Better Off Undead: The Bloodhound Files

by DD Barant

  “Good thing, too. You were starting to get giddy.”

  We go back to the office. Our one solid lead having sputtered out, we go back to doing the kind of police work that never gets much attention on TV shows or in the movies. We look through files, we make calls. Gretch has a mountain of stuff on the Gray Wolves, but we restrict ourselves to anything pertaining specifically to the Don. The file on Tair is much thinner, but then he’s technically only existed for a short length of time.

  We go do some fieldwork. Talking to informants, checking places the Don was known to frequent, just hitting the street and shaking things up, hoping something will fall out.

  Nothing does.

  That’s how it is sometimes. You work the case, you probe all the angles, you stay alert. And the case sits there and mocks you, a cold, unresponsive thing about as revealing as a block of oak. You know that everything you need is there, locked inside the grain of the wood; but you can’t locate the tools necessary to get at it, so you wind up trying to carve the damn thing open with your fingernails.

  “Hey,” Charlie says. We’re back at the NSA offices, in the cafeteria, on either side of a table covered with piles of paper and two open laptops. “This might be something.”

  I look up from my laptop. “What?”

  “Says Ignacio and the Don had a falling-out last year.”

  “A serious one?”

  “Nah. It’s pretty hypothetical, actually. Thirdhand story caught on a wiretap about some kind of ongoing territory dispute. Seems Iggy might have taken somebody else’s side.”

  “Any repercussions?”

  “Doesn’t seem to have been. Notation says the dispute was resolved amicably.”

  I shake my head. “Wise guys. They do this stuff all the time, back and forth, arguing over who gets the bigger cut. But why would the Don go to someone he didn’t trust?”

  Charlie shrugs. “Because he’s nutty?”

  “No, that would probably make him more paranoid, not less. Maybe he thought Iggy would jump at the chance to get back in his good graces.”

  “That makes it sound like he knows what he’s doing.”

  “I know, I know—”

  “Speaking of which, what the hell are you doing?” Charlie glances down at my hand, and I follow his look.

  I’ve been fiddling around with a pencil in my left hand. At some point I must have subconsciously decided the point wasn’t sharp enough, so I’ve been rubbing the edge of my thumbnail up the cone to the tip.

  Which wouldn’t be worrisome, except that the pencil is a third shorter than it was ten minutes ago, and there’s a little pile of wood shavings on the table.

  “Aw, crap,” I say.

  “Lucky it wasn’t a pen.”

  I take a look at my thumbnail, then all my nails. Sure enough, they’re visibly longer than they were when I got up today, and a helluva lot sharper. “Lucky I didn’t have an itch.”

  “I take it this isn’t normal?”

  “For a grizzly, maybe. For a human being, definitely not. My nails break when I type too hard.”

  “Huh. Then why the expression Hard as nails?”

  “Because Hard as screws is unclear and sexually suggestive.”

  “If you say so.”

  Great. In the war for my body, the thrope forces have taken my fingernails. What’s next, establishing a beachhead on my earlobes?

  I’m still feeling jumpy, restless, all wound up. It doesn’t look like we’re going to get anything else accomplished and my shift is over.

  So I decide the best course of action is to go dancing.

  I’m willing to admit I’m a little manic by this point. I call Xandra and Gretch and even Eisfanger, but not Cassius. I’m worried what might happen if I’m around him in a social setting, and I’ve got enough on my mind as it is.

  Eisfanger can’t make it and Xandra is busy, but Gretch agrees to get a sitter and show up. Charlie, of course, is determined to stick with me for the duration, but that’s just fine; Charlie’s a great dancer. His natural grace gives credence to the theory that T. rexes evolved into birds.

  We go to a place called the Duke of Juke, with a live big band and a dance floor the size of an Olympic swimming pool. I wear a black skirt, heels, and a loose-fitting blouse with plenty of breathing room; I feel like I’m sweating before we even get in the door. Charlie wears a black suit with chrome pin-striping, a fedora with matching hatband, and spats. Blood-red tie, silver stickpin. Sharp enough to put your eye out.

  And then we hit the floor.

  The band is called Merry Miller and the Jive Doggies, and they do know how to swing. Charlie and I get out there and cut a few carpets’ worth of rug. The band plays the classics, starting off with “Swing, Swing, Swing”; you know, the one with the drums going boom bada boom bada boomdy boomdy boom! And then the horns wail, loud and brassy, and the drums just keep pounding away in the background. It’s in every movie with a swing dance scene I can think of—you’d know it if you heard it. In fact, I’ve heard it so many times I’m sick of it.

  But not tonight. Tonight that big bass backbeat gets my pulse going and my blood pumping, and I just cut loose. Charlie manages to keep up, but then, he’s leading. Mostly.

  It might seem weird that I could go out and enjoy myself after a day like the one I just had, but that’s a cop’s life: You grab your joy where you can get it, and you leave the horror at the office. Otherwise, you’ll hit burnout faster than a marshmallow at a cookout.

  I should be celebrating, anyway—today was a win. No lems were destroyed and a bunch of desperate women were given a new chance at a new unlife.

  I even got to shoot someone.

  Which, despite all the jokes, I don’t actually enjoy doing. Or never used to, anyway … but it seems that’s not true anymore. Blowing off that smug, slave-trading, pimp-doggy’s kneecap was the most fun I’ve had in a long time, and that scares me deeply. So—no matter what I may be telling myself—tonight is less about celebrating a win and more about denying a loss. About trying to affirm that I’m still me.

  For at least the next two nights, anyway.

  I do my best to try to dance myself into a state of exhaustion … and it doesn’t work. I’ve been going fulltilt for a dozen songs and I’m not even winded. It’s Charlie who finally signals he needs a break, and not because he’s tired, either.

  “I thought you said you were gonna trim those things,” he says. He holds out his hands, and I see multiple small gashes on his plastic skin. Little crescent-shaped cuts, made by yours truly.

  “I did,” I say. “I’m sorry, sandman. Ah, geez, you’re hourglassing all over the place.”

  “Little duct tape will fix it. Be right back.”

  Gretch is waiting at a table by that point, and I head over and throw myself into a chair. “Gretch! Glad you could make it.”

  “My pleasure, Jace. You seem to be enjoying yourself.”

  “Yeah, well …” I stare at my fingernails ruefully. “I don’t think Charlie’s hide is having quite as much fun.”

  “Ah. You’re still experiencing lycanthropic symptoms, then?”

  “Just a little claw growth.”

  “How about aversion to sunlight? Or garlic?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “Mmm. That’s not necessarily good.”

  “I’ve got another treatment coming up tomorrow.” I’m doing my best to catch the eye of the waiter; I’m parched.

  “You may want to move it up. This isn’t an exact science, you know.”

  “So people keep telling me.” I finally get the waiter’s attention and order a pitcher of water, a shot of tequila, and a beer. Gretch has a glass of sangria, which here means blood and wine mixed together.

  “So who’s looking after Anna?” I ask.

  “Two special agents and a professional nanny,” Gretch says, just a touch coolly.

  Guess I can’t blame her for overreacting a little. I tactfully change the subject. “I don�
��t suppose any new intel has come in on Tair or the Don in the hour and a half since I last saw you?”

  “I’m afraid not. However, I think we’ve ruled out the possibility that they may have fled via the Black Port; Damon went over the site very thoroughly and is sure neither of them was there recently.”

  I nod glumly. “I know, he said the same to me.”

  “Did he?” She frowns. “I knew that. I must have forgotten.”

  Which is something normal people do, but not Gretch. She notices everything and forgets nothing—especially not about a current case. “Hey. You all right?” I ask.

  She gives me a smile as bright and taut as a sail in a summer breeze. “Of course. But I’m afraid I’m having a few symptoms of my own.”

  Right. After over a century as an immortal pire, Gretch is now aging six months for every year Anna does. Normally, Anna’s father would shoulder the other half of the time-debt—but since he’s dead, Cassius has taken it on. They’re both still vampires, with all the advantages and limitations thereof, but their biological clocks have been restarted—kind of—and that presents in odd little ways.

  “Oh? Like what?” I ask.

  “Breathing, for one. I found myself doing it today, on the elevator, for no reason at all.”

  Pires don’t need oxygen, but that doesn’t mean they don’t breathe; they still have lungs, and they use them to move air over their vocal cords while speaking. But the regular rhythmic in-and-out that living beings take for granted isn’t normal for them—they have to actively will it to happen.

  “Huh. Anything else?”

  “I—no. No, that’s about it.”

  She’s lying.

  And I don’t know what bothers me more, that she’s hiding something from me or that I can tell. Keeping secrets is Gretch’s business, after all, which means either my own senses have become super-acute or her skills are degrading. Neither is good news. Plus, there’s the fact that Gretch herself was one of the first people exposed to the Ghatanothoa meme, the same one that drove the Don crazy: subliminal footage of an Elder God, spliced into a recording of a ritual sacrifice. Looking at said deity full-on produces an instant mummy, a leatheryskinned immobile husk with a still-conscious brain trapped inside it. The few known cases at one point had all been found to be irretrievably insane, presumably a consequence of the condition itself; there’s a medical condition called “locked-in syndrome” that mimics it, but doesn’t have the side effect of immortality.

  That presumption was wrong. Turns out the mental instability was just as fast to set in as the paralysis, which shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise; madness and Elder Gods seem to go hand in tentacle.

  Gretch was paralyzed for most of a week.

  She recovered, just like almost everyone else did once the big G went back where he came from. But magic, as I keep hearing, isn’t science. It’s never 100 percent predictable. There are still hospital wards in most countries filled with the immobile bodies of those the cure didn’t fix, pires or thropes trapped inside their own insanity for the rest of time …

  But even the ones who were cured didn’t neccessarily escape unscathed. Worldwide, cases of mental instability have shot up in both the pire and thrope populations—and the symptoms can take weeks or months or maybe even years to appear. Gretch might be okay … but then again, she might not.

  Lovely.

  Charlie arrives and sits down, nodding hello to Gretch. His hands are now striped with black swaths of tape, which blend in well enough to his skin tone to almost be invisible. He’ll have to have the plastic skin of his hands replaced—which he does on a regular basis anyway, but it still makes me feel guilty.

  And damn it, I still want to dance.

  So I do what comes naturally: I go out and get what I want. There’s a pire in a zoot suit sitting at the next table by himself, and I ask him if he’d like to hit the floor. He grins and says, “Sure.”

  And that’s where things get out of control.

  I haven’t really danced with anyone other than Charlie or Cassius since I got to Thropirelem, and apparently I never understood just how careful they were being with me. But then, they both know I’m human—and my current partner apparently doesn’t.

  Swing dancing covers a wide range of styles, from East Coast to West Coast, from Balboa to Collegiate Shag, from Lindy Hopping to the Charleston. It can be done close in, body-to-body, or it can be done with the partners only touching hands or not touching at all. Depending on your preference and level of skill, it can be as easygoing as a foxtrot or as strenuous as Russian gymnastics. The pire I’m dancing with is clearly fluent in many styles, and the first little while we spend together is him trying to figure out exactly how good I am. That’s normal, with a new partner—you’re trying to sync up, to get into the same groove.

  I’m pretty good. But tonight, I feel like I’m more than pretty good—I can match him move for move, no matter what he throws at me or how quickly he changes things up. So after a while he stops testing my limits and just cuts loose, figuring I can handle it.

  If you’ve ever seen any vintage swing-dance footage—guys like Frankie Manning or the Ray Rand Dancers—then you know just how extreme some of those moves can be. Bodies get whipped up, down, and sidewise, between the legs and over the head, sometimes around the hips like a hula hoop. I’m in good shape—but thrope bite or not, I’m only human. My partner isn’t—and he’s a lot stronger, faster, and closer to indestructible than me.

  He’s swinging me backward and trying to get me to do a midair somersault when I feel my wrist snap. I holler in pain and land badly, and he immediately lets go. Charlie’s by my side in an instant, with the pire stammering apologies and Charlie ignoring him completely. My wrist hurts—a lot—but it’s my own damn fault. I assure the pire I’m okay, and Gretch rigs a splint at our table. I never knew she had any medical training, but Gretch is full of surprises. Once the wrist is properly immobilized, we decide to call it a night.

  Charlie’s holding the car door open for me when my phone rings.

  “Well, at least we know the Don’s still in town,” Charlie says.

  We’re at a restaurant called the Slaughterhouse. It’s a choose-your-own-supper spot, big in the thrope community. They specialize in chicken, rabbit, and veal, but also offer some higher-priced dishes for the sophisticated palate; according to the chalkboard out front, tonight’s special is deep-fried guinea pig.

  Inside, the most popular dish seems to be dead mobster.

  There are three of them. The first vic’s in the kitchen, lying on the floor next to a row of cages that makes it look more like a prison than a restaurant. His head’s about six feet away from his body—decapitation is one of the sure ways to kill a thrope or a pire.

  I kneel down and examine the corpse. “Edges of the cut are clean—single swipe. Sword or maybe meat cleaver.”

  “No weapon in his hand,” Charlie points out. “Probably an ambush attack.”

  I do a quick search of the body, find half a dozen silver-edged throwing knives in a thick, rune-inscribed bandolier. “Warded sheath, looks like.” Thropes prefer not even being around silver, but they need it to fight their own kind; the right spell will let them carry a silvered weapon without ill effects, but it requires a special permit and they’re hard to get.

  ID in his wallet says he’s Joey Piccolo. The look on Joey’s face is one of confusion, which is understandable when you realize that the last thing he probably saw were the tips of his own shoes from a very strange angle.

  The other two victims are in the main dining area. The scene here is a lot messier, since the weapon used was a blunt one. The first body is slumped over a table, still seated. Another thrope, and a big one. He’s wearing a heavy trench coat, which when pulled aside reveals chain-mail armor and a silver-edged machete in a warded sheath. Neither of them saved him from having his head bashed in by something heavy and made of silver.

  “Bodyguard number two,” I say as I che
ck his wallet. “Vincent Spuzone. The one that stays close. Chain mail to turn him into a living shield—anything gets chucked at his boss, he makes sure it hits him instead.”

  “Which is why he’s still seated,” says Charlie. “Hitter took him out from behind so he wouldn’t be a problem, then went after the primary target.”

  We walk over and examine the last body. You don’t see many overweight thropes, but this guy obviously worked at it. At least three hundred pounds of flabby flesh stuffed into an expensive suit. I’d tell you what he looks like, but there isn’t much left of his face to describe. He’s sprawled out on the floor, with bits of his skull and brain decorating the walls and tables in a radius of at least ten feet.

  I pull a wallet bulging with hundreds out of his pocket. I already know who he is, but it’s good to verify. “Phillip Ulzano. Local gourmand and capo in the Falzo family.”

  “So now the Don’s going after his own people?”

  I shrug. “Paranoid schizophrenics often attack the people closest to them. But this was more than just a random bout of violence.”

  “Yeah. The guy with the throwing knives was lured into the kitchen and killed first. Fast and silent, too.”

  “And then the other bodyguard was taken out. Leaving Ulzano alone and unprotected—but that’s not all. Look at the footprints in the blood, Charlie.”

  He frowns. “Which ones? The place was full of people eating, and everyone panicked when the mayhem broke out. All I see is a big red muddle.”

  “In here, yeah. But check out the path between the kitchen and the dining room.”

  Charlie does. “One set of thrope prints. Heading from the dining room to the kitchen. Which means that after bashing Ulzano’s brains in, the killer left through the kitchen.”

  “Tracking little bits of frontal lobe along the way. But the kitchen wasn’t exactly blood-free, and Joey the knife-thrower had to have been killed first. So why no tracks leading out of the kitchen?”

  “Because the guy with the sword never entered the dining room. He took out Joey, then waited.”

  “Yeah. For the other killer to finish off Ulzano and his pal, after which both left through the kitchen.”