Sam asked me last week if Saint Patrick had been a wizard. I’m tempted to have Archives look into it, but it’s hard to come up with a valid reason to make an official request. He certainly wouldn’t be the only spellcaster in the early church, and he had the staff and the robes and the big grey beard.
The truth is that the Church and the world of magic have always been inextricably connected. I don’t know if Jesus was a real person and there’s certainly no evidence of any smiling benevolent gods above or pitchfork-wielding devils below, but some saints were undoubtedly spellcasters and some of their miracles were spells I’ve seen performed many times.
Saint Finbar, the founder of Cork City went on a pilgrimage to Rome in the 6th Century and came back with a Vampire in tow; probably the first to visit Ireland. That vampire styled himself as an archbishop and has been living under a hill in Cork for almost fifteen hundred years. In that time, he’s only left Ireland a handful of times. If you believe the rumours, one of those times was to serve as Pope.
And repelling a vampire by showing them a crucifix? Don’t believe the Hammer Horror movies. That’s a legend born in an era when Vampires hunted and didn’t just feed on volunteers. The Pope at the time made a deal with the Fraternity: In exchange for the Church not hunting down their kind, the Fraternity agreed not to feed on clergy. Showing a cross was simply a way to identify yourself as such, and to avoid being eaten.
Parade Preparations
Thursday, March 17th, 07:05 AM
Cormac, McGinnis and I arrived early to Connolly Station, but the place was already teeming with people. It seems the crowd was arriving early for the celebrations and a steady stream of visitors flowed out of the doors past us as we pushed our way in. It took us fifteen minutes to find someone who had been expecting us, but they were able to lead us to a linesman in orange safety-clothes working in one of the maintenance sheds.
He introduced himself to us as Michael Tierney, then led us to where he had stored the massive spools of insulated cable. “What’s the deal with these, anyway?” he asked. I’m sure the curiosity had been building for weeks.
“Part of a scientific study,” said McGinnis, which was standard nonsense we used for situations like this.
Cormac approached the coils and extended one hand. He quickly withdrew it again like he’d been stung. “That’ll do it,” he said.
“Is it magnets or something?” Tierney asked, surprised at Cormac’s reaction.
“Something like that, yeah,” I said. “These have been connected flush to rail-lines the entire time? Until last night?”
“Well, until a few nights ago,” he said. “We’re a bit short-staffed this week, so I had the lads take them up on Monday. Is that OK?”
“It’s not ideal,” said McGinnis. “The time elapsed since-”
“That’s fine,” I said. “We have a truck waiting in the car park. Is there someone who can help us carry these down?”
Tierney himself and two of his men helped us carry the spools down the Scene Team’s van. Cormac tried to help, bless him, but when he touched one of the cables his face turned green and he had to sit down for a bit.
“We could be helping Martin’s Curse break free of the train system,” he said. “What if it spreads to roads and cars after this?”
“You said that wouldn’t happen,” I pointed out. “Besides, there’s only a handful of cars in the parade and you’re going to de-hex them the moment they finish the route.”
I looked about the maintenance shed. “What are those?” I asked Tierney, pointing to a pile of loose train tracks stacked against one wall.
“Old rails,” he said. “Been in use too long, got rusted and replaced.”
“Can we borrow a couple?”
Arts and Crafts
Thursday, March 17th, 8:56 AM
At Parnell Square, the assembly area was chaos. Everywhere I looked, I could see marching bands rehearsing, floats in various stages of assembly and repair, performers wearing half pantomime-horse costumes looking for each other and people in headsets carrying clipboards acting as though the world was ending.
McGinnis was busy supervising the Scene Team who were unspooling cable, cutting it to length, and stapling green cloth pennants along each section.
“Parade starts in three hours,” I reminded him.
“I’m aware,” he said. “But if we put these up every one hundred metres, we only need twenty-five or thirty of them. We should have strung them up over the route in the next hour or so.”
“And we’re definitely not going to spread Martin’s Curse onto the road network, right? Because that would be bad.”
“Martin’s Curse amplifies with repetition,” he said. “If the same parade went over the same route, every hour on the hour, for a month, we’d be in danger. A one-time transit shouldn’t have any effect.”
“‘Shouldn’t’?”
“As ‘shouldn’t’ as magic can be, I guess. I’d be more worried about those.” He pointed to the pair of iron railway lines I had laid across the entrance to the route.
“There’s plywood coming to make a ramp for the floats and the uh, the wheelchair-users. Only people those will cause any problems for are the ones we want them to cause problems for.” Behind me, the Chicago Police Department Marching Band broke into a stirring and deafening rendition of ‘Danny Boy’. McGinnis grinned over the noise, and I abandoned him to his work. I could see the plywood arriving.
On Your Marks…
Thursday, March 17th, 11:18 AM
About forty minutes before launch, the people with headsets and clipboards went into over-drive, herding and wrangling everyone back into their assigned positions. Then the honorary Marshall was introduced. This year it was some very pretty young lady that everyone assured me was a singer.
While she made a speech to drum up enthusiasm, I walked down the line of waiting floats and bands and marchers. I had changed into my tactical gear at that point and it was interesting to see the effect my gaze had on the waiting throng. A surprising number of them suddenly formed into rank when they saw me approach. Some of the American marchers, wearing military badges and hats with unit and battalion numbers stitched on, threw me a salute. I couldn’t bring myself to salute back, but I did nod and smile in acknowledgement and they beamed back, delighted to get my approval. I reminded myself then to speak to Sir Arthur again and thank him for this glamour.
At twelve noon exactly, the person with the clipboard and the headset but who also carried a whistle, so was presumably their leader, blew hard on it three times and the first float rolled slowly forward. I had returned to the starting line at that point and held my breath as I saw the front wheels hit the hastily-constructed plywood ramp. The theme of this year’s parade was ‘Voyages’ and the float had been built to resemble a large sailing ship, crewed by a medley of famous Irish explorers.
The ramp held and the float rode it like an ocean wave, rising slowly up one side then fast down the other. I was watching for adverse reactions in the crew, but aside from someone dressed like a pantomime Tom Crean, who leaned over the side to see what had caused the disruption, nobody seemed too put-out.
The Army No. 1 Band came next. As the military band who greeted foreign kings and presidents, I shouldn’t have had to worry about them as they were all background-checked out the arse, but I still watched each one as they crossed the rails for signs of discomfort or nausea. One of the trombone players coughed into his instrument as he crossed the ramp, so I waited a few moments before following.
A hundred meters up, they passed under the first cursed wire. The effect would not have been as pronounced as walking directly over a rail, but it should have had some effect. As he passed by, he maintained the beat set by the rest of the band, so I chalked that first mistake up to nerves and stopped to watch the rest of the parade catch up.
It went like that for some time. Each time I caught what I thought was an adverse reaction from someone, I did my best to surreptitiously follow them to the next wire to see if it was repeated. I got nothing but false-positives and began to wonder if this whole thing was a waste of our time. Perhaps the gang abandoned their plans the moment their member had been arrested. But on the other hand, the consequences of someone using the parade to steal a year from the life of everyone who marched, or their luck, or their life energy, was something that didn’t bear thinking about.
A Face in the Crowd
Thursday, March 17th, 1:26 PM
I had advanced as far as the statue of Big Jim Larkin on O’Connell street and was watching some acrobats perform directly under one of the cables we had strung over the street. If any of them were made ill by it, they hid it well.
As I watched, I became aware of a face in the crowd opposite me. While all eyes were glued to the performers, one pair stared at me, unblinking. The hair was unkempt and he had a few days of stubble, but I recognised the contempt in those blue eyes immediately. I stepped off the curb to approach, and he turned and disappeared. The gap he left in the crowd was immediately filled by those around him, and I was not able to see him after that.
I grabbed the radio hooked to my epaulette and brought it close to my mouth to speak, and to be heard over the noise and music of the surrounding celebrations. “Attention everyone. Just saw Michel Rossier in the crowd at the GPO. He ducked away when I tried to approach.”
"That French Hunter?" Murtagh’s voice crackled back, almost unintelligible over the background noise from the grandstands where he had been stationed, "Received. You want us to arrest? Detain?”
I swore quietly under my breath. My gut told me that Rossier certainly wasn’t here to take in the atmosphere of the city during festival week, but he hadn’t actually crossed any lines or broken any laws that I knew of. “Be on the lookout for.” I clarified into the radio. “Notify me of his whereabouts if encountered.”
After that, I resumed parade duty; watching each group as they passed under one of the cursed cables and following anyone exhibiting strange reactions. By the time I reached the end of the parade route I was trailing the last float; a papier-mâché construction designed to look like an airport arrivals gate and manned by people waving and holding ‘Welcome Home’ signs. I’m no art critic, but it felt a bit on-the-nose.
Downtime
Thursday, March 17th, 17:56 PM
It was evening by the time the parade organisers released everyone with a ‘job well done’ speech at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The floats were loaded onto flatbed trucks, and the instruments of the marching bands were carefully disassembled and stored in velvet-lined cases to be later smashed to pieces by airport baggage-handling staff.
The OSI staff gathered in a large cluster in Saint Patrick’s Park where Murtagh stood on a plastic crate to address everyone. “Y’all did a fantastic job!” he yelled. Few Irish people can pull off a convincing ‘Y’all’ and Murtagh was certainly one of them. “Seems we scared off the people we were hunting, but ‘no score’ in this game is a win for the good guys.” A small smattering of applause answered that. “I know we’ve all been pulling double hours the last while, so to thank you all personally, here’s our Chief Investigator. Victor Grey.”
With that, he jumped off the crate and made one of those ‘your stage, sir’ gestures. I did not agree to this. But I looked at the thirty waiting faces and felt the pressure of the trap placed on me. I realised I had to do something before Cormac started chanting ‘speech speech speech’ so hopped up onto the crate which creaked alarmingly.
I looked at the assembled faces, all waiting for me to say something, and stalled.
“Speech, speech, speech,” chanted Cormac.
“I’m not one for big speeches,” I said, cutting off the chant. “Just as Murtagh said, it’s been a busy week for everyone, so please don’t think your contributions and extra hours have gone unnoticed.” I sought about desperately for anything else to add. “The department thanks you, and…”
“Pub?” said Putter, then added, “On you? Sorry, on the department?”
I knew there was a petty cash discretion for things like this, but I knew that buying drinks for all of Containment when they had spent a full day in uniform and when they didn’t get to arrest anyone, would be heavy on the ‘cash’ and light on the ‘petty’. “Sounds good,” I said. “But I doubt any pubs have space for thirty of us, tonight of all nights.”
“I know of one,” said Finlay. “If nobody objects to a bit of a damp decor and a real arsehole living downstairs.”
Everybody Comes to Vic’s.
Thursday, March 17th, 6:54 PM
I wondered briefly if we were breaking licensing laws before I remembered the department probably owned my entire building. Also, we were law enforcement and ‘scary’ law enforcement at that, so the regular Gardaí would probably let us sacrifice a goat in here before they risked knocking impolitely at the door and disturbing the ‘VSB’ at their business.
I had jogged on ahead and taken any notes or files about Finlay’s and my investigation and hidden it in my hotpress downstairs. The department showed up a short time later, having made a brief layover at an off-license for essential supplies. As everyone filed past me, Murtagh handed me the receipt for later reimbursement.
I was sitting at the bar, nursing an orange juice and wondering how I would explain the expenses request when I looked up to see Sir Arthur standing behind the bar with a smile on his face. He wasn’t polishing a glass giving cryptic life advice, but he still managed to radiate the same ‘old timey friendly bartender’ vibe without even trying.
I blinked and he was studying the alcohol receipt that I hadn’t realised he had picked up. “This shouldn’t be a problem,” he said before folding it and tucking it away in a shirt pocket. Then he winked. “I think allowances can be made for national holidays.”
The noise of the crowd behind me faltered and died as people realised the Magistrate had joined us. I glanced back over my shoulder to the darkened pub lounge. It was clear that nobody was quite sure how to proceed. Then Putter broke away from the Containment crowd and approached the bar. But she didn’t come to me or the Magistrate. Instead, she settled on a stool at the very far end of the bar and placed her empty glass on it. “OJ, neat,” she said, and whipped the glass towards us down the bar’s slick surface.
I didn’t see the Magistrate’s arm move, but it was suddenly plucking her glass off the bartop and gracefully refilling it from the bottle I had placed on the bar before me. Then he returned her glass to the bar and, with the slightest touch of his wrist, flicked it back to her down the full length of the polished bartop. The glass stopped directly in front of her, and she lifted it to show the room that it was filled to the brim without a drop spilled. Then she grinned widely and took a massive gulp as if it was actually alcohol.
Whatever tension might have arisen from having The Boss in the room evaporated at this, and a cheer arose from the assembled. As conversation returned to its normal level, I gave Sir Arthur a nod of respect and raised my own glass, which he refilled from the bottle he was still holding.
“I understand things went smoothly?” he asked.
“Very. A man in a marching band from Minnesota was sick from the cables, but we took him aside and questioned him,” I explained. “Turns out he’s a practitioner, but he was here by coincidence. Just wanted to play the trumpet. Cormac spoke to him and you should have the full report by tomorrow.”
“And yesterday’s report?”
“The wolves?” I asked. “As reported, the deer was an initiation ritual. When you think about it, it’s a sign of respect. Daring each other to approach your territory wouldn’t mean anything if they didn’t fear you.”
Sir Arthur’s face was an impassive mask.
“We’re still investigating the attack on Ms. Star, and have cameras all over the Park, in case whatever did it reappears,” I said and added, “McGinnis!”
McGinnis had been sitting alone up to that point, sometimes chatting with Yang at the next table but mostly monitoring his phone. When I yelled, he jumped to his feet and ran to the bar. “Sir!” he said, putting down the phone, before adding “And sir!”
I wasn’t sure which ‘sir’ I was. I took the phone and showed it to Sir Arthur. “We have cameras in all the less-travelled places. Park being what it is this week, we figured, if the creature is in there, it’s avoiding crowds. They’re thermal imagers, so it should be easy to distinguish them from a person or a deer, even at night.” I flicked through the images in McGinnis’s app, to demonstrate that we did have every corner covered.
“I’ve also been training an AI,” added McGinnis quietly.
“Oh?” said Sir Arthur and I together.
“Just a little hobby in my spare time. I’ve trained it to recognise deer and people and… and y’know, squirrels and whatnot…” he trailed off under our combined gaze.
“And?” asked Sir Arthur.
“And it’ll beep when it sees something it doesn’t recognise. It’s mostly false positives, but each wrong answer helps it learn. I hope to use this on a wider scale later.”
The phone chose that moment to begin beeping, so Sir Arthur handed the phone back to McGinnis gingerly.
“Probably another false positive,” said McGinnis. “No need to all go chasing round the Park at night.”
We all go chasing round the Park at night.
Thursday, March 17th, 7:21 PM
McGinnis’s camera had spotted our quarry crossing one of the cricket pitches with a low loping run. When we arrived, we could see the marks left by its claws in the turf. Short shallow trenches for the front legs and long deep sweeping score-marks for the hind legs led south over the pitch but disappeared when they hit the tarmac of Wellington Road.
Containment’s standby team, along with any department employees who hadn’t been drinking, assembled by the tracks to take instruction from Murtagh. McGinnis had returned to the department with the Magistrate to coordinate by radio.
Murtagh raised both hands to get silence, then spoke. “I want four teams! Two by two along the North and South sides of the road, in both directions. It wouldn’t follow the road for long, so find the tracks again and radio as soon as you have something! Remember, this thing can jump, so sweep at least twenty feet either side of the road! And keep your team-mates in view the whole time. I swear to Jaysis, if I have to send a search party out after one of you…” He left the rest of the threat unsaid and split the assembled group into groups of three.
Putter and I were joined by Valentina Symonenko, also from Containment. While Putter was small and dark-skinned, Valentina was almost as tall as me and blonde. I certainly wouldn’t mistake one for the other in the dark, assuming I could even see Putter.
We took the south side of the road and followed it east, towards the Wellington Monument. Putter followed the verge of the tarmac and Symonenko tracked about ten feet to her right. I followed ten feet to her right, and a little behind, so I could keep both of them in view while I checked the soft earth for claw marks and tracks.
After twenty yards or so, the bank of trees on our right crept closer to the road and the ground itself dropped sharply away. I found myself looking up at Valentina, who was picking her way carefully, in the light of a torch, to avoid putting a foot wrong and tumbling down the slope towards me. At the foot of the slope, I could see the top of the stone wall that marked the perimeter of the Park. On the other side was Chapelizod Road which would become Conyngham Road, which led directly past the front gate of the Department. The hairs I didn’t have on the back of my neck stood on end.
Just before the slope became too steep, Putter yelled out at almost the same time as Valentina. I strode forward and could see what had caught their attention. Long claw tracks led down the slope, increasingly widely-spaced as if the thing had been gathering speed. Sure enough, they terminated about fifteen feet short of the brick wall in a pair of deep crescent-shaped throughs.
“It ran down, then jumped clear of the wall?” asked Putter, incredulously.
“It left the Park,” I said. “And I think I know where it was going. Valentina, radio Murtagh and let him know what we’ve found. Tell him to get everyone back to the office.” Then I turned and made my way down the hill, where I climbed over the wall and ran for the Department.
Huffing and puffing and blowing the house down.
Thursday, March 17th, 8:45 PM
McGinnis was outside the offices when I arrived, examining the front gates. As I approached, he took a gate with each hand and slowly closed them. They should have fit neatly together, as they had for the last one hundred and eighty years or so, but one of them had been warped by an unknown impact.
“What happened here?” I asked, dreading the answer.
McGinnis jumped at the sound of my voice, but recovered quickly. “Something hit the gates, hard. We heard the clang from inside. Good job they were locked.”
“Good job they were iron,” I corrected. “Any idea which way the thing went?”
He looked from me to the gate and then back to me. “This was the wolf? Attacking the actual department? Jesus, the Old Man is gonna flip.”
“Not if I get to it first. Which way did it head?”
“I didn’t even know what it was!” McGinnis looked around as if lost.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, and took off running in a random direction.
Twenty yards down, outside the Dublin Bus depot on the other side of the road, I found a young couple. The man was lying down and his girlfriend was kneeling next to him.
“Excuse me!” I said as I jogged up and flashed my fake Garda ID. “Did something happen here? Were you attacked?”
The girl rose to her feet. “Some fuckin’ junkie just grabbed his coat!”
I stopped short. “A junkie?”
She was as angry as any I’d seen any North Dublin girl. Which is angry. “Homeless guy with no shoes or shirt. Just a pair of trousers, knocked Simon down and grabbed his coat off of him!”
I moved to the downed Simon. “Are you OK, sir? Any bites or scratches?”
“Just me head,” he groaned from the ground. “Hit it a whack when he knocked me over. Am I OK to move it?”
“If you can wiggle all your fingers and toes, it’s probably safe to try sitting up. Just stop if you feel any sharp pains or numbness.” I turned back to his girlfriend. “Did you see which way the man went?”
She pointed towards the east, so I set off on a slow jog. But by the time I reached the junction with Infirmary road, I realised it was a lost cause. Crowds of people moved about, enjoying the evening. None were barefoot and none gave any sign that they had encountered the wolf. I turned back towards the department, to see Simon and Mrs. Simon had followed me. They looked at me with expectant expressions.
“Should we file a report with you, then?” asked Simon.
“A report?”
“The jacket, man. It was brand new. North face.”
I looked around for a regular Garda, but there was never one when you needed one. With a sigh, I said, “follow me, I guess.”
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