Chapter Fifty Three

  “Mich, this is Desmond, reporting in,” said Eugene into the phone.

  “Eugene?” I heard Mich reply. “Is this a new phone?”

  “Recovered it from one of the cultists. Hoping you could pull up the call logs.”

  “I’ll get someone on that ASAP. Hope you got good news for me.”

  “I have… news,” said Eugene.

  I could feel him eyeing me.

  Or, rather, the man who sounded like Eugene.

  Because my normal under-caffeinated wizard—with his mop of unwashed hair and perpetual five-o’clock shadow—had been replaced by a straw-haired, clean-shaven, sharp-jawed stranger with a sun-lined face and a dimpled chin.

  Seemed our Puppeteer was a nauseatingly handsome individual.

  Could still use a bath, though—not that I was fit to judge.

  Eugene was also using the Puppeteer’s phone—some kind of rugged, high-tech satellite flip-phone—and had reclined in the driver’s seat to help him breathe after the sudden, traumatic chest compression.

  Something had popped when I landed on him—I was pretty sure it was his sternum.

  Meanwhile, I was hunched over in the passenger seat, head between my knees, a barf bag clutched in both hands, waiting for Eugene’s solution to my… intoxication to take effect.

  It sat heavy in my stomach.

  Several minutes earlier, Eugene and I had been sprawled out on the warehouse floor—Eugene pinned on his back, struggling to breathe, and me, a shaggy, disheveled wolf draped across him, trying to scrape together a coherent thought.

  Having returned to my body, I was finally able to feel the physical after-effects of receiving a massive, yet non-lethal, dose of bufotoxin.

  Non-lethal for a werewolf, that is.

  My mind was playing Wheel of Fortune, all the dollar amounts swapped for emotions, and I was Vanna White, trying to spell out my thoughts one letter at a time, starting with the vowels.

  Yes, I’d like to buy an ‘e’ for existential crisis.

  My pulse pounded behind my eyes as my stomach spasmed and bile rose in my throat.

  A sense of impending doom washed over me.

  There was a good reason why most people who smoked toad venom only did it once.

  I’d had bad hangovers before, but this was something else—and it was clear to see why Virginia wanted me back so badly.

  Because misery loved company.

  And I was her trauma-buddy.

  Mich’s voice crackled, pulling me back to the present.

  “So, how are things with the new recruit and that chimera? Agent Thompson's got collections on standby… and clean-up will be in the area soon for the dead thralls.”

  “The situation's been contained,” said Eugene. “Virginia managed to tame the chimera and isolate it herself. Damn thing’s following her like a puppy.”

  Hot breath clouded my window, followed by a squeak as the nose of said puppy pressed up against the glass.

  Not now, Sylvie, I thought to him, your AJ needs more recovery time.

  The Bronco’s headlights shone like radiant columns of light in the fog that pressed in all around us, filling the warehouse.

  Sylvester—whom the fog clung to—waited patiently and intently outside my door.

  I’d assumed that Sylvester would have followed Nevermore to the park, as I had instructed, but it seemed that having his AJ suddenly yanked away left him with a severe case of separation anxiety.

  Now his heart was giddy with excitement.

  Here was his AJ, in the fur and the flesh.

  She looked so small, so soft…

  So tantalizingly close.

  And, while it was probably the bufotoxin messing with my cortisol levels, I was low-key panicking—my mind slowly coming to grips with the reality of my situation.

  While inside Sylvester's head, I couldn't fully appreciate the relative size of a draft-horse-turned-chimera.

  In fact, he only thought himself normal-sized—everything else was just really small.

  But seeing him from the outside now, all I could think was:

  My god, what big teeth you have.

  Both sets of them.

  I was starting to see why Virginia had gotten so spooked.

  He was like a slightly smaller T-rex.

  Except unlike in the movies, his vision wasn't based on movement, and standing still wouldn't hide me from him.

  Our telepathic bond was basically an AJ-homing device, and he knew exactly where I was.

  At all times.

  And, to top it all off, he was a literal walking biohazard… who wanted to cuddle.

  The pane of glass separating us was thin indeed—barely more than the clear plastic wrapper around a piece of candy.

  For now, though, Sylvester was behaving.

  We’d agreed on some ground rules:

  First: no eating Eugene.

  Second: no eating Boden or Coy—they were friends, not chew-toys.

  Third: no damaging Marvin, which also included doing anything untoward towards him.

  I knew how Sylvester’s mind worked. I knew it craved enrichment.

  Fortunately, Sylvester seemed to grasp the idea of an imposter—that this Puppeteer was not his Puppeteer.

  But Eugene had still donned the shade-enchanted helmet and vest, just to be safe.

  To make sure Sylvester’s attention stayed on me.

  As if he wasn’t already burning a hole in the back of my head with his laser focus.

  “So, any collateral I need to be worried about?”

  Funny you should ask, Mich!

  “No,” said Eugene. “At least no casualties—just a security guard with a concussion and a good bit of property damage.”

  “Honestly, not as bad as I was expecting. How's the visibility?”

  “Mild. Looks like three of the staff, guard included, got a good look at the thing. But Virginia got it shrouded pretty quickly after that.”

  “Good, that'll make things more manageable. Really won the lottery with this random hook-up of yours. Will Virginia be able to handle the rendezvous with Thompson? Get your catch of the day away from any more wandering eyes?”

  “That... might take a while.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, no, not really. Our chimera is just loitering with us inside an old warehouse while Virginia detoxes,” Eugene said.

  “Detox? Is Gin okay?” Mich asked.

  Eugene glanced at Gin, who was currently hyperventilating into her bag.

  “She’s… been better. Looks like our chimera was crossed with a Cane or River Toad. Its skin is toxic to touch. And she made contact.”

  “Cane Toads? God, I hate those slimy little bastards. My in-laws have them all over their yard in Jupiter. They lost a dog after it licked one. Are you able to treat her, or do you need assistance?”

  “I’ve administered a… treatment. It just needs a little time,” Eugene said.

  Eugene’s ‘treatment’ had been a literal rock.

  A bezoar.

  Like the titular main character from Rowling’s seminal work, he’d chosen to aid his ailing sidekick with a gallstone from a goat’s intestines.

  Though, unlike in the books—where the bezoar instantly cured Ron Werewolf of all poisons—the real thing had a few… caveats.

  As a preventative measure, a bezoar could be swallowed—or dropped in a drink—to protect you from ingesting a poison.

  But, as an intervention, after the venom was already in your bloodstream, it was less effective.

  Still, it had its uses.

  As Eugene explained, “It’ll help your body expel the venom faster—basically leaches it out through your gut. It’s also quite effective at suppressing nausea and vomiting.”

  Unsurprisingly, the thing that prompted this proposal had been me dry-heaving while we’d still been piled up on the floor.

  A proper dog-pile, once Boden joined in.

  Eugene had to use magic to get himself out from under more than two hundred pounds of dog before the first chunks of chicken bones had made their appearance, and even then he needed his wizard-staff as a crutch to stand.

  Seemed being tossed about by a drug-addled werewolf was a good way to spring an ankle.

  Virginia and I had managed to shift into our werewolf form, but we remained curled up in the fetal position while Boden administered tongue-based aid.

  Fresh cramps twisted in our gut.

  Strands of saliva—thick like shoelaces—oozed from our mouth, as if we’d swallowed a sneaker.

  It certainly felt like we had.

  And, over the course of mere minutes, we’d proceeded to empty our stomach of its contents—over $300 of prime ribeye steak, spread across the warehouse floor.

  Even then, we continued to retch.

  Needless to say, when Eugene proposed that by swallowing a magical rock I could treat the worst symptoms of bufotoxicity, I was more than willing to give it a shot.

  “How long will it take?” I’d asked Eugene as he leaned against the Bronco and began fishing through his pockets.

  “You should feel some effects almost immediately, but it will take time for all the symptoms to ameliorate. If things don’t clear up before the bezoar passes through your system, in maybe two or three days, you can just cleanse it and reuse it.”

  “And how do you cleanse a bezoar?”

  “I find soap and water works pretty well.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Eugene, who had pulled out what looked to be a bag of marbles, shook his head.

  “Wait, you haven’t used this one before, have you?”

  “No, this is a spare I’ve never used… thankfully.”

  He snapped his fingers, making the marbles disappear, and continued searching.

  A moment later he said, “Aha!” and produced a small leather pouch.

  “Now, I agreed to provide magical healing—that was part of the deal—and this certainly qualifies, but I did spend a pretty penny on this. So I’ll want it back at some point.”

  “So don’t flush it, you mean.”

  “Basically.” Eugene nodded.

  “So how will I know when I’m about to, uh… pass it?”

  “Oh,” said Eugene with a smirk, “you’ll know.”

  He deposited the iridescent amber stone into my hand, and I involuntarily gagged.

  It was the size of a fucking golf ball.

  Back in the present, Boden started worming his way from the back seat into my lap.

  Once a lap puppy—always a lap puppy.

  He struggled to squeeze between the seats.

  Not wanting to earn the ire of a dog that could supposedly decide my fate, I lifted the seat latch and slid myself backwards.

  “Seems an odd thing to put into a chimera,” said Mich. “From your description, it sounded like teeth with legs. Poisonous skin seems a little… redundant. I mean, close enough to touch is close enough to eat. Right?”

  “No, I’ve seen this before,” Eugene said. “The toxic skin is just a coincidental adaptation. The real intent is likely a chimera that can brumate.”

  “Bro, what?”

  “Uh, reptilian hibernation. They’ll go dormant at cold temperatures—some amphibians can even be frozen solid. Makes them easy to store and transport.”

  “I suppose it saves on food costs.”

  Eugene leaned over to peek out the passenger window, observing the shadow that loomed over the vehicle.

  “Yeah,” he added, “just need a big enough fridge.”

  Noticing what I was up to, he covered the receiver and asked, “You doing all right?”

  “Snuggling by proxy,” I said in a muffled voice.

  My face was buried in Boden’s belly—his tail doing a little wack-wack-wack across the seat and console—and I was relaying the experience to Sylvester.

  Taking advantage of our telepathic bond so Sylvester could channel his cute aggression through me, just as I’d channeled my frustration through him.

  This wasn’t quite the ‘Group Therapy’ Dr. Anderson had suggested I attend, but you worked with what you had.

  At least it was enriching for the three of us—Boden, Sylvester, and me.

  Wasn’t sure where Coy was.

  He’d pulled his Schr?dinger Dog act again—both here, there, and nowhere.

  All at the same time.

  “So, were you able to ID our Puppeteer?” I heard Mich ask.

  Eugene gave me a pat on the back before returning to his seat. “I was. You still running the poll?”

  “All bets are in, and we’ve got a tie between… ‘Kilgrave Wannabe’ and ‘Evil Dr. Dolittle.’”

  “Any votes for Florida Man?” Eugene asked.

  “Nope, wasn’t one of the options. But we’ve got a ‘Rabid Raccoon,’” Mich said.

  Eugene shrugged. “Eh, close enough.”

  “So who is it?”

  “Q. B. Bourdeaux.”

  “No shit! Beastlord?”

  I could hear Mich lower the receiver and call out across the office, “Pete! Mark Bourdeaux as resolved—and pay out the pool!”

  There was a low murmur of voices I couldn’t make out, followed by Mich saying off-phone, “Look, I can’t debate this right now—you should have used Wikipedia if you didn’t know who Kilgrave was.”

  Eugene had already given me the rundown on Q.B. earlier, when I’d asked about his new appearance.

  Quentin “Beastlord” Bourdeaux had been a renowned swamp sorcerer who’d set up shop in the Everglades, where he enjoyed the pastimes of hunting, wrestling gators, taking long walks in nature, and playing a most dangerous game with anyone foolish enough to try collecting the bounty on his head.

  He even had a quote from the book—“Instinct is no match for reason”—tattooed along one arm.

  As well as Genesis 1:28 written backwards on his chest for reading in the mirror.

  According to Eugene, the DOA would’ve largely left Bourdeaux alone—because a problem far removed from civilization wasn’t really a problem—if he hadn’t kept pissing off the DEA.

  For, you know, engaging in the lucrative business of drug trafficking.

  He’d also earned himself a spot on the DNR’s Most Wanted list for the illegal capture, possession, and poaching of wildlife and other protected species—to either smuggle or to turn into an assorted collection of clothing items and accessories he either wore or sold as contraband.

  Oh, and good ol’ animal cruelty.

  Blessed was he to rule over all of God’s creation—and do whatever he saw fit with it.

  That was his God-given gift, after all—to dominate the minds of all that crawleth across the earth.

  And wear them as boots.

  Bourdeaux had first gotten onto the DOA’s radar after he’d been caught north of Mobile, Alabama, transporting an honest?to?God rhinoceros in a U?Haul—which he then sicced on local law enforcement when they tried to arrest him.

  And his reputation only worsened from there.

  In fact, “Beastlord” wasn’t just his moniker, but his actual middle name—he’d legally changed it.

  “So, Bourdeaux was working with the Green?Flames?” Mich continued. “Didn’t expect him to become so… entrepreneurial. Thought he was more of a one?man band. At least, one man and his army of wee beasties.”

  “Perhaps they liked his personality,” Eugene said.

  “Well, sure, if you called Joe Exotic having a love?child with Steve Irwin and being raised in a Bass Pro Shop a personality.”

  “I was going to go with Jeff Foxworthy as Crocodile Dundee, but yours is better.”

  “Dundee? Really? Does he have a bowie?”

  Eugene pulled out a rather large and ornate knife from his belt.

  “Yep. Thirteen inches, Randall?made. Damn thing’s like a machete.”

  Mich whistled.

  In an Australian accent, he said, “Now that’s a knife.”

  I could tell the blade had been recently used.

  It was laden with the stench of fresh blood.

  Human blood.

  “Always thought the gators would eventually get him,” Mich said.

  “Yeah, that would’ve been poetic. But it looks like gravity was what finally got him.”

  “You didn’t push him off a building, did you?”

  “No, he fell for a rigged Slip. Literally. Got sent down an abandoned elevator shaft.”

  “This shaft in real space?”

  “It is, but it’s sealed off save for a maintenance entrance in the basement, and I've secured the site.”

  “Good. That’s real good. You got an address for me?”

  “Dockside Condominiums on Concord.”

  “I’ll send clean?up there next.”

  According to Eugene, this was an important, if unspoken, nuance of how the DOA operated: to leave no trace.

  And this extended beyond just the SC?DOA.

  Thing was, the Department of Occult Affairs was just one part of a large alphabet soup of clandestine state and federal organizations—all under the supervision of the humbly named Agency of Supernatural Intelligence, or just ASI—that all operated under a common doctrine of Noosphere Containment.

  In a nutshell, we humans—and potentially any sufficiently intelligent species for that matter—possessed an evolutionary survival trait that protected us from metaphysical threats we couldn’t understand.

  Basically, it was like telling Tinkerbell to go fuck herself because we didn’t believe in fairies.

  Ghosts? Demons? Boogiemen?—Get outta here.

  No. Seriously. Go away.

  It made it so that what we didn't know had trouble hurting us. But this adaptation worked both ways: we could restrain reality with our belief just as readily as we could turn our beliefs into reality.

  And there were many names for this phenomenon—Manifesting, the Law of Attraction, the Placebo Effect—but they all amounted to the same thing:

  Our imaginations had power—and that power could be dangerous.

  Concerted efforts to control this phenomenon could be traced as far back as the Renaissance—when we humans first started weaponizing our intellect and began reshaping the world around us in a more… profound way.

  But it really wasn’t until the 1940s—after an Incident that became known as the Schwarzwald Breach—that the U.S. government finally recognized the importance of controlling this so?called Noosphere.

  For national security reasons.

  It all started during the height of World War II, when a certain warring power—on a quest for world domination—made use of recently discovered, or technically re-discovered, tomes of forbidden lore. With even a small, yet zealous, group of participants—i.e., cultists—they demonstrated the ease with which you could tear a hole in the fabric of our reality.

  I say our reality, because, apparently, ours wasn’t the only one, and bad things tended to happen when they mixed.

  “But, as apocalyptic as this might seem,” Eugene had explained, “it isn’t really any different from all the other initiatives meant to prevent mankind from annihilating itself—disease control, nuclear non-proliferation, disincentivizing armed conflict. Et cetera, et cetera.”

  “What’s important to understand,” he’d continued, “is that the vast majority of people need to believe there’s no greater power—or threat—than ourselves. That’s the core of Noosphere Containment: keeping the power of our collective consciousness with us. And not, say, believe in some eldritch horror hell-bent on consuming the minds of all living creatures.”

  “Praise be to Cthulhu.”

  Eugene had frowned at my joke.

  “Sorry, that slipped out,” I’d said.

  At least, I thought that was what I’d said.

  But I could have imagined it—I’d been a little out of it at the time.

  I’d just taken Eugene’s bezoar and managed to pull myself into the passenger seat to wait out the effect.

  Despite the engine being off, it felt like the whole world was vibrating.

  Shifting beneath me.

  My limbs were tingling, my vision spun, but at least my stomach felt much better.

  Seemed the bezoar worked in that regard.

  But my mind was still a little scattered.

  Sometimes I was in the Bronco, my head on the dashboard while Boden nuzzled me for attention.

  Then I was in a different car, Virginia resting her head in my lap while I stroked her mane.

  Then I was back in the Bronco again.

  I’d been coherent enough to warn Eugene when I sensed Sylvester approaching, and then Eugene was in the car with me, my head on his lap while he stroked my mane.

  I remembered speaking with Nevermore for a brief second—him apologizing about Sylvester—before departing to meet with this... Agent Thompson.

  And thinking that the name felt familiar.

  I wasn’t sure how Eugene and I had gotten onto the topic of DOA protocol—only that, at some point, we had.

  “So… ASI is like Men in Black,” I’d said. “They think it’s best that we don’t believe in spooky supernatural stuff.”

  “Close enough,” Eugene said. “So the best way to stay on DOA’s good side—the ASI by extension—is to keep a low profile and stay within their jurisdiction.”

  “What’s their jurisdiction? This Noosphere thing?” I’d asked.

  “No, the Noosphere is the world as we know it. The Know-sphere, if you would. What my colleagues and I often call ‘real-space.’ Everything outside it is ‘meta-space’—as in metaphysical. That is their jurisdiction.”

  “You guys sure love your jargon,” I’d muttered.

  “Well, you already know it by a different name.”

  “I do?”

  Eugene nodded.

  “Sonder and Abandon. Different names for the same thing.”

  A rose is a rose, I suppose.

  “So how come I’m a werewolf?” I’d asked. “Like, I didn’t believe in any of this shit before. But that didn’t protect me. How’s that fit in all this?”

  “Well, keep in mind, it is just a conceptual model. The ASI's chosen schema. But you can imagine the Noosphere like a city built atop an ancient forest. Just because you pave over it doesn’t mean its inhabitants simply disappear. Many will be forced out, sure, but many will also adapt and learn to live amongst us—preying on us from the shadows where the walls are thin. And it’s always the things we fear most that continue to haunt us.”

  And dig through our trash at night, I’d thought sullenly.

  “Either way, the goal is to limit the impact the supernatural has on the wider public—to keep the Noosphere intact. But it isn’t flawless. There are holes, weak spots, places where the borders are thin. What you might call a breach, or a meta-space incursion—MSI for short. From this perspective, this is why you—your condition—and even magic itself still exists."

  “So what about Slips? They a type of breach?” I’d asked.

  “Depends: is a door a type of hole?”

  “I mean… technically.”

  My head had started to hurt again, and I lost my train of thought.

  Eugene, meanwhile, continued to explain how, over the years, ASI had churned out countless smaller divisions to address the many facets of the supernatural.

  The slice given to the SC-DOA was the statewide monitoring, regulating, and, when needed, suppression of organized occult activity. These included, but were not limited to cults, covens, druid circles—any groups or individuals who practiced the arcane arts to a sufficient degree.

  And the best way to piss off the DOA—and ASI by extension—was involving actual law enforcement.

  Because… jurisdiction.

  It was a core tenet of Noosphere Containment after all: to preserve the Rule of Law.

  One fantasy to rule them all.

  So as long as you didn’t tie their hands down with a bureaucratic nightmare, the DOA was willing to exercise a high level of… discretion.

  That was the understanding.

  What they were less forgiving of was someone, like Bourdeaux, actively at odds with publicly facing regulatory agencies—like the DEA and DNR—or, say, letting a giant man-eating chimera run loose in public.

  Those kinds of things got dealt with quickly and harshly.

  As for someone turning into a wolf to steal people’s food and a car…

  Sylvester might not be a rhinoceros, but stick him in a U-haul, and I’d have all the trappings to be the next Bourdeaux.

  So, after buying an ‘e’, came the letter ‘f’.

  For fucked.

  Things were different for Eugene, however.

  For him, Bourdeaux being tossed down an inaccessible elevator shaft had been a good thing. It meant there was time for Mich to send in a clean-up crew before anyone could report the body.

  No one to ask questions about how it got there.

  Or why its face was missing.

  It was better that way.

  Because some questions were better left unanswered.

  But I couldn’t help myself.

  “Is this like a polyjuice potion or something?” I’d said, gesturing to Eugene’s appearance.

  Whatever Eugene’s disguise was, he not only looked, but smelled, like a completely different person—enough to fool a disoriented Virginia.

  “Not a potion,” Eugene had responded, “but the idea is similar.”

  After a moment to process this, I asked, “So… how’s it work?”

  “It’s, ah… complicated.”

  So, Desmond—wizard detective who compulsively spouted off arcane lore—was suddenly being cagey.

  That was a little suspicious.

  I’d let the thought slip out, knowing damn well Eugene could hear it.

  Well…

  Eugene sighed.

  “It’s called a Deathmask. It’s…”

  Eugene winced as he took a deep breath.

  “It’s like how those assassins in Game of Thrones steal the faces of their targets.”

  “You… stole his face?”

  Another pause.

  “You know… with magic,” said Eugene.

  “Oh, good. Was starting to think you’d gone all Leatherface.”

  “Well… it does involve a piece of uncured leather.”

  I managed to lift my head and stare up intently at Eugene.

  “You, uh... care to elaborate?”

  “Well, you place it over the face of someone recently deceased to… capture their image.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know… like a system image.”

  I said nothing.

  “It’s a computer thing,” Eugene said, sounding awkward.

  “Sooo… you copied his face?”

  Eugene just shook his head.

  He’d then gone on to explain what really went into crafting a Deathmask.

  And it was a good thing I’d already emptied my stomach.