by SM Reine
“What color was its hide?” Noah asked.
Leslie said, “Definitely gray.”
“Claws? Big teeth?”
“And an angry face,” she said with a vigorous nod.
Lincoln stepped into the bushes, pushing branches aside to see the ground underneath the window. There were much fewer shards of glass than had been inside the office. But there was something else that was much more informative: big, thick gouges in the dirt, as if an animal had been struggling for purchase.
Werewolves often left such gouges when they were attacking.
“Sheriff,” Lincoln called.
Noah stepped outside, wading into the bushes. “You see something in there?”
“Careful,” Lincoln said. “Flashlight.”
Noah handed it over. Lincoln shined it on the claw marks, and the sheriff blew out through his teeth. “Gonna have to talk with Peralta about missing that one.”
“You ought to take measurements, impressions, and some dirt samples,” Lincoln said.
“I know how to do my job. Been doing it longer than you have,” Noah said.
“I was a deputy for a second.”
“And you got put on leave and never went back. This is my scene. I’ll handle it.” But when Noah flagged down the crime scene tech borrowed from Knoxville, he gave the exact orders Lincoln had. Measurements, impressions, dirt samples.
“You’ll have to process the evidence to be sure, but I’m telling you right now, these gouges aren’t from werewolves,” Lincoln said.
“Let the evidence speak for itself,” Noah said. He lifted the radio from his shoulder and pushed the button. “Call the mayor for the sanctuary’s number. I wanna talk to their Alpha werewolf again.”
Chapter 16
Even though the sanctuary was deep in the woods—a long drive via the winding road between sanctuary and civilization—it took less than a half-hour for Abel Wilder to make an appearance at the hospital. He came with a small entourage: that visiting shifter, Pedregon, and the wolf who’d given Lincoln a ride. Krantz. That one was named Krantz.
Lincoln tried to reach Abel before Noah. He failed. Noah’s determined stride closed the distance to meet the shifters in the middle of the lawn, and the sheriff met Abel’s gaze fully, without knowing it was a challenge to a werewolf. He couldn’t have been more aggressive approaching Abel in a tank loaded for war.
“What’s the problem here?” Abel asked. His nostrils were flared, sniffing the air. His slouch wasn’t lazy, but insolent.
“Can you account for your whereabouts tonight around eight?” Noah asked.
“Do I gotta?”
“I’m the sheriff, son,” Noah said.
Abel’s lip curled. He was staring right back at the sheriff, and the longer the eye contact continued, the tighter the muggy night air wrapped around them.
Lincoln bumped into Noah, and the sheriff’s gaze diverted.
“Sorry,” Lincoln said.
“What were you doing at eight o’clock tonight?” Noah asked. At least he was watching Lincoln now, looking annoyed.
“I was with my pack,” Abel said.
The scene was growing quiet. Everyone was watching the werewolves more than paying attention to the job.
“Can you account for this?” Noah asked, showing Abel to the claw marks.
“Nope.”
“Then you deny that these marks were made by werewolves?”
“Yep,” Abel said.
Lincoln had to step in. “Werewolves leave four parallel scratches, not five. There are other kinds of shifters, though. Other kinds of preternaturals. The pack is the dominant preternatural force in the area, so maybe they’ve got an idea what made this.”
Abel seem to notice Lincoln for the first time, but Lincoln focused his gaze on Abel’s collarbone. It was a lot more respectful than what he done in the sanctuary earlier. The Alpha seemed to notice. He nodded with appreciation.
“None of my pack made these scratches,” Abel said. “They’ve all been in the sanctuary with me. Everyone’s got an alibi. You can spend months verifying every last shifter’s whereabouts if you want, but you’re not gonna find the killer with us.”
“You sound awfully sure of that, Mr. Wilder.”
“Call me Alpha.” Abel bared his teeth. “It’s my title, like how I call you sheriff instead of what I’d really like to say.”
“Can you smell anything we’re missing?” Lincoln asked.
“Everything,” Abel said. “You don’t know nothing with your mundane noses and that busted old equipment. No shifter’s ever been here. Not since Genesis. We don’t got reason to come to your hospitals, and we wouldn’t be welcome if we tried.”
“We’re going to need to collect some DNA while you’re here,” Noah said.
Abel moved nearer to him. Noah may have had the authoritative aura of a sheriff, but it was nothing compared to the weight of an Alpha werewolf’s everything. His golden eyes, his confident stature, the unspoken surety that he would win any fight without sustaining the slightest injury.
“Where’s your court order?” Abel asked, picking the syllables out with his teeth.
Noah didn’t have one. It was unlikely he’d get one. The justice system was overflowing with urgent cases, and the backlog was nuts.
But his expression spoke volumes. It said, “I don’t need a judge to arrest you” and “I am the law,” which was close enough to true, since the overloaded justice system meant limited oversight, too. Exactly the reason Lincoln wanted Noah nowhere near the sheriff’s office.
“DNA would absolve you fast,” Lincoln said.
“And it’d be on file forever to use against me however this jack-off wants,” Abel said.
“Don’t let him have it,” said Pedregon.
“You’re setting an unfavorable precedent right now,” Noah told them all.
“Says the guy who’d rather try to pin this on me than find out what I know,” Abel said. “This bitch ain’t the first to get murdered in this hospice. Do you even got a clue how big this is? You should be begging us for help.”
“There hasn’t been any murder in Grove County for decades,” Noah said, conveniently ignoring all the murders that had gotten Lincoln’s badge stripped.
“Check the medical files, look for patterns, and earn your fucking paycheck,” Abel said. “Thought you weren’t going to help with the murders, Marshall.”
“I said I wasn’t gonna help you,” Lincoln said.
“The family resemblance is real strong.” The Alpha worked his tongue in his mouth and spit on the ground.
He marched away, Krantz at his elbow. Pedregon spit at Noah’s feet too. “I’m confident we will see you around, paco.”
It was a miracle that the three of them retreated without any bloodshed.
But Lincoln could feel the storm growing. The first waves of it were crashing over Noah now, watching their retreating backs as he obviously considered how to reassert his control.
The shifters got in a car and drove away. Lincoln didn’t breathe until the car was gone.
“How do you know the werewolf Alpha?” Noah asked, the muscles of his face shivering under the skin. He was fighting hard not to let his emotions show. He was failing.
“They moved into Northgate while I was deputy,” Lincoln said. “A series of murders almost got blamed on the pack. Investigation revealed their innocence. We’re not friends, but we’ve got a working relationship.”
“You mean the deaths blamed on Father Night?” Noah asked.
“There were murders. Father Night was blamed because he was responsible, along with everyone else connected to the White Ash Coven in Northgate—including a lot of people we’re related to.” To be fair, in that neck of the woods, most people were some kind of distant cousins.
“Those deaths were probably from demons who showed up before the Breaking,” Noah said.
“That’s not how I remember it, and I would remember better than you. I worked that case
. Where were you, Noah? Wasn’t that when you split with Abigail and spent a few weeks in Tampa?”
Noah turned red all over and swelled up like a balloon, just like he had as a kid. “That’s the case where you got put on suspension and vanished to escape a dishonorable discharge.”
Vanished, Noah said. Like Lincoln hadn’t been kidnapped by the demon possessing his body.
The entire cult in Northgate had conspired to bestow the spirit of a nightmare demon upon Lincoln, just because he was convenient. Because he was the youngest son of the Marshall family, with the tiniest bit of demon blood in his heritage, making him the perfect vessel. They never even tried to recruit him into the cult. They had kept him as a sacrificial lamb.
Once the demon controlled his body, Lincoln had gone straight to hell and committed sins for which there was no redemption.
He knew what it looked like when demons killed.
Just like he knew what it looked like when men killed.
“What did Abel Wilder mean when he said you weren’t gonna help him investigate?” Noah asked.
“It means I’ve lost the right to work with the police and I won’t help the pack, but I’m gonna be around. I’ll be watching how y’all process this case real closely.”
“Is that a threat?” Noah asked.
“It’s not a threat as long as you keep your department’s nose clean and don’t pin this on the nearest retard,” Lincoln said. “You gotta treat your community right. All of your community. Even the people you don’t like. Because I’ll tell you this, Sheriff Adair: Justice is blind, but I’m not. And I’m not going anywhere until this case is solved right.”
Chapter 17
The Marshall house was swarmed by lightning bugs, tracing electric zigzags between bloodroots that nodded in the breeze. Cicadas buzzed over Lincoln’s passage through the thicket. He sloshed through mud and pulled himself up on creepers.
The front door stood open, propped against Grandpa’s shoe again. Voices filtered through the lace curtains as softly as the light from the antique lamps. The air felt hotter here, climbing the stairs to his childhood kitchen, than it had down by the hospice. But it also felt like his collar was getting tighter, his body heavier. If he slipped he was going to tumble back down the drive to the hospice, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to leave his father’s bedside again.
It must have been euchre night because women encircled the table in the breakfast nook. Everyone had a cup of beer, just like always. Only real difference was that the size of the cups were smaller. Aunt Bee alone used to go through three or four pints a night.
They were making up for the missing alcohol, still scarce enough to cost a fortune after Genesis, by smoking fat blunts thicker than a thumb. The Marshalls had always grown their own tobacco and marijuana in the field past the pond, so it was easy to get, even now.
Once Lincoln had gotten old enough to realize that those smelly barrels of buds were illegal, he’d asked his dad about it. And his dad had said, “A man’s got rights no white collar, limp-wristed politician in the big city can deny. And it’s our responsibility to exercise those God-given rights.”
The ladies must have been inhaling their God-given rights ever since Lincoln and Noah left, because they were all coughing and red-eyed over the cards.
“Evening, ladies,” Lincoln said, tilting his head. “Mrs. Welch. Miss Castle. It’s a pleasure to see y’all here. I wasn’t expecting company.” They had enough players from elsewhere in town to have two euchre games running, and enough pot to keep all of them happy.
“We’re over almost every night,” said Mrs. Welch, a neighborhood mom who used to babysit him. She patted the woman beside her. “And it’s not Miss Castle anymore. It’s Mrs. Joanna Farley.”
“You and Bill, huh?” Lincoln asked.
“That’s right,” said Joanna, beaming.
“Congrats to the both of you. He’s a lucky guy.”
“Stop flirting and get over here,” Ashley said. She kicked a chair out for Lincoln to sit. There was no malice in her once she’d inhaled a half a gram. She was the smiling little girl who used to spend euchre nights playing hide and seek with Lincoln, joyful and welcoming. “Got any news about the sirens?”
“I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation,” Lincoln said reflexively, to a chorus of groans.
“Whatever. I’ve got a blunt for you if you’ll take over as my partner for Aunt Susannah. Even a shot of Coors is enough to put her to sleep these days,” Ashley said, rolling her eyes. Lincoln’s mom lurked in the corner, and he could tell that she wasn’t sleepy. She was being sullen. Aunt Bee had said something Susannah didn’t fancy again.
Lincoln wasn’t gonna cover on cards, no matter how childish his mom behaved. “I’m afraid I’ll have to decline the pleasure of y’all’s company. Travel and investigation’s got me tired, and I’d like to be up early to visit my father. Ladies.” He saluted them and got a dreamy wave from Mrs. Welch in return.
The conversation followed him up the stairs almost as long as the smoke did. Lincoln coughed into his sleeve. He’d never smoked, not once. His dad was right that God’s law superseded that of man, but Lincoln had a fondness for man’s law too. He hadn’t even gone to any keggers with his frat before turning twenty-one. No, he’d saved the alcohol poisoning for the night of his birthday. And spent the next day in the hospital.
He was feeling almost as bad as that day in the hospital now. Weeks without sleep had piled onto his spine, pushing him down.
When he pushed his bedroom door open, Sophie’s disapproving gaze lanced through him, cutting the last of his strings.
Lincoln collapsed to the desk chair and kicked the door closed. “What’d I do wrong this time?”
Sophie’s eyebrows lifted in slow motion, incredulity dawning over her. “This time?”
“You were pissed at me when I got back from the pack, and now something else has got you going. What else offended you?”
“How quickly did you forget my complaints about your family?” Sophie asked. “Did you forget them between your uncle’s pickup and meeting your brother-in-law at the barbecue? If so, I’d be remiss if I didn’t consider a diagnosis of short-term amnesia.”
“I didn’t forget anything,” Lincoln said. “It’s like you just wanna be mad at me.”
“Your family was so disrespectful.”
“They were just talking.” He toed his boots off with twin thumps, kicking them under his bedspread.
Sophie’s nose wrinkled. “They wouldn’t even speak to me directly much of the time. They talked over my head as though I’m a child!”
“Old people being old people.”
“They’re racist,” she said.
There was that word. Sophie must have been dying to drop it all day, and now she did it with obvious relish, painting his whole family with a slur when she barely knew them. “You ever think they might hold a grudge against you because you walked into a family of witches with stuff showing your allegiance to witch hunters?”
“My guardians! I happily supplied context when asked. What more do they need?”
“You could stop being such an ass every time they say something you don’t like,” Lincoln said.
“They’re the ones saying things that are wrong.”
“Thought crimes don’t really exist, shortcake. They can say what they want,” Lincoln said. “We live in a nation with free speech. Wherever you come from, I reckon you must have had the same, or else you wouldn’t mouth off like this.”
“Mouth off? Mouth off?” She towered over Lincoln, all five foot whatever of nerd rage. It was hilarious after watching Noah and Abel trying to pull that maneuver on each other. He could have stuck Sophie in his shirt pocket.
“Why you people gotta be like this?” Lincoln asked. “You’ve gotta make waves everywhere you go. You can’t just go with the flow.”
“The flow of your community’s river floods with racism,” Sophie said. “Look at the words you’ve chosen
. ‘You people.’ You group me in with some imaginary racial group and saddle me with your expectations!”
“It’s not a race thing. You know, we’re totally capable of acting like assholes over other bullshit, too,” Lincoln said. “Like Noah. My goddamn brother-in-law, Noah Adair, somehow the Sheriff of Grove County. May God save all our souls.”
“Permit me to extrapolate the night’s events based upon my brief observations. There was a crime, and he’s now attempting to blame it upon the werewolf pack. Am I correct?”
“Right in one,” Lincoln said.
“A man so set upon his bigotry is incapable of acting in good faith. He should be removed from the investigation.”
“It’ll never happen.”
“Why? Are there no checks and balances after the apocalypse?”
“There ain’t none, but even those that came before Genesis weren’t enough to slow down Noah Adair.” Lincoln sat back, rubbing his temples with both hands. He didn’t even have a headache, exactly. He just felt so heavy. “Noah and I haven’t talked since the incident our last year of high school. We were planning to pull a prank against our school with some friends.”
Sophie’s lips pursed. “Under ordinary circumstances, I would believe you’re attempting to derail the conversation. Given our venue, I am willing to listen to what you have to say.”
“You’re so kind. Just one big heart, Sophie Keyes.”
“I don’t have to be kind to you.”
“Noah burned down the school gym,” Lincoln said. “I had the team on board for a normal prank. Something with toilet paper. But he’d gotten fireworks and he needed to do something flashy—leave a mark. So after we put toilet paper all over the gym, when it was just Noah and me, he insisted on setting off the fireworks too.”
Sophie lifted a hand to stop him. “The head of local law enforcement is a former convict?”
“Oh, he wasn’t convicted,” Lincoln said. “We kept our mouths shut, and this autistic kid took the fall. Derek Gonzales in the special ed program. Someone said they saw him near the gym that night, and his mom admitted that he sometimes throws fits, and that was it. He was a sophomore. He spent a couple years in juvie, and Noah never got looked at twice. He’s got no record. He looks like a great sheriff. But I know the truth. He’s a coward.”