The fragrance of fresh blood blossomed in the night air, and like the scent of a lover, it made me want things.Cravethings. But I pushed those primitive urges back. “Robyn—”
“It’s not me.” She pushed her way through the foliage at the edge of the path behind the carousel. “It’s—”
“Justusno!” The order rumbled from my throat with a depth and resonance no human could have produced. I lurched toward him, and my brother froze, his teeth still piercing Drew’s flesh, on either side of his trachea. “Let him go.”
Justus growled for a second. Drew’s breath hitched, his chest stilled in panic. Then my brother let him go and backed away.
Blood spurted from both sides of Drew’s neck onto the concrete.
“Shit!” Robyn rushed forward and pressed her hands against the wounds, trying to hold them closed. I pulled my shirt over my head and held it out to her, but when she reached up to take it, more blood poured onto the concrete.
Drew’s mouth opened, as if he wanted to say something.
“Don’t talk. You’re making it worse,” Robyn whispered, tears filling her eyes. But by then his gaze had lost focus.
Drew sucked in one more weak breath. Then he went still.
“Motherfucker!” I shouted, and Justus whined, cowering on the ground in the shadow of a carousel horse. Dimly, I realized that his posture was the instinctual reaction of a Pride member to his Alpha. Something he hadn’t needed to be taught.
If that instinct had kicked in a second earlier, Drew might still be alive. He might still be able to admit what he’d done in front of the council.
“We needed him,” I whispered as I sank onto the concrete, wishing I had something to wipe my bloody hands on.
“Justus will be enough,” Robyn insisted. “They’ll be able to smell Drew in his scent.”
“That won’t excuse what he did. We needed Drew to testify to manipulating him. To sending him pictures of Ivy and Leland, knowing what would happen. Without that, he’s just another rogue stray.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Robyn whispered. “But we need to clean this up and get out of here.”
She was right. “The Elephant Cafe.” I pointed with one bloody hand at the closed restaurant. “There might be bleach inside.”
Robyn stood and dropped my backpack at my feet. “I’m on it. Clean up your hands and put a shirt on.”
While she was gone, I dug carefully in my bag for a packet of antiseptic wipes, a must-have for any infant’s diaper bag and shifter’s supply pack. Justus watched me; his head cocked to one side.
“Don’t worry,” I said as I wiped blood from my hands and arms. “I’m going to take care of this. I’ll protect you. I’ll teach you.” If I’d done that in the first place, Drew could never have gotten to him.
It took most of the packet of wipes to get me clean enough that I could wear the spare shirt from my bag without getting blood on it. As I tugged the top into place, Robyn returned carrying a gallon of bleach and a roll of brown paper towels that could only have come from a public restroom.
By then, Drew had stopped bleeding, but there was a large pool of blood beneath him. I rolled him over, and while we listened for any sign of approaching company, we sopped up as much blood as we could with the paper towels, shoving them into my backpack with the used wet wipes for disposal—or incineration—later.
When we’d done as much as we could, we doused the blood stain with bleach. That wouldn’t erase any trace of blood, but it would destroy Drew’s DNA and prevent his death from exposing the existence of shifters.
“Okay, I’ll take these back and wipe down everything I touched.” Robyn held up what remained of the bleach and paper towels. “Then I’ll catch up with you.”
“We’ll wait here for you,” I said, but she shook her head firmly.
“You have a dead body and a giant cat. You need to get the hell out of here right now. I’ll meet you at the car.”
Unable to argue with her logic, I nodded and lifted Drew’s corpse. “Come on, Justus.”
Robyn headed for the Elephant Café, and my brother and I pressed on toward the exterior fence where we’d come in, hidden by foliage as much of the time as we could manage.
We could hear the party well before we got to it, and once we came to the herpetarium, it became clear why: the event had spilled outdoors.
“Fuck,” I whispered, eyeing several dozen students holding beer bottles and cocktails in plastic light-up cups. Most of the girls wore cheap plastic headbands with panda or tiger ears on their heads, and several of the guys carried an inflatable giraffe or gorilla under their arms. And as far as I could tell, every single one of them was wasted.
Unfortunately, they were also between us and the section of fence I’d parked Spencer’s car behind.
