Werewolf Cop by Andrew Klavan

said.
    He put his hand on it. Drew it out. An old .38 Smith and Wesson. He tried to make sense of it. Was she going to tell him it was a relic of World War II . . . ?
    â€œDo you know why the bullets are silver?” she asked him.
    â€œWhat? Oh. Silver bullets. For, like, a werewolf.” Now he got it. It was a magic gun to kill Dominic Abend with. Great.
    â€œSilver is the metal that conducts the best. Heat. Electricity. But not just that. More. More mysterious things too. It is not the bullets that will do the death-work, you see. It is your ‘Yeah, sure.’ That. The silver conducts that as well.”
    â€œRight,” said Zach, with a sarcastic drawl. He gripped the gun in his hand and turned it this way and that, from professional habit mostly: he couldn’t see it well. “And you want me to have this. To protect myself from Abend. Is that right? Well, I don’t know if I can get it back through customs. But thank you kindly for the thought.”
    Even the details of her features were sinking into the darkness now, but he thought he caught a glimpse of some strange tenderness in the sadness of her smile. She reached up and briefly gripped his elbow, as if with true affection. Then she turned away. Turned her back on him.
    â€œYou know the word liebestod ?” She could not have seen him begin to shake his head, but she went on anyway before he said no aloud. “Love-death, it means. A song or story about lovers who must together die. Romeo and Juliet—these you know, yes? But Americans do not tell such stories. Each one is everything to himself there, so I think. And always they believe they will make for themselves the happy ending. They do not know about liebestod .”
    A wind moved, the fallen leaves rustling on the ground, branches creaking overhead. Zach shivered and looked around him. The woods were now draped in such sable night that the trees beyond the conifer circle had vanished into a general black and twisted thickness. Even the nearby evergreens were becoming mere suggestions of themselves. In such full darkfall, Zach’s eyes were quick to make out the odd star-like gleam that had appeared on the far rise to his left, to the east. In the moment or two that he watched it, wondering what it might be—an airplane? the evening star?—it expanded into a brighter blast of radiance, and then took shape: a curving silver crescent, the top edge of the rising moon.
    â€œAnd yet it has been like that for me and my country,” Professor Dankl went on, her voice still deep and hollow but full of feeling too, full of a world-weary fondness that struck Zach as somehow particularly European. “ Liebestod . I have sacrificed even my immortal soul to defend her—to defend her from evil and from death—to chase them through the centuries of unbelief, alone in my understanding of them. Umsonst . For nothing. I have failed and she is gone. My country . . . my continent . . . my culture. . . .”
    Zach stood fascinated by the moon as it rose and rose, as it became a half circle illuminating the romantic silhouetted skein of branches and forest vines beyond the clearing, and then still kept rising from behind its far hill. He felt Professor Dankl glance over her caped shoulder at him, and looked at her—but she had turned again, was facing away from him again, and he went back to watching the moonrise, only half listening to her mad ramblings.
    â€œNow she is gone, I cannot bear what I have become for her. Why should I fear what I must now do? Why should I fear hell even? I am in hell.”
    Taking another quick look her way, Zach saw her shake her head at the earth beneath her feet. From where he was, she was little more than a shadow, frail and hunched. He turned his eyes to the moon again. It had crested the rise. It was full and glorious. The forest was magical with its glow. The deep interweavings of the branches had grown mysterious and