In Truth and Claw (A Mick Oberon Job #4)

by Ari Marmell

  “The favored luxury transportation of dead men and mangled witches.” Didn’t figure Cadillac’d be running with that particular ad campaign any time soon. I hoped the stiff who’d been Fino Ottati, or whatever craft kept him up and about, could handle the Chicago streets without killin’ anyone else.

  Cursin’ every bit of the way, furiously hot over lettin’ Orsola slip away and at the notion of startin’ the hunt for her all over again, I shuffled my keister around and crawled back the other direction.

  I was upright again by the time I got to the front door. Between the constant flow of luck and mojo from the glyphs to me, they’d gotten weak enough that I could work through ’em without losin’ a step. (If I’d only had more swift!) But it wasn’t until I cracked that door open that I heard the shouting.

  Ramona shouting. Shouting for me.

  And between and around those calls, a hideous snarling, a predatory howl, piercing the night louder’n any siren. Folks were gonna be wakin’ up, snapping on lights and lookin’ out their windows any minute, if they hadn’t already, and I did not want any of ’em gettin’ a slant on what I knew was out there, even if I was utterly stumped as to how.

  Y’see, no vampire ever made that particular sound. But I knew what did, no matter how impossible. I’d heard it too many times after my best pal had vanished into the depths of the woods of Elphame.

  A few hours before dawn, on a night when the moon was just a clipped crescent of fingernail high above the rain, and the layers of oil-soaked cotton clouds, Pete had changed.

  A few tatters of shirt and trousers flapped from a pelt of gray hair—and no, I don’t guess I meant “fur.” The stuff was almost more like what you’d find on a silverback gorilla than any wolf you ever saw. It was long, knotted, ugly… Almost diseased. Open sores wept in a couple of mangy bald spots. Streaks of watery goo matted the hair down in random splotches across his body, and even from here I could smell the sour tang of pus.

  He’da been close to nine feet tall if he’d stood up straight, but the hunch and bulge of his shoulders brought his head down closer to seven. His snout, his arms, his legs… All long, twisted, as if some mad sculptor had taken a clay model of a man and stretched ’em out. But the claws and the fangs, slick with blood that dripped steadily from the gums and the nailbeds, those looked straight and sturdy.

  No simple animal. Nothin’ natural. Nothin’ clean. “Werewolf,” you lot call it.

  Ain’t near that pretty.

  But I’d seen him change before, and this was worse’n normal. An already corrupted process had been corrupted worse.

  Ramona swooped over his head, just outta reach of those horrible, impossible arms. I dunno if she held back because she didn’t wanna risk hurting my pal, or just because she had no idea how to close in and bring her own talons to bear without Pete rippin’ her in two. Either way, I appreciated it, but she was runnin’ low on options.

  “Mick! For heaven’s sake, do something!”

  Even in the middle of everything, I couldn’t help but chuckle at her, of all people, usin’ that expression.

  But what the hell to do? He hadda be stopped, sure, before he hurt anyone or anyone saw him. As it was, somebody’d run an old Model A coupe into a tree a half-block down and left it there, door hangin’ wide, engine exhaling steam up into the bare branches above. I wondered what the poor driver’d thought he’d seen loomin’ in his headlights, or how the cops were gonna react to his wild tale.

  Since a lotta folks didn’t wait for the dawn to be up and about their day, though, it wouldn’t be long before we had a whole lot more’n just a single late-night driver to worry about.

  Werewolf, werewolf. How’d you fight a werewolf? Silver, of course, but I didn’t exactly make a habit of carryin’ any on me, and besides, I wasn’t lookin’ to kill Pete! Wolfsbane, which woulda been great if, again, I actually had any on me.

  And that was assumin’ the standard rules applied, if whatever’d caused this off-schedule transformation hadn’t…

  Wait.

  “Where’s the vampire?” I shouted, sheathing my sword and closin’ with wand aimed.

  “The vam—?” She spun, spiraling upward as a sudden leap nearly snagged her. “It’s dead!” she shouted back, and while she didn’t say it, her tone told me I was a twit for even worrying about that now. “I was just coming down to tell Pete we should go look for you when—”

  Pete roared, so I couldn’t hear the rest, but it ain’t as though I didn’t get what she meant.

  Right. “We’ve gotta hold him!”

  “Hold him? Are you nuts?”

  I fired the L&G, not at him, but at her, sending a large dose of what I’d drained from the witch’s protections to mix with her own aura. Even from the ground, I saw her peepers go wide with the influx of power.

  “On my mark!” I yelled, and then I turned the wand on my best friend.

  The agony I’d suffered inside the house, the sickening torment of the wards, was still fresh; in fact, I was still feelin’ a good bit of it. I squeezed off a small burst of mojo, enough for just a quick sting of bad luck.

  Pete’s attentions had been fixed on the succubus overhead, a predator’s instinct recognizing her as a threat, but now he whipped his snout around, fixed me with a murderous glare. And now I had his attention, he recognized me.

  No, it recognized me. ’Cause the hunter, the mind I was dealin’ with now, wasn’t Pete—werewolf, human, or otherwise.

  “C’mon, you bastard!”

  Gods, he was fast! A sudden lope and he was almost on me. But between us lockin’ eyes, and the boost from the L&G, it was enough.

  I bundled up every scrap of the pain I felt, or had felt in the last few minutes, and shoved it through the wand and into his noggin.

  Pete flopped to the street with an ear-splitting scream, twisted and clawed hands clasped to the sides of his skull. He thrashed, kicked, and I swear he started diggin’ at his own hide, maybe tryin’ to tunnel down to the pain and let it out.

  “Ramona, now!”

  She hit the concrete beside him and lunged. Between one step and the next her wings vanished and her whole body swelled, her shape changing to layer muscle on top of muscle. She slammed into the writhing werewolf with a grunt, snagging him in a pretty impressive wrestler’s hold, but even with the extra strength and the magics I’d sent her way, she wasn’t gonna be able to keep it up for long. Already she was strainin’ and struggling with every toss and turn; soon as Pete—or what was wearin’ Pete—got over the pain enough to really fight back, she’d be behind the eight-ball, bad.

  So I hadda do this quick.

  “Get the hell outta my friend!”

  If anyone’d been watching, I probably looked to be conducting a symphony. I wove every bit of my own magic, magnified through the wand, through the werewolf—body, aura, and soul. Or souls. I pulled whole ropes of luck and strength away, turned ’em to my own purposes, and fed ’em right back in.

  Tryin’ to pass it all to Pete while draining it from the thing inside Pete. And if that sounds easy or simple, you’re a twit.

  I dunno which exact part of the process we broke. Maybe we gave Pete, or the natural cycle of the werewolf, enough get-up-and-go to reassert themselves. Or maybe we gave the spirit enough of a shellacking it couldn’t maintain the forced transformation, or it hurt too much, or…

  Nuts. Whaddaya want from me? It worked.

  The werewolf trailed off in mid-growl, whole body goin’ slack as a dropped yoyo. A single wet, nasty sound rang like a shot through the neighborhood as flesh twisted and bone cracked, all at once. Hair dangled and fell in two or three massive clumps, turnin’ brittle and cracking away into dust before it even hit the ground.

  And just that quick, he was Pete again, naked as a jaybird, starin’ up at us with an expression first empty as a mannequin’s, and then as horrified as I’ve ever seen on a man.

  “We’ve gotta get inside,” I said. “Off the street.”

&
nbsp; Still wearin’ her own impossibly bulging body, Ramona picked him up and cradled him like a puppy. “Where to?”

  Dammit. “Orsola’s digs. Only option.”

  “Wards?”

  “I did some work on ’em. It won’t be any fun, but we can tolerate ’em long enough to find the glyphs and deal with ’em proper.”

  She grimaced, but made for the door. Me, I scooped up Pete’s broken belt—and the heater attached to it; he didn’t need to lose his department-issue piece, on top of everything— and followed.

  * * *

  I’d been right. The wards weren’t fun. But they packed nowhere near the punch they had when they’d first clobbered me, and I managed to locate most of the chalk-and-iron-filing glyphs—under carpets, on the backside of furniture—and break the lines.

  Now I’d had a chance to give the whole place a good up’n down, it was clear Orsola’d been here a while. Months, at least. And she’d been busy. I found all sorts of scrawled notes and incantations scattered around what’d been some kinda study or library. Some in Italian, some in English, all spindly and spidery and damn near incomprehensible. I thought a couple pages might prove useful, the ones where she was obviously talkin’ about the vampire spirits, how they’d been summoned, how to steal control of one of ’em. No such luck, though. Lotta ramblin’ about grave dirt and corrupted funerary rights, new moons and intercessionary spirits, sacrifices and heart’s blood, but nothin’ too intelligible. I crumpled ’em up and stuck ’em in a coat pocket.

  She’d also had help, gettin’ around, cleanin’ herself up… No idea who her assistant mighta been, prior to Fino (goddamn it, Fino), but we got lucky in at least one respect: The guy’d left some clothes, sloppily folded in a dust-covered old bureau.

  He’d been bigger’n Pete, who now looked like he was wearin’ an older brother’s hand-me-downs, but it beat sittin’ around—or tryin’ to get home—with Little Pete swinging free.

  Right now, he was hunched in a chair, its upholstery cracked and yellowed with age, mitts clasped around a cup of tea that’d gone cool without him takin’ so much as a sip. No idea where Varujan had scrammed off to, and at the moment, I didn’t much care. Me’n Ramona—who was once more back to lookin’ just supernaturally gorgeous insteada full-on supernatural—stood across the room, jawin’ softly.

  We didn’t whisper, exactly, and it ain’t as if we were tryin’ to keep anything from Pete. It just… didn’t feel right talkin’ about this in front of him out loud, like it was nothin’ big.

  Plus, I was keepin’ half an ear on the real faint sounds from outside. People were up and about, now that the bulls had come to investigate whatever crazy story they’d been told and were examinin’ the crashed Ford. No doubt they were catchin’ all sorts of hinky reports from folks who’d seen bits of pieces of what went down, witnessed from between heavy curtains on a night-darkened street. They’d nod, and try not to scoff out loud at the nice hardworking citizens with their ridiculous imaginations, and then they’d go back to the clubhouse and guffaw and slap their knees about it. But one or two, who’d seen a few things, been around the block a couple times, would laugh just a little nervously, and wonder if just maybe the stories weren’t quite as goofy as they sounded.

  They wouldn’t say anything about it to their fellow elephant ears, or to anyone else. But they’d wonder.

  “Mick? You still in there?”

  “Huh? Sorry, doll. Got distracted.”

  “You don’t say?” She took a puff of her cigarette, cast about for something to use as an ashtray, and then—maybe remembering whose place this had been—shrugged and let the ash fall to the floor.

  “Got a lot on my mind.”

  “Yeah. What I said was, I’ve never heard of a vampire surviving beyond the destruction of its body before. Are you sure?”

  “Well, I can’t be completely positive, but yeah, pretty well sure. I think when you killed it, its spirit was drawn to the predator lurkin’ inside Pete, and it tried to move in insteada goin’ in search of another convenient stiff. Didn’t work out too well, and I don’t think it woulda lasted long even if we hadn’t driven it out, since Pete was still in there, but… obviously it clung on for a bit.”

  “I don’t know much about the spirits that inhabit vampires,” she admitted. “Never really even thought about it until today, and I’d never heard of any sort of non-human or non-corpse vampire until your… um, watermelon.” She shook her head, setting her hair to waving like a soft tide.

  “Not many do know much about ’em. I mean, they’re not even really individual spirits, per se, just fragments of spiritual… I dunno, energy? Essence? They got no personality, no individual existence. Maybe they ain’t just the source of vampires, but other undead or death-related Fae, too. I got no idea. Normally, when a vampire dies, the essence is just… absorbed back into that whole. Like pourin’ a bucket of water back into the ocean.

  “But after what Orsola did to this one, or says she did? I dunno. Maybe it really does hang together, keeps its identity, its memories—or at least enough of the personality she gave it to be a real pain in the rear.”

  We both froze at a knock on the front door. Wasn’t the first time, either. The bulls were canvasing for witnesses to the crash and the fight—or whatever it was—that’d happened out in the street. We kept quiet, waited for ’em to assume either nobody was up or nobody was home, and to move on. Hopefully, it was the last time they’d bother.

  “Do you believe her?” Ramona asked, even more quietly, after we’d given it a few minutes. “Do you think this thing’s just going to keep coming for you, over and over, life after life, forever?”

  “I’ve been noodling on that.” I had, too; it’d been in the back of my mind, picking and nagging at me, since the minute the witch had threatened me with it. “I’m just guessin’ here, you understand, but given the nature of these things? No, I don’t think she coulda transformed it that completely. I figure, sooner or later, her magic—and the beef with me—are gonna fade. It’s gonna dissipate, go back to bein’ just a shred of potential, mixed in with the others.

  “But I got no notion of when. Whether it’s just a matter of time, or a matter of how many incarnations it goes through, or what? So yeah, it’s gonna keep on gunnin’ for me for a while before I’m rid of it.”

  “Or it gets rid of you,” she whispered, taking another long drag.

  “Anything’s possible, sweetheart, but that ain’t the current plan.”

  She reached out, squeezed my arm. It was nice, especially after the last few months.

  Didn’t seem to be much to say to that, so I scooted across the room to stand beside the old chair. “How about you, pal? How’re you doin’?”

  He swirled the tea, which we’d taken from Orsola’s kitchen, seemed to be fascinated by the spin and dance of the leaves. Wasn’t sure he’d even heard me, at first.

  Then, “How long’s it been, Mick? About two and half years?”

  “Uh.” We’d known each other longer’n that, though we hadn’t drunk outta the same bottle that whole time, so I didn’t figure that’s what he meant. Which left…

  Since he got bit.

  “Yeah, that sounds about right. Give or take.”

  “You know what I been most afraid of, every second since then? What’s given me fuckin’ nightmares at least three times a month, no matter how much I tried to get used to this, how many full moons you took me Sideways?”

  I could take a pretty solid guess. “Pete, you—”

  “That, one full moon, somehow, you wouldn’t be around. Or I’d get caught up in somethin’ and not be able to make it. Or a dozen other things. That I’d lose control.” He finally looked up, and his eyes shone wet in the weak lamplight. “That I’d hurt someone, kill someone. That the monster in me would—”

  “Pete, you didn’t hurt anyone.” I crouched next to the chair. Didn’t feel right makin’ him look up at me. “Things coulda gone real sour out there, sure. No denying
it. But they didn’t. We—you—got through it.”

  “And what about next time?”

  “Ain’t gonna be a next time, pal. That vampire, spirit, whatever you wanna call it, it’s moved on to somethin’ else. It knows it can’t hold onto you now. And there ain’t any others like it. You’re all aces.”

  “But now I know, don’t you see? Now I know it’s possible. That even when it’s not a full moon, I can’t be absolutely sure I’m safe, that the people around me are safe. Okay, so maybe that damn spirit won’t grab me again, but what if something else does? You didn’t know this was possible until today, Mick. So you can’t know what else might be able to… to change me.” He had the full waterworks goin’ now. It was hard to look at; Pete wouldn’ta wanted to be seen this way.

  I tried to reassure him, tried to tell him that the odds against him runnin’ into anything else in his life that could do this— could do what I’d thought, after thousands of years, was impossible—were so high I wasn’t sure numbers even went that far.

  Maybe… Maybe I got into his head, some, too. I didn’t do much, wouldn’t do that to him. Just enough to calm his emotions, let him get hold of himself.

  I wish I could say I did that solely for his sake. Mostly it was. But we hadda get back to it, hadda keep workin’ on the case. People were gonna die, not by the claws of a werewolf but the fangs of vampires, and Dagda-knew-what other magics, if we didn’t run this down.

  And just a little bit, if I’m being square, because it ate at me seein’ him so broken.

  Judgin’ by the blank stare Ramona was pointin’ my way, she knew what I’d just done. I couldn’t tell if she approved or not, and she obviously wasn’t gonna spill her feelings on it either way.

  “All right,” I said, once Pete seemed steady again. “If you two are jake with it, I’m gonna ask you to head back to my joint and wait for me there.”

  “Can do,” Pete said, with almost no quaver.

  “That’s fine by me,” Ramona said, “but why? Where are you going?”

  Last place in the world I wanna go, dollface.