Jake leaned over, grabbed his hat, and picked Harry up effortlessly. He slung him over his shoulder and turned to leave when a car pulled across his path, blocking his exit. He loped to the other end of the alley, but a Cadillac screeched to a stop there. The headlights from both cars lit the narrow lane; Jake was trapped in the middle near a couple of rank-smelling ash cans. The five men who spilled out of the cars brandished revolvers, aiming them at Jake and the unconscious Harry. Crazy shadows made many-armed monsters on the walls.
The three toughs at one end stumbled over the bodies Jake had left behind. There were exclamations, and one of the men retched at the sight and smell.
“That’s the guy, Mr. MacLaren.” At the other end of the alley, Eddie limped behind a large man in a flashy, double-breasted suit. He gestured to where Jake was trying to melt back into the shadows. “I’d recognize that cheap suit anywhere. I watched him eyeballing Sadie at the club while she was dealing. Then I followed him here, when I saw him trailing Sid and Joey as they hauled off that deadbeat Harry Gray.”
Then Eddie got a look at what was left of Sid and Joey at the far end of the alley. He moved farther behind MacLaren.
“Wait a minute,” MacLaren said. “Gray is the junkie? He’s a Fed—he was at the big bust two years ago! The new boss is going to be very interested in what Gray knows about us!”
Jake was in a bind. He could run for his life, but leaving Harry behind with these goons would be tantamount to killing him. Jake could Change back to his human form, maintain his cover, and although he’d be able to fight, the chances of Harry and him surviving the armed gang were slight.
Jake adjusted Harry over his shoulder and pulled his hat lower. He’d try to make a break, hoping that in the mayhem, no one would notice a werewolf too much.
Fat chance.
He tensed himself, ready to spring, when he heard the clatter of ladies’ shoes on the pavement at the top of the alley.
He froze. It was Rosalie and her sister Olivia.
It wasn’t until the ladies called out that the gunmen noticed the two women had passed the cars and were right smack in the middle of things.
“Jake? You there, Cousin Jake?” Their voices couldn’t have been more out of place in that dirty alley.
MacLaren didn’t lower his pistol. “Ladies, this is a private party. Best you turn right around and get yourselves home.”
“I think not,” Rosalie said. “Not without Jake and his friend.” She and Olivia were dressed for an evening out. They stood primly, in their best coats and hats, between the two groups of gangsters. Their arms were linked, their gloved hands folded over their handbags. They might have been strolling to church.
The other gunmen didn’t bother stifling their laughter. Even MacLaren grinned at the ridiculousness of the situation. He snapped his fingers. “Walt, Jonesy, Studs.”
The men moved forward quickly. Walt stepped behind Rosalie and shoved her hard to the ground. She didn’t raise her head, and she was shaking.
At the same time, Jonesy grabbed Olivia by the arm.
“Take your hands off me!” Olivia demanded.
Jonesy laughed again but did as he was told.
“Jonesy! What are you doing!” MacLaren said.
When Jonesy realized what had happened, he looked at his hand and shook his head. “I don’t know! It was like . . . I didn’t have any choice!”
“Well, get them out of here,” MacLaren said. “Or shoot ’em. We ain’t got time for this.”
Jonesy grabbed Olivia again and yanked her into him. “C’mon, you! You’d better scram—argh!”
Olivia had turned in to Jonesy and latched onto his neck with her mouth. As he screamed, perhaps Jake was the only one of the men capable of seeing her skin change, becoming violet snake scales. Her eyes enlarged, her nose diminished, and her teeth became . . . vampiric.
Studs and Walt tried to pull Olivia off Jonesy; she lashed out at them with razor-like claws. With a growl, Rosalie hurled herself from the ground and landed on top of the men attacking her cousin. Rosalie’s face was like Jake’s, now: furred, fanged, furious. Her little hat fell to the mud as she and Olivia shredded the gangsters. Bones crunched, blood ran.
As surreptitiously as he could, Jake deposited Harry behind the ash cans.
MacLaren was smarter than his men. He stared for only a moment, then aimed his pistol at Jake.
Jake rose up and threw an ash can at MacLaren, bowling him over. Jake turned to Eddie, who had the sense to run. Jake hesitated: Eddie now knew Harry was a government officer with an opium problem. Jake couldn’t let him get away. But MacLaren was already scrambling up, his pistol cocked and ready—
A flash of fur. Something bounded over the Cadillac, knocking Eddie over. A large wolf, wearing a red union suit, grabbed the dope dealer by the back of the head and shook.
Jake dove for MacLaren, who managed to fire a shot. Jake clutched his shoulder but landed on top of MacLaren. The mobster screamed, the fear widening his eyes as Jake lowered his wolfy head toward him and snarled . . .
“Jake, no!” Olivia placed her hand on his back. “Don’t kill him!”
Jake growled, thinking what MacLaren was: he would have killed Harry, he was a poison to his community, he was betraying his country by stealing secrets. “Since when are you squeamish?” Jake said, his voice made harsh by his elongated jaw.
“We need him for the FBI to quethtion. So Harry can wrap up his cathe.” She, too, spoke awkwardly around a mouthful of sharpened teeth and two long fangs.
MacLaren, unable to see past Jake’s head, still had it in him to be offended by mercy from a lady. “What makes you think I’ll talk, sister?”
Olivia leaned down so MacLaren could see her. Her black eyes narrowed, and her head swayed slightly, fixing MacLaren with her gaze. He almost screamed, but stiffened, stared as if in a trance.
“You’ll thing like a canary, when I get done with you,” she said. No one hearing her would have doubted her, even with her hissing lisp.
A thrill of power rushed through the air. Vic had Changed back to human form, shivering in the night air wearing only his union suit. “Hey, Jake, we got to finish up quick. I left the car a few blocks back after I dropped off the girls, and tried to make sure the coast was clear for us to join you. But we won’t stay alone forever.”
“Right,” Jake said. He got up and Changed back skin-self, handed the shivering Vic his jacket. “You and Rosalie move the bodies so it looks like they were fighting each other. The big guy down the end was a knife man; use that to cover up the worst of the claw and bite wounds.” He turned to Olivia. “And how about you lay one of your Lamont Cranston–Shadow whammies on MacLaren? Suggest he remember this was a fight among his own men, and we were never here. And that he’s dying to confess to the FBI, starting with who the ‘new boss’ is. I’m willing to bet he’s a Nazi, or linked to them, if he’s dealing in top secret calculations.”
“Right, Jake.” She pulled MacLaren up by the lapels and slammed him against the wall. “I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men.”
She sank her fangs into his neck; MacLaren went limp, his eyes wide.
“Jake?” There was a weak voice from the sidelines; Harry struggled to pull himself upright. “Jake, what the heck—?”
“Harry, it’s all right!” Jake tried to reassure him, but Vic was standing in his long underwear and a borrowed suit coat, and Rosalie was Changing back from her wolf-self, mourning a run in her last whole pair of stockings. Olivia, still a purple vampiress in a muddied coat, was whispering to MacLaren, who nodded eagerly.
Harry rubbed his head woozily. “Jake, there was a wolf-man. And he was wearing your ugly hat . . . ”
“Harry,” Jake said. “We’re Fangborn. And we’re here to help. Give us a hand, Olivia?”
She turned from MacLaren, delicately licking the blood from her fangs.
“We need to clean up my friend. And please give him a good story about how he followed Eddie from
the club just in time to see the fight among MacLaren’s men. How he flagged down the local cops and brought them here.”
Olivia cocked her head. “It’ll be tricky. It’s harder to alter the blood chemistry of an opium addict. And he’s concussed.” It sounded like “concuthhhed.”
“Do your best. We’ll alert the Family down in Virginia to keep an eye on him. They’ll give him more forget-me juice, if he shows signs of remembering us too well.”
After they rearranged the bodies to suit their story, they loaded the still-dazed Harry in the back of MacLaren’s Cadillac, his head cradled in Olivia’s lap.
Jake handed Rosalie into the front seat and, after she smoothed her skirt around her knees, got in beside her and shut the door. He leaned around to the backseat. “Hey, Harry? How’d you like a kiss from my cousin Olivia?”
Harry’s head ached from the beating, and the need for a fix was almost crippling. He looked up woozily at the lady who was stroking his hair in the dark. He couldn’t see her well, but he knew, somehow, she was pretty.
He did like a pretty girl.
“Okay,” Harry said. Was it his imagination, or was the pain that consumed him lessening?
Olivia leaned down to him, her lips slightly parted. Harry imagined a glint of white teeth. She brushed right past his lips and went for his neck.
By the time her fangs had pierced his skin and his blood was flowing into her mouth, Harry was so overwhelmed by a sense of wellbeing and comfort, the pain and the call of the opium needle was as remote as Shangri-La. There was room for only one thought:
That’s some A1 kissing . . .
In the front seat, Vic peered into the night, navigating their way back to his car. “So the girl, the computer—Ida? She was letting her boyfriend, Eddie there, into the lab?”
“She thought Eddie was just helping her out,” Jake said. “But he was helping himself to the calculations and the information about who they were for. We were looking for some criminal mastermind, not Eddie trying to keep his junk supplier happy. MacLaren’s men, well, let’s say they didn’t just deal drugs. I’ll be surprised if they weren’t being encouraged to expand their businesses by the Nazis. The Bureau will track down the rest, shut them down, as soon as they find MacLaren’s ‘new boss.’ ”
Jake continued. “Harry couldn’t afford to reveal himself as a Fed to MacLaren’s men. He couldn’t admit to his boss that he was taking opium. So he brought me in to get the evidence, while he kept himself out of the picture.”
A voice came from the backseat, as if from a great distance. “Wow,” Harry said.
“How you doing, Harry?” Jake asked. Vic and Rosalie exchanged tense glances.
“Well, I don’t mind telling you, Jakey, I’m feeling pretty fine. But, tonight I saw a wolf-man wearing your darned hat. I saw a giant dog kill that cut-rate hood Eddie. And Olivia, well, apparently, she’s a vampire—but nothing like what you see in the movies, let me tell you! At first, I thought I was high—who knows what that lovely, wicked Sadie has been giving me?—but I hadn’t fixed. And it all seems so clear now. Like that time, up in Salem, when you—”
Time for Jake to step in. “Yes, Harry, my Family is full of werewolves and vampires, but not like in the movies. We’re the good guys.”
“Gee.” Harry sighed. “That’s swell.”
“Olivia?” Vic said quietly. “You got the mix a little off. A little rich on the truth-telling serums and light on the memory blockers.”
“Hey, it’s a complicated case,” she said, weaving a little. She was drained and giddy from the night’s work. “But I’ll take another crack at it.” She smiled blearily and regarded Harry. “C’mere, lover boy.”
A week later, Harry was back in Washington, whistling his way down Pennsylvania Avenue, his second-best suit cleaned and spruced up, a brand-new fedora cocked jauntily on the back of his head. There was a spring in his step that would have been out of place during wartime, save that everyone who saw him was suddenly filled with encouragement. Everything about his attitude shouted: We can do it!
Something had changed him in Boston. Maybe it was solving the case, maybe it was seeing his old friend, maybe it was getting hit on the head in that filthy alley, but Harry hadn’t had the urge to use since then. It was days before he even noticed. Before Boston, he would have described himself as possessed by opium.
No more of that, now. Never again.
He’d already convinced his boss, Mr. Roundtree, to keep him on the job. In a month or two, Harry’d be back on track to run his own projects. Heck, he’d win the war from this side of the Atlantic!
He was still whistling as he entered the Department of Justice. He’d be hunting and pecking his way through another night at the old Smith Corona, and his fingers would be sore and stiff from jabbing the heavy keys. But his work—with Jake’s help—had been a significant break, uncovering a major conduit for drugs and industrial-military espionage in the Northeast.
Something stopped him in his tracks. It took one minute to realize he wasn’t ill, another to wonder what the problem was. But there was no problem. It was the image of the family sitting at the cloth-covered table, joined in company, sharing food, giving praise. On the left-hand side was a large, scruffy, shepherd-like dog, his head happily uptilted to the woman serving coffee.
He had passed the murals every day, had never really taken the time to examine them. Too tied up with work and then the pursuit of the needle, he’d barely bothered to look up. He did now. Amazing.
It was the dog that caught his attention. He wasn’t much for dogs, didn’t like the way they slobbered and jumped all over you—
In the alley. In Boston. Something had attacked MacLaren’s men. Harry had been rattled, his head half-caved in, but he hadn’t been high, and he knew what he saw. A wolf, standing on two legs, wearing a suit and one damned ugly hat—
The hat had been Jake Steuben’s. He’d have recognized it anywhere.
As Harry stared at the mural, he remembered it all.
Jake had pulled a Lon Chaney in the alley, turned into a wolf-man. And Jake’s friend Olivia had bitten him in the neck, just like Dracula. Only Harry was in better shape than he had been in years, and clean, to boot.
The first thing he thought was: Oh, no. I don’t want to want to have to get high again . . .
And when he realized the idea left him with distaste, rather than that burning desire, he took a deep breath and considered. He’d done shady things to feed his addiction, seen horrors on the job. And now he realized Jake and his family were something out of a Saturday matinée.
But he’d trusted Jake with his life on more than one occasion. And Jake had always come through. Olivia had taken the most terrible burden from him, given him his life back.
Jake and his family were the good guys. They were patriotic, and discreet, too. Had to be.
Harry decided that there was nothing monstrous about them. He was eternally grateful to them.
It took him a while to find out the name of the mural—Society Freed Through Justice, by George Biddle. It stuck him as particularly appropriate. He wondered why the artist had included the dog. Wondered how many more—Fangborn?—there might be out there.
Harry thought long and hard. If Jake and his family could defeat MacLaren, and save a lost cause like Harry, imagine what they could do with a little help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . .
He made an appointment to discuss the matter with Mr. Roundtree. He had a feeling that after hearing what they could do, these Fangborn would suit his boss down to the ground.
Whether writing noir, historical fiction, urban fantasy, thriller, or traditional mystery, Dana Cameron draws from her expertise in archaeology. Her fiction, including stories featuring the Fangborn—who were introduced in “The Night Things Changed”—has won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards as well as earning an Edgar Award nomination. The first of three novels set in the Fangborn universe, Seven Kinds of Hell, was published earl
ier this year by 47North. Dana lives in Massachusetts with her husband and benevolent feline overlords.
The Case: A terrifying bogle starts haunting a Scottish laird’s castle after the birth of the laird’s youngest daughter.
The Investigator: Thomas Carnacki, a British occult detective with a penchant for ghostbusting gadgets like his “electric pentacle”—quite “high-tech” for his era.
THE BEAST OF GLAMIS
William Meikle
I arrived in Cheyne Walk that Friday evening in response to a very welcome card from Carnacki. It had been several weeks since our last supper together, and I knew that Carnacki had not been at home for a fortnight at least. Such an absence told of an adventure and I admit to a certain degree of anticipation as he showed me in.
“So what is it this time, old chap?” I asked as he took my overcoat. “A haunt or just another gang of criminals bent on deception?”
He smiled.
“Oh, there was certainly a degree of deception involved,” he said. “But never fear . . . it is a fine tale that will be a whole evening in the telling. I hope you have a full pouch of tobacco at hand.”
It was not long before Carnacki, Arkwright, Jessop, Taylor, and I were all seated at Carnacki’s ample dining table. As ever he brooked no discussion as to why we had been asked to supper, and we all knew from long experience that he would not say a single word until the meal was over and he was good and ready.
At table we exchanged cordialities, and Arkwright entertained us with his tales of the goings on in the corridors of Westminster. Carnacki kept us waiting until we retired to the parlour and charged our glasses with some of his fine Scotch.
Jessop’s palate was the first to notice a new addition to Carnacki’s drinks cabinet.
“I say old man, isn’t this the Auld Fettercairn?”
Carnacki smiled.
“Indeed it is, old chap. And thirty-five years old at that, one of only twenty bottles in existence. It was part of my payment for my recent sojourn. If you will all be seated, I shall tell you the tale as to how it was procured.”
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