asked her once where she bought them. She’d given me a wink and said, “The Sharper Image catalog, of course.”

Christine got a bottle of Type A from the refrigerator, pried off the cap, and put it in the microwave to warm up. Then she sat down and poured the contents into the mug I’d put on the table for her, along with a placemat and napkin. Setting the table for a vampire is pretty uncomplicated, but I knew she appreciated the gesture.

“So how was work?” she asked, taking her first sip.

“Depends on what part you mean,” I said. “Do you wanna hear about how Karl and I almost got held up by elves, or about when it got really weird?”

Her eyes widened a little. “Goodness,” she said. “You mean I have to choose?”

“Naw, I’m having a sale tonight – two for the price of one.”

“Hmmm,” she said. “And what is the price?”

“Your opinion, when I’m done.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal, Sergeant. Go for it.”

So I told her about my shift, starting with when the two elves hit Jerry’s Diner. Eventually, I got around to the new street drug, Slide.

The look she gave me when I finished was as skeptical as McGuire’s had been – not that I blamed her.

“A drug that addicts supes…” She’d picked up that term from me and used it freely, even though some supernaturals consider it a slur. Christine knows I don’t mean anything by it.

“That’s what it looks like,” I said.

“I knew about the goblins and meth, of course,” she said with a frown. “I’m not likely to forget, after a bunch of them came over here to kill you a while back.”

“That’s over and done,” I said. “And anyway, things didn’t work out too well for the gobs that night.”

“Just as well,” she said. “Little green bastards.”

“I never thought it possible that other species of supes could become drug addicts,” I said. “But I trust the evidence of my own eyes.”

“I trust your eyes, too,” she said, “but, for gosh sake… So this stuff affects both elves and vampires?”

“The vampire angle’s just hearsay, for the moment. It came from that asshole Car, and I’m not sure I’d trust him if he said bats fly at night. But elves… yeah, I’d say that’s a certainty.”

She drained the mug and put it down. “Goblins and elves are both part of the faerie family. Think there’s a connection there? Some kind of genetic thing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “And for the moment, guesses are all I’ve got.”

“I don’t imagine that state of affairs will continue for very long – now that Detective Sergeant Markowski is on the case.”

Some of that was kidding, but only some. Despite knowing me better than anyone alive – or undead – my vampire daughter seems to think I’m pretty cool. How many dads can say that?

“So,” I said, “I take it that this is the first time you’ve heard about this HG stuff?”

“Absolutely. There hasn’t been even a whisper. What’s HG stand for, again? Hemoglobin-something?”

“Hemoglobin-Plus, according to the elf.”

“Plus what?”

“That’s the mystery, or one of them. It must be something pretty potent, since hemoglobin all by itself isn’t addictive to anybody.”

“Well, it is to me,” she said.

“Fuck that. You’re talking about nourishment, honey. Calling blood addictive to vampires is like saying humans are addicted to food. I mean, in a literal sense I guess that’s true – without it, we’d die.”

“The ultimate withdrawal pang.”

“It’s still not the same,” I said.

She laughed softly.

I looked at her. “What?”

“Stan Markowski, once the scourge of the undead from Scranton to Shickshinny, defending vampirism. There was a time when you didn’t talk like that.”

I turned my head and looked out at the night that was pressing against the window. “There was a time when I didn’t know better.”

After finishing my eggs, I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d ask around the… community about this HG shit when you have a chance.”

“I’ll be happy to,” she said. “But if somebody’s actually using this stuff, it’s pretty unlikely they’re gonna just admit it – at least to me.”

“Maybe not, but it could be somebody heard about another vampire getting hooked on this stuff. You know people like to gossip.”

“And vampires, like corporations, are people, too,” she said, giving me a toothy smile.

“Yeah,” I said, “but a lot more talkative.”

I thought that was strange, since I was pretty sure that four of the councilors running for re-election were Democrats and the other two were Republicans. Who would call members of their own party bums?

Then I got a little closer and saw the smaller print saying that the billboard was brought to us courtesy of the fine folks at the Patriot Party. Now it made sense.

The Patriot Party didn’t like anybody – except for fellow Patriots, that is. They were new on the local scene, and while I don’t usually pay much attention to politics, I knew that the Patriot Party combined fiscal conservatism with a social agenda that some people found kind of disturbing. They were backing Philip Slattery for the mayor’s seat, and supporting a whole slate of candidates for City Council.

Everybody wants lower taxes, including me. That’s just what the Patriots promised – I think they wanted to cut the property tax rate in half. That would make a lot of people happy, but the big drop in revenue which would require serious cuts in city services.

The Patriots were fine with that, especially if the services that got cut involved poor people, unwed mothers, or people with substance abuse problems. Supporters of the Patriot Party apparently believed that poor people deserved to be poor, unwed mothers were sluts, and drunks and druggies had brought their problems on themselves and shouldn’t expect taxpayers to help them cope.

The Patriots also weren’t real fond of gays, and they were especially down on supes. Their members contained quite a few Bible-thumpers, who had declared supes to be “abominations before the Lord”. They usually accompanied this claim with a bunch of quotes from the Old Testament – like the one from Exodus that says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

But some other members of the Patriot Party made a more legalistic argument. They said that a “citizen” was defined someplace as “a man or woman living under a particular legal jurisdiction”. Since supes weren’t human, their argument went, they couldn’t be considered citizens and therefore had no basis to claim civil rights.

I wondered if that meant supes didn’t have to pay taxes, either. Karl and Christine would love that part of the program, if not the rest of it.

The PP seemed to have money to spare, considering how many billboards and commercials they’d bought. There was even a Super PAC, the Coalition for American Morality or something, that was running TV and radio ads in support of the Patriots, and putting out some other ads that said some real nasty things about Mayor D’Agostino and the incumbent City Council members.

Fucking politicians.

When I got to the squad room, Karl wasn’t at his desk. That was unusual, since he usually gets in before I do. Then I saw him standing in the doorway of McGuire’s office, talking to the boss. Karl looked my way for a moment and I heard him tell McGuire, “Here he is.” Then he closed McGuire’s door and headed my way, walking fast.

When he reached me I asked, “Something up?”

“Not much – just a war. Come on, let’s go.”

That’s what they call it – the Catholics do, anyway. Considering how many churches there are around the world, God’s got more houses than Donald Trump.

St. Mark’s Church towered over its South Side neighborhood like a skyscraper over a bunch of mud huts. As usual, God had used an architect who thought big and liked stone.

I wondered if He’d looked out the front window recently. Was He pissed that a little piece of Hell had been left within a hundred feet of His front door? Could be that He was amused. They say that God created everything – and I guess that means He made irony, too.

Karl and I made our slow way down the middle of the street, trying not to step in any of the blood. At least we didn’t have to worry about traffic, since both ends of the block were closed off by police barriers. Behind the yellow sawhorses, reporters screamed for access, forensic techs waited impatiently, and neighbors just stared in shock and disbelief. It was a typical crime scene – even if this particular crime was anything but typical.

Even though it had been dark for hours, everybody could still get a good look at the carnage. The forensics people had set up enough lights for a film set. Difference was, these actors weren’t getting up for another take, no matter who yelled “Action!”

I looked over my shoulder and said quietly to Karl, “You doing OK?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I had something before coming on shift.”

I’d been concerned that he might be feeling edgy. Some vampires get that way in the presence of a lot of fresh blood – although Karl was used to it. He’d been to a lot of crime scenes.

Our slow progress eventually brought us to the tall man in the black raincoat. He stood, hands in his coat pockets, staring at one of the bodies as if he was trying to memorize it. He didn’t look up as we approached. Lieutenants don’t have to show up at crime scenes, but Scanlon does anyway. I think he likes it.

“Evening, Scanlon.” He outranks me but doesn’t act like it, usually. I used to work Homicide, and even though I’ve been in Occult Crimes for years, we still run into each other at crime scenes – especially those with a body count as high as this one.

Scanlon slowly turned toward me. “Stan.” He looked over my shoulder, nodded, and said, “Karl.”

“Lieutenant.” Karl doesn’t have the long history with Scanlon that I do, so he keeps it formal, usually.

I made a gesture with my chin toward one of the bodies. “They all vampires?”

“That’s what my guys tell me. Once I noticed one body had fangs, I had them check all the others.”

“No wood, though,” Karl said. “Did you notice?”

We both looked at him. “No arrows,” Karl said, “or crossbow bolts, or any of the other things most people use to kill the bloodsucking undead at night, when they’re not lying helpless.”

They, I noticed, not we. But the way he’d said “bloodsucking undead” showed that he wasn’t completely indifferent to what had happened. Karl’s what you might call conflicted.

“Silver bullets for all of them, you figure?” I said.

“That, or maybe charcoal,” Scanlon said. “We had a guy use a charcoal slug on a vampire last year, remember?”

“Forensics will tell us about the bullets,” I said. “But there’s something else I noticed.”

Now I was the focus of attention.

“A couple of them are lying on their backs, and I recognize the faces,” I said. “Both members of the Calabrese Family.”

Scanlon made a disgusted sound. “Fangsters. Jesus.”

“Looks like somebody set up an ambush with the Calabrese guys as the guests of honor,” I said. “They got hurt pretty bad tonight.”

“It wasn’t a shutout, though,” Karl said.

I turned toward him. “What?”

“One of these dead guys is wearing thin latex gloves,” he said.

“Paranoid about leaving his prints?” Scanlon said.

“Could be,” Karl said. “Or maybe he was part of the ambush and figured he’d have to reload eventually.” Karl made a grimace that briefly displayed his fangs. “The bloodsucking undead don’t handle silver bullets too well.”

Scanlon looked from Karl to me. “Vampires… ambushing vampires?”

“Makes a certain amount of sense,” I said. “Word on the street these last few weeks is that a gang from out of town had its eyes on the Calabrese territory. I figured if the rumors were true, it was only a matter of time before the new guys tried what you might call a hostile takeover.”

Scanlon’s head did a slow pan, taking in the crime scene and the six dead men it contained, all of whom had probably died tonight for the second time.

“A vampire gang war,” he said. “Just what we fucking need.”

I shrugged. “Could be worse.”

He looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Yeah? How?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

“No, but they’re playing to win,” I said. “A couple more nights like tonight, and Calabrese is gonna start running out of soldiers.”

“You heard anything about where these new guys’re from?”

“Nothing I’m willing to put any faith in,” I said. “One guy I talked to last week said he thought it was Philly – but it turns out that it was something he got from his cousin, who heard it from some other guy, who was banging a girl who once knew somebody who lived in Philly. Or something like that. You know how it goes.”

“Confidential informants – you gotta love ’em,” Karl said.

“Not when they only have shit to tell me, I don’t. If we’re gonna find out what’s going on, we better get a little closer to the source.”

“So, we going to see Calabrese?”

I thought about that. “No, not tonight. After what happened to his crew, he’ll be hiding out for a while.”

“Hiding out?” Karl showed his fangs in a grin. “Don Pietro Calabrese, capo di tutti vampiri, hiding from his enemies like a rabbit cowering in his hole? Say it ain’t so, Stan.”

“That’s not what Calabrese will call it,” I said. “He’ll say he’s gathering his forces, or planning strategy, or maybe even going to the fucking mattresses. Do wiseguys still say that?”

“Beats me,” he said. “All I know about the Mafia, I learned from Francis Ford Coppola. If I wanted to mess around with those guys, I’d be in Organized Crime.”

“Well, since Calabrese is likely to be unavailable for a while,” I said, “we oughta pay a call on Victor Castle.”

Before Castle, the position of local “supefather” had been held for a long time by an old vampire/wizard named Vollman. But he’d died last year, at the hands of his own son.

Victor Castle has a lot of business interests in town, but he usually hangs out at the rug store he owns on the west side. Like a lot of businesses, Magic Carpets, Mystic Rugs was usually open at night, catering to customers who didn’t come out during daylight hours.

When we walked into the store, Castle greeted us himself instead of sending one of his flunkies. Apart from the expensive suit he wore, the man who’d come into this world as Vittorio Castellino didn’t look much like the big deal he apparently was. Average height or a little less, bit of a gut on him, and a lot of bald scalp glistening in the overhead lights.

Castle never seemed to know what to do with his hands. As we approached, he was fiddling with the large gold signet ring he wore on his right pinky finger. I never knew whether the ring was some kind of badge of office or just something that Castle wore as a complement to his thousand-dollar suits.

“Sergeant Markowski,” Castle said. “Good evening.” He turned to Karl and with a slight nod said, “Detective.” There was usually a hint of tension between those two, and most of it originated with Karl. My partner was a vampire, but he was a cop first. I figured Karl was reluctant to pay homage to a guy who he might have to arrest someday.

Castle studied us for a couple of seconds, turning the ring around and around. Then he said, “Why don’t we talk in my office?”

Castle’s inner sanctum was done in dark wood, including a huge desk that looked like it might have been real mahogany. Rugs, rolled up and tied tight, were standing in three of the corners, and fabric samples of different sizes were tacked to each of the walls. Larger carpet samples, about a foot square, were stacked all around the room.

Despite the general sloppiness of the office, Castle’s desk was nearly immaculate. All that rested on it were a fancy-looking clock encased in Lucite, a closed ledger, and one of those Tiffany-style desk lamps that provided the only light in the room.

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