On the Prowl

was too hasty in using his weapon. Chief Roberts thinks within narrow channels, but he’s correct within his limits.”
    She huffed out a breath. “That is not an explanation.”
    He felt a smile start. Kai was angry. If he told her she was pretty when temper brought that flush to her skin, she might pick up the knife again. But she was.
    Her Gift was linked to water, and she wore its colors often. The soft flannel she wore tonight was a pale green that made him think of one of the many bright pools in the Summer Lady’s land. Her throat rose from the neck of her pajamas, a strong and beautiful pillar the color of warm, wet sand. She would smell so good right there, in the hollow between neck and collarbone.
    He took a moment to rein in his body, but the smile lingered inside. “I’ve been searching for the killer.”
    “I know that. I don’t know why you were at the morgue. Or why you were shot for being there.”
    “I wanted to see the bodies of the two who were slain. I didn’t have permission.” The two victims had been killed within city limits, so the city police were handling the investigation. Chief Roberts didn’t play well with others, particularly those in the sheriff’s office. “I hoped to pick up a…a scent. Traces left by the killer.”
    “Are you a—a werewolf? A lupus, I mean.”
    “Eh.” The question startled him. Kai had always been careful not to pry, not to ask too many direct questions. But she was his friend. He knew her secret; he could give her more of his. “No,” he said, then decided that wasn’t enough. “This is the only realm with lupi. They’re native to it. I’m not.”
    She nodded solemnly.
    His muscles loosened in relief. She didn’t fear him, wasn’t upset—and she didn’t go on to ask the obvious questions, the ones he wasn’t sure he could answer. “I said I wanted to find the killer’s scent. I meant the physical scent, but I…there’s more, for me. I pick up other traces, psychic traces, but sensually, as a smell. Like you receive thoughts visually.”
    “Oh.” She cocked her head. “I like that. It makes me feel less of a freak to know your talent works a bit like mine.”
    “You are not a freak.”
    She tapped her head. “This knows that.” She touched her chest. “This doesn’t. Did you get a scent from the bodies?”
    He grimaced. “I never reached the bodies. The police have them under guard.”
    “I guess the morgue usually has someone there. An attendant.”
    “I allowed for that,” he said dryly. He’d been sloppy, but not that sloppy. “I didn’t expect officers to be stationed at the bodies.” He could have killed or disarmed them, of course, but one action would have been immoral, the other stupid. He shook his head. “I don’t understand why they were there. Chief Roberts is narrow, not stupid. He must have some reason to guard the bodies, but I can’t come up with one.”
    “He may be thinking of vampires. A lot of people are right now. The bodies were drained of blood, right? So he might have posted people to watch and make sure they don’t—well, rise or something.”
    Nathan snorted. “If he’s trying to find a vampire, he’s wasting his time. They don’t exist. Not the way they’re depicted in fiction.”
    “But…they do exist?”
    “Blood-drinkers are real, but not native to this realm. Most of them aren’t intelligent, and none of them reproduce by endowing their victims with the ability to rise from the dead.”
    She grinned. “Or go around seducing young virgins?”
    They’d watched Interview With the Vampire together last Halloween. Funny show. He’d chuckled at what she claimed were all the wrong places. “Exactly.”
    “So you think it’s a human who killed those people?”
    “Unlikely. A deranged or evil human might drink blood, but he or she couldn’t suck out the entire ten pints in the average body. Nor is it easy to drain a body completely in other ways, and the victims were apparently exsanguinated in the same places the bodies were found.”
    “Then it’s an animal of some sort. Something that came in on the power wind.”
    “Probably.” He considered his words for a moment. “By ‘animal’ I don’t just mean inhuman. I mean a species incapable of complex communication.”
    “Communication? You think that’s the dividing line between animal and, uh…I guess I can’t say human, but I’m not sure how to put it.”
    “Sentient is the closest word in