“I’m here for information,” Ezekiel told him. He made every word deliberately matter-of-fact. “An exchange of information, that’s all; nothing exciting. A mass slaughter of police officers is not on my schedule for today. You’re not in danger. No one here is in danger. Certainly I’m not. Your gun’s not loaded with silver. No one out there is loading silver.” From this distance, he could tell there was no silver in Ayerson’s gun, though the other part was a guess. But it seemed likely. Silver ammunition was very expensive. Even after the war had whittled down the number of vampires in the world until their miasma finally failed, after the whole world had learned at last to recognize the monsters that preyed on them, few police officers had ever been armed with silver. After all, no one had been at war with ordinary humans.
Ezekiel said softly, “Settle down, Detective. Sit down. Let’s have a civilized chat.”
There was a pause. Detective Ayerson, mouth hard, stared into his face. Ezekiel’s black dog shadow wanted to read that attitude as a threat and a challenge. Ezekiel did not allow himself to respond with anything other than amusement. He could hear Ayerson’s heartbeat: fast but steady. The detective’s breathing was fast as well, but he did not now seem inclined to raise a general alarm. The man was afraid, but far from panic. Ezekiel’s shadow would have enjoyed panic, a hopeless struggle, blood. Ezekiel himself approved of the man’s steadiness.
“How did you know?” Ezekiel asked him. He asked the question mostly so that Ayerson would have to think about answering, about entering a dialogue; so that the man would settle down. But he was also curious. He lifted his hand, turned it to make the claws glitter, then shifted it back to a fully human hand. See? No threat here. Sitting down, he stretched his legs out comfortably, setting a good example. He met the detective’s eyes, and smiled; not his executioner’s smile, meant to terrify, but a civilized, polite expression.
Ayerson stared at him for a long moment. Then he turned, plucked his gun out of its holster, turned back, laid the weapon down on his desk ready to hand, gave Ezekiel another long look, and dropped into his own chair. Not relaxed, far from it; but the threat of imminent violence had clearly passed. He said curtly, “Saw that interview. Everyone did. Don’t know how you walked right through the whole crowd out there –” He broke off, looking Ezekiel up and down.
“That damned news clip,” Ezekiel said lightly. “That was months ago and a long way away, and everyone looks different by lamplight, surrounded by blood and death. You’d be surprised how few people recognize me. They don’t expect to see me, not walking into their everyday world.”
“A cop doesn’t have an everyday world,” Ayerson said grimly. “Everyone out there should have recognized you.” It was plain he was going to remind every cop in this station of that as soon as Ezekiel was gone. For now, he only stared at Ezekiel some more. His heart rate was slowing. He said, inflection not quite making it a question, “Information.”
Ezekiel inclined his head. “Your kidnappings. Women; young, but not girls. One married, one in a committed relationship, two single. Mostly students at the university. None of them the kind to walk away and leave their families wondering.” Just the sort, in fact, that would make Detective Ayerson think of his own daughters. One more reason for the detective to be grim. One more reason, too, for the man to cooperate, even knowing what Ezekiel was. Perhaps especially knowing what Ezekiel was. He would be desperate to close this case.
“And?” said Ayerson. He did not sound desperate. He sounded wary. He looked Ezekiel up and down once more, eyes half-closed, expression neutral, as though half expecting him to admit to kidnapping those women himself. Perhaps to eating them right down to the bones. Ezekiel doubted the detective believed that, but no doubt the idea was now crossing his mind. But Ayerson didn’t touch the gun on his desk. Instead, he said, “Werewolves leave a body. Parts of a body.”
“Usually,” Ezekiel agreed. “But try plotting those disappearances on a map. Along with any wild animal attacks from the last three months or so, ‘werewolf’ sightings, slasher murders if you’ve had any. Unexplained violent homicide. Also any violent stranger rapes. Add those in, too. Any from the last few months. With the dates of each. You can do that? You’ve got those data?” He paused and then added, “I’ll wait.”
The detective regarded Ezekiel for another moment. Then he grunted and turned to his computer. Ezekiel rose and moved around the desk so that he had a view of the computer screen. Ayerson’s heart rate picked up again as Ezekiel got up, particularly as he stepped around to stand behind him. Ezekiel sat down in the other chair, the one where the now-empty holster hung. He crossed his arms and tilted his head, trying to look young and harmless.
Detective Ayerson gave Ezekiel a sidelong look. He didn’t say anything, though. He opened another screen. Little square icons flashed in different colors, three red and a scattering of black. Two blue icons joined the red and black. Ayerson glanced over the information there, then moved the mouse, deleting one and then another of the black icons. Then a third. Ezekiel made an interested sound.
“Explained homicides,” Ayerson said, his tone flat. “Boyfriend, mother’s boyfriend, woman who drowned her kid. The ones left on the screen, we don’t know.” He began to add dates to each icon, referring now and then to notes in other files. Though Ezekiel had not suggested adding a phase-of-the-moon notation to each icon, the detective did that, too. Ezekiel’s opinion of the man, already high, rose another notch. He leaned forward, considering the pattern of those icons, certain now of what he faced in this town. Then he noted the sudden tension in Ayerson’s shoulders and neck, and made himself relax again. “Four,” he observed, his tone carefully neutral. “You always get so many mysterious murders in this town?”
“No,” said Ayerson. “A woman, a woman, a woman, a couple.” He swiveled his chair to face Ezekiel. “The first three were up north, out of our jurisdiction. I don’t know the details. Nothing was specifically identified as a werewolf attack. But that might have been...political pressure. Nobody likes to think we’ve got a serial killer; a werewolf would be worse. But it could have been a werewolf. Though none of them were...eaten.” He pointed at the screen. “The moon was full or near full for all these. This one here, too. If it were my people working that case, I’d have thought about handing out silver ammo.” His hard gaze shifted to examine Ezekiel’s hands, now lying relaxed along the arms of his chair, then rose again to his face. “You a cop? That what you are?” He sounded skeptical, perhaps because of Ezekiel’s youth as much as because of what he was.
The detective’s tone was edged with hostility. But the suggestion was, perhaps, something of a compliment. Ezekiel tried not to sound too sardonic. “In a way. If your killer, or killers, are werewolves, then they are assuredly my business.”
“You don’t let werewolves kill people. That’s your law. You said that, on camera. Was it the truth?”
Ezekiel met his eyes. “It was the truth.”
The detective grunted, thoroughly noncommittal.
“What’s the blue?”
“Rapes. Violent stranger rapes, like you said. This one –” Ayerson reached to tap the screen with one blunt finger, “This one was cut up. Her tits, her belly. Shallow little cuts, just through the skin.”
“She, ah, couldn’t tell who cut her, or whether he used a knife or claws?”
“It was dark. He was big. She never got a glimpse. Dark or not, I guess she would have noticed if he were –” The detective gestured, unwilling to put some things into words.
“He would have been in human form,” Ezekiel assured him. “At least mostly.” It took a black dog with excellent control to extend shadow claws from human hands. But Ezekiel had already suspected that was the kind of black dog he faced in this city.
The detective gave Ezekiel a long look, then tapped the screen again, forcefully. “Moon’s new for the rapes and the disappearances, full for the homicides. That a coincidence?”
“Maybe,” said
Ezekiel. He knew it wasn’t. Even a black dog who usually owned plenty of control might lose some of that control during the full moon. Clever of Ayerson to guess that.
“Huh. You know who this is, doing this?”
“I think I have a general idea.”
Ayerson tapped the computer screen. “It’s all north of the Foothills campus, town side of the reservoir. All in town, nothing in the park. That we know of. Campus housing all through here.” The detective swept a fingertip across the map. “University buildings up through here. You’d think our killer’d be hunting in this area, not many witnesses after dark, but so far, all the action’s been farther east. If our killer’s hunting tonight . . .” He leaned forward in his chair. “It’s a full moon, near enough. A killing moon. This bastard’s going to go for the kill tonight or tomorrow. Isn’t he? Where? You know where this guy is. Or how to find him. Tell me where he’ll be.”
Ezekiel studied the map. “Somewhere he can hunt. Somewhere with room to run.” The park west of the reservoir should have been perfect. But perhaps not for the kind of hunting these particular black dogs had in mind. He suspected they weren’t very interested in isolated hikers. No. They would want to hunt somewhere they could study their prey. Someplace they could cut just the ones they wanted out of the herd.
What he wanted was someplace suited to an ambush. Ezekiel wanted a swift kill, several swift kills, so that he would no longer be seriously outnumbered when he found the rest. Ezekiel did not need the numbers to be equal, but he suspected he faced more than a couple of black dogs here, and probably all of them decently trained. He did not want to face all of these enemies at once.
But for an ambush, he would indeed need to guess where young black dogs would go to hunt.
He wished he could wave a magic wand, find them instantly, take them before the moon even rose. If Natividad had been here—but he was very glad Natividad wasn’t here, that no Pure woman was here. He would have been glad to use Pure magic to find those black dogs. But if the black dogs in this city were what he suspected, this city would be deadly dangerous for any Pure woman. Far better that Natividad was at Dimilioc, and safe.
He said coolly, “I’ll put a stop to this, Detective. Tonight, I hope, though I can’t promise that. But I suspect I may have a general idea of where to hunt, now. For which I am in your debt. I will repay that debt by suggesting, strongly, that tonight you and your people would do best to stay off the streets and out of my way.”
Ayerson snorted.
Ezekiel, smiling, tilted his head. “Well, if you must go out tonight, Detective, then load your gun with silver, if you have any. But don’t shoot me by mistake.”
“If I shoot you, it won’t be by mistake.”
Ezekiel suppressed a grin. He stood up, noting the way the man carefully did not flinch. He said, “Why don’t you walk me out, Detective? I’ll give you my card. If I don’t get these guys taken care of tonight, if they’re seen elsewhere or if they kill someone else, call me.” He met Ayerson’s eyes. “I’m your best chance to rid your city of this danger. Keep that in mind, Detective.”
From Ayerson’s unfriendly stare, the detective wasn’t convinced. But Ezekiel thought he might call, if he had to. He wasn’t a fool. And he might not trust Ezekiel, but he was probably astute enough to understand that he was not, in this, the enemy.
The evening was hot, sullen, still. Here in this industrial district, the air felt gritty with the scents of asphalt and rust and hot stone, the stink of diesel and truck exhaust that overlay organic smells of rot and clotting algae from a nearby lake. Ezekiel breathed through his mouth. It helped only a little.
There had been nothing so clear on Ayerson’s map as a circle of activity surrounding an obvious black dog lair. It might have been exactly that simple, if the black dogs here had been sufficiently ignorant and stupid. Young strays often were abysmally stupid, having never learned to think under the pressure of their shadows. But these black dogs clearly had better control of themselves, more ability to think, to plan. Ezekiel suspected they weren’t strays at all. And he was almost certain they were ruled by an experienced black dog, though the group plainly also contained a handful of vicious youngsters; enough youngsters, and strong enough, that the older one could not fully control them. Not when the moon rose full.
It had risen now. Even indoors and hours before dusk, Ezekiel had felt its seductive pull. For a young black dog, for any black dog with poor control, that pull might well prove irresistible. They would slip their leader’s control, and hunt. And there was a very good chance they would hunt right here, in these empty streets scattered with industrial buildings shut tight and silent warehouses, with broad parking lots fenced against vandals and vagrants and nothing else but empty countryside and the wide lake. Here, in these unpeopled, little-patrolled streets, they could hunt almost as freely as though they ran in the trackless mountains.
And Ezekiel was almost sure they would hunt here tonight, because tonight they could find prey here. Because tonight, in defiance of good sense and public warnings and the rising moon, half the young people from the university had decided to attend a rave in one great empty warehouse, here in this otherwise all-but-deserted area. The music pounded through the air, heavy as the stench of hot asphalt.
They told themselves, no doubt, that there was safety in numbers. They told themselves that they would stay close to friends, that they would not venture out into the dark alone. That they would be safer at a noisy and crowded rave than ever they would be in their lonely student apartments.
But what young people told themselves while sober and sensible was easily forgotten when they were stupid with drink. Anyone would guess that one or two of these foolish children would stumble out alone into the night. Ezekiel leaned in a shadowed corner of a flat roof, two stories up, where the moonlight falling past concealed him as though he stood behind a sheer curtain. Here he had a good view of the back of the warehouse, the hardly lit parking lot behind it, the street that ran east toward the lake and west toward the mountains. He watched the scene patiently, without paying any particular detail much attention. It was not his eyes he depended on tonight, nor any specific human sense. He was listening to the falling moonlight, waiting for the faint stir of air where something bulky moved, scenting the gritty air for the heavy sulfuric spoor of a black dog. His was the patience of the hunter, and he was aware of the young human people below mainly as prey. Or as bait.
And they came. Three black dogs, young and hot for the chase, sliding through the shadows, angling to get between a pair of young women and the car that was their obvious goal. The women had not seen them, not yet. They were half drunk, supporting one another, laughing too loudly, a little bit afraid of the dark, but not nearly as afraid as they should be. One held a cellphone in her hand, like a talisman. The other clutched a beaded handbag as though it contained a weapon. Ezekiel pictured a panicky girl pulling out pepper spray to use against a black dog, and wanted to laugh...or his black dog wanted to laugh. That was the moon, of course; even his shadow became that little bit more ascendant when the moon was full.
One of the black dogs was indeed laughing, vicious soundless black dog laughter, jet-black fangs visible in the fiery gape of his jaw, crimson eyes burning like coals in the dark. The other two came behind that one. Both of those were larger and heavier, but clearly subordinate to the first; they crowded each other, snapping sideways in challenge and half-serious threat, but they did not crowd up against the one in front. Massive shoulders flexed beneath shaggy pelts, asphalt smoked beneath the fall of heavy paws, blunt-muzzled heads dropped low, snaking back and forth on powerful necks as they measured their quarry. They would drive those girls west and north, Ezekiel guessed, toward the mountains, into the empty countryside and away from any hope of help. The hunt and the chase and the red blood...Ezekiel half closed his eyes, setting himself against the pull of the moon, the seduction of the change. He would change, of course. But not now, not yet, not simply y
ielding to the urgent pressure of his shadow.
And not until his prey committed to their hunt and forgot to watch for those who might be hunting them.
Below his perch, the smaller black dog in the lead allowed himself to be seen. There was one reverberating instant in which nothing moved: girls and black dogs all equally still and silent.
Then the black dog dropped his lower jaw in a silent, fiery laugh, and the younger of the girls—a vivid teenager with blue glitter dusted across her high, angled cheekbones, with blue eye shadow and blue lipstick and her white-blonde hair buzzed short—caught the other’s hand and pulled her back toward the crowded rave. But the other two black dogs loomed suddenly into the glow of the streetlights, blocking that escape. The older girl, taller and prettier but not so striking, jerked to a halt, shrieking. The younger screamed as well, for help that was as far out of reach as though they had been the only souls in all the city. The high voices cut through the pounding rhythm of the music, frightened and desperate.
Within the warehouse, someone yelled. But the black dogs lunged, snapping, their terrible claws gouging the pavement, pressing the girls away from any hope of safety, making them run. They would run them to exhaustion and then tear them down—and in the morning, someone would have to decide whether to proclaim their deaths due to animal attacks, or to a serial killer, or to werewolves. But whatever authorities declared, anyone with sense would know what had happened. And all across this state, people would begin to panic and call for the authorities to do something, anything, so long as the monsters were destroyed and the night made safe for themselves and their children . . .
Ezekiel shook his head fiercely and stepped forward, away from his sheltering corner and off the roof. He let his shadow rise as he fell, burning and dark, and when he struck the pavement, it cracked and smoked under the rush of roaring heat. He flung himself forward, but soundlessly, and the strays did not turn. Young and careless and accustomed to be the hunters; they might be strong, but they would be easy prey. Ezekiel wanted to laugh; he wanted to roar out a challenge and a threat. But his shadow understood about ambushes, about a sudden unanticipated leap out of the dark. He ran in silence, now on the street and now scaling a wall to run along the rooftops.
Black Dog Short Stories II Page 7