by Andrew Dudek
“I. Know. What. You. Want.” Dallas was speaking with the kind of exaggerated slowness that New Yorkers use to communicate with non-English-speaking tourists, like speaking slowly would somehow translate it into a simpler language that they’d understand. “And I’m telling you, I don’t know where it is. The Magic Council isn’t known for sharing secrets. Even with its members.”
I sighed. I hadn’t really expected Dallas to tell me what had become of the Gauntlet of Greckhite, the ancient weapon that could grant its wearer godlike power, after I’d stopped a rogue knight of the Round Table from using it to destroy human society. The wizard hadn’t told me the last dozen times I’d asked—but I had to try.
“Jesus, man,” I said, fanning myself with my hand. “Do you need all of these candles? It’s hot as hell in here.”
Dallas looked at me like he couldn’t believe that someone as stupid as I was allowed outside without adult supervision. “Ambiance. I run a magic store. There are three other places in Manhattan owned by people who know what they’re doing. If I don’t give the customers what they want, they’ll go somewhere that does.”
“You’re the only one who’s actually a wizard,” I said. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
He sighed. “You’d think. Turns out people don’t always want the real thing. They want what they think is real. So I’m stuck in this incense hellhole.”
In a lot of ways the Rabbit’s Hat looked like an other Manhattan storefront—floor-plan-wise, anyway. The space was about the size of a large bodega, but instead of being full of fruit, bread, and refrigerators of milk and beer, it was jammed to bursting with magical devices and ingredients. Huge bookshelves covered the walls, with just enough of a break to allow access to the front door, each shelf groaning under the weight of dusty, leather-bound volumes. Glass counters were set up in front of most of the shelves: inside these were ceramic jars of dark liquids, powders, ancient ceremonial daggers, and other assorted tools and artifacts. On top of the counters were the candles. They burned in odd, abnormal colors—blues and greens and purples—but they felt even hotter than was natural.
Everything in the store could be used in some magic spell (or potion, enchantment, or curse). And it was run by the only full-fledged wizard in New York.
Dallas looked like he should have been sitting in the upper levels of CitiField, not sitting in a candlelit room in the late days of summer. He was a short, stocky guy, his head covered in a mop of dark curls, and he was dressed in basketball shorts and a sweat-stained Mets jersey. He held his arms out to his sides as if to say what can you do?
“You should think about getting a fan or something,” I said. “See you around, Dallas.”
I had my hand on the door when Dallas said, “Carver, wait.”
I turned around cautiously. I didn’t actually expect him to tell me what the Council had done with the Gauntlet, but there was a seriousness in his voice which suggested a major problem.
“Something went down in a cemetery in Newark last night.”
I wasn’t surprised. We were approaching the end of August, which meant that most college summer breaks were over. A lot of schools had little magic clubs. Every co-ed who fancied herself a practitioner of the Art would be tromping to local boneyards to summon the spirit of sisterhood or whatever. “Anything bad?”
“Three dead.”
I whistled. “That qualifies. How’d you hear about it?”
“I saw it in my crystal ball.”
“Really?”
“No, you idiot. I have a friend on Newark PD.” He shook his head, tried to laugh, but he looked troubled. “I’m gonna check it out. Thought the Round Table might want to get in on the action.”
“Yeah, we probably will.”
“I’ll be taking an early lunch. Meet you at noon.” He scribbled an address on a piece of sketchbook paper.
“The last time you gave me an address like this, I walked into a dead man’s apartment and almost got killed by a vampire.”
Dallas snorted. “Well, that shouldn’t happen this time.”
I waved the page in a salute. “See you at noon.”
With that, I stepped out of the baking interior of the Rabbit’s Hat magic shop, into the humid, boiling sun on a late August morning, and headed for the offices of the New York division of the Knights of the Round Table.
Traffic was about as light as it gets in mid-morning Manhattan, and it took me less than an hour to get to the office of Kill ‘Em Dead Pest Control, a squat two-story in Long Island City, Queens. I pulled my new (well, used) car, a forest green Ford Taurus, into the four-spot parking lot next to the building, and parked in a space marked “Dave Carver, Chief Exterminator.”
The interior of the building looked as nondescript as the outside. As long as you don’t go poking around in closets or look in the basement. Seriously. If you ever find yourself in that office, don’t look in the closets. The main floor could belong to a small accounting firm: it’s full of desks and cubicle half-walls. Look as hard as you want, though, and you won’t find a single calculator.
At the most, three of the cubbies are ever occupied at a given time. Today, the room was empty save for the pretty young woman sitting at the reception desk, and the couch, which was occupied by a small bear.
I mean, he looked like a bear. Sort of. He was too scrawny for bear to really apply, but he sure had a lot of hair. The thick stuff on his head was pulled back in a scraggly tail. His face was almost entirely obscured by a coarse beard. Even his arms were carpeted with curly, black-and-brown hair. His eyes were young, though, and his forehead was completely unlined. He was really just a kid.
The cub kept looking nervously from the year-old Time we kept on the end table to check out the receptionist.
Madison Coburn smiled warmly as I walked in. Her hair was a nice summery shade of green these days and was tied up in a messy bun. She wore a polka-dotted blouse and a knee-length skirt. Every few minutes she’d run a hand along the fresh cut on her neck. She’d been wounded in a vampire attack a few months before, but she’d come out of it okay.
“Morning, Captain,” she said. When I’d first met Madison, she’d been shy and nervous around me. Nowadays she was the only person in the office who actually seemed to enjoy talking to me. “Dallas have anything interesting to say?”
“There might be something going down in Newark,” I said. “Who’s this?”
The cub stood up, tugging on the bottom of his T-shirt. He chewed on the edges of his mustache.
“This is Harrison Edwards, Captain,” Madison said. “He wants to speak with a knight.”
So this kid wasn’t here looking to get rid of roaches. He had a real problem. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with Yukon Jack, Junior, though. I needed to get ready for Newark. “Can Earl or Rob handle it?”
“Earl’s in Atlantic City with Krissy,” Madison said. “Dealing with that nickar, remember?” Nickar are water beasts that like to nibble on swimmer’s toes and tip over boats. “And Rob’s clearing out that vampire nest in Red Hook.”
Harrison Edwards looked at me. His eyes were big and watery. So help me, he reminded me of a lost puppy.
I sighed. “Okay. Come on upstairs, Fuzzball.”
My personal office was on the second floor of the building, down a short hallway. I’d been here since March, but I still hadn’t gotten around to decorating. My desk was covered with paperwork, but no personal knickknacks. The walls were painted a dull white and unadorned except for a pair of swords that hung crossed behind my chair. One was a heavy arming sword that looked like it could have been used during the Crusades. The other was a rapier, less than half the width of the bigger blade, but it was lighter.
“Have a seat,” I said, pointing to the folding chair across the desk. “So. Harrison. Do you prefer Harry or something?”
The kid’s eyes flashed. “No, sir.”
I shrugged. “Okay, so what’s up, Harrison? Ghost in your attic? Vampire next door? Troll
under your bridge?”
He looked at the wood of the desk, running a fingernail along a crack. Stalling, obviously.
“How old are you, Harrison?”
“Eighteen.”
“I get it,” I said. “I was even younger when I saw my first monster. I was scared, too. But I learned how to deal with them and now they’re not so scary.”
“It’s not that I’m afraid—”
“You think I’ll think you’re crazy?” I laughed. “Trust me, kid. Whatever’s going on, I promise I won’t think that. You won’t surprise me. I pulled my best encouraging smile out of my bag of tricks (it wasn’t very good—the last few months had been neither encouraging or smile-worthy—but I tried). “Tell me what’s happening. Point me to the monsters so I can go kill them.”
He shook his head. A strand of hair pulled free from the tail and fell across his face. “I’m not here because I need you to kill a monster. I’m here because I am a monster.”
I frowned and my hand dropped to the switchblade I keep in my pocket. “What are you talking about?”
“I…I think I’m a werewolf.”
Chapter 3
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
“A werewolf?"
“Yes, sir.”
I leaned back in my chair and ran my hands through my hair. “Forgive me, but that seems like the kind of thing you’d, you know, know, know what I mean. There’s an easy way to tell: have you recently turned into a large wolf?”
Harrison completely ignored the joke. Or maybe I’m just not as funny as I think I am. “I mean, I haven’t been bitten by anything—”
I held up a hand. “Stop right there. It wouldn’t matter if you had been bitten. Lycanthropy isn’t contagious. You can’t catch it.”
Harrison’s face went pale, like I was a doctor giving him bad news. “Really?”
“Sure. Werewolves aren’t made. They’re born. The only way you could be a were is if one or both of your parents are.”
His face dropped.
“What?” I asked. “Are either of your folks werewolves?”
He shook his head slowly, still looking down at his feet. “No.”
“Well, there you go.”
“I mean, I don’t know. I never knew my dad.”
“Ah.”
“What?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s not unheard of for weres to, I don’t know, interbreed with humans. Does your mom ever talk about him?”
“Not much. She just told me once that she loved him.”
I grunted. Like Harrison, I’d grown up without knowing my father. My dad had been a knight of the Round Table and he’d died in action. Mom had lied to me, though, and told me that he’d abandoned us when I was still in diapers. But Harrison’s mother, it seemed, didn’t harbor the usual ill-will towards a deadbeat ex. Weird.
“What makes you think you’re a wolf, anyway?”
“I’ve always known I was different. My mom says I hit puberty at six. I had a full beard by the time I was eleven.”
I nodded. “Excessive body hair can be a sign of wereblood. It’s also a trait of people of Armenian descent, so you never know.”
Harrison frowned and crossed his arms. On a different man, it might have been intimidating, but it just made the kid seem smaller. “More recently…I’ve been angry all the time. This kid was messing with me at school last year. I put him in the hospital. I didn’t even think about it. One minute he was shoving me, the next he was on the ground with a broken arm and a fractured leg. There were some other kids there…they said my eyes went yellow and I started snarling. And I didn’t want to just hurt him. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to tear into his throat with my fangs.” Harrison Edwards blinked. There were tears in his eyes. “What’s wrong with me?”
I grunted. “Temporary insanity?”
“You had oatmeal for breakfast,” he said. “With blueberries.”
I frowned at this non-sequitur. “No, I didn’t.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Sorry. That was your secretary. She also has a cat.”
Madison did have a cat. I hit a button on my desk and spoke into the old office intercom. “Weird question: what did you have for breakfast?”
“Oatmeal.” Madison’s voice came out distorted and static-y. “With blueberries.”
“Thanks, Madison.” I looked at Harrison. “So you smelled that? You might be a werewolf. I know a lot about fighting them, not much about being one. Tell you what, kid: Madison’s got a whole bunch of books downstairs. Talk to her. She’ll help you figure out what to do.”
“Can we, like, cure it?”
“Nothing to cure. You’re not sick. But somewhere in those books there might be some ways to deal with it. Do your homework and I’ll help when I get back from the cemetery.”
“You’re going to a funeral?”
I grimaced and stood up. “Nope. Crime scene.” I shook Harrison’s hand and looked him in the eye. “Nothing to worry about. This is controllable. Talk to Madison—she’s really nice, and she’s single.” I winked as I led him into the corridor. “Stay here, stay out of trouble. I’ll see you in a while.”
I walked out of the office, imagining Harrison Edwards as a snarling, hungry wolf. I wondered if someday I’d have to kill him.
I’ve been in a lot of graveyards in my time. Comes with the territory when you’re a monster hunting, ghost busting knight of the Round Table. Mostly at night, so I’m used to the kind of eerie silence that accompanies an empty cemetery. I could hear traffic in the near distance, but there were no people in sight in Potter’s Field Cemetery.
The huge field was torturous under the scorching sun. In the distance, beneath an old dead tree, a bright piece of police tape waved, bright and yellow, in the dull breeze, a flag marking the spot.
“Carver.”
Steve Dallas stepped through the cemetery gate. The sweat marks on his jersey were even more pronounced and he’d traded his reading glasses for a pair of mirrored aviators. He had a messenger bag slung over one shoulder and perspiration dribbled down the sides of his face. He was followed by policewoman. She was maybe in her mid-thirties, but her hair was a shade of iron gray. One hand held a leather briefcase. The other rested on her holstered pistol.
I offered a hand to the cop. “Dave Carver.”
She shook, briefly but firmly. “Sam Fasano.”
“Hot enough for ya?” I said politely. “I spent some time in South America recently, and this feels even worse than that.”
“Not as hot as it was last night,” Fasano said. “Follow me.”
As the policewoman made her way up the hill, I looked at Dallas. He quirked an eyebrow. He didn’t know what to expect, either.
We followed Officer Fasano through the graveyard, past worn-down gravestones and wilting flowers. The air was full with the sickly sweet smell of old floral arrangements left to the mercies of the hot sun, but there was another scent. The closer we got to the old tree, the stronger it got. The copper odor of blood is unmistakeable, and there was plenty of that. But there was something else, too. Something familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
The police tape had been tied around the trunk of the tree and looped on the nearest headstone. Fasano shook her head and lifted the tape and led us to stand beneath the old tree.
In a small section of grass, someone had dug a fire-pit. It was empty and cool, but the ash and soot were black. It had been used recently. That smell was stronger here, almost overwhelming. I recognized it now.
So did Dallas, apparently. “Sulfur,” he said.
“This is where they were found,” Fasano said.
“What was found?” I asked.
“The bodies,” she said, popping the locks on her briefcase. “Three of them. I’ve been a cop for a long time. Seen my share of murders, but this…was beyond that.” She took a manilla folder out of her case. “See for yourself.”
I opened the folder and took out a stack
of crime scene photographs. Like Fasano I’ve seen my share of death, most of it ugly and bloody. Someone less experienced than me might have doubled over when he saw the images in those photos.
The first showed a girl. Late teens, early twenties. She was dressed in a black leather corset, miniskirt, and thigh-high boots. Standard attire for wannabe witches. A little on the heavy side, maybe, but she had a pretty face. Her hair was the color of a midnight sky. She was pale and the makeup on her face was smeared with tears. She lay on her side, doubled in the fetal position. Her stomach was torn open, and organs were spilling onto the grass. Her ribs were visibly cracked in several places and they poked through the skin. Parts of flesh and muscle had been torn away in jagged bits. Mouthfuls, I thought. Something had eaten this girl.
The next photo was a young woman of the same age and dressed similarly to the first. She was on her stomach a few yards from the oak tree. Her back had been opened, revealing a spinal column that was crushed and splintered.
The girl in the third photo was on her back, her hands clutching at grass. Her torso rested near the fire-pit, but her legs were several feet away. There were puncture marks in the crown of her head and just below her jaw, as well as similar wounds near her ankles.
I flipped through the photos. All of the same three girls. Close-ups of the wounds, their faces, their clothes. Finally I handed the pictures back to Fasano. I could see from Dallas’s expression that he’d already perused the photos.
“So,” the cop said, “what kind of animal does something like that?”
Dallas and I glanced at each other. “No idea,” I said, which was only a little bit a lie.
“Me either,” the wizard said.
“What about these?” Fasano crouched next to the fire-pit and indicated a marking. I bent to examine it.
Paw print. Four-toed, canine tracks. But it was huge, nearly twice the length of my stretched hand. My mind flashed to Harrison Edwards, the werewolf back at the office. But this print was too big, even for a werebeast. It was huge, nearly the size of an elephant’s tracks. And there was the scent of sulfur to consider.
