“We’re here on friendly terms. Hopefully, they let us in.” I rolled down the window, adopting the friendliest expression I could muster for a man who reeked of cat. “Hey, there. How’s it going?”
I didn’t think it was possible for a human to hiss, but hiss he did. “Seriously? You know perfectly fucking well that it’s shit. One of our own is missing, and you moon chasers are the ones who took him!”
Okay, so we’re not off to a good start.
I held up both hands in a peacekeeping gesture. “I’m Valens Farkas, second of the Hungarian pack. You might have heard that our new Alpha is on the Interspecies Governing Council? No? Okay, well, he is. And as your closest rep, he wanted to send us personally to see if we could find out anything about Leon’s disappearance.”
Surprisingly, that seemed to knock his anger down a notch. He took a large step back from the window and gestured one of the other males over.
They conferred quietly for a moment, and then he came back.
“Apologies. I assumed you were with those cocksucker Caelestis wolves. We forget sometimes how many packs there are. If you’re here on official business”—he took a long, overdrawn look at Elodie that made me want to snap right back at him—“then we’ll let you in.”
“We are. My colleague actually hails from the Maiden’s Enclave. They’re trained in special cases like this.”
The lynx’s eyebrows went up incredulously. “Damn. We’ve been getting stonewalled for almost two weeks by the council. I’m glad to see us giving them hell has finally turned into something. The IGC insisted he wasn’t kidnapped, but there were obvious signs of foul play. Follow the driveway about another mile. I’ll radio down for someone to meet you and take you to Leon’s place.”
“Thank you…?”
“Larson.”
“Thank you, Larson.”
“Thank you for giving a shit. Lynxes aren’t important enough to get any help most of the time.” He waved me through, lifting his radio as he turned his back on us.
“Well… that was an interesting greeting,” Elodie said, drumming her fingers on the armrest. “Lynxes aren’t the most populous of the cat species, but they are entitled to equal representation under the IGC. I wonder why they would have ruled it not a kidnapping.”
“I don’t know, but I think we’re about to find out.” The tires ground over the gravel of the parking lot, where a heavily tattooed, blonde female lynx in camouflage pants waited for us. She was visibly pissed, but remained silent as she watched us get out of the car. I waited a beat for Elodie to settle her blade over her shoulder before turning to introduce myself.
“Hello, I’m?—”
“I don’t care. You reek like wet dog, and the sooner you take your canine asses out of here, the better. This way.”
She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving us to follow or not. She clearly didn’t give a fuck.
Elodie and I exchanged a loaded look, but followed quickly. Official business or not, two wolves wandering unsupervised in a lynx clowder’s territory would end in bloodshed. Not mine or Elodie’s, but I still wanted to avoid it.
We walked deep into the forest, following a small footpath that could have been made by a deer as well as a human. I didn’t mind it, besides the now-fading stench of cat piss. Territory marking was less common among wolves, but many of the smaller apex predator species still acted on those instincts.
Our angry guide stopped so suddenly, I would have run into her back were it not for my canine reflexes.
Thirty yards away stood a humble cottage, tucked into a small clearing and surrounded by trees. It might have been paradise if it hadn’t been torched.
“Shit,” Elodie swore off to my side, clearly coming to the same conclusion I had. We weren’t going to find any evidence of use if the whole place had been burned.
“There were no bodies found inside?” I asked our guide, and her only response was a swift shake of the head.
“Okay. We’ll still look around, though I doubt we’ll find much given the fire damage.”
“Shocker,” she snapped. She tossed a piece of bubble gum into her mouth and looked down at her black-lacquered nails, sharpened to points like a cat’s claws.
“Okay, then. Ready to poke around?” I turned to Elodie, but she was already wandering toward the side of the cottage, instead of the front door. “Firecracker?”
“Shh,” she whispered, waving for me to be quiet as she continued around the side. She stopped in front of a glass window, shattered, presumably, from the fire. Silently, she continued around the small cottage, stopping at each of the four windows before returning to the first one.
I followed her in silence, not noticing anything more than broken glass.
But after a long moment, she turned and gestured me closer. “This is where they broke in.”
