Nazis and Witches and Vampires, oh my.
Ireland was already earning a reputation in the international community as a producer and exporter of practitioners in post-war Europe, and the Department’s laissez-faire attitude to those that embraced the magical arts was certainly contributing to our image of a land running amok with witches and sorcerers of every stripe.
Skorzeny bought a large farm in Kildare, just a few miles up the road from the Magistrate’s, though Sir Arthur didn’t yet own the property. You can visit Skorzeny’s old farm today. It also hosts weddings and has a lovely little tea shop and it doesn’t mention the Nazi Commando that owned it even once on its website.
At the time, ownership of the Magistrate’s farm was disputed between descendants of its original owner and a trust that had once been established to care for the school and its students. The trust had been without a board for a very long time, but it still owned the property on paper and the great-great-nephews of the young lord lived in England and probably couldn't find Ireland on a map. So when a coven of actual witches moved in during the second world war, there had been nobody to object.
Skorzeny set up on his own estate and began surveillance of the Kildare coven. I find it hard to believe that the department of the day weren’t keeping tabs on him so I’m not sure how what happened in 1963 came to pass. But it was known as the Battle of Kildare.
Cormac and I attempted to find a trail to follow, to see if it actually led back to the main house. But aside from the flattened bushes around the perimeter of the pond, there was no sign that anyone had passed through the area.
I sighed. “So they either emerged from the pond here, circled around and forded upstream or downstream and then crossed the track and ran off into the sunset-”
“Sunrise,” corrected Cormac.
“The sunrise. Or they made their way back through the trees to the main house and slipped back inside the coffins or guest beds, hoping not to be identified.”
“Do you think they could have washed the blood off thoroughly enough? Here? Sir Arthur can detect a drop of haemoglobin through a stack of mattresses and I don’t even see any soap.”
“Hopefully, it’s that simple. C’mon, Murtagh will be waiting for us.”
We made our way through the trees back to the house without finding any more tracks. Whoever had led us to the mill had either not come this way again or did so more carefully, without laying down a trail of blood and damaged greenery.
When we reached the house, Murtagh was pacing outside the back door, hands thrust deep in his pockets. He stopped and shot us a hopeful look when he saw us emerge from the treeline. “Any joy?”
“Some,” said Cormac. “The trail - as much as it is - leads to the mill then doubles back, we think.”
“Any news here? Did your men report anything?” I asked.
“Nothing from the men, no. But Doctor Yang has a tentative time of death. Sometime early this morning, likely between four and seven a.m.”
“What time was Sunrise?” I asked.
“Six forty-four,” replied Cormac and Murtagh in unison. I should have known myself; It’s a schedule you got into the habit of checking when you worked for Sir Arthur.
“When was the last time someone saw Woods?” asked Cormac.
“He left last night’s reception about four, I think,” I said.
“Just after, yeah,” said Murtagh. “He seemed on edge for the whole night. I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did.”
“Any reason that you could tell?” said Cormac.
“Just seemed like that kinda guy. Nervous.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t the presence of five vampires that had him on edge,” I said.
“Five?” said Cormac.
“Oh, you missed the developments,” I said with a laugh. “Turns out we have a new Guardian of the North. And he brought a plus one.”
“That must have gone down well.”
“Might actually cause more of a fuss than a dead caretaker,” I said.
Murtagh chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “You think these are connected? You show up uninvited, you’re worried they won’t accept you, so you kill someone in order to change the conversation. The others can’t vote against you if they’re turning on each other in suspicion.”
“Nice idea,” I said. “But in that scenario, you’d be the first suspect. They’ll turn against you before they consider one of their own.”
“Then should we be looking at one of them?” Cormac mused. “Fastest way to discredit the newcomer: Frame him for breaking their hospitality rules.”
“I guess we’ll see which way fingers start pointing when they wake up,” said Murtagh.
“Make sure all of Containment are on standby,” I said. “I know some were up late and some were up early, but I don’t want anyone asleep at eight o’clock tonight.”
He nodded.
“In the meantime, I want all the ground between the bungalows gone over with fine-tooth combs. Check first for blood and then for anything else suspicious.”
“Pond scum,” Cormac added.
“What?”
“If they washed off the blood in the millpond, they may have picked up something else. Weeds, or algae.”
I turned back to Murtagh. “Worth a look.” Then to Cormac, I said, “I know you spent most of last night scrying, but if you’ve any juice left, help Containment with the sweep.”
Murtagh ruminated for a moment then asked, “What about Galligan’s men? We could use the extra eyes. You want me to bring him in on it? Let him know what’s happened?”
I considered it, briefly. “Let me talk to him.”
Augustine and his entourage had been given the oldest houses on the estate. They were guest-houses built back when the estate was first founded, with low eaves and doors small enough that you did not need to be a troll or a man of the Archbishop’s stature to be forced to duck your head entering. It wasn’t an insult, though. The walls of the cottage were thick and the windows were small and few in number; just the thing that makes a vampire sleep safely.
An old weathered stone mounting-block lay just outside the door of the cottage we had assigned to his security, and Galligan sat on it, seemingly enjoying the sun. He wore suit trousers and a shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Under his right arm, an empty shoulder-holster swayed from the movement of his arms as he polished one of a pair of black leather boots. Its partner lay at his feet, waiting its turn, though it looked perfectly clean to me. It seemed Galligan was one of those people who equated shiny shoes with discipline. Or he’s cleaning the blood off them.
I circled around as I approached, trying to catch a glimpse of the sole of the boot on the ground. As I did, he looked up at me, squinting in the sunlight.
“Well, if it isn’t Mister Grey,” he said. “Social call? Or are you here to tell me why your guys have been running around like blue-arsed flies all morning?”
At this distance, I could see that the sole of his boot was as clean as I expected. I sighed and said, “We think there was an intruder last night. Someone between four and seven this morning caused a ruckus.”
He held the boot at arms’ length and eyed it, scanning for blemishes. “Did you catch him?”
“Not yet. We’re combing the grounds. I wanted to ask if all your men were accounted for.”
He eyed me again. “Between here and the Master’s bungalow?” he gestured with the boot towards Augustine’s, “Yeah, we’re all accounted for. Not a lot of places to slip away between hither and yon.”
I sighed again and removed my glamour. He responded by taking off his own. This old tradition usually signified that what came next would be an honest exchange. Or a fight to the death. Which was just a very honest exchange.
Out of his glamour, he was even bigger than I expected. White Clan trolls are usually tall and he was taller than usual, but not as narrowly-built as his clansmen. The only reason he didn’t seem as muscular as a Red was because his extra height made him seem like he had normal proportions. He needed a warning sticker to let observers know that he was further away than he seemed.
Troll skin can’t take tattoos, so some clans had adopted scarification in the past. It had never been a White Clan tradition, as far as I knew, but Galligan had a wide burn scar beginning above each eye. They ran back over his scalp, narrowing as they did, before they curled around to finish in a point below each ear, like the shadows of ram’s horns.
“I’ll be honest,” I said, “on the understanding you are too. There was a murder.”
He placed the boot down on the ground. He studied the pair in thought for a moment and then picked up its mate. “One of yours? Security patrol ambushed?”
“Woods, the caretaker,” I said.
I watched to see how he reacted, but aside from a slight raise of his rams horns, he may well have been carved of the same stone he sat on. He considered his boot for a moment and asked simply, “How?”
“Torn apart, literally,” I said. “Someone forced their way into his room and eviscerated him.”
“Fuck,” was all he said. Then he considered his boot one more time before placing it next to the first and reaching inside. He pulled out a small pistol -- at least a pistol that seemed small in his hands -- and tucked it into his shoulder-holster. I wondered if that was his usual paranoia, or if he’d hidden it there when he had heard me coming.
He stepped into his boots and began lacing them. “What are the next steps?”
I was surprised. I had expected resistance or for him to go storming off with his own plan of action. “We planned to wake the Magistrate a few hours early and bring him up to speed.”
“You need to keep de Silva’s house under lockdown,” he said as he finished lacing his boots and stood. “You can use my guys.”
“Why de Silva?” I asked.
He turned to me in surprise. “You don’t think he did this? He’s borderline feral… years of subsisting on animal blood. He’s more wild animal than man.”
“He’s never killed anyone that I know of.”
“No, but he hunts all along the west coast. I don’t want to tell you how many times he’s crossed the mouth of the Shannon, into his Excellency’s territory. When he’s on a hunt - when his bloodlust is up - the rules no longer apply.”
“Then the last thing I need is him waking up to find a cordon of His Excellency’s finest surrounding his house.”
Galligan lifted a hand in objection, but I interrupted.
“Containment can watch the cottages. Your men can help at the perimeter. You know the old mill road?”
He nodded.
“Nobody alone,” I said. “Groups of three, ideally, patrolling its length and watching for anything unusual in the woods.”
He disappeared inside his house and emerged a few minutes later, followed by six of his lackeys. I watched as he issued instructions. He was sharp and concise with his directions but his men listened attentively and immediately broke into two teams and trotted off to the woods without question or comment.
When they had gone, Galligan turned to me with a quizzical look. “A thought occurs to me…”
“Yes?”
“You may think that His Excellency is responsible for the attack, and this was just a way to strip away some of his protection detail.”
I didn’t want to lie and contradict him outright. “It occurred to me. But if he did kill Woods, he’ll have The Magistrate, Don Juan Perez, and Hamilton to deal with. I probably saved the lives of those six men, in that case.”
“And if the Magistrate did it? Are you prepared to arrest your own boss?” he asked. “That’s murder, but there’d be no hospitality violation in that case, so I can’t say if the other vampires will be obliged to intervene and help you.”
Up to that point, the idea of Sir Arthur tearing Ian Woods to pieces and vaulting off into the forest hadn’t even crossed my mind. I tried to picture it, but couldn’t; my brain simply didn’t have the mental capacity for such flights of imagination, it seemed.
“If Sir Arthur did it, we’ve got much deeper problems,” was the best I could do.
The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. Repeated sweeps of the grounds yielded no more forensic evidence. As those who had taken the night shift woke up, they were ushered to the main house with no further explanation and bid to wait in the large low-ceilinged kitchen. We re-counted heads to confirm nobody was missing, then went to wake the magistrate.
Waking a sleeping vampire can be a tricky thing. What passes for “sleep” can change from one day to the next, depending on a hundred different circumstances. It was least predictable during the summer months when the sun was up higher and longer.
Here, surrounded by potential enemies, it was a coin-flip if Sir Arthur was sleeping more deeply to maintain his energies for the night ahead, or if we’d find him with one eye open.
I unlocked his bungalow and entered with Murtagh. The corridor inside was dark and silent. This cottage had an identical layout to the one I had been assigned, so I bypassed the kitchen and front room and knocked on the door to the larger back bedroom before opening it.
The wooden crate inside was closed when I opened the door, but the lid rose before I could even take a step into the room. In defiance of stereotypes, Sir Arthur rose from his slumber by first bending at the waist.
“Mr. Grey,” was all he said. His expression didn’t betray much beyond a small irritation at being woken early, though I found it hard to believe that being seen sitting in a box full of blankets didn’t bruise his ego a little.
“There’s been a murder, sir,” I said. “Woods was killed an hour or so before dawn.”
In an eyeblink, though I’m ninety percent sure I didn’t blink, he was standing upright and the blanket that had been covering his legs had been thrown back over the upturned lid.
“Who did it?” he demanded. His voice shook the small room.
“We- we don’t know,” I stammered. We followed the trail of the killer into the woods as far as the old mill pond.”
“There was blood?”
“At the scene? Yeah. On the trail as well, but nothing once it reached the pool.”
He moved forward gracefully, stepping out of the crate. “I would expect not. When the estate was used by Wiccans, that pond was used as a Cleansing Pool in their rituals. I imagine much of its power remains.”
“Oh,” I said. “We were hoping you and the others would be able to smell blood on the hands of the killer.”
“It seems they are one step ahead of us. Are they awake?”
“We’ve let them sleep. But Galligan and the Arch-Bishop’s security team have been read in, so I expect they’re waking him as early as they can.”
“The moment the sun sets, I will need to speak to him.” Sir Arthur spun on his heel and paced to the wall. It was a habit of his I’d noticed when he was awake during the day and stuck indoors. Sometimes, he’d get so deep in thought that we were surprised when he stopped short of banging his head into the plaster.
“Do you think he could have done it?”
“Hm? Augustine? Violating the hospitality accords?”
“Yeah. Woods was ripped apart. The Archbishop has the strength.”
“Put that theory out of your mind. He hasn’t violated the accords in thirty-nine centuries. He wrote the damn things.”
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