Blood Trail

needed. I went out to the barn when Daniel was born but Rose watched."

    Cloud looked up at the sound of her name. She'd run ahead and was urinating against a fence post.

    "Anyway," Peter continued, nostrils flared as they passed the post, "there was this young doctor in the crowd and before Grandfather could carry Grandmother away, he'd hustled the both of them and Father, who was about five, into his office." He snickered. "Boy, did he get a shock. As soon as they were alone, Grandfather changed and almost ripped his throat out.
    Lucky for the doctor, Aunt Sylvia was wrong - somehow, I don't know - anyway, Dr. Dixon acted like a doctor and Grandfather let him live. He's been taking care of all our doctor stuff ever since."

    "Handy man to know." The amount of "doctor stuff" necessary in Canada for government documents alone could be positively staggering. The wer were lucky they'd stumbled onto Dr.
    Dixon when they had. "So that leaves only Barry Wu."

    "Yeah." Peter sighed deeply and scratched at the patch of red hair in the center of his chest.
    "But you better talk to Colin about him."

    "I intend to. But I'd also like to hear your opinion."

    Peter shrugged. "I like him. I hope he didn't do it. It'll kill Colin if he did."

    "Have they been partners long?"

    "Since the beginning. They went to police school together." They'd reached the second fence.
    Cloud sailed over it, just as she had the first. Peter slipped his thumbs behind the waistband of his shorts, changed his mind, and started climbing. "Barry's an okay guy. He reacted to us the same way you did ..." Twisting his head at an impossible angle, he grinned back over his shoulder at her. "... kind of shell-shocked but accepting."

    Cloud had run on ahead, nose to the ground. About three quarters of the way across the field, she stopped, sat back on her haunches, pointed her nose at the sky, and howled. The sound lifted every hair on Vicki's body and brought a lump into her throat almost too big to swallow.
    From not very far away came an answer; two voices wrapping about each other in a fey harmony. Then Peter, still in human form, wove in his own song.

    The sheep had begun to look distinctly nervous by the time the howl trailed off.
    "Father and Uncle Stuart." Peter broke the silence to explain the two additional voices.
    "They're checking fences." He turned a little red under his tan. "Well, it's almost impossible not to join in. ..."

    As Vicki had felt a faint desire - firmly squelched - to add in her own two cents worth, she nodded understandingly. "Is that where it happened?"

    "Yeah. Right here."

    At first glance, "right here" looked no different than anywhere else in the field. "Are you sure?"

    "Of course, I'm sure. It hasn't rained and the scent's still strong. Besides," one bare foot brushed lightly over the cropped timothy grass, "I was the first one to the body." Cloud pushed up against his legs. He reached down and pulled gently on her ears. "Not something I'm likely to forget."

    "No, probably not." Maybe she should have told him that he'd forget in time but Vicki didn't believe in lying if she could avoid it, even for comfort's sake. The violent death of someone close should make a lasting impression. Given that, she gentled her voice to ask, "Are you going to be up to this?"

    "Hey, no problem." His hand remained buried in the thick fur behind Cloud's head.
    The wer touched a great deal, she realized, and it wasn't just the youngsters. Last night around the kitchen table, the three adults had seldom been out of contact with each other. She couldn't remember the last time she'd spontaneously touched her mother. And why am I thinking about that now? She dug out her pad and a pencil. "Let's get started, then."

    Ebon had been traveling northeast across the field. The bullet had spun his body around so that the ruin of his head had pointed almost due north. Even without Peter's description, there were enough rust brown stains remaining on the grass to show where what was left of Ebon's head had come to rest. The shot had to have come from the south.

    Vicki sat back on her heels and stared south into the wood. Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. She stood, rubbing at the imprints of dried grass on her knees. "Where was your aunt shot?"

    Peter remained sitting, Cloud's head in his lap. "In the small south field, just off that way." He pointed. The small south field wrapped around a corner of the woods. "Ebon was coming from there."

    "Similar