by Tom Bont
“No, sir. But this one piqued my interest while I waited in the grocery line for a sweet, old lady to count out exact change in nickels and pennies.”
Danny leaned forward and pointed to the list of people in the article. “We ran these names. All of them have less than stellar reputations.”
Kent sat up a little straighter in his chair. “These people really exist?”
Angela smiled. “Yep!”
“Last knowns are old,” Danny said. “Houston cops aren’t interested in finding them. Bad guys disappearing? Not exactly showing up on the nightly blotter.”
“What makes you think this a Task Force W case?” Kent asked, skimming the article again.
“Three of the names,” Danny answered, “are known lupus. Known to me, anyway. Earl Campbell, Joe Dan Wood, and Eugene Miller. Could be more than those three. Campbell there, when he’d come through Redstick, we’d run him off down the street as soon as we got his scent. Big troublemaker.”
Angela flashed back to the revealing conversation she’d had with Redstick Police Chief Wilcox. “We keep our territory clean,” he’d said. “Well?” she asked Kent.
“Someone kills some bad guys. Three of them are werewolves. I’ll need a little more than that.”
Danny scratched his jaw. “If someone’s running around killing lupus, a war might break out. Maybe between the clans if it’s a lupus doing the killing. Maybe between humans and lupus. In either case, we need to find out about it. If we’re on the brink of war, we need to stop it.”
Danny crossed his legs and rested his elbow on Detective Billy Alvarez’s desk. Angela stood by the window sipping a cup of coffee.
“The reports vary from person to person,” Alvarez said. “The most trustworthy one I’ve got—” he read from his computer screen “—is some guy showed up, asked for a cigarette, and as soon as he took his first puff, the power went out in the area. It’s wasn’t quite pitch black, but all the witnesses agreed it was darker than it should have been. No one knew what was happening. And…when the power came back on, the victim and the cigarette puffer were gone. This is all that was left—” He turned his monitor around.
Angela stepped a little closer while Danny leaned in. On the screen was a series of pictures. All of them were of Roman numerals on sidewalks, floors, and chairs.
“They look burned in,” Danny said.
Alvarez nodded. “They are.” He turned the monitor back around and read some more. “Suspect is of an indeterminate race, black hair, tall, stooped shoulders. Two people reported hearing what sounded like a Harley riding away.”
Angela took a sip from her cup. “How scattered about in time are they?”
Alvarez grabbed a pencil and wrote while he flipped through the screens. “You know, we didn’t purposely ignore these.” His eyes jumped to Angela a few times. “The cases are still open. We’re just overworked these days.” He finished writing and handed the sheet to her.
Angela looked at the dates. “Once a month. Roughly.” She handed the sheet to Danny. “Full moons?”
Danny shook his head. “No. Just the opposite. New moons. Darkest night of the month.”
Alvarez laughed as he looked at the dates on the screen again. “So…what? We got a guy who thinks he’s a werewolf, but can’t read a calendar?”
“Looks like,” Angela said, grinning. Danny wasn’t smiling, though. In fact, he’d pressed his lips together and tugged at his earlobe.
Later, when they pulled out of the police station, she asked. “What’s on your mind?”
“Morstat.”
“What?”
“Not what. Who.” He picked the sheet of paper back up and looked at it. “It’s our bogeyman. What mothers tell little wildling children to watch out for.”
“You mean a Fector? One of those werewolf-hunting Catholic priests?”
He shook his head at her. “No. We worried about them all the time. Morstat comes after bad little werewolves.”
“What is a bad werewolf?” she asked. “You forget to howl at the moon or something?”
“We have our own laws,” he snapped. “They keep us hidden. Safe.”
“Sorry,” she said. “What kind of laws?”
“We call it The Pact. All Frenatus swear to uphold it. For instance, we aren’t allowed to kill another lupus without the consent of Lupus Rex.”
“You aren’t allowed to kill each other, but you can kill humans with impunity?”
“We aren’t allowed to piss off the humans either. Killing one? That would do it.”
Angela shifted from one foot to the other. “Killing humans that wander into your territory doesn’t violate that law?”
“Redstick’s on a state highway, for Christ’s sake,” he exclaimed. “We are part of the community, you know. We only take care of the bad guys when they come around looking to start some shit.”
Lupus society made a bit more sense to Angela. “All right. I can see how violation of either one would lead to war.” She stopped at a red light. “So, this Morstat comes after lupis who violate the Pact?”
“Maybe. The legend says he comes after the bad little boys and girls. Not adults. Cuts off their heads. Feeds ‘em to his horse.”
“Jesus Christ, Danny! Werewolf fairy tales are hardcore.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He looked thoughtful. “In any case, he comes every 13 years for 13 heads. He only takes the heads on the new moon. And the victim must be in lupus form. But the count? The Roman numerals? The new moon? Too damned coincidental for me.”
“Me, too,” she said. “Thirteen, huh?”
“Right.”
“Just our luck.”
“Right.”
“When’s the next new moon?” she asked.
“Three nights from now.”
“Well,” she said, “Drapper’s out of the country until after that. Might as well do some good.”
Angela and Danny were sitting in their car in Sunnyside, probably the most decrepit area in downtown Houston. Danny insisted the area was crawling with lupis, and when pressured for more information, he confessed it was only hearsay on his part. According to rumors, there was a whole lupis underground who sold their sexual services to the depraved: men who wanted to screw a lupa, women who wanted to screw a lupus, and everything in between.
“This, um, takes bestiality to a whole new level,” she muttered.
“Yeah,” he agreed, looking up the street to the blinking traffic lights. “I wonder if Task Force W doesn’t need a vice squad.”
“So, you believe this Morstat is real, don’t you?” she asked, eager to change the subject.
“I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “I will say that most of the legends we’ve grown up with have more or less turned out to be true.”
“Yeah, well, after some of the weird shit I’ve seen on this job, you’ll have to convince me it does not exist.”
He turned and gave her a sideways smirk as their radio squawked, “Power outage reported. Wilmington and Cullen.”
“Gotcha,” Danny murmured as he pressed the “GPS” button on their computer screen. “Hell, that’s only four blocks over. Hit it!”
Angela pulled out into the street, tires screeching, lights flashing, and siren blaring. As they neared the intersection, Danny rolled down the window and sampled the night air. Angela slowed and turned the siren off. The roads were mostly deserted.
“Ahead!” Danny shouted. “I hear something in the loading alley behind that strip mall.”
Angela sped up and took the turn around the corner of the building. She braked when her headlights showed a tall, lanky man swing a long sword at the neck of…a werewolf. They were all the way at the other end of the alley.
“Don’t lose him!” Danny growled as Sword-Man climbed aboard a motorcycle and rode off.
As they passed the headless werewolf body, Angela peeked out her window. The body turned to dust under a slight breeze and ‘XIII’ remained there, etched into the concrete. When she
looked back out her windshield, the road ahead had disappeared in a thick wall of fog. Peeking at her in the distance was the taillight of a motorcycle. “Danny?”
“Just keep going…” He said. He’d hung his head out his window and was squinting through the fog. “I don’t think…I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
Angela slowed down as the fog grew thicker.
“Don’t stop! Catch the fucker!” His eyes had turned pale blue.
“Get yourself under control, Officer!” she ordered.
What the hell am I supposed to do if he changes and I’m driving?
“I’m under contr—”
The motorcycle rider had stopped and was setting his foot on the ground. Angela pulled up short. The dim headlights were good enough to show the man to be well over six and a half feet tall. He wore black jeans and jacket without any patches she could see. If he was outlaw, he wasn’t affiliated. The skin on his face was shrunken, pale, and his eyes, dead.
This was not a live person.
Angela and Danny got out. She pulled her weapon but held it down at the ready.
He just cut the head off a werewolf, for fuck’s sake! Tough sonuvabitch. I don’t think silver’s gonna do shit to him.
The biker took two steps towards Danny. “If you follow me any farther, lupus, you will be unable to return. I have no need of you. Turn back now.”
Danny took two steps forwards himself. He’d clenched his fists. The growl of his other nature rumbled in her ears. “Why did you take my dad, Morstat?”
Morstat stared at Danny and spoke in level tones, almost matter-of-factly. “I did not harvest Robert McIver. Job McIver killed him. I harvested him, the murderer.”
“Uncle Job killed my dad? That’s bullshit!”
Morstat snapped his fingers, and his bike rolled up. In the place where there should have been a gas tank sat a head, barely human, barely lupus, wires and flexible, translucent hoses pumping viscous fluids of assorted colors through them. Some went into the head, some came out. “Speak!”
“Hello, Danny-Boy,” the disembodied head said.
Danny cried out, “Uncle Job!”
“Yes.” The crackly voice sounded like it was talking with half its mouth in water. “Morstat speaks the truth. I killed your dad.”
Danny’s eyes widened, and his mouth hung open. He clenched and unclenched his fists and walked up stiff-legged. “Uncle Job? I don’t understand! Why?!”
“I wanted what was his.”
Danny paused for a moment. “My mom?”
“Yes. My brother, your dad, he…he was a good man. Undeserving of the death I wrought. I now serve Statera Mortis.”
“Are you satisfied?” Morstat asked. “Will you turn back now?”
Danny dropped to his knees and stared off into the distance.
Morstat lifted his leg over the seat of his bike while Angela holstered her weapon and rushed to Danny’s side
“How long will Uncle Job serve you?” he asked.
“As long as Robert McIver remains dead by his hand. Though I feel that may not be long.”
Angela helped Danny to his feet but addressed Morstat. She had a hundred questions. Well, start with the basics. “Who…or what…are you?
“I am the Balancer of Deaths,” Morstat said. He pushed a button, and his motorcycle started up. It wasn’t quite as loud as a Harley-Davidson, but it thundered. “I was born of Julius Caesar’s blood the day Marcus Junius Brutus, a man who swore to die before he let Caesar do so, spilled it upon the Senate floor.” He revved the throttle, and the face mounted between his knees screamed in pain with a thousand voices. “I balance the scales between betrayal and honor.”
“You’re done for another thirteen years,” she asked, “right?”
“No,” he answered with a slow, sad shake of his head. “The scales remain unbalanced by an unwieldy amount. Such is life. Such is death. With the Forsaken Dweller near, I must work to fulfill my destiny and restore the equilibrium before the end.” He shifted his bike into gear and rode off. The mist evaporated as the sound of his motorcycle grew dim.
“No, ma’am, we aren’t building an interdimensional portal,” Dr. Drapper said. Angela could tell he wanted to laugh, but the FBI badge seemed to have removed any humor from the question. “We don’t build things here. We’re theoretical physicists.” He let out a nervous chuckle instead. “My wife would tell you that I can’t change a light bulb.”
“So, this theory about opening portals where two universes touch is just so much hoopla?”
“Absolutely not!” Drapper gave her a look as if she’d called his baby ugly. “It’s all math at this point, but…wait, you know about the theory?” He looked at his whiteboard. To Angela, it was a cornucopia of letters, numbers, and Greek symbols reminiscent of what a crossword puzzle written for Azathoth, H.P. Lovecraft’s god of chaos, would have looked like.
“It’s…come up in one of our cases,” Danny said.
He sighed and shook his head. “As I said, it’s only math at this point. We’re decades away from building anything.”
Angela shared a look of approval with Danny, and he pulled out copies of the pages from the Spationomicon. His name, not hers. He spoke Latin, and Spatium was the closest word he could come up with meaning ‘another, all-encompassing place.’
“Do these formulae mean anything to you?” Angela asked.
Dr. Drapper read the first page of math as someone else might read a novel. A blood vessel pulsed in his right temple. “Stinking internet. They even got my name here!” He shook his head and finished reading it. He flipped back and forth a few pages and underlined a few sections. He muttered, “No way.”
“Problems?” Danny asked.
“Can I put this into the computer and run it? Some of this doesn’t make sense to me. I want to verify some things.”
Angela and Danny shrugged to each other. “Sure,” she said.
“Thanks. Shouldn’t take long.”
She and Danny went through two cups of coffee, two large unsweet teas, two waters, two Subway sandwiches, and three potty breaks over an agonizing eight hours. About the time she was ready to storm the lab with gun and badge flashing, Dr. Drapper called them in. “The model’s finished. You want to see it?”
Angela choked on her tea. “You built it?”
“Built…?” He paused for a moment before he chuckled. “No, I didn’t build anything in the sense you’re thinking. I modeled the math.” He pointed to a series of computer monitors.
Angela and Danny watched the video. Two bubbly clouds circled each other.
“This—” Drapper said, pointing to the one on the left “—represents our universe. The other represents another one. This is the math I’ve been working on. However—” he punched a key on the keyboard “—this is where the other math picks up.” The two bubble-clouds moved closer together and touched. “When I zoom in, you’ll see how they interact with each other. Where the bubbles from the two different dimensions intersect, nothing spectacular happens. However, if two bubbles share more than an intersection, energy is transferred between them.”
“Could something from one universe move into the other universe?” Angela asked.
“Of course.” He took his glasses off and started cleaning them. “Energy. I thought I explained that.”
“No, I mean like a person or something?”
“Well, we’re made up of energy. E=MC2. I suppose if someone was converted into pure energy, they could make the trip.”
Danny grinned. “Like in Star Trek?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
Angela stared at the cookbook on how to bring something over to chow down on Earth.
“I’m actually kind of miffed,” Drapper said.
“Why’s that?” Angela asked.
“Someone’s already figured it all out. This research was supposed to keep me busy for a decade. I published a paper a few years ago that theorized this. And now to find it already done? Pah!�
�� He looked at the sheets. “Who’s the scientist who solved it?”
“We don’t know.”
“What?” Drapper’s eyes bulged. “This is Nobel-level work.” He paused a moment and smirked. “Matt Damon been solving problems on chalkboards again?”
“No…” Angela tilted her head to the side as one of the bubble-clouds consumed the other. She pointed at the screen. “What just happened?”
Dr. Drapper ran the simulation backwards for a few seconds and watched the conclusion. “Oh. Yeah, that was something I didn’t take into account but found fascinating.” He pointed to a section of math on one of the sheets that he’d underlined. “This part right here. If enough of the bubbles line up and the energy transfer is high enough, the receiving universe will start absorbing the source universe. Picture a siphon. The lower end of the hose pulls the fuel from the higher end; once the transfer starts, the lower energy state will pull the higher state with it.”
“Wait,” she said. “You’re saying that one universe eats the other?”
“Eat implies an active decision. I’m not sure that applies here. More likely, anything at the source location would convert to energy and be absorbed by the parasite universe.”
“How long would it take to finish the transfer?”
“That’s a good question.” Drapper interlaced his finger and tapped his thumbs together while he considered it. “It’s a function of the dimensional surface tension and energy differential. It could take as little as a thousand years to ten billion years to absorb a solar system.”
“It couldn’t be done faster than that?”
Drapper looked at Danny with curiosity. “Well, I suppose if there was an intelligence at the receiving side, the other universe, controlling the transfer from our universe, it could be done faster. But spontaneous absorption? A Big Bang-sized boom. A Big Pucker.” He chuckled again at his own joke.
“How would you stop it?” Danny asked.
“You are asking a bunch of questions for something that’s highly theoretical,” Drapper said. “What’s going on here?”
Angela stepped up. “We’ve got a cult who thinks they can trigger this manually.”