“Uh, no.”
“Of course not, no one reads anymore. Paradise Lost is Milton’s great epic poem about the war in heaven, the rebellion of the angels, the fall of Lucifer, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. As an aside, some people believe this was the time when vampires and lycanthropes came into existence—Satan’s mockery of God’s greatest creation. Whatever. At any rate, in the first few chapters, Satan is the hero. He speaks long monologues what he’s thinking, his soul-searching. He’s debating about whether or not to take revenge on God for exiling him from heaven. After reading this for a while, you realize that Satan’s greatest sin, his greatest mistake, wasn’t pride or rebelling against God. His greatest mistake was believing that God would not forgive him if he asked for forgiveness. His sin wasn’t just pride—it was self-pity. I think in some ways every single person, human, vampire, whatever, has a choice to make: to be full of rage about what happens to you or to reconcile with it, to strive for the most honorable existence you can despite the odds. Do you believe in a God who understands and forgives or one who doesn’t? What it comes down to is, this is between you and God,
and you’ll have to work that out for yourself.”
“That—that sounds okay. Thanks. Thanks for talking to me.”
“You’re welcome.”
At 4:00 A.M., the next shift came on. I didn’t go straight home and to bed, even though I was shaking. All the talking had taken a lot out of me. After a late shift I always met T.J. for coffee at the diner down the street. He’d be waiting for me.
He wasn’t, but I ordered coffee and when it arrived, so did he. Slouching in an army surplus coat, glancing around to take note of every person in the place, he didn’t look at me until he slid into the booth.
“Hey, Kitty.” He flagged the waitress for a cup of coffee. The sky outside was gray, paling with the sunrise. “How’d your shift go?”
“You didn’t listen to it?” I tried not to sound disappointed, but I’d been hoping to talk to him about it.
“No, sorry. I was out.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep, quiet breath. Grease, cigarette smoke, bad breath, and tired nerves. My senses took it all in, every little odor. But strongest, right across the booth from me, was the earthy smell of forest, damp night air, and fur. The faintest touch of blood set my hair on end.
“You went running. You turned wolf,” I said, frowning. He looked away, ducking his gaze. “Geez, if you keep doing that, you’re going to lose it completely—”
“I know, I know. I’m halfway there already. I just—it feels so good.” His look grew distant, vacant. Part of him was still in that forest, running wild in the body of his wolf.
The only time we had to Change was on full moon nights. But we could Change whenever we wanted. Some did as often as they could, all the time. And the more they did, the less human they became. They went in packs even as people, living together, shape-shifting and hunting together, cutting all ties to the human world. The more they Changed, the harder it was not to.
“Come with me next time. Tomorrow.”
“Full moon’s not for another week,” I said. “I’m trying my damnedest to keep it together. I like being human.”
He looked away, tapping his fork on the table. “You really aren’t cut out for this life, you know.”
“I do okay.”
That was me patting myself on the back for not going stark raving mad these last couple of years, since the attack that changed me. Or not getting myself ripped limb from limb by other werewolves who saw a cute young thing like me as easy prey. All that, and I maintained a semblance of normal human life as well.
Not much of a human life, all things considered. I had a rapidly aging bachelor’s degree from CU, a run-down studio apartment, a two-bit DJ gig that barely paid rent, and no prospects. Sometimes, running off to the woods and never coming back sounded pretty good.
Three months ago, I missed my mother’s birthday party because it fell on the night of the full moon. I couldn’t be there, smiling and sociable in my folks’ suburban home in Aurora while the wolf part of me was on the verge of tearing herself free, gnawing through the last fringes of my self-control. I made some excuse, and Mom said she understood. But it showed so clearly how, in an argument between the two halves, the wolf usually won. Since then, maintaining enthusiasm for the human life had been difficult. Useless, even. I slept through the day, worked nights, and thought more and more about those times I ran in the forest as a wolf, with the rest of the pack surrounding me. I was on the verge of trading one family for the other.
I went home, slept, and rolled back to KNOB toward evening. Ozzie, the station manager, an aging hippie type who wore his thinning hair in a ponytail, handed me a stack of papers. Phone messages, every one of them.
“What’s this?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing. What the hell happened on your shift last night? We’ve been getting calls all day. The line was busy all night. And the messages—six people claiming to be vampires, two say they’re werewolves, and one wants to know if you can recommend a good exorcist.”
“Really?” I said, sorting through the messages.
“Yeah. Really. But what I really want to know—” He paused, and I wondered how much trouble I was in. I was supposed to run a late-night variety music format, the kind of show where Velvet Underground followed Ella Fitzgerald. Thinking back on it, I’d talked the entire time, hadn’t I? I’d turned it into a talk show. I was going to lose my job, and I didn’t think I’d have the initiative to get another one. I could run to the woods and let the Wolf take over.
Then Ozzie said, “Whatever you did last night—can you do it again?”
Chapter 2
The second episode of the show that came to be called The Midnight Hour (I would always consider that first surprising night to be the first episode) aired a week later. That gave me time to do some research. I dug up half a dozen articles published in second-string medical journals and one surprisingly high-level government research project, a kind of medical Project Blue Book. It was a study on “paranatural biology” sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers attempted to document empirical evidence of the existence of creatures such as vampires, lycanthropes, etcetera. They more than attempted it—they did document it: photos, charts, case histories, statistics. They concluded that these phenomena were not widespread enough to warrant government attention.
The documentation didn’t surprise me—there wasn’t anything there I hadn’t seen before, in one form or another. It surprised me that anyone from the supernatural underworld would have participated in such a study. Where had they gotten test subjects? The study didn’t say much about those subjects, seemingly regarding them in the same way one would disposable lab rats. This raised a whole other set of issues, which gave me lots to talk about.