His teeth glittered in the moonlight as a shark-like grin spread across his wide face. He was stocky and strong and, in spite of his dapper clothing, looked as though he hadn't shaved in days. Jordan thought he saw a flash of yellow in the man's dark eyes, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
"Get away from my daughter," he said, threateningly.
"Now, now. I was checking on her. You do know that it is illegal to leave children unattended in cars?"
"Who the hell are you and why the hell are you here?"
Jordan's arm was beginning to shake and he drew his fist back, out of the man's grasp, then curled it to his chest, ready to strike again.
"My name is Nero Hunt, Mr. Hacker. I am a social worker with the Child Welfare Department. We received a call that your daughter has been living in filth, with a wild animal."
"Right, because social workers always drop by at two in the morning," he said, sarcastically.
"Some of us are more... nocturnal than others," Hunt said, with a terrifying smile. "I suggest you unlock the door and let me examine the child."
"No. She's sleeping."
"Very well," the man said, with a sigh. "I didn't want to do this, but..."
He pulled a paper from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and presented it to Jordan with a flourish.
"This is a warrant, Mr. Hacker. It allows me to examine your apartment, your daughter, and remove her from your care if I see the need. Considering the fact that you have her in the car so late at night, I don't see myself leaving her with you. I have seen the inside of the apartment, and you have very obviously been keeping a wild animal in there. That apartment is not safe or suitable for anyone to live in, let alone a small child. You will hand her over."
Jordan read the warrant carefully. At a glance, it appeared to be legitimate. Unfortunately for Mr. Hunt, Jordan had spent a great deal of time working with the legal system in California to create and standardize a specific font for legal items; one which would not be available to the general public, or anyone without a password. The font on the warrant was close, but not close enough. The subtle differences in the angles of the punctuation and shapes of the vowels was enough to convince him. The man was getting impatient. Jordan glanced at him through his lashes and saw it clearly. The crescent-moon of yellow in his irises, the only warning that Darla gave when she was about to shift. This was no social worker. This was a goddamn werewolf.
"Alright," Jordan sighed, sounding defeated. "The outer lock is warped, I'll have to unlock it from the inside."
The man sneered and gestured for Jordan to walk past him. He watched smugly as Jordan climbed into the driver's seat.
"Can't unlock it if it isn't on," Jordan called from the cab.
The man tapped his foot impatiently. Jordan turned the key, slammed his door, and stomped on the gas, peeling away from the old two-story house. He checked his mirrors and his heart nearly stopped. The man was holding on to Darla's door handle, keeping pace with him at thirty miles an hour. Jordan watched as the man shifted, pressing his foot harder on the gas pedal. Forty. Fifty. He hit sixty through the thin, winding roads of the suburbs, tilting up on two wheels every time he turned a corner. The wolf was still with him, clinging now to the side of his house, his claws buried in the wood. Jordan cursed.
The wolf was trying to jump forward. If he made it to the front, he could smash the cab windows without breaking a sweat. Jordan was painfully aware of this, as Darla had managed to punch through his windshield at the age of two. Her tiny fist had left a tiny hole. He could only imagine the hole that this beast would leave, first in the truck, then in him. Sweat trickled down his spine and made his palms slick and slippery on the leather steering wheel.
The freeway entrance was coming up. A sound barrier wall began a quarter mile down the road from the ramp. Screaming curses and praying for a miracle, Jordan smashed the side of his truck into the wall, breaking off his mirror. He gunned it, dragging his truck and house along the wall as sparks flew and steel screamed. Wood chips scattered across his windshield, leaving tiny smears behind. He hoped it was blood. He yanked his wheel left just before the guardrail, narrowly escaping impalement. His right-hand mirror was destroyed, and his left was useless for what he needed to see. He gripped his steering wheel grimly, and hoped that he'd done enough.
The truck and tiny house flew at a hundred miles an hour down the virtually empty highway. Even if the werewolf had managed to survive the crushing, he would be blown away in the wind. At least that's what Jordan hoped and expected. Werewolves could run and jump just fine, but he'd never met one who could fly. He maintained his speed as long as he could, draining the gas tank. He didn't know where he was going, and had only a vague understanding of where he was now, but he knew that there would have to be a gas station near any exit he chose. The truck began to sputter as the needle brushed the E, and he pulled off, hoping that his cling-on had fallen by the wayside.
"If not," he muttered, fishing a book of matches out of his dashboard. "I'll light him on fucking fire."
The thought of dousing the monster in gasoline and flicking a match at him like some kind of action hero made Jordan grin. He coasted off the freeway and down an unfamiliar boulevard, pointing his nose at the illuminated numbers blazing in the sky beneath a friendly green dinosaur. It suddenly struck him that the dinosaur on the sign was just like the pictures of cows on the ground beef he bought the week before, and he began to chuckle. The chuckle quickly evolved into a laugh, and shortly he was choking on his own amusement. He was laughing out of control, and one tiny part of his brain began to worry that he was having some kind of seizure.
The thought sobered him quickly, and he was relieved to catch his breath again. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror and realized that his green eyes were bloodshot and crusty from lack of sleep. His wavy black hair had gone greasy, and was flopping limply over his forehead. Purple smudges under his eyes made his cheeks seem hollow and flat, and the stubble on his square jaw highlighted the peeling skin on his lips. He was a wreck.
"You," he told himself firmly, "need a nap."
But there was no rest to be had, of course. He limped his smashed up truck into the gas station and glanced over his shoulder at Darla, who was still snoozing away. Her pretty pink lips puffed out with every exhale, and a bubble of spit popped between them. The sight warmed his heart and gave him a shot of energy that he so desperately needed. She needed him to save her from everything and everybody that would dare to hurt her.
He locked the doors as he stepped out, and walked around the truck to the passenger's side, blinking at the destruction, then rubbing his eyes and squinting. The paint had been scraped from the entire side of his truck, and the mirror was completely gone. The wood exterior of the camper had been stripped away, leaving blood-streaked panels of plastic insulation in its wake. The window had survived, though the borders were gone. The roof was missing a line of green shingles, and the railing for the porch was hanging at a crazy angle. Jordan took a deep breath and walked the length of his truck. He knew that the werewolf could have swung around the back and held on. His heart pounded furiously as he walked around the corner.
The porch was empty. He sighed with relief, then noticed that the steps had been ripped off. He ran his hand over the ruined edge, and pulled his hand back sharply when he hit a jagged edge, causing his fingers to bleed. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the jagged edge was in fact half of a werewolf claw. Four of them were embedded in a line on the back of his camper; two broken, two torn out by the roots. He shuddered and suppressed the urge to vomit.
Once his tank was full, he pulled up the GPS on his phone to figure out where he was and what safety he could get to in the four or five hours until Darla woke up. He was just north of San Perdido. In four hours he could get halfway up the length of California, but there were cities upon cities in that direction. He could almost make it to Vegas, but Nevada had the opposite problem. There wer
e hardly any cities at all. A sudden sinking dread reminded him that he didn't have any idea whatsoever what he was doing. He needed help. He typed in the name of April Sprinkle's shop, and found that he was less than thirty minutes away. He rubbed his chapped lips thoughtfully, with not being in a vehicle that could be hidden. If Hunt was alive, he and his people would be looking for them.
Exhaustion clouded his brain, and he found it impossible to make a decision. He desperately needed sleep. Checking the map again, he found that the closest big box store was only ten minutes away. He knew from experience that stores like that always had multiple loading bays, stacks of pallets, massive cubes of crushed boxes, and industrial-sized dumpsters out back. He could tuck his truck into the chaos for a couple of hours and sleep in relative safety. If he drank some coffee first, he should be able to sleep for an hour or two at most and wake up before the employees tried to have him towed. Decision made, he rushed into the convenience store and bought a canned coffee.
He found a space to park between two bales of cardboard. The deep shadows and irregular outlines of the bales hid him well, and he was confident that he wouldn't be seen; at least not until the sun came up. He opened his coffee and took a drink, then popped his chair back so he was lying flat. That was all it took. The coffee slipped from his hand as he crashed uncontrollably into a black, exhausted sleep.
Back at the on ramp, a crumpled figure moved. Bones scraped against each other as the figure forced his body to align. With his pelvis still twisted ninety degrees and his legs bent at awkward angles, the figure pulled a phone from his pocket and pushed a single button.
"Rosie. They got away. Don't ask stupid questions, just fucking find them! Red truck. License plate WLFH0WL. Custom camper. Gonna be torn up on the passenger side. What do you mean, can I be traced? What does that... oh. Fuck. Yes, my DNA is all over that bitch. God damn it. Well then send a normie! Wait, what? What do you mean, we're out of allies? You and me personally? The whole pack. God... yeah, okay. No, I need to, um... put myself back together. Eight o'clock? Yeah, I'll be there."
He shoved the phone back in his pocket and groaned. If a passerby looked closely at the black shadow by the freeway at any time over the next three hours, they would see a man-shaped wolf wriggle and writhe as he aligned his bones and forced his body to heal, one break at a time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Moranis awoke with a start. Someone was pounding on the door, which nobody ever came to. He shook his head in confusion, and a piece of paper fell off his face and floated to the floor; the hardwood floor. Where was his blue carpet? He realized, painfully slowly, that he wasn't at home. He'd fallen asleep on the soft pink couch in the hippie shop, and he was expected to let Bates's people in. He jumped to his feet, scattering bits of paper, and rushing toward the door. His legs were asleep from the knee down, and he fell on his face. The pounding started again.
"Moranis! You in there?" A muffled voice called.
"One sec!" Jeffery said, kicking his legs to get the blood flowing.
He winced as his feet heated and throbbed. As soon as he'd regained feeling, he scrambled to his buzzing feet and limped to the door. He glanced through the window before opening it and under the yellow street light he saw a team of four, all dressed in black with S.H.D. emblazoned on their jackets and hats in yellow. He blew out a sigh of relief and pulled the door open.
"It's about time you guys got here," he said, grumpily.
"Yeah, we had to investigate a call in midtown. Someone swore up and down that they saw a werewolf get smashed against a wall by a truck. They might have been right, there was plenty of blood and debris, but no body. No body! Nothing for us to do. You have a body, right?"
"Yes?" Jeffery answered hesitantly, feeling his torso.
"A dead one?" the officer asked, flatly.
"Oh, yeah, upstairs. In the duffel bag."
"Has the scene been touched?" The man asked as his team filed past and headed toward the stairs.
"Yes. I've been collecting evidence regarding the situation."
"Next time don't touch it till we get here," the man said, irritably. "Stay put, stay out of the way, and be ready to answer questions. Got it?"
"Yes, sir," Jeffery answered, nervously.
He studied the man as he walked away. An older man, with thick gray hair which looked as though it had been cut with kitchen shears in someone's bathroom. The only lines on his face were just around his blazing blue eyes, and he stood straight and tall at nearly six feet. Jeffery couldn't begin to pinpoint his age. The rest of the team were equally striking. One of the men looked like a younger version of the lead, with browns instead of grays and blues. The other seemed to be permanently edging on frustration, as if he'd spent the morning trying to solve a rubix cube. He had dark hair and green eyes, and he squinted a lot. The woman intimidated him most though. Tall, dark and strong, she spoke in quick little sentences and flashed her nearly-black eyes angrily as she walked. The team bickered as they went upstairs, until the lead hollered at them to shut up.
Jeffery shook his head and walked back over to the couch. He was told to keep investigating, damn it! Why would Bates tell him that if he was sending the Shifter Homicide Division to the scene? He scowled angrily at the mess of papers scattered over the couch, shelves and floor. He needed to get more organized. Sighing, Jeffery checked his watch; just after four in the morning. He scrubbed his face with his hands, knocking his glasses to the floor.
"Gonna break them one of these days," he muttered as he picked them up.
He knelt down beside the scattered papers and tried to remember how he had been organizing them. Whatever he'd been doing, it was lost to him. He sighed and started again. There were over six hundred shifter files for the five-year span. It was an overwhelming amount of information. He began by separating the files by year, and was immediately struck by a pattern. Shifter growth, as tracked by the organization, had remained fairly steady. But according to April's files, growth had been steadily rising over the last five years. Most of the unknown names were contained in the last two years' worth of records. He started counting the stacks to compare her exact numbers to his, but then changed his mind. He could do that later; for now, he needed to know exactly what the files contained.
Grabbing the first file off of the largest stack, he flipped it open; Xerxes Zenada. It irritated him for some reason he couldn't really identify, and he put the file back in its folder and rearranged the stack alphabetically. Once that was done, he pulled another file from the top of the stack; Albert Abbot. Tension eased in his chest, and he got to work. The first page was essentially identical to his file on the same person; year of birth, year of change, human identifiers (social security number, ID number, etc.), shifter identifiers (sire, rank, etc.), contact information, and sub-pack affiliation and status. Mr. Abbot was a new shifter, and was one of the fifty-four shifters that he'd had his team reach out to this week. His sub-pack affiliation and status were listed as "pending".
If he were in his own office, looking over his own records, that would be the end of Mr. Abbot's file. April had more. Jeffery took the page and tucked it under the back page of the stack he held in his hand, in the folder, and scanned the next page. It listed Mr. Abbot's recommended doctors, lawyers, emergency personnel and real estate agents. Under a column marked "preferred", there were check marks beside the names of one doctor and one real estate agent. Jeffery assumed this meant that Mr. Abbot had reached out to those specific shifter-friendly people and had begun to establish himself.
The page after that contained a diagram which looked like a sort of bubbly fractal spider web. Mr. Abbot's name was in the center circle and highlighted in pink, and a line from that circle connected his name to the name of his sire, which was highlighted in yellow. His sire's name was connected to five other names in addition to Abbot's, and each of those five were ringed with more names. Jeffery furrowed his brow.
"What were you up to, April?" he muttered.
&nbs
p; "I suggest you figure it out quickly," the squinting agent said.
Jeffery jumped. He'd been so focused that he hadn't heard the team come back down the stairs.
"Why do you say that?" Jeffery asked, controlling his voice so he wouldn't squeak with surprise.
"Because this is the third body we've wrapped up this week alone. Every one of them an ally. Every one of them killed the exact same way. We've got the lab running tests on the other two to find out if it's a lone wolf or a rogue pack. Either way, you better watch your back. Whoever this is knows the code intimately. Nero Hunt, obviously, but also the names we use with law enforcement and medical personnel. We're being deliberately gutted, and whoever is doing it wants us to know about it."
"Why would a shifter do that?" Jeffery asked. "Every shifter relies on these people, lone wolf or not."
"Don't know," the agent said, shrugging. "Not really my department."
The agent turned away and helped carry the body out the door. It was in a body bag now, with handles on either end. He wondered absently if they had removed the original bag from the office. The four-person team moved it down the stairs and into the back of their van, and Jeffery was grateful for the early morning darkness. They looked official enough, but people would ask questions, and that was one leak he didn't want to be responsible for. If there was a serial killer lone wolf on the loose, the less the normies knew about it the better.
The sky was just beginning to lighten when they slammed the doors. They returned with what looked like tackle boxes, and the three subordinates headed for the stairs. The lead stopped to talk to him.
"Where were those files?" he asked.
"On the floor next to the body," Jeffery told him, suppressing a shudder.
"We're going to need them."
"I can't... I have my own investigation to complete, I need what's on those files."
"So do I."
They stood for a second at an impasse before the lead sighed.
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