“I don’t—”
“That happened,” he said. “But the tricky thing is that all of that was itself a cover for something else.”
“Wait, the white trash dickheads were covering up for someone? Who? I don’t understand. And, if that was a cover-up, why’d the Feds use that story, too?”
He smiled at the windshield. No visible humor in it, though.
“Because the cover story was something everyone could sell. Domestic terrorism. White power. Racism. Drugs in the water. That’s doable. That makes sense. That’s something, scary as it was, tragic as it was, people could live with. The rest of the country, I mean. Maybe the rest of the world. They could live with that story, especially since all of those militia assholes died that night.”
“You lost me a couple of turns back, man.”
“No,” he said, “I just haven’t gotten to the part where it makes sense. Or, maybe I should say I haven’t gotten to the truth. ’Cause unless you’re who or what I think you are, this isn’t going to sound like the truth and it isn’t going to make any fucking sense at all.”
“You are scaring the living piss out of me here,” I said.
He nodded. “Yeah, being scared is absolutely the appropriate response. I was scared then. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life. But I have to tell you, Mr. Hunter, that I am starting to get that scared again.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid that what was happening then is happening now. That it’s happening again.”
“Okay…but what did happen back then? If there was a cover story, then what was it covering up?”
That’s when he finally turned to me and I saw all sorts of dark lights glimmering in his eyes. If he’d looked crazy before, then he looked absolutely lost now.
“The whole thing, the drugs, the violence, all of that was done to hide the fact that there were monsters in Pine Deep.”
I had to take a moment on that. “When you say…‘monsters’…?”
“I mean monsters. Vampires and…”
When he didn’t finish, I pushed him.
“And what?”
He looked me right in the eye.
“And werewolves.”
To which I said, “Oh shit.”
To which he replied, “Yeah.”
We sat there.
Talk about the elephant in the room.
I said, “You’re looking at me funny.”
He said, “I guess I am.”
“Am I going to regret asking?”
“Depends on how this conversation goes,” he said. “Could play out a bunch of different ways.”
“You’re making a lot of assumptions. You know how that usually turns out.”
He shrugged. I noticed he’d placed his hand on his lap again. Very close to the gun.
Again.
Balls.
“I’m going to say a word,” he said. “It’s a word that the Limbus guy used. He didn’t explain what it was. He figured I already knew. Which I do.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to say it and then you’re going to tell me the first thing that comes to mind. Fair enough?”
“I don’t like games,” I said.
“Not a game.”
I said, “Shit.”
Then I said, “What’s the word?”
His hand moved an inch closer to his pistol.
Let’s face it, I expected the word to start with a “W.”
Instead, he used a different word. A lot more precise. A word that changed the entire dynamic between us.
He said, “Benandanti.”
I looked at him, at his face, his eyes. At the expression he wore.
I took a breath and said, “Yes.”
He closed his eyes.
And said, “Thank God.”
Chap. 22
Without another word, he turned in his seat, restarted the car, put it in drive, and hit the gas. We drove for maybe a mile before he said anything. I sure as hell wasn’t starting any conversations.
Crow said, “Tell me.”
“I don’t talk about this with anyone.”
“Tough. Tell me.”
“You used the word,” I said. “You know what it means.”
“Sure,” he said, “I know what the word means. ‘Goodwalker.’ I want to know what it means to you.”
“I think you already know.”
“That’s not what I mean. I want some background on you. Because if the stuff that’s happening is what I think it is, then there’s only two sides. Black and white. No gray area at all.”
I nodded. He was being very cagey about it. So was I. We were dancing around it because, hell, this really isn’t the kind of conversation people have.
I mean, I do, but only at home, when I’m around my aunts and my grandmother and my cousin. They’re like me. They’re exactly like me. Families tend to keep secrets like this. I’ve always kept it to myself. Usually the only people who find out about our family secret do so on their last and worst day.
On the other hand, I think I can say for certain that the people at Limbus—whoever or whatever the fuck they are—know. Why else would I be here? Cricket knew that I’d recognize the bite and claw patterns in those photos.
He was right.
“This has to go two ways,” I said. “If I show you mine, you got to show me yours.”
“You comfortable with the way that came out?” he asked.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. And…yes, this is a two-way street. Kind of has to be, don’t you think?”
So, after another mile I began talking. Trees whipped past. The sky above us was blotted out by the canopy of fall foliage.
“It’s a family thing,” I said. “Going back like…forever. My bunch is more or less Irish-English mutts. Been here since five minutes after the Mayflower. But we have roots in Italy going back to Etruscan times. Like six, seven hundred years B.C., you dig?”
He nodded.
“We weren’t always what you’d call saints, but I guess in our own way we’ve always been on the side of the angels. Not literally, ’cause that would be a little New Agey even for me. But in spirit. White hats, no matter how battered and stained those hats were.”
“Nice to know,” he said, then threw me a curveball. “Any relation to Theiss?”
I took a moment on that, then figured in for a penny, in for a pound. “Direct descent,” I said.
“Wow.”
“Wow,” I agreed. “Not sure which version of the story you heard. The one that makes the history books is that back in 1692, in Jurgenburg, Livonia, a Benandanti named Theiss was arrested and put on trial for being…well, for being what he was.”
“Say the word,” said Crow. He cut me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “Really…say it.”
I sighed. “Okay. Theiss was arrested for being a werewolf.”
He took a deep breath, held it, let it out, then he picked up the story I’d started. “Theiss’s defense was that at night he and the members of his order—”
“Family,” I corrected.
“Family. Okay. He and the members of his family transformed into werewolves in order to fight demons and other kinds of evil. Witches, pernicious spirits. Like that. He was whipped for superstition and idolatry and let go.”
“To paraphrase you,” I said, “that’s the story they sold to the press.”
“And the real story?”
“He was tortured for a long damn time. They wanted him to confess to being an apostate of Hell and an enemy of God. But…Theiss was a tough old motherfucker. They tried it all on him. Thumbscrews, the rack, dunking. The church is nothing if not enthusiastic.”
“They couldn’t break him, though?” prompted Crow.
“No. In the end they let him go because they figured that he couldn’t possibly endure all of the torture if he didn’t have God’s grace. Yada, yada, yada. So they let him go. They even gave him a nickname. You seem to kn
ow the story. What’d they call him?”
Crow smiled thinly. “The Hound of God.”
“Right. The thing is, a lot of the history books get it wrong. They don’t always connect the Benandanti with werewolves. Mostly ’cause there are a lot of New Age lamebrains who use that name like the Celts use ‘wicca.’ There are plenty of Benandanti in Europe today who come in to bless a new baby or sage a new house. Like that.”
“Don’t mock,” said Crow. “They might be doing something useful.”
“Maybe they are, but that doesn’t make them true Benandanti.”
“Ah,” he said, “pride goeth before a fall.”
“Yeah, well fuck you, too.”
“Point taken.”
We both smiled at that. Not sure what it meant, though.
“So,” I said, “are you going to ask me the obvious question?”
“Do I need to?”
“I don’t know. You tell me?”
“Sam,” he said, “I knew what you were when you walked into my office.”
“Why? Because Cricket told you?”
“Nope.”
“Then how? I didn’t wear my ‘I’m A Werewolf, Ask Me How’ button today.”
He didn’t answer. We rounded a bend and on the other side was a parked police cruiser, lots of crime scene tape strung between tree trunks, and a big kid in a deputy’s uniform leaning against the fender of the car. Maybe twenty-two. He was massive. Six-six, with more muscles than is necessary on any human being. He had his arms folded over his chest, a kitchen match between his teeth, and a scowl as dour as a country parson at a peep show.
I took one look at him and I knew why Crow knew what I was when he met me. This was his deputy.
And damn if he wasn’t playing for the same team as me.
Shit.
Big Bad
The killer climbed another tree and hunkered down in the crotch, his body completely concealed by camouflage, his face painted green and brown. He had a pair of binoculars whose lenses were covered with a filter that would not reflect light. His clothes were daubed with a paste made from ground bird feathers, squirrel urine, owl feces, and insect larvae. Not even a bloodhound could smell him through that.
Not even one of his brothers could smell him.
Not unless they were very close, and the killer was six hundred feet away and fifty feet up a towering oak.
He watched the three figures below.
The smallest of the three men was strange. The killer knew him, had seen him many times in the town. Had read about him on the Internet. Chief of Police. Alcoholic. Husband to a farmer.
And, very likely, a killer, too. A man who was more dangerous than his size and age suggested.
The biggest of the three men was even harder to categorize. He was a monster, even by the killer’s standards. Man, wolf and something else. There was a darkness in him that ran all the way to the soul. The killer feared him for reasons he could not name.
The third man looked weak, but wasn’t. Middle-sized, middle-aged, thin and haggard. He looked like a salesman, and not a successful one. He looked tired and frail.
But the killer could smell the wolf in him.
It was a strong wolf.
A true hunter.
The killer wanted to fight him. To see which of them was stronger.
To see which of them deserved to live.
He would have to arrange that.
He knew, in fact, that he would have to face all of these men. And maybe the big man he’d seen earlier. He would have to kill them all.
He…and his family.
The slaughter would be so delicious.
Chap. 23
We sniffed each other.
I’m not proud of it.
And, don’t get the wrong idea. We didn’t sniff each other’s asses. We’re strange but we’re not weird. We stood a few feet apart and took the air. His expression never flickered. Him I definitely wouldn’t play poker with. If he was like me, he was cataloging everything he could from my smell. I sure as hell was.
He was bigger and stronger than me, but the wolf in him was younger. A lot younger. It was more savage than mine. Less controlled. I could feel it wanting to come out. The kid had some iron goddamn control, though.
“Okay, okay,” said Crow, “you two are weirding me out. So cut the shit.”
“He’s the consultant?”
“Yes. Officer Mike Sweeney meet Sam Hunter, and vice versa. Shake hands and mind your manners. Both of you.”
He didn’t budge, so I took the cue and offered my hand. Sweeney looked at it for a moment, then without haste took it. And held it.
“Crow,” he said, “this guy had blood on him. Been in a fight. Couple of different guys. No…three different guys.”
My mouth went dry. No one’s ever read me that way. The way I usually read people.
Crow came and stood beside Mike. “I won’t ask if Mike’s telling the truth,” he said, “’cause Mike doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes.”
“Private matter,” I said.
“Which you’re going to tell us about,” said Crow.
I shook my head. “I plead the fifth.”
“No,” said Crow.
“No,” said Mike.
“Then we have a problem,” I said. “I didn’t come here to be blindsided by Sherriff Andy and Barney Fife.”
“Who?” asked Mike.
Crow said, “Sam, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of what’s going on here isn’t going to make it into any official report. If you’re going to work with us, then it has to be by being straight up.”
“You could arrest me.”
“Pretend for a moment that I won’t.”
We stood there inside that moment, none of us budging.
“He killed someone,” said Mike. “He changed and he killed someone.”
Crow nodded. “Is that true?”
I shrugged.
“Did they need killing?” asked Mike.
I tilted my head to one side. “You hear about that case last year? Guy doping little girls and making rape porn?”
“I heard about it.”
I shrugged again.
“There’s not going to be a trial,” said Crow, “is there?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Mike Sweeney took a step closer and sniffed again. Then he nodded and stepped back. “More than one guy.”
“Even total assholes have friends.”
“Had,” he corrected.
“Had,” I agreed.
He smiled then. A very small, thin smile. It was the kind of smile nobody—and I mean nobody—would ever want to see. There was no trace of humanity in it. No fragment of mercy.
“Fuck ’em,” he said. “You’re here as a consultant?”
“Yeah.”
“Then consult.”
With that, he turned his back on me and walked toward the crime scene.
Crow sighed.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“Mike had a complicated childhood.”
“I can imagine.”
He shook his head. “No, I really don’t think you could.”
He turned to follow Mike, and I, feeling more awkward than I had since my first middle school dance, trudged along in his wake.
Chap. 24
I ducked under the yellow crime scene tape and moved into a space dense with shadows. A motorcycle was wrapped around a tree. Front wheel torn open, gas tank ruptured, seat dislodged, headlight glass twinkling in a thousand pieces. There was dried blood everywhere, though for once I had to rely more on sight than smell because of the presence of the spilled gasoline.
Mike took an iPad from a briefcase he’d laid on the edge of a plastic tarp near the crash site, called up an image folder and handed it to me.
“The body was transported last night. These are the photos.”
I looked at them one at a time. High-res digital photography is very stark, very detailed. Artl
ess and cruel. The body of a man lay partly atop the bike, partly on the grass. And partly fifteen feet away. He was literally torn to pieces. It was a very brutal kind of thing, and a very familiar kind of thing.
I tried my Richard Dreyfus line again.
“This was no boating accident.”
Crow chuckled. Mike didn’t.
“Sam used to be a cop,” Crow said to Mike. To me he said, “Walk the scene. Tell me what you see.”
I did. There were tire tracks that curved off the road and right into the tree. There was dead grass around the spilled gas. There was blood spatter. There was the ruined machine.
“This is bullshit,” I said.
Crow and Mike exchanged a quick look.
“Walk us through it,” said Crow.
We went back to the road and I reconstructed it for them. “Here’s what is supposed to have happened,” I said. “It rained last night, right?”
“Until ten.”
“Ten. Okay. And when was the crash?”
“Passing motorist called it in at ten-twenty-one.”
“Uh-huh. So, the story is this. Guy’s tooling down this black as fuck road in the middle of a rainstorm at night. Loses control, goes into a skid, wraps his bike around the tree at high speed and goes splat.”
Crow put a stick of gum into his mouth and began folding the little foil wrapper with great care. “Uh-huh,” he said.
“Bike had to be going at high speed and for some reason the driver didn’t throttle down when he lost control.”
“Uh-huh.”
“To do that much damage, he had to be going at a hundred or better.”
“Uh-huh.”
I looked at him. “All of which amounts to a yard-high pile of total bullshit.”
“Why?”
“Let’s start with the road. Why would anyone be on this road at night? Does it even go anywhere?”
“It’s a fire access road and it’s used by the forestry service,” said Mike. “Kids come up here to make out.”
“Not in the rain,” I said. “And not on a bike. It’s not a dirt bike, either.”
“No.”
“In the photos, the guy’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. In the rain?”
Crow spread his hands.
“Where’s his helmet?”
“He wasn’t wearing one,” said Mike.
Limbus, Inc. Book II Page 28