She gave him a smile of greeting. His gray eyes held welcome and a hint of suppressed humor. He probably could tell from the look on her face that she thought this greeting ritual was a bunch of crap. It was a stupid formality put in place to make the council members feel important. Not that she would ever say that out loud. She knew when to hold her tongue and toe the party line. If a little kowtowing was called for, she could bow and scrape with the best of them.
“Tori,” Caladh said, his dark eyes shining with pleasure. “It is agreeable to see you.”
“And you.” Tori bit the inside of her cheek against a grin. Caladh had such a formal way of speaking, he always sounded like a Vulcan to her. “My lord Arias,” she greeted the president. She met Tobias’s gaze and inclined her head. “Tobias.”
“What news do you bring us?” Deoul asked.
“I’ve just received confirmation from the hospital that our human victim this morning was bitten by a werewolf, not a vamp.” She stood next to one of the folding wooden chairs that were there allegedly for liaisons to sit on while they made their reports, but she had never sat in the presence of the council, nor had any liaison she knew. She tried to put a positive spin on things by saying, “The great news is that Barry didn’t release any preternatural essence into the wound, so the vic won’t turn.”
“That is your wolf’s only saving grace.” Deoul glanced at the other two council members and then turned his pale gaze upon Tori once more. “Our laws are clear on this. The werewolf will be chained in silver, restricting his ability to shift, for one full cycle of the moon.”
Tori swallowed. To change into their animal form was as natural a thing to a shapeshifter as breathing. To be unable to shift at the full moon would be a torture she wasn’t sure Barry’s mind would be able to endure. “May I plead mercy?” She looked at all three councilors. “Barry didn’t attack the human on purpose. He was provoked—”
“Only with words, as I understand it from Aldis Knox. We expect better control from the members of our community.” Caladh sat forward and clasped his hands on top of the table. “We have been able to maintain calm among the human population only tenuously, especially as the next Influx draws near. If Barry were allowed to go unpunished…” He shook his head.
“Of course he shouldn’t go unpunished,” Tori said. “That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m asking for leniency, that’s all. Please don’t restrain him during the full moon. It would be torture.”
“A fitting punishment, I’d say.” Deoul’s face creased in a smug smile as if the thought of a werewolf in agony somehow made him happy.
Tori clenched her fists against the urge to vault over the table and wipe that smirk off his face. Or just get rid of his face, period. But no matter how close she might be to Caladh and Tobias, even they wouldn’t be able to save her if she ate the president of the council.
Tobias cleared his throat. “I agree with Tori. Binding him during the full moon is too harsh. Fit him with silver restraints for the next week, then remove them and let him shift during the full moon. Otherwise the strain—”
“He should have considered his actions first,” Caladh broke in. He shook his head. “I must side with Deoul on this matter.” He turned his gaze back to Tori. “I’m sorry, Tori, but as Deoul said, our laws are clear. Punishment would be even harsher had he turned the poor fellow.”
“But he didn’t,” Tobias pressed. “Shifting from human to animal is an agony you’re all too familiar with.” He shot a glance at Caladh. “But from what I understand, not shifting is even worse.”
“It is. Which would be the point.” Caladh’s gaze hardened. “On this I stand resolute. Actions have consequences. Preternaturals must be held to a high standard when it comes to our dealings with humans.” He shared a glance with Deoul. “The decision stands. Barry will be restrained for thirty days, including the night of the full moon.”
Tobias’s lips tightened. He slumped back in his chair. “I’d like my objection to be on the record,” he murmured. Looking at Tori, he said, “I’m sorry. A decision is based on majority.”
“I understand.” She uncurled her fingers and rubbed her moist palms against the outside of her thighs, before straightening her shoulders. “I’d like to be the one to tell Barry.”
Deoul shrugged. “I have no objection.” He glanced at his colleagues. “Caladh? Tobias?”
They both shook their heads.
The council president looked at Tori again. “He’s in one of the holding cells downstairs, which is where he’ll stay for the next thirty days.” His tone held warning, like he thought she’d try to break the guy out or something.
She might be tempted, but she wasn’t stupid. She didn’t want to ruin her life, or possibly put it in jeopardy because Barry was going to be shackled in silver for a crime he’d actually committed. As a liaison, part of her job in addition to investigating crimes was to uphold the law. She might not agree with it, but until someone changed it, she was duty bound.
Sometimes this job really sucked.
Tori gave a small bow and started to turn.
“Just a moment,” Tobias said. “There’s one more thing I’d like to bring up while Tori’s here.”
She frowned and turned back to face the council.
“It strikes me that having our liaisons make these face-to-face reports is a little…pretentious. Their findings can easily be sent through e-mail over a secure server.”
Why the hell did he have to involve her in this? She didn’t want to fight this particular battle.
“Pretentious?” Deoul’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “This is a time-honored tradition, Tobias. There is order in what we do.”
“Yes, yes.” Caladh waved one hand. “In this I must also agree.” His glance toward Tobias held some humor. “This appears to be an off day for you.”
“Apparently.” Tobias crossed his legs and rested one elbow on the arm of his chair. “I just feel like it’s more a matter of ego to make them come here in person and adhere to the old-fashioned greeting.”
Deoul puffed up, his eyes glittering. “Ego! This is not about ego. It’s about respect.” He leaned toward Tobias. “Do you not believe the council is worthy of respect?”
Tori watched the interaction with a horrified interest that was reminiscent of watching a train wreck. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. Apprehension crept up on her, because she knew that soon enough one of them would turn to her for her opinion.
“Of course,” Tobias responded to the most egotistical and pretentious pret among them. “But wasting our liaisons’ time by making them come to the office is hardly respectful of them.”
Then came the moment Tori had been dreading. Caladh looked at her and said, “You’re a liaison. What do you think of Tobias’s proposal? Do you believe we disrespect you?”
Hell, yeah. Tori searched her mind for a tactful way to agree. “There could be more efficient uses of our time,” she finally murmured.
“I see.” Deoul began drumming his fingers on the table. “Should we discontinue these face-to-face meetings then? These in-person reports where we can gather so much more information through body language and attitude that doesn’t come across in an e-mail?”
You mean so you can try to figure out if your liaisons are trying to hide something from you. Sneaky, slippery elf. “I merely agreed with Tobias that e-mails would be more efficient as far as time goes.” She made an effort to keep a melodious inflection in her voice. It had been known to calm the savage beast. She wasn’t sure it would do the trick on three of them. “Though I will say that the greeting I could do without.”
Deoul’s eyebrows rose, as did Caladh’s.
“It’s just…” She huffed a sigh of frustration. Damn Tobias for putting her in the middle of this. “We’re not in the other dimension anymore. Many of us have been on Earth for centuries. Some of us for millennia.” She looked at Deoul and Caladh. “Why are we holding onto a language from a place that cast us o
ut?”
“Hear, hear,” Tobias said quietly.
Tori tried to tamp down her irritation. He really was trying to make her job easier. She should cut him some slack. She just wasn’t sure she would.
“Hmph.” Deoul folded his arms across his chest and stared at Tori. Finally he said, “We’ll take this under advisement. You may go.”
She gave a slight incline of her head, shot Tobias a dirty look, and then turned and left the chamber. She knew Barry was on pins and needles, waiting for the verdict, so she headed down to the basement first.
Stopping at the check-in desk, she removed her weapon and signed it over to the guard on duty, who stowed it in a locker and handed her the key. She passed through a metal detector and went on to where Barry was.
The cell was really a large metal cage, maybe six by eight, with a bench against the back and three rings bolted into the cement floor. Barry was on the bench, one arm between his legs, a silver handcuff around his wrist. The other handcuff at the end of the foot-long chain was attached to one of the floor rings. He looked up as she stopped in front of him. “Well?” he asked.
“Thirty days of restraint in silver.” There was no easy way to break it to him, and he was way past needing things sugarcoated.
He paled. “Even through the full moon?”
Tori nodded. “I tried for leniency, Barry. I really did.”
“I know you did.” He stared down at the floor. “I’ve never been unable to shift into the wolf at the full moon.” He looked up at her again. “The urge is inescapable, Tori. I’ll go crazy.”
“No, you won’t.” Right then she made the decision to ride this one through with him. Werewolves were social animals. To be denied the opportunity to shift and run with the pack would be untenable. She couldn’t let him go through it alone. “I’ll be right here with you. We’ll keep each other sane.”
His eyes widened. “You’d do that?”
“Yes, I would.” Tori knew Barry was a good guy. He was one of the prets who’d decided to look at his exile on Earth as a second chance—a way to atone for the lawlessness he’d practiced in the other dimension. He volunteered at a homeless shelter and worked as a nurse at one of the local hospitals. “Consider it a date.”
His lopsided grin held self-depreciation. “Usually I can show a girl a better time than being chained up in a cell.” He glanced at the handcuffs, waving his hand back and forth to give them a rattle. “Though something like this I could put to good use.”
“I’ll take your word on that.”
His lips quirked again. Then he sighed. “Really, Tori, I appreciate the offer. But I can’t let you do it. I got myself into this mess, and I’m the only one who should be punished.”
She studied him and saw fear lurking deep in his eyes, though he did a good job at trying to hide it. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” His gaze met hers. “You’re a stand-up person, Tori. Thanks.”
“No problem.” She rested one hand against the wall of the cell. “You keep your chin up, okay?”
He gave a nod. “I will.”
She lifted her hand in good-bye and headed back to the front where she retrieved her sidearm from the locker, dropped the key off with the guard, and went back upstairs.
Ash was still in the break room. When she pushed open the door he looked up from a scandal rag he was perusing. “Did you know that you can tell a pret from a human by the hair between our toes?”
Tori pursed her lips. “Really?” Last time she’d looked, she didn’t have hair between her toes.
“According to this article.” He held up the paper. “It amazes me the crap people will believe just because it’s in print. Idiots,” he muttered, as he let the paper drop to the sofa beside him. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“The attacks going on in your quadrant.”
“Not you, too.” He scowled and shot to his feet. Dark blond hair lifted and then settled against his head. His eyes filled with the amber of the wolf. “I don’t have to justify myself to you.”
“Whoa there, Bartholomew.” She lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not judging you here. I just want some information.”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “That’s different, then.” He plopped back down on the sofa and stretched long legs out in front of him. Slowly the wolf surrendered, the light going out of his eyes. “Don’t call me Bartholomew.”
She grinned. His full name was Bartholomew Maxwell Asher, but he preferred to go by the nickname Ash. She only called him Bartholomew when he was being a butthead.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
Tori sat beside him, one leg bent so she could face him. Let’s just get this one out of the way. “Do you think Barry’s responsible?”
“Hell, no. Why? Do you?” His look was disbelieving.
She shook her head. “No, but until I can check out his alibis on the days of the attacks, I really just have my gut to go on.”
Ash stretched one arm out along the back of the sofa. “Your do-gooder wouldn’t stray far enough away from his little lost sheep to run around biting people in the north quadrant.”
“I agree.” Both with the statement that Barry was a do-gooder and that he wouldn’t leave his homeless guys for very long. “What’s your gut telling you?”
Ash heaved a sigh and raked his fingers through his hair, frustration written in every long, lean line of his body. “I think it’s a clever SOB we’re after, and he’s not going to stop until we catch him. That’s what my gut tells me.” He stared at her. “If you’re asking me if I have a list of suspects…No, I don’t. And it’s frustrating as hell.”
“I hear the suspect uses bleach to break down his DNA.”
He nodded. “And drops about fifty gallons of ammonia at the scene to override his scent.” He gave a low growl. “Okay, I’m exaggerating. But the end result is I couldn’t smell a thing for about twelve hours after I left one of those scenes.” His scowl proclaimed his aggravation with that state of affairs. “Some damned werewolf I am when I can’t smell a damned thing.”
“Ammonia, too? Dante didn’t mention that.”
“Dante? MacMillan?” At her affirmation, Ash asked, “What the hell is MacMillan doing getting involved with something in District Four? He’s based out of District Two.” His scowl deepened. “Like you.”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Tori muttered. “Some cop named Rivera called him this morning about Barry, wondering if it could be the same guy. I told Dante I’d talk to you.”
“Uh-huh.” A look crossed his face she couldn’t quite decipher. “Rivera’s getting desperate, too. His boss probably gave him the same ass-chewing I got from mine.”
Tori hunched forward and rested her chin on her fists. “So, why hasn’t a BOLO gone out on this?”
“A BOLO that says what? Be on the lookout for a werewolf who’s biting people?” He rolled his eyes and then stared up at the ceiling, his head on the back of the sofa. “There’s no fur, no hair, no fiber, no nothing. It’s like he’s wrapped in plastic, for God’s sake.”
That set Tori’s brain whirling. How would a werewolf, or even a human for that matter, keep from leaving bits of himself at a crime scene? Little booties would mask shoe prints. Latex gloves would hide fingerprints. But what about hair and skin cells? People shed hair and skin at a fairly rapid rate. For a crime scene to have none of that… “Maybe he was wrapped in plastic,” she mused out loud. “Or…he shaved?”
Ash seemed to consider that seriously. “Well, if he shaved all over, head to toes, he’d have no hair to lose. But humans and prets alike shed something like fifty thousand skin cells a day. Even if he was already in his wolf form, well, there’d be fur, wouldn’t there?”
“You’d think so.” Tori drew in a breath and held it a moment, rolling things over in her mind. Finally she shook her head in defeat. “I don’t know what to tell you, Ash. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Thank you! That’s what I was trying to tell them,” he said with a gesture in the general direction of the main chamber. “Not that they listened.”
“Yes, well, they often don’t, do they?” Tori pushed to her feet. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
“Thanks.” Ash stood as well and raised his arms above his head in a stretch. “Let’s just hope someone else doesn’t take a page out of this guy’s book and decide to do the same thing in another quadrant.” He shot her a dark look. “Maybe yours.”
Tori walked out of the building, Ash’s last words tumbling around in her mind. And she was struck by one thought: Why had the werewolf decided on District Four? Why not the other quads? What was so special about the north?
Chapter Five
The next morning Dante carried his travel mug of coffee out to the stables. Monsoon season was in full swing and while they wouldn’t see any rain until later in the day, the humidity was already in the fifties and climbing. He was used to humidity in the teens, or lower, so this was nearly unbearable, especially when coupled with triple-digit heat. But he couldn’t forgo his morning cup of coffee. Setting his mug on one of the flat-top rails, he pulled out his smartphone and re-read the e-mail Tori had sent him yesterday.
Ash said the suspect uses a lot of ammonia at the scene so determining his scent is impossible. The ammonia temporarily fries the olfactory sensors in the nose. I was able to check Barry’s alibis for the dates in question, and he checks out. He’s not the guy. Unknown suspect remains at large.
After he’d gotten the e-mail, Dante had called and left a message for Rivera, letting him know what Tori had reported. He could imagine the other detective’s disappointment. And dread. Since Barry wasn’t the suspect in the “werewolf incidents,” as Captain Scott called them, that meant there was another attack coming.
Secret of the Wolf Page 5