Then came World War II. Millions of Americans got put into uniform and sent over to Europe. There, some of them were bitten by vampires and lived to carry their curse back home. Others were victims of werewolf attacks. And a bunch more made the acquaintance of various witches, wizards, sorcerers, necromancers, and other practitioners of the black arts.
A few years later, easy access to air travel made it possible for European supes to migrate westward without any problems. Quite a few of them did. There wasn't much left of Europe by then, anyway.
The revival of interest in monster movies after the war didn't happen by chance. It reflected a country that was starting to get used to what was really going bump in the night. Movies like I Married a Zombie weren't always fiction, if you know what I mean.
The 1940s also brought McCarthyism. Tail Gunner Joe started out by going after domestic Communists, but the political witch hunt soon turned into a real one when he widened his net to ensnare members of the supernatural community (who the right-wingers referred to as "Supies"). I guess we've all seen the footage of those hearings, with McCarthy browbeating the witnesses: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a coven?" It didn't come out until long afterward that Roy Cohn, the Committee's top inquisitor, was actually a closet werewolf.
McCarthy wasn't necessarily wrong. Some supes really are dangerous, take it from me. He just didn't know when to stop. He started out trying to unmask vamps in the State Department, and more power to him (he was smart: subpoenaed everybody who worked the night shift). But then McCarthy's early success made him arrogant. He figured it was his duty to take down every supe in America, along with those humans who supported them (he called them "Supesymps," for Supe Sympathizers, except when they were known as Fellow Flyers). A lot of innocent weres, witches, and trolls were caught up in McCarthy's inquisition before the public finally had enough and stopped backing him.
• • • •
The civil rights movement didn't openly include many supes, at first. But then Martin Luther King, Jr, gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. He said that he looked forward to the day when "black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, naturals and supernaturals" would live together in harmony.
There was a rumor going around that J. Edgar Hoover had a tape of King "entertaining" a vampire, but I don't believe that. No human as good as Dr King was would mess around with vamps. Probably. But nobody's ever explained why the bullet that killed him was made of solid silver.
It was Lyndon Johnson who really sealed the deal on supe equality. Riding high on the wave of public sentiment that followed JFK's assassination, he pushed through Congress a whole bunch of civil rights bills. One of them gave supernaturals the same rights and responsibilities as all other citizens.
It didn't exactly hurt his credibility when Johnson revealed that one of his daughters, Luci Bird, had willingly succumbed to a vampire and planned to marry him. That nighttime White House wedding was quite an event, I hear – even if some in the media did start referring to the bride as "Luci Bat." Far as I'm concerned, there are worse things she could have been called.
You can find supes everyplace now, but they're not evenly distributed. There's lots in the big cities, of course. A big population means more potential "blood donors" if you're a vamp, a bigger client base if you're a witch or wizard for hire, and more to eat if you're a ghoul. It's true that some, like the werewolves, used to settle in mostly rural areas – simpler to hide, I guess, and farm animals are easier prey than people. But even that's changed now.
Scranton's got about seventy-five thousand people, which puts it about midway between New York City and Hicksville. But there's an awful lot of supes here, relative to the population. Nobody understood why that was, until 1966. That was when a couple of profs from the local university figured out that a whole bunch of ley lines intersect in the Wyoming Valley. Several of them come together right here in Scranton.
It's not known for sure where ley lines came from – there's four or five major theories, and every one makes my head hurt. But all the experts agree they exist.
They're a powerful source of magical energy, ley lines. The more lines intersecting, the stronger the energy. Passon and Warner, the professors, proved that there are four points in and around Scranton where at least ten different ley lines come together. That's kind of a big deal, in magical terms. Or so they say.
I hope those two profs got tenure, or whatever they call it. They helped answer a lot of questions.
The intersecting ley lines are like a magnet for supes, which explains why we've got so many. They were drawn here over the years, even if they didn't realize why. Weres, vamps, ghouls, witches, trolls, you name it. We've got 'em all in Scranton.
Lucky us.
The Occult and Supernatural Crimes Investigation Unit, which everybody calls the "Supe Squad," is located in the basement of police HQ. There's no windows down there, but none of us mind. You never know what might get out through a window when you're not looking. Or what might get in.
I pull the night shift, which is the busiest time for our kind of work. I've racked up enough seniority to get whatever shift I want, but I work the graveyard (yeah, I know) because I like the action.
The boss is Lieutenant McGuire. They say his wife was grabbed by a gang of werewolves years ago, and that McGuire tracked them down, all by himself. When he left the house where they'd been hiding, there wasn't a creature alive inside, including McGuire's wife, who was found with a silver bullet in her brain.
McGuire always claimed it was a stray shot that killed her. But there are stories about that – rumors, really. Stories that one of the weres had already bitten her, that she was infected with lycanthropy. Some of the stories say that she begged him to do it.
It might be true. McGuire's an okay guy and a good boss, but he's got a darkness about him that has nothing to do with the fact that he doesn't see much sunlight.
Despite whatever may have happened in the past, McGuire's no vigilante. He plays by the rules.
But may Almighty God help any supe who breaks them.
It's not against the law to be a supernatural creature, or to engage in most kinds of occult rituals and practices. But there are laws concerning all that stuff. The bottom line for supes is the same one that applies to humans: you can't hurt anybody.