Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 Page 5

  Selene walked out of the kitchen, and I bit back a snarl. Her friend had done this to me. She stepped back when she saw my expression, so I tried to make it more neutral. My head throbbed, and I grimaced instead.

  “What happened?” Lonna asked. “You look awful.”

  “I did something stupid and got whacked on the head,” I told her. “I may have a concussion.”

  Max, a medical doctor, came in with an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. “I knew this would come in handy sometime.” He took out a light and shone it in my eyes, then felt around my head. “For bone fragments,” he explained, “although it’s definitely possible to get a concussion without any damage to the skull.”

  I hissed when his fingers found a very tender spot.

  “It’s just a bump, but no fracture,” he said. “Happens all the time in sports—poor kids’ brains just get rattled around. Did you lose consciousness?”

  “For a few minutes.”

  He continued through a long list of questions and finished with, “I think you’ll be fine, but I want to get a CT to make sure there’s not any fluid buildup. We’ve got one at the Institute.”

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. “Bloody expensive machines.”

  Selene had been watching, and I couldn’t read her expression. Did she suspect I’d had a run-in with her friends? I wanted to tell her not to go anywhere, I needed to talk to her, but I didn’t want to spook her into going into hiding. I didn’t have enough to arrest her, so I’d just have to be patient and corner her later. Once I got rid of this damned headache.

  “I’m really sorry, but I need to go,” Selene said. “Gabriel, I hope you feel better.” In what seemed like a flash, she left.

  “Interesting,” was Lonna’s comment. “Y’all go ahead. I’ll stay here and clean up.”

  Max drove me to the Institute. Once we cleared the woods around the drive, I couldn’t help but think it looked sinister looming above the lawn and its stone walls lit with yellow semicircles from the spotlights. Only dim lights shone from within the building. I noticed the difference between when I’d approached it that morning and now, both with regard to how it looked and how I felt. This morning, I had been confident, a little impatient, and curious on my official visit as the Council member who had advocated for it and wanted to make sure it was, indeed, almost ready to start its mission. I thought I had the backing of my peers. Now I felt wobbly and uncertain, both physically and with regard to the politics around it. I would say meeting Selene was a bright spot, but not since her friend had bashed me on the head. At least David had demonstrated a crack in his armor, and the shadowy figure who had been my father took on more definition in my foggy memory.

  “Here we are,” Max said and pulled into one of the Co-Director parking spots.

  Steadier than before, I got out of the car on my own this time. “I’m getting better.”

  “Let’s take a look just to make sure.”

  He opened the side door with a key and flipped on the lights. We both squinted against the glare. The blood scent still lingered, although not as strongly.

  A bump from upstairs drew our gazes to the ceiling.

  “Someone’s in Lonna’s office,” Max whispered.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded, and we moved toward a door marked Stairs. “We’re directly below the office, and as I recall, we left her at home. There’s no reason for the security guards to be in there.”

  “Do you have a cleaning crew?” I followed him to the door.

  “We told the cleaners not to come tonight. I’ll check it out. Stay here.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. Adrenaline and that extra push from the dopamine that activated when we were about to change cleared the fog in my head. “I’m going to change.”

  He put a hand on my arm. “Not until I can scan you. Rearranging yourself may cause further damage.”

  “I’m still coming with you.”

  He nodded. “There’s a second stairwell at the other end of the hall. I’ll take that one.”

  The darkness in the stairwell seemed total as my eyes adjusted back from being in the light. With my hearing attuned for any sound that might indicate someone coming down, I felt my way up the railing. The stairwell itself smelled like paint, new rubber and cleaning agents, which blocked out the blood.

  By the time I emerged onto the second floor, my eyes had adjusted back to the darkness.

  Max came out of the stairwell on the other end of the hall, and we both closed in on Lonna’s office. I listened for the faintest sound, but the only noise in my ears was my own heartbeat and Max’s breathing.

  “Anything?” he mouthed.

  “No.”

  The door stood slightly ajar, which indicated someone had been there, and he nudged it completely open. Light from the waxing moon poured through the windows and over Lonna’s desk. As with LeConte’s office, paper was strewn everywhere, but thankfully, no body lay on the desk.

  Max indicated he would go around the desk and look underneath. I stayed by the door in case the intruder hid elsewhere and decided to make a break for it. He shone his cell phone torch app under the desk, and I saw its light flicker in the little space between the bottom of the desk and the floor.

  “Nothing,” he said out loud.

  I walked around and checked other possible nooks and crannies, even checking the wingback chairs to make sure no one sat curled up in them.

  “Is there another way out beside the hallway and stairwells?” I asked.

  “Only the windows, but there’s nowhere to go once you’re out, not even a ledge.”

  “No secret passages?”

  He gave me a doubtful look. “It’s a new building.”

  “Hey, it’s Scotland,” I said, but then my attention returned to the mess. “Can you tell if anything’s missing?”

  “No, only Lonna would be able to.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I suppose we should call her. And Garou. And find the security guards.”

  “I’ll have the detective post twenty-four hour surveillance on the place,” I said. “Twice in one day is twice too many. Damn, I wish I could figure out where the perp went.”

  “What if no one was actually here?” Max asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know about Wolf-Lonna and my abilities to create an astral projection.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “True, but you’ve set up wards around the place to ensure none but you and she could get through, right?”

  “Yes, but those are not always foolproof.”

  He walked to the door, and I followed him into the hallway. He locked the door behind him.

  “It will take me some time to test them and see if I can determine whether they’ve been breached,” he told me. “Meanwhile, let’s get you scanned to make sure you don’t have any edema from your head injury.”

  I felt the back of my head where they’d hit me. The tender bump had decreased in size and painfulness.

  “We should find the security guards first and make sure they’re not hurt.”

  He led me into the stairwell, down the stairs, and to a vacuum-sealed door. “If there was a breach, they’re likely downstairs.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “We keep the most important and expensive equipment in the basement,” he told me. “It seems excessive, but in case of some sort of chemical or biological warfare, it’s also someplace we can hide if necessary. The ventilation system has its own generators, and there are emergency provisions down here.”

  “Are the English going to invade again? I thought we’d been pretty well defeated two hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “If not the English, then maybe someone nastier. We’ve gotten threats.”

  When he opened the door, the smell of shed blood hit me full-force the second time that day
.

  Chapter Six

  When we walked into the room where the CT scanner resided, we were met by a nasty surprise: the security guards tied up, their throats slit. However, there wasn’t much blood, at least not enough for two grown men.

  “Not again.” Max groaned and staggered back.

  “Again?” I asked and reached to steady him. My eyes took in the details of the scene, which almost seemed ordinary compared to LeConte’s odd murder that morning.

  “LeConte and now this. I’ll call Garou.” He dashed out of the room, and his speed gave me pause because I’d not known Max ever to hurry. Yes, the matter was urgent, especially since these chaps were very dead, but there was something odd about his reaction.

  I’ll talk to him about it later.

  I shook my head and investigated the corpses. These two didn’t make my stomach turn like LeConte had, but they also didn’t resemble a certain picture a young boy shouldn’t have seen of his mutilated father. I pushed the memory away and closed my eyes to bring my wolf nose into play and focus on the scent trail, faint as it was. There was the same kerosene-pipe smoke smell and another one that smelled vaguely of dust and mold. I sneezed.

  Ah, so he had an accomplice. I opened my eyes and took off my jacket—doctor’s orders or not, I was going to change. I walked into the hallway and looked around for a room I could secure against someone walking in on me.

  A petite black wolf appeared in the hall, and I knew Max had called Lonna, who had sent her psychic double. It always threw me how the spirit-wolf didn’t have a scent.

  “It’s the same one as this morning,” I said.

  “I wonder if their intent is to intimidate or if they’re actually looking for something.”

  “I don’t know. Let me change and I’ll join you.”

  “Not so fast,” Max said and came through the door. “Wolf-Lonna has this. She can travel faster than any of us.”

  Indeed, she’d left, head low, following the trail.

  “Amazing how she does that. Does Abby have a double?”

  Max grinned ruefully. “Like any nine-month-old, she babbles when no one’s in the room with her but it’s impossible to tell who or what she’s talking to. It’s early to know what her talents will be.”

  After about twenty minutes, Garou shuffled into the hallway. He looked exhausted and irritated.

  “I take it you have already been in there,” he said.

  “That’s how we discovered the bodies, yes,” Max said.

  “What brought you to the Institute so late?” Garou asked and checked his watch.

  “Investigator McCord sustained a concussion today,” Max told him. “I was concerned and decided to check him out.”

  Garou looked at me with narrowed eyes. “How did this happen?”

  No way was I telling him about Selene and the scar-faced Englishman. Obviously she had a reason not to go to the police in spite of being involved in something dangerous, and I needed to speak to her before spilling her secrets. “I cannot say, as it impacts my own part of the investigation, Detective.”

  “Were you attacked? If so, you need to make a report, particularly if it concerns our investigation.”

  “Once I’m feeling coherent enough, I’ll be happy to talk to you about it. Meanwhile, you have two more corpses to check out.” I stepped aside and gestured for him to proceed into the CT lab.

  A quick tour of the building didn’t yield any more clues, at least not to my tired brain. I figured if Garou picked up anything, he would include it in a report, which I would get soon, anyway. Plus, I counted on Lonna to tell me what her double found.

  After convincing Max I was feeling better and enduring another round of him looking in my eyes and poking and prodding my skull, I left without getting scanned. He had me promise not to do any changing for the next twenty-four hours, and definitely not if I had any headache, dizziness or nausea, in which case I needed to come back and see him for that CT. It was after two o’clock in the morning by the time I fell into bed and dreamed in fragments of battles and death.

  Laura’s words “Don’t forget your ten o’clock!” rattled through my brain at about nine-fifteen. I jerked awake with the sense I had been running through fields all night from an enemy who pursued me with relentless determination through my dreams. In spite of my fatigue, I rushed to get ready in time. This was an important appointment, one I made every year, and the only one I’d delay investigating a triple homicide for.

  The community knew that the school for poorly behaved children was called the Council School, but they didn’t know why, exactly. It was another example of how lycanthropes had managed to live in human communities with only the barest of awareness. Like many of our institutions, including Lycan Castle, the name had long ago passed into the status of, “I never really thought about it much, saw no reason to.” Even when it touted its expertise in treating the symptoms of Chronic Lycanthropy Syndrome, no one made the connection. Perhaps a rare lycanthrope-wizard collaboration had instituted some sort of memory spell around it so people would acknowledge it and move on.

  My head throbbed when I walked into the sunlight, but briefly, and my driving was steady. I pulled up to the school, a large gray stone building with gargoyles perched on the corners of the crenellated roof. No one knew when it was built or the gargoyles added, likely sometime during the Victorian era when Queen Victoria fell in love with Scotland and decided to make the country pretty. I always liked to think of the architect adding the Gothic elements to make it more appropriate to the setting.

  I waved to my favorite, a dog-like creature I’d long ago named Harry. He didn’t wave back, but to me, he represented my ancestors back in the murky time of legend before everything had to be documented in minute detail for the world to see. The others represented other magical species, most of which had died out long ago or perhaps had never existed. The wizard gargoyle clung to the roofline with clawed hands and peered down with iris-less eyes set in a gaunt face with fangs. I always felt it leered at me.

  Headmistress Corinne Reid met me at the door. We embraced and sniffed, and I got the image of a warm breeze sweeping across green fields dotted with purple and white heather. She stepped back and studied me with bright green eyes. As usual, her blonde hair was pulled back in a bun, but it didn’t make her high-cheeked face severe or unfriendly.

  “Welcome, Investigator,” she said. “We always look forward to your Solstice visit. But there’s something different about you.”

  “It must be my current investigation,” I said and gestured for her to lead the way.

  “No, there’s something else. Oh, well.” She stepped into the gloom that was the front hall of the Council School.

  I maintained some skepticism regarding the pagan feasts and their effects on us, but I respected the tradition of seeking for truth in the waxing light of the year, with the presumption being that most would be found at the time when light was most abundant. This included interviewing the children who attended the school to see who might develop into a full werewolf and who merely had the behavioral symptoms. Those who would bloom into true lycanthropes were then invited to attend special classes and training. It was in the interest of keeping our kind out of the light of human awareness, or at least on the very periphery of it, so this “chore” fell under my jurisdiction. Although I would end up spending several hours with sullen preteens, the children often surprised me in a good way.

  Today was no exception. Corinne led me to an office overlooking the wide lawn in front of the school and left to fetch the first interviewee. Thankfully, we’d left the shadows behind. Sunlight poured through the windows, and specks of dust floated through the beams. I couldn’t help but note the difference in smell between the synthetic new building odor of the Institute and the must and paper scent of the older structure.

  “This one insisted on talking to you,” she
said when she returned, a piece of paper in her hand and a small white-blond boy in tow. “He’s not one of our CLS kids, but he has some interesting abilities that have been getting him in trouble.”

  “And what does this have to do with me?” I asked.

  “He saw you come in and said he has something to tell you about a soldier. Alexander, come tell Mister McCord what you need to say.” She ushered the child into the room and left us to speak privately.

  The child sat across from me and studied me with serious brown eyes that flicked from me to a space over my left shoulder. The office chair with its red leather cushions dwarfed him.

  “Good morning, Alexander,” I said and resisted the urge to look behind me.

  “Good morning, sirs,” the child said.

  I looked up, startled, and felt a draught. “There’s only one of me here.”

  He shook his head. “No, there’s the chap standing beside you too. Bit see-through, but he’s there.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I glanced down at the summary sheet Corinne had handed to me. The boy’s diagnosis space had a question mark in it followed by the words, “suspected clairvoyant or psychotic.”

  “What is he wearing?” I asked.

  “He’s got on brown pants and a big jacket.”

  “Describe him to me.”

  “He looks like you, but with more wrinkles and shorter hair.” Alexander leaned forward, and light flashed through his eyes. “And he’s trying to tell you something, but you don’t want to listen.”

  “I see.” I didn’t speak further, just listened, and heard a sound like the wind blowing through dry autumn leaves. “Do you know what he’s trying to say?”

  “He says he tried to talk to you last night, but you were hurt on your head.” He sat back and rubbed his temples, a surprisingly adult gesture for such a small boy. “Why does talking to him make my head hurt?”

  “Sometimes that happens when you’re doing things too much before you get used to them,” I said. “It’s like building a muscle. If you use it too much before it gets strong, it hurts so you’ll stop.”