Circus of the Damned

The werewolf’s fur was a dark honey color. A blond werewolf? Was it Stephen? If it wasn’t, then he had disappeared, and I didn’t think Jean-Claude would allow that.

A voice yelled, “Everybody freeze”‘ Across the ring were two patrol cops with their guns out. One of them said, “Jesus Christ!”

I put my gun away while they were staring at the dead snake. The body was still twitching, but it was dead. It just takes longer for a reptile’s body to know it’s dead than most mammals.

I felt light and empty as air. Everything had a faintly unreal quality. It wasn’t the snake. It was whatever Jean-Claude had done to me. I shook my head, trying to clear it, to think. The cops were here. I had things I needed to do.

I fished the little plastic ID card out of my sport bag and clipped it to the collar of my jacket. It identified me as a member of the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. It was almost as good as a badge.

“Let’s go talk to the cops before they start shooting.”

“The snake’s dead,” he said.

The wolfman was tearing at the dead thing with a long pointed muzzle, ripping off chunks of meat. I swallowed hard and looked away. “They may not think the snake is the only monster in the ring.”

“Oh.” He said it very softly, as if the thought had never occurred to him before. What the hell was he doing with the monsters?

I walked towards the police, smiling. Jean-Claude stood there in the middle of the ring, his white shirt so bloody it clung to him like water, outlining the point of one nipple hard against the cloth. Blood was smeared down one side of his face. His arms were crimson to the elbows. The youngest vampire, a woman, had buried her face in the snake’s blood. She was scooping the bloody meat into her mouth and sucking on it. The sounds were wet and seemed louder than they should have been.

“My name’s Anita Blake. I work with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. I’ve got ID.”

“Who’s that with you?” The uniform nodded his head in the man’s direction. His gun was still pointed vaguely towards the ring.

I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, “What is your name?”

“Richard Zeeman,” he said softly.

Out loud I said, “Richard Zeeman, just an i

But the uniform nodded. “What about the rest of them?”

I glanced where he was staring. It didn’t look any better. “The manager and some of his people. They waded into the thing to keep it out of the crowd.”

“But they ain’t human, right?” he said.

“No,” I said, “they aren’t human.”

“Jesus H. Christ, the guys back at the station aren’t going to believe this one,” his partner said.

He was probably right. I had been here, and I almost didn’t believe it. A giant man-eating cobra. Jesus H. Christ indeed.

Chapter 8

I was sitting in a small hallway that served as the performers’ entrance to the big tent. The lighting was permanently dim, as if some of the things rolling through wouldn’t like a lot of light. Big surprise there. There were no chairs, and I was getting a little tired of sitting on the floor. I’d given a statement first to a uniform, then to a detective. Then RPIT had arrived and the questioning started all over again. Dolph nodded to me, and Zerbrowski shot at me with his thumb and forefinger. That had been an hour and fifteen minutes ago. I was getting a wee bit tired of being ignored.

Richard Zeeman and Stephen the Werewolf were sitting across from me. Richard’s hands were clasped loosely around one knee. He was wearing white Nikes with a blue swoosh, and no socks. Even his ankles were tan. His thick hair brushed the tops of his naked shoulders. His eyes were closed. I could gaze at his muscular upper body as long as I wanted to. His stomach was flat with a triangle of dark hair peeking above the sweat pants. His upper chest was smooth, perfect, no hair at all. I approved.

Stephen was cuddled on the floor, asleep. Bruises blossomed up the left side of his face, black-purple and that raw red color a really bad bruise gets. His left arm was in a sling, but he’d refused to go to the hospital. He was wrapped in a grey blanket that the paramedics had given him. As far as I could tell, it was all he was wearing. I guess he’d lost his clothes when he shapeshifted. The wolfman had been bigger than he was, and the legs had been a very different shape. So the skin-tight jeans and the beautiful cowboy boots were history. Maybe that was why the black shapeshifter had been naked. Had that been why Richard Zeeman was naked, as well? Was he a shapeshifter?

I didn’t think so. If he was, he hid it better than anybody I’d ever been around. Besides, if he had been a shapeshifter, why didn’t he join the fight against the cobra? He’d done a sensible thing for an unarmed human being; he’d stayed out of the way.

Stephen, who had started out the night looking scrumptious, looked like shit. The long, blond curls clung to his face, wet with sweat. There were dark smudges under his closed eyes. His breathing was rapid and shallow. His eyes were struggling underneath his closed lids. Dream? Nightmare? Do werewolves dream of shapeshifted sheep?

Richard still looked scrumptious, but then a giant cobra hadn’t been slamming him into a concrete floor. He opened his eyes, as if he had felt me staring at him. He stared back, brown eyes neutral. We stared at each other without saying anything.

His face was all angles, high-sculpted cheekbones, and firm jaw. A dimple softened the lines of his face and made him a little too perfect for my taste. I’ve never been comfortable around men that are beautiful. Low self-esteem, maybe. Or maybe Jean-Claude’s lovely face had made me appreciate the very human quality of imperfection.

“Is he all right?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Stephen.”

He glanced down at the sleeping man. Stephen made a small noise in his sleep, helpless, frightened. Definitely a nightmare.

“Should you wake him?”

“You mean from the dream?” he asked.

I nodded.

He smiled. “Nice thought, but he won’t wake up for hours. We could burn the place down around him and he wouldn’t move.”

“Why not?”

“You really want to know?”

“Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do right now.”

He glanced up the silent hallway. “Good point.” He settled back against the wall, bare back searching for a more comfortable piece of wall. He frowned; so much for a comfortable wall.

“Stephen changed back from wolfman to human in less than a two-hour time span.” He said it like it explained everything. It didn’t.

“So?” I asked.

“Usually a shapeshifter stays in animal form for eight to ten hours, then collapses and changes back to human form. It takes a lot of energy to shapeshift early.”

I glanced down at the dreaming shapeshifter. “So this collapse is normal?”

Richard nodded. “He’ll be out for the rest of the night.”

“Not a great survival method,” I said.

“A lot of werewolves bite the dust after collapsing. The human hunters come upon them after they’ve passed out.”

“How do you know so much about lycanthropes?”

“It’s my job,” he said, “I teach science at a local junior high.”

I just stared at him. “You’re a junior high science teacher?”

“Yes.” He was smiling. “You looked shocked.”

I shook my head. “What’s a school teacher doing messed up with vampires and werewolves?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

I had to smile. “That doesn’t explain how you know about lycanthropes.”

“I had a class in college.”

I shook my head. “So did I, but I didn’t know about shapeshifters collapsing.”

“You’ve got a degree in preternatural biology?” he asked.