Lyn Benedict - Gods & Monsters

She must have made a face, because Caridad mirrored it. “So the source is dubious. The report is real. I’ve got the police reports to back it up—”

Sylvie waved a hand irritably. Bad enough she was caving to this nonsense; the least Cachita could do was let her listen in peace. The perky newscaster, some pleasing mixture of black and Latina, leaned forward, pasted a serious expression on her wide-eyed face, and said, “Local patrons of a favorite restaurant claim to have seen a monster coming to dinner. . . .”

Stripped of the mindless banter between anchors, the story was simple, the start of a joke. A man walks into a bar and turns into a monster.

It could have been a joke, but the punch line was bloody. Whatever had happened after that—and the anchors weren’t sure, parroted comments about knives and shattering glass—seven people went to the hospital to have their wounds stitched.

The anchors made inane comments about gang initiations, quoting urban legends about car headlights and homicidal quotas as if they were fact, and Sylvie turned them off. She was thinking about timing.

The police had disturbed the bodies in the swamp on the same night the man pulled his “stunt” in the restaurant. The women had changed shape. So had he.

A thin connection, maybe even no connection. There were werewolves who made their home in the city, and there was nothing to say that one of them hadn’t simply had a temper tantrum. But it was worth checking out.

Caridad smiled, toothy with victory. “I told you.”

“Smug isn’t a good look on you,” Sylvie said.

“I’ve got an appointment to talk to the staff in an hour. You could come.”

Sylvie looked at Wales. “Symbology?”

“Go,” Alex said. “I can help him.” She put a last glide of aloe gel across his cheekbone and smiled.

Wales hesitated, slipping a few more inches between him and Alex, but finally nodded.

With that less than ringing endorsement, Sylvie followed Cachita out into the evening.

IT WASN’T A LONG DRIVE, NOR AS UNPLEASANT AS SYLVIE HAD feared. With only Sylvie as her audience, a willing one at that, Cachita stopped being so fiercely cheerful. She tuned the radio to a Latin station, all dance beats, drummed along on the steering wheel, and said nothing at all.

Her face in repose was oddly stern. For the first time, Sylvie found herself considering the woman seriously as something other than an ambitious reporter willing to step outside the bounds of the norm in search of a story to call her own.

The restaurant light was turned off, the lot blocked with a sawhorse. Cachita pulled up; Sylvie hopped out, canted it aside, and let Cachita drive past.

She followed on foot, approaching the restaurant slowly. Whatever had happened had broken out at least one of the front windows. A series of plywood sheets was nailed over it.

Sylvie dropped her gaze. The lot was asphalt, sun-baked, the lines worn, and overlaid by tread marks. Nothing animal would have left tracks. There was no real greenery around. To the right of the restaurant, down Aragon Ave, palms studded the sidewalk, and small planters sprouted trees and flowering bushes. To the left, down Merrick, there was a green space shoehorned in between a shopping center’s parking lot and the Casa de Dia’s.

Then again, if it had been a shape-shifter, presumably he’d had a car parked somewhere near.

Cachita paused in the doorway, briefcase dangling from her hand. “See something?”

“Just getting a feel for the area,” Sylvie said. She’d hoped for a paw print, cheesy as it seemed. Lio said Maria turned into a bear. A bear print would be a better link than a wolf print.

She spun once more, slowly, looking for security cameras. She didn’t expect to find one, and she didn’t. If there had been cameras, the cops would have had the tapes, then the ISI would have stepped in, and they’d have the restaurant under wraps.

Inside Casa de Dia, the promise made by shattered glass was fulfilled. The restaurant wasn’t quite in shambles, but it was close. A young man in an apron was steadily sweeping up shattered dishes; another was following his smeary path with a mop. Several tables listed to one side, courtesy of broken legs, and a pile of damaged chairs made a strange tangle.

Cachita set down her briefcase on one of the remaining tables and beelined in on the older woman staring over the mess. Her hair was tied back in a long braid, and it whipped around like an angry cat’s tail when she turned on Cachita and Sylvie’s approach.

“You the reporter?”

“Yes,” Cachita said.

“What do you want of us? I won’t have my staff ridiculed.”

“We just want to know what they saw,” Sylvie said easily. She leaned up against the edge of a booth, checking first to make sure it was still sturdy. Three long rips in the red leather drew her attention. Claw marks. A cop might interpret them as knife marks if they were inclined to look for an answer that made sense and not for the truth.

The chink-chink-chink of swept-up china stopped. Both young men were listening.

“Gloria, it’s all right,” Cachita said. “We won’t hang you out to dry. We just need to know. We think this monster’s kidnapped and killed women, and there’s a woman who never came home last night.”

Sylvie stopped running her fingers through the tears. Cachita hadn’t said anything about that back at the office. She might be making it up—Sylvie thought Cachita was comfortable with saying anything to get her story—but there had been a new woman in the ’Glades today.

“He came in. He exploded,” the boy pushing the broom said. “One moment, a man. The next, fur and teeth.”

“A wolf?” Sylvie said.

“Mezcla,” the mopper said. “El monstruo. Gato y oso y lobo y hombre. Como una pesadilla.”

“Con dientes grandes,” the sweeper said. He stuck his fingers in his mouth, drew his lips back, and snarled.

“A mixture of animals, a nightmare,” Cachita repeated.

Both boys nodded.

“With big teeth.”

That wasn’t right. The Magicus Mundi had its share of monsters and chimeras. There were gods who could take any damn shape they wanted. But this . . . Going from human to a patchwork quilt of animals.

It sounded more and more like sorcery to her. False shape-shifting. Something bought with blood and pain and easily warped.

“People screamed,” Gloria said. “I screamed. And he just started flailing, biting, and clawing.” She hesitated, then pushed up her colorful sleeve. Beneath it, her arm was mottled black-and-blue, skin drawn tight beneath stitches. “He grabbed me, dragged me toward the door.” Her breath rattled in her lungs; she folded her arm across her chest, and the boy dropped the mop to lean up against her.

“People were panicking,” she said. “They crashed through the window, and it startled him. I pulled, and he let go. He ran into the street, then ran into the dark. Out of the light. He howled. . . .”

“Una pesadilla, verdad,” Cachita murmured. “You were very brave. Then and now.”

Gloria shrugged. Unwilling to take praise for simply surviving. She pinned Sylvie with her dark eyes. “Are you a reporter, also?”

“No,” Sylvie said. “I’m a monster-hunter.”

“Bueno,” Gloria said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Cachita whirled on Sylvie. “What? I come to you with monsters, and you give me shit about being crazy, but her? You just tell her you’re a monster-hunter?”

“She didn’t annoy me,” Sylvie said.

Cachita blew her hair out of her face in aggravation. “I’ve been nothing but forthcoming—”