"Jar of the Djinn"
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dochermes"Jar of the Djinn"
10/21/1996
I.
At ten-thirty, Cindy Brunner was standing in the tiny foyer, watching traffic on 38th Street. Awful lot of humongous SUVs any more, she thought. She was making her way through a bowl of cottage cheese in which she had cut up an apple and some pineapple chunks. At thirty-six, she was more attractive than ever. She was only an inch over five feet tall, slim and fit as a gymnast, with breasts a bit large for her frame (she explained this as somehow coming from being born six weeks premature). Her dark blonde hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail. Cindy was wearing white sneakers, very old and comfortable blue jeans and an open denim shirt over a black pullover. Her inquisitive, freckled face had always been appealing; people felt comfortable with her.
An unmarked police car pulled up and backed into a space just down the block. Finally! She raced to the kitchen down the hall to fling the empty bowl and spoon into the sink and got back just as a familiar figure was starting up the six steps to the front door. He was unaccompanied, so this was unofficial business. She reached out and scanned his mind lightly, found nothing suspicious and opened the front door just as he raised his finger to the bell.
"Good morning and may I say it's about time. You phoned an hour ago."
"Hiya, Cindy," Harold Klein said with a smile. He was a sturdy man below average height, with curly grey hair and a worn face. As always, year after year, he wore a raincoat that had been white the year Cindy was born.
She grinned like an imp with honest delight. "Inspector, I hope you've got something for Jeremy and me. A cult of assassins from Nepal? Giant bats carrying off children? Come on, let's have it."
Klein regarded her affectionately. "Ah, this is unofficial. Where's the Dire Wolf himself? I'll explain it to both of you at the same time."
"He's in the conference room. Right this way."
She turned and trotted up the stairs. Klein glanced briefly at the open door to the reception room where he had always been taken before. He followed her up the wide, carpeted stairs. In those snug jeans, her ascent was worth watching but his mind was as always distracted.
Klein had never been on the second floor of this old brownstone before. He saw the open door to a library and the hall itself was lined with tightly packed bookcases. Smiling at him over one shoulder, Cindy opened the dark wooden door at the end of the hall. "Jeremy," she sang cheerfully, "it's your friend the Inspector here to see you."
II.
For a few seconds, Klein was lost in taking in the room. His long decades of training in observation was worked to its fullest. This was a big, high-ceilinged room, well-lit and cool to the point of being chilly. One wall was taken up with a row of dark green filing cabinets with reference books stacked on top of them. There was a seven foot monitor screen with various electronic communication devices around it, and enclosed bathroom in one corner and a waist-high cooler.
In the center of the room, a oak table stood, four feet wide and ten feet long, with ten swivel chairs spaced along it, and one at each end. Sitting at the head of this table was the man he had come to see. Jeremy Bane glanced up. His pale grey eyes caught Klein like a spotlight. The Dire Wolf was a slim, even gaunt man in his early forties, with short black hair and a narrow, feral face. He was wearing black slacks and a black long-sleeved turtleneck.
As he saw Klein, he pushed his chair back and rose. "Hi, inspector. I don't think you've been in here before." In front of Bane was a wire basket of mail, a ledger and a check book, all of which he scooped up and put in the seat to his left.
Klein snorted, "I think I'd remember. Hell of a set-up you got here, Bane."
There was a faint distance in Bane's tone. "When the KDF was active, this was our command center." He came back to the present with a snap. "Have a seat, Inspector. Cindy, do we have any coffee here?"
"I think so," she answered and dug around in the cooler. "Yep, here we go. This'll just take a minute."
Klein took a seat at Bane's right. "Before we get down to business, I have a question. You mind?"
"I can't tell until I hear the question."
"Fair enough. So. The last I knew, to get a P.I. license, you needed three years experience in the police department or army or working for someone who is a P.I. I always wondered how you got your ticket."
Bane raised one eyebrow. "For three and a half years, I worked for Michael Hawk's agency. Can you think of a better teacher?"
"Naw. Hawk was a fine detective, he was the real thing."
"I'm sorry he couldn't have taught me more but the Midnight War kept getting in the way. What else? I posted my bond and passed the written and oral exams. I renew my license every two years. And I already had my conceal carry permit."
"That's all I wanted to know. Just for my own satisfaction. You know, Mr Dire Wolf, I give you information I wouldn't share with a regular civilian."
Cindy came over with a mug of steaming coffee and Klein accepted it gratefully. "Thanks. Today I'm here on unofficial business. Off the record. Strictly personal."
"Got it." Bane watched Cindy sit down to his left, after moving the pile of paper one chair further down. She had coffee for herself, but she put a tumbler of ice water in front of him. "I'm listening."
The inspector frowned and looked down at his mug."You know, there's a thousand detectives on the force and they're great with homicides, assaults, robberies. I have no complaints. But we both know- in this city, strange things happen. Let me come straight out with it. Every year, there are maybe twenty crimes in the city that just can't be explained. The department closes them as soon as possible and pretends they never happened. The first time I tried to reopen the Seneca case, I realized the mayor's office was actively blocking me."
"Fear of panic in the general public? If the average taxpayer realized what horrors come out at night, there would be hysteria that would close the city down."
"So they cover things up and explain things away. Look, I'm a cop and always have been. When I run into something my force can't or won't handle, I still want to the get the job done. Thank God I heard about you two."
Klein pulled out a cigar, saw no ashtray and no offer of any. "We're working the same job from different angles. I sure didn't believe in vampires and werewolves and whatever until the evidence was too overwhelming to ignore. The first time I came face to face with a ghoul- remember that night?- I almost had a heart attack."
"You know you can come to use with anything supernatural," Bane said. "This private investigation business is just a way to do some good and fill time. My real mission in life is the Midnight War."
Cindy cut in for the first time. "I think it's time for you to tell us what's really on your mind, Inspector."
"You're right. I spent all last night covering a homicide up in White Plains. Man named Akil Maroun, Green card. He was a professor at Westbrook Academy, taught Egyptian history and calligarphy. His body was found last night at ten o'clock after he wasn't answering his phone and a colleague got worried enough to peek in a window."
Cindy interrupted to ask, "I thought your territory was midtown Manhattan, How come you took a case in White Plains?"
"I'll tell you the truth, sweetie. I'm getting a reputation like you and your partner here. If it's weird and gruesome, the brass send me. Anyway, I was out there until five this morning with the forensic boys and a couple of uniformed officers. We questioned everybody three or four times, took pictures, searched every inch, the usual. The real point of interest is the body."
He paused so long that Bane and Cindy thought he wasn't going to continue, but finally he said, "Maroun was totally dehydrated, one hundred percent dry. No fluid left in the body. He looked like he had left out in the desert for a year. No blood, no water in the tissues. And get this.. three hours earlier, he had been seen in a restaurant eating a meal with his in-laws."
"I can see why your science boys are upset," Bane said. "Any puncture wounds?"
"Nope. Nothing we could find. The lab has no clue how it could be done. They guessed that maybe if you stuck a catheter in his body and sucked out the fluids, it could cause this in a few days. Or maybe if you kept him in a vaccuum at oven temperature overnight. But in an hour or two? They don't even want to talk about it."
"Frankly, it's weird as all get out to me," Cindy said. "Jer?"
"I don't remember anything quite like it. So, inspector, what's the situation now?"
"Maroun's body is resting at 30th Street, in a drawer with a tag on its toe. Everyone has been grilled back and forth, his in-laws and the man they had supper with, his ex-wife, a cleaning lady, even a student he had thrown out of his class. And the questions are starting again now. Nothing useful so far."
Bane stood up and started pacing. He couldn't help it. The same enhanced metabolism that gave him his extra speed also made him hopelessly restless. "Do you have anything we can read?"
"Right here. You know, these have to be returned. If it came to a hearing, I could not justify having let you see this."
"Got it. Don't worry, Klein, I will never let you down."
"I'm counting on my pension," the inspector said as he handed over a thick manila envelope.
As Bane took the reports, he smiled thinly. "You can tell, I wouldn't make a living as a PI. No client, no fee, not even a retainer."
Klein stood up as well, looking Bane in the eyes. "You know you want to tackle this. This is what you live for. Digging for clues and questioning witnesses and sitting in a car all night are not for you. You ARE a wolf. You were born to chase dangerous things and tackle them. Am I right?"
"You're right. I'm bored. I'm on this case. Cin, what do you think?'
"I'm with you," the blonde telepath said. "we were not made to sit around watching TV and eating junk food. I say we jump in this case up to our necks."
Klein brought his mug over to the sink and rinsed it. "I feel better now. This is off the record, of course. Still, I wouldn't mind getting a phone call when it's all over."
"You'll be the only one to know." They shook hands and all three went out into the hall and down the stairs. As Klein stepped out to the street, Cindy chuckled. "We are so crazy, Jeremy. We have more money than we can spend, no kids, no reason not to spend our living partying. And yet we jump at every chance to risk our lives fighting some deadly mysterious THING."
"Wouldn't have it any other way. Let's dig in, looks like forty pages of police language to struggle through."
"What, am I back in college? Sounds like homework," she grumbled.
II.
By three o'clock, they had done as much research as they thought practical and locked the reports to be returned to Klein later. Fried salmon and crab meat, which had been prepared earlier in the day, was cooked and consumed. Cindy had a big chef salad with her own home-made dressing, which so far had never worked out well. Bane added some hash browns; everything he cooked had to be done in a frying pan or it would be ruined. They did not eat a lot before going out on a case, but long experience had taught them to be prepared for long hours without food or sleep.
"Not bad," she said, cleaning up. "How about something Italian next? I crave garlic and red wine."
"Fine with me." Bane pulled on his black sport jacket with its dozen built-in gadgets. In a holster behind his left hip was one of the anesthetic dart guns. Cindy had changed to boots, denim jeans and a thick white pullover. Her own jacket was shorter, with the same gadgets, and she kept her dart gun in the inside left pouch where her bustline concealed the bulge.
"Got your telepathy warmed up?" he asked.
She gave him a quizzical look. "I guess. I am a little out of practice. I haven't seen Teacher Anulka in more than a month, now that I think of it."
Bane put an arm around her shoulders. "We'll go to Tel Shai as soon as this is over. I don't feel like I'm at peak either."
She followed him down steep concrete steps to the basement, past the vault arsenal, to the underground garage. It was only big enough to hold two cars at a time. They chose the dark blue Buick Regal, which had been fitted with Kevlar panels and crime lab equipment. Bane went up the narrow ramp to the blind alley between buildings, turned out on Lexington Avenue and went north.
"Good to be out and about." Cindy stretched back in the seat. "So we have agreed where to go first?"
"I think so. The student- Yusef Shadid. He told the cops that he was so upset about being dropped from the class in Egyptian history that he walked around until midnight. So, no alibi. The other likely suspect is that man who had dinner with the victim. This guy, William Tolstov, is a bit enigmatic. Political operative or something like that, I suspect. His time table is pretty tight. Unless he mummified the victim in a few minutes and got out right away.
As they headed uptown, Cindy asked, "You know, I've been wondering. Why did Klein ask you about your license?"
"Aw, I figure he just has mixed emotions about calling us in. He wants to bring these monsters and psychos to justice and he knows the regular system can't handle it. But we're are mavericks, loose cannons. We're outside his circle."
"I see. Well, it's tough for him but he's made the right choice. I hope he comes to see that."
The Dire Wolf pulled into an apartment complex near the university. Very nice, quite modern and expensive, he thought. A group of two-story white cement block buildings housed some of the students. He got out, looking in all directions as if he were in a jungle surrounded by dangerous predators. A lifetime of violence had prepared his habits; he walked through a convenient mart as if walking into an ambush.
"Let's circle the perimeter," Bane said in a low voice.
"That is SO not necessary," she answered. "Jeremy, this is not a den of White Web assassins or a warren of Ghouls. It's a college dorm full of teenagers." She glanced at the number on the nearest door. "We need 217, let's go this way." She looked up. "Second floor, You got the lock?"
"Sure," he said. With a signal from his Link, he overrode the lock and opened the door. "You know, with Len dead, if the Trom tech he left us breaks down, we can't repair it. It's beyond Human knowledge."
"Maybe we need a new Trom liaison," she said. "Here we are." They went down a narrow, softly-lit hall. A loud pounding bass came from behind one door and a faint but unmistakable smell of pot was in the air. Cindy laughed. "College, all right."
In front of door 217, they stopped. Cindy closed her eyes for a second. "He's in there. By himself." She knocked on the door.
"Go away," came an unsteady voice.
"Yusef, I want to talk to you," she said in a sweet voice, reaching out with her mind at the same time. In a minute, the door creaked open an inch and dark eyes peered out. "I don't know you. Leave me alone."
She gave him her most charming smile. Cindy did not use her looks often but there were times being a pretty little blonde helped. "I can help you, Yusef. Won't you let me in?"
Reluctantly, the student opened the door. He was short and slim, wearing a white dress shirt and slacks, and was staring at her as if he had not seen enough women in his life. He hardly noticed Bane.
"Let us in and I promise we can help you straighten things out. You want to get back in class?"
That did it, he allowed them in. Bane held back, amused that Yusef seemed basically to not have noticed him. He forgot sometimes the effect Cindy had on men, especially young college kids who were shy. He consciously stayed back and said nothing.
"I don't know you. How do you know my name?"
"We've heard about Professor Maroun giving you a hard time. I would like to hear your side of the story."
"A hard time...? He dropped me from my most important class. I thought he would understand but no! He's just another faithless materialist."
"You're from Lebanon, but you grew up in Egypt. I understand you've written some articles about Egyptian magick?"
"Yes. I don't know how you know that, but certainly I have. The world have forgotten the wonders of the ancient knowledge. I see these movies, the TV shows, and it makes me sick. No respect."
"And Maroun was no different?"
"No! He was a fool. I told him my discoveries and he laughed. In front of the entire class, he called me a superstitous hick."
"That was wrong," Cindy said. She had noticed the young man stealing surreptitious glances at her breasts. She subtly threw back her shoulders a fraction of an inch. As he looked at her, his natural defenses wavered and she suddenly probed deep into his mind. For a long second, his thoughts were open to her. He convulsed and shook his head.
"What was THAT?" He shuddered and turned angrily to Bane. "I want to know who you two are!"
"We're hunters," said Bane calmly. "I can tell you I know the secret history of Egypt, before the oldest records. I know about Khebir. Listen, Professor Maroun is dead. The police have no idea how it was done." His voice got silky and cold. "But you know, don't you?"
Yusef stepped back, eyes wide. "I don't know-"
Now Cindy interrupted. "It is ancient magick. Maroun was wrong. You did learn the secrets of Darthan spells as practiced in Khebir. Back in Lebanon? Yes. In that cave in the desert, you found..."
She broke off in mid-sentence and swung to stare at a tall ceramic jar which stood on the desk on the other side of the room. Just over a foot high, glazed with black enamel and red calligraphy, it had a metal stopper chained to the neck. "That's it," she whispered, "the Djinn."
III.
Suddenly Bane's presence in the room was noticeable. He looked eyes with the student, who fell back a step. "I get it. You had a grudge about Maroun. Motive. You were out in his neighborhood alone, with no one to back up your actions. Opportunity. And now I see you have a killing demon in your possession. So there's Method. That's the triangle of factors we need."
Yusef tried to smile but it didn't work. He looked anxiously at these two strangers. "Wait.. you can't possibly think I have a Djinn in here. You are educated Westerners, Americans who don't believe in anything. Look." As he spoke, he yanked the cap off the bottle with a pop. For a painfully long moment, nothing happened. Then Yusef Shadid laughed hysterically.
"Jeremy..." Cindy said, "here it comes."
A whisper hissed from the neck of the bottle. Then a faint trickle of black smoke streaked with red began to bubble up.
"Okay, now THIS is hard to believe," Bane said.
"Unbeliever! Did the word ever fit better, dog?" Yusef was so excited that he was almost clapping his hands together. He leered at Cindy, and the boyish face was lit with malice.
The black smoke thickened, billowed and took shape. It was a pillar six feet high, forming crude arms and legs. At the top of the cloud, two red eyes glowed with independent light. A deep voice that came from no flesh and blood echoed in the dorm room, "What is thy bidding, oh my master?"
"Slay this unbeliever. Not the woman. I have other plans for her."
"Oh, I bet you do," she snorted.
The Djinn solidified a little more, a tornado of smoke taller than a man. It turned its blazing eyes on the Dire Wolf. "Your blood is hot and rich. I shall drink it with pleasure."
"Yeah, right," Bane said as evenly as if he had been facing down malevolent spirits all his life. He stood with arms crossed, hands near the hilts of the silver daggers sheathed on his forearms. "Not gonna happen."
The Djinn flowed forward, crude hands raised as it neared the Dire Wolf. In a sudden blur, Bane had drawn the daggers and slashed back and forth. The Djinn shrieked in unearthly pain and drew back, surprised by the resistance, Part of its substance had been severed and it drifted off to dissipate.
Bane smiled coldly. His daggers had ensalir blades, pure silver blessed by the immortal Eldarin. They disrupted spells, killed creatures and and protected against evil that otherwise could not be defied. The Djinn had never expected this.
"Kill him, I say! Obey me, oh spirit, as the Holy Word binds you."
"Oh, you shut up," Cindy said as she gave him an elbow to the chest that drove the air from his lungs.
The Djinn swirled faster and tighter as it gathered its powers. Loose papers flew around the room and Bane's hair stirred. Again, the demon from the desert lunged forward, quickly enough to seize a mortal man. But Bane was no helpless victim. Faster than a real wolf, he stepped to one side and his silver daggers flashed around in a figure 8. Most of the Djinn's right arm seperated and fell apart into wisps of smoke. "Dog of an infidel," thundered the inhuman voice.
Managing to straighten up, although his face was pale, Yusef screamed, "Coward! Why do you hesitate? I tell you to kill him."
He had gone too far. The Djinn swirled to glare down at him and the crimson eyes flared brighter. Without warning, the smoke being encircled Yusef, engulfing him, smothering him in a grisly embrace. The boy could not even scream. He made a gurgling noise and staggered around the room. When the Djinn released its prey, the mummified corpse of Yusuf Shadid dropped to the floor with a rustle as of a bag of leaves. The Djinn laughed in unholy glee.
Cindy turned to his partner. Bane's face lit with a sudden idea. She knew that look and was glad to see it.
"Stand clear," he said in a stern voice. As the Djinn turned its dark thunderhead toward him, Bane had sheathed one dagger. In his free arm, he cradled the ceramic jar. "Had enough blood?" he asked calmly.
"There is never enough. Yours and hers, I shall drink you both dry."
As the tower of black smoke drifted toward him, Jeremy Bane did something odd. With his dagger, he sliced deep across his left thumb, then flung the dagger aside. Shifting the bottle to his right hand, he dripped blood into the vessel and then stuck his thumb into his mouth. With his good hand, he pointed the open neck of the ritual jar at the oncoming monster. Instantly, without transition, the pillar of smoke rushed headlong into that vessel. There was a roar of displaced air and,as the tail end vanished within, he clamped the metal stopper firmly in place.
"Cheers," he growled.
Cindy clapped her hands in delight. "Oh man, Jeremy, that was great. You're the master at this game."
He smiled at her and put the jar down. "I work best under pressure."
She had retrieved his dagger from the floor and handed it to him. "Let me see your thumb, hon. I have some gauze pads in one of these million pockets in this jacket." As she wiped the slice with an alcohol swab and stuck an adhesive pad over the gash, she asked, "So you figured he'd follow the blood into that jar and pass up a chance to make us both mummies?"
"it was worth a try. I always wondered how they got those genies in the bottles in the first place, you know?"
The blonde telepath nodded in the direction of the dessicated corpse. "It's just as well that kid was killed by his monster. What could we charge him with? Even with the Djinn as exhibit A, we couldn't go to court. He would get away with murder and never be punished."
"It's a rough justice," he admitted. "Okay, we need to plan our next moves. We'll leave the body here for Klein. We'll take the Djinn of course, he's going in our vault. He can sit on a shelf until someone tells us how to dispose of him safely."
Cindy was examining the room intently. "None of your blood got on the floor. I don't see where we could have left any fingerprints. Let me put on these rubber gloves, okay. We'll lock the door behind us."
Giving the scene a careful search himself, Bane agreed. "I don't see any sign we were here."
"All right, then." She led him down the hall and out into the night. "With her powers, she arranged it so that two people on the sidewalk looked the other way as they passed. She had done this many times before. Under her influence, the couple stared in the opposite direction until she and Bane had gotten into their car and pulled away. "With me around, there are never any witnesses," she chuckled. "I'm the blonde who wasn't there."
Cindy had gotten behind the wheel. Bane was seated in the passenger seat with the jar of the Djinn securely in his grip.
"We'll call Klein and send him out there. Unofficially, of course. Another dried-up shell of a victim. Although we can't go into details, this will be the last victim. The murderer got himself with his own weapon."
"Very neat," she said, patting him on the thigh. "One day and it's all settled. How's your thumb? That was a nice slice you gave yourself."
Bane scowled. "It bothers me that the monster did get to drink some of my blood after all."
"Hah! You mean... you got stuck for the drinks!"
(3/29/2000- Rev 5/15/2013)
10/21/1996
I.
At ten-thirty, Cindy Brunner was standing in the tiny foyer, watching traffic on 38th Street. Awful lot of humongous SUVs any more, she thought. She was making her way through a bowl of cottage cheese in which she had cut up an apple and some pineapple chunks. At thirty-six, she was more attractive than ever. She was only an inch over five feet tall, slim and fit as a gymnast, with breasts a bit large for her frame (she explained this as somehow coming from being born six weeks premature). Her dark blonde hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail. Cindy was wearing white sneakers, very old and comfortable blue jeans and an open denim shirt over a black pullover. Her inquisitive, freckled face had always been appealing; people felt comfortable with her.
An unmarked police car pulled up and backed into a space just down the block. Finally! She raced to the kitchen down the hall to fling the empty bowl and spoon into the sink and got back just as a familiar figure was starting up the six steps to the front door. He was unaccompanied, so this was unofficial business. She reached out and scanned his mind lightly, found nothing suspicious and opened the front door just as he raised his finger to the bell.
"Good morning and may I say it's about time. You phoned an hour ago."
"Hiya, Cindy," Harold Klein said with a smile. He was a sturdy man below average height, with curly grey hair and a worn face. As always, year after year, he wore a raincoat that had been white the year Cindy was born.
She grinned like an imp with honest delight. "Inspector, I hope you've got something for Jeremy and me. A cult of assassins from Nepal? Giant bats carrying off children? Come on, let's have it."
Klein regarded her affectionately. "Ah, this is unofficial. Where's the Dire Wolf himself? I'll explain it to both of you at the same time."
"He's in the conference room. Right this way."
She turned and trotted up the stairs. Klein glanced briefly at the open door to the reception room where he had always been taken before. He followed her up the wide, carpeted stairs. In those snug jeans, her ascent was worth watching but his mind was as always distracted.
Klein had never been on the second floor of this old brownstone before. He saw the open door to a library and the hall itself was lined with tightly packed bookcases. Smiling at him over one shoulder, Cindy opened the dark wooden door at the end of the hall. "Jeremy," she sang cheerfully, "it's your friend the Inspector here to see you."
II.
For a few seconds, Klein was lost in taking in the room. His long decades of training in observation was worked to its fullest. This was a big, high-ceilinged room, well-lit and cool to the point of being chilly. One wall was taken up with a row of dark green filing cabinets with reference books stacked on top of them. There was a seven foot monitor screen with various electronic communication devices around it, and enclosed bathroom in one corner and a waist-high cooler.
In the center of the room, a oak table stood, four feet wide and ten feet long, with ten swivel chairs spaced along it, and one at each end. Sitting at the head of this table was the man he had come to see. Jeremy Bane glanced up. His pale grey eyes caught Klein like a spotlight. The Dire Wolf was a slim, even gaunt man in his early forties, with short black hair and a narrow, feral face. He was wearing black slacks and a black long-sleeved turtleneck.
As he saw Klein, he pushed his chair back and rose. "Hi, inspector. I don't think you've been in here before." In front of Bane was a wire basket of mail, a ledger and a check book, all of which he scooped up and put in the seat to his left.
Klein snorted, "I think I'd remember. Hell of a set-up you got here, Bane."
There was a faint distance in Bane's tone. "When the KDF was active, this was our command center." He came back to the present with a snap. "Have a seat, Inspector. Cindy, do we have any coffee here?"
"I think so," she answered and dug around in the cooler. "Yep, here we go. This'll just take a minute."
Klein took a seat at Bane's right. "Before we get down to business, I have a question. You mind?"
"I can't tell until I hear the question."
"Fair enough. So. The last I knew, to get a P.I. license, you needed three years experience in the police department or army or working for someone who is a P.I. I always wondered how you got your ticket."
Bane raised one eyebrow. "For three and a half years, I worked for Michael Hawk's agency. Can you think of a better teacher?"
"Naw. Hawk was a fine detective, he was the real thing."
"I'm sorry he couldn't have taught me more but the Midnight War kept getting in the way. What else? I posted my bond and passed the written and oral exams. I renew my license every two years. And I already had my conceal carry permit."
"That's all I wanted to know. Just for my own satisfaction. You know, Mr Dire Wolf, I give you information I wouldn't share with a regular civilian."
Cindy came over with a mug of steaming coffee and Klein accepted it gratefully. "Thanks. Today I'm here on unofficial business. Off the record. Strictly personal."
"Got it." Bane watched Cindy sit down to his left, after moving the pile of paper one chair further down. She had coffee for herself, but she put a tumbler of ice water in front of him. "I'm listening."
The inspector frowned and looked down at his mug."You know, there's a thousand detectives on the force and they're great with homicides, assaults, robberies. I have no complaints. But we both know- in this city, strange things happen. Let me come straight out with it. Every year, there are maybe twenty crimes in the city that just can't be explained. The department closes them as soon as possible and pretends they never happened. The first time I tried to reopen the Seneca case, I realized the mayor's office was actively blocking me."
"Fear of panic in the general public? If the average taxpayer realized what horrors come out at night, there would be hysteria that would close the city down."
"So they cover things up and explain things away. Look, I'm a cop and always have been. When I run into something my force can't or won't handle, I still want to the get the job done. Thank God I heard about you two."
Klein pulled out a cigar, saw no ashtray and no offer of any. "We're working the same job from different angles. I sure didn't believe in vampires and werewolves and whatever until the evidence was too overwhelming to ignore. The first time I came face to face with a ghoul- remember that night?- I almost had a heart attack."
"You know you can come to use with anything supernatural," Bane said. "This private investigation business is just a way to do some good and fill time. My real mission in life is the Midnight War."
Cindy cut in for the first time. "I think it's time for you to tell us what's really on your mind, Inspector."
"You're right. I spent all last night covering a homicide up in White Plains. Man named Akil Maroun, Green card. He was a professor at Westbrook Academy, taught Egyptian history and calligarphy. His body was found last night at ten o'clock after he wasn't answering his phone and a colleague got worried enough to peek in a window."
Cindy interrupted to ask, "I thought your territory was midtown Manhattan, How come you took a case in White Plains?"
"I'll tell you the truth, sweetie. I'm getting a reputation like you and your partner here. If it's weird and gruesome, the brass send me. Anyway, I was out there until five this morning with the forensic boys and a couple of uniformed officers. We questioned everybody three or four times, took pictures, searched every inch, the usual. The real point of interest is the body."
He paused so long that Bane and Cindy thought he wasn't going to continue, but finally he said, "Maroun was totally dehydrated, one hundred percent dry. No fluid left in the body. He looked like he had left out in the desert for a year. No blood, no water in the tissues. And get this.. three hours earlier, he had been seen in a restaurant eating a meal with his in-laws."
"I can see why your science boys are upset," Bane said. "Any puncture wounds?"
"Nope. Nothing we could find. The lab has no clue how it could be done. They guessed that maybe if you stuck a catheter in his body and sucked out the fluids, it could cause this in a few days. Or maybe if you kept him in a vaccuum at oven temperature overnight. But in an hour or two? They don't even want to talk about it."
"Frankly, it's weird as all get out to me," Cindy said. "Jer?"
"I don't remember anything quite like it. So, inspector, what's the situation now?"
"Maroun's body is resting at 30th Street, in a drawer with a tag on its toe. Everyone has been grilled back and forth, his in-laws and the man they had supper with, his ex-wife, a cleaning lady, even a student he had thrown out of his class. And the questions are starting again now. Nothing useful so far."
Bane stood up and started pacing. He couldn't help it. The same enhanced metabolism that gave him his extra speed also made him hopelessly restless. "Do you have anything we can read?"
"Right here. You know, these have to be returned. If it came to a hearing, I could not justify having let you see this."
"Got it. Don't worry, Klein, I will never let you down."
"I'm counting on my pension," the inspector said as he handed over a thick manila envelope.
As Bane took the reports, he smiled thinly. "You can tell, I wouldn't make a living as a PI. No client, no fee, not even a retainer."
Klein stood up as well, looking Bane in the eyes. "You know you want to tackle this. This is what you live for. Digging for clues and questioning witnesses and sitting in a car all night are not for you. You ARE a wolf. You were born to chase dangerous things and tackle them. Am I right?"
"You're right. I'm bored. I'm on this case. Cin, what do you think?'
"I'm with you," the blonde telepath said. "we were not made to sit around watching TV and eating junk food. I say we jump in this case up to our necks."
Klein brought his mug over to the sink and rinsed it. "I feel better now. This is off the record, of course. Still, I wouldn't mind getting a phone call when it's all over."
"You'll be the only one to know." They shook hands and all three went out into the hall and down the stairs. As Klein stepped out to the street, Cindy chuckled. "We are so crazy, Jeremy. We have more money than we can spend, no kids, no reason not to spend our living partying. And yet we jump at every chance to risk our lives fighting some deadly mysterious THING."
"Wouldn't have it any other way. Let's dig in, looks like forty pages of police language to struggle through."
"What, am I back in college? Sounds like homework," she grumbled.
II.
By three o'clock, they had done as much research as they thought practical and locked the reports to be returned to Klein later. Fried salmon and crab meat, which had been prepared earlier in the day, was cooked and consumed. Cindy had a big chef salad with her own home-made dressing, which so far had never worked out well. Bane added some hash browns; everything he cooked had to be done in a frying pan or it would be ruined. They did not eat a lot before going out on a case, but long experience had taught them to be prepared for long hours without food or sleep.
"Not bad," she said, cleaning up. "How about something Italian next? I crave garlic and red wine."
"Fine with me." Bane pulled on his black sport jacket with its dozen built-in gadgets. In a holster behind his left hip was one of the anesthetic dart guns. Cindy had changed to boots, denim jeans and a thick white pullover. Her own jacket was shorter, with the same gadgets, and she kept her dart gun in the inside left pouch where her bustline concealed the bulge.
"Got your telepathy warmed up?" he asked.
She gave him a quizzical look. "I guess. I am a little out of practice. I haven't seen Teacher Anulka in more than a month, now that I think of it."
Bane put an arm around her shoulders. "We'll go to Tel Shai as soon as this is over. I don't feel like I'm at peak either."
She followed him down steep concrete steps to the basement, past the vault arsenal, to the underground garage. It was only big enough to hold two cars at a time. They chose the dark blue Buick Regal, which had been fitted with Kevlar panels and crime lab equipment. Bane went up the narrow ramp to the blind alley between buildings, turned out on Lexington Avenue and went north.
"Good to be out and about." Cindy stretched back in the seat. "So we have agreed where to go first?"
"I think so. The student- Yusef Shadid. He told the cops that he was so upset about being dropped from the class in Egyptian history that he walked around until midnight. So, no alibi. The other likely suspect is that man who had dinner with the victim. This guy, William Tolstov, is a bit enigmatic. Political operative or something like that, I suspect. His time table is pretty tight. Unless he mummified the victim in a few minutes and got out right away.
As they headed uptown, Cindy asked, "You know, I've been wondering. Why did Klein ask you about your license?"
"Aw, I figure he just has mixed emotions about calling us in. He wants to bring these monsters and psychos to justice and he knows the regular system can't handle it. But we're are mavericks, loose cannons. We're outside his circle."
"I see. Well, it's tough for him but he's made the right choice. I hope he comes to see that."
The Dire Wolf pulled into an apartment complex near the university. Very nice, quite modern and expensive, he thought. A group of two-story white cement block buildings housed some of the students. He got out, looking in all directions as if he were in a jungle surrounded by dangerous predators. A lifetime of violence had prepared his habits; he walked through a convenient mart as if walking into an ambush.
"Let's circle the perimeter," Bane said in a low voice.
"That is SO not necessary," she answered. "Jeremy, this is not a den of White Web assassins or a warren of Ghouls. It's a college dorm full of teenagers." She glanced at the number on the nearest door. "We need 217, let's go this way." She looked up. "Second floor, You got the lock?"
"Sure," he said. With a signal from his Link, he overrode the lock and opened the door. "You know, with Len dead, if the Trom tech he left us breaks down, we can't repair it. It's beyond Human knowledge."
"Maybe we need a new Trom liaison," she said. "Here we are." They went down a narrow, softly-lit hall. A loud pounding bass came from behind one door and a faint but unmistakable smell of pot was in the air. Cindy laughed. "College, all right."
In front of door 217, they stopped. Cindy closed her eyes for a second. "He's in there. By himself." She knocked on the door.
"Go away," came an unsteady voice.
"Yusef, I want to talk to you," she said in a sweet voice, reaching out with her mind at the same time. In a minute, the door creaked open an inch and dark eyes peered out. "I don't know you. Leave me alone."
She gave him her most charming smile. Cindy did not use her looks often but there were times being a pretty little blonde helped. "I can help you, Yusef. Won't you let me in?"
Reluctantly, the student opened the door. He was short and slim, wearing a white dress shirt and slacks, and was staring at her as if he had not seen enough women in his life. He hardly noticed Bane.
"Let us in and I promise we can help you straighten things out. You want to get back in class?"
That did it, he allowed them in. Bane held back, amused that Yusef seemed basically to not have noticed him. He forgot sometimes the effect Cindy had on men, especially young college kids who were shy. He consciously stayed back and said nothing.
"I don't know you. How do you know my name?"
"We've heard about Professor Maroun giving you a hard time. I would like to hear your side of the story."
"A hard time...? He dropped me from my most important class. I thought he would understand but no! He's just another faithless materialist."
"You're from Lebanon, but you grew up in Egypt. I understand you've written some articles about Egyptian magick?"
"Yes. I don't know how you know that, but certainly I have. The world have forgotten the wonders of the ancient knowledge. I see these movies, the TV shows, and it makes me sick. No respect."
"And Maroun was no different?"
"No! He was a fool. I told him my discoveries and he laughed. In front of the entire class, he called me a superstitous hick."
"That was wrong," Cindy said. She had noticed the young man stealing surreptitious glances at her breasts. She subtly threw back her shoulders a fraction of an inch. As he looked at her, his natural defenses wavered and she suddenly probed deep into his mind. For a long second, his thoughts were open to her. He convulsed and shook his head.
"What was THAT?" He shuddered and turned angrily to Bane. "I want to know who you two are!"
"We're hunters," said Bane calmly. "I can tell you I know the secret history of Egypt, before the oldest records. I know about Khebir. Listen, Professor Maroun is dead. The police have no idea how it was done." His voice got silky and cold. "But you know, don't you?"
Yusef stepped back, eyes wide. "I don't know-"
Now Cindy interrupted. "It is ancient magick. Maroun was wrong. You did learn the secrets of Darthan spells as practiced in Khebir. Back in Lebanon? Yes. In that cave in the desert, you found..."
She broke off in mid-sentence and swung to stare at a tall ceramic jar which stood on the desk on the other side of the room. Just over a foot high, glazed with black enamel and red calligraphy, it had a metal stopper chained to the neck. "That's it," she whispered, "the Djinn."
III.
Suddenly Bane's presence in the room was noticeable. He looked eyes with the student, who fell back a step. "I get it. You had a grudge about Maroun. Motive. You were out in his neighborhood alone, with no one to back up your actions. Opportunity. And now I see you have a killing demon in your possession. So there's Method. That's the triangle of factors we need."
Yusef tried to smile but it didn't work. He looked anxiously at these two strangers. "Wait.. you can't possibly think I have a Djinn in here. You are educated Westerners, Americans who don't believe in anything. Look." As he spoke, he yanked the cap off the bottle with a pop. For a painfully long moment, nothing happened. Then Yusef Shadid laughed hysterically.
"Jeremy..." Cindy said, "here it comes."
A whisper hissed from the neck of the bottle. Then a faint trickle of black smoke streaked with red began to bubble up.
"Okay, now THIS is hard to believe," Bane said.
"Unbeliever! Did the word ever fit better, dog?" Yusef was so excited that he was almost clapping his hands together. He leered at Cindy, and the boyish face was lit with malice.
The black smoke thickened, billowed and took shape. It was a pillar six feet high, forming crude arms and legs. At the top of the cloud, two red eyes glowed with independent light. A deep voice that came from no flesh and blood echoed in the dorm room, "What is thy bidding, oh my master?"
"Slay this unbeliever. Not the woman. I have other plans for her."
"Oh, I bet you do," she snorted.
The Djinn solidified a little more, a tornado of smoke taller than a man. It turned its blazing eyes on the Dire Wolf. "Your blood is hot and rich. I shall drink it with pleasure."
"Yeah, right," Bane said as evenly as if he had been facing down malevolent spirits all his life. He stood with arms crossed, hands near the hilts of the silver daggers sheathed on his forearms. "Not gonna happen."
The Djinn flowed forward, crude hands raised as it neared the Dire Wolf. In a sudden blur, Bane had drawn the daggers and slashed back and forth. The Djinn shrieked in unearthly pain and drew back, surprised by the resistance, Part of its substance had been severed and it drifted off to dissipate.
Bane smiled coldly. His daggers had ensalir blades, pure silver blessed by the immortal Eldarin. They disrupted spells, killed creatures and and protected against evil that otherwise could not be defied. The Djinn had never expected this.
"Kill him, I say! Obey me, oh spirit, as the Holy Word binds you."
"Oh, you shut up," Cindy said as she gave him an elbow to the chest that drove the air from his lungs.
The Djinn swirled faster and tighter as it gathered its powers. Loose papers flew around the room and Bane's hair stirred. Again, the demon from the desert lunged forward, quickly enough to seize a mortal man. But Bane was no helpless victim. Faster than a real wolf, he stepped to one side and his silver daggers flashed around in a figure 8. Most of the Djinn's right arm seperated and fell apart into wisps of smoke. "Dog of an infidel," thundered the inhuman voice.
Managing to straighten up, although his face was pale, Yusef screamed, "Coward! Why do you hesitate? I tell you to kill him."
He had gone too far. The Djinn swirled to glare down at him and the crimson eyes flared brighter. Without warning, the smoke being encircled Yusef, engulfing him, smothering him in a grisly embrace. The boy could not even scream. He made a gurgling noise and staggered around the room. When the Djinn released its prey, the mummified corpse of Yusuf Shadid dropped to the floor with a rustle as of a bag of leaves. The Djinn laughed in unholy glee.
Cindy turned to his partner. Bane's face lit with a sudden idea. She knew that look and was glad to see it.
"Stand clear," he said in a stern voice. As the Djinn turned its dark thunderhead toward him, Bane had sheathed one dagger. In his free arm, he cradled the ceramic jar. "Had enough blood?" he asked calmly.
"There is never enough. Yours and hers, I shall drink you both dry."
As the tower of black smoke drifted toward him, Jeremy Bane did something odd. With his dagger, he sliced deep across his left thumb, then flung the dagger aside. Shifting the bottle to his right hand, he dripped blood into the vessel and then stuck his thumb into his mouth. With his good hand, he pointed the open neck of the ritual jar at the oncoming monster. Instantly, without transition, the pillar of smoke rushed headlong into that vessel. There was a roar of displaced air and,as the tail end vanished within, he clamped the metal stopper firmly in place.
"Cheers," he growled.
Cindy clapped her hands in delight. "Oh man, Jeremy, that was great. You're the master at this game."
He smiled at her and put the jar down. "I work best under pressure."
She had retrieved his dagger from the floor and handed it to him. "Let me see your thumb, hon. I have some gauze pads in one of these million pockets in this jacket." As she wiped the slice with an alcohol swab and stuck an adhesive pad over the gash, she asked, "So you figured he'd follow the blood into that jar and pass up a chance to make us both mummies?"
"it was worth a try. I always wondered how they got those genies in the bottles in the first place, you know?"
The blonde telepath nodded in the direction of the dessicated corpse. "It's just as well that kid was killed by his monster. What could we charge him with? Even with the Djinn as exhibit A, we couldn't go to court. He would get away with murder and never be punished."
"It's a rough justice," he admitted. "Okay, we need to plan our next moves. We'll leave the body here for Klein. We'll take the Djinn of course, he's going in our vault. He can sit on a shelf until someone tells us how to dispose of him safely."
Cindy was examining the room intently. "None of your blood got on the floor. I don't see where we could have left any fingerprints. Let me put on these rubber gloves, okay. We'll lock the door behind us."
Giving the scene a careful search himself, Bane agreed. "I don't see any sign we were here."
"All right, then." She led him down the hall and out into the night. "With her powers, she arranged it so that two people on the sidewalk looked the other way as they passed. She had done this many times before. Under her influence, the couple stared in the opposite direction until she and Bane had gotten into their car and pulled away. "With me around, there are never any witnesses," she chuckled. "I'm the blonde who wasn't there."
Cindy had gotten behind the wheel. Bane was seated in the passenger seat with the jar of the Djinn securely in his grip.
"We'll call Klein and send him out there. Unofficially, of course. Another dried-up shell of a victim. Although we can't go into details, this will be the last victim. The murderer got himself with his own weapon."
"Very neat," she said, patting him on the thigh. "One day and it's all settled. How's your thumb? That was a nice slice you gave yourself."
Bane scowled. "It bothers me that the monster did get to drink some of my blood after all."
"Hah! You mean... you got stuck for the drinks!"
(3/29/2000- Rev 5/15/2013)
