by Raven Hart
I reached into my pocket for the flashlight I’d brought. Not even my eyesight could work in this pitch-blackness. Like a cat’s, my eyes could amplify the smallest shard of light. But with no light whatsoever, I was as blind as the cockroaches that crept around my feet.
I rounded a bend in the tunnel and saw a crumpled human form. I trained the beam of the torch on the figure, relieved to see that it did not wear the clothing Donovan had earlier. I bent to examine the body, first checking the neck, naturally. There were no fang marks on the side that faced upward.
I turned the body onto its back so I could see the other side of the neck. The corpse of the unfortunate man emitted a sound that decomposing remains sometimes will—one last sigh from the lonely shell, left behind by its soul gone on to eternal reward or damnation.
I found the fang marks on the other side of the neck. Multiple fang marks, in fact. It had been a family meal. Something glittered in the beam of light, and I saw that the poor fellow still grasped a gold chain in one fist. At least I knew his occupation. The bloke could only be a modern-day “tosher,” that is, an individual who braved the frightening and oxygen-deprived subterranean world to search for anything of value.
Such persons began their careers as mudlarks even while they were still children, going to the banks of the Thames at low tide to see what they could scrounge among the flotsam and jetsam. There were much easier ways of making a living, in my opinion. But who was I to judge? One of my many occupations was as a dealer in antiques. I could be said to trade in other people’s castoffs as well.
I dusted off my hands and continued my search. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find several such bodies. Hugo’s party had been in London for days before I arrived. The surrounding area was home to a number of backpacker hostels and cheap hotels converted from old family homes, creating a continuous transient population: it was the perfect hunting ground. The occasional person gone missing might not be noticed right away, especially in some areas north and east of King’s Cross renowned for the vices of drugs and prostitution.
I continued my walk, dodging the more disgusting items on the sewer floor as well as the sinuous tree roots growing down from the surface. I was fortunate indeed that I was in a section of tunnels that was high enough in which to stand upright. I would have hated to have to slog through the muck on my knees.
I paused at the sound of footsteps headed in my direction. There was something wrong with the gait of whoever approached; the footsteps were tentative, staggering as if the person were lame. A few feet and the individual would come into the range of my flashlight.
“I see torchlight. Who’s there?”
“Donovan?”
“William! Thank the gods!”
When he came into view, he was doubled over. I could see that he held his arms tightly across his chest. When he reached me he collapsed into my arms. I leaned him against the cleanest section of wall I could locate and trained the beam of light on his chest.
There was a gaping hole directly over his heart. It was too deep and wide a wound not to have struck that organ. A piece of splintered wood adhered to his clothing, fastened there by the coagulating blood.
“Who did this to you?” I asked.
He tried to speak, but no words came out.
“How did you survive it?” I had never seen or heard of a vampire who could survive a wooden stake to the heart. I looked into Donovan’s face and even by the dim illumination of the fading flashlight, I could see a fierce gleam in his blue eyes. By then he’d found his voice.
“You may have the voodoo blood. But I’ve got a few tricks up my own sleeve, mate.”
Then he fainted. Dead away. If you’ll pardon the expression.
Jack
Over beer and chicken wings at the little swamp bar I told Seth what I’d just seen. Actually, he ate the chicken wings and I drank. You can try until the cows come home to order rare chicken in a dining establishment and they simply won’t serve it to you. Guess they’re a mite worried about liability. I couldn’t exactly explain to the proprietors why I was immune to salmonella.
“That Mustang belongs to Samson’s oldest boy, Nate,” Seth said. “According to my contacts hereabouts, his wife up and disappeared not too long ago. Maybe him and Sally are sweet on each other.” Seth sucked some wing sauce off his thumb and forefinger. “Ah, opposable thumbs. That’s one of the best parts about being a part-time human. Say, can you vamps shape-shift at all? Take the form of a bat or something?”
“No, I can’t turn into a freakin’ bat. Why would anybody want to turn into a bat? Those things are nasty. Have you ever seen one up close? They look like Chihuahuas with leather wings. Now that’s just wrong. You’ve been watching too many Bela Lugosi movies.” Seth had a thing for old horror flicks, the cheesier the better.
“Seriously, man, can vampires do anything really interesting?”
Seth and I had a running debate over which was the most awesome variety of nonhuman—vampires or werewolves. “Well, I might not be able to turn into a bat…” I looked around to make sure nobody was close enough to overhear us. “…but I can fly.”
Seth went wide-eyed. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“Nope.”
“I gotta see this.” Seth reached for his wallet and laid two twenties on the bar. “C’mon outside.”
“Now, wait a minute. I don’t want to oversell this. I can’t fly like a bird or anything.”
“Dude, you can either fly or you can’t. It’s like being pregnant.”
“Well, that’s the way I fly. A little bit. Really, it’s more like I…hover.”
Seth laughed so hard I thought he was going to choke on his beer. “Okay, so you can hover. I guess that’s better than a poke in the eye with a wooden stake.” He raised his beer bottle in salute.
“That’s more than you can do, dog breath.”
Seth lowered his bottle. “I should have taken a bite out of your hide the other night, but I don’t like dead meat.”
I started to counter with another of my witty rejoinders, but the words died on my lips when I realized who had just walked through the door.
Samson Thrasher. With a platinum blond Connie Jones on his arm. Without thinking about it, I stood up. “What the—?”
Seth grabbed me by the arm. One glance at him told me he was as shocked as I was. “Chill out, Jack. She’s gotta be working undercover. Don’t blow it. You could put her life in danger.”
It was all I could do to sit back down. But I realized Seth had to be right. It was the only explanation why Connie would be with Samson Thrasher. I hated the thought of her hanging out with the Thrasher pack, even if she was doing police business. “I thought you had them under surveillance. Why didn’t you know?”
“It’s the platinum wig,” Seth hissed. “I saw a bleached blonde around the place now and then, but I wasn’t close enough to see who it was, and I didn’t think anything of it. I just figured one of the boys had a new loup-garou wife.”
To prevent too much inbreeding, the Thrasher pack had often turned to a number of packs in Cajun country to find mates for their sons and daughters. A loup-garou is a Cajun werewolf. I suppose that a swamp dog is a swamp dog whether you’re in Savannah or Louisiana. They evidently like to stick to their own kind.
“So much for keeping the Thrasher matter just between us monsters. What are we going to do now that the police are involved?”
“I don’t know,” Seth said. “I need time to think.”
“Time’s up, buddy,” I said. I stood up and started toward Samson and Connie.
“Be careful, Jack. Don’t say anything that might endanger Connie.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, giving him a meaningful look. “I would never do anything to hurt Connie.”
I sauntered over toward them. Two other male werewolves, each with a girl on his arm, had entered the bar behind the pack leader. One of the girls was Sally.
Samson didn’t look much different fro
m the last time I’d seen him, many years ago. He was tall and rangy with that wiry strength that always took you by surprise in somebody so thin. Especially when you had to fight them. He had shaggy gray hair, cut in a mullet. His eyes were different from Seth’s; they were the pale blue-white eyes of an Arctic wolf. I always wondered how Samson came by those eyes that made you feel like you were staring into a mile-deep pool of water just on the verge of freezing.
Those eyes widened when he saw me. “McShane, you old grease monkey, you. I guess they’ll let anybody or anything in here these days. I’ll have to speak to the proprietor about his lack of good taste and refinement. What brings you to my neck of the swamp?”
“Oh, you know what a social butterfly I am,” I said. “I thought I’d check out the nightlife hereabouts.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Connie hadn’t flinched from the time she saw me. She had a wad of chewing gum in her mouth and an expression of lazy boredom on her face. Man, she was good.
Samson tilted his head upward, put his nose in the air, and took a deep breath. He smelled another werewolf besides the ones he’d come in with. About that time the music on the jukebox stopped and when the folks on the dance floor sauntered toward their seats, Samson saw Seth, who raised his beer bottle in his direction and gave him a big, toothy grin.
“Who’s your friend?” Samson asked.
“Him?” I said. “His name’s Seth. He’s somebody you should meet. So who’s your friend? Aren’t you going to introduce me to this fine lady?”
Samson inclined his head toward Connie. “This here little lady is Bitsy,” he said. “Bitsy, meet Jack McShane.”
“Bitsy?” I couldn’t help it. I snickered.
Connie glared at me. “Pleased to meet you.”
The music on the jukebox started up again. It was a slow dance. “Bitsy, would you like to dance while Samson here goes and introduces himself to my friend? I’m sure they have a lot to talk about.”
I was strictly going on instinct. Since Seth had saluted Samson instead of sneaking out the back door, I could only figure that he had some plan up his sleeve, so I might as well invite Samson to meet Seth because he was going to whether I encouraged him or not. Besides, this way I’d get to talk to Connie alone.
Connie shrugged and smacked her gum, as if she didn’t care one way or another. “Sure. Why not?”
“I’ll be back in a minute, darlin’,” Samson drawled. “Now, Jack, don’t you try anything fangy, uh, I mean fancy, with my girl here while I’m gone, you hear?” Samson slapped me on the back a little too hard and laughed at his own joke before making his way over to Seth. The other werewolves and their girls followed him. When I looked after them I could see Sally steal a scared, wide-eyed glance at me, but she wisely said nothing.
I took Connie in my arms and guided her to the farthest corner of the little parquet dance floor. “What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.
“I’m doing an undercover investigation. What are you doing here?” she hissed. “And Seth. What’s going on?”
“Seth and I have reason to believe that the Thrashers are manufacturing crystal meth. So we’re investigating, too.”
When I mentioned the name of the drug, Connie’s expression hardened into what I could only describe as a look of hatred. It was a little unsettling. “Seth’s in law enforcement,” she said finally, “so I can understand him being here. How did you get involved?”
“You see the little blonde with one of the Thrasher boys?”
“Yeah, Sally. Evidently she’s the girlfriend of Thrasher’s oldest. How do you know her?”
“She’s one of Eleanor’s girls.”
“And?” One of Connie’s delicate brows shot upward. She had learned all about Eleanor since right after she found out William and I were vampires. I had told her everything. Well, almost everything. She still didn’t know about other nonhumans. But she was about to find out.
If she had known about Eleanor’s operation while El was still in business—that is, before Reedrek burned her house down—I had no doubt that Connie would have raided the place for prostitution. That is, if the higher-ups in the police force, the ones who had turned a blind eye to the operation for so long, had allowed it.
Eleanor’s place had been a favorite with politicians and other powerful, rich guys since the day it opened. If the police had shut it down, they would have had a lot of explaining to do. Connie wouldn’t have cared if they demoted her; she would have busted Eleanor and her gang anyway. That’s how by-the-book she was. But none of that happened and now I was the one with a lot of explaining to do. Namely, why I was so concerned about one of Eleanor’s charges.
“Well, um, you see, William felt responsible for Eleanor’s girls, what with his sire burning down their house and destroying their livelihoods and all. So when he left for Europe he told me to take care of the girls.”
Connie gave me a look that said she wished she had a wooden stake in her hand. “Do you mean to tell me that you have been babysitting a whole whorehouse full of floozies since William left?” She put her hands against my chest and pushed away from me.
“They’re homeless,” I said. “Where’s your Christian charity?” I put my arms around her waist and gently drew her back to me. I just loved to feel that girl against me. And she always smelled so good, just like a woman should.
Connie glanced over to where Samson and his boys were talking to Seth, and my gaze followed hers. So far they were talking peacefully. I was glad the juke joint was packed tonight. Nobody wanted to make a scene in front of the human crowd.
“So, you’re telling me you’re here because the Thrashers have gotten this Sally, who you’re supposed to be looking out for, hooked on meth?”
“Yeah,” I said, glad that she seemed to have calmed down. At least for now.
“How did Seth get on this case? He’s way out of his jurisdiction.”
“Well, he—that is…” What could I say that wouldn’t spill the beans on Seth’s being a werewolf? It was his place to tell her, not mine. Although I must admit that having Connie know he was a monster, too, wouldn’t bother me one little bit.
“What are you not saying, Jack? Whatever it is, I need to know.”
She was right. She was putting her life on the line in this investigation in ways she didn’t even begin to understand. I had no choice.
“This is not easy to explain,” I began. I was relieved to see a guy feed another quarter into the jukebox.
“Spit it out. It looks like Seth is keeping Samson and his boys occupied for now, but we don’t have much time.”
“Seth’s a werewolf,” I blurted. “Uh, I mean, Samson’s a werewolf. Hell, they’re all werewolves.”
Connie looked around her wildly. “All these people are werewolves? Wait a minute! There’s such a thing as a werewolf?”
I glanced around to make sure nobody had heard her since her voice just went up an octave. “No, not all of them are werewolves.”
I pulled her closer and she let me hold her. Much more of that and I was going to get turned on, and then I might have that little problem with bursting into flames that I did the last time I tried to get intimate with Connie. That might make a bit of a scene in itself. Not to mention set off the smoke alarms.
“Only Seth and the Thrashers are werewolves,” I said. Holding her as I was, I could feel the small revolver she had in a shoulder holster under her jeans jacket. I was glad it was there for her protection.
“Seth’s a werewolf?” Connie looked as stunned as if somebody went upside her head with a two-by-four. “All this time I’ve known him and he’s a werewolf.” She shuddered.
“Do you remember how I told you that vampires have to police themselves so that human beings won’t find out about us?” I asked. “Werewolves are the same way. Think about it. It would be a bloodbath for people in and around the county jail and a disaster for all nonhumans.”
Connie squeezed her eyes shut. “I ca
n’t believe this. First vampires. Now werewolves. What else is out there, Jack?”
“I’ll explain all that to you later. What you have to know now is this: Seth and I will handle the situation with the Thrashers. The local police can’t get involved. You need to go back to the city and stay there.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Jack, I didn’t come here to investigate the methamphetamine case. I came here to investigate a domestic violence matter that may have turned into a murder. You see Sally’s new boyfriend, Nate?”
I looked at Samson’s oldest as he slouched against the bar while his father talked to Seth. He had the mean, insolent look that the whole pack had. Being the son of the alpha didn’t sweeten his disposition any. He had to help his father fend off challengers but could never challenge Samson himself. Well, he could, but then he would have to kill his own father. The Thrashers were a tight bunch, and I doubted if the other pack members would accept one of their own who offed his old man. “Yeah? What about him?”
“I heard through…informants that he was beating his wife on a regular basis. By the time I got down here to investigate, she had vanished. I tried to question the women in the extended family, but none of them would talk about what happened to her.”
Alarm bells went off in my head. “It seems to me you’ve done too much already. Don’t you know that the womenfolk will tell their men you’ve been asking after this girl? You’ve got to get out of here and leave all this to Seth and me.”
“No way. I may be on the verge of being able to bring in the police.”
“Bring in the police? Are you telling me you’re doing this without any backup?” I couldn’t believe my ears. “Do they even know you’re here?”
