Everyone knew humans rarely made it through their first shift. It was what stopped my own father from trying to turn my mom. He wouldn’t take that risk with her life. So, what was this wolf doing? Why did he keep biting these women when they all just kept dying? What could his motives be?
Her hackles rose higher, tail pointed straight in the air. “Who would do this?” she whispered in my head.
I didn’t have an answer for her, but I didn’t think she was really expecting one. All I knew was I needed to get her somewhere safe. Every shadow, every creak or whistle of the wind was a potential threat, each one putting my nerves further on edge.
“We need to go.”
“What’s that smell?”
I sighed again, knowing there was no way I was getting her to leave. She was too inquisitive, too independent, and too damn hard-headed to do what I asked, regardless of the circumstances.
Instead, I closed my eyes and took a deep inhale, weeding out the typical scents like pine, dirt, woodland creatures, and the decaying body in front of us. It wasn’t hard to figure out what she was talking about. It was pungent and intrusive.
“It smells like piss.”
“Yes, but don’t you smell the chemicals in there too. It’s not just urine. It’s something else too.”
“Wyatt. We’re following your scents. We’ll be there in moments,” Abraham said, cutting into my thoughts.
“Your brother’s almost here,” I told Callie.
She nodded as she slowly crept around the body, careful not to touch anything. “I think they used store-bought wolf urine.”
“That’s a thing?”
She turned around to give me an unimpressed look. “Yes. We encourage farmers to use it instead of harmful pesticides to protect their crops from animals like deer and rabbits. This werewolf must have used it to mask his scent.”
I stood there stunned. Abraham and all his enforcers, myself included, had been working on figuring out and stopping these murders for months. In less than five minutes, Callie had given us the first big break we’d had in all that time.
Damn.
Was there anything she couldn’t do?
Callie’s ears perked up the moment I heard the distant sound of thumping paws on the forest floor. We glanced at each other before focusing on the edge of the clearing in anticipation of Abraham and his men. Seconds later, five large wolves burst through the vegetation, stopping short just in front of us.
We stepped aside as the new wolves, Abraham, Calvin, Clyde, Huxley, and Beatrice all gathered around the body. They were quiet for a long time before Abraham finally spoke up.
“It’s him.”
Chapter 13
Callie
“It’s who?” I asked.
Abraham swung his big head my way, blue eyes narrowing. “What are you doing out here?”
I peeked at Wyatt out of the corner of my eye and read the guilt plastered all over his face. But why?
“I… um… was out running and ran into Wyatt.”
“You were out running alone?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. And?”
“I’d prefer if you stuck with the pack. Or at least one of our sisters.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I didn’t say you did. I would just feel more comfortable if you weren’t out this far alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. I was with Wyatt.”
He turned to look at the wolf in question. “What were you doing out this far?”
I glanced at him too and found an interesting array of emotions on his face. He looked guilty, but there was something underneath that. Resignation? Surrender? Whatever it was, it didn’t make sense in this situation. None of it did.
“I was just out for a run.”
Abraham’s eyes narrowed as they darted between the two of us. I knew if he dug too deep, he’d find something to harp on and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his nonsense. A subject change was in order and I had just the thing.
“What’s going on here, Abey? You don’t seem surprised to find a dead woman in our woods.”
He winced and glanced at the ground before just barely meeting my eyes. “This doesn’t concern you, Callie. You should go back to the lodge and let us handle this.”
I snorted and planted my feet more firmly on the ground. “Not going to happen. Tell me what this is all about.”
“It’s an enforcer matter.”
My tail went stiff and my hackles rose as I bared my teeth at my brother. “Abraham McCoy, I am a part of this pack and deserve to know what’s going on. If there’s someone killing women in our woods, I should know about it.”
He sighed and dropped his head. “The fewer who know about this the better. I don’t want to start panic in the pack.”
“Well, one more in the know won’t hurt. Now spill.”
He sighed again, this time longer and louder, but I didn’t care. He might have been the boss of this pack, but he was not the boss of me, and he’d better remember that.
“It started seven months ago.”
“SEVEN MONTHS AGO?! Why am I just hearing about it now?”
He grit his teeth and growled softly. “Do you want to hear this or do you want to yell at me?”
I dipped my head and he continued.
“We don’t know who it is, but he kills every few months and the women always look the same. Dark hair, dark eyes, and partially shifted. That’s about all I know.” He grunted that last line and I could tell he wasn’t happy about it.
“This one smells old,” Clyde piped up.
Abraham nodded his big wolf head. “At least a few weeks I’d say.”
“It’s closer though. We’re only a few miles from the lodge,” Huxley added.
Abraham growled softly. “He’s getting bolder.”
“We need to search the scene and then have Paul get out here with a few other police officers,” Beatrice said.
Abraham shook his head. “This isn’t good for us. We don’t need the human police poking around our woods. We’re lucky we have Paul on the inside, but that’s only going to help for so long.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Callie, I need you to get back to the lodge. Wyatt will go with you.”
I was just about to argue when Wyatt beat me to it. “Actually, Alpha, Callie had some insight about this murder you should probably hear.”
Abraham turned to look at me, his blue eyes equal parts weary and determined. It was clear the murders were wearing on him. I felt a twinge of guilt for giving him a hard time, but it passed as soon as I remembered he shouldn’t have kept this secret from me to begin with.
“What is it, Callie?”
“I think the werewolf doing this is using store-bought wolf urine to mask his scent.”
“How do you know that?” Calvin piped up for the first time. He’d been hanging around the back of the pack of enforcers, and I’d assumed it was because he didn’t want to be any closer to the body. My cousin, although one of Abraham’s enforcers, was still just as sensitive as always.
“I recognized the smell.”
“That’s great information, Callie. Thanks,” Abraham said.