Dog Days
Page 1
Dog Days
Mason and Lou
Book I
John Levitt
In A City Beset By Supernatural Forces, Loyalty Can Be Hard To Find…
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small dog speeding down the alley, lean and torpedo shaped, moving faster than anything that small has a right to. As it reached the creature that was attacking me, it started up with a frenzied snarling interspersed with rapid high-pitched barks, then sank its teeth into the creature’s spindly back leg. The thing whipped around with dismaying speed, and the dog instantly released its grip and threw itself onto its back. The monster hesitated, then swiveled back toward me. The minute it did, the dog was at him again, snarling and growling like a crazed rottweiler. This time, though, the thing lunged for him, scary fast. But the dog was even faster. He was back up on his feet quick as thought, making a dash for the safety of a small crack where two of the buildings didn’t quite come together.
The creature turned back toward me again, but the respite had given me a chance to take stock of things. I stepped forward, gathered some energy, used the unnatural cold and coupled it with the smell of garbage faintly hanging over the alley. Then I wove in the angle of the dog’s head sticking out of the crack. I reached out and formed a fist.
“Freeze,” I said, conversationally.
It stopped in midturn. Before it could shake itself free, I spun on my heel and faced away.
“Reverse,” I said, then turned back to face it.
It started trembling, its outline wavering and dissolving into tiny droplets of color that swirled around aimlessly for a time. I let out a huge sigh and looked over toward the crack between buildings. The small dog edged out warily from his refuge.
“Louie,” I said. “What took you so long?”
Praise for Dog Days
“Jazz, scotch, and dark magic. It’s all waiting around every unfamiliar corner and at the end of every shadowed alley in a world that has both bark and bite. The supernatural lives, breathes, and slithers in a San Francisco where the dog days don’t just get you down, they eat you alive.”
—Rob Thurman, author of Nightlife and Moonshine
…and for John Levitt’s previous novels as J. R. Levitt
* * * *
“A new guy on the block who is clearly a writer to watch. This is a fast-moving, compulsive read with an unforgettable climax. You’re going to like this one a lot.”
—Stephen King
* * * *
“Introduces an author of rare ability and a background that provides authentic details of police work…a rave-worthy mystery.”
—Publishers Weekly
* * * *
“[Carnivores is] a fine novel that constantly surprises.”
—Booklist
Copyright
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
DOG DAYS
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2007 by John Levitt.
Cover art by Don Sipley.
Cover design by Annette Fiore-DeFex.
ISBN: 1-4295-8760-1
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ACE
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to especially thank my agent, Caitlin Blasdell, for her overall help and invaluable assistance with the manuscript, and of course, my wonderful editor at Ace, the ever-helpful Jessica Wade.
Thanks also to Alan Beatts, bookseller extraordinaire of Borderlands Books in San Francisco, for his unfailing support and sage advice.
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
About the Author
One
We’d just finished up the last set, and it was late. I was tired, so I didn’t stay around long, just packed up my guitar and headed out. I had landed a sweet gig at Rainy Tuesdays with the Tommy Willis Quartet, courtesy of a bad flu bug that had knocked out Cal Simmons, Tommy’s regular. The gig was booked through the weekend, and I could just leave my amp at the club, thank God. I didn’t feel up to hauling it down the street or waiting for a ride to where my van was parked.
There weren’t many late-nighters on the street by the time I left—even in San Francisco a lot of people have to get up for jobs in the morning. I had parked my van several blocks away over on Valencia, and I cut through Clarion Alley to save a few steps. Clarion is a narrow passageway that runs between Mission and Valencia, the site of a neighborhood arts project that’s been ongoing the last few years. Brightly colored murals adorn the sides of buildings and enliven the fronts of wooden garage doors. Some are political in content and style, vaguely reminiscent of old Soviet Union revolutionary art. Some look like children’s drawings. Quite a few are done in comic book graphic design: a cartoon face angrily hovering over a toon town city, cartoon bears frolicking in the grass, a wormlike elf, a malevolent leprechaun. Along one long sky blue wall, stylized blackbirds plastered themselves in panicky flight.
I was halfway down the alley before I noticed how quiet it had become. Too quiet, I thought, recalling every black-and-white grade B movie I had ever seen on TV growing up. It wasn’t so much the silence as it was the quality of the silence. Sharp, crystalline. Like high mountains on a winter’s night when the stars are cold and bright and you can hear a dog quietly barking five miles off. Definitely not normal. Somebody was doing something and it didn’t feel friendly.
I stopped, set down my guitar case, and quietly backed up against the side of a brick building. It was sudd
enly cold, not that damp San Francisco cold, but clear and crisp, like the silence. I took a couple of deep breaths and my breath plumed out like steam. It’s not easy to prepare for an attack when you have absolutely no idea what form it may take. All you can really do is relax, try to blank out your mind, and wait. It’s kind of a Zen warrior thing. If you start wondering what’s about to happen, start casting around for possibilities and making plans, you’re in trouble. Nothing will get you killed faster than preconception.
As I waited, the mural directly across from me caught my eye. It was another cartoonish figure, a red spidery creature with a ridiculous plump body and absurd tentacle limbs, topped by an oversized head. The head was vaguely wolflike, with sharklike cartoon teeth dripping cartoon blood. It wasn’t altogether clear whether the artist had intended the creature to be scary or funny. He probably didn’t even know himself, but in the faint glow of a distant streetlight at 2:00 a.m., scary was definitely winning out.
But what concerned me most about it was its unusual texture. The painted figure on the wall started to shimmer like an oil slick gently moving on the surface of a pond. It undulated in a rhythmic, pulsating fashion, becoming clearer and more three-dimensional with every pulse. Finally it detached itself from the surface of the brick, wavered insubstantially for a moment, then coalesced into a solid, three-dimensional creature. Lifting up its head, it swayed slowly from side to side, sniffing the cold air. It was the size of a smallish tiger and although I could see right through it to the wall behind, it still looked concrete enough to tear off my head without any bother.
Actually, this was a pretty simple conjuration. Animating the inanimate is one of the basics in anyone’s bag of tricks who possesses talent, although animating a two-dimensional painting was a neat wrinkle I hadn’t seen before. If I’d had a minute or two to consider my options, I could have easily dealt with it. The problem was, I didn’t have a minute or two. It scurried over toward me in ghastly silence, scuttling crablike on tentacle legs, quicker than I cared to see. The thing to do was quietly slip away, give myself enough time and space to regroup, and then efficiently take care of the problem. Unfortunately, I had cleverly backed myself against a brick wall. It wasn’t about to let me leave and I wasn’t quick enough to get around it without losing several important body parts.
Now, I’m good at inventing spells and manipulating my surroundings. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and my strength is the ability to cast on the fly, so to speak. It’s not that easy; you have to take into account all the variables—the time, the weather, the physical surroundings, emotions, sounds—everything. You bind them all together, weave them into a gestalt, draw on your reserves of energy, and try to come up with something that works. The foundation each time may be similar, but it’s never exactly the same spell twice, because the situation is never exactly the same. It’s a lot like jazz that way. And like jazz, it does require some talent to pull it off.
The stasis hanging over the alley was making it difficult, though. It didn’t leave me much to work with. Whoever had set this in motion obviously knew me well enough to understand how I worked and the best way to deaden my particular abilities. I reached back and ran my fingers along the rough brick wall behind me, testing the texture. I noted the exact color of the thing rushing up sideways toward me. I felt the slight irregularities of the asphalt under my feet. Then I let out some potential and yanked at the blackbirds painted on the wall next to me, hoping at least to buy time with a diversion. They didn’t look capable of doing much else. The birds shimmered briefly and then slid down the wall like refrigerator magnets that had lost their charge. They lay there flapping weakly until they all disintegrated into an oily sludge. Not one of my better efforts.
By this time the creature was right up on me, jaws gaping, two feet from my face. I muttered a couple of syllables, reached down as if I were opening a sliding window, and let out some more potential. The thing slammed into the shield I had managed to raise, barely twelve inches in front of me. It paused a moment, staring at me with huge yellow cartoon eyes, and exhaled noisily. I could see its breath misting in the frigid air, splashing against the invisible shield. I felt like one of the three little piggies, and not the one with the brick cottage. The shield started to dissolve like cellophane when a lit cigarette is pressed against it. I realized I was in over my head.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something the size of a large cat speeding down the alley, silent and purposeful. It was a small dog, lean and torpedo shaped, moving faster than anything that small has a right to. As it reached us, it started up with a frenzied snarling interspersed with rapid high-pitched barks, then sank its teeth into the spindly back leg of the creature. The thing whipped around with dismaying speed, and the dog instantly released its grip and threw itself onto its back, emitting a series of high-pitched squeals like a wounded piglet. The monster hesitated, then swiveled back toward me. The minute it did, the dog was at him again, snarling and growling like a crazed rottweiler. The creature turned again, and the dog repeated the exact same behavior, throwing itself down on its back in total submission, squealing piteously. This time though the thing lunged for him, scary fast, but the dog was even faster. He was back up on his feet quick as thought, making a dash for the safety of a small crack where two of the buildings didn’t quite come together. The thing’s teeth snapped together an inch or so behind a tail that was rapidly being curled between the dog’s legs. It turned back toward me again, but the respite had given me a chance to take stock of things. Plus, the intrusion of the dog had given me a lot more to work with. I could see his head poking out from between the buildings, looking on with great interest. I stepped forward, gathered some energy, used the unnatural cold and coupled it with the smell of garbage faintly hanging over the alley. Then I wove in the angle of the dog’s head sticking out of the crack. I reached out and formed a fist.
“Freeze,” I said, conversationally.
It stopped in midturn. Before it could shake itself free, I spun on my heel and faced away.
“Reverse,” I said, then turned back to face it.
It started trembling, its outline wavering and dissolving into tiny droplets of color that swirled around aimlessly for a time. The colored mist splattered against the building, blurred momentarily, and coalesced into the original cartoon, once again safely spread out on the building wall. I let out a huge sigh and looked over toward the crack between buildings. The small dog wormed his way out from the opening. He was black and tan, black with small tan marks over his eyes, a tan patch on his chest and muzzle, and tan paws. If you took a Doberman, left his ears and tail uncropped, shrunk him down to twelve pounds or so and thinned out his muzzle to a fine sharpness, you would have this dog. He edged out warily from his refuge and immediately sat up in a begging position, apparently waiting for a doggie treat.
“Louie,” I said. “What took you so long?” I patted my front pockets. “Sorry. I forgot to bring the bacon.” His ears drooped slightly. “You did good, though,” I added, picking up my guitar case. “Let’s go home.”
He wagged his tail in acknowledgment and trotted off down the alley in front of me.
* * * *
The next morning (technically 11:45 A.M. IS still morning) I was having my usual breakfast of black coffee. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and coffee is the most important part of the meal. I just cut out the middleman. I live in a small in-law apartment in the Mission, a converted garage, really, but it has a small bedroom that I turned into a music studio, adequate kitchen, and a large space that doubles as a living and sleeping room. A small garden in the back provides some greenery in the midst of city concrete. The only problem is that the bed is near the open kitchen and I can never cook anything Indian or the bedsheets smell of curry for days.
Best of all, there is a narrow driveway I can park my van in. Parking in San Francisco, especially for an apartment dweller, is worth more than gold. Plus, it’s relatively cheap an
d the landlord who lives upstairs is away two months out of three.
Blond wood paneling throughout gives it a homey feel, and the walls slope at different angles like a ship’s cabin. When the wind blows in those San Francisco winter storms I can hear the upper part of the house creaking like a ship at sea. It is old, it is small, and it suits me fine. I had installed a cat door in the back so Louie could come and go as he pleased. Considering the events of last night, it was just as well I had.
I cooked up a mess of bacon for Lou’s breakfast. I can’t imagine anything worse for a dog, but I owed him. Not that he’s exactly a dog. Well, he is, but he isn’t. I don’t know just what he is; none of us do. All I knew was that if you had the talent and were very, very lucky, sometimes one would find you. Sometimes they turn up on the doorstep; sometimes they follow you home. I know one practitioner who stopped his car for a red light and one jumped in through the open passenger-side window.
Mostly they seem to be cats, which is probably where the idea of the witches’ familiar comes from. Louie, being a dog, is kind of unusual. I’ve heard of ferrets and even a skunk, but I’ve never met one. Few are larger than a good-sized cat, which is the reason dogs are so atypical. It’s too bad; Louie is great, but if he’d been the size of a full-grown Doberman life would have been a lot easier for both of us.
We call them Ifrits, after the Djinn of legend, but the truth is none of us know what they are or where the hell they come from. But they’re not common. Most practitioners never find one. Maybe one in five, or even less, have the luck. It doesn’t seem to matter how powerful you are, or how talented, or even whether you’re a decent person or not. I’m sure Ifrits have their reasons as to who they hook up with, but what those reasons might be is anybody’s guess. I was one of the lucky ones—about seven years ago, Louie strolled into a club where I was playing, looked at me, hopped up on the amplifier, curled his tail around his paws, and that was that.
They seem to live about as long as humans, which is convenient. They never switch practitioners. If someone with an Ifrit dies, you never see that Ifrit again. And on rare occasions, again for reasons we don’t fathom, an Ifrit will simply up and leave. When they do, that’s it. I’ve never heard of one ever turning up again. It’s as traumatic for the practitioner as it would be to lose a child. Some never recover. It’s not something I like to think about.