Laws of Nature -2

by Christopher Golden

Tina slid back in the booth. "Maybe that would be better," she said. "If it was a bear. People would realize that was simply its nature; tragic, of course, but just nature."

  "I think you're right," Alan admitted. "That'd be better. If it was just animals. I surely hope that's the way it turns out. You can't blame animals for doing what they were born to do."

  When the last of the customers had shuffled out on to the Boston street, Jack locked the door of Bridget's Irisk Rose Pub behind them, and only then did he al ow himself to relax. Any time he was around a group of strangers these days - which was every time he worked or, truthful y, went anywhere in the city of Boston - he felt on edge. A seemingly innocent face in the crowd could take on sinister import if that face turned his way for slightly longer than was normal.

  Jack didn't flirt anymore. Not that he had given up on it completely, but he always felt a certain reserve in himself, knowing that even the sweetest, cutest girl in the place might be less attractive on the inside. That any face in the crowd could suddenly change.

  The pub was already abuzz with closing time activities. Jack flicked the house lights up al the way and the place became almost garish. Waitstaff moved about quickly, wiping down the few tables that had not been taken care of earlier and mopping the floor. Jack slipped down into the restaurant area and began to upend chairs, placing them on top of the tables, so that the waiter with the mop, Gary, wouldn't miss anything.

  Behind the bar, Bil Cantwel wiped down the oak counter and stacked clean glasses. Even as Jack glanced at him, Bil flicked the cloth out, draped it over something under the bar, then glanced around one last time to make sure everything was in its place. Bil was fast. It never ceased to amaze Jack how quickly he could prepare the bar for the fol owing day.

  Bil took the drawer out of his register and tapped the computer keyboard a few times. Then he sat down to count out the cash in the drawer, to make sure it matched the computer's assessment. He would count his tips last, Jack knew.

  "Hey."

  Startled, Jack nearly dropped the chair in his hands. He glanced up to see Mol y smirking at him, obviously amused that she had made him jump. Despite the harsh lighting and the long hours they had worked that day - and al week - she looked great. While most of the eighteen-year-old girls he knew always seemed to have put themselves together with great care, almost to have sculpted their appearance from makeup to fashion, Mol y was always just Mol y.

  "A little on edge?" she teased.

  He al owed a smal smile. "Always, unfortunately. You never know when some wild woman is going to attack."

  She cocked a hip and placed a hand on it. "You wish."

  And there it was, unspoken between them. Only implied. The attraction Jack felt was undeniable, and he knew that she felt it, too. But neither of them was wil ing to do anything about it.

  Not with Artie's death so fresh.

  "Penny for your thoughts?" she inquired.

  "You couldn't afford them, Hatcher," he replied. "You done for the night?"

  "Yeah. Kiera and I did the rol ups for tomorrow. Only Tim and a couple of the other guys are left in the kitchen. Can I buy you a drink?" she asked.

  Jack glanced over at the bar, where Bil slipped his drawer back into the register and began to count his tips.

  "Bil wil not be happy if we mess up his counter," Jack told her.

  "He'l live," she said. "Besides, Bil loves me."

  Mol y set off toward the bar. The sounds of shouts and something banging came from the kitchen in the back. Tim Dunphy and the rest of the kitchen staff were blowing off steam, meaning they were finished for the night. They'd go out the back, and Dunphy would lock the rear door. He was the only one on staff who had a key to the place other than Jack, Bil , Mol y, and Courtney.

  Kiera and another waitress waved as they disappeared back into the kitchen. And that was that. The only people left in the front of the restaurant were Jack, Mol y, and Bil . The place seemed surreal, lit up like that when it was empty. Jack moved to the hostess's station by the front doors and turned the lights down again, leaving only a few stil lit at al .

  "Hey, romantic," Bil said, looking up.

  Jack gave him a halfhearted smile but did not respond. He didn't think the lighting romantic at al . In truth, he was happy to have his friends' company. When he was alone down here, in the shel of the restaurant, after al the life had fled from it and the lights were down, he could not help but think of the night of Artie's wake.

  It had been the first time he had ever talked to a ghost.

  Of course, it had happened a great many times since then, but that first night, he had been terrified. Artie had been murdered by the Prowlers and had returned from the dead to ask Jack to take vengeance for him. He had opened Jack's mind so that he could see the Ghostlands, the world side by side with that of the living, where lost souls wandered.

  Artie had never real y gone away.

  Jack did not see him al the time, but it was rare for a whole week to go by without a visit. Artie wanted him to take care of Mol y, had even suggested that there might be more between them than friendship. The ghost would rather see her with Jack, whom he knew would treat Mol y right, than some other guy. Which total y freaked Jack out. Not that he didn't have feelings for Mol y, but the last thing he felt he could do was talk to Artie about them.

  And Mol y . . . Jack had a feeling that she suspected. He had told her about his ability to speak to the wanderers of the Ghostlands, and she had never asked if Artie was among them, a fact that told Jack she did not want to know the answer. Which was fine, considering that Artie did not want Mol y to know he was stil around. The ghost was afraid she would not be able to move on with her life.

  Much to Jack's chagrin, what had been a simple life for him had turned out to be very complicated. And, it seemed, death was complicated as wel .

  With a shudder, he glanced at the spot behind the bar where Artie's ghost had first appeared to him, and then went over to take a seat next to Mol y. Though Bil was stil counting out his tips, he had taken the time to pour her an iced tea.

  "Oh, sure," Jack said, "you'l dirty up your nice clean workspace for her, but if I asked you, al I'd get is the evil eye."

  "Sorry, partner," Bil replied. He paused as he silently counted the last few dol ars. Then he glanced up with a devilish grin. "She's just a hel of a lot cuter than you."

  "I happen to be very cute," Jack retorted.

  Mol y sipped her iced tea, but raised an eyebrow to look at him. "Eh, you're not bad."

  They al shared a laugh, but it was fol owed by a long moment of uncomfortable silence. Jack took a deep breath and looked at Mol y, who glanced away. He shook his head and turned to Bil instead.

  "Do you think this wil ever go away?"

  "This?" Bil frowned.

  Jack shrugged self-consciously. "This. The aftershock from what happened with . . . with the Prowlers." His gaze was locked on Bil 's. "It's like an echo that won't fade."

  "It'l fade," Bil replied instantly. His eyes ticked toward Mol y. "Our girl here wil head off to Yale in the fal , and life wil go back to normal. The nighttime wil go back to just being what happens when it gets dark."

  Mol y cleared her throat. They both turned to her. She stirred the ice in her glass with a straw.

  "Maybe it shouldn't," she said. Jack frowned. "What do you mean?" "Maybe it shouldn't go back to normal. Okay, we could forget about it. I mean, at least partial y. Forget in a sense that whole days might go by where we wouldn't think about it."

  Her gaze, hard and sad, went to Bil . "Except you. I guess you couldn't forget, could you?"

  "Not likely."

  Mol y reached a hand out to grasp Jack's wrist. "But if we do forget, what about next time?"

  "I don't get you," Jack told her. Though he was afraid that he did.

  "What about the next time it happens somewhere? And we could have done something because we knew?"

  Bil placed both hands on the bar and leaned forward, a
grave expression on his face. "No one wil believe you. Even the people who know about Prowlers pretend it isn't true. Look at the Boston Police Department. Had to be twenty officers and detectives, maybe more, involved in the case in April. Al of them saw, with their own eyes. None of them talked about it.

  Who'd believe them?"

  "So we don't talk," Mol y relented. "But I know how I'm going to feel if it happens again."

  It was just after seven the fol owing morning when Mol y stumbled into the kitchen, wiping sleep from her eyes. The sun streamed in through the high windows and gleamed off the slanted floor. Jack sat behind the round table in a T-shirt and jean shorts, looking bright-eyed and ready to face the day.

  Mol y wanted to kil him.

  His chin was covered with stubble, but that was the only sign that he had not woken up much earlier than she had. With her hair more unruly than ever, slippers on her feet, and her ratty terry robe badly tied around her, she felt like roadkil .

  "Good morning," he said pleasantly, a bowl of Wheaties on the table in front of him.

  "Who says?" Mol y griped as she trudged to the fridge to pul out the orange juice.

  "You're real y not a morning person, are you?" Jack teased.

  It had been almost three months since she had moved in. He knew ful wel she was not a morning person, no matter how perfect and sunny it was outside.

  "You're a sadist," she told him as she retrieved a glass from the cabinet. She sat down at the table and began to pour as Courtney walked into the kitchen.

  "Jack?" his sister said.

  Her voice was fil ed with a cold dread that sent shivers through Mol y. Courtney walked with a cane and had done so for a decade, and though her features were stil young and attractive, her handicap often made her look older than her twenty-nine years. But never as old as she looked in that moment. Her face was ashen and drawn.

  "What is it?" Jack asked, voice tinged with concern for his sister as he went to her.

  Mol y had known them half her life, and she knew there was no one more important to Jack than Courtney. Courtney held pages from her computer printer in her hand, and she offered them to him.

  Her eyes went to Mol y's. "I've been sort of . . . keeping an eye out. On the Net. Like we talked about? I ran across this today."

  Courtney let Jack take the pages and sat down at the kitchen table, resting the cane against her leg. Mol y's gaze ticked from her to Jack and back again, wondering what she had found, but knowing exactly what it was al about. When Jack final y handed her the pages, Mol y hesitated only a moment. It was a news piece about the mutilation murder of a mailman in central Vermont.

  "It could be anything," she said, her voice sounding hol ow even to herself.

  Mol y glanced up at Courtney, but Jack was the one who replied.

  "It could be," he agreed.

  With a sigh, Mol y closed her eyes and dropped the pages on the table. When she opened them again, Jack was staring at her expectantly.

  "But it's probably them," she al owed, resigned to the truth of it.

  Jack reached out for her hand, gently lacing his fingers with hers. "There's only one way to know for sure."

  CHAPTER 3

  It took almost an entire day for Jack and Molly to arrange everything for their trip north. The schedule at the pub had to be considerably altered to cover for their indefinite absence. It was a sort of reconnaissance trip - at least they tried to think of it as such. Bill and Courtney were eager to reassure them that it was unlikely they would actually find anything, that the acquisition of a cell phone for each of them was merely a precaution.

  Jack and Molly had spoken about the murders privately only once. The details sounded too familiar. While there were other explanations, now that they knew that Prowlers existed, it was natural to lay the blame for this new round of savagery on the ancient, monstrous race.

  Bill had explained to them that contemporary Prowlers had no real unity, no cohesive society, and yet there did exist a kind of loose network, a matrix of connections and information. There were Prowlers who were cruel and a few that were benevolent, but most, he explained, were simply animals, their lives dictated by instinct and necessity, not morality. Though he had been less than forthcoming with tales of his own past, it was obvious he still had connections to that dark, underground semi-society.

  The weapons were a testament to that. Bill did not tell them where he had acquired the guns he wanted them to take along - another precaution - and no one wanted to ask him. It was another part of his life, a link to his heritage that made them all uncomfortable. Ever since they had discovered that he was a Prowler, they were reluctant to ask him about his past. It was difficult enough to reconcile their love for the man with the knowledge of what he was.

  Once upon a time, Bill Cantwell had played football for the New England Patriots. Whenever Jack thought about that, he marveled at the man's control of his physical appearance. Prowlers had to concentrate in order to look human, and it was nothing short of miraculous that Bill had been able to play a game as brutal as professional football and never reveal his true form.

  They knew him as a former professional football player, a bartender, a friend. Yet it was clear that he was very old, perhaps centuries old. Before he had played for the Patriots, he must have been many other things. Logic indicated that Bill Cantwell was not even his real name, though that was something else no one wanted to ask him.

  It rained all of Thursday morning. It was nearly noon when Jack pulled his battered old Jeep into the narrow alley behind Bridget's. Molly was upstairs, double-checking what she had packed and putting a call in to her mother. Mrs. Hatcher was an alcoholic and worse, and lived in a shabby apartment in a run-down section of Dorchester. Molly called her rarely and went to see her even less. It was not that she didn't love her mother, Jack knew, but that the woman did not care if Molly called or not, could barely seem to remember she had a daughter. Contact became too painful for Molly.

  The only other vehicle parked behind the pub that day was Bill's enormous Oldsmobile. Bill bent over the open trunk of the Olds, hair matted to his head by the rain, which dripped in a steady flow from his beard.

  Courtney stood just outside the open kitchen door of the pub with a huge black umbrella over her head. The umbrella and the grim expression on her face caused her to resemble a woman standing vigil at a graveside. Jack dumped his bags into the Jeep and walked back to her, ducking his head under the umbrella so that they were only inches from each other.

  "Hey," he said, voice low, his words meant just for her. "It isn't a funeral."

  Courtney blinked, her mouth dropping open in shock. "That was in really bad taste," she chided him. "I know it isn't a funeral, little brother. I'm just worried about you. About both of you."

  The wind swept the heavy rain down at an angle; the buildings provided none of the protection they might have if it had been just a light shower. It was not. It was a storm, the sky low and dark, roiling like an ocean, pregnant with the promise of more rain. With her umbrella cocked at an angle to keep her as dry as possible and leaning on her cane, Courtney looked small and frail to her brother. For a long moment, he hesitated.

  "I don't wanna go," he said at last.

  She looked stricken. "Then don't go. Let somebody else fight them." Courtney's eyes, usually filled with such life, had none of their familiar sparkle. "We've done our share against these animals, Jack. Nobody's gonna think less of you if you and Molly just stay home. And I . . . if I lose you, little brother . . . you're all I have."

  Her voice was so plaintive that Jack almost could not respond. Finally he smiled softly and stepped forward to hold his sister.

  "Court, you've got it wrong," he said. "I don't want to go 'cause I don't want to leave you here. Me and Molly, we'll be all right. We find something, or even suspect something, you and Bill will get a call. We'll figure out what to do from there. I'm just . . . I don't want to leave you with the pub to run, and the possibility that
. . . there might be more where Tanzer came from."

  Mouth set in a firm line, Courtney nodded once. "I'll be fine. Not that you're not a full partner these days, Jack, but you weren't much help back when you were nine. I can handle it. As for the . . . as for them, I'll be careful. And I've got Bill."

  Jack narrowed his eyes. Courtney noticed, and seemed pained by his expression.

  "You don't trust him?" she whispered.

  He barely heard her above the rain. "It isn't that. I mean, he's still Bill. We'd probably be dead without him. I guess I just . . . I don't know if I can ever put aside knowing that he's one of them."

  Courtney bristled. "He isn't one of them. Same species, that's all. But so are you and Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer. Doesn't make you one of them."

  Jack took a long breath. He glanced at Bill, who was down the alley, still fussing with something in his trunk, and wondered how good his hearing was. Then he turned back to Courtney and nodded.

  "We've been through this. I know you're right. He's the closest thing to an uncle or whatever I've ever had. The closest thing to family we've had since Mom died. But it's hard not to hold something back, y'know? I mean, they're a whole race of Hitlers and Dahmers, and the decent ones are the exception. But I know you'll be safe with him. He cares about you."

  There was a bit of extra weight to Jack's last words, an emphasis that Courtney caught immediately. She smiled and rolled her eyes.

  "Bill is staying here while you're gone, but he's sleeping in your room, Jack."

  "You're a big girl," Jack replied nonchalantly. "You run your life the way you want to. None of my business. All I ask is that you stay alive."

  Courtney grew suddenly serious again. Her gaze caught his, and they locked eyes. "Same here," she said.

  A moment later Molly appeared inside the open door with a canvas suitcase that had once belonged to Jack and Courtney's mother. There was a melancholy air about her that would have been impossible for Jack to miss. Courtney apparently noticed it as well, for neither of the Dwyer siblings asked Molly how her conversation with her mother had gone.