Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (41 page)

I moved across the clearing made by death and wolves and many human law enforcement officers and crime scene people, using my nose, and sometimes my eyes, to tell me what had happened here. And by what I saw and scented, we had a bigger problem than I'd expected.

“Eli?” I said. “Those three wolves? Two were males and the other one was in heat.”

Eli grunted. He'd heard the stories about werewolves. He understood what I meant. We had a crazy female on our hands, and the bitches were always smart, wily, and inevitably in charge, thanks to the mating, rutting madness that drove a pack with a female in it.

And then I smelled something else. I bent and let my nose guide me into the edge of the rough land, the low trees and brush of the wet world. I found where a boat had come ashore, a scar on the mud, one that extended up into the brush as if it had been pulled high. And from the scents scattered all around, he had changed into his wolf, in the boat, before leaping into the brush.

I said, “The wolf—
a
wolf, maybe not one of
the
wolves—came to the site, maybe back to the site, recently, like maybe yesterday, which is odd. Why would he do that?” I moved to the edge of the killing ground and found his scent stronger there. He had marked his territory only once, against a short, broken tree, as if leaving a calling card. And it was definitely not one of the three wolves who had done this killing. “Eli, we have three wolves killing. And one, maybe, investigating. Or something. And this one was smart. Not a single good track left anywhere.”

I found one poor, dried-out paw print, mostly just leaves pushed into the soil, but there was enough to compare against the tracks of the crime scene photos.
Not
one of the killer wolves. It didn't make sense. But yeah. “We have four wolves, three in a pack and one a lone wolf,” I repeated. Which, for reasons I didn't examine, scared me more than anything else.

•   •   •

We landed back at Sarge's place for lunch and to gas up, eating sandwiches on the dock, watching him work. The sun was high in the sky, and temps were cool, so there were few mosquitoes and gnats and there was enough wind to keep the no-see-ums away. If the full moon hadn't been near, it
would have been pleasant lying back on the dock, sleeping in the sun. Or it would have been if PP hadn't lumbered over and stuck her slobbery face into mine. I had felt her heavy paws landing on the board of the dock, and I didn't react. Just lay still while she snuffled my neck. She didn't bite or growl and I figured it was a form of acceptance, so I slowly reached up and scratched her belly. She flopped down beside me, exposing her underside to me. “You'll never be finished with her now,” Sarge said. I figured out what he meant when she head-butted me to keep scratching. Lunch was a nice break from the noise and vibration of the small plane.

In the early afternoon, we saw two other sites before heading back to Sarge's place. One of them had been visited by the fourth werewolf, after Crime Scene Investigations had finished with it, and he had landed on the same side of the small bit of land where the crime scene people had come ashore. He had stayed a long time at that one. He had tracked the other wolves back to their landing site on the other side of the spit of land, where the pack's boat had come ashore. He had marked this site only once too, which just felt wrong for wolves of any kind. I bent over the site and sniffed, pulling in air over my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Eli looked away as I did it, and I couldn't tell if he was fighting laughter at the expression I made or some other emotion.

When I stopped and stood upright he said, “Babe, just a suggestion. Don't do that in front of a date. It's . . . not pretty.” When I grinned at him, Eli flipped a hand to show he was
just sayin'
, and I chuckled.

Either way, the lone wolf smelled . . . worried.

Oddly this one had smelled as if he'd been a wolf for some time. He smelled in control, and even when he lingered over a place where the bitch had relieved herself, he hadn't gone into the male werewolf version of mating frenzy. He had kept it in control. And what was even odder, this guy—like the rogue weres—hadn't been traveling with a grindylow. He had nothing to keep him in line, to keep him from killing and eating humans, or turning humans into pack. Our lone wolf was in control of himself and really, really alone.

•   •   •

Over a dinner of fresh seafood at a place called Joe's Got Crabs (this time mine was broiled, with fried soft-shell crabs on the side, with a house-made, Cajun-style rémoulade sauce that was to die for) I explained to the
guys what I'd deduced. “This last guy, the lone wolf, has lived here long enough to have bayou skills. He knows the area.”

Eli nodded and gestured with his fork as he chewed. “He knows how to approach, how to move along the edges of the kill sites. Even in broad daylight, he'd move almost unseen.”

“And he's worried about the other werewolves.”

“Worried how?” the Kid asked. I shrugged, and he went on. “Like he's afraid they'll track him? Attack him? Hurt him?”

“Interfere with his standard of living?” Eli asked.

I thought about that one. “Weres used to live in Lousiana. Then they had a run-in with Leo Pellissier and he kicked them out of the state. What if one—I don't know—stayed? Took up residence? Lived among humans without turning anyone?”

“And now his lifestyle is in danger,” Eli said, having allowed us to provide potential confirmation toward his own point. He ordered beer for us both and bowls of ice cream all around. When Alex looked dumbfounded, Eli said, “You were a good sport today, staying in the cabin with the dog and the old guy. Figured you deserved a treat.”

“I'd rather have a Ferrari, but ice cream isn't bad.”

•   •   •

I spent an hour texting Rick, because his carrier didn't offer good cell coverage this far south. Sometimes the government's predilection to pick the cheapest bid on a job caused problems later on. Go figure. Rick made plans to join us, but it would be another day before that could happen, which left me many hours before he could get here. And few hours before the first day of the full moon.

Just after the texting ended, I heard back from the sheriff and the governor. The gov felt that PsyLED would take too long to find and kill the “wild dogs” and offered me a contract. But the wild-dog clause was a problem, legally speaking. With the tentative exception of vamps, supernats and their legal standing had not yet been addressed by Congress. Vamps were already in a legal limbo, with Leo having asked for a status like American tribal Indians had—called tribal sovereignty, making vamps a dependent sovereign nation within the federal government. It would give them a position that was similar to a state in some situations, and similar to a nation in others, with certain amounts of recognition, self-government,
and sovereignty. It was a huge legal jumble of problems, which would take decades to sort out, and even longer to implement, all of which made the Master of the City of the Southwestern states happy, because it left him in charge of his people and free to act in any way that led to the safety of the human public. However, no such legal interference had been instituted or started for weres or witches, making their legal limbo even worse than the vamps'. And calling a were a wild dog was . . . wrong. Werewolves were sentient beings.

Yet people were dying. And I was stuck in the middle of the problems.

I copied Leo, my partners, and Rick on the offer and got a single-word text reply from my sorta-boyfriend.

Sigh . . . ,
it read.

“Yeah,” I said to my empty room. Our “wild dog” were had suddenly become a pack of three led by a sex-starved female. Add a lone wolf into the picture, and a state government that wanted in on the kill action, and this was suddenly FUBAR territory. I was not touching this with a ten-foot pole, not until Rick's bosses at PsyLED decided on a course of action. Which might mean we were headed home in the morning. Yet the next night was the full moon, which would mean death for someone unless I acted. Which the legal situation could prevent. This sucked. I wanted to hit something, but Eli was asleep. Which sounded all wrong too. I rolled over in bed and commanded myself to sleep. I felt Beast sling out a claw and instantly I went under. My last conscious thought was of Beast as a sleeping pill.

•   •   •

It rained all night, sometimes so hard it beat against the windows, with lightning and thunder all around, the noise enough to rouse me several times. Mostly, thanks to Beast, I slept through it, knowing that the next three days could be sleepless and dangerous and deadly. Or not.

Sometime during the night, I got an official e-mail from PsyLED, but with the noise outside, I missed it. An hour before dawn, the storm broke, Beast slapped me awake, and I found my cell blinking. I rolled up to a sitting position and discovered that I had an official offer from the U.S. government, one worked out with Leo's lawyers and two congressional committees, approved by the Louisiana governor, and vetted by the president himself, all in just under seven hours.

I had a kill order to take down the pack. And I was gonna get paid big bucks. “How cool is that?” I asked my dark, silent room. And best? No one said anything about the lone wolf, who hadn't been in on the carnage and feasting.

As I sat there, I got a second text from Nadine, the sheriff, with a new sighting location. During the storm the night before, four local fishermen had taken refuge on land in the swamp over near Lake Boudreaux. They had seen two huge dogs and a bear as the storm cleared. Nadine sent both a map and a GPS, saved by the men. I pulled up a sat map and studied it. The sighting had been inland, if you can call the swampy area north of Lake Boudreaux inland, up through an old canal, on actual land.

I studied the site on sat maps and determined that we could get there via boat. I loved modern detecting methods. I got up, stretched hard and slow, and walked to the connecting door.

Banging on the Younger brothers' door, I shouted, “Wake up, sleepyheads! We got a job with a GPS to start the day. Big enough bucks to buy the Kid a pony for his birthday!” I started to turn away but banged once again, my fist flat on the door. “And I'll need my special equipment, pronto.” I sent the proposal and the GPS to them and got dressed, glad I'd gotten some sleep. I was gonna need it.

I was packing my boots and other supplies into a bag when my cell chimed. On the screen were the words
Darlin'. PsyL authorized me to area. Officially. Flight landing at NOLA at two. See you at 4p
.

“Again with the
darlin'
?” But something like longing or hunger flowed through me and I dropped onto the bed, grinning foolishly into the dark. Rick was coming. Maybe I should have gotten nonconnecting rooms. Not that there would be any actual sex—not with the possibility of me getting the were-taint as a really bad, incurable, untreatable STD—but maybe I should have gotten nonconnecting rooms anyway. Just in case.

I texted back,
I may not be me. Fair warning
. Rick was a were. He'd figure it out.

Several minutes later he texted to me.
Noted
. Which made me happy all over for reasons I didn't understand.

Eli knocked on my door, one tap. That was all. One. Mr. Minimalist. “Come.” Who says I can't do terse?

Eli entered, geared up for the day, a bulge under his arm visible as he
entered, another in the back of his shirt, both of which were nine-millimeter semiautomatics. I knew he'd have more weapons on—a silver-plated knife or two and a few stakes. All that just to greet the dawn. Eli, a minimalist in all other ways, was not into austerity where weapons were concerned. In his hand was my fetish box. He put it on the bed beside me, and for once was unable to keep his curiosity off his face.

Feeling a little uncertain, because I'd never done this in front of him before, I opened the box and rummaged around inside, finally pulling out a short necklace strung with glass beads and wired with canine teeth and three largish bones. I knew what almost all my necklaces were, animal-wise, but some I didn't use often, and this one I had never used.

Trying to sound offhand, Eli said, “You're gonna track in animal form?”

My eyes on the bones, I nodded, letting a small smile form. I said, “Think you can find the most recent sighting place?”

“Does a mountain lion scream in the woods?”

I smiled wider without looking at him. “Loud. Even if no one is there. And yeah. Animal form. One with a good nose and who can swim.”

“In gator-infested waters?” He sounded half-teasing, half-appalled.

I chuckled softly. “Most gators are hibernating. Water's still too cold for them to feed.” I looked up under my eyebrows. “Sarge told me. Anyway, swimming is only important if I really need it.”

“And?” The word was phrased the way he must have spoken in the Rangers, sharp and cutting and demanding of more than just an answer.

“Newfoundland,” I said. “I have the bones of a huge black Newfoundland, two years old, who was in training to work with an SAR team because of her swimming ability and because she had an air nose.”

Eli grunted. “Change in here or the Kid will want to watch. I'll go get some protein.” He left, closing the door behind him. He hadn't asked about the air nose comment, because he knew what it meant.

Some dogs track on the ground. Others over water. Yet others—some very special few others—can track through the air, sometimes for miles. They were the wunderkinds of tracking dogs as far as I was concerned.

I stripped and put the folded clothes into the bag. It was bright pink with big flowers in hot pink, red, and fuchsia, with green leaves on it. Peonies maybe. The zippered duffel had been a gag gift from the Kid, who expected me to retch and throw it away. Instead I'd brought it on two other
jobs. And Eli made him carry it while we both cooed about how cute he looked. Mean? Yeah. Probably. But
turnabout's fair play
had been fun.