NEKROPOLIS, BY TIM WAGGONER
A Matt Richter Novel

Chapter One 

I was sitting in Skully’s, nursing a beer that I couldn’t taste, and which I’d have to throw up later, and trying real hard to look like I was minding my own business, when the lyke walked in.

He (I knew it was male only because I’d been told) stood well over seven feet tall. But he didn’t have to stoop to enter the bar. Since Skully’s is located close to the Wyldwood, a lot of his customers are lykes, who often wear their wildforms, and he’d designed the nine foot-high doorway to accommodate the specialized – and mutable – physiognomy of his clientele.

The lyke, Honani by name, stone-cold killer by rep, was one of the newer shapeshifter breeds, a mixblood: lyke biology tweaked by the hand of genetic engineering. But as far as I was concerned, he was an ugly mess. I could pick out badger, puma, crow and what I thought was a bit of snake around the eyes. He looked almost as ugly as one of Lady Varvara’s demon kin. Almost.

Skully’s doesn’t offer much in the way of décor, but that has more to do with the owner’s practicality than any lack of aesthetic sense on his part. The nine-foot high door is solid iron, and there are no windows so customers aren’t tempted to throw anything – or anyone – through them. The walls are unpainted brick and the floor smooth concrete so Skully can hose the place down every night and remove the bloodstains. The tables are solid oak and bolted to the floor to make it more difficult to use them as weapons, and the chairs are easily replaceable cheap wood because they have an extremely sh