The Night Beat Read online

  From the little I could see as I chomped on a big face tentacle and got flipped around, Maurice was attacking the stomach area, normally considered somewhat vulnerable. This thing had three top level, professionally trained, Enforcement personnel on it and all we were doing was causing it to stagger a little. I got flipped around even more and realized we weren’t causing the stagger -- the thing’s foot was sort of caught on the lip of the hole the Dirt Corps had created.

  Slimy tried to shake me off, big time, but I clamped my jaws harder. Supposedly pit bulls have locking jaws, but they’re Chihuahuas by comparison to a werewolf. If I didn’t want off, I wasn’t going off.

  Of course, after being slammed against all three walls of the alley a few times, I was considering the benefits of letting go. The thing was, Slimy was moving towards the street. And a loose slime monster was bad enough, but a loose ancient Sumerian demon crossed with a slime monster was the definition of Foreshadow of the Apocalypse.

  My particular tentacle flipped low and I caught that there were at least twenty Dirt Corps members clinging to this thing’s lower half. As I was whipped around, I saw Monty slamming his hands into whatever parts of Slimy he could hit. Considering the fact that liches are stronger than vampires, this should have done something. But Slimy just did his version of a Santa Claus impersonation and shook like a bowlful of jelly.

  Ken noticed we were having a little trouble and joined the fray. This was good in that he was the most powerful vamp on the scene, so he could probably do the most damage. It was bad, however, because Ken lost concentration for some reason, and Jack came out of that happy “it’s all good” vamp stupor and took a good look around.

  I moved out of werewolf form and into wolf, in the hopes I’d look more normal, so to speak. I also managed to catch hold and dig my claws in so I wasn’t flailing around like Slimy was using me for fly-fishing bait. So I had a good view of Jack.

  He was a cop on Prosaic City’s Night Beat. They only took the best, and the ones who could handle the more-than-weird. Even so, he was a human and one of the things those of us in Necropolis Enforcement swore to -- aside from the standard protect and serve stuff -- was that we’d do our best to never let the humans know this wasn’t really their city.

  Now Jack was staring at pretty much every undead known to man and a couple man didn’t really know about. All we were missing was a zombie to cover every trope -- the mummies were already there, being dragged along by Slimy -- and the minute H.P. arrived, that was going to be covered, too.

  As I tried to figure out which was going to be worse -- Slimy stomping around using my city as a midnight buffet or Jack having to have a serious memory wipe -- he reached into the sedan. And pulled out our riot gun, which was a lot more like a bazooka, and aimed.

  “All of you, let go on three!” I knew that tone of voice. It was the one Jack used that told all listeners he was the man in charge.

  “Is he serious?” Amanda asked me.

  “One….”

  “He seems serious,” Maurice offered.

  “Two….”

  “He means it!” I shouted. “Everybody, do it!”

  “Three.”

  Chapter 5

  We went flying -- in the vamps’ cases under their own control -- as Jack fired. The riot gun held a lot of shots and it looked like he planned to use them all.

  I hit the wall over the trashcans and fell onto the top of one. Mercifully, the lid was down and the thing was packed so full I didn’t crash through. I was between Jack and Slimy, so I had a great view. Which was nice, because I’d spent a lot of time being the tetherball and I couldn’t really move.

  Jack was firing, calmly and consistently, laying down a steady stream that hit Slimy all over the place. He was also advancing while firing. Slimy, meanwhile, seemed somewhat rocked but not stopped, and he was advancing, too. At current rate and speed, they were going to slam into each other in front of me.

  Jack knew it, too. He maneuvered himself in front of me, so he was between me and the monster.

  I, as the Count put it, panted after Jack because he was literally the most manly man I’d ever met, seen or smelled. And he was in full-on manly mode at the moment. I was lucky the moon wasn’t full -- I’d have been crawling on the ground in front of him, whining, with my tail up, in between rolling on my back and offering the full on “I’m your puppy mamma” routine. Hey, there are some things a weregirl can’t control.

  “Can you move?” he asked me, still watching Slimy and firing steadily.

  “Sort of.”

  One of the undead benefits is an ability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. As a werewolf, I had enhanced senses under normal situations, let alone during battles. So I’d counted the number of shots because I could and you learned to do things like that because they helped you stay unalive. And I knew Jack was out of ammo.

  He did, too. He tossed the gun back towards the car, turned, grabbed me, flung me over his shoulder, and ran. It would’ve been more comfortable if I’d been in human or werewolf form, but I didn’t complain. Slimy stomped the trashcan I’d been on about two seconds after Jack grabbed me.

  We reached the car and he tossed me in it. I got the impression he was going to attempt to drive away, but he went to the trunk. I remembered what we had in the trunk. “I don’t think an urban assault rifle is going to help,” I called to him.

  “Can’t hurt.” He leaned against the car and fired. This seemed to affect Slimy, but it was still coming towards us. “Any suggestions?”

  “Oh, goodness. Good effort, young man, and you’ve certainly hurt it more than anyone else. However, it would help if you aimed for its vulnerable spots.” The voice was old and quavered, with excitement.

  I crawled closer to Jack. “H.P., if we knew where its vulnerable spots were, it’d be dead already. Jack, if he deigns to tell you, shoot wherever H.P. says.”

  H.P. wasn’t the biggest man in the world. Well, he wasn’t a man any more, technically. He also hadn’t been that old when he’d died, less than fifty. He looked, sounded and acted old because he said he felt old. He was a zombie. But there hadn’t been any choice, really. Once a human dies of natural causes -- well, natural human causes -- there’s only so many ways to bring them back. And we’d needed H.P.’s expertise.

  He smiled at Jack. “May I, young man?”

  Jack sighed. “Sure, why the hell not?” He handed H.P. the gun.

  H.P. shook his head. “Children, everyone needs to get clear please.” Even though most of us were technically older than him, he called us all children -- he meant it lovingly so none of us minded. He was also unfailingly polite, due, according to the Count, to the era he’d been raised in. It never bothered me unless we were in pressure situations. Then I kind of wanted him to get a little testy. But he never did. He wasn’t at the Count’s level, but H.P. was pretty unflappable.

  He was also shooting. At what I and, I was sure, the others, considered Slimy’s feet. And it was working.

  “You see, children, its power comes from below,” H.P. said merrily as he laid down a steady stream of bullets and Slimy started shrinking. “Hence, you have to cut it off from the source.”

  “Does he always lecture?” Jack asked me.

  Maurice and Amanda landed next to him. “Constantly,” Maurice said.

  I waited for Jack to react. He didn’t. He was still watching H.P. take down Slimy. “Why?”

  “He’s a professor,” Amanda offered.

  “Professor of what?” Jack’s calm and interest were starting to freak me out far more than Slimy.

  “Ancient monsters,” Ken answered as he landed, carrying Monty and Rover. He set Monty down carefully, but an arm fell off anyway. “Ancient gods and monsters,” he amended. “And current ones, too, but his specialty is the ancient. Sorry, Monty.”

  Monty sighed. “It happens.”

  Jack bent down, picked the arm up, and handed it to Monty. “Need a hand?”

  “Hila
rious.” Monty gave him a dirty look. “I’m used to it, thanks.” He shoved the arm on and Rover did his wrap and squeeze thing that helped Monty reattach.

  Jack looked back at H.P. Slimy was down to human sized and shrinking. “Good thing he showed up. What’s his name?”

  “Professor Emeritus Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” H.P. called over his shoulder. “Tenured at Necropolis University. At your service.”

  Chapter 6

  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.