Inked

Grayshadow was missing three fingers on his right hand, a relic of an old duel.”
    I swallowed. “I didn’t really look that close.”
    My head was pounding and my throat felt like a desert. I spied a small fridge sitting at the end of the sofa, wedged in between an overstuffed filing cabinet and the wall. Its sole contents turned out to be a six-pack of mineral water and a beer. The beer was warm. I drank it anyway.
    “If you already knew who he was, why let Sedgewick examine him?” I asked, after a minute.
    “I was hoping he would tell me that the skin was removed after death, and that something else had killed him.”
    “Yeah, because that would be so much better!”
    “Yes. It would.”
    The strain in his voice surprised me. While Cyrus was considered mad, bad and dangerous to know, Sebastian’s reputation matched what I’d seen so far—elegant, composed and levelheaded. Only he wasn’t sounding so much like that now.
    “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what’s going on?” I demanded.
    Sebastian wordlessly pulled a manila folder from under his suit coat and handed it to me. It contained photos, big glossy ones in full color that might have been taken from the exam room down the hall. Only the backgrounds differed. Instead of brushed steel, these bodies lay on red, rocky soil, cracked asphalt and scrub brush. Three bodies, three different places of death, but the same gruesome method.
    “Grayshadow was the fourth—that we know of,” he said, when I looked up. “The first was a week ago. Forest Walker of Maccon. Then White Sun of Arnou and Night Dancer of Tamaska.”
    “And Grayshadow belonged to which clan?”
    “Arnou.”
    “So two out of four were Arnou.” Sebastian nodded. “But why were they all…like that?”
    “Our pelts are prized possessions in many circles. If taken at the moment of transformation, they retain much of the magic needed for the Change.”
    He said it so matter-of-factly, that it took me a second to get it. “Wait. You think someone killed them for their skins ?” I stared at him in horror.
    “So it would seem.” His voice was as smooth and untroubled as if that earlier lapse had never happened. But his eyes were clouded when they met mine. “It appears that we have a Hunter.”
    I looked down at the too-colorful photos. My nausea was back, big-time. “But how? Weres change so quickly—”
    “A spell is required to strip the skin from the body before the change can be completed.”
    “You think a mage did this?”
    “They are one of the few predators to which we are vulnerable.”
    My head was spinning, a combination of numb stick, shock and warm beer. It felt like I was simultaneously getting too much information, and not enough. “Okay,” I said slowly, trying to sort out my jumbled thoughts. “Right now, I’m not interested in this Hunter, mage or not. I’m interested in why Cyrus’s phone was found under a dead body, and one that had no clothes to hold it. Was it planted to make us think it was Cyrus? Because any Were would immediately know that it wasn’t.”
    Sebastian’s jaw tightened. “It was, I think, a message to me.”
    “What? Some kind of challenge?”
    “More likely a warning not to interfere in this creature’s affairs.”
    I frowned. “And you would need a warning because?”
    “White Sun was my Second, my right hand. When I learned of his death, I asked Cyrus to check with his contacts in the underworld, to get me a lead on this creature. A name, a location, anything.”
    “And did he?”
    “I didn’t want to discuss this over the telephone,” he said, not answering me. “And as you know, Cyrus and I cannot meet.”
    I nodded. Sebastian had recently been elected wartime chief, which was what bardric actually meant, of the North American Were clans. In order to get the votes of those leaders who were more impressed by brawn than brains (in other words, most of them), he’d asked Cyrus to challenge him for the right to lead their clan—a dispute that could be resolved only by combat.
    As they’d planned, Sebastian won the fight and the election, but losing made Cyrus vargulf— an outcast—in Were society. The brothers intended to reveal the truth after the war was over, allowing Cyrus to reclaim his position. In the meantime, he was using his disreputable reputation to spy on the Were underworld for his brother.
    “So how were you getting information?” I asked, and immediately knew I’d hit pay dirt.