The Night Beat, From the Necropolis Enforcement Files (4 page)

H.P. continued to take care of Slimy and I contemplated my next move. I could go human, but I was hurt and healing was better in wolf form and a lot faster in werewolf form. I wondered if Jack would notice if I slipped into the half-human, half-wolf look. I could ask Jack what he thought he was seeing, but I got the impression he was seeing exactly what was here. I could run away and hide, but that went against both my better nature and the oaths I’d taken for both of my jobs.

I was saved from making a decision by the radio. “Officers Wolfe and Wagner. Are you all right? Come in.” Darlene sounded beyond worried. I couldn’t blame her.

I also couldn’t work the radio with paws. Jack reached in. “Yeah, Darlene, we’re okay. Situation,” he looked back at H.P., “seemingly under control.”

“Detective Wagner, Chief wants to know how you knew to send other police support to stadium?”

“Pardon me?” Jack gave me a confused look. I shrugged as best I could.

“The Chief isn’t upset -- they got there in time to stop a huge riot. But he does want to know how you knew.”

“Perps gave us a clue,” I managed to get out. The movie idea that werewolves can’t talk when in non-human form is a lie. When you’re younger, you sound like you’re talking with a rolled up cloth in your mouth, but practice does make perfect. Now I just sounded out of breath.

“Yeah,” Jack said quickly.

“I’ll relay to the Chief. Do you need assistance with the suspects?”

Jack and I looked at each other. We had nothing and no one to bring in, back, or even talk about.

Ken leaned in the passenger’s window. “We need at least six ambulances, Darlene.” He was talking in Jack’s voice again. “Officers down.”

When you’re a cop, there’s no worse phrase you can hear. When you’re with Necropolis Enforcement, we have and hate that one, but there are worse phrases. Officer engulfed. Officer ingested. Officer staked. Officer doused. Officer dusted. Officer turned. That was the worst one, really. Because that meant one of your friends had given up and given his or her soul to the Prince. And that meant you had to dust them, as fast as possible and with the most extreme prejudice known to undead or human kind.

Jack hung up our radio, but I could hear Darlene in the background, calling for medical. “Ken, I’m not really down.”

“I didn’t call them for you,” he said as he pointed towards H.P.

I got out of the car on all fours and stayed that way. Still hurt too much to go for upright, let alone human. We all walked closer to the carnage.

Apparently Slimy had swallowed without chewing. Guess they didn’t teach proper eating etiquette in whatever level of Hell he was from. He’d ripped apart the squad cars, but the humans were each in one piece. I trotted over and started sniffing. Amanda and Maurice came with me -- she moved the living ones to H.P. and Maurice moved the dead ones to Ken.

We were lucky -- the four uniforms were all alive, though just barely. H.P. started doing our form of C.P.R., which consisted of a lot more than chest pounding and the kiss of life. A couple of the hookers were still with us, and, sadly, the one dealer who’d been in the alley was clearly going to recover.

On the deader side, all the bums were gone. This wasn’t a surprise. By the time someone was living on the streets, their natural resistance to the occult was lowered, let alone their natural resilience. We’d lost three hookers and a couple of junkies as well.

The mess was unreal, but one area Dirt Corps handled better than anything was toxic cleanup. I chose not to look -- their ways were effective, but unbelievably gross. I don’t care who you are, watching a bunch of mummies, skeletons, liches and worms gobble up gross ick is more than any stomach can handle.

I went over to watch Ken work and Jack came with me. Ken had one hand on a dead hooker’s head, thumb and forefinger on the temples, with the other on the heart. He was concentrating.

“What’s he doing?” Jack whispered to me.

“Seeing if they’re worth reviving.” Ken had a perfect track record so far -- he’d never brought back a potential minion.

“But they’re dead.”

“Yeah, well, there are ways. I mean, they won’t come back as human, but being a zombie’s not as bad as it’s cracked up to be. And there are other options. Hookers usually come back as succubae. It’s typecasting, but it works.”

“What do the junkies and bums come back as?”

“Bums usually opt for zombie. Junkies…well, junkies rarely come back.”

“Why so?”

“They’re already too close to the Prince.” This was true. There were so many sins out there, and everyone indulged in at least one of them, even if they thought they didn’t. But junkies were among the most willful, more so than alcoholics, adulterers, or murderers. Pedophiles, rapists and junkies rarely got a second shot at life from us. We had standards and we also had history to back up our decisions.

“Who’s the Prince?” Jack asked as Ken shook his head and moved on to the next body.

“The Prince of Darkness.”

“Oh. The Devil. Or is that Count Dracula?”

“Neither.” I struggled to put the right words around what the Prince really was.

“Count Dracula gets a bad rap for no good reason,” Ken offered. “He’s one of the main reasons the Prince hasn’t taken over.”

“And the Devil’s really Yahweh’s servant,” Maurice added as he joined us.

“Yahweh?” Jack sounded confused.

“The entity most humans call God’s real name.” I was very fond of Yahweh, some because he was strong and righteous, mostly because he was the strongest god fighting against the Prince and it paid to support your boss.

“God has a lot of names, but --”

Ken interrupted Jack. “Yes, he does. But there are also more gods out there than you can count. And they
all
have a variety of names. But each prefers the name he or she feels is truly theirs. The one you’re talking about is named Yahweh. He likes his name used, by the way, though not in vain.”

“So, what does he do when someone says ‘God damn it’?” Jack sounded ready to sign up for H.P.’s
Gods and Monsters for Beginners
class at Necropolis U. I was getting worried.

“He laughs,” Maurice replied. “If he even hears it. ‘God’ is a general term. Now, if you cursed using his real name, then he’d be taking an interest. But when someone goes, ‘Oh God, oh God’ and then orgasms, it’s just a general statement, sort of like ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘demon kind are scary’.”

“So, the Prince isn’t Count Dracula and he isn’t the Devil,” Jack said. “So, what is he?”

My wrist-com came to life as the Count calmly answered. “Evil incarnate.”

Chapter 7

Jack looked around. “You know, supposedly, all of you are evil.” He didn’t sound accusatory or even fazed.

“Those are stories,” the Count explained. “Started by the Prince.”

“But you’re undeads.”

“Yes? What’s your point?” The Count sounded polite and mildly offended.

I decided to rejoin the conversation. After all, Jack was my partner. “We have souls. Unless we give our souls to the Prince, we’re like humans, and we have free will. And, yes, we’re undead. But we’re also alive -- we call it being unalive. What we don’t want to become is dusted. Dusted means unlikely to come back.” We didn’t want to become turned, either, to come back as a minion, but some things I didn’t like to talk about, ever.

“But I thought you lost your soul when you became a vampire or a werewolf.”

“No. You lose your soul when you give it to the Prince. Otherwise, it’s yours. Well, yours and your god’s.”

“Which god is yours?”

“I’m a Yahweh girl, but there are plenty of other gods out there just as worthy.”

“So, like, Zeus is still around?”

“Around and kicking. And still on the side of good, so to speak. The Greek and Roman gods were all about partying like it was the end of the universe. One of the reasons Yahweh could get stronger -- it’s hard to keep your faith in a god who’s more interested in screwing your wife, sister and daughter, all at the same time. Especially when you had a god right nearby who was doing his best to kick evil in the butt on a daily basis.”

I felt a little better and went to werewolf form and onto my hind legs. Jack didn’t even blink, but he did catch me when I started to topple over. “You’re not doing too great. I think we should put you into one of the ambulances.”

Maurice snorted. “That would be a fun trip to vivisection hell. No, we’ll take Vicki back to Headquarters. We have full medical there. Our kind of medical.”

“I’m going with you,” Jack said calmly.

I was going to protest but Ken said, “Okay.”

“What?” Ken normally wasn’t big on bringing humans over without major security clearances. “He’s a human.”

Ken shot me a look that said I was acting like an idiot. “He’s a human partnered with a werewolf. He’s a human who took in three vampires, a werewolf, a lich, a white worm, and a variety of Dirt Corps undeads fighting with an ancient Sumerian demon. And instead of running, wetting himself, or screaming like a little girl, he pulled out a gun and started shooting at the true enemy in front of him. I think he’s passed the tests, Vic.”

“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