Immortal Lycanthropes - By Hal Johnson Page 0,21

face, which most people, on the first day, cannot do.

“I have to go now,” Myron said. And he went to the corner of Fifth Street and Sixth Avenue. The walk took him over an hour, and he got lost for part of it, when a man in a battered fedora and a seersucker suit talked him into walking six blocks and one mysterious flight of stairs in the wrong direction, but at last he found himself at his destination. On one of the four corners was a deli; on two others, pornography stores. The fourth corner had a plain brick building with a small bronze plaque that read 9UM. There was no bell, so Myron pulled the marbled glass door open. The small lobby contained a dying, beribboned potted plant; a slouched-over janitor, his cap pulled low, polishing the floor with a huge buzzing machine; and a high white marbled desk, behind which sat a smartly dressed man. The man had a little mustache and a headphone over one ear. There was very little room for Myron in the lobby.

Myron figured he might as well just cut right to the chase. “I’m here to see the Nine Unknown Men,” he said.

“If they are unknown, this may prove difficult,” the man behind the desk said. He had an Indian accent.

“It’s cool, Gloria sent me,” Myron said, loudly to be heard over the floor polisher.

He paused a moment, and seemed to be listening on his earpiece. “You have told one lie today, Myron Horowitz,” the man said inexplicably. “Tell another and you must face the web of silver.”

“No, no.” Myron could barely see over the lip of the white desk. “I’m one of those . . . I don’t even know what to call them.” He tried to lean forward for a conspiratorial whisper, but he was too short. “I’m an immortal lycanthrope.”

“That will get you through the door,” the man said, and he moved his hands around behind the desk, where Myron couldn’t see. Perhaps he pressed a button, because a panel in the wall, behind the dying plant, slid open, and he tilted his head toward it.

Myron had to clamber over the plant to enter. He found himself, as the door slid shut behind him, in a small pitch-black room. Suddenly his ears were popping, and he realized he was in an elevator, descending rapidly. He was blinded momentarily when the door opened again. Here was a larger, brighter lobby. People were walking quickly back and forth, carrying clipboards and pocket calculators. Most of them looked Indian. A woman, wrapped in a brightly colored dress, gestured for Myron to follow her. She was wearing a security badge, with her photo and the name Sukumarika on it. The two walked down a long white corridor that reminded Myron of the hospital.

“Listen carefully,” said the woman, Sukumarika, “because what you are about to hear is non-negotiable, and I will not repeat it. The Nine Unknown Men have been around since before your great-grandmother’s great-grandmother was born, and don’t think just because you got through the door that we’ll change for you.”

“If I’m immortal, aren’t I older than the Nine Unknown Men?” Myron asked. The woman stopped dead in her tracks.

“I suppose that’s correct,” she said after a moment, and began walking again. Her lips were pursed disapprovingly, probably because Myron had said aren’t I instead of am I not.

“Actually, I’m not that old,” Myron said. “I’m only thirteen.”

“You can’t be thirteen,” Sukumarika said. “None of your kind has been born in millennia.”

“Maybe I was just born, maybe I’m the first of a whole new set. Did you ever think of that?”

“This is impossible. The lycanthropes are a dead branch; a dead branch, like the Illuminati.”

Myron said, “I don’t know what you mean. I was thinking maybe I was more like the chosen one.”

At that moment Sukumarika threw a bag over Myron’s head. Myron was small enough, and the bag was large enough, that it went down to his waist. He tried struggling, but several pairs of hands had seized him, and, mostly from fear, he lost consciousness.

2.

Myron finally found himself in front of a giant metal head, about eight feet tall. It was a woman’s head, the color of bronze. The eyes glowed, and the mouth was on a hinge, so it moved, laboriously, when she spoke. She was speaking.

“Myron Horowitz, you have already told one lie today,” thundered the brazen head.

“What’s happening?” asked Myron, who vaguely assumed, incorrectly, that he was