by Gini Koch
“But…but….” I couldn’t bring myself to say what my real objection was. That the human guy I was sort of in love with was going to not only know I was a werewolf, but see all the undead side of me. I wasn’t ashamed. I was afraid. Not afraid he’d try to kill me, but that he wouldn’t like me any more, not even as a friend.
Jack cleared his throat. “I’ve known you were a werewolf for a while.”
“Come again?” I swiveled my head so fast I cracked my neck. Which was a good thing, so I didn’t complain.
Jack grinned. “I’m on the Night Beat, Vic. The Chief considers me one of his best detectives, and you’re his favorite. I didn’t get partnered with you by random chance. I got partnered with you because the Chief knows we need to work with Necropolis Enforcement to survive.”
“You knew? How long? And, wait a minute. The Chief knows? Who else knows?” I was supposed to be undercover inside Prosaic City P.D. Not to spy on them, but to protect them. Kind of hard to be undercover if everyone knows your secret identity.
“Yes, the Chief knows. A select few others know. I think Darlene’s figured it out, but if so, she’s very discreet. Probably because she likes you. Everyone likes you, Vic. You’re a great officer and a nice person. I’ve known since I took you on as a partner. A little bitchy around the full moon, but a lot of people are. The Chief wanted to be sure your partner was able to protect you, and you can’t protect someone if you don’t know what her strengths and weaknesses are.” Jack sounded like he was trying to be soothing and reassuring. I didn’t want to let it work.
But it did. I thanked the Gods and Monsters again for there being no full moon tonight. And decided to let that bitchy comment pass for now. “Well, okay. I guess. But you never said anything.” And we’d been partnered for well over a year.
He shrugged. “I knew you were scared to tell me. Besides, it didn’t matter.”
“This is so touching.” Maurice made a gagging noise. “When we get back to Headquarters, I think I’m going to barf up blood, I’m so nauseated by the love in the alleyway.”
I was glad I was still fur-covered because that way Jack couldn’t see me blush. He just grinned again, though.
I was going to say something when my ears picked up a noise. A high-pitched, urgent noise. “The ambulances are almost here. I think we have ten coming, maybe a dozen.” I figured Jack was right and Darlene had a good idea of what was going on, because that was a lot of emergency vehicles for four police officers.
Amanda came over. “They’ll be here shortly. We need to go back to human forms or we need to disappear.”
Chapter 8
“There’s no way Vic can go back to human right now,” Ken said briskly. “She can barely stand upright.”
“But I’m supposed to be one of the detectives on the scene.”
“I’ll handle it,” Jack said. “I’d like one of the vampires to stay with me, though, just in case.”
“I will,” Ken offered. “Maurice, you take Vic back to Headquarters and get her taken care of. Amanda, can you carry the others?”
“Monty’s done with cleanup and he’s taking Dirt Corps back the way they came,” Amanda said. “So I’ll only have to worry about H.P.”
Ken shook his head. “Nope. We have a new succubus and zombie that need to go with you.”
Amanda sighed. “No problem.” Vamps were strong and Amanda worked out. Not that she was the vampire equivalent of a body builder or something, but she was stronger than the average vamp. She was at least as strong as Monty.
“I’d take one, but Vicki squirms,” Maurice said. Sadly, he was right. Werewolves don’t like to fly all that much. And Maurice loved to fly fast and wild. It was all I could do to not claw him and jump for the illusion of safety when I wasn’t hurt. When I was it took all my concentration and his to keep me from freaking out, even if he flew slowly.
“You need to get moving,” Ken said.
“I’ll see you later, partner,” Jack said as he handed me to Maurice. “Behave and don’t bite someone’s head off.”
“Funny. See you later.”
Maurice snorted, Amanda picked up H.P., our new zombie and our new succubus, and we all took off.
“Slow down!”
“Vicki, Vic, Vicster, Vicarino…you freak at granddaddy speeds, you freak at NASCAR speeds. I’m a formula vehicle and since it makes no difference, I’m going to get us there faster so I get clawed less.”
Maurice had a point. I shut up, closed my eyes, and tried to relax.
Didn’t help. I could feel the air moving past us, smell everything we whizzed by, hear the noises that showed me our speed.
“What happened?” This question came from the succubus.
“Well, an ancient Sumerian demon manifested and they always come out hungry,” H.P. began. I could recognize a lecture starting. I opened my eyes, did my best to drown out the lecture by humming “Werewolves of London”, and tried to enjoy the view.
All things considered, Prosaic City looked pretty good from the air. Like all big American cities it had a variety of business and high-rise sections, older stately buildings surrounded by newer, sleeker ones, scattered suburban sections filled with every kind of tract home from simple to McMansion, a lot of streets and highways, an old downtown nice people didn’t want to be in after dark, a newer downtown where they did, and a variety of uptown and other higher class, hot spot, and trendy areas. Unlike many cities, it had a variety of rivers running through it and an impressive bridge system.
And unlike every other city in this hemisphere, it had an underground like you wouldn’t believe.
Prosaic City was one of the country’s older inhabited burgs. In the course of its existence it’s been rebuilt several times. Because it was built on top of Necropolis. Which was a bad move by the old-time Prosaic City Planning Council, but everyone makes mistakes, right? Just because no one else had settled on the pretty spot next to the water didn’t mean anything, they reasoned, they’d just gotten there first.
Actually, they’d gotten there last.
There are points in the world where the occult pull is particularly strong. Where the ley lines, longitude, latitude, winds, weather, and general forces of both nature and the occult combine with placement in the cosmos and an entity is formed that shouldn’t be able to exist in reality. I’ve heard them called hell mouths, portals, doorways, entryways, and a variety of other terms. But those aren’t really accurate.
What forms isn’t a door. What forms is a city. A city that exists both in this plane of reality and all the others at the same time. A place that wasn’t built but can never be removed, a power created by everything and nothing at the same time, something that wasn’t born but can never die. What my kind call an Undead City.
In the American hemisphere, that city is Necropolis.
Necropolis was here first, but most of its residents immigrated over time. The pull from an Undead City is strong. The power in one is even stronger.
Prosaic City was built right on top of Necropolis. This made things hard for the Necropolites and weird for the Prosaics. Due to the way an Undead City worked, the humans could and did put their buildings and roads and such on top of things of ours that were already there. So, City Hall and the city courthouse was right on top of what was considered Necropolis’ Red Light District, which, as the Count said, made poetic sense.
All the undead can see into at least two planes of existence, and most can see into more. Vampires and liches can see almost as many planes as a god. Werewolves aren’t quite as powerful magically, so we have limits. Which was okay with me. I had enough fun keeping Necropolis separated from Prosaic City on a nightly basis.
Not that I wasn’t good at it. I was considered one of the best, if not the best, at cross-existence. But it had taken me years to hone the skill to perfection, and that much focus on one skill meant others weren’t quite as sharp. Then again, I never found not being able to look into one of the levels of Hell without trying to
be a hardship. I didn’t care for Hell and never wanted to go there. That I had reasons to go there made it worse.
We call moving back and forth between the human and undead planes sliding. Everyone has to learn it, it’s not natural to any being. Some humans did it as easily as undeads. They were usually mentally unstable -- not before the slide, but after. It’s hard for a human to see myths and legends and worse in real life and know it’s real. Most minds can’t take it if they aren’t prepared.
However, the younger, the better. That’s the main reason changelings exist. Not to steal babies but to save them. Children who can see the undead normally have a lifetime of pain and torment ahead of them, unless we get them first.
Undeads, by our nature, don’t have the same issues. We know the human plane exists -- at least two-thirds of us were human before we undied. But seeing the human world superimposed over the undead one was always good for a headache if your concentration faltered.
“Now, this is one of the greater ironies of this particular age,” H.P. said, as I lost said concentration and “Werewolves of London” left my personal airwaves. “Necropolis Enforcement Headquarters shares existence space with the largest church in Prosaic City, Our Lady of Compassion, which has been compared favorably to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and Notre Dame.”
“Not if you have to fly through it,” Maurice muttered.
“And the University,” H.P. went on, “sits on the same grounds as the Prosaic Country Club and Estates.”
“You mean I’m gonna go to school where all the rich johns live?” The succubus wasn’t totally adapted to the undead way of life yet, that was clear.
“Yes,” H.P. said cheerfully as we landed in front of Our Lady of Compassion, or the OLOC as we Necropolites called it.
“But they won’t be able to see you,” I mentioned. The succubus looked disappointed. And familiar. “Sexy Cindy?”
“Yeah, that’s me. Was me,” she corrected. “Who are you, bitch?”
“I’ll choose to take that as an attempt to be home-girly with me, and not stupid. It’s Detective Wolfe. In, ah, wolf form.” I looked down. “Sorry. In werewolf form.”
Sexy Cindy’s eyes widened. “Whoa. No wonder you were always busting me.”
“We were busting you because you were a prostitute working the worst parts of town.” Police work. It was truly all glamour and excitement.
“You just didn’t like me propositioning your partner.”
“True enough. You might have been the only one in Prosaic City’s criminal class who fell for the unmarked police car.”
“It looked like a regular car,” she mumbled. “Not like I got a lot of time to go cruise the car lots or something.”
I yawned. “Heard it before. Didn’t impress me then, doesn’t impress me now.” This was an old argument. You bust a perp, right after they realize you’re not buying that they’re innocent they explain that they have no opportunity to better themselves. Sadly true more often than not. But most of them never tried, either. Sexy Cindy was firmly in the never tried category. I wondered what being undead was going to do to her.
“What am I in for now?” Sexy Cindy asked truculently.
I told her the truth. “The rest of your unlife.”
Chapter 9
Necropolis Enforcement Headquarters followed standard Necropolis architectural design. I loved it, but it was always fun to see a newbie’s reaction.
Our new zombie, who H.P. introduced as Freddy, and Sexy Cindy both looked around and gaped. “But…it’s all…modern,” Freddy said.
“The city of the future,” Maurice said gaily. “We know, we know…where’s all the gothic crap, right? What, no gargoyles? No creepy statues? No horrifying images or evil words? What kind of self-respecting city of the damned is this?”
“I think it looks cooler than cool,” Sexy Cindy said softly. “If I’d known something like this existed, I’d have asked you to kill me a long time ago.”
The buildings were impressive, even to someone who’d lived here a couple hundred years. We had our share of beings who could see the future. For whatever reason, they all worked in the artistic pursuits. So, every time Prosaic City encroached on us to the point where it had a collapse and we had our version of a bad infestation of vermin, we redid the place.
Current standard was wide at the bottom going quickly to various levels, but all slim and spiky after about the fifth floor. I called it a sort of Futuristic Eiffel Tower effect, which always made Maurice wince. Tons of shiny metal and windows that went dark when the sun was out, lots of light, no matter what. Grass where humans had streets -- we didn’t have the same transportation issues they did, after all, and grass is so much nicer to pad on. And roll on. I started to whine and realized I really needed to get back into human form or I was at risk of going wild for a while. Nothing wrong with going wild, of course, but there was too much going on to indulge in that right now.
“Be a good girl and relax,” Maurice said soothingly. Sadly, it helped. I’d been friends with Amanda and Maurice for my entire undead existence, and no one knows what you really need and want to hear like a vampire.
The doors slid open and Maurice and Amanda stepped on the moving sidewalk. Because we’d now entered Necropolis, but weren’t in what was called Necropolis Proper, we could still easily see the human plane. We sailed past a ton of pews, through several statues of the Virgin Mary and over the altar. At the priests’ room we went downward and into the Proper and the human parts faded away.
What we called the Proper and a human would call ground level for Necropolis was about a hundred feet under what Prosaic City called the ground. We still had sunlight and moonlight and all that, we just sat a little lower on our astral plane. No Necropolite complained about this -- walking through humans was freaky and most didn’t like it. Those who did tended to be those who really thought they had definite human leanings and were just misunderstood. Yeah, even the undead have their version of modern day Goth kids. Not that a real Goth was a problem, but a wannabe is a wannabe, no matter what plane you call home.
The sidewalk took us into the main part of Headquarters. Personnel were waiting to take Freddy and Sexy Cindy to Indoctrination and there were a host of medical personnel waiting for yours truly. I tried not to cringe and didn’t succeed, if Maurice’s mutterings were any indication.
In addition to the med staff, there was another being waiting for me. “Oh, no. Maurice, do something.”
“Not a thing I can do to dislodge him, but I’ll stay with you into the hospital,” Maurice said in a low voice.
He was in full wolf form for no reason other than that he was a fanatic about it. I’d actually never seen him in human form and almost never in werewolf form, he was that committed to the rather ancient belief that werewolves were strongest in “natural animal form”. He bounded over, tail wagging, eyes serious, ears alert for any danger. “Vic, what happened? Are you going to be okay? Do you need a transfusion?”
“Just got banged up, Ralph.”
“I’d better stick with you. Werewolves need to pack together.” He was serious. Ralph Rogers, Werewolf With a Cause. He was a big, good-looking wolf, but a weregirl could only take so much dork in her life and Ralph threatened to exceed my limit on a nightly basis.
“I think we can handle it, Ralphie,” Maurice said, as he pointedly swished by. Ralph and Maurice didn’t get along. At all.
The med personnel got their paws, claws and talons on me, and I got hustled into a medical bay. They tried to keep Ralph and Maurice out, but Ralph was loud and insistent and Maurice was willing to be nasty and they knew it, so ultimately, it was a intimate group of ten by the time I got onto a bed.
Ralph tried to get next to me. Maurice blocked him every time and made it look accidental. Really, a werewolf doesn’t stand a chance against a vampire, especially a smart and sneaky vampire, and there weren’t a lot of earnest and apple-cheeked ones out there.
“Ralph, I really think I’m o
kay. I didn’t lose any blood, all my limbs are attached, and I can feel my bones setting themselves. Shouldn’t you be out on patrol or something?”
“It’s my night off.” Ralph gave Maurice a dirty look. “Though I see I shouldn’t have taken it.”
“Ralph, it was an ancient Sumerian demon crossed with some sort of slime monster. Maurice gave it his all, just like the rest of us.”
“I note he’s not the one injured.” Ralph made this sound like Maurice had tossed me to Slimy and then run off screaming.
“I wasn’t the one who went on Mister Monster’s Wild Ride,” Maurice said haughtily. “I also wasn’t the one listening to the Enforcement Band Radio to be able to intercept the object of my unrequited affections the moment she returned on premises.”
Ralph growled, always impressive in a werewolf. The doctor in charge had enough. “All personnel who aren’t medically trained and part of my med team, out. Now. That particularly means you, Agent Rogers.”
Ralph bared his teeth, shot me an expectant look that turned to doggy-disappointment when I didn’t demand he stay so we could hold paws, heaved the big sigh, then turned tail and left. The tension in the room dropped.
Maurice winked at me. “I’ll ride herd on Mister Lovestruck. I can see why you want the human when this is your most likely alternate.”
“I have options!”
“Uh huh. Let’s talk about why you and Ken didn’t work out, shall we?”
“Later,” the doctor snapped. “After she’s healed later.”
Maurice blew kisses to all and swished out after Ralph. The tension in the room went back to normal.
“How do you deal with them?” one of the nurses asked as they started the various tortures we called medical treatment.
“I tell myself it could always be worse.”
“How?”
“I could be living and working with my parents.”