by Naomi Clark
I bit down on my own impulse to run. I could hear the word police flying back and forth between the people around us. I hoped they’d show up fast, taking the responsibility for the scene out of our hands. It was a selfish, cowardly thought and I knew it wasn’t how I really felt, but I couldn’t help thinking it. My wolf was desperate to get away. I’d never felt her so scared or cowed before and it added another layer to my fear. Sweat beaded between my shoulder blades and my skin prickled in the warm night wind. I was tense, poised to leap up and run.
Sun was taking Shannon’s advice and breathing slow and deep, her eyes fixed on the cobbled street. “He’s dead,” she mumbled. “Oh God, he’s dead. What am I going to do?”
“The police will be here soon,” I told her. “They’ll take care of everything.”
“I need to get away from here. That smell...” Sun lurched gracelessly to her feet, casting around for an escape route. The apartment block was at the top of a narrow, steep street. The only way to go was down towards Rue de Clichy. Sun bolted surprisingly fast and disappeared into the shadows.
I ran after her instinctively, grateful for an excuse to leave the scene and the terror it inspired in me. Maybe the same terror moved Sun. I heard Shannon shout my name, heard her heels clicking on the cobbles as she followed, but I didn’t slow down. The wolf was taking over, and the wolf wanted plenty of distance between us and Mike’s corpse.
I raced past closed shops and open bars, past bright light and jazzy music as I followed Sun. I shoved aside knots of people crowded in the streets, people who’d ignored Sun’s earlier screams and who ignored her headlong flight down the street now, wrapped up in their drinking and smoking. The thrill of movement chased away some of my irrational panic, and the odors of smoke, alcohol and warm bodies washed away the cloying smell that had freaked my wolf out so much. I felt better. More myself, more in control the further away from Mike I got. By the time I caught up with Sun, as she leaned heavily against a fetish shop window, I was calm enough to be thoroughly embarrassed by my own nerves.
“Sun.” I reached for her carefully, not sure what her reaction would be. She was bent double, clutching her bump.
“It’s kicking,” she wheezed. “It hurts.”
It took me a second to realize she meant the cub and then I was even less sure what to do with her. Pregnant people worry me. I helped Sun stand upright, bracing her shoulders while she gasped for air.
“Oh God, that smell,” she moaned. “It made me so sick.”
“Me too,” I agreed, rubbing her back for lack of any other ideas. “But it’s okay, we’re away from it now.”
Sun nodded, pale skin flushed by the pink lights of the fetish shop. “I didn’t kill him,” she said abruptly.
I gaped at her. “Of course you didn’t! Why would you even say that?”
She turned away then, hair falling to hide her face. “I don’t know, I just... Well, it had to be a wolf, didn’t it?”
I thought of the newspaper headlines. Le Monstre. I thought of the killing wound, Mike’s throat ripped out with one messy bite. Sun was right and she was wrong. People would cry wolf because of the wound, but I hadn’t smelled any wolf around Mike’s body except Sun. Of course, I could have missed it, panicked by the strange rotting fruit smell and its effect on me.
“Nobody will think you did it,” I assured her. “Shannon and I saw him storm off earlier, after all. And who’s going to believe a pregnant woman would kill her cub’s father anyway?”
Sun laughed bitterly. “He’s not the father.”
I didn’t think there was much I could say to that, so I rubbed her back and waited for Shannon. She arrived a few minutes later, face etched with worry. She slapped my arm lightly.
“Don’t run off on me like that!” Before I could apologize, she turned her attention to Sun. “Sun, the police are on their way,” she said, fighting for breath a little. “You have to come back and tell them what happened.”
“I don’t know what happened!” Sun wailed. “I went out to sniff around for him and there he was, just there, on the street... dead.” She shook violently, clutching at me for support. “Somebody dumped him right there for me to find.”
“Okay, so you need to tell the police that,” Shannon said calmly, slipping into PI mode. “You tell them whatever you argued about, tell them he went off to calm down, tell them everything.”
Sun’s eyes shone with fright. “They’ll think I did it.”
“No they won’t. Listen, should we call someone for you?” Shannon asked. “Family, Pack? You must have someone somewhere.”
Sun shook her head, the simple gesture loaded with emotion and my heart sank for her. “You’re a lone wolf?”
She shrugged. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Then let’s go back and get this sorted out, okay?” Shannon suggested. Her no-nonsense tone seemed to have a pacifying effect on Sun. The other woman wiped her eyes and nodded. I had a glimpse of her wolf, scared but determined, and I wondered again about that rotting fruit scent as we slowly made our way back to the apartment.
It wasn’t blood or flesh, I knew that much. It wasn’t anything to do with Mike’s wound or his death. I knew what all those things smelled like, and none of them made the wolf panic. The closest thing I could think of was wet rubbish, the kind of smell you got from the bins behind fast food restaurants, but that wasn’t right either. Smells like that intrigued the wolf, not panicked her.
***
The police were on the scene when the three of us reached the apartment. No cars; the street wasn’t wide enough, but there were several officers there, distinctive in their squat round hats. One had rounded up the shop staff and customers and lined them up outside the shop, presumably questioning them. Two more officers knelt by Mike’s body and a third was cordoning off part of the street with yellow tape. Yet another officer was standing at the door to the apartment block; he gestured us over sharply.
“You are the girlfriend?” he called to Sun.
She nodded, but didn’t budge. She didn’t want to get any closer to Mike. I sympathized. Bad enough that it was her boyfriend laid out there like a slab of meat, but there was that smell wafting around us again. Already I felt tense and edgy, on the verge of snapping. Sun’s stiff body language told me she felt the same.
The policeman came to her when he realized she wasn’t going to him. “Please, we must take a statement. You will come to the station, d’accord?” He looked at me and Shannon. “You two also.”
I nodded, suppressing a sigh. God. I was sick of giving statements. I’d spent hours giving statements since Sly’s arrest. Statements against him, statements against Alpha Humans, statements on behalf of Eddie... If I’d known I’d be doing the same thing in Paris, I would have stayed home.
***
The Préfecture de Police was somewhere I might have wanted to visit for interest’s sake. It was on the Île de la Cité, an island in the Seine that also housed Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, where apparently there was a piece of the True Cross. When we’d visited Notre Dame earlier, I’d never imagined I’d be back so soon, riding in a police car at that. Sun sat in the back between me and Shannon, gripping both our hands so hard that I’d lost the feeling in my fingers.
It didn’t take long for Shannon and me to give our statements, but it was close to midnight by the time Sun was done. We waited for her in the grim reception area, me flicking through pamphlets on crime prevention to see how many words I recognized, Shannon filing her nails and yawning widely.
Sun emerged from the interview room with a female police officer supporting her. Tears had dried on her face, leaving shiny tracks down her skin. Her hair was a ruffled mess, like she’d been pulling at it and her eyes were dark and shadowed. She looked exhausted and fragile and Shannon and I both leapt up to greet her.
“I want to go home,” she whispered, releasing the police officer to take my hand.
“We will need to speak to you again,
perhaps,” the officer told her. “But Oui, go home, sleep. It is the best thing right now.” She patted Sun sympathetically on the arm.
We took a taxi back to Montmartre. Outside the apartment block there was no sign of the horrific scene we’d left. The police had worked quickly to move Mike’s body and there was no sign anything had ever happened. All that lingered was that smell and even that was fading fast. Sun hesitated and stumbled as we approached the front door.
“I don’t think I can go in.”
“It’s fine, Sun,” I said, taking her arm. “You can stay with us tonight if you want to.”
She looked so pathetically grateful. I forced myself to ignore the flicker of annoyance I saw on Shannon’s face. I understood it; it had been a long day and a longer night. I just wanted to curl up with Shannon and sleep but I couldn’t push Sun away. She couldn’t possibly be alone at a time like this. If she were at home, she’d have Pack all around her, supporting her while she grieved her mate’s sudden, violent death.
Right now, I was all the Pack she had. Of course I couldn’t turn her away.
While Shannon scrambled around in the kitchen to make some tea for Sun, I ushered her into the bedroom. “You can sleep in here tonight. Shannon and I will share the sofa.” My back twinged in anticipation of an uncomfortable night. I’d be better off shapeshifting and sleeping on the floor.
“I don’t want to put you guys out,” Sun said in a tiny voice. She stood in the middle of the room looking lost and forlorn while I fussed with pillows.
“Don’t be silly. Just get yourself to bed and try to sleep, okay? In the morning we can call your family or—”
“No.” Suddenly she was fierce, eyes flashing. “No, I can’t call them.” She sat down on the bed, clawing at her hair. “They don’t even know I’m here.”
I chewed at my lip; a habit leftover from when I’d had it pierced and used to suck on the lip ring. Sly tore the ring out in a fight and I’d been left with a long white scar in place of the piercing. I kind of wanted a new piercing to replace it, but couldn’t decide what. Kaye, the piercing specialist at Inked where I worked, had suggested a tongue bar, but my wolf cringed at the idea of a piece of metal through the tongue. I couldn’t imagine how it would affect my sense of taste in wolf shape. I forced my attention back to the present.
“Sun,” I said, sitting down with her, “you don’t have to tell me, but... Are you a lone wolf?” Having been one myself for so long, I felt a spark of kinship with her that went beyond the usual bond of Pack. When she didn’t answer, I carried on. “I was, for years. I only rejoined my Pack last year.”
She looked at me in surprise. “Why did you leave? Why did you go back?”
I shrugged. There was no simple answer. “I left because my parents wanted me to be straight and I was sick of fighting about it. I came back because I missed my family.”
She blinked at me. “Oh my God, you and Shannon are a couple? I just assumed... Oh God, I can’t kick you out of your bed now!” She rose, but I pulled her down.
“You stay here and you sleep,” I said firmly, then added, “think of the baby,” for lack of any other convincing argument.
She rubbed her bump in that absent way and nodded. “Thank you. I mean it, thank you so much. All this...” She laughed. “I’m going to go crazy when it sinks in.”
I couldn’t think of a response for that, but was saved when Shannon entered with a steaming mug. “I found some herbal tea,” she said. “It’s vanilla and blackberry. It might help you sleep.”
“It smells delicious,” Sun said without much enthusiasm. She took the cup and set it on the bedside table, then simply stared at her hands.
Shannon and I glanced at each other and backed out of the room in mutual accord. In the soft silence of the living room, we curled up on the sofa, sinking into each other. “Not how I imagined our first night in Paris,” she whispered to me.
I shook my head. “What do you think happened to him?” I glanced out the window at the darkened city, wondering if Mike’s killer prowled the streets of Montmartre right now, stalking its next victim. I shivered.
“It looked like an animal attack,” Shannon replied. “But it wasn’t messy enough.”
I nodded, thinking of my own kills. With the best will in the world, with the best skill, no kill was ever really clean. I could take out a rabbit or a deer with a single, strong bite to the throat, but there’d be splatter afterwards. Blood gushing over my fur and the animal’s to soak the ground. There’d been none of that outside. Mike had been bleeding sluggishly when we found him, but I hadn’t noticed blood on the street. There should have been some from a bite that savage.
“He was killed somewhere else and moved,” I guessed, remembering how Sun described finding him. Just there on the street, she’d said..
“Would a wolf do that?”
I considered it and had to admit there was no real answer. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why not? But why would a wolf kill him and drag him somewhere else?”
“Why would a human?”
We fell silent then, too tired to talk anymore. The first streaks of dawn light poured through the window as we finally fell asleep.
Three
When I woke, stiff and aching, the sunlight streaming through the window told me it was nearly midday. Shannon moaned as I gently slipped out of her arms to stretch. There was no sound from Sun coming through the bedroom’s closed door. My wolf whined for fresh air and I opened the window, leaning out over the iron railings to stare down at the street. Inhaling deeply—filtering out the scents of coffee and tobacco from the shop—I could still pick out the sweet-rot smell. Faint, but there and still making my stomach churn and scaring my wolf. People strolled by, chatting and laughing, oblivious to the horror of last night. Yet every now and then someone stopped and sniffed the air with a frown. It didn’t take long to figure out the common factor; those who paused were always a wolf. Didn’t humans smell it?
When I pulled the window shut, the sudden slam woke Shannon. “Ayla?” She sat up, rubbing her eyes and raking her hair away from her face. I smiled, forgetting the weird smell. She always looked so beautiful like this, half-asleep and angelic. Since we hadn’t exactly spent the night as I’d hoped, I couldn’t help feeling a pang of lust as I looked at her.
“Salut,” I said, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her. “Ready for another exciting day in Paris?”
She grimaced. “I’m not sure I can handle any more excitement on this holiday.” She stood, pulling me to my feet to hug me. We’d both fallen asleep in our clothes and I ran my hands up under her top to caress her bare skin. She shivered and stepped away, face flushed. “Don’t get me started,” she warned. “The last thing Sun needs is to come out and see us rolling around on the floor.”
“It might cheer her up,” I objected, regretting the words even as I said them, gloom settling over me. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Shannon kissed my cheek and headed for the kettle. “Why don’t you go and look in on her? She needs to eat.”
I peeked into the bedroom while Shannon made tea. Sun lay on her back, the bed sheets tangled around her legs. One arm was thrown across her eyes, like she was trying to block the world out, the other was draped over her bump.
“Sun?” I whispered. She jerked up with a squeak, eyes wide.
“Oh my God.” A sort of sick realization fell over her face. “It was real, wasn’t it? Mikey’s dead.”
I nodded, my heart aching for her. Holding out my hand, I said, “Come on. Breakfast.” To my surprise, she came with me.
Shannon served us all more of the weird vanilla and blackberry tea. I didn’t mind the taste of vanilla as much as the smell, but I still couldn’t drink all of it. Sun sipped it automatically, staring down into the dark purple liquid with damp eyes.
“What do you want to do, Sun?” Shannon asked her softly. “Is there someone we could call?”
She shook her head, repeating the same wo
rds she’d told me last night. “Nobody knows I’m here. This was just supposed to me be and Mikey.” She sobbed and quickly wiped her tears away. “I need to get out there and find the bastard,” she muttered into her tea.
“No.” Shannon rested her hand on Sun’s, squeezing. “No, you can’t do that. You cannot even think of doing that! You’ve got to be at least seven months pregnant and this is a job for the police, okay?”
I had to smile, a little bitterly. It sounded like the start of one of the many conversations—arguments—Shannon and I had during the whole Sly mess, when Eddie was pressuring me to help him kill the feral and stop the supply of Silver Kiss. Shannon and I had never argued as much in six years together as we did during those weeks. Hearing her talk to Sun with the same tight anxiety in her voice brought back a rush of nasty memories.
