CHAPTER 27
In the Air Tonight
I walked into Maurice’s and slapped Everett Christiansen on the back. I hadn’t seen him since the beginning of the full moon. For some reason, he looked a little tired.
“Still think the South Side of Chicago is the baddest town ever?” I asked, sitting down next to him.
“This place is insane,” he said, picking up his shot and downing it with shaking hands.
“Just concentrate on those PUFF bonuses,” I said. “And they call it the Big Easy for a reason.”
It had become tradition, after surviving a full moon, Hunters, MCB agents, and SIU cops gathered at Maurice’s, and Melisent had shots waiting for all of us. It looked like most of them had already arrived.
“We were at a call,” Milo said, sat down, looked at the shot, then at the waitress. “Orange juice? Please?”
“Up to you, honey,” Melisent said, pouring Milo orange juice in a shot glass.
I took his bourbon and downed it.
“I’m gonna need a basis for drinking, honey,” I said. “And I still don’t have your number.”
“Food’s almost up,” Melisent said. “And that’s ’cause I’ve got yours.”
Milo looked over at Officer Tremaine. “Hey!”
“Tremaine,” Tremaine said, raising her glass. “That loup-garou on Roche?” Her accent had gotten very pronounced.
“Tremaine,” Milo said. “And this guy kept trying to sell me drugs! Right in front of a cop! With a dead werewolf up on the roof! There were thirty or forty people gathered around trying to get a look!”
“Drugs ain’t my bailiwick,” Tremaine said.
“We got more important things to worry about,” Salvage said. “We take our time busting street dealers, we get nothing else done. Not in this damn town. Unless it’s gnomes.”
“Death to all gnomes,” Tremaine said, raising her glass.
“Death to the gnomes!” the other two chorused and drank.
Melisent poured more drinks.
“How the hell do you handle this?” Christiansen asked. He had bandages on his face.
“Last couple times, with half as many people,” Trevor said.
“We lose anybody?” I asked.
“No deaths. Some injuries, nothing severe.”
“You expected more?” Christiansen asked.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” I said, grinning. “This was an easy full moon. Hell, I got some sleep.”
We’d gotten a lot of calls over the last few nights, but with all the people we had in town, most of them had been easy to clear up. I’d even been able to stop by the house, take a shower and change into a new uniform.
“Alvin and a couple of Ray’s guys are in the hospital,” Trevor said. “Torn up by some ghouls.”
“Steele and Castillo,” Ray said. He was the only one from his team who wasn’t looking worn to a frazzle. “Superficial injuries, they’ll be fine.”
“LT and Stick Insect,” I said, nodding. “Ghouls are nasty. SOCMOB. F-G, O-O-N.”
“What?” Greer said.
“Standing on the corner minding my own business,” Tremaine translated. “Fucking ghouls. Out of nowhere. I’ve actually listed that in the ER before. ’Cause I was standing on a corner…”
“Hoooweee!” Shelbye said, sitting down at the bar. She had Fred Ramsey with her. He was in a soft cast and from the looks of the way he was moving, probably had broken ribs. Shelbye had a bandage on her arm but that looked like it. “We gonna be havin’ a real fais do-do on Saturday! Y’all come on down my camp! Laissez les bons temps rouler!”
“Make a deal with Doc Henry?” Salvage asked.
“T’at one beeeg rat!” Shelbye said. “Gonna make a fine rat jambalaya! We bring some up to t’ee boys in hospital. Do t’em good. Put bone on t’eir bone!”
“Rat what?” Katie said. “You’re going to eat a rat?”
“How come you always manage to get the big ones?” Trevor said. “When they said giant rat, I was thinking dog-sized, not elephant.”
“Elephant rat?” Christiansen said, downing another shot. The shakes were fading at least.
“Mole rat,” I said, shrugging. “We got an idea on PUFF on that yet? Should be decent.”
“Real big,” Milo said. “Real real big in your rearview.”
“Use a LAW again?” Salvage asked.
“Figured Shelbye would want it for jambalaya,” I said. “So, Bertha.”
“So it nearly ate us!” Milo said. “I said we should go straight to LAW.”
“Worst part was it half ate Honeybear. Trunk is that fucked up. ’Cause somebody drives like an old lady.”
“Cousin Louis fix it right up,” Shelbye said.
“If that stupid woman had just gone through the intersection…”
“You’d have looked both ways and slowly and cautiously proceeded,” I said, “while I was busy trying to kill a monster rat…”
“Monster rats,” Christiansen shouted. “What, a hundred zombies? Ghouls? Vampires hunting in a group? Fricking werewolf on every corner! What the hell is wrong with this town?”
“It’s New Orleans,” Trevor said, lifting his drink. “To absent companions.”
“Absent companions,” we all chorused and downed our drinks. Melisent was already pouring before they all hit the bar.
I tried again when she poured mine. “And, honey, I need some sweet tea and a phone number.”
“I’ll get you the sweet tea,” Melisent said. “I’ll even give you a phone number. It’s to a mental hospital. You need it.”
“We have a fais do-do Saturday.” Shelbye declared. “Bring both teams, they free. Plenty of rat to go around! You guys sticking around?”
“We’ll hang out for a while,” Ray said. “See if things calm down, but eventually we’ve got to go. There are other areas we cover.”
“Fair enough,” Trevor said. “I still need more help. At least one more full-timer at minimum.”
“Two,” Christiansen said, standing up and putting money on the counter. “If I’m out of MHI because I won’t do New Orleans, I’m out of MHI. Fine. But I’m not doing another full moon in this town. I want to live to spend the PUFF money.”
“I’m sure Tony will take you back,” Ray said, shrugging. “Up to him.”
“New Orleans isn’t for everyone,” I said.
“No kidding,” Trevor said. “See ya round, Chicago.”
Christiansen left without another word.
Good riddance. Fucking shotgun? Maybe that works in Chicago.
* * *
This next bit’s gonna be kind of choppy. Much of it was “same shit/different day” and I’ll skip most of that. I got injured, was out for about a month at one point. Dropped the Shackleford kids some special Uncle Chad presents. Spent some more time in England trying to track down what our mysterious digger creature is—no luck there—and did some research on swamp-ape language. Banged some hotties. The usual.
Things did calm down. New Orleans was still the busiest place in the country, and the company hot spot, but it wasn’t the madhouse that it had been when I first arrived.
The hexes went back to causing impotence and baldness, rather than growing giant mutant animals or summoning powerful shadow demons. At least for a while. At the time we didn’t know the cause of the out-of-control hoodoo, or that it would be back soon. But those assholes creating werewolves were still a pain in our ass, and every full moon there would be a few new ones.
We’d been turning over people like a treadmill. And it had been a revolving door, let me tell you. Our advertisement and recruiting started to pay off, and Ray kept finding us more help. Some, like Chicago, came in with background and knowing—just like I had—that the Big Easy was going to be easy. Then after one or two full moons would quit. Some quit Monster Hunting, some got taken back by their teams.
We’d lost Alvin. Not dead, lost his leg to a loup-garou, but fortunately didn’t get infected. He retired back to Texas. Still there last I heard, got a job with a Sheriff’s department doing the desk work and handling their supernatural stuff. With Alvin gone, Shelbye and Trevor were the only remaining members of the Hoodoo Squad from when I’d joined.
It was late summer and hot as hell day and night, when we got a call from SIU.
Earl Harbinger had been making regular visits, off moon, to the area. Most of the time he’d respond to calls but he was never around the team shack. Always gone. Off on his own. I asked him what he was doing one time and he answered “Enjoying the night life.”
What he’d been doing was, literally, going to bars and clubs, drinking, and just hanging out.
If you’re read-in on Earl, you’ll know what he was doing. He was loup-garou hunting.
So we get a call from SIU. Our boss has up and shot some dude in a bar multiple times. Guy’s dead. Earl’s claiming the dead man’s a werewolf.
Slow night. We all had to roll out on this one.
Dive’s over in Metairie. One of the ones that had been identified in the very long list from MCB of having had at least one person bitten in it by a loup-garou. Earl’s out front of the bar, smoking a cigarette, talking to Officer Tremaine, jacket undone. He’s turned his weapon over to the first officer on scene but identified himself as MHI so the officer called SIU instead of locking him up. Earl’s looking cool as a cucumber.
Inside the bar I expected a shambles. Nope. There were clear signs of hasty exit. There’s a body under a sheet, blood leaking all over the already nasty floor.
Guy appears to be in his thirties. Sort of biker looking. Long hair, beard, hairy, heavy-set, bunch of heavy rings on his fingers which creates a sort of brass knuckle effect in a fight. No real indications, though, that’s he’s a loup-garou. Wearing all his clothes and stuff. I’d add description of his face but…wasn’t much left of his head. And was leaking from a lot of holes. A lot.
According to witnesses, Earl simply gunned him down in cold blood.
So…what the hell happened? Took forever to drag it out of Earl.
He’s in the bar, looking for one of, any of, the loup-garou that had been intentionally biting people off-moon and this one walks in. Earl knows he’s a werewolf right off. Guy spots Earl. Walks over and bows up on Earl.
Earl explains there are rules about being a werewolf, at least in the alpha’s territory. Which he was in. No messing with humans. Don’t piss off the alpha. He’d violated both.
This guy suggests that Earl shove it and wants to fight. Makes a challenge.
Earl suggests they take it outside.
The guy says let’s throw down right here.
“So I said, ‘Okay, if that’s how you want it,’” Earl tells us. “And I pulled and shot him with all six cylinders. Reloaded. Put those in his head. Amazing how fast that clears a bar.”
Cold, man. Really cold.
For reasons that may be obvious to you or may not, this apparently surprised the hell out of the guy. He was expecting Earl to, you know, take him on physically.
I’d gotten some skinny on stuff by then so I asked Earl why he’d done it that way.
“I’ve seen more punks like him than all the bad werewolf movies ever made. He violated rule one and two. Wasn’t going to waste my time.”
The body, of course, tested positive for lycanthropy.
You do not bow up on Earl Harbinger. Certainly not if you’re a loup-garou.
Later, it happens again. Slightly different. Earl walks into a club over in Lower Ninth, walks up to one of the club’s regulars and just guns the guy down. In that case, other guns were pulled. Earl holds up his hands, identifies himself as being with Hoodoo Squad and calmly suggests they call the police.
We had a lot fewer problems with new loup-garou after that. It was just amazing.
* * *
But something happened between those two events. It was before Earl found the second loup-garou. I might as well finish the story I started this memoir with.
October and the weather was finally starting to cool off. At least it had. Then it got blazing hot again, what up north would be called an Indian Summer and down in the Big Easy was just called “hot enough for you?”
That night, you could feel the tension in the air. The feel that there was a front on the way and it was going to be big one. The feel that the temperature was going to break and break hard in a wall of thunder.
If you’ll remember, I had rolled up on a single werewolf call, which had turned into a two werewolf call. And after I’d gotten injured killing those two, a pack of ghouls had crawled out of the ground to eat the corpses. Which it turned out really pissed off the third werewolf.
So there I was, limping back from calling the coroner, around the corner to see a pile of ghouls devouring the loup-garou I’d just killed. A blast of wind hit as the storm reached the cemetery. The heavens opened up and water poured from the sky.
The ghouls turned, hissing at my lights, and got up from their meal.
More were closing in among the tombs. Their outline was revealed as lightning pounded the Big Easy like Thor’s hammer.
I was wounded, alone, stuck in a thunderstorm and surrounded by hungry ghouls. Then another freaking loup-garou, barely audible over the howling wind, thunder and pouring rain, bayed its challenge to the moon…
I’ve been dead. Dying doesn’t really trouble me. Various ways of dying are my fear. Dying slowly in agony dissolved by spider venom while doctors try very hard and fail to save me. Having my soul ripped from my body. Being sacrificed. Ending up crippled, especially if I lose the use of my dick.
Screaming my way to death as the ghouls pile on and feast.
But there are times, for me, when I honestly long for a glorious death. When all the fear slips away. When I truly enter that zen state that is the point of all the martial arts crap. When the world focuses to a mind, a hand and a blade.
Okay, and a white phosphorus grenade.
I took one from my vest, pulled the pin and tossed it at the cluster that had been feeding. Ghouls don’t like fire. They jumped away from it and it took their minds, momentarily, off of fresh meat. Then I took Mo No Ken in a two-handed grip and went to work.
The injury to my leg was a distant issue. A variable to consider like the pouring rain making my sword’s grip slippery in my gloved hands. I would be slightly less agile than normal. The wet ground. The bloody mud that eventually started to suck at my boots.
The tombs were tight, here. There was no wall or brother at my back and damned little maneuvering room to crash through and attack at an angle. There were ghouls before me and ghouls behind. I had them right where I wanted them.
I knew this was not the battle where the Lord planned for me to die. This was no grand finale. This was just another skirmish in a war that would only end with the Final Battle. This might not be my destiny, but if I fell here, He’d find somebody else to be destiny, boy. I did not care. It was time for battle.
There was barely room to swing Mo No Ken as I turned back and forth, slashing and hacking at the undead, the rain pouring down my face and the battle illuminated by continuous sheets of lightning blasting the firmament. Lightning struck a nearby tomb, the bolt so close you could hear the pop beforehand then the massive CRACK as it hit. The lightning flashed from tomb to tomb, so bright for a moment I thought I was in a strobe-filled club.
I did a side kick left, slamming a ghoul in the stomach while thrusting right, one-handed, into the eye of one on the other side. Spin back and Mo No Ken swept up, then down, slicing the kicked ghoul from shoulder to stomach, out the right side, cutting the ghoul in half. Spin, sweep back up and another was sliced from groin to shoulder and literally fell in two, adding to the writhing pile of undead on that side. They were still slithering forward, grasping at my boots, snaggle-fanged maws chewing at my shin plates…
Then the loup-garou arrived.
Most of the ghouls were to my right where the body of the last loup-garou had been mostly consumed. That was, coincidentally, the direction it arrived from.
Ghouls will generally run from a serious fight. They smelled the blood and sensed the injury. They didn’t have enough sense to realize that even wounded I was the more dangerous predator.
But they recognized loup-garou. Suddenly, the “heavy” side was just trying to get away and, to my left, they were running. Not from me. From the werewolf.
Couldn’t have that.
I slashed off the ghouls that were holding my boots and gave chase. I wasn’t finishing them off, you pretty much have to burn them, but a ghoul on the ground with no legs I could deal with later.
They’re fast and agile but they weren’t fast and agile enough. Some jumped up on the tombs and made it off into the darkness to safety. But not many. A couple that tried that ended up cut in half. Most I left crawling on their arms in my wake. They weren’t getting anywhere fast that way.
But I could tell from the sound that the battle with the loup-garou was almost over.
Now the pain hit. My leg was on fire. I was weak and trembling in the rain as the loup-garou slunk forward. I was the last remaining prey in sight that wasn’t running away and it wasn’t going to stop until all the prey was down and easy to feed on.
Loup-garou are like that. They say that wolves aren’t that way but they do the same thing. All predators do. Get a wolf around vulnerable prey and they’ll kill everything in sight, then go back and eat. Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my.
“Thanks for the assist,” I said as the werewolf slunk through the rain towards me. It was low, growling, ready to leap. It had been wounded by the ghouls, bitten and scratched, but unlike me, its wounds were already healing. “I don’t suppose you’d like to reconsider? I could use your sort of backup on a regular basis.”
I can be fairly persuasive. Apparently, I wasn’t persuasive enough. The loup-garou leapt.
Mo No Ken slashed one last time as I stepped aside.
My savior was dying.
Turned out to be a middle-aged white lady. Looked like she would have been more comfortable in church. Actually, looked a bit like a “Bertha Better Than You” type.
“Go to God, madam,” I said, turning Mo No Ken against the downpour to clean it. “I’m sure you’re forgiven all your sins.”
So that completes the story I began with. If I was basing this book on the format of my previous memoir, that would be the way I’d end it.
But I’ve overlooked one very important New Orleans tradition, and the day when Hoodoo Squad met its match: Mardi Gras. The day the dinner table turned.