Once the bud was in my ear, I flicked it on. “Agent Callen, two three five nine, reporting in.”
“Location?”
“Northwest of Landing Street. Crandore Laboratories.”
“Stand by, Agent Callen.”
Static filled my ear as I returned to my sister. The sirens were no longer distant. I estimated thirty seconds before they reached me. I clenched my jaw, wanting to hurry this along. While I needed the engines to arrive as quickly as possible since evidence was burning away while I stood twiddling my damn thumbs, I also needed to make this whole catastrophe official.
“Callen. Man, you’re in so much shit. Brent punched a hole in the wall next to your door.”
I held back my groan, my emotions and mental state too frayed to deal with Lucas. “Reporting a fire at Crandore Laboratories.”
“Oh sh—”
“One unconscious but alive employee.” I assumed as much from the lab coat the guy wore. “And one dead shifter.”
“Wh—”
“Just get it in the system. I’ve got five—”
“All done.” Lucas hesitated. “You sound off. What’s goin—”
“Meet me at the SICB medical lab?”
“Sure. I’ll be there when you get there. I need to tell Brent.”
I grimaced. Lucas was a good guy, the best. He’d always had my back, and I’d admittedly put him in the middle of some crazy situations over the time we’d known each other, starting at the academy. Nothing too deep, but I was sure he wished he’d chosen another partner in our first close-combat class. But still, the guy was over a hundred years old and had led a different life before deciding to join the SICB. I figured he was old enough to deal with every decision he made. “Can you buy me some time? Thirty minutes?”
He snorted. “Callen, I’m good, but that’s pushing it.”
I glanced away and watched the fire trucks pull in, their shouts already filling the burnt air.
“—warpath, for real this time.”
The man at my feet stirred, and I glanced down. “He knows I went offline?”
“Did you not hear a word I just said?”
I should have felt guilty, but Lucas knew exactly what I was like, knew what to expect. I took action. Got the job done. And I occasionally played by the rules, just often enough to keep from getting myself fired.
His sigh filled my ear. “I’ll do what I can. See you in ten.”
“Thanks.” I exhaled, relieved I would Lucas would be meeting me.
Ignoring the fire crew beginning to unravel hoses, I knelt beside the stirring body. It wouldn’t be long before the human police would arrive, and no doubt before that the SICB as per standard protocol when an incident involved a category 3 facility. My narrowed eyes roamed the man’s body. He was bloody, but I couldn’t scent my sister’s blood on him. With a flick of his lab coat, I exposed his shirt. The same blood stained the blue cotton. A look under the material revealed no wounds. It was strange. There was more blood closer to his chest, to his neck. I tugged his collar out the way and froze. A bite mark, raw, raised, and clear of any blood.
I shot a quick gaze at my sister and then back to the man. Could she have bitten him?
I scrubbed at my face. If that were the case, this had just got a hell of a lot more complicated.
It only took a show of my badge and a few curt conversations to put both my sister’s body and the man’s prone form—I may have knocked him out again—in the same ambulance with the instruction to head to the SICB medical lab.
Being in the SICB had its perks, and anything involving supes meant we trumped jurisdiction. I’d shown the arriving human police the bite on the guy, so they’d had no choice but to let me take him.
I followed close behind, having no idea how today’s events could have ended in such a mess.
My sister was dead.
I breathed through the pain piercing my chest. While we hadn’t seen each other since I’d left my father’s pack to start my new life and join the SICB, it didn’t mean I didn’t love her or hadn’t missed her.
We’d kept in contact via email and had even managed a few video calls in secret. It was why I felt like I knew my niece. The whole cloak-and-dagger nonsense surrounding our correspondence was frustrating, but it was what it was. When I’d left the pack, I’d become dead to them, by order of my father. I sneered at the term. Father. He didn’t deserve such a title of respect. He was a sadistic SOB at the best of times. At the worst, he was a thieving, crooked scumbag who delighted in torturing anyone who dared to oppose his absolute rule.
I engaged my right indicator as we headed closer to the lab. We were still another few minutes away. While dragging up thoughts of pack life perhaps wasn’t the healthiest, it gave me something else to focus on. Once back with my sister and the lab tech, it would take enough of my willpower not to crumble into despair and sorrow. Sometimes the evil of my past was safest.
So yeah, it was a no-brainer that once I was able, I left the pack. There were some people I left behind that made the decision difficult, but I had to escape before my dad and I killed each other. I had no desire to be alpha of the pack, ever, and there’d been no way I could have stuck around for longer than I had. Try as he might to make me into the son he thought I needed to be, he’d failed.
SICB training had been the logical step. Justice and all that was so ingrained in me, despite my dad’s attempt to beat it out of me, that I knew the SICB was where I was destined to be. It was the only way I could try to make a change in the world.
My phone buzzed. I pressed the
