Water to Burn (26 page)
Authors: Katharine Kerr
“Let’s just say it would be a great first step in a long process. You’d be helping save this poor girl from a life of sin. She’s being forced to work as a prostitute.”
“Yes, Michael made sure to cite the example of Mary Magdalene. Let me think about this.”
He hung up before I could say anything else. The abrupt end to the call put me off guard when the phone rang again. I clicked on, expecting it to be Father Keith. Instead, Caleb said hello. It took me a moment to gather my mind. Once I did, I felt profoundly uncomfortable, even though Caleb sounded pleasant and businesslike.
“Sorry about the phone tag,” he said. “I had to go out of town for a couple of days. Some unexpected business dealings.”
“Well, we were moving, too,” I said. “Not a problem.”
“Good, good. That’s always a real chore, all right.”
I pinpointed the problem as the distinct feeling that someone else was listening in to the call. It was nothing so clear-cut as the sound of breathing, or even that slight hollowness of sound that occurs when an eavesdropper’s on a second phone, but I felt it nonetheless.
“Now, about that lunch date,” I said, “I’ll be unpacking for the rest of today. Tomorrow? Sunday?”
“Tomorrow would be best for me. Where are you living now? Is there some place good nearby? We want a place that’s quiet so we can talk.”
“For sure. None of those bright shiny places where everyone sounds like shrieking parrots. We’re in the outer avenues, near Noriega.”
“Okay, then I know where we should meet.” Caleb paused for a strangely high-pitched laugh. “How about the Cliff House? The dining room, not that burger place. It’s about as old-fashioned quiet as you can get.”
“Sounds good. One o’clock?”
“Perfect. I’ll see you then.”
We ended the call. I continued unpacking while I went back over the conversation in my mind in order to decipher my feeling of discomfort. In their elaborate security system, Ari and Itzak had included the “interference generator” that protected cell phones conversations and other wireless communications, which made a tap in unlikely. The listener, therefore, had to be in Caleb’s mind, or attached to his consciousness one way or another as a psychic wiretap, as it were. The obvious candidate: Brother Belial.
I suspected that I was going to meet him at lunch, too, whether he was present physically or not. When I considered Caleb’s odd laugh, I remembered that the Cliff House stood just down the hill from the place where Doyle and Johnson died. Either Caleb’s sense of humor was even stranger than Ari’s, or the thought made him real nervous.
Although Father Keith never called me back, a couple of hours before sunset, he did drive over in a borrowed red SUV full of werewolves. Since the moon would be full that night, the Hounds of Heaven, as they called their pack, had gone to Father Keith’s protection the day before. All five of them sat decorously in their seats inside the SUV, each wearing a doggie safety harness, Lawrence in the front seat, JoEllen, Matt, Ryan, and Samantha in the seats behind. Each also had a leather collar, decorated with a dog license tag and a small silver cross.
Keith himself was wearing his floor-length brown Franciscan robes. He’s neither tall nor short, a compact, solid-looking man with curly gray hair, tonsured of course, and pale blue eyes. When I went outside to greet them, I noticed the window of the downstairs apartment next door, which looked our way from right across the driveway. Instead of the usual drawn curtains, I saw faces plastered against the glass, staring.
“It’s warm down in town today,” Keith said. “Since I was coming all the way out here, I thought I’d take the pack to the beach for a run.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “What’s with the crosses on the collars?”
“Just something to help them keep their focus. It’s not easy for them, keeping the chaotic side of their nature under control.”
I helped him unlatch the wolves from their safety harnesses. They bounded out of the SUV one by one, shook themselves, and began sniffing around the sidewalk and the steps like ordinary dogs, tails wagging, tongues lolling. Of course, they all looked like wolves, not dogs, and they were all larger than Great Danes and stockier than St. Bernards, especially Lawrence, the alpha male. When I glanced at the building next door, I saw that the neighbors in the upstairs apartment had also come to their windows to stare. I gave them the sorority girl wave, that is, hold your hand up straight and waggle only the fingers, but they didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed.
“Why not come with us?” Father Keith said. “We haven’t had a chance to talk in a long time.”
I hesitated, tempted by the thought of fresh air and exercise. “I dunno,” I said, “Ari’s at the gym, and I should wait till he gets back.”
Keith raised an eyebrow. “What’s this? He keeps you on a leash? I could get you one of those ornamented collars.”
“Very funny! Ha ha. But no, I’m worried about rogue waves. Did you hear about that girl who drowned not far from here, and then the lawyer down by the Ferry Building?”
“I did. You don’t think the waves were natural.”
“I sure don’t. I don’t want another one coming for me.”
“Well, it should be low tide now, according to this morning’s paper.”
“Okay.” I realized that if a wave did erupt, I’d be able to confirm my theory, assuming I got out of the way in time. “I really should take a look at the ocean, anyway.”
“I could pray to Maria Stella Maris for protection,” Father Keith said. “Or we could just go to the park.”
“No, let’s try the beach. I’d better leave Ari a note. I’ll run upstairs and be right back.”
“Wait a minute.” Father Keith leaned into the van and took a piece of paper out of the glove compartment. “You’d better put this somewhere safe inside. Oh, and get yourself a sweatshirt. The wind’s going to be chilly.”
The paper was a baptismal certificate for one Sophia Chekov, dated sixteen years earlier and artfully stained with weak tea to age the paper. He’d put a couple of crumples in it, too, and rubbed a little dust along one edge.
“Why is her birthplace listed as Kiev?” I said. “And why was she baptized in Italy?”
“Italy because I was there that year. Kiev because Michael wanted it that way. He’s got a scheme in mind.”
“I see. It’s a good thing you joined the church. The criminal element would have been real glad to employ you if you’d given them the chance.”
“Just go get the sweatshirt, will you? My wolves are getting restless.”
Since the beach was so close, we walked. The Hounds formed up into a tidy pack and sauntered ahead of us until we crossed the Great Highway. On its western edge we climbed the low rise of dunes, covered in ice plant, sea grass, and assorted weeds, and looked down onto Ocean Beach itself. A cool wind smacked us with the scent of dead and decaying ocean critters that most people call the “fresh smell of the sea.”
The tide, just at its lowest point, rolled white foam onto the long stretch of pale beige sand, littered with dead kelp and driftwood. At a distance to our right, far up the misty beach, a few people were strolling on the firm sand at water’s edge. Otherwise, we saw no one but a flock of sandpipers.
At the smell and the wild view, the pack broke ranks. With yips and muffled howls, they raced down the rise, slipping now and then in the soft dry sand, and headed for the water’s edge. The sandpipers threw themselves into the air and flew away. I noticed, though, that Lawrence hung back, trotting after the others with his tail and head held low, still mourning his slain mate.
“Be careful!” Father Keith yelled after the wolves. “Remember who you are!”
We followed more decorously. Down by the water the air felt a lot colder than it had on the city streets. I zipped up my orange sweatshirt, and Father Keith pulled up the cowl of his robe. When I looked out to sea, I spotted a thick gray line at the horizon.
“Fog’s coming in,” I said.
“It sure is.” He turned to look north, where the pack had dashed into the shallow water. “Stay close!” he called out.
For an answer they bounded out of the water and raced off to the north. We followed, striding on the firm damp sand.
“Their idea of a joke,” Keith said. “I’ve been learning some interesting things about werewolf psychology lately.”
“I bet. Say, does anyone in your order—well—mind that you have wolves hanging around you once a month?”
“I’ve been consulting with the higher-ups about that. So far, they agree that five souls are always worth saving, no matter how unusual the souls are. It might even be possible to schedule a meeting at the Vatican, but I wouldn’t count on that.”
Always the lousy higher-ups, I thought, whether in my agency or his, taking their time with their damn decisions!
The wolf pack turned and circled back, this time with Lawrence in the lead. Seawater and sand crusted their legs and white bellies. They galloped up to us, leaping and wagging, then dashed off to the south. We turned around and followed.
“They can’t help wanting to run like this,” Father Keith remarked. “But I wish they wouldn’t get so far ahead.”
“There’s something I want to ask you. The Wolf of Gubbio, that legend about St. Francis, you know? Is there any chance it was a werewolf?”
Father Keith laughed under his breath. “If you’d asked me that six weeks ago, I would have said no and suggested you see a qualified therapist. Now, well, I have to say yes, there probably was a wolf, and yes, it probably was a werecreature. Look, the legend tells us that the wolf was huge, it was solitary, and it sought out human company by hanging around a town. It listened to what the holy saint had to say and made a bargain with him, which indicates a human mind.”
“Sure does. I wonder if it had gotten itself stuck in wolf form somehow.”
“Maybe. Or maybe the original story did feature a werewolf, and the monk who wrote it down figured that such things were nonsense. Medieval people didn’t believe every crazy idea that came along, you know.”
Keith paused to shade his eyes with one hand and look for his pack. By then the wolves had gone a good half mile down the beach. The tide was coming in stronger, reaching white fingers a little farther up the sand with every wave. When I looked out to sea, I noticed that the gray fog line was beginning to rise up in tufts like drifts of smoke. The breaking waves crested into blue-green swells, crusted with rusty-red kelp floats, higher and closer to shore than they been when we’d arrived. I saw a lone surfer crouched on his board as he waited for the right wave.
“One crazy surfer out there,” I said, pointing.
“Where?” Keith looked out to sea. “I don’t see anyone.”
The surfer caught a good swell and rose to stand on his board. He was too tall, I realized suddenly, to be a human being.
“It must have been a trick of the light,” I said, “or maybe a seal. I don’t see him now either.”
But of course I did see the huge figure, surfing the billow high and easily. Olive-green kelp draped his body. His long purple hair flowed in the wind as he lifted something to his mouth—a conch shell, wreathed in strands of seaweed. The note sounded long and low as it echoed over the murmur of the rising tide. Far down the beach the wolves began to howl. When Triton blew his wreathed horn a second time, they turned and raced back toward us.
“That’s odd,” Father Keith said. “I thought I heard a musical note.” He shrugged. “Must have been a car horn, out on the Great Highway.”
As the wave began to break, Triton and his surfboard disappeared. I was disappointed, because I’d been hoping to see him traveling the pipe.
Whining, ears flat, the sand-crusted wolves surrounded us, pushing one another to get close to Father Keith. Samantha, the omega female, leaned against me. When I stroked her sea-damp head, I could feel that she was trembling and not likely from cold. Father Keith knelt on one knee and began murmuring under his breath in Latin to comfort his little flock.
“There, there,” I whispered to Sam in English. “Triton won’t hurt you. He saw you as Chaotics, is all, and was warning me.”
She whined openmouthed and wagged her tail in a feeble sort of way, then sat down at my feet.
While I’d been gawking at Triton, I’d missed noticing that we had company on the beach. Two people had come down from the dunes, and they’d obviously seen the wolf pack. Up on the dry sand a man and a child stood staring at us. He looked around thirty, the little girl was maybe six, and they shared a sandy-haired, freckled Norman Rockwell kind of face that marked them as dad and daughter. They both wore jeans and the heavy jackets of locals, not tourists. At first I wondered if they were actual people or more Chaotic projections. I cast a quick ward, which had no effect on either of them.
When Father Keith stood up again, they apparently decided he was approachable, thanks to his holy-orders robe, most likely. They walked over to join us, though they stayed about ten feet back from the lolling tongues and white teeth of our pack.
“Uh, excuse me,” the man said. “We were just wondering what kind of dogs they are. They’re pretty big, huh?”
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