2 Blood Trail (4 page)

“Our aunt,” Rose began but Peter cut in when he saw the look on Vicki’s face.

“We have two names,” he explained. “One for each form.” He laid a short-fingered hand against the tanned muscles of his chest. “This is Peter, but it was Storm who met you at the door. And, in her fur-form, Rose is called Cloud. It’s easier than explaining to outsiders why all the farm dogs have the same names as members of the family.”

“I can imagine it must be,” Vicki agreed, pleased that her earlier assumption about the names had been verified. “But doesn’t it get a little confusing?”

Peter shrugged. “Why should it? You have more than one name. You’re Ms. Nelson to some people, Vicki to others, and you don’t find it confusing.”

“Not usually, no.” Vicki conceded the point. “So your aunt was shot in her . . . uh, wolf form.” Well, they were called werewolves so she supposed wolf was the preferred term. It certainly seemed more socially acceptable than dog.
And just think, before Henry came into my life, I never used to worry about things like that. . . .
She’d have to remember to thank him.

“That’s right.” Peter nodded. “Our family owns a large sheep farm just north of London, Ontario . . .”

The pause dared her to comment but Vicki kept her expression politely interested and her mouth shut.

“. . . and Silver was shot in the head when she was out checking the flock.”

“At night?”

“Yes.”

“We thought about telling the police that someone had shot one of our dogs,” Rose continued, “and at the time that’s all we thought it was, some dickhead with a gun who had no way of knowing she was anything more. These things happen, people lose dogs all the time.” Her voice broke on the last word and Peter butted his head against her knees. She threaded her fingers through his hair and went on. Touch appeared to be important to them Vicki noted. “But the last thing we need is police roaming around and asking questions, you know, seeing things, so the family decided to deal with it.”

Peter’s lips drew back off his teeth; long and white, they were his least human feature.

If “the family” had caught up to Silver’s killer, Vicki realized, justice would have little to do with the law and the courts. A year ago she would have been appalled at the idea, but a year ago she’d had a badge and things had been a lot simpler. “So what did you tell people who asked where your Aunt Sylvia had gone.”

“We told them she’d finally decided to join Uncle Robert up in the Yukon. She always talked about doing it so no one was very surprised. Aunt Nadine—she was Aunt Sylvia’s twin. . . .” Rose swallowed again, hard, and Peter pressed closer. “Well, she stayed out of sight for a while. Twin bonds are pretty strong with our people and she kept having to howl. Anyway, Monday night, Ebon—Uncle Jason—was shot in the head while he was out checking on the ewes with fall lambs. No one heard anything and we couldn’t find a scent anywhere near the body.”

“High velocity rifle, probably with a silencer and a scope,” Vicki guessed. She frowned. “Sounds like quite a marksman; to hit a moving target at night. . . .”

“Monday was a full moon,” Henry broke in. “There was plenty of light.”

“Wouldn’t matter with a scope. And there wasn’t a full moon the night Silver was killed.” She shook her head. “A shot like that, two shots. . . .”

“That isn’t all,” Rose interrupted, tossing something across the room. “Father found this near the body.”

Vicki flailed at the air and the small lump of metal landed in her lap. Silently cursing her lack of depth perception, she dug around in the folds of her shorts and when she fished it out, stared down in puzzlement at what could only be—in spite of its squashed appearance—a silver bullet. She closed her teeth firmly on her instinctive response.
Your uncle was killed by the Lone Ranger?

Henry reached over her shoulder and plucked the dully gleaming object from her palm, holding it up to the light between finger and thumb. “A silver bullet,” he explained, “is one of the traditional ways to kill a werewolf. The silver is a myth. The bullet alone is usually enough to do the job.”

“I can imagine.” A .30 caliber round—and Vicki knew the slug had to have been at least that large to have maintained any kind of shape at all after traveling through flesh and bone and then impacting into the dirt—fired from a high velocity rifle would have left very little of Ebon’s head in the wake of its passing. She turned again to Rose and Peter who had been watching her expressionlessly. “I take it that a similar bullet was not found by your aunt’s body or you’d have mentioned it?”

Rose frowned down at her brother then they both shook their heads.

“Doesn’t really matter. Even without the bullet, the pattern points to a single marksman.” Vicki sighed and leaned forward on the couch, resting her forearms on her thighs. “And here’s something else to think about; whoever shot Ebon was shooting specifically at werewolves. If one person knows you’re wer, others will too; that’s a given. These deaths could be the result of a community. . . .”

“Witch hunt,” Henry put in quietly as she paused.

She nodded, not lifting her gaze from the twins, and continued. “You’re different and different frightens most people. They could be taking their fear out on you.”

Peter exchanged a long look with his sister. “It doesn’t have to be that complicated,” he said. “Our older brother is a member of the London police force and Barry, his partner, knows he’s a wer.”

“And his partner is a marksman?” All things considered, it wasn’t that wild a guess. Nor would it be unlikely that said partner would own a .30 caliber rifle when any six people in any small town would likely own half a dozen between them.

The twins nodded.

Vicki let her breath out in a long, low whistle. “Messy. Has your brother confronted his partner about this?”

“No, Uncle Stuart won’t allow it. He says the pack keeps its trouble within the pack. Aunt Nadine convinced him to call Henry, and Henry convinced them both that we should talk to you. That you might be our only chance. Will you help, Ms. Nelson? Uncle Stuart said we were to agree to whatever you charge.”

Peter’s hand was back on her knee and he was staring up at her with such single-minded entreaty that she said without thinking, “You want me to find out that Barry didn’t do it.”

“We want you to find out who did do it,” Rose corrected. “Who is doing it. Whoever they are.” Then, just for an instant, the fear showed through. “Someone is killing us, Ms. Nelson. I don’t want to die.”

Thus lifting this whole discussion out of the realm of fairy tales
. “I don’t want you to die either,” Vicki told her gently. “But I might not be the best person for the job.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and took a deep breath. Both deaths had occurred at night and her eyes simply didn’t allow her to function after dark. It was bad enough in the city, but in the country with no streetlights to anchor her, she’d be blind.

On the other hand, what choice did they have? Surely she’d be better than nothing. And her lack of vision didn’t affect her mind, or her training, or her years of experience. And this was a job that would count for something, it was important, life or death.
The kind of job Celluci still does.
God damn it! She could work around the disability.

“I can’t leave right away.” Dawning expressions of relief mixed with hope told her she’d made the right decision. “Unfortunately, I have appointments I can’t break. How about Friday?”

“Friday evening,” Henry interrupted smoothly. “After sunset. Meanwhile, no one is to go anywhere by themselves. No one. Both Ebon and Silver were shot while they were alone, and that’s the only part of the pattern you can change. Make sure the rest of the family understands that. And as much as possible, stay in sight of the house. In fact, as much as you can, stay in sight of non-wer. Whoever is doing this is counting on you not being able to tell anyone, and as long as there are witnesses around you should be safe. Did I miss anything, Vicki?”

“No, I don’t think so.” He’d missed asking for her opinion before he started his little lecture, but they’d discuss that later. As for his assumption that he’d be going along, well, it solved her transportation problem and created all sorts of new ones that would have to be dealt with—again, later. She wasn’t looking forward to “later.”

“Over the next two days,” she told the twins, “I want you to write me up a list—two lists actually; the people who know what you are on one and the people who might suspect on the other. Get the input of everyone in the family.”

“We can do that, no problem.” Peter heaved a sigh of relief and bounded to his feet.

Apparently the fact that she and Henry operated as a team had come as no surprise to him. Vicki wondered what Henry had told them before she arrived. “First thing tomorrow,” she buried the slug in tissues and sealed it into one of the small freezer bags she always carried in her purse, “I’ll drop this off at ballistics and see if they can tell me anything about the rifle it came from.”

“But Colin said . . .” Rose began.

Vicki cut her off. “Colin said it would lead to awkward questions. Well, it would in London and, considering your family’s situation, it’s not the sort of thing you want talked about. Good cops remember the damnedest bits of information and Colin handing around silver bullets could lead to your exposure later on. However,” she pitched her voice for maximum reassurance, “this is Toronto. We have a much broader crime base, God forbid, and the fact that
I
was handing around a silver bullet won’t mean squat even if someone does remember it.”

She paused for breath and tucked the small plastic bag containing the tissues and the slug down into a secure corner of her purse. “Don’t expect anything though, this thing is a mess.”

“We won’t. And we’ll tell Aunt Nadine to expect you on Friday night.” Peter smiled at her with such complete and utter gratitude that Vicki felt like a heel for even considering refusing to help. “Thanks, Ms. Nelson.”

“Yes, thank you.” Rose stood as well and added her quieter smile to the brilliance of her brother’s. “We really appreciate this. Henry was right.”

What Henry was right about
this time
got a little lost in Peter shucking off his shorts. Vicki supposed she’d have to get used to it but at the moment all that naked young man left her a little distracted. The reappearance of Storm came as a distinct relief.

He shook himself briskly and bounded toward the door.

“Why . . .” Vicki began.

Rose understood and grinned. “Because he likes to ride with his head out the car window.” She sighed as she stuffed the discarded shorts back into her bag. “He’s such lousy company in a car.”

“Well, he certainly seems anxious to get going.”

“We don’t like the city much,” Rose explained, her nose wrinkling. “It stinks. Thanks again, Ms. Nelson. We’ll see you Friday.”

“You’re welcome.” She watched Henry walk Rose to the door, warn them to be careful, and return to the living room. The look on his face rerouted the accusation of high-handedness she was about to make. “What’s wrong?”

Both red-gold brows rose. “My friends are being killed,” he reminded her quietly.

Vicki felt herself flush. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s hard to hang onto that amidst all the,” she waved a hand as she groped for the word, “strangeness.”

“It is, however, the important thing to be hung onto.”

“I know. I know.” She forced herself not to sound sullen. She shouldn’t have had to be reminded of that. “You never thought for a moment that I might say no, did you?”

“I’ve come to know you over these last few months.” His expression softened. “You need to be needed and they need you, Vicki. There aren’t too many private investigators they can trust with this.”

That was easy to believe. As to her needing to be needed, it was a facetious observation that could easily be ignored. “Are all the wer so,” she searched for the right word and settled on, “self-contained? If my family were going through what theirs is, I’d be an emotional wreck.”

Somehow he doubted that, but it was still a question that deserved answering. “From the time they’re very young, the wer are taught to hide what they are, and not only physically; for the good of the pack you never show vulnerability to strangers. You should consider yourself honored that you got as much as you did. Also, the wer tend to live much more in the present than humans do. They mourn their dead, then they get on with life. They don’t carry the burden of yesterday, they don’t anticipate tomorrow.”

Vicki snorted. “Very poetic. But it makes it nearly impossible for them to deal with this sort of situation, doesn’t it?”

“That’s why they’ve come to you.”

“And if I wasn’t around?”

“Then they’d die.”

She frowned. “And why couldn’t you save them?”

He moved to his usual place by the window, leaning back against the glass. “Because they won’t let me.”

“Because you’re a vampire?”

“Because Stuart won’t allow that kind of challenge to his authority. If he can’t save the pack, neither can I. You’re female, you’re Nadine’s problem, and Nadine, at the moment, is devastated by the loss of her twin. If you were wer, you could probably take her position away from her right now, but as you aren’t, the two of you should be able to work something out.” He shook his head at her expression. “You can’t judge them by human standards, Vicki, no matter how human they seem most of the time. And it’s too late to back out. You told Rose and Peter you’d help.”

Her chin went up. “Did I give you any indication that I might back out?”

“No.”

“Damned straight, I didn’t. She took a deep breath. She’d worked with the Toronto City Council, she could work with werewolves. At least with the latter all the growling and snapping would mean something. In fact, the wer were likely to be the least of her problems. “There might be difficulties. I mean, with
me
taking this case.”