City Under the Moon (4 page)

Six

FBI Counter-Terrorism Squad Offices

Chelsea

December 30

11:22 p.m.

Tildascow hadn’t scored a proper office until she got her second Director’s Award, the FBI’s equivalent of the Oscars. Her investigation into an Al Qaeda plot on New York’s water supply had revealed a loose thread that unraveled a billion-dollar international electronic banking scheme. It was pure serendipity, but she had no qualms about parlaying the glory into a real office. The couch had come out of her own pocket, but at least she got to pick the color.

She stretched out on the black leather in her cozy jeans and Quantico hoodie, sipping hot chocolate and fiddling with a stupid sleeved blanket. She checked her email, well aware that she was looking for an excuse to procrastinate.

Anderson had sent a couple of updates: three animal attacks reported within the first hour; now the number had grown to seven. More were sure to come. The police were on alert, but it was a big city and those things were crazy quick.

She scrolled to “L” on her BlackBerry and picked up her landline. Shitty cell service; they said we’d have a flying car by now, but it took two phones to make a call.

Tildascow had never before dialed this phone number. She’d gotten it in an email, which she’d never answered.

By design, she had no connections to her old life. No relatives, no relics, no old friends to call and reminisce. No one who knew that little girl with the curly blond hair and the bright blue eyes, the one who looked just like her mom. They’d all fallen into the chasm between the girl Brianna and the Special Agent Tildascow.

Except one, who stubbornly refused to go.

When little Brianna turned seven, her mother had enrolled her in the Brownies, the minor-league Girl Scouts. It was important to make new friends, Mom said. This was supposed to be accomplished at bimonthly troop meetings, which would be held at the home of a girl named Kelly.

The moment Brianna arrived at Kelly’s house was precisely when she discovered that there were rich people and there were poor people—and the Tildascows were not rich people.

Their Brownies Troop Leader was Kelly’s mother. She was a sharp, well-spoken woman with a no-nonsense aura, which must have served her well in her day job as a big-shot attorney-turned-government-gunslinger. She would arrive for their meetings with an assistant in tow (always a sharply-dressed young woman), and dismiss her with work orders precisely at 5 p.m. Then she’d immerse herself in the girls’ baking and papier-mâché follies for two solid hours.

She always made sure to personally engage each of her Brownie mini-monsters during the course of the evening. She’d inquire about whatever little dramas they were facing, and offer uplifting advice in a warm, dignified tone. Soon Brianna felt like she’d found a secret best friend. Most likely, all of the girls felt that way. It was honest mutual respect from an adult they admired, and it positively lit them up.

At 7 p.m., the assistant would reappear with updates from the office. Kelly’s mom would vanish for a few minutes while the live-in cook (
the live-in cook!
) served s’mores. She’d make an encore at 7:30, offering cookies to the parents arriving for pickup, and leave the girls with sticker books, fun assignments, and hugs with encouraging whispers.

She was just too damned good to be true. And the girls of Troop 60421 weren’t the only ones who noticed. Kelly’s mom soared up the ranks until she had nowhere to go but Washington. First it was Attorney General. A year ago she’d become the National Security Advisor.

Brianna knew her as “Mrs. Luft,” but her name was Rebekkah.

After what happened to seal that little girl in her past, she had tried like hell to shake Rebekkah Luft. Something about the way she offered affection made Tildascow angry. Or maybe scared. Whatever it was, she’d needed everything gone, and that relationship was part of everything. She did enjoy hearing about her former friend’s remarkable ascent, but she kept her eyes averted when she appeared on TV.

Still, she’d often wondered if a few turns in her career weren’t the result of Rebekkah Luft’s silent machinations. Why hadn’t the incidents in her past kept her out of Quantico? Or the DoD’s Prime Program? Luck, skill, or Luft?

They’d crossed paths here and there, sometimes in ways that felt arranged. Like the time Luft—then Attorney General—spoke at Tildascow’s graduation from Quantico. She’d never done that before, and never did again.

Every time they met, Luft would put a hand on her shoulder, look deep into her eyes, and ask, “How are you?”

She’d never realized how much that question could hurt. Not until it was asked by someone who knew the answer.

The phone rang. She braced for impact.

“Hello?” Luft’s sleepy voice made Tildascow feel like she was going to get in trouble.

“Mrs. Luft? It’s…“ She hesitated too long, feeling stupid, and finally blurted, “Tildascow.”

“Brianna? Brianna, how are you?”

“Listen,” she snapped, spiking the lump in her throat. “Um… Mrs. Luft, I… I’ve got… Something happened that I think I need to bring to your attention.”

“Okay, but don’t you dare call me Mrs. Luft again.”

PART TWO

One

Akron, Ohio

December 31

12:58 a.m.

“I swear to God, I’m gonna wolf out!”

That wasn’t the most prudent thing Lon had ever said to a roomful of people, but he simply refused to tolerate mockery by inferior intellects.

He’d been dominating the
Magic: The Gathering
tournament—as usual. And this was the big one, the regional qualifier for the Pro Tour. He was just three wins away from a free trip to Las Vegas, and his “weenie-meanie white and greenie” deck had proven unstoppable. He hadn’t lost a game, let alone a match (except one to mana screw), when the stupid judge misunderstood the stack rules of his
Tarmogoyf
.

And it was a staple card! Everyone knew it!

The other players laughed at him. Bitter bitches got to feel like big king shits because he got cheated out of a win.

Lon’s therapist said that he put other people down in order to feel better about himself. And that, pseudo-philisopho-theoretically, was what kept him from having friends.

The way Lon saw it, he just hadn’t met anyone worthy of being his friend.

Well… maybe there was one. But first he’d have to get up the courage to meet her in person.

Lon walked home in misery, kicking every rock he could find along the two-mile dirt road from the comic shop. His hands were buried in the pockets of his ever-present black overcoat, which was more a statement than a practical shelter from the wind. He may have been freezing, but it was too late to call his mom without incurring the wrath of his stepfucker, Frank.

He was a puffy eighteen, maybe the last kid at school who couldn’t even grow peach fuzz. Not that it wouldn’t look ridiculous on his always-blushing fatboy cheeks, especially if it matched his flaming-red Chia Pet ‘fro.

Honestly, he couldn’t blame the people who found him distasteful. Hell—Given the choice, even
he
wouldn’t want to be his friend. But what can you do about that? Body swapping only happened in bad eighties movies and secret government laboratories.

Life was so much easier on the computer. In his forums, video games, and chat rooms, he was respected for his expertise, his authority, and his mentoring skills. That world seemed less arbitrary. And also, he didn’t have to struggle to look people in the eye.

He turned onto the long, lonely road to Frank’s farm, and that familiar dread crept into his throat. Even if he didn’t get to Las Vegas for the
Magic
Pro Tour, he was going to find a way out of his stepfather’s house, and he was going to do it on his own terms. Most of the kids at school were still in emotional diapers, but Lon felt certain he had the clarity to live on his own. He just needed the money.

He snuck through the back door into the kitchen. It was a good bet that Frank was already passed out, but he didn’t want to risk an encounter. He’d memorized all of the kitchen floor’s creaks. It only took three well-placed steps to reach his sanctuary in the—

“How’d it go, Lon? You win your card game?”

Fuck
.

Frank’s disingenuous sing-song tone meant that Lon’s mother was nearby—and even still it carried an undercurrent of threat. Fucker never failed to turn into a monster as soon as Mom strayed far enough.

“No,” Lon muttered as he hurried into the basement. That was where he lived, literally and figuratively. His beloved cave, ten feet by six, containing everything he had in this world.

A black light threw its glow on his vintage velvet posters: Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Nick Cave. His unfurled futon bed filled the narrow gap between the wall and the card table he used for a desk.

The computer was his Fortress of Solitude, and its layout was supremely specific. His side-by-side widescreen monitors cycled a montage of artwork inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. An open notepad next to his trackball contained a list of the in-game materials he’d been collecting to level up his
World of WarCraft
character’s crafting skills once the new expansion arrived. Against the far wall, two iron bookshelves were overstuffed with his vast library of occult reference material—all except for the eye-level shelves, which boldly displayed the room’s
pièce de résistance:
his collection of miniature pewter statues (all hand-painted by the arch-mage himself).

Lon hadn’t taken the time to fold up his futon, so there was no room to pull his chair from the computer table. Instead, he took his wireless keyboard and mouse to the bed and bumped up the font size on his Opera web browser.

He was currently administrating six websites. One of them wasn’t live yet; he’d been hard at work creating content to launch modernwitchcraftandmagick.com by February first. Another, truthabouttheblairwitch.com, he’d all but abandoned. He usually only got about ten messages a day from his Lovecraft shrine, but his
Magic: The Gathering
site’s forum could get up to a thousand posts per day. The others fell somewhere in between. Tonight there had been a little spike on one of his less-traveled pages, ofwolvesandmen.com.

Of Wolves and Men
was his master’s thesis on
lycanthropy
, the transformation of man into wolf. Unlike his other sites, it was distinctly non-interactive. There were no forums, no feedback button; his contact information was listed only for solicitors of his web design services. He didn’t want to hear from the
Twilight
girls who kept pictures of Jacob on their hope chests (although it was a blessing that they’d finally stolen the thunder from the
Buffy
fans who claimed to be wiccans because they knew how to light candles). He’d spent time in the faux-werewolf “community” and become familiar with the “scene,” which existed primarily in competing forums and YouTube videos. He’d played their “misunderstood by society” game for a while, even commissioning his own dentures from a well-respected fangsmith. But at the end of the day, those people weren’t interested in the truth; they’d just latched onto a clique that’d given them an opportunity to shun society back for their own perceived social excommunication. Lon wasn’t looking to lycanthropy for something precious to call his own.

Not that he’d deny his passions. He was a fan of many things: collectible card games, vintage sci-fi, massively multiplayer role-playing games, the women of seventies-era sci-fi television; the fantasy writings of Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Robert Jordan, and master J.R.R. Tolkien; the artworks of Bernie Wrightson, Frank Frazetta, and H.R. Giger; music of articulated spite; all things
Lord of the Rings;
and much more. He lived to indulge in fandom, and unlike the pussies at school, he wasn’t afraid to let his passions show.

But his interest in the occult—in lycanthropy specifically—wasn’t a matter of fandom. Even a modicum of research would result in far too much evidence for any educated mind to deny the truth.

No, the
truth
(if such a concept could be removed from abstracts and primal fears) is that preternatural lurkers are all around us. Hiding in the mist, scratching in the dark, flirting with our subconscious... But their dark magicks became hidden eons ago. Those “in the know”—interesting that they called themselves
Illuminati
—forged a dark pact with the Devil (
perhaps,
but not necessarily
specifically,
the Biblical interpretation of such a beast), shrouding corporeal manifestations of evil in alternate planes of existence, thus obscuring the truth so that normal folk might sleep peacefully. But, alas, the human imagination would not be thoroughly repressed, and so our creative minds had invented bastardized versions of the demons persisting in our nightmares, and proliferated them throughout popular culture.

Every society in the history of the world has concocted its own legend of a human shapeshifter! Coincidence?
Please!

But everything was about to change. The Internet was a new tool, one that could never have been imagined by the silent monks, banished priests, and outcast lepers—those purged from society in order to keep the secret of the dark pact. Righteous warriors, speakers of the dark truths, would band together through new information networks, sharing their intelligence in virtual secret cabals, restoring to mankind the lost knowledge we so desperately need.

Diddle-eee! Diddle-iddle-dee-dee-do-dee-dee!

Diddle-eee! Doo-dee-doo-due-do-eee…

Lon’s Instant Message ringtone was the opening bars to
Toccata und Fugue in D minor
by Johann Sebastian Bach, the ubiquitous aural introduction to horror radio plays, B-movies and TV commercials for haunted houses. Pedestrian, he knew. But his head wasn’t too bloated for irony.

He reclined on his futon, smiling at its charming creak, and resumed play in iTunes, thus spilling the ballet suite from
Swan Lake
through his wall-mounted speakers. The melancholy theme never failed to remind him of
Dracula
, director Tod Browning’s 1931 masterpiece starring Bela Lugosi.

Lon cracked his knuckles as he eagerly read the IM, a beckon from the screen name
GothkGrl.
“Are you there, my dark prince?” was scrawled in purple zombified font.

‘Twas the fair Elizabeth, the love of Lon’s life. Their affair had begun with flirtatious missives on sundry occult forums and blossomed into six months of heated IMs.

He was working up the nerve to call her, but never mind about that.

“Good evening, my grotesque beauty,” Lon typed with a mischievous grin.

As he awaited her response, curiosity led him to open his Internet Protocol tracing program. The surge to his
Of Wolves and Men
website had come from the northeastern United States. New York and DC. Maybe
An American Werewolf in London
had run on cable.

“Evening, hardly,” Elizabeth responded. “I’m five hours hence from slumber. And my harridan host womb woke me at an unconscionable hour this very morn, blasting her loathsome radio.”

He loved it when she got bitchy.

Lon began typing an in-depth description of the travesty he’d suffered at the
Magic
tournament, but he froze when he heard the cellar door open. It could only be one of two people, and the heavy footfalls suggested the greater of the two evils. He quickly shut his monitors and speakers, leaving his lady love in mid-sentence, rolled under his covers, faced the wall, and feigned sleep.

The bottom of the stairs always took Frank by surprise. The oaf caught a bookcase and paused for a moment, probably ogling one of Lon’s
Lord of the Rings
action figures. Several of them had hackjob superglue repairs from Thanksgiving, when Frank had stomped on them during a drunken rant. Great night that was. Lots to give thanks for.

Frank came closer and stood next to the futon, looking down on Lon. “You ain’t a-sleepin’,” he said in a questioning tone.

Lon wished he could cough up his hatred like some kind of diseased sputum and spit it right in Frank’s face. He was also coming to despise his mother for bringing him into this hell, no matter how damn lonely she’d gotten. And for being so stupid that she didn’t see Frank for what he really was.

“Maybe I’ll just take one of these here action dolls if you ain’t awake.”

If Frank was going to take one of his collectibles, Lon wouldn’t be able to stop him. He’d learned that lesson on the ass end of more than one beating.

His stepfather stood over him for a good, long while, breathing unevenly through his drunkenness. Was he going to pass out, or did he fall asleep on his feet? Or was he imagining something disgusting?

Time passed—seconds felt like minutes.

Could Frank tell he was awake? How long had it been?

Lon felt himself slipping into helpless despair. What was this creep going to do? Why wouldn’t he just leave?

Lon’s mind always wandered back to the same hole: What had he done to deserve his life? He couldn’t convince anyone to like him. Not the kids at school, not Frank, not even himself.

Maybe he deserved these beatings.

The wait was maddening.

Finally, Frank shifted. His leather boot creaked out one final threat. After another moment, he turned and plodded up the stairs.

Lon fought as hard as he could, but still the tears came.

Two

Akron, Ohio

December 31

6:14 a.m.

“Lon, could I see you up here?”

Lon stirred to consciousness, hoping he’d dreamed that voice.

“Lon, could I see you up here?” Frank asked again. The first request had been three-dollar-bill polite. This was an ultimatum.

Mom would have left for work by ten after six. The dust probably hadn’t settled in the tracks of her Isuzu Rodeo.

“Up here. Now.”

Lon sighed and fumbled for his glasses. What a way to start a day. He looked around for some pants—

Frank started down the stairs.

Lon bolted to intercept him, meeting him midway. If he couldn’t avoid a fight, it might as well be upstairs where his collectibles weren’t within reach.

“What?” he asked, mustering as much nonchalance as possible while quivering in his tightie-whities.

“You get up here when I tell you to.”

He followed Frank up to the kitchen, wondering which flavor of bullshit—

“I wanted to have a conva’sation with you ‘bout them cards you play with,” Frank said, nodding in agreement with himself as he spoke. His face was a twisted collision of beady eyes, droopy ears, furry eyebrows and a snaggletooth that protruded from the right corner of his mouth. How could anyone have sex with such a man? “How much you spend on them things?”

Lon sighed. They’d had this talk before and it always went back to this: “It’s my money, Frank. I earned it myself.”

“Yeah, but it’s family money. Y’see, I earned the money for the food that goes into your mouth, but I don’t see none of that back, you unda’stand?”

Lon kept his eyes on the floor. “Yes.”

“Now I don’t care what your mom says, you’re gonna start givin’ back for all’s that you’s takin’ from this family, you unda’stand?”