Protect

by Laura Wylde

  I couldn’t resist a quick look around before studying the photographs on display. Like every other room in the house, the proportions were generous. Their module was set up in the same manner as a precinct office, but a wide aisle surrounded it on four sides. Against one wall was a small lab with a flat-screen display for microscopic findings, along with some computerized diagnostic equipment. On the opposite side was a coffee station. The equipment looked like what you would find in a coffee drive-through. To keep the aisle looking pleasant, there were two reclining chairs at each end, parked next to a lime tree growing in a ceramic pot.

  “Could you look at these photographs, please?” Asked Jamie. He had wheeled his chair close to mine and leaned over me as he showed me several snapshots taken from the far end of the park. At this proximity, with his manly arms brushing against mine, with the same faint scent of cinnamon and cloves as Daniel, he could ask me to do an Irish jig on top of a table, and I would do my best to comply.

  With an effort, I focused on the photographs in question. There was one group shot of five middle-aged women. Pinned around the central photo, was a clear shot of each member of the group as they entered the park. There was really nothing remarkable about five middle-aged women entering a park together, but there was something unusual about the way they looked. Nature had not endowed them with a single agreeable trait. I’ve met homely women before. Most of the ones I’ve known made up for a lack of symmetrical features with a personality that shines through, making them beautiful. I can honestly say this was not true for this group. Their closely set eyes narrowed with contempt. Their lips pulled in and downward, dragging the rest of the face along with them. They dripped with bitterness.

  I couldn’t say much about the group picture as not all the faces were completely visible, so I concentrated on the individual photos. I pointed at one. “I recognize this person.”

  Jamie squinted at the shot, then asked as though disappointed, “are you sure?”

  I nodded. “She’s the librarian. She has been helping me with my research.”

  “She’s not the one who attacked you and Lenny in the park.”

  Daniel interrupted, his voice edged with excitement. “But she is the one who initiated the attack! It makes sense now. The librarian would know what you’re studying. She would realize when you were coming close to the truth.”

  He picked up the entire set of photos and beckoned us all into the dining room where we sat around the table like knights summoned to council. He separated out two and placed them side by side with the other three below them. “We have here, one suspected harpy with a familial DNA match to Lenny’s sample. We have a librarian who knew Tanya’s routine.” He pushed up a third photograph. “We ran an Interpol inquiry on this one. She’s wanted in connection with a murder in Toronto.”

  He tapped on the table. “That leaves two more. They may have slipped in from Selvestovia.”

  It all sounded perfectly logical to him but still I wondered, “what could I possibly learn that would threaten them?”

  Daniel looked at me as though the answer was obvious. “You had begun studying the underworld.”

  “I had uncovered hardly anything. Most of what I’ve learned came recently, from Jamie and Jack.”

  “It was only a matter of time. You were correlating too many things. Soon, you would have traced their migration to the America’s, maybe even have learned about the vast network of dark creatures living in the tunnels. There would be harpy hunts, just as organized groups of humans have been hunting vampires for years.”

  Since we were at a table, Jamie felt it was a good time to rummage around in the kitchen. He returned with a six-pack of beer and a bag of potato chips. “I could go along with a harpy hunt,” he said, opening one of the beers. “They’ve had a lot of time to breed over the last two hundred years.” He handed me the open beer and popped open another. “Every time there is a war or a natural disaster, harpies use the opportunity to find mates. Nobody sees anything unusual about dismembered body parts or disappearances during war.”

  I took a long swallow of the beer. It was a German import, dark and smooth. It settled some of the butterflies flitting around in my stomach. “She was protecting herself.”

  Jamie clicked his bottle against mine. “Don’t start feeling sorry for her. She’s a predator. She probably had you marked as prey months ago, before you even began to trace mythological migrations. You flushed her out when you escaped her. She had no choice then, but to tell her friends so they would help her. She was coming after you, one way or the other.”

  I placed my hands flat on the table. They were surprisingly steady, and so was my voice. I should have been given a little German beer remedy a long time ago. “What should I do?”

  “You should do nothing,” answered Daniel. “You should stay in the house. Get some sleep. Watch some television. Lenny and I will do reconnaissance. Maybe Ready Freddy has heard something new, or your prostitute neighbor. By now, the harpies are putting out their feelers, trying to find where you are. We’ll look around. Jack and Jamie will be here to protect you.”

  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Once more, I was putting Lenny in harm’s way and I hadn’t even said I was sorry. My throat choked up when I saw him getting ready to leave. He still hadn’t looked at me. Gathering what remaining courage I had, I stopped him at the door by firmly gripping his sleeve. “Be careful out there,” I pleaded.

  His eyes refused to meet mine, but he took my hand and squeezed it before returning it to my side. “I know the ropes. I was pounding New York streets when your granddaddy was in diapers.”

  “Be careful anyway,” I said hoarsely.

  I stood by the door for minutes after they had left, trying to gather my thoughts. I felt numb. The last few days had been one incredible incident after another. None of it seemed real, but neither did the life I had before meeting up with a harpy. I felt so detached, I barely noticed when Jack placed his hands on my shoulders and began gently massaging my neck. “Are you alright?” He asked. It was the same question I had wanted to ask Lenny.

  “I’ve run mountain marathons that exhausted me less than this. Why do I keep feeling I messed up? That everything I do just makes more of a mess?”

  “You’re still in shock. It’s going to take time to process everything you’ve been through.”

  The fingers explored the taut muscles that had been gathering at the back of my neck for days. The man probably knew how to bake bread. As his thumbs rotated in tight circles, his fingers gathered the flesh, squeezing and kneading it into flexibility, just like bread dough. I closed my eyes until with a final squeeze, he flattened his hands and slid them down my arms, as though wiping away the last of bad energy. “Daniel is right. You should get some rest.”

  “I think I’d like to unwind a bit. I feel like I’ve been pumping on adrenaline.”

  I wandered back into their office and stood at the sliding doors, looking out at the garden. It seemed difficult to believe anything could disturb the peaceful night. I could hear the two men in the background clacking at their keyboards, but they didn’t seem real. Only the moon turning the rosebushes silver and the splash of an elm tree casting a giant shadow, seemed real.

  “Ha,” announced Jamie loudly. “Lenny just checked in. He’s been to the apartment to talk with the prostitute. She said the rumor on the streets is, there is an entire covey of harpies building nests throughout the city. Our group is located in the Manhattan district, but she doesn’t know where.”

  “Did she have any more to add?” Asked Jack. I half-turned at the door, listening to this conversation about a neighbor who was casually living the night- life I had spent three years trying to uncover in my mythology studies.

  Jamie chuckled. “She had a run-in with Bunny in the laundry-room. Bunny was as drunk as a sailor with a three-day pass. She was thrashing the place out, screaming about parrots and how she knew they had been there because she could smell t
hem. She told Gloria, that’s the prostitute, the only thing worse than a badger was a parrot.”

  Jack had a wonderful laugh. It came from deep within his diaphragm and tumbled out like stones skipping down a hillside. “Poor Lenny. Bunny is going to be a sensitive subject with him for a while.”

  Jamie opened another beer. “At least we know now that Bunny and the harpy are not allies.”

  I called from the glass, sliding doors. “What makes you so sure? Harpies and sirens have teamed together in the past.”

  “Only when it’s to a mutual advantage. Sirens hate dark places, and they are very clean. Lenny’s new informer mentioned the rumors going around about harpy nests. Bunny almost went ballistics. She said harpies stink and she hoped the parrot takes out the lot of them.”

  Jack laughed again, the sound rich and warm. “Strange allies in strange places.”

  He returned to his computer, the keys clicking away more merrily. Jamie, though, stood up and stretched. “If you would like to go out on the patio, I think it will be safe as long as you’re accompanied.”

  “No, I think I’m going to take a nice long bath and lie down.”

  “There is a bathroom adjacent to your bedroom, but we also have a sauna. Just follow the hallway under the stairs to the end door.”

  I nodded and left the room to wander my way up the stairs. Of course, they had a sauna. Exactly what wouldn’t a group of men have who have been kicking around for several hundred years? I sprawled out on my bed a few minutes, thinking about the day and my second harpy attack. The fact that I was still alive didn’t seem as remarkable as the fact that I was still sane.

  Daniel

  I know Lenny would have been happier if I had assigned him with Jack. The two have always gotten along well. Jack has more patience with youngsters than I do and is more tolerant of Lenny’s out-of-bounds behavior. Jack’s indulgence often pays off. Lenny is our best under-cover agent. I let him swing by Tanya’s apartment for a minute and talk with the prostitute while I waited in the hallway.

  He really did have a remarkable ability for recruiting spies. Gloria gave us a full report on what she had heard and promised to let us know of anything else that came up. Maybe it’s his boyish good looks, although I don’t know why that would influence coyotes. Whatever he had on them, it kept them at his beck and call.

  Lenny usually liked this part of the job. He preferred being outside to indoors, which is why I was having a hard time understanding just what happened to him in the park. It wasn’t a few seconds of hesitation before shape-shifting. He had run without shape-shifting at all. This wasn’t like him. He was no stranger to danger. He was fast on his feet, never missed a sound, alert to every movement.

  As we flew away from the apartments toward the library, I tried to strike up a conversation. “It seems Gloria is sweet on you.”

  “I paid a portion of her college debt, so she won’t have to work on the street anymore. I’m taking it out of our expense account.”

  “I appreciate you notifying me.” I glanced over at him. His eyes were deeply furrowed over his beak, his wings flapping the air stiffly. “It was nice of you, Lenny. It was a nice thing to do. Did she tell you what she was majoring in?”

  “She began with business courses, but she decided she wanted to do paralegal work. It seems someone in the department has already offered her an internship.”

  “Fancy that.” It was the type of maverick thing Lenny did, wheeling and dealing without consulting, but this quality would make him a good leader one day.

  “She’s a good girl. I take care of my people.”

  “How do you take care of the coyotes?”

  The library skylight loomed in front of us and we descended gently to take our positions. “Coyotes value their freedom more than they do anything else,” he answered tersely. “That’s all you need to know about them.”

  “Lenny, part of being a team is understanding how each member operates and keeping open communications. I’m not your enemy.”

  “You keep a short lease. Sometimes, a short lease doesn’t work.”

  “Are you referring to the park? I’m trying to understand what happened.”

  “I don’t know what happened! Okay? I just couldn’t stop running.” He gazed down angrily at the neat rows of library shelves with bowed over heads walking as reverently between them as monks through the corridors of a Cathedral.

  At this hour, there were more librarians putting away books than there were studious book readers. Two appeared no older than thirty, were conservatively dressed and would be very pretty with a more flattering hairdo and a dash of color. Another was around sixty, with bluish, twisted ends sitting on top of a head full of silvery curls. Her smile caused a full grandma-love melt-down. There was no way she could be a harpy.

  A forty-five-year-old matron with her dark hair caught in one thick, loose braid, supervised a young man with Downs Syndrome as he learned to put the children’s books in order. It seemed unlikely she could be a harpy.

  Apparently, the harpy kept much to herself. She remained in the section of rare and antique books, hovering over the most ancient scripts as though they were hers alone. Allowing others to glimpse them was a privilege, not a right. Still, I wanted to keep an eye on her, and I wanted Lenny to open up.

  I tried to keep the fatherly tone from creeping into my voice, and ask from a neutral standpoint, “You’re attracted to her, aren’t you?”

  We weren’t standing very close, but he pulled away as though I had touched him. “I guess it has never happened to you, the unflinching hero.”

  “She moves me. She moves all of us. Tanya is a very attractive woman.”

  “So attractive you can’t keep your hands off her.”

  “I admit my timing was poor. Maybe you should have been the one she kissed first. She cares about you. She took care of you when you were wounded.”

  “You couldn’t stand that could you? You had to get in the middle of things just like you always do.”

  “Everything I’ve done has been for your own good,” I snapped, then realized how patronizing I sounded. “I’m not trying to get in the middle of things. I’m just trying to bring us all back together. We all desire the same woman. Somehow, we’re going have to figure out how to deal with it.”

  “What’s there to deal with? Why should she choose me when she can ride off into the sunset with you?”

  “She didn’t choose anyone! I just happened to be there in a moment of weakness. She’s tired and scared. She just doesn’t want to show it.”

  The moon was rising higher, casting long, brooding shadows. It flickered over Lenny for a moment before a drifting cloud covered the sight of his angry, moon-shadowed face. The evening glow had put a hard glint in his puppy-dog eyes. The plane of his cheek ended in a strong, jutting jaw that bulged nervously where the muscles crunched together.

  I think I was like that three or four hundred years ago. I was seething with the fires of youth and righteousness. I was on a gallant quest for truth, honor and virtue. I played a passionate role during the Enlightenment. It was Jack who finally disentangled me from the seductive beat of Spanish romance and the fires of the French Revolution. There were noble men and beautiful women with lofty ideals. There was also an underground of vice, human trafficking and black magic. The explosive mix would lead to terrible wars and incredible deeds. It was intoxicating, seductive and addicting.

  The fires haven’t really died, but they’ve become slow-burning. I don’t throw myself into things. I don’t seek out, but let things come to me. Lenny was still in pursuit, believing if he didn’t hurry, his opportunities would slip out of his hands.

  The librarians were finishing up their rounds and getting ready to leave. The two young women left together without saying a word to the harpy. The old lady met up with the matronly one. They both praised the boy who grinned happily and offered his arm to the elderly woman. The harpy waited until they had left, then lifted her lip in a snarl of
contempt as she locked up the precious books.

  She was alone. I edged around to the front of the building and got ready to follow her. “Lenny, I do understand.”

  “You don’t understand!” His colors flared for a second and I thought he was going to give away our position. “You think you know me. We’re not alike. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He made a face. “I’m going to have a talk with Ready Freddy. He may have come up with something.”

  “Let’s see where the harpy goes. We might find her nest.”

  “You go ahead. Or have you lost your touch with tackling old hags?”

  “Lenny…” He flew off before I could get in another word.

  I sighed as I waited at the entrance way for the harpy to appear. I could almost feel Jack’s hand on my shoulder and his voice advising me, “leave it alone.” Lenny was angry. He just needed time.

  It really should have been Jack in charge. He has worked for the New York City police force since 1845. That was before the emancipation of the slaves. Although New York had abandoned slavery by that time, it did not hire black police officers. His good deeds went unnoticed until the riots during the Civil War. Hundreds of people died, hundreds more were wounded as the dark beasts rose from the swollen belly of the underground and joined human forces in a wave of unremitting hate and evil. It was the first time he was recognized for heroism and decorated for his bravery.

  The second time was when the Five Families went to war against each other in the early part of the twentieth century. The police force needed every hand they could get, and with his expertise in mob riots, Jack was the one they needed. They made him a uniformed officer when I was a plains-clothes detective, but I learned more from Jack than he did from me. Syndicated crime isn’t much different than a mob riot when you learn to read the signs, especially if they’re connected to dark agents of the night.