The Dragon Done It (8 page)

Her eyes had glazed a little and she looked ready to cry again. I felt bad, like I was rubbing her nose in it, but if I was going to help her . . .

Was
I going to help her? Sweet mother of mercy!

"Am I right?" I repeated.

"Huh? Oh, yes. On the button."

"So, tell me where you found the dog."

She drew the back of her hand across her mouth, sat up and stared into at the rain. "At the pound," she said. "I picked the one that looked most like a wolf—German shepherd it said on the cage. I told the superintendent I was going to give it a good home, then I brought it here."

"Did you know what would happen when you put the hat on it?"

"No. I was guessing. Luckily for me I guessed right."

"Not so lucky for the German shepherd."

"The hat turned him into a wereman."

"Most dangerous werebeast of all. So it's said."

"I did it in the alley that runs down the side of your office. Once the transformation was complete, it was easy enough to herd the wretched creature into your doorway and . . . and . . ."

"And shoot it in cold blood at point-blank range."

She buried her face in her hands. "It was just a dog," she sobbed.

"Not a werewolf at all," I mused, "but a wereman. An Alsatian in a
lycanthropia
hat. Now I've seen it all. All you need to tell me now is why."

"I told you, I was desperate. If I go back to the Titans they'll turn me into something horrible and I'll never get back in one piece. If I try to run they'll track me down and kill me anyway. You don't know what those Titans are like."

I stopped rubbing her shoulders for a moment. An old scar on the back of my hand throbbed suddenly.
Remember me
, it seemed to be saying.

"Oh yes," I muttered, "oh yes I do."

"You do?" she looked at me curiously.

"Another story," I said. "Another time. You were telling me why you shot the dog."

"So you could get me put away," she said. Then she added, "Could you rub my shoulders again? It feels kind of nice."

Dumbstruck, I obliged.

"You?" I said when I could speak again. "The woman who framed her own husband to avoid the clink . . . and now you're framing yourself!"

"It was the hat that gave me the idea. I sat there staring at it, just like you said, when the idea came to me. If I could commit what looked like a murder on the doorstep of someone I could trust, I could get myself into safe custody before the Titans even got a sniff of what was going on. Nobody can touch you once they put you in Wulan Pen, not even the Titans. But only a murder would guarantee me a life sentence. I could never kill anyone, not for real, and that's when I thought up the trick with the dog."

"And when the dead body turned back into what looked like a wolf, everyone would assume you'd killed a shapeshifter. Even me. Making it, in the eyes of the law, first degree murder."

"I really thought you'd believe the blackmail story," she said sulkily. "The whole thing would have worked if you hadn't been so damned keen on following up the clues."

I adopted my best hurt expression.

"Ma'am," I said, "it's what I do."

Pressing herself into my embrace, she said softly, "Now you know the truth. So what are you going to do? Take me back to the Titans? Or turn me over to the cops?"

Her eyes flashed, once, twice, and my heart did the high-wire thing again. Then, so help me, I said, "Hold tight, lady. I got a better idea."

We stood beside the dancing railroad tracks: me, the dame and three Titans. Winter wind howled into our flesh. Lightning flashed above us, beneath us, inside our heads. In the far, far distance, a familiar smear of light came galloping out of the gloom.

The great lobster shape of the Search Engine crashed to a halt just inches from our faces, spilling its load of noxious gases and lubricants into the noisome filth of its wake. Even the Titans had the good grace to look impressed.

Something like a head emerged from the cab. Following it out, moving with sidewinder speed, came something like a body. This time, instead of inviting us up, the driver was coming down.

We backed away. Even the Titans backed away. We had to, to give the driver room to stand.

The Titans, I noticed, had dipped their massive, horned heads in respect.

"Which one of you's brought it?" said the driver, with something like anticipation.

The dame took one step forward and handed it over. When she stepped back, I slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close.

"Don't worry," I whispered in her ear. "It'll all work out."

Raising something like an arm, the driver put on the hat.

We sat in my office: me, the dame and the two remaining Titans.

"I'd offer you coffee," I said, "only the machine's busted."

Hyperion, the bigger of the two, waved away the offer with one gargantuan hand.

"Who'd have thought it?" he rumbled in a voice like boulders in a tumble-dryer.

"Ah well," drawled Oceanus. "We lost a bet. So what?"

"We lost Iapetos, is what we did. We shouldn't have bet him."

"He was noisy. You never liked him."

"Yah."

Then Hyperion turned to me and said, "We got you to thank for showing us that place, buddy."

"Interesting place," Oceanus put in.

"Sure enough. Strange fellow though, that driver. Who'd have thought he'd turn into something with so many teeth?"

"Yah. Poor Iapetos."

"Who'd have thought it?" I agreed. "So you didn't mind my, er, client making the substitution? Not putting the hat on herself."

"Nah," said Oceanus, picking a piece of driftwood from between his teeth. "It can get pretty dull, you know, being a Titan. Everything's smaller than you are. Even most worlds."

"Especially most worlds," put in Hyperion.

"Yah. And it isn't every day we get to see a place we've never seen before."

"Especially one that's bigger than we are."

"And that driver."

"One weird character."

"Yah. And just a little . . . would you say . . . ?"

"Scary?" I put in.

"Yah. Scary. We don't get scared much."

They sat silent for a minute or two, considering fear with eyes like turning worlds.

"So," I said, "my client's debt?"

"All paid," said Hyperion, swiping that mighty hand again. "No bother. You guys, you did something today nobody's done for a long time."

"An eon," put in Oceanus.

"An eon," Hyperion agreed.

The dame pressed some of my favorite parts of her body close to me. I relaxed back in the chair and said, "What did we do?"

"You surprised us."

"It's a long time since I surprised a god," I said when the Titans had left.

"They aren't gods," said the dame.

"Next best thing," I replied. I pointed to the footmarks on the carpet. "The size they are, they might as well be."

"You know, that's always puzzled me. They must be, what, a thousand miles high? But they always manage to fit in an ordinary room. How do they do that?"

"Search me," I said. "I still don't know how we got them inside that filing cabinet. I never folded a Titan before."

We both stared at the cabinet.

"Is the world inside that top drawer bigger than this one?" she asked.

"Bigger than all of them put together," I said. "At least, that's what the guy in the market said when he sold it to me. I've only been inside it three times now but, from what I've seen so far, I think he may be right."

"It impressed the hell out of the Titans."

"That was the idea."

"What about the one who, um, stayed behind? What do you think will happen to him?"

"Iapetos? Search me. I'm just glad I got him down there in the first place. I promised the driver I would, you see. That was the ticket price we agreed on, you see, when I was down there hunting werewolves. That was the fare: one Titan."

"What does the Search Engine driver want with a Titan? Especially one in so many pieces."

"Who knows? Maybe they burn well."

Slithering off my lap, she danced across the office. The Titans had been good enough to clear away both the corpse of the poor Alsatian and the mess it left behind, so she had room to pirouette. She'd taken off the sweater and hung it over the stove to dry, which improved the view no end.

"You knew all along, didn't you?" she said, reaching a breathless halt. "All that time you were just keeping me talking and watching me dig myself deeper and deeper."

Enjoying the sight of her chest rising and falling, I nodded.

"I didn't work it out all at once," I said. "The information I gathered at Lycanthropia Terminus just confirmed the hunch I got when I worked out what that pooch had really said while it was dying on the carpet."

"And what was that?"

"When the poor critter turned into a man, it absorbed just enough human vocabulary to ask for help; of course, being a German shepherd, it came out as
hilfe
. After that, I thought it said
knock
."

"Knock?"

"Yeah. Only I think what it was really trying to say
Knochen
."

"What does that mean?"

"Brush up your German, sweetheart. It means
bone
. The poor mutt was just looking for his lunch."

"You're so clever, my own little poor mutt. Have you got a bone?"

"Why don't you come over here and find out for yourself?"

She came over and, funny, all that German went right out of my head. Like I said:
femme
, yes;
fatale
, most definitely. Ooh la la.

"Ow! Vicki, be careful!"

"Sorry. Sometimes I forget how sharp they are."

"Terrific." He wove his fingers through her hair and pulled just hard enough to make his point. "Don't."

"Don't what?" She grinned up at him, teeth gleaming ivory in the moonlight spilling across the bed. "Don't forget or don't—"

The sudden demand of the telephone for attention buried the last of her question.

Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci sighed. "Hold that thought," he said, rolled over, and reached for the phone. "Celluci."

"Fifty-two division just called. They've found a body down at Richmond and Peter they think we might want to have a look at."

"Dave, it's . . ." He squinted at the clock. ". . . one twenty-nine in the a.m. and I'm off duty."

On the other end of the line, his partner, theoretically off duty as well, refused to take the hint. "Ask me who the stiff is?"

Celluci sighed again. "Who's the stiff?"

"Mac Eisler."

"Shit."

"Funny, that's exactly what I said." Nothing in Dave Graham's voice indicated he appreciated the joke. "I'll be there in ten."

"Make it fifteen."

"You in the middle of something?"

Celluci watched as Vicki sat up and glared at him. "I was."

"Welcome to the wonderful world of law enforcement."

Vicki's hand shot out and caught Celluci's wrist before he could heave the phone across the room. "Who's Mac Eisler?" she asked as, scowling, he dropped the receiver back in its cradle and swung his legs off the bed.

"You heard that?"

"I can hear the beating of your heart, the movement of your blood, the song of your life." She scratched the back of her leg with one bare foot. "I should think I can overhear a lousy phone conversation."

"Eisler's a pimp." Celluci reached for the light switch, changed his mind, and began pulling on his clothes. Given the full moon riding just outside the window, it wasn't exactly dark and given Vicki's sensitivity to bright light, not to mention her temper, he figured it was safer to cope. "We're pretty sure he offed one of his girls a couple weeks ago."

Vicki scooped her shirt up off the floor. "Irene Macdonald?"

"What? You overheard that too?"

"I get around. How sure's pretty sure?"

"Personally positive. But we had nothing solid to hold him on."

"And now he's dead." Skimming her jeans up over her hips, she dipped her brows in a parody of deep thought. "Golly, I wonder if there's a connection."

"Golly yourself," Celluci snarled. "You're not coming with me."

"Did I ask?"

"I recognized the tone of voice. I know you, Vicki. I knew you when you were a cop, I knew you when you were a P.I. and I don't care how much you've changed physically, I know you now you're a . . . a . . ."

"Vampire." Her pale eyes seemed more silver than grey. "You can say it, Mike. It won't hurt my feelings. Bloodsucker. Nightwalker. Creature of Darkness."

"Pain in the butt." Carefully avoiding her gaze, he shrugged into his shoulder holster and slipped a jacket on over it. "This is police business, Vicki, stay out of it. Please." He didn't wait for a response but crossed the shadows to the bedroom door. Then he paused, one foot over the threshold. "I doubt I'll be back by dawn. Don't wait up."

Vicki Nelson, ex of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force, ex private investigator, recent vampire, decided to let him go. If he could joke about the change, he accepted it. And besides, it was always more fun to make him pay for smart-ass remarks when he least expected it.

She watched from the darkness as Celluci climbed into Dave Graham's car. Then, with the taillights disappearing in the distance, she dug out his spare set of car keys and proceeded to leave tangled entrails of the Highway Traffic Act strewn from Downsview to the heart of Toronto.

It took no supernatural ability to find the scene of the crime. What with the police, the press, and the morbidly curious, the area seethed with people. Vicki slipped past the constable stationed at the far end of the alley and followed the paths of shadow until she stood just outside the circle of police around the body.

Mac Eisler had been a somewhat attractive, not very tall, white male Caucasian. Eschewing the traditional clothing excesses of his profession, he was dressed simply in designer jeans and an olive-green raw silk jacket. At the moment, he wasn't looking his best. A pair of rusty nails had been shoved through each manicured hand, securing his body upright across the back entrance of a trendy restaurant. Although the pointed toes of his tooled leather cowboy boots indented the wood of the door, Eisler's head had been turned completely around so that he stared, in apparent astonishment, out into the alley.