On the second floor of the warehouse, the ceiling was scorched with a blackened circle, mirroring one on the floor directly beneath it. There had been a fire here recently, though it looked as if it had burned out prematurely. Not much had been left behind to feed it. Mandy snorted and nodded her muzzle at me as if she wanted to say something. I made a mental note to ask her about it later and ventured farther into the room.
Dark red curtains hung from the ceiling, covering a good chunk of the cracked drywall and boarded-up windows. Several disassembled bedframes were stacked against the far wall, and a soiled mattress lay abandoned in the middle of the floor. It summoned a low growl from Mandy when she sniffed it. She nodded her muzzle again as if to suggest she’d gotten what she needed, and then took off across the room, heading for an exit in the back corner.
This new set of stairs only went down one flight, to the empty ground floor that looked as if it might have been a factory floor or receiving center at one time. A maze of conveyor tables zigzagged through the room, and piles of rotting cardboard boxes created an obstacle course that would have been hazardous to navigate even in daylight. I barely managed with the aid of my blood vision, my gun relinquished to one hand so I could climb over a metal desk angled in my path. My hip cracked into the corner of it as I dismounted, and a nest of rats hissed and squeaked as they fled from a box beneath the desk.
I swallowed a squeak of my own and hurried after Mandy. She dipped her nose to the ground and increased her pace, rushing toward an exterior door at the back of the building. Hinges groaned, and metal scraped the concrete floor. Then I was running to catch up.
Mandy had locked onto a scent, and she didn’t seem to care that I was on this hunt with her. She slipped through the crack in the door and out of sight, sending a stab of panic through my chest. I rushed into the alley after her, my gun grasped in both hands again. My eyes darted in all directions. Then I caught sight of the green dog vest as she disappeared around the corner of the next building up.
I swore under my breath and chased after her. She moved so fast—which meant that our suspect was swift, too. And likely another werewolf. Great. Just what I needed.
Before I’d made it to the alley Mandy had turned down, a howl filled the air. The sound echoed all around me and sent a tremor through my bones, but it didn’t slow me down. I pushed onward, my breath scorching my lungs and my legs aching for reprieve.
Where was my superhuman strength? The thought grated on me. Raphael had been fast and incredibly strong. Why didn’t I have that? Was I not only a flawed detective but also a defective vampire? So far, my new existence appeared to come with far more cons than pros, and I still didn’t know whom I was supposed to lodge my complaints with.
At the mouth of the next alley, I paused to catch my breath and evaluate the scene. With the red vision, my surroundings glowed with stark white outlines. Movement caught my attention just as a wolf landed on top of a rusty dumpster up ahead. Mandy yipped and shook her muzzle.
Her doggy tantrum was short-lived, and then she leapt at her mark—a stocky man in a ragged vest and blue jeans. He had a long tangle of dark hair and a matching mustache. Mandy looked as if she were trying to bite it right off his face as he clung to the broken end of a ladder attached to the building. I guessed he’d used the dumpster as a launch pad. The ladder was at least ten feet off the ground.
The man swatted at Mandy with one arm and bared his teeth as he tried to walk his legs up the side of the building. An unnatural growl stirred in his throat. Mandy returned it full force before propping her front paws up on the wall and closing her jaws around his ankle. He kicked her in the face with his free foot. The heel of his boot bit into her muzzle, drawing a wounded yip from her.
“Down!” I shouted, taking aim with my gun. The man turned his yellow eyes on me at the same time Mandy did, as if he assumed I’d made the request of him. But as soon as Mandy dropped all four paws back to the dumpster’s lid, I put a bullet through the man’s forearm.
He screamed and fell to the patch of gravel and weeds below. So, bullets worked on werewolves. Score one for me! That was a relief. I kept my gun trained on the guy and shook my head as Mandy hopped down from the dumpster and moved in on him.
“You can’t eat him,” I told her. “At least not until I ask my questions.”
The man wrapped a hand around his injured arm and kicked at the gravel, pushing his back up against the building behind him. My breath tightened at the sight of blood oozing through his fingers. I wondered how much of a fight Mandy would put up if I tried to take a bite out of him first.
He sneered up at me, sending the edges of his greasy mustache curling over his upper lip. “The boss knows I’m here. He sent me himself,” he said. “If I don’t return, Scarlett can kiss her deal with the pack goodbye.”
“What deal?” I bit my tongue too late, and the man’s eyes lit with understanding. He gave me a throaty laugh and shook his head.
“So the royal bitch is on the run again.” He spat at my feet.
“What deal?” I demanded. I wondered if he meant the same deal Mandy had mentioned before—a ride for a bite. Mandy growled and inched closer to him, but his expression grew bored.
“Don’t matter now. Looks like she left our turf. You better, too, if you know what’s good for you,” he said, his eyes flickering yellow as he stared up at me. The bones in his jaw moved in ways no human’s ever should, and I lifted my gun higher, angling it at his face rather than his chest.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warned him.
Mandy’s growl cut off suddenly. She lifted her head and turned to glance behind me with a whimper.
“Mandy? Is that you?” An amused voice asked.
I took my eyes off the man at my feet long enough to get a look at the newcomer. And the silver-barreled shotgun aimed at my head. Part of me wanted to believe that I didn’t have anything to worry about, but I clearly wasn’t on the same level as my sire had been. Would bullets hurt? Could they actually kill me? I honestly wasn’t sure.
The man holding the shotgun was clean-shaven and wore a leather jacket. I wouldn’t have guessed that he was with the mustachioed scumbag Mandy had tracked down, but apparently, werewolves were capable of just as many flavors as humans. Or vampires.
“Report back to Marcel,” the newcomer ordered our bleeding catch. “I’ll take care of these two.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, my gun trained on the fallen man’s face.
“What are you going to do, sweetheart?” Leather Jacket snorted. “Shoot him? Go ahead.” The smirk on Mustache’s face melted into a grimace.
“Just tell me where the Scarlett Inn is,” I said through clenched teeth. “Then we can all go our separate ways.” Thankfully, Mandy didn’t protest my suggestion.
“The Scarlett Inn?” Leather Jacket scoffed. “What’s a good girl like you want with the Scarlett Inn? Are you looking for a job, sweetheart?”
“Or maybe she has a thing for scrawny little wolf girls,” Mustache said, casting a sideways glance at Mandy. She had migrated behind the dumpster, retreating from Leather Jacket’s line of sight.
“This doesn’t have to get ugly.” I tried to relax my shoulders to match their confidence, but it just wasn’t coming to me. I could smell Mustache’s blood. The tangy scent stung the back of my throat. “Just tell me what I want to know.”
Leather Jacket narrowed his eyes at me. “You think we’d be here if we knew the inn had moved? Who the hell are you anyway? One of Ursula’s scouts? Or just a random vamp Scarlett screwed over?”
A rifle cocked, and another body joined us in the alley. This one I recognized. FBI Special Agent Roman Knight. In full black under the pale light of the moon, he was almost invisible, save for his white halo of hair.
“Having a party without me, boys?” he asked Leather Jacket. Then his eyes fell on me and hardened. “Lose the shotgun, Arnie.”
“She one of yours, Knight? I’ve got splinter
rounds loaded in this thing. It’d be a shame if one of them ended up in her heart.”
“It would be,” Agent Knight agreed in a flat voice. “But I can thread needles with this machine. You and your boy over there would both have a third eye before she hit the ground.”
Leather Jacket gritted his teeth, but he lowered the shotgun and tossed it into a tangle of brush growing up through the chain-link fence that surrounded the industrial park. He placed his hands on his shaved head and dropped to his knees. His eyes stayed locked on me, a teasing sharpness to them that suggested we weren’t finished.
Agent Knight pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and slung his rifle over his shoulder and across his back as he approached. His casual resolve unnerved me. Did he know how much danger he was in? He didn’t seem to.
“Wait,” I said, lowering my gun to my side. “I was questioning them.”
“So I heard.” He gave me a patronizing glare. “Funny, I was sure your captain told me you were placed on leave.” He pressed a button on a small device attached to his shoulder holster and spoke into it. “Suspect apprehended. Bring the car around.” After he’d released the button, he looked up at me again. “You should probably go, unless you’d like to ride along down to the field office and explain why you’re interfering with an FBI investigation.”
I swallowed, trying to calm the frustrated rage that was eating me alive. “You don’t understand. These men, they’re not what you think. They’re—” I glanced back at where Mustache had been sitting, but he was gone. Mandy, too. “Shit!” I spun in a wide circle, searching the alley and the brush and bramble along the fence.
“I hope that dog of yours is collared and licensed. Her type doesn’t fare well in pounds,” Agent Knight said, ignoring the fact that the other man was missing.
Leather Jacket—Arnie—snickered. “I’ll make bail by tomorrow. Then you and I’ll have us a good time, sweetheart.” He gave me a shameless and lusty once-over. Agent Knight shoved him toward the alley that opened onto the main road running through the industrial park.
“Don’t hold your breath, sweetheart,” he said. Then he shot a look over his shoulder at me. “Go home, and don’t let me catch you at my crime scene again.”
I stared after him as he hauled off my only lead. Wrath curdled in my gut, and my hands shook. I had an awful urge to break something. Like maybe his face.
Mandy’s warning about involving humans came back to me, but there was nothing I could do about it. Not legally. A werewolf in FBI custody didn’t seem like a good idea even if there hadn’t been a secret vampire society to police supernaturals. I wondered what kind of attention this would end up attracting. And then I wondered how I was going to evade it.
A black SUV stopped at the end of the alley. I ducked behind the building and watched from the shadows as Agent Knight opened the back door and shoved the werewolf inside. Then he opened the front door and climbed into the passenger’s seat. I caught a glimpse of a woman behind the wheel. She was dressed all in black, just like Agent Knight, with black hair knotted in a braid over her shoulder. She turned slowly as if sensing me, and bright green eyes met mine just before Agent Knight’s door snapped shut, concealing them behind tinted windows.
* * * * *
“It’s not that bad,” Laura said. “Just a scratch really.” She’d pulled her hair back into a messy bun and put on a pair of rimless reading glasses to get a better look at the damage.
Mandy sat curled up in a barstool at the kitchen counter, one leg tucked under her and the other upright so she could rest her chin on her knee. Laura dabbed a cotton swab covered with antibiotic ointment over a cut that ran along half the length of the girl’s eyebrow. Then she carefully stretched two butterfly strips over the wound to hold it closed. She’d already cleaned and covered the road rash on Mandy’s forearm and had her rinse the blood out of her mouth. Her lip was split and swollen on one side.
Mandy watched me as I paced the kitchen, but she didn’t say anything as Laura finished patching her up. She’d reappeared in the alley in time to witness me taking my frustrated rage out on a dumpster. Our ride home had been tense, and I was worried that she knew how hard it was for me to sit next to her for half an hour with as much blood as she was leaking all over the place. In her wolf form, she seemed to have a keen awareness of those sorts of visceral emotions.
My hunger had evolved. After the blood bag, I’d felt like a million bucks. Then, just a few short hours later, I’d been reduced to a ravenous train wreck. I didn’t understand how it was possible. Had our useless investigation really taken that much out of me? Or had the small bit of human blood I’d had trigger some full-blown addiction?
I slurped at the thick cow blood Laura had blended up for me while we were gone and tried not to focus on the fact that it tasted like ass, especially now that I’d had the good stuff. My stomach grumbled a painful protest, and for a moment, I feared that I might have another Exorcist experience. Maybe Laura hadn’t strained the mutilated cow bits as well as she’d thought.
“Better?” Mandy asked, eyeing me cautiously.
I nodded and swallowed the last of the blood with a wince. “Who were those guys?” I blurted, jumping right into the questions I’d wanted to ask since the warehouse.
Mandy sucked in a sharp breath, and her eyes unfocused as she glanced away from me. “Wolves from the Moreau pack. I didn’t recognize the one I tracked outside, but the other one is Arnold Moreau—the alpha’s little brother.”
“He told Mustache to report back to Marcel—”
Mandy flinched at the name. “That’s him,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Laura gathered up the bandage wrappers and sighed as she circled the kitchen counter to throw them into the wastebasket under the sink. “I don’t like this at all. You’re supposed to be on leave.”
“You sound like that prick FBI agent.” I pulled out a chair at the table and dropped onto it, discarding the sticky plastic tumbler next to a giant first aid kit that looked like a tackle box. It’d been around since we were toddlers. Laura had been a careful child—me, not so much.
Mandy’s eyes found me again. “He smelled like vampire,” she said grimly.
“No way.” I shook my head. “He called me during the day.”
“I didn’t say he was a vampire,” Mandy said. “He smelled like vampire. As in, he was with one recently. Whether he knows that or not is another story. Either way, he can’t be trusted.”
“Agreed.” I folded my arms. “What about upstairs—what were you trying to tell me then?”
She blinked a few times as if catching up with the present. The mention of Marcel Moreau had shaken her, and I didn’t have the heart to ask what I was pretty sure I already knew the answer to.
“The fire,” she finally said. “I put it out. The night before you and your partner met Raphael.”
“Why? Who started it?”
“One of Scarlett’s minions, I’m sure. That it’s still standing is probably why Raphael made an appearance.” Mandy pulled her other leg up and hugged them both to her chest. Her jaw clenched, and I could tell she was trying to steel herself against what she was about to share. “That’s what they do when the Inn’s been compromised. They move the girls out and burn the place down to destroy any lingering scent trails. One of the older girls told me before she died—before she was murdered—that when a place goes up in flames, it means they’ll be moving to a new city soon.”
“Where would they keep the girls in the meantime?” I asked.
Mandy shook her head. “They have money. They could bribe a client with a big enough place, or buy a property if they wanted to. They could be anywhere.”
I remembered from Will’s investigation notes that the warehouse belonged to an out-of-state trust. We’d had a hell of a time tracking down the names of the trustees, and the few that we did reach by phone didn’t seem to know much at all about the property—though they all agreed that we would have to get
a search warrant if we wanted inside. With nothing more than a tip from a petty crook, no judge would sign off on that. And that’s how Will and I had ended up staking out the place for my first week on vice.
“A fire seems awfully risky,” I said. “What about this House Lilith you keep mentioning? Shouldn’t they be putting a lid on this illicit business?”
Mandy shrugged. “Scarlett’s good. As long as she doesn’t let the humans catch up with her, I doubt House Lilith will care enough to shut her down. They seem content to let the vamp community do whatever they want, as long as they do it in the shadows. At least, that’s what Scarlett’s clients seem to think.”
“But you said they’d assassinate me if I went to a human hospital.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “I think their priorities might be a bit skewed.”
“You think?” She laughed humorlessly. “House Lilith’s job is to keep the supernatural community secret. They’re like a cleaning crew. A vamp or wolf makes a mess of things—they’re the ones who fix it. People end up mysteriously dead. Strange pictures or events are revealed to be hoaxes. Buildings get burned down. They might even think what Scarlett’s doing is making their job easier.”
“How do you know all of this?” Laura asked. She leaned back against the far kitchen counter and folded her arms. “I mean, weren’t you basically a captive? Did the clients really talk that much?”
“I escaped six months ago,” Mandy said, her eyes unfocusing again. “I heard about a rehab center that catered to my kind and hitchhiked there.”
“Rehab?” I interrupted.
Mandy grimaced and gave me a resentful frown. “Corralling unwilling werewolf girls is apparently a lot easier to manage when they’re hooked on heroin. That’s how a lot of them end up dying—if the clients don’t finish the job first.”
“Oh, God.” Laura covered her mouth with one hand and shook her head. “That’s horrible.”
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