“Do your best. We’ll alert the Family down in Virginia to keep an eye on him. They’ll give him more forget-me juice, if he shows signs of remembering us too well.”
After they rearranged the bodies to suit their story, they loaded the still-dazed Harry in the back of MacLaren’s Cadillac, his head cradled in Olivia’s lap.
Jake handed Rosalie into the front seat and, after she smoothed her skirt around her knees, got in beside her and shut the door. He leaned around to the backseat. “Hey, Harry? How’d you like a kiss from my cousin Olivia?”
Harry’s head ached from the beating, and the need for a fix was almost crippling. He looked up woozily at the lady who was stroking his hair in the dark. He couldn’t see her well, but he knew, somehow, she was pretty.
He did like a pretty girl.
“Okay,” Harry said. Was it his imagination, or was the pain that consumed him lessening?
Olivia leaned down to him, her lips slightly parted. Harry imagined a glint of white teeth. She brushed right past his lips and went for his neck.
By the time her fangs had pierced his skin and his blood was flowing into her mouth, Harry was so overwhelmed by a sense of wellbeing and comfort, the pain and the call of the opium needle was as remote as Shangri-La. There was room for only one thought:
That’s some A1 kissing . . .
In the front seat, Vic peered into the night, navigating their way back to his car. “So the girl, the computer—Ida? She was letting her boyfriend, Eddie there, into the lab?”
“She thought Eddie was just helping her out,” Jake said. “But he was helping himself to the calculations and the information about who they were for. We were looking for some criminal mastermind, not Eddie trying to keep his junk supplier happy. MacLaren’s men, well, let’s say they didn’t just deal drugs. I’ll be surprised if they weren’t being encouraged to expand their businesses by the Nazis. The Bureau will track down the rest, shut them down, as soon as they find MacLaren’s ‘new boss.’ ”
Jake continued. “Harry couldn’t afford to reveal himself as a Fed to MacLaren’s men. He couldn’t admit to his boss that he was taking opium. So he brought me in to get the evidence, while he kept himself out of the picture.”
A voice came from the backseat, as if from a great distance. “Wow,” Harry said.
“How you doing, Harry?” Jake asked. Vic and Rosalie exchanged tense glances.
“Well, I don’t mind telling you, Jakey, I’m feeling pretty fine. But, tonight I saw a wolf-man wearing your darned hat. I saw a giant dog kill that cut-rate hood Eddie. And Olivia, well, apparently, she’s a vampire—but nothing like what you see in the movies, let me tell you! At first, I thought I was high—who knows what that lovely, wicked Sadie has been giving me?—but I hadn’t fixed. And it all seems so clear now. Like that time, up in Salem, when you—”
Time for Jake to step in. “Yes, Harry, my Family is full of werewolves and vampires, but not like in the movies. We’re the good guys.”
“Gee.” Harry sighed. “That’s swell.”
“Olivia?” Vic said quietly. “You got the mix a little off. A little rich on the truth-telling serums and light on the memory blockers.”
“Hey, it’s a complicated case,” she said, weaving a little. She was drained and giddy from the night’s work. “But I’ll take another crack at it.” She smiled blearily and regarded Harry. “C’mere, lover boy.”
A week later, Harry was back in Washington, whistling his way down Pennsylvania Avenue, his second-best suit cleaned and spruced up, a brand-new fedora cocked jauntily on the back of his head. There was a spring in his step that would have been out of place during wartime, save that everyone who saw him was suddenly filled with encouragement. Everything about his attitude shouted: We can do it!
Something had changed him in Boston. Maybe it was solving the case, maybe it was seeing his old friend, maybe it was getting hit on the head in that filthy alley, but Harry hadn’t had the urge to use since then. It was days before he even noticed. Before Boston, he would have described himself as possessed by opium.
No more of that, now. Never again.
He’d already convinced his boss, Mr. Roundtree, to keep him on the job. In a month or two, Harry’d be back on track to run his own projects. Heck, he’d win the war from this side of the Atlantic!
He was still whistling as he entered the Department of Justice. He’d be hunting and pecking his way through another night at the old Smith Corona, and his fingers would be sore and stiff from jabbing the heavy keys. But his work—with Jake’s help—had been a significant break, uncovering a major conduit for drugs and industrial-military espionage in the Northeast.
Something stopped him in his tracks. It took one minute to realize he wasn’t ill, another to wonder what the problem was. But there was no problem. It was the image of the family sitting at the cloth-covered table, joined in company, sharing food, giving praise. On the left-hand side was a large, scruffy, shepherd-like dog, his head happily uptilted to the woman serving coffee.
He had passed the murals every day, had never really taken the time to examine them. Too tied up with work and then the pursuit of the needle, he’d barely bothered to look up. He did now. Amazing.
It was the dog that caught his attention. He wasn’t much for dogs, didn’t like the way they slobbered and jumped all over you—
In the alley. In Boston. Something had attacked MacLaren’s men. Harry had been rattled, his head half-caved in, but he hadn’t been high, and he knew what he saw. A wolf, standing on two legs, wearing a suit and one damned ugly hat—
The hat had been Jake Steuben’s. He’d have recognized it anywhere.
As Harry stared at the mural, he remembered it all.
Jake had pulled a Lon Chaney in the alley, turned into a wolf-man. And Jake’s friend Olivia had bitten him in the neck, just like Dracula. Only Harry was in better shape than he had been in years, and clean, to boot.
The first thing he thought was: Oh, no. I don’t want to want to have to get high again . . .
And when he realized the idea left him with distaste, rather than that burning desire, he took a deep breath and considered. He’d done shady things to feed his addiction, seen horrors on the job. And now he realized Jake and his family were something out of a Saturday matinée.
But he’d trusted Jake with his life on more than one occasion. And Jake had always come through. Olivia had taken the most terrible burden from him, given him his life back.
Jake and his family were the good guys. They were patriotic, and discreet, too. Had to be.
Harry decided that there was nothing monstrous about them. He was eternally grateful to them.
It took him a while to find out the name of the mural—Society Freed Through Justice, by George Biddle. It stuck him as particularly appropriate. He wondered why the artist had included the dog. Wondered how many more—Fangborn?—there might be out there.
Harry thought long and hard. If Jake and his family could defeat MacLaren, and save a lost cause like Harry, imagine what they could do with a little help from the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . .
He made an appointment to discuss the matter with Mr. Roundtree. He had a feeling that after hearing what they could do, these Fangborn would suit his boss down to the ground.
Whether writing noir, historical fiction, urban fantasy, thriller, or traditional mystery, Dana Cameron draws from her expertise in archaeology. Her fiction, including stories featuring the Fangborn—who were introduced in “The Night Things Changed”—has won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards as well as earning an Edgar Award nomination. The first of three novels set in the Fangborn universe, Seven Kinds of Hell, was published earlier this year by 47North. Dana lives in Massachusetts with her husband and benevolent feline overlords.