Page 16 of The Doctor's Wolf: Part Two
Everyone here was familiar with the way blood smelled when it was spilled in large amounts, and that was the case.It had soaked through the carpet, had followed the lines of the wooden floorboards and ran like tears down the wall where it had been used to write, crudely:the deserved suffering before death.
The blood had drawn dark lines along a cooling finger from whence it had dropped to form a puddle, and it stained void faces and chests torn open with wicked force.The two victims had been brutally mutilated and placed in an armchair each, angled so as to face the French doors, face whoever walked onto the gruesome scene.
“These are Mary Ann and Jackson Williamson,” Maxim said.“Mary Ann was a werewolf, though with no direct pack affiliation, and Jackson was fae.”
“This is extraordinarily violent,” Adler said, and Gordon was sure that the way he moved to block his view wasn’t intentional, was instinct.
Maxim nodded.“It very much is.”
Gordon put a hand on Adler’s shoulder.“Remember why I’m here, detective.I don’t need protecting.”He turned to one of the forensic techs.“Hey, did you bring an extra whitesuit?”
The tech nodded, pointing toward another room.Gordon turned to head that way, but Adler stopped him, wrapped an arm around his middle, and drew him in for a quick kiss.
“Sorry, sweetheart.I sometimes forget how brave you are.I mean, I know, but then I forget.”
Gordon rolled his eyes.“You are forgiven, detective.”
“Thank you,” Adler said just before letting Gordon go, his voice low and husky.
Gordon went to put on that whitesuit.He was pretty sure that Adler was watching him go.Focus on the murders and not on the hot werewolf.The dead need you more than the living right now.
Chapter 10
Adler’ssensesseemedheightenedto the extreme.It was a combination of the scent of blood and his mate so near, his mate who Adler needed to keep safe no matter what.
That’s the wolf talking.Of course he is safe here.Get a grip.
Adler forced himself to shift his focus from Gordon to the bodies.
In this, her human form, Adler didn’t recognize the female wolf, Mary Ann.He saw that her medium-long hair had been dyed—nothing as colorful as his mate did, just a light tone of caramel brown with the roots showing in almost black.Gordon never lets his hair grow out this much.Was she too busy to touch it up?Or was she trying to get back to her natural color?I wonder what she looked like in her wolf form.I must have heard her howl during the full moon at some point.
“Was her chest torn open with bare hands?”Adler asked, leaning forward across the area the forensics team wasn’t done with yet.
Maxim nodded.“I thought the same.That’s why I wanted the both of you here.”
Gordon came back, now mostly covered in one of the all-white forensics suits.He put on a surgical mask and face shield, then pulled up the hood of the suit, zipping it all the way in the front before pulling on a set of black gloves.
Now uniformed like the rest of the forensics team, he crossed the line of tape, stepping into the heart of the mayhem.
“Have you documented the bodies so far?Can I examine them?”he asked a team member.
Adler didn’t know if his mate was able to tell the forensics people apart.He sure couldn’t.However, the person Gordon had asked nodded, and Gordon carefully made his way over to Mary Ann.
“Anything you can glean, Gordon, we are eager to hear,” Maxim said, crossing his arms.
Adler frowned.Maxim wasn’t happy, and given Adler’s beta nature, seeing someone so alpha unhappy had the same effect on him.He felt glumness creep in from all sides made only worse by the fact that he couldn’t be physically near to his mate just then.
“Well,” Gordon said, peering into the open chest.“I’ll need them back at the morgue before I give you anything definitive, but”—he looked at the broken ribs like fence posts after a car crashed into them—”I think this was likely done by a vampire.Not a very young one, someone with the kind of explosive strength that comes with age.And yes, at first glance, I’d say they tore into her.Through her.They paid no attention at all to keeping your ribs lined up all evenly, did they?Such horrible manners.”He turned his attention to the male corpse.“The neck is broken, here.That would have taken quite a forceful blow.”He looked back over to the werewolf’s corpse.“I don’t see the heart, but the lungs are there, and…” Adler took a steadying breath as he watched his precious mate reach inside that torn-open chest and feel around.“Yeah.I’d say it’s just the heart that’s missing.”
Maxim raised his chin.“But you’ll have to count all the wobbly bits later?”
Gordon barely glanced up from his work.“Exactly.”He took a few steps back, looked around and took an instrument from a work kit nearby.A thermometer, Adler realized when Gordon pushed it inside the open chest.“I think this happened in the early hours.”
Adler looked at the message on the wall behind the two bodies, the red letters stirring something in the back of his mind.He turned to Maxim.
“Do you have any reason to think humans are involved?I mean, it doesn’t seem like it.”
A very small frown line appeared on Maxim’s otherwise smooth forehead.“I’m not sure.For now, I am including you as the direct point of contact between this investigation and the NAPD.Better to have you here than to miss you later.Like a condom you always carry in your pocket just in case, you know.”
