Werewolves of Brooklyn

By Brad Vance

Darien Mackey wasn’t looking for an adventure. For ten years, he’d been happy living in Brooklyn, working as a butcher in the same job, living in the same apartment, dating some “nothing-special” guys. Until one night his buddy Jacob talked him into taking ayahuasca, the soul-changing drug. And Darien had a vision…of a wolf, its all-too-human eyes on him, its paws on his chest, its enquiring mind in his own… 

Darien Mackey is changing. He’s more confident, more assertive, hungrier, hornier. And his world is changing around him – his job, his home, his beloved Mechanic’s Library all falling victim to the predations of unscrupulous developers, bent on demolishing the old Brooklyn he loves and replacing it with a forest of condos. But he’s no longer a passive observer of his own life, and as this thing, this power, grows inside of him, he resolves to fight back, to preserve the way of life he loves. 

And he’s not alone in the fight. The Lipsius Preservation Society of Brooklyn stands ready to assist in the battle, even though it seems like a bit of a joke to Darien, with its King and its Duke, Marquess, Earl and Viscount. 

But there’s nothing funny about his growing attraction to Albeus Finley, King of this mysterious Court. And when slumlords and condo-mongers start to die mysterious, violent deaths at the hands of savage animals, Darien begins to realize that something is afoot in Brooklyn – something supernatural. 

And it’s afoot in him, too…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orland Outland
• Release date: Nov 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519914651

Brad Vance

Brad Vance writes gay romance, erotica and paranormal stories and novels, including the breakout hits "A Little Too Broken" and "Given the Circumstances." Keep up with Brad at BradVanceAuthor.com, email him at [e-mail], and friend him on Facebook at facebook.com/brad.vance.10.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Brooklyn Mechanic’s Institute and Library is fictional, although its situation is based on current events surrounding one of Brooklyn’s public libraries.

I’m heavily indebted to Luc Sante’s Low Life for my portrait of life in post-Civil War Manhattan, and to E. A. Bud Livingston’s Brooklyn and the Civil War for background on antebellum Brooklyn.

For the battle scenes, I consulted Harry W. Pfanz’s Gettysburg: The First Day, James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, and Allen Guelzo’s Gettysburg: The Last Invasion. While I’ve adhered to the meat of the facts and invented no skirmishes, I’ve taken liberties with some of the battle scenes that would be unforgivable in a historical novel about the Civil War. But, in a historically accurate universe, there are no werewolves, either, so there’s that. Given that there was a squabble over the proper assignation of glory at the railroad cut on Gettysburg Day 1, I’ve taken advantage of this historical fog of war to give my man of the 14th Brooklyn a role that’s at least plausible.

For the butcher’s trade, I consulted Bill Buford’s Heat and Adam Danforth’s Butchering books.

For information on wolves, I relied on Jim and Jamie Dutcher’s The Hidden Life of Wolves and James C. Halfpenny’s Yellowstone Wolves in the Wild.

And of course, innumerable web sites on all of the above, as well as on historic mansions of Brooklyn and their occupants, New York landmark preservation, rent control and gentrification/development issues, ayahuasca, and more.

CHAPTER ONE – THE LANDSCAPE OF FEAR

In a strange moment between pulses of terror, Brandon Ace realized that he’d never felt so alive. All his senses were alight, all in overdrive as they registered the multiple threats. He’d seen the pack of dogs sitting there in the parking lot, the flat discs of their hunters’ eyes reflecting the bright lights of MetLife Stadium. He heard their low growls, and a breeze brought the smell of their wet, wooly fur to his nostrils.

He was in the middle of a triangle, equidistant between the refuge of the stadium, his Mercedes-Benz CL65, and the wild animals staring at him with…almost human anger, he’d have sworn. He’d gone big game hunting in Africa, paying to shoot a wild animal, so he could be photographed standing in triumph on the neck of a dangerous giraffe. He’d listened with fascination to his guide describing the hunting methods of packs and prides, and now here he was, the hunter soon to be captured by the game.

Brandon had a handgun, illegal as hell in New York City, but when you were the owner of numerous lower end apartment buildings, you had to defend yourself from the crazies who’d personally blame you for the lack of heat, or the mushrooms growing out of the walls soaked with water from broken pipes.

He’d brought it with him tonight, but he’d left it in the car. It had seemed inappropriate to pack it to a meeting of his fellow real estate developers. They’d met in secret here in New Jersey, far from prying eyes, to discuss a potential eminent domain seizure of more prime Brooklyn real estate.

This was his big chance, his ticket out of the slumlord business. He’d worked like a dog, snapping up dingy old apartment buildings across Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and turning them in to flophouses for recovering addicts.

Three-quarter houses, they were called, not permanent housing but not a halfway house. Halfway houses were monitored and regulated for compliance with health and safety codes. Ace could cram a three-quarter house full of men, and collect $215 per resident per month in shelter allowance from the city’s Human Resources Administration. Then he’d get more from Medicaid to pay for their treatment.

Now the goddamn New York Times was doing an exposé and his whole business model was at risk. Fucking do-gooders!

Then the dogs moved. Shit. They weren’t dogs, he realized. They were wolves. What the fuck were wolves doing in Jersey? There were three of them, and he watched them split up—one moving towards the stadium’s office complex, one towards his car, and the last one trotting straight at him.

He ran. He knew he was doing exactly what they wanted, but he had no choice. He could no longer hear the long sigh of the freeway on the other side of the stadium, as they pushed him across the parking lot, towards what was left of the eponymous meadowlands. This was bad, he thought.

There was a scattering of trees on the edge of the lot, between the lot and the meadows. If he could find a big enough branch, he could fend them off long enough to dial 911. Brandon had grown up on the streets of Bed-Stuy, and he was prepared to handle himself.

Yeah, some part of him suddenly felt alive, ready to fight. Packs of feral, fetal-alcohol syndrome kids had been his hunters in his childhood – at least wild animals were more predictable.

They rounded on him, letting him make the tree line. That was when he realized his mistake. Out here nobody could see him, nobody would find him if…

Fuck you! he shouted at them. Yah! Yah! He waved his arms wildly, trying to make himself a bigger animal than he was.

They…grinned at him, tongues lolling. Took a formation…what the fuck? The lead, the alpha male, was the point of the V as they moved in on him.

Fear gripped him now. Three against one, and this wouldn’t be a beating like the ones that had hardened him as a kid. This would be…

The alpha stopped, only six feet away. Its eyes were so bright, blue flecked with yellow, so…human.

Then the beasts…changed. They got up on their hind legs and…extended. Transformed. Into men, but…not men. The alpha had piercing yellow eyes to match his wild blond hair, and his tattooed hands ended in long fingernails…no, too thick for that, they were…claws...

Jesus Christ, Ace whispered, his bowels roiling.

A flock of ravens circled overhead, squawking, ready to pick at…the remains of a wolf’s meal.

Brandon Ace, the alpha said. You’ve made your last deal.

What the fuck are you?

The alpha smiled, grinning wide, revealing teeth still in their carnivorous animal form.

We’re the hand of justice. We’re the spirit of Brooklyn.

He screamed as they leapt at him, the ravens screaming with him. But only for a second, before the alpha’s jaws locked on his throat.

CHAPTER TWO – THE WOLF SIGHTING

An ayahuasca trip had not been among Darien’s plans for a Saturday night. When Jacob confessed his real reason for coming back to the city, Darien sighed and shook his head.

Come on, Daz, Jacob urged him. You know it’s mind expanding. It’s not like acid or ‘shrooms, it’s…it changes you.

I’ve read the articles, same as you, Darien replied. So much for dinner at the little Italian place, he thought, and catching up on each other’s life for the last year.

But if he was honest with himself, it was a relief. What was he going to tell Jacob he’d been up to, anyway? Cutting meat, reading books, seeing plays, visiting museums, living his life, such as it was. He hadn’t taken up yoga or learned a language or done anything else with the sudden glut of free time with which he’d found himself, after his best…be honest…only friend moved upstate.

Here, Jacob said, pushing his phone into Darien’s view. "Check out all these five-star reviews of this guy on Google. He’s the real deal, a real shaman. He’s in town tonight, dude, that’s it. And you gotta be referred by someone he trusts."

It’s all very dodgy.

Fuck yeah it’s dodgy, it has to be, it’s illegal, man. The establishment wants us all on psychiatric meds, not psychotropic meds. They don’t make any money on those. It’s all gotta be very hush-hush, totally underground.

Darien thought a little about the mysterious Amazon concoction that was supposed to rebirth you. Drink it up, and it would shoot you through a stereoscopic polyphonic journey, during which you’d relive old memories, cry over all the things you’d refused to cry about, see yourself from the outside, heal your wounds… And all the people he knew who’d done it had loved it, had become (at least in their own eyes) different people afterward.

Maybe I don’t want to be a different person, Darien thought.

Jacob made his poochie face at him, and as always, Darien cracked up. There was something about a dude the size of a lumberjack, with the beard and flannel shirt to match, putting on the face of a sad Japanese anime girl.

Please won’t you go with me, on a rocket ride to the center of the universe?

Darien sighed. He was irritated, realizing that Jacob wasn’t in town to see him, after all. He’d come to get enlightened or whatever.

If that’s what you’re doing, and you’re here one night, after a year away, and that’s the only way I can spend time with you…

Poochie face gave way to guilty face. Daz, man, you should come visit me on the farm. Take a week off and just…chill out.

I can’t, Mr. Nowak needs me, he said automatically. And he wasn’t the least bit surprised when Jacob chimed in, matching him syllable for syllable as he said it.

You always say that. Hell, it’s not the Old World, you get vacation time. You…do get vacation time, right?

I’m sure if I asked for it, I would, Darien admitted.

In ten years, since he’d come to Mr. Nowak’s butcher shop in Brooklyn, begging to be his apprentice butcher, he’d never taken one. But neither had the boss, or his wife, or his son or daughter. Working was what you did. Vacationing was what people did when they retired, or won the lottery or, God forbid, couldn’t work anymore.

Darien had been abroad, to Italy, to France, even to Poland, but they had been working vacations. He’d gone to see each nation’s master butchers at work, to visit their shops and watch and learn, absorbing as much information as he could in as short a time as possible.

Mr. Nowak’s reputation had opened doors for him, until at a certain point, his own reputation as a maestro preceded him. But there had been little sightseeing, and no down time – every precious moment was spent learning something new for his craft.

The wolf, the wolf, Jacob said, always at the door. Work harder, hide the money, the wolf is coming.

Jacob was laughing, but with the Nowaks, not at them. His own grandparents had survived World War II thanks to their pickling skills (and their skill at creating hiding places for those pickled goods that were never discovered by Nazis). Jacob had taken up those skills, and made them his craft. A craft that was easier to practice, less stressful, and more lucrative once he lived upstate, closer to the sources of the produce.

This, Jacob pressed, could be your vacation, your once-in-ten-year vacation. Thank God the Nowaks are religious, and you get Sunday off. You can sleep it off tomorrow.

On one condition.

Name it.

You sure about that? I haven’t named it yet.

Name it.

You come back down here within the next couple weeks for a real visit. And I swear I will ask for a whole Saturday off.

Dude, this is my busy season, I shouldn’t be here at all, and I…shit, I know that look. Fine. Okay. Now let’s go get on the Mad Tea Party Ride.

The other people in the room were crying, laughing, hugging themselves, confronting their hidden selves. Some were vomiting, which they’d been told to expect. Jacob sat there with an awestruck look on his face. Darien was happy for his friend since, unlike some of the other cosmic baggage handlers here on the floor of this Hell’s Kitchen apartment, he was having a good time, at whatever astral plane destination he’d landed at.

He’d sat patiently through all the mumbo-jumbo, the waving of burning sage and the chanting and the other room cleansing rituals. He’d been handed a nasty-tasting tea, bitter and sugary at the same time. It was a biological compound of two plants, one of which contained the hallucinogen DMT. For a rational man like Darien, everything outside the ingestion of the chemical was garnish and window dressing, but he played along, not wanting to be the spoilsport.

He waited. He felt nothing. Nothing at all. He was just watching the others go into that 2001: A Space Odyssey full of stars tunnel, leaving him behind. He hadn’t noticed the ambient soundtrack until now, a CD of forest sounds playing on a boombox, the kind of twirly sounds that made him feel like he was in an upscale boutique, waiting for a size 0 salesgirl to sweep in on him. Why was this Amazon jungle experience being accompanied by sounds of the deep forest?

He hadn’t had enough notice to fast for twelve hours beforehand, so maybe that was it. The shaman, via his translator, had walked them through the things they shouldn’t have had today – cheese, beer, wine, yogurt, coffee, chocolate, amphetamines, and SSRI antidepressants. Darien had quaffed a full pot of coffee that morning, like he did every morning, firing himself up for a ten hour day.

He turned at last to the shaman, who was straight from central casting – wizened, short, scrawny…fucking Brazilian Yoda. He raised his eyebrows, to ask him: Is this all there is for me?

And as he did, he felt a dread so terrible it nearly consumed him. Before him the room disappeared, as if being sucked into a drain. In the blackness that remained, a calendar spun from a dot in the center to full size, a visual trick to mark the passing of time that was straight out of the old black-and-white movies he loved to go see at Film Forum. The pages began to flip, month after month torn off and flying away.

On the back of each one, before it left his field of vision (which had somehow expanded to a 360 degree view, unhindered by the limits of his eyes), there was a picture – of him, his life, progressing from now until…forever, it seemed.

And it wasn’t so terrible, seeing himself working every day, seeing himself at the Nowak’s shop every day, going home every day to the apartment above the shop. It wasn’t the knowledge that Mr. Nowak would die, and the son would inherit, and Darien would work there till he died that now made him choke, gasp, sob.

No. It was the last page of the calendar, the picture of himself, dying, alone. The way he’d lived his life, the price to pay for living his life the way he had. No family, no friends, no lover…

I have a boyfriend, he tried to tell the calendar.

The calendar laughed at him. You go on dates with someone you fuck, it said, flipping its pages saucily. That’s not a relationship.

I’m better off alone, he insisted. My choices in men…they’ve always made my life worse than it is when I’m alone.

The calendar shrugged, turned away. Over its shoulder it said, Maybe someday a man will choose you. And that’ll work out better.

As it floated off, it pulled the blackness with it like a curtain, revealing a wild landscape.

Darien smiled. It was familiar, as familiar as childhood.

Every year, his parents had taken him and his sister Carrie to Yellowstone, in the car and on the road the day after school was out for the summer. Every year they’d come and seen the bears, the eagles, and the elk. Every year Darien had watched the most fascinating animal of all – the photographers.

They set up their tripods, their equipment, and they kept their eye on the landscape. Perfectly still, sometimes all day. Waiting for a shot