Nocturnal: A Novel

“Inspector Bryan Clauser, this cloak is the mark of the Saviors. We are asking you to embrace this role, to become one of us.”

Bryan stared at the cloak. “I’m going into a hospital,” he said. “I don’t think Sherwood Forest is on the way.”

Adam started laughing again. He covered his face with his hands, as if to say oh man, you stepped in it this time.

Alder’s face screwed up into a mask of contempt. “A half hour ago, Inspector, I could have shot you as a monster. Now you are a Savior, and you won’t wear the cloak? Just who in the hell do you think you are?”

Bryan tried not to laugh, but he made the mistake of looking at Adam who still had his face in his hands and was shaking his head. Despite the mutant chromosome, the killing dreams, a ruined career and a trail of corpses, Bryan couldn’t suppress a smirk as the situation’s absurdity caught up with him — this old man not only wanted to dress Bryan up like a superhero, but he couldn’t fathom that Bryan wasn’t oh-so-excited about the idea.

Alder held the cloak up again, as if Bryan hadn’t really seen it the first time. “But it’s bulletproof.”

Bryan tried to squeeze back the laughter, but he couldn’t. “Uh, can’t I heal real fast?”

“Of course,” Alder said. “But healing won’t put your liver back in your body if they shoot it out of you.”

Bryan stopped laughing. “The monsters use guns?”

“Of course they use guns,” Alder said. “Guns work. They’re monsters, not idiots.”

So they could claw him, bite him, and they could put a couple of rounds in him as well? As Pookie would say, awesome. Still, though, the cloak was too damn conspicuous.

“As far as I know, Chief Zou is going to throw me in jail the second she sees me,” Bryan said. “So I’ll stick to my usual clothes.”

Adam took the cloak from his mystified grandfather and hung it back up in the cabinet. “If you change your mind, cop, I’ve got some other stuff you could try.” He shut the door.

Alder huffed. “Adam, he is not going to wear that ridiculous outfit you came up with. We have tradition. The disrespect of today’s youth, I swear.” He turned back to Bryan. “And don’t you worry about Amy Zou. I’ll handle her. We’d best get to the hospital.”

The old man was right. If Bryan wanted to help Erickson, he couldn’t do it from the Jessups’ basement. Like it or not, Jebediah Erickson was Bryan’s brother. He was family, something that Bryan wanted desperately.

“Okay,” Bryan said. “Let’s do it. Am I driving, or do you guys have a car?”

Adam started laughing again.

Council Meeting

During Rex’s tour, he’d seen that the people of Home made do with very little. Some had electricity, but most did not. Dampness hung in the air. Gleaming moisture covered many walls. In some places tiny streams trickled along eroded rivulets in tunnel floors. For most, Home was whatever they carved out of centuries-old landfill.

That made Firstborn’s quarters in the Alamandralina look like a palace.

Rex knew the room wasn’t part of the original ship, because the floor was level. The wood here was beautiful — deep browns sanded smooth, any holes long-since filled in, glossy lacquer reflecting light from both the electric chandelier hanging above and the dancing flames of dozens of candles in each corner. Thick rugs lined the floors. Decorations hung on the walls, mostly designs carved into human bones and skulls. Where there weren’t bones, Rex saw maps: tourist maps, Muni maps, hand-drawn sketches, a map of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, another of Alcatraz Island — and every map showed hand-drawn tunnel systems.

The maps illustrated something Sly had said: there were many places to hide.

Rex sat at the head of a long, black table. Behind him and to the left stood Fort, Sir Voh curled up on his thick neck. Behind and to the right stood Pierre, who held a shotgun with some kind of a drum clip. It was a big gun, but in his hands it looked like a toy.

Sly sat at the right side of the table, Hillary at the left.

Firstborn sat on the other end — no weapons for him. Was he still a threat? Sly thought so. Rex trusted Sly, but he had to figure this out for himself.

The black-furred man was the oldest of them all except for Mommy. It wasn’t just his age or the gray muzzle — he had this air about him, a sense of importance. He really was like a knight, plucked right out of a movie and brought into the modern world.

“I have stuff I want to know,” Rex said. “First of all, what’s happening to me? I’m getting stronger, I can feel it. And I can heal, like, really quick. I wasn’t like that before. How come I am now?”

Hillary answered. “If you had grown up here, you would have been strong and fast like the other children. It’s because of smells. Down here, smells are everywhere. Up there, no smells, so you were like them. But I knew where you were, my king. I waited until the right age to send Sly up to put smells by your house.”

“Smells,” Rex said, the word drawing forth the wispy memory of a strange scent. “Wait a minute. Before I got real sick, I smelled pee around my house. Are you saying I changed because someone peed on my house?”

Sly stood and bowed dramatically. “I had the honor, my king. I’m so proud to know my scent brought you to us.”

“But that’s gross,” Rex said. “Totally gross.”

Hillary laughed. “Smells are just another way of talking. Soldiers mark their kills, a way of telling everyone I am the one that did this.”

That made Rex think of Marco peeing on the dead cop. Poor Marco.

Firstborn stared at Sly, slowly shook his head. “I should have known it was you, Sly.” He looked at Hillary. “You told Sly to do this?”

She nodded. Hillary glared at Firstborn with defiance and anger, but also a bit of fear.

Firstborn cracked his knuckles. His every motion drew tense looks from Pierre, Sir Voh and Sly.

“You said he wasn’t the first, Hillary,” Firstborn said. “Have you really been doing this for eighty years?”

Her smile widened. “You think you know everything, but you know nothing. Eleven kings I smuggled out, right under your nose. Some I lost track of. Maybe they were taken away by the people who took them in as their own. Some I could not find until it was too late, until they had passed the time that matters for becoming a true king.”

Firstborn leaned toward her. Rex heard the shotgun rattle lightly as Pierre adjusted his grip on the weapon.

“But how?” Firstborn said. “How could you get them out? How could I have never learned of this?”

“I have secrets,” Hillary said. “Secrets I will keep. We can’t have new queens without new kings. The people know this, Firstborn, and they hate you for trying to stop it.”

His fist banged against the black table. “With your own eyes, you saw the death that a king brings. We don’t need new queens. We are fine here.”

“Fine?” Hillary scowled. She spread her arms out, the gesture clearly indicating the ship and the caverns beyond. “There is more to life than this. Even if we get a new queen, she will never change if she can smell Mommy’s scent. If our kind is to spread, we must send kings and queens to new cities. That is why I took Rex away. That is why I had soldiers watch him grow.” She looked at Rex again. Her warm smile returned. “If we had waited too long, you would not have the power to call others to you, to bind them to you.”

The power to call others — Rex had done that before his fight with Alex Panos. “My dreams. Were my dreams part of calling to others?”

Hillary nodded. “Yes. A king must get the smells while he is young. By fourteen or fifteen years old, if you have not changed, then the ability to call is gone forever.”