Fort Freak Read Free

school, first day of camp, first day of the year. My tendency is to view the unknown future more with trepidation than joy. And now I could add to that list the first day of work.
    As I walked toward New York’s 5th precinct, a hot, muggy wind off the East River sent trash scurrying down the gutters and wafted to me the scent of garbage rotting in black plastic sacks awaiting pickup. Abandoning me, the wind raced on to seize the American flag on the front of the station house, gripped it, and set it twisting and snapping like a maddened whip.
    The four-story building that housed law enforcement for the part of New York City known as Jokertown was pale stone and it came right up to the edge of the sidewalk. There were a handful of parking spaces out front, but they were filled, and it made me glad I hadn’t bothered to bring down my car from Saratoga. To either side of the precinct rose two redbrick buildings that were both taller and wider; it left the cop shop looking like a short guy squeezed between burly longshoremen.
    I held my hat against a particularly strong gust of wind and picked up the pace. Not just because I wanted out of the heat, but because I wanted to be early. I opened the door, then paused for one brief moment to savor the moment. My dad had worked here. Been captain of this precinct. Died at his desk on a particularly chaotic Wild Card Day that is now in the history books. I had never known John Francis Xavier Black. He died four months before I was born, but his picture is everywhere in my mother’s house upstate, and I’d heard the stories from one of his detectives, Sam Altobelli. And now I was about to walk in his footsteps.
    Are you proud of me, Dad? I hope you’re wa—
    I lost the rest of the thought and my hat when I was shoved violently from behind.
    “Jesus fucking Christ, get out of the way.”
    My hands and knees, rather than my face, met the stained linoleum floor, and I flinched as a pair of size thirteen, thick-soled, metal-toed shoes stepped over me. I tried to regain my feet, but was knocked down again by the long scaled tail that dragged behind my assailant.
    Regaining my feet, I tapped the broad shoulder. The back of his head was weirdly misshapen and scaled like the tail. “Excuse me,” I said.
    “This time,” a deep baritone grunted back.
    This time I closed my hand on one beefy bicep. “No, you owe me the apology.”
    The man turned. I braced myself for what I would see, but I didn’t brace enough. I ended up taking a step back. What faced me was a dragon.
    He was also a cop. The tail and the head had sort of distracted me from noticing the blue uniform. Great, I was about to start my first day on the job in a fight (hopefully verbal) with a fellow officer.
    It was shift change, so the room was bustling. The desk sergeant stood up, and was patting the air in a soothing gesture. Moving his arms caused his drooping and faded brown batwings to jerk too, but he wasn’t exactly leaping or flying to my aid. The night-shift cops, now in civvies, paused in their rush for the door. It might be the end to their “day,” but a fight was always worth a delay.
    Day-shift cops were pushing in behind me. One of them—a man with a shock of orange-red hair, the red-veined nose of a drinker, and a missing ear—slapped the dragon man on the shoulder and said, “Kick the rook’s ass, Puff.”
    So much for the verbal thing. Maybe I could take him if I fought dirty. I glanced from the grinning razorlike teeth to the clawed hands that were clenching and flexing in preparation, and I had the feeling that he knew more about dirty fighting than I could ever hope to learn.
    “Guys, guys, what’s going on?” came a basso rumble from behind me.
    I risked a glance and found myself staring at a horror. He had to be pushing seven feet tall, with a wolf’s snout, bear claws at the end of arms so long they dragged the ground, and bull horns thrusting out of the forehead. And fur.
    I was starting