“I’ll tell you a little secret about how this town is run,” Franklin said as he clapped his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “And when I say run, I mean run into the ground. The—”
Marlow had heard this one before. He unearthed his kit—just the Kevlar and weapons, anything silver he had to sign out himself—and headed to get changed. Rude, maybe, but he might get killed tonight. He didn’t want Franklin’s opinion on where city funds should be spent to be one of the last memories he made.
“Fuck me. I got it in my mouth,” Bennett said. She took a swig of water, swilled it around her mouth, and then spat it out. The red-tinted liquid splattered over her boots and dribbled into the cracks in the pavement. “What the hell?”
Marlow holstered his gun and held his hand out for the bottle. She twisted the cap on and tossed it to him. It slapped, cold and heavy, against his palm, and he bent over to pour it over his head. Blood and a few furry chunks hit the pavement.
“Urban farm?” he suggested.
The bottle went to Franklin next. He rinsed off his hands and shook them to shed the water and mess. The flip of his fingers was oddly fastidious for the situation. “Hoarder?”
Bennett crouched down to wipe her boots off with a tissue. “Still think the Blue Moon is an old wives’ tale?” she asked.
“Yes,” Marlow said.
“After that?” Bennett jerked her thumb back over her shoulder toward the house. The windows and doors were broken to let out the stink of the aconite tear gas they’d used to clear out the feeding frenzy. “You ever seen a clusterfuck like that on a normal night?”
“Two hundred guinea pigs did not just manifest themselves overnight,” Marlow pointed out. “They were already there, and it’s just chance the wolves found them tonight, rather than last month or two months from now.”
“Bullshit,” Bennett said. “One wolf maybe, but six of them, just gorging themselves like that? They hadn’t even eaten all of them; they were like foxes in a henhouse. And it’s a coincidence it happened on the double bubble? I repeat, bullshit.”
She had a point. Marlow stuck a finger in his ear and wriggled it. That had been weird. It had been like… gory confetti, and the wolves drunk on the thrill of it. On the other hand, she might plan to kill him tonight, so he wasn’t in the mood to admit anything.
“We’ve had weird calls before,” Marlow said. “What about those guys that left out chicken carcasses stuffed with weed butter before they turned? Six stoned wolves with the munchies, and three on the worst trip of their lives. Nothing weird about the ‘lunar energy,’ just garden-variety stupid.”
Bennett pulled a face, but there wasn’t time to argue further. Their radios crackled with another call, and she caught it.
“Dispatch, throw us a good one,” she said. “We’ve a blue-moon skeptic on our hands here.”
A guinea pig, fat and fuzzy, with two asymmetrical rosettes on its backside, scurried out of the gates and along the pavement between their feet. Franklin grabbed it on instinct and then stood awkwardly, as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
“I’ve got just what you’re looking for, then,” Dispatch drawled. “Reports of a half-naked woman staked out on her lawn. Neighbors called it in. Apparently they tried to get her to come inside, but she won’t give them the keys. Elim and Church Street, white house, red door, lady on the lawn. Can’t miss it.”
“We’re on it,” Bennett said. She turned to Marlow. “See? Told you. Blue moon brings out the crazies.”
Marlow snorted. “She’s a null,” he said as he loped back over to the van. “This is garden-variety stupid.”
They piled into the back. With the rookie on desk duty at the station, it was Franklin who brought up the rear. He gave them all a quick leer as he slammed the doors shut.
“At least the scenery is gonna be nice for once,” he said as he dropped the guinea pig in an empty ammo box.
“Don’t be gross,” Bennett said as she fastened her seat belt.
She slapped the metal next to her and yelled, “Go, go, go!” to the driver. Marlow was nearly thrown out of his seat as the van took off with a guttural roar of the engine. He hung on to the straps of his harness and managed to get himself wedged back into position and strapped in. Franklin swore at Bennett as he bounced off the sides before he managed to fall into a seat.
Marlow tilted his head back against the cold metal behind him, the thrum of the engine loud as it vibrated through the bone, and tuned out the familiar bickering. He focused on the staccato monotony of calls as they came through the driver’s radio.
Fire at a Target over in Mesa Verde.
Two robberies under cover of the moon. Three reports of pack activity. One call up at the Reserve to collect a handful of paparazzi who’d thought it was a good night to try and catch a photo of a naked celebrity mid-shift. That made Marlow think briefly of Cade, somewhere in the city—unless he’d made it out to the ranch he’d offered Marlow as a bolthole.
Marlow checked the gun in his holster, as if it might have fallen out since last time. It was an old habit, but the buzz of low-grade anxiety that made his heel bounce and his skull ache was not new. He remembered it from his first shift after he’d been put back on active duty after the shooting. The brass had been confident they’d cleaned out the department, but the back of Marlow’s neck had burned all night long with uneasy suspicion.
It had faded over the years, tamped down as he dealt with the very real, toothy, and easy to identify threats right in front of him. He’d actually thought it had gone away, but now it had been turned back up, he’d realized it had always been there as a low background hum.
Maybe he should have taken up Cade on his offer, pulled a hamstring, and sat this month out in the country. Except if he’d done that, Marlow wasn’t sure he’d have been able to come back.
One good thing about it, he supposed as he braced around a corner, at least Cade wouldn’t get to say “I told you so” if he was right.
