Page 153 of Golden Eagle

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The body lay in the narrow fire break between a Pre-War apartment building and an art deco one that housed a bodega on the first floor, and offices above. The space was so narrow that Lanny had to turn sideways and squeeze the few paces down to where Harvey crouched awkwardly beside a downspout, hem of her white lab coat carefully tucked up so it didn’t drag in the blood on the pavement.

“Oh, God,” Garcia said behind him, shoe soles scrabbling as he pushed back out of the narrow alley and went out on the taped-off sidewalk to be noisily sick.

Harvey lifted her head and called, “Nobody let him puke on any evidence,” expression disgusted.

Lanny had the back of one hand pressed to his nose. He wasn’t in danger of being sick – he’d been a cop and a boxer too long to let the unspeakable go to his stomach – but the scent was overpowering; it threatened to make his eyes water. He smelled not just death, but death that had been torn up. Death that had been devoured, parts of the body never meant to see the light of day laid bare to the narrow stripe of blue sky far overhead.

Harvey’s gaze shifted to his face as he drew up in front of her, and her face settled into worried angles. Fear shone in her eyes. “It’s like the others,” she said in an undertone, and lifted up the white drape at her feet without preamble.

He wasn’t able to make out any visual particulars of the gore she uncovered, though, when he inhaled, some instinct in the back of his skull thoughtliver. Because being a vampire was damn weird.

There was another scent, too: wolf. With that now-familiar, wild, metallic tang of the feral that fled the scene with Trina.

“Same one?” Harvey asked quietly.

He took a breath, and dropped his hand from in front of his face. “Yeah. Same one.”

“Any progress being made on that front?” She didn’t sound all that hopeful.

He sighed. “Some. Not enough. Any idea who the vic is?”

He thought she’d roll her eyes and sayno, of course not. They’d have to run DNA and hope the poor bastard was in some sort of system.

But she said, “The patrols who responded to the call talked to the bodega owner next door. He was badly rattled, but he said he was unlocking his front door when a regular jogger – he said his name was Dennis, and that he’s training for a marathon – came in for his usual Vitamin Water. They chatted for a few minutes, and Dennis left. A few seconds later, the owner heard screaming. He said it sounded like Dennis. He grabbed his baseball bat and ran out on the sidewalk, just in time to see a pair of feet getting dragged down here.” She gestured to the alley around them. “He recognized Dennis’s shoes. He said things got fuzzy after that.”

“Those shoes?” Lanny asked, pointing to a pair of blood-spattered yellow Nikes behind Harvey.

She nodded. “Yeah. Someone was going to get him some hot coffee and sit him down. I figured you’d want to talk to him.”

“Definitely.”

He let his gaze wander over what was left of Dennis, committing it to memory, imagining all-too-clearly how it had played out. He didn’t figure the wolf had gone straight for the throat and given the poor bastard a quick, clean death. This kind of carnage spoke of madness and desperation. He noted bits of shredded clothing, thin spandex running gear, all of it ripped to tatters in the wolf’s frenzy, some of it maybe eaten.

He heaved out a breath. “Thanks, Christine.”

She nodded and turned back to what little remained of the body.

Lanny squeezed back out of the fire break. Garcia was still bent over, hands on his knees, wheezing, so he left him to it and went next door to the bodega.

A uniformed officer stood at the counter, thumbs hooked in his gun belt, keeping watch over what must have been the owner.

Lanny made his way toward the man, noting all the details of trauma: the slackness of his face, the haunted, vacant look in his eyes, his curled, defensive posture. He smelled sharply of fear-sweet, and more faintly of vomit; he’d been sick, obviously, just like Garcia.

“Sir,” Lanny said, gently, when he reached him. He sat down on a case of Gatorade so he was on eye level with the man, hoping to make himself look small, and trustworthy. He felt something like guilt, as the man lifted a glassy look up to his face; like maybe the bodega owner could sense that he was a vampire, that he was more like the thing that had eaten one of his usual customers than he was like the human he’d once been. “Is this your store?” He put on his softest smile, the one he’d used to soothe countless suspects and victims over the years.

It didn’t seem to work here. The man blinked a few times, uncomprehending.

“Sir?” Lanny repeated.

“He’s in shock,” the uniform said, unhelpfully.

“Yeah.” Lanny sighed through his nose. “I got that. Sir?” When he got no response, he realized what he needed to do – what he wasgoingto do. Had he still been mortal, he would have sent Garcia to get the man coffee, sat with him a while, trying to make small talk; had the man driven to the precinct and offered whatever he wanted to eat or drink until he finally crept back from the place he’d hidden in his own mind, and was ready to talk. He would have done that because it would have been the only option available to him.

But he had other options now, didn’t he?

He’d fought in the cage because he could, now.

Just like he was now drawing upon his power of compulsion, channeling all his will into his gaze and his voice. “Tell me what happened,” he said, voice ringing, an oily tide of guilt rising in his gut.

He wasn’t just a man anymore.

As the bodega owner began to speak, lifeless and rote, he wondered how long he could keep playing at being a detective.

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