made him crazy. He tried again." She shrugged. "And then I bit him."
I nodded again; it didn't make me feel much better. If biting had cured the guy, she wouldn't have called me, just saved it for the next time we got together for dinner. "Anyone see you?"
"The door was shut. He knocked me down, then ran out of the office." She paused. "He's a really bad one - "
"We'll get him. We always get the bad guys," I said, confident.
She shook her head. "There was something weirdly, profoundly, wrong about him."
"You're just tired. We always - "
"No, Gerry!" Her sharp tone startled me. "This is different. His reaction . . . I can't get the taste out of my mouth. It's like . . . I could work on him for a year, and still not get anywhere."
Her eyes filled up, and I knew that she'd been thrown for a loop. Professionally and personally, Claudia is a proud person.
"Scootch over," I said. I didn't say any more, just sat down on the lounge and put my arm around her. I resisted the urge to take off my jacket and put it over her shoulders, because the sun was the best thing for a vampire in need of healing, even the weak sun of a Massachusetts midwinter. And besides, I needed my coat myself. I always seem to feel the cold.
Prudish. Overprotective. Chilly. In a lot of ways, we werewolves are just big pussies.
After getting Claudia's promise that she'd take it easy, I took the copy of the file she had and visited the address of "J. Smith."
J. Smith? Proof once again that evil is not creative.
I didn't need to get out of the pickup, but I did. As I figured, the place - a double-decker - was abandoned, my footprints the first breaking the new fall of snow surrounding it. As I nosed around, I picked up lots of strong residual scents, most of them unhappy: drugs and sex, pain and fear. There was something in the background, an ugly smell that made my skin crawl; I didn't know if our guy had been there, but the recognizable odor of Evil called me to Change . . .
Not here, not now. Save it for tonight, when you might be able to do something about it . . .
I reluctantly followed my tracks back to my truck and decided to pick up the trail at the hospital. Construction and early holiday mall shoppers had turned Route 128 into a slushy parking lot, but the F150 handled well with her new snow tires. I tuned the radio to the Leftover Lunch on WFNX and crept toward Union Hospital in Lynn.
I like being a werewolf for the same reasons I liked being a cop. Sure, it's a lonely job and I see life's tragedies, but then I fix them. I help people, I make the world a better place, and I'm good at it. I like being one of the good guys. I get a sense of satisfaction I bet your average CPA never gets. Or maybe they do; what do I know? I'm just Gerry Steuben, regular guy, North Shore born and bred, with a CJ degree from Salem State, recently early-retired from the Salem PD. My tax forms say I'm a PI now, but I don't do domestics, insurance fraud, or repo. I'll go to the end of the earth to find lost kids, though, and never charge a cent. But I mostly stick to the family business, which is eradicating evil from the world.
Sounds like I'm full of myself, doesn't it? Not if you know the truth about my type. Our type. The Fangborn, Pandora's Orphans, the ones the ancients called "Hope," supposedly trapped at the bottom of the box. But according to our legends, the First Fangborn got out, and it's a good thing they did, too, for when evil was released into the world, so was the means of destroying it. Vampires and werewolves, the first to clean the blood and ease the pain, the second to remove irredeemable evil when we find it. Our instincts are infallible, our senses attuned to evil. True evil - not the idiot who cuts you off in traffic or steals your newspaper - exists, and we're here to fight it. We're the ones evil can't touch, the superheroes you never see, if we do our jobs right. I believe that to the core of my soul, and it's the best