The sergeant went through a bewildering explanation for a moment and then shrugged at her expression.
“Just follow the signs to the FBI Academy,” he said, still having a hard time making eye contact. “You can find it from there.”
As they pulled out, Janea leaned back and put her license away, then looked at Barbara.
“I’m annoying you, aren’t I?” Janea asked.
“No, dear,” Barb answered, reaching over to squeeze the other woman’s hand. “I’m simply finding it a challenge in many ways I hadn’t expected. You are a very good friend and the challenges are good for my soul.”
“That’s another way of saying yes,” Janea said, leaning back in the seat. “I just get this way around men. It’s broken up so many relationships for me you wouldn’t believe. But I enjoy attention.”
“That is, I suppose, a goodly thing to your goddess,” Barbara said, ignoring the posted speed limit and cutting through the turns to the FBI Academy. “I, on the other hand, am realizing I’m not as perfect as others thought. Or even as sinless as I had thought. I hadn’t realized I was as vain as I am. It’s something I need to work on. So for that, if nothing else, I thank you.”
“You’re weird,” Janea said.
“You keep saying that,” Barb replied as she finally spotted building F-134. It was a brick building like most of the others on that part of the base, single story and long with several doors, most of them marked with blue signs. She hunted around until she found the door marked “Federal Bureau of Investigation Research and Analysis Lab” and then found a parking place.
When they reached the door she found it locked and pressed the button next to it, presumably a buzzer. After a moment the door clicked to the buzz of a solenoid and they went inside.
The entry room was hard tile floor, acoustic tile ceiling and bright fluorescent lights. There was a desk with a woman sitting behind it, a rather pleasant faced younger woman who looked like a receptionist.
“Barbara Everette and Doris…” She locked up on Janea’s last name for a moment, “Grisham. International Society for the Study of the Paranormal.”
“You’re expected, ladies,” the woman said, smiling. “Through the door.”
“Mrs. Everette?” the man on the far side said, taking Barb’s hand as she came through the door. “And Miz Grisham?”
“The same,” Janea said, smiling and bowing faintly as if to a courtier. “I prefer to be called Janea.”
“Janea, then,” the FBI agent said, virtually ignoring the way she was dressed. “I’m Special Agent in Charge Jim Halliwell. Let me take you back to the lab so we can get started.”
“I take it we’re not going to be working directly with you?” Barbara asked as they went down the long corridor. To the left were offices while to the right was a cube farm. As they passed one of the side corridors in the cube farm, an agent with his arms full of documents ducked back from Halliwell, then did a double take at the sight of Barbara and a triple take at Janea. By the time they’d reached the end of the corridor, there was a general buzzing from the cube farm and Barb looked over her shoulder to see various people, male and female, “prairie dogging” over the tops of the cubes.
“No, the agent assigned to your portion of the investigation is Special Agent Greg Donahue. He has the asset of having attended conventions previously.”
“And is he aware that there are… Special Circumstances to this investigation?” Barbara asked, carefully.
“Yes, he is,” Halliwell answered, opening the door to the lab.
The room had microscopes and various instruments with readouts on the front. Also a large number of computer monitors. And that was about all that Barb could determine from it.
“The FBI crime lab in D.C. does most of the direct crime investigation,” Halliwell said, leading them across the room. “This lab does research into oddball aspects of forensics. Trying to determine if the DNA from pollen on a victim can be traced to a particular area or plant, that sort of thing. It also handles most of the Special Circumstances… oddball aspects. Fortunately, the techs are rather closemouthed about what they do.” He pushed open a conference room door and waved the ladies in ahead of him.
There was a tall, thin man in a white lab coat and a larger man, both taller and much more heavyset, in the room. The lab tech, or doctor or whatever, was sitting very straight and still while the other had sprawled in his chair, hands behind his head. He sat bolt upright, though, as first Barbara and then Janea entered the room.
“Dr. Hannelore, Agent Donahue, Barbara Everette and Doris Grisham,” Halliwell said. “Miz Grisham prefers to be called Janea.”
“Mrs. Everette,” Donahue said, standing up and taking their hands. “Janea…” he continued, looking her up and down for a moment and then shaking his head. “I’m going to be working with… you two?”
“Better assignment than you expected?” Janea said, archly, sitting down and crossing her legs so they were in clear view of everyone on her side of the table.
“Uh…” Donahue said, his mouth open for a moment. “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he continued as he regained the capability for speech. “I was expecting… I dunno. A couple of little old lady psychics.”
“Guess again,” Barb said, placing her purse on the floor and then rolling her chair up to the table. “What do you have for us, Special Agent?”
“Dr. Hannelore?” Halliwell said, passing the ball.
“Seven victims,” Hannelore replied, dimming the lights and bringing up a picture of a young woman on the projection monitor. “Each of them killed by having her throat cut. Indications of sexual assault and ligations from binding. Each with these symbols,” he continued, showing a close-up of a stomach covered in a strange script, “marked on various portions of the body. We sent the symbols to an expert in these things and he identified them as…”
“A prayer to a Hebraic shedim,” Janea interjected. “Originally a Persian daevas called Remolus. Might be related to the brood of Tiamat but seems to be a lower ranking daevas than that. The writing appears to be early Fars but it’s not quite right. Hints of Sanskrit or maybe latter Sumerian. We hadn’t seen this particular script before but it’s interpretable according to our sources. I’m no expert in it myself. And clearly a summoning; he’s trying to summon Remolus and is probably channeling from him at the very least.”
“Remolus,” Halliwell said, stepping over to one of the workstations and typing. “It says here that he’s got no priors during our period of control of this area. ‘The Soul Eater’?”
“All demons are soul eaters,” Janea said, shrugging. “And the translation’s a bit off. Remolus’ major secondary name comes from an Aramaic inscription that translates as Soul Drawer or possibly Soul Sucker. As far as we know, there is no way that purely through necromancy he could possibly gather enough power to summon Tiamat. That takes enormous power. Although, if he did, that would be bad.”
“How bad?” Halliwell asked.
“Tiamat is a gate and the key to the gate between the worlds,” Janea said, frowning. “Effectively, if she stays in place for any significant time at all, and she is very difficult to kill, then you have a fully opened gate to… call it Hell. Demons can come through in swarms. Of course,” she added, looking over at Barbara, “the heavenly host is supposed to be manifest to battle them directly upon earth. However, the power levels would be so high…” She paused and shrugged. “It might be better to have a nuclear war.”
“Heaven forbid,” Barb said, softly.
“As you say,” Hannelore replied, looking at the dancer in interest. “The bodies had not been killed at the location. There is significant exsanguination. We’re not sure what was done with the blood, whether it was kept for necromantic purposes or dumped.”