One Monster Too Many

The place was a mess, and I’ve seen some horrid crime scenes in my afterlife.

My partner wasn’t too impressed either. I saw him make the tiny sign he uses when he’s exasperated, and I agree. Well, I would have agreed with my usual nod, but I was trying my hardest to keep my head from breaking off by not moving much.

Hangovers are a bitch when you’re one of my kind.

And my partner wasn’t helping. I can only read his face due to long association; his unmoving face brings to mind words like “stoic” and “chiseled,” and not for the poetic reasons. If a muscle twitches, that’s another person’s screaming from the rooftops.

We did need this case, but I rather wish the extenuating circumstances weren’t so... extensive.

We needed fresh air.

It took far too long to shoo all the bulls out of this particular china shop. And I needed to have a word or two with the Chief, for them contaminating the crime scene.

But not right now. They were now properly outside, but in sunlight. And me with a head trying to re-create “In the Mood” on the inside of my cranium. Let me cut to the chase: I am not, in fact. In the mood.

My partner locked the door to prevent them from returning, and steered me into another room. A blissfully darkened one, and one that smelled like it had nothing to do with the violence downstairs. He signed, It’s as dark as I could make it as quickly as I could. Sleep, I’ll get rid of the dumb onions. Kill anyone who tries to come in.

Orders I can live with. Well, I meant-

When I woke up, it was blissfully silent. My head wasn’t pounding. I smelled the coffee, but the strong scent wasn’t enough to mask the unique signature of Partner that came along for the ride. I stretched, then made my way downstairs.

He was in the kitchen, holding one of the tall cups of hideously eye-opening brew he’s known for. The other was for me, and I gratefully slurped it.

He quirked an eyebrow, and set down his drink to sign. Tough night?

“Ugh. I had an infestation. You’d think a private island would stay that way, right? So, a yachtful of spring breakers decided to have their own private beach party.”

Partner flinched, but his eyes conveyed sympathy.

“You know what I’m like when I'm woken up. Well, it was messy, and that means I have to keep the others to prevent word from getting out. So they’re all locked up nice and tight, electronics confiscated so they can’t call for help, and I had to take their rich-money yacht out into very deep water and scuttle it in such a way to look like natural damage. I have no idea who half of them are, but you know what I’m like after I eat junk food.”

Partner nodded. Oh, he knew that feeling very well.

“So, sleep interrupted, chase and hunt, extra work getting rid of the boat, and the hassle of making sure they all stay put. At least I’m well fed, but then to get a call where I have to do a morning shift because the normal boys can’t handle this case? Small wonder I’m in a bad mood, and a migraine to boot.”

Partner slid out his cell phone, angled it so that we could both see what he was texting. “Chief did ream out the whole crew after I texted him the details. We officially have the case till we’re sick of it. Their files have been delivered to your office, I glanced at them. That lady in the front room – what’s left of her – didn’t have any known enemies. No disgruntled family members, no children desperate for their early inheritance. You saw. Chief’s worried about a turf war between out kind. I checked my contacts. Negative, and all accounted for. That leaves yours-”

My phone was already out, and I was tapping away. Replies came in slowly, because it was early evening after all. Practically daytime yet. I may be kicked out of my tribe, as Partner was kicked out of his, but what intertwined lives we two have built has given us grudging respect with our old ones. When we contact, they reply, knowing it’s in their best interest. And besides, I’ve already kicked the Primogenitur’s ass twice in combat. A third time, and by tradition, I’d become head of the Council. Literal heads would roll, and they don’t want that.

Pretty soon, everyone was accounted for – except one.

And a local.

There aren’t that many of us. There are more of Partner’s running around, but still, few enough. Nature of the species. And the penchant for turning rogue, or having a rando turn up and go crazy, keeps us all in control. Just one would expose us all.

The corpse in the front room was ripped apart.

There was a lot of blood missing.

The one not answering my texts worked in blood testing.

The blood smell was making me hungry, and I’d just fed last night.

Twilight is when Partner and I can work together without either of us going mad. I decided we should pay a visit to my silent contact.

And we walked into another disaster zone.

His place was trashed. Blood collection vials were scattered everywhere, or piled high, and drained of fluid.

I found him sleeping off a bender in a back room, on a makeshift bed of more vials.

He’d turned into a nip junkie.

I get it, I really do. It’s hard working in what’s basically a jam-packed buffet of a crowded city. But with all the diseases that humans can get, and then the drugs that can be applied to said diseases, plus high-fat foods or the horrid chemicals they eat instead of a balanced diet, and don’t forget illegal substances…

There’s a reason my infestation is now in detox in my fridge.

But this guy seems to have leaned into it. In the labs, at his job, he can determine concentrations of whatever to precise percentages, better than machines.

And here he lay, in the stolen leftovers.

I’ve dealt with junkies. When it’s our kind, though, it looks so much worse. Concentrated.

If I had a heart, it would be breaking.

There was a bit of blood around his mouth, but none of it had the scent of our victim. From the vials, though, came the indescribable aroma of a thousand people: old, young, sick, medicated, flavored with notes of Metformin or leukemia or Adderall. Overwhelming, overstimulating.

For humans, it would be as if I brought you an angry skunk and shoved its back-end business directly in your face, and fired repeatedly.

Luckily, I don’t really have a stomach either, and I can hold my breath and turn off my nose receptors. My partner, on the other hand, fled.

Nip junkie woke up a little when I shook his shoulder, the lethargy of his addiction showing. We talked a little, about what was going on, and how he could get clean if he wanted to. I left my card, for what good that might do. It’s bad when humans hit rock bottom, but for us, it could easily turn into a slaughterhouse. I didn’t want that on my doorstep.

I left quietly. I hope he listened to me, because I don’t want to have to return with a set of sharpened wooden stakes.

Partner was dry-heaving, and casting a bit of a wild eye at the cloudy sky. I agreed. “Come on, let’s go back to the crime scene. We can hole up, maybe come up with some ideas.”

Because I was fresh out, and Partner looked like it too.

And the moon would soon rise.

So we hustled, and let ourselves in the back, and got hit by the wall of… well, you can imagine. That wasn’t our reaction, but you’re neither of our kind.

When blood dries, the smell changes.

And sometimes, undertones are sharper.

We smelled it at the same time.

Or maybe it was being in a nip junkie’s den.

Flakka isn’t a well-known drug here, because of the instability. I’m not the only one in law enforcement that put pressure on certain pushers to keep it out.

But spring break was in full swing.

Great. All we needed was the zombie drug, to make a monster trio in the room.

What I wasn’t smelling, and hadn’t this whole time, was a distinctive odor. “Partner, all I’m getting are us, the victim, and the whole pack of Keystone Cops routine, including slapstick drama. Do you think our perp is a cop, and the scene was deliberately compromised to cover that fact?”

He shrugged, but his lip curled. He didn’t like the thought. He glanced at the sky, which he couldn’t see through the walls, but we both knew. He sighed silently, and turned and went upstairs.

When he came back, he was completely naked. Already the hair was starting to grow. One hand-rapidly-turning-paw signaled, Let’s do this.

“I wasn’t going to-”

But I followed him out the back door.

For being in a city, the violence in the front room seemed to have created a bubble of silence on the block. Partner shivered, dropped to his knees. The Change took him fast.

He hated it.

He once told me, while quite drunk, that he never wanted to Change ever again. Not because he was ostracized because of his defect, but because it came so quickly, and felt so good – but he was mute, so he couldn’t howl with the pack.

You try it sometime. Go out into the wilderness, and try to stand naked under a full moon and resist that urge. And if there’s so much as a chihuahua yip, you’ll want to answer with every fiber in your pink-skinned body.

Now take that away from someone born to the pack.

One of the best things I’ve ever done in my undead life, was convincing him that being silent was one of the best skills for a natural-born tracker. Becoming a detective was just a natural step in his continued existence.

But we have Rules. He doesn’t ask me to work during the day, and I don’t ask him to work at night.

Partner hates drugs, and what they do. And the idea of a cop out there hopped up on Flakka was one monster too many for the city.

We’ve been around the Chief’s boys long enough to sort out who’s who by smell. Chief knows what we are, but the beat cops don’t, and it will stay that way.

By the time it took us to find out where one particularly new recruit lived, and haul ass over there, he was out hunting again.

Partner oozed out of the car, all two-fifty pound of muscle. He works out, and it shows. His jet-black muzzle shot in the air, and he took off.

I was right behind him. Chief would be much slower, and after seeing what he did to that poor woman, I didn’t want that happening to the Chief too. Or his boys.

By the time we caught up, Flakka boy was trying to convince some young couple that he had to come inside, check for noises, yeah, he’d heard noises, has to check for a prowler.

He was hiding a tire iron behind his back.

Partner can’t snarl, which is better in situations like this. He didn’t stop, just accelerated, and took the guy down sideways by the neck.

“We’re detectives! Call the police! Bring them in for backup! Close and lock the door!” I was waving my badge, but I have no idea if they could see it in the dark.

Partner couldn’t say anything, but the perp was making up for it with the noises he was making – screeching, howling, even cursing and growling like a thing possessed. And I’ve seen possessions, so yeah, it was creepily similar. Partner didn’t care, kept going for vitals and ripping open everything he could, despite blows from the tire iron being rained down on his back.

I couldn’t get a clear shot, dammit. And I wasn’t sure if it would slow him down at all.

The two rolled about the lawn, I tried my best to help, and just ended up dancing a solo tarantella. I managed to grab the tire iron at one point, at least. I could easily hear the frantic babbling inside the house, so they were still on the call with the 911 operators. A silhouette at a window was giving play by play.

Partner disengaged and ran before the first headlights panned across the yard. I had already faded into the shrubbery on the far side, watching as the cops piled up and formed a line with the Chief. The panting, frothing thing on the lawn pulled itself up, and lurched towards his former buddies, who immediately opened fire.

I had a fleeting thought for the couple in the house, but they were now hiding in the kitchen in the back of the house.

Finally, the thing collapsed, and stopped breathing. The blood smell rising from what was left almost made me gag, it was laced so heavily with drugs.

Time to leave.

*****

My partner had beat me back to the office, our go-to rendezvous when things go south. I laid my offering on a large platter I pulled from a cabinet, placed it on the desk.

He was brushing his teeth with a fierce intensity. His hands were shaking with effort to keep The Change at bay, and I knew what it was costing him.

I also took a satchel off my shoulder, and pulled out his clothing that he’d left at the first crime scene. With the boys all at the second one, slipping in and out and taking all evidence we’d been there was easy.

Even mute, dealing with a partner who Didn’t Want to Talk About It was hard.

“I get it, I really do. The lure of drugs is so tempting when you live on the verge of society, no matter which one. Especially with our dietary needs. I was disgusted, and I’m still ravenous. So I swung by the blood bank and did some judicious confiscation.” I pulled two collection bags out of my satchel. “Brushes like this – sorry about the pun – are part of the deal. But it still sucks.”

He actually winced at that one.

“Sorry, You know I cope with bad humor.” I tapped the package. “Fresh wagyu, no fillers or hormones. Ethically sourced, the rancher owes me a favor or twenty. Thought you’d need it as bad as I do.”

At least he put down his toothbrush, and came over to the desk. Took a chair, though you could tell he was fighting the urge to curl up in it. I was guzzling my pints with only a touch of decorum.

“Partner, it’s okay. You know I don’t care. We got the bad guy, we’re out of the public eye, and the Chief will take it from here. And we’ll get some nice fat paychecks from tonight’s work. You take the cot, and get in a bit of sleep. Let our secretary take the calls for a day or three, rest and relax. When I’m done dealing with my infestation, and figuring out who they are, I’ll come back to the city with a list of names for the Chief. Least he can do is deal with informing families that their idiot kids went off on an adventure with the wrong guy, and got themselves all killed at sea.”

He snorted through his nose quietly, but he was wolfing down on his bloody beef chunk, so I pretended not to notice.

“And I wanted to thank you, personally. I know what it cost you to do that tonight, but you saved a pair of innocent lives. And I’m not leaving till I know you’ll be okay. Believe it or not, I do care about you, heartless monster that I am. And not just because you earn us some fat paychecks, you know.”

He quiet-snorted again at that, but one very bloody but hairless pinkie wafted me towards the door.

“All right, then I’ll go clean up my mess at home. Be well, Partner, text me if you need to, and I’ll see you in a few.”

He nodded, and I waved before closing and locking the office door behind me. Partner would activate the special locks when he’d cleaned up.

I didn’t do a lot of thinking on my way to the beach. I was already tired, and I had a long flight ahead of me.

The full moon was shining brightly when I made my own Change, and flew home.