Authors: John Conroe
I rode in the backseat of the dark Ford Explorer, next to
Velasquez
. Roma had shotgun and Sommers was driving. We headed north out of Brooklyn, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. The city street
view suddenly gave way to green trees and I realized we were entering Central Park
area
. In the twelve months I had been in the city, I hadn't made it to Central Park. Sommers parked in a cluster of official vehicles near the north end of the park, after entering through the gate near 102
nd
Street. I jumped out of the vehicle and followed the other three as they bee-lined for the center of activity, which was the middle of a bunch of ball fields in a wide meadow. Cops and Emergency services personnel, dressed in raingear, were all over the place, treating wounded, taking statements, photographing bodies, with some obviously searching the grounds for something. Roma was met by some Homicide types and I could just hear the conversation over the pouring rain.
“About an hour ago, six to eight perps attacked a group of ball players trying to get a game in between showers. There are eleven wounded, six dead, including four of the attackers.”
“What weapons did they use?” Roma asked.
“The attackers? Just hands and teeth. The bystanders? Anything they had, mainly umbrellas.”
“Teeth?” Roma asked.
Gunfire suddenly erupted at the north end of the field, causing most of us to grab our guns. Roma just turned to look, and the rest of us
holstered
after seeing the officers at that part of the field put away their guns and move to the downed individual.
“Make that five of the attackers,” the Homicide officer added.
Roma turned to look at the three of us. “Have a look around and see what you can find out.”
Sommers joined the group that had just done the shooting and Velasquez headed to where the EMTs were treating the wounded. I moved across the field, trying to read the tracks in the torn up muddy field.
I could see that a group had moved in a straight line from the entrance we had just come through to one of the ball fields. It looked like several attackers had peeled off to assault bystanders on the way. A blanket covered body lay off to the side, a bare foot poking out from under. At least four of the attackers had continued straight on. A body lay in front of me, eyes open, lips drawn back in snarl, head bent back at an impossible angle. One of the four, I guessed. A pair of woman's shoes where lying a little further on and the tracks showed female sized feet moving away from the dead attacker, a pair of child-sized shoe prints moving parallel. I paused, confused by the next pattern. The small female-sized feet disappeared, covered or obliterated by some really large dog tracks. Where the hell had the dog come from? I shifted around a couple of Crime Scene types who were photographing another body, this one with its throat ripped out. Same snarl on the face though. Okay, first attacker gets his neck broken...by the woman? Second gets his throat ripped out by one hell of big dog. I picked up the tracks again, heading slightly northwest. At least the dog's tracks and the child's. What happened to the woman's? I couldn't find them, so I kept on with the ones I had. Which brought me to body number three, also with its throat ripped out. The rain was coming down harder and a normally difficult crime scene was fast becoming impossible. The daylight, already muted by the storm clouds, was almost gone and I broke out my Surefire LED light to help pick out the tracks. I could smell the blood and feces of the dead attackers, mingled with a wet dog smell and a salty coppery blood smell that was different from the dead bodies'.
How the hell was I smelling all this, especially in the rain? I spotted a dot of red in the dog tracks, then another and another. The red splotches got bigger as I moved out of the field on a path headed into a wooded area. Most of the other cops and emergency personnel were back in the field and nobody was paying me any attention. Just another uniform searching the park. The woods got thicker and the tracks disappeared on a paved path, but the red splotches kept on. Abruptly, I came to stream running out of a rough rock arch, the front overhung with yellow forsythia. Instinct made me slow, as the wet dog smell got stronger. A low growl stopped me in my tracks and I realized I was all alone, well out of sight of the field. A pair of red rimmed eyes watched me from a rocky hollow on the left side of the arch, the forsythia partially blocking my view. I edged slowly closer until I could make out a pale face watching me from next to a very large, very disturbed canine face. So here was the kid and the dog, with the dog being wounded. Where had the woman gone?
“Hey kid, you alright?” I asked quietly, trying not to spook him or his dog.
He didn't say anything, his expression a mix of fear and determination. Brave kid.
“Is your dog hurt?” I asked.
He glanced at the dog and looked back at me, undecided. I kept edging closer and the growls gradually subsided, although the red eyes never left me. The kid looked about eight or nine, dark hair, dark eyes. The dog was huge, reddish brown and if I didn't know better, more wolf than dog. I could see wounds on the dog's neck and as I studied the two of them, I realized that the wounds were looking better as time went on. It brought to mind an image of Tatiana, her wounds healing as she drank my blood. I also noted that the dog had the most intelligent looking eyes I had ever seen on an animal. Almost human. I had a hunch. I unfocused my eyes and used my Sight to look the animal over. Its aura was blue and green, human and animal mixed. Reaching slowly into my cargo pocket, I pulled out the sub sandwich. After unwrapping it I tossed it up. Half the bread and most of the lettuce fell off it in mid flight, but the meat (ham I think) and cheese and bottom roll landed right in front of the dog, who sniffed once and gulped twice. Almost immediately, I could see the wounds finish closing.
A yell behind me caused me to turn and look, but it was far away, back at the field. I turned back to the boy and dog, only to find the dog gone and a naked woman in its place. My hunch had been correct. Not that big a stretch really. Tatiana had told me that werewolves were real. I just didn’t expect them to be soccer moms.
“Ma'am, you alright?” I asked.
She nodded, her reddish brown hair plastered to her head with rain. I thought for a moment, then rummaged in my shoulder slung patrol bag. I tossed her a bottle of water, two granola bars, a cheap one dollar rain poncho and a fifteen dollar Trac fone that I keep as a spare ( and an untraceable way to call Gramps if I need to). Her hand shot out and snatched each item from the air like a pro ball player.
“You have someone you can call, ma'am?” I asked.
This time she spoke, slightly louder than a whisper. “Yes, Officer.”
“You alright if I leave you then?” I asked, not wanting to be gone too long. I wasn't part of the triple S group yet so, I didn't think I need to tell them about the werewolf momma who had killed three of the attackers while protecting her son.
“We'll be fine. Thank you Officer....?”
“Gordon, Ma'am.”
“Officer, you smell like vampires.”
“Yes Ma’am.” I answered, and left, heading back to the field.
My absence, of about eight minutes, hadn't been noticed. Instead, everyone's attention was on the capture of the last assailant, who had apparently bee
n hiding in the plastic tunnels
that were part of the little playground, north of the ball fields. Listening in, I found that the big field was known as the North Meadow and the entrance we had come through was known as the Girl's Gate.
The last of the six had been flushed from hiding and then tasered when he proved too difficult to manhandle. Arms cuffed behind his back, he was being led to a squad car by two large cops, struggling the whole way. About my height, slender, long lank hair plastered to his face, eyes wild and mouth snarling, he looked less than human. Again, my gut told me to use my Sight and I scanned his aura. Blue, but with flashes of white across his personal biofield. And just a trace of greasy black. Human, with twitches of vampire white and demon black. Concerned, I moved up close behind him, not liking the way his bound arms were straining at the cuffs. As they neared the squad car, a female cop opened the rear door and everything went to hell in a hurry.
The cop on his right arm slipped in the muddy grass and the wilder chose that moment to exert all of his berserk strength against his cuffs, snapping the metal links. Time started to slow, as he spun to his left, slamming his fist against the other cop's temple, dropping that one like a wet sack. He then leaped for the lady cop at the squad car.
I was moving as soon as the cop slipped, my fight brain taking over. My right hand snatched a handful of his greasy hair just as he began his leap. Everyone around us seemed frozen and even the perp was moving a little slower than I. Yanking back hard, I pulled him completely off his feet, slamming him to the wet ground. Scary quick, he bounced to his feet, spinning and slashing his hooked left fingers at my face. I leaned back a little, letting his fingers slide by with a mere half inch to spare. He surged forward a step, swiping at me again, this time with his right hand. My body moved forward on its own, ducking the swing and my right arm shoved his past me, spinning his back to me. Again I grabbed his hair in my left hand, but this time I snaked my right arm around his throat and under his chin, which he obligingly lifted, as I pulled on his hair. Keeping my left hand at the back of his head I stepped in close, grabbed my left bicep with my right hand and squeezed both arms hard, while I bent him over backwards.
He flailed for a moment, but off balance and back arched, he was helpless as the pressure of my arms on his carotid arteries shut off all blood flow to his brain. Ten long seconds later his consciousness shut down. I spun as I dropped backward so that I landed on his back, just as a ton of cops piled on both of us. Spitting out a mouthful of mud, I relaxed my hold enough to keep the creepy kid under me from checking out completely. Swift, efficient hands re-secured Junior’s arms, this time with multiple plastic wrist cuffs and a whole bunch of hands pulled me upright.
“Good job, buddy
.”
“Atta boy, nice moves.”
A couple more pats on the back and I was able to move aside and straighten my disheveled self.
“Hey Gordon, where the hell did you come from?”
I looked up to see Sommers staring at me.
“Ah..I was over in the woods, following a blood trail and when I came out, I was just in time to join that little fiasco.”
“Roma wants to see us. Nice takedown, by the way. Fast.”
“Thanks.”
We trudged over to where Roma was holding court under the sheltering branches of a huge maple.. There were a few new faces I hadn't met yet and he made the intros as they all stared at my mud-covered uniform.
“Chris Gordon, meet Fran DeMarco, Brian Takata, and Chet Aikens.”
DeMarco was a tough looking fifty-ish white woman with short dirty blonde hair. Takata was Asian, about five eight, blocky and had the same military demeanor as the six foot Sommers. Aikens was a skinny six foot plus black kid with geek glasses. Roma continued.
“Fran is our Medium, Brian comes out of a SWAT background and is our close combat expert. And Chet is our historian and all-round technical wizard,” he explained. “Gordon, here, turns out to be the mythical demon hammer we've been hearing about, although it appears he has other talents. Quick thinking Chris.”
I just nodded, keeping my mouth shut. I'm a firm believer in letting them wonder if you're an idiot, rather than speaking too quickly and removing all doubt. The Inspector looked around the group and then said, “Well, what have we got? Fran? Why don't you lead off.”
She nodded, took a breath and began.
“I was able to find the ghost of one of the dead assailants, but he was almost incoherent. He last remembered hanging at a drug party, probably last night, and suddenly found himself here. He's already moved on. I was just talking to the dead woman over there.” She waved her hand at the blanket covered body with the foot sticking out. “She said they came out of nowhere and one of them just lit into her. I couldn't get anything else, ‘cause something spooked her, and every other spirit around here, just before the last living perp went nuts and got Gordon all dirty.”
I
was most likely the thing that scared off the woman's spirit. Ghosts were afraid of me for some reason. Peter’s group wouldn’t let me go ghost hunting, because nothing showed up when I was around.
“Let me guess, it was a Hance party?” Roma asked.
Fran nodded.
“Gina?” Roma moved to her next.
“The wounded mentioned that the bulk of the attackers targeted a woman and little boy. Someone's guard dog chewed up several of the perps, but no one remembers seeing the kid, the woman or the dog after. It was, by all accounts, mass confusion.”
“Steve?”
“A pair of Central Park Precinct guys were close by and heard the screams. They shot and killed one perp on arrival. We all saw the second to last get his button punched just after we got here, and the last one is Gordon's little playmate in the squad car,” the big officer reported. “ All the living perps responded like they were on Angel Dust, but worse. Buncha officers got slammed around by some skinny under nourished drug heads.”