“How did he react?” said a heavyset woman. She was middle-aged and plump. Her graying hair perched in a bun atop her head. The others called her Aunt B, for what reason I didn’t know. She looked like every child’s favorite grandmother. She was also the alpha female of the twelve hyenas the Pack counted among its members.
“He appeared surprised.”
Light murmur rippled through the Council.
“He has access to the morgue,” Jennifer said. “A lot of corpses.”
“And being a plastic surgeon, he would meet many pretty women,” added the alpha-rat through a mouth full of potato chips. The rotting head did nothing to dull his appetite.
“Why didn’t he mate with Olathe?” Jennifer wondered. “It’s obvious they were working together. He would help her take over the People and in return, he’d get all the vampire flesh he wanted. Plus fresh corpses.”
“She was barren,” Jim said. “Roland probably had her fixed before he fucked her.”
“Did you go to lunch?” Aunt B wanted to know.
“Yes. It was a normal lunch. The next time I saw him was after Derek and I encountered that vampire. Crest was asleep on the stairs when I brought Derek home.”
“Did you sleep with him, dear?” asked Aunt B. “We need to be clear.”
I tried to keep from gritting my teeth. “No.”
“Then you haven’t seen him in an uncontrolled environment.” Aunt B shook her head. “He could’ve been cloaking the entire time.”
“His cloak would have to be exceptional,” I said. “I felt no magic. Nothing at all.”
Curran, who had been leaning against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest. “To sum up, he’s never appeared at the same time as the upir. He seems to pop up in her life whenever she makes any headway. She’s never seen his place or met any of his friends.”
“He’s familiar with tech.” I finally thought of something smart to say. “He owns a car.”
“Anything else?” Mahon asked.
“He’s fascinated with Lyc-V.”
“I like him for it,” Jim said. “And the kid thinks he’s an asshole.”
Thank you, Derek.
Curran pushed himself from the wall. “Either he’s the upir or he’s not. How would we find out?”
Doolittle stirred. “The only way to know for sure, m’lord, is to scan a blood sample. Blood can’t hide the magic when separated from the body. Time is of the essence in this matter. The less time the blood has to degrade, the better. I suggest we take a portable scanner.”
“If he is what we think he is,” the alpha-wolf said softly, “we’ll have to go in force.”
“And I doubt he would volunteer the sample.” Mahon said.
“We can’t compel him,” the alpha-wolf said.
To compel a person to give a blood sample with the purpose of scanning it was illegal. It was a violation of privacy and the courts have been adamantly enforcing it. If Crest proved to be human, he could make enough of a stink to keep the Pack in hot water for years.
“Not to mention that he’ll know who all of you are,” I said.
They mulled it over.
“It doesn’t matter,” Curran said. “We solve this now.”
“DOESN’T FEEL SO GOOD, DOES IT?” JENNIFER SAID to me as we left the black van that ferried us to Crest’s apartment.
“No.”
“It’ll be okay,” she said and we both knew she lied.
The tight pack of shapechangers cleared the stairs to the lobby. A clerk was on duty, a thin, red-headed man, who started to rise at our approach. Curran nodded to him as if they had known each other for years and the man sank back into his seat.
The six of us took the stairs at a run, Curran in the lead, followed by Jim, Jennifer, Doolittle, and me. Aunt B’s oldest son brought up the rear. He chose to carry a shotgun.
We reached the door to Crest’s apartment. Behind me Aunt B’s son blocked the stairs. I wondered if the shotgun was for me, in case I developed second thoughts.
My stomach tightened. It felt wrong. I should’ve come alone. I shouldn’t have let them pull me along. I will not put myself into this situation again.
Curran knocked on the door. Crest’s voice said, “Hello?”
Curran looked at me.
“This is Kate,” I said. “I’m not alone and I need to talk to you.”
A silence issued as he digested it and the door swung open. Crest looked slightly disheveled. He gazed at the stone-faced gathering outside his doorstep and stepped back. “Come in.”
We did. The shapechangers spread through the house, and Crest found himself enclosed in a ring. They maintained their distance, a few feet between them and the human in the middle. Just enough room to gain momentum for a leap without getting in each other’s way.
“Mind telling me what this is about?” Crest said. His gaze flickered to Curran.
“These people are shapechangers,” I said. “Several of their pack mates are dead. I’m involved in the investigation and the murderer has developed an unhealthy fascination with me. He left a rotting head in my yard with a love note.”
Crest’s face lost its expression. “I see,” he said. “You think that I’m the guy.”
Doolittle stepped forward. “If you’d be so good as to volunteer a blood sample, the matter can be cleared up within minutes.”
Crest was looking at the kid with the shotgun. Wrong. Excluding himself, the kid was the least dangerous of those present. “And if I don’t volunteer?”
“You should,” Curran said flatly.
Crest looked at me. “Kate? You believe that I’m the killer?”
“No. But I have to know for sure.”
A mix of emotions twisted his face. He thought that I had betrayed him. So did I.
“You said you wanted to be part of what I do,” I said softly. “Now you are. Please give us the blood, Dr. Crest.” I don’t want to see you hurt.
Crest clenched his teeth. Around me the shapechangers tensed. His gaze fastened on my face, Crest rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and held out his arm. “Might just as well get it over with.”
Doolittle tied his biceps with a strip of rubber. A long needle pierced the skin and the dark blood squirted into the clear tube.
“So tell me,” Crest said. “What exactly am I supposed to be? I assume since Kate’s involved, I’m not an ordinary human. What am I guilty of?”
“She thinks you feed on the dead,” Jim said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. You hunt them. In the night. Human, vampire, Pack, doesn’t matter. You hunt them, you kill them, and then you eat the corpses.”
“Lovely.” Crest’s gaze didn’t waver. Doolittle carried the sample to the scanner.
“Oh, it gets better, Doc.” Jim was on a roll. Sonovabitch. “You also kidnap young women. You fuck them, then eat them. You mate with animals and make kids. Hordes of little misshapen Crests that roam the city in search of human meat.”
“How nice.”
The scanner chattered, printing out the signature. Jim shut up and leaned forward, his eyes fixed on his prey. The shapechangers hovered on the verge of shedding their humanity, ready to rip into the warm meat. They breathed deep, their muscles taut with concealed motion, their eyes hungry and unblinking. And their prey, the human in the middle of the room, stood surrounded and alone, looking at me like a lost child. I slid Slayer from its sheath and held it ready.
“Human,” Doolittle said. “He’s clean.”
“You sure?” Curran said.
“Not a scintilla of doubt.”
A shiver passed through the group as if someone turned off an invisible switch. I put away Slayer. Curran looked at me. His face was calm, that particular calm that contained a storm. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Next time you get a hunch, don’t tell me.”
He turned to Crest. “On behalf of the Pack, I offer you a formal apology and our friendship. A suitable compensation will be rendered for the offense to
your person. You would honor us by accepting it.”
Crest made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
Curran strode past me and the shapechangers filed out of the room one by one, until only Crest and I were left.
“You really thought I was a monster.” Crest’s voice held quiet wonder. “Tell me, how long did you suspect me? Did you go to dinner with me thinking that I rape and kill women so I can feed on their corpses?”
“No.”
“No? Why should I believe you?”
“If I suspected you then, I would’ve tried to kill you then.”
“As opposed to being ready to kill me now?” He paced, suddenly breaking into motion as if standing still had become too great of an effort. “I saw your eyes. If that printout had said anything but what it said, you would’ve run me through with that sword. And it wouldn’t have bothered you!”
“It would’ve bothered me a great deal.”
He spun about. “You know, I really thought we had something there. Something nice. But I was wrong.”
No reply would have been a good answer to that, so I kept my mouth shut. Crest’s face had gone pale with bitterness, his mouth a narrow straight slash. “Worst of all, I think you would’ve preferred it to be the other way. You wanted me to be that thing.”
I shook my head.
“No, you did. What was it, Kate? Did you just have to be right or was I too much of a departure from your world? Do I have to be a monster for you to fuck me?”
Coming from him the expletive gained an edge, like a knife. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his hands in front of him, trying to grasp the air. “Sorry doesn’t begin to cover it!” He glared at me and exhaled forcefully. “I’m through with this conversation and I’m through with you. Go. Just go away.”
I left. He closed the door behind me. I wished he would’ve slammed it, but he closed it very carefully.
Nobody waited for me on the stairs. I got down to the lobby and walked up to the clerk. “Is there a back door out of here?”
He pointed down the hall. I took it, walked out of the building, and kept walking. The shapechangers could find me by scent. If they really wanted to track me down, there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop them. But I had a feeling Curran was too disgusted with me to care one way or the other. I hailed a horse buggy and paid the driver fifty bucks to take me to the ley point.
CHAPTER 9
I SAT ON MY PORCH, ALTERNATING BETWEEN A bottle of Hard Lemonade and Boone’s Farm Sangria, and watched the night breathe. It was very quiet. The night breezes had died and nothing troubled the dark leaves on poplar branches. Not a blade of grass stirred on the lawn below.
I took a big swig of sangria and another of lemonade. Not drinking so much, but getting drunk. Making my body feel as bad as my mind. I wished I had some beer to chase down the wine. It would make me sick faster.
I’d accomplished quite a bit. It was hard to sit here and not be proud of myself. I’d failed to find Greg’s killer. He would murder again, he would kill young women, he would kill shapechangers, and I didn’t even know where to look for him. I’d pissed away whatever meager credibility I’d had with the Pack. And with the Order, for that matter. I had a thing going with a nice guy. It wasn’t perfect, but he liked me. He had tried pretty hard. A normal, decent guy. And I had broken our little relationship beyond all repair. He wasn’t a part of my world so I brought him into it. On my terms.
I turned one of the bottles upside down, guzzling the liquid without tasting it, until I almost choked, and raised it in a salute to the distant line of trees. “Nice going.”
The trees said nothing. I shook my head and reached for the other bottle.
And saw a monster in my yard.
It sat on its hunches, sniffing at the wind. A large bastard, at least a hundred and sixty pounds. Long grayish fur grew in patches on its lean carcass. Bare skin, pale and wrinkled, showed between the irregularly shaped spots of fur, especially on the stomach, where long, ragged scars crisscrossed the flesh. A small hump protruded from the beast’s back, and the fur covering it was longer and coarser, forming a matted mane that flared just behind the large head crowned with round human ears.
The thing’s hind legs were heavy and muscled and shaped somewhat like those of a canine, but with longer digits. Its front paws, smaller and disturbingly human in shape, clutched something dark. I squinted at the wet fuzzy clump. A squirrel. The creature sniffed at its prize with long wrinkled muzzle, opened massive jaws, and tore into the squirrel. A sickening crunching of broken bones disturbed the night’s silence.
It chewed with gusto, squeezing the bloody stump in its hands and looked at me. The small bloodshot eyes that glared from the beast’s face were undeniably human. When you looked into the eyes of a shapechanger, you saw a beast clawing to get out. When I looked into this thing’s eyes, they burned with understanding, dim yet significant intelligence, betraying sadness and a capacity for suffering.
The thing raised its horrid maw to the sky and made an eerie lingering noise, as if a dozen voices murmured the same phrase in a dozen languages at once. Then it turned to the squirrel and bit off another morsel.
A faint scraping of claws reached my ears. I glanced about me. Grotesque shapes hid in the shadowy corners, some small, some large. They perched on the rails, they slunk below, around the porch stairs, and darted under the truck in the driveway, shifting and moving all around me.
The rim of the bottle touched my lips and I drank, as the beasts drew closer.
“Poor Crest,” a velvet voice murmured. “I’ve been alive for three hundred years and I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.”
I set the bottle down with marked slowness and looked toward the voice. “It’s you,” I said. “Shit. I would’ve never thought.”
Bono smiled at me, showing even teeth, white and inhumanly sharp. There were too many of them, too. Funny how I never noticed it before.
The black, spiky, gel-saturated hair was gone, and long sleek strands fell to his shoulders. They were gray, the odd dark gray of dirty duct tape. His skin was pale and smooth, and I was seeing too much of it, since Bono chose to appear nude, except for something resembling a kilt or a skirt that hung from his hips, doing a piss-poor job of covering whatever it was supposed to cover.
The world went fuzzy. I rubbed my forehead. The wine was kicking in.
Bono slid from the rail on which he had been perching. He moved with liquid slickness across the porch, seamlessly coming to all fours and lowering himself to the floorboards to sit beside me.
There was something so alien in the way he moved, in how he sat, how he smelled, how he looked at me with the eyes brimming with hate, something so inhuman that my brain stopped, smashing against that inhumanity like a brick wall. He made me want to scream.
I forced myself to sit still. The effort burned some alcohol and the view didn’t seem as blurry.
In the yard several smaller creatures waited impatiently as the large one finished his squirrel.
“It’s hard for you, isn’t it?” the upir said softly. “It’s hard to sit next to me like this. You want to scream and run, run as fast as you can across the grass, never looking back, knowing that you can’t escape but running still because it’s better to die with your back to me. Do you know why that is? Because your body knows that you are food, to be used, eaten, and discarded.”
I brought the bottle to my lips and took a small sip. “How many cheesy novels did you have to read to come up with that one?”
He leaned, lowering himself until he lay on his side, his head supported by the arm bent at his elbow. “Laugh, Kate. It’s the last opportunity you’ll have.”
I shrugged. In the yard the squirrel hunter took a swipe at a smaller, hideous thing that darted to nip at the tuff of fur in his hand. The smaller creature yelped, readied for another pass, and froze, its short, nearly translucent tail quivering, gripped by an invisible hand.
It stood stiff, thick legs far apart. The quivering spread up its spine, until its neck trembled. The phantom hand squeezed hard one last time and released it. The creature jerked and collapsed. Shaking, it gained its feet and stumbled away, whining softly, its tail between its legs.
“Children misbehave sometimes,” Bono said. “They need to be punished. If you’re wondering, I can do it to my women, too.”
He stared at the big creature and it walked toward us. “Let’s get the introductions out of the way,” the upir said. “This is my eldest son at the moment. I call him Arag. Arag, this is a future dinner. Future dinner, this is Arag.”
Arag’s human eyes, sunken deep into his deformed skull, teared up.
“What the hell did you . . .”
“Baboon.” The upir shook his head. “Strong, cruel, aggressive. Unfortunately, he got a little more from me than from his mother. He can speak. Say something for Kate, Arag.”
The monster looked down at his hands. He shifted from foot to foot, unsure, and emitted a long distorted screech, like nails scraping against chalkboard. “Bloood,” he shrieked.
“Sad, isn’t it?” Bono smiled. “He walks the Earth, a pitiful, wretched creature, uttering words at random, longing for something—he himself doesn’t know what—and hating everyone and everything. I tried ripping out his vocal cords, but the damn things just grow back.”
“Blooood.” Arag sighed.
The upir waved him away. “Go on.”
Arag returned to his post in the yard. The upir sighed. “I’m thinking of killing him when we’re done here. You think I should?”
I swallowed more wine.
“It won’t help,” Bono said.
I shrugged and drank some more. “Why make an alliance with Olathe?”
“Why not? It was a good plan. Sooner or later the half-breeds and the necromancers would’ve warred, and Olathe would take over the vampire stables. I’d have enough vampire meat to gorge myself sick. Vampire flesh is the best, Kate. It’s aged and flavorful, like a fine wine.”
“You ate shapechangers, too.”
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