Page 6 of Dead Wrong

A young man in a yellow and black tracksuit trotted over to us. “Are you guys talking about what Bert saw?”

“Where’d you wander off to?” Anna asked.

“I thought I found a piece of Chutney, but it turned out to be a chunk of that buck we saw. Big fella.” He held his hands about a foot away from his head. “Antlers out to here.”

“Xander was with them last night, too,” West explained.

I pivoted toward Bert. “Is the buck the animal you saw?”

Bert shook his head. “I think it was a lost dog.”

“And I told you it couldn’t have been,” Anna said. “Otherwise, we would’ve smelled it.”

Bert pinned her with a fierce gaze. “You calling me a liar?”

She rose to the challenge. “Did you smell another animal, Bert? Because the only scents I picked up last night were evergreen mixed with the shit you took behind the bushes.”

Bert snarled. “I told you that wasn’t me.”

Her hands moved to her hips. “Then I guess Chutney took a giant dump right before he died.”

I tried to steer them back on track before they tore each other to shreds and joined Chutney. “Can you describe this dog, Bert?”

He scratched the back of his head. “Pretty big. Bigger than you’d expect. Thin tail. Long hair around the face.”

“Sounds more like a lion,” I said.

He gave his head an adamant shake. “Nah. Couldn’t have been. It was wearing a collar.”

West’s face hardened. “You were close enough to see a collar, but not close enough to take it down?”

“The collar was shiny,” Bert protested. “It glimmered in the moonlight.”

“I was going to say it glittered,” Xander murmured.

“I don’t care if it glowed bright orange and had theChanel logo as a buckle,” West seethed. “Why didn’t you go after it?”

“Because,” Xander began, taking great interest in the ground, “we were too distracted by Chutney.”

“Then he exploded,” Bert continued, “so we forgot about the dog.”

“Could’ve been one of those Australian shepherds,” Xander said. “Or a Burmese mountain dog.”

“Or it could’ve been a lion,” I repeated.

“We get a lot of wildlife in this forest,” West said, “but lions don’t generally feature.”

I gave up. “Okay, so what kind of dog looks like a lion in the dark?”

“Moonlight,” Xander corrected me.

I was ready to send Xander on a one-way trip to the moon so he could see the light up close.

“We all smelled the buck,” Anna said. “If there was another animal nearby, we would’ve smelled that too.”

“We all smelled it, but Chutney was the one who tracked it,” Xander said. “I was so jealous. That buck had been evading us for weeks.”

“Chutney’s hunting skills were next-level last night,” Anna said. “It really sucks. He was so proud.” The werewolf chewed her lip. “One second he was running through the woods and the next second…” She made an exploding noise. “Fur everywhere.”

---