According to the neighbors, the woman on the lawn was Vera Brannick, and she was usually very nice. Not tonight.
“She bit me!” Franklin said as he recoiled. He shook his hand, then examined the bite mark. “Damn it. She broke the skin. I’m gonna need a shot or something. Fuck sake.”
Vera screamed and, as Bennett finally managed to get her feet unshackled, kicked.
“Get away! I want this!” she yelled as blood soaked through the pink teddy from the gouges on her stomach. She’d done them herself. “I want to know wild, feral love. I want him to come for me! He can’t resist.”
Marlow threw a blanket over her like she was an angry canary. She fought them as they tried to get her on her feet, so they just picked her up and hauled her over to the ambulance.
“She’s on something,” Bennett said. She stopped and pulled a cautious face, then spat a tooth out into her hand. “Shit.”
The paramedic plucked it out of the froth of bloody spit with gloved fingers and held it up to check it in the light.
“Came out in one piece,” he said. “I can insert it back in if you want?”
Bennett gave an exasperated look. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I always thought I could rock a gap tooth.”
The paramedic looked at her. Behind him, his partner had Vera strapped down to the stretcher and had slid a needle into her arm. Her screams slid away to dozy mumbles.
“Put it back in,” Bennett said, the words enunciated. “You idiot.”
He absorbed the insult with a shrug and got her to perch on the back of the ambulance and tilt her head back.
“Her neighbor says she was out there nearly an hour,” Marlow said. “I can’t believe she lasted that long.”
Franklin snorted. “You ever see a wild animal eat something rabid? No way. They give that crazy, frothing squirrel a wide berth. I figure it was the same with her. Any wolf that came by could smell the bad idea on her.” He held his hand up and flapped it toward the paramedics. “I guess no one cares about my hand, huh? Just let it fall off, yeah?”
The paramedic glanced over his shoulder. “Put antiseptic on it.”
Bennett growled something at him around the fingers in her mouth, and he looked back down at her. He’d just wiggled the tooth back in when the radios crackled again.
“Dispatch to Charlie-forty, we have an incident at an address you flagged,” Dispatch said. “A Victor Clemons. Do you want to respond?”
Shit. That was all he needed. Marlow cracked his neck to loosen the muscles and glanced over at Bennett.
“Dispatch,” he said. “We’re taking five to get Bennett patched up—”
“Take it,” Bennett said as she pushed the paramedic’s hand away from her mouth. “I’ll catch a ride with another squad once they’ve splinted this.”
The spot between Marlow’s shoulder blades itched as he tried to work out why Bennett would give him a chance to look good in front of their superiors. She wanted the promotion—either for the usual reasons people wanted to be promoted, or because it would make it easier to run a corrupt protection racket with less oversight—and she’d never played fair before. Maybe this had been planned?
He hesitated. Dispatch crackled an impatient request for an answer.
“Do it,” Bennett said. She wiped blood off her lower lip and gave him an annoyed look. “Since when do I need babysitting. Go. Make sure no one is getting killed.”
That was his job.
“On our way,” he said as he depressed the button on the radio. “Two-man team, Bennett’s trailing.”
Victor Clemons was a prudent man where full moon safety was concerned. Surveillance cameras, heavy-duty shutters, reinforcements to the walls and ceiling. His door was open.
Marlow signaled to Franklin to go around the back while he edged up onto the porch and checked the hall around the corner of the door. Thick gouges were ripped out of the plaster on the wall, dug down into the drywall beneath, and the wooden flooring was splintered and torn up. The flat, metallic scent of blood hung on the air.
“Victor?” Marlow said, voice pitched to carry but not too far. He unclipped the flashlight from his belt and flicked it on to illuminate the dimly lit space. “Are you still in there?”
He edged around the door and down the hall, one hand on the butt of his gun. The stairs were clear. Living room too. The TV was smashed and the couch torn to shreds, but no sign of blood or bodies.
The house felt empty. All Marlow could hear as he made his way steadily down the hall was his own footsteps and the faint controlled sound of his breathing.
