The Wolf is on his back, the lighter fur on his chest and abdomen exposed. He growls when I draw near, exposing his bloody teeth, but the threat is empty. All but one leg is trapped underneath the crisscrossing pipes, and the free leg looks broken, jutting out at an unnatural angle. I stop less than a foot away from the Wolf who has terrorized and brutalized me for days on end. I don’t know what expression I’m wearing on my bruised and swollen face, but it’s hostile enough to make McKinney snap his busted jaw at me.
I wiggle my bare, bluish toes in the snow—there’s no feeling in them now—and sigh deeply as I wrap my hands tighter around the pipe. “You know, McKinney,” I rasp out, “this could have ended so much better if you’d just taken I don’t know for an answer. But you let your prejudice against the ICM—against humans—get the better of you. And now we’re here.”
The Wolf shoots me a grim look of determination, the fire still burning in his eyes. But then, the animal form recedes, the fur giving way to hair, the limbs cracking and snapping into different shapes, the snout shrinking back into a smaller nose and jaw. In seconds, the Wolf is gone, and the man within lies before me. He’s covered in oozing lacerations, broken bones poking through shredded skin, and massive, mottled, half-formed bruises.
McKinney’s face, smeared with blood, tilts toward me, and another of his feral grins peeks out through his matted beard. “It’s funny,” he says, wheezing between each word. “I thought only DSI’s veteran elites held any real threats over our heads. Like your two lady friends back in town.” He chokes out a laugh. “Got to admit, you surprised me, kid. Pulled some damn good tricks. Don’t know how you got someone to help you with my car, though, but…” Blood dribbles down his chin. “I don’t guess it matters now.”
My grip on the pipe loosens. Is he giving up? Should I—?
McKinney’s left hand, freed by his transformation, lashes out and grabs my ankle.
Gasping, I yank my leg away.
But it’s too late.
The blood that was on McKinney’s hand is smeared across the top of my foot. Across several open cuts.
Lycanthropy, says a forgotten professor’s voice in the back of my head, is spread through direct contact with a werewolf’s blood. If exposed, there’s a fifty-percent chance a human will contract the virus.
I stare at my foot in horror, nausea rolling in my gut, and then slowly raise my gaze to McKinney’s gleeful face. A gurgling snicker breaks past his torn lips. “You want to see prejudice, kid?” He gestures toward my foot with his bloody hand. “That will show you prejudice, if the gods of vengeance are smiling down on me tonight. And when you finally decide to join me in hell, in ten years, twenty…or maybe next week…let me know how you feel then about our little chats in the cabin, and my supposed paranoia, and how well the ICM treats Wolves, and—”
I lift the pipe into the air…
…and drive it straight through McKinney’s chest.
Straight into his heart.
“That’s for Liam, you bastard,” I spit into his shocked face. “And for the record, the only one heading to hell here is you. I’ll walk through oblivion for eternity before I join you in any afterlife.” I push the pipe in deeper, out his back, piercing the ground. “Human. Wolf. Vampire. Some other creature of the shadows. Doesn’t matter what I am. What matters is what I do. What matters is that I’m not a fucking monster like you.”
McKinney’s mouth slips open, like he wants to reply. But then the light begins to fade from his eyes. And a moment later, all that remains is the dim flicker of vengeance left unfulfilled.
I don’t see McKinney’s shade—it leaves the world too quick to follow, like they usually do—but I hope his shade sees me, one last time, kneeling over his broken body, hands still clasped around the pipe. I hope the image is burned into his mind before the Eververse spirits him away. And I hope he relives this memory, over and over, his final moment on Earth, until his soul is dragged past the iron gates into the inferno. I hope…I hope…
My hands slip off the pipe, and I fall back into the snow.
The last thing I see before my vision fades to black is a snowflake dancing in the air, painted violet by a flash of red and blue.
Chapter Fifteen
When I come to, I’m sprawled across the back seat of someone’s car. There’s a blanket that smells like mothballs tucked around my beaten body, and my head is resting on what might be a balled-up coat. Waves of pain wash over me with every bump in the road as the car zips quickly along a darkened road. The windows reveal it’s still night outside, and no streetlamps dot the landscape. I’m not in Aurora yet, but since I’m also not stuffed in a trunk, I assume I’m heading that direction.
Which is good. Because one of my lungs isn’t working right.
The car slows at an intersection but doesn’t full stop, and as it turns left, somebody reaches up and flicks on the ceiling light. I blink at the sudden brightness, nudging the blanket up higher on my face to shield my eyes. From the driver’s seat, a mildly familiar voice says, “You awake, Kinsey?”
I mumble a response with my raw throat that might sound like, “Yeah.”
“Well, thank god for that,” the man replies. Most of his profile is hidden from my view, but there are several details about his hair and face that tickle a recent memory. Where have I seen him before? “I was worried I was going to lose you before we made it to town. Couldn’t tell how bad you were hurt, and damn if you weren’t well on your way to becoming an icicle. I’ve got the heat up. Are you warm enough?”
“Hm, think so?” My toes and fingers are still a bit numb, but they move when I command them to. I have a feeling some of the skin on my feet might not make it. “I’m more worried about my chest, to be honest.”
“Ribs?” asks the man. He turns to glance at me huddled in the back seat. Yeah. I’ve definitely seen him before. “Saw the bruising. Tried to be gentle with you, but I had to move fast. There were more units inbound, and several fire trucks. Somebody who lives out there in the boonies spotted the fire and called 911. Luckily, I was nearby—thanks to an anonymous tip—or you might have found yourself in handcuffs instead.”
His identity finally swims to the forefront of my murky mind. “You’re the detective from Slate’s house. The one who threatened the reporters off us.”
“Yup,” he says, attention back on the road, “that’s me. Matt Lassiter. Detective First Class.”
“I…I don’t get it. Why were you out in the sticks so late at night? What sort of tip were you following? Murder case? Or…?”
His eyes appear briefly in the rearview mirror, brows raised. “Kinsey, I was looking for you. Half the damn PD has been looking for you for days.”
I tug the blanket over my head and reply, muffled, “I still don’t understand.” The PD searching for a missing Kook? “Can you explain what happened after I got snatched?”
“Sure.” The car cuts around a sharp turn a little too fast, and the detective clears his throat. “Few days back, all available units get scrambled to Lombard. Shootout in broad daylight between two unknown groups. Come to find out DSI is one of those groups, and the other consists of some naked wackos. A witness down the street claims some dogs are involved too, but, huh, we don’t see any of those when we get there. Strange.”
(I’m surprised the sarcasm doesn’t drool out of his mouth.)
He takes a short breath and continues. “So, anyway, bunch of naked weirdos, most of them down for the count, some with injuries so bad we aren’t sure they’re going to make it. And, standing in the middle of the circle of fallen nudists, triumphant—two women from DSI.”
Hah, Ella and Amy took them all down?
“Were they hurt?” I ask.
“The DSI ladies? One had a busted arm, but beyond that, some minor cuts, bruises, burns. They were only in the hospital for a few hours between them. Tough, I’ll tell you.” Lassiter scratches his head. “But they’re not the main focus of this story. Main focus is you and the
other kid, Liam Calvary.
“The DSI ladies tell us that you all were ambushed by the naked weirdos because said weirdos have something to do with the Jameson Bar and Grill triple homicide. Which, as I’m sure you know, the PD was prevented from investigating by the mayor’s office.
“The women claim you and one other DSI detective were kidnapped during the ambush, and they need to hunt down your kidnappers immediately. About this time, more DSI agents show up, including several big wigs, your Captain Riker among them. More cops show up, too, including four police captains. There’s a big hullabaloo in the middle of the street—thankfully, the roads are empty due to the snow. And blah, blah, blah, we bitch for a while about jurisdiction on the shootout. Then Mayor Burbank phones in for DSI’s side of the game, so you all herd up the naked wackos and take them away to whatever holding area that I, personally, did not think the Kooks were allowed to have. But I digress…”
He flicks the turn signal, and the click-clicking fills the silence while he chews on the next part of the story. “Twelve hours on, we hear nothing else about this shootout, and then DSI finds one of their kidnapped agents…dead.” Lassiter sighs. “I’m assuming you knew about that?”
Liam’s terrified, tearful face comes back to haunt me again. How could I forget?
“Yeah. I was there.”
Lassiter is silent for a moment. “Sorry, Kinsey.”
“Me too.”
The detective fakes a cough. “Anyway, the police commissioner, playing ball with the mayor’s office, conscripts all available uniforms and detectives for a manhunt to find your kidnappers. Because DSI doesn’t have the manpower to conduct such a large-scale search in this kind of weather. And so, for the next four days, we’re going door to door with your picture, following up bunk tips, and doing all the other fun stuff associated with finding a missing person who might already be dead.”
I peel the blanket off my face. “Guess you win the grand price, huh?”
“Some prize,” he murmurs.
“Okay, I’m caught up, mostly.” I shift in the seat, and some laceration on my back tears open, leaking blood. I wince. “One question though. Why’d you take me away from what you would have reasonably concluded to be a murder scene?”
Lassiter considers the question, biting the inside of his cheek. “Also had hush-hush orders to cover up any strange things we came across.”
“Strange?”
“Yeah,” he says, in a pinched voice, “like burning construction sites surrounded by winding trails of large, dog-like paw prints—again, with no actual dogs in sight. Just you, a dead guy you clearly impaled with a pipe, and the charred corpse of another guy still on fire inside the building.”
“Paw prints, huh?” I pick at a spot of blood caked on my face. “Didn’t think about that. They’re usually more discreet. But, special circumstances…”
“Oh?”
“I escaped from the torture shack, and they chased me down.”
Lassiter rolls the car to a stop, and the red glow of a traffic light filters into the car. We’re on the edge of Aurora now.
Waiting for the green, Lassiter raps his fingers on the steering wheel. “Okay, first of all, what the fuck is the ‘torture shack’? And second, what the hell are they?”
I swallow thickly, tasting copper. “Um, torture shack is where they kept me. Cabin in the woods. No idea where it is. But you can probably find it by tracking my blood—or the paw prints—back to it from the construction site. If you really want to see the torture shack for yourself.” My fingers knead the fabric of the blanket. “As for your second question, do you truly want to know? Most cops aren’t receptive to this sort of…information.”
The light changes, and Lassiter taps the accelerator. “Let me guess,” he says with a hint of exasperation, “the naked weirdos are werewolves?”
I contemplate lying to him.
But I can tell from his tone that he’s not the sort of person to sweep logical answers under the rug, even if they conflict with his worldview.
“You got it,” I say. “Werewolves. They have a tendency to run around naked when they know they’ll need to shift into Wolf form. Clothes get in the way.”
Like with Martinez at Jameson’s. He couldn’t shed his clothes in time during the attack, and he got tangled up when he tried to shift. The killer was simply too fast and…
Hell, I’ve just realized. All this bullshit I’ve been through in the past few days, and I’m no closer to solving the bar and grill murders. McKinney was convinced the ICM had a hand in it, but I don’t buy that. There’s something else going on here. The Jameson trio, and whatever unknown cohorts they may have had, were planning a summoning for a particular reason. They wanted something from the creature they were prepping to yank out of the Eververse. Their killer, or killers, must have targeted them to prevent that summoning. Maybe the answer is in Slate’s emails. Maybe DSI is already further ahead in the investigation than me—
“Kinsey, you all right? You went quiet back there.”
Shaking my head to clear out the mental glut, I reply, “Sorry. Just thinking. Been a long week.” I nibble my chapped lips. “You believe me, about the werewolf business?”
If Lassiter’s a PD veteran, which he appears to be, given his age, and if he’s as smart as I believe, he must have noticed some strange happenings in Aurora over the years. Happenings he couldn’t simply rationalize away.
The car is whizzing past buildings now, homes and businesses, growing taller and brighter as we travel toward downtown Aurora.
Lassiter hums thoughtfully, eyes flicking from the rearview mirror to the side mirrors to the windshield, and around and around, until they finally settle on me once again. “Not saying I buy this supernatural shit a hundred percent, but since I can’t wish away what I’ve seen, I’ll play along with this werewolf narrative for now.” His gaze drifts back to the road. “So, which hospital you want to go to? We’ve got three choices nearby.”
“No hospital. DSI infirmary.”
“You’re shitting me.” He cranes his neck to scrutinize my injuries, but most of them are covered by the blanket. “Kinsey, you need to be in the ER, not some understaffed—”
“DSI has full hospital facilities. We just call it the infirmary because it’s part of the office.”
Lassiter’s eyebrows shoot up. “You poor bastards get hurt so often you need a full hospital in your HQ?”
“Unfortunately.”
He grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white. “Okay, okay. I’ll take you to the DSI office. On one condition.” He raises his index finger from the wheel. “Sometime soon, preferably after this Jameson homicide shit settles down, you invite me out for lunch to a nice, off-the-wall diner, and we have a long, enlightening chat about what’s really going on in my city.”
As a DSI agent, I’m not supposed to tell normal people about the supernatural underworld, unless they get irreparably tangled in it, but I already know Lassiter isn’t going to let this go. He’s probably had suspicions percolating for a while now, especially with DSI butting in more and more in PD murder cases over the years. If I don’t bring him into the fold, he might bulldoze his way in through official channels, which would cause a ruckus at the mayor’s office.
“All right, Lassiter. Deal. After the Jameson case wraps up, you name the day.”
“Good man, Kinsey.” Lassiter takes a sudden right, and a familiar row of rooftops pass by the windows.
We’re on Lombard Street.
Crafty bastard…he was taking me to the office all along. I got played!
Lassiter pulls the car up to the front lobby door, unbuckles his seatbelt, and turns around to face me, slapping on a dimpled gotcha smirk. “So, kiddo, what do you say we get you some medical attention?”
Chapter Sixteen
Eleven hours. That’s how long it takes for the lycanthropy virus to become detectable in human blood after initial infection. So that’s how long I have to wait to fi
nd out whether or not I’m doomed.
Thanks to my injuries, however, I don’t spend all eleven hours staring at the off-white ceiling. Instead, I lose the first seven to anesthesia, after I’m whisked away from Lassiter’s car and straight to a fully prepped surgical suite in the DSI infirmary.
The findings?
Four broken ribs. Three broken toes. Two veins leaking blood into my abdominal cavity. A hairline fracture in one of my tibias. A similar fracture in the femur on the opposite leg. Right lung punctured by a rib fragment—I’m lucky it didn’t collapse. More burns from the cattle prod than anybody cares to count. A dozen lacerations that need ten or more stitches. Hypothermia-damaged tissue on both feet—thankfully, no amputations needed. And, finally, an assortment of missing nails and teeth.
The upside of all those injuries is that Navarro puts me on the good stuff, so when I wake up after my stint in surgery, I’m feeling wonderful. The usually stiff hospital bed seems more like a tubful of cotton balls, and the blankets resemble fine silk sheets from some five-star hotel I can’t afford. The fluorescent lights are less glaring and more caressing, and my brain interprets the white spots that swim through my vision as falling stars in the clear night sky. I’m pretty sure I make a wish on at least one of them. And I’m pretty sure that wish is related to delivery pizza. Or maybe Chinese takeout.
Point is, I’m super high.
For, like, another four hours.
So by the time judgment finally comes calling, in the form of Navarro pulling back my curtain, holding an ominous-looking set of papers in his hand, I really only feel like I’ve been waiting for thirty minutes instead of an eternity in purgatory.
Navarro closes the curtain behind him and wanders closer to my bed as he peruses the papers—the test results—I assume he’s already read several times. His brows are drawn together, and his lips are pursed. Like there’s something about the words on the page he can’t quite decipher. He’s so consumed by this apparent mystery that he nearly runs into the railing on the side of the bed. He stops short and huffs, finally looking up from the papers to examine me.
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