John Levitt - Unleashed

As soon as we got home, I opened the trunk where I kept the rest of the stones and pulled out five of them. The minute Lou saw what I was doing, he jumped up in Sherwood’s lap and turned his back on me. He did not approve of those things. He was probably right.

I stuffed four of them into a pocket and held on to the fifth. Poor Lou. He thought he was showing disapproval by jumping up on Sherwood, but it was exactly where I wanted him to be.

“Concentrate on the Wendigo,” I told her.

I let out a pulse of talent, directing it though the rune stone. Then I bent it and sent the enhanced energy through Lou, who sneezed violently as it coursed through him, then through Sherwood and back through Lou, creating a feedback loop. Sherwood straightened up suddenly, almost throwing Lou off onto the floor.

“I’ll be damned,” she said. “It worked. I can feel him.”

“Can you tell where he is?”

“No, not exactly, but I’ll bet I can find him. It’s like a heat source in a cold room-diffuse, but you can tell what direction it’s coming from. And he’s fairly close by. I can tell that much. Somewhere south, I’d say.”

“Great,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we let Victor and Eli know?”

“We don’t need to. We’re not going to be doing anything. We’re just going to talk to him.”

Sherwood got that I didn’t want to involve the two of them, although she didn’t know why. The old Sherwood would never have let that pass, but now she just shrugged her acceptance. But when she stood up and Lou hopped off her lap, she stopped.

“It’s gone,” she said.

“Pick Lou up.” Lou submitted with good grace, although of course he didn’t care for it.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s back. I’ve got to be holding Lou for it to work. Good thing he’s not a Great Dane.”

We climbed into my van, Sherwood in the passenger seat and Lou in her lap. She directed me with hotter and colder, like the children’s game. Finally she got a handle on it; west on Cesar Chavez, then south on San Jose, winding through the city. We passed Geneva, then a couple of blocks later, Sherwood said, “Go back. We passed him.” At the corner of Niagara Street I stopped and looked around. Nothing seemed promising-no parks, no wooded area, just the usual collection of houses, and a Muni yard down the block.

“There,” she said, pointing over to the right. “Somewhere there.”

I could barely see a long low building painted a sickly green, half hidden by some trees. It clicked suddenly and I knew where we were.

“That’s Bluestone Studios over there,” I said. “A couple of floors, lots of little rooms for bands and artists-forty or fifty, as I remember. I was here about five years ago, checking out a friend’s band. What the hell would the Wendigo be doing here?”

“Maybe he likes music,” Sherwood said.

“Or musicians. I’m still not sold on his being harmless.” We got out of the car and walked over toward the building. Sherwood was carrying Lou, who had given up squirming.

“He’s definitely inside,” Sherwood said as we approached the building. The entry door was propped open with a metal folding chair, and musicians carrying instruments were passing in and out.

We walked in and down a long hallway, listening to the muffled sounds of guitars, keyboards, and drums, all behind closed doors. From the hallway, all the sounds blended together like some enormous modern performance piece.

When the corridor crossed another hallway, Sherwood turned left without hesitation, passed a few more doors, and stopped in front of a door painted a bright red. She put Lou down and gestured at the door.

From behind it came the sound of a highly distorted guitar running fast scales and a drummer doing speed rolls. I knocked on the door, loudly enough to be sure I would be heard over the instruments.

The room went instantly silent. We waited a moment, but there was no sound of movement from inside. Sherwood looked at the door, then back at me.

“What’s that about?” she whispered. The silence from behind the door was contagious, as if we had been caught doing something illegal just by knocking at the door.

I shrugged and knocked again, and now that the room was silent, it sounded twice as loud. There was the suggestion of movement inside, then the door opened a crack. I could just see a young stocky guy whose face showed a pitiful attempt at a beard. The faint sweet whiff of high-quality dope wafted out past him.

“Yeah?” he said, suspiciously.

I put my foot over the doorjamb in the best PI movie fashion so he couldn’t slam the door on us. On second thought, he still could, and if the door was heavy enough, it would probably break my foot. I withdrew it as unobtrusively as I could.

“We’re looking for a friend,” I said.

“Who?”

Good question. He saw me hesitate and the suspicion on his face deepened into paranoia.

“Are you guys cops?” he said. Sherwood laughed.

“Are you serious?”

“Hell, yes. If you’re cops, you gotta say so. If I ask you directly, you have to tell me the truth. That’s the law.”

An enduring urban legend. Generations of brain-dead dope dealers believe this as a matter of faith. It never occurs to them that if it were true, there would never be such a thing as a successful undercover operation. But it was a useful misapprehension-for the cops.

“Dude,” I said. “Do we look like cops?”

“Yeah, sorta.” Fair enough. We were cops, sorta, when you came right down to it.

“No way,” I said. I pointed down at Lou. “Does he look like a police dog to you?”

Lou got tired of this exchange and wriggled his way through the opening, squeezing past the attempt to block him. The guy turned and stepped back, unwilling to let a strange dog in, unwilling to step away from the door to get Lou, but also unwilling to close the door and trap Lou inside. Stoned as he was, he still realized that would not go over well. I took the opportunity to push the door all the way open and step inside.

A huge drum kit filled up one corner of the room, with three different toms and seven or eight cymbals. Sitting behind it was a familiar curly-headed fellow, wearing forest green. I thought for a second the guy at the door was going to tackle me, but the Wendigo sighed and said, “It’s okay, Zack; they’re friends of mine.” He eased out from behind the kit and walked over to us.

“Give us a moment, would you, Zack? We’ve got some business to discuss. Get me a soda, will you?”

Zack nodded knowingly. Private “business” was something he could understand.

“This is a surprise,” the Wendigo said.

“Yeah, we’re full of surprises. I didn’t expect to find you behind a drum kit, for that matter.”

“Music is my life. Or I hope it will be.”

He looked strong and healthy, bursting with energy. Those stones must have pumped him up considerably.

“Why didn’t you tell us we were looking for a shape-shifter?” I asked.

“So you finally figured it out. Who was I to spoil the surprise? I wasn’t that happy with you guys in the first place, if you’ll remember.”

“And in the meantime, a friend of mine nearly died.” A look of concern crossed his face, but I couldn’t tell if it was real or not.

“Sorry to hear that,” he said. “But telling you what it was wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run. She’s pretty focused once she sets her sights on someone.”

“She?”

“You assume all monsters are male? Kind of sexist, don’t you think?”

“Whatever. How do I find her?”

“Again, assuming I knew, why should I tell you?” I pulled the four green stones out of my pocket.