Demon Accords 10: Rogues (7 page)

“Ah, is anyone else uncomfortable with this?” Dustin asked.

Rodney looked slightly in awe, his grin growing as he observed Kyle’s discomfort.

Lisa smiled and held up her glass.  “In nature, gentlemen, you have to take time to truly observe with all your senses.  Sometimes, what looks like prey is actually far more dangerous than first glances might imply.  For instance, a whitetail buck, like most animals, is generally only dangerous when cornered or surprised at close range.  But let’s say we transported one of you hunters and your stand directly to Africa and a waterbuck happens by.  You decide to shoot it, but only wound it.  It takes off and you follow, hot on its trail.  You take twenty steps into the thick bush and suddenly find yourself impaled on almost three feet of horn because you assumed it would react like a whitetail when instead of fleeing, it turned to confront its attacker.”

“Let me guess… you’re the waterbuck,” Rodney said.

“She’s the wolf that finishes off the waterbuck,” Shorty said suddenly.  The others all looked at him, surprised.  Lisa narrowed her eyes at him, but he didn’t meet her gaze as he stood to take his plate to the pass-through counter.

“You’re mixing the wrong carnivores on the wrong continents,” Hutch said.

“Doesn’t matter.  Kyle’s still going to be hurting in the morning,” the guide said.

The others turned to Kyle, who was holding the back of a chair and wobbling in place.  His eyes had gone glassy and unfocused until he became aware that people were paying attention.  At that point, he made a sloppy waving motion, as if to brush away their concerns.  Unfortunately, taking away one hand from his support chair unbalanced him and he started to lean alarmingly far in Rodney’s direction. 

Grin even wider, Rodney shoved him back upright, then pulled out his own chair and guided the younger man into it.

“We done?” Lisa asked Kyle.  He frowned and started to shake his head but the motion almost took him out of his sitting position.  His frown turned to alarm and he visibly stilled himself, looking like a man with his foot on a pressure-sensitive land mine.  “We’re done,” she answered herself, getting up and taking her own completely empty plate to the pass through and handing it to the woman who was curiously watching the dining room drama.  “I’m Lisa,” she introduced herself.  The older woman frowned.  “I’m Mrs. Dox,” she said, turning abruptly away and heading to the big sink.

“She flirts with Kyle, and he rather shamelessly plays on it,” Hutch said in a quiet voice.

“So I didn’t make any friends there,” she muttered.

“Well, if you
had
fallen victim to his charms, she still wouldn’t like you,” Hutch noted.

“Right.  A no-win situation,” she said. 

Hutch was studying her even as he nodded at her words.  “True.  You’re not even tipsy, are you?”

“After that much vodka? 
Who
wouldn’t be feeling it?” she asked back.

“Hmmpf,” he grunted.  “Shorty’s right.  You
are
a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he said, looking over at Kyle, who had put his arms on the table and was leaning his head on his hands.  Because of this, Hutch missed the sharp look she shot him.

“Well, I’m going to catch the news,” she said, heading toward the abandoned television.

Hutch sidled over to Shorty, who was picking up serving dishes, grabbing a couple himself.  “That’s one seriously sharp young woman,” he said with a smile of admiration.

“Vein-opening razor sharp, Hutch,” the other man said, tone serious.

Hutch looked from guide to the girl, who was now leaning back in one of the La-Z-Boy recliners. He frowned as he thought about Shorty’s words.  The professional hunter was well known for his own regard for ladies of all shapes, ages, and sizes.  In Hutch’s estimation, Shorty would normally be falling all over a pretty young woman like Lisa.  His caution was troubling.  As if they needed any more trouble.

“Gary, you ever gonna take the damned garbage out?” Florence Ducar yelled from the kitchen.

Gary Ducar grimaced and swore to himself.  That damned crone wouldn’t leave him alone.  Do this, get that, move this, haul that.  Her mouth was like an inexhaustible river of never-ending insults and demands.  Worse than the damned kids at the damned school.  At least there, he could force their respect.

He set down his beer and pulled himself off the couch, pausing to catch the last bit of the Cowboys failed offensive drive against the Colts.  Then, cursing his favorite team under his breath, he pulled up the waistband of his track pants and headed into the kitchen.

The white plastic bag was waiting for him by the back door, tied up tight like his life, both headed for the dump.  Florence didn’t look up from her pile of dishes in the sink, which was a small blessing, as he walked behind her and grabbed the sack of rubbish.  She had earphones in and was listening to her damned music again like one of his school kids.

Outside, the October air was brisk and sharp, the just-past-full moon rising over the treetops that framed his backyard.  His garage was the detached type, sitting twenty-five feet from the back door of the house.  As he got closer, he saw the door wasn’t shut all the way.  Damn woman… gonna have half a dozen raccoons in the damn garage if you don’t pay attention.   Details were important.  Fetter Central School ran on details, which
he
oversaw.  Principal Priess certainly had no eye for detail.  Which is why the Assistant Principal was the job that kept the place running and kept the punks in line.

He pushed the door open and reached in for the light switch.  It clicked, but no lights came on.  After flicking it a couple of times with still no effect, he swore softly and sidled into the garage, his temper rising.  She should have told him the damned switch was broken.  How can a man keep things repaired if he doesn’t know they’re broke?

The garbage cans were further in, close to the overhead door up at the front.  A beam of moonglow shone through the open doorway behind him, giving him just enough light to see the bulk of the two big waste cans.  He started carefully forward, but his foot kicked something on the ground, scooting it off into the darkness, rustling as it went.  Then it came to a stop.  And something else rustled in the stygian blackness. 

Shit!  Some damned animal was already in here, he thought. It rustled again.  Hmm, bigger than a rat. Possum or skunk maybe.

He dropped the bag of garbage by the cans and moved toward his workbench, where he knew the exact location of every tool.  In this case, the work light that came with his Dewalt Cordless tool set should be sitting right on the corner of the workbench.  His hand found it right where he expected it and he turned while clicking the trigger switch.

The light pooled on the floor in front of him and lit up the object he’d kicked.  It was orange and red with a bit of white poking out, maybe six inches long.  He shined the light further into the garage in the direction the rustling had come from.  His table saw, drill press, lathe, and planer filled the space before him, the equipment effectively hiding whatever was still moving about.

Keeping his eyes toward the equipment, he squatted down and picked up the soft, fuzzy object, only looking at it when it was close to eye level.  It took a second for his brain to make the identification.  It was a paw and leg—orange fur—his neighbor’s tabby cat.  His cautious alertness turned to alarm as he realized the leg—a front one—had been ripped from the cat, the knobby end of the bone gleaming white in the bright light.  Reflexively, he threw the leg away from him like it might bite. Time to leave.  That wasn’t no possum, coon, or skunk on the other side of the planer and lathe.  He turned his light toward the door.  A disconnected wire dangled over the switch.

He stood up fast and turned to leave, but a massive shape shot over the top of his prized bench lathe with a snarl straight from hell. His light went flying as an irresistible mass drove him back into the wall of the garage.  His arms and legs instinctively scrabbled for leverage, but razor teeth punched into his stomach and ribcage and the massive head whipped him back and forth like a ragdoll.

He only saw patches of light and darkness as his head floundered and his last glimpse of recognizable vision was a blurry snapshot of his wife absently shutting the kitchen door, dancing in her awkward way to the music playing in her earbuds.  Then the beast reached a new level of frenzy and, with a final flick of its head, it broke Assistant Principal Ducar’s neck.  He dangled, dead, in its jaws, but that seemed to piss it off even more, as if he had dared to die too soon.  It shook his limp body even harder, an impossibly violent blur.  The flailing ten-pound lump of bone and dead brain on the end of the corpse’s neck exceeded nature’s design specifications and the soft, thin neck tore a bit more with each flick of the massive beast.  A final snap sent the head arcing across the garage to land upside down on the table saw, the sharp teeth of the blade catching and holding it.

The beast studied the head with its red eyes, chomping a bit as it shifted the body in its mouth.  Seemingly satisfied, it dropped the body and placed one giant front paw on the chest while worrying the rib cage apart with jaws that could snap a pressure treated four-by-four.

Inside the kitchen, Florence’s Lady Gaga song ended and the break in music triggered a thought.  Where the hell was Gary? Probably dusting his damned workshop. That man couldn’t even take out the garbage without having an OCD attack.

She opened the kitchen door and yelled out to him, “Gary, what’s taking so long?”

He didn’t answer, and the lights were off in the garage.  The door stood open. 
He
wouldn’t have forgotten to close that.

She stepped outside and glanced around.  Their house was the last one on the street.  It would have been the house on the cul-de-sac if their town had been fancy enough to have such things.  Instead, they were the last house on the dead-end dirt road.

Suddenly nervous for no discernable reason, Florence took several quick steps to the open garage door.  Her pace was birdlike, and she knew it.  Hated it, but knew it.  Her brothers had called her Finch for her short, jittery walking pattern.  That and her finicky eating habits.

Annoyed at herself, yet still unsettled, she reached into the garage and flicked the light switch.  Six sets of hanging fluorescent lights flickered into brightness, illuminating Gary’s shop and Gary… or what was left of him.

Florence Ducar started to scream, an ear-piercing, from-the-bottom-of-her-feet cry of terror that didn’t stop until her closest neighbor, Vito Abruzzo, found her in a heap. 

“Sounds nasty,” she said.

“Of course it’s nasty.  Puking your guts out is supposed to be nasty.  That way, it teaches us not to get into drinking contests with women we’ve underestimated,” Hutch said.  “How are you feeling?”

“Me?  Oh, well, you know,” she said, turning back to the Discovery Channel show about men searching for millions of dollars of gold with millions of dollars in heavy equipment.

Hutch watched her for a second.  She looked remarkably unaffected by half a bottle of vodka. 

The door from the kitchen opened and Shorty appeared, his cell phone against one ear as he scanned the room, his eyes stopping on the girl in the recliner.  Immediately, he started over to them.

“What’s the matter?” Hutch asked when the guide got close.  “You look white as a sheet.”

Lisa swiveled around and took in the short man’s pallor and frightened expression.

“There’s been another one?” she guessed.

Covering the phone with one hand, Shorty nodded, his eyes assessing her condition.

“I’m fine.  Where do I have to go?” she asked.

“We’ll be right there, Buck,” the guide said into the phone before hanging up.

“Come on.  I’m driving.”

“I can drive myself,” she said, almost instantly regretting it.

“Can you?  After all that booze… which you smell strongly of, by the way,” Shorty said.  He leaned close, pitching his voice low for her ears alone.  “It wouldn’t be human for someone to drink as much as you have and be okay to drive.”

Then he turned and headed out the main door.  After watching him for a second, she followed.

Thirty-seven minutes later, Shorty pulled his Ford F-150 down a dead-end dirt road that was lit by the flashing light bars of three police cars.

She smelled it as soon as she stepped out of the truck—blood.  Blood, vomit, feces, urine and… wolf.  Werewolf.

The last house on the street was a single-story ranch, white clapboards, a blue metal roof, and a matching detached two-car garage.

“Sheriff Grable is here.  You’ll want to watch yourself with him,” Shorty growled as they walked up the driveway. 

“Tough?” she asked.

“No nonsense.  Old school,” was the guide’s response.

The activity was centered on the garage, where there were several people visible through the small windows on the overhead door. A uniformed deputy stood with his back to them in the middle of the driveway, watching the garage.

Shorty, who she had noticed normally walked very, very quietly, scuffed a boot on the gravel driveway.  The deputy whirled around, hand going to the gun on his belt.

“Hey Nate,” Shorty called softly.

The deputy straightened from his instinctive crouch, calming visibly at the sight of Shorty and looking intently at Lisa.

“Buck said you’d show up.  This the animal expert?” Deputy Nate asked, his initial suspicion turning to a different kind of interest.  Lisa/Stacia was very familiar with men giving her
that
particular look, as any attractive woman would be.

“Lisa, this is Nate Lahey.  Nate, Lisa Renault from Columbia University and other places,” Shorty said.

Nate shot the compact woodsman a curious look at the term
other places
, but Shorty just waved a hand toward the garage.  “Was it Florence or Gary?  Or both?”

Confusion was replaced by somberness on the young deputy’s face.  “Gary.  It’s a real mess.  You sure you want to see this?” he asked Lisa.

“Nobody
wants
to see something like this.  But I’m here for a reason, so I might as well get to it,” she said.

Deputy Nate nodded, then sniffed the air a couple of times before nodding again.  “Mints are a good idea.  It’s pretty rank in there.  Hope you haven’t eaten a lot tonight,” he said.  Now he was patronizing her a bit, another reaction she was used to from men, particularly authorities.  It didn’t usually last long, though.  Shorty offered her another Altoid.  He’d suggested, in the truck, that she might not want to arrive smelling of vodka. He’d been very careful with his wording.  Okay, so maybe not all men were patronizing.

“Right, let’s go.  You need to sign us into the crime scene log?” she asked.

“Log?” Nate asked, confused.  “Ain’t really a crime scene.  It’s a bear mauling.”

“Ookay.  Whatever,” she said and headed up the driveway to the garage.  Behind her, she heard Shorty speak quietly to the young deputy.  “Between you and me, I think she’s seen way more of this kind of thing than hopefully we ever will,” he said before the sounds of crunching gravel indicated he was following.

When she got up to the buildings, she could see that the side door of the house led into first the kitchen, and then further in, she could see what looked like a standard living room setup.  A middle-aged woman was sitting on the couch, curled in on herself, while another similar-aged woman held her.  A man wearing a Carhartt jacket stood uncertainly nearby.

Turning the other way, the side door of the garage was open and at least four men were studying the blood-sprayed walls and floor.  Quietly, she stepped up to the doorway and took in the sights and scents of the scene. 

Buck Thompson was talking to an older man who was dressed in civilian clothes but stood with casual authority.  Probably Sheriff Grable.  A uniformed deputy was taking pictures from various angles while another deputy shone a bright flashlight into the corners of the room that weren’t well illuminated by the overhead fluorescents.

“Found the right hand,” the flashlight wielder said from his spot near the front left side of the overhead door.

Buck and the sheriff looked over his way, but Buck caught sight of her and the sheriff noticed his sergeant’s diverted attention almost instantly.  A sharp man, she decided as she nodded to Buck and then continued to take in the scene.

The man, formerly known as Gary, was strewn about the floor of the garage.  His head was atop a table saw, ragged neck stump pointed up at the ceiling, eyes thankfully looking away. 

The main part of his body lay almost dead center of the floor, the pool of blood congealing around it.  The chest was torn open and broken ribs gleamed whitely in the fluorescent light.  A tiny wisp of steam rose from the open cavity, indicating death was only a few hours old.  His left leg, clad in a black synthetic material, was only partially attached, the remaining threads of the pants doing as much to connect it as the few remaining shreds of tissue.

His right arm was much shorter than his left and missing everything from the forearm down, which explained the flashlight-shining officer’s find.  Blood sprays covered the open-framed walls, the white sheet rock of the ceiling, and the beige metal of the overhead door.

“Lisa, this is Sheriff Sherman Grable,” Buck said, coming closer.  “Sheriff, Lisa is the New York expert I told you about.”

“You think Morris Alcombe was killed by a werewolf,” the Sheriff stated baldly, causing the other two deputies to look up with interest.

“Sorry to meet you this way, Sheriff, and yes, Mr. Alcombe was murdered by a werewolf.  I’m pretty sure this man was too,” she said, continuing to study with her eyes to back up what her nose had already told her.

“That quick?  One glance from a doorway?” the sheriff asked, incredulous.

“If you know what to look for, a werewolf kill is really obvious, Sheriff.  Natural carnivores kill to eat or defend.  Weres that kill humans do it for usual human reasons, like greed, fear, the thrill of the kill, or in this case, anger.  Enormous anger,” she said, moving a step into the garage and looking around again, even glancing back at the doorframe, doing a double take and then back to the sheriff.

“If I had to guess, I’d say the victim brought that bag of garbage out.  But the lights didn’t work so he set it down near the garbage cans and grabbed that yellow worklight that’s currently on the floor there, from his tool bench.  Then he got killed.  The killer pretty much crushed his ribcage with its jaws while shaking his body so hard that his head eventually ripped itself off and flew over there.  See that pile of sawdust by that machine there?  It looks like it fell out of the machine when the victim’s body was slammed into it.  See how it’s shaped?  Like a paw print?”

“But the lights work?” Buck asked.

“There’s a smudge of blood on the wire just above the switch.  I think the killer pulled the wire loose, Changed into his wolf form, and waited for the victim.  Then when he was done, he switched back to human form and repaired the wire before leaving.  You should dust it for prints.  And check outside for footprints.  Ground’s not frozen yet.”

Sheriff Grable cocked his head a bit sideways and studied her, his expression hard to read but if she had to guess, he didn’t believe her.  He smelled of anger and fear, a dangerous combination.  She thought back over her words and realized she could have been more circumspect about her delivery.  That was too rapid fire, and she hadn’t pretended to study the visual cues long enough.  She was used to working with Chris and Tanya, all of whom could smell as well as she could, with the exception of Declan, but
he
had a whole range of senses that she and the others couldn’t experience.

The sheriff didn’t speak, instead walking closer and bending to look at the exposed white wire and its red smudge.

She stepped back out of the doorway and flashed her small LED light at the ground just outside the garage door.  She could literally smell where the killer had stepped, in bare feet, but there wasn’t a track until she turned the back corner of the garage.  There, in a small patch of grass and moss, mostly moss, was a bare human footprint.

The sheriff and Buck moved up near her and spotted the track, illuminated by her flashlight.

It was maybe a size ten or eleven, she guessed.

“Son of a bitch,” the sheriff said quietly. 

“I’ll get the casting kit,” Buck said, heading back out front.

That left her alone with the sheriff, who continued to study the track, playing his own beam of light further ahead toward the treeline.

“He could be watching us right now, couldn’t he?” he asked.

She studied the line of trees, the shadows much less of a hindrance to her eyes.  The wind swirled, gusting from that direction before settling back toward that direction.

“Maybe.  I doubt it.  Although with young rogues, anything’s possible,” she said, not willing to assure the sheriff that nothing currently lurked in those woods.

“Buck says you know
them,”
he commented.

“Them, sheriff?”

“That Gordon and the vampire girl,” he said, clearing his throat a bit uncomfortably as he did.

“I know lots of vampires, Sheriff.  Lots of werewolves, too.  But if you mean Chris and Tanya, then yes, I know them.”

“You see this kinda stuff a lot in the city?” he asked gruffly.

“No.”

“What?  You just said you had lots of vampires and werewolves there,” he said.

“Actually, I didn’t.  I said I
knew
lots of them. But I think you know what I said.  Sheriff, my uncle is a state trooper.  I’m familiar with this technique for questioning.”

“What technique is that?” he asked, frowning.

“The deliberate changing of words to elicit more information when the subject feels it necessary to elaborate on the officer’s accusatory re-phrasings,” she said.  “But in the interest of speeding things up, I’ll explain.  Murders of humans by weres are not common.  Sometimes accidents happen, particularly in bar fights, as weres have bad tempers and are much, much stronger than regular humans.  But in those cases, death is from too much blunt trauma, generally.  Changing forms and killing a human in wolf shape almost never happens.  When it does, the killer is swiftly found and dealt with by the rest of the were society.  Something similar occurs with vampires.”