The Law is my Shepherd

By Don Kilcoyne

There's one vampire too many in Hawthorne...
Science has swept away the secrecy that long separated mankind from the supernatural creatures that share our world. But a vengeful demon will shatter our fragile peace unless it can be stopped by Angus Wellstone and the cops on the Overnight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Kilcoyne
• Release date: Nov 18, 2010
• ISBN: 9781370022731

Don Kilcoyne

Don lives in Warwick, NY with his bride and joy Kelly, four cats and two Hondas. He surrounds himself with creative people at all times, whether he's singing with the band The Crimson Pirates, creating pewter jewelry with his partner at Highland Pewtersmithy and Fellowship Foundry, performing at the New York Renaissance Faire or developing the ad campaigns that actually pay hismortgage, at Rivet in Soho, New York. Look for Surplus Heroes, The follow-up to The Law is MyShepherd, coming soon!

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The Law is My Shepherd

Don Kilcoyne

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Don Kilcoyne

This book is also available in print.

Find out more at http://www.donkilcoyne.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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CHAPTER 1

The human face comprises 15 bones including the zygomatic. Most call it the cheekbone. The hand is a lot more complicated, with 27 bones, including the metacarpals and phalanges, which, when folded up nice and tight, create what we call knuckles. For thousands of years, the cheekbone and the knuckles have been natural enemies, endlessly shattering against each other with loud, meaty thwaps, often followed by sharp, shivery snaps.

I bring this up because as this story begins I had been listening to those meaty thwaps for nearly an hour and hadn’t yet heard a snap. That was worrying me. Not the thwaps. I’d have time to worry about those later. But the lack of snaps meant trouble. See, Cheeky’s got a soft, delicate little face, with ratty little undernourished bones. Knobs, on the other hand, has fists the size of regulation softballs and bones as dense as petrified wood. By all the laws of physics and anatomy, I should have heard a snap or two by now. I heard lots of AAAgghhhh! and Rrrrrr! and Jesus fuckinchrist my godamnfuckin hand! But not a single Snap from the zygomatics. (Or the metacarpals for that matter, but frankly, I hadn’t been expecting that anyway.)

No, the cheekbones weren’t cracking. Nor — and this is the important part — was Cheeky. I didn’t hear a single snap, nor did I hear Cheeky say the name that I needed to learn if I were to save Cheeky’s life. And that is, after all, why we’d gone so far off the damned ranch.

Just for the record, nobody took any pleasure in having Cheeky tied up. Or beaten up. Not me. Not Knobs. Certainly not Cheeky himself, his legs cuffed to a chair, arms behind his back.

You know, I’d better backtrack for a moment. We don’t know each other well yet, and it’s easy to misinterpret this kind of thing.

Earlier that evening the welterweight S.O.B. cuffed to the chair —Anton Chekowicz — had singlehandedly wrecked a local bar. He’d wrestled four guys twice his size to the ground after smashing a pinball machine with his head. Not normally a face-battering offense, true. But while we had no solid idea what the squirt was capable of, the evidence gave us a damned good hunch, and we needed Cheeky to confirm it himself if he intended to make it through the week. So we had him secured to the chair for our safety, and were punching him in the face for his. Beating his face to save his ass. Clearer now?

Bam. Knobs’ bruised and bleeding fist knocked Cheeky’s head back like the top of a Pez dispenser. Knobs cursed again. But Cheeky just took it. Wouldn’t open his mouth.

Gibson, Cheeky’s lawyer, stood with his back to the wall, his pudgy hands white-knuckled, clutching the chair rail. Red rimmed his eyes over jowls so purple they looked bruised, as if Knobs had been working Gibson over for the last hour instead of his client. The lawyer glanced across the cinderblock room at his brief case, on top of which sat his cell phone, just ten feet out of reach. He was welcome to go get it. Really. Call anyone he wanted. But he’d have to squeeze past Knobs to get it. Personally, I couldn’t see that happening any time soon.

Bam! Again. Same spot. Shit, teeth should have come loose on that one. But Cheeky just gritted ‘em, kept his jaw locked and grinned through a bloody pulp of lips.

Gibson screamed, his warbly wail blubbering out like a chubby teenaged girl, I swear to you, Detective, this will be your BADGE. I will take your badge. Then I will take your house. Your sister’s house. Your dog’s house!

Haven’t got a dog. Thwap!

I was playing it cocky, but I knew Gibson was right. We were playing a big hunch, and if we were wrong, it was over. Knobs and me, on the street. Goodbye pension. Goodbye government-insured-and-fueled squad car. (I like that car.) Hell, most likely, goodbye freedom. This kind of shit could — and perhaps should — get us locked up for five years. But if we were right — and every punch Cheeky shook off convinced us we were — Gibson wouldn’t be able to touch us.

Open your Goddamned MOUTH, Cheek! Knobs’ own teeth were gritted as tight as Cheeky’s. His knuckles looked worse than Cheeky’s face.

Uckoo!

Thwap!

Screw it, Knobs. I tapped him on the shoulder like I was hitting a pause button, freezing the next punch. We needed to finish this job before someone came looking for us. He’s not gonna open up. Pull out the good silver. I looked over at Gibson to see if he understood where this was going. Nothing. Like the proverbial deer, he was trapped in the frozen moment.

You sure? asked Knobs.

Yeah. What choice do we have? Give up now Cheeky walks, Gibson sues us both homeless, and this time next week, we read about Cheeky’s funeral anyway. Any minute someone’s gonna walk through that door… same thing. Cheeky walks… In for a penny…

UCKOO AA-HOWWE! Cheeky howled through his clenched jaw.

Knobs reached into his pocket, rummaged for a moment and pulled out a glistening set of silver knuckles. Not solid silver, of course. Not on a cop’s salary. But silver enough. We’d confiscated these brass bad boys in the high school a few years back and, well, things being how they are nowadays, we paid out-of-pocket to have the knuckles silver-plated. Just in case.

Knobs carefully slipped them over his own ground-chuck digits, then slowly brought his fist down right in front of Cheeky’s eyes, where four blunt brutal spikes gleamed in the blue-green fluorescent light.

That woke Gibson up. Detective! Gibson blubbered. Those are illegal! If you touch my client with that, you’ll... I’ll... Goddamnit you can’t do this!

Do it, Knobs.

Knobs drew back his fist. Deliberate. Slow. Giving Cheeky all the time he needed to think. To think about how much that silver was going to hurt. How long it would take for the blistering wound to heal. If it ever did. Knobs was giving himself time to think it over, too. This wasn’t SOP for my office. Tying a guy up, working him like a punching bag? No. Never before. Clobber a guy in a fight? Sure. But this? This was entirely new territory for everyone involved. This sucked. If you’re asking yourself ‘Why the fuck did we do it front of his lawyer?’ it’s actually kind of simple: I don’t think either of us could have done it if we didn’t have a witness to make us pay if we were wrong. But fuck Gibson. We weren’t wrong. So bear with me through the ugly stuff, OK?

Knobs’ elbow was cocked so far back the cold silver weapon brushed against his earlobe. A smeared thumbprint of blood ran along his jaw. He started to shake. So did Cheeky. Gibson just sputtered.

Do it, I croaked.

Knobs pistoned his fist toward the middle of Cheeky’s forehead, the four spikes soaring home like fighter jets in perfect horizontal formation. Cheeky screamed. Knobs pulled the jab, freezing his fist half an inch from Cheeky’s sallow, acne-cratered brow, the silver never touching his skin. As Cheeky screamed, I shoved my nightstick sideways into his mouth. He clamped down again, but all he got was a mouth full of walnut.

Knobs took off the silver and massaged his damaged knuckles. He looked at Cheeky, whose mouth was gnawing frantically at the walnut doweling, and snorted, Good night, Gracie.

Over the barrel of the baton, in between Cheeky’s chipped, cavity-riddled, nicotine-stained incisors and lumpen plaque-speckled molars, hung two long, pearly white glistening canine fangs.

For one long moment, every nerve in my body tingled. My back muscles unclenched. My diaphragm released, gulping in cold fresh air. I hadn’t noticed how tight my chest had gotten, how shallow my breathing had become, until suddenly all the tension let go at once and I got light-headed. I think I was one shock away from wetting myself.

Well, you really did it, Cheeky, I said, mussing his hair and reaching for a chair. You’re a nocturnal. Happy fucking birthday. I collapsed into the chair, tossed Gibson his cell phone (he fumbled it) and waited for Knobs to uncuff our prisoner. You have no idea what trouble you just stepped into.

I’m Detective Angus Wellstone. You might know my name. I was in the middle of some stuff a few years back. I’m still with the Borough of Hawthorne, New Jersey, Police Department. Most of the time, I really like it here. People get along, living, undead or lycanthrope. We’ve got more than our normal share of the latter two, but everybody generally behaves, and it helps the local economy when most of the shops keep business hours around the clock. Nice town. But it’s got its quirks. Cheeky’s dilemma, for instance, opened up a coffin full of trouble for this little 24-hour town. It’s the kind of thing that could happen anywhere, but only seems to happen here.

I grew up in Hawthorne, and I’ve known Anton Cheeky Chekowicz almost all his life. The Chekowicz’s have lived in town as long as anyone can remember. Three generations, at least. Never rich, never poor, never popular, but never a problem, either. At least not until Cheeky. My bride describes Cheeky as a little caterpillar of a man. Fuzzy. A little bit cute, but mostly creepy. And like a caterpillar, he always turned up where he wasn’t expected, nor particularly wanted. Most locals felt a little protective of him. I guess they felt every little caterpillar had a butterfly in there somewhere. Well, we’d been waiting a hell of a long time for Cheeky’s metamorphosis. By the age of 42, he’d been mentioned in the Police Blotter more often than most of my officers. Just little nuisance things: Trespass. Public intoxication. Driving without a registration. Passing a bad check. He always had a job, even if just for a week at a time, but he never had any money. One week he’d be pumping gas, the next he’d be cutting grass for the town and the third you’d find him rounding up shopping carts at the Home Depot. Everybody knew him, and some guys would spot him a drink at the bar. No one really talked to him, but somehow everyone knew a story about him. Maybe Cheeky makes the stories up. Who knows? I sort of collect Cheeky legends. Better than comic books. I’ve been told how Cheeky was traumatized during a house-to-house firefight in Operation Desert Storm, which had made him a little bit weird. And I’ve also heard he survived adult spinal meningitis, which had made him a little bit weird. Most stories revolved around how he had become so weird. My personal favorite is the top secret story that Cheeky used to be a genius who’d worked for the government, but he snapped when his inventions were turned into weapons. The guilt made him — say it with me — a little bit weird. I busted his balls for a week about that one. But all the stories are bullshit. Cheeky was just a schlub. There’s nothing evil about being a schlub. Nothing evil, that is, until you transform into a vampire at a local pub without the requisite paperwork. Then you land on my official evil schlub shit list. Heh. New story. Cheeky got attacked by a vampire, which made him a bit weird. Get it? Bit. Weird. Yeah. Never mind.

Cheeky, who had just recently ascended to the elevated ranks of the immortal undead, sat slumped in his chair, a gob of pink spit swinging from his chin as he breathed. Even without the cuffs, he was too depressed to move. He was scarecrow thin, with a two-week scruff on his cheeks, and rheumy eyes obscured by the greasy, thinning red hair dangling over his forehead. In other words, he looked perfectly normal. If not for the stink of shit and vomit and the speckles of blood around his lips and nose, you’d never know Anton Chekowicz had been having a really bad night.

So, Cheeky, you realize you’re in violation of the Twilight Statutes, right? An unregistered nocturnal. Who killed you, Cheeky? I asked.

You don’t have to answer that, bleated a high-pitched whine from across the room. And the correct term is Resurrected American. Gibson had managed to pry himself off the wall that he’d been clinging to for an hour. Even his complexion had calmed from outraged purple to blustery crimson. Gibson I also knew much too well. I guess he was an effective lawyer; he certainly had plenty of nuisance clients on retainer. But between his Burberry coats, his lavender Lexus, and his hobby of filing frivolous suits against the town, he just rubbed everybody the wrong way. For instance, he’d sued me personally five times, for everything from harassment (I gave him a parking ticket) to assault (I spiked him at second base during a charity softball game.) He lost every single case (the softball game was a close one), but I’m out hundreds of dollars in legal fees. How he got hooked up with a loser like Anton Chekowicz is a mystery that I’m just not curious enough to gnaw at. As far as I could tell, they deserved each other.

I stood up. Gibson backed up against the wall again. I ignored him. You really, really want to answer my questions, Cheeky. This is not a parking violation. You are over quota. Do you realize what that means?

That fact has not been established, said the lawyer.

If there’d been an opening anywhere in Passaic County, I’d have seen a bulletin.

Maybe they forgot to CC you on it.

Now, I don’t think I’m a proud man, nor a particularly angry man, but I do have my buttons, and Gibson had just pushed one. I’d know about it.

Really? You’re that important? Clearly he was getting his bluster back. You’re claiming that every time a Resurrected passes on, the feds whip a note off to some half-assed local detective in a nowhere commuter town.

Yeah, you know, that crap wasn’t gonna work for me.

You know better than that, Gibson. Your bullshit’s not doing your client any favors. I turned my back on the hack and crouched down directly in front of the littlest nightwalker. Yes, Cheeky, I’d know. Yes, we’re a little commuter town, and I’m just a half-assed local detective, but the Bureau does not forget Hawthorne. They have never left me out of the loop. I’d know if there were an opening. I’d know if you were registered to fill it. And you know I’d know it. I turned back to Gibson. So you can keep hoping that there was an opening, that somehow Cheeky found out about it before I did, and that somehow his application got to the Bureau without going through my office. Oh — and got approved without a copy coming back to this office. But that’s not what happened. That’s not how the Bureau works. Trust me. I’ve got friends there, remember?

Your friends at the Bureau will hear about your treatment of my client. Mr. Chekowicz has been beaten and tortured by your partner in clear violation of...

I turned away, sick of looking at the greasy parasite. Prove it.

What?

Prove it. Look at him. Gibson turned to look at Cheeky, whose face, a mass of bloody, bruised and torn tissue just minutes ago, was nearly completely healed. As Gibson stared, Cheeky licked the last drop of his own blood from his upper lip. Hey, Gibson! Grab a camera and get that last blotch of bruise before it...oops! There it goes. Well, a camera wouldn’t have helped much anyway. Do you get it, Gibson? Your client. Is. A vampire.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that... chimed in Knobs dutifully, looking at his own brutalized hands, clearly disappointed they weren’t healing at vampire-speed.

Not a thing, I concurred, unless you’re an unregistered, over quota vampire.

Resurrected American, Cheeky tried feebly.

An unregistered, over-quota Resurrected American has two options. I shifted all my focus to Cheeky. Turn in your sire — you know — the guy who killed you! Or slowly starve.

I can’t tell you! Cheeky squeaked, grabbing the chair and wincing as if Knobs was going to punch him again. But that ugly game was over.

Cheeky, it’s your sire or you! There’s no government blood subsidy for you unless you turn him in!

I’ll get by.

This time Cheeky should have winced. Knobs launched himself across the desk, taking Cheeky, the chair and Gibson down in a tangle of flailing limbs. Springing back to his feet, Knobs dragged Cheeky up by the throat. You’ll get by HOW? he snarled. You son of a bitch! Answer me! HOW will you get by?

I grabbed Knobs by the shoulder and separated the two men. I left Gibson where he fell. Calm down, Detective. I put myself between the two and settled Cheeky back in his chair. Mr. Chekowicz, please answer the Detective’s question. How do you plan to get by, without government blood subsidy?

There’s butcher’s blood! Pig tastes like us! And some of the veterinarians sell animal blood, too! I’ll get by!

Knobs sucked air through his teeth, ready to blow again, then stopped. Adjusted his shirt. Combed his hair with his fingers. Then leaned over until his face was just inches from Cheeky’s. Very quietly and steadily, he said, Cheeky. Anton. You have no idea how difficult it is for a vampire…

"Resurrected —

Shut up. How difficult it is for a vampire to survive on animal blood alone. Sure, animal blood will keep you animated. Pig blood might even taste like bacon for all I know. But you’ll feel hungry all the time. And hollow. And the emptiness will eat at you like DTs that never end. And finally, it’ll get so bad you just have to go for it. You’re gonna see somebody stumble out of a bar, late at night. Nobody’ll be around. And you won’t be able to stop yourself. You’ll sink your teeth in and drink. There wasn’t any threat in his voice anymore. No pretense. No macho posturing. Knobs was just telling it like it was. Flat straight talk. It’s gonna happen. It always does. And when it does, Cheeky, I’ll know. And I’ll stake you. This is a promise. You drink, you die. By my hand.

Let me tell you a little bit about my best friend Knobs. Darius Knobs has been my partner for almost twelve years. Unofficially, of course. A small town like ours doesn’t really send out teams of cops.