Guardians of the Gates - Part 1, The New Breed by Jeff Schanz (best novels ever .TXT) đ
- Author: Jeff Schanz
Book online «Guardians of the Gates - Part 1, The New Breed by Jeff Schanz (best novels ever .TXT) đ». Author Jeff Schanz
âMaybe it was Bigfoot,â said Sebastian, trying to sound humorous.
âYou know Bigfoot donât go âround England.â Orpheus didnât always get Sebastianâs sense of humor. âBut heâyas why Iâm thinking they maybe right. The news says theyâs two folks been killed. One got his neck torn up and the otherân got his head chopped clean off.â
Deceivingly smart this man. I can guess where heâs going with this.
âIn the paper heâya,â Orpheus continued, âIt says they found parts of the one man in the teeth of the otherân. And it says since tâainât nothing lyinâ around that killed the otherân, they think somebody else killed that man. The police says an animal killed the one man, but this heâya paper says they thinks since da one man done bit the otherân, maybe heâs a werewolf.â Fee flattened the page and held it up for Sebastian to see. âGot a picture heâya of somebody running away, carryinâ a girl too. Maybe he da one killed the werewolf and saved the girl.â
A picture?! Oh, yay. The council will have a field day with that. Sebastian restrained himself from climbing over the desk to have a better look at the picture. The distance Fee was holding it made it difficult, but Sebastian managed to make out the picture with some effort and a little squinting: A blurry night shot of the back of a dark figure in a dark coat with a womanâs legs sticking out one side. Someone could possibly infer height and the fact that he was male, but other than that, about a billion people fit the description. Still, though â not a desirable development.
âThey find any silver bullets?â asked Sebastian, with more attempted humor.
âNo, suh. But I heard you could kill a werewolf by aâchopping off his head.â
And you heard right.
âAn thisân got his head chopped off. So, Iâs wonderinâ if maybe theyâs right.â
âDonât know about werewolves. Sorry. I donât suppose the picture was on the TV news?â
âShoot, I donât know. I wasnât paying all that much attention to TV this morninâ. It just seemed funny when I saw this heâya paper.â
âWell, hopefully, it isnât real,â said Sebastian.
âEh, donât matter. Just hopinâ that ifân it is a werewolf, he didnât go hurtinâ nobody else.â
Me too.
Fee angled the article back to his eyes. âJus funny is all. Usually them kinda crazy things happen way out in the country. Why this werewolf is in the middle of that big olâ city, and ainât nobody seen him, is funny to me.â
Sebastian stretched a little to have another look at the picture in Feeâs paper. Maybe he missed some recognizable detail on his first glance? Maybe his hairstyle? No. He was being paranoid. If he was recognizable at all, Fee wouldâve been the first to see it. âDid it say where that guy was from? The guy that got his head chopped off?â
âNo. Jus says he didnât have no family. Only went missing one day. Wonder how he turned into a werewolf?â
Same thing Iâm wondering.
Orpheus kept reading. âSays he didnât show up foh work and folks thought he got caught up in one aâ them cults, or someâm. Maybe ran off and shave his head, start banginâ on a tambourine, or someâm.â
âMight have. Werewolf thingâs gotta be bogus.â
âYeah, maybe,â laughed Orpheus. âOnly thing his work folks remember is that he come back from lunch one day looking like he seen a ghost, or someâm. Then, the next day he donât come back at all.â
Sebastian began to try and fit that nugget into his puzzle, then stopped himself. There could be any number of plausible explanations for the guyâs work behavior. Regardless of his eventual transformation, Sebastian couldnât go interjecting possibilities into coincidences to try and create facts.
âWell, I canât go solving the mystery for them way over here,â said Sebastian, trying to seem less interested. âHeâs probably just some crazy guy on drugs, or worships some weird cannibal cult. Too many crazy people in this world to try to explain all of âem.â
But Sebastian was anything but disinterested. That rag shouldnât have any reasonable information in it whatsoever, yet it strangely had a tidbit he could add to his puzzle. A puzzle that still had no corner pieces yet.
âYes, suh, I agree with that. Bunch a crazy people in this world.â
Crazy, yes. And perhaps ballsy. Bad guys trying to manipulate dimensional energy, volunteers and victims for â what? Experiments? Sirens to lure the volunteers in? Was the wolfer in the park an experiment gone wrong? Or maybe an experiment gone right?
Orpheus went back to his paper, first checking his pocket watch. No wristwatch for Orpheus. His grandfather had passed down a silver watch chain that had been bought with a yearâs worth of savings to make the old man feel respectable. Orpheus wanted to honor his grandfather and used the chain to keep a newer battery-powered pocket watch. He gave up on The Globe, folded it onto his lap, settled into the seat, and closed his eyes.
Sebastian was considering borrowing the folded Globe from Orpheus when his cell phone chimed. The little notification âdingâ told him he had en email: âRe: Aunt Em.â
This concludes the sample.
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Publication Date: 09-14-2019
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