“You should do a story about a werewolf!” they said. “Where are the werewolves?” All right, then. Werewolves it is. Since the full-moon-turning, silver-allergic, wolfsbane-hating werewolves we know and love only date back to the Lon Chaney Jr. movie, I decided to delve into a different mythos. Yee naldlooshii are very rarely portrayed correctly—usually not much different than modern werewolves—and I’ve only seen their name spelled “correctly” once or twice. But the original legends, in which they are more like shapeshifting cannibal sorcerers, are really impressive, and the elements of this story fell into place like Tetris blocks. Also, the Academy of Sciences is a really cool museum.
TIMELINE: November after Blood Hound.
“Yeah, this looks like a werewolf,” I said to the police officer.
Instead of asking me if I was crazy, Officer Reed asked, “Are you certain?”
I nodded and looked at the blood covering the room. Either it was a murder scene, or somebody had very strange ideas about painting the walls. “Pretty sure.”
He followed my gaze. “Are you going to be all right around the blood?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking, man.”
Of course he asked because I, Lucy December, was not just a private detective or supernatural consultant for the San Francisco Police Department. I was also a vampire. Hat, trenchcoat, fangs, bats, the whole nine yards.
The victim had been mauled to death in his penthouse apartment. Not the first time the police had asked my help on something like this, and likely not the last.
“Could this be anything like what happened last month?” Reed asked.
I shook my head. Vince Reed and I had gotten to know each other fairly recently when a hellhound rampaged through the city. Well, not a hellhound, the hellhound. A demon who was to ordinary hellhounds what a wolf was to a cocker spaniel.
“No, that demon’s long gone.” I shook my head. “He killed people with more ritual than this. Also, he just materialized into a room—this one was forced entry.”
I gestured to the splintered door.
He nodded, understanding. “Forensics found animal hair on the site, but it’ll be a few weeks before we get any definitive test results. That’s why I was asking.”
“That doesn’t make me think less about werewolves.” I looked at the mess. “What was the victim’s name?”
“Malcolm Hines,” Reed said.
I recognized that name. Dammit. Now I had an idea of what had happened, and wolf-shifters were definitely not off the table.
The world was full of gods and monsters, some good and some bad. Fairies, demons, and spirits of all kinds existed just under the surface, and this city was full of them. Hell, I wasn’t even an ordinary vampire. I had faith.
I couldn’t pray, or keep kosher, or even take Shabbat as a day of rest. The vampire curse did not interact kindly with concrete expressions of faith, but there was a loophole. Pikuach Nefesh, the principle that laws—even our most holy mitzvahs—could be laid aside to save a life. If you had to drink blood to survive, then so be it—as long as there was no murder involved. And if you had to live a cursed life in darkness, then live that dark life as best as you could. And that was how I lived, an outsider to my own society of outsiders. Cut off from my traditions yet surviving from their memory.
It was all that I had.
There were many different kinds of people who could transform into animals, and shifting into a wolf only barely narrowed it down. Tonight did not have a full moon, so this was more than likely an at-will transformation. But again, it was all about the victim.
Malcolm Hines was a radio host-turned-podcaster, a long-term grifter whose politics changed with the winds of outrage. His show used to air at two in the morning because so few people cared to listen to him, and his rhetoric was extreme enough to alienate both political parties. The kind of fellow who would say “I tell too much truth for either side” before beginning a truly abhorrent rant. These days, he made his living off impressionable youth, molding edgy fourteen-year-olds in his image.
I heard one of Hines’s diatribes against the Jews once, and it made me want to hit him with a chair. But his biggest rants were all about Native Americans. Whether it was casinos, reservations, or baseball teams, he always seemed to be angry—outraged—at these “invaders” who took money and jobs away from “true Americans.” He was the only person I knew who hated the Washington Redskins because he thought the mascot was too positive.
Yeah, but he didn’t deserve to die like this. Nobody did.
“I’ll let you know if I find anything.” I looked back at Reed. “I’ve got a few ideas, but I need to research this on my own.”
“Thank you,” Reed said.
I left, not for home but for somebody I knew. Someone who I hoped wasn’t on the suspect list, but who might have some knowledge that could help.
Across town, I knocked on John Renar’s door. An at-will shifter wolf whose extended family never called themselves a “pack,” but they all lived in the same big house and ran together with a clearly defined hierarchy. Fur and fang rarely got along, but he was a decent guy. And he hated Hines.
As the door opened, I put on my best Harmless Lucy smile. At Five-Foot-Nuthin’ and Cute, I found that friendly worked better than intimidating. Renar leaned against the doorjamb and looked down at me.
“You’re here late,” he said. “Though I guess it’s always late when you’re about. Do you want something?”
“Hey, John.” I smiled. “What’s up?”
“I know you want something, so cut the small talk.” Somebody or something moved in the house behind him. A shape that seemed not entirely human—canine? Large or small? But I couldn’t get a good look.
“Okay, yeah, I’ll cut to the chase,” I said. “Have you heard of a man named Malcolm Hines?”
John spat.
“Yeah, you definitely know who he was. Can you account for your whereabouts earlier today?”
“Yes, he can,” a female voice answered. The shape in the back stood up taller, silhouette shifting in the dim shadows into the form of a dark-haired woman, so beautiful that even I felt a momentary pang of jealousy. The look in her eyes of barely repressed feral freedom was familiar. I could see the same in Renar’s eyes. “Did something bad happen?”
“You said ‘was,’” John added.
“Yeah, I did use the past-tense,” I said. “He was mauled to death in his own home by some sort of wild animal. You’re an activist who’s been pretty vocal about your feelings for him, so I’m here to talk to you instead of waiting for the police to find your name.”
“Did you tell the police about me?”
“Nope,” I shrugged. “So, be honest. Completely honest. Do you know what happened?”
“No, I don’t.” He said, his eyes glancing briefly to the left. Shifty-eye theory may or may not have been a fraud, but it was enough to give me some concern.
“John. This is important.”
“I don’t know anything,” he repeated. “And that bastard got what he deserved.”
“That’s like, the worst answer. If the cops show up, don’t tell them that, all right?”
“I thought you said you were on my side.”
“That’s why I’m giving you advice. I get what you’re saying, but whether he was or wasn’t a bastard, murder is murder.”
“Just what do you know? What the hell do you know about a man like that? What do you know about how much harm people like him can do? What do you know about oppression? Displacement? Pain?”
“Hello? Ovens? In Germany?”
“Were you even in Germany when that happened or were you safe over here?” he snapped back.
I clenched my teeth. “Safe? Safe while Charles Coughlin screamed his support for Hitler on the radio? Safe while Charles Lindbergh praised the master race? While Henry Ford called us a stain? The only reason we stayed safe here was because the Axis attacked America first. I’ve been kicked around throughout Europe since before Columbus was a twinkle in his mother’s eye. You and I both know oppression, so don’t try to play the Misery Olympics with me.”
“You have to be invited to come inside, right?” John shut the door in my face.
“John, we weren’t this antagonistic the last time we saw each other,” I said to the closed door.
It was probably my fault for letting him let me give him a reason to be offended. He knew something, but I didn’t feel that he was guilty. So now what?
“I’m not going to tip off the cops, but you know they’ll be here next,” I muttered as I began to leave. “And they won’t ask for an invitation.”
The door creaked open behind me just as I began to leave.
“Hey.”
I turned around to see the woman I had briefly glimpsed before.
“John’s innocent. Nobody in the pack had anything to do with what happened to that man, but you can’t ask us anything more about it.”
“You know that doesn’t sound very reassuring.” I folded my arms.
“I can’t tell you why, but you need to drop it and walk away,” she said. “It’s something you wouldn’t understand.”
“I can understand a lot.”
“It’s something that we do not speak about—that we dare not even name.”
“So it’s a Voldemort thing?”
“Please don’t joke. This thing, it’s like a storm that crushes houses. It’s out of your league.”
“You know that it’s really bad if you’re hiding anybody, right?”
“What part of what I said makes it sound like we’re hiding anyone? I’m warning you for your own safety. This thing—it’s something that our people need to handle for ourselves.”
“It’s something that the cops are going to dance all over if you don’t handle it really fast, then,” I said. “And they might jump in even if you do. I don’t have any control over them. So tell me more about this house-crushing storm.”
“I’ve already told you too much.”
“Yeah, you’ve really made it easy for me.”
She shook her head, her nostrils flaring for a moment. “Do you mean you don’t smell it on the wind? You need to go. The night has become dangerous.”
“Okay, that’s cryptic, but—”
That was the second door slammed shut in my face in one night. I tucked my hands in my coat pockets and walked away, annoyed.
Smell it in the air? Was it a metaphor or did she really smell something? Could she smell anything over San Francisco’s distinct city-stink?
Still, something about what she said bothered me in a way that made me slip a hand inside my coat, closer to my holstered gun. Silver bullets. Just in case. But I managed to make it all the way to my car without any axe-murderer wolf monsters leaping out at me, so I chalked it up to nerves instead.
Just as I touched my hand to the car door handle, I saw something move in the sideview mirror. A silent blur, faster than a wolf and closing in on me. I whirled around and brought my weapon to bear with all my supernatural speed, but my movements were not fast enough.
It was shaped like a huge wolf, hulking and primeval, its eyes such a bright shade of yellow that they nearly glowed. It struck me with enough strength to knock the pistol from my grip, sending it clattering across the pavement. I hit it with my backhand, the car keys in my hand raking across its muzzle. The wolf snarled and turned its head to the side, and I kicked it hard in its temple, giving myself enough time to quickly dive for my gun. I ducked and rolled just in time to miss its massive jaws snapping at where my head had been.
I grabbed the weapon, rolled, and brought it up again just in time to see a bear—not a wolf—smack me across the head, smashing my head into my car door with enough force to dent it.
A cougar’s jaws clamped around my throat and tore as my enemy changed its shape yet again. As durable as vampires were, blood loss and decapitation were things that could take us down really fast. The cougar’s jaws became a wolf’s again, and whipped me from side to side, slamming me into the pavement and tearing through my arteries. It didn’t rip my head off, but the blood loss was harsh enough to take me down hard. That was my life splattering in the streets.
I couldn’t think straight through the shock and pain as the shifter became a bear again and slammed a crushing paw onto my chest, shattering my ribs. It slammed me hard face-down on the ground, its crushing weight suffocating and overwhelming.
There was the sound of a door opening, and the weight left me. I heard what sounded like wings beating the air and the keening screech of a hawk, but then I blacked out from blood loss.
I came to soon after as my vampiric healing took effect, countering the damage. I was vaguely aware that I was on a couch inside a house that smelled strongly of werewolf and incense. The incense was probably there to hide the werewolf.
My head pounded so hard that I could barely tell which way was up, the room’s sounds seeming to be coming through muffled cotton. The blood loss had done such a number on me that I clearly wasn’t yet safe to drive.
“So, does this count as an invitation?” I asked.
“Hush, don’t talk. Let your throat heal,” the werewolf lady said.
John stood away from us, leaning back against the wall. “Can’t say we didn’t warn you. We don’t have any spare blood for you here, but we’ve got pizza. Do you like pepperoni?”
I forced myself to sit up. “No. Meat and dairy isn’t kosher.”
“And blood is?”
“It’s different,” I said.
“Sure it is.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “You know, I’m better equipped to fight a threat if I know what it is. Are you willing to talk about it yet?”
“No,” John said.
“John,” the lady stood up. “Just tell her already.”
“No, Christine.”
“Tell her or I will.”
“Yeah,” I piped in. “Tell me or I will.”
Look, it was a bad headache. They stared at me in an appropriate manner.
Renar sighed and shook his head as he left the wall to sit next to me on the couch.
“What you saw was one of the foulest creatures ever to walk the earth,” he said. “Yee naaldlooshii.”
“Ye Olde Noodleshin?” I tried.
He looked like he wanted to strangle me. “Don’t mock me.”
“My brain is scrambled and I’m trying to pronounce a foreign language.”
“Yee naaldlooshii. A skinwalker.”
“Skinwalker. Texas Skinranger?”
Okay, now he really did want to strangle me.
“Please take this seriously,” Christine said. “You are in great danger.”
“Yeah, tell me something new. Go on, John. What’s a yindleshiney?”
“A yee naaldlooshii was once human.” Renar emphasized the name through gritted teeth. “He took the Witchery Way and destroyed his humanity with wicked acts—usually murder of a close relative, or incest, or cannibalism. Things like that. The skinwalker possesses vast magical powers, but the most known is that he can transform into any animal simply by touching its pelt or similar remains.”
“Okay. So the yanaglotchy is a shapeshifter.”
“Yee naaldlooshii,” he corrected.
“Yeenerloshy?” I tried. I really tried.
“Skinwalker. Just say skinwalker.”
“Skinwalker.” I nodded. “Okay, skinwalker. Crazy witch guy, turns into animals.”
“The skinwalker has many powers,” Renar gritted his teeth and continued. “He can curse and poison his enemies with bone beads and corpse dust.”
“Good thing that vampires are immune to poison.”
“Take this seriously,” he frowned. “You have no idea how terrible they are.”
“Look. I don’t mean to disrespect you, or anything, but I took out a count of Hell the other week. Nasty guy, looked like a dog with wings.”
“Then you should understand how dangerous an animal with black magic can be,” he said.
“Yeah, I do,” I admitted. “But what I don’t get is why you strung me along, told me nothing, and then left me out to the wolves, present company excepted.”
“Is that why you’re being so difficult?”
“Both of you, stop it,” Christine chided as she joined us on the couch. She slipped an arm around Renar’s shoulders. “John, don’t let her get to you,” she said, and then shot me a death glare.
“Sorry.”
“You should be. You’re being annoying on purpose,” she shook her head. “The reason why our people don’t talk about skinwalkers is that naming one gives its power. They know when their name is spoken and will never let a target escape with its life. You already have its attention, so I suppose it no longer matters.”
“So how do you think Malcolm Hines got its attention? One slur too many?”
“No, I don’t think so,” John shook his head. “I think I know why, but you’ve said it yourself.”
I thought for a moment. “Because doing this puts police crosshairs on the native community. On people like you and the things you’ve said.”
“We’ll deal with it ourselves,” he said. “The only way we can.”
“By ignoring it and denying everything?” I asked.
He shrugged and nodded.
“Or maybe—and bear with me here—maybe I go and kick its ass and drag it to the cops, who kind of know a little bit about supernatural stuff.”
“You can’t. It’s too powerful for you.”
“You know I like, just beat up the world’s biggest hellhound, right?”
“Crosses and exorcisms will not help you against the skinwalker,” he said.
“I didn’t use a cross. So, how do you kill one?”
He shook his head. “In theory, the same way you kill anything else, only it takes more. Skinwalkers have been shot, stabbed, and burned, only to walk away unharmed.”
“Then I guess I need to shoot this one a bunch of times,” I said.
“Stop joking.”
“I’m not.”
“You may still be able to survive this if you leave it alone,” John said. “The skinwalker did not recognize you as a vampire. Otherwise it would have taken off your head. If you stay out of its way, it may not find you again.”
“So what?”
They both stared at me.
“Did I stutter? So what? I’m not in this business to keep myself safe.”
“But you should—”
“I’m going after him.”
“I don’t know where the skinwalker has made its lair. Trying to find it or attack it would be suicide.”
“I’m going after him.”
“You couldn’t find it if you tried.”
“That’s not gonna stop me.”
“We could track the scent of blood in the air,” Christine said.
“Christine, no. Don’t.”
“No, John.” She shook her head and stood. “She’s right. We could sit back and let the yee naaldlooshii kill again, or we could do something about it.”
“I can’t risk losing you.” He put his arms around her.
“It’s killing people and framing others. We are already in danger.”
I stood up, feeling less shaky now, and began to walk toward the door. “Well, I’m going to go beat up a bad guy, if either of you’d like to join me.”
“I promise not to put myself in danger,” Christine said. “I’ll lead her, but then come home before the skinwalker attacks.”
John looked at her for a long, lingering moment, and I could feel the debate behind his eyes. But finally he broke, exhaling in a resigned, troubled sigh.
“Please be safe.”
“I’ll keep her safe for you, John.”
Christine opened the door for me, and we walked out into the night.
“So is there anything else I need to know?” I asked.
“A skinwalker transforms by touching the pelt of an animal,” she explained. “It used to be that they had to wear it like a cloak, but there have been reports of skinwalkers touching something as small as a feather or swatch of leather.”
“So it’s belief-based?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
We looked out into the distance.
“Try to keep up with me.” She transformed. For some shifters, the process is painful, slow, clothes-tearing. As for Christine, she slid from one form to the other so smoothly that there was barely any transition, with even her clothes vanishing as she became a majestic, tawny wolf. She sniffed the ground, picking up on a scent too weak for even my senses to detect.
“Hey, could you give me one second?” The wolf looked up at me.
I went over to my car and retrieved my gun and my hat. I holstered the gun in my coat, and then put the hat on my head.
“Gotta be stylish. All right, Christy. Let’s roll.”
Christine left me in the dust. As I changed into a bat. It took some effort—mostly because of my own injuries—but I made it. Vision dimming, hearing increasing to sonar levels. I flapped my bat wings and soared, flying high enough to get a bead on Christine.
Flight is freedom. For millennia, humans have yearned to fly, finally grasping the sky with technology. Nothing—nothing—compared with flying on one’s own power. I soared in the night, diving down to follow Christine. The wolf dropped her speed a little to help me catch up, so I dropped down onto her back. We couldn’t exactly communicate in English like this, but she kept running as I clung to her fur.
There are few things in the world as cute as a tiny bat riding a dog.
We followed the skinwalker’s trail all the way across town, leading us into Golden Gate Park. The smells and sounds of the city—though still present—were now muffled by the presence of nature all around us.
The trail led us across from the DeYoung museum to an elongated three-story building whose roof rose up in three domes. No light shone through its glass facade. I hopped off Christine and turned back into myself again.
“The California Academy of Sciences?” I asked. “Really?”
The wolf shook herself off, smoothing out the fur I had ruffled before shifting back to her human form.
“Isn’t a museum just a little too public for something like this?”
“A building filled with the skins and bones of dead animals,” she commented. “It sounds logical to me.”
I grimaced. “Right. Yeah. You’ve got a terribly good point there.”
Christine sighed and looked back over her shoulder. “I’ve brought you here, but I can’t follow you inside. Will you be all right?”
“I’ve been around a long time. I can take care of myself,” I said. “But thank you for bringing me this far. Give John my love, okay?”
“You can still turn back,” she said. “You don’t have to risk yourself like this.”
I responded by loading my gun.
I could still see Christine watching from across the street as I approached the Academy’s front doors, half-expecting them to be locked. Even though the museum had been closed for hours, the doors swung open without a problem. Well. No better place to be than inside.
I didn’t know what I was expecting. A pile of dead security guards and janitors? Racks of slaughtered animals? A black Sabbath taking place right in the foyer? Instead, what I got was a tyrannosaurus rex. Well, sort of. It was an unwritten rule that every natural history museum worth its salt needed at least one fossilized T. Rex, and the California Academy of Sciences was no different. Their dinosaur wasn’t as big as Sue in Chicago, or even the one in New York, but it was pretty impressive in its own right. The museum’s other main bony showpiece was a massive skeletal whale, but it wasn’t in its usual spot hanging from the ceiling. I could hear water trickling, reminding me of what I knew about the layout of this museum.
I was mindful of my footsteps echoing on the hard floor as I traveled through the sign and touch exhibits that converted the museum’s vast open space into a maze, but there seemed to be no movement that I could detect—not even on the big walkways criss-crossing above me.
I heard footsteps approaching. Slipping my hand in my coat, I ducked back just in time to see a flashlight shine from somewhere around the planetarium.
“Who’s there?” someone asked. I spotted a security guard’s uniform, which was most certainly not what I had been expecting. The man wearing it seemed a little skinny for a security guard. Not short, but also not terribly tall. The scraggly beard communicated somebody more on the “rent” end of rent-a-cop.
I decided to act marginally less suspicious than the average gal in a trenchcoat breaking into a museum at three in the morning, so I stood up to get his attention.
“Excuse me, sir.” I flashed my I.D. quickly. “Detective. There have been reports of a disturbance here tonight. Would you know anything about that?”
The guard approached and shook his head. He was one of those people who wore sunglasses at night, and I could have seen my reflection in the mirrored lenses if not for my vampirism.
“I haven’t heard anything,” he said. “It’s usually quiet in here all night, except for the animals.”
The animals. Dammit. The swamp and aquarium habitats were full, and the skinwalker could have been hiding any one of them. In fact, didn’t they even have an alligator somewhere?
“Well. If you could, I’d like to take a look at some of those animals. Could you show me to the rainforest habitat, please?”
“Of course, ma’am.” He turned the flashlight around. His keys jingled from a pretty thick ring on his belt, only slightly muffled by another next to it, which looked like it was padded. “It’s this way. They lock it up at night.”
“Thank you very much.” I walked with him. In the daytime, this place would have been beautiful, built like a greenhouse to allow natural light to come in. At night, the museum was lit by the moon, and shadows distorted the aisles between exhibits. We left that part of the museum and walked over the short indoor bridge leading to the rainforest dome.
“It must be amazing working nights in this place. It’s kind of eerie, isn’t it?”
“Every job gets boring after long enough,” the guard said as he approached the massive, enclosed dome that was the Academy’s rainforest habitat. He was very accommodating. Water streamed beneath us, forming the artificial pond that watered the rainforest habitat.
“Here we are.” He leaned over to the lock, removing one of the two key rings on his belt. I noticed that the other, padded key ring was decorated with some sort of fuzzy fob. “Though I don’t think you’ll find anything wrong in there, ma’am.”
“Thanks. Seriously. You’re really going out of your way for me here.”
The guard turned his head just a little bit. “It’s my pleasure.”
“Aren’t you breaking the rules a little bit?”
He hesitated with the door half-held open, his other hand at his side, next to the fuzzy key ring. “No, what do you mean?’
“I mean.” I drew my gun. “A real security guard would have tried to usher the suspicious-looking lady out of the building. Or at least looked closely at my badge. Come on, who did you think you were kidding?”
He smirked. “Is that what gave me away?”
“No, it was the yellow eyes behind your shades. Now, there are a few ways we can do this. The easy way involves me taking you to the police. The hard way is the one where I beat you silly.”
“I think not.” The skinwalker brushed his fingers against the swatches of animal skin dangling from his belt. He transformed into a bear so fast that I barely had time to fire once before he pounced.
The scent of blood filled the air, but I couldn’t tell how badly I had hit him. The skinwalker barreled into me with all of his weight and clamped his paws around my shoulders. I had enough presence of mind to drop my gun just as he began to swing me, hurling me like a baseball off the walkway. I hit the railing and flipped over the edge, banging my head against a metal strut before falling headlong into the artificial pond.
Water overwhelmed me. Vampires could not travel through running water—it knocked out our senses and disoriented us, taking everything we had to thrash and flail to get out of it. Dropping a vampire in a lake could easily be lethal if just for eventual sun exposure. My vision came in disjointed flashes, my hearing overwhelmed by the roar of the water, my head spinning until I could no longer tell the direction. I flailed and tried to swim, to reach for the shore, to do anything to save myself.
A tremendous weight slammed me underwater, the flash of burning yellow eyes reflecting off scales and thrashing jaws as the skinwalker tried to snap at me in the form of an alligator. I blindly grabbed his jaws and he thrashed; the muscles that opened his mouth much weaker than the ones that could close it. Wrapping my arms around the skinwalker’s snout, I held on for dear life as he tried to throw me. I couldn’t see. I could barely feel. I could only trust that I was doing something right.
The skinwalker’s form began to melt, becoming smaller and serpentine as he twisted out of my grasp. My flailing hand slapped against something cold and metallic against the manmade shore, and I hung on for dear life. I was able to open my eyes enough to see the shore. I used the ladder to pull myself out of the water, and then I collapsed on the shore, panting and gasping for breath. I shook off the disorientation just as something growled behind me.
The skinwalker—now a bear again—took a swipe at my head. I ducked low and kicked him right between the legs. As he pitched forward with an agonized yelp, I scrambled away and tried to orient myself better in the room. My gun still laid on the walkway, but the skinwalker was between it and me. Several parrots escaped the rainforest dome and flew out into the museum proper.
“All right,” I said. “I guess you chose the hard way.”
The bear turned into a mountain lion, who lunged at my knees. I stumbled as I sidestepped, nearly falling into the water. Still having the presence of mind to backhand the skinwalker in the face when he turned. The mountain lion became a wolf, missing a bite; then a snake that slithered away, fast. I looked back toward my gun again.
“All right.” I looked around for the skinwalker as I edged closer to the weapon. “There’s just one thing I don’t get about all of this. Why did you do it? Did you hate Hines? Were you trying to frame the community?”
“Why would I care?” came the skinwalker’s true voice—raspy, growling, not the warm and friendly tones of the security guard he had impersonated. “I killed a man. It was fun.”
“Right.” I took another step toward the gun. “This was totally just a random thing, and you didn’t plan it at all.”
“Chaos is its own plan.”
“Ooh, nice slogan,” I said. “Where’d you come up with that little gem? The Joker?”
“You brag too much for someone who is about to die,” his voice echoed again from wherever he was hiding. Stupid echoing acoustics.
I took another half-step toward my gun. “I believe the phrase is, ‘He who puts on his armor should not boast like one who takes it off.’ King Ahab. Ninth century B.C.”
A wolf charged at me from the shadows. I dove for my gun, grabbing it and firing at him before I stopped sliding. The skinwalker veered off-course, dodged the wild shot and ran to the side. I scrambled to my feet and went after him. Blood spattered the ground in a vague trail, though I clearly hadn’t injured him that badly. I ran in pursuit.
“Hey!” I followed the trail through the piazza, toward the entrance hall. “Stop running away! I’m not letting you get out of here!”
I turned the corner, approaching the big dinosaur skeleton just as the skinwalker, who had been waiting beside the door, pounced on me. had completely walked into that one. He bit my hand and pulled the gun out of it—again, damn it—which left me unarmed beneath him. I shoved a knee underneath him and kicked, tossing the wolf off. He landed on my gun and kicked it away, though knocking him down bought me enough time to scramble to my feet. Blood trickled from a wound near the skinwalker’s shoulder, but he still stood strong.
“Round two isn’t going the way you wanted, is it?” I asked. “So, whatcha gonna do now?”
The yellow-eyed wolf looked at me. “I could kill you.”
He charged, feinted left, and broke right when I lunged to intercept him. He hit me low across the hips, teeth raking over my thigh. I grabbed the wolf around his hips and held tight, straining to pick him up. The skinwalker yelped in surprise as I lifted him over my shoulders and fell back, slamming him headfirst into the ground. Nobody expected a German suplex. The wolf crunched hard into the pavement, and I let him go to roll back to my feet.
The wolf turned into an eagle and took to the air, flying up all three stories into the museum rafters. Even with the moonlight, I lost track of him in the gloom.
“Okay,” I called out. “Why did you really kill Hines? He was almost as much of a jerkwad as you, so why not somebody else?”
The skinwalker’s raspy voice echoed through the museum. “I hate Renar. I hate his pack. He will be blamed for the murder, and I will laugh as he is punished. When he is gone, I can pick apart his kindred one by one.”
“What’s really funny is that I figured this out within like five minutes.” I continued to look up and around. “What makes you think the police won’t do the same? Are you that afraid of confronting him yourself? What are you scared of, little man? Worried that even with all your shapes, he’s twice the shifter you are?”
The eagle screamed out of the shadows, diving for my eyes. I took a shot at it and threw my arm in front of my face. Talons raked through my sleeve and dug into my forearm, and the skinwalker flew away. Some glass tinkled down from where my shot had hit.
I shook off my arm, ignoring the pain. “You know, you’re really not equipped to take me down. No follow-through. Sure, you came close that first time, but you should have finished me when you had the chance. And I’m not gonna give you that chance again. You’re finished. Done. Kaput.”
Looking around, I tucked one arm halfway inside my coat. Then I added one final little insult. “You picked the wrong town to have your rodeo, cowboy.”
The skinwalker shrieked and dove at me again, talons out. I whipped my coat off and flung it, catching the eagle and wrapping him up in it just before it reached me. I swung hard and slammed the bundle to the ground just before I pounced on it, throwing my full weight on top of the fragile bird. I felt something crack underneath me, and the eagle shrieked. The skinwalker began to change shape again, thrashing and flailing underneath me.
I grabbed my gun and shoved it against the struggling shapeshifter in my coat. He shoved me off before I could pull the trigger, throwing the coat away. I sprang at the skinwalker before he could run and managed to tackle him in his human form. Skinny, reedy, scraggly, and hairy. That key ring of pelts jingled at his waist as we grappled there on the floor. He smacked an elbow into my nose, and I kneed him in the groin. My gun was on the ground again, but it was all right—I had the worst luck in shooting this guy. He clawed at my eyes as I grabbed him around his waist. The skinwalker shoved both hands into my throat and kicked at my hip, tearing himself from my grip. He punched me in the face and tumbled back, scrambling to get away from my grasp. I rubbed my nose and shook off the disorientation, letting him step away as I put my coat back on and stood to my feet.
The skinwalker backed away, bruised from the fight and bleeding from the one gunshot that had grazed his arm. He looked at me with yellow eyes and reached for his belt.
“You should have finished me when you had the chance,” he mocked. He did not transform. The skinwalker blinked in surprise and looked down at his belt.
I twirled the key ring of pelts around in my hand, the animal-skin patches flapping together as I did that. “Finders, keepers.” I grabbed my gun off the floor and pointed it at him.
The skinwalker’s mouth hung open as he stepped back, staggering against the railing surrounding the T. Rex skeleton.
“Wow, and I thought the bear form was hairy.” I steadied my aim at him. “Nair. You should invest in Nair. It’ll pay off.”
He looked at me, at my gun, and caught his breath.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
“No, it totally is.”
He chuckled, and then evil laughed. I swear, it was a full-on evil laugh. People never did those anymore.
“Dude, you’re like two seconds from getting shot. You are out of laughing room.”
The skinwalker threw himself over the railing before I could shoot him and planted both hands on the tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.
The remains of a tyrannosaurus rex. Sure, fossils weren’t literally bone, but it was as close to a pelt as you could get. And belief mattered.
“Aw, crap.”
He transformed in the blink of an eye, growing into a fifteen-foot-tall dinosaur.
“Aw, hell.”
The T. rex did not have feathers. It did, however, have teeth bigger than steak knives. The dino-skinwalker turned and roared at me not with one of those elephant-vacuum-cleaner bellows from the movies, but something more akin to the earth-shaking mega-growl of an alligator, and loud enough to break windows.
“Aw, shit.” I ran.
I mean, I ran. I heard the dinosaur as it began thundering after me and tore around the nearest corner into the exhibits. I remembered that the only way a person could outrun a horse was to force it to keep turning around, because even though they were way faster on straight stretches, we cornered better. So maybe the tyrannosaurus was like a horse. Or maybe I was just grasping at straws. So I wove my way through the exhibits, running through row after row of signs and display cases.
Instead of taking time turning corners, the skinwalker just smashed through them, the rude jerk. Plastic, fiberglass, and the contents of those cases scattered everywhere as it closed in, and I began to run out of running room. Where to now? The rainforest dome? Too closed-in and fragile. The walkways? Those were right at snack level for him. The planetarium? Same problem as the rainforest. The restrooms? No, that didn’t go well in Jurassic Park.
His thundering footsteps came terrifyingly close, and I turned into a bat to gain some speed. The T. rex’s jaws snapped shut mere inches from me, so close that I caught a spray of spittle from his mouth. I screamed into the air, flapping as hard as my tiny wings could manage. Veering to the side, barely avoiding death as the T. Rex chomped again. I cruised around, careening back and forth, making myself as difficult a target as I could. The next roar almost blew out my batty little eardrums and wrecked my equilibrium, sending me into a spiral. I shifted back into human form before I could crash. Hitting the ground running, I grabbed the side of the wall and swung myself around the corner.
The stairs! There were stairs! Tyrannosauruses couldn’t climb stairs, right? I ran for the stairwell just as the dinosaur emerged from around the corner and charged at me.
I had made it halfway up the steps when the T. Rex jammed itself into the stairway, the walls straining and cracking around him. He snapped his jaws mere inches from my body, giving me my third super-lucky missed bite of the day. I looked back, directly into his eyes. Turns out he couldn’t fit in the stairwell and had wedged himself in there.
“Yeah, bye.” I ran the rest of the way up the stairs. The skinwalker roared loudly enough to make me stumble up the last step, but I made it.
“Okay, Lucy,” I said to myself. “He turned into a freaking dinosaur. This was not what I expected to see today, but let’s think.”
I heard him thrashing around in the stairs and backed further away. Well, now what? There was no way my gun had the stopping power to take down a whole-ass dinosaur, so just shooting him was no longer an option.
I looked around and found out where the museum’s whale skeleton went. It hung from the ceiling, flanked by two smaller specimens, and oriented opposite from a huge (read: life-sized) fiberglass blue whale, just like the one in the New York museum. A sign read Whales: Titans of the Sea with a date-range for the new exhibit. Well, that explained a lot.
The second floor had a lower ceiling than the main hall, and the new exhibit cast everything in a calming, blue glow, an effect somewhat lessened by the sounds of a dinosaur thrashing around downstairs. I pocketed the skinwalker’s ring of pelts along with my gun.
“Come on, Lucy. Think. He’s going to find a way up here pretty soon if he wants his skins back. He might change into something else, or he might just smash through those walls until there’s room. But either way, time is not on my side.” Maybe I could double-back and sneak out through the balcony. Or if I just wanted to escape, I could find an elevator and head for the roof.
No. I wasn’t really in an escaping mood tonight. There had to be a way to take this guy down. Besides, I had fought demons and won, so this guy shouldn’t be as much of a threat. But what was Mr. Dino-Thunder’s weakness? What could I use to take him down?
I spotted a large freight elevator way in the back of the large room and headed that way. Worst-case, I could use it to escape. Or maybe even trap him, since the doors looked big enough to haul larger pieces like that whale skeleton.
The red light on the elevator dinged and I quirked an eyebrow, confused. Was there somebody else here after all? A real security guard, perhaps?
The huge doors opened to reveal an extremely angry yellow-eyed tyrannosaurus rex who had taken the elevator like a civilized person.
“Oh, I’m in danger,” I said.
The dinosaur charged, weaving between the hanging whale skeletons as he ran after me. I ducked around a wall—not a partition, a real wall—to avoid him. I got my gun ready, even though I knew there was no way it could finish him off.
I fired as soon as the T. rex turned the corner. He flinched when one of the bullets struck home but shook it off and bellowed again, which gave me enough time to back off and start running again, putting more distance between us.
I shot at him again as I turned the corner, completing the circuit back into the whale room. I ducked behind a large exhibit to catch my breath and considered my options as the dinosaur stomped into the room and stopped, sniffing the air.
“I can smell you,” he said in a voice so deep that thunder would have taken lessons. “I smell your fear. I am yee naldlooshii. I am death incarnate. You cannot stop me.”
Aw, what the hell, I still had a few bullets left, anyway. Emerging from behind the exhibit, I aimed for his head and started firing when he roared. He flinched a little and some blood trickled from his snout, but I couldn’t hope that it did much damage.
Suddenly, two furry blurs raced up from the stairwell, charging at the T. Rex’s feet. The skinwalker reared back at the sudden assault, and I managed to squeeze off another shot at him. It hit somewhere in the cheekbone, making him stumble.
The werewolves barked as they went for the dinosaur’s hamstrings, circling him and harassing around his feet. I recognized Christine’s tawny coat and realized that the other one must have been John. When the skinwalker tried to snap at John, who backed away from his jaws, Christine attacked his opposite leg. They circled him, using pack hit-and-run and flanking tactics.
“Thanks, you guys!” I yelled as I re-aimed the gun, carefully leveling it to try to hit the dinosaur in the eye. “Time to finish this.”
I pulled the trigger. Nothing, my gun clicked empty, I had been too worried about dinosaurs to remember to keep track of how many bullets I had left. Such was the life of Lucy December: Super-Genius.
“Oh, come on!”
The tyrannosaurus roared in triumph and charged past the werewolves to come at me again. I dashed to the side and out of his reach just as both wolves attacked his hamstrings once more, nearly bringing him down. He thrashed around, whipping them off and almost stepping on Christine.
Okay, Lucy. Think. Think. Maybe there was a whale harpoon or something else I could use. There was no way that this Land Before Time mo-fo would be the one to finally take me down.
Then I saw it.
“Hold him off!” I called out as I ran. “I’ve got this!” I hoped that they got the hint and would lead the skinwalker in the right direction. I wasn’t about to blurt it out in his hearing.
Turned into a bat and quickly flew up to the ceiling, bypassing the whale skeletons—there was no way I was going to wreck one of those priceless specimens—straight for the fiberglass blue whale. I turned back into my human form and crash-landed onto the whale itself. The rig holding it up creaked, and the model swayed, but it still held. I chanced a glance back down to the floor, where both wolves were herding the T. Rex closer to my position. Christine bled from a gash at her side, but both were still on their feet and running. If the skinwalker had looked up, he could probably have reached me for a Lucy-snack, but he was too concerned with the others, and stayed low to attack them.
I rolled across the whale, reaching up to the ceiling. The whole thing was held up by a full rigging of cables, but they converged into one central spot on the ceiling—again, just like the museum in New York. The cable was solid, but I hammered away at it with my empty gun.
“Come on, dammit! Break!” I cursed at the rigging, and then began fumbling in my pockets. Did I have a spare magazine in there? I thought I did, but it had been a hectic night.
The dinosaur smacked John with his tail, sending the wolf flying back into the wall. He struck it and fell, changing back into his human form as he landed. The skinwalker lunged, only for Christine to hurl herself at his throat, barely managing to knock him off-course.
I found a magazine and fumbled with my gun, ejecting the spent one and trying to jam the new one inside. It didn’t help that my platform was swinging badly. Below, the tyrannosaurus almost bit Christine in half, sparing her only because she fell and rolled out of the way of his jaws as they clamped over thin air. He stomped, and she yelped as a claw struck her along the side, near her other wound, sending her falling down to the floor. The skinwalker turned around to finish her off, placing him just beneath me and the whale.
I chambered a round and pressed the barrel up against the bolt holding the cable up, and then pulled the trigger as many times as I could. The shots echoed like deafening thunder, but soon were drowned out by the rage-filled bellow from the skinwalker dinosaur as he realized where I was.
The tyrannosaurus rex’s roar may have been loud, but it was nothing compared to the sound of a giant fiberglass whale dropping on its head. I had the sense to turn into a bat again just as the cable broke free, sparing myself a trip down with it as the whale model shattered in an explosion of fiberglass, shaking the museum with its impact, and shattering even more windows in the building.
Round 3: Lucy December wins by TKO.
I dropped to the ground, landing among the pieces of shattered fake whale. John Renar had managed to sit up, and a bloody Christine, still in wolf form, was nuzzling his chest. The skinwalker lay in the rubble, bloody and broken. He groaned, somehow still alive and aware enough to look up at me with his one remaining eye. I aimed my gun at his head.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Finish me, vampire.”
“Yeah, no.” While still keeping my gun trained on his face, I leaned down to handcuff him. The metal bracelets made a wonderfully satisfying noise as they snapped around his wrists.
“What are you doing?” the skinwalker slurred.
“I’m taking you to the police. The cops in this town have been working on ways to how to deal with supernatural threats, and I’m not letting any of this carnage get pinned on John or his friends. You’re responsible for the murder of Malcolm Hines and the damage done to this museum will probably add terrorism charges as well. You’re going to rot in a cell for a very long time without any of your pelts or other devices. Your days as a feared noodle ocean are over.”
John Renar sighed in frustration. “That’s ‘yee naldlooshii’.”
“Whatever.” I shrugged and hoisted the wounded skinwalker over my shoulder. “Does anybody know where the phones are in this place? I’d use my cell, but I don’t think it survived the water.”
John muttered something and produced his phone.
“Yay, modern technology to the rescue.” I dropped the skinwalker in the corner while I made the call. I kept my eyes on him, but he didn’t have the strength left to make another move.
As it turned out, the police were very happy to have such a quick and decisive conclusion to the case. And ironically, the museum vandalism ended up worse for him than the murder. And that was why you didn’t mess with my town. It was just too damn expensive.