Lucian nodded. “Yeah, it’s over. And this is all so charming. I think you really love her. And I think she loves you.”
“Are you still in love with her?”
Lucian laughed softly. “Am I in love with her? As much as I’m capable of being, I suppose, but that doesn’t matter. I’m here as her friend.”
“You’re not sleeping with each other?”
“We haven’t slept together in years.”
“How many years?”
“Decades, old boy, decades.”
It all had to be a macabre joke.
“I’m sorry. I don’t believe any of this.”
“Don’t you? I think you do, but I can help you on the road to belief as well. You’re not in great shape at the moment, Lieutenant. Another encounter with Aaron? What can I say to convince you—beyond what you already know but don’t want to see? Ah, yes! I’m willing to bet that the police have recently discovered body parts. Belonging to one Rutger Leon.”
Sean started. The news hadn’t hit the papers yet. The front pages had been filled with the aborted attack on Mamie.
“Fine—what about Rutger Leon’s body parts?”
“Well, I’m the one who made them into parts.”
“You?”
“I was very hungry. I’m sure that Maggie informed you there are many of us trying to form a higher society. We indulge in small mammals and the Red Cross most frequently. Still, when I hit one of those terrible urges myself—in keeping with our higher society—I try to abate my cravings with those most deserving. Rutger came to the hospital to torture the girl. I decided not to let him.” Sean concluded he was definitely losing his mind. “Why are you here?” he asked.
“So that you can save Maggie’s life.”
Sean frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She’s going to try to kill Aaron, of course. She’s going to try to trap him, and kill him. No matter what I say to her. She can’t do that. For one, he’s very powerful, and he could kill her. She’s bested him before, so she doesn’t realize just how powerful he’s become. And if she managed to do away with him, I’d be required to order an execution. It’s a law more ancient than any of us. We are not to kill our own kind. No matter what I think of Aaron, or how I feel about Maggie, if she destroyed him and I didn’t order her death, there would be rebellion and chaos among our ranks.”
“Then why are you telling me this?” Sean demanded harshly.
“Obviously, you, as a mortal, have to kill him.”
“How?”
Lucian smiled. “Good response. Not ‘don’t be ridiculous, I’m an officer of the law, I can’t kill him.’ Get to him before Maggie. And carry a sword.”
“Get serious. I can’t walk around with a sword—”
“Then get a really big knife. When you get your chance, you’ve got to cut off his head.”
“I can’t even find him! How the hell am I going to get his head off?”
“Ah ... now I have your attention. If you want this to end, you have to figure out how to kill Aaron. As to how you’re going to manage to do it... well, hell, I don’t know. I believe he comes from this area—”
“Believe? You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know everything. As I said, Aaron has gotten strong. He’d like to be me. But he wants revenge against Maggie more than anything, so he’ll go after her first. They met here. And at some time, he must sleep. All vampires must rest. He won’t necessarily sleep by day—like Maggie and me, he has learned to abide the daylight. Still, in the day, we haven’t the strength we have at night. Find him by day, find him when he’s at rest. Don’t give him any warning shots, officer. Find him, kill him. Stake him through the heart, take his head.”
“If I were to suggest such actions at a task force meeting—”“No task force is going to help you, Canady. Look to the past. If you dare, be sane. Refuse to believe all this. But if you love Maggie, you’d better kill Aaron.” The private line to Sean’s office started blinking. Sean kept staring at Lucian.
“Your phone,” Lucian said politely.
“Right. Excuse me,” Sean said, swiveling around as he picked up the receiver.
Jack was on the line.
“I’m on my way in right now. You know what, Sean? No one saw this character enter the morgue. No one at all. It was like he disappeared into mist, and arrived from mist. What do you think?”
“I think it’s all nuts. Get here as fast as you can.”
He set the receiver down and turned back to finish his conversation with Lucian.
But Lucian was gone.
Into thin air.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Jack came into his office carrying his notebook.
“You all right?” Sean asked him carefully.
“Oh, yeah. A guy disappears in front of me, bullets don’t kill him, but I’m just fine. How about you?” Sean lifted his hands, giving nothing away with his expression. “I’m interested in what you found out about Aaron Carter.”
“Well, there’s one hell of a history on a fellow with that name,” Jack said. He showed Sean printouts he took from his notebook. “The Carters owned a plantation just upriver from your place. The first generation was fine. The original Carter, Grayson, was a popular man with all ethnic groups; he hired free Negroes, Spaniards, French, English, pirates—he was a magnanimous man who gave many a head start in life. He died in 1747; the place went to his son, Aaron. Aaron was sixteen when he inherited the holdings. He inherited over his older brother, Steven, because Steven was retarded, or slow, or mentally deficient. Still, when Aaron was away on business, Steven remained. Screams were heard in the night, travelers disappeared, and so on. Then, the young and reputably beautiful daughter of a neighbor’s black servant disappeared and a group of townfolk broke into the Carter place and guess what they found?” Sean lifted his hands. “I don’t know—Aaron Carter sleeping in a crypt?” Jack shook his head. “No, Aaron Carter was human enough then. They didn’t find him at all. They found slaves and servants hideously killed, their body parts strewn about the basement. In a room kept perpetually dark, the people found a group of terrified young women, a harem of them—black, Asian, white, Anglo, French, Hispanic. He kidnapped them, and entertained himself with them until he tired of them. There were rooms in a wing of the house, supposedly Steven’s domain, where dozens of murders had been committed.”
“What happened?”
“Well, naturally, Steven was blamed. He was shot dozens of times by the people, then hung by his heels and set afire. Most of the place burned. Aaron Carter, supposedly returning from abroad, grieved for the people and his brother. He donated money to the families, and had a large chapel built in the ruins of the property. He said he was going away, to Europe, far away from the horror for which he felt so responsible.”
“End of the story?”
“No. There are two endings—the rational story has it that he went to Europe, returned with a wife, a toddling son, and an infant daughter, and was then murdered by the mother of the last girl to disappear into his family homestead. Some say, however, that the girl’s mother was heavily into the occult. Not just voodoo, but all kinds of black magic. They said she could summon the devil, and could make people disappear. The story has it that she believed Aaron himself seduced her daughter, and, in turn, she had a very beautiful woman seduce Aaron— and take his life. Whatever the story, he disappeared, but, supposedly, his great-grandson arrived from an island plantation during the Civil War and nearly married into the Wynn family—they were distant cousins, since Mrs. Wynn was a descendant of the baby girl Aaron Carter had brought back to the States. She had married a man named Dixon, and rebuilt the house. The Dixons, however, died out at the turn of the century.” Sean stared at him, feeling a strange sensation rise within him. There was a stretch of land north of Oakville that had been vacant ever since he could remember. The taxes had been paid on the property; the grounds were overgrown, but occasionally tended. Because of the old plantation ruins on the property, it had been fenced off about twenty years ago to keep out tourists—the curious, and the cultists who liked to conduct séances and have services during the full moon.
Sean was quiet.
“What are you thinking?” Jack asked him.
Sean lifted his hands. “I’m thinking that we’d look really ridiculous waiting for daylight, gathering together a duffle bag of stakes and holy water, and hunting through the old Carter/Dixon property.” Jack shook his head.
“And what are you thinking?” Sean asked him.
Jack looked at him steadily. “I’m thinking I saw a man today who seemed evil in a way I could touch—and then he disappeared. And I’m envisioning all those old movies. Professor Van Helsing and his helpers, moving quietly through the tombstones and crypts ... opening Lucy’s grave, seeing her beautiful face, and ...”
“And?”
“Which movie was it when everyone got spattered in a sea of blood once the stake was stuck into the vampire?”
“I don’t remember,” Sean said.
Jack shrugged. “Then, in the darkness and the mist, the vampire rises—they always wait until it’s too late, and somehow the vampire wakes up before they can stake him. And he kills everyone and flies away into the spooky mist of the coming night.”
“Jack, these vampires don’t have to sleep by day.”
Jack just stared at him. “These vampires?”
He nodded awkwardly. “If there are vampires. Maybe they’re real, maybe they’re madman. Anyway, our killer is— one way or another—a psycho named Aaron Carter. Or a psycho using the name of Aaron Carter. He thinks he was Jack the Ripper and a dozen other mass murderers throughout time. I don’t know if we can catch him on his property, but if so, at the very least maybe he’ll believe that we can best him with the right weapons.”