Season of Wonder

by Paula Guran

  I shrugged miserably.

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s scary, yes, the idea of evil appearing in our form, with our powers. It’s also a tremendous revelation. Gerry, it can tell us a lot about who we are, maybe more than the geneticists or the oracles can, and it can tell us about the nature of evil. It may even foretell the final battle against evil, Gerry. The one where we win. Who wouldn’t want to be present for that?”

  Her eyes were alight and her fangs peeked out with her excitement.

  I hated her for being excited, but at least that helped shake off the overwhelming emptiness I felt. Time to man up, Gerry. We’re still the good guys—

  It’s just that the bad guys had never looked like us before.

  I nodded. “Okay, you contact the family, and I’ll hit the Internet. Smith’s out there, and until we get a clue or a scent, we’re just gonna have to wait.”

  We exchanged a look. Sensing the presence of evil is one thing. Being able to find it before it acts is quite another. And the idea of evil in the form of a Fangborn was just plain terrifying.

  I went home, and no sooner opened the door than I was attacked by a mass of muscle and fur.

  “Beemer, get off!” I peeled the big, brown-striped tom off my shoulder and dumped him on the couch. As a kitten, Beemer jumping from the staircase railing onto me was impressive and cute as Hell. Now that he was in the fifteen-pound class, it was less amusing. To me, anyway. Beemer still thought it was a riot. But even he couldn’t cheer me up tonight.

  As I heated a shepherd’s pie I got over at Henry’s Market, I listened to the police scanner, but didn’t hear anything that would help. As Beemer washed himself on the leather couch next to me, I drank too much and flipped around the TV—a beaut, 40-inch plasma, with controls to put the Enterprise to shame—but there was nothing to keep my attention. Ditto the Internet and the new issue of Maxim. If you wanted proof that my kind are born, not made, just do the math: if we could turn normals, not a single lingerie model would be left unbitten. Trust me.

  Frustrated in every sense of the word, I didn’t drift off until just before the alarm rang.

  Groaning, I got up, dumped kibble into Beemer’s bowl, and hit the bricks, not because I had a lead, but because I had a headache worse than any hangover. The memory of evil left unchecked is one of the downsides of the job, and I didn’t even want to think about what Smith meant.

  I walked by Ziggy’s, but Annie wasn’t working. The day outside matched my insides: granite gray, cold, depressing. Even the telephone poles were decorated to suit my mood: the neighborhood was papered with missing pet flyers. I knew how I’d feel if Beemer ever went missing: it’d be a crappy Christmas for the kids worrying about Kitty-Cakes or Bongo or Maxie . . .

  Focus on the job, Gerry. Keep it together.

  Down by the Willows, I caught a faint scent. The Salem Willows is an amusement park, very small and dated. It’s mostly Whack-a-Mole and fried dough stands and rackety rides during the summer. In the winter, it’s a wasteland, boarded up and abandoned.

  It wasn’t abandoned now: Salem PD, state police, and the ME vans were there. My vision and hearing sharpened, and my olfactory nerves went crazy. Smith had been here, not long ago.

  Weems was also there. This time, he came right over to me.

  “Steuben. Been seeing a lot of you lately.” He only reaches my chin, and he’s kinda pudgy, so short-man syndrome never helped things between us.

  That’s why werewolves and vamps have such crappy reputations. The local authorities always notice us sniffing around crime scenes and figure we’re the bad guys.

  I sipped my coffee. “Been seeing a lot of you, too, Weems. Funny, huh?”

  “I ain’t laughing.” He crossed his arms. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for the guy at the hospital who knocked my sister around.”

  His face softened, just a little. “Your sister, she’s okay.”

  Suggesting I was not. “C’mon, Weems. I’m trying to catch an asshole here.”

  “And what’re we doing?” For an instant, I thought he’d either hit me or have a heart attack. He balled up his fists and turned a shade of red that would have made Santa’s tailors envious.

  “You know what I mean.” I tried to look desperate, no stretch, under the circumstances. “Man, come on. It’s Claudia.”

  The stories would have you believe that vampires are incredibly alluring. It’s true, they produce a pheromone that seems to make people around them comfortable, which helps vamps in their healing work. Add a good dose of empathy, and yes, vampires hold a definite attraction for normals, who think of it as sexual.

  Something about Claudia had long ago hit Weems hard, right between the eyes. She’d hate me throwing her under the bus like that, but if it got me past his defensiveness . . .

  I could see that Weems was torn, but he wasn’t going to pass up anything that made him look good in front of Claudia. “We got one vic, and it’s a wet one. Or it was, a couple of days ago: it’s pretty dried up now.” Weems looked greenish; he never could stand the sight of blood. “Chest sliced open . . . and the heart removed.”

  “Jesus.” I swallowed. “Got an ID?”

  “Homeless guy. My guess, he was either flopping in the shed over there, or he was lured in.”

  “You said sliced open?”

  “You’re a ghoul, Steuben.” He sighed. “ME says a big knife, it looks like. They need more tests.”

  I nodded. If there was one thing we could agree on, it was the reluctance of the ME to spill details.

  He hesitated. “The chest was opened up like . . . ah, jeez. It reminded me of one of those Advent calendars. The skin pulled back square, and the ribs broken to get the heart out.”

  Maybe he didn’t like me seeing him queasy, maybe he just regretted telling me as much as he did, but Weems’s face hardened. “Get lost, Steuben. I find you nosing around, you’ll be sorry.”

  “Merry Christmas to you, too, Weems.” I left.

  “They found a body,” I said, after I let myself into Claudia’s condo.

  Claudia was excited. “Yeah, I know, I just heard it on the news.” It was her day off and while Claud was waiting to hear something solid back from the family—who were going crazy over the news—she was trying to work out a profile for Smith. Maybe she was doing rote work for the same reason I was: to keep from thinking about our world being turned inside out. I still felt like I had the pins knocked out from under me and I hated that uncertainty.

  “Down the Willows?” I said, surprised. That was quick.

  “No, pulled from the harbor.” She frowned. “The woman had been in there about a week. They said ‘mutilated,’ which usually means something worse.”

  “So was mine.” I told her what I’d just learned from Weems. “They know who she was?”

  “A local prostitute, was all they said.”

  “There’s a chance it’s not the same guy, not our guy—” I said.

  “I’m not willing to bet on that.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “He’s selecting people on the periphery of society,” she said. “Going for those who live under the radar.”

  I considered where the trail had led me: the abandoned drug den, the dry spell in the emergency room, and—oh, Hell. Three missing cats in one neighborhood was just too much coincidence. I told Claudia. “I guess he’s been doing this for a while.”

  She nodded. “And is escalating. He’s refining his ritual, getting bolder, going for less vulnerable, more public targets. It’s typical that he started with animals.” The look on her face didn’t bode well for Smith when we caught him. “Gerry, it’s only going to get worse from here. I’m guessing that he’s attributing some special significance to the date—the full moon, Christmas . . . ”

  Suddenly, I knew. “It is Christmas,” I said. I told her Weems’s description of the corpse, what he’d said about Advent calendars. “Doesn’t that sound like what you�
�re talking about? Little, uh, treats leading up to the big day?”

  She nodded. “Right. Christmas. Good eyes on Weems.”

  I snorted. “He’s my hero.” But Christmas was just two days away. “My question is, Why did Smith have to call a cab?”

  “He didn’t have a car,” she answered promptly. “Weems brought him in, right?”

  I made a face at her. “But if Smith is responsible for the murders, he must have a car.”

  “He can’t afford to let it go out in public. Too many people could see . . . what?”

  “Bloodstains? Cracked window?”

  “Too recognizable,” she said. “A truck with a business logo on it, contractors, deliveries—”

  “Right, it’s got to blend in, but not the sort of thing you’d drive for private stuff.” I thought a minute, then an idea hit me. “Like a police car. Maybe it isn’t Smith! Maybe it’s Weems!”

  “Gerry. Get real. Weems is your bête noir, and he’s a dickhead, but he’s not our guy.”

  “He was at the hospital.” I ticked off my reasons on my fingers, loving that Smith might just be a garden-variety psycho, his trail confused by Weems. “He was at the donut shop. He’s been dogging my tracks all day, and every time I saw him, I felt the call to Change.”

  “All places you’d expect to see a cop investigating the same case as we are. Have you ever wanted to Change because of Weems before now?” She put her hand on mine; it was warm as toast. “I know you don’t like him, but you’re getting distracted by this. You’ve always been so damned sure about everything—”

  That was the problem: I couldn’t be sure about anything anymore if Smith was Fangborn.

  I pulled away. “I don’t think so. I think you were picking up on his vibes, the same time you were dealing with some ordinary, run-of-the-mill loony, and that’s why you thought it was Smith.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “Weems has nothing to do with this. I think you want it to be Weems so you don’t have to consider that there might be an evil out there we haven’t seen before. I get it, Ger: you want things to be cut-and-dried. But now we know . . . it can’t be like that.”

  “Whatever.” I turned away.

  “Don’t dismiss me, Gerry.”

  You know about that traditional conflict between werewolves and vampires? It’s really just a sibling thing.

  “Claudia, just because—”

  “Sssh!” Claudia was pointing to the TV.

  The news was on. A school bus, its driver, and six kids were missing from their daycare center.

  “Okay,” I said, “we’ve got the fake address at the Point, a murder at the Willows, a body in the harbor. Throw in the missing pets, and we have someone with a familiarity with the waterfront. That’s a couple of big neighborhoods to cover.”

  “He needs space, and he needs a place where people won’t hear . . . screams.” Claudia was looking at the map spread out in front of us. “He’s sticking with what’s familiar to him, which is good for us, but he’s also an organized psychopath, which is bad.”

  “The houses are too close together, here and here,” I said, pointing out two neighborhoods. “That leaves the warehouses in the industrial park down at the Point and the coal plant down here.” I pointed to a neighborhood that was near, by water, but on the other side of town, by land.

  “A school bus is going to stick out in either place,” Claudia said. “Is he going to take them out to sea?”

  “If he is, we’re pretty well screwed,” I said. “Protective coloring— where can you take six crying kids and a school bus where no one will notice?”

  We looked at each other, then simultaneously at one of the neighborhoods we had just rejected. A short distance from my own house, separated by large parking lots and a playing field, was the middle school, now empty for the holidays.

  It’s not that we need the moon to shift, though that helps. It’s easier to run around as a wolf when there aren’t many people around. It’s easier to pick up a faint trail with the dust settled from the day. It’s not that we need the moon, but somehow, it makes it easier for me, the same way the sun takes the poison out of vamps like Claudia. You’d have to talk to our scientists who are working out exactly how we Fangborn work, but if you think of it like a vulture’s bare head helping to kill the bacteria they pick up, or photosynthesis, taking nutrients from the sunlight, that’s probably close. All I know is that Claudia couldn’t taste the blood and clean it, cauterize the wound, and numb the memory without sunlight to charge her up. And in the same way—don’t ask me how, I’m not one of the geeks—I get recharged by the moon.

  Plus, lots of bad guys also wait for night to work. Makes it easier on us all.

  The moon was full and low on the horizon as we parked down the street from the school. We ran down the plan again: check the school and then call the cops if we find anything.

  Simple, if we were right. If we weren’t already too late.

  “Got the gear?” I asked Claudia.

  She nodded, held up the leash—her excuse for being out with a very large dog—and a charged cell phone. As for me, while I hate what people inflict on their pets—birthday parties, pedicures, Halloween costumes—I will always be grateful for the dog-clothing craze. And grateful to the guy who invented stretch fabrics: my Lycra doggie track suit makes it a heck of a lot easier if I have to Change back to human and don’t want to be buck-naked.

  Claudia doubled the knots on her bootlaces, tied her hair back, and we went into the schoolyard.

  The bus was there, all right, on the side, cold and silent as an empty grave. Sure, school was out and it was night, but who notices a school bus outside a school? The schoolyard had been badly plowed, so there were no clear tracks, but it only took me a minute to find the basement door they’d used, the lock broken.

  The reek hit me as soon as we got the door open. This time, I didn’t resist the Change.

  The rush of adrenaline and endorphins and other hormones blotted out whatever pain shrieking bones forced through evolutionary growth in an instant might bring. Nature wouldn’t be so cruel as to put this burden on us without compensation. The bloodlust didn’t hurt, either, and it was only Claud’s warning hand on my back that reminded me not to howl with the delight of it.

  Smith’s spoor was worse than any I’d ever smelled, overwhelming the traces of new linoleum, old wax, and textbooks. It was nearly unbearable to my lupine nose, but one thought, a bloodthirsty, simple joy, cleared of all human doubt and fear, overwhelmed even that:

  It was time to track and to tear.

  I stepped out of my boots and glanced up at Claud, who was down on one knee; the reek was hitting her just as badly. It was always harder for her; vamps don’t have the same chemical buffer that protects wolves. Her skin took on a violet cast visible even in the shadows, and her eyes were wide and bright. Her facial features broadened, her nose receded, and her fingers lengthened.

  She stood up, shook herself, and nodded. As she packed my boots into her backpack, I saw the gleam of her viperish fangs extending, the glint of a streetlight on the fine pattern of snakescale, an armor of supple, thickened skin. Snakes have always been associated with healing and transformation—there’s a reason they’re on the staff of Asclepius—but they’ve got a rep for danger, too.

  I whined and stared at her neck. Her hand went up, and she found the pearls she’d forgotten to take off.

  “Thankths,” she said, with a slight hiss. Still largely humanoid, fangs and a forked tongue make speech awkward, but not impossible. She stowed the necklace in her bag, and nodded.

  I led the way, as stealthy as a shadow. I cast around, stopped, panted, and tried again, but with no luck. There was no one single track to pick up. Smith’d been here long enough for the basement to be so saturated with his stench that I could barely breathe.

  I couldn’t detect the children. I hoped we weren’t too late.

  Claudia nodded. She pointed at the first door, and we both l
istened. Nothing.

  She tried it; locked solid.

  The next was an unlocked closet. The stink was there, too, but less. The bus driver was stashed in there. There was a pulse, faint and fading.

  Claudia fanged down, called 911. We continued.

  The next door opened silently; I could smell WD-40 recently applied to the hinges. No way to tell Claud, but she pointed to the duct tape across the lock, and I nodded. We went in.

  The children were there. Even under Smith’s foulness, I could tell they were alive. I felt a surge of delight.

  They were drugged, only half-awake; a light on the playground offered just enough illumination for a normal to see forms without detail. My nose told me of full diapers, fear, and baby shampoo.

  Smith was nowhere around. We went quietly, just in case.

  “Hang on,” Claudia said. She Changed back about halfway, just enough to keep her powers on deck, but not so far that the first thing the kids saw was a pale purple lady with no nose and very big teeth.

  She went over to them quickly. “Hey, you guys? Let’s get you fixed up and we’ll get you home, okay? My dog Chewie is going to do some tricks for you. He’s really big, but he’s really, really friendly. Chewie, come!”

  That was my cue. I knew to play it dumb and sweet over in the faint light so the kids would focus on me. That way, they’d be less afraid and they wouldn’t notice Claudia practicing her leech-craft. I spend my time fighting evil, not practicing party tricks, but whenever I fell over, the kids laughed, so it was okay. And as soon as Claudia got one kid untied, her razor nails dancing scalpels over the duct tape, I was there, his new best friend, and they were so busy patting me they forgot to be afraid. Under the guise of inspecting their wounded hands, she got to work, biting their wrists, narcotizing the pain, neutralizing their terror, sucking out Smith’s drugs, dimming their memories. I could sense her body reacting to the blood and emotion she was taking in, her muscles rippling, nearly all trace of humanity lost from her features even as she healed the little ones.