by Rae Foxx
But mostly, I ran away from the slime.
16
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. What the fuck kind of police station is this?”
I shifted out of my fox to stand buck naked in the middle of the street, staring at a mobile park trailer with battered sides and a window patched together with silver duct tape. It looked more like an abandoned drug house than it did a police station. Hell, the hundred-year-old building with no electricity back in Puritan Village was in better condition than this place. Even the stone municipal building where I’d met Mayor Hissy Lips was better. The place looked like where Seniors might retire, not a fucking police station.
Whatever, I didn't care what it looked like as long as I could find the police chief inside and we could go set a trap for the murderer before anyone else got hurt. Out of breath from running from the alley, I stormed up the wobbly steps, careful not to get a sliver on my bare feet and threw open the flimsy door. The place smelled like papers and copying machine ink. Also rot, because every building in Cummings Cove smelled like rot. You’d think a police station would smell of something else, maybe gun powder.
Nah, not around this place.
A tired-eyed old woman with unnaturally red hair looked up as I crashed through the door, pushing her oversized glassed up her nose with a wrinkled finger. Her lips curved into a smirk as she looked at me, chuckling as she nodded to a row of hooks next to the door where a row of fluffy robes hung. I had spent my whole life as a shifter, naked bodies weren't unheard of, even in Puritan Village they had been normal, but here they have robes.
"How can I help you?" the frazzled receptionist asked as I slid my arms into the robe, her glasses falling back down her nose as she went back to whatever papers she had been filing.
“I need to speak to Chief...Fucking," I spoke slowly, trying to enunciate the word as it was spelled, and not as the twins had said it. It came out the wrong way, anyway. Okay, try again. "Fo-King or Fuck King or Fuckin’" God, this wasn't working, everything sounded like fucking, my nerves were fried. "I need to speak to Chief whatever in the shit his name is!"
I pounded my fists on the counter, sending pencils rattling as my fried nerves threatened to erupt all over the place. The old receptionist didn't even flinch. She just sighed, pushed her glasses back up her nose and went back to her papers, which turned out to be a crossword puzzle.
"Let me see if he's in," she mumbled, writing a word in on her crossword. "He's not in."
"You didn't even check..." I glared at her before turning to try to peer around the corner of the room we were in, I could see a few desk legs, and papers balled up on the ground like a mad scientist’s room, but nothing else.
"You're right. I'll check again. He's not in." Her voice was a dead tone that grated on my spine. My fox was nearly going rabid. If she wasn't careful I was going to shift and explode all over this unhelpful receptionist. That crossword puzzle was no match for my claws.
"Come on! This is an emergency!" I slammed my palms on the counter just as the door pushed open behind me and a rush of chill dawn air rustled at the hem of the robe I wore, sending a shiver up my spine.
"Morning, Prya," a voice half-yawned as the door clattered shut and streak of blue uniform and aroma of coffee moved past me at lightning speed.
"Morning, Chief," the woman, Prya, said finally looking up from her game to fix her beady eyes on me. "Oh look, he's in."
My fox growled as I did, the feral sound exploding as I slammed my palms on the counter again and took off after the chief, ignoring her protests along the way.
Chief Travis Phoquin was already at his desk by the time I bolted around the corner. His eyes were hooded as he sipped at his coffee, finger thumbing through paper, or mail or whatever was cluttering his desk. There was a lot cluttering his desk. Between papers, mail, food wrappers and far too many paper airplanes I couldn't see the surface. Not even a keyboard to go with the monitor that was so covered in sticky notes it looked like a rainbow cube.
"I saw a wolf in an alley," I began before he had even acknowledged me. I didn't want to wait anymore. I had found the murderer and we needed to catch him.
Phoquin jumped at my near shout, coffee spilling over his hand and onto the layer of papers on his desk. Swearing, Travis grabbed tissues and dabbed at the papers as he looked up and jerked even more. More coffee spilled over his hand, dropping onto the papers which were now forgotten.
“Oh, Scarlet. I didn’t know you were here,” he mumbled, and attempted to continue to clean up the coffee, although now he was missing it all together. Liar, liar, cop pants on fire. He very clearly knew I was here, and now he was all flustered about it. Still, it was cute the way he tried to be casual about the whole thing.
“I found the murderer," I declared, stomach swimming from saying the words out loud. The swirling feeling got worse the longer Travis stared at me, the dark orbs of his eyes burning into mine and making those nerves pick up, but for a different reason.
In my haste to reach him I had forgotten about the last time I saw him, forgotten about the way the touch of his skin against mine had caught my skin on fire. He clearly hadn't forgotten. No wonder he was spilling coffee and blushing. Damn, he was cute when he blushed, which really wasn't helping the look he was giving me. All those swirling electric butterflies were returning, and I was suddenly regretting coming here at all.
“How you are?" Phoquin began, his coffee laced with cinnamon breath washing over me as he leaned in before jumping back like those electric butterflies were attacking him as well. "I mean, you are hot. I mean good. Are you hot? Good. I mean, are you okay? You’re flushed.” He stuttered and jumped as he tried to recover whatever the hell he was trying to say.
"You look good," he finally finished, me still staring at him as I tried to follow his insanity. He didn't seem to notice my confusion, he reached out and lightly touched my cheek and I about swooned and melted right there on the spot. When he took his hand away, a tingling remained on my face, flooding down my spine and pooling in my belly in sparks that only sent those butterflies into a flurry. If he could do that with one touch to my cheek, what else could he do with those fingers?
Goodness.
Okay, Scarlet. Fuck. You came here for a reason. Like solving the murder.
The murderer!
Damn it!
"I know who killed Kent," I continued, although the urgency in my voice had faded a bit and it took a bit too much thinking to pull me away from the intensity in his gaze. Screw fingers, he was going to melt me into goo with just a flash of those eyes.
"What do you mean you know who killed Kent?" Travis asked while I held my breath. I couldn’t help it. The man was all kinds of sexy. Some kind of sexy song should’ve been playing in the background, because I felt like I was about to get a cop stripper-gram.
I should ask for that for my birthday. I’m sure it would go over well with the twins. Maybe they could all dress up as cops and... oh, fuck. Get your head on straight, woman.
"I mean I saw the murderer. I was shopping this morning and I uhm... I went for a walk and I saw something by the market I thought you should know about. There was a wolf, his paws coated in that stuff I saw. His teeth were all broken and I know he did it. Everyone says I'm just imagining him, but I saw him and I saw the green slime, so I know I'm not imagining him. Or I am and someone should call the local mental institution. The first person I thought to tell was you and you said I could find you if I needed to and…” Fuck, turns out Phoquin wasn't the only person who turned into a rambling bitch when they got flustered. This place made me a fucking wreck. Murders and eye patched fucking wolves and hot cops. Strike that—one cop.
“Come, Scarlet, sit down and let me get you a cup of water.” He opened a little swinging door of a fridge beside his desk as I sat down, the back of his hand brushing against my exposed knee. I shuddered against the complete onslaught of lust that shot through me, curling my legs tighter against the old metal chair tha
t creaked underneath me.
“Here," he smiled as he handed me a damp bottle. I didn’t really understand why people gave each other water when they were upset. It wasn’t like water would do anything for me. Maybe just a distraction. "Now, slowly, tell me what happened. You said you saw something by the market? Where exactly.”
His eyes didn't leave mine as he dug through his desk before producing the same elongated notebook he had in the cop car. He opened it and pulled out a pen.
“Well, I came from the market…” No reason to outline my fucking crouching tiger freak out at the sight of meat. “And I went into the alley to get some...fresh air. And I heard a noise in the trash can. I didn’t think anything of it at first. I mean, it’s a dark alley with a dumpster. There’s bound to be rats or raccoons at the least..."
And I was rambling again. I stopped myself and took a sip of the water, waiting for his scribbling to catch up. He looked up at me, that dimple in full force and waved his hand in a circle. “Go on, Scarlet. What else?”
“The lid to the dumpster flew open, and out jumps this white wolf. He's got this eyepatch, and a leather cuff thing—"
"The wolf has an eyepatch?" He interrupted me, and I froze. Yes, I know I sounded crazy, but did he really have to look at me that way? "And a leather cuff?"
I nodded yes to both. I didn’t even get the goddamned sentence out of my mouth before Chief Fuckin’ covered his mouth with his hand and then coughed once.
“What the fuck are you laughing at?”
He reached out and put his hand on my knee. “I’m sorry. I really am. You just took me by surprise. A wolf with an eyepatch? I mean did he ask you to walk the plank and say ‘Arrr’?” A growl ripped from my chest. “Not funny, got it. What else?”
I guess no matter how cute and shy, every man had a little asshole in him.
Good thing cause I had a whole lot of bitch in me.
"There was a wolf," I snapped, shoving his hand off me as I leaned toward him, fox teeth sharpening as my angry yellow gaze zeroed in on him. "The wolf, who had an eyepatch, jumped out of the dumpster, all snarling and stalking me, his teeth were all broken and his—"
“And it charged at you? Have you been bitten?” He interrupted me again, bending to look at my legs like he expected a big hunk to be taken out of my calf or something.
“What? No! I mean yes!" I shrieked, pulling the robe tightly around me. I had been naked a million times, but I didn't want him to be looking at me like that. Not yet. "Yes, he charged at me, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here because of the green goo."
"Green goo?" He sat back up and squared off his shoulders, staring at me as though I had completely lost it. Okay, wolf with an eyepatch I was well aware sounded bat shit crazy. But the green goo?
"Okay slime. The same stuff that was at the murder scene," my voice caught again. "It was all over his paws."
Phoquin stared at me, eyes narrowed as though he was waiting for me to finish. When I didn't, he lunged forward shifting through papers again before he found an official looking list and scanned it.
"Scarlet, there was no green goo, or slime, at the crime scene."
"Yes there was, it was everywhere. I told you, it was all over the floor. It's what I followed when I found the body—" I froze, my eyes falling to the papers on his desk, and the multiple pictures of me and the twins that were buried there. "You think I'm a suspect."
Phoquin's back straightened, eyes hooded as he began to shuffle papers again. He had known I was here, and he was shocked, but not because of the electric touch that zinged between us... because he was afraid of what I could see.
"Everyone is a suspect right now," he half mumbled, trying to reach out to me again. "Until we have actual concrete proof, everyone is a suspect."
"But the goo..."
"We have no record of green goo, so unless you can provide—" I jumped up, the chair falling to the ground with a clatter that cut him off and made him jump. "I can. I can find you proof, but you have to find the wolf and get that goo off his paws. He did it, and I'll prove it."
"Okay then," Phoquin said, standing and leaning over his desk. "I believe you."
"Then bring the wolf in for questioning and you'll have your proof." Anywhere else that sentence would have made no sense, but Travis Phoquin just nodded, his lips in a tight like as he silently agreed.
I said no more before I ripped myself from the station, turning into my fox before I cleared the door, leaving the robe behind.
I was sure he got a glimpse of my bare ass, but I didn't care. It was my ass that was about to save me. I had never been more glad for falling on my ass in my life.
17
Leaves cracked and crumbled underneath my feet as I trudged through the forest of tall oaks and pines that I hadn't seen since my days at Bloodwood Academy. Since I had run through these trees... these exact damn trees.
Crap.
Trees continued to speed past me, even as I pulled to a stop. The sound of my heart mixed with the crunching of leaves as I no longer moved.
I was dreaming. Dreaming of running through a forest I hadn't been to in weeks. Of course I was dreaming. The first time I'm able to sleep in days and I'm trapped in the forest of the school that I had accidentally helped burn down.
Leaves crunched under foot with each step, worms and crawly creatures wiggling between my bare toes as I moved to crunch them. Everything was so still I could hear them move through the dirt, the sound of suction and rot blending with the distant call of birds that I hoped didn't exist in the real world. With its long, echoing shriek and the way it twisted my nerves the call of the bird belonged in a horror movie.
Which I really wished this wasn't.
Dim light seeped through the high canopy of trees, beams of light flickering as I sped forward, everything moving in fast forward as I raced back. I weaved through trees and brush until I pulled to a stop right beside a large moss-covered tree. The world wobbled as the trees swayed in a non-existent wind, everything spinning as I clutched the tree. Clutched the moss that was no longer moss.
My hand slid against it, sliding over the bark and the heavy layer of this green slime that covered it.
The same slime from the butcher shop. It smelled the same, like sweet rot and dirt. It felt the same too, and I slipped on it the same. My hand slid off the trunk and sent me staggering forward, through the tree, and into a dense fog. Twirls and twists of dense white hung clung to the air, clogging the world and taking all of the trees away, pushing in on me. Suffocating the air and sucking up the oxygen.
My ears buzzed with the nothingness of the fog, the haunted bird giving one last chime before it too was swallowed by the oppressive vapor. Vapor that shifted and broke as I stepped forward in search of trees or forest... or escape.
All of that was gone.
Then everything changed, morphed before my eyes with a groan as the forest stretched and shifted into something else.
I’d tumbled down a hole into a nightmare.
The trees were gone, replaced by steel rods that stuck up from the ground like horrific daisies, each one ending in a hook.
A hook that was a little too red.
A hook that dripped that red all over the floor that was no longer made of dirt and leaves and crawling beasts. The floor pulsed in a shade of the deepest scarlet, pulsed with blood that ran through veins and arteries, that weaved through the ground like a giant web.
The forest was alive.
It was the only thing that was.
Where the branches and leaves should be, bodies of every kind of animal hung from shiny silver hooks.
Squirrels. Rabbits. Hogs. Ducks. Wolves. They were all there, and none of them were skinned. Limbs hung like broken twigs, dripping red toward the ground that continued to throb and pulse in time with my own heart.
The dream pulled me forward, weaving me through the metal pikes as we followed the veins of green that flowed with blood. The veins of green twisted through the dead fores
t, they wrapped around my legs with tiny green stretchy strings that pulled at my skin, at my joints. Controlled me.
Strings of death.
Strings of decay.
Strings of murder.
Murder.
Damn it! Wake up!
Wake up Scarlet!
If I didn't wake up I knew where this was going to lead me, and I didn't want to see.
Wake up!
A wolf’s growl rumbled over the pulsing of my heart, the low snarl wafting through the fog that broke apart, skittering away as though it was scared of the noise.
Wake up!
The shout died in my mind as the dream snapped and all of the death and metal twisted into smoky, black tendrils that began fading away into nothing. Nothing but black and the low growl of a wolf. I turned, facing the shadows of a forest, and a wolf so bright he could have been pure light.
Moonlight. That's what I had described its coat as before, and it was still true. Even with a weird-ass eyepatch and a leather cuff, his fur seemed to glow. It rippled as though he was caught in an invisible wind. I was sure if there was a "bad boy shifter wolf" magazine he would be the cover model.
The power in him, the strength in that one gleaming eye, it was unfathomable. It was also terrifying.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice a loud boom. Everything else was shaking, but my voice was strong. The wolf crouched in preparation to pounce, his top lip pulling back into a snarl. The low accompanying growl ripped through me and made my heart flutter even faster.
Faster still when two small creatures tiptoed through the dark behind him. My heart pounded in my chest, trying to break through bones in its panic as I waited for whoever was with him to emerge. Whoever was going to contact me.
I would recognize those stripes of orange and white fur anywhere.
