by Dan Willis
Alex caught a cab to the Smithsonian, and managed to make it inside just as the guards were ushering people out.
“Mr. Gundersen is expecting me,” he said as he hurried along the first side hallway to the Deputy Curator’s office.
“Oh!” Gundersen said, almost leaping out his chair when Alex came in. “There you are, Mr. Lockerby. I was beginning to worry.”
“Did you do as I instructed?”
“Yes,” the balding man said, nodding. “I felt as if I would be attacked by monsters at any moment, but I followed your instructions to the letter.”
“Good,” Alex said, moving to the back wall of the office and taking out his chalk.
“Do you really think the thieves were watching me?” he said, his voice quavering at the thought.
“Maybe not watching,” Alex said, sticking a vault rune to the chalk door he’d drawn. “But somehow they found out about those cards in storage and managed to get to them before you. Then there’s the attack at the gallery. The thing that did it wanted to know where the cards were. Asked me specifically, so we know they believe there are more, and they want them.”
Alex ignited his vault rune, then pulled the heavy door open.
Lieutenant MacReady practically ran out of the vestibule into Gundersen’s office.
“I don’t ever want to do that again,” he gasped, shivering at the thought.
“It’s just like being in this office,” Alex protested.
“If this office didn’t have any windows or way out,” MacReady grumbled.
Gundersen’s eyes got big as the policemen kept emerging from the new door in his wall. He looked around at his well-appointed office as if he had just realized what might happen in it during the night.
“Don’t worry,” Alex said, clapping the balding man on the shoulder. “We’ll be as careful as we can. Now that we’re here, however, it’s time for you to go home.”
“Home?” Gundersen said. “But what about tonight? Aren’t you expecting the thief to try to break into my safe?”
“Yes,” Alex said with exaggerated patience. “But I don’t expect them to do it while you are still here.”
“Right.” Gundersen nodded, picking up his briefcase. “Good luck, gentlemen.” With that, he let himself out of the office and locked the door behind him.
“Get the light,” MacReady said to one of the officers and a moment later the office was plunged into darkness. “How do you want to play this, Lockerby?” the Lieutenant went on as everyone waited for their eyes to adjust to the moonlight filtering through the windows. “There isn’t a lot of space in here.”
“Two of us will wait in here, up against the back wall,” Alex said. “The rest will wait in my vault and we’ll rotate every hour.”
MacReady made an unconvinced noise in the dark.
“I’ll leave the door open, of course,” Alex explained.
“Uh-huh,” the Lieutenant said, not sounding like that made the idea any better.
“How much longer is this going to take?” one of the uniformed policemen hissed in the dark of Alex’s vault.
He was seated somewhere off to Alex’s left along the conference table, but with the lights off, he was just a disembodied voice.
“Relax, Hannigan,” Lieutenant MacReady’s voice came from Alex’s left. “It takes as long as it takes.”
Alex pulled out his pocketwatch and flipped open the cover. The runes inside glowed faintly, but it was enough for him to see the time.
“It’s just after midnight,” he whispered. “I expect our thief will be along soon.”
“What makes you think that?” Officer Hannigan asked.
“According to the almanac, the moon set almost ten minutes ago, so the sky is as dark as it’s going to get,” Alex replied. “I suspect our thief usually tries to be subtle, to sneak in and out without being seen, like he did at the warehouse. This is his best opportunity to do that.”
As if on cue, the room was suddenly filled with the sound of breaking glass. Not the sound of someone delicately fracturing a window-pane to allow entry, but rather the sound of an entire piece of sheet glass being shattered into a million pieces.
“What?” one of the officers outside in the vault said.
“Look out,” the other yelled, then the vault filled with ruddy light as an explosion rocked the office.
Alex was thrown to the floor by the blast, and flames rolled into the vault, singeing his suit coat.
“What the hell?” MacReady swore. “Get out there, boys.”
Alex pushed himself up as the cops ran past him and poured out into the office. As he got to his feet, an unearthly roar tore the air, followed by screaming men and gunshots. MacReady rushed by, gripping his shotgun, and Alex lurched after him with his ears still ringing.
The scene beyond his vault door was something out of a nightmare. The explosion had blown out the windows in the office, and glass shards covered the floor. The two officers who had been in Gundersen’s office were crumpled on the floor, their flesh blackened and charred from the blast. Another uniform was down, lying in a pool of his own blood, while the remaining officers shot at the creature in the middle of the office. It was just as Alex remembered, the twisted form of a man, covered in fur and with a long, protruding snout.
As Alex entered, the wolf man picked up one of the cops and bodily threw him out the opening where the windows had been. Bullets slammed into the wolf man’s hide and Alex could see blood leaking from wounds, but they all seemed minor, barely more than scratches.
One of the cops attempted to tackle the beast, but the creature seized the man with its jaws and tore his throat out.
“Keep away from that thing,” MacReady roared as he unloaded a blast of buckshot right into the monster’s chest.
The wolf man reared back under the impact, dropping the dead cop to the floor. Blood was pouring from its chest, but as Alex watched, the flow began to dwindle. A memory of Dr. Kellin leaped to his mind, of a bullet being expelled from a hole in her side as the wound closed itself.
Alex hadn’t expected to be needed for anything other than his vault. Six cops and a lieutenant with a shotgun should have been more than enough to take down a thief, even one magically mixed with a dog. As a result, his 1911 and his heavier weapons were still in his vault. He could run back and try to get them, but by the time he got back, the monster would have time to kill the remaining cops and flee.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Alex’s fingers slipped through the finger holes in his knuckle duster. He’d put it in his pocket after Connie got shot, purely as a precaution. It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t nothing.
The wolf man backhanded Lieutenant MacReady, knocking him across the room. Alex took advantage of the creature’s distraction to step in and deliver an uppercut to the monster’s kidney. Normal knuckle dusters amplified their user’s striking power, but like most things Alex used, this one had been enhanced with rune magic. The engraved impact runes along the side made it hit like a sledgehammer, and on each end were Iggy’s ‘stinger’ runes. These added pain to any blow akin to an electric shock, and left the area numb and unresponsive.
The wolf man howled in a strange mix of man and beast as the blow landed and he jumped away, cradling his side. It turned its burning eyes on Alex and a low, rumbling growl issued from its snout as it pulled back, ready to spring.
At that moment one of the cops lashed out with his nightstick. Alex didn’t know if he was out of bullets, or just emboldened by the creature’s reaction to being punched. The club cracked the monster in the shoulder, and it shied away for a moment. Without the aid of the impact and stinger runes, the club didn’t hurt the wolf man as much, but it wasn’t nothing.
“Going to kill all of you,” the thing growled, taking a swipe at the cop, who had wisely retreated out of range.
It turned back to Alex just as Lieutenant MacReady shot it full in the face. The monster howled and clawed at its face as blood ran from a ruined eye
socket. Alex seized the opportunity and lunged in, bringing the metal front of his knuckle duster down on the wolf man’s thigh. The stinger did its job and the creature stumbled and fell heavily to the floor.
Alex didn’t relent, stepping over the alchemical creature and punching it repeatedly in the back. Each time he hit, the monster shuddered in pain. It tried to fight back, but the stinger had numbed its muscles, making them sluggish and slow to respond.
The creature looked up with hate in its eyes as Alex raised his hand for a final blow to the face. Before Alex could strike, however, someone jumped on him, grabbing his arm. He staggered, trying to find the person grappling with him, but nothing was there.
“What are you doing, Lockerby?” MacReady yelled as he struggled to reload his shotgun. “Finish him off.”
“Something’s got me.”
As Alex struggled, he became aware of a distortion where his attacker should be. It was more pronounced as he moved, so he twisted his upper body quickly back and forth.
Pain lanced through his shoulder as something bit him, hard.
Alex charged the office wall, slamming the invisible attacker against it. The distortion wavered, then resolved itself into the form of a man, though it was still indistinct.
“I see him,” MacReady snarled. Stepping up to Alex, he slammed the butt of his shotgun into the largest part of the blurry mass.
There was a high-pitched squeal and Alex was suddenly free. His attacker dropped to the floor and in a blink it was suddenly visible. It was another alchemical monster, but this time the features were bulbous and reptilian. Its eyes were round, and protruded like a lizard’s; it also had a wide mouth filled with needle-like teeth. The body was small, with feminine curves, and though the creature wore no clothing, it was covered in tiny, multicolored scales.
Alex was frozen in fascination at the thing, and didn’t react when its scales began to shift, adapting to the background and causing it to vanish. MacReady didn’t hesitate; he fired his reloaded shotgun right where the thing had been, and it screamed. This time when it reappeared, there were bloody tears in the creature’s torso, and it wasn’t moving.
“No!” the wolf man roared.
Too late, Alex turned back to his most dangerous opponent. The wolf man rose up from the floor, catching Alex in the chest with its shoulder and hurling him right through the office door and into the hall beyond.
Alex lay stunned for a moment as his ribs screamed at him to take it easy. He heard another two shotgun blasts and the wolf man howled again.
“Stop him,” MacReady yelled as Alex struggled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his bleeding shoulder and chest.
Several more shots rang out, but by the time Alex managed to limp back to the gaping hole in the wall the wolf man was gone.
“He won’t get far,” MacReady said, surveying the room. “Hannigan,” he barked at the cop who had hit the wolf man with his nightstick. “Take charge. Find out who’s still alive and keep ‘em that way.”
With that, the lieutenant went to the phone that had fallen off Gundersen’s desk in the explosion. Picking it up, he pressed the switch until he got an operator, the called for more cops and at least one ambulance.
While the lieutenant was on the phone, Alex knelt down by the dead woman. Whatever alchemical potion had caused her to change had lost its effectiveness and her features reverted to normal. She was small and pale, with a prettyish face, a pert nose, and fiery red hair. Other than the brutal gashes torn in her torso by the shotgun, she had no marks or tattoos, not that Alex expected any of the latter.
Moving to take off his suit jacket and cover the naked dead woman, Alex winced. She’d bit his shoulder in her chameleon form, and lifting his arm was a new exercise in pain. Biting back a curse, he managed to get his coat off and leaned down to lay it over the body.
MacReady hung up the phone and barked at Hannigan for a report.
“Wills and Peterson are in bad shape, but they’re alive,” he said, his voice a growl. “The rest are dead.”
MacReady cursed, then turned to Alex.
“We need to end that thing, Lockerby,” he said. “I’ve got some boys coming over with bigger guns, but we need to be able to find it before we can kill it. You got any ideas how to do that?”
Alex looked down at the dead girl, then sighed and nodded.
“I know where he’s going,” he said. “We’ll need to hurry.”
He turned, but instead of heading out through what remained of the office door he headed into his vault.
“Where are you going?” MacReady demanded.
“To get a bigger gun.”
29
Hair of the Dog
Someone screamed as Alex and Lieutenant MacReady stormed through the front door of the Willard Hotel. Each man’s clothing was smeared with drying blood, and they both carried repeating shotguns.
“Easy, folks,” MacReady said, holding up his badge. “Police business. There’s going to be a whole lot more cops behind us,” he continued to a slim man in a hotel uniform. “Send them up to the top floor.”
The man stuttered a reply, but Alex just pushed past him with MacReady in tow. He hauled the collapsible cage to the open elevator and stepped in. The operator was an older man in an impeccable tuxedo, and his eyes widened at the sight of his new passengers.
‘Wh-what floor?” he squeaked.
“Twelve,” Alex replied, as MacReady pulled the folding door closed again.
The elevator operator pulled the handle that made the car ascend, and it lurched upward.
“Now you want to tell me why we’re here?” MacReady asked Alex.
“The monster is going to Zelda Pritchard’s room,” Alex said.
“You still on her?” the Lieutenant asked, his voice incredulous. “I told you she had an ironclad alibi for the first two robberies, and she was with you when the gallery was hit.”
“I don’t think Zelda is involved,” Alex explained. “Not directly anyway.”
“Then I repeat, why are we here?”
“Ylang-ylang and vanilla.”
“What?”
“Zelda wears very exclusive perfume,” Alex said. “It’s made by a friend of mine in New York by the name of Enzo Romero and it uses very exotic ingredients.”
“Yang-yang and vanilla extract?”
Alex didn’t bother to correct MacReady, he just nodded.
“Zelda travels with a valet and a ladies’ maid,” he explained. “They’re brother and sister. I met the valet on the trip down from New York. He had the reddest hair I’ve ever seen.”
“Just like the dead girl at the museum,” MacReady said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Might be a coincidence.”
“When I covered the girl with my coat, I noticed that she smelled faintly of ylang-ylang and vanilla, but only faintly.”
“Like she was around someone who wore that scent on a regular basis.”
Alex nodded as the car slowed to a stop.
“Top floor, gentlemen,” the elevator operator said, his voice still trembling.
“Get back down to the main floor and stay there,” MacReady said as Alex pulled the cage open.
Alex led the way toward Zelda’s suite. As he went, he grabbed the charge handle on his Browning A5 shotgun and pulled it back, loading a shell into the firing chamber.
“How do you want to play this?” MacReady asked, chambering his shotgun as well.
“Let me knock and see if she answers,” he said. “The wolf man was wounded pretty good, we might have beat him here.”
A high-pitched scream erupted from the end of the hall followed by an animal snarl.
“We didn’t,” MacReady yelled as both men broke into a run.
Transferring his shotgun to his left hand, Alex jammed his right into his trouser pocket. Looping his fingers through his knuckle duster, he pressed his thumb down on the rune carved on the top end.
“Stand away,” MacReady said as they reached the door, no
doubt intending to blow the lock off with his shotgun.
But Alex didn’t hesitate; he lashed out at the metal plate covering the lock mechanism, releasing his thumb as the steel knuckle duster made contact. All the remaining impact runes went off at once in a blow that shattered the lock and blew the door wide open.
In the room beyond, Zelda Pritchard stood behind a decorative couch, dressed in a pair of silk pajamas. She had what looked like a hatbox clutched to her chest and she didn’t turn to see what had happened to her front door. Her eyes were fixed on the ragged and bloody wolf man limping toward her from a side room.
The creature’s yellow eyes darted to the ruined door, then it snarled and lunged forward. Alex opened his hand, letting the knuckle duster fall to the floor as Lieutenant MacReady raised his weapon and fired. The blast caught the wolf man in the chest, and he flinched. Clearly the shot hurt him, but not enough to stop him. The creature crouched, ready to spring over the couch at Zelda.
Alex raised his own weapon. It was the same model Browning that Lieutenant MacReady carried, but it had something the police issue shotgun couldn’t match. All along the side of the stock, Alex had painstakingly carved runes. Three were for accuracy if long shots were required. Three would force the pellets apart as they exited the barrel, providing for a more devastating spread, and the final three increased the mass of the pellets, giving them far greater penetrating power.
As the wolf creature leaped, spreading its clawed hands to rend Zelda apart, Alex leveled his weapon, touched a mass rune with the tip of his finger, and fired. The pellets slammed into the creature’s side and it howled in agony, missing Zelda as she darted away, and landing heavily on an expensive Persian carpet.
“Alex,” Zelda shrieked, noticing him for the first time. She charged at him and threw her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder as she sobbed hysterically. “It came back!”
“Get behind me,” he ordered, shoving her back as he tried to keep his weapon trained on the wolf man. It was down and not moving, but Alex could see its chest rising and falling, so it wasn’t dead.
