“You think anormdid this?”
“Or somebody very, very careful.”
As strange as it sounded, I voted for the former because this perp hadn’t been careful.He’d had his victim almost get away and had to bury a hatchet in the poor bastard’s skull to prevent it.And then…
Well, I didn’t know what then, because the body wasn’t much of a body anymore.It was more of a stump, with only the torso and head still present.The limbs were missing, having been chopped off after death, leaving behind something that looked less like a man than a particularly gruesome Halloween decoration.
Damn.
“Let’s get this over with,” Caleb said, because we had to move the body to examine it any further.The amount of dirt, dust, and debris covering it made identification impossible until it was cleared away.The guys who had been in earlier had moved enough to make sure what it was, but hadn’t done more in order to leave a fairly undisturbed scene for us.
Have to remember to thank them, I thought dryly.
“Get back a few feet,” Caleb told the kids, right before his summoning spell jerked the corpse out from under, sending a cloud of dust billowing and making me glad for the mask.Until it cleared enough for me to see—
Well, shit.Because, along with all the other indignities this guy had suffered, he was missing most of the skin on the backside of his body, with only raw, red flesh remaining.I crouched down to pull a tuft of fur out of a smear of half-coagulated blood and felt my lips draw back from my teeth.
“Got something?”Caleb asked.
“Yeah.”The reason I had been assigned this particular job.
Sebastian, who was sick of leaving “justice” to the Clan Council, had recently agreed to a revolutionary joint Were/mage task force to investigate shifter crimes.That took some of the workload off the Corps and put new operatives in the field with a different skill set.On paper, it was a dream team, but in practice…
Well, we were still figuring that out.
But I imagined that the boys from this morning had been more than happy to find some bit of fur, allowing them to dump this monstrosity on us.It looked like our little task force had our first big assignment.Because sure, I absolutely had time for this right now!
“Lia?”Caleb prodded.
“Hunter,” I said, with the wolf in my voice, and heard him curse.
He wasn’t half as furious as I was.Hunters were the scourge of the Were world, taking us for our pelts, which could allow norms to Change with the right application of spells.The stolen hides normally went for huge sums, and now that the world was at war, the price had increased by a factor of ten.
But Hunters were mages and used spells to strip off the hides from their dangerous prey, yet there were no traces of magic here.
So what the hell?
And why dismemberment?Hunters were normally after hides, not trophies.And if thiswasa trophy hunter, why leave the head of the victim intact, which was the part that the sick bastards who hunted Weres for sport most valued, and which would give us the best chance of identifying the victim?
My wolf didn’t like this puzzle any better than the rest of me, having woken up and started prowling around my skull.I didn’t know why, as a body shouldn’t trouble a wolf, even a savaged one.But she wasn’t happy.
That made two of us, but I still had students to instruct.
“Another important secondary spell isSanguigen,” I said roughly, “which reconstructs a picture of a person from the DNA in their blood.It is often far more detailed than a simple reveal spell, and surprisingly accurate, showing not only the most likely hair and eye color but also approximate age, body composition, the presence of identifying factors such as freckles or baldness, and general health.It’s not as good as a photograph, but it’s better than relying solely on eyewitness testimony, and is invaluable in cases like this, where no witnesses were present.”
I stood up and backed off before casting it, to avoid the clots of blood suddenly flying up from the floor, goopy and half-solidified, like a gory fist.They shimmered and flashed in the air for a moment, going from shit-brown to a brilliant gold, before whipping about in a mad cyclone and coalescing…
Into something that was not a man.Or a Were, or anything else I’d expected in my wildest dreams.But that had my vague feeling of unease ramping up into nightmare fuel.
No.
No!
“Augghhh!”Kimmie gave a little shriek and stumbled back.
“Holy fuck!”Caleb swore.
“What the hell?”Dimas said roughly and looked at me, with the light of the spell gleaming on his face shield and making him look like an astronaut.A very pissed-off one.“What is that thing doing here?”
