Dead Silver

by Max Florschutz

  For a moment, it almost looked as if the hospital’s security guards would have to carry through on Morris’s threat. Hanks looked each of them over, his jaw clenched tightly and his hands forming such tight fists even I would have had trouble prying them open. Then he turned away and glared at me.

  “You’ll be sorry,” he said, his voice almost alarmingly quiet.

  And then he was gone, storming out of the hospital with enough bad blood trailing behind to fill all of Felix’s dead cows ten times over. The nurse let out a relieved sigh as she dropped back into her seat, hands shaking. Neither of the police officers took pains to hide their relief at the sheriff’s abrupt departure.

  “Did you—?” one of the security guards began to ask.

  “I meant every word,” Doctor Morris said, his words clipped and precise. “I want a memo sent to all staff immediately. Neither Sheriff Hanks nor his deputies are allowed onto hospital premises unless they are suffering from an injury or sickness that needs treatment. The only exception will be if they can provide a warrant. Nurse?”

  The woman behind the desk gave a small yelp as she realized the doctor was speaking to her, and she scrambled for a pen, papers sliding across the desk and falling to the floor. One of the officers bent to help her gather them up.

  “Should I mention the reason?” she asked.

  “No need,” Morris said, shaking his head. “Half the hospital heard that exchange, and the half that didn’t will know soon enough.” The nurse nodded as he turned back towards the hall. “Your friend will be out momentarily, Mr. Decroux,” he said as he began to walk away. “Please try to keep him from being beaten and left in the desert for the foreseeable future.”

  “I will,” I said as he vanished back into the hospital. I let out a sigh, noticing that my hand was still wrapped so tightly around my staff that my knuckles were white and my fingers had started to ache. I moved it to my other hand, forcing my digits to unclench and shaking my hand back and forth to get more blood into it. Apparently, I’d been a little more inflamed by Hanks’ comments than I’d thought.

  “You’re Hawke Decroux?” one of the officers asked. I nodded.

  “Sanchez mentioned you,” he said, holding out his hand. “We were actually waiting for you.”

  The hackles on the back of my neck went up. “Really?” I asked. “What for?”

  “Just to remind both you and Mr. Rocke to not leave town,” he said as I gave his hand a weak shake. “We’re pretty sure that neither of you have done anything wrong, but we don’t want to find out otherwise later. Plus, we might need your help again, too.”

  “Is that so?” a familiar voice asked as Rocke rolled into the room in a wheelchair, back in the same clothes I’d found him in, although someone had been kind enough to wash the blood and dirt off of them. “Worried we might skip town, huh?”

  “Well, you were attacked,” the officer said, stammering slightly. “If you would like us to arrange some sort of police protection—”

  “No thanks,” Rocke said, shaking his head. “No offense, but my job’s a lot easier without you guys breathing down my neck. You go ahead and keep investigating. I’ll keep my guard up.”

  “But …” The officer trailed off Rocke gave him a confident sort of half-grin. “Well, all right,” he said, giving him a shrug. “But neither of you leave town, all right? We’ll contact you if we find anything.”

  “You mean if you need anything,” Rocke said, nodding. “You’ve got my number.”

  “And mine,” I added as the officers turned towards me. “You should be able to reach one of us.”

  “All right,” the officer said, nodding as Rocke came to a stop in front of the desk and took a clipboard from the nurse, scrawling his signature out on the pages. “We’ll be in touch.”

  I watched the pair walk out before turning back to Rocke. “I hope you’ve got some energy,” I said as he finished signing and handed the clipboard back to the nurse. “We’ve got some serious stuff to go over.”

  “Can it wait until I’ve had a shower?” Rocke asked as the other nurse began to wheel him towards the front doors. “And maybe some breakfast?”

  “What? They didn’t feed you enough in here?” I asked, my good mood returning.

  “I skipped breakfast,” he said. “I wanted a non-hospital meal.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, my stomach making its own sympathetic twinge, “I could use a bite, myself. And while we do that, I can run you over last night’s development.” Apparently my face gave away a bit of my unease, because Rocke homed in on it like a bird of prey, his eyes narrowing.

  “What happened last night?” he asked, his tone leaving no option for anything but an answer. “Another attack?” His wheelchair came to a halt next to my Rover, and he stood, his eyes never leaving mine even as he thanked the nurse for her help.

  “Worse than just an attack. Felix lost a full grown cow,” I said as the nurse began to wheel the now empty chair away. “Not a calf this time, a full grown animal. And your rune hadn’t burned out, either. It was destroyed.”

  “Destroyed?”

  I nodded. “Clawed to shreds.”

  “All right,” Rocke said, his face grim as he opened the passenger door. “Tell me.”

  * * *

  “Good afternoon, this is the University cryptozoological department. How may I help you?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.

  “Yeah, hi,” I said, wishing my phone wasn’t tethered to the wall by its power cable. I wanted to get up and walk, stretch my legs a little. “I’m looking to speak with …” My eyes darted to the small pad of paper I’d scrawled the names and numbers on. “Dr. Hainsworth. Could you connect me to him?”

  “Dr. Hainsworth?”

  “Yes.”

  “One moment, let me connect you to her office.” I winced as I heard the tone in her voice.

  Whoops, I thought as the phone switched to some familiar hold music. I’d apparently struck a nerve with the secretary, but how was I supposed to know that Doctor Sam Hainsworth was a woman? It’s not like there were any pictures of her on the wiki.

  The hold music gave me some time to pull my thoughts back together. I was back at the motel room, waiting while Rocke showered, cleaned up and—as he’d put it—got “prepared for anything.” I had a feeling we wouldn’t be going through metal detectors very easily once he was ready.

  Our breakfast had been serious, quick, and to-the-point. Rocke had drilled me on every aspect of the events I’d seen that morning and on the case so far. If not for the food in front of me to split my focus, I probably would have ended the breakfast with a headache. As it was, I had felt slightly dazed by the time he’d finished pulling information out of me, both from the speed and from the amount of questions he’d asked.

  He’d had more, but I wasn’t able to answer them. Which left me with the job of trying to find those answers. Fortunately for today’s modern sleuths, most questions were never more than a quick internet search away, and what Google couldn’t answer, an expert could.

  Which was why I was waiting to speak with Doctor Hainsworth, one of the world’s foremost—and only—researchers on chupacabras.

  “Hello?” The voice pulled me away from my thoughts, and I struggled to come up with a response.

  “Ah, hello?” I said, and almost let out a groan. Wonderful response.

  “Yes, hello?”

  “Yes, hi! Is this Dr. Hainsworth?”

  “This is she, yes,” she said in a refined accent. “What can I help you with?”

  “Hi, Dr. Hainsworth,” I said, hating the words the moment they left my mouth. Smooth. “My name is Hawke Decroux. I’m doing a little research on chupacabras, and I’ve come upon some dead ends.” Much better. “I was wondering if you could help me by answering a few questions?” There was a faint pause on the other end of the line.

  “Well, I suppose,” came the eventual response. “As long as it doesn’t take too much time. Who do you work for
?”

  “I’m not from a magazine or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said. “I’m a freelance animal control officer.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m working a job that up until now, I was fairly certain was a chupacabra—”

  “Silver Dreams.”

  I paused. It hadn’t been a question. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact. How did you—?”

  “I make it my business to keep tabs on all chupacabra reports,” she said, and I nodded. Of course she would.

  “So you agree it’s a chupacabra?” I asked.

  “It would certainly fit, given the area’s history.”

  “Well, then, if you don’t mind, could I ask you a few questions about chupacabra physiology?” I asked. “There’ve been some odd events, recently.”

  “I suppose,” Hainsworth said, her voice still carrying a tinge of suspicion. “What would you like to know?”

  “How strong is a chupacabra?” I asked. “Compared to another creature of the same size?”

  “How strong?” she asked, surprise in her voice. “Well, fairly strong. They’re a burrowing species, after all. It’s what makes them so hard to catch.”

  “So they have quite a bit of strength for their size?”

  “Well, that depends on what you mean by ‘for their size,’” she said. “A chupacabra has a fairly developed musculature that gives it a robust amount of strength, but it doesn’t surpass a creature, say, two times its size.”

  “I see,” I said, lying through my teeth. I had no idea what I was supposed to compare that to, or even how. “So a chupacabra could exert quite a bit of cutting or tearing force with its claws then?”

  “Well, what kind of force are you looking at?”

  “The kind that would be required to claw through wood,” I said. “Say, to tear a chunk out of a wooden fence post.”

  “It’s certainly possible,” Hainsworth said, her tone somewhat skeptical. “Their claws are sharp, and they would need the strength to cut through roots and other such obstructions when burrowing. Could I ask why you chose a fence post?”

  “Because that’s what got chipped up at the site of our latest attack,” I said. “We had a spellrune designed to keep animals away, and it apparently took issue with it.”

  “Did it now?” I could hear excitement in her voice, although still laced with some skepticism. “Was this at a recent attack, or—”

  “This morning,” I said. “It took another cow from our client.” A pause.

  “I’m sorry, but did you say cow?” Hainsworth asked.

  “Yeah, I did,” I admitted.

  “Surely you mean a calf. A young animal.”

  “Well, it started that way, but they seem to have graduated now,” I said.

  “They?”

  “Well, based on what I know—which I understand isn’t much—a chupacabra can only hold two to three gallons of blood, at most.”

  “Two-point-four,” Hainsworth said reflexively.

  “Two-point-four, then,” I said. “Anyway, with everything that’s been getting hit here recently, I’ve been sort-of assuming that there had to be more than one chupacabra—”

  “Entirely possible.”

  “—possibly working as a group.”

  “Less likely. Such a thing has never been documented before.”

  “But it’s possible?” I asked.

  “Well—” There was a faint ruffling sound on the other end of the phone, as if she were shifting it around in her hands. “I suppose. You have to understand that the chupacabra is one of the rarest cryptozoological animals ever encountered. To date, there have been less than a hundred confirmed sightings, and even fewer have offered actual evidence past a footprint or a sample of some kind. Comparative research is somewhat lacking.”

  “Which is why I called you,” I said. “I wanted to get your opinion on what we’ve seen here so far.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  I paused for a moment as I considered the questions I’d planned to ask. I wanted to make the most of my time. I’d been lucky to even get her on the phone at such short notice, even more so that she was willing to talk. I decided to start with the basics.

  “How does a chupacabra feed?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How does a chupacabra feed?” I asked again. “What I’ve been able to find online is a little vague. I know they drink blood and store it internally, but past that there isn’t much available. For example, how does a chupacabra hunt, specifically?”

  Hainsworth drew in a breath, as if she was standing in front of a university classroom rather than speaking to me over the phone. “The chupacabra is a skittish predator, one of the reasons we know so little about them. Having never acquired a living specimen, much of the theory on how it hunts is subject to differing opinion. But based on what we understand of its physiology, we believe that chupacabras are nocturnal hunters who catch their prey while asleep.”

  “As for how it chooses its prey,” Hainsworth continued, “we aren’t exactly sure. Which is why when you say that your clients have lost an entire cow, I don’t see a precise reason to disbelieve you. In any case, once a chupacabra has chosen its prey, it approaches the target and numbs it with a fast-acting agent in their saliva. Once their prey is numb and unable to feel the incision, the chupacabra accesses a vein with its claws. They then lap up the blood, and their saliva acting as a paralyzing neurotoxin. From there, the chupacabra sucks the animal’s blood until either the prey dies or the chupacabra’s blood sacs are full.”

  “And the prey?”

  “Dies from blood loss, usually,” Hainsworth said. “Either the chupacabra feeds until there isn’t enough blood left to pump, or the prey dies, paralyzed, as its blood pumps from its neck. Either way, unless you catch it early enough to stop the bleeding, the animal dies.”

  “Does the chupacabra target a specific vein?” I asked, the cow’s neck wound fresh in my mind.

  “Not that we can identify,” Hainsworth said. “They seem to go for the external jugular veins most commonly, but recovered bodies have shown plenty of other locations.”

  “And what does the cut look like?”

  “It’s usually a small incision, more like a stab than anything else,” Hainsworth said. I frowned, wishing I’d seen some of the other attack results. That certainly didn’t sound like the cut I’d seen that morning.

  “Have there been cases of large openings?” I asked. “Like say, across the neck of a cow?”

  “No,” Hainsworth admitted. “But then, I’ve not heard of a chupacabra attacking something as large as a cow before, either. And you’re sure it was a chupacabra?”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t a vampire,” I said, rolling my shoulders as I leaned back in my chair, stretching the power cable to its full length. “And there wasn’t any blood left nearby. This cow was completely drained.”

  “It’s not the locals just putting you on?”

  “Bit of an expensive prank, isn’t it?” I asked. “Unless someone’s looking to make a lot of enemies in a small town, I think we can rule that one out.”

  “Well, as I said, it is possible that chupacabras could be working in a group, or have some sort of established pecking order. Just because it’s never been documented before doesn’t mean quite as much when your research field is so limited.”

  “Or,” she continued, her voice growing slightly more excited, “this is part of their mating procedure, and this is the work of a pair.”

  “Mating?” I asked, surprised. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me.

  “Well, yes. Chupacabras reproduce sexually,” Hainsworth said. “Of the three autopsies performed, two were male, and one was female. There’s been much speculation on how reproduction would ensue, with the relative scarcity of chupacabra sightings but—”

  “So this cow was the result of a chupacabra attack?” I asked, cutting her off.

  “Well, no, I can’t say that
,” she said. “At least, not with any degree of certainty. It could be. But it could also not be. All I’m offering are theories.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, offering another shrug she wouldn’t see. “We’re running on theories at the moment anyway.”

  “I understand,” she said with a concise laugh. “Believe me. You’ve just described my entire field.”

  “Do chupacabras operate in any sort of pattern?” I asked, my mind going back to the map I’d put together.

  “Aside from their hibernation cycle, none that we know of,” came the response. “Then again, most attacks are fairly isolated incidents over a span of a few weeks before the suspected hibernation period, and they seem to be based on opportunity. If you’ve found a pattern, then it’s new to me.”

  “Well, what about the blood?” I asked, having exhausted my previous angle, “Why blood?”

  “That’s what they eat.”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “No Unusual connection?”

  “None whatsoever,” she said, as if it were the most matter-of-fact detail in the world. “There have been some theories that a chupacabra’s thirst for blood is similar to a vampire’s in regards to being used as food, but their internal biology suggests that they digest the blood they drink, rather than cannibalizing it for nutrients like vampires.”

  “So it’s just a food source?”

  “So far as we can determine, yes.”

  “Alright then,” I said. “I have one last question for you. Have you ever encountered reports indicating that chupacabras might use magic of some kind while hunting?”

  “Magic?”

  “Yes,” I said. “More specifically, have any of the attacks you’ve studied carried any sort of magic scent?”