Page 55 of Golden Eagle

Trina’s expression tightened in response to the bluntness. “Yeah. In the park. Still working on an ID.”

“Your case?”

“No. Someone else’s.” She paused. “It’s just pieces, left. The vic was eaten.” The last she said matter-of-factly, without any emphasis on the final word, but her throat moved as she swallowed hard.

Sasha didn’t bother to tamp down the soft growl that built in his throat.

“Want us to take a look?” Nikita asked, and his voice had gentled. Sasha was proud of him for that.

“Yeah, that’d be good.”

Sasha’s hackles went up the moment they stepped in the lab. He smelled wolf. The ferals he’d tracked before, the ones whose scent had been used as bait by the Institute.

He growled.

Dr. Harvey stood on the far side of the table, gripping the edge of the white drape. She lifted her brows in response to Sasha’s growl, and he cut off immediately, offering her a sheepish smile.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she said, voice touched with wariness. “I don’t like the way it smells, either.”

“It smells familiar,” Nikita said, stepping up to the table beside Trina, looking down expectantly.

“Friend of yours?” Harvey asked dryly, and pulled back the drape.

Nikita took a short, sharp breath, and forced it back out through flared nostrils, muscle leaping in his jaw as he clenched it. He didn’t sway, though; didn’t show any of the usual signs of fainting or falling ill. He was well-fed, this time, in both ways that counted.

Sasha allowed himself a quick burst of pride before his gaze dropped to the table, and then he was checking a growl again. He pushed it down and stepped up alongside them, on Trina’s other side.

“Eaten, yes,” Nikita said.

Trina nudged him with an elbow.

“You said it, not me. And yes, it’s true. It’s also very irregular for a wolf.”

Sasha thought of the Russian wilderness, the musk of a deer; his own hands, tendons stark in their pale backs, as he gripped at shaggy coat; the give of flesh beneath his teeth, blood filling his mouth.

He blinked down at the human remains on the table, and wanted to be sick. He felt Nikita’s gaze, a quick check over the top of Trina’s head, but shut his eyes, and inhaled deeply, trying to sort out all the scents that lay in the dead limbs in front of him.

Blood, yes, dried and clotted. Fear-sweat, long evaporated, a rank layer over the regular sweat of exertion. And the wolves: two, both male, and healthy; their saliva stank of something desperate and wild, a dumb excitement. And a third wolf, one distant, not involved with the killing, but one that had brushed up against one of the murderers: Gustav’s Hannah.

He opened his eyes, and found Dr. Harvey watching him critically.

“The victim is male,” Sasha told her. “Healthy. I think he was probably running for exercise, before he had to run for his life. They tore him apart while he was still alive.”

“Jesus,” Trina breathed.

Dr. Harvey swallowed. “Yes, that was my conclusion, too, based on the amount of bleeding.” She indicated the raw edge of the dismembered leg with a gloved pinky finger. “Is it the same – wolves – as before?” She only stumbled over the word a little.

“Yes. The two ferals. And they’ve been in contact with Hannah.”

“She orchestrated the attack, then,” Nikita said. “She’s the captain.”

“Which means Gustav is,” Sasha said. They traded a look over Trina’s head, and Nikita had pulled on his old Cheka mask, the flat, terrifying look that meant he was on the war path – only his eyes betrayed his worry.

“If you can tell all that by smelling this” – Trina said, gesturing to the table – “why weren’t you able to track down Gustav yesterday?”

Nikita paced away from the table, hands clasped together in the small of his back; the pose did nice things to his shoulders. Stood him very upright; made it easy to imagine he wore his long, black leather Cheka coat. “We kept catching trails. Him, once, then her. Then both of them together. But they always stopped.”

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