by Alex P. Berg
I pulled over to the side of the road, and the police car pulled to a stop behind me. A floodlight on the top of the car burst to life, and a state trooper stepped out the door.
“You want me to stay quiet, too?” asked Bill.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “Larry? Bill!”
“I’m on it.”
As the state trooper walked toward us, Larry pressed his fingers into Bill’s forehead. I heard a whump, and the next thing I knew, Larry wasn’t cradling Bill in his arms but a watermelon instead. I heard a muffled moan—coming from inside the watermelon. Larry stroked it, hushing it as the trooper stopped at my window and leaned over.
“License and registration, ma’aaaaammmm…?” The word stretched as the officer glanced into the truck, his eyes darting from one person to another. He blinked, his brows furrowed.
“Right,” I said, reaching into the center console for my wallet. “Larry? The registration’s in the glove box.”
The officer pointed at the cage in Tank’s arms. “Is that a raccoon?”
I swallowed back a lump. “It is.”
Betsy barked. Tony hissed.
“Do you have a permit for that?” asked the officer.
“For what?” I asked. “A raccoon in a cage?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I need a permit?”
The officer blinked again. “Well… guess I’m not sure. Say, is that a midget?”
“The politically correct term is dwarf, I think, officer.”
“But he’s not a dwarf.” Larry handed me the registration as the watermelon continued to moan softly. “He’s actually a leprech—”
I elbowed Larry as I took the papers from his outstretched hand. “Right. Here you go, sir. License and registration. Can I ask what the problem is?”
The trooper couldn’t stop staring. “No problem. You’ve got a tail light out, that’s all. So… where are you folks headed?”
Dawn smiled and waved at the officer. Darragh cut loose with another snore.
“On our way back to Austin,” I said. “Headed home.”
The officer snorted. “Of course. Keep Austin weird, right?”
“You got it,” I said with a smile.
The trooper grabbed my ID and the registration paperwork. “I’m leaning toward letting ya’ll off with a warning, but I’ve got to run your license first. Sit tight for a minute, okay?”
The officer walked back to his car, and I breathed a sigh of relief. So did Larry. The watermelon didn’t though. It kept moaning.
“You can ease up on the glamour,” I said. “At least until the trooper comes back with my ID. It sounds like you’re smothering him.”
“Smothering? Yes. Glamour? No,” said Larry. “I didn’t trust myself after the debacle with Darragh. I took a different path.”
I glanced at the watermelon with newfound horror. “Come again?”
“That’s right. Go on. Touch it. We can crack it open later and have a taste, though I wouldn’t recommend it. Bill’s head being encased in there will probably give the fruit a sour taste. But don’t worry about Bill. He can’t suffocate. One of the perks of being a zombie.”
“If nobody else wants it, I bet this little guy wouldn’t say no,” said Tank, lifting Tony’s cage. “He doesn’t seem to have a problem with spoiled food. Come to think of it, considering what he did to that ham, we should keep him away from Bill.”
My phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket and answered, not even giving second thought to the fact that it was one in the morning. “Hello?”
The voice that responded was thick with a familiar Russian accent. “Miss Lexie. I was of hoping you’d still be awake.”
I felt my cheeks tighten. “Romanov. What do you want?”
Everyone quieted and turned their attention to me, animals, unconscious leprechauns, and watermelons not withstanding.
“You know what I want.”
I switched the phone to speaker so everyone could hear. “The tome. Well, tough luck, Romanov. We’ve got a pretty good idea of what you intend to do with it, and we’re not in the business of enabling homicidal maniacs with delusions of grandeur.”
“We’re not in that business anymore,” corrected Larry.
“Please, Miss Lexie, there is no reason to delay inevitable. I will have tome, by any means necessary. I require it to complete magical superfecta.”
“Your magical what?”
“Superfecta. Is like trifecta, but with four elements instead of three.”
“Didn’t you already obtain four items for him?” I whispered to Larry.
“Yeah, but one was that useless map. I don’t know why he didn’t buy it himself.”
“Point,” said Romanov, “is tome will be mine. But I will extend olive branch first. Bring me tome, and I will not hold offense against you. You have until dawn. I suggest you make logical choice.”
My phone beeped as Romanov ended the call. I looked up at Larry. “Well? You promised me you wouldn’t give in to this guy.”
“I promised you I wouldn’t sell him the tome, if I recall correctly.”
“Stop jerking her around, Larry,” said Dawn. “She’s right, and you know it. Romanov is dangerous. There’s no telling what he’d do with that book. It’s bad enough he’s in command of the items we’ve already sold him.”
“I know, alright?” said Larry. “I may be stubborn, but I’m not blind.”
“So,” I said. “What do we do? Obviously, we can’t risk him finding the tome. We need to either destroy it or hide it somewhere so obscure and off the beaten path that he’ll never find it.”
“That’s one option, if such a place exists,” said Larry. “But there’s another method.”
“Being?”
Larry smiled. “He needs all four items, right? So maybe we take back some of the ones he’s already acquired.”
32
I sat on the mangled couch in the Nyte Patrol living room. Tank had turned the TV—which thankfully still worked—to Food Network where Masaharu Morimoto and Bobby Flay were engaged in a heated Iron Chef showdown with currants as the secret ingredient. For once, I was the only one watching, though. Dawn sat on the armrest, running a whetstone over the edge of her katana, having already honed the wakizashi to a razor’s edge. Meanwhile, Tank was methodically disassembling, cleaning, oiling, and reassembling every one of the dozen guns in his duffel bag. I felt like I should be doing something, too, but what, exactly? Tidying the living room? I didn’t even clean my own dorm room. Waxing my demon tooth bat? It seemed impervious to damage, no matter what I smacked with it.
I yawned and checked my phone. Just after two. Maybe the best way I could prepare would be to take a nap.
“Well, I think I did it,” said Larry.
I rose from the couch and joined the wizard as he waltzed in from the kitchen. “Did what?”
“Solved Tony’s transformation problem,” he said. “I cooked up a potion, convinced him to lap some of it up, and he returned to human form. Good thing I still had some eye of newt on hand, otherwise he would’ve been plum out of luck.”
“Is it a permanent solution?” I asked.
Larry shrugged. “The moon’ll still be close to full for a couple days, so we’ll find out soon enough.”
“Almost full? I thought it was an either or kind of thing.”
Larry shook his head. “Common misconception. For were beasts who can’t control their transformation, it’s the amount of moonlight that hits them that’s the triggering mechanism. I mean, haven’t you ever seen a monster movie where it’s overcast and the clouds break and suddenly little Johnny turns into a snarling werewolf? That’s based in fact.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. Remember when we were listening to Mystic Radio yesterday and the jockeys mentioned the overnight were attack?”
I almost slapped my forehead. “Damn. They said the creature was striped.”
“Yup,” said Larry. “It was Tony. Or at least I assume it was. His memory wh
ile he’s in raccoon form isn’t the best. But for now he’s safe. He’s finishing showering and getting changed. Speaking of which—can you give him a ride? He lives in one of the campus dorms, too.”
“Sure. I can drop him off on my way back.”
“Your way back? Girl, we’re not done.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “It’s past two. I have classes tomorrow.”
Larry adopted a serious look. “Lexie, you said it yourself. Romanov’s dangerous. His vampire dubstep orgy proved that, and as cool an effect as those crystals gave to the party, I have a feeling they also helped channel a more dangerous energy into the mix. If we’re to steal back the items we delivered to him, there’s no time like the present. He won’t be expecting it, not only because it’s the middle of the night but because he thinks we’ll cave and give him what he wants.”
I sighed. “Fine. If I miss class, I miss class. But tell me you have a plan this time. Like, a real plan that you’ve thought out that doesn’t involve winging it with flames and balls of lightning and Tank and Dawn and me pulling your ass from the fire when everything goes to shit.”
“I do,” said Larry. “Together, we’ll head back to Romanov’s place. Tank and Dawn will venture into the back of the estate to recover the crystals. Chances are, they’re still there. Nobody’s going to clean up that mess until the morning. You’ll come with me to take back the sword. When I delivered it, I took it under Romanov’s supervision to the armory, so I know where it is. I’ve already explained that the map is useless, so we don’t have to worry about it. The amulet is the hard one. When I delivered it to Romanov, he slipped it over his neck right away, and though I’m not a betting man, I’d wager he’s still got it on his person. But the way I see it, we can let him keep that one. He said he needs all four. One won’t do him a whole lot of good.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “And the tome? Clearly putting Bill on guard duty isn’t going to cut it, and you’re nuts if you think we’re going to bring it with us to Romanov’s place.”
“I admit I may have overestimated Bill’s ability to repel the enemy,” said Larry. “But I’ve thought it through, and I know a place where the Librum will be utterly, unimpeachably safe. Somewhere Romanov absolutely will not be able to reach it himself, in the care of someone who understands the magnitude of the object they’re instructed to protect.”
“Oh, god. You’re not leaving Betsy and that drunken leprechaun in charge of guarding it are you?”
“Betsy’s watching over Darragh while he sleeps his bender off in the guest room, but no, I did not expect the police dog to guard him and the tome both.”
“So who’s in charge of it then?”
Larry waggled a finger. “No. It’s better only I know. That way if anything happens, if Romanov captures you or Dawn or Tank, he won’t be able to find it. And I can lock the information in my mind where nothing short of a nuke can dig it out. Trust me.”
“You realize every time you’ve told me to trust you, you’ve later proven yourself to be totally untrustworthy.”
“This time it’s going to be different.”
A door creaked. I turned to find Tony exiting the bathroom, his hair wet and mussed up, wearing the He-man shirt and pants we’d recovered from near the Suburban, though he’d lost his glasses. He smelled blissfully like soap.
“Perfect timing,” said Larry. “Go on. Get him home. We’ll be ready when you return.”
I sighed and gave Tony a wave. He followed me out the back door and into my Suburban. The engine roared to life with a turn of my keys, and I turned the truck around in the driveway before heading back toward campus. Streetlights cast their yellow glows over the sidewalks, the streets empty and still.
We traversed a few blocks in silence before Tony found his tongue. “You know, Lexie,” he said as I turned onto West 21st Street. “I just wanted to say… About tonight…”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was a disaster. You shouldn’t have been a part of it.”
“What? No. I was going to thank you.”
I executed a double take. “Thank me? Are you nuts?”
“No, really. Without your help and Larry’s and everyone else’s, I’d still be running around the woods right now, naked, clawing people’s faces to shreds. Trust me. It’s happened before.”
“I know. I heard it on the news. But I’m surprised you’re not upset after how many times I forgot to tell Larry about your problem, not to mention how we treated you in general. I mean, I nailed you with a demonic softball bat, for Christ’s sake.”
Tony blinked. “You did?”
“Right. Larry said your memory while in raccoon form is fuzzy.”
“Well if you did, I don’t feel it in my ribs anymore,” said Tony. “But never mind. What’s important is that, ultimately, you didn’t forget about me. You helped me out, and I appreciate it.”
Tony smiled. With his hair freshly washed and his ridiculous glasses gone, he was actually pretty handsome. I’d bet if he put on something other than a 1980’s comic-themed T-shirt he might even pass for a hunk.
“If you say so. Either way, I’m glad it worked out.” I pulled up outside the Jester dormitory and put the beast in park.
Tony didn’t reach for the door handle. He sat there, smiling at me with that goofy, somewhat unsure grin of his.
“Well… we’re here,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Can I tell you something, Lexie?”
Oh, boy, I thought to myself. Here it comes. “Shoot.”
“I know I didn’t make it easy on you, what with popping up and refusing to come meet Larry in person. Truth is social interactions don’t come naturally to me. But there’s something about you that… I don’t know. Puts me at ease. It’s hard to explain. Ever since I saw you standing in that doorway, I felt this incredible connection, like we’re meant to—”
“Alright, let me stop you right there,” I said.
Tony blinked, confused. “What is it? Did I say something wrong?”
“No, it’s not that. But I know where this is going. The whole love at first sight spiel. That you thought we had a special moment, maybe when I stumbled into you at the library, or when I pet you on the head while you were in raccoon form trying to settle you down—but we didn’t. Really.”
Tony’s mouth hung open. “No moment?”
I shook my head. “No moment.”
“Oh.” He perked. “Well—maybe there doesn’t need to be a moment. You know, some fires burn slow. Lexie, I felt a spark. Honest. I mean, if you’re not busy, I’d love to—”
“I am kind of busy though,” I said. “I’m an engineering major. You know how it is. Plus I’m on the softball team, at least for now, and that takes up a lot of time. And even if I end up getting kicked off the team, I’m kind of picking up this whole Nyte Patrol thing, which doesn’t leave me with a lot of time for personal relationships. No offense.”
Tony sighed, and his face fell. “Right. No. I get that.”
“But,” I said. “You are hot. Like, really hot. And just because I don’t have time for a relationship doesn’t mean I’m busy all the time. I get drunk and lonely every now and then like any other girl. So… You’ve called me. I’ve got your number. We’ll see.”
He stared at me in shock. “Are you serious?”
“I’m not making any promises, and if you start blowing up my phone, that maybe is going to turn into a hard no.”
Tony blinked and shook his head. “Right. Sure. Sure. So, uh… goodnight?”
“Goodnight, Tony.”
He eyed me with uncertainty, then puckered up and leaned in.
I caught him six inches out with a finger to his lips. “Yeah. It’s not that I’m against the concept, but your breath still smells like rotting meat. Next time, okay? After you plow through a tube of toothpaste and a few bottles of mouthwash.”
Tony chuckled, blushing as he pulled away. “Right. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Goodnight,
Tony.”
This time he got the hint. He hopped out and closed the door behind him. I put the Suburban in drive, pulled onto the street, and headed back toward Larry’s place. I glanced in the rear view mirror to make sure Tony was headed to his dorm, but I couldn’t help but notice the smile on my own face.
33
I pulled underneath the low hanging boughs of a massive pecan tree and killed the engine. Down the street, I could barely make out the entrance to Romanov’s estate by the light of the moon.
“Alright,” said Larry as he turned to face Dawn and Tank. “Everyone ready?”
Dawn pulled one of her swords from its sheath and ran her thumb across the edge. “Ready as we’re going to be.”
Tank worked the action on his Mossberg pump action shotgun. “Roger that.”
“You’ve got the phone, right?” asked Larry.
Dawn patted her pocket. “The best burner an all-night 7-11 sells.”
“And you’ve got Lexie’s number?”
“Larry, what do you take me for, an idiot?”
“And it’s on vibrate?”
Dawn pulled the phone from her pocket and checked. She flicked her thumb at the switch on the side. “It is now.”
“See?” said Larry. “This is why we have a checklist. It’s not because I’m the overbearing group mom.”
“Hate to break it to you,” said Tank, “but shotgun fire is louder than a phone.”
“Well hopefully you won’t run in guns blazing,” said Larry. “Besides, if it comes down to a gun fight and we need to contact you, perhaps Dawn will feel the phone in her pocket buzzing over the massive cacophony of gunfire.”
Tank grunted and hopped out the door, shaking his head.
“Relax,” said Dawn. “We’ll be fine. It’s your group I’m worried about.”
“Our group?” said Bill. I’d propped him up in the center console. He claimed he liked the air on his face. “Are you saying we’re reckless?”
“I’m saying you’re the team with Larry on it. Meet you here in an hour?”
“If everything goes according to plan,” said Larry.
