Unleashed

by John Levitt

  “Well, we’re over on Greenwich Street,” I said, “just down from Coit Tower. Come on by.” I handed the phone back to Victor. “I see a problem here. If this shape-shifter can imitate us all, how can we trust anyone to be who they seem? I’ve got Lou to vouch for me, but what if he’s not with me, like tonight? And how would I know you’re really Victor, for that matter?”

  “A good question,” he said, which of course was no answer at all.

  “And another thing,” I said. “The original shape-shifter knew us all—she’d have had no problem in imitating us. But this one did a pretty good job on Eli, so wouldn’t it have to be someone who knew him? Someone besides Ruby? And you, as well. It imitated your voice. And me, since it knew quite a bit about who I was. Who knows all three of us?”

  “Half the practitioners in the city,” said Victor dryly. “And all of the ones who cause trouble.”

  “Ramsey,” I said

  “Ramsey? You must be joking. Why him?”

  “Ruby was hanging around with him when I first ran across her at Mama Yara’s. It made no sense to me at the time, but it does now. The shape-shifters travel in pairs, the Wendigo said. You know Ramsey—the man is a walking disaster. Why else would Ruby keep him around—unless it wasn’t Ramsey?”

  “Backup rations? A kind of walking larder if things got too lean? And Ruby could have been using him as an information source—a gofer or a sneak. How could he have guessed she wasn’t what she seemed? We certainly didn’t. And why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “Well, when I thought Ruby was Ruby, she asked me not to. At the time, I thought she was just embarrassed to have you think she was with a total geek like Ramsey. After, with everything that was going on, I just didn’t even think of it.”

  Victor muttered something under his breath, and I don’t think it was a compliment on my brilliance. “But think about it,” I said. “What better disguise?” Victor was not impressed with my reasoning.

  “This is another of your unwarranted leaps in logic,” he said. “The shape-shifter that was Ruby could have provided her partner with all the information she’d need.”

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly. “Maybe it is a stretch. But it’s still worth checking out.”

  “Agreed,” said Victor. “I don’t suppose you know where he lives?” Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I did. Ramsey had invited me over so many times that I eventually relented and once showed up against my better judgment. It wasn’t much fun.

  “He lives over on Sutter Street, around Fillmore,” I said. “Not that far from here, actually.”

  “Good. We’ll head over there.”

  “What, right now?” I had the feeling I was repeating myself. Hadn’t I just said that the other day?

  “If you’re after someone, you don’t want to give them time to catch their breath if you can help it. If Ramsey is the shape-shifter, which I doubt, it won’t be expecting us so soon.”

  CAMPBELL’S LAND CRUISER CAME INTO VIEW, driving slowly up the street. She caught sight of us and pulled over. I looked over toward Lou, who was stretched out on his side, sound asleep again.

  “Can you take Lou home?” I said, before she had even got out of the car. “It looks like he’s about had it.” She looked at me doubtfully through the car window.

  “What about you?”

  “The night’s not quite over yet. Things to do, people to see.”

  “I could try to take him back, but I’m not sure he’ll go for it.”

  “Sure, he will. Look at him.” I poked him gently and he raised his head and looked at me bleary-eyed. “Go home with Campbell,” I said, gesturing toward the car. “I’ll be fine.

  Lou climbed wearily to his feet and headed off toward her Land Cruiser, stumbling a couple of times. He was used up. A couple of quick assurances to Campbell that things were under control, a brief explanation of our next stop, and she drove away without much protest. I was on my own again, and hopefully I would take better care of myself this time.

  Victor and I made our way back to his car, and ten minutes later we were in front of Ramsey’s place, a huge Victorian on Sutter Street broken up into apartments, the way a lot of those old buildings are. Ramsey’s apartment was number 4, but only three apartments were visible. A walkway leads around to the back, though, where a rear door reveals another apartment that you wouldn’t know was there unless you’d visited before. The door was warded of course, since a practitioner lived there.

  “Do we knock?” I asked in a low voice. Victor shook his head without hesitation.

  “We go right in. If he’s the shape-shifter, we’ll need the surprise. If he’s not—” He shrugged. “We’ll just apologize. He won’t give a damn when he sees it’s us.”

  He was right. Ramsey would be so thrilled by the thought of being in on something exciting that he wouldn’t care that we’d just waltzed in uninvited, even though that’s unforgivable by practitioner etiquette.

  Victor looked up and down the door, examining the warding. You can’t actually see warding unless you’re another practitioner, and even then you don’t exactly see it. You feel it and sense it, in a way ordinaries can’t. It’s an overlay, and for someone like Victor, or even myself, it’s as obvious as a new paint job on an old rusted car.

  The warding was not only over the door but the entire side of the building. Quite ambitious, but pitiful even for someone as unskilled as Ramsey. Worse, he hadn’t kept up with it—warding doesn’t last forever; it needs to be maintained. I’d neglected that myself a couple of years ago, much to my sorrow. I’m a lot more conscientious these days.

  “Give me a hand with this,” said Victor, pointing to a spot right over the door.

  The warding there had completely degraded to the point where it was nonexistent. He reached out with his talent, I did the same, and together we peeled the rest of the warding off like loose skin off an onion. Victor reached under his jacket and brought out the Glock. He motioned toward the door with it.

  “Kick the door. Hit it right next to the lock, and hit it hard.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t just knock?” I said. He looked at me in exasperation.

  So I was to be the muscle. I don’t mind being the B player in the movie, but Victor is the one with martial arts skills. He doesn’t often use those skills; he prefers simple weapons like guns, things that won’t mess up his hair. But he’s got those skills in reserve if he needs them, and even though he’s not a very big guy, I’m sure he would have done a better job at door crashing than me. But he had the gun and wanted to stand back, ready in case anything came flying out. Or maybe he thought it would be good for my self-esteem to feel useful. More likely he just wanted me in front if things went sour—sometimes I think he feels that in the grand scheme of things I wouldn’t be that much of a loss.

  I was still wearing my heavy boots, though. I gathered myself, got my balance, and unleashed a side kick, striking the door just above the lock right next to the doorjamb. I could feel the shock all the way up my leg. The door remained stubbornly fast, and I bounced off and lost my balance, falling to the ground.

  Victor smirked at me and stepped forward. He spun around with one of his tricky martial arts moves and hit the door, which of course obligingly flew open. It was like the pickle jar, I was sure. I’d softened it up, almost breaking my foot in the process, and then he stepped in. It would have flown open if he’d simply breathed on it. One good thing—he was now the first through the door.

  I scrambled to my feet and followed him inside. We didn’t have to secure the room—it was tiny, consisting of a kitchenette with a ratty table and plastic chairs, plus an additional living area no more than six feet square. It made my in-law space seem like a mansion. Stairs led to an upstairs room that clearly couldn’t be any larger than the downstairs.

  There was that familiar taint of corruption in the air, along with the musky odor of a bear’s den, but I wasn’t sure it came from any creature’s lair. Bags of over
flowing garbage were piled up in the kitchenette, leaving almost no floor space. The burners of the electric stove were crusted over with a year’s worth of spilled soup and ramen noodles. In one corner near the stove was a shriveled piece of bacon, so old even Lou wouldn’t have touched it. It looked like it could have been there since the earthquake of ’89, if not the big one a century earlier. Maybe it was a lair, but more the one of a total slob than of a monster.

  Victor was up the stairs in two seconds, not waiting for me, and back down in less than a minute.

  “Not here,” he said.

  So the trip was a bust, a big anticlimax. I wasn’t that displeased; I was tired and sore and the last thing I wanted was another deadly confrontation. Maybe I’m getting old, but I prefer a good night’s rest before battling monsters.

  But it wasn’t over yet. As we stood crowded together in the tiny apartment, the sound of steps echoing on concrete reached our ears. They stopped outside the door, and then it slowly swung inward. Ramsey was home.

  EIGHTEEN

  USUALLY IT’S UNWISE TO BREAK INTO THE HOUSE of a fellow practitioner. There’s a universally accepted convention that anyone who does deserves whatever they get. And every practitioner, no matter their level of talent, is stronger on their home turf. Partly it’s psychological—the small dog syndrome where a little dog will drive off a larger dog who dares to enter its yard. But it’s more than that—strength is absorbed from home base in a very real way, and even a very ordinary practitioner can be dangerous on his home territory.

  There were two of us, though, and even on his home ground there wasn’t much Ramsey could have done to either of us. I’d expected him at least to ask indignantly what we were doing there, but he surprised me. His eyes darted back and forth between us, and when he finally spoke it was a total non sequitur.

  “I don’t know where she is, honest,” he said.

  So he immediately assumed we were looking for Ruby. Interesting.

  “Bullshit,” Victor said. “Spill it.”

  I looked over at Victor and mouthed, “Spill it?” in mock amazement. He must have been watching too many late-night movies on TV. Ramsey didn’t seem to notice.

  “Really, I don’t. I haven’t even seen her for days.”

  Of course he hadn’t. Ruby was dead. But why would he assume we’d broken into his place to look for her? Or was he the shape-shifter after all, stalling for time? Then I had that intuitive flash, the one that’s almost always right.

  “You knew,” I said. “She wasn’t using you—you knew all along what she was.”

  He tried on several expressions—bewilderment, fear, defiance—before settling on the truth.

  “No, not at first. I swear it. I ran into her one day, and she seemed to like me. Then I started doing little things for her, just to hang around, you know? I mean, she was out of my league, really.

  “I just thought—I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t think much about it, really. I was afraid to, if you know what I mean. And then she . . . Well, the sex was incredible.”

  There was an image I could have done without. Victor looked puzzled.

  “But Ruby was gay.”

  “Maybe Ruby was,” Ramsey said. “But the shape-shifter wasn’t, at least, not completely. She was addicted to sex—couldn’t go long without it and didn’t care who it was or what gender they were. Something in her makeup, I think.” He paused, and a faint smile came over his face, showing even through his fear. “She could become anything, or anyone. You have no idea.”

  So he’d been screwing her all along, knowing she was a monster, but not caring. Now, Ramsey was bound to have been hard up for sex, but this was beyond belief. I try not to be judgmental, but the very thought was enough to make me feel sick. I could barely wrap my mind around it.

  “But you knew what she was,” Victor said. “How long did it take you to figure it out?”

  “A while. By the time I figured it out, I was in a bind. I was afraid to leave; I was afraid to tell anybody. She would have killed me.” He shuddered. “And eaten me.”

  “So you helped her out? Helped her find her victims, helped her avoid detection?”

  “Never,” he said. “Not the victims. Swear to God.”

  I didn’t believe that. But I did believe it was the real Ramsey we were talking to. If it was a shape-shifter, it was more than a fine actor. Then again, if it had killed and eaten Ramsey, it would in essence be him. So how could we tell the difference? Even Lou couldn’t tell, if it had consumed someone’s essence. Victor was thinking along the same lines, I was sure. Earlier, he might have tied Ramsey up and taken him off to Bertram for some special questioning, but after the debacle with me, he wasn’t quite so eager to go that route. Ramsey looked back and forth at Victor, then me, twitching like a lizard.

  “You’ll protect me, won’t you? If she comes back . . .”

  “She’s not coming back,” Victor said. “We killed her.” Ramsey looked blankly at him, then a slow expression of immense relief spread over his face.

  “Oh, thank God,” he said.

  It couldn’t be an act. But Victor wanted to make sure.

  “But she wasn’t the only one. There’s another shape-shifter, and it could be anyone. Even you.”

  “Don’t,” Ramsey said. “That’s not funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  “That’s crazy.” Ramsey turned to me and held out an imploring hand. “Tell him, Mason. You know me. That’s crazy.”

  “Sorry,” I said. Victor glanced over at me and then leveled the Glock at Ramsey’s head.

  “I’m sorry, too,” he said. “But there’s no way to tell if you’re really Ramsey or not. We just can’t take the chance.”

  He cocked the hammer back, which made a little snicking sound. There’s no need to cock the hammer on a double-action automatic; in fact, it’s overkill. Cocking the hammer to make it single-action is dangerous. It takes only the lightest imaginable pressure to fire, and the slightest flinch can be enough to accidentally discharge the gun. But the sound itself is enough to make one go weak in the knees, especially when the muzzle of the gun is pointed directly at your head.

  So Victor was running a bluff. Even he wasn’t harsh enough to coldly execute a fellow practitioner, or anyone else, based on mere suspicion. Then again, maybe it wasn’t a bluff at all. Ramsey had assisted Ruby, or at least kept quiet about her, even knowing what she was and what she was doing. Maybe Victor didn’t care whether Ramsey was the shape-shifter or the real thing—in Victor’s eyes he was equally guilty, and I’m not sure I disagreed. Still, I could never execute someone in cold blood. That’s why Victor is a chief enforcer and I’m a jazz musician.

  In any case, the sound of the hammer being cocked would be the test. If Ramsey was really the shape-shifter, it wouldn’t stand there meekly, accepting death without a struggle. It would launch itself forward and go down fighting, if it went down at all. I took a step back and gathered energy.

  But it wasn’t the shape-shifter after all. Ramsey collapsed on the floor, his legs no longer able to hold him upright.

  “No, please. No. Don’t kill me. Dear God, please.”

  He was speaking halfway between a whisper and a cry. I couldn’t really feel that sorry for him; he was culpable in the deaths of more than one person. But he was so pitiful I got no pleasure from seeing him grovel. It was sad and pathetic, and it made me feel slimy and nauseated.

  Victor waited a few long moments, giving him a chance to launch an attack if that was what he had in mind. But it was no act. Ramsey bowed his head, stared at the floor, and sobbed uncontrollably. Victor eased the hammer back down and put the gun away under his jacket.

  “I’m not done with you yet,” he said. “I’ll be back when this is over. I may kill you yet.”

  He jerked his head at me and started out the door. Even in a situation like this, Victor had to be the drama queen with an exit line.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You sp
ent a lot of time with Ruby. You knew what she was and you didn’t care. Here’s your chance to make some amends. There has to be something about these shape-shifters, some way they’re different, some little tell we can use that gives them away.”

  Ramsey was now sitting up, back against the wall. He looked eager to please now. He was more afraid of Victor than he was of any shape-shifter. He paused almost imperceptibly, then shook his head regretfully.

  “You hesitated,” I said. “You know something.” Victor stopped in the doorway and reached back under his jacket.

  “No, no,” Ramsey said, panicking. “There was one thing I noticed, but it wouldn’t be any use to you. That’s why I didn’t say anything.” Victor and I waited, but he didn’t go on.

  “Well?” I prompted.

  “It’s about the sex. You know, we had a lot of sex.” He seemed half ashamed, half proud. “Well, it was pretty normal, nothing weird or kinky or anything.” Not unless you considered having sex with a homicidal shape-shifting monster kinky. “Anyway, she always got off.” Ramsey actually smirked as he said that. “And when she . . . ah, came, she made this funny noise. I guess it was the shape-shifter in her coming out.”

  “What noise?” Victor asked. I didn’t say anything. My throat had suddenly closed up.

  “A weird kind of trill. Almost like a hummingbird.”

  NINETEEN

  I WALKED OUT OF RAMSEY’S WITHOUT ANOTHER look at him. He had told me all I needed to know. A trill, he’d said. A goddamned trill. I was as creeped out as I’d ever been in my life. I might never have sex again.

  This explained why I hadn’t heard from Morgan. How foolish of me to have worried about her. She wasn’t at her parents’ house; she wasn’t out of state. She was holed up over at her lair in Bernal Heights, figuring out new and better ways to eliminate dangers to her existence like Victor and myself. And snacking on unfortunate acquaintances.

  That thought hit me full force. Morgan was dead, of course, probably killed at the same time as her beloved dog. When I’d shown up there, the shape-shifter had taken the form of Beulah. When I drove it off, it had circled back and reappeared at the front door as Morgan. The real Morgan, or parts of her, had probably been down in the basement all along.