She spun around, ready to take their photo, and the werewolf was standing between them.
"Smile!" the man said. He was tall, pale, gaunt, yet his eyes were alive and strong, filled with exuberance.
He's just like me, Abby thought, amazed. Except ... he's not at all. Because he's tasted human flesh. She looked at the men in black and wondered what they tasted like.
"I need to talk to you," she said. The man shrugged and sat down.
"What about our — ?" the tall bald guy said.
"Scram," Abby growled. They ran off without their camera. She reckoned they'd run a long way.
"You're just like me," he said, smiling. There was utter confidence in his voice that even Abby found disarming. The way he sat, easy and graceful. The way he smiled, loose and friendly. Everything spoke of a belief in his own invulnerability.
First mistake.
"A little," she said. "But I don't kill people."
The man frowned. "Then what do you eat?"
"Deer."
"Holy shit!" He feigned disgust, stuck fingers down his throat as if about to vomit. "All that fur!"
"Some people are hairy."
"I rip off their skins first." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "That's usually after I've torn out their throats ... usually. Sometimes I do it before. Fear adds to the flavor of that first bite, it really does. Something to do with the makeup of their blood."
"I'm here to stop you ... stop you killing." Abby hated the nervousness in her voice, but he had unsettled her.
"You're BPRD?"
Abby nodded. She thought she hid her surprise quite well.
"Why didn't they send the big red guy?"
"He's off fighting dragons."
The man leaned back, laughing so loud and hard that he startled a flock of birds from the church roof. He patted his knees, wiped his eyes, shook his head. She saw the animal movements in every gesture, and she could not help feeling attracted to him. His power. His grace. Both were richer than hers, more emphasized. Was that because he ate people? Tasted human flesh? She glanced out into the street at the people wandering back and forth, and she could not help her subconscious throwing up the word: cattle.
"So they sent you to catch me," he said. "Well, what are you waiting for?"
"I wanted to talk you out of it, not catch you. You know I'm like you — a werewolf — but I control it. I have help, yes, but you can have help, too, if you — "
"You want to lock me up in a cage for a few days every month, feed me deer and sheep and cattle. You expect me to go for that rather than what I have here? This spread of tastes?" He waved his hand vaguely toward the street, but his eyes never left hers.
"Well ... " That doubt and hesitancy again, and she was surprised that it was quickly making her hate this man. And she didn't even know his name.
"Think again," he said. "You have no idea what it's like. And if you did, you'd know why I have to do this."
She was ready. Maybe it was the training the Bureau had given her, or the way Abe Sapien had taught her to read someone's intention in his eyes, but even as the man came at her, she was twisting to the side, bringing her gun up out of its belt holster, and letting off a shot at his shadow.
He screamed as he landed across her legs. The bullet had taken him in the ankle, and his eyes went wide as he felt the silver bleeding into his system. "You bitch!" he hissed.
Abby closed her eyes at the stink of silver, felt her stomach heaving. When she looked again, he was gone, bounding over the perimeter fence almost before she could blink. He's fast! she thought. Lord help me, he's fast even in his unchanged state. She jumped up, readying herself for a long chase, but then she heard the squeal of brakes and the horrible impact of metal on flesh.
Perhaps she would be lucky.
Past Poe's grave, out onto the pavement, she saw the SUV slewed across the street. In front of it, writhing on the concrete road, the man squirmed in a spreading pool of his own blood.