Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

I considered where the trail had led me: the abandoned drug den, the dry spell in the emergency room, and – oh, Hell. Three missing cats in one neighborhood was just too much coincidence. I told Claudia. "I guess he’s been doing this for a while."

She nodded. "And is escalating. He’s refining his ritual, getting bolder, going for less vulnerable, more public targets. It’s typical that he started with animals." The look on her face didn’t bode well for Smith when we caught him. "Gerry, it’s only going to get worse from here. I’m guessing that he’s attributing some special significance to the date – the full moon, Christmas . . ."

Suddenly, I knew. "It is Christmas," I said. I told her Weems’s description of the corpse, what he’d said about Advent calendars. "Doesn’t that sound like what you’re talking about? Little, uh, treats leading up to the big day?"

She nodded. "Right. Christmas. Good eyes on Weems."

I snorted. "He’s my hero." But Christmas was just two days away. "My question is, Why did Smith have to call a cab?"

"He didn’t have a car," she answered promptly. "Weems brought him in, right?"

I made a face at her. "But if Smith is responsible for the murders, he must have a car."

"He can’t afford to let it go out in public. Too many people could see . . . what?"

"Bloodstains? Cracked window?"

"Too recognizable," she said. "A truck with a business logo on it, contractors, deliveries – "

"Right, it’s got to blend in, but not the sort of thing you’d drive for private stuff." I thought a minute, then an idea hit me. "Like a police car. Maybe it isn’t Smith! Maybe it’s Weems!"

"Gerry. Get real. Weems is your bete noir, and he’s a dickhead, but he’s not our guy."

"He was at the hospital." I ticked off my reasons on my fingers, loving that Smith might just be a garden-variety psycho, his trail confused by Weems. "He was at the donut shop. He’s been dogging my tracks all day, and every time I saw him, I felt the call to Change."

"All places you’d expect to see a cop investigating the same case as we are. Have you ever wanted to Change because of Weems before now?" She put her hand on mine; it was warm as toast. "I know you don’t like him, but you’re getting distracted by this. You’ve always been so damned sure about everything – "

That was the problem: I couldn’t be sure about anything anymore if Smith was Fangborn.

I pulled away. "I don’t think so. I think you were picking up on his vibes, the same time you were dealing with some ordinary, run-of-the-mill loony, and that’s why you thought it was Smith."

"You’re wrong," she said. "Weems has nothing to do with this. I think you want it to be Weems so you don’t have to consider that there might be an evil out there we haven’t seen before. I get it, Ger: you want things to be cut-and-dried. But now we know . . . it can’t be like that."

"Whatever." I turned away.

"Don’t dismiss me, Gerry."

You know about that traditional conflict between werewolves and vampires? It’s really just a sibling thing.

"Claudia, just because – "

"Sssh!" Claudia was pointing to the TV.

The news was on. A school bus, its driver, and six kids were missing from their daycare center.

"Okay," I said, "we’ve got the fake address at the Point, a murder at the Willows, a body in the harbor. Throw in the missing pets, and we have someone with a familiarity with the waterfront. That’s a couple of big neighborhoods to cover."

"He needs space, and he needs a place where people won’t hear . . . screams." Claudia was looking at the map spread out in front of us. "He’s sticking with what’s familiar to him, which is good for us, but he’s also an organized psychopath, which is bad."

"The houses are too close together, here and here," I said, pointing out two neighborhoods. "That leaves the warehouses in the industrial park down at the Point and the coal plant down here." I pointed to a neighborhood that was near, by water, but on the other side of town, by land.

"A school bus is going to stick out in either place," Claudia said. "Is he going to take them out to sea?"

"If he is, we’re pretty well screwed," I said. "Protective coloring – where can you take six crying kids and a school bus where no one will notice?"

We looked at each other, then simultaneously at one of the neighborhoods we had just rejected. A short distance from my own house, separated by large parking lots and a playing field, was the middle school, now empty for the holidays.

It’s not that we need the moon to shift, though that helps. It’s easier to run around as a wolf when there aren’t many people around. It’s easier to pick up a faint trail with the dust settled from the day. It’s not that we need the moon, but somehow, it makes it easier for me, the same way the sun takes the poison out of vamps like Claudia. You’d have to talk to our scientists who are working out exactly how we Fangborn work, but if you think of it like a vulture’s bare head helping to kill the bacteria they pick up, or photosynthesis, taking nutrients from the sunlight, that’s probably close. All I know is that Claudia couldn’t taste the blood and clean it, cauterize the wound, and numb the memory without sunlight to charge her up. And in the same way – don’t ask me how, I’m not one of the geeks – I get recharged by the moon.

Plus, lots of bad guys also wait for night to work. Makes it easier on us all.

The moon was full and low on the horizon as we parked down the street from the school. We ran down the plan again: check the school and then call the cops if we find anything.

Simple, if we were right. If we weren’t already too late.

"Got the gear?" I asked Claudia.

She nodded, held up the leash – her excuse for being out with a very large dog – and a charged cell phone. As for me, while I hate what people inflict on their pets – birthday parties, pedicures, Halloween costumes – I will always be grateful for the dog-clothing craze. And grateful to the guy who invented stretch fabrics: my Lycra doggie track suit makes it a heck of a lot easier if I have to Change back to human and don’t want to be buck-naked.

Claudia doubled the knots on her bootlaces, tied her hair back, and we went into the schoolyard.

The bus was there, all right, on the side, cold and silent as an empty grave. Sure, school was out and it was night, but who notices a school bus outside a school? The schoolyard had been badly plowed, so there were no clear tracks, but it only took me a minute to find the basement door they’d used, the lock broken.