"Anything unusual. What makes him a beast? What's become of the man inside? What precisely are we dealing with here? I want you to take some venom from--"
"Venom! That's it. There was a toxin in the old people which I couldn't identify, like a snake's venom--paralyzes prey."
"And when the creature doesn't feed on its prey, the paralysis wears off, but the venom remains in the system, turning a normal man into a madman and killer and what you see before you now."
"A werewolf..."
"You see the importance of keeping him alive, don't you, Lou?"
Cage considered this a moment. "If there are others ... yes, we must track them down."
"And destroy them. They're not benign creatures, and if their population is on the rise, accounting for the many bigfoot sightings all over that area ... well, you see the danger Kerac placed this entire city in."
"But you found him. How did you do it, Abe?"
"The curse again..."
"Not a curse this time. Thank God for your gift, Abe; no telling how many lives you've saved. McMasters can choke on that."
The door burst open and Stroud thought he'd find the affable Bob Arnold, but when he turned, his light illuminated the faces of Anna More, McMasters and several uniformed policemen, the blue-suits with their guns pulled and pointed at Stroud, Cage and, in the backdrop, the wild man, Kerac.
"Now we got your ass, Stroud," said McMasters nastily. "We got your whole damned scam on tape. Room was bugged, pal!"
"Are you crazy, McMasters!" shouted Cage. "You should be thanking this man. He's stopped Kerac from killing again where you failed."
Behind the crowd strode a huge man with white hair in a three-piece suit. Stroud recognized Police Commissioner Aaron Burns. Burns had worked on a case in close connection with Stroud in the past, and Stroud was glad to see him.
"Where is this thing?" said Burns, ignoring the others and stepping close to the cage. "Put a light on it." Burns was always gruff, always anxious to cut to the core of things.
"Careful," said Stroud. "You get too close, and he'll take an arm off or bite a hole in your face."
Burns was paralyzed, however, as the light played over the thing in the corner of the cell. A big man, Burns blocked the view of the others. Anna More went to the far side of the cage. She, too, seemed mesmerized by the monster.
"Do you really expect anyone to believe that this thing was once a man?"
"Commissioner Burns," said Stroud, "Kerac is it. It is Kerac, and there it stands."
He turned, shaken; he looked deeply into Stroud's eyes. "This man changed into an animal?"
"Yes, Aaron, from all we can deduce--"
"And you suspect there are others?"
"That is a possibility."
"And you want to study him, and eventually release him?"
"That's madness!" shouted McMasters.
"Quiet, Mac!" said Burns. He took Stroud aside. Stroud's attention was half on Anna Laughing More, however, as she was still frozen in place, staring at what remained of Kerac. Kerac made a plaintive cry, heart-wrenching, like an animal caught in a trap. Stroud wanted to go to Anna, put an arm around her, steady her, but Burns was in his face.
"You're sure ... absolutely sure?"
"My instincts tell me so, and the evidence supports it."
"What evidence?"
Lou Cage piped in. "Forensics, sir, points to the strong possibility there are others of them."
"Where?"
"Wooded areas north of Grand Rapids would be our target area," said Stroud.
"Do you have any idea how this would read in an official report, Stroud? What the papers would do with it?"
"Yes, sir ... I think so."
McMasters pushed forth. "I say we gas the damned thing the way we would a rabid dog. Now."
"McMasters!" shouted Burns. "Consider it out of your hands."
"What?" He was incredulous. Stroud himself was a little surprised that Burns was taking his side. "But, sir!"
"Wait outside," he told McMasters firmly, and the other man grumbled but left. Burns called out after him, "And not a word of this to anyone."
Burns then took Stroud further from the others, Stroud glancing back at Anna, who still stared into the cage. Burns said in his ear, "There's been another report out of a small town north of Grand Rapids, report of some sort of mutilation in triplicate. A farmhouse attacked. Everyone destroyed in the same manner as Kerac's victims. Yet Kerac is here in custody..."
"I see."
"Just got it fresh an hour ago. McMasters knows nothing about it; he's been up all night searching for what you have aptly brought under control, Abe." His tone changed in the darkened room. "I think your plan is the best chance we have. Take Lou Cage, and whoever else you need, and whatever assistance the CPD can give. You just contact me, understood?"
Cage, leaning in to hear, said, "Thanks for asking, Commissioner."
Burns shook Stroud's hand, grasping with both his own in the gesture of a man running for office, but in Burns' case, the gesture was genuine. "We're all counting on you, Dr. Stroud."
"Wish I had as much confidence in myself."
"You're the man for this job. Keep me posted, and contact me for anything you may need."
"Will do."
"All right!" Burns shouted to the uniformed cops around the room. "Everyone out. Let Dr. Stroud get to work." He stopped at the door and turned and said to Anna More, "And very nice to have met you, Chief More."
She said nothing; she just stared down at the hairy creature balled up in its cage, wooden-looking toenail-claws extended like an angry cat. Burns disappeared, leaving Cage and Stroud to deal with Anna Laughing More.
Anna pulled away from Stroud's touch. "We should kill him here and now, like McMasters says!" she shouted. "Put him from his misery! Are you forgetting that there is a human being in there?" She backed up, lifted her gun and aimed and fired just as Stroud grabbed her wrists, diverting the shot aimed at Kerac's head.
The gunshot ricocheted off the cinder-block wall with a deafening scream and spat to a halt somewhere the other side of the room where Cage cursed, "Sonofabitch!"
Stroud wrenched the weapon from her and she slapped him. "That's enough, Anna!"
"This is wrong," she cried, "inhuman!"
"He's our only link to the others."
She began to cry, going for the door. He pursued her and turned her around. In the dark, their eyes met. "I understand how you feel--"
"Do you?" she asked. "If that were someone you once cared for?"
"We need Kerac alive for now."
"And should he escape you?"
"Cage is going to put a transmitter on him. When we release him, we'll know his every move."
"You've got it all worked out, then. Every detail. He's just a specimen to you now."
"It's not like that, Anna."
"I wish I could believe you."
"Burns didn't tell you about the new attack?"
"What new attack?"
"I suppose he figured your people contacted you from Merimac, but there's been a fresh kill, another family ... north of Grand Rapids."
"Coincidence," she said lamely, her eyes filled with doubt.
"Maybe ... but then, perhaps the old Indian man was right. Maybe there are others like Kerac--a whole army of them. It would account for the slaughtered livestock, Anna."
She said nothing, shaking her head, not wanting to believe.
"That's why we need him alive. If it's any comfort, I don't think there's anything left of Kerac inside this thing. I get no sensations or feelings from him than those of a purely instinctive beast."
"Creature comfort," Cage said a bit glibly. "No moral compunction, no ethical problems to solve, just feed."
"Any chance Kerac has is in Cage's hands," said Stroud.
"Me?" asked Cage.
"If we can extract the venom, perhaps some sort of antidote could be found."
"Whoa, Stroud. Isolating the venom, finding a cure, could take
forever."
"Don't you think he's suffered enough?" she asked.
Stroud squeezed her hands in his. "No, not yet, I'm afraid."
"Your plan could take a long time. I won't be a party to it. I ... I will be returning to Merimac."
"I see."
"There I will tell them that Kerac was captured and killed."
"You..." Stroud hesitated. He didn't want her to leave this way. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. It's time I got back ... and removed myself from this. When ... if ... you return to Michigan with your werewolf hunting party, call me. I will want to be there."
"Anna," he said, holding firm to her hand, "I will miss you."
She said nothing, dropping her eyes and rushing out.
-13-
Several days and nights passed with Kerac firmly in place in Abraham Stroud's mansion, in Andover, Illinois. Cage had extracted blood and venom samples from the creature before leaving Chicago, and now the results were in and Cage sat in the huge drawing room, explaining the results as best he might to Stroud. Below them, in a room that was once a torture chamber of sorts, at the heart of the old manse, Kerac enjoyed the accommodations less than he had the police pound where they first met. Whenever the eyes inside the creature's head fell on Stroud, they filled with murderous rage.
Stroud's mansion in Andover, Illinois, had been left to him along with a fortune in family funds by his grandfather, who had spent his life as a shrewd businessman by day, a vampire killer by night. The dark, old stone mansion with its wrought-iron gates and bars across the windows had survived the Civil War, and more recently a war with vampires. Evidence of destruction was being obliterated by the army of repairmen Stroud continued to employ.
Andover was providing a quiet, out-of-the-way place to keep Kerac in captivity and out of sight. Meanwhile, the tests went ahead. Kerac's cell was monitored twenty-four hours a day via remote cameras. The film was sifted for any changes in him, particularly any changes back to his former self. There had been none.
"He's been totally taken over by the beast," Stroud told Cage. "Not once has he reverted."
"So much for the myth," said Cage. "Lon Chaney, he isn't."
"And your findings?"
Stroud and Cage shared a plate filled with meats and breads and cheeses as well as their wine. "Afraid I'm going to destroy a few other illusions we have about werewolves, Abe."
"Destroy away."
"Well, the blood is thick with animal red corpuscles, quite similar to a dog's, coyote's, or wolf's, and genetically that thing you have downstairs is a wolfman. Human genes disfigured by those of a wolf. Massive changes at the cellular level ... accounts for the shape-changing. Quite Jekyll-and-Hyde-like at first, but then Hyde won over completely, as you say."
"Then he ... it's no longer human?"
"Not in a biological sense."
"What sense, then?"
"He may retain some human characteristics, cognitive skills--"
"He still thinks human thoughts?"
"I would hazard a guess, yes."
"What kind of human thoughts are we talking about? Home, family, kids?"
"Survival."
"Just glad Anna isn't here to hear this."
Cage nodded. "I second the motion. She'd start shooting again." Cage filled his mouth with food.
"What about the venom? You said you had isolated the paralytic properties."
"Form of curare--"
"But that's a plant toxin."
"Tubocurarine chloride, Abe. He somehow manufactures it in that primitive brain. It renders a man helpless, paralyzed; unfortunately, the victim is quite aware of his surroundings, just unable to move."
"For how long?"
"Depends on the dosage. Enough and it'd kill a man."
Stroud shook his head, went to a large window and stared out through the bars there. "Strange, you'd think it'd kill him if it was in his system."
"Only way to determine how he gets it from the brain to his teeth, or fangs, rather, is a dissection."
"Out of the question. We need him, Lou, alive. What about an antitoxin?"
"You're asking the impossible, but that stuff we gave him to keep him calm may hold some promise. Seems to short-circuit the venom. If we can boost it, maybe."
Cage was speaking of the antipsychotic drug thiothixene, which had had the desired effect of keeping Kerac in a peaceful state of acceptance. Cage had said that if the authorities at the Merimac facility had seen to it that Kerac got such a drug, the venom in his system might not have taken control in the first place and the oddity of a werewolf would not have surfaced.
Cage began talking as if to himself now. "Fascinating creature, we have here, Stroud. Somehow cytogenic. It can--"
"Cyto? Genie?"
"It has the ability to create living cells, new cells we've never seen before. Those tissue samples I took ... amazing. Yes, cytogenic, like the ovaries or testicles, capable of regeneration of living cells--"
"And child-bearing by extension."
"Exactly, but what I was getting at is the fact ... It would appear that one of his organs, the thyroid or the parathyroid, acting at the behest of the thalmus--"
Stroud knew this was the more primitive part of the brain.
"For Christ's sake, I don't know. Pure speculation, but something up in his head directed a gene change, remolded his goddamned chromosomes with some kind of hormone we may never discover, Abe."
"Man-made monster ... brainchild of mankind? Manufactured in a primitive part of his own brain," said Stroud. "Just needed a boost. Waiting in the dark interior all the time--just for a boost? Strange..."
"I suppose it could be released in any man, Abe ... any one of us."
"The beasts within..."
"Exactly ... The shape of things to come? Or the shape of things long gone?"
"We've got to create an antidote. Failing this, we must have an effective weapon against the likes of Kerac," Abe said after some silence.
"Dr. Stroud! Come quickly!" It was Ashyer, Stroud's manservant, who had been taking a turn at monitoring the camera focused on the creature several flights below in its cell. "He's ... he's changing!"
Stroud, followed by Cage, rushed to the display screen. There they saw some features fading from Kerac's face. The coloration from brown to gray to lighter tones and back again. The snout was receding. Kerac was screaming in pain and terror. "We'll have it on film," said Stroud. "He's metamorphosing. Lycanthropy, filmed for the first time."
"Hold on," said Cage. "He's regressing."
It was true. The flickering images of the man beneath the beast died away quickly, recaptured by the features of the monster. The snout raised to the camera, and it wailed out in a mournful, even sad cry, wishing desperately to be released.
Werewolf's Grief (Bloodscreams #2) Page 13
