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BOOK TWO
THE NECROMANCY OPTION

Chapter One

The picture on the flat-screen projection was of a pretty young woman, slightly overweight, with black, obviously dyed, hair, lying on her back with her throat cut from ear to ear. Her lips and eyelids had been painted in black and there was a symbol painted on her right cheek in what appeared to be permanent marker.

"Victim Number Nine, Sharon Carter," Special Agent in Charge Jim Halliwell said. "Age, sixteen. Home, Newberry, South Carolina. MO standard for case R-143-8. Found in a remote, wooded, area. Anal, vaginal and oral sexual assault. Markings drawn on the body with magic marker. Marks of stakes in the ground and remnants of military parachute cord ties. Ligation marks on hands and ankles. Biological tracings of a white male with brown hair. Footprints indicate somewhere between five foot seven and six feet in height. Stake marks are of a military type stake. Perpetrator may be current military or of military background."

"So, basically, we're where we were with victims four through eight?" Agent Donahue said. "All the clues in the world and no idea who the perp is?" Greg Donahue's six foot four, heavy-set, frame was leaning back in his chair, frankly sprawled, in contrast to the other six agents watching the briefing, all of whom were sitting erect with every sign of attentiveness. They put Halliwell in mind of a group of well-trained Dobermans with one sprawled St. Bernard in the middle.

"Not quite," Halliwell replied with a note of satisfaction. "Agent Griffith might have an idea," he added, gesturing at the young man at his side.

Griffith was twenty-six, medium height and overweight with brown hair that was already receding. Unlike everyone else in the room his clothing was rumpled and his tie pulled down and askew. The FBI liked clean-cut agents with an almost military bearing. But over the years they had learned that certain types of personalities did not grow on trees. So for the Griffiths of the world, an exception was made.

"I've been comparing known similarities in all the cases," Griffith said, throwing up a complicated chart. "All of the victims have been in their teens, female, all the rest. However, what got me was that most of them had a 'Goth' look to them."

"Victims four and seven didn't," Donahue pointed out.

"Goth?" Agent Laidlaw asked.

"Black eye make-up," Donahue answered. "White face powder, black clothes and hair. Sort of a vampire look. Really common with disaffected middle class suburban kids of a certain type. Generally they're a bit more intelligent than the norm in their school, don't fit in very well, tend to not be druggies but try to set themselves off. If they read much, it's vampire stuff like Anne Rice."

"Anne who?" Laidlaw asked. "I'm getting lost here."

"Rice," Donahue sighed. "Interview with the Vampire? Ring any bells?"

"No," Laidlaw admitted.

"So a lot of them were Goths," Donahue said, giving up. "What's the point?"

"Well, it was a point of similarity," Griffith said. "So I ran it down. It turns out that all of them had attended a con within two months of their deaths."

"Con?" Laidlaw asked.

"A science fiction, fantasy or gaming convention," Griffith answered. "Actually, in seven of the nine cases, it was a science fiction literary convention. One media convention and one gaming. Each of them, though, has had a horror track and LARPing."

"Goth LARPers?" Donahue asked, frowning. "Horror fans?"

"Maybe," Griffith answered. "Since we just got the connection, we haven't run down all the leads. I don't know what they were engaging in at the cons. Might be LARPing, might have been gamers, might have been general con-goers."

"What in the hell is a LARPer?" Laidlaw asked. "Now I'm getting totally lost."

"LARP," Donahue said, sighing again. "Live Action Role Play. Basically a role playing game where people wander around the con playing it. Goes on all night and all day, damned LARPers sitting outside your room at four in the morning talking about how to ambush the werewolves or whatever. It's a pain in the ass."

"You've been to cons?" Griffith asked, surprised.

"A couple," Donahue admitted, shrugging. "Mostly to get signatures from authors I like. And, hell, there are people there that you don't have to explain who Anne Rice is," he added with a chuckle. "Or Robert Heinlein or Poul Anderson."

"We're trying to build a suspect list based on this connection," SAIC Halliwell said. "The profilers think we're looking at a person between the ages of eighteen and thirty. With the other items, hair color, skin color and height, we can begin building a suspects list. If we can find out who has been attending the cons. Besides the victims, obviously."

"Depending on the con, you could be looking at anywhere from six hundred to forty thousand attendees. That doesn't narrow it down much. Even if you just look at the 'white males with brown hair.' "

"It's more than we had," the SAIC said.

"No traces of makeup left by the perp," Donahue pointed out. "So our perp might be mildly intelligent and not dressing the part. Or he might not be a Goth. Goths generally hang out with Goths."

"Which is why I'm thinking LARPer," Griffith argued. "Goths interact with non-Goths more in LARPing than anywhere else. And there are non-Goth look people that hang with the Goths."

"Hell, all of the conventions will have lists of who attended," Donahue said, shrugging. "Get those and you can narrow it down quite a bit."

"We tried that," Halliwell admitted. "The first problem is the people that run the conventions were pretty unwilling to cough up the lists. . . ."

"I can imagine," Donahue said, grimacing. "Con-goers and organizers tend to be . . . well, I guess it could best be put as either libertarian or liberal. Giving the FBI lists of their attendees has to really go against their grain."

"The other problem is that most of them don't have good records of people that just show up," Halliwell said. "They don't require ID for example. And although we had matches on people at several of the cons, no matches on all of them that met the description and profile of the perp. Also no across-the-board matches on hotel reservations."

"So now what?" Donahue asked.

"We're going to insert agents at cons," Halliwell said, shrugging. "Undercover, obviously. Their task will be to try to ID suspects that meet the description and profile. Pictures and names when possible."

"We'll be looking for people that are 'day-trippers,' " Griffith pointed out. "Most of the cons have a different badge for that. But it's not guaranteed; they might be rotating names some way. Someone who is interacting with the Goths but may not be dressed as one."

"Each of you will be assigned a con," Halliwell said. "And we'll keep sending agents to others, trying to build a list, until we close the case or the con angle proves to be a bust." He paused and frowned then shook his head. "Donahue, Griffith, you got any suggestions on how to go undercover to a con?"

"Yeah," Laidlaw said, grinning. "Where do we get our Klingon outfits?"

"What you wear doesn't really matter," Donahue said, frowning. "But you have to have a reason to be there, other than to laugh at the geeks. Or you're going to stand out like a God damned sore thumb and blow the investigation. Just the FBI look is going to make you stand out. The clean-cut, short-hair, erect bearing is going to peg you as a military guy, maybe cop, right away. You'd be amazed how many of both go to the cons—about half the guys who wear Storm Trooper armor are local cops for example—but they generally try to keep a low profile in that area. And if you're going to be going around asking questions, you're going to have to have a reason for it. Depending upon the con, and who is going, I'd suggest an intensive reading course in one of the author guests. Or if it's a media con, get familiar with one of the TV shows or movies that one of the guests was in. Get a book or a picture signed. Go to a couple of the panels. If you're gothing, get to know some of the bands and understand the attitude, even if you don't have it. If it's a gaming con, you're going to have to be able to game and that's a skill I don't know if any of you have. Don't laugh at the geeks. Don't go around with the 'get a life' attitude or, again, you're going to blow the investigation. Laidlaw, you golf, right?"

"Sure," the agent said, frowning.

"Can you explain why you go out to chase a little white ball around a course?" Donahue asked. "You get paid money to do that? No. You do it for fun. Your friends do it. When you're done you get to hang out at the nineteenth hole and drink beer and lie about your game. That's all that cons are. It's where people with similar interests come together. They're not your kind of people, they're their kind of people. And they're just as . . . disparaging of golfers as you are of them. And since most of them have a better vocabulary than you do, they can be disparaging better, trust me. Get that in your head, get some background, and you'll be fine. Dress casual, really casual, and take good walking shoes."

"There's one other potential link," Halliwell said. "An author called K. Goldberg has been a guest at seven of the nine conventions. You read any of his stuff, Donahue?"

"Her," the agent said, shrugging. "No, but I've heard of her."

"The next convention she's at is in Greensboro in a month," Halliwell said, correcting himself. "Read some of her books, bill them to the Bureau. That's your con."

"Great," Donahue said, grumpily. "I'm supposed to infiltrate Goths. Why did it have to be Goths?"

* * *

Barbara Everette dropped Allison off at dance class with a sigh of relief and headed towards the Wal-Mart shopping center on the edge of town. She pulled onto Mississippi 15 and began weaving through traffic, pushing the Expedition up to well over the posted speed limit.

As she approached the Wal-Mart she looked at her watch and frowned, then glanced at the gas gauge. The Expedition had plenty of gas but it was time to check in.

She pulled out of the left-hand lane, inserting the vehicle into a small space between two pick-up trucks, and then whipped into a turn lane, pulling into a battered Quik-Mart. She topped off the tank with a couple of gallons of gas, then went into the store, picked up a Starbucks vanilla Frappuccino and headed to the counter.

"Hello, Mrs. Everette," the dark-skinned owner of the store said, smiling. He took the twenty she gave him and made change for the Frappuccino and the small amount of gas. Part of the change was a gold coin that appeared at first glance to be a Sacagawea dollar.

"Thank you, Mr. Patek," Barbara said, nodding. "Go with your god."

"And you with yours, Mrs. Everette," the man said, bowing slightly.

Barbara pulled back into traffic then drove to the Wal-Mart shopping center. Instead of getting out right away, she opened up the coin, wrestling with it slightly to get it to pop, and unfolded the note inside.

"Religious Retreat. Foundation for Love and Universal Faith, Women of Faith Division. Invitation and tickets by mail, Tuesday or Wednesday. Mission of one week plus duration to follow."

She rolled up the note and tossed it in her mouth. The sugar- impregnated rice paper dissolved pleasantly on her tongue. When it was gone she walked into the Wal-Mart to pick up sundries, sipping on her Frappuccino to get the taste of ink out of her mouth.

* * *

"Agent Donahue," Halliwell said as Greg entered his office. "Sit down, please."

Donahue glanced at the visitor in the office as he sat down, then looked over at his boss.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"This is Mr. Germaine," Halliwell said, gesturing at the newcomer with a frown. "He's a . . . consultant on the R-143 investigation."

"I wasn't aware that we'd called in a consultant," Greg said, frowning. The visitor was well dressed in a tailored suit. The FBI used a variety of consultants and Donahue mentally pegged him as a specialist in some forensic field.

"Greg, you've been with the Bureau . . . twelve years, right?" Halliwell said, with a hint of nervousness. "But most of that time in Robbery, right?"

"Yes, sir," Donahue said.

"This is your first kidnapping investigation," Halliwell added. "I've been in kidnapping and serial for over twenty years now. And . . . well, I've seen some things that, let's just say they don't make the news, okay?"

"I'm not following you, sir," Donahue said, frowning. "What sort of things?"

"The term is 'Special Circumstances,' Agent Donahue," the visitor said. He had a light accent, maybe British overlaid with something else.

"What does Special Circumstances mean?" Greg said, feeling like he was interviewing a suspect rather than having a meeting with his boss.

"It means the supernatural, Greg." Halliwell sighed. "And before you decide I'm nuts, don't. About the sixth investigation I was on turned out to be a vampire. A real, honest-to-God, bloodsucking, charming, stronger-than-human vampire. I am not shitting you, okay?"

Greg's face bunched up, his eyes closed and he actually felt his blood run cold.

"You're not joking, are you, sir?"

"No, he's not," Germaine replied. "When there is an investigation that has Special Circumstances, the FBI calls us in. They, in fact, keep us informed on all investigations that might have such circumstances. We'd been tracking R-143, mostly because the cabalistic symbols on the bodies are, in fact, the correct symbols for a particular form of necromantic rite. But we had hoped that it involved, let's just say a normal psychopath. Unfortunately, we've recently been informed that such was not the case. We have reason to believe that the girls are being sacrificed to a particular lesser deity, call it a demon. Such sacrifices create power which can be used by the sacrificer. Furthermore, sufficient power can permit the deity to manifest on earth. We would prefer to prevent that from happening. Things get . . . remarkably ugly when that occurs."

"What does this have to do with me?" Greg asked.

"We have far fewer agents available than the FBI," Germaine said, smiling faintly. "On the other hand, we also have some techniques the FBI does not to narrow down the field of suspects. We believe that, of all the potential conventions, the one that you are going to attend has the highest likelihood of attracting your perpetrator. Therefore there will be a Special Circumstances consultant attending that con. They will probably accompany you to it. In the event that you find the perpetrator, I would recommend that you inform the consultant. It is possible that the person may have abilities that you will be unable to combat. By the same token, the consultant may need . . . back-up. Depending upon who is sent they may have an attitude of nonviolence towards all but the necromancer or entity. Therefore, if your perpetrator is not using ritual, or does not summon a manifestation, you and the local police may have to handle the capture." Germaine paused and thought for a moment. "However, if there is manifestation, it is probably better if you let the 'consultant' handle it."

"If it hadn't been for the SC operative in that vampire investigation, I wouldn't be here," Halliwell said. "I've dealt with them several times over the years. Sometimes it turns out to be nothing, just your usual murdering madman. But when you need an SC operative, you really need an SC operative. Understand?"

"No, sir," Greg admitted.

"Well, let's put it this way," Halliwell said, grimacing. "If the SC operative tells you to jump, don't even ask how high. Just jump. Period. Or you're liable to end up as a corpse."

"And, I might add," Mr. Germaine said. "A corpse whose soul now resides in hell as the plaything of the demon you were opposing."

"Yes, sir," Greg said, swallowing.

"One more thing," Halliwell said. "Nobody finds out about SC unless they have to and they're considered trustworthy. The very existence of Special Circumstances is top secret. You don't tell anyone about it, you don't admit to its existence outside of the circle who know about it. There is no 'Special Circumstances' department in the Bureau. It doesn't exist, period. You cannot talk about the special aspects of this investigation with anyone except myself or the director. And, obviously, the SC operatives you may encounter in your career. You're now on an inside track in the Bureau. It won't get you promoted faster but . . . you'll see things and know things that very few do."

"Assuming you survive," Germaine said, with another faint, secret smile. "Special Circumstances investigations are notoriously hard on regular agents."

 

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