“Interesting.” I moved ahead of them, not wanting to lose the faint blood scent. I chased it down the corridor, its ribbon thickening as I ran down another staircase and through a maze of hallways until all that stood between me and full-on assault was the door to an office. Max caught up to me and wrinkled his nose, telling me how strong the odor was since he was a wizard, and therefore limited to human-level senses.
“I told the ladies to stay back,” he said.
I nodded. “Whose office is that?”
“Doctor Otis LeConte. He’s one of our geneticists. He’s a human.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You have full-blooded humans working here already?” As soon as I said it, I recognized how ridiculous it sounded. Of course I knew they hired humans, and the scientists would have started with the others. My attention was only half on the conversation. I wanted to help the poor bugger, but I listened and smelled for signs of an assailant to avoid potential ambush.
“He was the first we hired. It was one of the items we had on our list to talk to you about today.” He cocked his head. “Do you hear anything in there?”
“No, nothing’s moving.”
He moved forward, then stopped and looked at me. “At your command, Gabriel.”
Not sure why he deferred to me, I said, “Go on.”
He opened the door and stumbled back, his hand over his nose and mouth.
“Come now, you’re a physician. It can’t be that—” But it was. LeConte lay splayed out on his desk, his lab coat dripping with the contents of his circulatory system onto the dark brown carpet. Both wrists had been gashed open, as had his neck, and his eyes stared at the ceiling in horror. Files had been turned out on the floor and had become a Red Sea of paper.
As I recoiled in horror, my mind catalogued observations to sift through later. There was a laptop computer on a shelf to the side and several little statues and knickknacks that looked to be made of precious metal also stood in front of books on the bookcases. Not a robbery, then. I would have to wait and see what the coroner said—he was one of us as well—but the wounds didn’t look like they had been made by werewolves. Perhaps someone pretending to be one of us, but definitely not us. Also, the window stood wide open, which allowed the air to circulate. It had likely kept any of the younger ones from smelling the blood, although I still didn’t understand how someone didn’t notice something.
“Oh my god! Otis?”
I caught Selene’s arm before she barged into the room. “There’s nothing to be done for him. You’ll only interfere with evidence now.”
Her face had gone white, even her freckles, and she wobbled. I pulled her to me so she wouldn’t fall should she faint, and I found she fit perfectly against my chest. I filed that impression away for future consideration as well, turned, and guided her to a chair in the hallway. She slumped forward, her head between her knees, and took deep breaths. Truth be told, I felt woozy as well, and the hand I placed on her trembling shoulder might have been as much to steady myself as her. I hoped my father wasn’t looking down from wherever werewolves went after they died and shaking his head in shame at his weak-stomached son. It seemed unfair I could eviscerate animals with ease, and I could even handle the usual murder victim, but the sight of such brutality always got to me. I blamed childhood trauma.
“I don’t want to know, do I?” asked Lonna. She stood with her arms crossed and looked down at Selene, but her face had also gone pale, and her nose wrinkled. Max had closed the door and gone to call the police. Not the human ones. Lord knows we didn’t need them mucking about in here.
“You’re going to need to find a new geneticist,” I told her. “He’s been exsanguinated.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You and your big words. Someone sucked his blood?”
I started to shake my head, but then stopped. A man LeConte’s size—and I was pretty good at guessing heights and weights—would contain about five liters of blood. What I had seen looked like a lot, but after a certain point and with the element of surprise, any amount over about a liter would seem excessive. His neck and wrists had still been dripping, which told me the deed was recent. I stood, commanded my knees to stop their schoolboy knocking, and said to Lonna, “Can you take care of her? I need to see if I can find the trail of the perpetrator.”
Lonna nodded and sat next to Selene, whose breathing deepened and lengthened into quiet sobs.
I found Max outside LeConte’s window, which was on the first floor. I half-expected to see him performing some sort of spell or doing something else wizardly, but instead, he shone a light on the ground.
“Ultraviolet with a little magical help,” he said. “If there was blood on the bastard’s shoes, it’ll show, but the sun is too bright for me to see. Can you stand there and cast a shadow for me?”
“I can’t imagine how there wouldn’t be anything on the killer’s shoes unless he’d covered them with something.” I moved to the spot he indicated.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t rained in days—an unusual state of affairs for Scotland, even in the summer—and the ground was dry, so there were no impressions to be found. Between the two of us, we detected some blood splotches on the mulch under the bushes outside of the building and some bent grass blades. Of course, the traces petered out, but at least it was along a straight trail leading directly toward the woods.
“I’m going to change and go after him,” I said.
Max nodded and turned to give me some privacy. To his credit, he didn’t say that would have been the thing to do in the first place, although I cursed myself for not thinking of it sooner. Finding LeConte’s body had shaken me, as had the implications. My mind raced with what I would tell the Council and how they would react.
It occurred to me that someone inside the building may be watching, and the thought made my skin crawl, but time was too precious to waste on privacy concerns, and Max was there in case someone decided to take advantage of that moment of disorientation when the change was almost complete. I divested myself of my garments and left them in as neat a pile as I could, and took a deep breath. The life force of nature of the woods and trees nearby reached out to me, and I to the wild energy. It enveloped my limbs, traveling down my nervous pathways to blood, bone, and sinew, drawing everything to the center. I simultaneously folded inward and outward, gritting my teeth at sensations that, although they had become familiar, were never comfortable—like hands molding and rearranging me with no regard for the limits of my tendons and muscles. I understood the change differed for everyone, and I envied those for whom the transition went smoothly. Some legends held that werewolves wore their animal skin on the inside when they were human. Turning inside out would have been easier.
Finally, after I had physically rearranged myself, I panted for a few breaths and then took off. The path that had been illuminated by the UV light now showed itself to me with the scent of LeConte’s blood, heavy and fatty and crying out for vengeance. The dim light of the woods barely registered as my nose directed me to turn right, left, over, under, squeezing between. Whoever had murdered the scientist had his own interesting scent, a combination of pipe smoke and kerosene.
The trail ended at a stream, but there was still enough scent in the air to figure out which way the murderer had run. From what I could recall, there were busy roads on either side of the woods where a getaway car and driver could be waiting.
I chose the direction my nose told me to go and found the trail about forty meters north. The blood was gone, but the kerosene-pipe smoke smell was there along with sweat. That scent disappeared along the side of a road, where a small pull-off could have hidden a vehicle behind some trees, and I noted where it was so the police could come look for tire tracks. Not that they’d likely find anything of any help in the dry gravel.
I trotted back toward the Institute, and a lithe red wolf surprised me in the woods on the other side of the stream. She smelled familiar.
“Selene?”
“Gabriel?” S
he sat back on her haunches and regarded me with a concerned look. “Did you catch them?”
“Obviously not. And what are you doing out here? They could’ve been armed.”
In spite of lacking human facial muscles and their range of expression, we lycanthropes can express our emotions adequately without speaking, and her glare told me she was pissed even without her baring her teeth.
“Otis was my friend. I wasn’t going to let them get away.” She turned and walked in the direction from where she’d come.
“I wasn’t either,” I told her.
“Obviously not,” she tossed over her shoulder at me.
I ran to catch up with her. “Look here, there’s no reason to get sarcastic with me. You’ve had quite a shock, but I’m only trying to help.”
The tears came through her mental voice. “Don’t you think Otis’s murder could have something to do with your visit? The timing is odd, isn’t it?”
Her question would’ve floored me had we been near a floor. Here I had gone chasing after a potentially armed villain—yes, I could acknowledge my own bravado and stupidity here—and she had started sorting through the facts like a scientist. I blamed the surge of attraction I felt toward her on my current animal state, my tendency to fall for smart women, and our situation. We’d faced death and now strolled, albeit briskly, through lovely woods on a summer day. I’d learned two years previously not to fall for scientists. They’ll stick with their own every time.
“You’re quiet,” she said. “I apologize if I offended you.”
“No offense taken. I was just pondering what you said, and I sincerely hope my visit today had nothing to do with your friend’s death.”
“It would be a coincidence, and I don’t believe in those. All I know is that a dear friend has been killed in a horrible manner.”
I wanted to dissect the manner in which she’d said “dear friend” so I could quell the jealousy that blossomed in my chest. Had she and LeConte been lovers but covered it up to avoid a workplace scandal?
Stop acting like a pup, I scolded myself. What the lovely Selene does on her own time is her business. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret when we left the woods, walked into the sunshine of the Institute grounds, and once again became Lycanthropy Council Member and scientist.
“I see the cavalry is here,” she said.
Indeed, the yellow-and-blue marked car, just similar enough to the human police vehicles, had arrived, its lights whirling. When I got close, Lonna’s mental voice came to me: “The police are here, and the detective wants to see you first.”
2
Selene changed in her office, and I in Max’s, and then Detective Garou met me in the conference room. He rubbed his close-cropped beard and studied me with narrowed eyes.
“Sorry to be presumptuous sir, but aren’t you…?” His accent held a hint of French, definitely more continental than English or Scottish.
“Yes, I’m Gabriel McCord, Investigator for the Lycanthrope Council.”
“Oh. Dreadfully sorry to trouble you, sir. You may go.”
“No,” I said and stopped myself from snapping at him, choosing instead to patiently explain. “I was there when the body was discovered. Question me like you would any other witness on the scene.”
“Right, then. What was the nature of your business here today?” He glanced at the clock. “And when did you arrive?”
“That’s better. I was here on official Council business, mostly to see how they’ve been progressing with starting up and to help determine whether they’re ready for the first batch of applicants.”
“I’ve heard of this place, sir, but I don’t know what it’s about. The Council has kept it all hush-hush, calling it merely ‘The Institute’.”
“The full name is The Institute of Lycanthropic Reversal. It’s a sanitarium for the newly turned werewolves in the United States and elsewhere tainted vaccines were used as part of a horrible pharmaceutical experiment.”
“So that’s why there’s so many Americans here. Why not just build it over there?”
“The method is still experimental. Some of the substances have been approved for study here, but not by their Food and Drug Administration.”
He nodded. “And the time you arrived, sir?”
“About nine o’clock.”
“And when you discovered the body? It was you, correct?”
I told him how I smelled the blood and about the discovery of the body, my run through the woods, and where I think the getaway car had been stashed.
“Had you any contact with the deceased, sir? When he was alive, I mean.”
“None whatsoever. I imagine I would have met him today had circumstances been different.”
“Thank you, that is all.”
I gave him my card in case he had any further questions but doubted I’d hear from him. The Lycanthrope Police were creatures of the Council, which I disagreed with, but which had been well-established by the time I came on. He surprised me by stopping me before I left the room.
“Sir, since you’re the Investigator, and all this will be going to the Council anyway, would you like to sit in on the questioning?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Thank you, Detective. I had not thought to ask, but that would be helpful.”
He gestured for me to take the seat beside him and walked into the hall to have his deputy summon the next person.
When Lonna entered the room, she pressed her lips into a line and nodded to me. It occurred to me that I knew this group of people’s secrets except for the lovely Selene, who had intrigued me by following me. There were things I had not shared with the Council, and I knew I’d have to be careful not to betray I knew more than they did. In that context, the detective’s invitation no longer seemed so friendly.
“When was the last time you saw Doctor LeConte alive?” Garou asked once Lonna sat.
“This morning at staffing at eight o’clock,” Lonna said, her lovely light green eyes filling with tears. I waited for her to add something and then remembered her background as a social worker and private investigator. She would be careful and only answer what was asked.
Garou seemed to come to the same conclusion. He leaned forward and said in a gentle voice, “Any information you can give us will be helpful. Was there anything unusual about the meeting?”
“No. We were mostly preparing for Mister McCord’s visit.”
“Yes, he told me that he was here in an official capacity. What was Doctor LeConte’s task to be?”
“He and Doctor Rial were to give him a tour, and then we were all going to have a meeting and then lunch.”
“And what was LeConte’s role here?”
“He’s our associate geneticist.” She sniffled. “Or he was.”
“I see. You have another one, then.”
“Yes, Iain MacPherson, a human. He’s out of the country currently.”
“And where were you between when you last saw Doctor LeConte and when Mister McCord and Doctor Fortuna discovered him?”
“I was in a meeting with Doctor Rial and Doctor Fortuna, finalizing the details of the visit.”
Garou made a note in his pad. “Why was Doctor LeConte not present?”
“He was working on a project, but I can’t say more,” she said. “It’s confidential Institute business.”
“I see.” He dismissed her with an aerial downstroke of his pen and said, “That will be all.”
She gave me a pleading look before she rose from the table and stalked to the door.
“Excuse me,” I said to Garou. “Please continue without me.”
I caught up to Lonna in the hall and followed her up the stairs to her office. Max had been called in next, and Selene had been instructed to stay in her office until summoned, so Lonna was alone.
“Come in,” she said. Her office fit her title of Institute Director with a large desk, windows overlooking the lawn and woods, bookshelves, and even two wingback chairs in front a fireplac
e. Their clawed feet rested on an oriental rug.
“Nice,” I said. “It’s Masterpiece Theatre meets University President’s office.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“Sorry,” I told her. “I’m a little off, so my jokes aren’t working like they should.”
“Oh.” She gestured for me to take a seat in one of the chairs by the fireplace, which was, of course, not on. She went behind the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out two bottles of water. “My fridge isn’t here yet,” she said and handed one of the waters to me.
“I was hoping you’d offer me some Scotch.”
“Not while the police are still here. Max has some rum in his office if you want to get into something later.”
“I might.”
She plopped into the other chair and took a deep drink of the water. “This isn’t how I’d hoped your visit would go.” She tucked a stray dark curl behind one ear. “I was looking forward to showing our facility off and walking you through the reversal process, or at least our planned method for it.”
“Yes, I imagine you had a different agenda. We can discuss other things if you like, but I am interested to know what LeConte was doing while you met without him.”
“He was the one who excused himself,” she said. “We didn’t kick him out.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“He was excited because Iain had sent him the files and blood samples for the first batch of applicants for our program recently, and he wanted to review and organize them so he could tell you we’d made progress on that front.”
“Where are the files now?”
“Good question. Since the Council still requires us to do everything with paper, probably in the mess in his office.”
“The Red Sea,” I murmured.
She covered her eyes and groaned. “Gabriel…”
“I know, I know. I told you, I’m off today. Would Iain have kept copies?”
“Yes, in case the ones he sent were lost in transit. We can tell him the bad news and ask about the files in another couple of hours when he checks in. It’s still early there.” She looked at me sideways. “Go ahead and ask, Gabriel. You know you want to.”
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