“Cats?”
“Yes, Siamese cats. In fact…”
A fat, lazy cat with the classic seal coloring and brown boots loafed atop the seller’s desk.
“But you’re here about my rock collection. Two of my treasures in particular. Two very special ones.”
Hugh nodded. The man waved him toward a chair set on the other side of the acre of rosewood desk. Hugh’s gaze met the cat’s. He was unaware that he’d stopped blinking until his eyes began to burn. When he looked again, the cat had transformed into a wolf—an enormous wolf with a blood-soaked mouth.
Hugh jolted up, unable to trap the scream in his throat or behind his teeth. He was there again, in Thailand, but also in the shadow of the tower in Stanhope, Connecticut. Both. Neither. As his eyes focused, he found himself in an unfamiliar room with industrial beige walls and windows cloaked in vertical blinds. He was in a hospital bed.
Sweat poured. An intravenous pump hissed as it delivered fluids and medication into his bloodstream. Despite perspiring, a chill settled over his flesh. Hugh glanced down to see the hospital gown covering his torso. A quick peak beneath it and the blanket showed that he was naked apart from his socks.
Movement drew his focus to the door. A short, round man in navy blue hospital scrubs entered the room.
“Good morning, Mister Monroe,” the man said.
“Morning?”
His nurse fiddled with the intravenous pump before opening the medical report on a stand, set beside a plastic box filled with tape and other medical supplies. “How are you feeling?”
“Confused.”
“I’ll bet. You’re at Stanhope Valley Hospital. My name is Juan. I’ll be your waiter during your visit to Chez SVH.”
Juan attempted to check Hugh’s pulse. Hugh pulled away and massaged his forehead.
“The police brought you in last night. You were admitted through our E.R. You don’t remember?”
Juan made a second attempt at taking Hugh’s pulse. This time, Hugh permitted it.
“No, what I remember is…” He glanced around the room. “My things?”
Juan tipped his chin toward the room’s locker-style closet. “Two bags. Don’t worry about your cell phone—the police brought that in with you.”
Hugh sighed.
“We’ve got a lot of questions that need answers, Mister Monroe,” Juan said.
Hugh absorbed the nurse’s words. Answers? The ones Hugh had involved ex-soldiers with glowing eyes and murderous wolves.
“Can I have some water?” he asked.
The nurse wheeled over a tray table and then presented him with a pink plastic pitcher and a cup. Hugh poured the cup full of crushed ice and water and sipped. The glorious, brisk rush down his throat brought him fully out of his sluggishness and helped him to think.
“Better?” Juan asked.
“Almost. I need a moment to catch my breath.”
“Sure. But when I come back, I expect to hear you dish.”
Hugh made an underhand snap with his free hand. “You got it, girlfriend.”
Juan tittered on his way out of the room. As soon as the door closed, Hugh pushed the tray table aside, swept back the covers, and lowered the bedrail. Standing, he disabled the IV pump by switching it off. Then, steeling himself, he worked the tape off of his skin and pulled the intravenous needle out of his flesh.
He found a gauze square among the medical supplies in the plastic box and slapped a haphazard bandage over his punctured arm vein. Arm. The image of blood exhumed the memory of what he’d witnessed before lights out—the severed arm, the tattoo. Hugh muttered a swear beneath his breath and reached for his medical report.
Scanning the documents, it dawned on him that his bare butt was hanging exposed. Hugh ripped off the hospital gown and rounded the bed. In the closet were his duffel and messenger bags, his shoes, jacket, and phone. He pulled on fresh boxer-briefs, jeans, and a T-shirt. Shoes next and then jacket, he pocketed his cell and checked his wallet. The rest could be replaced.
On his way toward the door, Hugh again scanned the first page of the hospital document.
“Brought in by Officer Olivia Upton,” he read aloud.
Hugh closed the report and opened the door.
***
The police building was only a degree brighter than the surrounding landscape it occupied. Hugh guessed that Stanhope, like a lot of former factory cities on the East Coast, was presently struggling through a decline, attempting to hold on as it redefined itself. A sign on the door read: K9 Unit Headquarters.
He opened the door and entered a stuffy vestibule that smelled of the enduring winter grit tracked inside on shoes. A woman stood guard on the other side of a bank teller’s window. She pressed the intercom when Hugh approached.
“Can I help you?”
“Olivia Upton, please.”
“I’m sorry, but she’s unavailable,” the woman said, though by her tone and dour expression the gatekeeper hardly appeared too bent out of shape over his situation.
“Look,” Hugh said. “I need to see her. My name’s Hugh Monroe, and she—”
“She’s unavailable. Is there someone else you’d like to speak to?”
“Yeah,” Hugh said.
He paced the small reception area, aware of the grit beneath his shoes, the scratch in his throat. His legs and spine ached. The sense of frustration nearly overwhelmed him. He was in an unfamiliar city, had bartered a stranger’s money away on rare geological specimens, and, last night…
The door to the station’s inner sanctum released with an electronic buzzing sound. Hugh glanced up to see a tall man dressed in street clothes enter the reception area. He wore a scowl, appeared bad-ass—a seasoned vet of the Stanhope police force, Hugh guessed.
“Mister Monroe?” the man asked.
Hugh nodded and extended his hand. The man shot a look down at the offer before accepting and shaking with the kind of strength capable of shattering bones.
“You’re the guy they found up near the tower,” the policeman said. “Guilty.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at Stanhope Valley?”
“Also guilty, but I’m feeling better,” Hugh lied. “Look, can we talk somewhere more formal, Detective-?”
“Foley. Sure, come on.”
He instructed the receptionist to buzz them back in. She did. As soon as Hugh stepped through the door, he felt trapped. Foley’s cologne had been splashed on by the gallon, as though meant to disguise some other stink. The station house beyond was a jumble of desks, all of them unoccupied, each one laden with case files and clutter.
“Where’s the K9 unit?” Hugh asked, sure he could smell wet dog among the dregs of stale coffee and men’s cologne.
Foley laughed. “You’re about a month too late.”
Detective Foley waved Hugh toward a chair set before one of those cluttered desks. Hugh reluctantly sat, wondering at the seat’s numerous prior occupants.
“A month?” he parroted.
“The last service dog, Tiggs, died in the line of duty at the start of February.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Foley made no show of emotion as he took his seat on the other side of the desk. “What can I help you with, Mister Monroe?”
Hugh drew in a deep breath and regretted it. Foley’s stink was inside him now. “Okay, I know this is gonna sound strange, but I saw something last night up near that tower.”
Foley fixed him with a look through slitted eyes. “What sort of thing?”
Hugh exhaled. “It’s bat-shit psycho, what I’m about to tell you, I know. I got attacked by two men, only…”
“I’m waiting,” Foley said, his impatience clear.
“They weren’t men.”
“What are you doing in town, Mister Monroe? And why were you at the tower?”
“Look, there’s no way that this doesn’t sound criminal, but it isn’t. At least I don’t think so. I was hired to deliver rare rock specimens. These men jumped
me.”
“Specimens?” Foley repeated. “Plural?”
“And then this woman showed up. Beautiful woman.”
“What did she look like?”
“Blonde. Buck naked. I swear—”
The intercom on Foley’s desk chirped. It took a repeat performance to get the detective to break focus with Hugh. Foley answered.
“What?” he snapped.
“Sir, can you come out to reception?”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“It’s kind of an emergency.”
Foley rose. “Don’t move. I’m interested in hearing more.”
Hugh already sensed the little he’d revealed was a mistake. The way Foley listened and reacted conjured gooseflesh beneath the sleeves of his jacket.
Specimens—plural.
He’d left one of the rocks—the smaller—hidden in a cleft in the tree’s trunk, as insurance. The two demon-men had only taken the larger sample. And funny how much Foley smelled like them, looked like them: tall, athletic, military. Hugh cursed himself and swept a glance left in search of another way out of the station. Then right.
The blonde woman had moved directly beside him with the stealth and silence of a ghost. Hugh jolted and swore, nearly spilling out of the chair.
She leaned closer, raising a finger to her lips, a warning for silence. Hugh hastily absorbed her image. She was even more beautiful up close, and as lovely clothed as bare. And what she was clothed in was a form-fitting police uniform in colors of slate gray and royal blue.
“Come with me. Hurry,” she said, and started away from Foley’s desk.
Hugh jumped up and followed through a door at the back of the room that had been hidden by a row of lockers, then down a long corridor. The course turned right past an empty kennel area, more desks, and toward an exit sign.
The woman pushed through the door. A blast of frigid air swept in, cooling Hugh’s face. A police cruiser was parked outside. Its paint matched the color scheme of the blonde woman’s uniform.
“Get in,” she said.
Hugh reached for the front passenger door’s handle. He wedged in beside the cruiser’s laptop mount.
“Who are you?” Hugh asked.
The woman started the cruiser then gunned the gas. They raced away from the station and onto the streets of Stanhope.
“Officer Olivia Upton,” the woman said. “I’m the one who sent you in search of those precious rocks.”
***
The radio squawked. The officer switched it off and drove on. In the tense silence that followed, Hugh realized he’d escaped one kind of prison for another.
“Not much of a K9 unit back there,” he said, shattering the pall.
“There used to be. We were just starting to make a difference.”
Choking down a painful swallow, Hugh faced her. “What does a police woman in a Connecticut K9 unit need with rocks from the moon?”
She glanced over, her eyes filled with what he identified as a mix of fear and hopelessness. “What does it matter now? They took them. I’m driving you back to the train station. Get away from Stanhope and never come back here.”
Hugh shut his eyes and remembered. Beautiful naked woman. Wolf. Officer Olivia Upton. Even febrile, he could think clearly enough to understand that she projected none of the malevolence he’d picked up radiating off those men with the demon eyes and cologne stink—and Foley.
“They didn’t get all of them,” Hugh said, and opened his eyes. “I hid one, near the tower.”
“What?” she gasped.
Hugh looked over to see a measure of hope had blossomed in the woman’s eyes.
“Tell me,” Hugh said. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“Djinn,” she said. Hugh shrugged. “Also known as a genie.”
“You mean like magic lamps and carpet rides?”
“Nothing so cartoonish. Supernatural creatures from Arabic mythology. We got word that a new criminal powerhouse had landed in Stanhope, unlike anything else that had blown through the city before. They were former private security, had gone overseas to the Middle East, got involved in the dirtiest deals, got changed,” she said. “My team did our best to stop them.”
“The K9 unit?”
She rolled her neck at an angle. “K9, yes, but more than just that.”
“The wolf,” Hugh said. “That was you.”
Olivia nodded. “Like I said, more than just a K9 unit. A Lycan unit. But they’ve been dismantling us. There’s a leak in the department.”
“Foley’s one of them?”
“Yes.”
Conflicting flickers of heat and ice fought for control of Hugh’s flesh as he processed the information. A febrile hallucination, a bad dream—only the cruiser was real, as were the tender spots along his spine, Olivia, and the looming tower, now visible through the windshield.
“Why do you need those moon rocks?” Hugh asked.
“The Djinn are at their most powerful at night but vulnerable during the day,” she said. “If I can stop them during sunlit hours…”
She parked the car alongside the curb. They got out.
“Show me,” Olivia said.
Hugh fast-marched around the tower and toward the tree, which didn’t look any less sinister in the daylight. He rounded the tree, found the cleft in the trunk, and located the smaller of the two moon rocks. He fished it out of its hiding place.
“The six Apollo missions to the moon returned with 2,415 samples of rock. You’re looking at one of them,” Hugh said. “This sample was likely given as a gift to a foreign diplomat.”
The policewoman touched it. “Are you sure it’s the real deal?”
“Olivine basalt, sure. Why?”
“Because I don’t feel anything, like at night when the moon’s out. I should, if the theory works.”
“And what’s the theory?”
“That moonlight is only reflected sunlight, so if this moon rock reflects the sun’s light during the day, I should—”
“She should be able to do that little circus trick of hers that she picked up over in Europe after getting bit by the cursed wolf,” a man’s voice interrupted.
They spun around to face three men, Foley among them. The speaker was the same brute that had made off with the other sample of lunar rock. All three had drawn their side arms.
Olivia made a reach for her gun. The brute warned her against it.
“I’ll take that,” Foley said. He pulled the moon rock out of Hugh’s hand. “Not that it works.”
The lead brute smiled. “It was a clever strategy, but it failed. And now it’s time to end this, out of sight. The tower.”
Foley stored his sidearm and grabbed hold of Hugh’s collar. The other man reached for Olivia and strong-armed her away from the tree, toward the tower’s closed doors. Once taken inside, Hugh knew that they were both dead.
The moon rock’s acrylic case glinted in the bald March daylight. Hugh’s mind raced, and then focused. All of the lunar samples returned to Earth in the Apollo missions had arrived in special environmental containers to protect them from contamination. Same deal with the coating of acrylic, he reasoned.
They reached the tower. The brute gripped the padlock and snapped it off using only his fingers. Again, Hugh inhaled the too-heavy stink of cologne. Maybe the men were rotting from the inside as part and parcel of their deal with the Djinn. One hard shove and the doors parted. Darkness oozed beyond the threshold.
“No,” Hugh said.
He reached out, seized the acrylic case, and pivoted away from Foley, driving the rock sample into the tower’s outer wall. A sound like breaking glass tore from between his fingers. The pieces tumbled. Hugh fell with them. He scrambled for the sliver of lunar rock, located it among the shards of acrylic, and took aim—first at the sun and then Olivia.
A mad hound’s howl roared up into the daylight sky. At that instant, Foley was leaning down, his hand on Hugh’s skull, as though the detective me
ant to pick him up by his hair. Then Foley was dragged off him and into the shadows inside the tower, and the man briefly shrieked before his voice cut out in a sharp, wet note.
Hugh stared into the darkness, aware of the liquid gurgle of strangulated cries and fast movement among the shadows.
He held the moon rock before him like a talisman. Getting back to his feet took the last of his energy and will. Hugh stepped inside the no-man’s land. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the mangled bodies, Olivia’s among them.
“God, no,” he gasped, and moved to the downed officer’s side.
The body was a husk. A second after picking it up, Hugh realized that it was only part of her police uniform, discarded across the dank floor.
“Hugh?” Olivia asked in a weak voice.
He tracked over to her. The transformation had been brief, and she was again in human form, on all fours, naked. Hugh pocketed the moon rock beside his cell phone, whipped off his jacket, and covered her.
“You okay?” he asked.
Hugh helped her to stand the rest of the way and held her against him when her legs threatened to give out. “I think so. Yeah, now that I know it worked.”
Hugh glanced down at the bodies and body parts left in gory, bleeding piles.
“Oh yes, it worked,” he said, and caught himself smiling.
***
The new service dog’s name was Izzie, and she’d been trained in the usual duties: sniffing out drugs, helping in search and rescue missions, and to aid in the apprehension of suspected criminals.
Hugh patted Izzie’s head, not caring if it was against the rules.
“Have you considered my offer?” asked Olivia.
Hugh rose from his crouch beside the newest addition to the team. “Joining your Lycan unit? Won’t ‘geologist’ look suspicious on the books?”
“Special Investigator,” Olivia corrected. “I could really use you.”
Hugh met the woman’s eyes and again allowed himself to be seduced. She was beautiful—the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
“I have a lead,” he said. “Stuff the Soviets brought back during their three Luna missions to the moon. How about I start there?”
Morbid Metamorphosis Page 28
