* * *
Occam called it in to HQ, asking for marked cars to seal off the area.
I called it in directly to FireWind, saying, “Aya. I think we foundgwyllgitracks in the snow. The devil dogs appear to be being tracked by humans. Or maybe vampires. And the track line is melting. If you want in on this, in wolf form for tracking, you need to get here fast.”
FireWind was typing, the clackity keys not stopping as I spoke. They went silent and he said, “Address?”
I gave him the address in Kingston, near an assisted living facility.
“Is there a place I can shift?” As in, get naked and change forms in private.
“We can make something work,” I said.
After hanging up, I stared at the crime scene.
The site was bloody, the kid’s body torn apart. But not by dogs or wolves. By vampires. The skin had been scalded off his lower legs. Then he had been drank down, unhealed fang wounds torn through at the throat, groin, and shoulders. It wasn’t a feeding. It was an attack.
The boy’s arms and lower jaw had shifted form, into a reddish black devil dog. It looked as if he’d died in midshift.
There were devil dog tracks all around, most overlapping the human shoe prints. I had a bad feeling the young man had been tortured to death as a way to force him intogwyllgiform. And maybe as a way to call more of his kind to the scene.
I knew him. Gad Purdy. He had been one of Zeb’s best friends, along with Uriah, from the Lambert clan, which made him my cousin to one degree or another. Zeb had played with Gad, Uriah, Harmon Stubbins, and two boys from Colonel Jackson’s faction growing up, and though the friendships had been tested when social services had raided the compound and takenthe womenfolk away from the Jackson alliance, Zeb’s friendship with Uriah and Gad had survived.
The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and the Department of Human Services had been after the church for human trafficking and child endangerment, and everyone knew I had played a part in the government agencies descending on the church. I figured everyone still living on the compound had strong feelings about me and the role I played in the raids and the continuing legal oversight.
But Gad…He and Zeb had been close. I opened my tablet and looked at the names on the list of Lost Boys that Sam had sent, knowing what I’d see there. Uriah, Gad, and Harmon were among the most recent group of Lost Boys sent to live away from the church.
Uriah was the reason Zeb had run away, to be with his best friends.
How many of the church boys—young men—were devil dogs, created to be shape-shifting warriors, bred to fight and to kill? And what had Torquemada known or discovered about them? Had he discovered something in the Coda?
Overhead, in patches of blue sky, prisms of light danced and flickered. Arcenciels flying over the city. Even as I had the thought, an arcenciel darted down and hovered above the body, wings flapping, gusting a downdraft. Pearl. She hissed at me, somersaulted, flipped her tail, and disappeared.
* * *
FireWind appeared around the corner in human shape, dressed in jeans, his white dress shirt, and a PsyLED navy jacket, a comms system on his head, the mic at his mouth, a gobag on one shoulder. Comms were crackling in my earbuds with FireWind ordering up PsyCSI and connecting with Kingston PD and the state lab.
He walked straight to Occam and said, “Secure location to shift?”
Occam walked around the corner and up to a small notch in the warehouse wall that I hadn’t noticed. He turned his back to the notch, FireWind slipped into it, and Occam kept a lookout, glancing at me once to make sure I was okay. My cat-man, keeping watch over me. It wasn’t necessary, but I was learning to find his protectiveness kinda sweet.
Minutes passed. In the distance, police unit sirens wailed as local cops sped to the scene, running lights and sirens. I got out of my car, adjusted my jacket so my weapon, badge, and name tag could be seen.
A marked city unit pulled up and slid to a stop on the icy slush. I walked carefully across the melting ice as the skinwalker black wolf slid out of the notch, the gobag the man had carried, now around his neck, twined with his comms system. FireWind approached the body, walking into the breeze, sniffing.
I held up my ID for the officer. I pointed at the wolf and said, “He’s with us. Tracker dog.”
“Ain’t got no vest or leash,” the officer said.
“Don’t need one,” I said back.
The cop made a huffing sound of disbelief. Occam joined us, so I fell back. I heard him begin a soft-voiced conversation and I joined FireWind, watching as the boss-boss began a sniff-search.
The black wolf stopped on a patch of ice-free parking lot and studied the body. Sniffed high in the air and then dropped his nose and began to make large circles. Nose to the ground, he went off into a patch of trees, returned, went off a hundred feet or so toward the road. Came back.
Other law enforcement units arrived and took charge of sealing off the crime scene.
FireWind trotted to me, which I didn’t expect. I’d have expected him to go to Occam. The black wolf sat at my feet and looked up—not that far, as he was a huge wolf—into my face. He tapped the ground with a paw four times.
