Tooth and Claw (The Harry Russo Diaries Book 2)

by Lisa Emme

  A hand grabbed my arm from behind. “Harry, wait up.” It was Nash.

  “Where have you been? I was looking for you,” I said, grabbing his hand and pulling him up the stairs. I had lost sight of the mystery man. “Come on, we’re going to lose him.”

  “Lose who?”

  “Just come on. I’ll explain later.” I hustled up the stairs, pushing through some stragglers on the landing, dragging Nash behind me.

  When we stepped outside, I looked around quickly. “Damn. I don’t see him anywhere.”

  “See who Harry? What’s going on?” Nash stood with his hands on his narrow hips, he had his detective’s shield clipped to his waist by his belt.

  “There was a man. The wolf hated him. If he could have torn him limb from limb, he would have.” I paced to the corner of the church and looked down the street. The man was nowhere to be seen. “What about the woman? Who was she?” I asked, walking back to stand in front of Nash.

  “She’s just a nurse who works for a private firm. She was a friend of the family, nothing more.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Look Harry, enough with the super sleuth routine. Leave the investigating to me.”

  “No, you don’t get it, Nash.” I huffed out a breath. “The wolf is trying to tell us something, tell me something. We have to find out who the man is. He’s connected somehow, I know it.”

  “Come on Harry. Don’t you think it’s a bit of a stretch? Some unknown man is involved in, well, we don’t even know what exactly, but you think he’s guilty because a ghost wolf growled at him?”

  “It’s more than that and you know it, Nash. You saw the wolf. It’s not just some crazy thing I’m making up. And if you had seen how he reacted to this guy,” I crossed my arms and glared at him. “Besides, the nurse knew the man too. She kept looking over at him nervously the whole time you were talking to her.” I stamped my foot. “They’re connected. I know they are.”

  “All right, calm down.” Nash reached out and rubbed my arm. “Even if it’s true, we have no way of finding this guy now.”

  I frowned. He was right. If only I had gotten his name or his license plate or something. And then it dawned on me. “Of course, the ring!” I grabbed Nash by his upper arms - man, are his arms pumped - and gave him a little shake. “We can use the ring to find him.”

  “What ring? What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “The man was wearing a very distinctive signet ring. It must be for a fraternity or maybe a professional designation. We can figure out who he is using the ring.”

  “I don’t know Harry. That’s a pretty big order. With only the ring and a physical description, we’ll probably have to spend hours and hours searching for some kind of match.

  “Not if we get Bryce to help us,” I replied gleefully.

  Chapter Eight

  Nash was understandably confused about how a dead guy was going to help us find our mystery man. Of course he didn’t know that Bryce’s ghost, who I had helped out a month or so ago after he had been murdered, had never really left. Instead, he had taken up residence in my old computer.

  When he was alive, Bryce had been a computer specialist and hacker extraordinaire, so it wasn’t really all that surprising that he had managed to meld himself into the circuitry of my computer. Okay, so it was. I didn’t know ghosts could do that, but ghosts do thrive on electricity, and so Bryce had somehow figured it out. He had even upgraded and totally rebuilt my old system from the ground up, and paid for it with money from a secret offshore account. It was like having my own version of the super computer HAL inhabiting my living room - without the plotting to kill us, hopefully - at least when he was around, which hadn’t been much these days.

  Since Bryce was now the equivalent of a bunch of nanobytes or whatever, and since just about everything was connected to the internet these days, he had a lot of room to roam. Most of the time he wasn’t around because he was off exploring some new corner of the World Wide Web. I also had a strong suspicion that there were a lot of good-looking women who kept their laptops open in their bedrooms and had their webcams turned on remotely. He was a bit of a perv.

  At my insistence, Nash had followed me home to see for himself. He paced the corner of my living room where the office was set up, tousling his hair with his hand.

  “So let me get this straight,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Bryce, the ghost, didn’t go to wherever ghosts go…”

  “Into the light,” I added helpfully with a grin. I was kind of enjoying Nash’s discomfort.

  “Right, into the light. He didn’t go into the light. Instead, he figured out how to live in your computer.”

  Tess, who had arrived home about the same time we did, rolled her eyes. “I tried to explain all this to you a month ago when we were trying to find Harry,” she said.

  “I don’t think you could really say live, since he’s dead,” I added, ignoring Tess’s complaint. “But yeah, Bryce is now in the computer. Or the computer is really Bryce, I guess.” I shrugged. I really didn’t understand the logistics of it myself. “However it works, Bryce is part of the computer and he’s a super hacker and can find just about anything on the web.” I sat down at the desk chair and flicked the monitor on. We kept the computer running all the time now, Bryce preferred it that way. “We just have to hope that he’s around.”

  “Where does he go when he isn’t there?”

  “I don’t know, surfs the web, talks to other computers.” I shrugged again. I really didn’t know although I did have my suspicions, but Nash didn’t need to hear about Bryce’s predilections.

  The computer monitor remained black and I jiggled the mouse a few times. “Come on Bryce,” I said. I really didn’t know if he would be there.

  Nash began to look at me skeptically. “You’re yanking my chain aren’t you?” He looked at Tess. “Both of you.”

  “No, we’re not. Honest,” I said holding up two fingers like a boy scout making a pledge. “It’s just he isn’t always there.”

  “Very funny, Harry, you had me going for a minute there.”

  “Look, it’s not a joke.” I banged on the side of the computer. “Bryce, quit kidding around if you’re in there.”

  “Hey, hands off, hot stuff!” The disembodied voice that came through the speakers sounded like a male version of an automated smartphone voice.

  “Bryce. You’re there.”

  “At your service, darlin’” The voice took on a distinctive twang.

  “Holy shit! He’s really in the computer.” Nash looked at the computer screen in disbelief. As a joke, Bryce had placed an animated GIF of a robot on the screen that interacted with us whenever we spoke to him. At Nash’s words the robot began to wave then held up a sign that said “Hi Loser”.

  “Very funny, Bryce,” I scolded. “Where have you been?”

  “Oh you know, here and there. There’s a really hot MILF in Seattle…”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. Too much information,” I interrupted. “So listen, I have a job for you.”

  “I’m all ears, or rather microphone. Speak and I shall obey.”

  I described the man to Bryce and then told him about the sigil on the ring. “It had a red background with a white cross. Only the cross was sideways so it looked more like an ‘X’.”

  “Like this?” The computer screen suddenly had an image similar to what I had seen.

  “Close, but the cross isn’t quite right,” I replied, biting my lip in thought. “It’s the arms of the cross, they’re different. They weren’t all equal in length so it wasn’t exactly an ‘X’. Two of the arms were a little shorter, like if you took a regular cross and turned it on its side.”

  “I think you mean a saltire cross. Like this?” He displayed another image.

  “Yes, that’s it.” I clapped my hands and looked over at Nash. He still looked like he was a bit
dazed at the whole talking computer thing. “The face of the ring was rather large and it was square with rounded corners. It looked like it was some sort of enamel maybe, or a polished agate with a pearl inlay.”

  “I’ll do a search of all known symbols of fraternities and professional organizations.”

  “It could be a family crest of some sort too,” added Nash, his detective instinct overriding his shock.

  “Roger that. I’ll add family genealogies and heraldic symbols to the search. It may take a couple of hours.”

  Tess looked at me and then Nash, “So, who wants to watch a movie?”

  Chapter Nine

  The next couple of days were pretty quiet. Nash didn’t stay for the movie, which was just as well, because it probably would have been awkward when his sister, Christina, arrived for a ‘cooking date’ with Isaac. There was definitely something going on between those two, although so far the relationship had been strictly culinary, at least as far as I cared to know.

  It had been a relief to just have a quiet evening in after the last couple of nights, not to mention the fact that we gorged ourselves on Coquilles Saint-Jacques - trust me you’ve never really eaten scallops until you’ve tried them this way - and Duck Confit. Living with a ‘foodie’ vampire has its perks.

  Tess nearly busted a gut when I told her about my visit from the Conclave Elders and what I had done to Elder Marshall. Christina had long since gone home and Tess and I were just finishing up the dishes. It was only fair since Isaac and Christina had done all the cooking.

  “Ohmigod! I wish I could have seen the look on his face when you dragged him across the room,” Tess guffawed, slapping her thigh.

  Isaac on the other hand was flabbergasted. “You mean you pushed him several feet across the floor and lifted him out the door?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say I lifted him. It was a lot harder than I thought and I couldn’t get him off the ground, but I gave him a big enough push that it got him over the threshold.” I shrugged. I didn’t see the problem. Isaac had told me to practice every day. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal, Harry, is that you shouldn’t be able to move an object or a person of that size.” Isaac still looked a little shocked. “Tomas has been practicing his entire lifetime and can, at most, lift a large hardcover book.”

  Now it was my turn to be a little shocked. “Well, you never told me I shouldn’t try to move big things.”

  “It seems it was a good thing that I didn’t,” Isaac said, deep in thought. He was probably wondering just how many other ways I could be a total freak. Good thing he didn’t know about the vampire lie detector yet.

  Just before Tess and I turned in for the night, Bryce chimed in saying he had found a match to the sigil on the mystery man’s ring.

  “Ever heard of Count Saint-Germaine or the Marquis de Montferrat?”

  “No. Should I have? Who were they and what do they have to do with the ring?” I asked impatiently. I was tired and wanted to go to bed.

  “Not they, but he. They’re the same person. He was also believed to be a Prince of Transylvania, or that was the rumour in 1779,” Bryce replied, modulating his voice on the word Transylvania so he sounded like a bad B-movie vampire.

  “So wait a minute, are you saying that Harry’s mystery man is supposed to be some ancient Prince?” Tess asked. “Is he a vampire?” She looked at Isaac who put his hands up, signalling he was at a loss.

  Isaac had missed hearing about the mystery man earlier when Nash was here, so I quickly filled him in. “But, this guy wasn’t a vampire,” I added. “I’m sure of that.” And I would know since I have a built-in vampire detector.

  “I didn’t say he was. If you would quit interrupting me….” Just how you make a computer generated voice sound snippy, I don’t know, but Bryce managed it.

  “Okay, okay. Astound us, oh Font of Information.” I bowed with a little flourish of my hand to the computer, which was a wasted gesture now that I think of it because Bryce couldn’t see us, not unless he had a webcam set up somewhere. Actually, I wouldn’t put it past him; he’d become a real voyeur since shedding the old mortal coil.

  “All right then. Prepare to be astounded.” The monitor suddenly displayed a black and white reproduction of a portrait of a man. It looked like it could have been something from the 1700’s. The man in the portrait reminded me of George Washington.

  “The Count Saint-Germaine was a philosopher and occultist believed to have been born in the late 1600s. Later, when he was in his late 80’s and still looked like he was in his 30’s, he claimed to be over five hundred years old. He is believed to have been known by many of the most famous figures of European history: Voltaire, Casanova, Madame de Pompadour, Catherine the Great and King Louis XV, Anton Mesmer; they are all said to have been linked to the Count.”

  Bryce’s male Siri voice droned on while several other pictures flashed on the screen.

  “It was believed at the time that Saint-Germaine had discovered the ‘elixir of life’ and he capitalized on that belief by seeking benefactors in order to set up a laboratory to reproduce the elixir. He was eventually bank-rolled by a German royal named Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel who was known for his interest in mysticism and was a member of several secret societies.”

  “So the perfect patsy for his con,” Tess mused.

  “More than likely,” Bryce replied. “Hesse-Kassel set Saint-Germaine up with a laboratory somewhere in the Schleswig region of Germany. Saint-Germaine managed to bilk the Prince out of a good portion of the family inheritance before disappearing in a mysterious explosion that destroyed his laboratory. He was never seen again, or at least not until 1970 when some guy named Richard Chanfray appeared on French television claiming to be Saint-Germaine.”

  “But what does that have to do with my mystery man? Is he this Chanfray guy? Are you suggesting that he’s Saint-Germaine?” I asked.

  “Chanfray disappeared in 1983. Apparently he committed suicide but the body was never found,” replied Bryce.

  Another series of pictures flashed on the screen, including a picture of the ring I had seen the mystery man wearing.

  “Hey, that’s the ring!” I said excitedly.

  “It is worn by members of the Society of Montferrat. Supposedly, they are a secret fraternity of men who believe Saint-Germaine’s claims and have dedicated themselves to re-discovering his elixir.”

  “But Saint-Germaine was more than likely a fraud.” Tess shook her head. “Where did you find all this?”

  “Mostly on the regular old web, but I found some legitimate chatter about the Society on the Deepnet,” Bryce replied, referring to the Dark Net or hidden criminal side of the internet. “These guys are for real,” Bryce continued. “They have chapters all around the world. But wait, I haven’t got to the best part yet.” Another picture, a much more modern portrait this time, appeared on the screen.

  “Hey, that’s him. That’s the man I saw at the funeral.”

  “This is Douglas Bellemare, President and CEO of Bellemare Industries. He’s also Grand Master of the Society of Montferrat and he claims to be a descendant of Count Saint-Germaine.”

  “Wow, good job Bryce. This is incredible.” He had given me a lot to think about. Like what a secret society had to do with missing werewolves and whether there was a connection to the death of two young, apparently healthy, men.

  ***

  The next day I called Nash to give him the information that Bryce had uncovered. He seemed interested enough in the stuff about Count Saint-Germaine, but the name of the mystery man was old news to him.

  “I found out the man’s name last night,” he said.

  “You did? How?”

  “By doing my job,” he replied impatiently. “The nurse from yesterday is employed by Bellemare Industries. Listen, I thought you were going to leave the investigatin
g to me?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Harry,” Nash warned. “You stay away from Bellemare. We don’t even know if he’s involved and if he is, he could be dangerous.”

  “He has to be involved, why else would the wolf hate him so much? I had more dreams last night.” They had been the worst ones yet.

  “I’m sorry, I know they’re rough on you.” Nash’s voice lost some of its stern tone. “Were they the same as the other night?”

  “Similar, but they were mainly about the white room. It looked like a hospital room or maybe some sort of research facility. There were men and women in dark blue lab coats. They had a patch over the breast pocket with a flower or a star or something. I couldn’t really see it all that well.” I shuddered, thinking about the dreams. “And there was a cage, a silver cage. There were men fighting and then there were wolves fighting. There was blood everywhere. Everything is kind of jumbled together. But it was awful.”

  Thinking about the dreams was freaking me out all over again. I had woken up feeling terrified and confused. The wolf had been sitting beside my bed and, as if sensing my distress or maybe it was in apology, he put his head on my lap. After a minute or two he stood up and then howled mournfully before disappearing. The dreams must have been his way to communicate with me, since he was in wolf form and couldn’t speak. What I really wanted to know though, is why he was in wolf form and not his human form. I don’t know how, but I knew that he was a werewolf and not just an ordinary wolf. If the man was dead, why didn’t he appear to me as a man? Why was he stuck in his wolf form?

  “Are you okay Harry?” Nash’s voice was concerned. I guess I had been quiet too long.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. The dreams are just bothering me.” I sighed. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, why do you think the ghost is a wolf? I mean, since he’s a werewolf, why isn’t he appearing in his human form? He’d be able to talk to me then, instead of haunting my dreams.”