Lover Beware

might not even have had time to know his hand was gone. He had good instincts, though. He tried to pull his head down, protect his neck. That’s when he lost some of his face. Then it ripped out his throat.”
    The rookie was looking sick. Maybe she’d pushed reality on him a little too firmly.
    “Now, now. You’re not supposed to say ‘it,’ ” Phillips said with heavy sarcasm. “We have to say ‘he’ now, treat ’em like people. Full rights under the law.”
    “I know the law.” She turned away and frowned. A van from one of the TV stations had pulled up. Dammit. “I need you two to join the uniforms at the entrance. I don’t want any media ghouls messing up my crime scene.”
    “Sure thing, Detective.” Phillips gave her a mocking grin, turned, then paused and took the toothpick out of his mouth. When he met her eyes the mockery and anger had faded from his, leaving them dead serious. “A word of advice from someone who put in some time on the X-Squad. Call them whatever you like, but don’t mistake the lupi for human. They don’t think like we do, and they’re damned hard to hurt. They’re faster and they’re stronger, and they like the way we taste.”
    “This one doesn’t seem to have done much tasting.”
    He shrugged. “Something interrupted him, maybe. Don’t forget that they’re only legally human when they’re on two legs. You run into one when it’s four-footed, don’t arrest it. Shoot it.” He flicked the toothpick to the ground. “And aim for the brain.”

Chapter 2
    LILY’S EYES WERE gritty and hot the next morning when she made her way through the mass of desks in the bullpen. It had been two in the morning when she’d returned to her little apartment on Flower Street.
    The lab crew had put in an even longer night, though. The preliminary report was waiting on her desk. She settled into the battered chair that was just beginning to adapt its lumps to her own bottom, took a sip of her coffee, and skimmed it quickly.
    It held one surprise. For some reason they were holding off on the complete autopsy “pending official notice.” Her eyebrows went up. What did that mean? Otherwise it was pretty much what she’d expected. No blood other than the victim’s, no tissue. A few hairs. At least they’d been able to establish that the attacker had been one of the Blood, though.
    Science depended on things happening a certain way without fail. Water boiled at 100©C at sea level, no matter who did the boiling. Mix potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal together in the right proportions and you ended up with gunpowder every time, no random batches of gold dust or baking soda to confuse matters.
    But magic was capricious. Individual. The cells and body fluids of those of the Blood—inherently magical beings—didn’t perform the same way every time they were tested. Which made it possible sometimes to identify the traces magic left in its wake, but played hell with lab results.
    Still, the lab tech had been able to determine that the blood in the wounds had been contaminated by magic, probably by some body fluid from one of the Blood. Saliva, obviously, but the tests couldn’t confirm that.
    The report did list some negatives. Lily snorted when she read them. No one with a functioning brain would have suspected a brownie anyway, and gnomes were timid and extremely rare. Gremlins could be nasty, but there hadn’t been a gremlin outbreak in southern California in years. Besides, they were way too small. The damage she’d seen last night hadn’t been inflicted by a gremlin pack.
    What the lab work couldn’t tell them, the other physical evidence did. Lily knew very well which species they were dealing with—one of the lupi.
    Werewolf.
    She sat back with a sigh, turning back to the first page to give the report a more thorough reading. The man at the desk next to hers tilted his head back and howled.
    “Cute, Brunswick,” she said without looking up from the report. “Very lifelike. You been tested?”
    The woman at the desk behind Brunswick snorted. “Him? You’ve got to be kidding. Lupi are supposed to be virile, charismatic, sexy as hell—”
    “Hey, I’m sexy! Just ask my wife.”
    “They’re also tomcats.”
    “Can’t call a wolf a cat.”
    “Don’t nitpick. You know what I mean—they’ll stick it anywhere, anytime, to anyone who’ll let ’em. You want me to ask your wife if that’s true, too, studmuffin?”
    Two of the nearest men laughed.