Neither, to their credit, yelped, but it looked like a near thing on both parts. Billy’s eyes bugged and I raised a defensive hand. “He wouldn’t stay in the car. I don’t know how I’m going to explain him to them.”
“…as a police tracking dog…?” Billy suggested weakly. “A police tracking dog the size of Godzilla? Jesus, Joanne, look at him!”
“I know. I guess mass doesn’t convert away to make normal-size fauna. Do you think they’d buy it?”
“I think it doesn’t matter anyway. How do you plan to get him down there?” Billy pointed to the twelve-foot drop to the chamber floor, a factor I hadn’t previously considered.
Morrison growled and edged forward, ears back, to peer over the tunnel’s edge. Then his massive shoulders rolled, a no problem shrug if I’d ever seen one, and he surged forward, clearing Billy’s head easily and landing three-quarters of the way across the chamber with little more than a grunt.
It was enough to garner attention, and nobody else was as manly as Billy had been: half a dozen homeless guys did shriek, piercing squeals that echoed off the ceiling. Billy swore and jumped to the chamber floor, trying to break up their vocal panic with his own deep assurances: “Police dog, here to help us track. I know he’s huge, but he’s not aggressive. Just don’t get in his face.”
“Doesn’t look like a fuckin’ dog to me,” somebody snarled. I saw tension ripple down Morrison’s spine before he looked over his shoulder and gave me another this is your fault glare. I didn’t think that was quite fair, since I’d told him to stay in the car. On the other hand, if he had, I’d have never seen my shapeshifted boss heave a mighty sigh, lie down, and roll over on his back to loll about and invite belly scratches. Ginormous or not, with his tongue hanging out and his spine all a-wriggle against the floor, he didn’t look even slightly dangerous, and the wolf aspects seemed much less dramatic.
I slithered down the rope ladder, scraping my hands and stomach in my hurry, and scurried over to rub Morrison’s tummy to prove it was safe to do so. He was going to kill me. Oh, God, he was going to kill me, bring me back and kill me again, even if he had to spend a million years learning magic just so he could do it. And if he didn’t, I might do it myself, because I was pretty sure I deserved to be killed repeatedly for getting either of us into this situation.
The snarly guy muttered, “I’ll be damned,” and Rita snuck over to scratch Morrison’s chest tentatively. He tolerated it for a good ten seconds from both of us, then flipped over again and stayed down, chin on his paws in what I assumed was his best attempt at non-threatening behavior. Probably everybody else interpreted the furious glare he fixed on me as attentive-waiting-for-commands behavior.
“All right,” Billy said. “We’ve got our crew in place now. Thanks for helping me hold down the fort. It’s best if you head back to your fire now. Wolves won’t generally approach a group of humans or fire, not that we expect this one to get past us. Watch yourselves, though.”
A few of them started to protest. Morrison sat up. Suddenly none of them wanted to hang around anymore, and there was a rush for the ladder, which, after some debate, they left in place. Thoughtful of them. Within about two minutes, Rita, Billy, Morrison and I were the only ones left, and Rita was staring hard at my boss. “He’s the same size that woman is.”
“Bigger,” I said ill-advisedly. “Probably has forty pounds on her.”
She swung around to glare at me, though she pointed an accusing finger at Morrison simultaneously. “Is he like her? A werewolf?”
Morrison turned his head so slowly I hardly saw him move, but I certainly felt the incredulous weight of his expression. “This is why I didn’t want you to come along,” I said to him. “I didn’t want to explain everything right now. And no,” I said to Rita. “He’s just a victim of me screwing up. Werewolves don’t exist and even if they did, every piece of folklore I know says they’re bound by the phases of the moon.”
“Which is full tonight,” Billy said. I wanted to kick him. “And if that woman wasn’t a werewolf,” he continued, “what was she?”
“Well, whatever she is, Morrison’s not, okay? She could shift back and forth and he can’t.” They were right. Tia was a werewolf. And she was probably the dance theater killer, because if legend was right and werewolves were tied to phases of the moon, she probably had some kind of major power suck going down around the full moon, and I was pretty damned certain the murder’s timing wasn’t coincidental. Moreover, tonight, Sunday night, not Saturday which I suspected Billy had meant, was the actual full moon, which probably meant if we didn’t stop the bitch—no pun intended—she’d attack the dancers one more time.
I did not want to fight a werewolf. It was up there with zombies. Traditional creatures of the night were just not my thing, damn it, not that anybody had asked me what my thing was. I said, “Shit,” under my breath, and more clearly said, “Rita, this is probably a good time for you to cut loose, too. If she’s a werewolf, hell, I don’t know what happens if you get bitten by a real werewolf, but it can’t be good.”
“No,” Rita said in a small voice. “I got you into this. I’d like to see it through.”
“You…” Had gotten me into it, actually, what with giving me the dance concert tickets in the first place, but even so, I shook my head. “This is what I do, Rita. It’s my job.”
“You’re a police officer,” she said incredulously. “Werewolves aren’t your job.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “My duties encompass a lot more than your average cop’s. Trust me. This is what I do. You didn’t get me into anything I wouldn’t have ended up in one way or another.”
Morrison cocked his head, curious motion, but Rita remained unconvinced. “I’d still like to help if I can.”
Feeling completely absurd, I said, “Morrison?”
He looked between us, then pulled his lips back from his teeth, indicating what he thought of the idea. Billy snorted and Rita scowled, obviously afraid we were making fun of her. Feeling even more absurd, I said, “Rita, this is our boss.
Captain Morrison of the Seattle Police Department. I sort of have to do what he wants in this situation.”
“…your boss is a werewolf?”
I was going to personally hunt down and bludgeon whoever it was who was responsible for werewolf legends. Never mind that it would no doubt require time travel and knowledge of languages which had long since slipped out of human memory. It would be worth it. While I worked up a response that wasn’t “Arrrrgh!” Morrison got up, walked to Rita and sat down in front of her. He was nearly as tall as she was, which made making eye contact easy before he slowly, deliberately, swung his head back and forth in an emphatic no.
“Holy shit, he understood me! You understood me?”
Morrison nodded this time, big heavy bob of his head. Rita squeaked, “You’re a cop? You’re a captain?” and he nodded each time, showing infinitely more patience than I would have expected. Rita goggled at him, then at me, then wrenched her jaw up and said, much more quietly, “Do I really have to leave? It’s my friends who are missing.”
Morrison put his head to one side, sympathy in the motion, but nodded again, then gave me a gimlet stare. I stepped up, knowing exactly what he wanted me to say. “A few months ago a civilian got invo—” No. That was wrong. I backed up and started again. “I got a civilian involved in one of my cases, and she nearly got killed. Pulling that kind of stunt again will lose me my job. She volunteered, too,” I said to Rita’s unspoken protest. “But from where I’m sitting, where the captain’s sitting, that doesn’t make a lot of difference. You understand?”
She wasn’t a big woman, but she got smaller, shoulders curving in and head lowering. “I understand. You’ll find them, though, right? You’ll all come back?”