A Hellhound in Manhattan: Part 1

Chapter 2

Eleven o'clock. Closing time. The last of the straggling restaurant patrons had finally left, this time without a drunken fuss. Once again, the hour to toss out the garbage was at hand. So many half-eaten steaks and burgers gone to waste.

Emmy Hernandez was on trash duty for the night. She brought out the last couple bags through the back entrance, and she paused when she spotted a vagrant crouched beside their dumpster.

Emmy threw down the bags in frustration. They kept their dumpster under lock and key for this very reason, and yet the homeless still loitered like stray animals waiting to be fed. While Emmy had nothing to do with this, if her boss found out he was going to dock her pay anyway. Dirty bums hanging around their establishment would be bad for business, even if it was closing time.

"Hey!" Emmy scolded. "Hey, get outta here!"

She got closer in her attempt to shoo the vagrant away, and saw a white fluffy tail wagging from beneath their coat.

The hunched over vagrant growled as they looked up with fiery red eyes. Their snout was long and pointed in a snarl, revealing a set of sharp teeth.

Emmy trembled as she stepped back in stunned silence. She couldn't tell if this bum was even human. They had a mane of silver hair, and when they stood up on their hind legs they were taller than she was.

The vagrant had a handful of cold fries in their grip. Somehow they had broken into the locked dumpster.

"What?" it snarled in a young woman's voice. "You're not eating this!"

The monster shoved the fries in her mouth. The ketchup dripping from her chops looked so much like blood that Emmy screamed.

She fell backwards over one of the trash bags and scrambled back inside, locking the door behind her and rushing for the phone to call the police.

***

By the time Detective Elisa Maza made it onto the scene, both the restaurant and the alley had been blocked off by yellow tape.

"Oh, detective! Glad you're here."

"What's the situation, Morgan?" Elisa questioned.

"I just got a statement from the witness. Says she saw a 'werewolf' sniffing around the dumpsters out here."

Elisa stepped across the yellow tape and into the alley where the creature was spotted. All that was left were two torn open trash bags with half of its contents strewn across the pavement. It had been picked clean of all its leftover meat.

"Had to chase away a few homeless folk who were trying to get at the evidence here," Morgan added.

Elisa frowned. She understood having to keep the crime scene untouched; she just wished it didn't have to be at the cost of the homeless just wanting to keep themselves fed.

"Where did the witness see the werewolf?" she asked.

"Right over there, detective." Morgan pointed over towards the waste disposal unit. "You think it was one of those gargoyles?"

Elisa scoffed. "I highly doubt that."

It wasn't at all like the gargoyle clan she knew to do something like this, especially since they had a perfectly good kitchen over at Castle Wyvern. She certainly couldn't have imagined that one of the trio would have done this. Brooklyn, Broadway and Lexington were a rambunctious lot, but still far more well-behaved than to scare restaurant employees like this.

She walked over towards the dumpster. When she crouched down and inspected it, she couldn't deny it. Not only was the bottom corner torn open from the outside, but along the edges were claw marks.

First gargoyles, now werewolves.