Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 5

(1)

Mike Sweeney biked down to the Crow’s Nest and used his key to let himself in. The store wasn’t scheduled to open until nine-thirty, but he had nowhere else to go. He was only half aware of the process of locking up his bike, opening the shop, counting the money in the till, restocking the shelves, and sweeping the floor. On some level he was aware that he was doing these things, but it was more process than deliberate action, and even though he’d only worked at the shop for two weeks he did everything right, made no errors, felt no hesitation. Autopilot with just the occasional glance from the person behind the wheel.

Then Mike went into the small employees-only bathroom to get the dustpan and peripherally caught sight of himself in the mirror. What he saw jolted him out of the unconscious rhythm and he froze for a discordant moment because the face there in the glass was not his own.

It was…and then again it wasn’t. Déjà vu flared and he knew that he had seen this other face, this other version of his own face somewhere else. Recently. He straightened slowly, afraid to move too fast in case it somehow changed what he was seeing in the mirror. Carefully, like he was trying not to spook a skittish deer, he moved toward the mirror and looked at the face, watched as it moved with him, normal in the seamless way it mimicked his every movement but totally unnatural in what it showed. The face that looked back at him was older, with a stronger jaw and skin that was gaunt and stretched over a sharply etched brow and cheekbones. The lips of this stranger’s mouth were thin and hard as if he was fighting a grimace of pain, and the upper lip was cut by a thick white scar. The eyes were the most compelling, though. They were blue, flecked with blood-colored drops of red and totally ringed with gold. Strange eyes. Alien. If there was anything human about those eyes, Mike Sweeney could not find it. There was no way Mike could have known it, but those were the eyes his mother had seen that morning in the kitchen. Mike hadn’t looked at his own reflection that morning in the bathroom; he’d just stumbled in, washed his mouth with Scope, and used the toilet. Had he looked then he would have seen the same eyes that stared out of the mirror at him now.

Hard eyes, cold, without remorse, without pity. Without hope.

“Dead eyes,” he murmured, and the sound of his own voice was equally unfamiliar. It had grown deeper, sadder, more harsh. There was a cynical sneer in the sound of it.

The face in the mirror stared at him, hard as fists, cold as night.

Mike blinked to clear his eyes—and that fast the spell was broken. In the microsecond of the blink the face was there—and then it was gone. He blinked again, but all he saw was his own face. Fourteen going on never grow up. That’s how he thought of himself, and that’s what he now saw. Just his own face. Tired and pale, splashed with freckles, smoother bones in brow and cheeks, hair more garishly red, chin still childlike, lips unscarred. He leaned closer, letting the light above the mirror fall on his face. He searched the mirror for any trace of what he had seen, and all he saw—and that only for a moment—was the alien color of his eyes. Fiery gold rings around blue ice, flecked with blood. He blinked again…and his eyes were ordinary blue. No trace of fire or blood—merely a cold and hopeless blue.

He stood there, peering at himself for several minutes, then he closed his eyes and stared at the darkness behind his lids for a slow count of thirty. When he opened his eyes, they were still ordinary eyes.

Mike straightened, turned, picked up the dustpan, and walked out of the bathroom. By the time he’d swept the floor the whole incident was gone from his conscious mind. Secretly and quietly shoved down by some unknown hand into a darker and less accessible place inside. He did not even remember that he couldn’t remember. He finished his chores by eight-thirty, picked a magazine off the rack, and sat down on the stool behind the counter to wait for the day to start.

At nine o’clock precisely, the bell above the door tinkled and Mike looked up from the latest copy of Cemetery Dance to see a police officer enter the shop. He was a big, brawny, blond-haired cop with a very neatly pressed uniform, highly polished leather gun belt, and gleaming chrome cuffs that jingled as he walked. The blacking on his shoes looked like polished coal, but despite his fastidious clothing he walked with a noticeable limp and both of his hands were lightly bandaged.

Mike’s heart froze in his chest.

It was Tow-Truck Eddie.

(2)

Newton sat at his desk with his main computer on in front of him and his laptop open to his left. He had several Google search pages open on each and a half dozen Word documents. His fourth cup of coffee was cooling to tepid sludge as his fingers blurred over the keys, typing in search arguments, scrolling through the lists of web pages, cutting and pasting information and URLs. He’d been at this for hours now, ever since driving back from the hospital. No shower, no change of clothes, no food except for the cups of coffee that had long since turned his stomach to acid.

Willard Fowler Newton was furious. He was hurt and scared, too, but mostly he was absolutely livid. Twenty-four hours ago he was just another third-string reporter in a fifth-rate town like Black Marsh. A day ago he was, he knew, a geek. Nerdy and kind of annoying—insights often provided for him by people he met, even strangers. He was content to be a geek. He could do geek without effort.

Now he was caught up in something that involved vampires. Actual vampires.

That’s what made Fowler so furious. Vampires should not be any part of the world in which he lived. Vampires were TV and movies. Buffy and Blade and Barnabas-fricking-Collins. Vampires were Halloween costumes and Count Chocula. Vampires were fiction. At worst they were supposed to be myths and legends. Vampires weren’t real. Vampires and geeks do not belong in the same reality, of that he was quite certain.

In vampire stories there were only two kinds of characters—victims and heroes. Newton knew that there was nothing remotely heroic in his nature, but he sure as hell did not want to be a victim.

Waking up and discovering that the world now included vampires and werewolves—let’s not forget werewolves—was too much to ask. Not just one…but two monsters…the big two. The classics. Right here in River City. Shit.

Crow was the hero, Newton knew. He’d already shown that by facing Ruger twice. Val was a hero, too. She’d fought Ruger herself, and she’d killed Boyd. At best, Newton knew, he was the squatty sidekick who would probably not make it to the final reel. Like George from Seinfeld, with a stake and hammer. Yeah, there were good odds on that game.

But what could he do? Running was an option, and he gave that a lot of thought. No one would blame him; no one ever blames the geek for being a coward. After all…we were talking supernatural monsters here. He didn’t have a black belt like Crow or a will of iron and a big-ass pistol like Val. All he had was…what?

That was the thought process that took him from sitting in his car after leaving the hospital—crying like a baby and praying to a God he hadn’t said “boo!” to since his bar mitzvah—to where he was right now. Parked at his computer, working the Net, working sources. Finding stuff out. It’s what a geek would do.

He kept at it for hours, researching everything he could find, punishing the keys with stabbing finger hits. He searched on vampires and werewolves, and at first the enormity of the available information nearly stopped him in his tracks. When he typed “Vampire” into Google the search told him there were 54,200,000 hits.

“Holy shit!” he breathed, then tried adding an “s” to make it “Vampires.” That dropped the number of websites down to 18 million. “Werewolf” 11,400,000 hits. He chewed a plastic pen cap for a few moments, then he tried it as “vampire folklore” which eliminated most of the film and fiction references and that dropped it down to 773,000 sites. On a whim he refined it even more by adding the word “university,” hoping to score experts. That dropped it down even further to 276,000 sites, and from there Newton plowed it, looking for thesis papers, studies, published works, and for names that popped up over and over again: J. N. Corbiel, an assistant professor of folklore at the University of Pennsylvania.

Newton recognized that name and pulled open his file drawer for the folder of notes he’d made when researching material following his interview with Crow. He riffled the pages until he found one whose contents jarred him. One he’d read but put out of his mind at the time—could that just be a day or two ago? The printout was a historical account of a man named Peeter Stubbe, known in folklore as the Werewolf of Bedburg, a mass murderer executed in 1589 following the most famous werewolf trial in history. Under brutal torture Stubbe confessed to having been a sorcerer and lycanthrope who had practiced black magic since boyhood and who transformed regularly into a savage wolf for the purpose of hunting humans for sport and food. The article also gave the many aliases Stubbe used over the years: Peter Stubb, Peter Stumpf, Abel Greenwyck, Abel Griswald…and Ubel Griswold.

His skin crawled.

There was a URL on the printout and he typed it in, bringing up a page with a lot of history about that and similar werewolf trials, most of which had been conducted by the Inquisition. Dr. Corbiel had a typically dry and detailed academic style, but the case details were nonetheless bloody and sensational.

Newton sat back in his chair and considered this, tapping his lower teeth with the cap of his pen. U of P was in Philly, maybe fifty, sixty miles from where he sat. Maybe he could meet with this Professor Corbiel, pick his brain. Pretend to be doing a story on the folklore behind the pop culture, something like that. Or maybe writing a pop-culture book.

He looked for an e-mail address and found it on the staff directory, and clicked on it to load an e-mail screen. Jcorbiel@sas.upenn.edu.

“Dear Professor Corbiel,” he began.

(3)

Before Weinstock even had the door closed, Val said, “Crow told me everything.”

“Okay,” he said carefully, glancing at Crow.

Crow nodded. “She knows what we know.”

“That was fast, don’t you think? Val needs rest and—”

“Listen to me, the both of you,” Val interrupted. “I know I’m hurt, I know I’m pregnant, and I know that Mark and Connie’s deaths haven’t really hit me yet, not like they will…but if either of you starts walking softly around me, or hides stuff from me because you don’t want to upset me or some such crap, I’ll skin you both alive. You know I’m not joking here. My family is dead and I need to understand why…and how.”

She looked at each of them in turn.

Crow took the lead. “Believe me, sweetie, this isn’t a matter of the manly men not wanting to upset the womenfolk. The real problem, at least for me, is that I don’t know how to talk about this.”

Weinstock nodded agreement.

Val nodded. “Then that’s a problem we’re going to have to solve right now, boys. Are we talking past or present tense?” When they looked perplexed, she added, “Did Boyd’s death end it, or does…what happened last night…indicate that this is still happening?”

“We’ve been chewing on that all morning,” Weinstock said.

“The way I see it,” Crow said, “this part of it—the, um, vampire, part of it—started with Ruger and Boyd coming to town.”

“You know that or are you guessing?” Weinstock asked.

“Guessing, but before they got here we didn’t have vampires.”

“Oh?” Val said. “And how do you know that?”

“I…well…”

Weinstock jumped in on Val’s side. “We can’t make assumptions here. Are you suggesting that Ruger and Boyd were vampires already?”

“No,” Crow said. “At least Ruger wasn’t.”

“He wasn’t,” Val agreed. “Not when he was at our house, not that first night. I think I would have known…and he probably wouldn’t have bothered with a gun.”

Crow nodded. “Absolutely. When he and I fought outside your house he was human enough, but when he showed up at the hospital it was like fighting a whole other person.”

“So what happened during those two days?” Weinstock pursed his lips. “I mean…I’ve seen enough Dracula films to know how vampires are made, but doesn’t it take three or four days?”

Crow shook his head. “I doubt we can trust what’s in the movies. I mean…this is real, and when it comes to vampires being real, what do we actually know? What are vampires, after all? I’ve read a lot of books…nonfiction stuff, folklore, and there are all sorts of vampires out there, all the way back through history. Hundreds of different kinds in different cultures. The whole idea of a vampire being some guy in a tuxedo and an opera cloak is for the movies. Even in the novel, Dracula, the vampire was different than they showed in the films. I don’t even think they staked him in the book. It’s been a while since I read it, but I seem to remember that Dracula was stabbed or something.”

“That doesn’t fit with what’s been happening here,” Val said. “I shot Boyd over and over again, and he lived through it, if ‘lived’ is the right word. It was only after I shot him in the head that he went down and stayed down.”

“That’s more like those zombies in those Living Dead films,” Weinstock offered.

“They were undead ghouls, not zombies,” Crow corrected.

Weinstock shot him a look. “Really? Nitpicking? Now?”

Val interrupted, “Are we sure Boyd’s actually dead?”

“Baby,” Crow said with a smile, “you blew most of his head off.”

Her eye was icy and she spaced each word out. “Are. We. Sure. Boyd’s. Actually. Dead?”

Crow and Weinstock looked at each other. The doctor cleared his throat. “I guess we could go and check?”

“Yeah,” Val said coldly. “Maybe you ought to.”

Neither of the men made a move to get up.

“What about Mark?” Val asked and her voice cracked on his name. They looked at her. “If Boyd is what we think he is—or was—then what about Mark? And Connie, too, for that matter.”

“Oh shit,” Weinstock said. Crow just closed his eyes and sighed.

“Crow…Saul…listen to me,” Val said, her tone cool but reasonable, “I know you’re both as freaked out about this as I am. It’s unreal…surreal—but my family was murdered last night by a monster. An actual monster.” She took a breath. “If there is even the slightest chance that my brother is somehow infected…” The word hung in the air like a bright flare and no one could bear to look at it. “If there is even the slightest chance that he and Connie could become like Boyd…then I want to know about it, and I want to know right now.”

Crow struggled to his feet and looked down at her. He was filthy and exhausted, his eyes were glassy with fear and shock, and his face was the color of old milk. He licked his lips. “Okay,” he said. “Okay…I think we’d better go check. Saul?”

The doctor nodded tiredly and stood, but suddenly swayed and sat down hard again on the bed. The jolt made Val hiss with pain. Weinstock grabbed the metal rail of the bed to steady himself, too frightened to be ashamed. Tears broke from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks and when he raised his hands to touch the wetness his fingers quivered with palsy.

“God…” he breathed and his voice broke into a sob. “I don’t know if I can do this…”

Crow stood by wretchedly and watched, but Val reached up with one hand and touched Weinstock’s chest, her palm flat. The doctor looked down at her slender tan hand, his lips trembling into a small smile at the tenderness of the gesture. “Val…I—”

Then Val’s hand closed into fist around a knotted wad of his lab coat and with a grunt she jerked him down to her level so that his face was inches from hers. Aghast, Crow saw her mouth twist into a harsh mask. Her voice was a whisper filled with razor wire. “Don’t you fucking dare! My brother is dead! My sister-in-law is dead! Friends of mine are dead. Don’t you dare wig out on me now, you son of a bitch.”

Weinstock stared at her in total shocked horror. That one blue eye seemed to radiate heat and he was burned by it. His own eyes bugged and his mouth hung open in a soundless O.

“Now you get your ass down to the morgue and you do whatever you have to do to make sure that bastard Boyd is dead…and you see to my brother, or so help me God, Saul, I’ll—”

“Val…” Crow said it softly, but it was enough. Val cut a hard look at him, and then her glare softened, just a bit. She pulled Weinstock two inches closer.

“Please,” she said, and this time it was a whisper of urgent need. “Please.”

Weinstock could feel his face change in that moment. Shock drained away and the buttery lines of his chin and mouth firmed up; shame and anger warred in his chest. Val pulled him one last inch closer, then leaned her head up and kissed his cheek. Weinstock closed his eyes for one long moment then nodded. “Yes,” he said, and kissed her; then he straightened and went into the bathroom to throw water on his face. When he was done, he stood in the doorway, patting his face dry with a wad of paper towels. “Crow…I’ll wait for you in the hall.” He shambled out.

When the door closed, Val looked at Crow and even managed a small smile. “See what you got yourself into when you proposed to me?”

He sucked his teeth. “Yep. It’s all clear to me now—you’re a complete psychopath. I’m on the first bus outta here.” He grinned. “Crazy or not I really do love you, Valerie Guthrie.”

“You’d better,” Val said and somewhere behind the stern lines of her face there was a tremble, a flutter in her voice that he could only just hear. “I don’t have anyone else left.”

Crow kissed her and went out to where Weinstock stood, hands deep in his lab-coat pockets, giving the hallway the thousand-yard stare. Without another word the two of them headed down to the morgue.

(4)

Polk’s voice was a shrill whisper. “You want me to do what?”

“You heard me. Search his office, his files, and his computer. Whatever he has that relates to what’s going on has to be completely destroyed. You hearing me? Everything.”

“I’ll get caught, Vic. There’s no way I can break into his office without someone noticing. He’s here all day and at night. Someone’d see the lights through his window.”

He heard Vic sigh and there was a pause as if Vic was slowly working through a slow ten-count. “Jim,” Vic said tiredly, “believe it or not I actually get tired of having to threaten you every time I want something done, so, let’s just take it as read that you’re going to do this because you don’t want to face the consequences of really, truly pissing me off.”

Polk sat down on the third step and rubbed his face with one hand. “Yeah,” he said tiredly, “okay. Only…I really don’t know how much more of this stuff I can take, Vic. My nerves are shot. My hands are shaking all the time, I got diarrhea now everyday, my gut feels like it’s full of broken glass.”

“Tell you what, you hold the phone while I go open me up a fresh can of I-don’t-give-a-shit.”

“Thanks, Vic…you’re a real pal.”

Vic was laughing when he hung up. Polk stared at the mottled gray-white of the concrete of the stairwell landing, conscious of the weight of his sidearm in its holster, heavy with promise.