The rest of us worked the outer perimeter, finding tracks in the melting snow. But there was little to say how all the primaries during the crime had arrived at the location or left it. Even the vampire tracks appeared in the woods at the edge of the parking lot and then seemed to disappear into nowhere. And with the snow melting, I feared that scents and prints would trickle away faster than we could keep up.
But FireWind was smart. After he had been over the entire site and trotted into the woods, all around the parking lot, and all around every building near us, he trotted up to me. Irritated, he bopped me on the hip, shook his head at me, showed me his teeth, and made noises that sounded as if he had stomach cramps. “If you need to poo, go poo in the woods,” I said.
He chuffed at me in a sound that was full of irritation, and loped to LaFleur.
The wolf repeated the irritated sound and jogged back to the area of the kill scene, then raced and leaped into an open dumpster. He didn’t stay inside long enough to sniff it out. He just leaped back out of the dumpster, landed, and bounced up and down on his front paws.
“Soundboard?” Rick asked.
Aya chuffed hisyes.
Rick said to the rest of us, “Leann and I ordered a soundboard off an online store. PsyLED refused to budget for it, so we used personal funds. We recorded words and alphabet for it last night.”
We…So many uses ofwe. AndLeann, not Rettell. I turned my head to hide my smile.
Rick and Rettell got a soundboard out of her government car’s trunk and unrolled it on the cracked pavement.
The uniformed woman said, “It’s a one-of-a-kind button and word soundboard, created for intelligent creatures—were-creatures—to talk to the human-shaped.” Across the top were three rows of the alphabet in QWERTY formation for words that had to be spelled out. Across the bottom were buttons for complete words, punctuation, and emotional context.
FireWind familiarized himself with the soundboard and tapped out, “Vampires up. Landed here.” The recorded words were vaguely Rick-like, but metallic too, as if there had been some kind of filter on it.
FireWind walked to the dumpster and tapped it with a paw, then looked up at the building beside us, to which I had paid no attention. It was an empty but well-kept warehouse.
FireWind returned and tapped, “In.”
“They were inside the warehouse?” I asked.
FireWind tapped, “Yes.”
“Are they there now?” Occam asked, glancing at me, probably all worried that I might be in danger. He was smart enough not to say so.
FireWind tapped, “No.”
“They had a vehicle?” LaFleur asked.
“Yes,” the board’s pseudohuman voice said.
“Okay. Let’s get a warrant and go inside to see what might be still there,” Rick said.
* * *
We got a warrant fast. The snow had kept crime down and the judge was available to issue it almost instantly. As there was no owner around to complain, and the paper warrant was on the way via marked unit running lights and sirens, FireWind had T. Laine break the chain, and the door swung wide. The building had electricity, lights on in the entry.
After telling us he would sniff out the place first, we were prepared when the black wolf went in, sniffing for weapons, blood, hostages, vampires, explosives, magic, and rodents. That last one he hadn’t actually sounded out on the keyboard, and was just me thinking. I didn’t speak the word aloud, but I wore a grin when I entered the building, weapon drawn, heading right, in front of Occam, where we cleared offices with nofurniture, no electronics, in a building that had minimal heat and less insulation in the metal walls.
Once the smaller rooms and functional bathrooms were cleared, we joined the others in the large area to the rear. There was nothing in the great open space but mattresses on the floor, and cages.
Eight cages. All were empty. Most had bowls on the floor and blankets in the back, larger than but similar to the cage PsyLED had procured for thegwyllgi, who were on their way to Montana. Four of the cages had blood on the bars and mesh sides; urine and feces were puddled on the floors.
Two cages were encircled by quartz crystals, tied onto the heavy-duty wire with string, like bizarre Christmas decorations. One cage had broken crystals, the other had fully intact crystals. All the cages were large enough for humans to stand up inside, and when he saw them, LaFleur said a word that might have been a curse. Or a prayer. “Scion cages,” he said. “Was Soul kept in one?” he asked FireWind.
The boss-boss sniffed around both cages with crystals and pawed the one with the broken crystals.
I stared at the cage with its dangling broken crystals, jagged edges sharp as scalpels. Each of the quartz crystals had a space inside for an arcenciel. I could almostseeSoul breaking crystals meant to imprison her.
From a corner, FireWind yipped, tearing my attention away. The wolf was staring at a ladder that went up into the metal roof supports. At the top was a small door, cracked open to the cold daylight outside. He yipped again as Occam reached him.
“Is this how the boys got away? Up the ladder and out the small door there?”
