by Nigel Henry
“What?” I reply. “I’m just saying jail’s probably not going to be very effective against prisoners that can fly out between the bars.”
“When this is over we’re going to have a talk about your instincts,” Mom says.
I huff and fold my arms. “Ugh, of course, you’d take his side.”
We pull up across the street from the bank and Perkins hops out and heads to the trunk. A moment later he returns with three garment bags, handing one to each of us.
“Uniforms?” Mom guesses as she unzips hers to reveal a black suit and white shirt. Mine is virtually the same. Dad grumbles when he opens his to find a security guard’s gray button-up.
“All right team,” Perkins says. “You can change in the staff bathroom. The shipment comes in at four o’clock. Do your thing if anything goes wrong. But make sure no one gets hurt, and stay in radio contact.”
Perkins’ tense attitude tells me it’s not the time for jokes, so I let my parents take the lead as we cross the street and head for the bank. I’ve gotta say, for a place that might be the scene of an epic battle between the forces of good and bird poop, the bank looks relatively normal this morning. I can already see the line of people forming at the ATM machine, some holding way-too-expensive Starbucks lattes, none of them with any clue what could go down.
West Village Credit Union is one of those dog-friendly banks, too, so there are three dog owners waiting to walk in, their pets happily lapping up water from a bowl like they don’t have a care in the world. One of them is one of those little brown hot dogs, and I can’t help but utter a squeak of adoration and pity when I see him get nosed aside by a bigger golden lab. What can I say; I love dogs, but my folks won’t let me keep one. Something about how we can’t take care of a dog AND save the city from monsters. When I go away to college, I’m totally getting my own dog.
Perkins introduces us to the bank’s manager, a portly white man with graying hair that looks like it’s running away from the top of his head and a face that screams “I think finance is fascinating.” The manager lets us change in the restrooms, then posts Dad out by the front door. Mom and I get to hang out in the back and get training on the bank’s computer system. Turns out they actually want us to do teller-y stuff while we pretend to be tellers.
Two hours and waaaay more boredom than I ever could have expected later, we’re ready to go to work. Mom and I take our places at the teller kiosks and call up our first customers. Mine is a George Clooney-lookalike who wants to withdraw two thousand dollars from his savings account.
“No problem, sir,” I say as I pull up his account and being the withdrawal. “And how would—OH WOW!”
My eye drifts to the balance of his account. Dude has two million bucks sitting in savings, another six hundred thousand in his checking account. Who the hell has two million dollars lying around? Does actual George Clooney have that much money? I haven’t even started my working life but I’m pretty sure I won’t have made two million bucks by the end of it. Hell, I don’t think I’ll be able to see two million of anything. Except maybe Beyoncé videos. I could watch those all day.
“Is something wrong?” Clooney asks.
“No, sir,” I say, trying to regain my composure. “I’ll have your money to you in two millions—er, minutes! Two minutes!”
He looks at me like I’m a freak as I hand him his cash and receipt. I guess I blew my chance to live in the lap of luxury.
“Everything okay?” Dad asks through the comm in my ear.
“Oh yeah, it’s fine,” I mumble as the next customer walks up. “I just learned that there are six zeroes in two million.”
“Ah, your first brush with monied people.”
“You guys ever think we could make two million bucks? You know, if we stopped the whole hunting thing?”
“Who knows? We’d save a ton of money on weapons.”
“Excuse me!” A skinny woman a bad blonde wig snaps her fingers as she screams at me. “Can you pay attention please?”
My hand instinctively reaches for the slingshot under the kiosk, but then I catch myself. It probably wouldn’t help things if I blinded the second customer I’ve seen today.
“Sorry about that,” I say. “How can I help you?”
She shoves a paper in my face. “You can help me by getting me my damn money.”
Can’t kill customers. Can’t kill customers.
THE REST of the day is filled with customers both nice and awful, but no pigeon-human bank robbers. Which is to say it’s dull. So dull, in fact, that I consider robbing the place myself just to spark some excitement. The only thing that keeps me from going crazy is the fact that my kiosk faces the street, so I can see all the dogs as they gather around the water dish.
Things pick up at four o’clock when Perkins’ voice comes in over my headset. “Okay, shipment’s in route. Stay sharp.”
“Copy that,” Dad says. I shoot a quick glance over to my mother and see she’s got her collapsible baton hidden from customer view next to her keyboard.
The truck arrives a few minutes later, and two men in bullet-proof vests get out and start lugging in bags. I give the room a quick scan: no one’s in masks or hoodies. Maybe they won’t show.
“Ms. Hicks!” A voice behind me says firmly, grabbing my attention. It’s the bank manager. “Ms. Hicks?” he repeats.
“Yes?” I say, remembering that I’m still supposed to be Special Agent Hicks for this mission.
“I was just asking if you didn’t mind refilling the water dish out front.”
“Seriously?” I give him a dirty look. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye out for bandits and you want me to go be your errand girl?
“Do it,” Mom’s voice sounds in my ear. “We’re supposed to be regular employees.”
UGGGHHH.
I huff before forcing a smile onto my face. “Sure thing, Boss Man.”
I make my way out to the front, past the security guards who are still carrying in money from the armored car and pick up the water dish. That’s when I notice the most adorable husky puppy tied up at a bike rack on the sidewalk. He’s mostly gray, but his face is white, and he’s got this great gray stripe running down his snout. His eyes are a striking blue, and his nose is pink.
“Hey there, guy,” I say. He takes a step back and lowers his tail. “Aww, I’m not going to hurt you.” I scratch behind his ear. He starts panting and then he rolls over like he’s asking for a belly rub. And it’d be totally rude not to answer that request.
“Oh my God, you’re so cute,” I gush.
“Wow, he really likes you,” a voice behind me says. I turn and there’s a young-ish man that I assume is the dog’s owner. He’s dressed in a black t-shirt and blue jeans with a black Knicks cap on his head. He’s holding a Starbucks cup in his hand.
“Your dog is great,” I say.
“Thank you. Cal’s normally scared of most people.” He goes to untie the dog, but the dog bolts the moment it’s loose. It takes off through the doors and into the bank.
“Cal, wait! Come back here!” The owner shouts as we both give chase. I find him cuddled up next to my Mom, who looks like she’s in love.
“Sorry about that,” Cal’s owner says as he grabs the leash. Cal looks around the room grinning like he’s just won the biggest prize in the world.
“It’s no problem,” I say as I slide behind my kiosk. “While you’re here, is there anything we can do for you?”
The man’s about to answer when a brown haired woman and another man enter the bank, both wearing baseball caps. Cal starts barking uncontrollably. I turn my attention toward them and something seems off.
“Yes,” the man says. “I’d like to withdraw $200 from my checking account.”
“Sure thing,” I say and I start typing away. I peek out from above the computer monitor to keep an eye on the two of them. They’re looking around the room nervously.
“You know what, can you give me a moment?” I tell the man. “My machin
e’s down. Let me run to the back.” I head toward the manager’s office and whisper into my comms. “What’d the perps in the footage look like?”
“Three men and a woman. One of the men looks like he lives in the gym.” Dad says.
“Woman and man,” I reply, “Both wearing caps. I think that’s them.”
“Roger. I’ll work on clearing out the room.”
I make my way back and put on my best smile to Cal’s owner. “Sorry about that, my machine’s working again. Now, it was $200, right?”
“Actually,” the man says, pulling a handgun from his waist, “I’ll take as much as you’ve got.”
SIX
WELL, shit. That was unexpected.
The man keeps the handgun pointed at my chest as he clarifies himself. “That big shipment of cash that just came in, I want it all. Now.”
I freeze, unsure of my next move. He hasn’t started yelling, so no one’s noticed him yet. I’m absolutely sure that won’t last. I have to get that gun out of his hands before this whole thing goes sideways, but I can’t do that while it’s aimed directly at me. I’m fast, but I’m not faster than a bullet.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll get it to you. You don’t have to hurt anyone.”
“Do as I say and I won’t.”
I get an idea, remembering that I’ve still got my comms on. I can signal my parents. “All right,” I say. “Just, please don’t hurt me. My Mom and Dad would lose it if anything happened to me.”
“Ria? Oh my God.” Dad’s voice comes into my headset. At the same time, the gunman tilts his head, as if he’s hearing something strange.
“Who are you talking to?” He barks.
Crap crap crap, he heard the comm somehow. I’m blown.
He reaches over the kiosk toward me. I back away and he points the gun at me. I hold my hands up to my head.
BLAM!
The sound of the gunshot burns my ears, but it’s not followed by the kind of “holy fuck” pain that you’d expect. After a second, my brain starts to tell me that maybe I haven’t been shot, so I lower my hands and look up.
My Mom’s fighting the gunman, baton extended as everyone else screams and runs away. She must’ve attacked him while his attention was on me. She crashes her baton against his hand and the gun falls from his hand and clatters toward me. I kick it behind me and rise out of my seat.
That asshole just tried to kill me.
Okay, dick bag, let’s dance.
I grab the slingshot from my kiosk, load in a salt-ball and fire at his face. The ball hits him directly in the eyes and he screams as he stumbles backward. I grab my baton in time to see Dad knock the woman in the baseball cap backward. The other man rushes me, but I kick him on his ass.
The three of them land together and we advance, weapons out. Checkmate. Millers: one, bank robbers: zilch.
They try to rise, but I load in another salt shot and aim it at the now-unarmed gunman. “Just give me a reason,” I growl.
For a moment, we’re in a standoff, with no one daring to move. Then, bless his little furry heart, Cal the husky runs up to the gunman and starts whining. To my surprise, the gunman kicks the dog away.
“You idiot,” he screams, “You said they were unarmed!”
Cal lands against a kiosk with a loud yelp and I decide that this guy needs an attitude adjustment. I fire another salt shot, but he freaking flips out of the way and lands on his feet.
I’m momentarily dumbfounded. I was too close. There’s no way he should’ve been able to avoid that shot.
“I guess we’ll do this the hard way,” he says.
Then, before my eyes, he begins to change. His skin turns gray, and he starts to crouch down on all fours. If I didn’t see it, I wouldn’t believe it.
He’s shape-shifting in front of me.
“Close the door,” Mom shouts to Dad, “Don’t let them fly away!”
Dad starts to move, as I see fur start to grow from the man’s skin. Fur, not feathers. And then his hands turn into paws, not wings.
“Uhh, I don’t think we’ve got to worry about them flying away,” I say.
And we don’t. Because suddenly I’m not looking at three pigeon-human shapeshifters. I’m looking at three dog-human shapeshifters.
“Oh, they can turn into more than just birds,” I mutter. “That would’ve been nice to know before.”
The dogs pounce, one going toward each of us, with the biggest one—the former gunman—coming after me.
I hit the floor and kick the dog over, and it goes crashing into the kiosk, knocking it over in an explosion of wooden shards. It’s up in a heartbeat, rounding back and snapping at me with really-freaking-sharp teeth. I duck to the side and smash my baton into its snout before loading the slingshot and firing it at the dog’s eyes.
All the good that does, as the dog keeps coming at me. I don’t even have a moment to check on my parents, I’m so busy trying not to die myself. This is totally making me a cat person.
The dog pounces again. I try to duck but I’m not fast enough. It knocks me over this time, and suddenly its teeth are snapping at my face. I’m holding it by the neck trying to keep it off me as dog-shifter saliva falls on my face. I look to the side and spot my baton. If I can grab it I might be able to give him a mouthful, but I can’t spare either arm to reach for it, not if I want to keep having a face.
There’s a yelp from the side and suddenly Dad’s crashing into the dog, knocking it off me. I get up in time to see it rebound and sink its jaws into Dad’s shoulder. He screams out in pain as the dog tries to shake his arm off.
“Dad!”
I grab the baton and smash it into the dog’s eye. It yelps and lets go and they all turn tail and head out the door, Cal included. Mom and I forget about them as we gather around Dad.
Shit, he doesn’t look good. His shoulder’s bleeding heavily. Mom takes off her blazer and puts pressure on the wound, but Dad waves us off.
“Get them,” he rasps, “I’ll be fine! Go!”
That’s all the encouragement I need, as I leave Mom with him and tear out the door after those assholes. I see the wolves turn the corner a couple of yards ahead of me. I race after them and I hear a dog’s pained scream. This one’s gut-wrenching, like a dog that got its foot caught in a bear-trap.
I turn the corner just in time to see three birds as they fly off. Below, lying on the ground is a bloodied and whimpering husky puppy.
Perkins’ voice comes in over my comms. “What the hell is happening?”
I stare at Cal, adrenaline still running through my veins. “We’re gonna need a… uh… vet.”
SEVEN
“OW!”
I can hear Dad wincing as Mom stitches him up in the bathroom, and I try my best to block out the sounds by turning on some music in my bedroom. I’d hoped Janelle Monáe would help me calm down, but I can still feel the tension in my stomach.
I flop onto my bed and cover my head with my pillow. Of course, that only serves to bring back memories of the shifter pinning me down and snapping at my face. And suddenly it’s as if I can still feel the saliva on my face.
We screwed up. We weren’t prepared to fight a pack of wild shapeshifting dogs. We didn’t have the proper weapons or protection and Dad almost paid the price for it.
Mom says he got lucky, that the dog didn’t hit the bone or an artery or shred his muscles. But I can’t help but think about what would have happened had those teeth landed a few inches away. It could’ve gotten him in the neck, and then I’d be making plans to bury my father.
Inspector Perkins showed up a few minutes after the robbery went down, ushering us into his squad car and taking us back home to East Flatbush. I was a bit worried about Dad being seen dragged bleeding into the house by a police officer in broad daylight, but as luck would have it, Daylight Savings ended today, so it was already dark by the time we get home, giving us the cover we need to get him inside.
Perkins had to leave after getting us in to go c
lean up the crime scene and interview eyewitnesses. Those people are definitely going to need therapy after what they’ve seen, but, thankfully, I don’t think we have to worry about reading of our fight online. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in five years of fighting monsters, it’s that people are pretty good at convincing themselves they were hallucinating. And if that doesn’t work, everyone else is good at calling eyewitnesses crazy.
So now, alone in my room, I turn the whole thing over in my head.
The shifters tried to rob us the old-fashioned way, with guns and threats. They only went beast-mode when that didn’t work. We weren’t ready for that because we hadn’t seen it before. They’d only turned into pigeons in their previous robberies, and each time was to get away.
They expected it to be easy; they expected to come in waving a gun and flap away with a bunch of cash. We’d surprised them, they’d surprised us, and both sides went away unhappy. Call it a draw. Maybe.
I hear Dad’s lumbering footsteps coming up the stairs, and I step out into the hallway to see Mom helping him up the landing. He looks more pale than usual, and his left shoulder is heavily wrapped. But he still flashes me a smile. “Hey, kiddo.”
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He waves the question off with his right hand. “We’ve all had worse. It hurts, but I’ll be okay.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You shouldn’t have had to help me. I put you in danger and—”
He cuts me off. “Stop. Six weeks ago you saved your mother and me from a psychotic spider. Today I saved you from a rabid dog. That’s what this family does: we look out for each other.”
He grunts the rest of the way up the steps and puts a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll get ‘em next time.”
“But how? We don’t even know where they are.”
“Well,” Mom says, “maybe it’s time we wake up our guest.”
Dad nods and starts lumbering up toward the attic. Mom helps him and I bring up the rear. Once there we gather in the center of the room. There, sitting apart from our weapons supply in a metal crate is the other thing Inspector Perkins helped us bring home: a sleeping husky puppy.