Chapter 59

"Bloodsucker? Rankow? Sir, you must be mistaken—names like that belong in American superhero comics."

The driver's voice was tight. "I'm just an ordinary cabbie. If your only goal is to get back the waiting charge, I'm afraid I can't allow that."

"Still, you haven't denied that on the thirteenth of November you drove this taxi past my workplace and gave me a ride."

Baron spoke coldly. "That morning was no coincidence. It was a carefully laid trap. Who ordered you to do it?"

He spun the cylinder of his revolver. A slight pressure from his finger lowered the trigger, and the scent of gunpowder—of death—filled the cab.

"Sir," the driver said, "if you're trying to rob me, take the cash in my pockets and the money box. Just leave me the car—I need it to support my family..."

Baron's reply was flat. "Your family's already dead. Yet you brought them back. Right now they're holding hands in a villa on Westing Street, singing 'I Have a Good Daddy.'"

The driver gave a bitter laugh. "That's a cruel thing to say. I may fear death, but if I must, I'll die to defend my family's honor."

His tone chilled. One wrong answer from Baron and he would stamp the accelerator and ram the nearest police station.

Baron said nothing. Instead he flicked a newspaper onto the seatback—the same paper he had seen at Baggin's house on the Inside. The headline announced that Rankow had been stripped of his professorship at Edinburgh's College of Witchcraft for violating alchemical taboos...

Underneath ran an anonymous rebuttal signed "The Great Dwarven Alchemist." The writer defended Rankow, calling the Alchemical Society "a pack of asses." Rankow, he insisted, was a genius whose "Blood Twin Method" could graft the soul of one animal onto the corpse of another—a revolution that would overturn the whole field. The article ranted for pages. Had Baron not known it was the work of a cranky old man defending his pupil, he would have thought it written by some fanatical devotee.

"Your teacher, Baggin, keeps every clipping about you. You've changed your appearance, but his house has a photograph. The way you handle the wheel matches it exactly."

Baron invented freely—there was only one photo—but he wanted to rattle the driver.

The driver said nothing.

Baron pressed on, tossing over another paper from the Inside.

"Six years ago you resigned from House Lancelot and Edinburgh's College of Witchcraft and vanished. Two months later the Bloodsucker began to hunt on the Inside."

The driver shrugged. "Sir, if you're robbing me, hurry up. Alchemy and wizards—do you think we're in a comic book?"

"Besides," he went on, "if one man's disappearance coincides with a killer's first appearance—"

"When did I ever say the Bloodsucker was a killer?" Baron cut in softly.

"I only meant—"

The driver faltered. Before he could finish, Baron—an escaped convict who wore half a dozen criminal labels—flung yet another newspaper at him.

"I don't know the exact ritual, but I suspect that after your wife, daughter, and her grandparents died in the crash... death unhinged you. You performed an incomplete alchemical rite on their bodies."

Very quietly: "If one animal can live on in another's blood, why not a human? The price is simply an equal measure of blood."

The paper lay open between them: TAXI DRIVER DRUNK AFTER MIDNIGHT—FAMILY OF THREE KILLED IN CRASH.

The driver's silence stretched on until his voice grated like rusted gears.

"Mr. Constantine, that's going too far."

"Too far?"

Constantine's reflection in the rear-view mirror smiled—sharp and mocking. "What's truly excessive is a humble bank clerk suffering so many disasters on his morning commute."

He added, "Last night you tipped off the Holy Office. I remember: you drove me to work that first day, and Alice stepped into this same cab when she left."

"I thought they couldn't pinpoint me without the Timed Death Sentence and without my using Dragonfire. Surveillance and navigation aren't that advanced yet."

Baron continued, "Each time I saw you, your meter showed a passenger, but your plates appeared near me far more often than any other driver's..."

The driver sighed before Baron could finish. "I see now why the great enforcer organizations never caught you, Dragon-Knight."

He dropped the pretense. Calmly he slipped off his ring; the glamour dissolved.

He looked exactly like the photograph in Baggin's study, only more weathered—fifty years old, hair already white. Only his eyes remained the same: hollow, lifeless, a whirlpool ready to drag anyone down.

The driver—Rankow—said, "Your deductions are amusing, Dragon-Knight. But on what grounds do you claim I'm the Bloodsucker? Not mere intuition, surely."

"No intuition required. One visit to Baggin's clinic is enough."

Constantine said, "His papers fall into three categories: himself, his pupil Rankow, and the Dragon-Eaters and the Bloodsucker."

The Dragon-Knight spoke with serene certainty. "Therefore the Bloodsucker is either Baggin or you. The Dragon-Eaters, I suspect, are the organization behind you."

For the first time Rankow's composure cracked; his pupils shrank to pinpoints, then returned to normal.

"So... Master Baggin knows everything."

He sighed again. "Mr. Constantine, has anyone ever told you that you would make an excellent detective?"

Once, in a strange world of demon-hunters, L had solved a vampire case—and become a vampire himself.

Baron recalled Prol, felt a twinge of pain, and replied half in jest, half in mockery: "Indeed, thanks to you. One can't be a proper detective without first being an escaped convict."

Coldly: "Now explain why you framed me, and what your blood ritual truly is. Then prepare to burn for your crimes."

"And if I refuse?"

Rankow's voice dropped to a whisper.

In the rear-view mirror his pupils shifted to bronze-green; scarlet wisps rose around him, coalescing into the ghostly shape of a woman.

He flicked his wrist. Ornate cards appeared—spell cards used by wizards.

A Bronze sorcerer.

Baron's heart sank.

He had studied the profession in the Handbook of Professions. Wizards relied on wands and incantations, paying in spirit to cast spells—either "sorcery" or "magic."

Sorcery used pre-loaded alchemic cards: weaker and costlier than the original spell, but versatile.

Magic, like a contract knight's Promise, was a wizard's exclusive right: one new spell per rank, up to four for a Gold wizard. Unlike spell cards, magic required chanting and affected only the external world.

The quickest way to gauge a wizard's rank was, as Lawrence had said, "look at the eyes."

Two other clues were casting speed and the wand.

Black-Iron and Bronze needed both wand and chant. Silver and above could cast without chanting, and from a kilometer away.

Rankow was Bronze—he needed his wand.

Which meant—

The crimson specter lunged at Baron—just as a gunshot rang out.

The ghost shattered. In the muzzle flash Rankow ducked, pulling a hidden wand from the door panel. He touched a spell card to the tip—only to have another hand seize the other end of the wand.

Rankow looked up into the Dragon-Knight's golden eyes.

The sheer, terrifying authority made him let go instinctively. Baron snapped the wand cleanly in two.

"All right," he said, tossing the broken pieces back. He pressed the gun to the Bloodsucker's forehead. "Now we can discuss the matter at hand."

Looking at Rankow's dazed face and the ring of British police outside the cab, Baron remembered a joke from his past life.

Beyond seven paces, the gun is faster. Within seven paces, the gun is faster and more accurate.

So why, he wondered, did every random address he picked turn out to have a police station?

Life was hard. Baron sighed.