by Tricia Owens
"Oh, my god," Melanie gasped. She spun around, all hyped-up, searching the alley. "This could be a trap, Anne!"
"It's sure taking a long time to close," I said critically. I pocketed the note and rose to my feet. "None of us knows who this guy is? Never seen him before?"
"Not my scene." Christian pointed at the body. "He doesn't have a mark on him. Shifters don't just fall down dead like this."
That gave me some food for thought. "What, like you think this might be a setup? I get caught with the body so everyone blames his death on me?"
"Could be," he said with a shrug. "You're not very popular these days."
"As true as that is, I have trouble believing that the Rebellion would kill one of their own just to frame me. And who would prosecute me? The Oddsmakers are judge and jury and everyone thinks I'm their lapdog."
"The Rebellion," Melanie repeated with a crooked smile. "I hope that means I get to be Princess Leia."
"I was thinking Yoda, since you're both the same height."
"Anne, that's mean!"
"I'm glad you're able to crack jokes at a time like this," Vale said sternly. "This is a serious problem."
"Look, I'm not pretending it isn't. I'm just clueless as to what's going on right now." I considered the body. Oh, man, a dead body. While I'd had plenty of experience with the old, rotting corpses of the miners that Dearborn had reanimated, a fresh body was a whole 'nother ballgame. I resisted taking a step back from it because that seemed disrespectful and rude. "We should ask Lev if he knows this guy."
Melanie hopped up and down. "Good idea! Lev probably knows all the wolf shifters in town."
"I'll fly it out." Vale had already begun stripping out of his T-shirt and jeans. I gathered up his clothes and didn't bothering hiding the fact that I checked him out. Hey, benefit of being his girlfriend, right? "I'll meet you at Celestina's," he told us.
In a blink he was gone. In his place squatted his gargoyle, which in the semi-dark of the alley could have been mistaken for a hairless, juvenile gorilla. But his gargoyle was much cooler than that, in my opinion. How many beings could change into an inanimate object? I thought what he could do was pretty damn awesome.
Well, admittedly it wasn't awesome when I wanted to go to lunch with my boyfriend and he was frozen solid, but I'd learned to shift my plans around accordingly.
Vale's gargoyle easily hefted the dead shifter in its muscular arms. With a powerful beat of its leathery wings, it launched them both into the night sky and dashed out of sight. If any non-magickal had seen, they would have assumed they'd witnessed the world's fastest and largest bat zoom by. Or Batman.
"You there!"
I turned and groaned beneath my breath when I saw the Asian girl and her two guy friends who had been in the crowd, talking about a monster. They were leading a yellow-shirted Metro bike cop. Melanie eeped, but Christian muttered, "Just relax," to her, and amazingly that seemed to help. As mismatched as the two of them were physically—Christian could probably rest his elbow on the top of Melanie's head—they were good for each other.
"There was a body right there, Officer," said the girl once the four of them reached us. She pointed at the ground behind me and then held up her phone's screen so the officer could see it. "See? Here's the proof. That same oil stain is right there. You can't see the faces of the guys leaning over him but I swear they were scary."
I tensed upon learning she'd taken a photo, but I reminded myself that Photoshop had raised the bar. These days you needed actual DNA evidence to convince anyone of anything.
The police officer looked over the ground, but of course there was nothing there. No blood droplets, nothing. Which was part of why I was confused about what exactly had gone down here with that shifter.
"What are you three doing here?" he asked my friends and me. He had a thick, blond beard, nicely trimmed to give him a strong jawline. It was a surprise to me that cops were allowed to have beards but I was glad they'd loosened their rules if they were all going to look like this one did. He was muscular and tall, though I wasn't a fan of his small, dark eyes. Well, everyone had to have a flaw or two.
"We were just trying to get out of the crowd," I said with a shrug. "We thought we'd walk back to our car using the alley rather than Main Street."
"There was a body right here," the girl insisted. She glared suspiciously at us. "Your friends were trying to figure out what to do with it."
I held up my hands in the universal sign of the innocent and professional bullshitters. "My friends are the ones you see here. I think you've got us confused with someone else."
The cop looked at the girl's phone again. "Did you touch the man?" he asked her. "Verify that he wasn't breathing?"
The girl shared looks with her friends. "Well, no. We were too far away, and the guys messing with the body looked really shady like I said."
"So the man could have been alive. Maybe just passed out and his friends were trying to rouse him. Looks like he was dressed up for cosplay or was a burner-type."
"Maybe, but he's still dead!"
The cop sighed. "Without a body, I don't have any proof of that. I've got nothing to investigate but a photo of a guy wearing ears."
"He wasn't wearing them; they were part of him!"
The look he turned on her was priceless.
"That part doesn't matter. He was dead and they must have helped those other people take him!" the girl insisted, pointing at us.
"Uh huh." The cop looked over the three of them closely, peering into their eyes. "Are any of you smoking? Been drinking? Having fun with anything else?"
"What? No!" one of the guys protested. "We don't do drugs."
"You been drinking?"
"Well, uh, just one or two beers."
"Uh huh." The cop turned his bike around. "I suggest that all of you stay clear of alleys from now on. It's safer to stick to the street. And call taxis to get home."
"Yes, sir," I said brightly, with a salute.
After he'd ridden back down the alley and turned the corner, one of the guys turned on us. "What'd you do with it?"
"It's in my purse, what do you think?" I retorted.
He scowled, but what could he or any of his friends do? The body was gone. Muttering amongst themselves, they headed for the street, occasionally shooting us accusing glares. I didn't resent them; they were being good, concerned citizens. But I was done with the festival and the hostility that weighed as thickly in the air as smoke.
I wanted to know what the real story was with that shifter.
~~~~~
Back in my neighborhood, we headed straight for Celestina's fortune telling shop. My neighbor's house had been done up inside to look like a Voodoo mambo's shack, but I doubted many of those had had a dead shifter lying on the floor in the middle of the main room. When my friends and I entered, Celestina and Vale were looking on while Lev sniffed the body.
Lev was a beautiful black wolf with pale blue eyes. He was the definition of stunning. The downside to him was that he just loved being a wolf. He loved it so much that he didn't often shift back into his human form, which left Celestina bemoaning her lack of quality time with him. Petting him on the head simply wasn't all that you expected and needed out of a relationship.
"Does Lev recognize him?" I asked as soon as Celestina and Vale noticed us.
"Next time you bring a gift, try bringing a plate of cookies instead," Celestina said as she crossed her arms over her chest, making all the bangles she wore jangle together. "This is unbelievably unsanitary."
"But there's no blood," I pointed out cheerfully, like that suddenly made everything better.
"Great, Anne. That's just great."
I suppressed a laugh. I couldn't help looking skyward to the ceiling, where dozens of handmade New Orleans-style Voodoo dolls hung suspended from fishing line. My friends and I had made them. One of them had once been possessed by the consciousness of Christian's mother. None of the dolls appeared to be occupied currently, th
ank goodness, because once had been enough. Not to mention I didn't want any more eyes on this situation than was necessary.
Vale was shirtless but wearing a pair of black sweat pants that I assumed he'd borrowed from Lev once he'd shifted form. I liked the look on him. Made me want to exercise or preferably, watch him exercise. I gave him his clothes back, though I much preferred him shirtless. Everyone politely looked away while he redressed.
As Lev's wolf continued sniffing the body, the rest of us settled on the various ottomans and chairs that were scattered about the room for clients.
"I don't know what we would have done if you'd had a client," I told Celestina. I motioned at the body. "It's pretty distinctly magickal. There's no way to explain it."
"You're assuming my clients are all non-magickal. That's not always the case."
I leaned forward with interest. "Have you ever had a client ask you about the future for the wrong reasons? Like they intended some black magick or just magickal shenanigans in general?"
"Not recently."
I sat back.
"Recently," Celestina went on, "I've had magickals asking me about the end of the world."
That certainly put a damper on a mood that was already pretty grim thanks to the dead body lying in the middle of the room.
Fortunately before we could all dwell on that bit of information and grow suicidal, Lev finished his inspection. His wolf backed away from the body and began to transform. Celestina tugged an insect-print throw blanket from beneath Melanie in preparation.
Lev's transformation was a significantly slower process than when either Vale or Melanie shifted forms. It took about six seconds, and looked pretty painful. Lev had never indicated that it hurt him, though. Eventually he stood there buck naked and grinning. Celestina wrapped the blanket around his hips and tucked it in before giving him a quick kiss. I could see she was pleased that he had transformed, even if it had required a dead body in her living room to achieve it.
Lev was Serbian, tall, and had a great body. He was also pretty shaggy, like a mountain man. I knew a lot of hipsters who would kill for his sideburns.
"Did you know this guy?" I asked him hopefully. "He's one of yours, right?"
"At first, I think no. His scent is not natural." Lev tapped a finger against his temple. "But then I think: this is trick. So I smell him again."
"And?"
"And I still not know him."
I slumped.
"But I know his pack. Alpha is very big, strong wolf." Unease flittered across his handsome features. "Not nice man, but he is alpha."
"Is he your alpha?" I asked, curious about this pack business. I'd seen documentaries on the Discovery Channel back before it turned into a reality TV channel, but none of the film crews had followed wolf shifters. The thought of it amused me: naked guys running through the streets of Vegas while Sir David Attenborough narrated their activities.
"No, he is not my alpha." Lev picked at the blanket around his waist and he glanced uncertainly at Celestina. "His pack and mine big rivals for territory. Many fights between us."
"Lev is being kind," Celestina drawled, her lips twisting down with distaste. "The Eastsiders Pack is made up of a bunch of Grade A assholes, and I'm pretty sure it's because they learned it from their alpha. They pick fights with Lev's pack all the time by sending one or two wolves into their territory and luring Lev's pack mates back across territory lines where they attack them in numbers."
"That's so mean!" Melanie fluffed up like an angry rooster. "Why don't they just stay on their side?"
"Because wolf shifters are constantly looking to expand their territory and grow their packs. The goal is to have one pack with one alpha, but there are too many alphas that aren't ready to roll over for something like that."
"Which is your pack?" Vale asked Lev. "I know of four within the valley. I can't say that any of them aren't aggressive, but that's the nature of the beast, no pun intended."
Lev jerked his shoulders back. "My pack is Black Die. We don't attack. We only defend."
Nothing in Vale's expression revealed what he thought about the Black Die pack. "That's one of the larger packs. Not many other packs challenge you. What would make the Eastsiders feel differently about their chances?"
"Alpha feud," Lev mumbled, subsiding slightly. "Very personal hate between them. They fight, we fight. All the time."
"While all this is fascinating," Christian drawled, "what does any of it have to do with the dead man lying on the floor?"
"I don't know, maybe we might be able to figure out if one of the rival packs killed him." I reached into my pocket and withdrew the note I'd found. "And of immediate concern to me: maybe someone in those packs gave him this. I'd like to find that person and ask him or her a few questions."
Lev took it from me. After a long, deep sniff, he startled. His shoulders lifted in what I took as the human version of wolf hackles rising. "It smells like alpha of Eastsiders."
"Does their territory include East Charleston around Main Street?" I asked.
He nodded warily. "At night is very dangerous area for wolf shifters."
"It's why we had to turn down going to First Friday with you," Celestina explained. "Someone might have noticed Lev and a fight would have broken out."
"You totally missed out on the macaroni and cheese on a stick," I murmured absently.
I didn't get it. Why would wolf shifters kill their own? And why would the alpha of Eastsiders give the victim that note? Had the victim been on a mission to find me or maybe even attack me? Or was the note a plant to get me involved in...something?
"Were you able to smell the cause of death?" Vale asked as he looked down at the body.
"I can't tell. Like I said, strange smell on him. Maybe trick to hide him. Or maybe something else."
"Like someone didn't want him being traced back to the Eastsiders," I mused. "Sounds fishy to me." I looked around at my friends with an innocent smile. "Anyone know any necromancers?"
"You buried the last one," Vale said wryly, referring to ex-Professor Dearborn, who'd lured me out into the desert to try to kill me and harvest my bones. He'd been pulled underground by the undead army that he'd raised to attack me.
"Necromancy is nothing to play around with," Celestina warned ominously. "When the spirit leaves, it leaves for good. What you call forth is not a living thing but a shell of flesh and bone. A monstrosity like that won't help you learn anything."
"You don't think there are occult rituals that can give us more information?" I pressed.
Celestina scowled at me, seeing where I was going with this. "Why are you asking me when you've already decided what you're going to do?"
"I just wanted to see if anyone agreed with me. Would be nice to have a second opinion."
"I think you'll receive five that tell you not to do it," Vale said with a shake of his head, "but even that won't deter you."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "It's eerie how well you know me. I think we should begin wearing matching sweaters."
"Anne, no!" Melanie exclaimed. At first I thought she was protesting the matching sweaters and I was shocked she felt that strongly about it. Matching sweaters could be cute if the design was right...But she came up and literally grabbed me by both arms and shook me. "You are not going to ask Orlaton to perform some kind of creepy rite on this body. That's just wrong!"
"I'm not going to ask him to give it life again," I told her. "I just want him to look for evidence of magick. If the wolf shifters didn't kill him, there's a good chance that magick did, and I want to know what kind and who knows how to perform it." I pointed at the note that Lev still held. "I wouldn't do this except for that. That right there means I'm involved whether I want to be or not. And if I'm going to be involved I want to know everything."
Vale leaned casually against a rattan-covered wall. "I thought you told me Orlaton doesn't trust you and isn't your friend. You were pretty upset about it."
"Yeah, so what?" I knew I sou
nded defensive but it wasn't anything I could control. Learning that Orlaton thought I could be a henchwoman for the Oddsmakers had hurt me and pissed me off in equal measure. "I'm not going over there to ask him if he'd like to have a sleepover. It'll be business only. He supplies a service which I'm going to take advantage of."
"No."
My eyebrows climbed. "No?"
Vale smiled because he wasn't intimidated by me one bit. "No, you're not going over there to ask him to perform an occult ritual on this shifter to determine how he died."
"Then how are we going to find out?" I demanded.
"Simple. We're going to go have a chat with the Eastsiders."
I grinned as the rest of my friends either groaned or gasped with dismay at Vale's suggestion.
"I like the way you think," I told him.
His eyes sparkled. "I know."
I jumped to my feet. "Well, now that that's settled—"
But I didn't get to finish my sentence, because the air outside the shop filled with the sound of howling wolves.
Chapter 2
I went to the window—the one that featured the giant painted palmistry hand surrounded by Christmas lights—and looked out into the street. There were maybe two dozen wolves outside, of varying colors and sizes, most of which had tipped their furry heads back and were baying to the moon like they were in some kind of group photo shoot for a T-shirt.
"They do realize people live in this neighborhood, don't they?" I asked no one in particular. "People with ears and working eyeballs?"
"Maybe they're trying to pressure us into letting them inside," Christian suggested.
"Why are they even here?" Melanie asked fearfully.
Lev shook his head urgently when we all looked to him. "I not tell anyone. I here with you whole time."
I was getting a pretty bad feeling about everything that was happening tonight. This was looking more and more like a setup. But for what purpose? I looked over the gathering of wolves. It looked like a wild dog park out there. "They're not all going to fit in here and more importantly, they'd stink up the place."
Lev joined me at the window. "That is my pack. I talk to them."