Bad Moon Rising (Pine Deep 3)

Chapter 28

1

The bottle of Scotch was half empty. Ferro got up and walked over to the couch and stared hard at Crow.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why what, Frank?”

Ferro’s hand snaked out and took a fistful of Crow’s shirt and pulled him roughly to his feet. He was six inches taller than Crow and his face was filled with fury. “Why did you bring us into this…this…?”

Crow began to say something but Val stood and put her hand on Ferro’s wrist. “No, Frank,” she said. His eyes snapped toward her and they seemed to generate heat. Val raised her other hand and put her palm on his cheek. “No. ”

Ferro’s eyes went moist. He let go of Crow and stepped back.

Val said, “We brought you in because we’re scared and we’re desperate and we didn’t know where else to turn. You and Vince are outsiders, which means we can trust you. We can’t say as much for the police here. Gus is a fool and Polk…well, there’s a possibility that Polk is involved. ”

“It was wrong of you to call us,” Ferro insisted, but his voice lacked conviction.

“I won’t apologize, Frank,” Val said. “I’ve lost too many of the people I love to want to play it coy. I’ll do anything I have to do in order to stop this. Anything. ”

Ferro tried to hold her gaze, tried to win the contest, but there was just no way. His eyes dropped and he turned away, swatting at the air as if he could put the whole thing behind him.

Crow cleared his throat. “We have other help on this. ” He told them about Jonatha Corbiel and filled them in on all of the information she’d dug up. “She’s doing the deep research for us, her and that reporter, Newton. Maybe she’ll come up with something. ”

“Frank…Vince,” Val said, “sit down. We have to tell you all of it now. From the very beginning. ”

Their faces registered the horror that each of them felt at the thought that there was more, but Val was implacable. She waited them out and they did sit down. Then she and Crow told them about Griswold and what they believed he was; about the Bone Man; about everything they knew and believed. Weinstock brewed a pot of coffee and everyone had a cup. When they were about three-quarters through the story Newton and Jonatha joined them, crowding the office. The detectives’ greeting was less than cordial.

“This is like a plague,” Crow said. “And the plague started with a single vampire. The main vampire. ”

“In folklore the paradigm is known as the ‘vampire over-lord,’” Jonatha said.

“This is getting out of hand,” growled LaMastra. Anger was replacing shock by slow degrees. “Vampires, werewolves, and ghosts?”

Ferro held up a hand. “There’s something wrong with your theory about this, Crow. All the stories about werewolves I ever heard of say that whoever gets bitten by one becomes one. So why didn’t the mayor ever turn into a werewolf after all this time?”

Jonatha fielded that one. “There is very little in the folklore that suggests that the bloodline of a werewolf follows through victims of their bite. That’s a fictional device. Like vampires, werewolfism is something that manifests based on a person’s nature. An evil, twisted person can become a werewolf. Unlike a vampire, though, this can happen while the person is still alive. ”

“So, Mayor Wolfe—and excuse me if I don’t think that his name is just too goddamn bizarre—is not in danger of becoming a werewolf?”

“I didn’t say that. Actually, we don’t know. From what Crow and Val said, he was going through a terrible psychological breakdown, including intense dreams about becoming a monster. ”

“Shit,” Crow said.

“So if he does carry the curse—or infection, to use Val’s word—then his own good nature has probably been at war with the werewolf nature all these years. ”

“That’s why he tried to kill himself,” Val said, her eyes going wide. “My God…he thought he was losing the struggle. He tried to kill himself to save Sarah. ”

Weinstock covered his mouth with his hands. “Dear God. ”

“On the other hand,” Jonatha said, “there is evidence in the folklore to support the theory that a werewolf is not inherently evil. Take the case of the Benendanti of Italy. They are ancient families who claimed that they became werewolves at night and descended into Hell to fight vampires and other monsters. Some were put on trial by the Inquisition, and there’s at least one case where a Benendanti was acquitted because the inquisitors could not prove—either through evidence or coercion—that the werewolf was not a servant of God. ”

“I read about them in a couple of books,” Crow said. “The name means…”

“‘Good walker,’” Jonatha said. “Though their nicknames are ‘The Hounds of God. ’”

“You think that’s what Terry was?” Val asked.