Witch Wolf (3 page)

If someone asked me what the change was like, the melding of my human thoughts with those of the wolf and the sharing of my body with her, I would tell them it was beyond frightening. The first shift I ever experienced, I'd gone under alone, locking myself in the bathroom of my apartment on the night of the full moon. It was that night that I knew without a doubt that I was no longer human.

It was the first battle the wolf and I had. She ripped from my flesh as if she were tearing me apart. I'd passed out from the pain of it and when I came to on the bathroom floor it was morning. All I can remember are snatches, bits of memory, and my utter determination to stay on that bathroom floor.

I'd fought the wolf and won the first few times, but always at the price of my consciousness. I cannot remember if it was my third or fourth shift that I finally decided to try and work with the wolf. The cravings were too strong and lingering just a bit longer after each shift. So I drove out to the country hours before the full moon rose to hunt in a woodland area an hour away from my apartment.

And hunt we did. It was beautiful and tragic. The earth and moon and stars were my mother, were a part of me. I'd taken down a deer that night, running wildly, teeth gnashing.

If I think about it hard enough I can still feel the creature's pulse thumping slowly against my tongue as it died. I wasn't used to it and I didn't know if a part of me would ever get used to it, but I had to learn to live so that it didn't kill us both.

I stopped reflecting on my change and looked in the mirror. I had to admit-I looked pretty damn harmless. Of course, the shoulder holster and Mark III over my red blouse looked anything but harmless. I could see what most people saw: a petite woman with a heart-shaped face. The dark kohl looked good with my pale skin and green eyes. It helped to bring out the specks of gold around my pupils. I was the only person in my family who had black hair and green eyes. The rest of my family had brown hair and blue eyes. On my mother's side our ancestry went back to Ireland, and on my father's, England. I was the weird wolf in the family. My high school history teacher had used the term "Black Irish" to describe it, whatever that meant.

I grabbed the black pea coat from the back of my chair and shrugged into it. Once the jacket went on over the Mark III, no one would know I was carrying. I was going to see a crime scene.

Yippee. I tossed the messenger bag over my shoulder and walked out of the office, silently cursing myself for wearing high heels. Three-inch heels and a crime scene are a disaster waiting to happen.

"June, I've got to go take a look at something for the cops. Can you manage locking the shop up by yourself if I'm not back by then?" I asked my secretary.

She pushed the gray tresses out of her eyes. "Will do," she said, "but I don't want this becoming a ritual." She looked down at the paperwork she was filing through.

I smirked even though she couldn't see it. June could be a little demanding at times, and an outsider might think she ran the place, by the way she talked to me. I'd come to realize she looked at me like one of her grandchildren. I liked having her in the office, because not only would she not take my shit-she wouldn't take anyone else's.

I walked across the street and spotted the solid black paint of my Tiburon. I slapped the sticky note with the directions on it on the dash and threw my bag on the floor in front of the other seat.

When I turned the key in the ignition the gentle sounds of Within Temptation's "Mother Earth"

drowned out the soft hum of the car.

*

Everyone had been standing around twiddling his or her thumbs. It seemed they'd already looked at the body.
That figures.
I ducked under the tape as Arthur spotted me and approached. He led me through the mass of uniforms and to the body.

I knelt carefully, holding my hands out for the pair of latex gloves he offered. There wasn't much of a body left of this. . . thing. I had to call it a thing, or a body, because in my mind it wasn't a man anymore. It was a mutilated corpse.

The torso was barely connected to the rest of its body, hanging on by ribbons of flesh like the torn wrapping paper of a present that someone had opened a little too eagerly. White hipbones tipped with blood glinted in the afternoon sun. The ground was soaked with blood and other fluids. The stench caught in the back of my throat and I resisted the urge to cough.

"What body parts are missing?" I asked as Arthur knelt down beside me. I leaned over the torso and carefully examined the wounds there. The body's hips had claw marks engraved in them. I tried not to focus on the hollowed insides of the torso below me. The smell of blood and death made my stomach lurch.

"We found the arm over there." Arthur pointed farther into the woods that surrounded us. "And as you can see, there's nothing left of his intestines." He sounded like he was going to be sick.

The human part of me agreed with him.

I took in a deep breath of air. It was a mistake this close to the body. I froze and tried to hold the pacing wolf inside me down. If I went apeshit at a crime scene I was not getting a Scooby Snack.

The entire body was such a mess of red gore that all I could smell was blood. It flooded my senses and called to the beast inside me. I resisted the urge to roll around in it, to claim it as my territory, my blood, my kill. It wasn't my kill, and that just wouldn't look good, would it? I stifled a giggle at the ridiculousness of my thoughts.

Lesson number one: You don't giggle at a crime scene. It makes everyone else think you've lost your mind.

I closed my eyes as the scent of blood mingled with something else. Another smell hit my nostrils, something sour and acrid. "Werewolf," I said as I moved around the body, pretending to examine it as I sniffed out the area around it. It wasn't just the scattered pieces of human flesh strewn across the dying grass that made me say that. I stopped with the tree behind me. Turning, I pretended to cough. The movement put my face toward the tree, and I sniffed. There was a scent on the tree next to the body. The werewolf had marked the tree. Which meant that yes, he'd piddled all over the damn thing. How did I know it was male? Female urine does not smell that bad, and most females don't feel an urge to piss on everything.

I felt the beast pacing in her fleshy cage, nuzzling at the surface as the tide of anger rose within me. I stood too quickly and stumbled away from the body. It wouldn't be an unusual sight. A lot of people stumble away after seeing a dead body, and usually vomit. I had good control over the beast, but when she lurked this close to the surface-I knew better. She whispered not-so-nice things. Okay, not-so-human things. I wouldn't let myself touch the blood. That was too much temptation. In fact, I was getting away from the smell of sweet metal and raw meat. The thought alone made my mouth water and I swallowed a little too loudly. I was suddenly craving a bacon cheeseburger. Good Goddess. That sounded good.

At first, the cravings had freaked me out. It started with a desire for bloody food. I had learned, over time, that it wasn't always just the smell of blood that pulled the predatory instincts out of the wolf. The smell of fear could pull out the predator in me and I'd want nothing more than to taste that fear on my tongue. In fact, smell serves as a huge trigger. The smell of desire, the smell of fear, the smell of salt and sweat and human frailty, those things have a tendency to excite the wolf and make me feel terribly inhuman. For months, I was a stranger to myself, but with time, I began to learn the wolf and to understand her.

Well, in some areas. Getting hungry standing over a corpse still made me uneasy.

I headed back toward the group of uniforms and Arthur fell into step beside me. My stomach gave a fierce little rumble.

"Did your stomach just growl or are you about to upchuck?" he asked with a teasing twinkle in his eyes.

I looked at him with what I knew was a blank expression. "I'm hungry."

"Hungry?" The teasing fell from his face. "How can you be hungry after seeing that?"

I shrugged. "There's this place by my apartment that makes delicious bacon cheeseburgers. I haven't eaten all day."

"I cannot believe you could eat any kind of meat after seeing. . . that. You are definitely one of the weirdest gals I've met." The expression he wore was both shocked and curious.

"You have absolutely no idea."

"What?"

I smiled. "Nothing."

When we made it back to the uniforms they were standing as far away from the mess of man-meat as they could. Two of them were arguing back and forth about the bear theory. I felt the anger stir inside me. How could they try and slight this off as a bear attack? It didn't make any fucking sense. If they ever wanted to catch the real killer, they'd have to come to terms with the facts.

"That wasn't a bear," I raised my voice, interrupting.

"What?" one of the uniforms asked.

I looked to the man I knew was in charge of the investigation.

"Deputy Sheriff Witkins," I said, "it was a werewolf attack."

"How can you tell?" he asked, his voice deep and calm.

"The only wild animal that's native to these parts is livestock and deer, and unless mad cow disease just took a whole new turn, it was a werewolf attack. A deer won't snack on the insides of a man."

"What about coyotes, Miss Lyall?" he asked, and I ignored the "Miss" part.

"They're scavengers for the most part," I said, "but even then they're not going to do that much damage to a man. If you measure the claw marks around the hip, you'll see they don't match up with any animals in this area." I left off the part that they probably wouldn't match up with any animals at all.

"The couple that owns this ranch says they heard a wolf howl." He looked me up and down.

"You may think it's a werewolf, Lyall, but I'm not putting my job at risk on your say-so. Not for a thing like that."

I looked at his pudgy face, staring into his beady brown eyes.

"That thing?" I crossed my arms over my chest. "That thing, Witkins, was a werewolf." I dramatically pointed in the direction of the body. "That was not the work of one Winnie the Pooh. It's seriously the Big Bad Wolf."

The deputy sheriff's dark brown eyes followed my pointing finger, and even with the tan his face paled.

"Miss Lyall," the deputy said, "if that's the case we have to figure something else out because the media can't have their hands on that version."

"That's Ms. Lyall," I snapped. So sue me, half the people I work with are idiots. I had a feeling I knew why the deputy sheriff didn't want the media getting wind of "that version." He didn't want the bad publicity if the shit hit the fan. I took a few steps closer to him, keeping my hand on the butt of my gun where it rested in its holster. As a deputy, Witkins got to handle the case out here in the boonies. It was his sandbox, but we'd been invited to play in it.

"Then I suggest you start finding out all that you can about your so-called Winnie the Pooh, because it's going to do this again, and within the next three weeks."

The other officer that had been talking earlier walked back to our group. He'd gone to throw up in the nearby bushes. He was so new I could tell this crime scene was going to haunt him for life.

You never forget your first crime scene. He'd see pieces of that body floating around behind his eyes for days. Trust me, it'd happen. What really sucks is when you start dreaming about dismembered body parts chasing you and whimpering, "help me."

I turned my attention back to the guy in charge. Why some law enforcers asked for my expertise and then stood around arguing with me, I would never fully understand.

"Wait, why in three weeks?" Arthur asked.

I drew in a deep breath, counting slowly. I couldn't believe Captain Holbrook hadn't pushed for the Paranormal class to be mandatory for all officers on the force. I fucking would've.

"It's a werewolf, Arthur. Can you not remember any of the stories from your childhood?"

"I wasn't into that kind of thing when I was a kid," he said, grinning.

"The full moon. Aren't werewolves supposed to shift on the full moon?" the deputy asked, and I had to admit that at least one person in our corner of the world was beginning to go somewhere with the thought. Maybe he'd stop arguing with me.

"Bingo," I said, keeping it to myself that werewolves could shift even when it wasn't the full moon. "I really suggest you start studying all that you can."

"Lyall," he said gruffly, "I want your help on this case. I want you to get me all the information you can on werewolves."

"Deputy Sheriff Witkins, I'm a witch and private investigator. I'm not a werewolf hunter, unless I decide to be." I spoke the truth, but I sensed very strongly that the deputy was going to try and back me into a corner if I put up a struggle. Legally, he couldn't force me to take the case.

As a witch, I'm what most psychics would call a clairsentient. In French, "clairsentient" means
clear feeling
. I have moments when I sense things, without rational thought, and without a doubt.

Most people have some type of psychic ability, whether they know it or not. Sometimes, people grow into adulthood and learn how to block out their own abilities, to the point where those senses become nearly nonexistent and undetectable. Instead of blocking mine, I developed them.

It's part of what made me a damn good cop and a wickedly good investigator.

I gazed at the deputy and knew deep down in my gut that, intuitively, he knew I was right, but he was going to put me on the case because he just didn't want to spoil his pretty hands with it and didn't want his department taking the fall if there was one.

I realized at a very young age that I am much more sensitive than most people to subtle energy changes and spiritual energies within the environment. I cannot touch a person or an object and see visions of the past. I am not a clairvoyant, a psychic that relies on clear visions of things to come. I may not see images, but I have moments where I
feel
and
know
.