Catastrophe

by Liz Schulte

I slept for a couple hours to help my body heal before I really gave the envelope Amos had left for me attention. There were eight known human cases, but he’d left a note inside that mentioned there were many more disappearances, so it was hard to say if any could have been this killer or typical vampire hunting. Given the vampire population in the area, it was very possible none of the disappearances were the loup-garou. And that was the problem with looking into the human cases, and probably why none of the other bounty hunters did it. It opened a can of worms. Too many species targeted humans, and we definitely couldn’t save them all. No one expected us to.

  While I didn’t have pictures, most of the crime scenes sounded about on par with the one scene I had been to: messy and chaotic. Basically, exactly what I would expect from the attack of a rage-filled man-beast. However, three of the scenes did mention that most of the body was gone and only pieces remained. That was promising. I also didn’t miss Dempsey’s name on all the reports. A voice in my mind pointed out more than once that if I were the killer, making sure I was investigating the crimes would be a great way to cover them up. He’d already admitted to killing his family—why not complete strangers too?

  However, his story was good and heartfelt. I believed him, cautiously. I had learned with Thomas that sometimes it was all too easy to miss what should have been obvious because I didn’t want to see the truth. Emotion had no part in bounty hunting or investigations. Despite how much pain he carried with him, Dempsey had to be a suspect in the killings—at least the human ones. While they weren’t my case officially, they were the closest thing to wolf attacks happening down here, so maybe it was part of Leilah’s test for me. Which meant I would find out everything I could about the loup-garou curse—for Leilah, of course, not Dempsey.

  There was a knock on my door. I glanced out the window. The sun was already coming up, so at least it wasn’t a vampire.

  “Femi,” Amos called from the other side. “Are you in there?”

  I let him in.

  His face was pale. “I looked for you all night. Where did you go? I thought you were coming to meet me here. I was worried that…” He looked away.

  “That I was chopped into bits like the other bounty hunters? Not likely.” I patted his shoulder. “Thanks for the files.”

  “So what happened?” he asked.

  “I was delayed.” The council didn’t need to know about the vampires, not until I heard back from Sy. There were simply too many coincidences to trust anyone else. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  He frowned, but nodded. “You all right, then?”

  I gave him a questioning look. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He looked past me to the human cases strewn over my floor with the paranormal cases. “I still don’t understand what the human cases will tell you,” he said. “They appear to be completely different.”

  “Mostly,” I said, “but there is something off about them too. Why does the council care about this case in particular? Why exactly was I sent here?”

  “Werewolf attacks are never taken lightly,” he said, seriously.

  “Right,” I said. So they were still going with the werewolf story. “I guess not.”

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, looking back up. “You see something, don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “That’s just it. I don’t see anything. It looks perfectly random. The victims don’t connect, the humans were killed differently, and nothing about them actually says werewolf to me, except the bite marks. But why do everything else so purposefully and then leave blatant bite marks?”

  “No one ever accused a werewolf of having a higher sense of reasoning.” He shrugged. “Honestly, I think it is stranger how long it took the council to respond to my requests for help.”

  That was new. “You asked for help?”

  He nodded. “I petitioned them several times, but never even got a phone call. Sure, Sy sent hunters down here, but the council didn’t care at all.”

  “So what made them care? What case changed that?”

  “The last bounty hunter before you, I guess. A couple days after he was found, Leilah called me and said she would send someone to take care of my problem.” He shook his head. “And here you are.”

  So Mace had changed their mind. I guessed it was possible, but it didn’t sound right to me. My eyes went back over the pictures. “Why is there no blood at the scenes?”

  “Must have killed them somewhere else.”

  “Then why place them in these spots? What do the places mean to you?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  I stopped on Gus’s picture. He was the first. He was also a ghoul. Everyone else that had been killed was more alive than him. There was an elf, four bounty hunters who must have been potential threats, and possibly three humans, but Gus was the one who stuck out the most. So why was he killed?

  “I wonder why it isn’t building its pack,” I said, casually poking holes in the wolf theory Amos refused to give up. “Usually the wolf leaves at least a couple survivors to get that nasty, hairy surprise on the first full moon.”

  His head tilted and his lips pursed. “I guess we won’t know for certain for a few more days.”

  “All the better reason to have this wrapped up by then.” I smiled and walked away from the pictures, stretching my arms. “You know, I have been trying all night to think of anything else this could be, but nothing is coming to mind. I just can’t believe it is a werewolf. Do you have any ideas?”

  He was from this area—surely he knew about loup-garous. They were the closest thing to a werewolf that I had ever heard about in the Abyss, so why hadn’t he mentioned them yet? Why was no one considering them, unless Dempsey was lying about the whole thing?

  “I guess it could be a vampire trying to make it look like a werewolf,” he said, squatting down and pointing at one of the pictures. “They look like bite marks around the edges, but the lines are fairly clean and surgical. I don’t know why the vampires would want to draw attention to themselves, though. There’s always the rougarou.” He laughed.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Local human legend. Complete nonsense. It is about a werewolf-like creature who kills bad Catholics.”

  “Humans are an imaginative group, aren’t they?”

  He laughed again. “They believe nothing and yet will believe everything. Have you had much vampire contact since you arrived?”

  I touched the spot on my head, which was completely healed now. “No. Why?” Bringing up vampires twice in connection with my case—Amos knew something. I took in the pictures with new eyes. Were the vampires manipulating the council the same way Corbin had manipulated me? My phone rang, jarring me from my thoughts. “Hello?”

  “It’s Dempsey. There’s been another,” he said, with a hoarse voice. “I’m not inviting you to the crime scene.” I felt my eyebrows pull together. Then why did he call me? “I want to meet. I have more questions.”

  “Yeah, last night was fun,” I said in an overly chipper voice, smiling at Amos. “We should do it again. We can eat at the same restaurant.”

  He didn’t say anything for long enough that I wasn’t sure he understood. Finally, he spoke. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  Amos was watching me with a thoughtful expression as I hung up the phone. “I thought you didn’t know anyone here.”

  I waved my hand. “I wasn’t sure you could get me the information I wanted about the humans, so I made friends with the human detective last night. I thought it would be good to keep track of their progress. Never know where a break in the case might come from.”

  Amos shrugged. “It seems like a waste of time to me, but I’m not the bounty hunter.”

  “Well, I am going to hit the showers, because I stink, and then I think I want to sleep for a while.” I punctuated the sentence with a yawn that started off as fake, but turned real. “Unless you need me for anything, I’ll talk to you in a couple ho
urs.”

  “What did the detective want?”

  “To ask me out again.” I winked at him. “I guess I left an impression.”

  Amos nodded and headed for the door. “I’ll talk to my contact at the police department and make sure he tells me if anything new comes in that might interest you. Get some rest. We have a werewolf to catch.”

  I locked and chained the door behind him. I went to my bag and dug around in it until I produced a roll of duct tape. I tore off the end and placed it at the base of the door, making sure both sides were perfectly smoothed down before I really did take a shower.

  When I was dressed and all the pictures and police reports were once again in the safe, I slipped off the necklace and went to the interior connecting door to the next room. I pressed my ear to the door and listened. I didn’t hear anything on the other side. I squatted down and picked the lock without much trouble, then eased the door open. The other room looked just like mine, only empty. I watched out of its peephole for a moment. No one was in the hallway. I opened the door quickly and walked toward the stairwell with my head down and hood up.

  I trotted down the stairs, pausing occasionally to listen, making sure no one was following me. Between the council and the vampires, paranoia was the order of the day. I snuck out of the hotel through the kitchen delivery door and stayed off the main roads all the way to my car. It was the one place I felt was probably safe from prying eyes. The only two people connected to the council who even knew what car I drove were Sy and Holden. They had both earned my trust over the years. Corbin also knew what I drove, but had he wanted me dead, he would have tried harder the day before. He wanted Thomas, not me. I hopped in and the engine roared to life. I slipped the necklace back on and took off.

  I drove to Alfios. Dempsey stood on the street with his hands jammed into his pockets and sunglasses on. I tapped my horn when he didn’t see me right away. He tried to open the passenger door, but it didn’t budge. “It sticks,” I yelled. “Put your back into it.”

  He yanked on it harder and it popped open. He climbed in. “You take this on the water too?”

  “Ha. Ha. Ha.” I scrunched my nose as I patted the steering wheel. “Don’t listen to him, baby. You’re perfect just the way you are.” I pulled away from the curb and back into traffic.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Moving targets are harder to spy on,” I said.

  “Who’s watching you?” he asked.

  “Vampires and others. It’s not important. I just have to be careful. What did you want to talk about?”

  He sighed. “If you trust me, I know somewhere we can go.”

  I glanced over at him. “I think I have shown you quite a bit of trust. You’re the one who appears to suddenly be afraid of me.”

  His mouth settled into a firm line. “It was just a shock.”

  He directed me out of the city and deeper into the bayou. At the end of a dirt road, we got out. Dempsey headed directly to the water and climbed onto a small boat. I didn’t venture far from my car.

  “What are you waiting for?” he called out.

  “You to come to your senses and get out of that water coffin,” I said, tempted to get back in my car.

  His real and honest laughter rang out. “You want a private place to talk. Can’t get more private than where I am taking you.”

  I walked slowly toward him. “If your plan is to drown me in the swamp, I just want to warn you that I’ll likely take you with me. And that would be a shame. I sort of like you.”

  He shrugged. “You’ll never know.”

  I climbed in the boat and it rocked. This was such a bad idea.

  Chapter 10