It’s rare for a wolf in the wild to go solo, and almost unheard-of for a werewolf to do so. There’s a reason why ‘Lone Wolf’ is an idiom. Your typical werewolf won’t go down the shops for milk without four or five friends as backup, and none would be foolish enough to take on a vampire without the support of their entire pack.
Despite vampires making their homes in cities and werewolves preferring the wild, they’re still two apex predators with strong territorial instincts sharing an ecosystem, and this has led to an unceasing animosity.
The last time a vampire was killed by werewolves was more than a century and a half ago in New Orleans. It took ninety werewolves, and more than sixty didn’t survive, but those that did still called it a victory.
Aftermath
Friday, March 18th, 10:21AM
“You’re back!” said Tierney.
“I am!” I called back. Tierney was working on a signal down on the tracks while Cormac and I stood on the platform of Connolly station about ten feet away.
“You need more rails?” He asked. He seemed perplexed as to why we had returned.
“Actually, I was wondering if you sent some people to collect the ones you gave us yesterday? Took them back after the parade?”
Tierney closed the back of the signal box then wiped his hands on a cloth tucked into his toolbelt. “No… Not like I even have the men to spare this week. You lose them?”
“Just mislaid them, temporarily. Not a big deal,” I said.
“No worries, then!” he said, cheerfully. “If you need replacement ones, let me know. Got a whole stack.”
As we walked away, Cormac said to me, “This is a big fucking deal.”
We were back at the Parade staging area at Parnell Square a short time later to go over the scene again. The street was heavily littered, but people with orange jackets and grabby stick things were already making progress on it. Two large flatbed trucks still waited by one curb, loaded with half-disassembled P.A. systems and temporary fencing. Engineers and volunteers scurried to and fro, disassembling the remnants of yesterday’s celebrations and adding them to the trucks.
“OK,” I said, “let’s start from basic principles.”
“Fine,” said Cormac. “A squillion years ago, there was nothing, which exploded into protons, neutrons, electrons and stupidity. The universe is made of each of these, in varying proportions.” I didn’t like the look he gave me when he said that bit.
“Fast forward to yesterday.”
“OK, OK, two thirty-three-foot long iron rails imbued with Martin’s Curse were borrowed from Irish Rail and laid over the street here,” he pointed to the spot where we had placed the rails yesterday and where we had found the plywood covers that had been used to make the ramps today, neatly stacked. “Being iron,” he continued, “they could not have been whisked away by magic. So someone came along, took them, then left with them in full view of everyone here.”
“This street has seen about a million strangers over the last twenty-four hours, so witness statements are going to be worth…”
“Not a lot,” said Cormac.
“Not a lot. But given they weigh about six hundred kilos apiece, it’s safe to assume someone would have seen them sling them over their shoulder and walk away with them.”
“Not that anyone short of your Uncle could.”
I was pretty sure I could get one off the ground, but I let that comment slide. “So someone with a truck or van or crane.”
“McGinnis has already been in touch with the parade organisers, and the people who put together each float. They’re checking their inventory, but most of that stuff was disassembled and taken away from Christchurch, where the parade ended. How do you accidentally take away a ton and a half or cursed iron?”
“What’s the worst that can happen if we don’t find them?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“Worst-case is they put them somewhere like… fuck… Let’s say they get dropped in a river. The repetitive nature of the flowing water could pick up the curse. That spreads to boats, which tend to follow the same repetitive paths and before you know it every waterway in Ireland is toxic to spellcasters.”
“Fuck. And the best case?”
“If they get melted down for scrap. Changing their form removes the curse. They’re just dead iron after that.”
“I’ll put out the word with scrap merchants and recycling plants. Hopefully, they’ve already got them and that’s that.”
“Touch wood,” said Cormac, sitting on the stack of plywood.
I looked at Cormac for a second, then beckoned to a guy supervising the loading of the temporary fences. He approached cautiously.
“What’s the deal with the wood?” I asked, when he was within earshot.
“What?” was the best he could do.
“The plywood,” I explained. “It’s all very neatly stacked here. Is it going on the trucks?”
He consulted a clip-board. “Uhh… Seems so. It was a last-minute addition to the schedule. Being taken away on truck number… six. To be delivered to some place on Conyngham Road.”
“That seems right,” I said, “Can you tell me who added it to the schedule?”
He flipped the clip-board around. “Initials are ‘JP’. That’d be Jessica Poole, she was in charge of logistics yesterday.”
An hour later, we were outside a small detached house in Greystones. It was a single-storey flat-roofed rectangular thing with floor-to-ceiling windows, built against a backdrop of deep green pine trees, from the 'Ripping Off Frank Lloyd Wright But On A Budget' school of architecture.
There was a very expensive SUV in the driveway and space for two more. The front lawn was very carefully manicured, but an open side gate showed a slice of the area behind the house which was anything but. I could see a stack of old engine blocks balanced against a washing machine with its outer covers removed.
As I moved towards the doorbell, the silence was broken by a sudden shrieking noise from behind the house. Cormac and I exchanged quick looks and broke into a run towards the side gate.
The area behind the house was a large gravel yard filled with metal refuse of all kinds. As I ran in, I had to dodge a shin-high anvil and an area of footpath covered with loose rusted rebars. I stopped when I saw the source of the noise.
A woman in a loose and dirty overall and with her hair tied back with a bright yellow headscarf was straddling one of our missing rails which had been propped up on carpenters’ horses. She was working an angle grinder over the surface and this released the shrill noise in addition to a wide fan of orange sparks. She was wearing bulky ear protectors so didn’t notice my approach until I waved a few times.
“Jessica Poole?” I asked.
She popped one ear out of its protection and nodded.
“We’re here to ask about these rails you… acquired.” I said, indicating the rail she was working on and the second one which I could now see lying along the wall of her house.
“Ah, shite,” she sat back on the rail with a disappointed thump. “I was really hoping they were waste. Somebody's missed them?”
“Mind telling me what you’re doing with them?” asked Cormac as he wove his way through the obstacles of the yard towards the second rail.
“I’m making a sculpture. I’ve been commissioned for some community art projects,” she said, getting excited. “The symbology of making a connecting arch from a railway, which traditionally both connects communities but also divides them - you know, ‘being from the wrong side of the tracks’ and all that - appealed to me so much, I couldn’t resist.”
“Did I see you yesterday?” I asked. “You had a clipboard and a whistle?”
“That was me, yeah. I help out with a lot of the city projects. The arch was going to be for the summer festival.”
Cormac ducked down beside the second rail and ran his hand along it in wonder. “Have you done any work on this one yet? You haven’t welded it or… sliced it?” It was clear we had reached the limits of his knowledge of metalworking.
“No, not yet. I was cutting this one to length first, then I was going to start curving it,” explained Poole. “Look, I know I can buy new ones but these are clearly used. They show a history and a character that really adds to the message.”
Cormac stood and turned. “That’s no problem. You can keep these and use them as you wish.” I looked at him curiously, but he gave me one of those ‘I’ll explain later’ gestures and continued. “Do you mind if I come back out and check on the progress in a few days? I’m a big fan of…” he floundered for a moment, “...community art.”
She seemed more than happy to hear we wouldn’t be confiscating the rails. It was all we could do to get out of there without accepting free tickets to her drama group’s interpretation of Ulysses.
As we drove back, Cormac drummed his hands happily on the steering wheel. “It’s like, the minute she decided it was ‘art’, it stopped being a railway line and the curse just lifted,” he explained. “This is huge.”
“So, to lift Martin’s Curse, we just need to pretend every train and train track in Europe is a piece of modern art?” I didn’t see how this helped.
“Yes? Maybe? I don’t know. But this is a big first step. I have a lot of phone calls to make.”
The Raid
Friday, March 18th, 12:45 PM
Back at the office, Containment was assembled and waiting for my return. As I walked into their bullpen, Murtagh approached me. He was fully geared up, lacking only gloves and helmet, which he carried under one arm.
“How’d things go with the rails?” he asked.
“Good. Cormac is excited.” I opened the locker that held the spare gear in my size and began suiting up. “No Finlay today?” I asked, looking about the room.
Murtagh shook his head. “Rota’d off. You’re sure about this?” he asked. “This is a pretty wild hunch to be knocking down doors on.”
I considered my answer carefully. I’d been considering it since the idea first woke me at 6am. The more I’d thought about it, the more certain I’d become. Sure, it was a hunch, but it was one of those hunches you just couldn’t shake. “If I’m wrong, I’ll buy everyone here lunch.”
A cheer went up from the room.
“At McDonalds. Eurosaver menu only,” I added. “One item per person.”
Another cheer went up from the room; an ironically exaggerated echo of the first.
Murtagh smiled and shook his head again. “I trust your hunches, Vic, but you’re explaining it to any ministerial enquiry if we’re wrong.”
Twenty-five minutes later we were filing up the service staircase of a fairly well-known city centre hotel. We’d timed the raid for after morning check-out and before afternoon check-in to minimise civilian bystanders, and had asked management to clear out cleaning staff from the third floor.
Symonenko was first through the stairwell door. She darted across the corridor and took a cover position behind a hastily-abandoned room service cart. She raised her weapon and gestured for us to follow.
Silently, we moved down the long corridor. Someone would scout ahead, find cover, then drop down to a position where they could cover the next advancing group. As I rounded a corner, I met a young woman and her two children emerging from a room. She paused in fear - she had no way to know the guns we carried were loaded with tranquilizer darts and not live ammunition. I smiled as reassuringly as I could and made one of those ‘get back inside’ gestures. She scooped up her children and did so. I heard the rattle of chain against door a second later.
Room 312 was a corner room. Its door was not on the side of the corridor, but at its end, so someone looking out the spyhole would have a full view of anyone coming towards them. The room was probably chosen for this reason, yet there was no other way to approach, short of abseiling off the rooftop and in a window.
Putter was first to the end of the hallway. She assumed a flanking position to the left of the door before Symonenko took the side opposite. I had the keycard for the door, so everyone else fell back to let me approach, though I felt Murtagh’s presence at my shoulder.
I removed the ‘Do not disturb’ sign from the door handle and frisbeed it away before swiping the manager’s keycard through the lock slot and held my breath while the little red light blinked twice and turned green. I put my hand on the handle, checked that everyone behind me was ready to go and slowly turned it.
Once the door was slightly ajar, I yelled out, in my best Murtagh impression, “Office of Special Investigations! This is a raid! Lie on the floor!” Then I shoved the door open and entered.
Inside, the curtains were closed and the lights were off. The only source of light in the room was a thin strip of sunlight along the top of the curtain rail where it didn’t quite meet the wall. In the half-light, I could see the bed was un-made. The sheets were so twisted and disturbed, most of the mattress was visible. There was an open backpack on the floor and clothes from it were strewn everywhere. But I was pleased to see a new-looking Northface jacket lying crumpled in a chair.
But, aside from that, the chair was empty, as was the bed. I peeked inside the wardrobe that nobody who checks into a hotel ever uses, to see it was similarly empty. Symonenko was behind me at that point, so I gestured towards the bathroom.
She slowly tested handle of the bathroom door before flinging it open. “Office of Special-” she began, before trailing off. “Victor? I think we have found him.”
I entered the bathroom to see our target lying in the dry bathtub. His feet were caked with mud and he wore only a pair of tweed trousers, which were much more torn and tattered than when I had last seen them on Sunday.
I bent down to shake him awake. It took several shakes, and I was contemplating turning on the tap above his head before his eyes groggily opened.
“Michel Rossier? You are under arrest for assault and battery.”
“And theft!” called Putter from the main room.
“Assault and battery and theft,” I amended. “Come along, mon ami, we have a lot to discuss.”
Negotiations.
Friday, March 18th, 9:39 PM
William Burke lived in a large detached house in a leafy part of Dalkey. It was shielded from the road by a screen of sycamore trees and a tall wall surmounted by nasty looking spikes. The gate to the long curved driveway was open, but we still parked by the street and waited before approaching the house.
We did so just as his last guest pulled away to a wave from Burke’s wife. Cormac and I held up our IDs so as not to alarm her. “Mrs. Burke?” I called out. “My name is Victor Grey and this is Cormac Francis. We’re from the Office of Special Investigations. Is your husband home? We need to speak to him about work-related matters.”
To her credit, she gave our IDs close inspection. “This is very unconventional. My husband doesn’t take meetings at home.”
“We understand, and I am sorry for the inconvenience. We saw you had dinner guests, so waited in order to not disturb your evening. It won’t take long, and once your husband hears what we have to say, we’ll be gone.” I gave my best smile.
“Wait here,” she intoned and disappeared inside the house.
We shuffled our feet in the gravel for a few minutes before Burke came to the door. The Minister for Justice was in his early forties, short and had a prominent overbite that had him unfavourably compared to weasels by some in the press. This comparison was unfair to weasels, said others.
“Yes?” he demanded, as he peered at our IDs. “The department knows not to disturb me like this-” his voice trailed off as he absorbed what he was reading. “Office of Special Investigations? The department in the Park?”
“That’s us,” I said, with a smile and a small bow.
“The ones that deal with…” he looked around nervously.
“Magic?” said Cormac. He clicked his fingers, and a small glowing orb appeared over his hand that disappeared when he clicked again. “That’s us.”
Burke stared in horror for a moment before closing the door behind him. “We can talk out here. My wife doesn’t know… wouldn’t believe…”
“I understand,” I said reassuringly. “And rest assured, this isn’t some emergency. We’re not here to ask you to unleash the dragon that the government keeps chained below Spike Island.”
“He’s joking, Minister,” said Cormac, shooting me a look.
“I am,” I said, with a smile. Then added, “It’s not a dragon. We’re actually here to talk about the Immigration Reform Bill you’re currently drafting.”
Burke escorted us to a pair of benches that sat under one of the large trees on the lawn and took a seat. “Immigration reform?”
“We need to talk about the wording,” said Cormac, by way of explanation.
“Ah, listen,” said Burke, standing. “I can’t be taking input like this. Bills are drafted according to a strict process-”
“We’re not here to lobby,” I said.
“Think of it as expert testimony,” said Cormac. “Like chatting with some doctors before drafting a healthcare bill.”
Burke hesitated before sitting again.
I sat opposite him. “It’s the preamble,” I began.
“The preamble?”
“It defines a requirement for citizenship as being a ‘natural-born human’.”
Cormac took a seat beside him. “We need you to change that to ‘natural-born person’.”
Burke looked from one of us to the other in confusion. “But they mean the same thing? Don’t they?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said with a grin.
“But, surely we don’t want,” he leaned in conspiratorially, “non-humans getting citizenship?”
I took off my glamour, then waited for the shock to die down. To his credit, he didn’t try to run. “My family came here in longships,” I said, “and we pre-date Wexford.”
Cormac added, “And there’s more who have been here longer.”
“There’s a practical element, too,” I said as I put my glamour back on. “If someone breaks the law here and flees abroad, so we have to extradite them, it’s easier if they’re a citizen of Ireland. There’s a hundred loopholes a criminal can use to escape arrest or prosecution if the government doesn’t recognise them as a citizen or even a person.”
“Most of our current laws only apply to people, after all,” said Cormac.
As I watched, something inside Burke seemed to rally. He set his jaw, as much as he had one, and said, “This is all very unconventional. I can’t let the wording of a bill that will set the law of the land for the next century to be decided by a- a-”
I figured it was time to unleash the big guns. “We’re no legal experts, I admit. But the Magistrate is. You’ve heard of our Magistrate I assume?”
Burke nodded silently and glanced up into the trees as if he expected to see Sir Arthur hanging by his feet, wrapped in a giant pair of wings.
“This is why we met outside office hours,” I said. “I can put in a call and Sir Arthur can be here in a few minutes. He’ll be able to explain it much clearer than we can.”
Cormac nodded. “He once convinced Haughey to-”
I interrupted with, “I think that’s still a state secret.”
“Oh,” said Cormac, laughing. “I suppose it would be. But if you’d like to meet him, we can make the call.”
Burke stood again. “That shouldn’t be necessary. I’ll talk to my people on Monday and we’ll discuss the wording.”
I handed over one of Sir Arthur’s business cards as I stood. “This is the Magistrate’s email. He’s asked to be cc’d on any discussion,” I said. “Once again, I’m sorry to disturb you at home. Apologise again to your wife for me.”
As we walked down the drive, Cormac said, “I have never felt more like a gangster in my life.”
“Well,” I said, “you’re new to government work.”
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