Werewolf Cop (40 page)

When he was done with his prayer, he forced his eyes away. He gazed out the window at the moon.

“Come on,” he said hoarsely. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

Imogen shifted against him, raised her face to look at him. She looked carefully, a long time, exploring his features. Then, slowly, she nodded.

“Yes. Let's.”

 

EPILOGUE

H
alf-naked and bedraggled, they made their way hand in hand down through the dripping forest in the moonlight, looking like—feeling like—the first man and woman or the last, as if they'd been expelled from Eden or survived the apocalypse, one or the other. They had recovered Zach's things—his phone, his car keys, and so on—and when they reached the Crown Vic, parked in its little tree-shaded turnout, Imogen waited in the passenger seat while he went around back and opened the trunk. As before, he had packed his overnight bag with some clothes: jeans and a Houston PD sweatshirt. He dressed back there while Imogen sat up front, clutching her torn sweater closed over her breasts, staring through the windshield and shivering. When he was done, he brought her a spare Extraordinary Crimes raincoat he'd found wedged in the trunk's corner. He handed it to her through the window, then walked back around the car slowly to give her time to put it on over her nakedness.

The moment he sat down behind the wheel, she turned to him, her pixie face streaked with grime and mascara and dried tears.

“Thank you,” she said.

He shook his head. Turned the ignition on. Put the car in gear. She reached out and touched his arm so that he had to look at her.

“No, I mean it. I don't know how you could have. . . . When you were that thing. . . . It must have required. . . . I can't even imagine.”

He managed to smile at her. Then he faced front and pulled the car out onto the road and started driving back toward the highway. He called 911 as they went. The dispatcher's voice came in over the speakerphone. He gave her a quick description of Goulart's death.

“I'm taking the vic to get medical care. I'll let you know where to find me,” he said. Then he asked her to call Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell. Then he hung up.

“I don't want medical care, thank you,” said Imogen crisply. “I'm not injured.”

“You're probably in shock,” he told her.

“I'll probably be in shock for the rest of my life, but I don't intend to spend it in hospital.”

Zach snorted. He kept his eyes on the windshield, watching the road as it wound through the woods and moonlight. “Guess I'll take you home, then,” he said.

They drove in silence for a while. Then Imogen asked him, “What will you tell them? They won't believe the truth. Take my word. I've tried it.”

Zach slowly shook his head. “We have to tell them something, I guess.”

“I was thinking it could be something like: Abend was practicing some sort of insane sorcery and he persuaded Goulart to go along. Goulart was very ill, you know.”

“I know.”

“So Abend convinced him that he could help by killing me in some weird ceremony or other, only you found them and killed Goulart and shot Abend. You think Abend was mortally wounded, but he got away.”

He glanced at her, a bit surprised. “That's very good. You just come up with that?”

She managed a smile. “I'm a professional journalist. Making up lies to fit the facts—it's what we do.”

He was surprised to hear himself laugh, but the very sound of it made him stop laughing. He pressed his lips together, watching the road.

After another mile or two, he called his wife. Grace's soft southern voice came over the speakerphone into the car. She cried out his name as if to warn him from the brink of danger.

“Zach!”

“It's all right,” he said. “It's over.”

She began to cry. “Thank God! Thank God! You come home now, baby. Come home. Everything'll be all right. I know it will. I
know
it will. Come home.”

For a moment, he couldn't answer. Then he managed to say, “I love you, baby. I'll talk to you soon.”

He disconnected. He bit his lip, driving.

“What is it?” said Imogen.

“I killed Margo,” he told her. “Margo Heatherton. I killed her.”

She touched his arm again. “Not you, Zach. It wasn't you. It was the wolf.”

“I was the wolf. I had the power to stop it. You saw that. It's just . . . that first time. . . . It took me off guard. It swept me away. I don't even remember what happened.”

“Then you can't hold yourself responsible. You can't.”

“I can,” he said. “I do. There's got to be a reckoning.”

Again, they drove along the wooded road without speaking. Then, just as Imogen was about to say something else, Zach's phone rang. It was Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell.

“I shot Abend,” he told her. “It was a killing shot, I'm almost sure of it. But he staggered off and I had to tend to the victim. I was so shaken up, I forgot to tell 911. Tell them to search the woods. I'm sure they'll find him.”

“I'm sorry about Goulart,” Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell said. She sounded sincere.

“He was sick. He was dying. Abend used that, got him involved in some kind of weird black magic crap, offering to heal him. Goulart was a good cop. He just got desperate, that's all. He lost his way.”

When he disconnected, he did not look at Imogen. “It's a good story,” he said.

They got on the Taconic, heading for the city. Zach was glad to step on the gas and speed up.

“Gretchen Dankl sought you out,” said Imogen. “She contacted you, just like she did Bernard. She must've intended to pass the curse on to Bernard, but it went wrong somehow. So she sought you out.”

“Yes, that's what I figure too.”

“Because she was looking for a good man, you see. A good man who would have the strength to control the beast and the courage to do what had to be done.”

“I guess so.”

“That's why she chose Bernard. And that's why she chose you. Because you're a good man, Zach.”

But Zach shook his head. “I killed Margo,” he insisted stubbornly. “There has to be a reckoning.”

Even over the noise of the car, he heard Imogen swallow hard. There were tears in her voice when she spoke now. “You died tonight, you know,” she said. And when he didn't answer, she said, “You did. I saw it.”

Finally, he nodded. “I did. I know.”

“You were gone for over twenty minutes.”

“Was I? Believe me, it seemed like longer.”

“It's impossible that you should have returned as you did. You understand that, don't you?”

“I don't know. It sure seemed that way to me too. Impossible.”

“Was it very awful?”

“It was.” After a moment, he added, “Worse than you can imagine, Imogen. Worse than anyone could ever imagine. I will never get over it.”

This time, when she took his arm, she clutched it hard. He could feel her fingernails through the sweatshirt. “Let that be the reckoning, then,” she said. “You have to, Zach. It's fair. It's right. You sacrificed your life tonight. You carried out the death sentence. You did not know it would be undone. You did not know it could be. You did not take your life back. It was given to you: like a gift. You have no right to refuse it. It was the wolf that did murder, and you killed the wolf. Let that be the reckoning. You have to.”

Zach felt the pressure of her grip on his elbow. The road blurred through the windshield. The road, the night, the moon, all of it. He raised his free arm and swiped it across his eyes.

“I don't understand any of this,” he said hoarsely.

Imogen let him go and sat back in her seat, exhausted. “No,” she said. “I don't suppose anyone does, really.”

When he pulled up outside her apartment, she leaned across the gearshift and kissed him warmly on the cheek.

“Go home,” she whispered to him. “Listen to your wife. What she says is true. Everything will be all right.”

His eyes met hers. He shook his head again. “How?” he asked her, in all seriousness. “How will it ever be right?”

“Somehow,” she told him.

This much was true, at least: as he was driving across the night streets, weaving through the taxi traffic, heading for the bridge, his mood began almost imperceptibly to lighten. He had turned on the radio so as to have some company, to hear somebody singing and feel less alone. Soon, though, the news came on, and now a dim voice was telling him that there were cities on fire somewhere, there were madmen raving in throne rooms and parliaments, and there were riots in the streets so bad that it looked like revolution or civil war. But as he gazed out the window, out the windshield, at the brownstones, at the towers, at the wet, glistening streets, New York seemed peaceful to him—as peaceful as it ever was, at least. He knew it could only have been his imagination, but he began to sense the influence of Dominic Abend dissipating from the underfabric of the great metropolis even now. It was probably all in his mind, but it did seem to him—it really did—as if the muttering voice of that Presence that had come through the dagger was fading—for a while, for tonight, for a moment anyway. It was probably all in his mind, but it really did seem to him that the storm had washed away some swarm of metaphysical monsters that had been boiling up from the pavements, that the mighty city had been cleansed somehow of supernatural evil and was now prepared once again to stage the hilarious tragedy of ordinary human corruption. That corruption—the city's everyday dishonesty, cruelty, and betrayal—ah, it was music to a lawman's ears. Because somehow you dealt with it, didn't you? Day by day. That was the job. You chased some bad guy down some dark alley while some other bad guy somewhere got away, and you felt everything would indeed be all right for a while. For tonight. For a moment. Somehow.

By the time he reached home, he had decided he would go on in that faith, long as he could, best as he could. Imogen was right. It was the wolf that had done murder, and he had killed the wolf. There could not be any greater reckoning than that.

He pulled the Crown Vic into the driveway and, as he stepped out, Grace opened the front door. They met each other midway along the path, as they usually did at the end of the day. He wrapped his arms around her and she pressed her face against his chest. He breathed her in deeply, filling himself with that scent of hers, that atmosphere that inspired in him such impossible yearning. That atmosphere—it had always seemed so mysterious to him, but not anymore. He understood what it was now. It was life.

She lifted her face to him and he kissed her.

WEREWOLF COP

Pegasus Books LLC

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Copyright © 2015 by Amalgamated Metaphor

First Pegasus Books cloth edition March 2015

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-60598-698-2

ISBN: 978-1-60598-748-4 (e-book)

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