The dark shadow whined.
“Who’s a good boy? Are you scared? I’m scared.”
A faint sound of a tail sweeping the floor echoed the panting.
I slapped my leg with my palm. “Come here, boy! Let’s be scared together. Come on!”
The shadow rose and trotted over to me. A wet tongue licked my hand. Apparently he was a friendly kind of demonic beast.
I reached into my belt and clicked a lighter. A shaggy canine muzzle greeted me, complete with big black nose and infinitely sad dog eyes. I reached over and slowly patted the dark fur. The dog panted and flopped on the side, exposing his stomach. Wicked fangs and glowing eyes, right. I sighed, flicked the lighter off, and went to rap my knuckles on the door. “It’s me, don’t shoot.”
“Okay,” Cash called out.
A metallic sound announced the deadbolt being slid open. I cracked the door slowly to find myself staring at the business end of the machete. “I’ve got the spawn of hell cornered,” I said. “Can you get me some rope?”
In ten seconds I had a length of chain in my hand thick enough to hold a bear in check. I felt the dog’s neck—no collar. Big surprise. I looped the chain and slid it around his head, and opened the door. The beast docilely followed me into the light.
It stood about thirty inches at the shoulder. Its fur was a mess of dark brown and tan, in a classic Doberman pattern, except his coat wasn’t sleek and shiny but rather a shaggy dense mass of rank curls. Some sort of mongrel, part Doberman, part sheepdog or something long-haired.
Vik turned the color of a ripe apple.
Cash stared at it. “It’s a damn mutt.”
I shrugged. “Probably got scared during the fight and just ran blindly through the bar. He seems friendly enough.”
The dog pressed against my legs, rubbing a small army of fetid bacteria into my jeans.
“We should kill it,” Vik said. “Who knows, it might turn into something nasty.”
I gave him my best version of a deranged stare. “The dog’s evidence. Don’t touch the dog.”
Vik decided he liked his teeth in his mouth and not on the floor and beat a strategic retreat. “Right.”
I’d kill a dog in self-defense. I’d done it and I felt bad about it afterward, but at the time there was no way around it. Killing a mutt who just licked my hand was beyond me. Besides, the dog was evidence. Ten to one, he was a local mongrel who had a panicked reaction to whatever magic John Doe in the cloak had been throwing around. Of course, he could also sprout tentacles in the night and try to murder me. Only time would tell. Until I’d watched him for a few days, the spawn of hell and I were joined at the hip. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, considering he tried his best to singe away the lining of my nose with his stink.
I took the dog to the medtechs to get cleared of the plague—he passed with flying colors. They drew some blood for further analysis and advised me that he had fleas and smelled bad, just in case I’d failed to notice. Then I took paper and pen from Marigold’s saddlebag and sat down at one of the tables to write out my report.
In the parking lot the inside of my ward circle blazed with orange flames. Three guys in heat-retardant suits waved their arms, chanting the fire into a white-hot rage. I couldn’t even see the pole or Joshua’s body inside the inferno.
The magic crashed. It simply vanished from the world in a single blink. The inferno in the parking lot began to die down. The guys in flame-retardant suits switched to flamethrowers and went on burning.
Patrice came up. “Nice dog.”
“He’s evidence,” I told her.
“What’s his name?”
I looked at the mutt, who promptly licked my hand. “No clue.”
“You should name him Watson,” Patrice said. “Then you can tell him ‘Elementary, Watson,’ when you solve a case in a blaze of intellectual glory.”
Intellectual glory. Yeah, right. I waved my write-up at her. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Deal.”
I handed her my notes. “The perpetrator is male, olive complexion, approximately six feet six inches tall, wears a long, sweeping cloak with a tattered hem, and likes to keep his hood on.”
She grimaced. “Don’t tell me. A guy in a cloak did it.”
I nodded. “Looks that way. Other fun characteristics are preternaturally hardy constitution and superhuman strength. There were roughly fifty people in the bar, but the m-scanner registered only one magic signature, probably our murderer. Fifty violent guys and nobody used magic.”
“Sounds unlikely,” Patrice said.
“It was a big brutal brawl. Nobody can explain to me why they started fighting, but apparently they went from zero to sixty in three seconds. I think our dude in a cloak emanates something that hits people on a very basic level. Makes them really aggressive. It’s also possible that animals run away from him, but we only have one test subject.” I petted the demon dog. “Your turn.”
Patrice sighed. “He’s a Mary.”
I nodded. Marys, so named after Typhoid Mary, were disease vectors—individuals who either spread or induced disease.
“A very, very strong one,” Patrice said. “Our guy didn’t just infect—and we can’t say for sure that he did, since the victim could have been syphilitic prior to the fight—but he actually gave the disease life, making it more potent and almost self-aware. The last time I saw this was during a flare. It takes a great deal of power to make a disease into an entity.”
Godlike power, to be exact. Except that no gods were prowling Atlanta’s streets. They only came out to play during a flare, which occurred roughly every seven years, and we had just gotten over the latest one. Besides, if he’d been a god, the m-scan would’ve registered silver, not blue.
“We have to find him now.” Patrice’s face was grim. “He has pandemic potential. The man’s a catastrophe in progress.”
We both knew that the trail had gone cold. I’d missed the chance to go after him, because I was busy crawling around and trying to keep his handiwork from infecting the city. He would strike again and he would kill. It wasn’t a question of if, but a question of how many.
“I’ll put an alert out,” Patrice said.
Find a guy in a cloak without any eyewitness sketches and apprehend him before he contaminates the whole city. Piece of cake.
“Can you find out more about the Good Samaritan who called it in as well?” I asked.
“Why?”
“You’re Joe Blow. You walk by and see me crawl around the fuzzy pole drawing shit on the pavement. Are you going to figure out immediately that I’m trying to contain a virulent plague?”
Patrice pursed her lips. “Not likely.”
“Whoever called it in knew what I was doing and knew enough to call Biohazard, but didn’t stick around. I’d like to know why.”
Half an hour later, I dropped Marigold in the Order’s stables and surrendered the dust bunny to the assistant stable master, who also was in charge of collecting all living “evidence.” We had a slight disagreement as to the living status of the dust bunny, until I suggested that he let it out of the cage to settle the issue. They were still trying to catch it when I left.
I dragged the dog into my apartment and into my shower, where I waged chemical warfare on his fur. Unfortunately, he insisted on shaking himself every thirty seconds. I had to rinse him four times before the water ran clear, and by the end of it, a wet spray blanketed every inch of my bathroom walls, my drain was full of dog hair, and the beast smelled only marginally better. He’d managed to lick me in the face twice in gratitude. His tongue stank, too.
“I hate you,” I told him before giving him leftover bologna from the fridge. “You stink, you slobber, and you think I’m a nice person.”
The dog wolfed down the bologna and wagged his tail. He really was an odd-looking mutt. Once the diagnostics from Biohazard came back, if he was just a regular dog, I’d have to find him a nice home. Pets didn’t do well with me. I wasn’t even home enough to keep them from starving.
I checked my messages—nothing, as usual—took a shower, and crawled into bed. The dog flopped on the floor. The last thing I remembered before passing out was the sound of his tail sweeping the rug.