Lupi 08 - Death Magic

crouched, sniffing all along that crack. He straightened and turned. “I smell blood.”
    She dug in her purse with one hand. Pulled out her weapon with the other. And elbowed him aside.
    To her surprise, he let her. “Anna!” she called loudly, banging on the door with the hand that held her weapon. “Anna, are you okay?”
    No answer. She wasn’t expecting one. The hand groping madly in her purse connected with what she wanted. She pulled out a single latex glove, handed her weapon to Rule, and tugged the glove on. “Anna!” she called again, even louder. “I have reason to suspect you’re injured. If you don’t respond, I will force entry.”
    Weapon ready in her right hand, she reached for the doorknob with her gloved left hand. The door had a key card lock like a hotel and the light was red, so she was startled when the knob turned. She swung the door open—and quickly, before the two lupi could shove her aside, she stepped in.
    A short entry hall, angling almost immediately to the left. Blank wall dead ahead. Drops of dried blood on the pale beige carpet. And a very stubborn, very fast man dodging around her to run inside.
    “Stay back,” she ordered Mark without knowing if he’d obey, and she followed as quickly as her merely human self could, weapon out.
    On the left, a kitchenette. Directly ahead a single room—bed to one side, couch, desk, and tiny two-person table on the other. Big windows with the drapes closed. And a nice, reddish-brown stain on the carpet directly in front of her.
    No body. No signs of a fight, aside from the blood.
    Rule was moving quickly through the small space, pausing here and there to listen and sniff. Making sure they were alone, she supposed. Mark—wonder of wonders—had stayed out, guarding the door. Lily crouched and studied the bloodstain.
    It wasn’t fresh, but the center looked to still be damp. There was some spatter. She tilted her head. She was no expert, but that didn’t look like spray from a bullet. “You smell gunpowder?” she called. Rule had vanished into the tiny bathroom.
    “No.”
    The wound hadn’t spurted. There was just that bit of spatter. Head wound, maybe? It looked like the victim had been struck, staggered a step or two, then fallen to the floor. The biggest spot would be where she’d lain, unmoving, her blood soaking into the carpet.
    Lily turned her head. Brown spots led away, as if the wound had still been dripping when the victim was carried out. Or walked out on her own? “Can you tell for sure if that’s Sjorensen’s blood?”
    He came out of the small bathroom. “Probably. I’ll need to get close.”
    “Just don’t touch it.”
    He came and knelt near to the stain, bent, and sniffed. Held still a moment, his mouth slightly open. “This is Anna’s blood.”
    “There’s a trail leading to the door. Drops of blood. I don’t know if it’s enough to suggest she was still alive then, her heart still pumping, but maybe. Maybe she was. What I’d like to know is if she walked out or was carried. Can you tell by sniffing?”
    “Not in this form. Probably not as a wolf, either. There are other smells here.” He sniffed the carpet again, this time a couple feet away from the bloodstain, then shifted position and did it again. “Mostly it’s Anna, but two of the not-Anna scents are recent. I don’t see how I could tell if they carried her out, though. They walked in, walked around, and walked out, but I can’t say if they were carrying her.”
    “Okay.” She took out her phone. “You want to have not been here?”
    His eyebrows snapped down. “What?”
    “I’m calling Croft. Maybe I should call the locals, but Croft can get everything rolling quickly, and speed is important. She might still be alive. But that means we’ll be stuck here awhile. It might be that you and Scott dropped me and Mark off. You never came in. You’re on your way to the Twelfth Street Kitchen right now.”
    “We’re not separating. If you’re here, so am I.”
    She gave up and called it in.

THIRTY-THREE
     

     
    RULE did not hit or harm any cops in the next few hours. Not Special Agent Ron Fielding of the FBI. Not Sergeant Willy Spaulding of the Washington Police Department, either, and that took more willpower. As Lily said at one point, Spaulding might not be an asshole, but he did a damn fine impression of one.
    Lily had wanted Rule to leave, to stay free to continue their own investigation. It made sense. Rule hadn’t even