ears flat. Whatever he was smelling, it wasn’t good. Brute started up the steps to the admin building, setting his paws carefully, slowly, his nose moving back and forth over each step. When he reached the narrow porch, that low-pitched, rumbling growl started, and Rick automatically reached for his weapon. He was unarmed and his hands closed on empty air. Brute snarled, showing fangs. Behind him, he heard the soft whisper of leather-on-steel, as Ernest drew his sidearm and positioned to the left. Soul moved quickly to Rick’s right, her feet silent on the wood.
Brute stared at Rick, his eyes almost glowing, trying to communicate . . . something.
“Are you still tracking the same scent from my quarters?” Rick asked.
Brute nodded once, then shook his head.
“Yes and no?”
Brute nodded, showing a gleam of teeth in the night.
Rick asked, “Have you smelled this scent before?”
Brute nodded, his eyes so intense that Rick felt, for a moment, like prey. He had no idea what to ask next. Brute huffed, put out a paw, and traced a jagged shape.
Rick asked, “The full moon?”
Brute shook his head.
Rick said, “It’s just a circle.”
Brute huffed, his head jutting forward.
“A witch circle,” Rick said. “The witch circle at the crime scene. You found the coven leader. Here.”
Brute nodded once, slowly.
“She’s been here all along?”
Brute nodded and turned back to the door, his eyes, nose, and ears focused on the wood.
“Someone I’ve never had contact with.”
Soul said, “Call backup, Ernest. Now.”
The guard didn’t bother to reply, but murmured into his mike, “Backup to Admin. Silent, armed approach.” To Soul, he said, “I’m carrying only standard ammo.”
Soul pulled up her skirt to reveal a thigh holster. She handed Rick a Smith & Wesson .22, still warm from contact with her body.
Holding a weapon, Rick instantly felt better. He released the magazine and checked the ammo. “Silvershot,” he said. He slammed the magazine back into place, pulled back on the slide, injecting a round into the chamber. Rick stepped into the shadows beside the door and slowly turned the knob. It wasn’t locked.
He pointed to the wolf, and held up one finger, then to himself and held up two fingers, then to Ernest with three fingers. The guard nodded, pointed left. Rick nodded and pointed right. He turned off his music and opened the door. Brute flowed in like a white cloud, hunched down, silent. Rick followed to the right, and felt, as much as heard, Ernest and Soul move left.
Inside, the entry was dark, lit only by the green glow of computer battery backups. Brute didn’t need more light; neither did he. They moved through the entry, around the counter, to the doorway in back. It opened to a hallway, offices on either side. Music flowed through the air, the mellow sounds of wood flutes, familiar and calming. His music, stolen from his quarters, the music that Chief Smythe had been so interested in.
The frame around one doorway was bright, and Brute padded down the hallway, nose down, to that door. Rick followed, and the music grew louder. He expected the office to be Chief Administrator Liz Smythe’s. Instead, it was Mariella Russo’s office, her name in gold leaf on the wood. Mariella Russo, who was on call the night he went to the crime scene.
He stood back and let Ernest take his place. The man reached out and took the knob in hand, turning it slowly. The door didn’t creak as it swung open. Light flooded into the dark hall along with his music, amplified, and a stench like rotten cabbage, rotten eggs, and burned matches. Rick covered his nose. Brute padded inside two paces and halted.
The office furniture had been pushed back, exposing the wood floor painted with a witch’s circle and pentagram. In the circle was a dark cloud and a body, human, Caucasian, female. Blonde. Rick felt the shock of recognition. Polly. He didn’t have to wonder if she was dead. Her abdominal cavity had been ripped open, and the cloud was feeding on her. A demon. Mariella Russo was sitting at her desk, staring into the witch circle, her cupped hands in front of her, holding something that glowed yellow-green.
Soul leaped for the desk, her body leaving the floor in one smooth, sleek movement. Agile. Inhuman. Both Ernest and Rick lifted their weapons in two-hand stances. Fired. Two taps. Ernest’s slammed Russo mid-center of her body mass. Rick’s shots hit her forehead.
A half second later, the concussion of the shots still echoing, Soul was standing behind the desk, holding Mariella’s hands in hers. She eased the thing, whatever it was, from the dead administrator’s hands. “Call for a containment vessel,” she ordered. But Ernest was already doing so, his voice soft and in control.
Brute whoofed and growled and ended on a faint whine, his eyes on Soul. Yeah, Rick thought, remembering her speed, like a time-jump of movement. She wasn’t human. No way, no how. Not with that leap. He walked to the circle and stood beside Brute, one hand on the wolf’s head, scratching gently at the base of the upright ears.
The demon raised up out of Polly’s naked body and hissed at them, showing a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth. Ernest turned up the volume of the music and the demon closed its eyes, settling back to the corpse, as mellow as Rick felt when the music protected him from the moon-call. He thought back to the spell at the crime scene. They had called up a moon-demon. Soul lifted her eyes to Rick. “Please go back to your quarters.”
Rick ejected the magazine of Soul’s .22 and put the safety on before setting the gun on the desktop. He and his unit backed out just as four men rushed into the room, one carrying a cylindrical canister with a rounded top.
The next morning, Rick and the others of his triumvirate were called to the chief administrator’s office. Since he hadn’t started with the other trainees, Rick hadn’t met the CA, Dr. Smythe, but now, the chief was sitting at her desk, her face grave, her salt-and-pepper hair in a short bob, her face set in the no-nonsense expression of a drill instructor. Soul was standing against the window, her arms crossed, shoulders hunched, her stance protective and uncertain, maybe just a bit defiant.
The former cop, the wolf, and the grindylow stood inside the office, Rick’s eyes drawn to the pile of things on the CA’s desk. It was his nine mil and holster, his backup ankle weapon, stakes, three silvered vamp-killers, his money, ID, credit cards, and the little black velvet jewelry box he’d purchased on his last leave.
He hadn’t seen his stuff since that last leave, two weeks ago.
His next leave was days away.
It was two weeks until graduation.
They were booting him out.
Rick’s heart dropped. Brute looked up at him and whined. Nudged his hip with his damp nose. Rick put his hand to the wolf’s ears and scratched.
“It has been brought to my attention,” the CA said, “that you were part of the reason—”
“The only reason,” Soul interrupted.
The CA nodded serenely. “The only reason why Mariella Russo’s crimes were discovered. We now believe the three students who supposedly signed Quit-Forms in the last few weeks did not terminate their schooling, but may have been fed to her demon.” The CA leaned back in her chair and templed her fingers at her chin. “We have launched a full investigation. We also understand that you witnessed . . .” She looked at Soul over her fingers. “. . . something that is classified, and must remain so.”
Did she mean the sight of Soul flowing-leaping-gliding over the desk to catch the thing in Mariella’s hands before she dropped it? Or the containment cylinder? Or—
“But that isn’t why I called you here,” the CA said. “We have a problem in New Orleans. You are from there, yes?”
Rick straightened. This didn’t sound like a you’re-fired speech. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you are familiar with Leo Pellissier, the master of the city?”
“I am.” He was related to Leo’s heir too, but he didn’t offer that, not now, not ever.
“We would like you to travel there and deal with the situation.” Rick’s breath exploded out of him, and he sucked in another. He hadn’t been aware that he’d been holding his breath. Smythe looked at Soul and her lips lifted
