Unnatural Acts

by Kevin J. Anderson

  While Rusty was in back wrangling with the cockatrice cages, preparing the creatures for the match, his bumbling nephew Furguson went among the crowds with his notepad and tickets, taking bets. Lycanthropy doesn’t run in families, but the story I’d heard was that Rusty had gone on a bender and collapsed half on and half off his bed; while trying to make his uncle more comfortable, Furguson was so clumsy he had scratched and infected himself on the claws. Watching the gangly young werewolf now, I was inclined to accept that as an operating theory.

  The fight attendees had tickets, scraps of paper, printed programs listing the colorful names of the cockatrice combatants—Sour Lemonade, Hissy Fit, Snarling Shirley, and so on. The enthusiasts were a motley assortment of vampires, zombies, mummies, trolls, and a big ogre with a squeaky voice who took up three times as much space as any other audience member. And there were werewolves of both types—full-time fully-furred wolfmen (affectionately, or deprecatingly, called “Hairballs” by the other type), and the once-a-month werewolves who looked human most of the time and transformed only under a full moon (called “Monthlies” by the other side). They were all werewolves to me, but there had always been friction between the two types, and it was only growing worse.

  It’s human, or inhuman, nature: People will find a way to make a big deal out of their differences—the smaller, the better. It made me think of the Montagues and the Capulets, if I wanted to be highbrow, or the Hatfields and the McCoys, if I wanted to be lowbrow. (Or the Jets and the Sharks, if I wanted to be musical.)

  Rusty asked me to pay particularly close attention to two burly Monthlies, heavily tattooed “bad biker” types named Scratch and Sniff. Even in their non-lycanthrope form, and even among the crowd of monsters, these two were intimidating. They wore thick, dirty fur overcoats that they claimed were made of werewolf pelts—nothing provocative there!—coated with road dust and stained with clotted blotches that looked like blood. Known troublemakers, Scratch and Sniff liked to bash their victims’ heads just to see what might come out. They frequently attended the cockatrice fights, and often caused problems, but Rusty allowed them to stay because they placed such large bets.

  In recent fights, however, a large fraction of the money was disappearing from the betting pool, as much as 20 percent. Rusty was sure that Scratch and Sniff had somehow been robbing the pot, and I was supposed to keep my eyes open. But these two didn’t strike me as the type who would subtly skim 20 percent of anything; my guess, they would take the whole pot of money and storm away with as much ruckus as possible.

  Furguson wandered among the crowd, recording bets with a pencil in his notepad, accepting wads of bills and stuffing them into his pockets. As he collected money, he was very diligent in writing down each wager and recording the ticket number. For weeks, Rusty had pored over the notations, trying to figure out why so much money went missing. He counted and recounted the bills, added and re-added the list of bets placed, and he simply could not find what was happening to so much of the take.

  Suddenly, the Rocky Balboa theme blared over the old rave speakers that had been left behind (confiscated by the warehouse owner for nonpayment). Eager fans surrounded Furguson in a frantic flurry, placing their last wagers, shoving money at the gangly werewolf as if they were over-caffeinated bidders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

  Now, I’ve been a private detective in the Unnatural Quarter for years, working with my legal crusader/partner Robin Deyer. We had a decent business until I’d been shot in the back of the head—which might have been the end of the story, but I woke up as a zombie, clawed my way out of the grave, and got right back to work. Being undead is not a disadvantage in the Quarter, and the number of cases I’ve solved, both before and after my murder, is fairly impressive. I’m very observant and persistent, and I have a good analytical mind.

  Sometimes, though, I solve cases through dumb luck, which is what happened now.

  While Rusty worked in the back, rattling the cages and giving pep talks to his violent amalgamated monsters, the Rocky theme played louder, and the last-minute bettors waved money at Furguson. They yelled out the names of their chosen cockatrice, snatched their tickets, and the gangly werewolf stuffed wads of cash into his pockets, made change, grew flustered, took more money, stuffed it into other pockets. He was so bumbling and so overwhelmed that bills dropped out of his pockets onto the floor, unnoticed—by Furguson, but not by the other audience members. As they pressed closer to him like a murder of carrion crows, they snatched up whatever random bills they could find. In fact, it was so well choreographed, the whole mess seemed like part of the evening’s entertainment.

  Scratch and Sniff had shouldered their way to the edge of the cockatrice ring, where they’d have the best view. Despite Rusty’s accusations, the big biker werewolves had nothing to do with the money that went missing. As the saying goes, never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence—and I saw the gold standard of incompetence here.

  I let out a long sigh. Rusty wasn’t going to like what I’d found, but at least this was something easy enough to fix. His bumbling nephew would either have to be more careful or find another line of work.

  The loud fanfare fell silent, and Rusty emerged from the back in his bib overalls; his reddish fur looked mussed, as if he had gotten into a wrestling match himself with the vile creatures. The restless crowd pressed closer to the fighting ring.

  Rusty shouted at the top of his lungs. “For our first match, Sour Lemonade versus . . . Hissy Fit!”

  He yanked a lever that opened a pair of trapdoors, and the two creatures squawked, hissed, and flapped into the pit. Each was the size of a wild turkey, covered with scales, with a head like a rooster on a bad drug trip with a serrated beak and slitted reptilian eyes. The jagged feathers looked like machetes, and their sharp, angular wings gave them the appearance of a very small dragon or a very large bat. Each cockatrice had a serpentine tail with a spearpoint tip. Their hooked claws were augmented by wicked-looking razor gaffs (I couldn’t imagine how Rusty had attached the equipment). Forked tongues flicked out of their sawtooth beaks as they faced off.

  I’d never seen anything so ugly—and these were the domesticated variety. Purebred cockatrices are even more hideous, ugly enough to turn people to stone. (It’s hard to say objectively whether or not the purebreds are in fact uglier, since anyone who had ever looked upon one became a statue. Scientific studies had been done to measure the widened eyes of petrified victims, and a standard rating scale had been applied to the expression of abject horror etched into the stone faces, but I wasn’t convinced those were entirely reliable results.) Regardless, wild turn-you-to-stone cockatrices were outlawed, and it was highly illegal to own one. These were the kinder, gentler breed—and they still looked butt-ugly.

  One of the creatures had shockingly bright lemon-yellow scales—Sour Lemonade, I presumed. The other cockatrice had more traditional snot-green scales and black dragon wings. It hissed constantly, like a punctured tire.

  The two creatures flapped their angular wings, bobbed their heads, and flicked their forked tongues like wrestlers bowing to the audience. The crowd egged them on, and the cockatrices flung themselves upon each other like Tasmanian devils on a hot plate. The fury of lashing claws, pecking beaks, and spitting venom was dizzying—not exactly enjoyable, but certainly energetic. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  The barbed tail of Sour Lemonade lashed out and poked a hole through Hissy Fit’s left wing. The other cockatrice clamped down with its serrated beak, locking jaws on the yellow creature’s scaly neck. Claws lashed and kicked, and black smoking blood spurted out from the injuries. When it hit the side of the pit ring, the acid blood burned and bubbled.

  One large droplet splattered the face of a vampire, who yelped and backed away, swatting at his smoking skin. Scratch and Sniff both howled with inappropriate laughter at the vampire’s pain. The spectators cheered, shouted, and cursed. The cockatrices snarled and hissed. The sound
was deafening.

  Then the warehouse door burst open, and I saw Officer Toby McGoohan in his full cop uniform standing there. “This is the police!” he shouted through a bullhorn. “May I have your attention—”

  The ensuing pandemonium made the cockatrice fight seem like a Sunday card game by comparison.

  CHAPTER 2

  Shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater is a well-known recipe for disaster. Shouting “Cops!” in the middle of an illegal cockatrice fight is ten times worse.

  Officer McGoohan—McGoo to his friends (well, to me at least)—was taken aback by the explosion of chaos caused by his appearance. His mouth dropped open as he saw dozens of unnaturals—already keyed up with adrenaline and bloodlust from the cockatrice fight—suddenly thrown into a panic.

  “Cops! Everybody, run!” yelled a vampire with a dramatic flourish of his cape. He turned and ran at full speed into a hulking ogre, which stunned him. The ogre reacted by flinging the vampire against the pit ring with enough force to crack the barricade.

  Inside, the creatures were still hissing and thrashing at each other. Several zombies shambled at top speed toward the back exit. The human spectators bolted, ducking their heads to hide their identities. A bandage-wrapped mummy tripped and fell while other fleeing monsters stepped on him, trampling his fragile antique bones and sending up puffs of old dust. The clawed foot of a lizard man caught one of the bandages, and the linen strips unraveled as he ran.

  At the door, McGoo waved his hands and shouted, “Wait, wait! It’s not a raid!” Nobody heard him, or if they did, they refused to believe.

  The skittish ogre smashed open an emergency exit door, knocking it entirely off its hinges. The door crashed to the ground outside, and fleeing monsters charged into the dim alleys, yelling and howling.

  “We can work this out,” I said, heading toward McGoo, who stood waving his hands and urging calm. He might as well have been asking for patrons in a strip club to cover their eyes. I saw that he hadn’t even brought backup.

  Gangly Furguson ran about in a panic, not sure what he was doing. He bumped into unnaturals and caromed off them like a pinball. Scratch and Sniff looked at each other and grinned. As Furguson came close, they grabbed the skinny werewolf and used his own momentum to fling him into the already-cracked pit wall, which knocked down the barricade. All the haphazard currency stuffed into Furguson’s pockets flew up like a blizzard of money.

  The cockatrices broke free and bounded out of the pit, still slashing at each other with razor gaffs but now taking a jab at anything that came near. They were like hyperactive whirlwinds, flailing, attacking. Sour Lemonade latched its jaws onto the shoulder of a zombie who did not shamble away quickly enough. Hissy Fit swooped down and attacked the vampire that had already been burned by acid blood; the vamp flailed his hands to get the beast away from his head and his neatly slicked-back hair.

  Taking matters into his own hands, Rusty grabbed Hissy Fit by the scaly neck and yanked it away from the vampire, stuffed the cockatrice into a burlap sack, and cinched a cord around the opening. “Furguson, get the other one! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  After being bashed into the wall, however, Furguson flew at Scratch and Sniff in a rage. He extended his claws, bared his fangs, and howled, “Shithead Monthlies!” Hurling himself upon Scratch, the nearer of the two, he raked his long claws down the werewolf-pelt overcoat, ripping big gashes. With his other hand, he tore four bloody furrows along the biker werewolf’s cheek.

  Sniff plucked Furguson away from his friend and began punching him with a pile-driver fist. Scratch touched the blood on his cheek, and his eyes flared. The tattoos on his neck and face began pulsing, writhing, like a psychedelic cartoon—and then the deep wounds on his face sealed together. The blood coagulated into a hard scab that flaked off within seconds; the flesh knitted itself into scar tissue. The tattoos fell quiescent again, and I realized that it must be some kind of body-imprinted healing spell.

  Very cool.

  Amidst the pandemonium, I reached McGoo. He looked at me in surprise. “Shamble! What are you doing here?”

  “I’m working. What about you?”

  “I’m working, too. Just answering a disturbance call. Scout’s honor, your friends sure have hair triggers! Did I catch them doing something naughty?”

  Rusty tore a large two-by-four from the cockatrice barricade and waded in to Scratch and Sniff. He whacked each one of them on the back of the head, which sent them reeling, then pulled Furguson from the fray. He shoved the burlap sack into his nephew’s claws. “Take this and get out of here! I’ll grab the other one.”

  With the struggling, squirming sack in hand, Furguson bolted for the nearest door and disappeared into the night. As he ran, the poor klutz was still dropping bills out of his pockets.

  The two biker werewolves shook their heads after being battered by the two-by-four. They both puffed themselves up, peeled back their lips, and prepared to lunge at Rusty, but the big werewolf swung the board again, cracking each man full in the face. “Want a third one? Believe me, it’ll only improve your looks.”

  “We may need to intervene in this, McGoo,” I said.

  “I was just thinking that.” He sauntered forward, displaying the arsenal of unnatural-specific weapons that he carried for defense in the Quarter.

  The two biker werewolves snarled at Rusty. “Damned Hairball!” Thanks to the hypnotically twitching tattoos, the bloody bruises on their faces had already healed up and vanished faster than they could wipe the stains away.

  McGoo stepped up and said to them, “Know any good werewolf jokes?”

  Scratch and Sniff looked at his uniform, snarled low in the throat for a long moment, then they retreated into the night as well. Outside, I heard a roar of motorcycle engines starting.

  The less panicky, or more enterprising, spectators scurried around to grab fallen money on the floor; then they, too, darted out of the building. Rusty managed to seize Sour Lemonade from the zombie it was still attacking and stuffed it into another cloth bag, which he slung over his shoulder, then loped away from the warehouse through the large doorway the ogre had shattered.

  McGoo and I stood together, catching our breath, exhausted just from watching the whirlwind. He shook his head as the last of the monsters evacuated into the night. “This place looks like the aftermath of a bombing raid. Mission accomplished, I suppose.”

  “What mission was that?” I asked.

  “One of the nearby residents called in a noise complaint. Some kind of writer. She asked me to stop by and request that they keep the noise down, said the racket was bothering her.”

  “That was all?”

  “That was all.” McGoo shrugged. “Should be quiet enough now.”

  McGoo is my best human friend, my BHF. We’ve known each other since college; both married women named Rhonda when we were young and stupid; later, as we got smarter, we divorced the women named Rhonda and spent a lot of guy time commiserating. I established my private-eye practice in the Unnatural Quarter; McGoo, with his salty and non-politically-correct sense of humor, managed to offend the wrong people, thus derailing his mediocre career on the outside in exchange for a less-than-mediocre career here in the Quarter. But he was a good friend, a reliable cop, and he made the best of his situation.

  It had taken McGoo quite a while to learn how to deal with me after I was undead. He wrestled with his own prejudices against various types of monsters, and, thanks to me, he could honestly say, “Some of my best friends are zombies.” (I didn’t let him use that to get any moral high ground, though.)

  As we surveyed the empty warehouse, he said, “I’d better go talk to the lady, let her know everything’s under control.”

  “Want me to come along? I could use something a little calmer after this.” I had, after all, solved the case of the missing money, but I decided to wait for the dust to settle before I tracked Rusty down.

  I found a twenty-dollar bill on the floor and dutifully pi
cked it up.

  McGoo looked at me. “That’s evidence, you know.”

  “Evidence against what? You were called here on a disturbing-the-peace charge.” As we walked out of the warehouse, I tucked the bill into the pocket of my sport jacket. “That’s our next couple of beers at the Goblin Tavern.”

  “Well, if it’s being used to buy beer, then I’ll consider that you were doing your civic duty by picking up litter.”

  “Works for me.”

  Behind the warehouse, we found a set of ramshackle apartments; I saw lights on in only two of the units, though it was full dark. A weathered sign promised UNITS FOR RENT: LOW RATES! Low Rates was apparently the best that could be said about the place.

  McGoo led me up the exterior stairs to an upper-level apartment. When he rapped on the door, a woman yanked it open, blinking furiously as she tried to see out into the night. “Stop pounding! What’s with all this noise? I’ve already filed a complaint—I’m calling the police again!”

  “Ma’am, I am the police,” McGoo said.

  The woman was a frumpy vampire, short and plump, with brown hair—and she looked familiar. “Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. The noise only got worse after I called! It was a mob scene out there.”

  She plucked a pair of cat’s-eye glasses dangling from a chain around her neck and affixed them to her face. “How can I get any writing done with such distractions? I have to finish two more chapters before sunrise.”

  I knew who she was, and I also knew exactly what she was writing. “Sorry for the interruption, Miss Bullwer.”

  McGoo looked at me. “You know this woman?”

  “Who’s that looming out there on my porch?” The vampire lady leaned out until she could see me, then her expression lit up as if a sunrise had just occurred on her face (which is not necessarily a good thing when speaking of vampires). “Oh, Mr. Chambeaux! How wonderful. Would you like to come in and have a cup of . . . whatever it is zombies drink? I have a few more questions, details for the veracity of the literature. And you can pet my cats. They’d love to have a second lap; they can’t all fit on mine, you know.”