Blood Trail

sounded a bit like Inuit - at least Inuit according to PBS specials on the Arctic; Vicki'd never been farther North than Thunder Bay.
    When she mentioned this to Peter, he kicked at a clump of yellowed grass.

    "I've never heard Inuit but we sure got the same problems. The more we integrate with humans the more we speak their language and lose ours. Grandfather and Grandmother spoke Dutch and English and wer. Father still speaks a little Dutch but only Aunt Sylvia bothered to learn any wer." He sighed. "She taught me and I'm trying to teach Daniel but there's still so much I don't know. The dirt bag that killed her killed my best chance at keeping our language alive."

    "You seem to be doing a good job." Vicki waved a hand back toward the willow. "Daniel's certainly using it. ..." It might not be much comfort but it was all she had to offer so far.

    Peter brightened. "True. He's like a little sponge, just soaks it right up. Cloud now," he made a grab for his twin's tail but she whisked it out of his way, "she learned to say Akaywo and gave up."

    "Akaywo," Vicki repeated. The word didn't resonate the way it did when Peter said it but it was recognizable. Sort of. "What does it mean?"

    "Uh, good hunting mostly. But that means hello, good-bye, how's tricks, long time no see."

    "Like Aloha."

    "Aloha. Alo-ha." Peter lengthened the second syllable until it trembled on the edge of a howl.
    "Good word. But not one of ours. ..."

    Suddenly, Cloud's ears went up and she bounded off into the underbrush. A second later, Peter shoved his shorts into Vicki's hands and took off after her.

    Vicki watched their tails disappear behind a barrier of bushes and weeds and slapped at one of the billions of mosquitoes their passage through the grass had stirred up. "Now what?" she wondered. From all the crashing about, they were still after it, whatever it was. "Hey," she called, "I'll just keep walking to the end of the lane. You can catch up with me there." There was no response but to be honest she didn't expect one.

    It was almost comfortable in the lane; a long way from cool but not nearly as hot as it would no doubt get later in the day. Vicki checked her watch. 8:40. "You can make those calls this morning if you like," Nadine had said, "but you might be better off heading out to the fields and having a look at where it happened before it gets too hot. When it warms up in a couple of hours, no one around here'II be awake to show you the place. Beside, Peter or Rose can tell you all about the three humans while you go." A good theory if only Peter and Rose, or Peter and Cloud, or even Storm and Cloud – whatever - had stuck around.

    She brushed aside a swarm of gnats, crushed another mosquito against her knee, and wondered if Henry was all right. The wer had apparently light-proofed a room for him, but at this point Vicki wasn't entirely certain she'd trust their good intentions. Still, Henry had been here other times and obviously survived.

    Pushing her glasses up her nose, sweat having well lubricated the slope, she reached the end of the lane and paused, a little overwhelmed by the vast expanse of land now before her. Up above, the sky stretched on forever, hard-edged and blue. Down below, there was a fence and a field and another fence and a bigger field. There were sheep in both fields. In fact, there were three sheep not twenty feet away on the other side of the first fence.

    Two of them were eating, the third stared down the arch of its Roman profile at Vicki.

    Vicki had never heard that sheep were dangerous, but then, what did she know, she'd never been this close to a sheep before.

    "So," leaning carefully against the fence, she picked a tuft of fleece off a rusty bit of wire and rolled it between her fingers, "I don't suppose you saw anything the night that Jason Heerkens, aka Ebon, was murdered?"

    At the sound of her voice, the staring sheep rolled its eyes and danced backward while the other two, still chewing, peeled off to either side and trotted a few feet away.

    "So much for interviewing witnesses," she muttered, turning back to look down the lane.
    "Where the hell are Cloud and Pe ... Storm?"

    As if in answer to her summons, the two wer burst out of the bushes and bounded toward her, tongues lolling, tails waving. Cloud reached the fence first and without pausing sailed over it and came to a dead stop, flattened against the grass on the other side. Storm, only a heartbeat behind, changed in midair, and