Strange City

by Anth

  It was a pendant, a stone circle. On one side was Sumerian art, the visage of the Goddess inanna. Queen of Heaven, and on the other, the Crescent Moon, Selena's sigil.

  Wolf Trap

  by Richard Lee Byers

  The fence was wrought iron, sixteen feet high, and topped with sharp-edged arrowheads: a heavy-duty perimeter defense for a hospital. But I'd climbed tougher barriers, and didn't need to shift out of human form As I swung myself over, the full moon, my birth moon, came out from behind the clouds A thrill sang down my nerves.

  I did my best to quash the feeling. That sort of exhilaration's nice (in a mindless kind of way), but I didn't want to bounce around like a puppy while I was trying to sneak into an enemy installation. I adjusted my ski mask and slunk on, creeping from one patch of cover to the next.

  The well-tended grounds were extensive. It was a while before I caught a glimpse of the hospital itself, and that first look surprised me, My client had men­tioned that there'd been some kind of insane asylum here since the mid-nineteenth century, but I hadn't expected to find the original building still standing. The sprawling, three-story structure was as ugly as its surroundings were pleasant The brick walls were grimy, the few small windows, barred. The place reminded me of every nasty thing I'd ever read about Victorian England, of Bedlam, Newgate Prison, and the workhouse. It seemed out of place on the out­skirts of contemporary San Francisco.

  Still, aesthetics aside, I was glad it was old, Old buildings are usually easier to crack than new ones.

  I looked about, didn't see anyone, and eased around the structure until I spotted a side door. As I'd expected I needed my picks. The lock was a good one; it put up a fight, and despite decades of practice, the gloves still made my fingers a bit clumsier than they would have been otherwise. I'd nearly made up my mind to peel them off when the latch finally clicked open.

  I cracked the door open and peeked inside, Beyond the door was a deserted hallway It wasn't too dark to see down, but it was gloomy; most of the ceiling fix­tures were switched off, The air smelled of disinfec­tant. Somewhere a sound whispered, too faint to identify.

  I headed down the passage. Doors with little win­dows lined both walls. On the other side were small, cell-like bedrooms, all vacant, Evidently, the hospital wasn't overcrowded.

  I turned a corner, kept moving toward the noise. Eventually, it resolved into jimmy Stewart's stammer. Brighter light shone ahead.

  Skulking on, I discovered that the hall ended in a sort of lobby adjacent to the main entrance. Other passages ran off it, a staircase led upward, and one corner was glassed in; the nurses' station, by the looks of it. Inside, two guys in white coats sat watch­ing a colorized movie on a portable TV, Apparently, they didn't have any work to do |one of the perks of the graveyard shift)

  There was something odd about the scene, and after a second, I realized what it was. The lobby was too bare—just tables and chairs; no decorations, even though it was Halloween night; no projects that the patients had made in art therapy, or whatever on dis­play; no Ping-Pong or pool table. Come to think of it, I hadn't noticed a baseball diamond or basketball court outside, either.

  But hell, what did I care? I hadn't come to critique the facility—just to bust somebody out. And to do that, I needed to get to one of the other corridors and continue my search.

  So I just walked out into the open. With iuck. the attendants wouldn't look away from the TV. And if they did, well, that was why I'd brought the mask and my Beretta.

  The men didn't turn. I chose another hall at ran­dom and discovered that its bedroom doors had name cards mounted on them. Bingo.

  I found Jennifer Ryan's room halfway down the cor­ridor. She was locked in, but this one only took a sec­ond to pick. I eased the door open, then stiffened in surprise.

  The teenage girl was in four-point restraints. Leather cuffs bound her wrists and ankles to the bed. An IV ran into one pale, skinny arm. Someone had shaved her head, the better, I assumed, to attach the wires that ran to some sort of monitor. A visor, linked by a cable to the same console, covered her eyes and ears and hooked metal prongs into her nostrils. Dressed in a pungent, urine-stained hospital gown, her coltish body twitched and writhed. Somehow, I didn't think it was going to be a problem to convince her to leave with me.

  Intent on pulling the hardware off her, I moved toward the bed. The soft scuff of a footfall sounded behind me. When I whirled, there was a figure silhou­etted in the doorway. I lunged, but [ was already out of time. The stubby, black gun in its hands made a funny whir. For an instant, my face and chest burned, then ! couldn't feel anything. My knees buckled, and the room got even darker. As I passed out, I marveled at just how quickly and completely the job had gone south. And to think that when I'd heard about ft, I'd figured it was going to be a cakewatk.

  i supposed that Nikos Ripthroat and I were a study in contrasts. He was slim, handsome, his skin so smooth and his bones so fine that his face just missed effemi­nate, He was elegant with his sculpted hair and pearl-gray Armani suit. I was hulking, shaggy, and, I knew, somehow uncouth despite a decent suit of my own and a stylish black leather trenchcoat. Plus, he was in a wheelchair and I was on my feet.

  'Erik Mikkelsen." He said my name as if he were tasting it, not sure he liked the flavor. Maybe he thought it discreditable that I no longer used my bombastic Get of Fenris handle. "They tell me you don't like to shake hands."

  I fought the urge to shove my fists deeper into my pockets. The urge won. "I'd just as soon you didn't sniff my ass, either"

  Nikos flushed. "They also told me you were insolent."

  "I'm guessing you didn't fly me three thousand miles to talk about my quirks Why don't you tell me what you do want."

  He grimaced. "All right. Please, sit down." I dropped into the armchair in front of his huge teak desk, "You understand this has to be kept completely confidential,"

  "Uh hah"

  "All right, then." Nikos paused, hitched the wheelchair around as if looking away from me would help him get started. Or maybe he was just checking out the view. It was worth it. His office took up most of the top floor of a skyscraper in the financial district, and the walls on two sides were made of giass Behind him I could see the Transamerica Pyramid, the Bay Bridge, freighters and sailboats traversing the sun-dappled waters of the Bay.

  "Sixteen years ago" Nikos explained, "I had a human secretary named Peggy Travis. She worked here, in the legitimate part of the operation. She was a wonderful girl, full of joy and fire, and we fell in love, or at least I loved her—enough to want to marry her.

  But while I was still trying to find a way to tell her what kind of being I really am, she ended the affair and quit her job To this day, I don't know why."

  I figured I did. Shed caught a whiff of the beast inside him It was the way ape-werewolf romances usually ended, or so I'd been told. There was no way I'd know firsthand; my sex life was limited to hookers and one-night stands,

  Anyway," Nikos continued, "I kept tabs on her to make sure she didn't run out of money before she found another position—that, in general, she was going to be all right. I knew when she married her high-school sweetheart, a boy named Scott Ryan, three months after she left me, and when she gave birth to a daughter named lennifer, four months after that."

  "Yours, unless she cheated on you," I said, showing off my arithmetic. "I assume that after that, you kept an eye on the kid."

  He hesitated Nikos reached the part of the story he was ashamed of. "At first, If she was only Kinfolk, I meant to leave her alone to live a normal human life. But if she was Garou, she'd need my help.

  "Unfortunately, it hurt me to think about her, because I still loved her mother- loved her, too, in a way, even though I'd never met her. I had plenty of other matters to distract me. lennifer turned eleven, twelve, thirteen without showing any sign of the Change. The upshot of it all was that, gradually, I just stopped checking on her."

  "Until recently. I gather. When you found o
ut things were different."

  "Yes. She'd started having nightmares and temper tantrums, fighting, destroying things, and running away. The usual picture. Naturally, Peggy and Scott thought she was having some sort of breakdown and dragged her to a shrink. The shrink recommended

  Jennifer be hospitalized, and when her first placement couldn't handle her she was transferred to what I'm told is a state-of-the-art experimental program for explosive teens."

  Nikos paused, rubbed his forehead, and continued. "I want you to break her out, so I can guide her through the Change before she really does lose her mind."

  "One question," i said. "You're a pack leader. You have plenty of flunkies you could send. Why do you need me?"

  Nikos scowled. "Because of this." He rapped the arm of the wheelchair, "A Bane got me. The wound's slowly healing, but until it does—"

  "You'll worry," I said, suddenly comprehending, "that one of your underlings will try to grab your throne. Your Shadow Lords are notorious for that kind of crap." Actually, as far as I was concerned, most Garou were too locked into the senseless, endiess struggle for dominance, but Nikos' tribe was a partic­ularly egregious example

  Nikos nodded. "I don't know who I can trust And if a rival got his hands on Jennifer, he could use her against me. So, will you help me? I'll pay you $20,000 and make a place for you in the pack."

  I'm sure I gaped at him, stupidly, in fact. It was the first time in a long while that I'd found myself so com­pletely at a loss for words.

  "I guarantee you'll be welcome," Nikos continued. "Everyone's heard about the victories you've won—"

  '"! fought for money." I said, more harshly than I'd intended. "Not for your precious Gaia, and certainly not to impress anyone. You can give my 'place' to the next ronin who wanders through here "

  Nikos frowned. "Are you sure?" he asked. Modern as he looked in his high-tech, corporate surroundings, complete with the computer and conference phone on his desk and the big-screen video system in the corner, he was really an old-fashioned Garou at heart. He couldn't fathom why any werewolf would opt out of the hidebound system of tribe, sept, and pack if given a halfway reasonable alternative. No doubt he'd been certain the invitation would clinch the deal.

  "Yeah," I said. "Hard to believe, isn't it? I mean, you make the Shadows sound like such a true-blue, fun-loving bunch of folks."

  All right," he said. "Then will you do the job for just the cash?"

  Sure," I said. "Why not?"

  Ah, why not, indeed?

  I dreamed I was lying in the bottom of a pitching row-boat with a fat fly buzzing around my head, Gradually, I realized the cold, hard surface beneath me wasn't moving. I was just dizzy and sick to my stomach And the buzz became a droning baritone voice,

  I cracked my eyes open and found that my vision was blurry. But I could see that I was sprawled naked on the linoleum in the middle of the lobby. A crowd of people surrounded me, many wearing blue coveralls and a number pointing guns at me—not tranq guns like the one that had knocked me out, but killing weapons, all loaded with silver bullets, I suspected The voice belonged to a pudgy, pink-faced guy with a wispy, ginger mustache. He was holding one end of a three-foot rod. The other was attached to the steel collar encircling Jennifer's neck, The visor was gone and she was standing unassisted, but it was obvious from her slack jaw and glassy blue eyes that she was still only semiconscious.

  "Look at him," the pudgy man said, "and you'll see that he's only flesh and blood. Nothing to be afraid of, just an odd kind of animal driven by instinct, That's why we caught him so easily. Despite the tricks he can do, he's no match for a rational human being."

  "What's the deal with his hands?" an Asian woman asked.

  "Ordinarily, a Garou mates with a human or a wolf, Sex between two werewolves is as unnatural as incest between a human brother and sister. The offspring of such a union is called a metis, or mute. They're always born deformed and are regarded as freaks even by their own race of monsters." He sounded as if he rel­ished the thought of my childhood loneliness and humiliation.

  "Actually," I said, "the other Garou always told me [ had an endearing pixie-like quality. And everyone adored my blueberry muffins."

  When i spoke, some of my captors jerked in sur­prise. The pudgy guy said, "I thought it was about time you were waking up. Who are you and what's your interest in this girl? Answer, or we'll hurt you."

  "My names Rolf Hendricks," I said. "Jennifer's my daughter, though she doesn't know it. E came to get her out of here and help her through the Change." A good mere always protects the client, though at moments when my own head is on the block, it's hard to feel enthusiastic about it. "Now, who are you and what were you doing to her?"

  The pudgy man sneered. "Why should I tell you?"

  Because it will give you a chance to gloat and strut, I thought. He seemed like the type. I just needed to provide an excuse. "Well, it sounded like you want to teach your buddies about the Garou. if we chat for awhile, maybe I'll display the inadequacies of my dimwitted animal brain. More to the point, from my perspective, if I stalled for time, maybe I could shake off the effects of the tranq before he and the goon squad started hurting me.

  The pudgy man chuckled. "All right, when you put it like that, why not? It's not as if you'll get a chance to repeat what you hear, and it might be educational for the students to observe your reaction." He glanced around at his audience, "He could fly into one of the werewolves' legendary psychotic rages, so stay ready to shoot. My name is Howard Cooper. I'm a psychia­trist, a neurophysiologist, and a Project Head for the Aesop Research Company."

  "A division of Pentex," I said. No wonder he knew ail about the Garou. The tribes didn't have a deadlier enemy than the Wyrm-controlled megacorporation. I was in about as deep as ( could get-Cooper frowned. He didn't like it that I knew that much about his organization. "Well, yes Recently ARC acquired this facility and informed the psychiatric community that we were converting it into a residen­tial treatment program for troubled adolescents. Since our goal was research, we'd be offering our ser­vices free of charge. Naturally, we were inundated with referrals. After that, it was just a matter of using genetic testing to identify the children we actually wanted to work on—"

  "Mislaid Carou-to-be." I said. "Precisely." He stood up straighter, preening. "Needed to test a hypothesis of mine—namely, that the right combination of aversive conditioning and chemotherapy can make it impossible for a young werewolf to complete the Change."

  I blinked and squinted. My eyes still refused to focus. "So what? The majority of lost cubs never achieve their potential anyway, And most kids aren't forgotten. Their Garou parents take them in hand as soon as they start showing signs of their heritage. So what do you hope to accompl ish?"

  The pudgy guy smirked. "As I expected, you lack the abstract reasoning ability to grasp the implications. Once I invent the treatment. I can refine it into a form we can administer to the entire population. The drugs will go into the food supply. The hypnotic stimuli will air subliminally on television. Every Garou child grow­ing up in a human community will be affected. And since there aren't many being raised by wolf packs anymore, in just a few years the supply of new were­wolves will dry up without your people ever even knowing why."

  The gunmen tensed just in case I did go into a frenzy 'They would have loved you at Auschwitz," I said mildly, 'But it'll never work." I wished I were certain of that.

  "Oh no, I assure you, it will. I'm on the brink. Too bad you won't be around to see it."

  "Why not? i figured there was an IV and a tin blind­fold in my future."

  "Sorry You've already accessed your powers. The treatment was never intended to work on someone like you But we do have a use for you."

  "What a relief," I said- "I'd hate to think I couldn't pull my weight."

  I wear a lot of hats at Pentex," Cooper said. "One of my responsibilities is training First Team opera­tives. Garou killers. They reside here, providing security, until t
hey're ready to go into the field. You're about to become the object of a training exercise."

  "Let me guess," I said "Slow me down with dope, turn me loose, and let the posse hunt me down. Only, what if I refuse to play?"

  "Then we'll regretfully blow you apart where you lie."

  "In that case, I'll play."

  He grinned. "I thought you might" He gestured, and the ring of people surrounding me opened, clear­ing a path to the door. "We'll give you a head start By the way. the fence is now electrified."

  "Well, gosh," l said, rising. "If there's no way out. I'll just have to kill every one of you monkeys, won't I?"

  Unfortunately, at that point my legs went rubbery and I staggered, making my threat less intimidating than it might otherwise have been. A couple people laughed. Trying to look undaunted, I ambled to the exit.

  Once outside, [ started running, putting distance between me and the enemy. I wracked my brains for a plan. Hell, I ought to be able to think my way out of this, no sweat. After all, I'd been a real Einstein so far.

  For instance, I could have found out who owned the hospital before coming out here, could have retreated when I sensed there was something strange about the setup, or at least proceeded more cautiously, maybe avoided tripping the alarm or whatever it was E'd done to give away my presence

  But no, i'd waltzed blindly up the gallows steps and stuck my head in the noose—proof positive that a Goof of Fenris could take himself out of the tribe, but that there was no way to take the infamous tribal reck­lessness out of the Goof.

  I did my best to stop kicking myself. It couldn't help me now. Instead I'd better decide what form to take. Either of the four-legged forms, Cujo or Rin Tin Tin, would have advantages. With sharper senses, I'd have a better chance of detecting enemies before they saw me, while being built low to the ground would help me hide.

  But as Cooper had pointed out, I'm a freak. No matter what shape I shift to, my oversized Larry Talbot hands stay the same regardless of form They don't shed their talons and fur when I turn human, and they don't shrink into paws when I go lupine, That makes the four-legged forms clumsy, and i didn't think I could afford clumsy.