We made quite the entrance into the main branch of the New York Public Library. We weren’t here to bust ghosts, just collect a permanently dead vampire. Fortunately, this time, the majority of the NYPD who were on the scene were those in the know. The head librarian was a gnome with a very convincing height glamour. She knew who to call. Calvin and Liz were carrying openly: guns at their hips, more exotic weapons under their light jackets. As we came in the front doors, I saw that the NYPD had done their job and had set up barriers to keep curious library patrons from getting photos of anything newsworthy. The crowd showed zero interest in me and Ian, instead aiming their phones and flashes in the direction of Calvin and Liz, our heavily armed twin walls of muscle.
My partner gave an exasperated sigh.
“Hey, not one word,” I told him. “Protected is good.”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
There was a uniform posted to direct us to where Bela Báthory had been found.
Barring our way to the body was a police photographer working over something laid out on a large sheet of plastic.
“This is the clue I was referring to,” Moreau told us. “It’s a flag that was used to cover Bela Báthory’s corpse. Dr. Van Daal said it was centuries old from the look of it, a museum-quality piece. She is having photos sent to Amelia Chandler and Conor Delaney, to get it identified as quickly as possible.”
The flag was a stunning example of ancient weaving.
It was silk; at least that was the only fabric I could equate with the shimmering cloth at our feet. Woven through the bright threads of every color of the rainbow were fine threads of gold and silver. The Celtic knot designs were so intricate, that if it was meant to represent an animal or object, I couldn’t detect it. It was large, at least six by four foot.
“Do you recognize it?” Moreau asked Ian.
“Other than it being beautiful, no.”
“Not even vaguely familiar?”
“No.”
“Good,” I said. “Don’t touch it.”
“Not going to. At least not in public.”
We proceeded to where the main action was.
Bela Báthory was laid out on a reading table like he was lying in state for a public viewing.
Oh boy, was he ever.
This was my first ever sight of a buck-naked, dead vampire that’d been eaten by ghouls.
“We meet again.” Dr. Anika Van Daal looked from Ian and me to our sizable (and not just in numbers) entourage, one eyebrow raised inquisitively.
Ian sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always?” Dr. Van Daal turned her attention to Moreau. “Alain, always lovely to see you. I take it your presence here is due to political necessity considering the identity of the deceased?”
“Partially,” Moreau said.
He didn’t clarify what the other part was, but I thought Dr. Van Daal got the message that it also was complicated. From the looks of things, she had more than enough complexity to deal with. Van Daal’s assistant was an elf, the rest of her team were humans. Van Daal knew what had done this; the others were just trying to ignore what had been done, and judging from the pasty faces of most of them, they weren’t succeeding.
Bela Báthory’s head was being photographed.
A good ten feet away from his body.
Interesting.
And so much for what had killed him permanently. Nothing got up once you severed its spinal cord.
“There’s a good story there,” Calvin muttered.
“There is indeed,” Van Daal said. “The head was still attached to the body when it was found, but apparently the spinal cord had been severed, so the skin of the neck was all that was holding the head onto the body. When we shifted the body to continue our examination . . .”
She didn’t say more and she didn’t need to. I wondered with the morbid cop humor that I’d picked up from our NYPD friends if the head had bounced when it’d hit the floor. Probably. I was sure the more jaded investigators had found it funny; the newer folks had probably danged near lost their lunch. Van Daal’s elven assistant was bagging the head, to preserve evidence, but mainly to keep the uninitiated from seeing Báthory’s incisors.
Anika Van Daal stepped away from the body, giving us an unobstructed view of the deceased. My cola and cruller stirred uneasily in my stomach.
Moreau hadn’t exaggerated. Bela Báthory had been eaten.
Ghoul teeth were pointed for tearing through flesh and muscle, unlike human dental work which only had incisors for puncturing, and even those weren’t sharp on most people. The teeth that had done this weren’t human, but the radius of the bites were.
Like I said, ghouls.
The human NYPD contingent in attendance were leaning more toward denial.
I didn’t blame them in the least. I’d rather not know what had done this, either—and I especially didn’t like what it meant.
The attack on the Persephone and Bela Báthory’s abduction and permanent death were most definitely connected to the robberies.
And now all of it was connected to Ian.
Van Daal was talking to Moreau. “Thankfully for the librarian who found him, he’d been covered to the neck with what you saw on your way in. It wouldn’t have been the first time they’ve discovered a homeless person sleeping in the stacks or on an out-of-the-way reading table. When the librarian tried to wake him up and Báthory’s half-eaten arm fell out from under the flag and over the side of the table, the poor man realized that Mr. Báthory wasn’t with us anymore.”