Thunder Moon (Nightcreature 8)

I’d never been a whiz at anatomy, but I knew what a heart looked like.

Abraham didn’t have one.

Chapter 15

“A human being can’t survive without a heart,” I said.

“Precisely.”

“So what is he?”

Doc lifted his hand to rub at his face, saw his bloodied glove, and lowered it again. “I don’t know.”

My mind ran in several directions at once, searching for an explanation.

“The heart wasn’t removed after death?” I asked. Anything could have happened between the time Abraham had died and Grant had been called.

“No scar.”

“What kind of monster appears human but doesn’t have a heart?”

“A woman?”

I gave Doc a quick glance.

“Sorry,” he said. “I make jokes when I’m nervous.”

“You and me both.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a single one, not even about Chuck Norris.

“He’s not a werewolf,” Doc mused.

“You’re sure.”

He lifted the silver scalpel. “As I can be.”

Problem was, according to the Jäger-Suchers, there were more supernatural beings out there than either they or anyone else knew about.

“What else was Mengele making?” I wondered.

Just because Hitler had ordered a werewolf army didn’t mean he hadn’t ordered a whole lot more. He’d been a greedy bastard. Start with the Jews, why not toss in the Gypsies and a few Catholics? Create a werewolf? Let’s see what else we can come up with.

“I don’t know,” Doc said. “I was just a kid, dropped behind enemy lines, fighting my way back home. We dealt with the werewolves, but I didn’t see anything else.”

“Did you hear of anything else?”

“No. For years when people brought up the war, I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to know.”

“What walks like a man, talks like a man, but isn’t made like a man?”

Doc spread his hands. “Zombie? Ghoul? Vampire?”

I rubbed my forehead. “Hell.”

“On earth,” he agreed.

Mengele’s monstrosities weren’t the only beings we had to consider. Many of the legends that had come down through the ages, terror-inducing tales told around campfires in every culture, were real. Which just meant I had no idea what we were facing or any hint where to begin searching for clues.

“Finish the autopsy. Let me know if any other crucial body parts are missing. Then get going on the others.”