Neil Gaiman - BAY WOLF

Listen, Talbot. Somebody's killing my people, said Roth, growling down the phone like the sea in a shell.

Find out who and why and stop them.

Stop them how? I asked.

Whatever it takes, he said. But I don't want them walking away after you stopped them, if you get me.

And I got him. And I was hired.

Now you listen: this was back in the twenty-twenties in L.A., down on Venice Beach.

Gar Roth owned the business in that part of world, dealt in stims and pumps and steroids, recreationals, built up quite a following.

All the buff kids, boys in thongs popping pumpers, girls popping curves and fearmoans and whoremoans, all of them loved Roth. He had the shit.

The force took his payoffs to look the other way; he owned the beach world, from Laguna Beach north to Malibu, built a beach hall where the buff and the curvy hung and sucked and flaunted.

Oh, but that city worshipped the flesh; and theirs was the flesh.

They were partying. Everyone was partying, dusted, shot up, cranked out, the music was so loud you could hear it with your bones, and that was when something took them, quietly, whatever it was. It cracked their heads. It tore them into offal.

No one heard the screams over the boom of the oldies and the surf.

That was the year of the death metal revival.

It took maybe a dozen of them away, dragged them into the sea, death in the early morning.

Roth said he thought it was a rival drug cartel, posted more guards, had choppers circling, floaters watching for when it came back. As it did, again, again.

But the cameras and the vids showed nothing at all.

They had no idea what it was, but still, it ripped them limb from limb and head from neck,tore saline bags out from ballooning breasts, left steroid-shrunken testes on the beach like tiny world-shaped creatures in the sand.

Roth had been hurt: The beach was not the same, and that was when he called me on the phone.

I stepped over several sleeping cuties of all sexes, tapped Roth on the shoulder. Before I could blink, a dozen big guns were pointing at my chest and head, so I said, Hey, I'm not a monster.

Well, I'm not your monster, anyway.

Not yet.

I gave him my card. Talbot, he said.

You're the adjuster I spoke to?

That's right, I told him, tough-talking in the afternoon, and you got stuff that needs adjusting.

This is the deal, I said.

I take your problem out. You pay and pay and pay.

Roth said, Sure, like we said. Whatever. Deal.

Me? I'm thinking it's the Eurisraeli Mafia or the Chinks. You scared of them?

No, I told him. Not scared.

I kind of wished I'd been there in the glory days: Now Roth's pretty people were getting kind of thin on the ground, none of them, close up, as plump and curvy as they'd seemed from farther away.

At dusk the party starts.

I tell Roth that I hated death metal the first time around.

He says I must be older than I look.

They play real loud. The speakers make the seashore pump and thump.

I strip down then for action and I wait on four legs in the hollow of a dune.

And days and nights I wait. And wait. And wait.

Where the fuck are you and your people? asked Roth on the third day. What the fuck am I paying you for?

Nothing on the beach last night but some big dog.

But I just smiled. No sign of the problem so far, whatever it is, I said.

And I've been here all the time.

I tell you it's the Israeli Mafia, he said.

I never trusted those Europeans.

Third night comes.

The moon is huge and a chemical red.

Two of them are playing in the surf.

Boy and girl play, the hormones still a little ahead of the drugs. She's giggling, and the surf crashes slowly.

It would be suicide if the enemy came every night.

But the enemy does not come every night, so they run through the surf, splashing, screaming with pleasure. I got sharp ears (all the better to hear them with) and good eyes (all the better to see them with)and they're so fucking young and happy fucking I could spit.

The hardest thing, for such a one as me: the gift of death should go to such as those.

She screamed first. The red moon was high and just a day past full.

I watched her tumble into the surf, as if the water were twenty feet deep, not two, as if she were being sucked under. The boy just ran, a stream of clear piss splashing from the jut in his speedos, stumbling and wailing and away.

It came out of the water slowly, like a man in bad monster movie makeup.

It carried the bronzed girl in its arms. I yawned, like big dogs yawn, and licked my flanks.

The creature bit the girl's face off, dropped what was left on the sand, and I thought: meat and chemicals, how quickly they become meat and chemicals, just one bite and they're meat and chemicals . . .

Roth's men came down then with fear in their eyes, automatic weapons in their hands. It picked them up and ripped them open, dropped them on the moonlit sand.

The thing walked stiffly up the beach, white sand adhering to its green-gray feet, webbed and clawed.

Top of the world, Ma, it howled.

What kind of mother, I thought, gives birth to something like that?

And from high on the beach I could hear Roth screaming, Talbot, Talbot you asshole. Where are you?

I got up and stretched and loped naked down the beach.

Well, hi, I said.

Hey, pooch, he said.

I'm gonna rip your hairy leg off and push it down your throat.

That's no way to say hi, I told him.

I'm Grand Al, he said.

And who are you? Jojo the yapping dog-faced boy?

I'm going to whip and rip and tear you into shit.

Avaunt, foul beast, I said.

He stared at me with eyes that glittered like two crack pipes.

Avaunt? Shit, boy. Who's going to make me?

Me, I quipped. I am.

I'm one of the avaunt guard.

He just looked blank, and hurt, a bit confused, and for a moment I almost felt sorry for him.

And then the moon came out from behind a cloud, and I began to howl.

His skin was fishskin pale, his teeth were sharp as sharks', his fingers were webbed and clawed, and, growling, he lunged for my throat.

And he said, What are you?

He said, Ow, no, ow.

He said, Hey, shit, this isn't fair.

Then he said nothing at all, not words now, no more words, because I had ripped off his arm and left it, fingers spastically clutching nothing, on the beach.

Grand Al ran for the waves, and I loped after him.

The waves were salt: his blood stank.

I could taste it, black in my mouth.

He swam, and I followed, down and down, and when I felt my lungs bursting, the world crushing my throat and head and mind and chest, monsters turning to suffocate me, we came into the tumbled wreckage of an offshore oil rig, and that was where Grand Al had gone to die.

This must have been the place that he was spawned, this rusting rig abandoned in the sea.

He was three-quarters dead when I arrived.

I left him to die: weird fishy food he would have been, a dish of stray prions. Dangerous meat. But still, I kicked him in the jaw, stole one sharklike tooth that I'd knocked loose, to bring me luck.

She came upon me then, all fang and claw.

Why should it be so strange that the beast had a mother?

So many of us have mothers.

Go back fifty years and everyone had a mother.

She wailed for her son, she wailed and keened.

She asked me how I could be so unkind.

She squatted, stroked his face, and then she groaned.

After, we spoke, hunting for common ground.

What we did is no business of yours.

It was no more than you or I have done before, And whether I loved her or I killed her, her son was dead as the gulf.

Rolling, pelt to scales, her neck between my teeth, my claws raking her back . . .

Lalalalalala. This is the oldest song.

Later I walked out of the surf.

Roth was waiting in the dawn.

I dropped Grand Al's head down upon the beach, fine white sand clung in clumps to the wet eyes.

This was your problem, I told him.

Yeah, he's dead, I said.

And now? he asked.

Danegeld, I told him.

You think he was working for the Chinks? he asked.

Or the Eurisraeli Mafia? Or who?

He was a neighbor, I said. Wanted you to keep the noise down.

You think? he said.

I know, I told him, looking at the head.

Where did he come from? asked Roth.

I pulled my clothes on, tired from the change.

Meat and chemicals, I whispered.

He knew I lied, but wolves are born to lie.

I sat down on the beach to watch the bay, stared at the sky as dawn turned into day, and daydreamed of a day when I might die.