Science and Sorcery

by Christopher Nuttall

  Joe Buckley was sitting on his bed when Caitlyn walked into the confinement chamber. In theory, he wasn't actually dangerous – or contagious – when the full moon wasn't overhead, but no one felt like taking chances. Two of the werewolves seemed to have been reduced to savage animals even without the full moon, or the transformation into a monster. Caitlyn had heard two of the female researchers joking that savagery was the normal state of human males, but the joke wasn't particularly funny. What would happen if other werewolves, out in the wild, started to carry wolfish traits back into their human lives?

  “I remembered the transformation,” Buckley said, once he’d waved to her. It didn't take a detective to see the strange mixture of emotions on his face, or the fact that he looked alarmingly malnourished. And to think he’d been incredibly healthy when he’d been bitten at Fort Hood. “I actually had some control.”

  Caitlyn stepped forward, up to the silver mesh covering the bars. “What did you feel like?”

  “It’s difficult to put into words,” Buckley admitted. “I felt calm and in control, but I also felt permanently on edge, as if a single word out of place would set me off like a grenade. And there was a violent deluge of information from my senses. I know that Jenny and Terrence over there are having it off when they’re not actually researching, because they stink of each other.”

  Caitlyn glanced behind her. The two researchers were blushing and trying to look anywhere, but at each other. She found herself trying not to laugh. As long as they didn't let their relationship get in the way of their work, she wasn't about to order them to stop seeing each other. Besides, given that she had been spending her nights with Matt, it would be more than a little hypocritical.

  “I’d keep that quiet, if you would,” she said, finally. How many other secrets could a werewolf sniff out and then put into words? “What else can you do?”

  “It’s very odd,” Buckley said. “I felt nothing after I was bitten, even if I healed quickly. But now, after the first transformation, I feel like there’s a new muscle in my body, just waiting to be used. In fact...”

  Caitlyn stared in disbelief as his body seemed to darken suddenly, before hairs started growing out of his face and his hands started twisting into paws. His hospital gown ripped as his body twisted, falling off the bed and landing neatly on all fours. Caitlyn barely heard the alarm behind her as she stared at a giant wolf, only slightly smaller than a lion. Buckley prowled up to the bars, sat on his hind legs and winked at her, as if he were a dog begging for treats. His snout opened, revealing sharp teeth and a very long tongue. And then the fur seemed to melt away and he was human again. Caitlyn carefully averted her eyes from his nakedness.

  “I had the impression I could talk,” he said, ruefully.

  “I don’t think you could,” Caitlyn said, feeling her heartbeat starting to return to normal. “Your snout isn't exactly built for human language.”

  “I could probably use an oversized computer keyboard or something,” Buckley said. “The point is that I had total control just then. There wasn't even the feeling of being on edge. I could be a werewolf on active duty.”

  Caitlyn winced inwardly. Some of the werewolves had accepted their confinement philosophically, or because it was better than the alternative. Others wanted out, including Buckley, who was part of a unit that had been scheduled to head for Afghanistan after the exercises at Fort Hood. Caitlyn knew that those exercises – and perhaps the deployment itself – had been cancelled. The army might be needed in the United States.

  But there had been no reduction in operations – mostly covert – against terrorist cells all over the world. And a werewolf would be very helpful to the operators on active duty...

  “I think I want the doctors to check you first, carefully,” she said, finally. She didn't think Buckley was actually lying, but there were too many unknowns. What if he lost control in the middle of an operation? “And then I want Lesage to take a good look at you. He can make the final call.”

  She walked out of the confinement chamber and down the stairs, passing a pair of SEALs who had been told to guard the airlock that led into the ultra-secure confinement facility. There was a brief pause while they checked her identity and then allowed her into the centre of the base, where the designers had intended to bring patients suffering from a biological warfare attack. Now, it held a single vampire and a team of researchers studying her.

  Layla lay on a table, completely naked. Her hands and feet were secured to the table, but she didn't look worried; if anything, she looked as though she were biding her time. Up close, it was impossible to mistake her for human any longer; there was something about her face that screamed predator right into Caitlyn’s mind. She had seen criminals and terrorists, but she’d never been so afraid of anyone as she was of the vampire. Layla was very far from human.

  And how many other genetic time bombs are there? She asked herself. How many more monsters are waiting to be discovered?

  “Good news,” Doctor Franklin assured her. “Take a look at this?”

  Caitlyn looked at the display, but it meant nothing to her. “Tell me what it means, Doctor,” she said, “and please go easy on the technobabble. It's been a long day.”

  “This device here,” Franklin said, tapping the headband he wore, “monitors brainwaves. I originally developed the device to allow a handicapped person to control a wheelchair with their thoughts alone. Problem is, the driver has to be as intensely focused as Mr. Spock to make it work properly.”

  He smiled. “Thing is, we can tell when she is trying to manipulate us,” he added. “There’s a very definite change in her target’s brainwaves, whatever she’s trying to do. The headbands sound the alarm and we pull the victim out at once, allowing them to recover in the safe room before they go back to work. We also discovered that a sharp electric shock helps break people free of her compulsion if pulling them out isn't enough.”

  They also had a very high staff turnover, Caitlyn knew. Layla didn't just screw with their minds to try to escape. She fucked around with them for her own amusement, just as a human sadist might drop a hamster in the bath to see if it could swim.

  “Good work,” she said. “Have you uncovered a way of proving mind control?”

  “Not yet,” Franklin said, “at least not unless the victim was wearing a headband.”

  Caitlyn remembered the incident in New York and scowled. “Keep working on it, Doctor,” she ordered. “We’re going to need it soon.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  New York, USA

  Day 33

  “Why are you not in the school itself?”

  Matt looked over at Golem and scowled. Stakeouts inevitably took their toll on policemen assigned to them – they required patience and discretion – but Golem, who was as close to immortal as anyone could hope to be, seemed to be taking it particularly badly. Matt was sure that when he’d been a Rookie officer, he hadn't been so irritating to his superiors. But then, it wasn't as if anyone could fire Golem. He didn't even draw a paycheck.

  “Because school kids can be more observant than adults give them credit for,” he said, as patiently as he could. He’d argued that they should put the observation station inside the school, but he couldn't blame the NYPD for getting cold feet. It wasn't as if a school had plenty of rooms that could conceal activities from all of the children. “We really don’t want to be noticed.”

  The NYPD had plenty of experience in stakeouts, but offhand he couldn't recall if they’d ever had to watch an entire school, knowing that if the shit hit the fan they might not be in position to intervene. Normally, they watched lairs belonging to drug smugglers or other criminal gangs, watching and waiting for the evidence they needed to secure a search warrant and then convict the criminals. Watching an entire school was very different, not least because of the fact that a number of children were exhibiting fugitive tendencies already. It was probably meaningless, or so he hoped. If they were all black magicians, there were
at least two hundred of them in a single school.

  “A sorcerer might be able to tell if he is being watched,” Golem agreed, reluctantly. “But what happens if he takes the bait?”

  Matt winced. Sending Misty Reynolds in to see what she could pick up from the children was a good idea, but Caitlyn had added a twist that – Matt suspected – she hadn't explained to the magician-teacher. The black magician would probably want victims who had mana-storing abilities and a magician would be the best possible target. Misty Reynolds wasn't just a hunting magician; she was bait. He looked over at the surveillance feed and winced again. The school had an alarming number of security cameras and all of them were currently feeding into the observation post, but they were very limited. Apparently, there were places where they couldn't legally put cameras – and a number of cameras had been knocked out by the students. Consequently, there were gaps in their surveillance network.

  The FBI had supplied what they called analysis software that looked for discrepancies that might indicate criminal activity, but one hour of working with it had convinced Matt that it was largely useless. It either branded everything a sign of criminal activity or ignored anything short of brandishing a gun; it certainly didn't seem to pick up on someone changing their face – or using a glamour to hide it – between security cameras. The FBI’s advisor had pointed out that it was designed for a more secure environment than a school; Matt, manfully resisting the temptation to point out that the lab wasn't the real world, had suggested that the program needed more refinement. And possible replacement with actual human eyes.

  “Tell me more about your era,” he said, instead. Golem could tell stories all day, if given a chance. Indeed, he’d been quite happy to outline what he knew of the Hunters, although not everything he said made sense. It sounded as though the sorcerers who had created them had done so without really knowing what they were doing. “And what my ancestors did that made them so famous.”

  Golem nodded. “They were gifted with the talent for hunting and killing supernatural creatures,” he said. Matt, who already knew that, listened patiently. “Many of them hunted werewolves and vampires in places where wild magic ran freely. Others served as City Guardsmen and kept an eye on magicians who might have broken the peace...”

  Matt settled down to listen, keeping one eye on the feed from Misty directly. She wore enough sensors to provide full-spectrum coverage of her surroundings, including a device that the scientists believed would detect a spell being cast at close range. It seemed to work – Misty had cast a spell and it had picked up on it – but none of them had been able to provide an idea of just how well it worked. There were just too many factors involved, starting with the mystery of why a spell could be cast outside the detector’s range and then left to work without triggering the detector. Perhaps, with enough fiddling, the analysis software might work after all. A glamour never quite seemed to be perfect, even the ones that could fool security cameras as well as the naked eye.

  They’d taken over a section of a small office block, allowing them to conceal a SWAT team near the school. Matt would have preferred a Special Operations team from the military – either SEALs or Delta Force – but the politicians had been quibbling over allowing the military to operate freely in the middle of New York. Besides, the SWAT team had practiced storming a school to kill someone who brought a gun and started gunning down his classmates. The basic principle was the same.

  But now all they could do was wait. And hope that the black magician hadn’t decided to go elsewhere for his rituals. And pray.

  ***

  Misty was not actually expected to mark papers, at least according to her job description as a substitute teacher. The more permanent teachers at the school were expected to do it, in order to ensure that the children received consistent markings for each class, but too many teachers had simply taken a few days off. She couldn't tell if the principal had given her the task because he needed it done, because he resented her presence or because he was trying to give her an excuse to remain in the school until late. Maybe the latter; it was a rare substitute teacher who was expected to remain in the school long after the children had left for the day.

  She scowled down at the papers, wondering – again – just what standards children were held to by their first teachers. Many of them had awful handwriting – unsurprisingly, they preferred to use computers to write their reports – and their grammar was terrible. Spell-checking software was very much a mixed blessing; it could point out a word that was clearly spelled wrong, but it couldn't always identify a word that was out of place. And at least one kid had written a paper on the novel they were reading without even bothering to use the spell-checker. Or master the trick for producing footnotes in Microsoft Word.

  If they can't master basic skills, she’d said, to her first principal, what are they going to be unable to master in later life?

  He hadn't been able to answer the question, at least not to her own satisfaction. The young Misty hadn't realised just how little power a principal really had, even over his own school; he couldn't even stop the endless series of educational fads that took up time for absolutely no reward. Once, her father had pointed out that those who could did, while those who couldn't became teachers. Misty suspected that the saying should really have said that those who couldn't became educational bureaucrats.

  She was struggling through a badly-written paper, trying to resist the urge to return it with a note saying that it should be written out properly, when there was a knock at the door. Misty looked up to see one of the pupils looking back at her, a blonde girl who seemed to spend half her time giggling with her friends. A popular girl, in other words, just the sort of person the young Misty had resented before she’d realised just how much insecurity lay underneath their smiles.

  “Come on in,” she said, pasting a smile on her face. Anything was better than grading reports written by students with bad handwriting and the unjustified belief that they were funny. “Marie, isn't it?”

  “Yes,” Marie said. She sounded...badly worried by something. Misty felt her heartbeat racing as she touched her broach, sending an alert to the watching officers. Could Marie be the black magician? Sandra hadn't been raped before she’d been murdered; Golem had assumed that she’d been meant as a virgin sacrifice, but could it be that her killer had been a woman? “I could always talk to Miss Hoover if something was bothering me.”

  “You can talk to me too,” Misty said. Teachers were forever getting in trouble for becoming too close to their students, but Marie clearly needed a sympathetic ear. “What has happened to you?”

  “I don't know,” Marie said, desperately. She seemed on the verge of tears. “I just keep having these dreams, and when I wake up I know I’ve forgotten them! And yet they feel important.”

  Misty considered it thoughtfully. She had never been one to believe in the New Age interpretation that dreams had important spiritual meanings, but she did believe that they were reflections of a person’s inner state. Or, sometimes, of a person who had eaten too much of the wrong food before going to bed. She had always had nightmares after devouring too much curry as a child.

  She looked up. “How close were you to Sandra?”

  “I...we knew each other,” Misty admitted. That was no surprise. “We weren't exactly close friends, but...”

  Her eyes started to tear up. “We could have been much closer if she hadn't died,” she added. “I was such a bitch to her!”

  Misty carefully avoided rolling her eyes. How did not exactly being close friends equal being a bitch to her? Maybe Marie now wished that she’d known Sandra better...or maybe she knew something she couldn't say out loud. Misty had enough experience with upset children to know when someone was genuinely upset. Marie was very upset and yet puzzled, as though she didn't know quite why she was upset. Something nagged at the back of her mind, something Golem had said to her, but what?

  “We can’t change the past,” Misty said, quietly. She
had her own share of regrets from the past, starting with not paying more attention to her father before he’d passed away. “I wish I could undo all the pain, but I can't. No one can. All you can do is try to be better in future.”

  She looked into Marie’s tear-stained face and smiled, as reassuringly as she could. “There is a life outside being a cheerleader, and being the Queen Bee of your grade,” she added. “You should try doing something different with your life.”

  “Dad says that I am going into the business once I graduate,” Marie said. “And all I have to do at school is mark time.”

  “That...wasn’t very good advice,” Misty said, dryly. She’d read Marie’s file; her father, a successful businessman, was currently diversifying his company. “You’ll need qualifications to be able to do something for your father.”

  “He said he never got qualifications,” Marie said. “All he knew he learned from actually doing things.”