City Under the Moon Read online

  Could it really have happened?

  She’d felt pain. Torment. And then fury. And hunger.

  It was a terrible descent, a free fall from humanity. Despair and helplessness, as she was forced from her mind and her body, both of them seized by something else…

  …and yet so… liberating… to embrace the cravings and shed the rest.

  The transformation was torturous, every second an eternity. It fueled the beast’s anger, stoking the Devil’s presence and distracting her faith. It was God’s will: The transformation was a test, and she had failed.

  No, God said in her heart. It is a reckoning. A penance.

  For what?

  She had no way of knowing. It was someone else’s sacrament.

  The other.

  In the enraged nightmare, a beast had run alongside her. Man, or wolf, or both. They hunted as a pack. He was her cherished leader.

  The impurity in her soul yearned to protect him. Their love was a blasphemy, because God had forsaken him.

  She prayed God would save her from the beast.

  Or was it the other way around?

  Seven

  President’s Secretary’s Room

  The White House

  December 31

  9:25 pm

  Lon had waited in the anteroom to the Oval Office for so long that he’d started to believe what he’d seen on that CDC video.

  The door to the Oval Office was angled into a nook in order to fit, well, the oval. That was the only interesting thing in this depressing waiting room. The folksy Americana furniture, grandmotherly beige curtains and yuck-brown carpet were straight out of a 1970s TV family drama.

  One of the Secret Service agents had taken his cell phone before they got on the helicopter. He hadn’t seen that guy again, and he was faux-politely rebuked whenever he asked for his phone back. Elizabeth was probably worried sick. He couldn’t wait to tell her that he was part of an important federal investigation!

  One of the president’s secretaries offered to contact his parents, but Lon didn’t care about them. Let his stepfucker Frank think they were going to come lock him up any minute now.

  Heavy traffic flowed past during those long hours. People went into the Oval Office, but never came out. Some guy in a sweater vest brought him a turkey sandwich for dinner. A Secret Service agent escorted him to take a piss. By the end of the day, he had managed to grow bored… while he was waiting in the White House to talk about a werewolf he’d just seen.

  He passed the time re-reading and re-re-reading everything in the National Archives’ files on lycanthropy. His own letter to President Bush was included, scrawled in his fumbled attempt at calligraphy.

  And then the door to the Oval Office opened. The freaking President of the United freaking States emerged with a freaking football in his freaking hands.

  “Boris Toller?” the freaking president asked.

  “Um…” Lon managed to move his chin up and down while he got his feet under him.

  The president tossed the football and Lon caught it against his chest. That might’ve been the first time he’d ever held a swineskin (Right?) in his life.

  “Nice to meet you, Boris, I’m William Weston,” he said with an outstretched hand.

  Lon put his boneless, sweaty mitt into the president’s grasp.

  “Want a picture?” Weston asked as he pushed Lon toward the office.

  “Hi. Hi. Sure.”

  One guy popped out of nowhere to take the football and another guy took their picture, and then suddenly they were gone. The ritual was probably standard operating procedure, Lon thought, but it felt intensely disingenuous.

  “It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” asked Weston, referring to the office.

  Lon couldn’t deny the majesty of the Oval Office. It was time to say something profound. “It’s a cool…”

  The president gazed at him for a moment, probably wondering if Lon was capable of making it through this. But there was no judgment in his voice when he spoke again. “How about we go watch some television, Boris?”

  With a hand on Lon’s shoulder, Weston led him through a door on the opposite side of the oval, into a curved junction between two hallways. Smart suits rushed to and fro, nodding respectfully to the president. Their quick looks made him feel embarrassed for his unaccomplished life.

  “So you run a website?” the president asked.

  Lon wasn’t quite ready to speak outside of his own head.

  Weston turned him so they were face to face. Something about the stance magnetically yanked Lon’s eyes upward into a lock with the president’s. He fought the urge to run away.

  “They tell me you’re the expert we need right now, Boris.”

  “Lon.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Lon, sir. I go by the name Lon.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  Weston spoke slowly. “Why do they call you Lon?”

  “For Lon Chaney Jr., sir. He was an actor, he played the Wolf Man.”

  The president raised a ponderous eyebrow. “That’s better than Boris.”

  Lon closed his eyes and swallowed. So. Damn. Stupid.

  And then they were moving again. Weston pushed him into an open doorway across from the Oval Office. “This is the Roosevelt Room.”

  Lon peeked in. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to see, or even which Roosevelt it was named after. Long table, lots of chairs, big flags, paintings, and a fireplace. He nodded that yes, this was indeed the Roosevelt Room.

  They proceeded to their left and crossed a hallway with more beige and brown. Weston said “goodnight” or “happy new year” to everyone they passed.

  The president pushed Lon into a right turn and Secret Service agents greeted them at an open elevator. They all got inside—wood and brass and mirrors—and one of the agents pressed a fancy security button. The combination of the men’s colognes put another twist in Lon’s stomach.

  “Great actor, Lon Chaney,” Weston said with a politician’s smile.

  Lon nodded, still stuck on the whole guy is in charge of the free world and you tell him you’ve named yourself after an—

  “But I was always partial to Karloff the Uncanny.”

  Lon’s heart burst with excitement! “Oh my God! No! Have you ever seen Son of Dracula? Chaney made a better Dracula than Lugosi!”

  “Have you ever seen The Black Room?” asked the president. “Karloff in dual roles? The man had range, beyond the makeup. How about The Comedy of Terrors?”

  Lon followed Weston off the elevator into a marble-tiled lobby. He was totally turned around, couldn’t have found his way out if he was being chased by a minotaur.

  “Okay, alright,” Lon conceded, “but have you seen the 1939 Of Mice and Men?”

  “I’ll admit I haven’t,” Weston responded, gesturing Lon through a door to their immediate right, past more bland artwork. “Is it good?”

  “You won’t believe Chaney’s performance! That’s where he really stepped out of his father’s shadow.”

  “I’ll check it out,” Weston said as they entered a new hallway and a decidedly different environment, one far more modern than the rest of the White House. The Na’vi carpeting, wood panels, and halogen lights were homey, but the dead room tone and cool recycled air felt oddly counterfeit, as if the walls were hiding something far more sophisticated.

  They passed a pod bustling with televisions and energetic people in headsets, and the president sensed Lon’s curiosity. “That’s the Watch Center. Those guys monitor all the news in the world, all the time.”

  They reached a long conference room, with massive flat-screen televisions built into its wood-paneled walls. A high-sheen redwood table was populated by a lot of the same people he’d met earlier, including Luft, Greenberg, and Truesdale. Others were seated behind them.

  Lon had seen this place in the movies! This was the White House Situation Room, where the president decides to drop nuclear bombs!
/>   “Have a seat, Lon.” Weston directed him to sit in a chair behind his place at the head of the table.

  Woah… Was he going to become a cabinet member?

  “Can we get some popcorn?” Weston asked a duty officer, trying to disarm the tension. “And champagne? Anybody want champagne?”

  A few people shrugged or nodded. The officer hurried off.

  “Mister President,” said Greenberg, “We’ve distributed silver bullets among the New York police in the JTTF. It was the best way to single out a number of officers.”

  “And the quarantine scenario?” Weston was far more relaxed than the others.

  “We’re readying checkpoints at all of the bridges and tunnels. We’ll be reinforcing all night long. We should be able to close everything down.” And then he added, softly: “If necessary.”

  “Here’s hoping it won’t be necessary,” said Weston. He turned his attention toward one of the TVs, where Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve had just returned from a commercial. The other screens were showing New Year’s Eve programming from CNN, Fox News, the Fox network, Comedy Central, and MTV, all with closed captions.

  “Thirteen minutes until moonrise,” said Luft.

  Wait. What?

  Weston turned Lon’s way. “Well, we’ve got a few minutes and popcorn is on the way, so why don’t you tell us about werewolves?”

  The entire Situation Room turned toward him. The taunting ring of Under Pressure by David Bowie and Queen danced through his head. Ding ding ding di-di-ding ding. Ding ding ding di-di—

  “Lon?”

  “Well, uh... sir, there are hundreds of different versions of the legend.”

  “Let’s start from the beginning.”

  “Well, the first true werewolf story was written in the year 8 AD, by a Roman called Ovid. It was in Book One of his fifteen-volume narrative poem, Metamorphoses. This was a history of the world from creation to Julius Caesar, in mythological terms, of course. Ovid wrote of the notorious cannibal Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, who tested Zeus’ power by serving him a meal of stewed children. In response, Zeus transformed him into a wolf. The better translation from Ovid’s Latin reads as follows:

  “Lycaon ran in terror, and reaching the silent fields howled aloud, frustrated of speech. Foaming at the mouth, and greedy as ever for killing, he turned against the sheep, still delighting in blood. His clothes became bristling hair, his arms became legs. He was a wolf, but kept some vestige of his former shape. There were the same grey hairs, the same violent face, the same glittering eyes, the same savage image.

  “Now, the first mention of the mortal werewolf came from The Satyricon, a satire novel by Petronius, from the court of Nero later in the first century. This was really the only other surviving novel from the Roman Empire, so it’s interesting that they both mentioned werewolves. But The Satyricon is much more lighthearted, like a relationship misadventure sitcom for the bathhouse set. In chapter sixty-two of Volume Two, the narrator has attended an extravagant dinner at the lavish estate of—“

  “Lon,” President Weston interrupted.

  That was when Lon realized that everyone was frowning at him like he was an infected pustule. Oh, how he knew that look.

  “I’m sorry,” Lon said.

  “That’s okay. I hope you’ll write down all of that for us later. In the meantime, let’s keep it succinct.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he repeated. “Now how does one become a werewolf?”

  “In pop culture—in the movies—it’s usually from the bite of another werewolf. In The Wolf Man, Lawrence Talbot, Lon Chaney Jr.’s character, is bitten by a werewolf who turns out to be the son of a Gypsy fortuneteller. Other legends claim that you can become a lycanthrope, a person who transforms into a werewolf, by donning a belt made of wolf skin during a full moon, or drinking rainwater from the footprint of a wolf, or drinking or bathing in the blood of a werewolf. And those are just the stories indigenous to America; there are really weird ones from—”

  “Which one is the truth?”

  “It certainly comes from a bite. But many accounts suggest that the attacks aren’t random. Very often, the lycanthrope will know their victim. It’s usually someone they love. The important distinction is that lycanthropy isn’t a disease; it’s a curse, a metaphor for atonement, punishment for sin.”

  “So who does the cursing?” asked General Truesdale. “Who created the first werewolf?”

  “That’s up for conjecture. Modern occult writings refer to witches or warlocks or shamans or, again, Gypsy mystics. But anthropologists have tracked legends of shapeshifters through the folklore of virtually every culture in history. Native Americans had their skinwalkers, like the Navajo yee naaldlooshii, or ‘he who runs on all fours.’ If you’re looking at pure shapeshifting, I mean that goes all the way back to Homer—“

  “Let’s stick with werewolves,” Weston said. Some of the others squirmed with impatience. “Traditional werewolf legend. The moon and silver, right?”

  “Yeah. The most ‘traditional’ version says that when there’s a full moon, a man cursed with lycanthropy will transform into a werewolf.”

  “Tonight’s not a full moon,” said Luft.

  “Neither was last night,” added the president, gesturing at Lon to continue.

  “Well, the full moon thing has been under contention forever. It probably started with Petronius, who wrote that when he first saw a man turn into a werewolf, I quote, ‘the moon was bright as day.’ But, I mean, if you think about it, it’s really stupid—why would it only work under a full moon? It’s transmogrification, not PMS.” Lon paused for the proverbial rimshot, but nobody laughed, so he continued: “There’s no reason to expect that a lycanthrope wouldn’t transform whenever he or she is exposed to moonlight.”

  “Interesting,” Weston said, throwing a glance toward Luft.

  “And silver is the only thing that will kill them?” Luft asked.

  “Some say holy water or fire will do it, but they’re confusing them with vampires. And I mean, I assume with modern weapons—if you blow a werewolf up, he’s probably gonna die, y’know? Also, they’re repulsed by wolfsbane, like vampires with garlic.”

  “Wolfsbane is a flower?”

  “Aconitum napellus. There’s debate about which specific subspecies the lore refers to, but I believe it to be Aconitum tauricum Wulfen, simply because of its endemism to the Southern Carpathians, in and about Romania. It’s a tall, romantic purple flower—“

  “Why Romania?” interjected Luft.

  “Oh, man, well, lycanthropy lore—all of the classic monster lore, really—is distinctly European. Horror literature reached its golden age when London was the world’s capital of society, and Romania was best known for the morbid reign of Vlad the Impaler, who served as Bram Stoker’s template for Count Dracula.”

  “But Dracula was a vampire,” said the president.

  “A lot of the fiction is tied together. See, it’s all drawn from primal fears. The vampire is the violator. The werewolf is the betrayer. I’ve already done a first draft of my doctoral thesis on this.”

  “We’re looking for fact, not fiction.”

  “Werewolves are fact. Vampires are fiction.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Because Lord George Gordon Byron essentially made vampires up for a story he created during the same writing exercise in which Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, in the volcanic summer of 1816, commonly referred to as the ‘Year Without a Summer,’ but he abandoned his so-called Fragment of a Novel, and that influenced his physician, John William Polidori, to write The Vampyre, which defined the creature as we know it.”

  Everyone in the room stared at him in silent dismay. He wondered if perhaps he should repeat that last part more clearly, but—

  “Answer me this, young man,” said Truesdale. “If this man becomes
a wolf, and whomever he bites becomes a wolf, where does it end? Why haven’t they overrun the world?”

  “I…” That one gave him pause. “They just don’t spread that way. People don’t usually survive a werewolf attack. And some of the legends say that when you kill the originator of the bloodline—the first werewolf—everyone he infected, and everyone down the line, gets cured.”

  “The originator of the bloodline,” repeated Weston.

  “The first werewolf,” Lon confirmed.

  “So we have a target,” said Truesdale, and people started moving.

  A target?

  “We’ll get our men this information, sir,” said Michael Shinick, the Attorney General. Shinick’s aide had already stepped into a futuristic phone booth. When he closed the curved door, its transparent glass turned milky white. So cool!

  “Anything else, Lon?”

  Lon shook his head, still on the phone booth thing. “If I think of something, I’ll let you know.”

  “Anything might be valuable. Please speak up.”

  The president’s aide returned with hot buttered popcorn. Weston grabbed a handful before it was on the table. “Thank you, Tommy. One last thing: Could you send my wife a bouquet of roses and tell her I’m sorry I had to work?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And get me a DVD of the 1939 Of Mice and Men.” He winked at Lon.

  “The moon rises in five minutes,” Luft said.

  “Let’s see what happens,” Weston said with a full mouth.

  “What…happens?” Lon muttered, thoroughly confused. He followed their eyes to the television.

  What might happen?

  Eight

  Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building

  26 Federal Plaza, Manhattan

  23rd Floor Research Library

  9:53 p.m.

  Tildascow checked the clock again. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate, her eyes kept sliding back to that goddamn clock.

  9:54.

  The FBI’s research library was so comprehensive that it defeated its own purpose. Post 9/11, they collected so much goddamn data that research was a constant fucking drowning in a “narrow this search” stupor. She never thought she’d miss the microfiche, but how could you find a needle in a haystack when the haystack kept getting bigger?