Hit List

wounds can be tricky, and cautious was better than being wrong. He helped me lift her just enough so I could search for the wound. But it wasn’t just a wound, it was several. I found at least three. “Shit!” I said.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s multiple wounds, which means it wasn’t a blade. He used claws.”

“Powerful enough shapeshifter to change just his hands,” Edward said.

“Yes.”

“They’re all going to be that powerful,” he said.

“I know.” I got towels from the bathroom to press against the wounds. “These are punctures. If they’re deep, her chances of catching lycanthropy are higher.”

“You’ll have to tell the EMTs when they get here.”

“I know.” I pressed the towels against the wound and tried to stop the bleeding. Edward kept holding her up and trying to keep her neck from moving. It was the best we could do until the medics got here.

“What’s our way?” I asked.

“What?” he asked.

“You said we’d be able to hunt them our way now. What’s our way?”

“Violent, and very, very final.”

I looked at him over Laila’s unconscious body. My hands were already soaked with her blood. I was kneeling in it. “Did you see the speed of the thing?”

“Incredible.”

“How do we kill that speed?”

“Wound it, then chop it up.” He sounded eager.

“I’m scared, Edward.”

He looked at me, his eyes empty and cold as a winter’s moon. “I’m not.” I guess he meant it to be comforting, and I guess maybe it was.

6

ONE OF THE good things about wearing the tight, tiny jammies was that no blood had gotten on them. Edward had had to give up his boxers to go into a baggie for the lab. They had let him put on shorts and a T-shirt since his room wasn’t a crime scene. Until the techs were done, my room was off limits. But neither of us had gotten to clean off the blood yet. My jammies were blood free, but the rest of me wasn’t. I had blood on my legs from the knees down, and on my arms nearly to the elbow on one side. Forensic techs had taken samples of the blood on little swabs but hadn’t let me clean up yet. The blood was drying and had that crinkly feeling to it like it always did, as if I could feel it adhering to my skin. I was never sure if that was a sensory illusion or if I could really feel it drying. Either way, I could feel the blood almost catching on my skin every time I moved just right. I wanted a shower. They had given me a blanket to hold around my shoulders in the chill of the night air, but the cement of the open balcony area was damn cold under bare feet. It was also awkward holding my gun in one hand while trying to hold the blanket in place. Detective Lorenzo had offered to let me put my gun in Edward’s room since the crime scene techs weren’t in there, but I’d declined. The Harlequin had tried to kidnap me tonight; I wanted a gun.

Detective Lorenzo was taller than me, but only an inch or so taller than Edward, about five-nine. His hair was thick, and though cut short it had waves to it. He’d have had to shave his head to not have waves, so that, though short, his hair would never be neat. His eyes were a dark, even brown, his face open and friendly, and cute in that boy-next-door way. He was probably thirty because of the detective shield, but he didn’t look it. There was some bulk under the suit that let me know either he had naturally good shoulders or he hit the gym, or maybe both. He’d been one of the detectives called to the crime scene before everyone was certain it was part of an ongoing federal investigation. Technically the Marshals Service could have kept him out of things, but most of us tried not to alienate the local police if we could help it. The preternatural branch especially ended up being alone a lot in the field. We relied on local police more than most other federal officers, even the rest of the Marshals Service. One of the nicknames among other cops for the preternatural branch was “lone wolf.” On the radio they’d say, “We’ve got a lone wolf on site.” I wondered how the nickname worked when there were this many of us. Can you say “lone wolves” and not sound silly?

Marshal Raborn was taller than all of us, and the fact that he carried a few extra pounds gave him some weight to back it up. He seemed to try to fill the room with his physical presence as if he were a much larger man than he was, or maybe his pissy attitude just seemed to take up more space.

“How did you know it was claws that cut Karlton if you didn’t see them?”

“Once I felt multiple wounds, I knew it had to be. If he’d used a blade, I’d have seen his arm moving as he drew it out to stab her again. His arm was stationary. He never had the range of movement to use a knife like that. Claws come out like switchblades; just hold them against the skin and they stab.”

“Only if they shift form first,” Raborn said.

“I told you, the really powerful lycanthropes can shift just their hands, so it’s just claws springing out.”

“That’s not possible. They have to shift into at least wolfman form to have claws.”

“I never said it was a werewolf, Raborn.”

“Wolfman is what we call all the shapeshifters in half-man form, Anita,” Edward said. He was trying to use his Ted voice, but there was too much of the real Edward leaking through, so it came out cold.

“He was covered head to toe,” Marshal Tilford said. “He could have been in wolfman form.”

I glanced at Tilford. He was about the same height as Edward and Lorenzo; we were having an average height day on the crime scene, at least for the men. Tilford’s hair, what little there was of it, was cut very short and close to his head. He was carrying a little more weight around the middle than Raborn, which meant if he didn’t hit the gym soon he’d fail his physical retest. The preternatural branch had to test with the HRU, Hostage Rescue Unit, which was the marshals’ equivalent of SWAT. But it was a new requirement since an investigation late last year had ended with fault laid on lack of physical fitness on the officer’s part as a major contributing factor to his injuries and the deaths of two civilians.

I must have looked at him too long, or maybe my anger at Raborn was still in my eyes, because Tilford said, “Hey, I’m just saying what I saw.”

“He was too human-shaped even under the costume. If he’d been in half-man form, there would have been differences in his legs, his arms; the shape isn’t perfectly human even covered up like that,” I said.

“And how would you know that?” Raborn asked.

I gave him glare for glare. “Experience.”

“I’ll just bet you have experience with wolfmen.” His voice was low and angry, and disdainful.

I don’t know what I would have said, but Lorenzo broke in and said, “The news crews are filming us. Maybe stepping inside Marshal Forrester and Tilford’s room would be a good idea?” He smiled while he said it, kept his voice mild and placating. He was trying to smooth things down. Good someone was.

“Blake here likes publicity, don’t you, Blake?” Raborn asked.

I started to say something, but Edward touched my shoulder. It was enough. I shut up and went into the open door of their room. Everybody else followed. Edward shut the door behind us.

“What changes in his body would have been there if he’d been in wolfman form?” Tilford asked.

“The legs are sort of longer, but crooked, almost like the knee joint is wrong, and the femur and tibia are both longer. The mask wouldn’t have fit that flat to his face. There’s more muzzle, for lack of a better word.”

Tilford nodded, as if he were filing it all away for later use. I hoped he was. We needed more of the marshals to know as much as possible about what we hunted. Lorenzo was actually writing it down in a little notebook.

“You should give a lecture next time we have training. This would be good stuff to know out in the field,” Tilford said.

“I’m always happy to share information,” I said.

“Well, aren’t you just the center of attention anytime a roomful of men shows up,” Raborn said.

“Jealous?” I asked.

“Of what, the men?”