Wild Country

by Anne Bishop

  She nodded since there was nothing to say. She was an inexperienced hunter. This had been her first high-speed chase, in a manner of speaking.

  “We should check the glove box in the car for some identification,” she said. “There might be a wallet in the grass near . . . the remains.”

  “I’ll go back and look for those things.”

  “We should arrange to have the car towed. Don’t want gasoline or oil leaking into the ground.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Jana hesitated, but it had to be said. “He wasn’t a Cyrus human. He was a bad man who might have done bad things, but by our agreed-upon definition, he wasn’t a Cyrus human.”

  Virgil studied her. She wondered if he had studied juveniles in his pack the same way.

  “Did you smell Barbara Ellen’s fear?” he asked. “Should a human female be that afraid of a human male?”

  “No, she shouldn’t.” Jana realized she would be the one taking Barb’s official statement, which would include exactly what was said and done. “Why did he go off the road like that? He might have gotten away if he’d stayed on the road.” Mel couldn’t outrun a car. Neither could Virgil.

  “He looked at Scythe and it did something to his brain,” Virgil replied. “He was already confused and dying before the Elders found him. Wounded animal trying to find a place to hide.”

  She wanted to believe the man was already dying before the Elders found him.

  “Take Mel to the stable,” Virgil said. “Then you need to talk to Barbara Ellen.”

  She nodded and turned toward the horse. Then she hesitated because one other person would need an answer today. “Are you sure he was already dying?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “It will matter to Candice. If he was already mortally wounded before he left the saloon, then her telling you the man was a Cyrus human, whether he was or not, wasn’t the reason he died. That will matter, Virgil.”

  A long look. “Tell her he was already dying.”

  She’d also sit down with everyone who worked at the Bird Cage Saloon and explain how the Bennett Sheriff’s Department defined “Cyrus human” so that any other wrongdoer who came into the saloon could be arrested according to human law instead of facing the Elders’ form of justice.

  She mounted Mel and headed into town. But she looked back once and saw Virgil, in Wolf form, trotting back to the car—and the Elders who might be waiting there.

  CHAPTER 28

  Earthday, Messis 26

  Despite this being the day of the week when no one was supposed to be at work or cause any trouble, the phone in the sheriff’s office rang. And rang. And rang.

  Virgil bared his teeth at it, but it was just a stupid machine that didn’t know the pack member who would normally respond to its howl wasn’t in the office yet.

  Why wasn’t the wolverine in the office yet? She had said Barbara Ellen was all right, and the human bodywalker had said nothing was broken in the hand that bad male had squeezed. They wouldn’t have lied to him. They wouldn’t have dared lie to him. But he knew from the teaching stories about humans that there were degrees of untruth between an actual lie and true speaking. Was Jana late because Barbara Ellen had other injuries and needed help and the females didn’t want to tell him?

  He’d make it clear to both those females that there would be no not-telling. They could whine about that all they wanted, but he’d make it clear that . . .

  “What?” he snarled as he grabbed the phone that wouldn’t stop ringing because it didn’t know enough to be cowed by the dominant Wolf.

  “Sheriff?” Male voice. Adult. Upset but not whining, not sounding weak.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Zeke.”

  He didn’t know the human well enough that he would recognize the man’s scent, but he knew the name, knew Zeke was the leader of a business pack that was clearing out houses. “Yes?”

  “We found a body. You need to come.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Parlan Blackstone looked around the private railcar that served as his home as well as a discreet place where he ran high-stakes card games and entertained women when he wanted female company. Moving from town to town had been essential to the clan. Even the wealthiest marks could be squeezed for only so long. Always better to move on and be welcomed back by those eager for a chance to get even than be seen as the embodiment of vices that had ruined a family’s fortune.

  Now he was gambling that he could gain a strong enough foothold in Bennett to secure a living for all of them—at least until travel restrictions relaxed and they could make their way back to the West Coast and settle down in one of the civilized cities still under human control.

  Dalton would stay in Bennett with him. The boy would have to keep a low profile for a while, maybe even change his looks and go by another last name. Wouldn’t be the first time they’d played that game. And Lawry would be there. Judd? Yes, Judd would stay with him, even if he had to put aside his preferred line of work.

  They would streamline their operations back to the original clan. Bringing in Sweeney Cooke and Charlie Webb as muscle had been a mistake. Neither of them understood subtlety or the need to put aside their own gratification in order to do a job. They had smeared the clan with the shit of their behavior, and because of that, his boy’s face and name were tacked to train station and post office walls all over the region.

  One way or another, Sweeney Cooke and Charlie Webb had to go before the clan could establish itself in Bennett.

  Unfortunately, Parlan didn’t have a feeling about their success or failure. What he did have was the feeling that he’d dealt himself a bad hand, that coming into the Midwest had been a mistake, that he should have made the decision to play the respectable con before they’d left the Northeast. Or they should have gone to the Southeast Region and set themselves up in a virgin town—a place they hadn’t plied their trade before.

  Parlan wandered around the car, idly shuffling a deck of cards. That action always soothed him, helped him think, helped him sharpen his focus. He’d always been that way, even as a boy. He’d known when he could cheat—and how much—and when he needed to play it straight. His father had loved gambling but hadn’t had the knack. Not with cards, not with dice, not with life. And his mother, who might have been a vibrant woman if she’d married a different man, had used her Intuit abilities to find the weakness in other people and inflict wounds, knowing just what to say to cause the most harm. It would have been a useful ability if she’d understood how to properly exploit it, but she’d inflicted one wound too many on him, and he’d walked away without a second thought, taking Lawry with him.

  He’d had the knack, the knowing, the skill for gambling, that his father had lacked, and with Lawry’s quick fingers and skill at con games, they had done very well for themselves. They were a clan now, a family-run business, even if one of their branches handled darker projects that were always lucrative in one way or another.

  His mobile phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Found one of our boys,” Judd McCall said. “We had a sharp reunion.”

  “And the other?”

  “His gear is here. I’ll find a place nearby to wait.”

  “You’ll be able to make the meeting?”

  “I’m on the outskirts, so meeting up with you won’t be a problem.”

  “I’ll be on the westbound train tomorrow. Should arrive in time for my business associates to set up an appointment with the town officials.”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  Parlan ended the call and went back to shuffling the deck as he considered how to manipulate the straw-men businessmen partners into saying the right things to Bennett’s mayor.

  Walking over to the card table, he dealt four cards faceup.

  Two black eights. Two bla
ck aces.

  Parlan stared at the cards and wondered why they made him uneasy.

  * * *

  * * *

  Jana had hoped Virgil would be off somewhere doing a sniff-and-pee patrol when she reached the office. No such luck. Not only was he there, but it was obvious he was waiting for her since he was standing outside. Worse, the backpack that held her crime scene kit was at his feet.

  “What happened?” she asked when he opened the back of the vehicle.

  Virgil picked up Rusty. “I’ll put her inside. Wait here.”

  The pup was stowed in her office crate—or maybe was given the run of the Me Time cell. Either way, Virgil returned fast enough that Jana didn’t think Rusty had been given a scritch or a treat. He set the backpack in the cargo area, closed up the back, and got in the passenger seat.

  “What happened?” she asked again.

  He gave her an address and then stared at her.

  “I should have called and told you I might be a little late.” It was tempting to point out that she wasn’t actually late since this was her day off and she was just supposed to be coming in sometime that morning to check the e-mail from yesterday. But Virgil didn’t look like he was in the mood to have her point out anything. “Barb decided her hand was sore enough that she needed some help feeding the animals, so Abby and I went with her. After I dropped the two of them back home, I came here.”

  Since he still didn’t say anything, she headed for the northern road that would take her to the address.

  Finally, he said, “A pack member who is injured shouldn’t run with a hunt. If she can’t keep up, she will fall behind, be alone. She can’t dodge if prey turns unexpectedly. She should stay close to the den until she heals. A pack leader should be told these things. If he can’t trust that he will be told, he will demand submission in order to find out for himself.”

  She could picture Virgil forcing a female Wolf into a submissive position so that he could sniff her and decide things for himself. Doing that to human females would be a violation, an assault. He wouldn’t see it that way, but she knew how she would feel if he forced her down. Something to explain to him when he wasn’t angry with her.

  “Having me and Abby help her today . . . Friends were taking care of a friend. That’s what we do.”

  She felt the weight of his stare before he growled, “And I’m not a friend?”

  Friend? She wasn’t sure. Pack leader? Oh, yeah.

  She glanced at him and hoped her smile looked genuine. “I didn’t need to bring out the big guns—or the big teeth—to convince Barb to do the smart thing. If I’d needed that kind of help, I would have hollered for you to come and deal with her.”

  He grunted and looked away, ending their little snarl-fest. Jana felt like she could breathe again.

  “I brought your crime kit,” he said.

  It was tempting to remind him that it was called a crime scene kit, but . . .

  Don’t correct the big, big Wolf with the big, big teeth when he’s still annoyed with you, even if he makes it sound like you’re about to indulge in a bit of larceny.

  “So we’re investigating a crime?” She felt her shoulders tighten when they approached the spot where the man accused of being a Cyrus human had left the road and tried to go overland. Had he been heading for the place they were going to now and turned the wrong way?

  “Dead body,” Virgil replied. “The Zeke pack and the Fagen pack had gathered to scavenge what they could from the houses on that street.”

  “Salvage,” Jana corrected. “They’re salvage companies, not scavengers.”

  He shrugged, making her wonder if he saw any distinction. Making her wonder about something else. “Why are they working on Earthday? And why are they working so far out? There are still a lot of houses—whole neighborhoods—closer to the town line that haven’t been cleared. Why work at houses that far into the wild country?”

  Virgil watched the land, watched the sky, maybe watched something she couldn’t sense or see. Finally he said, “Zeke said he and Fagen looked at the map, and they both had a feeling that they needed to check those houses today. They found the body in the first house they entered.”

  “So the Elders killed someone else?”

  “No. A human did.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Tolya gestured to the table in his office that he used for meetings when the big conference table in another room wasn’t needed. He waited for Judith and Melanie Dixon to take seats before sitting across from them.

  Stewart Dixon had returned to his ranch, but the women had remained in town. The reason offered was that they wanted to keep an eye on the ranch hand who had been stabbed while trying to protect Melanie. He didn’t doubt there was some truth in that, but he suspected they were staying at the hotel because the girl was afraid to go home.

  “Do you have some news?” Judith Dixon reached for her daughter’s hand.

  “Perhaps,” Tolya replied. “A man talked about doing . . . bad things . . . to one of the young women who live here. His words sounded similar to what your daughter described when the man came into your house.”

  “He’s here?” Melanie Dixon lost all the color in her face.

  “We don’t know if it was the same man. The man who was in town is dead. Killed by the Elders.” Tolya tried to assess the strength of these women. “I have a photo that was taken where he was found. The photo shows part of his head. We found no identity card. Nothing in the car or in his pockets showed a picture of him.” He focused on Melanie Dixon. “I can’t tell you if this is the same man who threatened you. That is something you would have to tell me.”

  The women stared at the folder under his hand.

  “I want to see it,” Melanie Dixon said.

  “The Elders were angry.” Tolya pressed his hand against the folder, as if the girl had tried to take it. “He doesn’t look the same as a living man.”

  “I need to see, need to know . . .”

  Want was one thing. You could live without things that were wanted. Need was something else. Need was about survival.

  He removed the photo from the folder and placed it on the table.

  “Gods above and below,” Judith Dixon whispered. She covered the lower half of her face with her hand, as if imitating what she saw.

  John Wolfgard knew how to work the camera the police used to document crimes, so he’d gone out to take pictures of the body since it wasn’t safe for any human to be out there. He’d taken pictures of the head as it had been found—caught in the windshield—and then posed it in a way that could be sent to police in other towns. Tolya thought this posed picture looked more benign than the other photos since it showed the head sitting on the hood of the car. The lower jar was still on the ground and out of sight, which created the odd impression that the head was rising out of the car.

  “That’s him.” Melanie Dixon shuddered. “I’m sure it’s him.”

  “Then he is no longer a threat to any of you,” Tolya said quietly.

  “What about the men who were with him?” Judith Dixon asked.

  “We’ll find out who he is—and we’ll find the other men.” He smiled, showing a hint of fang. “That’s a promise.”

  He escorted the women out of the building and watched them walk back to the hotel.

  he called.

 

  Another body? It was tempting to demand details, but Virgil was the sheriff, and he was doing his job. Besides, what Tolya had learned from his brief observations of Vlad working with Simon Wolfgard was that you got along better with a dominant Wolf by asking rather than demanding.

  Tolya strolled down the street. Time to do another part of his job and listen to the reports from the rest of the Sanguinati.

  * * *

/>   * * *

  Virgil studied the meat with considerable regret. The body. There were humans around, so he had to remember to call it a body instead of almost-fresh meat. Good thing Tolya hadn’t come with them. The Sanguinati would have regretted the waste of blood even more than he regretted not being able to have a quick snack. After all, this human didn’t need his liver anymore, did he? Or any of the meat on the legs?

  “Is this how humans usually kill each other?” he asked as Jana gingerly moved closer to the . . . body . . . while trying to avoid stepping in the blood. Sensible, that. Lots of terra indigene would follow a blood trail, even a small one, thinking they were following injured prey.

  And that’s what this reminded him of: injured prey. Run it down and hamstring it, then follow it as it bled and became weak enough to kill.

  “Looks like he was already shot.” She raised her camera and began taking pictures. “But all that blood . . . It’s not from the gunshot wound.” She looked toward the doorway at the human male who had reported finding the body. “Zeke, your crew and Fagen’s will have to work another house for the next few days. Wait. You walked through the house already, right?”

  “Most of it,” Zeke said. “Fagen was checking the kitchen and cupboards, and I was taking a look in the other rooms. We stopped as soon as I found . . .” He nodded toward the body. “I didn’t look in the other bedrooms.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll work next door for a while, stay nearby.”

  “Thanks.” Jana waited until Zeke left. Then she raised the camera again and took pictures of the lower half of the body. “To answer your question, no, this isn’t how humans usually kill each other. They shoot each other, or stab each other, or they strangle with their bare hands or with some kind of ligature, or they hang each other, or poison each other. What they don’t usually do is . . .”