Justin Gustainis - Those Who Fight Monsters Tales of Occult Detectives

Yeah, I’ll just bet it does. I know a dozen people who would love to get their hands on that box. I was smelling Carmine’s cologne in the tunnel now and understood what my Russian captor meant about him spreading his scent. It was everywhere. He must have brought down a bottle of cologne and sprayed it across every brick. I’ll bet Babs taught him that. It was quickly burning out my nose.

That’s when I spotted the thumbprint. I tried to give no sign of it, but scuffed my foot sideways, like I had tripped, and caught myself against the tunnel wall. Hopefully I’d be able to find it again. Once I was another dozen feet further down the tunnel, I stopped again and held up the picture. Apparently, Lady Russia was getting antsy, because a moment later I heard her let out an annoyed sound and then her voice rang out into the darkness. “Boris! Andrei, come here! I have the wolf seer, and he’s stalling. I think we will have to cut some … pieces … off him to get the location.”

Great. Just great. Well, I had what I needed from Carmine. I turned Sue’s head toward Lucas. “However you need to do it, you need to get back to the Palliser and give me a hand. I’m about to be overrun with Russian and South American snake shifters. I’ll do what I can, but bring enough ammo for an army.”

That was all the time I had to talk, because the moon had finally reached full height in the sky and we must have been just barely under the street, because it cut through me like a laser. I’m pretty sure I screamed. I definitely dropped to the floor of the tunnel like a puppet with its strings cut. “Get up!” She shouted at me, but it wasn’t like I had a choice.

I tried to choke out words, because I knew her fingers were getting itchy on the triggers. “If you did your research, you must know I’m a three-day. You want the box, you need to shield the moon.”

She swore in Russian and tucked one of the guns in her waistband. Only the very best alpha shifters can shield a lesser animal from a distance. Most need direct touch to control a shift. She reached out to grab my sleeve and at the last second, I pulled off my glove and grabbed her hand.

The moon faded with her power and I latched onto her mind in a hindsight. Her eyes glazed over as she slipped into her own past. I dragged her backwards with me and extinguished the light. I could hear the footsteps ahead of me increase in speed and a bright flash of light told me someone else had shifted. The low buzzing sound that resulted said there was at least one rattler among the snakes.

Terrific.

Once I was back at the spot where I’d stumbled, it wasn’t hard to find the place where Marco’s thumb had dug into soft mortar. As I suspected, the brick was loose in the wall. It would be tricky to pull it out with one hand, but I couldn’t afford to let go of the Russian babe to use both. I did, however, take back my gun, and hers to boot, before yanking the brick loose to let it drop to the ground. The sound echoed and the voices, boots and scales moved faster still. The snakes sounded big .

The box was just behind the brick and had a handle on front that made me think of a safe deposit box. Maybe it was. All I knew is that I only had time to drop Natasha, grab the handle, and take off running. I couldn’t risk that box staying here, even if there was only a slim chance of them finding it before we could get back to retrieve it.

The moment I let go and started to run, I felt the moon slice through my skin once more. Just to be safe, I put the handle of the box in my teeth. It was a good thing I did, too, because it wasn’t more than a dozen feet before I couldn’t stand the pressure anymore. The howl that tried to leave my mouth was forced to escape through locked jaws and then I was running on four legs instead of two, pulling behind the tattered remains of my clothing as I ran.

Bullets started to ricochet off the brick and I felt a flash of pain in my ribs. There were shouts behind and the scent of rotten cantaloupe enveloping me as I made one final leap through the door of the boiler room, tearing at least two leg muscles in the process.

But I was luckier than my pursuer. The giant snake ran fang first into the boiler I barely missed and cold-cocked himself. Lucas and two wolves I’d never seen before rushed past me into the tunnel shouting for everybody to give themselves up, as I crawled under the massive machine with my prize.

A week later I was still nursing an ACL tear and broken collarbone from a bullet, which had felt like my ribs at the time. As a three-day, I don’t heal very fast. But I’d be back on my feet a lot faster than a full human.

Even Lucas hadn’t been able to get the box away from me that night. He said he’d have had to break my jaw to unlock it. We went through it together the next morning. There was lots of interesting reading. Most of the blackmail evidence was destroyed, but Lucas saw no reason not to give the gold back to Carmine. Anyone it might have belonged to was long dead now and he’d need money to pay his legal bills for being out of the country. Turns out the Feds were watching him closer than we’d imagined. The RCMP picked him up at the hotel while we were all out, to deliver him to the Feds. I’ll be laying low for some time to come because it turns out I was caught on film as well. Since I was supposed to be dead, and now I’m not, I’ll probably need a make-over so I don’t wind up in the cell next door. However, Lucas is going to see what he can arrange for us to get a clean bill — a full pardon from the President for both me and Carmine, owing to us turning over the weapons cache and virus we discovered and the terrorist spies … at least the full human ones. The others? Well, the snake attackers who I was able to finger through the hindsight on Carmine will never see trial. Not only is Carmine watched by the Sazi now, he’ll be protected by them. At least, so long as he’s not breaking the law.

That’s Wolven law enforcement, and it’s why I stick around.

C. T. Adams and Cathy Clamp are real people with slightly twisted minds who write strange fiction for fun. They are happily the award-winning, USA Today bestselling authors of the “Tales of the Sazi” and “Thrall” series for Tor Books. They are also now writing urban fantasy as “Cat Adams” and released a new series, “The Blood Singer” in June, 2010. Both C.T. and Cathy spend their days working in a law office in central Texas, which is what many claim warped their brains. They share a website at www.ciecatrunpubs.com

Tony Giodone’s skill as a hit man has resulted in a stack of cold case files in the homicide divisions of a number of major cities. Even before he was attacked and turned into a werewolf, if you met Tony in a dark alley, he’d be walking back into the light alone. Although still an assassin, he’s now working for Wolven, the police force of the Sazi council — in other words, the good guys.

“Stupid fucking name.” The incubus Daunuan shook his head. “Why do so many human magicians pick stupid fucking names?”

“Aw, sweetie,” I said. “Don’t be like that. They’re just being creative. They think it makes them sound exotic.”

“It makes them sound like assholes.”

“Not everyone can have a name like yours, Don Juan,” I said with a wink, emphasizing the human pronunciation. The demonic version was more sensual, called for more use of the tongue and lips. We creatures of Lust were nothing if not sensual. And all about the tongue and lips. “Besides,” I said, “ ‘Noel Le Noir’ isn’t the worst name I’ve ever heard.”

“No, but it is hopelessly cheesy.”

“I like my men hopelessly cheesy.”