Monster Vice Read online

  So, rather than head for home and bed, I head down to the Morgue. One last duty to perform before I surrender to sleep and an oblivion hopefully devoid of dreams.

  * * *

  Because I am a decorated officer of Monster Vice, the rigmarole of beaurocratic machination is eliminated in terms of retrieving my brother’s body. The forensic guys of course would love to cut him up, another specimen to study in the War Against Witchery, but I have pulled the necessary political strings and saved my brother’s corpse the indignity of dissection and post-mortem skullduggery.

  Thus, the funeral takes place the following day. Mindy, Bill’s wife, holds my hand as I watch my brother’s casket lowered into the ground. His two sons, Gary and Todd, twins of five years each, stand on my right side, their faces blank with non-comprehension. Bill – dad – is gone, this much they know, but that’s all that’s really understood in the Child’s Big Picture of the moment. His will indicated that he wanted to be buried in his own churchyard. My brother had many friends and the ceremony is crowded with mourning parishioners.

  Though my heart is filled with sorrow, I am thinking of other things at the moment. Mindy has indicated to me that Bill had remained in the church property that evening, to leave at dinner only for, in his words “a quick walk around the block.” I tell her of course that he must have left church grounds at one point — a werewolf was unable to do anything on hallowed ground. Mindy assures me that Bill was at his desk in the rectory, probably when he had called me as well. But remembering his voice on that call – the agitation, the raspiness, the pain which it held – convinces me even now that Bill had made that call once already bitten by the Lycker. Which still does nothing to alleviate my overriding concern: For I am forced to entertain the notion that somewhere out there is a werewolf with no compunction to killing on hallowed ground. I do not see how this is logically possible; historically, werewolves and vampires simply cannot survive within a blessed environment.

  As I have been given a few days off for bereavement, I take it upon myself to investigate the circumstances surrounding my brother’s death. Mindy does not try to cling to me, nor keep me close by for comfort. She knows how I am – a kind of come and go guy, tarry not too long in any place for long. I say that will visit her and the kids in a few days, but that there is work to be done – work germane to Bill and his gruesome passing. Mindy tells me to go, and I do.

  I ponder Bill’s werewolf scenario in earnest, and try to dissect his case with professional detachment. So. If he was attacked, presumably near his church, then logic would dictate that the “biter” who got to him was local. Werewolves, unlike the Nosferatu, were not roving creatures, generally speaking. If they found a shelter that suited them over the course of weeks or months, generally they would not wander far, especially when it came to feeding.

  I drove to the church, directly after the funeral, opting to skip the post-ceremonial festivities that Bill’s wife was overseeing. I was never great at wakes. Instead, I thought I might have myself a little look-see around the neighborhood.

  The church was surrounded by generally low-income tenements. Not much traffic to speak of … and not a lot of activity on the streets. I tried to pick out potential “hot spots” for Lycker infestation, and found only one prime piece of property: an abandoned four story house at the end of the street, doors and windows boarded up, the gate padlocked to the gills.

  As soon as I spotted the house, the back of my neck began to tingle. Now if that wasn’t a Lycker stomping ground, then I didn’t know dirt about werewolves.

  I was about to act on a foolish impulse.

  I was going to investigate the house, alone, without backup.

  Unlike the Tutis, Lyckers could move about during the day. Which made my little piece of decision making presently all the more questionable. If I were to be cornered in that dump of a structure with a pissed-off Lycker, I could pretty well just kiss it all good-bye. My hope was, that if indeed there was a “biter” inside, I could find it napping, or off guard, and dispense with it quickly and antiseptically. A hope, anyway.

  I took a peripheral glance around the area; no one was about, no kids, nada. Good. This could conceivably go by the numbers, and by the way, vengeance would be mine against the piece of shit wolf that killed my brother.

  My thoughts returned to the night I was forced to put a bullet into Bill, and end his suffering. Yet born from that loathsome memory came other images from my past … and questions as to what kind of future lay before me. How long could I, for instance, continue this existence? A career Monster Killer. Not a lot of promise for comfortable retirement, much less surviving another evening. Was it time to call it a day? Was it too late to try and find some meaning to my life? Get married, maybe … have a kid or two. Step into the day rather than spend most of my waking hours in the dark, battling creatures that had no right to exist, yet did …

  I’m not generally predisposed to looking back – to analyze the decisions, right or wrong, that had brought me to this instant in time (i.e., a jaded Boogey Man Cop who had to Pound the Python 24/7 at least once a day). I tended to live in the present, dealing with immediate issues (usually, trying not to be eaten by something foul and evil), moving past those, and onto subsequent challenges. I was a creature of the moment, like the muse Terpsichore – a dancing blur of motion against an endless sea of activity that has no beginning and no end.

  But sometimes … just sometimes … the questions loom high, like a huge wall of water approaching that you know can only drown you in sorrow and despair.

  Boy, with thoughts like this flying about the ether, I don’t envy the wolf running into me today. I’m in no mood.

  The sun has suddenly disappeared behind a dense cloud cover. I look up and note that it is about to rain. Great. No umbrella, a heavy heart, and a werewolf just five minutes away, up the stairs, and god knows where. My mind went on its own private acid trip for a moment, recalling some lines from Omar Kayam.

  A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thee.

  My gun hand starts to shake – never a good sign. I thought I had rested sufficiently, but I realized this was good old American self-denial. I had drunk my body weight in whiskey since Bill died, and was still nurturing the proverbial Hangover from Hell. My mouth was dry, and tremors of paranoia seized every fiber anatomically possible.

  What the fuck was I doing?! Go back, asshole. The fur-prick in that house is going vivisect you in a minute flat, rate you’re going.

  Ah, the sweet, rational voice of reason. But would I listen?

  I cocked my piece.

  I searched half-boarded windows for the glow of watching eyes. Even at the height of day, the eerie luminescence of the Lycker gaze could not be missed. But there was only blackness in and between those ancient planks. Which made my body temperature drop yet another point on the old Fahrenheit constant of 98.6.

  My arms and legs ached, and between my badly tremulous grip on the Beretta and my fairly weak-kneed approach toward the house, I was almost beginning to believe that I was alcoholic. That perhaps to compensate for a life so unnatural, I had reconciled myself to the downward spiral of the doomed and drunk. Such cheerful philosophical ruminations came to an abrupt halt when I heard it.

  A low, purring growl.

  It was waiting for me, had probably seen me coming now these past five minutes.

  Probably sending out Christmas cards to all the other wolfies in Wolfendom that a human finger sandwich had been delivered, real personal like, and with no need to tip the delivery boy. Food’s a comin’, kids. Drool freely.

  Alright, I must stop this, I chide myself gently, as an unspecified twinge of pain seizes the right hand side of my stomach, slightly up, and just under the ribs. I wonder dimly if I’m slowly dying of cirrhosis, or some other suppurating disease that, in the great scheme of things, I probably rightfully deserve.

  Another growl. I again shake uncontrollably, and this time I know that the genesis of these spasms ar
e pure fear related. I give this a 9.5 on the Poop Your Pants scale of terror. And yet … I push on.

  Why? Because Dick Pitts eats fear for lunch.

  The front door now opens. Invitingly.

  Come to mamma. Come on, cop-burger. It’s grits and vittles time, with a dash of human brain and a healthy serving of human hemoglobin.

  I surmise that the wolf is testing my mettle. Or my clear lack of an appreciable intelligence quotient – depending on what gets me through the door first.

  The idea of turning, running back toward my car at a brisk sprint, taunts me with common sense and an inner voice that says: Pitts, you dumb fuck, leave now. This is a no-win situation for you. Okay? Are you listening? Do you want me to translate it in the Cyrillic? Maybe hieroglyphics? Ancient Coptic?

  No need. I get it. Leaving would be a good move.

  I kick the gate open and approach the door.

  No more growls now. Just an eerie creak from the hinges, shifting slightly to and fro, as a breeze comes in from the north.

  I approach the darkness. And then I do what any normal mental paraplegic would do under the circumstances.

  I enter the house.

  I expect some warning growls. Maybe even a growl of barely suppressed joy and triumph. Because, you see, after all, the wolf has me on its terrain. Sure, there’s the fact that I have the gun, but really, when you get down to brass tacks, it’s Wolf Team 10, Dick Pitts 0. And this is even before the first pitch is thrown.

  I dig for courage deep within myself. I am an Alpha Dog. Leader of the pack. Head high, nose wet, my muzzle not sniffing another mutt’s bung-hole because I couldn’t hack it as Head Canine. No sir. I reminded myself who I was, what I had done of late.

  And then the wolf howled.

  I took a step back, my blood instantly turning to something as gently viscous as ice water. I run into the edge of the door, which, as luck would have it, slams shut behind me. A draft? The wind? Sure. And I’ve got a 24 inch schlong, and that’s from the floor up.

  My gun darts to all points on the compass. Right, left, in front of me, and up, toward the stairs. The light is bad in here, very bad. I squint into the fetid blackness, sniffing the residue of age and dry rot.

  I feel that the Lycker is near.

  Usually you can at least hear the fucks breathe, or gnash their teeth – twitchy, yet predictable, idiosyncrasies to being a werewolf. But this one is quiet, very quiet. So quiet you could hear a bird fart, and then, hear it echo.

  “Foolish thing,” a dreadful voice comes out of the dark.

  I cannot, no shit, sports fans, believe what I am hearing.

  Unless I am grossly mistaken, the wolf is actually speaking to me. You think that’s strange?

  But let me tell you why.

  Werewolves don’t talk.

  “But very brave,” the horrendous, raspy voice chortles.

  I continue to have no more than a foot’s clear visibility in any direction.

  “Who are you?” I venture, and I hear my voice quaver.

  “No one special.” And I detect a note of wry amusement in its tone. “But I know who you are.”

  “Why don’t you come out and show yourself?” I ask.

  “Put your gun away, and I will,” it says.

  I almost chuckle at that.

  “Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” I snort.

  “I give you my word I won’t attack you.”

  I think about this. When you get right down to the straight poop, had the wolf gone for a full-frontal attack, I would have been dead by now. Lyckers are exceptionally fast, with speeds exceeding that (and this is clocked) of a jaguar.

  My fear has been subsumed by abject curiosity. I slowly replace my weapon in its holster. And wait.

  Silence, at first. And then a dragging rustle from just under the massive staircase.

  The eyes, of course, are the first visible evidence of the wolf’s close proximity. They glow green and bright. Staring at me with a commingled sense of hate and ravenous desire. But there is intelligence beyond these particular eyes – a distinctly human-like patience that is highly disconcerting.

  A list of possibilities automatically list themselves in my mind as to how a werewolf has achieved the power of speech. A mutant? A new form of advanced Lycker? The product of top-secret government experimentation? A rogue anomaly?

  None of these scenarios strikes a chord of definitive truth in my soul.

  No, this is something else.

  This is something truly, fucking scary.

  ***

  The wolf does me the unnecessary courtesy of keeping a respectful distance. It stops near the stairs, cocking its head toward me, fangs flashing at me with disturbing regularity.

  I decide to open up the dialogue.

  “You mind telling me how you can talk?” I ask.

  The question has little interest for my furry friend, based on what he next says. “You are here because of your brother, n’est pas?”

  And now it’s speaking fucking French to me! I nearly soil myself where I stand. The Lycker isn’t even playing hard to get.

  “Yeah,” I almost choke.

  “You think I attacked him,” the wolf continues to surmise with eerie confidence.

  “Yep, that about sums it up.”

  “It was not me. It was the Grand Master.”

  And from some remote and distant place in my mind … I believe the wolf. Moreover, I must continue to remind myself that this thing can kill me within a few seconds, and forget about all this pleasant banter. It has chosen to impart information to me. But why?

  The answer is simple: complete fearlessness. It has nothing to lose.

  Or … it enjoys telling me something that is absolutely true, and stick it, Dick, if you don’t like it.

  And then the words begin to penetrate into the psyche.

  The Grand Master?

  “Who the hell is that?” I ask the Lycker, trying not to let my voice quaver and quake with each forced syllable.

  The Lycker begins to laugh, a truly abhorrent thing to hear and witness, given it looks more like a large dog choking on food too hastily (forgive the pun) – wolfed down.

  “He is who he is. He is bat, he is wolf, he is snake – he has no limitations on what he is or manifests. He is perfection personified,” the Lycker says. And I gotta kind of hand it to the drooling fuckstick of a monster – it had a certain sense of poetic nuance.

  “And this Grand Master killed my brother,” I say again.

  “Two nights ago,” the wolf affirms. “In the church.”

  So my worse fears are confirmed: something out there, of the non-human persuasion, is able to exist and kill on holy ground. This is, my fellow fang-fighters, very bad news indeed.

  “How is that possible?” I ask, feeling very much out of my league at the moment. “How can a vampire transform someone into a werewolf, and function on hallowed ground?“

  “And how is it that I can speak?” the wolf replies. “A gift from the Grand Master. He has no limitations. And your hallowed ground security blanket … you can kiss that good bye, meat pie.”

  “Love to meet this big, bad Master of yours,” I bait the Lycker.

  It smiles back at me … an indulgent, almost benevolent expression in its eyes.

  “You will. Especially you!”

  “Why especially me?”

  The wolf takes one step forward, and its grin is gone.

  “You have killed so many of our kind. And his! He will extract his revenge against you slowly.”

  I also take a step forward, my patience dwindling.

  “Your kind and his started this war. And you’ve murdered thousands.”

  “We have always fed off of you through the centuries. But there were so few of us … now … it is different.”

  I hold the Lycker’s eyes in my gaze.

  “Tell your Master I’ll be waiting for him,” I say, all fear suddenly drained away.

  “And on that day, you die,”
the wolf whispers back. It does not trundle off into the dark – as if perhaps it is undecided about whether it might not be a fine and dandy idea after all to just kill me where I stand.

  Then I am suddenly aware of another presence in the room.

  The wolf senses it, too, and it curls its lips in feral anger, this time backing up.

  Down the stairs, the translucent apparition of a young woman descends; I recognize it as a simple Haunting – a Ghost - an individual who may or may not be aware of anyone else aside from her own despair and confusion, her spirit temporarily trapped on some plane between heaven and hell.

  The Lycker glances at me, a furtive glance, and hisses out of sight. Werewolves hate ghosts, always have. Like cats hating the water. Or vampires detesting crosses and garlic.

  I watch the girl continue to descend; quite beautiful, really … and her eyes stare directly into mine.

  “You should leave now,” she says in a soft, dulcet tone. “When I go, the creature may return to hurt you.”

  I instinctively take a step backwards, but I am not afraid of this gentle entity. The Popov Meteor Shower had produced benign side-effects to the world of the Living and Dead, and this girl’s soul was evidence of that.

  “You’re right,” I say. But I cannot immediately take my eyes off of her. She is already beginning to dissolve into a misty, fog of ectoplasm.

  “Go. Now,” she whispers again.

  I nod, and exit the house.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The panic attack hits me like a ton of bricks as soon as I’m outside the gate. I actually enjoy the luxury of yarking up what little I had eaten that morning for breakfast, choking on bile and other tasty afterthoughts to acid reflux.

  I spin quickly on myself, wondering if the werewolf was still entertaining second thoughts about having me “stay for dinner”, as it were.

  But there is no wolf.

  And the beautiful spectral vision of the girl is gone.

  Only a light drizzle annoys me, which by the looks of things, will graduate nicely into a fairly respectable thunderstorm. I am not so casual in my retreat from the house. I back up, gun out once again, not one to trust a Lycker on any occasion, albeit one that talked and warned me of an impending grizzly death by something called The Grand Master.