“They open tomorrow at nine,” I said, “but Lucas . . . one of the packs that the dead weres belonged to got wind that Wendigo were involved.” I didn’t go into how because I already felt bad enough without feeling like a dumbass on top of everything else.
“I’m coming,” said Lucas, a snarl creeping into his voice. “Jason was my brother.”
“I really think this is a bad idea,” I said. “I know what I said, but pack justice is taken very seriously and as an Insoli, I can’t protect you.”
“I’m not worried,” said Lucas. “You’re going to be there with me. You’re all I need.”
Yup, I was definitely a paranoid nutcase.
“You really trust me? I gotta warn you, that hasn’t worked out so hot for a few other people.”
Lucas gave a short chuckle. “Luna, the only thing you could possibly do is make this a little easier. I’m not doing so hot, but I’ll hold it together because that’s what Jason would have wanted. Will you meet me there in the morning?”
“Of course,” I said, feeling my core and other parts of me warm slightly at the tone of his voice. I felt a ridiculous surge of happiness at the thought of visiting the morgue. “Don’t worry about anything, Lucas. This treaty bullshit won’t cause any unpleasantness for you when you come to get Jason.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Luna.”
“See you tomorrow,” I agreed, and hung up the phone with a huge, irrational smile on my face.
Lucas finally showed up at the morgue an hour late, after I’d worn a groove in the stone steps, pacing and waiting. There was a hot, wet wind off the bay and I kept scenting the salt, thinking I’d catch another were.
He climbed out of the passenger’s side of a rusty pickup, and waved the driver off when he saw me. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“All right,” I said. “Have trouble finding the place?”
“Not as much as I would have liked.” Lucas was stiff, and his eyes moved from face to face as we went through the glass doors and across the lobby. He also looked shredded—like he lost ten pounds since I’d seen him last. His face was covered with uneven stubble and his eyes were sunken and red. He coughed, and it rattled inside his rib cage with a wet sawing sound.
I put a hand on his shoulder. Lucas wasn’t putting out any heat—he was the temperature of the air. “You okay?”
“Peachy,” he coughed. “Just perfect.”
The guard at the metal detector glared at Lucas. “Going to have to search your backpack.”
“He’s with me,” I said, moving my T-shirt to show my badge. “Let us through.”
Lucas breathed out and shook his shoulders. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”
“You just have to look in through the viewing window,” I said. “And tell the morgue attendant where to release the body to.”
“We don’t have any goddamn money for a funeral,” Lucas muttered. I led him over to the elevator and punched the down arrow.
“The city has a few forms you can fill out for help with that.”
Lucas hissed. “I don’t want your help.” His eyes silvered for a moment.
I held up my hands. “Look, Lucas, I know this is tough but nobody here is trying to give you a hard time. I’m trained to be sympathetic at times like this. If you think I’m being disingenuous, that’s your problem.”
As soon as I snapped at him I felt awful, and to see Lucas’s eyes fill up with apologies made it ten times worse. “Lucas, I’m sorry . . . I open my mouth when I shouldn’t a lot and . . .”
“No,” he said. “You’re right. Jason’s dead. He’s gone.”
I touched his hand. “That doesn’t mean that you have to pretend like it doesn’t bother you,” I said quietly.
A grim smile flickered across his face. “Wendigo once ate their dead. He’s less than nothing to me.”
“Okay then,” I murmured, staring at the old elevator dial as we descended into the bowels of the building.
The car took us to the sterile, fluorescent hallways of the morgue, where an attendant sat at the battered metal reception desk playing a handheld game that buzzed and chirped. A stark sign behind his head proclaimed NOCTURNE CITY MORGUE—NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT. “We’re here to identify the John Doe,” I said.
“Room five,” he replied, never breaking concentration from the screen.
“Come on,” I said to Lucas, taking his elbow and leading him into the viewing room. The drab salmon-pink curtains were pulled across the small window, and I hit the intercom button on the wall. “Are you ready for us?”
“Ready,” said the morgue attendant. I turned to Lucas. “I want to prepare you—falls don’t leave the body in the best condition.”
“Just open the curtains,” Lucas snarled.
“Fine, fine,” I said, and pulled back the curtains. Jason Kennuka had the blue paper sheet pulled up to his chin, covering the worst of the damage from his fall. One side of his face was misshapen and bruised, as if a sculptor had brushed up against his medium and thrown all the lines out of joint. Jason’s hair was matted with blood where his scalp had caved in, but thankfully the attendant had arranged what remained over the fractures.
Lucas stared at the body, his eyes silvering and his nostrils opening, fluttering like wings as he drew in a long breath. He put one hand on the glass, his sprouted claws screeching down the divider between us and the body.
I took a step back, unconsciously, the were putting me at optimum striking distance. “Lucas?”
“That’s him,” said Lucas. His voice was flat, like a long hot highway when you run out of gas alongside. “That’s my brother Jason.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly into the intercom, and the attendant hurried in and covered up Jason’s face with the sheet.
“We’re done,” I said to Lucas. “You holding up all right?”
“I need some air,” he whispered. His teeth were all silver fang as he spun and ran from the room.
“Shit,” I said to the empty space and the flapping door. “Lucas!” I shouted at his retreating back. “Lucas, wait!”
He made it to the wide entryway where ambulances and hearses backed up to deposit or receive their particular brand of cargo, and was bent over, hands on knees, shaking and coughing. “I could smell his blood . . . ,” he ground out.
“No,” I said. “You smelled a lot of blood. It’s hard for people . . . like us . . . in there. You did well.” I held out a hand to rub his back, and then hesitated. Dmitri would go ballistic if I suggested with actions or words that he wasn’t tough enough to cope without any sort of support.
But this was Lucas. I gasped as a little bit of black blood hit the loading dock from his coughing fit. “You’re not all right. I’d better take you somewhere.” I touched him gingerly between the shoulder blades and he let out a cry, just a single dry sound that was all he allowed himself. Then his eyes were his own again, and his cough subsided.
“Do you know once, when I was a dumb kid, I was in a bar over the state line, and I got into it with this gang of neo-Nazi assholes. I figured no big deal, I’ll shift if they get to be too much of a problem. But Jason came in and he stood next to me and he said, ‘If you show yourself now, think of what will happen to the clan. Think what will come down if the secret gets out.’ ”
Lucas swiped at his eyes. “And then he turned to the biker sons of bitches and said, ‘If you want to take him on, you take me on, too, and a pair of Kennuka brothers is something no pig’s asshole wants ruining his day.’ ” He sighed. “Until he went off, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t see him. He was my brother.”
I crouched down next to Lucas and put my arms around him. “I know,” I murmured. “And he was a good brother.” Then, because I’m neither a coward or a completely heartless bitch, I said, “Lucas, there are some things that have come up about Jason. I need to talk to you.”
“All right,” he said.
<
br /> I let go of his solid form and reached into my jean pocket for a tissue. “Here.”
Lucas wiped the blood off his chin. “I’ll be fine in a little while. Must have a bug.”
“If you say so,” I said. “Do you like Mexican food?”
“I’m hungry,” he murmured, and his eyes flared silver again. “I mean, yes. I eat Mexican. What’s wrong that you need to take me somewhere I won’t cause a scene to hear it?”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “Just . . . some things I think you need to hear from me. From someone who understands your situation. You take my meaning?”
Lucas nodded silently. “Yeah, okay. I have to deal with the funeral arrangements . . . can we meet this evening?”
“I’ll wait,” I said. “Not letting you out of my sight, remember?” That got me a small smile.
The coroner gave Lucas a metric ton of forms for funeral assistance, and it was dusk by the time he finished. “Let’s get out of here.”
I offered him a hand, which turned into me keeping my arm around his shoulder. Lucas didn’t say he was grateful or not, but from the way he leaned against me I think he was just glad to have someone prop him up. I know that if our situations were reversed, if it had been Sunny or Mac under the blue sheet, that my body would have been a useless bag, unable to contain my grief.
Lucas was handling it a lot better than I would have. I just tried not to think about how I was going to explain the scent of him on me to Dmitri. If he ca
me back.
CHAPTER 17
I took Lucas to El Gato y Ratón, a Mexican burrito joint tucked away down an alley off Magnolia. The neighborhood mostly caters to winos buying Ripple from the liquor store that took up the front half of the building, neon beer signs pushing against the smudgy fog that had drifted in over the course of the day, and methheads using the sidewalk for a mattress.
“Spare change?” one of them bleated at me, flashing dirty fingers and a mouth with more gaps than teeth.
I showed my badge. “Get lost.”
“Bitch,” he spat.
Lucas turned on him. “Another word and I’ll pick your bones clean.”
The speed freak backed off, and I nudged Lucas. “The chivalry really isn’t a big thing with me. I’ve been called a lot worse by guys that weren’t out of their minds on meth.”
“No excuse for human filth,” said Lucas. “I was doing the world in general a favor.”
“Fair enough,” I said, pushing open the door of El Gato. The sensor over the jamb played an electronica version of the Mexican Hat Dance. The decor ran to light-up cacti, beer signs with coyotes and XX symbols on them, and chili-shaped Christmas lights dangling from the ceiling, but it smelled like pico de gallo and warm tortillas and caramel, the burritos served were as big as my forearm, and the beer was kept frosty cold.
Lucas slid into a sticky blue vinyl booth and I followed him, picking the side that let me see the door and the kitchen with relative ease.
“What did you want to tell me about Jason?” said Lucas, after he had waved off a beer and settled on plain iced water.
“Well,” I hedged. Gods, how much did I not want to have this conversation with Lucas? About as much as I wanted a walk-in vault full of designer shoes and vintage purses. As much as I wanted to go back home and find Dmitri and an un-Hexed life waiting for me.
“Well . . . ?” Lucas prompted. “Luna, I’m not going to get violent. Jason dying is what it is. If you think I should know something, spit it out.”
Luna. My name sounded so soft-edged, so dark when it rolled off his tongue.
Okay, Wilder. Focus.
“There’s some indication that your brother had become involved with the wild Wendigo shaman,” I said, letting it all out in a rush. Lucas carefully set his water glass down in the center of a coaster advertising a telenovela and met my eyes.
“So?”
Perspiration stippled my skin and matched the water droplets on my beer bottle. El Gato wasn’t air-conditioned and the humidity outside was still making the temperature climb. Nearly dark, and still the city cooked at a slow boil.
“I went to his apartment with the lead detective in the murder case,” I said. “And we found certain . . . things . . . that made me believe Jason might not have been entirely forthcoming with you, Lucas.”
His face shut down, into that planar shell I was beginning to recognize as Lucas’s carefully neutral expression to hide some form of rage or hunger. “Things. Like objects?”
“Yes,” I said, shredding my napkin and not realizing it until I dropped my eyes to see my upper thighs covered with paper snow. “A fetish statue, specifically, for some kind of Wendigo god?”
Lucas rubbed his forehead, his fingers creasing the wrinkles that hid there and releasing them. “Those fucking things aren’t real. Jason couldn’t have believed in any of our gods.” He slapped his palm down on the table. “My gods are all dead.”
“Even so, there was magick there,” I told him, backing up a fraction in my seat. Lucas’s moods were changeable as his eyes. “I felt it.”
“Then what you felt was a fraud,” said Lucas. “Blood magick, or even caster magick, worked by someone who thinks it’s funny to prey on the guillible savages. Where’s this fetish now?”
“I left it with a friend,” I said. “Lucas . . . did it occur to you that the shaman might have caused Jason’s death?”
“No. Jason wouldn’t have been into all of that religious junk,” said Lucas. “And you can’t compel somebody who doesn’t believe. Isn’t that the principle of casters and vaudun and all the rest of the bullshit artists?”
“It’s amazing what someone charismatic can influence a good man to do,” I said, putting my hand over Lucas’s. “I think you know it’s possible. You must, or you wouldn’t have let me speculate this far.”
After a long, long silence when the only sound was an old Los Lonely Boys track on the restaurant’s tinny PA, Lucas moved his hand out from under mine, folded them in his lap, and said, “I do know. Jason had been gone for a long time. I knew something had gone wrong—wronger than him running wild—but I didn’t want to bring it up to the clan and have it get back to our mother.”
“Any idea at all why Jason and these wild Wendigo might be ritualizing their kills?” I said. “It doesn’t make sense from what you’ve told me about your people.”
“That’s just it,” Lucas snarled. “The wild ones don’t do what we do. They only obey hunger. I’m not like them, so don’t ask me to get inside their head.”
A waiter set down our steak burritos, giving Lucas a glance when he raised his voice. “No te precoupes,” I said to him with an apologetic smile. He rolled his eyes and went back to the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” I told Lucas. “But I’ve got a job to do here, and I’m trying to stop this before it gets bigger than either of us can handle.”
Lucas stopped in mid-bite, sniffed, and his head rotated toward the door like he was a missile locked on to a target. “I think it already has.”
Over the pleasant combination of scents from my beer and my burrito, something drifted to my nostrils that was too familiar and very, very unwanted. The distinctive wet-dog scent was different for every were pack, but it meant the same thing: Lucas and I were screwed.
I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and threw it down, standing up and unsnapping the strap on my holster. “Come on,” I said to Lucas. “Stay behind me.”
He flowed up from his chair, his speed displacing my eye, but he refocused just behind me. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said, pushing open the door of El Gato with my free hand. The other one was welded to the butt of my service weapon. Not that a regular bullet would do much good if the weres outside were good and pissed off.
The strains of the music cut off as the door swung shut behind Lucas and me.
Five figures stood in the alley, arms crossed, knowing that eventually we’d have to come outside.
I recognized Donal, and the four with him all sported the green knot tattoo and the surly expression of were muscle.
“Evening,” I said, trying hard not to let the shiver in my gut work its way into my voice. Five weres against the two of us, and not a full moon in sight.
That was it. We were freaking dead.
“You are in direct violation of the treaty, you Wendigo filth,” Donal snarled.
“Hold on there,” I held up a hand. “I know I didn’t just hear you threaten someone’s life right in front of a Nocturne City law officer.”
The other four growled at me and Donal remained unamused, his face like a stone. “Stay out of our way, Insoli. You’re interfering in pack business. Leave now, or I will put you down.”
“Dude,” I said, staring into his eyes, “threatening me is a really bad idea. Especially right after you’ve interrupted dinner at my second-favorite restaurant. By the time I deal with you, the whole thing is going to be cold. Do you have any idea how much a cold burrito upsets me?”
“Is she serious?” his tallest goon muttered to Donal.
“You have no idea how much,” I told him, slipping my gun out of holster and holding it down at my side. “Dead serious would be an accurate expression to use.”
“Missy, you’re involved in something that you can’t possibly understand,” said Donal. “I don’t know what this filth has told you, but I guarantee he’s a liar.”
“Mauthka ye,” Lucas spat at Donal. “You’re the filth, dog. Go scratch your fleas.”
“Aye, I’ll scratch my fleas here at home in my own bed while your people squat in the dirt and chew on the bones of what we weres decide to throw at you!” Donal bellowed.
“Let’s peel his skin off,” a goon giggled.
“There won’t be a death, but there will be apology for what he did to my poor niece,” Donal growled. “I’m in charge here. You made a bad mistake coming this close, you Wendigo coward.”
The tall Warwolf made a move toward us, claws sprouting from his hands, long and deep red. That was new. Also sort of creepy. The were let out a roar, his lips pulling back.
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