Werewolf Art Thou?: A paranormal mystery adventure, page 1
Werewolf Art Thou?
A PARANORMAL MYSTERY ADVENTURE
MONSTERS OF JELLYFISH BEACH 5
WARD PARKER
MAD MANGROVE MEDIA, LLC
Copyright © 2024 by Ward Parker
All rights reserved.
wardparker.com
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of creative fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contents
1. Up in Smoke
2. Vampire Dental Work
3. Shakedown Street
4. Bump Sting
5. Hitmen
6. The Cat’s Meow
7. Hair of the Wolf
8. Truth Spell
9. Prowler
10. Human or Animal?
11. Loup-Garou Times Two
12. Community Improvements
13. Like a Clownfish
14. Worked Like a Charm
15. Ackney Treatment
16. Silver Bullets
17. Wouldn't Be Caught Undead Here
18. Magic Hacks
19. The Enemy of My Enemy
20. Guard Demon
21. Ballpoint Penitentiary
22. Shifting Realities
23. To Catch a Monster
24. Magic Lessons
25. No-Tell Motel
26. Air and Earth
27. New Boss Same as the Old Boss
What’s Next
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Up in Smoke
“It must come from your gut,” Angela instructed me.
“It is coming from my gut,” I replied, grunting. “I’m about to give myself a hernia.”
It was a peaceful evening in Angela’s upscale Jellyfish Beach neighborhood, and I was attempting to levitate an elephant. What else would I be doing on a Sunday night?
You see, I was visiting Angela for my weekly magic lessons. The powerful mage, a title reserved for the highest level of witches, had finally forgiven me for briefly suspecting her in the murder of a voodoo sorcerer (long story). We had resumed my lessons, for which she accepted no payment other than an expensive bottle of single malt Scotch every week.
Percy, the elephant with human intelligence thanks to voodoo genetic editing, had escaped yet again from the safari park where he lived. He was smitten with me and, somehow, found me here at Angela’s. Fortunately, he had rudimentary magic skills that allowed him to travel here without being seen by humans.
Angela had told him that, if he was going to keep interrupting our lessons, we might as well use him in them.
Hence, my assignment was to levitate the 10,000-pound pachyderm. And I swear he’d gained a few hundred pounds since I saw him last. Life was easy at the safari park where he lived.
My love for you, babe, makes your magic strong enough to raise my body above the earth, he said to me telepathically.
“Nonsense,” Angela said, having heard his flirting. “Missy was born with nascent telekinetic powers. She’s never fully developed them. Only magic—not your puppy love—can allow her to reach her full potential.”
All I am, then, is a prop?
“When you show up uninvited, yes,” Angela replied.
She seemed a bit too rude to me, but Angela took her magic very seriously. In fact, it had saved her life on many occasions. Hopefully, she hadn’t hurt Percy’s feelings.
Anything I can do to help, he said sarcastically.
So, here we were in Angela’s backyard on the shore of beautiful Lake Algae, multi-million-dollar homes beside us and facing us across the palm-tree-lined waters. And I was lifting an elephant into the air.
Telekinesis had never been a necessary tool for my magic. I discovered I had the ability when I hit adolescence but used it for little more than party tricks, such as bending spoons or stopping the fall of an accidentally dropped object. This was before I learned I had the magic gene.
I had mastered the ability to load and unload my dishwasher with my mind alone, but, frankly, it was faster to do it by hand. As my magic skills improved, I used my telekinesis only to enhance certain spells.
When Angela learned I was telekinetic, she was more excited about it than I was.
“On its own, your telekinesis can only move inanimate objects and cooperative creatures like this elephant. But to create truly powerful magic, you must harvest every drop of energy available to you,” she had said. “That’s why your natural paranormal abilities need to be fully strengthened and developed.”
Therefore, with my mind alone and without any magic, I lifted Percy in the air in Angela’s backyard, between her swimming pool and her dock. It was essentially strength training, like lifting weights. Up and down, up and down, in three sets of eight reps.
Straining my mind, I lifted him above the top of the cocoplum hedge along Angela’s property line. This would have exposed the floating elephant to her neighbors had he not made himself invisible to them.
Angela and I could see Percy, though. His lovesick eyes filling with anxiety as he rose into the air.
“Do you smell that smoke?” Angela asked. “It’s not firewood smoke.”
It was winter, and in South Florida, whenever it dipped below 75 degrees Fahrenheit, it was fireplace weather. But Angela was correct. This odor was not a burning log or even that fake firewood.
It had the toxic odor of paint, metal, plastic, and other substances, including wood.
In short, someone’s house was on fire.
“Over there,” Angela said, pointing. “It’s someone in my neighborhood.”
A column of dark smoke rose from a point along the lake south of here. Her immediate neighbors’ homes blocked our view of the actual house.
Angela’s backyard trembled from a large impact, followed by an angry trumpeting.
“Oops. Sorry, Percy,” I said.
The fire had distracted me, breaking my telekinetic hold on Percy and dropping him to the ground.
I am only a dumbbell to you.
“No,” I replied. “You’re a sweet friend. And the only five-ton object here for me to lift.”
“I’m going to see whose house is on fire and if they need help,” Angela said. “You can come with me if you want.”
We jogged around the side of her house and got into her giant Cadillac from another era. She drove through this older but expensive neighborhood toward the billowing smoke. I heard sirens approaching.
The road curved sharply to the left, and there the house was directly in front of us, the second story engulfed in flames. It was a new home, having replaced a smaller, older one that had been knocked down. Built in a modern style that I found showy and unattractive, it was also, apparently, highly flammable.
Small groups of neighbors watched the blaze from safe distances, but the first responders weren’t here yet. Angela pulled up right in front of the house, jumped out of the car, and raced to the front door. I’d never seen anyone move so fast into danger, especially not a librarian in her seventies.
She tried the front door, but it was locked. She rang the doorbell and pounded on the door.
“Is anyone in there?” she shouted. “I’m coming in to help!”
She must have cast a spell to unlock the door because she yanked it open, causing us to be hit by a wall of dark smoke.
Angela disappeared into the smoke. I was right behind her, casting a protection spell for myself, though I wasn’t sure if it would protect me from flames.
An explosion of glass shattering erupted above me right before I went inside. All the upstairs windows blew out. Then, the downstairs windows did, too.
I couldn’t see Angela because the smoke was too thick. I heard her calling out, asking if anyone needed help.
Her voice sounded like it was ascending to the upstairs.
A hand grabbed my shoulder from behind. I screamed.
“Get out, now!” shouted the firefighter, wearing a face shield and oxygen mask beneath his helmet.
“My friend is going upstairs, looking for victims,” I said, the smoke searing my throat. Even my protection spell couldn’t withstand the smoke and heat. I stumbled outside in a panic about Angela.
Another firefighter entered the house, searching for victims, while others held fire hoses, aiming at the heart of the fire. A mechanized ladder rose above the house with a nozzle that shot water into the upper windows.
Angela emerged from the house and walked slowly over to me. Her face was covered with soot, and her hair was singed, but she looked fine.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“My magic protected me. I couldn’t find anyone inside except for one person. Dead. I couldn’t tell who it was, or whether it was male or female, before the firefighters kicked me out.”
“Why did you take such a risk going in there?”
“Because I knew my magic would protect me, if only for a short period. And because I suspected this was arson and a murder attempt.”
“How in the world could you tell? With a spell?”
“Did you honestly think you could save him?”
“I knew the chances were very slim. But I had another reason to go in. I wanted to sense if magic was involved in this fire. And the answer is no. The fire wasn’t caused by black magic and not by a dragon or other supernatural creature. Finally, a death of a human that the Friends of Cryptids Society doesn’t have to get involved in.”
Little did she know she was wrong about that.
Angela and I were forced to stand with the other neighbors behind yellow tape, far from the destroyed home. Matt had arrived and used his press pass to venture onto the property to pester the firefighters and cops.
From my vantage point, it appeared that the first responders were strongly encouraging Matt to go away, but they didn’t know him like I did. Try telling a mosquito to leave you alone without swatting it.
After the fire was completely extinguished, the home now a blackened, smoldering husk, the first responders and onlookers began leaving. Only then did Matt make his way to Angela and me.
“They can’t confirm it yet, but they’re pretty sure the deceased was Pierre Dunott,” Matt told us. “They also said it was arson because they found traces that an accelerant was used—most likely gasoline.”
“That confirms that the supernatural world was not involved,” Angela said.
Matt nodded. “The question the medical examiner needs to answer is whether Dunott died in his sleep from smoke inhalation or the fire itself. Or if he was murdered beforehand.”
After Angela had said Dunott was the most-hated man in Jellyfish Beach, she had explained to me why. He abused his power as a city commissioner to retaliate against local business owners who had once supported him but switched their allegiance to Dunott’s political rival. By “support,” she meant not just their votes in a recent election but oodles of campaign contributions which were now cut off.
In response, Dunott harassed them incessantly by ordering the police to pursue alleged code violations, revoking permits, even sending thugs to disrupt their operations.
“Do you think any of the business owners he harassed are responsible?” I asked Matt.
“That’s exactly what I think. Dunott’s behavior was reported to the commission, and they were supposedly investigating it. So were the police. But nothing was done to right the wrongs.” He glanced behind him at the ruins of the house. “Until now.”
“He didn’t deserve the death penalty,” Angela said.
“No, he didn’t,” Matt replied. “But apparently, someone believed he did.”
Matt called me a day later.
“I heard from my source at the medical examiner’s office. They believe the body was Dunott’s. Also, he didn’t have smoke stains inside his nostrils or signs of smoke inhalation in his lungs. No carbon monoxide in his blood, either.”
“Does that mean he was dead before the fire?” I asked.
“I believe so. The M.E.’s office says there are rare cases in which the fire can be so hot and spread so fast that the victim’s lungs seal themselves, and the person dies before inhaling any smoke. The fact that there was an accelerant backs up that theory. But I’m not so sure.”
“Did they find any other possible cause of death?”
“The fire made that very difficult to determine. It looks like the body had penetration wounds, but we won’t know for sure about that until the autopsy. We also need to see what the toxicology reports say when they come back, in case he was poisoned.”
“Let me know if you learn anything,” I said. This case was interesting to me because I had been personally on the scene. Thankfully, however, no cryptids or other supernatural creatures were involved. I was a mere spectator with no skin in the game.
Talk about self-deluded.
Two days after the fire, my doorbell rang at 5:35 a.m. My intuition told me who was at the door, and my intuition was right.
“We must download you immediately,” Mrs. Lupis said.
“It is of utmost importance,” added Mr. Lopez.
“Do you realize what time it is?” I clutched my bathrobe closed against the chilly morning air. Chilly for a South Floridian, that is.
“We apologize for not coming even earlier,” said Mrs. Lupis. “We only now learned a supernatural species had been living in this part of the state, which is beyond its documented range.”
“And now it’s dead,” her partner said.
“What kind of critter?”
“A loup-garou,” they said in unison.
“A what?”
“It’s a species of werewolf normally found in the French-speaking Canadian provinces and Louisiana, where it is sometimes called the Rougarou,” said Mr. Lopez. “Some scholars call them high lycans. I call them bad news. They’re much more powerful and dangerous than common werewolves.”
“Really?” As far as I was concerned, regular werewolves were dangerous enough.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “Even in human form, they’re stronger and more difficult to kill than a typical human. They’re often smarter, too. When they shift to wolf form, they’re larger and more vicious than a typical werewolf. But they can also shift into a form that combines human with wolf. They can walk upright on two legs and have human-like hands.”
“Meaning they can use human weapons,” Mrs. Lupis added.
“They also have more control over when they shift. They can resist shifting during a full moon.”
“Wow,” I said. “But if this one is dead, we have nothing to worry about.”
My handlers exchanged looks of exasperation.
“We wanted to document and catalog it,” Mrs. Lupis said as if speaking to a child.
“Right. Sorry you missed out. If that’s all, I’ll be going back to sleep now.”
“That’s not all,” Mr. Lopez said. “Not for you. We need to find out who killed this loup-garou. Meaning, you need to find out.”
“Why?”
“Because the well-being of cryptids is our mission at the Society, including finding out the causes and culprits when they are harmed. And it’s your job to implement it. Was he murdered by another supernatural creature? Or by humans—most likely more than one—who knew he was supernatural?”
When I received the humongous grant from them, I knew there would be strings attached. As time went on, those strings became bungee cords.
“I see.”
In that there had been only one alleged murder in Jellyfish Beach of late, my sleepy brain made the connection.
“Are you talking about Pierre Dunott?” I asked. “The guy who died in a fire recently?”
The two nodded solemnly.
“He was a loup-garou? Well, at least we now know that fire can kill them,” I said, trying to put a positive spin on it.
Mrs. Lupis glared at me. “Normally, they can escape fire without injury or death,” she said. “Only sustained immersion in flames will kill them. That means Mr. Dunott was already dead when his house caught on fire, or he was made immobile.”
“What kills a loup-garous besides flame-roasting? Silver?”
“A silver bullet or blade to the heart will kill them. To restrain him in the fire would require silver chains or the right magic.”
“You can’t bind them with steel?”
“Strong enough steel will do,” Mr. Lopez said. “The problem is getting him to be still while you wrap the steel chain around him. Silver will drain his strength.”
That had been the case for Harry Roarke, an ordinary werewolf, when the Knights Simplar captured him, then pacified him by draping a sterling silver chain around his neck.
I pictured how the murderers might have overcome Dunott. I figured it would have been murderers in the plural to accomplish such a dangerous task.
“So, the murderers broke into Dunott’s home and surprised him in his bed, shooting him with a silver bullet or binding him with a silver chain? I assume they would have to do this before he could shift?”
“If he was in human form at the time, they could have killed him with a normal bullet,” said Mrs. Lupis.
