by A. J. Aalto
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Malashock demanded.
“There are only a few types of lycanthropes this good at fooling other humans, Malashock,” I said, “and only one type that has gets pointy teeth and ears from living with the virus, and absolutely reeks of unwashed fur.”
“Who are you, Jane fucking Goodall?” Nyquist ground out, clenching his teeth. He pointed the gun at my nose; he remained blissfully unaware that a werefox crept closer to the back of his legs, sniffing.
“No, I’m Marnie Baranuik, DaySitter to Lord Guy Harrick Dreppenstedt, servant of the Raven of Night, and hey-ho, vixen of the Folkenflik skulk.” I said, drawing myself up as tall as possible. “And I smell you. I see you, werebat. I see your clipped ears and your translucent skin under that cheap drugstore bronzer, and I smell your balls-nasty cave-stink. Next time, if you survive what’s coming, splurge for a proper theater-grade concealer. It’s only about thirty bucks more, and fewer people will see through it.”
My gaze shifted as I spoke past him. “Your turn, werefox, let’s get this over with. Kinda curious as to what happens when a werefox bites a werebat. Do you become double-were? Is that a thing?”
Nyquist gurgled.
I nodded. “Same, yeah. Gurgle with a capital GUR, am I right? Look, I’ve got a more important job to do in these caves, Nyquist, then I wanna go home, have a good cry in the shower, and eat all the pizza in Niagara.”
Malashock finally spotted the pale shape in the darkness and whispered, “Oh, what the fuck?”
Thirty-Two
You never forget the lycanthrope that bites you; their infection changes your whole life. I remembered every detail about Gunther Folkenflik. I could still picture with painful clarity the scrawny, twitching blond man in the straightjacket walking across the marble floor at Skulesdottir behind Sayomi Mochizuki, representing House Sarokhanian before the UnHallowed Throne. Gunther was only sane in his fox form, now, and even that was a stretch. My belly gave a little flutter of sympathy. Still, we were skulkmates, kin of sorts, and though I hadn’t seen him since my official diagnosis, I was pretty sure he recognized me. Those all-too-human eyes of his were full of clear intentions.
I thought I should introduce Nyquist to Gunther, since the latter was about to get munched on.
“Hey, Mickey? Canines probably find you as tasty as boggles find goblins, and with that in mind, there’s someone you should meet. Gunther Folkenflik, meet Mickey Nyquist, your evening snack.”
Nyquist kept the gun on us, presumably in case Malashock and I were doing some bizarrely-improvised bluffing, but shifted sideways and pressed his back against the mud wall so he could take a quick look. He did a goggling double-take at the white werefox that would have been comical if his trigger discipline wasn’t worryingly terrible.
“Listen to me, Nyquist,” I said. “We can try to resolve this, but you’re right — there won’t be a negotiation. You’re either going to be eaten, or you’re going to slide over this way and be arrested by officer Bizarro-Me.” I spoke out of the corner of my mouth at Liv. “That’s what you’re gonna do next, if I don’t live long enough to guide you through the aftermath. Go easy on him. I think he’s just caught up in a little temptation, here. Nothing Shakespeare wouldn’t have done. Right, Mickey?”
Nyquist’s bottom lip quivered for a second and he nodded rapidly.
“Uh huh,” Liv barely whispered, focused on the werefox. She had come here expecting to deal with me, boggles, goblins, and an ancient vampire — V-word, Marnie! Holy smokes, what’s your damage? — but she probably hadn’t expected warring lycanthropes on top of all that.
“If,” I raised a finger imperiously, “Nyquist hasn’t bitten any humans.” I caught his eye again. “Or killed any endangered species of boggles or goblins in here.”
Nyquist clutched at his bag, eyeballed Gunther, and snarled impotently at anyone who would listen.
“No,” I said, “no more sending rubies home.”
“Storm-garnets!”
“Whatever!” I bellowed. “Stop yelling! I’m trying to help you, but you’re getting the nice little werefox excited!”
Malashock had been slowly edging closer to her abandoned gun, but Nyquist spotted her and made a warning noise. Folkenflik echoed this noise, a growl snagging in the back of his throat.
“Gunther,” I said slowly, holding up a piece of turkey jerky to entice him and keep his attention on me. “Listen to me. We’re going to let the nice lady take the Bad Ideas Bat outside and arrest him for stealing gems from the boggles.” That’s gotta be a crime, right? “Then you and I need to have a chat. Can you shift? Can we talk?”
Gunther sat on his haunches and blinked at me, his gaze glimmering with lycanthropy. One shaggy, torn ear flicked. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but jerked my head at Nyquist.
“All right, Mickey,” I said, wary of the shadows shifting now in the mud wall and the unsteady light cast by Malashock’s Maglite. “Nice and easy, now. Drop the bag. Drop the gun. Go slowly to Malashock and let her take you out. You’re under arrest, but you’re alive. That’s the best offer on the table at the moment.”
Nyquist stared at the werefox, then down at his gem bag miserably. “I didn’t bite anyone,” he spat. “Not a single person! And I didn’t hurt the boggles.”
“Happy to hear it,” I said.
“I’m… ” he wilted in resignation, “I’m a fruit bat.”
“What you are is werefox enrichment if you don't start taking my advice. Go with Liv.” We both shot Folkenflik another wary glance, and when he twitched and began to drool, I heaved a big sigh. Taking two cautious steps forward, I put myself bodily between the werefox and Nyquist, dropping the turkey jerky near Folkenflik's muzzle and forelegs. What the hell; he can’t infect me twice, right? “I’ll keep this fuzzy butt-biter company. And, fur-face, that was cheeky sass, and not an invitation to munch my haunch.”
Nyquist’s grip tightened on his gun.
I sighed. “Listen, fruit bat, you’re still having Bad Ideas, capital-B, capital-I. I can see them in your beady little eyes. If you shoot in this small space, that’s going to hurt your ears even more than it’ll hurt ours, and then Gunther, who, I will remind you, is not a vegetarian, is gonna flip his shit.”
Nyquist dropped the gun and the gem bag in a sad, sloppy slump, and the last indignant stubbornness went out of him as he shuffled to Malashock’s side. She picked both guns up and then hesitated, giving the werefox an uncertain look. “You going to be okay?” she asked me.
I threw her some turkey jerky to distract the Big-Ass Boggle if it was still between us and the cave mouth. “Leave me his gun, just in case. And some zip ties. Don’t worry about this foxy fella, he and I go way back.” I drifted off as the Blue Sense hit me with Folkenflik’s worry. Trouble, Lassie? Someone down a well?
“Go,” I told Malashock. “Just move slowly.” I slid closer to Gunther, and he lowered his nose to my shoes for a sniff. I held my bare hand down for him to check out. He gave me another sniff, then ate the turkey jerky off the floor. “Are you in there, Gunther? Remember me? In Egypt? The Bitter Pass? Yeah, I’m not holding a grudge, here. How about you? We good?”
I really wanted him to look at me when I said his name, or give me some indication that he was sane enough to help. He just sat there, trembling and drooling, his torn ear flicking. He looked a bit worse for wear, dust-streaked, greasy around the muzzle, his skin hanging like he’d lost an alarming amount of weight too quickly for his flesh to keep up.
“Where’s Sayomi, Gunther?” I asked.
He head-butted my knee and yipped.
“You said it, buddy,” I agreed. “I am assuming you’re here because your lady friend is, too. Does she still want my soul sucked out after she kung-fus the crap out of me?”
The mud wall shimmered next to us and something black pressed against it, reminding me of the many times Asmodeus had shoved his three heads out of my bathroom mirror to sass me while I wa
s naked. Without a hint of preamble, Gunther bolted down the fork to the right, splashing through puddles, spraying his grubby white fur with more mud. I hollered and took off after him, because I am still, beneath all the bad-assery, a doofus.
He passed doors upon doors and a moldy shelf covered by brown bottles dusted by years of grit. My light hit limp cobwebs, fresher webs, and, beneath both, beetle husks. Carrion beetles, their hard carapaces carpeting my path, crackled under my step. There were revenants at rest nearby. I had the right tunnel this time. Either that, or I was in the very worst tunnel I’d ever been in.
I paused for a moment, considering waiting until morning, but Wesley’s text came back to me — Rotten Roy was missing; Zorovar too. Ghazaros was seeking sanctuary at North House, having apparently relinquished Glen Strickland to our care and protection as part of the deal. Presumably, if any of it was a lie, if Strickland was a Trojan Horse-style offering to get the bad guys invited in the door, Wesley’s telepathy would have shown him the secrets of their deception. I hoped.
“Dark back there,” I said companionably to the werefox. “Bet you can see just fine. Bet I could, too, if I shifted, right?”
There was a cost to that, though, as both the creepy Doctor Delacovias and Finnegan Folkenflik had warned me — the more often you let the virus change you, the less capable you are of denying its sway. That’s why the older lycanthropes tended to travel as the motorcycle club — they needed Finnegan’s assistance and the rest of the skulk's support during the full moon to remain fully human, or at least human-ish.
Gunther darted into the distant shadows, and I had a moment alone in the dark to doubt my plan. “If Sayomi is here,” I said to myself, hoping Gunther would circle back to escort me, “then Aston may be here. And… is Aston here, Gunther? Are you still here?”
I promised Batten I would gather info, so I got to gathering. Moving deeper into the tunnel, where cell reception probably sucked, was almost certainly a bad idea. I heard scrambling paws on wood from further ahead. Sure, Marnie, follow a bitey lycanthrope deeper into a cave to find a hella-old revenant who hates you and your House, just so you can fail to tell your dead ex-lover that he’s here when your cell phone gets no bars. Brilliant plan.
“What fucktrumpet decided this was a good idea?” I asked aloud, knowing full well that fucktrumpet was me. “Dark Lady, I need an espresso,” I said on a sigh, looking around as if a café was going to appear down one of the tunnels.
“Gunther?” Scratching noises continued, not too far down the darkest branch. The cobweb nearest me swayed in an imperceptible breath of wind, and since the cave was well away from any outside breezes, that probably wasn't a good sign.
Disturbed and feeling exposed and vulnerable, I dug out my phone and checked reception — one bar. Maybe I should wait until I had something definite to report before summoning Batten close to whatever this was? I didn’t want to expose him to danger for nothing. I looked down at his fake name and the number of his burner phone. I had given him a candle for an avatar, a tiny light in the darkness, though it was an image of irony — when had Kill-Notch ever left a light on in his heart for me?
Well, I will fight the darkness, with or without him, I vowed. Goodbye Norma-Jean my damp, denim-clad ass.
Thirty-Three
Keeping my phone in hand, I ventured further after Gunther, and as the scratching got louder, I could see him as a pale, bounding flash of barely-lighter grey in the darkness.
The wood of the door bore numerous, deep scratches; he’d clearly been trying to get in for quite some time. Here, a void bloomed for the first time, cold and dark and empty of sanity. My heart hammered hard in reply, and I felt a wash of nausea and dread. I took another look at Gunther’s dirty muzzle and hanging flesh. Maybe he had been at it for days, weeks, worrying at the door. Why hadn’t he shifted back into human form? Was something stopping him? Had he forgotten how? Sadness swept through me. I wondered what Gunther had been like before, and why Finnegan, his own brother, who'd offered me help and support, hadn't been able to keep Gunther, well, Gunther.
He scratched again and leapt on the door. I tried the handle. It rattled, but the top was sticking and the door didn't budge. I aimed the flashlight upwards and saw a bolt, locking something in. The bolt itself had a cross stamped in it, and looked to be made of silver so revenants who dared touch it would get burned. Looking more closely at the door, I found more crosses, hundreds of them — crosses stamped into the doorknob and hinges, and carved into the wood where Gunter's efforts hadn't obliterated them.
“Oh, buddy,” I said to Gunther, fishing under the cuff of my jeans to draw a stake from the ankle sheath there. “I am so gonna regret this.” I reached up, mindful of cobwebs and anything that moved, unbolted the door, and then stopped to listen to whatever was within.
Something stirred, the quiet crunch of dry dirt grinding under somebody’s weight unmistakable.
I placed my warm, tingling palm on the door. Hunger. More than just hunger, the sensation bordered on crazed, desperate ravening. Someone had been stashed in this room without sustenance for I had no idea how long. The Lord of Exile, I guessed, but that didn’t explain Gunther’s presence or anxiety.
I closed my eyes and focused past the scent of the dirty werefox and the mud and the foul, stale air. “How does my life suck this much, that I’m hoping it’s just one corpse behind this door?”
The breath-stealing blast of psychometric input was sudden and fierce, and now I smelled it — dry bones and burnt molasses, but faint. Hungry. So cold and hungry.
The ache was jarring. I’d Felt it once before, in Ruby Valli’s cellar, trapped with Gregori Nazaire, her own companion gone mad with hunger. My heart hammered sympathetically and my metaphysical protectiveness surged. One revenant, old and starving. Made vulnerable by it. Vulnerable and dangerous.
Lich.
I took my hand away and looked down at Gunther, who had gone quiet, looking up at me expectantly with those very human eyes. Fuck. The identity of the revenant within occurred to me slowly and terribly. Fuckanut. There was only one person it could be, really.
“Fuck a whole bucket of nuts,” I told Gunther, but I couldn’t just walk away. I had to know what to tell Batten. If I put myself in danger here and left without checking to see who this was, he’d call me careless and, worse than that, he’d be right.
I checked my cell reception. Still one bar, thank the Dark Lady.
I texted Malashock, Nyquist cuffed? Wait for hottie from casino, show him cave entrance then process Nyquist. Promise?
She texted back, You know I can’t promise.
I made a face at Gunther and thought he understood my pain. “Why can’t people let me do my job?” He yipped. “Right. Let’s do this.” When he whined, I agreed with a nod. “This is going to be such a pain in the ass.”
I dialed Batten’s burner. I heard him pick up but he said nothing. “Listen up, you self-impressed dillhole,” I said to the star of my unfortunate Marnie After Dark fantasies. “If you get butthurt at me for what I’m about to say, I’ll shoot you in that fine ass twice as much as I did the last time, capisce?”
“Trouble at the spa, Snickerdoodle?” He chuckled, a gruff soothing sound, and I closed my eyes and let it wash through me.
I huffed to blow cobwebs away from my temple, ducked, and swatted at them uselessly. “Worse. Much, much worse. Like… Marnie-worse.”
“Afraid to ask.”
“I need you to grab your kit and come to Jones Beach — ”
“No.”
“To overpower a vampire hunter and slap her in her own cuffs — ”
“No.”
“Double-check that the werebat is securely in custody — ”
“The what?”
“Come into a boggle-, spider-, and beetle-infested cave — ”
“No!”
“And find me.” I listened to the unhappy silence on the other end of the phone, looked down at the company I was keeping, and a
dded, “I’m with Gunther Folkenflik.”
He drew the silence out another long beat. “The werefox.”
“Uh.” I looked down at the lycanthrope. He blinked. I scuffed the toe of my Keds in the dirt. “Yeah. Pretty sure Jim-Jam Slurper is in here, too. And, uh, other bad things. So many other bad things.”
I could barely make out the swear words under his snarling, but the ones I heard were both inventive and savage. I was impressed. “I told you to let me deal with it.”
“And I told you to disappear up your own ass. Guess we’re both disobedient.”
“Get the fuck out of there,” he ordered.
“I’m info-gathering as promised.”
“Now.”
I rested my hand on the door. “Be nice to me, jeez, I’m about the get murdered. Do you really want ‘now’ to be the last thing you say to me? After everything I’ve done for you? That’s cold, Kill-Notch.”
“If I say I’ll be there, will you swear not to do anything dangerous?”
“Of course not!” I hissed angrily into the phone. “Haven’t you met me?”
“On my way. Don’t move.”
“How fast can you get here? Where are you?”
The Blue Sense reported his frustration. “Just stay where you are and don’t die.”
“There, was that so hard? Hurry up. There are bolt cutters by the gate, bring them in. And bring me a fucking coffee. Dark roast double-double. And a doughnut, you cheapskate. Maple dip!”
“You’re a maple dip!” he bellowed, hanging up.
Constable Schenk had made the same astute observation. Maybe their unflattering, doughnut-focused stereotypes were warranted — I think I’m pretty sweet.
I put my phone away, promising Gunther, “Okay, okay, let’s see what we can do here.” I cracked the door half an inch and braced myself, readying my stake once more.
Gunther yipped hopefully, pawing and nosing at the door. When nothing lunged out of the dark at me, I swung it open all the way, wincing at the squeal of the hinges as they echoed down the tunnel. I waited, my focus sharpened. A high, limp, whistling sound escaped a pair of very human lungs, and I knew without seeing her that Sayomi was within.