“There wasn’t a lot of clean up,” the cougar says. “Just the meat. The sand absorbed all the blood and body fluids”
Emme gags. I hold up a hand. “I can see that, man.” I point to the sections of bone. “See that. All the bones are the same size. The same as human size. He didn’t change at all.”
“You saying he didn’t put up a fight?” the cougar asks.
I flip through the photos. “I’m saying a lot things,” I admit. “He either couldn’t fight or didn’t want to, which is bullshit. We’re weres, fighting is what we do.”
“Damn, right,” the motley crew in the living room calls out. Several fist bumps and high-fives follow.
I focus on the pictures and keep going. “My guess is he couldn’t fight. Magic or something else overpowered him.”
My focus shifts to Emme as I talk to the cougar, raising my voice slightly so the other weres know I’m speaking to them, too. “You only felt one presence, right?”
The crew in the living room mutters in agreement. The cougar nods. “That’s right,” he says. “It smelled wrong, you feel me? Smelled off, like it didn’t belong here. But there was only one we tracked.”
“Demon?” I ask. “Or one of its spawn?”
“Yes and no,” the cougar says. “It felt wrong, like a demon, but not exactly a demon. Not its spawn either,” he adds quickly before I can ask. “It was hateful and angry and shit. Almost what you’d expect to find in a vengeful ghost who’s stuck here with something to prove.”
Emme nods. Yeah, it’s pretty much what she told me. I go through the pictures again, pausing when I notice something in the sand. “What’s this?” I ask.
Swirls, almost like a design, form patterns along the beach. “Don’t know,” the cougar says. “They look witch-like, symbols and such, but they ain’t.”
Emme edges closer. I expand the photos to avoid her seeing more of the carnage. “They do look like magical patterns. Pretty,” she says. “But it’s not something that could conjure or harm.”
“You sure?”
Emme nods. “When Taran was in witch school, I often helped her study. Runes, symbols, and objects of power needed to be positioned in a certain order. This is more artwork than spell craft.”
“Still might be worth checking out,” I reply. I hand the cougar back his phone. “Moving on. Did you see anything else or leave anything behind?”
“Nope. Nothing for any humans to find.” He motions to the tub. “We knew we had to get the body back, we just didn’t want any of him back at our place. Sorry we messed up your murder scene or whatever the hell.”
“You didn’t mess up the scene because Ted wasn’t killed here. And based on how much evil this thing spewed, you’d have sensed it prior to today had it shown.”
Another set of “damn rights,” from the weres and a nod from the cougar tell me I’m right.
I inch closer when Emme tenses. There’s nowhere clean to stand and not much room. Had Ted owned a vacuum and some cleanser, and maybe if he wasn’t such a lazy bastard, this would have been a pretty swinging place and what I had to do wouldn’t be as bad.
But he was lazy and what’s left of him is in this disgusting bathroom.
There’s not much blood on the floor, the sandwich bags did a decent job keeping everything in, but the nasty meter is hitting an all-time high. The smell pre-Ted mutilation was bad. I picked up on it the moment we reached the second level. With the mutilation…let’s just say I’m pretty shocked Emme’s still vertical.
I fall on one knee, careful to avoid the splatter of blood that escaped. Using care, I sort through the packages, trying to see if there’s anything I can use. “Is there any way this is more than just Ted?” I ask. Hell, if there’s more than just one body part mixed in here, we have ourselves a whole other set of problems.
“It’s him,” both Emme and the cougar answer.
“How do you—” I push aside some smaller packages when a larger one catches my interest. “One, two—Holy shit. This bastard had three testicles?”
“Yes,” Emme and the cougar reply.
The fact that Emme answers, makes me want to shove what’s left of Ted in the microwave and set it to high. But I won’t because I’m classy and definitely, I repeat, definitely not jealous.
I lift one of the three bags. “I’ve heard about this,” I say.
“Yeah,” the cougar agrees. “But it’s not something I want to be known for.”
“I don’t mean I’ve heard about it because of Ted,” I say. I shake the bag, remembering Danny yammer on about the details once. “This condition or whatever the hell.”
“He had a condition?” Emme asks. “Was it caused by extra testosterone?”
“Nice guess, but not exactly,” I say. I toss the baggy aside and reach for a larger piece of Ted. It’s a wrist, the edge is crushed and badly bruised. “Not counting Aric, who changed at like two months of age, the strongest weres usually change into their beast forms by the age of six months. The weaker ones, closer to a year.”
The cougar shrugs. “We know that. Where are you goin’ with this, alpha?”
I don’t like being addressed by a title, but there are worse things the cougar can call me. He is only trying to show respect, so I let it slide.
“There’s this condition weak weres get. It’s rare, as in, once in two lifetimes rare. No one likes to talk about it because those weres usually die while the female is still pregnant. It’s known as nose blindness. Those weres, those who make it I mean, change three-hundred and sixty-six days from birth, just about missing being were completely. Ted was one of these.”
“You know this how, alpha?” the cougar asks. “Because of his three stones?”
I nod and lift another damaged piece of limb, an ankle, also bruised and the bones broken or
