Page 3 of Reaper
“Have you ever thought about driving around in something a little less ‘I’m a federal agent’?”I asked.“Besides, this thing has to get absolutely shit gas mileage.”
“The car came with the badge, and I don’t have to pay for maintenance, so I’m pretty good to look like a fed.Also, Iama federal agent, and with the engines we’ve got in our fleet, I get sixty miles to the gallon, so gas isn’t really an issue.”
“Wait, what?”I asked, sliding into the passenger seat.“Are you telling me you’ve got a magic motor in your Suburban?”
“I’m not telling you anything other than it gets better gas mileage than your Honda.You don’t have clearance to know the details,” Becks said, cranking the SUV.I noticed it did run a lot quieter than most enormous parking spot hogs.
We rode over to Southend for lunch at Phat Burrito, a locally owned joint that made burritos the size of my head.I got a Dos Equis to go with it, and Becks gave me a dirty look.“We’re on the clock.”
“I’m a wizard,” I replied.“It’s literally impossible for me to get drunk off one beer, and I really like Dos Equis.”
“And as an independent contractor, I guess I don’t get to tell you how to do your job, just what job I want done and when I need results by,” she said.“But as your fiancée, please stop making me look bad by drinking on the job.”
“Okay,” I said, walking up to the counter and getting a soda.I finished my beer first, but I did switch to Coke.I figured that had to count for something, especially since I picked up our burritos while I was there.“So now what?”I asked, unwrapping the hunk of tortilla, beans, cheese, rice, chicken, guacamole, and salsa bigger than my forearm.
“Now I watch you try to eat that without wearing it,” Becks said.She’d opted for a more fashion-safe, yet cowardly, burrito bowl.“Then I go to the office and look for similar cases in the surrounding towns while you go home and do some kind of divination spell to see what the hell that necklace is.”
“And by ‘divination spell,’ you mean look it up on Google,” I said, a little bit of cheese dribbling onto my chin.
“Magic takes many forms, Harker.You recognized that thing, even though you have no idea from where.”
“Maybe Luke will know when he wakes up.”
“Don’t try to rouse him early, you know his attack cat is very protective.”She wasn’t joking.Nameless was supposed to be my cat, but more and more he seemed like my uncle’s familiar.It wasn’t fair.I’m the guy who actually casts spells.If anyone should have a familiar, it’s me.But cat’s gonna cat, and I know better than to try to force affection on a creature with tiny daggers strapped to the end of every finger.If you ever want to know if someone understands the concept of consent, ask if they have cats.They’ll teach you about not touching anything that doesn’t want to be touched, andfast.
“There might be something in one of Luke’s books that will jog my memory,” I said.“Maybe I’ll put in a call to a local Alpha I used to drink with back before you made me all respectable.If there’s something going after the local shifter populace, I bet he knows about it.”
“Respectable?”Becks scoffed.“I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”
I chuckled and shoved more burrito in my mouth, trying to come up with a good way to approach a werewolf who threatened to rip my arm off and beat me with it the last time we met.
3
Didn’t I tell you I was gonna rip your head off and shit down your neck if I ever saw you again, Harker?”
“I’m pretty sure you said you were going to rip my arm off and beat me to death with it, Saint,” I replied, hoping I looked a lot more relaxed than I felt.
I wasn’t relaxed, not at all.I didn’t think Saint could kill me, but I definitely didn’t put it past him to make a hell of an effort.If you asked somebody to draw their prototypical werewolf in human form, Jason St.Laurent would probably be how most people saw it.He was taller than me, and I’m a few inches over six foot.He was broad across the shoulders and thickly muscled, with wavy dark hair and a grizzled beard.If it sounds a lot like I’m describing Joe Manganella fromTrue Blood, it wouldn’t be the first time someone has drawn that parallel.Not me, though.Not more than once.Saint backhanded me right off my barstool the first and last time I made the comparison.
Saint was ostensibly the leader of a motorcycle club called the Caswell Howlers, a social club with a headquarters staggering distance from Presbyterian Hospital.I guess he really was the leader of the Howlers, but the Howlers were also his pack.Shifters, all of them, and I don’t mean transmissions.Most of his pack were wolves, but there were a few bears, jackals, panthers, and at least one red-tailed hawk named Cindy.
Cindy was the reason Saint threatened my life.Not because I slept with her, although I did.But because I wasn’t a lycanthrope and I slept with her.Why that all fell on me, I didn’t know, but I’ve learned that it’s better not to ask too many questions when somebody wants to murder me over a sexual encounter.And yes, it’s happened often enough that I have rules for that sort of thing.Cindy and I had a fling a little more than a decade ago, and Saint informed me that I was under no circumstances to see her, speak with her, and certainly not screw her again.
Being a sober individual known for my good judgement and skills at conflict avoidance, I did all three.Did I mention Cindy is also Saint’s niece?So I knew when I walked into the clubhouse that I was taking my life, and my arm, into my hands.But the full moon was a couple weeks away, so at least Saint wasn’t going to be moon-crazy when he tried to murder me.
“You making jokes now, Harker?”Saint demanded, stepping out from behind the bar with a baseball bat in his right hand.I guess he had thought better of beating me to death with my own arm.
“I remember you used to think I was pretty amusing,” I said with my best “let’s not ruin your floor with a lot of blood and brain matter” smile.
“That was before you banged my niece then disappeared on her.”It’s really hard for humans to actually speak in a growl.The best most people can manage is a Clint Eastwood rasp.But Saint, he had the growl down pat.It was a rumble that sounded like it originated somewhere around his kneecaps and rattled around his entire intestinal tract before bubbling out of his mouth, coated in a thick layer of threat.
“For the record, you were responsible for the disappearance,” I said.“You told me to get lost and stay lost.So I did.”
“Except now I’m looking at you in the middle of my clubhouse.”Two steps forward and he was officially looming over me.
I don’t like being loomed at.It makes me feel short, and I don’t like feeling short.I also don’t intimidate easily.Something about staring Lucifer in the eye and basically telling him to go fuck himself makes it a lot harder for mere mortals to scare me.I decided it was time to stop playing at being Quincy Harker, nice guy who doesn’t want to get in a fight, and time to be someone a little more true to myself.
Time to remind Saint that when demons and monsters whisper stories about me they don’t call me Q, or Harker, or even Quincy.No, the monster under the monsters’ beds is only called by one name.
