This Strange Witchery. Michele Hauf
Chapter 21
The key to disposing of a werewolf body was to get the flames burning quickly, yet to keep them as contained as possible. Torsten Rindle had been doing cleaner work for close to ten years. When a call came in about a dead paranormal found or deposited somewhere in Paris, he moved swiftly. Discreet cleanup was one of his many trades. Media spin was a talent he’d mastered for whenever he was too late to clean up and a human had stumbled upon the dead werewolf. He also dallied with protection work and the occasional vampire hunt.
It was good for a man to keep his business options fluid and to always expand his skills list. And if he had to choose a title for what he did, he’d go with Secret Keeper.
But some days...
Tor shook his head as the blue-red flames burned the furry body to ash before him. The use of eucalyptus in the mix masked the smell of burning dog. For the most part. The creature had been rabid, eluding the slayer until it had gotten trapped down a narrow alleyway that had ended in a brick wall. The slayer had taken it out not twenty minutes earlier, and then had immediately called Tor.
Those in the know carried Tor’s number. He was always the first choice when it came to keeping secrets from humans.
Thankful this had been an old wolf—werewolves shifted back to human form after death; the older ones took much longer, sometimes hours—so he hadn’t needed to deal with it in human form, Tor swiped a rubber-gloved hand over an itch on his cheek. Then he remembered the werewolf blood he’d touched.
Bollocks.
He was getting tired of this routine: receive a frantic call from someone in the know regarding a rabid werewolf who may be seen by humans. Dash to the scene. Assess the situation. Clean up the mess (if extinguishing the problem was essential), or talk to the police and/or media using one of his many alter-ego names and titles, such as Ichabod Sneed from the Fire Department’s Personal Relations. Then return home to his empty loft.
Eat. Crash. Repeat.
Tor knew... He knew too much. Monsters existed. Vampires, werewolves, witches, faeries, harpies, mermaids. They all existed. And yes, dragons were known to be real assholes if you could find one of them. A regular human guy like him shouldn’t have such knowledge. That was why, over the years, he had striven to keep such information from the public. Because knowing so much? It fucked with a man’s mental state.
And then there were some days he wanted to walk away from it all. Like today.
This morning he’d been woken and called to assist with media contacts while a minor graveyard at the edge of the city had been blocked off from public access. Routine cosmetic repairs, he’d explained to the news reporters. The truth? A demonic ritual had roused a cavalcade of vicious entities from Daemonia. Slayers had taken care of the immediate threat, but that had left the graveyard covered in black tar-like demon blood. And the stench!
Tor had spent the better part of this afternoon arguing with a group of muses about their need to “come out” to the public regarding their oppressive attraction to angels who only wanted to impregnate them. Something to do with the #metoo movement. Sexual harassment or not, the public wasn’t ready for the truth about fallen angels and their muses. But, being a feminist himself, he had directed the muses to the Council, who had recently put together a Morals and Ethics Committee.
“I want normal,” he muttered. He grabbed the fire extinguisher to douse the flames. He refilled the canister at the local fire station monthly. “It’s time I had it.”
It took ten minutes to clean up the sludgy ash pile and shovel it into a medium black body bag. Fortunately, this werewolf had been tracked to the edge of the 13th arrondissement not far from the ring road that circled Paris. It was a tight little neighborhood, mostly industry that had closed during regular business hours, leaving the streets abandoned and the dusty windows dark. Tor hadn’t noticed anyone nearby, nor had he worried about discovery as he made haste cleaning up the evidence. His van was parked down the street.
He hefted the body bag over a shoulder, picked up the extinguisher and his toolbox filled with all the accoutrements a guy like him should ever need on a job like this, and wandered down the street. His rubber boots made squidgy noises on the tarmac. After dousing the flames, he’d rolled down the white polyethylene hazmat suit to his hips. With shirtsleeves rolled up, his tweed vest still neatly buttoned, yet tie slightly loosened, he could breathe now.
“Normal,” he repeated.
He’d scheduled a Skype interview early tomorrow afternoon. The job he had applied for was assistant to Human Relations and Resources at an up-and-coming accounting firm in la Defense district. About as mundane and normal as a man could hope for. He’d never actually worked a regular “human” job.
It was about time he gave it a go.
The olive green van, which had seen so many better days, sat thirty feet down from a streetlight that flickered and put out an annoying buzz. Humming a Sinatra tune, Tor opened the back of the van and tossed in the supplies. He’d dump the body bag at a landfill on the way home. He’d done his research; that landfill was plowed monthly and shipped directly to China for incineration.
“That’s my life,” he sang, altering the lyrics to suit him.
Sinatra was a swanky idol to him. Singing his songs put him in a different place from the weird one he usually occupied. Call it a sanity check. The Sultan of Swoon relaxed him in ways he could appreciate.
He peeled off the sweaty hazmat suit, hung it on a hanger and placed that on a hook near the van ceiling. At his belt hung a heavy quartz crystal fixed into a steel mount that clipped with a D ring onto a loop. He never went anywhere without the bespelled talisman. Another necessity for sanity. The rubber boots were placed in a tray on the van floor. He pulled out his bespoke Italian leather shoes from a cloth bag and slipped those on.
“Ahhh...” Almost better than a shower. But he couldn’t wait to wash off the werewolf blood. Odds were he had it in more places than the smear across his cheek.
Closing the back doors, he punched a code on the digital lock to secure it. While he sorted through his trouser pocket for the van key, he whistled the chorus to the song that demanded he accept life as it was...that’s life.
Maybe... No. Life didn’t have to be this way for him. He was all-in for a change of scenery.
Before he slid the key in the lock, he saw the driver’s door was unlocked. Had he forgotten? That wasn’t like him. He was always on top of the situation. Which only further contributed to his need to run from this life as if a flaming werewolf were chasing his ass.
Tor slid into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine. Another crazy midnight job. His final one. He would stand firm on that decision. And after getting a whiff of the dead werewolf’s rangy