Cameron understood. Waiting could drive a man out of his head. “All right. What about the two in the basement? We can’t just leave them here.”
“I’ll call Peter to come watch over them.” Noah gave a melancholy smile. “I think he’d like to feel useful again. It’s been a rough few months.”
Cameron pursed his lips. “It’s not going to rub salt in a wound for him to watch over two of Regina’s victims, is it?”
“I think he’ll look at it as trying to help fix what he didn’t see was happening.” Noah dug his phone out of his pocket. “Besides, I trust him to take good care of them. He and Kayla are tight these days. It’ll make me feel better about leaving them here.”
“Whatever works, boss.” Cameron touched the Messaging icon on his screen, then called up a new message.
Hmph. I don’t have a picture for Sonja’s contact portrait. Still, he could edit the information, from the cold Sonja Carter listing to Sunny. -Have to take care of some business at the morgue. Turning over rocks with Noah after. Send me a picture?-
The response came back a few minutes later. -Stopping to grab a coffee, then headed out to Bonney Lake. Be careful.- With it came a picture. Vaguely, he noted she was stopped at an intersection, so he wouldn’t have to scold her for taking a picture while driving. After that, he only had eyes for her. Her wry little smirk as she looked over the rims of her sunglasses. The sunlight on her skin, the wisps of dark hair that had escaped her ponytail around her face. Charlie had leaned over her shoulder to get in the shot.
“Cameron?”
“Hm?” Cameron looked away from the phone. “Yeah, boss?”
Noah made a vague gesture that encircled his mouth. “What’s with the stupid little smile you’re wearing?”
Cameron forced the corners of his lips down. “I’m not.”
“You so fucking are. Carter?”
“Shut the fuck up, man. You call Peter?”
“Texted him. He’s on the way. So, about that stupid smile...”
“I’m going to go take a piss.” Cameron stood up with a grumble. He could set the picture as Sonja’s contact portrait and smile his stupid little smile in the privacy of the bathroom.
If not for the tiny, overgrown sign, Cameron would never have known the place for a medical examiner’s facility. It looked more like an older storage unit on a forgotten corner of city land than a place to keep the uninvestigated dead. I guess that’s the point, he thought, though a niggle of unease remained.
Noah felt it, too. “This is an odd place.”
“I agree. But I’m not sure what else we expected. The guy hides bodies that died under strange circumstances. Where else would he do it but in an odd place?” Cameron didn’t buy his own rationalization. “I hate this business. Let’s get the paper signed and get the hell out of here.”
They got out of the car and headed inside. The interior didn’t impress Cameron any more than the exterior had. Once-white paint had faded to a tired cream shade where it hadn’t flecked off the wall. Scuffed tile might have come out of a Seventies home improvement store’s back catalog. No one waited for them in the rudimentary reception area. A screensaver swirled colors over the monitor of the computer on the desk, and a pen lay across the pages of an open file. The aroma of coffee drifted up from a lidded paper cup near the file.
Cameron’s hairs prickled up on the back of his neck. A glance over at his friend said Noah had much the same reaction. The energy of the entire city felt off after the ritual the night before, but the repellant sense of wrongness gathered here set his nerves on edge.
Cameron cleared his throat. “Hello?”
“In the back!” the voice from the phone called out.
The wolves waited for further instructions, but none came. Cameron frowned. “Can you bring the papers out here for me to sign?”
“I have someone on the table. Come on back. The papers are on my desk.”
Great. Autopsy in progress. As if I didn’t see enough of people’s insides last night. “You sure?”
“I don’t have all day.”
Cameron exchanged glances with Noah. Both men headed down the gloomy hallway toward the slender patch of light thrown from an open doorway.
The room looked enough like what Cameron had seen on various television crime dramas to feel familiar. A pair of steel tables held sheet-covered occupants in the windowless examination room. Lights loomed near the tables to provide illumination for the investigations, and scales hung nearby for weighing internal organs. He took note of a doorway that opened into a darkened room off one wall, one with rows of steel doors he recognized as corpse storage. Death lingered in the air, masked but not eradicated by industrial-strength disinfectants. Cameron would have sworn he scented another, more dangerous smell, but the chemicals fouled his nose too much to identify it.
A shape stepped out of the darkened room. Cameron repressed the fur threatening to break out along his hands and arms as he identified the form as human. He looked ordinary enough, a dark-haired man in blue scrubs who wore a puffy surgical hat over his hair. When he saw the pair of them, he licked his lips with a nervous flick of his tongue. “Cameron Roswell? You brought a friend?”
“He drove.” Cameron narrowed his eyes. He could see the tension in the man’s jaw, the dilation of his pupils. “Where’s the paperwork I need to sign?”
“On my desk. Over here.” He indicated the wall between the examination tables and the storage room, diagonally across the room from the door the wolves stood in. A small, steel desk held a handful of papers. “I marked the lines you need to sign on. There’s a chair next to it your friend can sit in, if he wants.”
Noah glanced from Cameron to the medical examiner. “I want to see the bodies, actually. You can show me.”
“I don’t think that’s a good—”
“I don’t think that’s a request.” Noah’s voice hardened. “Show me the bodies while Cameron signs the papers. I want to verify you moved them here.”
The coroner fidgeted with the face mask in his hands. “All right. They’re in the drawers in the other room. Follow me.”
Noah stalked after the coroner. His elongated nails and the grey fur on the backs of his hands didn’t escape Cameron.
Reluctantly, he crossed the room toward the desk. The sooner he got the paperwork signed, the sooner the innocent college kid who’d gotten caught up in this mess could go home for a final winter break. And the sooner we can get the hell out of here. As he passed the second table, the one furthest from the door, the scent of rot grabbed him.
So did the body beneath the sheet.
Already keyed up by adrenaline and paranoia, Cameron spun around with a snarl. The hand gripping his arm chilled him with the cold of its skin. White material flew upward as a vampire burst out from beneath the sheet. Black veins stood out from beneath pale skin in a horrible road map of corruption. Vile, blackish saliva dripped down its fangs as it hissed and lunged.
Cameron let his wolf take over. Power surged through him. He could feel the fur cover him, and today it felt like armor against the horrible blackness coursing through the vampire’s body. The power gave him mass, height, until he towered over the biter. Half-man, half-wolf, all righteous anger, he swiped a taloned hand at the vampire.
It danced back with preternatural speed to crouch on the table. Higher ground gained, it lunged again. Cameron caught it in the air. Fangs sunk into his shoulder. Black saliva burned like acid against his skin, but he ignored the pain. He wrapped his hand around the back of the thing’s neck to pull it off like a scrawny, toothy tick. Fire flared in Cameron’s chest, white hot, then spread out through his limbs with a burn that left energy in its wake. The vampire’s claws tore at Cameron’s forearm as the biter contorted to defend itself. Blood ran down the werewolf’s arm, first black, then clean red.
Cameron threw the vampire across the room to crash into the wall.
The enforcer had hardly a moment to notice the emptiness of the o
ther exam table before a second weight collided with his back. Cameron bunched his legs and threw himself backwards toward the desk and wall. Fangs sank into his neck just before the impact with the masonry. The enforcer could hear the satisfying crunch of bones and weak groan as his attacker found itself between a wall and a werewolf.
From the other room, Cameron heard Noah snarl. Metal shrilled with strain, then rang with a dull but audible clang! as something struck it. Then Cameron had his own problems to worry about. He lunged forward hard to dump the vampire off his back and onto the floor. This one had the same black veining as the first. Cameron grabbed the office chair from where it had tipped over next to the desk and used it like a mace. The seat hit the vampire in face. Black blood spattered across the base of the examination table. One arm from the chair sailed into a scale and broke the dial before both fell to the floor.
The vampire in front of Cameron rolled to the side and scurried on all fours through the gap beneath the head of the table. Its partner bounded over the top with an agility Cameron hadn’t seen before. He brought the chair up, hard and fast, to catch the vampire in the seat. Using the creature’s own momentum, Cameron drove both chair and vampire toward the wall behind them.
Chair parts flew in all directions. The pole that connected the seat cushion to the chair’s wheeled base was more resilient. It continued up as Cameron drove it, through the torn cushion and into the vampire’s sternum.
The vampire screamed. It hung upside-down from the wall, flailing, bleeding corrupted blood over the paperwork on the desk where the chair base pinned it into the brick. Cameron drove the second arm of the chair through its heart just to stop the shrieking.
A shadow wolf flew out from the storage room. Noah strode out after it, the metal door from a corpse cooler in one clawed hand. It had a significant dent in the surface which bore vague resemblance to a wolf’s head. Noah had taken his half shape, too, and his lupine muzzle curled up in a contemptuous snarl.
The shadow wolf recovered quickly. She came up with a growl. “Kill the smaller one fast.”
The still-free vampire threw itself against the exam table. It groaned and tore suddenly free of its moorings on the floor. Cameron caught it to throw it back, but he was too slow. The vampire had already lunged for the alpha.
Noah caught it on the metal door, like a knight with a buckler. But the shadow wolf threw herself forward, too, to take Noah out at the knees. He fell back with a grunt. The vampire swarmed over the door shield with a terrifying, single-minded drive to reach the alpha’s throat. It left deep scores along Noah’s biceps and chest, lacerations that oozed black blood at too slow a rate.
Feral power threatened to consume Cameron. His wolf threatened to lose itself in the frenzy of power that burned through him, wild and untamed. It burned hotter than the brightest fire, a berserker rage of terrible intensity, but the shadows behind the flames scared him. Control kept a wolf from harming others who didn’t deserve it. From hurting those they loved. He wrestled the inner beast into line. Not now. Don’t lose it now. We have to help Noah. Keep your head.
Back in control, Cameron dove in. He grabbed the vampire by the skull, furred and clawed hand large enough to envelope the entire back of the biter’s head. Claws burrowed into the vampire’s skull for a better grip. Black blood oozed into the gaps beneath Cameron’s nails, cold and revolting and foul. He lifted the vampire up over his head. Then Cameron drove hand and vampire down with all his weight into the floor.
Blood and bone fragments spattered outward to stain the tile. Cameron lifted the remaining mass up to smash it into the floor a second time. The skull had shattered too much for a third.
Noah threw the shadow wolf back with a powerful, two-legged kick. She crashed against a tray of autopsy instruments. Noah flung himself after his opponent. Both hands wrapped around the shadow wolf’s throat. They rolled together, struggling for dominance, until the shadow wolf came out on top. Unfortunately for her.
Cameron grabbed her by one arm. He felt the bone pop out of its socket with the force of his pull. The wolf yelped. Cameron smothered the sound by smashing the shadow wolf bodily against the nearest wall.
“Cameron!” Noah barked. “Hold!”
Without the force of the alpha’s control behind the order, Cameron could never have stopped. The wolf rode too high in him, with the anger and the smell of blood urging the beast’s instincts to kill all threats roaring in his mind. But he held. His muscles quivered with the effort required to only hold the shadow wolf against the wall, to not rend it limb from limb. A low growl escaped him.
Noah had picked himself up and taken his human shape again. He stalked over to stand next to Cameron. One hand reached up to wrap around her throat. “Shift,” he snarled.
The shadow wolf sneered.
Power prickled through the air. “I said shift,” Noah demanded.
Cameron almost did. But the command wasn’t for him. The shadow wolf fought against the command of the alpha wolf, who held this territory by right of combat, and lost. Fur and mass melted away to leave a bloodied woman. She stared with open disdain.
“Where is Kiplinger?” Noah said.
A pained chuckle was the answer.
“Tell me where Kiplinger is!” Noah roared.
And the shadow wolf laughed. Blood bubbled out of her mouth to trickle down her chin.
Anger burned in Noah’s eyes. Cameron couldn’t tell if the alpha’s rage overcame him, or if Noah decided the shadow wolf would give them no information. His hand clenched to crush the shadow wolf’s trachea. Cameron let the body drop to the floor.
Sepulchral quiet descended over the morgue. Noah stared down at the broken woman heaped against the wall. As the wolf receded from Cameron’s mind to leave better sense in its wake, the enforcer wondered what his alpha saw in the shadow wolf’s too-still form.
“Boss? You all right?” Cameron asked.
Noah didn’t move for a long moment. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I am.”
“We need to get someone to look you over.”
“We need to find Kiplinger. We need to end this.” At last, he turned away from the dead shadow wolf to face Cameron. “I can feel it now, Cam. What Kayla has felt all this time. The dark magic. Whatever got to the city’s witches... It’s in me, now.”
He gestured towards his torn shirt. It took a moment for Cameron to see the wounds against the dark material. Then he realized why.
The wounds had turned as black as the cloth.
Fury fogged Cameron’s memory of the fight. Only when he forced himself to think back did he remember the vampire clawing Noah open. He spun to look at the bodies he’d left behind, one impaled in the wall, the other on the floor.
Both bodies had disintegrated. Puddles of black ooze remained. They pulsed with a faint, nauseating rhythm. Cameron looked away.
Cold dread settled into his gut. “They infected you with it.”
“I don’t know how fast it moves.” Noah pulled off his shirt. The wounds stood out in stark, ugly gashes of darkness against his skin. He prodded at one. It did little more than seep a gelatinous glob of coagulated black blood. “But I don’t want to find out.”
“Me, either.” Fear for Noah turned into determination. Cameron looked down at his own wounds, fearing the worst.
Irritated lacerations bled red. He blinked. It didn’t infect me. Why?
Noah noticed, too. “Didn’t one bite you?”
“Yeah.” Cameron touched the two punctures on his shoulder. They complained as much as any other vampire bite he had taken over the years. I don’t understand. “Nevermind. Where’s the damn coroner?”
“I shoved him in one of the coolers so the shadow wolf couldn’t get him. And so he couldn’t run,” Noah admitted.
“Then let’s pull him out and get some fucking answers.” Cameron bent down to rifle through the shadow wolf’s jeans pockets. He came up with a cell phone.
No damn sense of digital security,
he thought, as he swiped past the lock screen. The time readout caught his attention first. “Hey, Noah? Isn’t the sun still up?”
“Should be. Why?” Noah called from the other room.
“Because those vampires should still be napping.”
A pause. “Fuck me. You’re right.”
“Someone’s up and changed the rules on us,” Cameron grumbled. “That’s not going to work for me. Gah.”
He startled as the phone vibrated in his hand. The home screen darkened to display a text message. An electric thrill shot through him when he saw the name on it.
Paul Kiplinger.
Cameron read the words with his heart hammering in his chest. -Have you killed the enforcer yet? That accursed woman is impatient. My head is on the line. I will not wait for you.-
So Kiplinger had something else planned, something they wanted Cameron out of the way for. Kiplinger and his new girlfriend? Guess he’s not long on mourning. So where the hell are you, asshole?
Kiplinger’s contact information didn’t include an address. Cameron eyed the shadow wolf’s corpse again. Kayla said Kiplinger kidnapped werewolves from all over to make into shadow wolves. I’ve never met this one. That means she isn’t local. They haven’t been in Tacoma long. She probably doesn’t know the area...
Cameron checked the first map app he found on the phone. The address to the morgue still sat in the input box. A helpful line displayed the progress from a previous destination to here.
A tight grin stretched Cameron’s lips. “Noah! Get your coroner out of the freezer. We’ve got to go.”
“Working on it. You find something?” A metal thump sounded from the other room, followed by a frightened squawk that sounded suspiciously like the medical examiner’s.
“Yeah. I think I found Paul Kiplinger.”
Chapter Eight
“He asked me to send him a picture, Charlie,” Sonja said to the dog as they drove.
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