A Logical Magician

11

Jack woke with a splitting headache. It felt as if someone had been using his head as a kettle drum all night. Groggily, he blinked his eyes several times trying to clear his vision. Hovering at the fuzzy edges of his mind was the image of a girl. A slender, good-looking young woman with pixieish features, he vaguely remembered her haunting his dreams. She had been desperately trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t recall a word she said.

“Damn it,” he muttered, sitting up in the bed. He hated waking up feeling this rotten. First in the office building, now in his apartment. Not that he had much choice the time before, when Merlin and Megan had been kidnapped. Megan! With a start, he recognized her as the girl in his sleep.

Anxiously, he tried to grasp the fleeting figments of his dream. Jack felt sure that Merlin’s daughter had been trying to contact him. Perhaps she even had a message from her father. Or wanted to pass along some clue to where they were being held. The literature of fantasy was filled with tales of dream messages. Unfortunately, the stories never dealt with the specifics of such communications.

Under normal circumstances, Jack slept fitfully, and rarely remembered a thing when waking. Today was no exception. No matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t recollect a thing about his dream. If Megan had told him anything, it had been lost on awakening.

Yawning, he padded into the kitchenette and made himself some breakfast. Originally, he had balked on returning to his rooms after his encounter with the vampire. If Walsh had been able to locate him there, so would any of the monster’s allies. Simon considered the apartment a death trap. Which ultimately was the reason Jack decided to spend the night there after all.

“They know the location,” he had told the changeling after they had finished cleaning the gym. “And they know that I know that they know the location. So, understandably they know that I know the place isn’t safe. Continuing that chain of logic, they therefore accept the fact that I would never risk staying in the apartment. Since they’re convinced I would never use it, that makes it the perfect spot for me to hide. It’s elementary games theory. Besides, I’m tired, I don’t have any other place to go, and the bad guys all probably think I’m dead.”

“You left me way behind on the ‘I know, they know’ routine,” said Simon, shaking his head, “but you’re right about them thinking you dead. Most supernatural, particularly those dedicated to evil, hold humans in pretty low regard. The notion that you could possibly defeat a vampire on your own would strike them as sheer lunacy. Until one of their sensitives finally notices Walsh’s gone, you’re safe.”

“All I want is a good night’s sleep,” said Jack. But even that had been denied, due to Megan’s unsuccessful attempt to contact him through his dreams. Chewing on a Pop-Tart, Jack wondered why the heroes of all the novels he consumed never worried about what to do next. They always had such nice, clear-cut plans of action to follow. Or stumbled about the scene until they discovered what to do. He didn’t even know where to start stumbling. Life was unfair.

After a few minutes of feeling sorry for himself, Jack perked up. While the world might be doomed in a few months, he had held his own last night against the forces of darkness. Even Simon had been impressed by his handling of Walsh.

Jack grinned. The garlic powder and the sun lamp caught the vampire completely by surprise. The trick was applying modern logic to legendary beasts. The supernatural beings of long ago had evolved through the ages. It made perfect sense to Jack that the methods of dealing with them would change as well. Cause and effect never went out of date. The only problem was deducing the new rules before it was too late.

Jack still was at a loss why running water and artificial sunlight had affected the vampire while prayer and a cross had not. As a mathematician, contradictions like that bothered him. They bothered him a great deal until he figured out the logical structure behind them. Which, he decided cheerfully, might have been the reason Merlin selected him as mankind’s champion.

Feeling quite satisfied with himself, Jack stepped to the front window of his apartment. April in Chicago was usually a bizarre month for weather. Either the temperature hovered slightly above freezing and it rained for weeks, or it was near sixty every day with bright sunny skies. Jack’s first year in Chicago, six inches of snow had fallen on Easter, only to melt three days later in eighty-degree heat. To the delight of everyone this year, especially the weather forecasters, spring had arrived in fine fashion, with beautifully balmy afternoons and comfortable temperatures.

Raising the curtains, Jack set the sunshine bathe him in its warmth. Raising his arms over his head, he stretched for the ceiling. Lazily, his gaze swept across the edge of the campus and to the street beyond. And froze.

Slowly and carefully, he backed away from the glass. His eyes remained fixed on two figures barely visible in the shadows of a deserted building a hundred yards distant. Neither gave an indication they had spotted him. Jack wanted to keep it that way.

Once he edged past the last possible angle of visibility, he immediately dropped to the floor. Scrambling on his hands and knees, he crawled back to the window. Cautiously, he raised his eyes above the window ledge, positioning himself so that the center frame hid his forehead.

Squinting, Jack searched nervously for the unholy duo he had glimpsed seconds ago. It only took an instant to locate them. As far as he could tell, they had not moved. He breathed a sigh of relief. His enemies evidently knew approximately where he was located, but didn’t have a precise fix on his whereabouts. He was safe, though not for long. Even now, companions of the two across the street might be searching the building for him.

At the precise instant that thought passed through Jack’s mind, someone knocked on his apartment door.

“Hey, Jack,” called a familiar voice from the hallway. “It’s me, Simon. Open up.”

Cursing slightly, Jack scurried over to the door and opened it. “Get inside,” he commanded softly, urgently. “Quick.”

“Now what?” asked Simon, stepping into the apartment. He looked around anxiously. “The forces of darkness are at low ebb during the daytime. We’re safe till night.”

“Glad to hear that,” said Jack. He pointed a finger at the rear window. “Want to tell our buddies across the street the news?”

Moving with inhuman grace, Simon positioned himself at the glass. The changeling’s features shifted to a bland, innocuous face resembling neither his nor Jack’s. Only then did he risk a look out the window. After a few seconds, his skin turned a delicate but definite shade of green. Jack licked his lips uneasily.

“You recognize them?” he asked.

“Unfortunately,” said Simon. He slipped back to the center of the parlor, rearranging his visage with each step. Jack closed his eyes, unable to watch. He found the process unsettling. It reminded him of a Gumby cartoon, but with a real person instead of a clay image.

“A young punk and a big dog, right?” asked Jack, wanting to be sure there was no mistake. “They were lounging in the doorway of the deserted store down the block. Neither of them possesses an aura.”

Simon’s face was still green. There was no humor in his voice when he spoke. “And you thought a vampire was bad news. Walsh was a pushover compared to those two watching this place. We’re in real trouble now, Jack.”

“How cheering,” said Jack, noting that Simon included himself in the danger. At least there was no more waffling on the faerie’s part. “Care to tell me who that character really is, and why that dog gives me the shivers?”

Simon edged back to the window. He beckoned Jack to follow. “Notice anything unusual about him?” the changeling whispered, as if speaking aloud he might be heard by those below.

Jack stared intently at the young man across the street. Tall and lean, he was dressed in faded blue jeans and a black leather jacket. Arms folded on his chest, he appeared half-asleep. Skin the color of old leather, his mouth was a thin red gash curled in an unchanging sneer. On his head, he wore an old red baseball cap, turned back to front in the prevailing style. Except for the fact that he lacked an aura, he could have been exactly what he appeared—a shiftless thug with nothing to do.

“He looks like a typical gang member,” replied Jack softly. “Complete with his colors.”

“A red cap?” asked Simon.

“According to the lecture given by campus security to all staff members,” said Jack, “hat and scarf colors are the usual identification marks for street gangs. Though I don’t recall any mention of an organization sporting red caps.”

“He belongs to a different gang than most,” said Simon, his lips curling in a sneer of disgust.

“Originally, his kind lived in the British Isles. That’s where I met them first. Many of us living here now emigrated from there during the Great Wars. We were a gentle folk, and fled the violence engulfing our ancestral home. But not them. They came much later. Not until your cities started to decay, and death walked the streets. That’s the type of surroundings they desired. That’s when they arrived, like a blight descending on the land.”

“They’re faeries?” asked Jack.

“Of a sort,” said Simon. “Among us, his kind are called the Border Redcaps. They’re a mixed breed, part faerie, part troll, part ogre, part who-knows-what else. The only certainty is that they are absolutely evil.”

“Border Redcaps?” asked Jack. “I never heard of them.”

“Few have,” said Simon. “They are not the type of character that populates the novels you favor. There is none of the romantic antihero so popular among current writers. The darkness within them is not a seductive, tempting sort. They are not rebels but cold-blooded murderers. The Redcaps kill without emotion, because it is what they do best. They are butchers of men.

“Their red caps are dyed red from the blood of their victims. They live in high towers along the border between the haves and the have-nots and prey on both. In Chicago, they inhabit the deserted upper floors of the high-rise public housing tenements.

“The police treat them like any other gang, not realizing the true extent of their wickedness. Each year, hundreds upon hundreds of runaways and the homeless disappear without a trace. They vanish into the night, never to be seen again.”

“The Border Redcaps?” asked Jack, for a second time. “But why?”

“As I said, it is their nature to kill. And,” added Simon, “they need a steady supply of fresh blood to keep their caps red.”

“What about the dog with him?” asked Jack, not sure he wanted to hear the answer. A big, black Doberman, the hound waited patiently beside its companion. Looking at it gave Jack the chills. There was something terribly wrong with the beast, something unnatural.

Simon drew in a deep breath. He swallowed hard several times before answering.

“The Redcap worries me,” he said, “but he’s no great surprise. From the story you told me, I suspected that his sort were involved in the kidnappings. They serve as the devil’s footsoldiers. However, the fiends are mere rank-and-file troublemakers. Add them all together and they have the brains of a halfwit. The fools are incapable of anything more than casual brutality and skull smashing.”

“Which indicates someone else is directing their activities,” said Jack. “Who?”

“Their lord is chief among the followers of the dark in Chicago,” answered Simon. “A merciless coachman, he rides the night winds with a pack of jet-black dogs at his side.”

The changeling lowered his voice, as if afraid of being heard. “The howling of his terrible hounds paralyzes any beast that hears it with fright. A once mighty leader whose sins were so great that after his death he was reborn in legend as an Archfiend. In olden times, the beasts he commanded were called the Gabble Ratchets, the ‘Corpse Hounds.’ One such monster waits and watches below. It loyally obeys only one master—Dietrich von Bern, the Lord of the Wild Hunt.”

As if summoned by the mention of that name, a heavy fist pounded on the door of Jack’s apartment. Caught by surprise, and overwhelmed by Simon’s rhetoric, Jack went numb all over. Ghastly visions of a devilish huntsman and his baying hounds raced through his head. Again came the pounding, this time accompanied by a gruff, loud voice.

“Open up, Collins. We know you’re in there. It’s campus security. We want to have a talk with you. Right now!”