Maybe all of them had snuck out of the store minutes after the Xaviers came to the station and had waited in that other parking area for him to come over and check out the store. But he didn’t think so. Because of the fence, the boys couldn’t have seen the area behind their store any better than he could have seen them. Not without being visible. At least one of them would have needed to know who had taken the bait before bolting out of the store just ahead of the explosion and then hiding with his friends to watch the success of their plan.
But something else had been hiding behind that fence. Waiting.
Between their screams and his running down the lane to reach them . . .
Something incredibly strong and incredibly fast had done this—as fast as the kill on Trickster Night at The Jumble. All three teenage boys were gutted, their torsos hollowed out. And the Crow . . . The lower legs and feet were almost human size but looked like a Crow—and they had been severed and dropped on the pile of organs that had been scooped out of the human bodies.
“They’re each missing a finger,” Ilya said. “Including the Crow.”
Grimshaw wasn’t sure if the Sanguinati’s eerie calm indicated genuine control or shock. He knew what he’d call it if Ilya were human.
“Air doesn’t think there is another exploding device,” Ilya reported. “But she doesn’t know what such a thing would look like if it’s mixed with the debris. She thinks it is safe in a dangerous way for humans to enter the building.”
“In other words, there aren’t more bombs, but the building could collapse,” Grimshaw said.
Ilya nodded. “Air informed Boris, and he has conveyed that information to Officer Osgood and the emergency people.” He looked pointedly at the ground near Grimshaw’s feet. “You need to see the human bodywalker.”
Grimshaw looked down and watched blood drip from his pant leg onto the ground.
Crap.
The adrenaline rush faded, leaving him shaky and cold. He couldn’t afford to go down. For one thing, Osgood didn’t have enough experience to handle all of this alone. For another, he wasn’t putting the rookie in the position of facing off with whatever had killed those three teens and the Crow.
“I’d better see Doc Wallace.” Grimshaw looked at Julian. “You should too.” He focused on Ilya. “And you should get checked out by whoever looks after your people.”
Ilya nodded, then said, “Air wants your people to know that there are two bodies in the wreckage. Only one is Sanguinati.”
* * *
* * *
Do yourself and whoever does your laundry a favor and stay off that leg until those gouges in your knee have a chance to start clotting. Otherwise you’ll be walking around the village looking like a horror movie extra.
Doc Wallace hadn’t minced words when he’d arrived at the station with his medical bag. He’d been efficient about cleaning out the wounds, muttering that, considering the impact of knee on pavement, Grimshaw was lucky that no bones were broken and nothing inside the knee was torn. As Doc put away his supplies, he said he’d be back in a couple of hours to replace the bandages since they would need replacing by then—a not-so-subtle message that Grimshaw shouldn’t shrug off the injury just because it looked small and dealing with it would be inconvenient.
Julian was banged up and had inflamed tendons or some such thing and should use cold packs on his shoulders. Doc recommended taking it easy but said it was okay for Julian to open the bookstore.
Ilya and Boris had retreated to the Sanguinati office above the police station after checking on Viktor, who asked to remain at the station and help out.
Paige and Dominique returned to the boardinghouse, shaken.
As Grimshaw drank coffee and waited for the over-the-counter painkiller to kick in, he thought about Sproing and The Jumble and killings that produced a gut-deep fear in him and everyone else who had seen the bodies. If this was the work of Crowbones—and he believed it was—he could understand why even the Elders who were a human’s nightmare wouldn’t want to tangle with this particular Hunter.
He understood why Aggie and Jozi had freaked when they thought they saw the Crowgard bogeyman on Trickster Night.
But how to reconcile the savagery of the kills with the warning rattle that had stopped them just beyond the blast radius and saved their lives?
And what would Stavros Sanguinati have to say about all of this?
* * *
* * *
Samuel Kipp walked into the station, gave Grimshaw a sour look, then settled in the visitor’s chair.
“By all the dark gods, you’re making my team earn their pay,” Kipp growled.
“I wish it wasn’t necessary,” Grimshaw replied. The past couple of days were catching up to him and he suspected he’d lost more blood than he wanted to admit. And he hadn’t needed Doc to point out that not moving his right knee meant not driving—and that was a damn inconvenience right now. “Want some coffee?”
Kipp shook his head. “We got coffee and sandwiches from the diner. Told them to put the bill on the station’s tab.”
“Good.”
Kipp rubbed at a spot on his pant leg. Grimshaw waited.
“The body at the Mill Creek Cabins. You guessed right about Edward Janse being killed by a human. Big hunting knife from the looks of it, and maybe more than one killer, but the ME will have to say officially. We saw a bit of that kind of crazy last year in Bristol when human males in their late teens or early twenties were using gone over wolf. You need that kind of pumped-up aggression to be that savage when you’re killing another person. As for the other kills . . .” Kipp scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’d guess sickle or a scythe blade combined with a short handle. Probably the scythe, going by the look of the wounds. This is one pissed-off terra indigene, but why use a human tool? Why not use fangs or claws?”
“Not how this particular Elder operates,” Grimshaw replied.
“You sure it’s an Elder?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Then you’re in deep shit.”
“Yeah, I know. What about the bodies found in the building?”
“The Sanguinati boy . . .” Kipp shook his head. “He must have been shifting back to human form when he got caught in the blast. We gathered what we could recognize. I handled that part personally. Figured that was another case of making sure the team doesn’t know more than it’s safe for them to know. An ME would have to confirm, but that other body didn’t die in the blast.”
“Dead before? That makes sense. Paige and Dominique Xavier commented on the store smelling like something had died in it.”