Blood Trail

business. ..."

    "Bullshit! When it affects your job - our job - like it did tonight, it's my business! Three to eleven shift has enough problems without you and your attitude adding to them."

    All right. If you really want to know, we think you've murdered two of my family. Except Colin didn't think it, couldn't think it, had to think it. He'd searched Barry's locker, the trunk of his car, even quickly searched his apartment one evening when they went back there for a few beers after work. Nothing beyond the rifles the pack already knew he had. No indication that he'd been casting silver bullets. Nor had his scent been anywhere in the woods. If Barry was responsible for the two deaths, he wasn't leaving evidence lying around. If he wasn't responsible, Colin had found nothing that could clear him.

    Colin wanted to confront him. The pack leader had refused to allow it. Torn between pack law and this newer loyalty, Colin had almost reached the point where he couldn't stand it any longer.

    He swung up into the truck and slammed the door. "Look" he snarled, "I want to tell you but I can't. Just leave it!" Slamming the truck into gear, he screeched out of the parking lot, knowing full well Barry wouldn't leave it. He'd worry at it and tear at it like Shadow with a slipper until he had it in pieces and could see what it was made of. Colin wasn't looking forward to going to work tomorrow night.

    Still, tomorrow night was a long time away and maybe this hotshot Toronto PI Henry Fitzroy had convinced the pack to hire could turn something up.

    "When I get out of the city," he told his reflection in the rearview mirror, "I'm going to have a good long howl. I deserve it."

    He watched Colin return home, bad mood obvious even through the scope. Finger resting lightly on the trigger, he tracked him from the truck to the house but, although he had a clear line of sight, he couldn't apply the necessary pressure. He told himself it was too dangerous -
    there were too many others too close - but in his heart he knew it was the uniform. Colin would have to die in his other form.

    Shadows moved against the windows, then the kitchen light went off and the farmhouse stood in darkness. Fire would take care of the lot of them, but he doubted he could get close enough to set it.

    Staying carefully downwind, he worked his way back to the road and his car, old skills put to new uses. Although tonight's reconnaissance had brought him little new information and no chance of making a kill, his penetration so close to their home had convinced him it would only be a matter of time before he won.

    There were, however, the visitors to consider.

    Until he found out who, and what, they were, he would not act against them. He would not have the murder of innocents on his conscience.

    Henry stood by the bed and watched Vicki sleep. She had one arm thrown up over her head, the other across her stomach. The sheet, like the darkness, did little to hide her from his sight.
    He watched her breathe, listened to the rhythm of her heart, followed the path of her blood as it pulsed at wrist and throat. Even asleep, her life was like a beacon in the room.

    He could feel his hunger growing.

    Should he wake her?

    She slept with the corners of her mouth curved slightly upward, as though she knew a pleasant secret.

    No. There had been enough strangeness for her to deal with for one night. He could wait.

    Lightly, very lightly, he drew his finger along the soft skin of her inner arm and whispered,
    "Tomorrow."

    For the first moment after waking, Vicki had no idea where she was. Sunlight painted molten gold across the inside of her lids and, as pretty as it looked, it shouldn't be there. Her bedroom window faced a narrow alley and across that another bedroom window so, even if she'd left the curtains open, which she never did, it couldn't possibly be this light.

    Then she remembered and opened her eyes. The ceiling was a blue blur with a yellow blur across it. Reaching out to the right, her fingers scuttled across the bedside table until they found her glasses. She settled them on her nose and the blurring vanished although the ceiling didn't change significantly. It was still blue. The yellow was a slanting bar of sunlight streaming through the space between the thin cotton curtains. Her room, Sylvia's old room, was obviously on the east side of the house. That settled, Vicki sat up.

    The black shape stretched across the lower left corner of the bed