Night Broken
Page 16

6
The original crime scene had only one body, another woman. She lay in the middle of the hayfield in a section, roughly square, that had nothing at all growing in it. The soil was black, and it stained the bottom of my tennis shoes with soot. Someone had burned a chunk of field and put the dead woman in it like the bulls-eye of a target.
Staged, I said.
Yes, agreed Tony. And well let the scene experts have their way, but, like Willis, Im reading the other bodies the same way. Arranged for maximum effect.
Unlike the other women, this one had been partially eaten. The soft flesh of her abdomen was completely gone and most of the thigh muscles. Something with big, sharp teeth had gnawed on the bones exposed by the missing flesh.
I stopped about five feet from the body and smelled. A lot of people had been roaming around the area, and if I hadnt been looking for it, I wouldnt have scented the same magic Id detected at the other site. Magic, deaththe bare remnants of the pain and fear that had also been present with the other bodies. Over it all hung a pall of burnt grass and earth. I didnt smell any kind of volatile compound, though maybe the circle had been burned a few days earlier. Some thingslike alcoholevaporate pretty fast.
I think its the same killer, I said.
We dont get so many murders around hereespecially where the victims are partially eatenthat anyone is going to argue with you, said Willis. But what are you basing that on?
The smell of magic is the sameand he killed her the same way he took out one of the horses, I told him. You see enough hunts, you pay attention to how prey is killed. He tore out the throat and ate it before disemboweling her, just like he did the horse. A lot of predators develop a favorite style of kill.
I took a step closer, and the slight change in angle highlighted the ground. Paw prints, canid and huge, dug into the barren earth. They were bigger than my hand when I set it beside them. A timber wolfs paw prints would have been bigger, toobut these were a lot bigger than any timber wolfs.
Not werewolf, I said with a relieved sigh. Werewolves have retractable claws that dont dig into the dirt unless they are runningalmost like a cougars. These have claw marks like any other canid.
Werewolves have retractable claws? asked the officer whod been still at the scene when we came here. Im forensics; why didnt anyone ever tell me that? I cant look for werewolves if I know squat about them. Do you have a werewolf who will let me examine him for a while? The last question was directed at me.
Youll have to ask Adam, I told her. Who would have to ask Bran, which I didnt tell her.
So what was it? Most of the cops had stayed at the other site, but a couple of others had followed Willis, Tony, and me. It was one of those who asked.
I dont know, I told him.
I knelt beside the body and put my nose down as close to the dead woman as I could get. She had been here longer and was beginning to rot. I sorted through odors as quickly as I could.
Between the rot and the burnt smell, it was difficult.
I sat up. I definitely smell a canid, though not coyote, wolf, werewolf, or any dog Ive smelled. I looked at Tony. Id like to be more help. Ill recognize the way our killer smells if I run into it again. If you want, we can have some of the werewolves take a shot at identifying it.
We are taking her word that it isnt a werewolf? asked Willis, disbelief in his voice. The wife of the Alpha?
Yes, said Tony. Were taking her wordbut well let forensics double-check. Would a werewolf have a better chance of identifying it than you, Mercy?
My nose was as good as most werewolves, better than some. But Samuel was very old, and hed run into a lot of things over the centuries. He was not a member of the pack, but hed come look if theyd let him.
I dont think that would be a good idea, said Willis before I could express an opinion. If this isnt a werewolf, then we dont want to bring any in to confuse the issue. Having Ms. Hauptman here is pushing it as it is.
Willis dusted off his hands and looked at me thoughtfully. This was not a werewolf?
No, I said.
He pursed his mouth. Damned if I dont believe you. Whatever did this isnt human.
Something supernatural, Tony said.
I nodded. I dont know how to prove it, without anyone being able to smell this magic.
Fae, then, said one of the other cops. Ive read all the fairy tales. The black dog is the most common of the shapes they take. Meet a black dog at the crossing of two roads or hear the call of the Gabriel Hounds, and you are sure to die.
I shook my head. Doesnt smell like faeand they have all retreated to the reservation, anyway.
There are other things out there besides werewolves and fae? asked Willis.
I got to my feet and dusted the dirt off my jeans before I answered him. What do you think? I asked.
He frowned unhappily.
I nodded. Thats what I think, too. Ive never come across whatever did this. But judging from the tracks and the amount of meat he ate in a very short timewhatever this is, it is bigger than any werewolf Ive been around. That means more than three hundred pounds.
On the way over, you just explained to me that you didnt think it was a good thing to tell people that there were other things out there besides werewolves and fae, Tony commented.
I waved my hand toward the crowd of police officers by the copse of trees. If something is out there doing this, then I think that its too late to worry about what is safe for the public to believe in. This I dont know what this is. Finding out and stopping it is more important to public safety than trying to not make them paranoid.
Willis shook his head and looked at Tony. The brass is going to want this to be werewolves. He turned to me. Fair warning. They are going to want to talk to your husband. Probably not for a few days, until the initial lab reports get back to us, but soon.
Is this really a conversation for dinner?
Christy interrupted me in the middle of explaining what Id been doing this afternoon. There was an odd pause because by interrupting me, shed made it clear that she felt comfortable correcting me. If wed both been werewolves, Id have been forced to make her back downand then her supporters would have stepped in to defend her.
That I wasnt a werewolf gave me some leeway of behavior, but not much.
We were eating formally again, as we had been since Christy had moved in. Four werewolves, Adam, Jesse, Christy, and I meant eight people, which was, to give her credit, too many people for the kitchen table. Eating in the dining room with Christy cooking meant bouquets cut and arranged from the garden, good china, and cloth napkins folded into cute hatlike things or flowers.
The tablecloth tonight had been hurriedly purchased (Jesse had been sent out to the store earlier) because Christys favorite tablecloth, unearthed from the linen closet, had a stain on itdiscovered just as I came in from work. She hadnt looked at me, but the sad note in her voice had Auriele glaring at me and a few reproachful looks from everyone else, including Jesse. The other tablecloths were dirty, and there was no way we could eat at a table without a tablecloth.
I had not said a number of thingsone of which was, if it was such a favorite of hers, then why hadnt she taken it with her? Another unsaid comment was that if Id known her grandmother had given it to her on her wedding day, I would have ripped it into shreds and used a paper tablecloth before Id put it on the table for last Thanksgiving. Instead of saying anything, Id ignored the whole dramatic show and gone upstairs to change my clothes from work, leaving Adam to listen to Christy try to decide if there was any way to salvage her grandmothers tablecloth.
It had taken a pep talk with the mirror to get myself out of the bedroom and downstairs to eat with everyone else. Dinner had been served, the pack gossiped over, then Darryl asked me about the kill site the police had taken me to. Id briefed Adam over the phone, but there hadnt been time to really hash the matter out.
I mean, Mercy, Christy said, as if she hadnt noticed the rise in tension when she interrupted me, why dont we hold off talk of dead bodies until after people are done with the food? I spent too long making this for it to go to waste.
For tonights dinner, Christy had made lasagna (from scratch, including the noodles), and Id been shuffling it around on my plate because knowing that shed made the food made me not want to eat it. That it was pretty and smelled good wasnt as much of an incentive to consuming it as Id have thought it would be.
Its okay, Mom, said Jesse with forced cheer, trying to defuse the situation. Dinner is kind of when everything gets ironed out. Sometimes its hard to get everyone in the same room afterward.
Ben, one of the four werewolf guards for the night, ate a big bite, swallowed, and said in a prissier-than-usual version of his British accent, Mercy, when you say it gnawed on the bones, was it trying to get at the marrow or just cleaning its teeth?
Ben, snarled Auriele. Didnt you hear Christy?
Six months ago, Ben would have backed down. Auriele outranked him, both as Darryls mate and as herself. But hed changed, grown stronger, so he just ate another bite and raised an eyebrow at me. Silentbut not very subservient.
Playing, I think, I said to attract Aurieles ire. She wouldnt attack meand in her usual mode of Christys protector, she might do something to Ben. Id decided the best way to deal with Christys interruption was to ignore her. The bones werent cracked, just chewed on. At least on the body I got close to. No cracking means no marrow. And if it was just trying to clean its teeth, it would have chewed harder.
I ate a bite of salad. It smelled like Christy because shed washed the romaine herself. Swallowing it was an effort. Trying not to look like I was choking was an even bigger effort.
Auriele opened her mouth, but Darryl put his hand on top of hers, and she closed her lips without speaking, but not without giving him a hurt look.
Adams hand touched my shoulder and suddenly I could swallow again. I had allies here, and Adam had my back.
The important thing, he said, is that we are careful. I dont want any wolf to go out running alone until we know what made those kills.
Darryl nodded. Ill see that word gets around.
Good, Adam said. Ive got people out looking for Gary Laughingdog. Hopefully, well find him before the police door hell find you, Mercy.
Im pretty sure he wanted to talk to me, I told him. If so, hell find me before anyone finds him. I wouldnt worry too much about the police finding him since hes running around as a coyote.
Did you check if Bran had any insights into what it was that killed all those people? Darryl asked.
Adam ate another bite of lasagna, paused to enjoy it, then gave me a slightly guilty look. I decided not to tell him it was okay if he liked Christys food. It was entirely understandable, but it was not okay, and I wouldnt lie to him. I looked away.
To Darryl, Adam said, I called Bran. Without checking out the site himself, Bran wasnt able to pinpoint what could have done it. Taking the fae out of the picture leaves us with not much. Might even be a native creature. Bran said he once encountered a wendigo, and he believes that it was physically capable of killing this way. They smell oddly of magic, the way Mercy described them. But he didnt think that it would have left canid paw printsor left anything except bare bones. Their curse is that they hunger in a way that cannot ever be satisfied. Also, they tend to haunt the mountain passes, not the open shrub steppe. Hes having Charles do a little more research for us.
Charles who? asked Christy.
Brans son, I told her, trying very hard not to be condescending and not succeeding. Maybe because I didnt try that hard. Shed been Adams wife for over a decade, and she hadnt bothered to learn anything if she didnt know about the Marrok and his sons. Hes half-IndianSalishand he has some people who will talk to him about things that are culturally sensitivesacred things or stories they dont want prettied up with all the original flavor lost so that it can be more effectively marketed as a genuine Native American story.
Have you asked Ariana? Darryl was getting good at ignoring the almost battle between Christy and me and, at the same time, reducing the tension by changing the subject. I would never have thought Darryl would be such an adroit politician.
No, said Adam. Not until weve looked at everything else. Ill call Marsilia as soon as were done here, but I dont expect her to have much for us. She might owe Mercy and need the pack to keep her seethe safe until she gets some more vampires with power here, but she doesnt like us very much.
Ben snorted. You can say that again.
Why not ask this Ariana? asked Christy.