Transformation was two nights away.

42

MY LAST KILL in the Golden State was thirty-two years ago, in the summer of 1977. Led Zeppelin had played the Oakland Coliseum and a vanload of fans had driven up to Muir Woods after the show to drop acid and screw. I’d planned to go farther north into the Napa Valley (the woods here a tad too close to the city and occasionally ranger-patrolled) but when a young hallucinating gentleman, gamine, with pre-Raphaelite blond curls that would have given Robert Plant’s a run for their money, injudiciously wandered away from his hallucinating friends and all but fell into my lap … Well. No pain felt he. I am quite sure he felt no pain. Had I not been long past the days of self-comfort I would have comforted myself with the thought that to him I’d been nothing more than an alarming—and final—hallucination. Altogether a lazy kill. I barely took pains to bury what was left of him. Of course the remains were found, three days later, but by then I was in Moscow.

Talulla was sick. We checked into a motel on foggy 68 just east of Carmel and I left her soaking in a hot bath. A risk, but unavoidable: Moonrise tomorrow would present its necessities. There was reconnaissance to be done. Besides, I’d seen absolutely no sign of pursuit since we left New York. We had new phones; check-in would be every hour. If she saw or felt anything—anything—suspicious she was to get among the public and call me. “Is it this bad every month?” I asked her. She was pale in the tub, dead-eyed, shivering. Her little breasts were goosefleshed despite the water’s warmth, nipples prettily puckered.

“At least.”

“Jesus, how’ve you managed?”

She just looked at me, jaws clamped, on behalf of womankind. My own pre-Curse blood-bubble and bone-burp routine was under way. The premature hybrid hands and feet were ghost-fucking with me (extra care behind the wheel, Marlowe), lupine previews flashing in my human shoulders and hips. I deal by keeping on the move. Sitting still makes things worse. Not so for Lula. She looked like she never wanted to move again. Her makeup was smudged. She’d started taking it off then given up. She stared at me with the baleful resignation of a seventeen-year-old suffering the sort of hangover she’ll come out of with a feeling of humble spiritual enlargement—if she comes out of it at all.

“I’ll wait awhile,” I said. “We’ve got time.”

She shook her head. “Don’t bother. This is just what happens to me. It’ll last till this evening then I’ll be full of beans. Come this evening you’ll wish I was like this again.”

It still wasn’t easy leaving her. Several false departures. “If for any reason something happens to me,” I said, turning back for the fourth time at the door—then realised I didn’t have anything useful to offer.

“Just go,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

I left her a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, three packs of Camels, a dozen Advil and a pot of lousy motel coffee. Also Cloquet’s Luger, which I’d hung on to, though I’d replaced the silver ammo with regular rounds. Useless against boochies (should I not be back before sundown) but fine for familiars and agents. “Anyone comes through that door who isn’t me,” I said, “shoot them.”

She nodded, teeth chattering, then closed her eyes and waved me away. I locked the door behind me. It was just after noon.

Novelists, notoriously, are always working, eyes and ears open for anything they might be able to use. Ditto werewolves. Not for quirky characters or snippets of dialogue but for murder locations, places that lend themselves to the secret kill. I’d had this stretch of coast—the hundred miles between Monterey and Morro Bay—in the file for years. Along with the requisite geography and the ghosts of Steinbeck, Miller and Kerouac, Big Sur’s got isolated houses and a glut of whacked-out residents with more money than sense. In the late sixties I’d rented a place here for a few weeks (flew to Alaska for the kill) and been struck by the potential richness of its pickings. Odd I’d left it this long, really. You were saving it for her , my romantic insisted—and in my new generous idiocy I didn’t wholly dismiss the idea.

It’s a strange craft or art, finding the where and the when and the who of the kill. Naturally one develops a nose for it over time, a sensitivity to variables. In the early years I used to spend weeks as it were casing the joint. Now you can drop me anywhere there’s human habitation and in less than twenty-four hours I’ll give you the optimal target.

Of course there are soft options. The Western world’s so mad these days you can put an ad in the paper and some desperate self-harmer will answer it. Wanted: Victim for werewolf. Must be plump and juicy. Non-smoker with GSOH preferred. No time-wasters . I’ve had my share of drug addicts and alkies, the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the infirm, the mentally ill. I’ve hired escorts (male and female), doped them, driven them out to the countryside, let them wake up and make me a chase of it. All of which will do (the Curse being unencumbered by aesthetics or fair play) but there’s a peculiar profound satisfaction in the straight—one wants to say traditional or clean-lined—mode of predation: You stalk a perfectly healthy human being, confront them, give them plenty of time to really take it in , then do what you do.

I spent the day driving and hiking, equipped with knapsack, bush hat, state-of-the-art Van Gorkom walking boots, binoculars and a paperback copy of Birds of the Western United States , officer. Tourist season was a month away and the trails were quiet. I had the place to myself. The odour of redwoods and damp earth made my eyeteeth and fingernails throb.

By three in the afternoon the fog had lifted and the sun had come out. I worked with free-form fluidity, and with an hour still to go before sundown I’d lined up a hit and two backups. It would mean a sixteen-mile on-foot round-trip and smart timing but we could do the whole thing without breaking cover once—and it doesn’t get better than that.

Talulla phoned as I was climbing back into the Toyota.

“You’ll be sad to hear,” she said, “I’ve entered the full-of-beans phase.”

“Good.”

“Don’t get excited. It’s basically ADD, with fever and hallucinations.”

This is another purpose of civilisation, so that we can exchange love-packed banalities over the phone.

“Everything’s set,” I told her. “I’ll be home in an hour.”