Watcher: Based on the Apocalypse (World of Darkness : Werewolf)

by Charles L. Grant

  He was there.

  In there.

  The question was, how pissed would Miles be if she ended it all here and now?

  Very, she decided, and grunted a quiet laugh.

  Her right hand slipped into the pocket of her slacks, fingers curling around a short wand of engraved ivory inlaid with silver stars.

  A knock, mock confusion—”I’m so sorry, I’ve got the wrong room, please forgive me.”—and it would be over before Turpin knew what had hit him.

  Just as she straightened, however, the double doors of the suite immediately to the left swept open, and a dozen people swarmed out, laughing, chattering, passing her with broad smiles and nods. One of them, a man about her height with thick white hair, paused, looked at her chest and said, “You’d better get your ID badge, Miss, or these security folks will hassle you all night.”

  She didn’t know what to say and so nodded a mute thank-you, and damned whoever he and his friends were because Turpin couldn’t possibly have missed all that commotion. She had never met the Strider, but she knew his reputation; whether he felt threatened or not, all his senses would be alerted.

  Damn it, she thought; goddamn it.

  Marcus Spiro glanced at the attractive woman leaning against the wall, thought to speak to her again, but was grabbed by the elbows and propelled around the corner and down the main hall. When he protested with a laugh, he was reminded, that the convention leaders wanted to speak to him before the opening ceremonies. Which meant now. And since they had paid his way, he couldn’t very well ignore them.

  Still, that woman—

  Well, at least his keeper wasn’t around.

  Not fair, he chided himself. Leon wasn’t a keeper. Every major guest was assigned someone whose job it was to keep the guest happy, and make sure he got to all the functions on time. The best ones, and Leon had turned out to be one of them, stayed the hell out of the way, like an unobtrusive waiter, just waiting for a look to bring him running.

  Not a bad life for a weekend.

  Thinking of his declining sales, Marcus sighed, wishing life could be that way all the time again.

  As it was, coming down here every couple of years—

  A young woman dropped out of the crowd ahead and grabbed his left arm. She wore a vivid red tank top, and jeans he figured must have taken her an hour to get into. When she tugged on his arm, he leaned down, listened for a moment, and straightened suddenly with a mock, “That’s disgusting!”, and an equally mock look of indignation.

  “Sure is,” she said, grinning. “So?”

  He grinned and let her guide him toward the convention’s operations center. Say what you will about traveling to towns like this in the middle of winter, having to put up with barely bathed cretins who slobbered all over you just so you’ll autograph one of your books … say what you will about barely edible convention food, obscenely late nights, equally obscene early mornings, and the strain it put on a body whose sole exercise consisted of depositing royalty checks twice a year … say what you will about all of it, these things were still a great place to get yourself laid.

  A glance over his shoulder was just in time to catch that other woman slipping through the fire door.

  A glance down at the buxom woman beside him, giggling as she leaned into him, just to be sure he knew that what she had wasn’t padded.

  Oh well, he thought; a bird in the hand is almost as good as a bird in the bed. He laughed aloud.

  The others laughed with him.

  The desert wind died.

  He turned to see who it was who had followed him, but there was no one there. Nothing moved.

  When he turned back, he nearly cried out—Fay was gone, the chair empty.

  He hurried toward the table, calling her name, listening to the flat echo of his calls ricochet off the crumbling walls. There were no footprints in the sand, no sign she had even been here except, when he looked closely, for the splatter of a single black tear on the table.

  He shivered, rubbed his arms for warmth, and called her name again.

  No one answered.

  Not even the wind.

  But he wasn’t alone, and that wasn’t right.

  This was his place, and his place only. When he needed the calm of meditation, when he needed answers for the hunt, when he needed reassurance that being a Silent Strider was neither a curse nor a condemnation, this is where he came.

  And he always came alone.

  Now, as he slumped dejectedly into the chair, he had one answer, and it tore at his heart as surely as a blade of silver:

  Fay was dead.

  How or why, he didn’t know, but she was dead. His best friend was gone, a former lover, and there was no one to replace her.

  He touched a finger to the tear, but it was dry. Dust. And when the wind returned, the tear scattered and was gone.

  The rose remained, crimson thorns, scarlet petals.

  He sat, and he stared at it until a shadow blocked the sun.

  He looked up, unsmiling.

  “You took her,” he accused bitterly. “She had plenty of time yet, and you took.”

  “No,” said Anubis. “She was brought to me.”

  Blanchard half rose when he saw Wanda weave through the crowd at the restaurant’s entrance, raised a glass until she spotted him, and sat again, spreading his arms in greeting when she took the chair opposite him.

  “Something to eat?”

  “It was your invitation,” she said blandly.

  “What do you want?”

  “Whatever. As long as it comes with wine. Lots of it.”

  He didn’t ask what bothered her; he assumed it was the constant flow of people, constantly talking and laughing, here and there tucked into corners for intense conversation; holding books and posters and cups of beer and soda; staring at him, reading his name tag and frowning as they tried to place the name with the face they had never seen before.

  He pointed to her chest. “You haven’t registered.”

  “You’re the second person to tell me that tonight.” She took a cigarette from her pocket, lit it, and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “! am not going to waste my money.”

  “Your funeral,” he said, beckoning the waitress with a finger and a smile.

  “Not quite,” she answered.

  He raised an eyebrow, but again didn’t respond. He did, however, smell trouble, and he cursed Crimmins for sticking him with this woman. Nevertheless, he kept his expression as pleasant as he could, saying little while she ate, drinking two glasses of wine before her plate was clear.

  Then she twisted around to look through the window at the deserted street, slumped back, and said, “God, it feels like midnight already.” She squinted at a thin gold watch on her wrist. “Jesus H., it’s barely seven.”

  “You’re too edgy,” he scolded lightly. The implication went deeper: you’re supposed to be a pro, bitch, get it together before you get one of us killed. Not, he added silently; that I give a damn about you.

  She looked at him for a long time with one eye half closed. Nodded slowly. Lit another cigarette. Stared at the glowing tip. “He’s in his room now.”

  Blanchard waited.

  “What don’t we just do it and get it over with?”

  It was a question, but just barely.

  He wondered if she honestly knew who they were up against; he decided immediately he didn’t give a damn because, no matter how it ended, she wasn’t going to survive anyway. She got on his nerves. He hated people who got on his nerves.

  “What are you going to do, bust in the door?” he said, not bothering to mask the sarcasm.

  “Key.”

  His eyes widened slightly. “You have a key?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then—”

  Her smile was chilling. “Sugar, just follow me. There isn’t a man’s room in the world I can’t get into One way or the other”

  Richard sat at the table, in the ruins, in the desert, and wept witho
ut tears.

  … she was brought to me.

  No translation needed: Fay Parnell had been murdered.

  There was no one left on his side, now.

  No one.

  Not even the Warders.

  It didn’t take a genius, or the import of his dreams, to figure out that they knew full-well he wouldn’t survive this assignment. Rogues, when all was said and done, could not be captured. Could not be taken prisoner. Could only be neutralized in one, lethal, way.

  They had known it, and they had known how it would be long before he realized it himself.

  He reached for the rose, but didn’t touch it.

  So what did they expect him to do, give his life to protect the Veil? To preserve their secrets? Were they counting on his tribe’s dedication to the Garou to commit virtual suicide for them?

  If he couldn’t figure that out, he surely would die. And dying, now, was the last thing on his mind.

  It’s a pisser, thought Curly Guestin; a real pisser, staying here to all hours, busting my butt and no overtime, no thanks, no bonus, no nothing.

  He stomped around the large room, cleaning up, wiping his tools and putting them away, making sure the cabinets and chests were properly locked, making sure the silent alarms were ready to go as soon as he left.

  Shivering when the wind came through the zillion cracks in the goddamn walls and ceiling.

  It was like working in a barn.

  Above him, the wings fluttered and rustled, sounding like bats disturbed in their caves.

  The frames swayed and twisted slowly, their faint shadows on the whitewashed walls expanding and shrinking as if they were running up to him and sliding away. Teasing. Taunting. He had seen it a million times, but tonight, like last night, the night before, and every night for the past week, he couldn’t help thinking that he didn’t like them very much anymore. They were spooky. They had never been spooky before, but they were damn spooky now.

  Ever since that blonde lady had been killed, those shadows had been spooky.

  It wasn’t too bad when Leon was around, or one of his buddies from down in the city. But too often, ever since summer, Leon had started taking off early, and Curly’s buddies had been working double, triple overtime just to make ends meet. He hardly saw them at all anymore.

  That left him alone when the sun went down.

  Spooky; too damn spooky.

  He slapped a rag over his table to knock the filings and bits of stiff thread onto the floor. He did it again, this time pretending he was knocking Leon silly, and the idea of him doing that to a man that size made him giggle so hard that he could barely stand up.

  Not that he’d really want to hurt his boss. Leon was okay most of the time. When he wasn’t brooding about something or other, when he wasn’t complaining about his competition up the road, when he wasn’t talking out loud about maybe closing the place down and moving down to Florida where he would lie on the beach all day and let women in little bathing suits bring him drinks until he died.

  Curly didn’t like that kind of talk.

  It made him nervous, real nervous, because it had taken him a hell of a long time to find this job, and he didn’t want to have to go through all that again, reading the papers, talking to people who thought he was so much older than he was because of his stupid hair. He didn’t want to, and when he scolded his boss, Leon would look at him like he was from another planet.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you, man?” he would say. “Shit, if I do leave, you can have this goddamn place, okay? Knock yourself out, Curly, knock yourself out.”

  Curly slapped the table a third time, and stuffed the rag into his hip pocket. Then he stomped over to the door and grabbed his broom.

  He didn’t have to do it; playing janitor wasn’t part of what he had been hired for. He was supposed to keep the frames and air foils working, that was all, keep the dopes who wanted to jump off the mountain from killing themselves on the way down.

  He was a mechanic, an artist, and a genius with his tools. Being a janitor had never been his dream.

  He did it anyway, though, because Leon sure as hell wouldn’t. Curly hated coming in every morning and seeing crap all over. It didn’t feel right. He had told Leon that a hundred million times every day practically when it wasn’t done—it didn’t feel right. Didn’t look right, either, when the customers came in, saw the place looking like a junkyard after a tornado.

  Leon didn’t care.

  All he cared about was watching people fly.

  That’s all he did. All day. Stood on the edge, hands in his pockets, and watched the people fly. Saying nothing. Humming to himself. Once in a while raking a couple of fingers through that goofy beard of his. Watching. Humming.

  And collecting the money.

  Curly looked around the room just to be sure everything was in its place, then switched on the tinny plastic radio he kept on the bench near the door. It only got one station. Tonight it was Suzy Bogguss singing about how wives don’t like old girlfriends, and girlfriends don’t like old wives.

  “True enough,” he said to the shadows as he attacked the floor. “Fucking true enough.”

  Right about now, he needed a new girlfriend himself, because his wife sure wasn’t putting out these days. She was a sweet lady, and he supposed he probably kind of loved her a little, but long about last Thanksgiving she’d gone with her aunt up to Nashville, gotten herself religion again, and fornication had suddenly become out of the question.

  “Jesus,” he’d once exploded in frustration, “you ain’t a nun, you know, Annie. Jesus, gimmie a break.”

  She hadn’t liked that at all. In fact, for his blasphemy, she had made him sleep on the back porch for half a damn week. Him and the damn dogs.

  He sighed, swept, listened to the wind pound the walls and wolf-howl in the eaves.

  Now that police lady today, she was pretty okay for a police lady. Dark-red hair, a figure he couldn’t keep his eyes off. He wondered if she had handcuffs. He wondered if she used them.

  He giggled.

  He swept.

  That FBI guy, though, he was something else. Weird eyes. Kind of quiet. Moved like he was on tiptoe or something. Not a really big man, but he had a voice that sounded like it started somewhere at the bottom of a well. Not deep so much as full.

  Really weird eyes.

  He paused for a moment, sneezed, wiped his face with the back of a hand, thought about the police lady, and rolled his eyes as he got back to work.

  Singing loudly and out of tune while Patsy sang about falling to pieces and not having the sense God gave her to do something about it.

  Something slammed into the wall, and the lights began to flicker.

  Joanne stood on the steps of police headquarters and zipped up her denim jacket. With chin tucked, she squinted at the sky, hoping to see at least one star, but the city lights cast a glow that showed her nothing but clouds.

  A righteous shoot; that’s what Lt. Millson had told her not half an hour ago. No charges, no penalties; Internal Affairs had closed the file, and she had been completely vindicated without prejudice, no blight on her record. Righteous shoot. She grunted. The man was from Chicago; they talked funny that way. Still, being exonerated ought to have been more … fulfilling, more satisfying somehow.

  It only made her angry that the process had to have been gone through at all.

  She stepped slowly down to the pavement, momentarily confused about where she had parked her car. Which reminded her of Richard Turpin, and that made her scowl. Her desk duty had been lifted, but she was still assigned to the mystery guy from D.C.; when she had demanded an explanation, all she’d gotten was a look.

  “He doesn’t tell me anything,” she had complained. “We did some looking today, talked to the girl and some guy at the hang-gliding place, and he doesn’t tell me anything.”

  “He doesn’t have to,” Millson said, not unsympathetically.

  “Well, how the hell am I supposed to h
elp him, then?”

  “Don’t shoot him.”

  Her smile was screw-you-sour, her departure swift, and she still couldn’t figure out exactly what the hell she was supposed to do. Be a damn chauffeur? Get him in bed, find out all he knows? Beat the shit out of him, find out all he knows? Jesus. Ten years a cop and this is what she gets?

  And why the hell hadn’t she told the lieutenant about the truck?

  In the beginning, she had been excited, even eager, when she had been assigned to the task force hunting for the Lookout Mountain killer. Most of the work was dull, to be sure—door to door, asking questions, correlating interviews, asking more questions—but then there were the results, the hints, the ghosts of answers maddeningly close and maddeningly out of reach, staring at charts and paper until her eyes burned as she and a dozen others willed a pattern to make itself known.

  A pattern was knowledge.

  With knowledge came possible prediction of the next killing.

  She had been to all the sites, and wondered why Turpin hadn’t taken the time today to visit the one on the side of the mountain. Instead, he had spent most of his time talking to Polly Logan, and it wasn’t until she had returned to headquarters that she realized he hadn’t told her what he had learned.

  And he had definitely learned something.

  She had seen it in his eyes.

  She had half a mind to return to the Read House, corner that spook or whatever the hell he really was, and choke him until he stopped playing games and told her.

  It wasn’t fair; she was a good cop, and getting better, and it damn well wasn’t fair.

  She started in one direction, realized she was wrong, made an about-face, and nearly bumped into two uniforms complaining about the mechanics in the motor pool, how they never get anything right, and the uniforms get all the grief when something falls off a car.

  She walked on, muttering to herself, working herself into a mood that soon enough had her deciding that, half a mind or not, she would see Turpin tonight and demand some answers to some questions.