It was a cold, wet night in downtown Seattle. A pair of eyes continued to watch the neon-lit doors that illuminated the dark street, down which Luke, in lupan form, had walked a moment earlier. His nose carefully sifted the scents of the city, irritated by the acrid scents of petroleum and filth. A steady drizzle of rain fell, but the city stench overrode the neutralizing effects of water. People stood shoulder to shoulder behind the luminescent signs in the windows of the bar, their musky libidos and perfume-laden aromas spilling like a stew into the narrow alleyway.
With a huff of breath, Luke backed into a corner behind a dumpster, rose on his hind paws and transformed from wolf to human. Then, he strode into the claustrophobic confines of the Mexican-style nightclub. No one noticed him as he passed through the crowd. A deft psychic suggestion reminded someone they were late getting home, and Luke dropped quickly onto the vacated barstool, immediately forgotten as the crowd around him swirled. The men and women paired off for cursory inspections, then separated to check out other options. Luke's target was hitting it off well with a tall redhead. Luke took shallow breaths of fetid air as he overheard the infuriating, witless exchange of what passed for pleasantries in a dive like this. He knew he would have to listen to every inane thing the man said all night. He could nearly recite it by now.
"Oh Baby, it's been ten years since I've been able to do this. I can't believe I’ve found someone so wonderful. You are truly a miracle worker."
Luke couldn't believe there were humans stupid enough to buy into these lines. And, the man's diction was atrocious. Luke spoke ten languages now, and he was more fluent in all of them than this idiot was in the single language he knew. The man spoke like a romance novel written by a twelve-year-old, and the women he hit on didn’t seem to pick up on it. There were either a lot of unsophisticated women in Seattle, or this seducer was careful to select the less intelligent ones. Luke had been to Seattle before, and knew it had to be the latter, which meant the man was cunning, at least on some level, which meant he could be dangerous if Luke let his guard down.
Luke was infuriated that he hadn’t been able to narrow the suspect list down further from the Canadian travelers he’d told Dwayne to target. He knew the skull had disappeared between the time Dwayne had taken another look at it, and the time Luke had gone back to it. He had transferred his latest memories onto the skull shortly before Dwayne’s visit, while showing him how it worked and testing to see how well Dwayne could use the device. It was a difficult technology, created by the Sh’eyta for use by werewolves, who also had a trace of Sh’eyta blood. The overlords would be expecting a report on the situation that was developing in Washington. He knew it hadn’t been removed by the locals who were digging up the island looking for buried treasure; everything the diggers found was inspected and documented by a small group of people with easily accessed, pliable minds, and none of them was vibrating with the excitement of finding such a rare treasure. As remote and tricky as the hiding place was, whoever found it was trying to find it. But what if the person who had located it wasn’t the one sent to hunt down the rebellious Skykomish pack? If that were the case, there was no way to know where the thief was, and he’d have to go after the woman who had confounded and nearly killed him five centuries ago. That was a huge risk, and one he was reluctant to consider.
Dwayne had sent the requested list, and Luke had visited everyone on it, quickly eliminating those whose minds were open books but showed no memory of a crystal skull. He was now back to the ones whose minds were compartmentalized in a way that hid their thoughts from him to the point that he would have to dig especially deep. This process could leave them with psychic lobotomies, which was a transgression of the law that said to never harm humans. Any transgression was a risk, so he had to minimize any harm that might come of his actions. He had to watch and wait, while time ticked away.
"That's a beautiful dress!” the slimy little man said to the redhead. “Where did you get it?"
She smiled as she took a sip from the glass the man had given her. "Jeannine's on Third."
Feigned surprise. "Really? I was just in there. I guess it just looks so much better on you that I didn't recognize it."
Titter.
The bartender handed Luke a glass of tonic water and he lifted it slowly to his pursed lips. He sifted the verbal exchange for any intimation that this man was the actual predator he was looking for, as he suspected he was not. If this was not the one, the last three days would have been for nothing. He would have to backtrack, find one of the last two potential adversaries and start the process all over. He took another swallow of water and settled in to watch and listen for a few hours.
It was only forty-five minutes before Luke stood up to follow the pair out of the bar. The man had scored already, and with his first play of the night, no less. Disgusted, Luke passed through the doorway and took a deep breath of wet, exhaust-laden air. At least it was a change from the sharp tang of alcohol and the musty bursts of cologne and perspiration. He dodged through the alleyway, shifting from man to wolf as he passed cement pillars in the ash and charcoal shades of the Seattle alleys at night. A quick scan told him no one had noticed the anomaly of a human going in and a long-legged canine coming out.
The man came around the corner with the redhead on his arm; she was laughing as if he had just said the most hilarious thing in the world. Luke had listened to the man and knew for a fact that he couldn't have said anything that witty. The man was the most boring creature Luke had ever known, and Luke had known some exceedingly boring creatures. He felt sorry for the woman. The man would be tossing her out of his room before the sun came up, and she would be surprised. They always were. That was the kind of woman this man liked. Luke was tempted to kill the man just to put himself out of misery, but then he would never know if he had killed the right man or not, and worse, he might not be able to find the skull. Luke watched the man open the car door for her, just like the gentleman he most certainly was not.
But then, Luke thought, as he started to lope steadily after the car, the woman inevitably had at least five of the wicked slammers, rapid injections of tequila, before the man took her home. Compliments of the man, of course.
Luke galloped down the city street, unnoticed by the clumps of people that flowed from place to place like jetsam on a tide. On occasion, someone would start to suspect his transformation, then look and see nothing, shaking their head. Luke wasn't concerned if they caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of their eyes, he knew he could blend into the greyness of the night. He'd been doing this for so long he didn’t even have to think about it. There were many skills a werewolf could develop over time, and he’d had more time than any other werewolf on earth, by several thousand years.
The car had turned toward the piers and the smell of tar, salt, and dying fish assaulted Luke's nose. Almost choking, Luke dropped his head toward the pavement to get closer to the rubber scent of the tires he was tracking. Tall walls of cement rose up on either side of the street like cliffs and neon signs beckoned damp travelers. A young woman wearing combat boots brushed by Luke without seeing him, slapping his nose with a wet gypsy skirt suffused with the scent of cigarette butts and alcohol. He shook his head and turned to look at her as she swept around a corner. Luke saw only the bobbing of magenta hair as she strode into a tiny club that faced the low, dirty walls between the alleyway and the parked cars under the Alaskan Way viaduct.
The only thing Luke could find to admire in his latest prey was the way the man could disguise himself. He probably went to the same sets of bars every Friday and Saturday night, alternating through about a dozen that he would be back to visit every six weeks or so, and his past conquests never knew it. Despite his disgust, Luke knew better than to underestimate the man. He had done that with another prey, years ago, and it nearly killed him. The car passed into a parking garage, and Luke went to an alley to change form again, then walked through the front door of the building. A doorman let him in without knowing it, and Luke went to the elevators, where he stepped in. After the doors closed, he ripped the panel open, pulled some wires to force the elevator to let him out on the penthouse level, then shoved it back together so it looked nearly the same as before. It was going to be a long, miserable night.
* * *
Luke looked through the doorway to the repair shop, studying his new mark. The last one – the lothario – had proven to be a small-time criminal with friends in high places. After all the time spent in dank bars listening to bad pickup lines, Luke had finally dismissed him as a suspect and now studied the small, greasy man under the Pontiac convertible. It hadn't been a convertible a few days ago.
Luke was beginning to get nervous. After eliminating most of the suspects with a quick pass through their minds, he had seriously considered lobotomizing all who remained, but he still needed to locate the crystal skull, so the only choice was to wait and watch. He’d begun to think the suspect he was looking for was uncannily clever. Luke knew by now that the entire sect of these werewolf hunters would be trained to cover their tracks well enough to look nearly innocuous on the surface, sometimes hinting at underworld connections, but nothing serious. Luke chafed at the amount of time the precious skull had spent in the hands of the enemy. He should also check in on the abandoned cub directly, but the imperative to get the skull back into his possession was too important to take a break from yet.
Luke reconsidered his tactics once more as he listened to the garage talk, barely decipherable even for his sharp ears.
It had been months since he’d made a face-to-face connection with anyone he knew. The enforced separation was distressing; both the wolf and the man in him craved company, but it was still a short time in his long life and he knew the thief would be looking over his shoulder, watching for someone like Luke. Not that there was anyone like Luke.
Luke had changed over the years. He had been brash in his youth. As long ago and far away as it was, he still remembered the dark hair and violet eyes of his first true love, though by now it was nearly all he could remember of her, and the way she looked at him the last time he saw her.
"Lucianus," she had said, "Amor, noli abire. Hi homicidae sunt.” My love, do not leave, they are murderers. He had brushed past her. It hadn't occurred to him, in his ego-ridden fury, that it wasn't his own life she was talking about.
He never saw her again. He only heard how she had died weeks later, and how long it had taken. Four days. She had lived for four days through tortures relayed to Luke only in whispers, and only after Luke demanded to know, blade first. If she could wait four days to die, he could learn to be patient. And he relived that lesson nearly every day of his existence, for nearly three thousand years.
The new mark pulled himself out from under the car and wiped a grease-stained arm across his forehead, then walked around the side of the building to the bathroom. Luke had watched him drink six cups of coffee this morning, so he wasn't at all surprised.
Luke also wasn't surprised to see another man rifle through the wallet that had slipped out of his co-worker's pocket. Men. Millennia after millennia, they never changed. What amazed Luke was that humans, every generation of humans, believed their generation was the most miserable. But time after time, there was no difference. There would always be holy wars. Where once there were Christian crusades, there were now politicians and welfare wars, both cleansing entire nations in the name of so-called ethics and decency. There had always been thieves, there would always be thieves. And war. Here in this relatively new nation of America, where officials were elected by vote, serfs still existed, only called by new names; minimum wage employees. Where once there were feuds, now there were Bloods, and Crips. Subjugated, they filled the inner cities and perpetrated violence on the only opponents they could reach – each other. There would always be slavery and rape, too. These used to be more predictable because men who loved such sport would buy suits of armor and well-muscled stallions, then join armies and violate the women they found in towns they pillaged, and enslave the men. Such barbarians were still around, but they blended in more easily and found more underhanded ways to do the same thing, often using a position of public power to carry out their malfeasance. Era after era, nothing changed.
And nothing seemed to change here in the garage, either. The man returned to his work, stripping the Pontiac down for spare parts he was using to repair a different car. It seemed to Luke that there were better ways to fix a machine, but it wasn't his place to point that out. It was his place to sit still and watch. Without even a sigh, Luke observed. Hours later, Luke followed the man home.