“They try,” I said calmly, hoping a clinical tone would help steady him.“But someone was interrupted in this case.The eye is still here.”
“Maybe whoever it was heard us coming?”Dimas asked, ignoring the fact that we weren’t the first Corps on site.But he wasn’t looking at me.He was looking at Aki, who Kimmie had her arm around.“That old bus rattles and coughs like it’s on its last tire.”
“Only thing that’ll fit all of you,” Caleb said, still scowling at the body.It hadn’t offered up any more secrets, which meant a lot of work ahead to identify him.
“There’s, like, seven of us, if you count you two,” Dimas said, talking about whatever-the-hell to give Aki a chance to recover.“We’d fit in an SUV.A black one would look badass!”
“Yes, because the Corps’ priority is looking badass.”
“Well, most of them do, and I haven’t seen anybody else slumming around in something like that—”
“What did you expect?”Caleb asked.“An Aston-Martin?”
Dimas just looked confused, probably because that era of James Bond was before his time.“Anything would be better than that!”
“And if we have to drag perps back with us?”
“What perps?We’re supposed to be this big, bad force of magical powerhouses, but all we’ve done so far is run up and down mountains and practice shielding.Unless Lia is taking on an army all by herself, and she didn’t even want us there!The Corps is never going to give us our freedom at this rate!”
“So you want to chase down perps?”A black eyebrow raised.
“Not right now!But we’ve been here a month and haven’t even touched a gun—”
“And aren’t going to today,” Caleb said, his eyes back on the corpse.I knew why he was wasting time bantering with Dimas.He didn’t want to admit the problem that was literally staring us in the face.
Neither did I, but it had to be said.
“Call it in,” I told him.
“Call what in?”my stubborn partner asked.
“You know damned well what.The fact that a Reaper got his hands on some of Jenkins’ joy juice and is now selling Relic upgrades.”
Chapter Twenty-One
My partner didn’t like that conclusion.My partner thought that conclusion was ass.As he explained at length and in terms he did not normally use in front of the kids.
I didn’t bother arguing with him because I didn’t like this any better than he did.Relics were as scary as hell and had almost destroyed not only the Clan Council, but the leaders of most of the major clans on Earth barely a month ago.I did not want to hear that name ever again.
And yet here I was, looking at one of them.
And then I acquired another couple of problems.Sophie and Jen had just come in, and I guessed they hadn’t found anything outside, as Sophie didn’t offer any information before pushing in front of me, her nose twitching.And then bared her teeth when I abruptly pulled her back, which was less weird than it sounds, as she was a Were, too, although not a wolf.
She was something far more unusual, being a Nagual, a shifter who can only transform at night, into a jaguar.The Corps did not like Naguals—mostly because of that, I thought, as a ghostly snout poked itself out past Sophie’s freckle-strewn nose.And started sniffing around.
All shifters were stronger, faster, and had more acute senses than their human counterparts, but that didn’t worry the Corps.They had spells that could compensate for all of the above and then some, rendering them at least a match for any misbehaving Were.Except for that one.
The rumor was that Naguals could separate their jaguar essence from their human one, sending the latter out into the world to bring back information or prey.They were also said to be able to walk in the spirit world, to see things invisible to human eyes, and to invade people’s dreams.There were even stories of Naguals killing victims while their human half was hundreds of miles away, eating pizza with witnesses when the crime happened.
No one knew which, if any, of the stories were true, because there were almost no Naguals left.And there was going to be one less shortly if the body on the floor was booby-trapped.I hadn’t tripped anything, but I’d been careful and knew what to avoid, unlike a certain overly eager redhead.
“Observation only,” I reminded her, and saw her eyes flash gold.
That happened when she was either irritated or her power was surging, with the vivid color overwriting the usual pansy blue.But today the beast’s eyes were also visible, and were spaced farther apart than her own, probably a testament to how large she would be when transformed.They freaked me out a little.
Hadn’t seen that before.
And the Nagual didn’t appear to like being touched.Too bad; I didn’t like interference in an investigation by inexperienced types who had been specifically told not to touch anything.My wolf didn’t like it, either, which was more of a problem since I had yet to get my own beast fully under control.
