The Protagonist Speaks

Dear readers, we tried to schedule an interview with the protagonist of this exciting new series, to ask him about shapeshifters and life under the dragon lord, but unfortunately he was detained by the police. So, instead, we bring you the transcript of his police interview.

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Police Interview Transcript. Subject: Benedict Shade, aka “Shade the Collector”

Date, October 16. Time is eight-oh-five. Present in the interview room are Officer Julio Gutierrez of the New Helvetia Police Department and Benedict Shade. Mr. Shade has waived his right to have an attorney present.

Mr. Shade, you are a person of interest in an official police investigation. You are not under arrest, and your presence here is voluntary. Could you please state your occupation for the record?

Certainly, Officer Gutierrez. I collect and sell magical artifacts, the more exotic and unusual, the better.

Are any of the objects in your collection dangerous?

Many of them are potentially lethal. The more dangerous the artifact, the more valuable it is.

You realize that selling lethal magical objects without a license from the Realm of Tolanica is illegal.

Of course! I would never think of selling a truly dangerous object without a permit.

Your reputation suggests otherwise.

Please, Officer. You shouldn’t believe every stray rumor you hear from the street. The NHPD has never found evidence of my involvement in a single illegal transaction.

You’ve been lucky so far.

[Laughter] Maybe so. Say, officer, any chance you could send for a cup of tea? Plenty of cream, please. The tea you have around here is probably domestic swill, so make it half tea and half cream. Real cream, please, with all the calories. And for Lord’s sake, heat the water in a kettle. Boiling water with radio waves is barbaric. And a teaspoon of vanilla bean if you have it. If you don’t, I carry a shaker of ground vanilla bean with me wherever I go. The desk sergeant impounded it when I came in, so you can get it from him.

Does this look like a restaurant? We don’t have tea. I can get you coffee if you want it. Heated in a microwave.

Ugh. Unless it’s imported from the rainforests of northern Qusco? I might be able to tolerate some of that with plenty of cream and sugar. No? Well, never mind. I’ll get by.

Let’s move on. You’re a shapeshifter, right?

That’s right. I am able to transform into twelve black cats.

You seem remarkably stable for a shifter. In my experience, most shifters are at least borderline insane.

What can I say? Imagine you are a normal young human, somewhere between the ages of twelve and fifteen, and you wake up one morning with the realization that you have become something… different. Something both more and less than human. It’s bad enough when you are suddenly and randomly gifted—or cursed—with the ability to transform into a single beast, like a wolf or a cougar, but most of us find our entire self fragmented among a number of smaller animals, such as foxes, crows, or, in my case, cats. I was lucky. Imagine what it must be like to discover that you have become a were-rat, or a were-slug? When the change comes, it’s totally unexpected, and it’s always traumatic. It changes your entire life. Even more than the onset of puberty, which occurs at roughly the same time!

How did your family take it when they discovered you had become a were-cat?

My father was already gone. He’d been disappeared by Dragon Lord Ketz-Alkwat’s secret police. You know how it goes. The “gray-ties” came knocking at our door at two in the morning. My mother told my brother and I to stay in our room. Then she went to my older sister’s room and told her the same thing. A few minutes later, Mother told us that our father was gone and would never be coming back. By the time I came down for breakfast, all traces of my father were gone. I was twelve years old. I still don’t know why they came for him, and I have no hope of ever finding out. But that’s life under the Dragon Lord, and it’s been going on for centuries. Nothing unique about my story. I was just another boy whose father or mother, or big brother or sister, or aunt or uncle, or grandparent or cousin disappeared suddenly, without warning, taken by the Lord’s Investigation Agency and erased from our memories.

What about the rest of your family? How did they take it when you became a were-cat?

The same way most families do when they discover their son or daughter, or brother or sister has become a freak. My mother was a strong woman. She accepted what she called my “affliction” and thought I could be tamed through drug therapy and the force of her will until it was time for me to enter into my three-year mandatory government service. I put up with that for about a year before I ran away and changed my name. I avoided government service, too. I decided no one was better suited to help me cope with my affliction than myself. Also, I had a little supernatural guidance.

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What do you mean?

After a few years engaged in a lifestyle I’m certainly not going to talk about with a policeman—hey, you never caught me, so there’s no point in rehashing it all now, right? Anyway, at some point I was visited by Coyote.

The Coyote? The trickster spirit?

The one and only. But he’s a lot more than a trickster. He’s the father of every living thing on this planet. His companion, Kodoyanpe, built the earth, but it was Coyote who filled it with blood, because red is his favorite color. And with blood came life.

And Coyote came to you?

That’s right. He provided me with the guidance I was rejecting from everyone else. I accepted his counsel because he was willing to give me some useful things. For example, he made me more sensitive to the presence of magic. He also taught me some occult magic and granted me some minor hexing powers. None of this was free, of course. It cost me the ring finger on my left hand, but I wasn’t using it all that much anyway. It also cost Lucky, one of my cats, his tail. He’s not too happy about that, but he copes.

Was it Coyote who taught you to use your shapeshifting ability to steal valuable artifacts?

Who says I steal those artifacts? I collect them from people who had no right to own them in the first place. Rich parasites, mostly. They’re the real thieves, not me.

Tell it to the judge.

I will in the unlikely event you ever catch me in the act or find any stolen goods in my possession.

It’s only a matter of time. Are you ever afraid that your cats will scatter to the winds and take pieces of your personality with them?

I have to admit it’s my greatest fear. Every shifter has to deal with the possibility. It’s why many of them are so mentally unstable. Each of my cats is a distinct piece of me, and if I were to lose one, I’d lose the part of me that it embodies. If I lose any, I lose some of what makes me who I am. If I were to lose half of them, the human part of me would dissolve into the ether. But I’ve got a handle on my cats, and I haven’t lost one yet.

How do you keep them under control?

Officer Gutierrez, you obviously don’t know many shifters. If you did, you’d know that the question you asked is in poor taste. How I deal with the pieces of myself is personal, and I won’t speak about it with anyone who isn’t a shifter or someone I know a lot more intimately than I know you.

My apologies, though if you were under arrest, rest assured I’d require you—compel you, if necessary— to answer my question. Now, I understand you were out of town recently. I’m sure you had an innocent reason.

It’s no secret. I went to Yerba City with my friend, Dwayne, to collect an artifact.

This would be Dwayne Buckler?

That’s right. He and his wife, Salamander, own some land by the river, along with a few trailers. I rent one of their trailers, and they live in a doublewide in the same court. Sal’s a river spirit, by the way. Dwayne makes pots and sells them. He’s quite the character and a real stand-up guy. I’m sure you have a file on him, but he’s clean these days. I trust him with my life, or at least enough to gather up my clothes when I transform into cats, and bring them to me when I need them. Anyway, I heard from my sources that an enchanted dagger was on its way to Yerba City, and Dwayne and I went there to collect it.

From its owner?

Right of ownership was an open question. It was being delivered to a private investigator, but he didn’t know anything about it and didn’t know it was coming. In the end, he and his were-rat friend helped me collect it. We got some help from a sorcerous goat-creature and a really powerful and scary witch.

A dagger, you say? From what I hear you’re quite an expert with blades.

Well, far be it for me to boast, but I can put a put a throwing knife into an eyeball from twenty paces. Not that I ever would, of course. But I didn’t want this dagger because it was a weapon. I wanted it because I heard that it contained a spirit of some kind. As it turned out, something was trapped inside, but it wasn’t the spirit I’ve been searching for.

What spirit is that?

Kodoyanpe, the Earthmaker. He was trapped in something long, long ago, and finding the artifact that imprisons him is the dream of every collector on the planet. I’ve been looking for the Earthmaker for years, and I intend to be the one who finds him, whether he’s indeed confined in an object, or in a tree, or a body of water—or even in another living being! Whoever finds the Earthmaker will be celebrated till the end of time.

You say the Earthmaker wasn’t trapped in this dagger. Who was?

I’m not at liberty to say. If you want to know, ask the Lord’s Investigation Agency.

Right. No thank you. That’s above my pay grade. Was this enchanted dagger dangerous?

More than I can possibly tell you. It could have instigated a major war between the Seven Realms. A lot of people died because of it, but it could have been worse. Much worse.

Were you responsible for any of those deaths?

Me? Of course not. And I find that question offensive.

Right. Maybe an investigation by the realmers would tell us a different story. Where is it now?

That’s none of your business.

We’ll see about that. Now that you’re back in New Helvetia, I hope you’re planning to keep your nose clean. We don’t want to hear about any black cats sneaking into gated communities, hexing the residents, and walking off with any enchanted gemstones or statuettes.

Please, Officer. I’m hurt by your low opinion of me. There’s no way you’d ever catch any of my cats walking away with anything valuable. If I were inclined to commit burglaries, I’m far too skilled to allow anyone to catch me in the act. Can I go now? I’m dying for some tea. Especially some red bush tea from the western cape of southern Ghana.

The transcript ends at this point with a note stating that the interview was interrupted by a representative from the Lord’s Investigation Agency, who took Shade into custody. The LIA agent, a dwarf who identified herself as Dallin Streete, offered no explanation. The note indicates gratuitously that Ms. Streete was remarkably beautiful and dressed as if she were stepping out of a limousine onto a red carpet. The note ends with this brief statement: “When Officer Gutierrez objected to the intervention of Agent Streete, he was seized by convulsions. He was taken to New Helvetia General Hospital where he is currently under observation.”

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Douglas Lumsden earned a doctorate in medieval European history at the University of California Santa Barbara. He taught world history at a couple of colleges before settling into a private college prep high school in Monterey. Now retired, he writes an urban fantasy series featuring hard-boiled private eye Alexander Southerland as he cruises through the mean streets of Yerba City and interacts with trolls, femme fatales, shape-shifters, witches, and corrupt city officials. Douglas and his wife Rita can be found most days pounding the pavement in our running shoes, or with their cat named Cinderella who is happy to stay indoors.

You can find Shade on the pages of Claws of the Collector.

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