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  “Oh, you’re telling me Jakey boy,” I said with a sad chuckle, “You’re telling me.”

  My second phone call was to Slate. Jeremiah Slate was a man who sounded as rigid and unflappable as his name suggested. He was perpetually dressed in an ill-fitting suit that hung poorly on his athletic body. The man was a lead on the DEA’s door kickers back in the 80’s and 90’s and still had the physique to match it despite the salt and pepper hair. He perpetually scowled and saw no reason that the fact half of the deputies he supervised could kill him with but a thought stop him from being the most terrifying person to work for ever. He had this uncanny knack for knowing your weak points, vices, and attempts to hide things from him. Which made him the perfect person to lead the local division. Specifically, it meant he could keep everyone in line, even Carlson who had authority issues. Couple that with his ability to pull blood from stone for our budget, making Chicago one of the most capable and best funded MCD’s in the nation.[30]

  “What do you have for me Tennant?” he asked by way of introduction.

  “A lot and nothing at the same time Sir,” I said as I filled him in on my day. When I was done, I stayed on the line waiting patiently for him to consider the information.[31]

  I didn’t have to wait too long. Slate started rattling off our marching orders at a pace that wouldn’t be out of place at boot camp, “I am dispatching four deputies to the morgue to back you up on the off chance the werewolves get violent.

  Additionally, once I am done with this phone call, I will fill out the paperwork and have Marshal Wilcott sign off on deputizing Cross so that he can officially help you out.

  Further, I’m officially waiving the State’s right to hold the body. If the pack wants their dead Alpha, let them have it. Not worth a burn protocol over.

  Regarding research, I’ll see if we can’t pull in Jennings to help Danver’s do the archive trawl and contact my people abroad. When you’re done at the Morgue, go over to Serendipity and see if the O’Dell’s know anything. You’re authorized to give out information that will end up in the papers within the week, but nothing case sensitive.

  When you’re done, report both what information you traded and received to me as soon as possible.”

  About what I expected. One of the nice things, possibly the only nice thing, about working for Slate is that he likes brevity, procedures, and protocols. Generally, that meant that I could guess his action plan before he put it in place. It was comforting in an odd way, but it made the deviations all the more shocking. I smiled and nodded, “Of course, Sir.”

  “Department briefing tomorrow at 9 am. See you there.” And then he hung up on me.

  ✽✽✽

  Jake texted me the contact information we had on file for the two Chicagoland packs.[32] The city-based pack was a bunch of second-gen werewolves under Katelyn Walker. Thankfully, or frustratingly, they responded to our call immediately and offered to schedule a meeting with Katelyn for tomorrow. Good news, it wasn’t her. Bad news, it wasn’t her.[33]

  So, then I called our point of contact for the country-based pack.

  Sydney “Syd” Larsson was an oddity for a Werewolf, let alone a first-gen one. First of all, she was the curator for the Burpee Museum of Natural History out in Rockford. First-gen werewolves were generally too feral for jobs. Sure, they were faster and stronger than a second-gener, but impulse control and moving past basic needs was not their forte.[34]

  Secondly, while she was affiliated with the pack, I had never seen her with a pack member nearby. Most werewolves tended to move in, at the very least, pairs. Every time I met her, she was alone. Moving around alone occasionally happened with the second-gens, especially those who never found a pack to begin with.

  But, first-gener’s were all about the pack and that bond. For her to be out on her own was akin to blasphemy, which just convinced me that she was the exception that proves the rule. But probably most damning was the fact that she not only willingly gave her phone numbers to the police but answered when we called. First-geners had almost a pathological hatred for any outsider that attempted to impose order upon them, which included cops, priests, the government, all the way down to queueing lines. This issue was exacerbated by the fact that many first-gen supernaturals were forcibly dragged into the light by the fact that once the second-gen popped into existence we started paying attention to the conspiracy theorists and the weirdness censor went right out the window. This had caused a large amount of animosity particularly in the werewolf community. All that combined with the fact that Larsson was a point of contact for the police, gave me the impression she pissed someone off years ago and being a go between was her prolonged punishment.

  “This is Syd Larsson, how may I help you?” she answered in a brusk yet clear voice.

  I paused, considering my options one last time. Ultimately, I decided on honesty. “Hello Ms. Larsson, this Deputy Marshal Silas Tennant with the US Marshal’s Metahuman Control Division. I have the body of a deceased werewolf who I have reason to believe was someone affiliated with your pack. Could you contact someone to come down to the Cook County Morgue to identify the body?”

  I heard the faint clatter and crinkle as something was dropped and broken. When Larsson returned to the phone, her voice had dropped several octaves to something just short of a guttural howl. “I see. When did this body come in?” I bit my lip in concern.

  Most first-gens tended to turn when they got scared or angry or really anything that got the adrenaline pumping. I didn’t know where exactly Larsson was, but images of a suddenly furred monster tearing through the museum made me pause before answering.

  I considered dancing around the question, but it’d probably only piss her off, which would definitely lead to a werewolf rampaging through a museum. I settled on a compromised truth. “Two nights back. We just finished doing DNA analysis which confirmed it wasn’t a lone wolf.” Technically speaking, I wasn’t lying. Lindsey did just finish the DNA analysis, which told us that the werewolf wasn’t in the ARCHIVIST system.[35] It’s just that there was no way a lone wolf would show up in Chicago.[36] Larsson knew that. I knew that. Larsson probably even knew I knew that. However, it was an excuse that allowed us to cover for not calling them sooner and gave the werewolves a reasonable explanation to not go all San Antonio on us.

  Her voice, while still low, started to climb back up to human registers. “I see. Someone will be there in 40 minutes.”

  “Of course Ms. Larsson. Please remind your pack that we don’t want any trouble and are fully willing to cooperate.”

  A sound that was somewhere between a bark and a laugh festered through the phone. “I think that will depend entirely on you, Deputy Tennant.”

  Before I could answer, there was a click as she hung up on me.[37] I settled down to prepare for the werewolves.

  ✽✽✽

  Thirty-eight very tense minutes later the werewolves arrived. The Marshal at the door radioed their arrival about two seconds after Miles started getting jumpy. I had tried to talk to him about all of his lifestyle changes and how he knew about the ravenous hunger during the wait, but he refused to talk around the cameras. It was mildly annoying, but understandable. Plus, I was too nervous about the thought of being up close with pissed off werewolves to really push.

  A minute after the radio warning, a man and a woman swept into the room. Dressed and built like rural bar bouncers, tight jeans and leather vests. After a quick assessment of the room, the man went back out while the woman stared daggers at the four other Deputies in the room with me. Unfortunately for me, these were non-MCD Deputies, which meant push came to shove, it was ultimately our job to hold the vault long enough for the doors to lock and the burn protocols to go into effect. I wanted to blame Slate, but I really couldn’t. If shit hit the fan, it was the right call and the seven of us in the room were worth keeping three First-gen werewolves from going on a killing spree in the middle of downtown Chicago.

  However, it was my job to m
ake sure things didn’t go that bad. Tact was the order of the day.

  That was immediately complicated by the sudden urge to run from the man the bouncer escorted back in. He was shorter than Miles, around 5’4” if I guessed correctly. Dressed in an unassuming pair of jeans and a tight white t-shirt that would’ve looked average at a distance, I would’ve dismissed him as just another dude. But up close, he had this haughty animalistic aura that screamed to the primal and prey part of my brain, “RUN YOU DUMB ASS! RUN!”. I looked around the room and saw the rest of the Deputies looking similarly panicked. Lindsey and Miles were doing a better job of concealing their panic, but it was still there. The longer he stayed, the more amplified the effect got. I swallowed hard, fighting the panic down as the shot man caught my eye.

  Smiling wolfishly, he walked right up to me and looked me straight in the eye. “Deputy Marshal Tennant, I presume. Thank you for placing the call. I’m Ipsen.”

  His voice was so rough and gravely that the hairs on my neck instantly stood up in fear. Some, foolish, part of my brain thought “This man could make a killing as a voice actor for villains.” And my consciousness, looking for any excuse not to be afraid clutched onto the thought. It helped, but not nearly enough.

  Still, it gave me enough clarity to realize that he had extended his hand to shake. His arms were oddly long but muscled to the point it could’ve easily been a Bowflex commercial. I finally found my wits and grabbed his hand, “Pleasure to meet you,” I said before stopping myself from adding “Sir.” My brain screamed that I was a horrific idiot for not taking my chance to run. I pointed over to the autopsy table. “This is the corpse we wanted to show you.

  At that cue, Lindsey stepped forward and pulled the sheet off the half-wolf. The bouncer twins audibly gasped, but Ipsen just squeezed my hand a little harder and nodded before releasing to walk over. The moment he let go, I could feel my blood rush forward to return normal circulation accompanied by the annoying tingling sensation you get when your foot falls asleep. I shook my hand a few times as I walked over by him, careful not to distract his silent contemplation of the scene before him. Curiosity finally over road my panic and I took a careful look at him.

  He looked melancholic. I expected rage and frustration, at the very least a little anger. Distraught would’ve made sense. Instead, Ipsen looked like he was trying to comprehend this new emotion that he had never encountered before. And all that did was drive my run responses higher. Something was off with this guy. Well, more off than normal for a werewolf and it was seriously bugging me out.

  Still, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt his contemplation. The silence was so intense, you could hear the clock tick. The fear and unease I felt only ratcheted up as time went on. I busied myself by counting the ticks.

  After a few minutes that felt like an eternity, he turned to me. “I will confirm that this man was the former Alpha of our pack, Steven Hotchkiss. He went missing three nights back and we felt him slip from us two nights ago. It is my understanding that you need to hold him to the next new moon?” he said in an almost mechanically even tone that somehow still made my neck hairs do their freaked-out dance even harder.

  I nodded numbly. Felt him slip? Did they already know he was dead? What the fuck was going on here?

  “At the next new moon, Sibor,” he said motioning at the male bouncer type, “Will come collect him for a funeral. Thank you for the phone call and your time.”

  And with that, he turned and walked out followed swiftly by his two flunkies. I just stared.

  About a minute later, Lindsey finally broke the silence with a cough. I turned and finally noticed the rest of the deputies also looking at the door in nervous shock. That went well. Almost too well. I shook my head to recollect my thoughts and began to the deputies in the room, “Thank you for your time gentlemen, you are dismissed. Sorry to disrupt your day.” They snapped out of their own shocked states and filtered out of the room.

  After they had all left, I turned to Miles and Lindsey. “I don’t know about you all, but I could use a drink.”

  Chapter 6

  Serendipity

  Serendipity was one of the best bars in town. I say this because not only was the food amazing, but also because it was relatively unknown to the people not in contact with Vampires in some shape, way, or form. Couple all that with the owners, and it was solidly at the top of most lists.

  James “Jim” and Cristina “Cris” O’Dell were vampires, sure. But not only were they affable, they were also legal bloodsucking citizens. When the truth came out during the Mayan incident that vampires and other types of supernaturals existed, but had just been hiding, public consensus was torn. The O’Dells, and other enterprising vampires, very quickly went into business securing their place in society.

  For the O’Dells that meant paying all their back taxes and spending more money than I could fathom on lobbying.[38] It helped that Jim had an American birth certificate (from 1893) and Cris had immigration papers (from 1872). Which meant that they came here legally and had never actually been legally declared dead, and that went a long way into navigating the legal nightmare that was becoming citizens in the post-Mayan United States. Furthermore, they made a point that Serendipity was neutral ground and those who caused trouble here had to deal with Cris directly. She might look like an Italian supermodel, but I’ve seen her throw a 300-pound man literally out the door and across the street one handed. Pretty looks be damned, woman was strong and more dangerously, unlike your average supernatural heavy hitter, actually knew how to use that strength.

  Couple that with their bar being pretty much exclusively the place where metahumans, humans, and supernaturals[39] could meet up and discuss things in a non-formal manner under the guise of getting dinner, which meant that many people liked both the bar and the O’Dells. So, ending up on the O’Dells shit list meant you probably ended up on the majority of the city’s movers and shakers shit list. I personally loved it because it meant I could go be a person outside of being a Deputy Marshal. Miles liked it because he got to people watch people who were normally unwatchable.

  We walked down the unobtrusive alley and into an unremarkable door, which lead us to the front room. Cynric Adel, the mountain of vampiric muscle who served as the bouncer, checked us over before letting us into the bar proper. A few people smiled and waved at me when I walked in while others paused their conversation while I walked by. I smiled and moved through the busy front room into the back. No need to hold people from doing business.

  The back was covered wall to wall in enough memorabilia and signatures from blues and rock legends that you could take all the decorations down and stock three different Hard Rock Cafe’s with it. Jim had made friends all over the music world and signs of that could be seen on the wall. From a signed Chuck Berry guitar to one of Louis Armstrong’s trumpets. It was a rather standard showing for a Tuesday night as Miles and I grabbed a seat at the bar and watched the man on the stage play.

  Jim O’Dell was a slightly tall man, just short of six feet tall, but you couldn’t really tell that as he stooped over his guitar tapping out a soulful and complex beat. The guitar was probably a century old but sounded perfectly in tune, and it had a twang that went well with Jim’s subdued Irish brogue to make a wonderful harmony. Jim would tell anyone that asked, he was alive back when the Blues had come to Chicago and had met numerous big names, such as Alberta Adams, Lester Davenport, Bo Diddley, Otis Rush, and more.

  If you listened to him play and sing, you wouldn’t doubt it for a moment. Some people claimed that undeath killed your soul and creativity, but Jim O’Dell just laughed that idea off. He had put out an album the year prior that had revolutionized the Blues Industry and occasionally did shows down at the House of Blues. Since he didn’t travel outside the city due to his “condition”, those shows always drew in people from all over the world and sold out faster than you could blink. Those of us who knew where Serendipity was generally got free shows and appreciated eve
ry damn minute of it.[40]

  I unfortunately couldn’t sit and enjoy his craftsmanship while I was on the clock. I passed a note to the bartender and a few minutes later, when Jim ended his set and left the stage, Miles and I were ushered into a small office. Jim was sitting behind a desk with Cris standing in the corner leaning on a filing cabinet.[41] Her face was blank, but she always radiated a slight aura of, ‘I’m really unhappy to be here dealing with you, so don’t waste my time.’ Considering what Miles had said earlier about good and bad cops, I could see how that would work. Now all I wondered is how much of it was an act and how much of a misanthrope she actually was.

  I took a breath to prepare for the verbal fencing match that was about to occur. Every vampire I have ever met acts as if every conversation is a way to both establish dominance and as if the meeting is being bugged, which meant there was far more implied than ever said.[42] Normally I’d have McCoy do this for me while I chased down other leads, since she had a knack for this vampiric politics thing that I just couldn’t fathom, but she was probably at the bottom of a bottle right now after the long weekend of sobriety. Jim smiled warmly and motioned to the seats, “Greetings, how might I help two fine gentlemen tonight?” he inquired in a voice that was smooth and gentle like the night tides on Lake Michigan. Translation: I’m the person you will be talking to this evening until otherwise indicated. Am I talking to the US Marshals or private citizens?[43]

  “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. O’Dell. I am Deputy Marshal Silas Tennant and this is Deputy Marshal Dr. Miles Cross. We’re here looking for some information about a case and were wondering if you would be willing to help us.” Translation: I recognize you as separate and equal powers. We’re here on official business and people will notice if we go missing. I am the superior in this situation and you will address all questions and discussion to me. We need information and while we know that no formal payments will be exchanged, we are both ready and willing to exchange information for information.