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dochermes"Ratface"
(6/29/2012)
I.
They met at Bleak's favorite spot, a sports bar on Eighth Avenue near the corner of 48th Street. Wary as always, Bane stepped to one side as he entered so he would not be framed in the light of the doorway. His eyes adjusted instantly to the dim interior of the bar but his most suspicious scrutiny saw nothing that could be a viable threat. Two college age guys playing pool and cracking insults at each other, a fat man at the end of the bar staring up wistfully at the barmaid as she wiped glasses without knowing he existed, a couple in a booth reading something together in the NEW YORK TIMES. The place smelled of beer and echoed with the commentary about a baseball game on the TV mounted up high in one car. Everything here was the same at it ever was. Just another late afternoon at HOME PLATE.
Standing there for that one second as he took the situation in, not moving or even looking angry, Jeremy Bane still had something ominous about him. In his forties, six feet tall and lean to the point of almost seeming skinny, Bane was wearing his trademark outfit of black slacks, turtleneck and sports jacket which made him look even thinner. In a narrow face under short black hair, his grey eyes spotted Bleak in a booth and he finally relaxed just a bit. He had been at war all his life and it took an effort for him to ease up. It helped knowing that one of the few people he trusted was nearby.
Bane walked back to slide onto the seat facing his old friend. "I see you've already ordered," he began.
Now seventy, the man known as Bleak was not an intimidating sight at first. Under average height and spare in build, he was wearing dark blue pants and a white dress shirt with the cuffs rolled back a turn. In front of him was a half-finished double cheeseburger and he was dipping a French fry in a smear of ketchup on his plate. Bleak seemed harmless at first. But once someone got a got look at those sharp blue eyes and the alert mind working behind them, Bleak suddenly became a little unsettling.
"Hey there, Dire Wolf," he said. "I wasn't sure if I should call you. This may turn out to be nothing but it is certainly odd."
"Sounds promising," Bane commented. The barmaid came over. She knew these two by now and she knew that they usually ordered some food and left decent tips. Bane asked for a hot roast beef sandwich, onion rings and ice tea. When Bleak held up his empty beer glass, she took it with her for a refill.
"Okay, Bleak, you have a sighting for me?" the Dire Wolf asked when she had brought his beer over and left again.
"No. Well, there is that Ratface business. I have a few tips on that. But I wanted to talk to you about something else. A teenage girl was asking me about you."
Bane did not know how to respond at first. "Like how? Do you think she's working for an enemy and gathering information?"
"Nah. When I say teenager, I mean like maybe thirteen. A kid. She came up to me in the library on 42nd Street, I was doing research on this 19th Century architect who had some theories about what attracts paranormal activity. Anyway, she walks up to me and starts talking as if we know each other. It was a quiet room, so I took her out in the corridor and asked her what the deal is."
The steaming hot roast beef on a club roll arrived and Bane dug in. Between bites, he motioned for Bleak to continue.
"I was getting uneasy," the old man said. "This kid knew my real name. She knew what I was doing back in the 70s in my days as Single Cross. She said her hobby was the Midnight War."
Bane swallowed and paused in his attack on the sandwich. "That's real unusual, Bleak. Most people who are interested in the supernatural never find out about the Midnight War. It's not for everyone."
"Yeah. So I figured like you did, that someone had sent her to set us up. I dunno, Wu Lung? Quilt? Avathor? We've both got a long list of people who wish us harm, buddy."
Watching Bleak thoughtfully, Bane said, "But you don't seem worried. If you thought it was an enemy using this girl, you'd have warned me to be on my toes. What's your opinion?"
The old man finished the last of his food, wiped his mouth and leaned back in satisfaction. "She really wanted to ask me all about you. Every detail of where you live and where your office is and whether it's true you can outrun a car or wrestle a tiger. But she mostly wanted to know if you had a girlfriend."
The sudden dismayed expression on Bane's normally grim face was comical to see. "Oh, come on. There must be some mistake."
"Nope." Bleak sipped his beer, enjoying his friend's confused reaction. "If you ask me, this girl has a major crush on you."
"On ME? How does she even know about me? I'm not a public figure, I keep as low a profile as possible. Something is fishy here, Bleak."
"Feh. Little girls go all crazy over rock stars and basketball players and God knows who else. I think you've just started collecting groupies, buddy."
Bane did not find this amusing, but then he really had no sense of humor in any case. "Name? Description?"
"Said her name was Sarah, but she didn't tell me her last name. Thirteen is my guess. Short kid, five foot three or so, a little cutie to be honest. Straight brown hair, medium brown eyes, a round face with some freckles. She was wearing round-rimmed glasses with quite a prescription from the looks of 'em. I'd say she's nearsighted enough she'd have trouble navigating with them off."
"Damn," Bane said. "Did she say what she wanted from me? I can't help but think there's something dark behind all this."
"Nope, that's it. Watch out for jailbait, buddy. Remember, fifteen will get you twenty, har har. Listen, Jeremy, seriously. I also wanted to talk to you about Ratface. I know you've been following the killings."
The Dire Wolf snapped back to attention. He seemed to have drifted off in alarm for a second at the thought of having a little girl for a fan. "Oh yeah, Ratface. I'm interested in that, I thought it was a typical werewolf at first but two witnesses swear he looked like, well, a humanoid rat. What have you got?"
"To start, he's intelligent and can talk in his monster shape. That's rare. Two bruisers I know have been invited to join a gang that Ratface is forming. Nothing big, just maybe a dozen strongarm guys to help with extortion and robberies. Imagine a gang where the leader is superstrong, superfast, has claws and fangs and best of all, ignores bullet from cops or other gangs. Lots of mugs are interested in signing up."
Bane nodded. "See, this is what I should be concerned with. Not a supposed teenage groupie." Without warning, he swung completely around to glare at the wide picture window showing Eighth Avenue outside the bar. No one was standing out there, just the usual tourists and natives walking by.
"Getting a little jumpy there, Dire Wolf?" asked Bleak with barely concealed glee. "Afraid you're being stalked by a teenybopper?"
II.
Walking briskly east along 42nd Street, Bane could not focus his thoughts on either the Ratface threat or the problem with the teen. This was unprecedented for him. His mind hopped back and forth between the two problems and got nowhere with either of them. This bothered him immensely and he stopped at the corner of Third Avenue to lean back against a building and try to collect himself. Without concentration, he couldn't expect to get anything done.
It was a brisk but not chilly November day just after two o'clock. The dark lowering sky suggested a thunderstorm on the way, which would at least clear the air. He wished the KDF had been available so he could offer them one of the problems he was wrestling with, but Sable had called him the night before to say that her team would be in Chujir for a few days to deal with a struggle between rival warlocks. Feeling once again he was being watched, the Dire Wolf glared about him but saw nothing.
He knew what the trouble was. All his Tel Shai training had been specialized for reacting to threats. If he was in fact being followed by someone who didn't mean any harm but who actually admired him, all those Kumundu techniques would not react. Bane sourly realized that while he could have spotted the most stealthy spy or assassin tracking him, he could have a half dozen teenage girls following him and never quite fix on them. It was infuriating.
Moving again, the Dire Wolf strode quickly up a few blocks to a four-story yellow brick complex with its own little parking lot. It was nowhere near five o'clock when he would be closing his office for the day in most circumstances. He moved across the lobby, past the EMERGENCY ONE clinic and past the wide staircase to where his office sat in a short dead-end hallway. On the bench in that hallway sat a couple he recognized at once.
They were both in their late thirties. The man was solid and burly, wearing a tan business suit with a dark brown tie. He had grown a mustache since they had last met. The woman was a strawberry blonde with a perm who had gotten a bit too voluptuous for the snug white summer dress she had on. Both of them rose quickly as they saw him approach and the anguished expression on their faces told him suddenly how the thirteen year old was who reportedly had a fixation on him. That much suddenly seemed clear.
"Mr and Mrs Simmons," he said, shaking the hand offered by the father. "It's been a few years."
"Thank God you're here," Oliver Simmons blurted out. "Margaret and I are at our wit's end, can we talk with you?"
"Sure, come right in." He unlocked the plain wooden door with its brass plaque that read DIRE WOLF AGENCY and ushered through the tiny waiting room into the office itself. Seating the couple in chairs before his desk, Bane turned on the AC fan because the office had gotten warm and stuffy during the day. He circled behind his desk and lowered himself to face them. "Please, get right to it," he said.
"Sarah has run away," began Simmons. "You remember our daughter Sarah. She was only ten when you helped us against that horrible man. She has idolized you ever since, perhaps a little too much. It wasn't so long ago."
"Three years," Bane answered. "You and your family were being threatened by Amber Jack.. or, John Mills Cahill to use his real name. He wanted property you were negotiating to buy and his instant resorting to vicious threats led you to call on me. That guy was a heartless brute, all right."
"He came to our house with a gun that one awful time and even threatened Sarah. Then you came up behind him and dragged him bodily away into the night. We never heard from him again," Mrs Simmons said. "It was such a relief."
"There's a report he may have fallen into Long Island Sound somehow," Bane said blandly. Let them think what they would. He was positive neither they nor anyone else would ever hear from Amber Jack again. "But what about your daugher?"
Oliver Simmons clasped his big hands together in front of him and shook his head. "Sarah is a good kid, never gave us any trouble before, doing okay in school. But after you bodily yanked that man Jack away when he was scaring her, Sarah developed an obsession about you."
"Me? I was just a detective doing his job," Bane said.
"That's not how she saw it." Mrs Simmons smiled slightly and went on, "She read every newspaper for any mention of you. She was online looking up old cases you had handled, particularly the times you captured Samhain or Golgora. Sarah found out about your old Kenneth Dred Foundation and had a separate scrapbook for each member. Mr Bane, it was a case of hero worship that got out of hand."
"I am not anybody's idea of a good role model," Bane growled. "She should be following some environmentalist or animal rights activist, someone like that. What's this about her running away?"
"Let me tell it," Mrs Simmons said. "Yesterday was Sarah's interpretive dance class at the White Rose Studio up on 72nd Street. When I went to pick her up, no one had seen her there. She apparently waited inside the door until I drove away and then took off. Sarah had her own account at our credit union for emergencies and to teach her how to handle money. That afternoon, she withdraw all six hundred dollars and left just enough to keep the account open."
"You've spoken to the teller who waited on her, of course?"
"Oh, naturally. He said she had her school ID and was lugging around a big bookbag. According to him, Sarah had no one with her, no one was in the lobby or outside who went anywhere near her. He thought she seemed cheerful and relaxed. Not under any visible stress at all." Mrs Simmon added, "He made some small talk while waiting on her, asking how she was and Sarah said that this was going to be the best summer ever."
The Dire Wolf scowled, very displeased at facing a situation he had never thought he would have to deal with. "And what did the police say?"
"They weren't much help. They get a flood of missing children reports every day. She wasn't in the company of any suspicious adult and had no signs of being suicidal. A man named Grierson took down all the details and said he would order the search process. Last night, Sarah's picture and description were on the six o'clock Channel Seven news but that was all we've seen of this so-called search."
"I know Grierson," Bane said, "He's all right, just swamped by a backlog of cases. I have an idea. Did you bring any photos of your daughter?"
"Yes." Oliver Simmons drew out a manila envelope holding a stack of 8x10 color glossies showing the girl's grinning face. "There were taken on her thirteenth birthday back in June. We were heading to have fliers printed and start posting them all over town."
The Dire Wolf reached over to where his cordless phone sat in its charger on the edge of the desk. "I want you two to listen closely," he said. Bane called first the Citywide Investigations Agency and then the Elizabeth Colt office. He described the situation and said he wanted all their available operatives looking for the girl. He wanted the operatives to come to his office first to pick up a picture of Sarah and to receive instructions but to make it quick.
"You're calling in other detectives?" asked Mr Simmons in surprise.
"Absolutely," Bane answered as he hung the phone back in its charger. "Citywide can put five good men on it. Colt is a small operation, just Elizabeth Colt herself and two agents Angelina Delgado and her cousin Luisa, but all three are among the best in the business. Some of the operatives should be turning up here in the next ten minutes."
"But...But we thought YOU would be handling this, Mr Bane."
"Oh, I will be. But let me make it plain that I am better suited for when it comes to the showdown. In confrontations against professional killers or wild psychos, I am the best in the business. I'm more a gladiator than a deductive genius, though. These detectives will do a better and more thorough search for Sarah than I ever could."
He stood up, his hyperactive metabolism finally making it unbearable to sit still more than a few minutes at a time. "I'll be out there searching, too, but having all these professionals on the hunt should improve the odds beyond measure."
"Wait, how much is all of this going to cost?" Mr Simmons asked. "I make a good living but I'm not a millionaire. If it means getting our Sarah back, I want to try anything but...."
Coming around the corner of the desk, Bane put a reassuring hand on the father's shoulder. "I'm covering the expenses, Oliver. This is on me. In fact..." He went over and sat down again to get a red leatherbound ledger from the center drawer of his desk. "Have you got any singles on you? Good. Hand me a dollar bill."
As the puzzled couple watched, the Dire Wolf wrote two entries in the ledger, tucked the dollar in a sleeve of the book and made out a receipt which he handed to Oliver Simmons. "You two are now officially my clients. This gives me some legal advantages when dealing with the police or when questioning people."
At that moment, the doorbell rang. Bane jumped up and rushed over to the waiting room. Up in one corner near the ceiling was the monitor of a closed circuit TV and he recognized the two women waiting out in the hall. He let them in and brought them to where Mr and Mrs Simmons were waiting.
Angelina Delgado was in her mid-twenties, a gorgeous young woman with olive skin, curly black hair that fell in a thick wave past her shoulder blades and huge dark eyes that took in every detail of the two people watching her. The slightly older woman with her was a bit heavier, almost chunky in build, but otherwise resembled her closely. Both were well dressed in a subdued, unobtrusive way.
"Angelina and her cousin Luisa both work for Elizabeth Colt," Bane said. "I've seen them handle difficult cases before and they are the very best in the metropolitan area. Angelina, here's a photo of Sarah."
Studying the picture with intense eyes for a second, the young detective looked up to present a somber face to the parents. "Mr and Mrs Simmons, I have three younger sisters that I love more than life itself. One is Sarah's age. Believe me, I will not rest until Sarah is returned to you. And my boss, Miss Colt, is already on the job. She is going to the credit union right now to ask some questions to the teller who saw Sarah last."
"Thank you," said the mother, holding out a hand which Angelina shook gravely. "I can see you are a serious young woman."
Heading for the door, the two detectives paused to look back. "Jeremy, we will be in constant touch. I am glad you called us in on this matter."
"Take care," Bane said simply. After they left, he turned back to the parents. "The men from Citywide should be here soon. I've used them many times." As he spoke, the Link on his belt buzzed. "Excuse me a second."
Going out into the waiting room and closing the door behind him, the Dire Wolf took the call. He conversed for a few minutes and returned to his office. "That was an unrelated matter. I'm going to wait here for the Citywide agents and then start searching myself."
Oliver Simmons slowly rose to his feet, and his wife did the same with some reluctance. They were watching him with the expressions of people trapped on a sinking boat. "How can we help, Mr Bane?"
"If you think of any details that you haven't already mentioned, call me at once," the Dire Wolf said. "Any new weird friends she had, sudden changes in her eating or sleeping habits, anything like that. Otherwise, my suggestion is that you both stay home for now. Eat even if you don't feel like it and rest even if you can't get to sleep. Remember you have to be strong now, and don't let yourself get rundown."
"That's good advice," Mr Simmons said as they were escorted to the hall. "I don't feel hungry at all but neither us has eaten since lunch yesterday. We're still living in Derby but we can come back here at once. Please call us as soon as you learn anything!"
"It's more than a promise," Bane said. He watched them cross the lobby to the twin glass doors which slid open automatically to let them out. He had not told them about the phone call from Lt Joseph Montez. There had been another Ratface murder uptown.
III.
Almost an hour later, Bane arrived at the crime scene in Brooklyn. He had waited for the Citywide Agency detectives to give them details and one of the photos, but he did not have to offer instructions. They were experienced and competent. As soon as they had left, the Dire Wolf had run down four blocks to claim his car at the IMPERIAL GARAGE and driven straight here. But even so, he was too late. The forensic team had taken over the scene and were doing their usual measuring and photographing and taking innumerable samples.
The deceased had lived in a few rooms over a seedy garage that offered body repairs and New York State inspections. Entry to the rooms was through a back door of the garage which opened to stairs leading up. Most likely this was not a legal residence. The place had no bathroom, but the renter had access to the garage's public bathroom with its sink and toilet but no shower. The city had thousands of impromptu arrangements like this. They violated health codes and building standards but there were too many of them to be stamped out.
Bane left his car on the other side of the street and raced over. Getting up from where he had been sitting in a squad car with the door open, Lt Joseph Montez waited for him. The man had been losing weight lately in his ongoing tug of war with obesity.
"Hey, Montez, you look good," Bane said. "You start running after work?"
"Who me? Nah, all I did was cut out the soda and Red Bull all the time. Just black coffee now to help me live without sleep. I'm sorry the scene is closed off now, Bane, I can't give you a quick peep at it."
"Yeah, I was delayed by a case in progress." The Dire Wolf glanced up at the windows over the garage, where two men in white lab coats could be seen moving around. "Same as the other killings?"
"Damn near identical. Victim was ripped up, claw marks and fangs. I've seen lots of rat bites over the years, Bane, and that's what these look like. Except of course they're big enough for a good-sized dog to have delivered." Montez made a whooshing sound of disbelief. "All these years of turning over Midnight War cases to you and I still get shaken sometime. A rat the size of a pitbull....!"
"Or worse, a rat that walks on two legs and can speak over a phone," Bane said. "There has to be some common link between the victims, have you doped it out yet?"
"Yeah, I think so. I haven't mentioned it to any staff yet, but these guys were all Chinese. Not Chinese-American but from actual China, you know? Three of them had slips of paper in their wallets covered with those scribbles, I showed them to Sgt Lao in Homicide and he said they were gambling slips. Looks like each of the victims was in the red for a hefty sum."
"Gambling debts..." Bane said. "It's a start. There are so many undercover gambling dens in the area. Chinatown alone has dozens. I wonder if maybe some local warlord down there has been getting strict on collecting money owed?"
"Seems like that's the direction I'll be investigating," Montez said. "But I won't be able to get hold of two detectives who speak Mandarin for a day or two yet. They're tied up testifying in court."
The Dire Wolf was studying the exterior of the door in the rear of the garage. Three parallel gouges ran deeply into the wood at face level. "Say, lieutenant, what do your CSI scientists make of these?"
"They haven't mentioned anything about 'em to me yet. Reminds me of when I used to go camping and you sometimes saw where bears leave marks like those."
"Huh." Bane glanced around again, annoyed at not having gotten there earlier, and turned to leave. "Thanks for calling me in on this, Joe. I'll let you know what I find, if anything."
"Sure. Hopefully you settle all this in the middle of the night with no one else around and I can get back to nice normal everyday murders." The big detective snorted in amusement at his own attitude and headed back to where a uniformed officer guarded the garage.
Driving back to Mahattan, Bane was surprised he hadn't heard yet from any of the operatives on the Sarah Simmons case. He decided to give them a little while before checking for developments. Meanwhile, he had his own work to do on this Ratface business. At a red light, he placed the Link in its clip on the dashboard and set it to voice command. Then, patching into the regular voice service, he started making calls to a few of his observers.
From the beginning of his career so long ago, Bane had always turned down rewards from the people he helped. Instead, he had requested that they inform him if they ever saw anything seemingly supernatural and most had been more than happy to comply. Several had even actively gone out looking for the weird or outre and their reports had led him to some major cases. Now he was calling first the martial arts teachers in the city that he knew.
With the third call, he got lucky. Sifu William Ma, who taught a modified Hung Gar style, had suffered a serious gaming problem all his life and knew most of the illegal gambling rooms in the lower end of Manhattan. He suggested a certain pair of rooms above a bakery on Canal Street. The games there were only open to men and to men who could show a certain amount of cash on hand. Fights were frequent and it was said more than once a complaining loser was carried out the back wrapped in a sheet to visit the East River. The place did not even open until midnight.
Bane thanked the sifu and said he might stop by to watch a few classes. Ma laughed and said it would be a tiger watching lambs at play, then broke the connection. The Dire Wolf remembered studying under Sifu Ma briefly, when he was a teenager who had not yet even heard of Kumundu, and he was fond of the old man for teaching whites when most kwoons were only open to full Chinese.
Passing through Times Square, he turned right on Third Avenue and left his Subaru Outback at the 40th Street IMPERIAL GARAGE again. By now his stomach was rumbling audibly. One of the prices for his superior speed and reflexes was a metabolism that burned up calories without mercy. He was always hungry. Bane went into a deli and ordered a corned beef on seeded rye, a pint container of cole slaw and a big bottle of seltzer. Before he reached the end of the block, the food was gone and the water was as well. He disposed of the debris in a wire basket at the corner and hurried to the building where his office was.
To his right was the wide staircase going up to the second floor and to his left was a wall painted a restful pale green. In the short hall between them was the plain wooden door to his office. Bane stopped in mid-step. Fixed to his door by a piece of Scotch tape was a folded slip of lilac-blue paper on which was written in ornate lettering FOR MY DARLING JEREMY.
IV.
He froze in position. Any humorous aspects of this were lost on him. Bane slowed his breathing, drew on Tel Shai awareness training and his hearing stepped up to the higher levels. Yes. Right behind and above him, soft subdued breathing. The Dire Wolf swung around, vaulted over the bannister and was up on the first floor landing in a blink. The girl crouching there gave an alarmed squeal and fell over backwards onto the carpet.
Standing over her, Bane glared in all directions but saw no sign of anyone else. The second floor of the building held two doctor's offices, a travel agency and an empty suite that had been vacated recently. At the top of the steps was a short bench and it was off this that the girl had fallen.
He reached down and took her hand to help her out and found to his dismay that she wasn't inclined to let go. Sarah Simmons was as Bleak had described her, wearing tan-colored boots and khaki pants, a dark brown T-shirt over a regular pullover so that the sleeves of the pullover stuck out from under the T-shirt. She was developing a figure, and her grin as she saw him was wide and appealing in an eager puppy-dog way. Through the oversized glasses, brown eyes peered myopically.
"You're so QUICK!" she squeaked. "I hardly saw you move. Oh, Jeremy, it's so wonderful we meet at last..."
Disengaging from her grip, the Dire Wolf did not smile back at all. "You're Sarah Simmons, right? Do you know how worried your parents are about you?"
"Like they care. Just the other day my mom said she couldn't wait until I got married and was out of her hair." Sarah tugged her shirt back into position and sat down on the bench. She patted the spot next to her and grinned again, but Bane made no move toward her.
"Right now, there are eight expensive PIs searching for you, young lady," he snapped. "I need to call them and the NYPD right now to report that you're safe."
"No, no, no, wait. There is so much we have to talk about. Can't you see we were meant to be together?"
"No."
"Aw. You just need to get to know me. I know everything about YOU. Your picture has been in the papers six times, and I have all six of them. I've visited where you caught Samhain and where you had that fight with the Stone Man. On my blog is tons and tons of articles I've written about you, not to mention my poetry..."
"Stop it" he snapped in the same tone he would use on a gunman being arrested. "That's enough. There is absolutely nothing between us. Sarah, you're a little kid and you're trying to enter a world that is incredibly dangerous.."
"Nature says I'm a woman," she answered, lowering her face and gazing up at him in a manner she had obviously practiced. "You need me to come home to after chasing serial killers all night. I haven't even kissed a boy. I'm saving myself for you."
"Not another word out of you!" he barked. "You don't have any idea what you're talking about." He took the Link from its clip on his belt and patched into the Verizon system. "First, I need to let the police know you're..."
In an instant, Bane had dropped the device and wheeled around in a crouch, barely fast enough to be facing the dark shaggy form that had hurtled around a corner and lunged straight at him. The two of them went down in a furious tangle, rolling on the floor. Claws tore at his body and yellow fangs snapped together so close to his face that the saliva got on his skin. Bane had gotten a knee up between them and he flung the monster off him.
For one instant, he saw red eyes glaring at him over a long fanged muzzle. "You know about Canal Street, eh?" snarled the monster. "You'll never make it to the bakery tonight!" Footsteps pounded on the stairs as the screaming girl ran off faster than she had ever moved in gym class.
As Bane leaped up, the hairy form flashed at him again and he was lifted bodily overhead and thrown violently down over the side of the staircase to slam into the concrete wall with murderous force. That impact dazed him for a few seconds. Bane shook his head, got back up on his feet and was racing up the stairs again within a few seconds but he found the first floor landing empty. He had heard Sarah take off as the fight began, but now Ratface was also gone. The Dire Wolf raced around in a frantic search, even running through the rear exit to scan the street. Nothing.
Bane glanced down and saw the material of his shirt was ripped to tatters. Beneath it, the dark gleam of the flexible Trom armor was unbroken. He hadn't been scratched. Those fangs had come much too close to chewing on his face, though. Ratface had werewolf speed and strength, he was the rare adversary that could meet Bane on equal terms. Getting thrown against a wall like that would have put a normal Human in the ER with broken bones and either a concussion or spinal injury but Bane had bounced back unharmed instantly.
Reluctantly, the Dire Wolf went down to the ground floor again, took the note off his door and entered his office. Dropping down behind his desk, he took blue latex gloves from a pocket and put them on before opening the note. It was as mushy and syrupy as he had expected. Each letter "i" was dotted with a little heart. Unfortunately, there was nothing to indicate a way to get in touch with Sarah. Bane placed his elbows on the desk before him and rested his face in his hands, thinking. It seemed as if his two cases had coincidentally crossed.
The rest of the day was going to be a lost cause. He phoned Mr and Mrs Simmons to give them the news that Sarah was alive and well and at liberty, not dead or in the hands of sex traffickers or anything like that. Unfortunately, she had run off again while he was distracted by a crook with a grudge, or so he explained it. Oliver Simmons said that was it, he was going to check into a hotel in Manhattan to be on hand until Sarah was returned. The mother would stay at their home in case their wandering daughter came back there. Bane notified the NYPD what had happened and assured them he would come down to 20th Street and give a full report, bringing the note with him to turn over.
In a foul mood over both losing the runaway and being caught offguard by Ratface so easily, Bane got a fresh black turtleneck from the closet and wadded up the ruined one into a hamper in the corner. His jacket seemed okay. The Dire Wolf slid one of the matched silver daggers out from its sheath under his sleeve and toyed with it thoughtfully. If this Ratface was a shape-changer as seemed certain, ordinary weapons probably wouldn't affect him. There were no silver bullets in the limited arsenal he kept hidden here in the office, but there should be a case of them over in the old KDF building, some for his 38 Smith and Wesson and some molded to work in the dart guns. He needed to get over there before dark and load up.
There was no sense in putting off unpleasant chores. He locked the office behind him and went up to the second floor landing to find Angelina already there. The beautiful young Latina was kneeling by the bench with a powerful magnifying lense that had an LED built into it. Standing over her was Luisa, writing in a pocket notebook.
"Oh, hi, Jeremy," said Angelina without getting up. "We haven't started questioning anyone yet. Here are some hairs that rubbed off on a wall at chest height. Stiff, dark brown, short, not Human at all. We're taking them to a lab for analysis. The girl left a bottle of Perrier on the floor behind this bench, but aside from fingerprints that we know are going to be hers, I don't see where that is going to be much help."
"Good to know you two are on the job," Bane said. "Listen. This is not joking. If you see this Ratface, don't try to tell yourself he's just a man in a costume. Get away from him and stay away. Bullets might annoy him but they won't do any damage. They'll just make him mad."
Angelina rose easily to her feet. "As a good Catholic girl from a small town, of course I have a silver crucifix around my neck."
"That might be some protection," the Dire Wolf. "But don't count on it too much. Keeping distance between you and this monster is your best approach."
"Understood," she said, kneeling again and looking under the bench with the light. "Can you say where we'll find you, Jeremy?"
"Ahh, I'll be tied up at police headquarters." He showed them the note and both women studied it intensely. Angelina giggled and then broke it short to adopt a serious tone.
"I wrote something like that to my chemistry teacher when I was thirteen," she admitted, "But I tore it up before ever giving it to him."
Bane grunted as his only comment and started down the stairs. Looking back, he said, "Keep in touch, you two. And Angelina, remember what I said about this Ratface. Stay safe."
"Good luck Jeremy," was her muffled reply from where she had gone back under the bench.
V.
It was almost nine that evening when Bane finally walked away from police headquarters on 20th Street and started heading north. Three times as many forms had to be filled out every time he went there as the time before, he grumbled to himself, and the notarized statements took longer every time. He missed the early days of working for Kenneth Dred, when he had been secretive and had left the scene of Midnight War encounters before the police arrived.
As he strode briskly along, glad to be outside, he had to admit the afternoon had not been a complete waste of time. While he had been filling out reports, the Citywide Agency operatives had started calling and he had co-ordinated their information with the NYPD. Two of the cops had seemed a little chargrined that no progress had been made locating Sarah Simmons. The girl seemed to be openly walking around Manhattan, boldly going right into the building where Bane's office was, and yet no one had spotted her.
Elizabeth Colt herself had driven out to Derby to poke around the Simmons house. She reported finding a notebook packed with doodles of hearts with arrows through them and the words "JB and SS" "JB loves SS" "Mrs Sarah Bane" and "J & S 4evah," that sort of thing. She reported that Sarah had evidently planned this to some extent. A change of clothing had been taken with her, along with her hairbrush, toothbrush, phone charger and similar personal items. Sarah had not left a note for her parents and none of her girlfriends from school had heard anything about the plan.
Making his way to Mott Street, he found the Hung Gar kwoon locked up and a sheet of notebook paper taped to the door, "ILLNESS IN FAMILY." Bane snorted angrily. If he got hold of Huang, the man would feel ill all right. The only way Ratface could have known about Bane being informed about the meeting over the bakery would be if Ma had told him. That score would have to be settled. If not now, then after the mess with Ratface and with the runaway girl was concluded.
Gazing further up the block, Bane spotted the WILKINS BROS BAKERY ahead, its windows dark and a "Closed" sign hanging in the door. There were three stories to that building, and the second story only had one window lit with the blue flicker of a television showing but the top floor was intriguing. The windows all had curtains drawn but light showed through the cracks and under the hems. Something was going on up there, all right.
The Dire Wolf went back to a kiosk he had passed a moment earlier and bought a newspaper. For one second, he experienced that sensation of being watched again. He faded back into a darkened doorway and studied the area as if looking for a sniper. Nothing suspicious. Tourists dawdling along, shopgirls chatting wearily as they headed for the subway entrance. After a few intense minutes, Bane shook his head. He had to be imagining it. No matter how specialized his Tel Shai training was, there was no way an untrained thirteen-year-old could be shadowing him. It was just too implausible.
Heading back to the bakery, Bane swung into the alley between buildings and found that, sure enough, there was a sentry at the most obvious spot. In front of a door propped open with a brick, a young Chinese man in a T-shirt and baggy jeans sat in a kitchen chair and puffed his cigarette. Without breaking stride, Bane approached the man, holding up the open newspaper to partly obscure his face.
"Excuse me, buddy," he said loudly, "I don't know this town, maybe you can help me..."
The guard offered an obscene suggestion for the tourist. A sudden flash of recognition distorted his face as he got a good look at the man approaching him, but by then a tight fist was coming right at his chin. Bane managed to snatch the falling man before the chair could be knocked over and make a clatter. It might have seemed to any passerby who happened to have been watching that the punch was so fast and hard as to be likely fatal. But in fact, Bane had pulled it to half what he was capable of.
Striking someone unconscious without causing permanent damage was never certain. Recently, Bane had been less inclined to just knock the enemy out because he had seen a number of them develop brain damage later. Propping the dazed young man up in his chair, the Dire Wolf reached into the right hand side of his jacket and took out a flat case that held five of the anesthetic darts. He jabbed oninto the side of the sentry's neck and saw the man's body instantly slump.
Bane arranged the sentry to sit up in the chair and put the open newspaper in his lap with one limp hand holding it down. There. Anyone passing by would think the man had fallen asleep. Moving in through the open door, the Dire Wolf glided silently up the ancient staircase, placing his feet on the outer edges of each board where there would be less creaking. There was no sign of a second guard at the top landing, which surprised him. Ordinary crooks would have arranged much better security than this. From the ceiling, a 75-watt bulb glared inside a grimy plastic bowl and revealed nothing but bare floor and three doors in a row.
A strip of light showed under the nearest door and he could easily hear the buzz of low voices in that room. Bane was feeling the heightened awareness and excitement as his adrenalin levels rose. Suspense and stress were what he reacted best to experiencing. He tried the handle on the door next to the room where the activity was and found it unlocked, so he slipped through into darkness. After a half minute of nothing reacting to his entrance, he took a pencil flashlight from an inner pocket and moved a thin white beam around the room.
A dozen folding card tables were leaning up against each other, taking up much of the floor space. In the wall opposite was a high narrow window which was covered with a sheet, and to his right was a door that connected to the room next door where the meeting was taking place. This was perfect. Bane looked around again and saw a cardboard box with some debris in it from someone doing carpentry, as well as an air conditioner with its cord tied up. In a corner were a few magazines and an empty beer bottle but otherwise this room seemed unused.
Pressing up against the door to the next room, Bane used Tel Shai technique to enhance his hearing and could make out an odd, high-pitched voice making a speech.
"You've seen what I can do," rang out the voice. "With me as your leader, nothing can stop us. The police will be helpless and ordinary people will run away as soon as they see me. The gambling that goes on here is a perfect cover. I will appoint two of you as my lieutenants to divide up the loot after each heist..."
A faint predatory smile crept across Bane's face in the dark. He adjusted the hilts of the silver-bladed daggers sheathed under his sleeves and took his .38 out to turn off the safety. Before he could open the door to the meeting, though, a huge commotion started. Many excited voices were yelling and then the distinctive shrill tones of Ratface sounded, "Quiet! All of you, be quiet."
Then Bane's heart sank as he heard the voice of Sarah Simmons sing out, "You guys are in BIG trouble."
VI.
He rarely cursed but Bane made a few heated comments under his breath just then. Of course, Sarah had been following him. She had probably watched him subdue the sentry outside and then she herself had followed him inside. Now she had been caught. This changed everything. With an innocent civilian in that room, he could not use one of the flash-bang grenades as he had planned, because her hearing and eyesight could be permanently damaged by it. Any gunfire might catch her. Bane was wearing the silk-thin Trom armor under his clothes and only had to worry about a shot to the head but Sarah was completely vulnerable.
Damn. The Dire Wolf opened the door, slipped through and closed it behind him. He had a few seconds grace where no one noticed him because all attention was held by the dramatic scene on the stage.
In the cleared room, two dozen folding chairs had been set up and all were occupied by the underworld riff-raff Bane had expected. He recognized several of them, including a career burglar and two enforcers known for beating shop owners who wouldn't pay extortion money. All of them had been up on their feet and were just now sitting down as Ratface yelled at them to be quiet.
At the rear of the room where all the thugs were facing was a waist-high platform with heavy curtains behind it. Perhaps at one point, amateur theatrics were performed there or live music had been offered. It was perfect for Ratface to appear on while addressing his new gang.
The shape-changer himself was a bizarre sight. At first, he seemed to be literally a five foot tall brown rat standing upright. But the shoulders were wider and the belly less prominent than they would have been on a real rat. The hind legs were longer and set in the pelvis differently. The long naked pink tail whipped about excitedly, and the ratlike head grinned to reveal rows of sharp yellow fangs. Even Bane, who had seen many werewolves in a long career, found the monster repulsive and frightening.
Within reach of Ratface, Sarah Simmons was being held with her arms behind her by a beefy thug in a windbreaker and jeans. The man was well over six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds and he held the teen in place easily. Sarah had purchased a blonde wig somewhere and her real hair was tucked up under it. This, and some lipstick and blush, changed her appearance enough to explain why the detectives searching for her might not have recognized her.
"You just wait until my boyfriend gets here!" Sarah yelled defiantly. "He'll kick your ass! He'll beat ALL of you up!"
Ratface laughed horribly, not quite a Human sound. He leaned in closer, whiskers twitching. "Will he, now? And just who is this boyfriend?"
"Jeremy Bane! The Dire Wolf!" she announced.
A gun firing could not have frozen that crowd in place as effectively as that name did. Bane had become a sort of urban legend in the badlands of crime. They almost held their breaths as Ratface bent forward until his muzzle was nearly touching the girl's face. Sarah wriggled loose somehow and slapped the monster's muzzle as hard as she possibly could, and instantly Ratface slashed her across the face with his clawed hand. The small teen cried out and went tumbling off the stage to hit the bare wooden floor with a thump.
Ratface began to say something, but a lean figure in black had leaped up on the stage. A hand seized his shoulder and swung him around into a crashing left hook that sounded like a whip cracking. The monster fell to one knee. Looming up over him, Jeremy Bane yelled at the crowd in a commanding voice, "Stay back, all of you! This is between your boss and me!"
VI.
Two deadly enemies leaped headlong at each other. Bane knew that this could not be a long drawn-out brawl but had to be ended quickly. Sarah needed medical attention. Ratface came at him with both taloned hands swinging left and right. The Dire Wolf blocked them upward and got in so close their bodies were almost touching. In just a few seconds, Bane slammed more than twenty full-strength alternating punches to the torso of the monster. The blows smacked so closely together that it sounded like drumming. He could feel ribs cracking under those punches.
One secret of Kumundu was that the enhanced healing of the tagra diet enabled Tel Shai fighters to hit harder and more often than a normal person could bear. The tiny fractures in the bones of his fists from those punches healed up instantly and there was no swelling. Bane could do immense damage with his bare hands without suffering consequences. Now, as Ratface gasped in surprise and pain, the Dire Wolf seized the creature's hairy arm by its wrist and elbow and levered him down to the stage. As Ratface was forced to his knees, Bane came in behind him and drove down the neck-breaking elbow strike just below the creature's head. That snapping noise was decisive. The whole encounter had taken less than thirty seconds.
Straightening up over the corpse, the Dire Wolf raised both fists and yelled, "Your boss is dead! Clear out, all of you, while you still can!" That was enough. Between the realization that they were not going to get paid to stand up to the Dire Wolf and the fact they had just witnessed him beat Ratface to death barehanded, none of the thugs saw any reason to stay. They got in each other's way in their frantic scramble out the door.
Hopping down on the stage, Bane found Sarah sitting up and pressing a hand to the left side of her face. He knelt over the girl and said in a gentle a voice as he could manage, "It's all over now. Come on, let me see." He pulled her hand away and saw blood covering her face. A nasty gouge ran from the bridge of her nose almost to her left ear and it was bleeding freely.
"You fought a monster to save me," Sarah mumbled. "Like the knight slaying the dragon. You do love me, too."
"None of that stuff," he said. Bane dug around in the back of his jacket and pulled out a flat package of sterile gauze pads. Tearing off the paper wrapping, he pressed one against her face and held it down. "You're lucky in a way. He missed your eye by an inch."
"Take me home with you," she muttered, trying to put an arm around his shoulder.
"Knock it off! I'm calling an ambulance now." Pressing the pad down with one hand, he unclipped the Link from his belt and got 9-1-1. After giving the address and details, he pulled Sarah up to her feet. "Can you walk? Of course you can. Come on, we have to get outside."
Helping her to the door, Bane looked back at the stage. In death, Ratface had reverted to Human form. The middle-aged corpse of Sifu William Ma stretched out face down. That explained why Ratface had chosen a Chinese gambling parlor for his new headquarters, Ma must have been owner of the parlor and had closed it for the one night. It explained also how Ratface had known Bane was on his trail.
On their way down the stairs, Bane called another number on his Link and reached Lt Montez. He explained the situation, that Ratface was dead but the body would be that of a local martial arts teacher. He also explained he would be at a nearby ER with one of the monster's victims. As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, an ambulance had already pulled up. The EMTS helped Sarah inside and strapped her down to the gurney fastened in place.
"I'll meet you at the hospital," he began but Sarah clutched at his hand fiercely.
"No, no, ride with me. Please, please, please!" As the EMTs agreed, Bane climbed in the back of the ambulance as well.
VII.
It was a long miserable night at the ER. The doctors decided Sally needed sixteen stitches placed closed together to minimize the scar, and she was only quiet after the local anesthetic made her face numb.
The hospital staff immediately decided Bane had been the one who had injured Sarah, despite both their claims he hadn't harmed her. The doctor in charge that night seemed to have a grudge against men and she called the police and the Child Protective Services even as Sarah was being prepped.
To the doctor's surprise, Sarah's father arrived within fifteen minutes and stood up for Bane, thanking the Dire Wolf profusely. Angelina Delgado and her cousin Luisa also turned up to see what had happened and they stood by Bane as well. When the police who arrived also treated Bane as the hero who had rescued a runaway in danger rather than a child abuser, the doctor gave up and went back to work grumbling to herself.
Finally, everyone cleared out. Bane would have to report to police headquarters in the morning for still more depositions and statements. Unofficially, one police detective told Bane it would be more or less hushed up and the Ratface murder spree would offically go on record as unsolved.
Oliver Simmons came out of Sarah's room and took Bane by the sleeve. He had already thanked the Dire Wolf profusely and now seemed somber realized how close his only child had come to death. "I hope you're not leaving right this minute? She wants to talk to you before she goes to sleep."
"Okay," Bane said grudgingly. While the father went for coffee down the hall, the Dire Wolf pulled a chair over by the bed where Sarah was lying in a hospital gown with a sheet up to her chest. The bandages covering one side of her face just left that eye exposed. "I don't want to hear any more nonsense about romance, Sarah."
"Oh, no," she said weakly. Exhaustion was catching up to her and her eyes kept closing on their own. "I suppose, I always knew deep down in my heart our lives are worlds apart. Our love was not meant to be."
Bane tried to make his voice soft, something he was not good at. "I want you to listen to what I'm saying. Take it to heart. I've been all over the world and I've seen a lot. Sarah... you're living in the United States. You're young, you're healthy, you're smart, you're good-looking. You have two parents who will support you no matter what you choose. Honestly, you can be anything you want. Don't throw all this opportunity away. Have an amazing life." He surprised himself with this speech.
After a long moment of silence, Sarah replied, "I'm... listening. I promise, Jeremy, I will have an amazing life." She slid off into deep slumber with the last word and Bane smiled for the first time in a long while.
9/15/2016
(6/29/2012)
I.
They met at Bleak's favorite spot, a sports bar on Eighth Avenue near the corner of 48th Street. Wary as always, Bane stepped to one side as he entered so he would not be framed in the light of the doorway. His eyes adjusted instantly to the dim interior of the bar but his most suspicious scrutiny saw nothing that could be a viable threat. Two college age guys playing pool and cracking insults at each other, a fat man at the end of the bar staring up wistfully at the barmaid as she wiped glasses without knowing he existed, a couple in a booth reading something together in the NEW YORK TIMES. The place smelled of beer and echoed with the commentary about a baseball game on the TV mounted up high in one car. Everything here was the same at it ever was. Just another late afternoon at HOME PLATE.
Standing there for that one second as he took the situation in, not moving or even looking angry, Jeremy Bane still had something ominous about him. In his forties, six feet tall and lean to the point of almost seeming skinny, Bane was wearing his trademark outfit of black slacks, turtleneck and sports jacket which made him look even thinner. In a narrow face under short black hair, his grey eyes spotted Bleak in a booth and he finally relaxed just a bit. He had been at war all his life and it took an effort for him to ease up. It helped knowing that one of the few people he trusted was nearby.
Bane walked back to slide onto the seat facing his old friend. "I see you've already ordered," he began.
Now seventy, the man known as Bleak was not an intimidating sight at first. Under average height and spare in build, he was wearing dark blue pants and a white dress shirt with the cuffs rolled back a turn. In front of him was a half-finished double cheeseburger and he was dipping a French fry in a smear of ketchup on his plate. Bleak seemed harmless at first. But once someone got a got look at those sharp blue eyes and the alert mind working behind them, Bleak suddenly became a little unsettling.
"Hey there, Dire Wolf," he said. "I wasn't sure if I should call you. This may turn out to be nothing but it is certainly odd."
"Sounds promising," Bane commented. The barmaid came over. She knew these two by now and she knew that they usually ordered some food and left decent tips. Bane asked for a hot roast beef sandwich, onion rings and ice tea. When Bleak held up his empty beer glass, she took it with her for a refill.
"Okay, Bleak, you have a sighting for me?" the Dire Wolf asked when she had brought his beer over and left again.
"No. Well, there is that Ratface business. I have a few tips on that. But I wanted to talk to you about something else. A teenage girl was asking me about you."
Bane did not know how to respond at first. "Like how? Do you think she's working for an enemy and gathering information?"
"Nah. When I say teenager, I mean like maybe thirteen. A kid. She came up to me in the library on 42nd Street, I was doing research on this 19th Century architect who had some theories about what attracts paranormal activity. Anyway, she walks up to me and starts talking as if we know each other. It was a quiet room, so I took her out in the corridor and asked her what the deal is."
The steaming hot roast beef on a club roll arrived and Bane dug in. Between bites, he motioned for Bleak to continue.
"I was getting uneasy," the old man said. "This kid knew my real name. She knew what I was doing back in the 70s in my days as Single Cross. She said her hobby was the Midnight War."
Bane swallowed and paused in his attack on the sandwich. "That's real unusual, Bleak. Most people who are interested in the supernatural never find out about the Midnight War. It's not for everyone."
"Yeah. So I figured like you did, that someone had sent her to set us up. I dunno, Wu Lung? Quilt? Avathor? We've both got a long list of people who wish us harm, buddy."
Watching Bleak thoughtfully, Bane said, "But you don't seem worried. If you thought it was an enemy using this girl, you'd have warned me to be on my toes. What's your opinion?"
The old man finished the last of his food, wiped his mouth and leaned back in satisfaction. "She really wanted to ask me all about you. Every detail of where you live and where your office is and whether it's true you can outrun a car or wrestle a tiger. But she mostly wanted to know if you had a girlfriend."
The sudden dismayed expression on Bane's normally grim face was comical to see. "Oh, come on. There must be some mistake."
"Nope." Bleak sipped his beer, enjoying his friend's confused reaction. "If you ask me, this girl has a major crush on you."
"On ME? How does she even know about me? I'm not a public figure, I keep as low a profile as possible. Something is fishy here, Bleak."
"Feh. Little girls go all crazy over rock stars and basketball players and God knows who else. I think you've just started collecting groupies, buddy."
Bane did not find this amusing, but then he really had no sense of humor in any case. "Name? Description?"
"Said her name was Sarah, but she didn't tell me her last name. Thirteen is my guess. Short kid, five foot three or so, a little cutie to be honest. Straight brown hair, medium brown eyes, a round face with some freckles. She was wearing round-rimmed glasses with quite a prescription from the looks of 'em. I'd say she's nearsighted enough she'd have trouble navigating with them off."
"Damn," Bane said. "Did she say what she wanted from me? I can't help but think there's something dark behind all this."
"Nope, that's it. Watch out for jailbait, buddy. Remember, fifteen will get you twenty, har har. Listen, Jeremy, seriously. I also wanted to talk to you about Ratface. I know you've been following the killings."
The Dire Wolf snapped back to attention. He seemed to have drifted off in alarm for a second at the thought of having a little girl for a fan. "Oh yeah, Ratface. I'm interested in that, I thought it was a typical werewolf at first but two witnesses swear he looked like, well, a humanoid rat. What have you got?"
"To start, he's intelligent and can talk in his monster shape. That's rare. Two bruisers I know have been invited to join a gang that Ratface is forming. Nothing big, just maybe a dozen strongarm guys to help with extortion and robberies. Imagine a gang where the leader is superstrong, superfast, has claws and fangs and best of all, ignores bullet from cops or other gangs. Lots of mugs are interested in signing up."
Bane nodded. "See, this is what I should be concerned with. Not a supposed teenage groupie." Without warning, he swung completely around to glare at the wide picture window showing Eighth Avenue outside the bar. No one was standing out there, just the usual tourists and natives walking by.
"Getting a little jumpy there, Dire Wolf?" asked Bleak with barely concealed glee. "Afraid you're being stalked by a teenybopper?"
II.
Walking briskly east along 42nd Street, Bane could not focus his thoughts on either the Ratface threat or the problem with the teen. This was unprecedented for him. His mind hopped back and forth between the two problems and got nowhere with either of them. This bothered him immensely and he stopped at the corner of Third Avenue to lean back against a building and try to collect himself. Without concentration, he couldn't expect to get anything done.
It was a brisk but not chilly November day just after two o'clock. The dark lowering sky suggested a thunderstorm on the way, which would at least clear the air. He wished the KDF had been available so he could offer them one of the problems he was wrestling with, but Sable had called him the night before to say that her team would be in Chujir for a few days to deal with a struggle between rival warlocks. Feeling once again he was being watched, the Dire Wolf glared about him but saw nothing.
He knew what the trouble was. All his Tel Shai training had been specialized for reacting to threats. If he was in fact being followed by someone who didn't mean any harm but who actually admired him, all those Kumundu techniques would not react. Bane sourly realized that while he could have spotted the most stealthy spy or assassin tracking him, he could have a half dozen teenage girls following him and never quite fix on them. It was infuriating.
Moving again, the Dire Wolf strode quickly up a few blocks to a four-story yellow brick complex with its own little parking lot. It was nowhere near five o'clock when he would be closing his office for the day in most circumstances. He moved across the lobby, past the EMERGENCY ONE clinic and past the wide staircase to where his office sat in a short dead-end hallway. On the bench in that hallway sat a couple he recognized at once.
They were both in their late thirties. The man was solid and burly, wearing a tan business suit with a dark brown tie. He had grown a mustache since they had last met. The woman was a strawberry blonde with a perm who had gotten a bit too voluptuous for the snug white summer dress she had on. Both of them rose quickly as they saw him approach and the anguished expression on their faces told him suddenly how the thirteen year old was who reportedly had a fixation on him. That much suddenly seemed clear.
"Mr and Mrs Simmons," he said, shaking the hand offered by the father. "It's been a few years."
"Thank God you're here," Oliver Simmons blurted out. "Margaret and I are at our wit's end, can we talk with you?"
"Sure, come right in." He unlocked the plain wooden door with its brass plaque that read DIRE WOLF AGENCY and ushered through the tiny waiting room into the office itself. Seating the couple in chairs before his desk, Bane turned on the AC fan because the office had gotten warm and stuffy during the day. He circled behind his desk and lowered himself to face them. "Please, get right to it," he said.
"Sarah has run away," began Simmons. "You remember our daughter Sarah. She was only ten when you helped us against that horrible man. She has idolized you ever since, perhaps a little too much. It wasn't so long ago."
"Three years," Bane answered. "You and your family were being threatened by Amber Jack.. or, John Mills Cahill to use his real name. He wanted property you were negotiating to buy and his instant resorting to vicious threats led you to call on me. That guy was a heartless brute, all right."
"He came to our house with a gun that one awful time and even threatened Sarah. Then you came up behind him and dragged him bodily away into the night. We never heard from him again," Mrs Simmons said. "It was such a relief."
"There's a report he may have fallen into Long Island Sound somehow," Bane said blandly. Let them think what they would. He was positive neither they nor anyone else would ever hear from Amber Jack again. "But what about your daugher?"
Oliver Simmons clasped his big hands together in front of him and shook his head. "Sarah is a good kid, never gave us any trouble before, doing okay in school. But after you bodily yanked that man Jack away when he was scaring her, Sarah developed an obsession about you."
"Me? I was just a detective doing his job," Bane said.
"That's not how she saw it." Mrs Simmons smiled slightly and went on, "She read every newspaper for any mention of you. She was online looking up old cases you had handled, particularly the times you captured Samhain or Golgora. Sarah found out about your old Kenneth Dred Foundation and had a separate scrapbook for each member. Mr Bane, it was a case of hero worship that got out of hand."
"I am not anybody's idea of a good role model," Bane growled. "She should be following some environmentalist or animal rights activist, someone like that. What's this about her running away?"
"Let me tell it," Mrs Simmons said. "Yesterday was Sarah's interpretive dance class at the White Rose Studio up on 72nd Street. When I went to pick her up, no one had seen her there. She apparently waited inside the door until I drove away and then took off. Sarah had her own account at our credit union for emergencies and to teach her how to handle money. That afternoon, she withdraw all six hundred dollars and left just enough to keep the account open."
"You've spoken to the teller who waited on her, of course?"
"Oh, naturally. He said she had her school ID and was lugging around a big bookbag. According to him, Sarah had no one with her, no one was in the lobby or outside who went anywhere near her. He thought she seemed cheerful and relaxed. Not under any visible stress at all." Mrs Simmon added, "He made some small talk while waiting on her, asking how she was and Sarah said that this was going to be the best summer ever."
The Dire Wolf scowled, very displeased at facing a situation he had never thought he would have to deal with. "And what did the police say?"
"They weren't much help. They get a flood of missing children reports every day. She wasn't in the company of any suspicious adult and had no signs of being suicidal. A man named Grierson took down all the details and said he would order the search process. Last night, Sarah's picture and description were on the six o'clock Channel Seven news but that was all we've seen of this so-called search."
"I know Grierson," Bane said, "He's all right, just swamped by a backlog of cases. I have an idea. Did you bring any photos of your daughter?"
"Yes." Oliver Simmons drew out a manila envelope holding a stack of 8x10 color glossies showing the girl's grinning face. "There were taken on her thirteenth birthday back in June. We were heading to have fliers printed and start posting them all over town."
The Dire Wolf reached over to where his cordless phone sat in its charger on the edge of the desk. "I want you two to listen closely," he said. Bane called first the Citywide Investigations Agency and then the Elizabeth Colt office. He described the situation and said he wanted all their available operatives looking for the girl. He wanted the operatives to come to his office first to pick up a picture of Sarah and to receive instructions but to make it quick.
"You're calling in other detectives?" asked Mr Simmons in surprise.
"Absolutely," Bane answered as he hung the phone back in its charger. "Citywide can put five good men on it. Colt is a small operation, just Elizabeth Colt herself and two agents Angelina Delgado and her cousin Luisa, but all three are among the best in the business. Some of the operatives should be turning up here in the next ten minutes."
"But...But we thought YOU would be handling this, Mr Bane."
"Oh, I will be. But let me make it plain that I am better suited for when it comes to the showdown. In confrontations against professional killers or wild psychos, I am the best in the business. I'm more a gladiator than a deductive genius, though. These detectives will do a better and more thorough search for Sarah than I ever could."
He stood up, his hyperactive metabolism finally making it unbearable to sit still more than a few minutes at a time. "I'll be out there searching, too, but having all these professionals on the hunt should improve the odds beyond measure."
"Wait, how much is all of this going to cost?" Mr Simmons asked. "I make a good living but I'm not a millionaire. If it means getting our Sarah back, I want to try anything but...."
Coming around the corner of the desk, Bane put a reassuring hand on the father's shoulder. "I'm covering the expenses, Oliver. This is on me. In fact..." He went over and sat down again to get a red leatherbound ledger from the center drawer of his desk. "Have you got any singles on you? Good. Hand me a dollar bill."
As the puzzled couple watched, the Dire Wolf wrote two entries in the ledger, tucked the dollar in a sleeve of the book and made out a receipt which he handed to Oliver Simmons. "You two are now officially my clients. This gives me some legal advantages when dealing with the police or when questioning people."
At that moment, the doorbell rang. Bane jumped up and rushed over to the waiting room. Up in one corner near the ceiling was the monitor of a closed circuit TV and he recognized the two women waiting out in the hall. He let them in and brought them to where Mr and Mrs Simmons were waiting.
Angelina Delgado was in her mid-twenties, a gorgeous young woman with olive skin, curly black hair that fell in a thick wave past her shoulder blades and huge dark eyes that took in every detail of the two people watching her. The slightly older woman with her was a bit heavier, almost chunky in build, but otherwise resembled her closely. Both were well dressed in a subdued, unobtrusive way.
"Angelina and her cousin Luisa both work for Elizabeth Colt," Bane said. "I've seen them handle difficult cases before and they are the very best in the metropolitan area. Angelina, here's a photo of Sarah."
Studying the picture with intense eyes for a second, the young detective looked up to present a somber face to the parents. "Mr and Mrs Simmons, I have three younger sisters that I love more than life itself. One is Sarah's age. Believe me, I will not rest until Sarah is returned to you. And my boss, Miss Colt, is already on the job. She is going to the credit union right now to ask some questions to the teller who saw Sarah last."
"Thank you," said the mother, holding out a hand which Angelina shook gravely. "I can see you are a serious young woman."
Heading for the door, the two detectives paused to look back. "Jeremy, we will be in constant touch. I am glad you called us in on this matter."
"Take care," Bane said simply. After they left, he turned back to the parents. "The men from Citywide should be here soon. I've used them many times." As he spoke, the Link on his belt buzzed. "Excuse me a second."
Going out into the waiting room and closing the door behind him, the Dire Wolf took the call. He conversed for a few minutes and returned to his office. "That was an unrelated matter. I'm going to wait here for the Citywide agents and then start searching myself."
Oliver Simmons slowly rose to his feet, and his wife did the same with some reluctance. They were watching him with the expressions of people trapped on a sinking boat. "How can we help, Mr Bane?"
"If you think of any details that you haven't already mentioned, call me at once," the Dire Wolf said. "Any new weird friends she had, sudden changes in her eating or sleeping habits, anything like that. Otherwise, my suggestion is that you both stay home for now. Eat even if you don't feel like it and rest even if you can't get to sleep. Remember you have to be strong now, and don't let yourself get rundown."
"That's good advice," Mr Simmons said as they were escorted to the hall. "I don't feel hungry at all but neither us has eaten since lunch yesterday. We're still living in Derby but we can come back here at once. Please call us as soon as you learn anything!"
"It's more than a promise," Bane said. He watched them cross the lobby to the twin glass doors which slid open automatically to let them out. He had not told them about the phone call from Lt Joseph Montez. There had been another Ratface murder uptown.
III.
Almost an hour later, Bane arrived at the crime scene in Brooklyn. He had waited for the Citywide Agency detectives to give them details and one of the photos, but he did not have to offer instructions. They were experienced and competent. As soon as they had left, the Dire Wolf had run down four blocks to claim his car at the IMPERIAL GARAGE and driven straight here. But even so, he was too late. The forensic team had taken over the scene and were doing their usual measuring and photographing and taking innumerable samples.
The deceased had lived in a few rooms over a seedy garage that offered body repairs and New York State inspections. Entry to the rooms was through a back door of the garage which opened to stairs leading up. Most likely this was not a legal residence. The place had no bathroom, but the renter had access to the garage's public bathroom with its sink and toilet but no shower. The city had thousands of impromptu arrangements like this. They violated health codes and building standards but there were too many of them to be stamped out.
Bane left his car on the other side of the street and raced over. Getting up from where he had been sitting in a squad car with the door open, Lt Joseph Montez waited for him. The man had been losing weight lately in his ongoing tug of war with obesity.
"Hey, Montez, you look good," Bane said. "You start running after work?"
"Who me? Nah, all I did was cut out the soda and Red Bull all the time. Just black coffee now to help me live without sleep. I'm sorry the scene is closed off now, Bane, I can't give you a quick peep at it."
"Yeah, I was delayed by a case in progress." The Dire Wolf glanced up at the windows over the garage, where two men in white lab coats could be seen moving around. "Same as the other killings?"
"Damn near identical. Victim was ripped up, claw marks and fangs. I've seen lots of rat bites over the years, Bane, and that's what these look like. Except of course they're big enough for a good-sized dog to have delivered." Montez made a whooshing sound of disbelief. "All these years of turning over Midnight War cases to you and I still get shaken sometime. A rat the size of a pitbull....!"
"Or worse, a rat that walks on two legs and can speak over a phone," Bane said. "There has to be some common link between the victims, have you doped it out yet?"
"Yeah, I think so. I haven't mentioned it to any staff yet, but these guys were all Chinese. Not Chinese-American but from actual China, you know? Three of them had slips of paper in their wallets covered with those scribbles, I showed them to Sgt Lao in Homicide and he said they were gambling slips. Looks like each of the victims was in the red for a hefty sum."
"Gambling debts..." Bane said. "It's a start. There are so many undercover gambling dens in the area. Chinatown alone has dozens. I wonder if maybe some local warlord down there has been getting strict on collecting money owed?"
"Seems like that's the direction I'll be investigating," Montez said. "But I won't be able to get hold of two detectives who speak Mandarin for a day or two yet. They're tied up testifying in court."
The Dire Wolf was studying the exterior of the door in the rear of the garage. Three parallel gouges ran deeply into the wood at face level. "Say, lieutenant, what do your CSI scientists make of these?"
"They haven't mentioned anything about 'em to me yet. Reminds me of when I used to go camping and you sometimes saw where bears leave marks like those."
"Huh." Bane glanced around again, annoyed at not having gotten there earlier, and turned to leave. "Thanks for calling me in on this, Joe. I'll let you know what I find, if anything."
"Sure. Hopefully you settle all this in the middle of the night with no one else around and I can get back to nice normal everyday murders." The big detective snorted in amusement at his own attitude and headed back to where a uniformed officer guarded the garage.
Driving back to Mahattan, Bane was surprised he hadn't heard yet from any of the operatives on the Sarah Simmons case. He decided to give them a little while before checking for developments. Meanwhile, he had his own work to do on this Ratface business. At a red light, he placed the Link in its clip on the dashboard and set it to voice command. Then, patching into the regular voice service, he started making calls to a few of his observers.
From the beginning of his career so long ago, Bane had always turned down rewards from the people he helped. Instead, he had requested that they inform him if they ever saw anything seemingly supernatural and most had been more than happy to comply. Several had even actively gone out looking for the weird or outre and their reports had led him to some major cases. Now he was calling first the martial arts teachers in the city that he knew.
With the third call, he got lucky. Sifu William Ma, who taught a modified Hung Gar style, had suffered a serious gaming problem all his life and knew most of the illegal gambling rooms in the lower end of Manhattan. He suggested a certain pair of rooms above a bakery on Canal Street. The games there were only open to men and to men who could show a certain amount of cash on hand. Fights were frequent and it was said more than once a complaining loser was carried out the back wrapped in a sheet to visit the East River. The place did not even open until midnight.
Bane thanked the sifu and said he might stop by to watch a few classes. Ma laughed and said it would be a tiger watching lambs at play, then broke the connection. The Dire Wolf remembered studying under Sifu Ma briefly, when he was a teenager who had not yet even heard of Kumundu, and he was fond of the old man for teaching whites when most kwoons were only open to full Chinese.
Passing through Times Square, he turned right on Third Avenue and left his Subaru Outback at the 40th Street IMPERIAL GARAGE again. By now his stomach was rumbling audibly. One of the prices for his superior speed and reflexes was a metabolism that burned up calories without mercy. He was always hungry. Bane went into a deli and ordered a corned beef on seeded rye, a pint container of cole slaw and a big bottle of seltzer. Before he reached the end of the block, the food was gone and the water was as well. He disposed of the debris in a wire basket at the corner and hurried to the building where his office was.
To his right was the wide staircase going up to the second floor and to his left was a wall painted a restful pale green. In the short hall between them was the plain wooden door to his office. Bane stopped in mid-step. Fixed to his door by a piece of Scotch tape was a folded slip of lilac-blue paper on which was written in ornate lettering FOR MY DARLING JEREMY.
IV.
He froze in position. Any humorous aspects of this were lost on him. Bane slowed his breathing, drew on Tel Shai awareness training and his hearing stepped up to the higher levels. Yes. Right behind and above him, soft subdued breathing. The Dire Wolf swung around, vaulted over the bannister and was up on the first floor landing in a blink. The girl crouching there gave an alarmed squeal and fell over backwards onto the carpet.
Standing over her, Bane glared in all directions but saw no sign of anyone else. The second floor of the building held two doctor's offices, a travel agency and an empty suite that had been vacated recently. At the top of the steps was a short bench and it was off this that the girl had fallen.
He reached down and took her hand to help her out and found to his dismay that she wasn't inclined to let go. Sarah Simmons was as Bleak had described her, wearing tan-colored boots and khaki pants, a dark brown T-shirt over a regular pullover so that the sleeves of the pullover stuck out from under the T-shirt. She was developing a figure, and her grin as she saw him was wide and appealing in an eager puppy-dog way. Through the oversized glasses, brown eyes peered myopically.
"You're so QUICK!" she squeaked. "I hardly saw you move. Oh, Jeremy, it's so wonderful we meet at last..."
Disengaging from her grip, the Dire Wolf did not smile back at all. "You're Sarah Simmons, right? Do you know how worried your parents are about you?"
"Like they care. Just the other day my mom said she couldn't wait until I got married and was out of her hair." Sarah tugged her shirt back into position and sat down on the bench. She patted the spot next to her and grinned again, but Bane made no move toward her.
"Right now, there are eight expensive PIs searching for you, young lady," he snapped. "I need to call them and the NYPD right now to report that you're safe."
"No, no, no, wait. There is so much we have to talk about. Can't you see we were meant to be together?"
"No."
"Aw. You just need to get to know me. I know everything about YOU. Your picture has been in the papers six times, and I have all six of them. I've visited where you caught Samhain and where you had that fight with the Stone Man. On my blog is tons and tons of articles I've written about you, not to mention my poetry..."
"Stop it" he snapped in the same tone he would use on a gunman being arrested. "That's enough. There is absolutely nothing between us. Sarah, you're a little kid and you're trying to enter a world that is incredibly dangerous.."
"Nature says I'm a woman," she answered, lowering her face and gazing up at him in a manner she had obviously practiced. "You need me to come home to after chasing serial killers all night. I haven't even kissed a boy. I'm saving myself for you."
"Not another word out of you!" he barked. "You don't have any idea what you're talking about." He took the Link from its clip on his belt and patched into the Verizon system. "First, I need to let the police know you're..."
In an instant, Bane had dropped the device and wheeled around in a crouch, barely fast enough to be facing the dark shaggy form that had hurtled around a corner and lunged straight at him. The two of them went down in a furious tangle, rolling on the floor. Claws tore at his body and yellow fangs snapped together so close to his face that the saliva got on his skin. Bane had gotten a knee up between them and he flung the monster off him.
For one instant, he saw red eyes glaring at him over a long fanged muzzle. "You know about Canal Street, eh?" snarled the monster. "You'll never make it to the bakery tonight!" Footsteps pounded on the stairs as the screaming girl ran off faster than she had ever moved in gym class.
As Bane leaped up, the hairy form flashed at him again and he was lifted bodily overhead and thrown violently down over the side of the staircase to slam into the concrete wall with murderous force. That impact dazed him for a few seconds. Bane shook his head, got back up on his feet and was racing up the stairs again within a few seconds but he found the first floor landing empty. He had heard Sarah take off as the fight began, but now Ratface was also gone. The Dire Wolf raced around in a frantic search, even running through the rear exit to scan the street. Nothing.
Bane glanced down and saw the material of his shirt was ripped to tatters. Beneath it, the dark gleam of the flexible Trom armor was unbroken. He hadn't been scratched. Those fangs had come much too close to chewing on his face, though. Ratface had werewolf speed and strength, he was the rare adversary that could meet Bane on equal terms. Getting thrown against a wall like that would have put a normal Human in the ER with broken bones and either a concussion or spinal injury but Bane had bounced back unharmed instantly.
Reluctantly, the Dire Wolf went down to the ground floor again, took the note off his door and entered his office. Dropping down behind his desk, he took blue latex gloves from a pocket and put them on before opening the note. It was as mushy and syrupy as he had expected. Each letter "i" was dotted with a little heart. Unfortunately, there was nothing to indicate a way to get in touch with Sarah. Bane placed his elbows on the desk before him and rested his face in his hands, thinking. It seemed as if his two cases had coincidentally crossed.
The rest of the day was going to be a lost cause. He phoned Mr and Mrs Simmons to give them the news that Sarah was alive and well and at liberty, not dead or in the hands of sex traffickers or anything like that. Unfortunately, she had run off again while he was distracted by a crook with a grudge, or so he explained it. Oliver Simmons said that was it, he was going to check into a hotel in Manhattan to be on hand until Sarah was returned. The mother would stay at their home in case their wandering daughter came back there. Bane notified the NYPD what had happened and assured them he would come down to 20th Street and give a full report, bringing the note with him to turn over.
In a foul mood over both losing the runaway and being caught offguard by Ratface so easily, Bane got a fresh black turtleneck from the closet and wadded up the ruined one into a hamper in the corner. His jacket seemed okay. The Dire Wolf slid one of the matched silver daggers out from its sheath under his sleeve and toyed with it thoughtfully. If this Ratface was a shape-changer as seemed certain, ordinary weapons probably wouldn't affect him. There were no silver bullets in the limited arsenal he kept hidden here in the office, but there should be a case of them over in the old KDF building, some for his 38 Smith and Wesson and some molded to work in the dart guns. He needed to get over there before dark and load up.
There was no sense in putting off unpleasant chores. He locked the office behind him and went up to the second floor landing to find Angelina already there. The beautiful young Latina was kneeling by the bench with a powerful magnifying lense that had an LED built into it. Standing over her was Luisa, writing in a pocket notebook.
"Oh, hi, Jeremy," said Angelina without getting up. "We haven't started questioning anyone yet. Here are some hairs that rubbed off on a wall at chest height. Stiff, dark brown, short, not Human at all. We're taking them to a lab for analysis. The girl left a bottle of Perrier on the floor behind this bench, but aside from fingerprints that we know are going to be hers, I don't see where that is going to be much help."
"Good to know you two are on the job," Bane said. "Listen. This is not joking. If you see this Ratface, don't try to tell yourself he's just a man in a costume. Get away from him and stay away. Bullets might annoy him but they won't do any damage. They'll just make him mad."
Angelina rose easily to her feet. "As a good Catholic girl from a small town, of course I have a silver crucifix around my neck."
"That might be some protection," the Dire Wolf. "But don't count on it too much. Keeping distance between you and this monster is your best approach."
"Understood," she said, kneeling again and looking under the bench with the light. "Can you say where we'll find you, Jeremy?"
"Ahh, I'll be tied up at police headquarters." He showed them the note and both women studied it intensely. Angelina giggled and then broke it short to adopt a serious tone.
"I wrote something like that to my chemistry teacher when I was thirteen," she admitted, "But I tore it up before ever giving it to him."
Bane grunted as his only comment and started down the stairs. Looking back, he said, "Keep in touch, you two. And Angelina, remember what I said about this Ratface. Stay safe."
"Good luck Jeremy," was her muffled reply from where she had gone back under the bench.
V.
It was almost nine that evening when Bane finally walked away from police headquarters on 20th Street and started heading north. Three times as many forms had to be filled out every time he went there as the time before, he grumbled to himself, and the notarized statements took longer every time. He missed the early days of working for Kenneth Dred, when he had been secretive and had left the scene of Midnight War encounters before the police arrived.
As he strode briskly along, glad to be outside, he had to admit the afternoon had not been a complete waste of time. While he had been filling out reports, the Citywide Agency operatives had started calling and he had co-ordinated their information with the NYPD. Two of the cops had seemed a little chargrined that no progress had been made locating Sarah Simmons. The girl seemed to be openly walking around Manhattan, boldly going right into the building where Bane's office was, and yet no one had spotted her.
Elizabeth Colt herself had driven out to Derby to poke around the Simmons house. She reported finding a notebook packed with doodles of hearts with arrows through them and the words "JB and SS" "JB loves SS" "Mrs Sarah Bane" and "J & S 4evah," that sort of thing. She reported that Sarah had evidently planned this to some extent. A change of clothing had been taken with her, along with her hairbrush, toothbrush, phone charger and similar personal items. Sarah had not left a note for her parents and none of her girlfriends from school had heard anything about the plan.
Making his way to Mott Street, he found the Hung Gar kwoon locked up and a sheet of notebook paper taped to the door, "ILLNESS IN FAMILY." Bane snorted angrily. If he got hold of Huang, the man would feel ill all right. The only way Ratface could have known about Bane being informed about the meeting over the bakery would be if Ma had told him. That score would have to be settled. If not now, then after the mess with Ratface and with the runaway girl was concluded.
Gazing further up the block, Bane spotted the WILKINS BROS BAKERY ahead, its windows dark and a "Closed" sign hanging in the door. There were three stories to that building, and the second story only had one window lit with the blue flicker of a television showing but the top floor was intriguing. The windows all had curtains drawn but light showed through the cracks and under the hems. Something was going on up there, all right.
The Dire Wolf went back to a kiosk he had passed a moment earlier and bought a newspaper. For one second, he experienced that sensation of being watched again. He faded back into a darkened doorway and studied the area as if looking for a sniper. Nothing suspicious. Tourists dawdling along, shopgirls chatting wearily as they headed for the subway entrance. After a few intense minutes, Bane shook his head. He had to be imagining it. No matter how specialized his Tel Shai training was, there was no way an untrained thirteen-year-old could be shadowing him. It was just too implausible.
Heading back to the bakery, Bane swung into the alley between buildings and found that, sure enough, there was a sentry at the most obvious spot. In front of a door propped open with a brick, a young Chinese man in a T-shirt and baggy jeans sat in a kitchen chair and puffed his cigarette. Without breaking stride, Bane approached the man, holding up the open newspaper to partly obscure his face.
"Excuse me, buddy," he said loudly, "I don't know this town, maybe you can help me..."
The guard offered an obscene suggestion for the tourist. A sudden flash of recognition distorted his face as he got a good look at the man approaching him, but by then a tight fist was coming right at his chin. Bane managed to snatch the falling man before the chair could be knocked over and make a clatter. It might have seemed to any passerby who happened to have been watching that the punch was so fast and hard as to be likely fatal. But in fact, Bane had pulled it to half what he was capable of.
Striking someone unconscious without causing permanent damage was never certain. Recently, Bane had been less inclined to just knock the enemy out because he had seen a number of them develop brain damage later. Propping the dazed young man up in his chair, the Dire Wolf reached into the right hand side of his jacket and took out a flat case that held five of the anesthetic darts. He jabbed oninto the side of the sentry's neck and saw the man's body instantly slump.
Bane arranged the sentry to sit up in the chair and put the open newspaper in his lap with one limp hand holding it down. There. Anyone passing by would think the man had fallen asleep. Moving in through the open door, the Dire Wolf glided silently up the ancient staircase, placing his feet on the outer edges of each board where there would be less creaking. There was no sign of a second guard at the top landing, which surprised him. Ordinary crooks would have arranged much better security than this. From the ceiling, a 75-watt bulb glared inside a grimy plastic bowl and revealed nothing but bare floor and three doors in a row.
A strip of light showed under the nearest door and he could easily hear the buzz of low voices in that room. Bane was feeling the heightened awareness and excitement as his adrenalin levels rose. Suspense and stress were what he reacted best to experiencing. He tried the handle on the door next to the room where the activity was and found it unlocked, so he slipped through into darkness. After a half minute of nothing reacting to his entrance, he took a pencil flashlight from an inner pocket and moved a thin white beam around the room.
A dozen folding card tables were leaning up against each other, taking up much of the floor space. In the wall opposite was a high narrow window which was covered with a sheet, and to his right was a door that connected to the room next door where the meeting was taking place. This was perfect. Bane looked around again and saw a cardboard box with some debris in it from someone doing carpentry, as well as an air conditioner with its cord tied up. In a corner were a few magazines and an empty beer bottle but otherwise this room seemed unused.
Pressing up against the door to the next room, Bane used Tel Shai technique to enhance his hearing and could make out an odd, high-pitched voice making a speech.
"You've seen what I can do," rang out the voice. "With me as your leader, nothing can stop us. The police will be helpless and ordinary people will run away as soon as they see me. The gambling that goes on here is a perfect cover. I will appoint two of you as my lieutenants to divide up the loot after each heist..."
A faint predatory smile crept across Bane's face in the dark. He adjusted the hilts of the silver-bladed daggers sheathed under his sleeves and took his .38 out to turn off the safety. Before he could open the door to the meeting, though, a huge commotion started. Many excited voices were yelling and then the distinctive shrill tones of Ratface sounded, "Quiet! All of you, be quiet."
Then Bane's heart sank as he heard the voice of Sarah Simmons sing out, "You guys are in BIG trouble."
VI.
He rarely cursed but Bane made a few heated comments under his breath just then. Of course, Sarah had been following him. She had probably watched him subdue the sentry outside and then she herself had followed him inside. Now she had been caught. This changed everything. With an innocent civilian in that room, he could not use one of the flash-bang grenades as he had planned, because her hearing and eyesight could be permanently damaged by it. Any gunfire might catch her. Bane was wearing the silk-thin Trom armor under his clothes and only had to worry about a shot to the head but Sarah was completely vulnerable.
Damn. The Dire Wolf opened the door, slipped through and closed it behind him. He had a few seconds grace where no one noticed him because all attention was held by the dramatic scene on the stage.
In the cleared room, two dozen folding chairs had been set up and all were occupied by the underworld riff-raff Bane had expected. He recognized several of them, including a career burglar and two enforcers known for beating shop owners who wouldn't pay extortion money. All of them had been up on their feet and were just now sitting down as Ratface yelled at them to be quiet.
At the rear of the room where all the thugs were facing was a waist-high platform with heavy curtains behind it. Perhaps at one point, amateur theatrics were performed there or live music had been offered. It was perfect for Ratface to appear on while addressing his new gang.
The shape-changer himself was a bizarre sight. At first, he seemed to be literally a five foot tall brown rat standing upright. But the shoulders were wider and the belly less prominent than they would have been on a real rat. The hind legs were longer and set in the pelvis differently. The long naked pink tail whipped about excitedly, and the ratlike head grinned to reveal rows of sharp yellow fangs. Even Bane, who had seen many werewolves in a long career, found the monster repulsive and frightening.
Within reach of Ratface, Sarah Simmons was being held with her arms behind her by a beefy thug in a windbreaker and jeans. The man was well over six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds and he held the teen in place easily. Sarah had purchased a blonde wig somewhere and her real hair was tucked up under it. This, and some lipstick and blush, changed her appearance enough to explain why the detectives searching for her might not have recognized her.
"You just wait until my boyfriend gets here!" Sarah yelled defiantly. "He'll kick your ass! He'll beat ALL of you up!"
Ratface laughed horribly, not quite a Human sound. He leaned in closer, whiskers twitching. "Will he, now? And just who is this boyfriend?"
"Jeremy Bane! The Dire Wolf!" she announced.
A gun firing could not have frozen that crowd in place as effectively as that name did. Bane had become a sort of urban legend in the badlands of crime. They almost held their breaths as Ratface bent forward until his muzzle was nearly touching the girl's face. Sarah wriggled loose somehow and slapped the monster's muzzle as hard as she possibly could, and instantly Ratface slashed her across the face with his clawed hand. The small teen cried out and went tumbling off the stage to hit the bare wooden floor with a thump.
Ratface began to say something, but a lean figure in black had leaped up on the stage. A hand seized his shoulder and swung him around into a crashing left hook that sounded like a whip cracking. The monster fell to one knee. Looming up over him, Jeremy Bane yelled at the crowd in a commanding voice, "Stay back, all of you! This is between your boss and me!"
VI.
Two deadly enemies leaped headlong at each other. Bane knew that this could not be a long drawn-out brawl but had to be ended quickly. Sarah needed medical attention. Ratface came at him with both taloned hands swinging left and right. The Dire Wolf blocked them upward and got in so close their bodies were almost touching. In just a few seconds, Bane slammed more than twenty full-strength alternating punches to the torso of the monster. The blows smacked so closely together that it sounded like drumming. He could feel ribs cracking under those punches.
One secret of Kumundu was that the enhanced healing of the tagra diet enabled Tel Shai fighters to hit harder and more often than a normal person could bear. The tiny fractures in the bones of his fists from those punches healed up instantly and there was no swelling. Bane could do immense damage with his bare hands without suffering consequences. Now, as Ratface gasped in surprise and pain, the Dire Wolf seized the creature's hairy arm by its wrist and elbow and levered him down to the stage. As Ratface was forced to his knees, Bane came in behind him and drove down the neck-breaking elbow strike just below the creature's head. That snapping noise was decisive. The whole encounter had taken less than thirty seconds.
Straightening up over the corpse, the Dire Wolf raised both fists and yelled, "Your boss is dead! Clear out, all of you, while you still can!" That was enough. Between the realization that they were not going to get paid to stand up to the Dire Wolf and the fact they had just witnessed him beat Ratface to death barehanded, none of the thugs saw any reason to stay. They got in each other's way in their frantic scramble out the door.
Hopping down on the stage, Bane found Sarah sitting up and pressing a hand to the left side of her face. He knelt over the girl and said in a gentle a voice as he could manage, "It's all over now. Come on, let me see." He pulled her hand away and saw blood covering her face. A nasty gouge ran from the bridge of her nose almost to her left ear and it was bleeding freely.
"You fought a monster to save me," Sarah mumbled. "Like the knight slaying the dragon. You do love me, too."
"None of that stuff," he said. Bane dug around in the back of his jacket and pulled out a flat package of sterile gauze pads. Tearing off the paper wrapping, he pressed one against her face and held it down. "You're lucky in a way. He missed your eye by an inch."
"Take me home with you," she muttered, trying to put an arm around his shoulder.
"Knock it off! I'm calling an ambulance now." Pressing the pad down with one hand, he unclipped the Link from his belt and got 9-1-1. After giving the address and details, he pulled Sarah up to her feet. "Can you walk? Of course you can. Come on, we have to get outside."
Helping her to the door, Bane looked back at the stage. In death, Ratface had reverted to Human form. The middle-aged corpse of Sifu William Ma stretched out face down. That explained why Ratface had chosen a Chinese gambling parlor for his new headquarters, Ma must have been owner of the parlor and had closed it for the one night. It explained also how Ratface had known Bane was on his trail.
On their way down the stairs, Bane called another number on his Link and reached Lt Montez. He explained the situation, that Ratface was dead but the body would be that of a local martial arts teacher. He also explained he would be at a nearby ER with one of the monster's victims. As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, an ambulance had already pulled up. The EMTS helped Sarah inside and strapped her down to the gurney fastened in place.
"I'll meet you at the hospital," he began but Sarah clutched at his hand fiercely.
"No, no, ride with me. Please, please, please!" As the EMTs agreed, Bane climbed in the back of the ambulance as well.
VII.
It was a long miserable night at the ER. The doctors decided Sally needed sixteen stitches placed closed together to minimize the scar, and she was only quiet after the local anesthetic made her face numb.
The hospital staff immediately decided Bane had been the one who had injured Sarah, despite both their claims he hadn't harmed her. The doctor in charge that night seemed to have a grudge against men and she called the police and the Child Protective Services even as Sarah was being prepped.
To the doctor's surprise, Sarah's father arrived within fifteen minutes and stood up for Bane, thanking the Dire Wolf profusely. Angelina Delgado and her cousin Luisa also turned up to see what had happened and they stood by Bane as well. When the police who arrived also treated Bane as the hero who had rescued a runaway in danger rather than a child abuser, the doctor gave up and went back to work grumbling to herself.
Finally, everyone cleared out. Bane would have to report to police headquarters in the morning for still more depositions and statements. Unofficially, one police detective told Bane it would be more or less hushed up and the Ratface murder spree would offically go on record as unsolved.
Oliver Simmons came out of Sarah's room and took Bane by the sleeve. He had already thanked the Dire Wolf profusely and now seemed somber realized how close his only child had come to death. "I hope you're not leaving right this minute? She wants to talk to you before she goes to sleep."
"Okay," Bane said grudgingly. While the father went for coffee down the hall, the Dire Wolf pulled a chair over by the bed where Sarah was lying in a hospital gown with a sheet up to her chest. The bandages covering one side of her face just left that eye exposed. "I don't want to hear any more nonsense about romance, Sarah."
"Oh, no," she said weakly. Exhaustion was catching up to her and her eyes kept closing on their own. "I suppose, I always knew deep down in my heart our lives are worlds apart. Our love was not meant to be."
Bane tried to make his voice soft, something he was not good at. "I want you to listen to what I'm saying. Take it to heart. I've been all over the world and I've seen a lot. Sarah... you're living in the United States. You're young, you're healthy, you're smart, you're good-looking. You have two parents who will support you no matter what you choose. Honestly, you can be anything you want. Don't throw all this opportunity away. Have an amazing life." He surprised himself with this speech.
After a long moment of silence, Sarah replied, "I'm... listening. I promise, Jeremy, I will have an amazing life." She slid off into deep slumber with the last word and Bane smiled for the first time in a long while.
9/15/2016
