Unleashed

by John Levitt

  “Maybe he likes music,” Sherwood said.

  “Or musicians. I’m still not sold on his being harmless.” We got out of the car and walked over toward the building. Sherwood was carrying Lou, who had given up squirming.

  “He’s definitely inside,” Sherwood said as we approached the building. The entry door was propped open with a metal folding chair, and musicians carrying instruments were passing in and out.

  We walked in and down a long hallway, listening to the muffled sounds of guitars, keyboards, and drums, all behind closed doors. From the hallway, all the sounds blended together like some enormous modern performance piece.

  When the corridor crossed another hallway, Sherwood turned left without hesitation, passed a few more doors, and stopped in front of a door painted a bright red. She put Lou down and gestured at the door.

  From behind it came the sound of a highly distorted guitar running fast scales and a drummer doing speed rolls. I knocked on the door, loudly enough to be sure I would be heard over the instruments.

  The room went instantly silent. We waited a moment, but there was no sound of movement from inside. Sherwood looked at the door, then back at me.

  “What’s that about?” she whispered. The silence from behind the door was contagious, as if we had been caught doing something illegal just by knocking at the door.

  I shrugged and knocked again, and now that the room was silent, it sounded twice as loud. There was the suggestion of movement inside, then the door opened a crack. I could just see a young stocky guy whose face showed a pitiful attempt at a beard. The faint sweet whiff of high-quality dope wafted out past him.

  “Yeah?” he said, suspiciously.

  I put my foot over the doorjamb in the best PI movie fashion so he couldn’t slam the door on us. On second thought, he still could, and if the door was heavy enough, it would probably break my foot. I withdrew it as unobtrusively as I could.

  “We’re looking for a friend,” I said.

  “Who?”

  Good question. He saw me hesitate and the suspicion on his face deepened into paranoia.

  “Are you guys cops?” he said. Sherwood laughed.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Hell, yes. If you’re cops, you gotta say so. If I ask you directly, you have to tell me the truth. That’s the law.”

  An enduring urban legend. Generations of brain-dead dope dealers believe this as a matter of faith. It never occurs to them that if it were true, there would never be such a thing as a successful undercover operation. But it was a useful misapprehension—for the cops.

  “Dude,” I said. “Do we look like cops?”

  “Yeah, sorta.” Fair enough. We were cops, sorta, when you came right down to it.

  “No way,” I said. I pointed down at Lou. “Does he look like a police dog to you?”

  Lou got tired of this exchange and wriggled his way through the opening, squeezing past the attempt to block him. The guy turned and stepped back, unwilling to let a strange dog in, unwilling to step away from the door to get Lou, but also unwilling to close the door and trap Lou inside. Stoned as he was, he still realized that would not go over well. I took the opportunity to push the door all the way open and step inside.

  A huge drum kit filled up one corner of the room, with three different toms and seven or eight cymbals. Sitting behind it was a familiar curly-headed fellow, wearing forest green. I thought for a second the guy at the door was going to tackle me, but the Wendigo sighed and said, “It’s okay, Zack; they’re friends of mine.” He eased out from behind the kit and walked over to us.

  “Give us a moment, would you, Zack? We’ve got some business to discuss. Get me a soda, will you?”

  Zack nodded knowingly. Private “business” was something he could understand.

  “This is a surprise,” the Wendigo said.

  “Yeah, we’re full of surprises. I didn’t expect to find you behind a drum kit, for that matter.”

  “Music is my life. Or I hope it will be.”

  He looked strong and healthy, bursting with energy. Those stones must have pumped him up considerably.

  “Why didn’t you tell us we were looking for a shape-shifter?” I asked.

  “So you finally figured it out. Who was I to spoil the surprise? I wasn’t that happy with you guys in the first place, if you’ll remember.”

  “And in the meantime, a friend of mine nearly died.” A look of concern crossed his face, but I couldn’t tell if it was real or not.

  “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “But telling you what it was wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run. She’s pretty focused once she sets her sights on someone.”

  “She?”

  “You assume all monsters are male? Kind of sexist, don’t you think?”

  “Whatever. How do I find her?”

  “Again, assuming I knew, why should I tell you?” I pulled the four green stones out of my pocket.

  “Four?” he said, unimpressed. “That’s hardly worth my while.” The greedy look in his eyes belied his casual tone.

  “It’s not like before; I’m not asking you to actually do anything. Just some information, that’s all. Still, if it’s not worth it to you.” I started to put the stones away.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Hold on. Maybe we can do business here.” He really was a junkie for the stones. He could have a thousand of them and he’d still want more. I carefully laid the stones out on top of a speaker cabinet.

  “How do I find it?” I repeated. “Or her.”

  The Wendigo sat back down on the low stool behind the drums, picked up a pair of sticks, and started tapping idly on random drum surfaces.

  “Why a drummer?” I asked, suddenly curious. “With your peculiar voice talents, I’d think you’d be a natural as a singer.”

  “What fun would there be in that? Music is all about rhythm, anyway, at least the kind I like. Rhythm is what calls to the blood—it was the first music, before humans were humans. Believe me, I know.”

  “So you’ve been around for a while,” said Sherwood, who had been silent up to now.

  “Indeed I have.”

  “Fascinating,” I said. “Once again, how do we find this creature?”

  “Well, she’s in the city. I can tell you that much.”

  “That much I already know.”

  “And she’s taken on an aspect. Not the way I have—the aspect I have is pretty much the aspect I’m stuck with. But not her—she can steal the identities of normal people.” I was getting impatient.

  “So far, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know,” I said.

  “How about this, then. She’s got to kill every three days or so if she wants to keep strong. If she goes more than a week without a fresh infusion, she’ll revert back to her normal state and eventually end up as a mere mindless beast.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, this should be obvious, but she’s got a strong survival drive. Not just blind instinct; anyone she thinks could possibly be a threat to her she will target and murder—and feed off them as well, killing two birds with one stone, if you’ll pardon the pun?”

  “What about your own abilities?” asked Sherwood. “You called Mason. You called me back from the dead, or close enough. Could you call her?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t if I could. She’s not very pleasant. And calling her up wouldn’t fit in with my new lifestyle.” He did a couple of quick drum rolls. “But I can’t affect her, anyway. We cancel each other out, at least as far as special abilities go. But if you really want to locate her, you do have an obvious method.”

  “And that is? “

  “You’re clearly someone who’s a threat to her, and she knows that. All you need to do is to put yourself in a particularly vulnerable position and she’ll show up, believe me. Guaranteed.”

  Bait. Once again. That seemed to be my current function in life. Still, not such a bad idea. Between Victor, Eli, and Sherwood, we surely could come up wit
h a plan that would tempt her into showing herself but still keep me safe. Relatively. I scooped up two of the stones and put them back in my pocket. I didn’t think what he’d told me warranted any more, and in truth, I was loath to let them go anyway. The Wendigo got a weird look on his face and for a second I thought there was going to be trouble, but then Zack came back in carrying a couple of cans of soda.

  “Everything cool?” he said, nervously, picking up on the tension.

  “Totally,” I said. “We were just leaving.”

  Zack stood in the doorway and watched us walk down the hall, still feeling paranoid, I’d guess. When he went back inside, he slammed the door and the sound of the dead bolt being aggressively shot home was audible all the way down the corridor.

  “I thought musicians were supposed to be mellow,” Sherwood said.

  “Jazz musicians are. Mostly. They have to be, just to get gigs. Heavy metal guys are another matter. Mostly Satan worshipers, I believe.”

  We headed back to Victor’s. If we were going to set up a trap with me as the tempting morsel of cheese, I wanted to get started on it right away, before anyone else died.

  We met Ruby coming out the front door of the mansion as we pulled up. She walked over to the driver’s-side window and reached in, putting a hand on my shoulder. She looked exhausted, with dark lines showing under her eyes. This thing was taking a lot more out of her than she’d admit.

  “I’m sorry about the trouble with your friend,” she said. “And her dog. That’s sad. I’m glad you’re okay, though. But we really do need to do something about this, you know, before it gets worse.”

  “We will,” I said. She looked past me inquiringly at Sherwood. “I’m sorry; I forgot you two haven’t met. Ruby, Sherwood.” Ruby smiled at her, and Sherwood nodded a bit distantly, which was unlike her. Weird.

  “Let me know what you come up with,” Ruby said. “You know I’ll be glad to help any way I can.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll be in touch. And be careful. I have a feeling one of us could be next on the hit parade.”

  “You know me,” she said. “Always.”

  She got into her old VW Beetle, waved, and putted off down the street. Lou and I jumped out of the van, but Sherwood remained seated, looking at me oddly.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “As I told you, ever since my return I see people more clearly. They seem almost transparent at times—that’s the best analogy I can come up with. Some people’s goodness shines through; others . . . Well, let’s just say not so much.”

  “And Ruby’s one of those others?”

  “Not exactly. It’s like there’s no one home, nothing there. I get no feeling at all from her.”

  “That’s odd,” I said. “But she’s a strong practitioner. Maybe she likes keeping her private thoughts private. I know I do.”

  “Maybe. But it doesn’t feel like she’s shielding, or hiding anything. She’s just . . . blank.”

  “And you think that means something?”

  “We’re looking for a shape-shifter, right? What if that’s not really Ruby? What if that’s not anything human at all?”

  THIRTEEN

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK?” I SAID TO ELI. “IS IT possible?”

  Sherwood had dropped her bomb of an idea on Victor and Eli the minute we got inside the house.

  “Oh, quite possible. The real question is, is it true?”

  “But how could she fool us all so easily? It’s not just that she looks exactly like Ruby; she is Ruby, for all intents and purposes.”

  “Remember what Richard Cory told me?” Sherwood said. “That once it consumes its victim, it becomes that victim? Not just the looks, not just the memories, but all the quirks, all the habits—everything that makes someone what they are.”

  This was wandering into territory too deep for me. I could see Eli’s eyes light up behind his glasses, though. This was what he lived for.

  “In essence, it is the victim, but at the same time, of course, it’s not. That makes for an interesting metaphysical speculation. What is it that makes us what we are? Does it have a soul?”

  “Who cares,” said Victor. “As long as we can kill it. Let’s leave the speculation for another time and look at the facts. We’re looking for a shape-shifter, one so good it can fool even Lou. Ruby shows up at an opportune time, and tries to convince us that there is no creature wandering around. Instead, she points Mason in the direction of a mysterious ‘practitioner.’ One that lures Mason to an out-of-the-way corner. He attacks him, turns out to be a shape-shifter himself.”

  “And she describes the supposed practitioner for me, but is conveniently missing when he shows up,” I said, slowly.

  “Exactly. One and the same, perhaps. Add to that the fact that Sherwood finds her oddly opaque, and you’ve got a hell of a lot of coincidence.”

  The chain of logic was flimsy, but it was one of those things that felt right—it had the ring of truth on an emotional level, and that’s often more reliable than cold fact. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.

  I offered a few halfhearted objections, but it was more just to excuse my own lack in not even thinking of it in the first place. It was still hard to believe that none of us, even Lou, couldn’t tell the difference between a child in a Lion King costume at Halloween and a real lion.

  Timothy had been listening quietly, but he had a puzzled look on his face.

  “I have a question,” he said. “You were over at your friend Morgan’s yesterday, right? When the shape-shifter was there?” I nodded. “But Ruby was over here almost all of yesterday. So how could it have been her?”

  Damn. The idea had made perfect sense, only to be torpedoed by an inconvenient fact.

  “That is a problem,” I admitted.

  “It would seem so,” said Victor, “but something’s not adding up here, and I think at the very least we need to pay Ruby a visit. Unannounced and unexpected. Mason?”

  “Now?”

  “When better? After the next person dies and we figure out the details?”

  Point taken. We decided just Victor and I would go—maybe we could catch her by surprise. If we all showed up en masse, she’d know something was up right off the bat.

  A half hour later we were looking for a parking space for Victor’s silver BMW. Ruby’s place turned out to be on the second floor of a small apartment building in the Richmond, not far from where Eli lived.

  Victor wasn’t relying on any use of talent this time. Anything that involved talent would be up to me—he was going with firepower, a Glock .40 that he had taken out of his safe and put in a shoulder holster.

  When we arrived in the area he parked two blocks away, as a tactical move. We walked over to the building separately, a half block or so apart. If true, it was entirely possible Ruby had realized she’d been outed—Sherwood might be as transparent to her as she was opaque to Sherwood. No point in providing her an opportunity to take us both down at once. I wasn’t that worried, though—between Victor and myself, I thought we could handle her. But we didn’t know the extent of her powers, and it never hurts to be cautious.

  Victor entered the building first, and I entered behind him a few seconds later. It was an older building, with three apartments on the ground floor and three more up above. We climbed up the stairs to the upper landing and stood outside Ruby’s door, listening. Victor knocked, loudly. It was silent inside. Either she hadn’t got home yet or she was very sound asleep. Or she was quietly awaiting us.

  Lou gave a little snort and wrinkled up his nose as if there was a bad smell in the air. I took a deep breath, but couldn’t smell anything. But when I took another, I could just sense the faintest whiff of something, sweet and cloying like rotten fruit. Or meat. It sent an atavistic chill up my spine to the back of my neck. The reaction to that particular smell is rooted deep, and is never good.

  “No wards,” Victor said quietly.

  I checked;
he was right. No practitioner leaves their home unguarded. But perhaps Ruby wasn’t precisely a practitioner, was she, now? He tried the door. Locked, of course. That wouldn’t be a problem for Victor, however. Mechanical devices are very difficult to affect using talent, but in addition to his talent, Victor was a regular James Bond. I had no doubt but that he carried a handy collection of precise lock picks in his wallet.

  He reached inside his jacket, pulled out the Glock, and held it six inches away from the striker plate where the lock met the doorjamb. So much for precision and subtlety.

  “Muffle the sound for me, will you?” he said. “We don’t want to disturb the neighbors.”

  He half expected me to have trouble with that, at which point he’d sigh and whip out some preset spell and do it himself. But a thick carpet covered the hallway, and overhead, a cone-shaped metal shade held a ceiling lightbulb, the kind you slip over the bulb and then screw the bulb into the socket.

  I used the funnel shape as a template and curved a line of talent around the gun, then another line spreading out into the floor of the landing. When the gun fired, the sound would bleed off into the carpet. People in the adjacent apartment might feel a slight vibration, but in San Francisco occasional tremors are hardly worth remarking on.

  Victor put two silent shots next to the doorknob. Splinters of wood flew off, one almost gouging my face. He shoved the door open and stood in the doorway, gun ready, scoping out the inside. After a few seconds, he motioned to me and eased his way into the apartment.

  Inside, it was a mess. Half-eaten pizzas falling out of their boxes littered the floor, along with crusted cartons of takeout. Clothes strewn about, dirt everywhere, empty wine bottles collecting dust on the floor. A mattress had been shoved into the corner of the living room, up against a wall. On each end, blankets and sheets had been torn into strips and jumbled together into a nest, with indentations at either end where a heavy body might have laid at rest. The lair of the beast. The whole room smelled like the big cat house at the zoo, overwhelming that first faint whiff of corruption I’d noticed in the hall.