by Nazri Noor
“Yikes.” I shuddered myself. “It’s way more macabre when you put it like that. Gil isn’t wrong, though. We can prevent this from happening if we know what it is we’re meant to be fighting. It can’t hurt to get what we can from his final moments. Answers straight from the corpse’s mouth.”
Asher shrugged my arm off, glaring at me. It didn’t happen very often, but as sweet as the kid was, he knew how to flay you with a single look.
“Too soon,” I muttered, pawing at the ground with the sole of one shoe. “Right. Sorry.”
“It’s not like you haven’t done this before, Asher.” Gil patted him on the back. "We just want to ask some questions. The sooner, the better, before his spirit wanders off. This is the best way we can help the people of this town.”
Asher put his face into his hands, steadying his breathing, then nodding. “Fine. Fine. Okay. I’ll do it. Stand clear.”
He knelt in the grass, eyes shut as he placed his hand in the air just above the man’s face, where his forehead would be. The little trick didn’t involve resurrection. That wasn’t part of the necromancer’s repertoire, or at least it wasn’t part of Asher’s. Bringing the dead back to life simply didn’t happen without any snags. There was always a catch.
No, this particular trick, I’d seen Asher pull off a few times in the past. It was a kind of temporary reanimation. Very helpful for harvesting information from the newly dead, but I understood his hesitation, too. Necromancers were painted as powerful mages who could command the dead and bend them to their will. Asher’s entire thing, whether it came to dealing with the living or the dead, was being a perfectly decent human being. Call it sappy, or idealistic, but Asher was at his most powerful when he showed reverence for the dead. And like he said, forcing a man’s spirit back into his newly-mangled body wasn’t the most respectful way to treat someone. But we needed leads, a way to stop more of these killings from happening.
Asher’s lips moved as he muttered a quiet incantation, speaking words I could never hope to understand. The wind picked up, tousling his hair as he chanted. When Asher opened his eyes again, they were no longer the same color, now burning with sickly green light. The dead man’s body convulsed, limbs thrashing in the dirt. His eyes flickered with light, the same pale jade as Asher’s. He gasped once, hard and deep, the sound a man makes when he emerges from the bottom of a lake – or when his soul returns to his body.
“Why?” the man murmured, the word stuttering like a hot coal on his fleshless lips. “Let me go.”
“I am so sorry,” Asher said, his voice soft, soothing. “I know you’re afraid, but we need to know what you saw. We need to know what did this to you.”
The man’s eyes goggled as he searched each of our faces. His mouth pulsed close and open, gawping like a fish, his body struggling to remember how to breathe. He turned his head sharply, left, right, left, eyes still wildly scanning the surrounding clearing.
“Where is it?” Asher said. “The thing that attacked you. Where did it go? What was it?”
A low whine started from the back of the corpse’s throat, a smaller version of his terrified scream. His eyes focused on something several feet away. He lifted his head, huffing and panting as he stared on in terror. I grimaced. I could have said that his eyes went wide with fear, but that no longer applies when someone’s eyelids are totally gone.
“The sign,” he murmured. “The sign, the sign.” He threw his head back, screaming, kicking at the earth.
“No,” Asher said, urgency flowing into his voice. “Don’t be afraid. We won’t let it hurt you.”
Sweet lies. There were things out there that could still hurt you after you were dead. But what thing had killed this man that it frightened him so badly? And what sign was he talking about?
“The sign,” the man burbled, raising his head out of the muck formed in the earth by his pooling blood. He lifted his hand, pointing at something between his feet. There was nothing there. The discomfort crawling up my spine was turning into dread. “Sign. Sign.”
He shuddered, the green light of his eyeballs fading as his spirit left him once more. The man went limp, his second death, this time for good. Asher lowered his head and shut his eyes, offering a quiet prayer.
“What was he talking about?” Gil muttered.
“I have no idea,” Asher said. “The sign. What sign? I was seeing through his eyes, but – no, nothing. That’s just a tree.”
I strode over to where Asher was pointing. It couldn’t have been easy for him to see from where he knelt, but there it was, nestled among the roots and fallen leaves. A bizarre little bundle of twigs rested there, like a weird wooden sculpture.
“What the hell is this thing, then?”
“Don’t touch it,” Asher called out. “Whatever it is, don’t touch it.”
He rushed across the clearing, bending down next to me to examine it. “Is this the sign? It’s like a fetish. Could be used for a hex, could be for protection. Why was he so afraid of it?”
Gil’s shoes crunched in the leaves behind us. I glanced up at him, my forehead creased. “Do your werewolf buddies up here use fetish magic? Is that a thing?”
He grimaced, ready with an answer, but hesitating. “It’s – yes, it’s not unheard of. Some among us have enough arcane potential to use magic. But that’s – it’s just so improbable. It’s far more likely that your vampire friend was involved.”
I rose to my full height, brushing wet leaves off my jeans. “Oh, here we go pointing fingers. I hate Vilmas as much as the next guy, but he didn’t do this.”
“Let’s not talk about pointing fingers, Sterling, because you started it. And how do you know this Vilmas wasn’t responsible? Some of you vampires do blood magic. The strong ones can transform, too.”
Gil folded his arms, raising his nose at me in defiance, a smug grin barely hidden behind his beard. Damn it. That was the problem with Gil. You’d think a werewolf would be all about feral bloodlust and flaring tempers, but the guy had more than enough brains to match the brawn.
“It wasn’t Vilmas,” I said, with no conviction whatsoever. “I just know it isn’t. He can’t be that well-versed at controlling the blood.” Unless, that is, he’d picked up one or two new tricks at court.
“You guys need to quit the pissing contest already,” Asher said, reaching into his pocket. “Sterling, step away from the tree. I need to take a picture of the fetish.”
I threw my hands up in anger. “Oh, why didn’t you just ask me to take a selfie with it? For fuck’s sake, we should just take it back with us.”
Asher snapped a couple of photos, then shook his head. “Hell no. First off, I don’t want to be the new guy in town who’s caught tampering with evidence. And then suddenly I’m the new guy in town who’s also a murder suspect. Second – we don’t know what that thing is or what it does. No way it goes in the house.”
I rolled my eyes. “How did we skip all the way to evidence and tampering? Who said we were going to call the cops?”
“Me,” Asher said, holding up his phone. “Watch me go.”
I lunged at him, aiming a swipe at his phone, but Gil pushed back against my chest, restraining me.
“Sterling,” he said, leveling me with his gaze and frowning. “I hate the idea of this, too, but Asher’s right. We should wait for them to show up. They’ll want to take a statement. It looks far worse for us if we just fuck off. New guys in town, and a dead body just happens to be found basically in their backyard? Yeah. Not a great look.”
I backed off, brushing at my jacket were Gil had touched me and giving him one last scowl. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction, but they weren’t wrong. I ruffled my hair with one hand, then gestured at the fetish.
“What if they find this thing?”
Asher shook his head. “I couldn’t spot it myself. Blends in too well. If they find it, then they find it. It’s very likely that it’s discharged and served its purpose, but it’s safer for all of us if it stays
out here. Let its energies disperse.” He knelt again, cautiously holding his hand a few inches away. “Hmm. Already dispersed, apparently.”
“Then it’s not going to be a danger to humans,” Gil said, relieved. “Just a bundle of twigs.”
“Just a bundle of twigs,” I echoed. “That might have been used for diabolical purposes by a magic-wielding werewolf.”
Gil glowered at me. “Or by a vampire.”
“The two of you need to stop this shit.” Asher hissed, holding his phone up to his ear. “Enough. Hello? Nine one one?”
8
I threw my head back and exhaled one last plume of silver smoke, watching it drift across the moon. Leaning on the hood of my car, I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, my boots crunching on debris and loose asphalt.
Our brush with the law hadn’t been as unpleasant as I’d thought. We told them exactly what had happened: we were hanging out at the cabin when we heard a scream. Minutes later, we found a dead body. Straightforward, and more or less unsuspicious, just like the boys had hoped. Nobody mentioned the fetish, though.
The three of us stood huddled in the parking lot, watching a squat building that thumped with rock music and roared with occasional peals of laughter.
“Sounds like a rough crowd,” I said, stubbing out my cigarette.
Gil shrugged. “You throw a bunch of wolves together, that’s what you get. They’re especially rowdy because everyone in there is from the same clan. It’s hard not to feel comfortable around family.”
Asher nodded at the bar, a red neon wolf flickering intermittently above the front door. “The Dead Dog,” he said. “Sounds friendly. Is that the name of the clan?”
“No,” Gil said. “Just the name of the bar. There are different clans all over. Some of them are like religions, and a bunch of others clump together because of common beliefs. Could be based on how you interpret your origins as a werewolf, or your perception of the world. Some of it is strictly familial. Way too much variety to cover.”
“And which kind are your buddies?” Asher said.
Gil frowned. “I’d hardly call them ‘buddies,’ not by any stretch of the imagination. What we have up here are mostly the Blood of Garm. There’s pockets of them throughout California, mixed in among the other clans. Could be some Fenrir Folk up here, too, but I doubt it. I’d say both of them fall more on the pseudo-religious side of the spectrum. Very old hierarchies and beliefs. Very old.”
I chewed my lip, picking up on the names he’d mentioned. Part of our education under our shared mentor had been to study up on mythology. It’s healthy knowledge to have on hand, in case you run into a creature of myth, or worse, a god, one that happens to be angry at you.
“Fenrir,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Huge wolf, right? Supposed to eat the sun at Ragnarok?”
“That’s the one,” Gil said. “Big figure in Norse mythology.”
“And so is Garm, come to think of it.” Asher rubbed his chin, which came off a little more comical than he’d intended because of how smooth and hairless it was. “He’s a psychopomp, guards the gates of Hel. Huge dog. His howl is supposed to herald the end of days – the beginning of Ragnarok.”
“In some stories, a huge dog-headed man,” Gil corrected. “Which makes him an especially appealing figure for werewolf worship. Or emulation. Whatever. The point is that the Blood of Garm is not especially known for being, uh, peaceful.”
A crash thundered from inside the bar, something I imagined to be the sound of a beer bottle being smashed across a counter. I grimaced. “You don’t say. It’s a clan built around a dog from the underworld, Gil. An actual hellhound.”
Gil folded his arms and raised his chin at me. “Remember when I told you that this wasn’t going to be a good idea?”
“Actually,” Asher said, “one more question. What clan do you belong to, Gil?”
I held my tongue. From the way Gil’s face fell, you could tell that it was a sensitive subject. Always had been, and we’d rarely ever discussed it. I liked messing around with my friends to the point of infuriation, but some buttons you just didn’t press. The question wasn’t meant to be malicious, though.
“That’s not something I really like getting into,” Gil said. “Not all of us can force the transformation the way I do, and a lot of the werewolves I meet – well, they find it unnatural. Immoral, somehow, like I’m mocking the moon itself. I don’t want to say that I’m shunned by other werewolves, necessarily, but that’s kind of what it feels like.”
“Sorry I asked,” Asher said.
Gil forced a little smile, clapping Asher on the back. “No harm done.” He slung his arm across my back, too, bringing the three of us in for a hug. “You guys are my clan, now.”
“I’m going to vomit,” I said, sticking a finger past my lips.
“Enough chitchat.” Gil thumped his chest and shook his head, psyching himself up like he was about to walk into a bar fight. Finally, some excitement. “Let’s head in.”
Asher looked between the two of us, blinking innocently. “Do I – should I just wait in the car?”
Gil sized him up. “Normally, yes, but we’ll make an exception for you this time. The rules are different out here. I didn’t like the idea of leaving you alone at the cabin, and I sure as hell don’t like the idea of leaving you in a parking lot outside a bar full of werewolves.”
“Wow,” Asher said. “My first bar.”
I wagged my finger at him. “You’re still not getting any drinks, though, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Asher frowned. “I don’t care about that. If I did I would have sweet-talked you into letting me have a beer ages ago.”
“Touché,” I said.
“It’s still a rite of passage, okay? Don’t burst my damn bubble.”
Gil chuckled. “Yeah, don’t burst the kid’s bubble, Sterling. Just because you were old enough to drink back in the eighteenth century doesn’t mean you get to boss him around.”
I shoved Gil in the chest, prompting laughter. I wasn’t even pissed about it, just annoyed on principle. “I’m not that old, you prick.”
Asher patted me on the back as he passed me. “It’s okay, Grandpa. We’ll love you no matter how ancient and decrepit you really are.”
“Thin ice, Mayhew,” I grumbled. “And you too, Ramirez.”
A woman waited at the entrance. She wasn’t wielding the clipboard and wearing the headset I’d come to associate with glitzier clubs. Instead she wore something that looked just as comfortable for chopping wood as it was for getting in a fistfight. In a denim jacket, ripped fishnets, and combat boots, with her red hair streaked through with blonde slashes, the Dead Dog’s bouncer looked like she’d fit in just fine at a punk gig. She tilted her head, grinning with familiarity as we approached.
“Jackie,” Gil said, lowering his head. “Been a long time.”
“It sure has.” Jackie cocked her hip, trailing a finger down the side of Gil’s cheek, then his chest. Oh. That kind of history. Gil turned away, clearing his throat. “You here to meet someone?”
“You know I am.”
She cast a quick glance across me and Asher. “Who are these two?”
“Friends,” Gil said.
Jackie eyed me from head to toe and back, the distaste clear on her face. I grinned right back.
“The bloodsucker can come in,” she said. “But you gotta leave the kid out here with me.”
Asher gawped, unsure of what to say. Gil shrugged. “Fine by me.”
“I could lose my liquor license,” Jackie said, appraising Asher a little more closely. “Can’t let just any baby boy walk into the Dead Dog like that, can I?”
Asher gulped. I rolled my eyes. So did Gil, to my surprise. He gripped Asher by the shoulder. “You’ll be fine out here. Jackie will keep an eye on you. She won’t eat you. Probably.”
Jackie tossed her hair and laughed. “Not in the way you think, Ramirez. Now shoo. Asher and I have things to talk abo
ut.”
I grinned at Asher, gleefully ignoring his mouthed “Help me” as we walked towards the entrance. When Gil pushed open the door into the Dead Dog, the last thing I heard behind us was the smile in Asher’s voice as he put on his best, most charismatic self. Attaboy.
But whatever Asher told Jackie to make her giggle was drowned out by the strains of rock music piped through huge speakers, and a persistent roar of conversation. I’d somehow expected to walk into an active bar fight, but the denizens of the Dead Dog were more interested in talking than anything. Pockets of people uniformly dressed in various combinations of denim and leather lined the walls, or sat at chipped wooden tables, each little group occupied in its own conversation.
Our intrusion didn’t go unnoticed, though. Heads turned as we passed. Expressions of recognition or plain neutral apathy were saved for Gil. I got a more distinctly even welcome of annoyance, anger, even a little revulsion. A vampire walks into a werewolf bar, eh? Everyone knew what I was, and nobody liked it. You might say it’s the pale skin and the undead swagger. I say it’s the chiseled perfection of my drop dead gorgeous face.
A man about as rugged and hirsute as good old Gilberto Ramirez himself strode up to us, though he gave me quite the wide berth. He clapped Gil on the shoulder in greeting, then immediately tilted his head in my direction. Even in the din of a noisy bar, vampire hearing is perfectly sensitive enough for picking out disses.
“Gil, the fuck are you doing bringing a vamp in here? You know he’s going to be pissed.”
I draped myself along Gil’s shoulder, grinning full in the wolf’s face. “Just who is going to be pissed, exactly?” Him, I guess, for starters.
“Sterling,” Gil growled. “I told you to behave.”
“I’m just asking a question,” I said, tilting my head and smiling sweetly.
The man wrinkled his nose at me, glowering, then looked back at Gil. “It’s your funeral. Back room.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, shaking his head as he walked back to his table. If people were staring at me before, they were watching like hawks now. Or more appropriately, wolves. Starving ones. I wish I could tell you that it made me afraid. Frankly, I adored the attention.