Free Werewolf Cop by Andrew Klavan Page A

and converted, but the Catholics ultimately won back the area. The public exposure of the werewolf’s depredations would have made a vivid example of . . .
    The jet lurched. Zach woke up—sat up—startled. Dawn was suddenly breaking at the portholes: pale-blue sky over dark-blue ocean. The jet was beginning its descent into Germany. He’d dozed off and slept through the night.
    Muzzy, he blinked and stretched and looked around him. There lay the soporific report on the fold-out table. It was turned to the last page, the final paragraphs. His eyes passed over the words, though his befogged mind barely grasped their meaning.
    The legend of Stumpf’s Baselard is the legend of Europe’s great moment. In its blade lie both the continent’s murderous savagery and its striving toward the holy, its sinful debasements and its yearning for redemption, its beastliness and its incomparable cultural beauty. The desire to lay hands on this artifact is the desire to take possession of a legacy that may have only been imaginary and yet was well worth the imagining: a history of blood sanctified by the mind of faith, the will to sacrifice, and the spiritual instinct to renounce vengeance in the name of love.
    Who holds the dagger, therefore, owns the distilled energy of a dead past and thus lays his claim to the life of the future.
    Who holds the dagger, therefore, holds power beyond telling.

6
    PROFESSOR DANKL
    L ooking back on it later, Zach was never sure when he lost his grip on reality—or when reality, rather, lost its grip on him. It could have been that moment when he fell asleep with his head full of stories about werewolves and magic daggers. He certainly woke up unclear and befuddled. He dozed on and off through the landing as if he were in a fever. He walked through the airport at Frankfurt feeling distant and discombobulated. The place was mobbed with travelers—his cop eyes noted their worried faces, their furtive glances at the television sets hanging here and there from the ceiling. On the screens he saw the images of cities on fire, mobs in the streets. And yet it all seemed very far away and fantastic.
    The fact that he had never been to Europe before added to the weird and dreamy atmosphere. He’d never been farther out of the U.S. than Mexico, which didn’t really count as a foreign country where he came from. He found it disorienting to be surrounded by people chattering in a language so completely incomprehensible to him. Ichten flichten richten schtickten. What the hell were they talking about?
    â€œLooks like some kind of mass exodus,” he said to the woman behind the counter at the coffee shop, gesturing with his head at the crowds streaming through the concourse. It was his first attempt to make a connection with one of the locals.
    The woman behind the counter was brown-skinned and wore a scarf over her head. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. Said nothing. More weirdness, as far as Zach was concerned. He took his coffee from her and fought his way back into the crowd.
    For the rest of the ninety-minute layover, he kept to himself, dozing in the waiting area by his gate or walking past the airport shop windows to stretch his legs. Trying to clear his head without much success. Then he boarded the plane for Dresden.
    In Dresden, after the mob scene in Frankfurt, the airport seemed bizarrely deserted. Same pictures on the TV sets—the fires and mobs—but they played to empty rows of plastic chairs in the waiting areas. Carrying his overnight bag toward the exit, Zach had the nagging sense that he was wandering farther and farther away from the world he knew.
    He made a brief, grateful connection with the lady at the rental-car counter. Trim and pert with short brown hair and the warm, patient expression of a young mom, she could’ve been any girl anywhere. That gave Zach the courage to talk to her—that and the fact that she spoke almost