“Safe to assume he called his girlfriend, or girl friend, whoever she may be, to warn her away.” I hated when that happened. “You got his cell?” Bishop held it up. “We’ll hit the nearest drop box and alert Reece he’s got a special delivery.”
“I’ll handle the data recovery.” He pocketed the phone. “Reece has his hands full.”
The fission of doubt that swept through me was unwelcome. I trusted Bishop. Just because he wanted to keep me as far away from Blithe and his fae friend as possible didn’t mean he would tamper with evidence to do it.
Probably.
We called the cleaners to dispose of the body, and we did it from the backseat of the Swyft we took to HQ to prevent segues like did he have a phone or where is his phone or everyone has a phone these days or other lines of inquiry that might incriminate us.
It’s not like the cleaners didn’t get their turn with it, just sometimes after we did. I didn’t begrudge them their priorities, but they were spread thin at times. When we needed more immediate results, and we had a person who could get them, we tended to ask forgiveness later.
With no other pressing leads, Bishop and I resigned ourselves to patrol. A crucial part of the job was maintaining a street presence, and Milo had been putting in overtime on that front as the others worked on various facets of the job, but this was one night I wished I had a target for our frustrations. And if it had antennae, so be it.
Sixteen
The first four hours slogged past, business as usual. I should have been grateful to catch a break, but the normalcy made me twitchy when so much tension bubbled beneath the surface of the city. I didn’t trust the quiet. I knew Atlanta, and she was primed to boil over at any moment.
When the status remained quo, Bishop and I decided pizza sounded good and went to get some.
We cut our last quadrant short to hit the part of town where para-owned food trucks congregated late at night. About halfway there, I heard a click-clack-thump on the pavement behind us.
“Turn left.” Bishop urged me toward the darkness rather than the light. “Head to Brunner’s Sports Bar.”
We kept our pace easy, our shoulders relaxed, and waited for our pursuer to reveal themselves.
A short yip urged us to wait, and I grasped the reason for the peculiar gait before I spotted the warg.
A female limped toward us, chunks of hide missing and blood running down her sides. She made it three more steps and collapsed in a twitching pile.
Fear she was a host locked my knees. I had seen what Martian Roaches did to those. A distant worry was she might be coven, sent to trick me into taking her back to the Faraday. The old Trojan horse bit. It was a classic for a reason.
Bishop looked to me for guidance, and duty overcame caution. I couldn’t risk letting an innocent die.
“Stand back,” I cautioned him. “Call for a medic.”
“All right.” He did as I ordered, but he wasn’t happy about it. “Don’t touch her if you can help it.”
Circling her, I got a better look at her injuries. There was no way these were self-inflicted. Having seen a roach burst from a host, I felt confident that wasn’t the situation here either. She appeared to have been mauled by a creature with fangs and claws. In a city like this one, that wasn’t saying much. We had all kinds. But, given the fact she was a warg, I was willing to bet another shifter had done it to her.
Her groans and whimpers grew louder, and she began to thrash on the asphalt. Her spine bowed, and her legs kicked wildly.
“She’s shifting,” Bishop warned. “Don’t get too close.”
“Yes, Mom.” I eased back slowly, so as not to provoke her when she was most vulnerable. “Will she survive?”
The change for wargs was bone-snapping agony, unlike the sanitized magical gwyllgi transformations. It took a long time, and it was a show of faith on her part that she allowed herself to be vulnerable in the presence of fellow predators. That made up my mind for me. She must know me from somewhere.
During the Bonnie Diaz debacle, I had met several pack members of the alphas I interviewed. I had passed out a lot of cards too. Their animal halves weren’t inclined to trust paper, so I had a bad feeling I could guess who was about to be revealed to us.
“Gayle.” I padded closer. “Can you hear me?”
Her shallow breaths weren’t promising, neither was the amount of exposed bone.
“Help…” she exhaled softly, “…me.”
“We’ve got medics on the way.” I knelt beside her. “Who did this?”
“He killed…them.” A sob hitched her chest. “All…of them.”
“Deric?” Ice spread down my spine when she confirmed it, but I fought through the instinctive recoil. “The females in quarantine?”
“The…pack.” A shudder rippled through her limbs. “Gone.”
Bishop caught my eye, and he shook his head, but I refused to believe that she was beyond saving.
“You did good.” I stroked her hair, aware of the comfort wargs found in touch. “You told us, and we’ll go handle it. You can rest now. The medics will be here in a minute, and we’ll get you help.”
“Too late.” Gayle lowered her eyelids, her dark lashes matted with blood. “Make the coven…pay.”
The pain tightening her body released her in death, and she relaxed with an almost relieved sigh.
Grief and rage twisted through me, most of it self-directed. I had let her slip through my fingers. I called once to check in on her, and when she didn’t answer, I let it go. Forgot about it. Forgot about her.
I should have remembered. I should have tried harder. I should
