Howling Legion s-2

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  “Sorry about that,” the guy in the shorts said. “I’m Mick. Lead investigator for Branch 18, and that,” he added, pointing toward the woman who’d emerged from the other office, “is Stone.”

  The woman who walked down the hall and stepped into the front room was nearly a foot shorter than Mick. She had long black hair pulled into a single braid, which she swatted over her shoulder. Her smooth, dark face was accentuated by high cheekbones and full lips. When she smiled at Paige and Cole, she shook their hands in a grip that was both strong and friendly. “Stone’s not my real name,” she said. “It’s Rosetta.”

  “Ah,” Cole chuckled. “Rosetta Stone. I get it.”

  She nodded and shrugged. Although she did seem to be impressed with him, she was just as impressed with Paige. “You’re not what I expected for…you know…people who go after those…?”

  “We get that a lot,” Paige said. “Right now we’re working on what’s happening in Kansas City. Do you know about that?”

  Now, Rosetta seemed more impressed with Paige than Cole. “Do we know about that? We’ve all been working late nights sifting through the pics and videos that are being posted to the site. I’ve never seen anything like it! So are those things the same as what you’re looking for in Valparaiso?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Thank God,” Rosetta sighed. “I mean, we want to help, but not with…I mean…”

  “I know just what you mean,” Cole said. “Those things in Valparaiso aren’t the same as what’s in KC, but they might be able to help us deal with that situation.” As he spoke, he felt Paige getting ready to silence him with a quick backhand. They’d spent a good deal of the ride to Omaha discussing just how much the MEG guys needed to be told, and the consensus was to let them know what they were getting into without saying anything that might get them too worked up. Paige seemed happy with his choice of words. Mick, on the other hand, was happier.

  “I’ve heard some stuff about what’s been going on in Valparaiso,” the lead investigator said. “When I called some of the people out there, they say they still hear various noises. Knocking, some disembodied voices, rattling, the usual stuff.”

  “Wait. You contacted someone?” Paige asked. “Someone other than one of us or another MEG office?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Rosetta jumped in and said, “When I spoke to you on the phone a few hours ago, you said you wanted to check out the locations where that Rico friend of yours was doing his tracking. Those places are mostly private homes. Occupied private homes. You’re on a tight schedule, so we did a little digging and made a few calls before you arrived.”

  “We didn’t tell them much of anything, though,” Mick added.

  Rosetta nodded eagerly. “Right. Of course. I made the calls myself and didn’t mention anything about you guys or anything that might scare them.”

  “All right, then,” Cole said. “What did you tell them?”

  Rosetta shrugged and replied, “That their houses may be haunted.”

  “And that’s not supposed to scare them?” Paige asked.

  Mick smiled reassuringly and waved his hands as if smoothing off a pile of shaved ice. “We didn’t use the word ‘haunted.’ We never use that term unless we’ve been there and gotten sufficient proof. We told them there were reports of suspected supernatural activity in their area and that we’d like to investigate. Remember the knocking and voices I was telling you about?”

  Both Cole and Paige nodded.

  Although Mick had been the one to ask the question, Rosetta picked it up and ran with it. “Turns out we’ve been getting reports from there since your other friend was tracking whatever he was tracking. We haven’t followed up on it yet because of a string of disturbances here in town. We never got around to those Valparaiso calls and they stopped coming. Also, we’ve been busy with other stuff.”

  “Like what other stuff?” Cole asked.

  Rosetta held up her hand and ticked her fingers down one at a time. “Kids, family, real jobs, school, you name it. MEG’s a great time, but she doesn’t pay the bills.”

  “So when can we get to Valparaiso?” Paige asked. “It’s about an hour from here, right?”

  “Yes, but we need to set up an investigation,” Rosetta said. “The lady I talked to earlier sounded pretty nice, so I should be able to set something up within the next week or so.”

  Rosetta and Mick seemed enthusiastic, but Paige and Cole weren’t smiling. Since he could feel Paige getting a little too impatient, Cole told the other two, “This is kind of an emergency. Well, not kind of. It is an emergency. How much have you been told about shapeshifters?”

  Both of them looked at him without blinking. “We’ve heard some of it. Like there’s some way for people to really be turned into werewolves and that you guys hunt them.”

  “And the vampires,” Mick said. “We know about them. Nymar, right?”

  Paige pressed her hands against her eyes and turned toward the door. “This was a really bad idea,” she moaned.

  But Cole wasn’t about to give up so easily. “You’ve seen what’s going on in KC with the murders and everything.”

  Nodding, Mick said, “Those aren’t rottweilers, are they?”

  “Not even close. We took out a bunch of them the other night—”

  “At that nature preserve outside of Kansas City!” Rosetta said as she snapped her fingers and hopped excitedly.

  “You know about that too?” Cole asked.

  “There was stuff on the news about a bunch of animals that escaped from a private collection or wandered in from the woods. Apparently some security and stoplight cameras caught some things running by, but they were just a bunch of blurs. You should see some of the wild stuff being posted onto our website about that. It’s just…wow.”

  “That about sums it up,” Cole said. “More people will get hurt, and we want to put an end to it as soon as we can. So if you need to cut a few corners or bend a few rules to get us into those homes, it’d be for a good cause.”

  “We know you guys do good work,” Mick said earnestly. “That’s why MEG agreed to help you in the first place. But in this field, reputation means everything. If we lose ours by harassing clients, we won’t be able to help you guys at all.”

  “But don’t worry about all of that,” Rosetta said. “I just need to call that lady back, set something up, and get the team together so we can all get on the same page. Should only take like two hours or so. Okay?”

  “We are overdue for lunch,” Paige said. “How about we come back after we get something to eat?”

  Rosetta smiled and clasped her hands together. “Perfect. That’ll give us some time to make the arrangements.”

  “And no matter what the home owners say,” Mick added, “we’ll be glad to take you out there and show you where your other friend was hunting.”

  “Sounds great,” Cole said. “Now, what’s the word on that hot dog place next door?”

  The Chicago Dawg House was one long room, half of which was filled with an order counter and kitchen. At the other half, a row of stools was lined up beneath another counter that was just wide enough for people to share some table space with napkin dispensers and plastic condiment bottles.

  Paige squawked the entire way into the restaurant, but quieted down when she saw the Vienna Beef sign. Her mood improved even more when she saw that the menu describing the ingredients in a classic Chicago dog was practically a transcript from when she’d described it in Kansas City. She was about to order that when her eye caught something a little farther down the menu.

  “Oh my God,” she sighed. “Look at that. Right beneath the ‘Butkus.’”

  Cole had been eyeing the Butkus anyway, which was a sausage covered with what seemed to be anything the cook could find that would singe the hairs on the back of his arm. “You mean the Fridge?”

  “Yesssss.”

  “Looks like it may even take up some space in that bottomless pit you call a stoma
ch. Go for it.”

  Their order was taken by a balding guy who stood a few inches shorter than Cole. The subtle squawk in his voice and the thick mustache on his face made it seem equally plausible that he was either a Chicago native or an off-duty cop. “You want that Fridge hot and wet?” he asked.

  Cole reflexively flinched, but Paige wore a smile that lit up her entire face. “Real hot and a little wet,” she said.

  The guy behind the counter winked at her and nodded once. “Lady after my own heart. It’ll be right up.”

  They moved down to sit at the counter on the opposite wall and waited for their food.

  “Do you really think it was a mistake coming here?” Cole asked.

  Paige craned her neck to look around at the autographed pictures of Cubs players that were hanging around the occasional framed jersey. “I don’t know. We’ll see what happens with those phone calls. To be honest, though, sometimes you’ve just got to gamble. If we were in KC, we’d just be checking in on more empty Half Breed dens or guessing where to find new ones. Not that that matters anyway because any Full Blood can just replace the Half Breeds we killed.”

  “That means we’ve only got another few days before the new Half Breeds become a real problem.”

  “Maybe not even that long,” Paige said. “The Full Blood looked like he was whipping the surviving Half Breeds in line somehow. If it wasn’t for that bait you threw at him, he might have steered those things right back at us.”

  “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

  Reluctantly, she cast her eyes down and shook her head. “Never. I only hope the Mongrels we find are willing to fight, because we may need their kind of backup more than a few extra sets of noses.”

  “What if they don’t agree to come back with us at all?” Cole asked.

  Paige pulled in a deep breath and let it out with an unconvincing smile. “Then we’ll throw everything we’ve got at them one more time. It’s not like we have much choice. Every new Half Breed means someone else was killed, and it’s not like when a Nymar attaches its spore to someone’s heart. That whole process is an easy morning of slow lovin’ compared to how someone is made into a Half Breed. First they’ve got to be attacked and torn up almost to the point of dying. If they survive that, they get to feel all their bones snap as they take their new form. I don’t even want to know what it feels like to have all their muscles unstrung and knotted around the bones that are left. Werewolves are more than supernatural. They’re some kind of horrible miracle.”

  Thanks to the loud music blaring through the speakers inside the place, Paige’s words didn’t carry much farther than a few feet. Apart from the guy who’d taken their order and the tall woman refilling supplies behind the counter, there were only two other people eating at the far end of the room beneath a flat screen TV suspended from the ceiling. Nobody seemed to have heard anything worthy of their attention. Cole envied them.

  Both of their faces brightened when the guy behind the counter called Paige’s name. Cole’s sausage was served on a huge roll, covered with peppers. Paige’s Fridge overshadowed his meal in every way.

  “Good Lord,” he gasped when he got a look at the monstrosity she was about to consume.

  The Fridge needed to be served on a larger roll, since the Italian sausage was covered by a thick layer of shaved Italian beef. On top of that was a mess of peppers that practically sent a wave of heat through the air. The whole thing had been dipped into an au jus sauce that dribbled from the soaked-through bread when she picked it up.

  “Good Lord is right,” Paige said. She turned her head sideways, opened wide, and bit off a good chunk of the upper layer of shaved beef and peppers. She said something after that, but only a few sloppy syllables made it through her food. Having barely swallowed that, she took a bite of the lower sausage portion. If she’d looked happy before, the sip of strawberry pop she took to wash it all down nearly pushed her straight into the orgasmic range.

  “You like that Fridge?” the guy behind the counter asked.

  Paige turned and threw a few unintelligible words his way before she swallowed and wiped her mouth. “You’re an artist! I’ve never had one of these outside of Chicago.”

  “Neither have I. That’s why I opened this place. What about you, guy? How’s that Butkus treatin’ ya?”

  Cole took a bite that was equal parts fire and flavor. “Damn! That’s…” His hands worked on their own to snag a few fries and stuff them into his mouth. They were just the right kind of greasy without being obnoxiously so. “These are…damn!”

  The guy behind the counter nodded and gave them a thumbs-up. “Glad to hear it.” Then he turned and started cleaning off his grill.

  For the next few minutes Cole and Paige just sat and ate. He made it halfway through his meal before his stomach burned with a heat that felt warm and friendly without showing any signs of letting up. It was perfect.

  “Youff neffer had one of dees before?” Paige asked through enough food to stop a weaker heart.

  “No, but I’ll be getting one before we leave town. Now I see why you get so pissed off when people screw up Chicago hot dogs.”

  “It’s messing wiff pure beauty,” she said, accenting those last three words with a beefy spray.

  They finished their meal a bit too quickly and headed for the door.

  “I want to get a few more dogs for the road,” Cole said, “but we probably won’t be on the road for a while.”

  “We’re leaving right now, but we’re not getting any more to eat. You need to be able to move.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you ate enough already,” she said while cheerily patting Cole’s gut. “Any more and I’ll be able to rub your belly to make a wish.”

  “No, I mean about being on the road. Rosetta still needs to make her calls.”

  “So we’ll leave them alone for a few hours,” Paige said. “They need to gather the rest of their team, which gives us enough time to zip out to Valparaiso and have a look around.”

  Cole knew better than to argue with her, so he piled into the car and hung on as she drove for the interstate like a winged rodent fleeing the proverbial home of the damned.

  “If we can do this on our own, why did we even bother those MEG guys?” he asked.

  Paige grabbed the directions he had written down when he looked up Omaha and Valparaiso on the Internet during the drive from KC. Steering onto the ramp for southbound I-680, she replied, “We’ll see if we can speed things up a bit for our new friends. That’s all.”

  Cole had a few other questions, but they wound up lodged in the back of his throat after Paige slammed her foot against the gas pedal. Thanks to her maniacal disregard for road safety and the general flatness of Nebraska, she was able to spot speed traps from miles away and rip across the distances in between them. They made the trip in less time than the website had estimated, which put them in Valparaiso at about four-thirty.

  Once there, she slowed down and asked, “You feel that? Mongrels are tricky little buggers. They’re shapeshifters, but not like Full Bloods or Half Breeds, so we can’t sense them like we can a real werewolf. What we can feel doesn’t change much if a Mongrel is a block away or right in front of you. It’s kind of like the heat you get from a Half Breed, but deeper down.” Flexing her hands, she added, “Sort of…arthritis with a purpose.”

  That analogy didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but thinking about it that way, Cole could feel something flowing from his shoulders down to his elbows that was more focused than the ache he always got after sitting too long at his keyboard. “The houses are supposed to be down this street a little further.”

  Paige found a place to park along the street and killed the engine. Reaching down to grab one of the levers near her left leg, she popped the trunk and said, “Get that trash bag from the Blood Parlor.”

  “That’s still in there?”

  “Yeah. Turns out the greasy invisible stuff lasts longer t
han I thought. It’s not as strong as it used to be, but it should be enough to do the trick.”

  Rather than ask her what she had in mind, he did as he was told and waited to be surprised. Paige took the bag, pulled out the crumpled hooded sweatshirt and slipped it on. The garment smelled like sweaty glue, but the sun was just low enough in the sky to work in her favor. When bright rays hit the greasy fabric, they were bent enough to make her shimmer in a few spots.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “Like a crazy lady in an old sweatshirt.”

  Pulling the hood down and stretching it to cover her face, Paige vigorously rubbed and pushed the hood back into its spot on the top of her head. “What about now?

  There must have been more of the greasy stuff in the fleece lining, because Paige’s features were all but erased. “Not invisible, but kind of like those drunks who get their faces blurred out on cop shows.”

  “Good enough. Get in the car and drive down to the corner. I’ll be there in a few.”

  Cole watched her dash down the sidewalk toward a nearby row of houses. The street was mostly empty, with the exception of a few kids playing in a yard and a couple of cars rounding the opposite corner. Spotting Paige from a distance, he could see a few more spots where the Mongrel grease was kicking in again. She was a long way from invisible, but the sunlight curled around her just enough to make a few sections of her back and side fade away.

  A lot more cars were at the next intersection, probably because of the bank and Dairy Queen located there. Braking at a stop sign, Cole idled for a full minute without anyone else pulling up behind him. When he got a curious look from a kid on a bike, he waved.

  Then something tapped against the window behind him and he turned to find a blurry sweatshirt racing around the back of the car. By the time he shifted toward the passenger side, that door was pulled open and a mass of stinking cotton slapped against the side of his face.

  “Keep going,” Paige said after she’d tossed the sweatshirt toward the backseat. “Don’t speed, but just get moving.”