by Faith Hunter
Alex nodded.
“Well, at certain places along the liminal thresholds, some beings can push through from one reality to another, and sometimes they end up here. Near Chauvin. And then there’s the vertices,” he added, and I figured he was now pulling our collective legs.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “But we’re interested in the crime scenes and the dog sightings.”
“Werewolves,” Sarge spat.
He said it with such certainty that I didn’t bother to disagree. I’d seen the photos. He was right. “Fine. Show us those.” The plane banked again and took us along Highway 56, back south to Chauvin.
The sites were all over the place, one close to 56, one near the end of 55, one off a canal on a spit of land that could be reached only by boat or plane. One was in downtown Chauvin. The others were scattered here and there, with no apparent relation to one another. Nine deaths in three months, here, and more, older ones, scattered along roads heading north. If this had been a mystery story, we would have been able to draw lines from site to site and determine the murderer’s home at the site where the lines intersected, but that didn’t work. Not here. The only thing the sites had in common was that there was always water nearby, but in Chauvin, there literally was water, water everywhere, on all sides as far as the eye could see.
And then I began to notice another similar feature of the earth and water below us. “Can you graph the sites,” I asked the Kid, “and tie them to the biggest ancient canal? The one with two lanes that goes so many miles? And then maybe put them in order along access from that one canal, with little numbers beside each one, so we can get a timeline based on the canal? I know the ones in town—”
“The two closest to town were the first and second ones,” the Kid interrupted, seeing where I was going. “Like they were hungry when they got to Chauvin. All the following ones were on the water. And yeah. All on the smaller canals that look like neighborhoods.” He traced them with his fingers. “And all related to and accessible from the big canal.”
I stared down and down, trying to memorize the world from above and hoping that I’d be able to put this view together with the Kid’s tablets and then the actual, ground-and-water-level sites.
“You want to see the sites?” Sarge asked. His tone was without inflection, and he didn’t take his eyes from the sky and the horizon line, but I could detect a scent from his pores that said he was disturbed, and far too interested in the answer to his unruffled question.
“How close can you get us?” Eli asked into the silence.
Sarge took the tablet from Alex and studied it for a moment. “I can land near some of ’em. Get you to within a few feet of shore. I keep a self-inflating, two-person raft packed in back.” He jabbed a thumb to the back of the cabin, and I figured that the twine-wrapped plastic was the raft.
“Let’s do it,” Eli said. “Which site first?”
I sat, thinking, as the men discussed landings and locations. It didn’t really matter which one we saw. I’d seen the pics both before and after the cops finished with them. And scavengers would have dealt with anything the cops left behind. We wouldn’t see much.
More quickly than I had expected, we were dropping altitude and I got queasy again. Not because of the flight. But because of the smells I’d expect to find on the ground. My Beast was used to the smells of rot and decay; she even ate things that were farther along in decomposition than were strictly smart, at least from a human perspective. But . . . there could be maggots hatching from blood-dried ground or from small bits of tissue missed by the cops. I hate maggots. I just do.
• • •
We made the Kid stay in the cockpit with Sarge and PP, which he pouted about, but we wanted to see as many sites as possible before sundown. And a two-person raft meant time spent ferrying back and forth over the water if he came. “I promise pizza suppers once a week for four weeks when we get home,” I said to cheer him up. His brother harrumphed softly, and Sarge chuckled, but Alex grumbled to silence at the promised treat.
The raft was easy to use but had a musty smell, as if PP had slept here one night. And as if Sarge fished from the raft from time to time. But it was functional, if a little black-moldy.
There wasn’t much left at the first crime scene site we visited, which had taken place on the second full moon after the wolves arrived. Even most of the smell of rot had been washed away by wind and rain and the movement of tides, and now there was little more than the stink of distant death, snakes, rats, nutria—humongous rats—and maybe armadillos, which would have been attracted to the insects feeding on the leftovers. And I caught the old wet-dog-that-rolled-in-something-dead smell of a werewolf, only one—a male, of course, since females went into permanent heat and went insane very quickly after being changed.
The second site was much the same, differing only by the smell of alligator. But the third site, which had taken place on the most recent full moon, only four weeks past, was very different. The paw prints and indentations in the mud were gone, thanks to the weather, and the body had been very carefully removed. But here I could still pick up not only the stink of rot but the gender of the victim. She had been young. And terrified.
I moved across the clearing made by death and wolves and many human law enforcement officers and crime scene people, using my nose, and sometimes my eyes, to tell me what had happened here. And by what I saw and scented, we had a bigger problem than I’d expected.
“Eli?” I said. “Those three wolves? Two were males and the other one was in heat.”
Eli grunted. He’d heard the stories about werewolves. He understood what I meant. We had a crazy female on our hands, and the bitches were always smart, wily, and inevitably in charge, thanks to the mating, rutting madness that drove a pack with a female in it.
And then I smelled something else. I bent and let my nose guide me into the edge of the rough land, the low trees and brush of the wet world. I found where a boat had come ashore, a scar on the mud, one that extended up into the brush as if it had been pulled high. And from the scents scattered all around, he had changed into his wolf, in the boat, before leaping into the brush.
I said, “The wolf—a wolf, maybe not one of the wolves—came to the site, maybe back to the site, recently, like maybe yesterday, which is odd. Why would he do that?” I moved to the edge of the killing ground and found his scent stronger there. He had marked his territory only once, against a short, broken tree, as if leaving a calling card. And it was definitely not one of the three wolves who had done this killing. “Eli, we have three wolves killing. And one, maybe, investigating. Or something. And this one was smart. Not a single good track left anywhere.”
I found one poor, dried-out paw print, mostly just leaves pushed into the soil, but there was enough to compare against the tracks of the crime scene photos. Not one of the killer wolves. It didn’t make sense. But yeah. “We have four wolves, three in a pack and one a lone wolf,” I repeated. Which, for reasons I didn’t examine, scared me more than anything else.
• • •
We landed back at Sarge’s place for lunch and to gas up, eating sandwiches on the dock, watching him work. The sun was high in the sky, and temps were cool, so there were few mosquitoes and gnats and there was enough wind to keep the no-see-ums away. If the full moon hadn’t been near, it would have been pleasant lying back on the dock, sleeping in the sun. Or it would have been if PP hadn’t lumbered over and stuck her slobbery face into mine. I had felt her heavy paws landing on the board of the dock, and I didn’t react. Just lay still while she snuffled my neck. She didn’t bite or growl and I figured it was a form of acceptance, so I slowly reached up and scratched her belly. She flopped down beside me, exposing her underside to me. “You’ll never be finished with her now,” Sarge said. I figured out what he meant when she head-butted me to keep scratching. Lunch was a nice break from the noise and vibration of the small plane.
In the early afternoon, we saw two other sites before heading back to Sarge’s place. One of them had been visited by the fourth werewolf, after Crime Scene Investigations had finished with it, and he had landed on the same side of the small bit of land where the crime scene people had come ashore. He had stayed a long time at that one. He had tracked the other wolves back to their landing site on the other side of the spit of land, where the pack’s boat had come ashore. He had marked this site only once too, which just felt wrong for wolves of any kind. I bent over the site and sniffed, pulling in air over my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Eli looked away as I did it, and I couldn’t tell if he was fighting laughter at the expression I made or some other emotion.
When I stopped and stood upright he said, “Babe, just a suggestion. Don’t do that in front of a date. It’s . . . not pretty.” When I grinned at him, Eli flipped a hand to show he was just sayin’, and I chuckled.
Either way, the lone wolf smelled . . . worried.
Oddly this one had smelled as if he’d been a wolf for some time. He smelled in control, and even when he lingered over a place where the bitch had relieved herself, he hadn’t gone into the male werewolf version of mating frenzy. He had kept it in control. And what was even odder, this guy—like the rogue weres—hadn’t been traveling with a grindylow. He had nothing to keep him in line, to keep him from killing and eating humans, or turning humans into pack. Our lone wolf was in control of himself and really, really alone.
• • •
Over a dinner of fresh seafood at a place called Joe’s Got Crabs (this time mine was broiled, with fried soft-shell crabs on the side, with a house-made, Cajun-style rémoulade sauce that was to die for) I explained to the guys what I’d deduced. “This last guy, the lone wolf, has lived here long enough to have bayou skills. He knows the area.”
Eli nodded and gestured with his fork as he chewed. “He knows how to approach, how to move along the edges of the kill sites. Even in broad daylight, he’d move almost unseen.”
“And he’s worried about the other werewolves.”
“Worried how?” the Kid asked. I shrugged, and he went on. “Like he’s afraid they’ll track him? Attack him? Hurt him?”
“Interfere with his standard of living?” Eli asked.
I thought about that one. “Weres used to live in Lousiana. Then they had a run-in with Leo Pellissier and he kicked them out of the state. What if one—I don’t know—stayed? Took up residence? Lived among humans without turning anyone?”
“And now his lifestyle is in danger,” Eli said, having allowed us to provide potential confirmation toward his own point. He ordered beer for us both and bowls of ice cream all around. When Alex looked dumbfounded, Eli said, “You were a good sport today, staying in the cabin with the dog and the old guy. Figured you deserved a treat.”
“I’d rather have a Ferrari, but ice cream isn’t bad.”
• • •
I spent an hour texting Rick, because his carrier didn’t offer good cell coverage this far south. Sometimes the government’s predilection to pick the cheapest bid on a job caused problems later on. Go figure. Rick made plans to join us, but it would be another day before that could happen, which left me many hours before he could get here. And few hours before the first day of the full moon.
Just after the texting ended, I heard back from the sheriff and the governor. The gov felt that PsyLED would take too long to find and kill the “wild dogs” and offered me a contract. But the wild-dog clause was a problem, legally speaking. With the tentative exception of vamps, supernats and their legal standing had not yet been addressed by Congress. Vamps were already in a legal limbo, with Leo having asked for a status like American tribal Indians had—called tribal sovereignty, making vamps a dependent sovereign nation within the federal government. It would give them a position that was similar to a state in some situations, and similar to a nation in others, with certain amounts of recognition, self-government, and sovereignty. It was a huge legal jumble of problems, which would take decades to sort out, and even longer to implement, all of which made the Master of the City of the Southwestern states happy, because it left him in charge of his people and free to act in any way that led to the safety of the human public. However, no such legal interference had been instituted or started for weres or witches, making their legal limbo even worse than the vamps’. And calling a were a wild dog was . . . wrong. Werewolves were sentient beings.
Yet people were dying. And I was stuck in the middle of the problems.
I copied Leo, my partners, and Rick on the offer and got a single-word text reply from my sorta-boyfriend.
Sigh . . . , it read.
“Yeah,” I said to my empty room. Our “wild dog” were had suddenly become a pack of three led by a sex-starved female. Add a lone wolf into the picture, and a state government that wanted in on the kill action, and this was suddenly FUBAR territory. I was not touching this with a ten-foot pole, not until Rick’s bosses at PsyLED decided on a course of action. Which might mean we were headed home in the morning. Yet the next night was the full moon, which would mean death for someone unless I acted. Which the legal situation could prevent. This sucked. I wanted to hit something, but Eli was asleep. Which sounded all wrong too. I rolled over in bed and commanded myself to sleep. I felt Beast sling out a claw and instantly I went under. My last conscious thought was of Beast as a sleeping pill.
• • •
It rained all night, sometimes so hard it beat against the windows, with lightning and thunder all around, the noise enough to rouse me several times. Mostly, thanks to Beast, I slept through it, knowing that the next three days could be sleepless and dangerous and deadly. Or not.
Sometime during the night, I got an official e-mail from PsyLED, but with the noise outside, I missed it. An hour before dawn, the storm broke, Beast slapped me awake, and I found my cell blinking. I rolled up to a sitting position and discovered that I had an official offer from the U.S. government, one worked out with Leo’s lawyers and two congressional committees, approved by the Louisiana governor, and vetted by the president himself, all in just under seven hours.
I had a kill order to take down the pack. And I was gonna get paid big bucks. “How cool is that?” I asked my dark, silent room. And best? No one said anything about the lone wolf, who hadn’t been in on the carnage and feasting.
As I sat there, I got a second text from Nadine, the sheriff, with a new sighting location. During the storm the night before, four local fishermen had taken refuge on land in the swamp over near Lake Boudreaux. They had seen two huge dogs and a bear as the storm cleared. Nadine sent both a map and a GPS, saved by the men. I pulled up a sat map and studied it. The sighting had been inland, if you can call the swampy area north of Lake Boudreaux inland, up through an old canal, on actual land.
I studied the site on sat maps and determined that we could get there via boat. I loved modern detecting methods. I got up, stretched hard and slow, and walked to the connecting door.
Banging on the Younger brothers’ door, I shouted, “Wake up, sleepyheads! We got a job with a GPS to start the day. Big enough bucks to buy the Kid a pony for his birthday!” I started to turn away but banged once again, my fist flat on the door. “And I’ll need my special equipment, pronto.” I sent the proposal and the GPS to them and got dressed, glad I’d gotten some sleep. I was gonna need it.
I was packing my boots and other supplies into a bag when my cell chimed. On the screen were the words Darlin’. PsyL authorized me to area. Officially. Flight landing at NOLA at two. See you at 4p.
“Again with the darlin’?” But something like longing or hunger flowed through me and I dropped onto the bed, grinning foolishly into the dark. Rick was coming. Maybe I should have gotten nonconnecting rooms. Not that there would be any actual sex—not with the possibility of me getting the were-taint as a really bad, incurable, untreata
ble STD—but maybe I should have gotten nonconnecting rooms anyway. Just in case.
I texted back, I may not be me. Fair warning. Rick was a were. He’d figure it out.
Several minutes later he texted to me. Noted. Which made me happy all over for reasons I didn’t understand.
Eli knocked on my door, one tap. That was all. One. Mr. Minimalist. “Come.” Who says I can’t do terse?
Eli entered, geared up for the day, a bulge under his arm visible as he entered, another in the back of his shirt, both of which were nine-millimeter semiautomatics. I knew he’d have more weapons on—a silver-plated knife or two and a few stakes. All that just to greet the dawn. Eli, a minimalist in all other ways, was not into austerity where weapons were concerned. In his hand was my fetish box. He put it on the bed beside me, and for once was unable to keep his curiosity off his face.
Feeling a little uncertain, because I’d never done this in front of him before, I opened the box and rummaged around inside, finally pulling out a short necklace strung with glass beads and wired with canine teeth and three largish bones. I knew what almost all my necklaces were, animal-wise, but some I didn’t use often, and this one I had never used.
Trying to sound offhand, Eli said, “You’re gonna track in animal form?”
My eyes on the bones, I nodded, letting a small smile form. I said, “Think you can find the most recent sighting place?”
“Does a mountain lion scream in the woods?”
I smiled wider without looking at him. “Loud. Even if no one is there. And yeah. Animal form. One with a good nose and who can swim.”
“In gator-infested waters?” He sounded half-teasing, half-appalled.
