Dying Bites

by DD Barant

  I glance at my watch. “Crime scene is now thirty-three hours cold. Not great, but better than forty-eight. How soon before we reach it?”

  “Two hours by train. Then thirty, perhaps forty minutes by car.”

  I look out the window. Chitose is supposedly a reasonably sized city, but it seems closed: not many cars on the road, most shops locked up. There’s something else about it that seems alien, and it’s not that all the street signs are indecipherable.

  It takes me a moment to figure it out. Most windows have tight-fitting shutters of plastic or metal, though a few businesses have windows with heavily smoked glass. Combined with the deserted streets, it gives the place a locked-down, fortress-like feel, as if the inhabitants were preparing for some kind of coming battle.

  The cab lets us out at the train station, and I almost expect to see tumbleweeds blowing across the empty platform. The train is waiting, a shiny new Shinkansen bullet train, all streamlined chrome and steel. The public transport feels a little low-rent to me—the FBI would have used a chopper—but that feeling vanishes when we board. We have an entire car to ourselves, and it’s definitely not coach; in fact, it seems to be a completely outfitted forensics lab.

  “I hope these facilities are adequate,” Tanaka says. “David was not completely clear on the level of technology you’re used to.”

  Is that a scanning electron microscope? “This’ll do, pig, this’ll do,” I murmur.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry. Film reference, wasn’t meant as an insult.”

  “Ah. I see.” His tone tells me he clearly doesn’t. I briefly consider educating him, but explaining a movie about a talking pig who wants to be a sheepdog to a Japanese vampire just isn’t all that high on my to-do list.

  The train begins to move; I get the impression they were waiting just for us. “Not a lot of service this time of day, I’ll bet.”

  “Very little, and none to Shimukappu. The Hidaka Mountains are sparsely populated, even more so at this time of year. In another month, when the snow begins to fall, there will be many more people.”

  I try to figure out what attraction snow would have to vampires and werewolves, and fail. “Why is that?”

  “Ski season.”

  Sure, why not. I can just imagine Bela Lugosi shushing down fresh powder while his cape billows out behind him. Do people ski at night? I don’t even know.

  Charlie’s found a seat and sunk into it, staring impassively out the window. Eisfanger’s already examining the equipment, making occasional sounds of glee. I look around, find a bare countertop and put my laptop down, then pull out my bottle of Urthbone and take a healthy swallow.

  I’m abruptly, intensely aware of Tanaka standing behind me. Though I can’t see him, I know he’s changed into were form. He’s staring at me hungrily through glowing yellow eyes, his claws flexing, his gleaming white fangs bared. . . .

  I whirl around. Tanaka stands in the same spot he was a second ago, unchanged. He arcs an eyebrow at me quizzically.

  “Sorry,” I mutter. “Long trip.”

  “Would you care to freshen up?”

  It turns out our little expedition consists of more than just a single car—there’s another with living quarters and a third that’s just for support personnel. I’m starting to feel a little like we’re going into the mountains to hunt Godzilla. Maybe he’s into snowboarding.

  I make grateful and extensive use of the facilities, which include a shower. By the time I’m done I feel a lot better; I’ve swapped the turtleneck for a scoop-neck sweater in brown and a pair of black jeans, both of which I’m guessing Gretchen picked out.

  Tanaka’s nowhere in sight. Charlie’s tipped his fedora over his eyes and gone to sleep. Eisfanger, however, is more than willing to talk—just not about anything I care about. When I ask him about the silver samples from the dog teeth, I get a twenty-minute technical dissertation on the molecular qualities of metal pigments. It culminates in the astounding revelation that silver-based paint, while not commercially available, is pretty damn easy to mix up.

  Silver occupies a strange kind of niche in this culture, not quite as dangerous or rare as uranium, but more toxic and easier to obtain than mercury. Vampires can handle it without any trouble, and—much like mercury—it’s indispensable to certain industrial processes, which Eisfanger is apparently intent on describing in detail.

  “Eisfanger,” I say, trying to derail him. “Interesting name. German?”

  “No,” he says, momentarily distracted from an in-depth explanation of silver halides. “It’s Icelandic—my father can trace his ancestry back to a pack of Arctic wolves. That’s where I get my hair and eye pigmentation from.”

  “How about your mother? Same thing?”

  He laughs. “No, my mother’s lineage is a lot less distinguished. Her grandmother was mauled by a wolf-bitten pit bull and survived. Her kids all turned out like me—kind of blocky.”

  “Stubborn, too?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says with a smile. “Though I prefer the term ‘option recognition deficient.’ ”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a touch of that myself. How about Sleeping Beauty, back there?” I nod toward the back corner, where Charlie hasn’t moved since I sat down. “He seems pretty single-minded himself. They use a bull to charge his batteries?”

  Eisfanger’s eyes widen. “Charlie? A steer? I wouldn’t let him hear that. . . . Cattle are used mainly to animate low-level manual laborers.”

  “Okay, then what?”

  “Well, enforcement golems are always powered by something carnivorous—usually something big, fast, and mean.” His smile widens. “Take a guess.”

  “Lion?”

  “No.”

  “Tiger?”

  “Uh-uh. Think bigger.”

  “Grizzly?”

  “Still too small.”

  I frown. Anything larger wouldn’t be a meat eater, would it? Then I get it, or at least I think I do. “Oh, I see. Killer whale?”

  His smile turns into a smirk. “Nice try, but it’s not aquatic.”

  “Then I have no idea. This isn’t exactly a level playing field, you know.” I glare at him. “This isn’t my world. I don’t know all the rules yet. Maybe you have giant man-eating shrews or dragons or some bizarre creature I’ve never even heard of. The most basic principles of magic probably taught to kids in third grade are a complete mystery to me—I mean, every time I hear the word ‘animist,’ I think of cartoons.”

  He looks a little embarrassed. “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. It’s not really fair, is it? Let me make it up to you—I’ll give you a quick lesson in animism, all right?”

  Maybe Eisfanger’s a little more savvy than I thought—he interprets the look on my face quickly enough. He laughs and says, “No long lectures, I promise—I know I have the tendency to talk too much, especially when I’m nervous.”

  “I make you nervous?”

  “Well, yes, you do. You’re from another world—with all sorts of technology I’m clearly not equipped to fully understand—and you seem utterly fearless. In lycanthropic terms, you’re definitely an alpha female.”

  The idea of pack structure hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes perfect sense. I wonder if Cassius got his position by ripping a superior’s throat out.

  “Okay,” I say. “I know I’m not the most gracious woman in any world, but a little Animism One-oh-one would be appreciated. Thank you.”

  He blushes, which with his fair complexion looks more like an instant rash. “All right. Well, the basic principle of animism is that all things have a spirit within them: people, animals, plants, objects, elemental forces, even geographical features like rivers or mountains. Animist shamans have learned how to communicate with and influence those spirits.”

  “All things, huh? Even a pair of nail clippers?”

  “Sure. Just because they have a spirit, though, doesn’t mean they’re intelligent. Small, simple objects are analogous to insects—they usually
have a single, obvious function. But they do have personalities, of a kind: a tendency toward stubbornness, for example.”

  That made a certain sense—I’d wrestled with my share of recalcitrant cell phones and hair dryers. “So you can tell anything what to do?”

  “Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’ll obey. Animism is more like a spectrum of negotiation; on one end is complete agreement, on the other total refusal. The complexity and success of the negotiation depends on many things: the skill of the negotiator, the natural tendencies of the object or being, the terms being offered.”

  “And the more complex the object, the more intelligent?”

  “Complexity is only one factor. Age is another. But the most important element of all is function. What the object does, more than anything, will determine the nature of the spirit that inhabits it.”

  “So the spirit of, say, fire, would be what? Hungry?”

  “Devouring, yes. Also volatile, passionate, and impulsive.”

  “How about something recently constructed? Like, say, a silver maiden?”

  He shakes his head. “Normally, that’s my job as a forensic animist—I talk to objects or bodies, get them to tell me their secrets. But the sarcophagus was too new to have an integrated spirit, and the blades themselves—well, silver just won’t talk to a lycanthrope. Same thing with the dogs’ teeth. Silver and magic is like chaff and radar, or putting tinfoil in a microwave.”

  “So you could have actually talked to the corpse?” None of the bodies had been available for autopsy; the older the vampire the faster they decomposed, even in subzero temperatures. All that was left of Keiko Miyagi was a viscous puddle, and Abraham Porter had simply crumbled into dust once the dogs tore off his head. Andrew Fieldstone’s body was still missing—probably to prevent someone like Eisfanger from pulling any clues from it.

  “If it was fresh enough, yes. I did talk to the dogs, but they mainly remembered how the killer smelled—that’s how we know he’s human. Unfortunately, we don’t have an olfactory database for a more specific ID. Yet.”

  “Smellprints? You’re really working on that?”

  “Oh, yes. Our noses, even in nonwolf form, are amazingly acute. We just haven’t quite figured out a way to quantify the data.”

  I try to imagine it, Eisfanger sticking his nose into a device like a microscope, except the two tubes go into his nostrils instead of over his eyes. “Good luck with that. . . . So the dogs told you it wasn’t a thrope or a vampire. What makes you think he’s crazy?”

  Now Eisfanger looks more uncomfortable than embarrassed. “I can’t tell you that. It’s classified—I’m not even supposed to know.”

  “Then why do you?”

  “It’s hard to keep secrets from someone with my job description.”

  “I guess so.” I don’t try to pressure him—in time, either he’ll trust me or he won’t. “Okay, back to animism. How about a little show-and-tell?”

  “You want a demonstration? Well, I’m not really prepared. . . .”

  “Not something you can do while we’re moving?”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem. I’m just, well, a bit of a perfectionist.” He suddenly brightens. “Oh, I know. Just a moment.” He digs under his seat and pulls out what looks like an equipment case, one of the aluminum-sided ones with reinforced corners and metal latches. He sets it down on the low table between us and opens it up, the lid preventing me from seeing its contents.

  He takes out a small animal skull, sets it down on the table next to the case. “Rattus norvegicus, the common brown rat. I use this particular specimen to communicate with local rodents that may have ingested parts of a victim or witnessed something significant. His name is Wittgenstein.”

  “And he’s—what? Alive?”

  “Oh, no, he’s definitely dead. But animal spirits can be bound to their remains with the proper rituals. Don’t worry, he’s quite happy; I give him the spiritual equivalent of food and other rewards.” Eisfanger picks up the skull and wiggles his fingers rhythmically behind it, as if he were stroking an invisible body.

  “What kind of rewards?” I ask, not sure I want to hear the answer.

  “Well, he likes to be tickled. All rats do, actually; several spots on their body have been identified as ‘tickle areas.’ Their response to having these areas stimulated is very close to a human’s: young rats enjoy it more than older ones, the ones that are stimulated are more playful, and they emit an ultrasonic squeak that seems to be the equivalent of laughter.”

  “So, one of your primary forensic tools is a ticklish rat skull.”

  “He’s very useful. I worked on a case where a body had been disposed of in a sewer and almost completely devoured by rodents; without Witty, we never would have made a positive ID.”

  “I guess that makes sense. Can you make murder weapons talk to you, too, or just dead animals?”

  “That depends. Wood is a good subject—something formerly living is always best. Silver, no. Other kinds of metals, sometimes. Geographic features don’t always notice what happens around them; they exist in a very different frame of reference and have a very different sense of time. A conversation with a mountain can take a few decades.”

  “Huh. I guess that’s why my pet rock in the corner doesn’t say much.”

  “Your . . . what?”

  I sigh. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be politically incorrect. Our resident Mineral-American.”

  He grins. “Mineral-American. That’s very clever.”

  It takes me a second to realize he’s never heard the term before. Not because he’s clueless, but because he wasn’t the target of a particular golem’s deadpan sense of humor.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” I say. “Sharp as a bag of hammers. So how does animism turn a two-legged bag of kitty litter into a citizen?”

  “Well, usually it’s a pretty simple ritual. The spirit of the animal is condensed into a liquid, most commonly blood, and then mixed with the sand or clay that’s going to become the golem. Once the golem itself is finished, another ritual activates it. It wakes up with a rudimentary intelligence, but learns pretty quickly. Once they’re trained they’re sent to work in a factory or office or wherever.”

  “Enforcers, too?”

  He shakes his thick head. “They’re different. Separate facilities, special training. They can be a little . . . volatile when they first wake up.”

  “I’ll bet. One second you’re a polar bear; the next you’re a walking sandbox.”

  “That’s not exactly it. They don’t retain the memories, the thoughts, of their previous life—what they do keep is the animal’s essential nature. That’s why they use carnivores for enforcement; hunters have the necessary instincts already in place.”

  “Right. So what large, aggressive beastie is powering Charlie’s motor? The Abominable Snowman?”

  He chuckles. “Well, I wasn’t being exactly fair with my hints. See, Charlie’s a special case; there’s only a few like him in existence. The liquid they drew his essence from wasn’t blood, and the project shamans needed a whole lot of it before they could find and distill the essence of what they were looking for.”

  “I’m still not following. If they didn’t use blood, what did they use?”

  “Oil. Charlie’s animated by the life force of a Tyrannosaurus rex.”

  I glance back at the sleeping golem. Suddenly, the alligator-skin tie seems a lot more appropriate. . . .

  The rail line through the Hidaka Mountains isn’t a heavily traveled route, especially at this time of year, and I’m not surprised to learn that this isn’t the regular train. Our rolling crime lab is a special government Shinkansen, a bullet train outfitted with the latest in technology and tasked to bring it wherever needed; Japan’s extensive rail network and the train’s ability to travel at nearly 200 miles an hour make it almost as fast as an aircraft, and much better equipped. Unlike other bullet trains, this one—named the Shinsou—doesn’t need special tracks to travel on, able to sw
itch between regular rails and the special Shinkansen tracks.

  That’s good, because this rail line is too remote and winding to support a bullet train. The view out the window is beautiful but strange; beneath an overcast sky, the Hidaka folded mountain range looks more like a series of immense, rounded hills than the craggy, irregular peaks I’m used to. Snow-dusted conifers cover them with a patchy fur coat, making me think of mold growing on abandoned anthills. It feels alien and artificial, like part of a theme park on another planet.

  When Tanaka reappears I wake Charlie up so we can discuss the case. The only new data Tanaka has for us is on the background of the victim, Keiko Miyagi: apparently the blood bar she worked at has a less-than-savory reputation.

  We also get some information on the significance of the murder site. Ezo Wolf National Park is historically important for two reasons: first, it’s the only place the Ezo wolf—also known as the Hokkaido wolf—is found, a species that was nearly wiped out in the 1800s when pire ranchers tried to eradicate them to protect livestock. Only intervention by local thropes prevented a complete massacre, and both the remoteness and history of the location made it ideal for what the Japanese government built there in 1942.

  A concentration camp.

  “The Second World War,” Tanaka says, staring out the train window at the mountains flowing past, “was fought over racial purity. At least, that is what the leaders of the Axis countries—Germany, Italy, Japan—professed to their followers. Hitler declared that lycanthropes were being tainted by mongrel blood, introduced by humans deliberately to weaken the race. Mussolini agreed with him, and the Emperor—a hemovore—saw it as an excuse to rid the islands of all lycanthropes once and for all. Most of the camps were in Europe . . . but not all. The Hidaka facility was one of them.”

  “This wasn’t in the original report,” I say.

  He turns to face me, and what I sense now isn’t lust but shame. “My government is not proud of what was done there, and would prefer that aspect of the homicide not be given undue attention.”