The guy behind the counter was mid-twenties, stoned, lank-haired, with bloodshot eyes that stared at the money. He licked his lips like Pavlov’s house pet before turning his eyes to the cell. He studied the picture a long moment before putting his fingertips on the bill and meeting my gaze. “I’d get fired if I told you he’d been staying with a girl and some other guys in rooms 114 and 115. So I can’t tell you that.” He picked up the twenty and put it in his pocket. “Sorry. And I can’t tell you the rooms adjoin either.”
I chuckled and said, “Hypothetically speaking, if someone busted in a door, and wanted to pay for it to avoid the cops being called, how much would that cost a girl?”
“Last time the repair bill was two hundred. But the cops got called.”
I dropped two hundreds and a fifty on the counter. “Write me a receipt for a door for two seventy. No one sees it but my accountant and Uncle Sam at tax time.”
The kid thought about it a moment, his brain on slow-mo. He scratched his butt while thinking, and finally nodded. “Make it an even three and you got a deal.”
I added enough bills to make him happy, but kept my hand over them. “For this, you also turn off the security cameras for ten minutes. No one dies, no blood, no cops, no press.”
“I’ll leave it on just in case you get carried away and I have to cover my butt,” he said, still scratching the object of his discourse, “but you can come back and steal it from me.” He pointed at an old-fashioned VCR player under the counter. The kid might be stoned but he was still thinking. He gave me a receipt on a hotel letterhead, which had been photocopied on a machine in desperate need of toner. His signature was illegible and I was guessing it wasn’t his, not that I cared. I’d be turning it over to Leo for reimbursement and to my accountant. A partial lie, another sin to add to my growing burden of them. I dropped an extra twenty on the counter to sweeten the pot. He said, “Business doing nice with you,” and laughed as if he thought it was really funny. Stoner humor had always escaped me.
I walked to Bitsa, took out three handguns and belted two into a special holster at the small of my back. I checked the loads on them all, chambering silver shot rounds. I slid two knives into my waistband. I could have called for backup—either Derek Lee or the cops. I didn’t. Rick’s scent was fading. So I’d check the place out first. I did slide a pair of brass knuckles over my right fingers. I had never used brass knuckles, but right now, they felt good. I probably needed my leathers for protection, but I wasn’t going back home to change.
I took a breath, studying the door locks. Settled my grip on the H&K 9 mil in my left fist, though I was a far better shot with my right. I’d be up close. Aiming wasn’t essential. I’d need the power behind my right hook; I wanted to wound, not kill. I strode up to 114. Drawing up Beast, letting her flood my system. Unleashing just a bit of the fury boiling inside me.
I swiveled around and forward. Weight perfectly balanced with momentum. Lashed out, transferring power through torso, hip, thigh, knee, leg, foot. And kicked the door, my boot hitting just under the lock. The door jamb splintered. The door slammed open. Broke the security chain. Wood slivers and lock parts flew, catching the morning light. The door hit the back wall. The smell of werewolf hit me. I was inside before the two wolves in human form were half awake.
One went down at the foot of his bed with my boot heel imprinted on his jaw. The other one tried for a gun that I slapped away. Punched him in the face. I was pretty sure I broke his jaw and a few teeth. He was out cold, his remaining teeth not aligned right anymore. I looked at my fist. It didn’t even hurt. Dang. Brass knuckles are cool!
Four seconds after I kicked in the door I was in the next room. Pivoted, weapon ready to fire at either door or window if needed. It was empty. It reeked of werewolf bitch, sickness, and sex. A lot of sex. Under that was the taint of Rick’s blood. I broke into a hot sweat, but forced myself to stand and observe, taking everything in, with all my senses. Overlapping impressions bombarded me, visual and olfactory, the taste and texture of the air on my exposed skin.
The room was trashed, as if a pack of rabid dogs had torn it apart, dissecting the furniture into its component pieces, with only the bed still standing, though it was severely wounded. From the stink, the wolf-bitch had routinely bedded down and mated with all of the male weres in the nest of torn sheets and mattress stuffing. And with Rick, a lot.
Wolves mate for life
, Beast thought at me.
Sick bitch.
I scented old beef blood and saw a bowl filled with water in the corner, a bloody place on the carpet and a scrap of rancid meat against the wall where a were had eaten in wolf form.
The stink of were-bitch had a sickly smell, even to my human nose, as if I could sniff out the virus or bacteria that was making her crazy. It smelled stronger and more virulent than that running in the male werewolves’ veins. The were-cats hadn’t smelled like this. Sabina’s old Roman scholar’s info was starting to smell real likely.
The closet doors were missing. Female clothing hung on several hangers, the rest rumpled on the floor beneath the rod. The bathroom was neater than the rest of the place, maybe because it hadn’t been used much. There were girl toiletries everywhere, spilled, dumped, half empty. The toilet lid was up, and an image of the were-bitch drinking from it made my lips curl with savage humor. A blond wig was half hidden under the counter.
Rick had been wooing a redhead in the photos, a girl I’d assumed was Safia. But by the stink of sex, he’d been with more than one were. If there was one wig there might be two. I turned slowly. Spotted a red wig, long tresses matted with crusted stuff I didn’t want to examine. Fake prepackaged change of identity. I pulled it out with a toe and flipped it over to expose the mesh underside. A brunette hair was curled inside. I leaned in and took a whiff. Yeah. Were-bitch. At some point in his undercover investigation, Rick found the wolves. And ended up . . . their prisoner?
Air moved through the open window on the back wall, and I went to it, unsurprised to see it broken out, blood on the shattered shards. I sniffed, parsing the pheromones. Rick’s blood, by the smell; I could almost taste his fear. He’d tried to get away. He had gone undercover and found trouble. Rick was a prisoner, or had been. Beast growled deep inside me.
I went back to the bed. Rick’s wallet and badge were under a pillow, on an undamaged spot of mattress. His blood was on the bed too. Rick wasn’t undercover anymore.
Rage boiled through me, building pressure, needing an outlet it wasn’t going to get. I needed to be analytical, methodical, not a raging maniac. But it was hard to breathe, my body felt clammy and cold in spite of the heat. I shoved down my reactions to the blood and semen and were-bitch scent, tamping the edges with cold, hard purpose.
Back in the room with the two naked wolves, one out cold, one in the middle of what looked like a very painful change, his human-shaped jaw crushed, I looked around. And smelled around. Marginally less ruined than the adjoining room, it was still a pigsty, littered with pizza boxes, beer bottles and cans, clothes everywhere. Inflatable mattresses, empty of air, were piled up in a corner as if tossed there when not needed. There was a pile of zip strips, the plastic handcuffs carried by law enforcement for securing subdued suspects quickly. To the side were several that had been cut off, the blood on most of them old and dried. The blood on one severed pair was fresher; it was Rick’s blood.
I sniffed the strip carefully. There was no scent of death in the blood. Rick had been alive when he wore it. Maybe last night. Last night when I had elected not to go back out into the rain. My throat constricted. My chest burned with breath that throbbed and tore as it moved through me, harsh and strident in the small hotel room. A half sob, full of fury.
I opened the closet. Rick’s bike jacket was on the floor. My eyes stung, dry and aching as I nudged the lapels open with a foot. His cell, the battery dead or the cell off, was beneath it. A handful of change was scattered there too. Nothing else.
I checked on the shifting were one last time, to see him lying on his side, fully wolfed out, panting raggedly, his paws running weakly like dogs’ feet do in dreams. I walked to him on the filthy carpet, and his feet speeded up as he tried to pull them under him, panting in fear. I thumped him on the skull with the knucks, and said, “I’m not gonna kill you.” He stilled, as if holding his breath. “The guy you were keeping here. Is he still alive?”
The wolf turned up golden brown eyes to me. He sniffed the air, scenting me as if to determine my species and purpose.
“You’ll live even if the answer is no. But if you tell me yes, and I find out you lied, some marine pals of mine—the ones you met at the big coming-out party—and I, will track you down, and I’ll hang your pelt on the wall of my house.” I extended my fist and drew Beast up into my eyes, into my skin. Her pelt roiled just under the surface, coarse and spiky. When I spoke again, my voice dropped an octave. “But first, I’ll play with you like a rabbit. I’ll make you suffer. Got it?”
The wolf finally got his paws under him and scuttled onto the mattress against the headboard, his tail curled between his legs and under his belly, his head down and eyes rolled up, the whites showing under the irises. It was submissive behavior. He whined and nodded once, the human gesture looking all wrong on wolf.
“Is the guy alive?”
The wolf put his head down further, between his front paws.
I tried again. “Was he alive the last time you saw him?”
Nod.
“Was that today? This morning?”
Nod. Nod.
Disgust and anger wormed through me. If I had skipped the church-and-guilt session I might have been here in time.
Maybe
. . . “Tap your paw. When did they leave?” Four taps later, I knew I had been sleeping, not guilting, when they left.
Four a.m. Why four a.m.?
“Were they in a car?” When he whined, I asked, “Car and a truck? Pickup truck?”
Two nods.
“Do you know where they were headed?”
The wolf hesitated this time, and I could see him thinking. I wondered if he thought like a human when he had a wolf brain or like a wolf. My own experience with shape changing might not be the same as weres’. Too bad we didn’t have time to make nice and compare notes. Finally he nodded.
“
You
know he’s a cop,” I said. “
I
know he was here. Injured. Kept prisoner. He turns up dead, and got that way after this conversation, I’ll remember you to the cops and to my buddies. Where were they going?” He looked puzzled and I said, “East of the river?” Head shake. “West of the river?” Nod.
That cut my search in half. My gut had been right so far today, so I asked, “Leo Pellissier’s clan home?”
The wolf’s eyes went wide in a thoroughly human reaction. Bingo. “At four in the morning?” I let disbelief color my tone. “When a vamp is most active?” When he ducked his head, indicating that I hadn’t understood exactly right, I guessed, “To look the place over and plan for later?” He dipped his head into a half nod, half shake. I was warm, but not quite hot yet. Whatever the wolves had planned, I wasn’t going to like it. “And they took Rick with them.”
Again, I got the yes/no body language. His posture said it all. Total submission. And a tail-between-the-legs fear of me coming after him when I figured it out. Whatever the wolf was in his human form, in his doggy-shape, he was no alpha.
I glanced over at the other wolfman who was still sleeping the sleep of the beaten. His naked body covered most of the bed, and I recognized the big guy who had been smoking outside the biker bar when all this started. Fire Truck. He was no prettier naked than he had been fully clothed. I swiveled my gaze back to wolf-boy.
“The were-bitch. She has a use for the guy? A use that will keep him alive?”
The wolf slowly shook his head no, twice, his eyes on mine. His shoulders hunched at what he saw there, and his eyes flicked to the gun in my left fist.
“So, she’s keeping him alive because she
likes
him?”
To my surprise, the wolf whined and nodded yes. My skin prickled as if my pelt rose. Hot fear slid though me as I made another wild-haired mental leap. From the way his nose twitched, and after the experience inside the bloodhound’s body, I knew the wolf smelled my horror. “She’s trying to turn him, isn’t she?”
He nodded once. Without thought, I struck. Beast fast. Throwing my entire body into the punch. The brass knuckles hit him square in his nose. Throwing his head up and back on the follow-through. He pinwheeled off the bed. Into the wall. And slid down it to lie in a limp heap. I wanted to shoot him so bad it hurt. But I rolled the human-shaped wolf over and handcuffed his hands behind his back with his own zip strips, using three of the strips to make sure they held. I secured his feet, also, with several of the little units. Then I lifted his feet and attached them to his wrist cuffs with several more, effectively hog-tying him.
I did the same to the wolf on the floor, but if weres shifted using the same laws of physics as I did, it wasn’t likely they would hold either guy.
Back in the office, there was a fresh stink of marijuana, coarse and prickly to my nose. I held my hand to the kid behind the counter and he removed the tape, placing it in my palm. But he didn’t meet my eyes, his own sliding to the right. I smiled, knowing it wasn’t a sweet smile. “If I find you made a copy or switched tapes, or anything else that comes close to breaking our agreement, I’ll come back and take my three hundred plus bucks out of your hide.”
Fingers shaking, he lifted a second tape from behind the counter and placed it in my hand. “Business doing nice with you,” I said, quoting him. He didn’t smile when I left.
In the parking lot I dug out my throwaway cell and punched in the number for the cop who had warned me that Rick was missing, Sloan Rosen. When he answered, I could tell he was at work, cop-shop noise in the background.