by Stephen Cole
‘I took a call from Jicaque after you left. He wanted to meet up with Tom.’
‘What?’ Suddenly Tom was wide-awake behind her.
‘And only Tom. Midnight, some place off of Times Square.’ Stacy shrugged. ‘I knew one of the messages had to be bogus. The only way to find out which was to come out here and get you.’
‘How do we know we can trust this other Jicaque?’ Kate said bitterly.
‘He said something kind of weird about Tom …’ Stacy clicked her tongue as she tried to remember. ‘Oh yeah – “This time, put on your pants before we meet.”’ She frowned. ‘Make any sense?’
‘It’s him,’ Tom said, struggling forward under his blanket so he could better talk to Stacy. ‘We first met in New Orleans … I’d changed back from the ’wolf and I ducked into some scuzzy old movie theatre to get dressed. He was sitting there – turned out he owned the place – and asked me if I needed any help. I didn’t know it was him till way after … No one else would know that happened.’
Kate nodded. ‘And if my mother had got to him, why would she arrange a message to be left while she was tricking us out to Gun Hill?’ She looked at him. ‘Jesus, Tom. It really could be him. He’s found us.’
‘Or Tom, anyway,’ said Stacy. ‘The message was for Tom to meet him alone at some diner called Vegetarian Kitchen.’
‘I guess that’s a good sign,’ Tom said. ‘Sorry you can’t come.’
‘Maybe he’s scared of my mom – wants nothing to do with her daughter …’ Kate said, trailing off as a horrible thought struck her. ‘Oh God, I just realised. Someone’s got to tell Rico and Jasmine … about Ramone.’
‘Rico’s brother?’ Stacy asked sharply. ‘What about him?’
Kate opened her mouth to tell her, but the words wouldn’t come. It didn’t seem possible that someone as larger-than-life as Ramone could now be gone. She turned to Tom, her eyes misting over. All she could see was the photo of Ramone’s desecrated body.
‘It’s bad news,’ Tom said huskily.
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The mood was subdued in the car as they drove the rest of the way into the seething heart of New York. Tom was guiltily glad to have got away, and grateful that it was Kate who would be breaking the news about Ramone.
He felt oddly detached from his surroundings as he wandered down Broadway. Everywhere was bright and well-lit. People surged along the wide-open streets in great waves, spewing out from the theatres and the restaurants in their hundreds. Great skyscrapers ploughed up from out of the busy traffic on every street in sight. And as he finally came to Times Square, there was a sense of something truly giant in the air – not just the massive neon hoardings cranked up high over the city, or the TV screens the size of a condo, or the buildings that outstretched and outshone the night sky. There was a brash, rough-and-ready optimism about the place, the feeling that you could come here and stuff would happen. That anything was possible.
Tom tried and tried to give himself up to such feelings, but he was still struggling to come to terms with his behaviour back on the bridge, and the wild mood swings he’d experienced since taking the serum. He kept getting flashbacks, frozen moments of violence that stung his senses. He hoped against hope that he’d ridden out the side-effects and that now he was normal again – at least, as normal as he could hope to be.
He’d hated the lupine nature within him before, but if he could no longer control the beast and its power …
At least he felt a little warmer now. Practical as ever, Kate had pointed out that Tom was going to draw some unwelcome attention at his rendezvous if he walked around Times Square naked. Luckily, Stacy remembered a hot tip from one of the street kids in her program: a thrift clothes store on Broadway regularly dumped unwelcome donations outside with its trash. Kate had managed to find him a holey sweater and a threadbare tweed jacket and a pair of tuxedo pants sporting some very suspect stains. They went nicely with the grubby pair of basketball shoes, straight out of the Eighties and a size too small.
But dress sense was the least of his worries, whatever the smirking hordes thronging the sidewalks around him might think. His stomach was fizzing with nerves at the thought of meeting Jicaque, after so many tricks, so many false hopes …
It was five minutes to midnight. Tom found his step was quickening as he turned on to West 44th Street. Did he dare to think he really could be cured?
The Vegetarian Kitchen was a tiny bistro that had snuck into the street between a 7-Eleven and a tacky video store.
Tom stared at it in disbelief.
It was closed.
He swore. There was no doubt about it: the place was dark, empty, shut up for the night.
‘Hey,’ a man’s voice whispered close by. ‘Down here.’
It was coming from an alleyway that ran beside the bistro. His hopes igniting once more, Tom rushed to the mouth of the dark alley to investigate.
Someone grabbed hold of his jacket and dragged him inside. He cried out but a hand clamped over his mouth. The ’wolves, he thought, panicking. How could I have been so stupid?
Across from the alleyway on the other side of the street, a psychic advertised her services in gaudy, flickering neon. In its pink burn he saw another man, Korean maybe, lurking in the thick shadows.
Tom bit the thick fingers bruising his lips, and with a grunt the man snatched them away. But before Tom could shout for help, the Korean doubled him up with a punch in the stomach, and thrust a knife towards his face.
The other man grabbed Tom again, this time in a neck-lock.
‘Give us your money and don’t make a sound or we’ll make you bleed, kid.’
‘Muggers?’ Tom gasped. Bizarrely, he felt a rush of sudden relief. ‘Thank God.’
He saw the Korean frown. ‘Huh?’
‘Comedian,’ muttered the first man, tightening the neck-lock.
Tom gasped. OK, so they might not be ’wolves – but the city had dangers enough without them, and he had been a fool to forget it. ‘I don’t have any money …’ he spluttered. ‘All I have is the clothes I’m in. Look at me …’ The pressure on his airway was beginning to make Tom feel giddy.
Change, he thought. Change to save yourself …
The knife-man frisked him quickly and swore. ‘Nothing.’ Then he smiled and held the knife to Tom’s cheek. ‘Maybe we’ll take something else from you, huh?’
Change!
Tom thought of the hundreds of people coursing through those brightly-lit streets just steps away. After what happened at Gun Hill he knew he couldn’t risk their lives to save his own.
And since his last hope had finally failed him, why fight? Maybe it was time just to give in at last.
He shut his eyes as the knifepoint pressed into his cheek.
Then a resounding clang echoed around the alleyway, and the knife fell away. A hand reached past Tom’s face and jabbed at the man who held him. With a cry of pain, the man fell back, clutching his eyes.
The muggers, reeling from this sudden assault, retreated quickly down the alleyway and back to the main drag without a backward glance.
In the sputtering light of the neon display Tom stared in disbelief at his rescuer. He was a short man wearing a white coat over checked trousers, an ageing Native American whose silver hair hung down to his shoulders in scruffy braids. His face was lined, his nose like a big, straight arrow through the contours, pointing down to a proud cleft chin. His eyes were amber in the light, twinkling with amusement.
The old man held up a glistening hand. ‘Chili oil,’ he announced in a voice that held no trace of accent. He gestured to a door in the wall beside him. ‘From the kitchens. I think it stung his eyes a little.’
Tom noticed the heavy frying pan in the man’s other hand. ‘You hit the guy with that?’ he asked.
‘The use of force is unfortunate,’ his rescuer commented, ‘but sometimes necessary.’ He paused. ‘Greetings, Tom Anderson.’
‘Jicaque?’ asked Tom, shell-shocked.
&nb
sp; ‘Sometimes,’ agreed the old man almost regretfully. ‘I prefer being Johnny Oldman, lately arrived in Manhattan as deputy head chef of Vegetarian Kitchen.’ He brightened. ‘You know, my egg rolls are the finest in Midtown.’
Tom just stared at him dumbly.
‘But what am I thinking?’ the old man went on. ‘You’ve had a terrible ordeal. You need a strong cup of java. I know someplace we can go.’
The old man headed back to the street down the alleyway, still clutching the frying pan.
Tom watched him go, his spirit shaken. This daffy old guy was really Jicaque, fabled medicine man and scourge of ’wolves across the USA? It was a blistering anti-climax.
Heavy-hearted, Tom was about to follow him, when he noticed the door in the wall leading to the kitchens of the restaurant. It was bolted shut and secured with a large padlock. So how the hell did Jicaque get out here?
With a shiver of fear and anticipation, Tom followed the old man as he turned left towards the hustle of the brighter streets.
*
Kate dreaded the task ahead of her as Stacy turned the car into the street where Ramone had his hideout. She’d tried rehearsing what she was going to tell Jasmine and Rico, but the words kept coming out all wrong.
Something else was wrong, too.
A sleek, dark stretch limousine was parked outside the slum tenements. It looked incongruous with the housing projects crowding the skyline behind it.
‘That’s weird,’ Stacy observed, slowing down. ‘What would a limo be doing here?’
‘Look,’ Kate said. ‘There’s someone coming out.’ A stooped, bedraggled-looking man was trudging down the steps leading up to the hangout. Something glinted in his hand; metal or glass perhaps, but she couldn’t tell what.
‘That’s Dr Woollard,’ Stacy reported. ‘I didn’t think he ever left his house. Why would he come to Ramone’s now?’
She was about to honk on the horn to attract his attention, but Kate grabbed her by the wrist to stop her. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Look.’
A skinny figure had emerged from the limousine to greet Woollard. He was ghoulish-looking, deathly pale, his features bunched up together in the middle of his pockmarked face. His white-blond hair was shaved back to stubble. As he ushered Woollard into the back of the car, he smiled, baring a sharp set of teeth.
‘Takapa,’ Kate breathed. ‘The one who’s making all this shit happen.’
Stacy nodded. ‘God help us, it looks like Woollard’s pitched in with him.’
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CHAPTER TWELVE
Tom glanced around the late-night coffee shop while Jicaque placed their order at the counter. Scattered tables of twenty-somethings huddled together over the yellow Formica, speaking in low, serious voices. Middle-aged men stared out stoically through the menu-cluttered windows, seemingly reluctant to go home to their empty apartments. A couple, he too young and she too old, looked lovelorn at each other over untouched lattes. Tom felt oddly at home here, just one more person in the coffee-shop crowd hiding from the sharp truths of life for a few short hours.
Jicaque returned, placing a cup of coffee down in front of Tom. ‘You’re disappointed,’ he noted, sitting opposite in the grimy booth. ‘You were expecting someone more impressive to bear the name of Jicaque, right?’
‘No,’ Tom protested.
His companion smiled wryly. ‘And a bad liar. But you, more than most, should appreciate that outward appearances count for little. Not in the world that we inhabit.’ He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Take these.’
‘No thanks, I don’t smoke.’
‘I mean, take them by way of example. I am an old man now, and I have survived the attentions of many enemies only through being prepared.’ Jicaque’s smile grew wilier, and he lowered his voice. ‘I don’t always carry a frying pan, and I don’t smoke, either. But I carry cigarettes powdered with a special compound of magnesium. Should I find myself in trouble, I take out a cigarette and light it. The resultant flare is a useful distraction.’
‘Ouch,’ Tom said. ‘Should I be worried about this coffee?’
‘At fifty cents a cup, maybe we both should,’ Jicaque replied.
Some oldster music, jazz or something, was piping through little speakers in the corners of the room. Jicaque clearly approved, shaking his head in time to the shifting beat. ‘Stan Getz,’ he said, with a sigh of contentment. ‘Pure genius. You know his work?’
‘I think maybe my dad’s heard of him,’ Tom said.
‘Kids.’ The old man grimaced, then sipped his coffee. ‘Won’t you drink?’
Tom felt dazed. He had rehearsed this momentous meeting in his dreams so many times; somehow, he’d never imagined it would take place over a Formica table with corny old records playing in the background. He shrugged, raised the cup to his lips and sipped.
Jicaque watched him intently, expectantly.
‘It’s good, thanks,’ Tom said, remembering his manners. Jicaque went on staring, and Tom shifted uncomfortably. ‘Do I have a coffee moustache or something?’
‘I thought as much,’ the old man said at last. ‘The powder I just slipped in your drink would’ve made you violently ill by now if you weren’t what I believe you to be.’
Tom stared at his coffee cup in alarm, then half-rose to his feet. ‘There’s poison in this?’
‘No,’ said Jicaque mildly, glancing around to check no one had overheard. ‘Merely a combination of dried herbs – an old, old recipe.’ His expression hardened. ‘I have heard many things, many rumours about you. But I am careful what I choose to believe. If not, I would’ve been killed years ago.’
Tom sat back down warily and pushed aside his coffee. ‘Maybe I should be more careful too. I heard you’d retired from practising medicine.’
Jicaque smiled, his striking amber-coloured eyes twinkling. ‘So the ’wolves like to think. You could say I started minding their business a little too closely for their liking. The lupine community does not appreciate human interference in its affairs. They threatened to kill me.’
‘They’re evil,’ Tom said, ‘they should be wiped out. Hunted down.’
Jicaque shook his head. ‘Like any predator, they have the right to exist.’ He sighed. ‘Werewolves have been a part of the hidden fabric of human society for countless generations. But they were not always so hidden. Will you listen to an old man’s story?’
Tom nodded. ‘It has to beat the jazz.’
Jicaque frowned at him, then began his tale. ‘No one knows for sure when the first werewolf dragged itself out of the darkness and into the world of men. But according to the ancient texts, a community of Pueblo people in America’s southwest suffered particularly from a plague of attacks. As is often the case in nature, they discovered an indigenous remedy nearby. If the bitten victim imbibed a solution of a local herb – in any other situation highly toxic – for the length of one lunar month, then the lupine toxins were unable to take hold. Ancient magics and rites were used to support a body’s natural resistance as it utilised the herb to overcome the lupine threat. In modern understanding, antibodies were created. Babies began to be born with natural immunity. Eventually, the community was able to drive out the lupine entirely.’
Jicaque paused to take another sip from his steaming cup. ‘They came to be known as the Shipapi; taking their name from the Pueblo word Shipap, meaning the womb of the earth, the place from which the first pure human beings entered the world.’
‘Go on,’ Tom said, fascinated.
‘Slowly, the word spread to other tribes that there was a way to fight back against wolfkind. But because the ’wolves hid in human form, the Shipapi’s secrets were entrusted only to a very few. They travelled the land, driving out the hidden ’wolves and appointing others in this sacred order.’
‘So what went wrong?’ Tom reached to take another gulp of his coffee – then changed his mind. ‘How’d the ’wolf fight back?’
Jicaque smiled grimly
. ‘The arrogance of man is often his downfall. The Shipapi grew complacent – even corrupt; the natural protection was diluted through careless mating. The ’wolves became able to infiltrate the ranks of the Shipapi for the first time. Trust dwindled, and so too did the numbers of the Shipapi. So many people died …’ Abruptly, Jicaque stopped, staring into space. A tear trickled down his cheek.
‘Are you OK?’ Tom whispered.
‘Sorry. It’s just this sax break here …’ He tapped his skinny chest. ‘Gets me every time, you know?’
Tom rolled his eyes. ‘Look … you’re telling a great story, but what does it have to do with what’s happening now?’
‘Be patient,’ said Jicaque sharply. ‘Though the natural immunity of the Shipapi was seriously compromised, resistance, in various forms and levels, still occurred in subsequent generations and is still evident today in a chosen few.’ Now the old man smiled. ‘The ’wolves call these silverbloods. I believe you’ve heard of the expression?’
Tom felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He had been called a silverblood. ‘I’m descended from the Shipapi?’ he asked in wonder. ‘You mean, like, my great-great-great-great-grandfather was one of these people?’
Jicaque opened his mouth to answer, but hesitated as a departing couple passed by close to their table, trying to squeeze past.
Tom glared at them, holding his breath until they had gone and the old man could talk freely again.
‘Indeed, you carry inside you the blood of the ancient guardians,’ Jicaque said softly. ‘A little diluted, sure – but there, nonetheless.’
Tom grimaced. ‘Not strong enough,’ he said. ‘Marcie Folan still made a newblood out of me.’
‘Not entirely; she made you a wereling,’ Jicaque pointed out. ‘As for me, I carry the resistance in a purer form.’
‘Like Rico,’ Tom guessed. Jicaque looked blank. ‘This kid I know,’ Tom went on. ‘His blood is poison to the ’wolves; he can’t be turned.’