The cops came, when it was all over, in cars.
Dog had taken off. The scarifying biker gang had shriveled into a dazed clot of scraped, bleeding werewolves. Apparently they’d managed to eat the Geeks, for the only victim still left standing on the site was me.
I babbled a little about visiting the pet store and being accosted when I came out. A woman officer took me into the back of a cop car and got my very confused statement, giving me a card for a place where I could get counseling for victims.
I’d gotten enough counseling during my orphaned childhood to give it myself, so smiled and stashed the card, collected my goods, and accepted Officer Smith as a ride-along while her partner brought up the rear.
“Kinda rough welcome to Las Vegas,” she said as we headed out, the wind whistling through Dolly’s broken window. Where was I going to get a ’56 Caddy Eldorado Biarritz window replaced in Las Vegas? Not even Irma had an answer to that one. “Why’re you staying at the Araby?’
“I can’t afford much until I get a job.”
“Get outa there as soon as you can. And collect that dog you mentioned adopting from the shelter. If you’d had one with you tonight, he might have scared off those cheap punks. Maybe.”
“Tomorrow,” I said, glancing into the rearview mirror. A gray lupine shadow was pacing Dolly and the squad car. At thirty-five miles an hour. That’s my boy!
“You’re lucky, Miss. The Lunatics are a nasty gang. We’ve been trying to put them out of circulation for a long time. Apparently they got to fighting among themselves over you.”
“Lucky,” I repeated with a shudder. At least my new dog was off the hook.
The officer dropped me off at the Araby Motel and returned to the following squad car with extreme regret, but I swore that I’d have new quarters soon. Tomorrow. And I would. Dog was waiting at the door to my unit, eerily enough, part of the shadow cast by the one parking lot light that still worked in the entire complex.
As he stepped forward, I saw that his ruff was matted by werewolf saliva. I hoped his coat was thick enough to serve as insulation.
“It’s a head-to-toe bite inspection for you, mister, in the morning, and a curry-combing with your brand-new brush. Then we’re off to see the wizard again. I could use some serious backup for storming Castle Nightwine. Again.”
He interrupted a frenzied licking of his messed up flank to growl amiably.
“I need a name for you.” I ran my hand over his skull, down his neck, past the wide leather collar that was now dimpled with fang-marks.
His eyes shone in the one parking lot light, pale and luminous, like the moon. Not just blue, like mine, but with an overriding silver-sheen. Like moonshine.
“Quicksilver,” I said.
He sat down, boxed at his nose with his paws and grinned up at me, his tongue hanging amiably through his very white fangs.
Quicksilver it was.