Chapter One
The call came in at two a.m.
“This is Sheriff Banes, Dale County Police Department. Is that Officer Ferris?”
“That’s right. Chris Ferris. What can I do for you, Sheriff?”
“We’ve got a crime scene down here you’re going to want to take a look at. Seems like one of yours.”
The ‘yours’ was said in such a way as to leave Chris in no doubt as to the Sheriff’s feelings on shifters.
“You’ll have to give me a bit more to go on.” He wasn’t getting out of bed for another domestic dog incident.
“Family of three slaughtered, someone attempted to cover-up by setting the place on fire. Our medical examiner’s at the scene, says the injuries are consistent with an animal attack. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen any animal other than a werewolf use arson to try to cover up its crime.”
“Text me the address, we’ll be there by dawn.”
“Much obliged to you.”
Chris called Will and from how alert Will sounded, he guessed Rhea was keeping them up again. The joys of parenthood. As he filled him in, he heard her soft cry and Jake’s voice in the background.
“Long night?” he asked.
“Rhea’s teething.”
“I’ll pick you up in twenty, okay?”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Dale County was two hours south of Eden. They arrived before dawn, certain of their destination given the small crowd of vehicles with flashing lights outside.
They pulled up and got out.
“Sheriff Banes?” he asked the first uniformed officer he saw who was hovering nervously outside the yellow crime scene tape.
“That’s him by the door,” the officer said with a stutter, eyeing them with wide eyes.
They ducked under the tape and strode across the lawn. The sheriff saw them coming, looking them both up and down and making a comment to the man standing next to him, who tried to hide a smirk.
Chris was no stranger to humans and their bigotry. Especially in the more rural places where they had limited experience of ‘out’ shifters. The cities, used to diversity in their human populations, had adapted more quickly to the knowledge that creatures of legend actually walked among them, especially when it turned out they weren’t so different in a lot of ways.
“Sheriff Banes?”
“You must be Officer Ferris.”
“And this is my colleague, William Morrow.”
They shook hands.
“What have you got?” Chris asked, skipping further pleasantries.
“I’ll walk you through the timeline,” the sheriff said, turning and ambling towards the house.
“Just before midnight last night, a call came in from Mrs. Hazel, the lady living next door.”
He pointed to a well-lit house.
“She reported a fire on the second floor. The fire brigade attended and put it out. She had told dispatchers there were four people living in the house and all home as far as she knew. Firefighters went room by room and found three deceased, two in a bedroom and one in the hall. The fire had got to them but hadn’t done much damage. It was clear they hadn’t died of natural causes or smoke inhalation. Our medical examiner got here around one-thirty, confirmed scratch marks and bites from a large animal, most likely a wolf. I called it in to the National Shifter Crimes Center, they gave me your number, and here you are.”
Chris couldn’t fault the Sheriff, everything done in a timely fashion not usually associated with provincial policing.
“Three deceased?” he queried.
“That’s right.”
“Four normally resident in the house?”
“Correct. We’ve ID’d those inside. Mrs. Hazel had pictures from a recent neighborhood barbeque. Plus, this is a small town. My deputy, Jameson, knows the family. The dead are Cindy Adams, aged 42, her daughter Becky, aged 18, and her son, Michael, aged 16.”
“And the fourth person?”
“Cindy’s foster son, Daniel. I believe he’s also her nephew.”
“Any sign of him?”
“No, and we don’t expect him to turn up willingly.”
“He’s the shifter?” That was different.
“Wasn’t one to our knowledge. He’s always been the quiet sort, polite, kept to himself. According to Jameson, there’s been some trouble lately, some signs he’s been going off the rails. And now this.”
He got what the Sheriff was inferring.
“You think he was infected?”
“Seems the most likely answer. If it weren’t for our ME’s confirmation of shifter involvement, the foster son would be our primary suspect. What was done to that poor family, how they died… I’ve never seen anything like it. If you ask me, it looks personal. Why would a random wolf do that?”
He and Will exchanged a glance. The Sheriff’s reasoning was sound for a human but didn’t quite fit for a new werewolf. Now and then, there were attacks by shifters against humans. But it was usually a pre-existing conflict that got out of hand or a drunken fight where the shifter lost control. This kind of thing, the slaughter of families, of children, was even rarer among shifters than it was among humans.
“We’ve got a county-wide alert out for him. Family car is missing though, so he’s probably long gone. We have a bolo out on that, too. Shoot to kill in effect.”
Chris gave the sheriff a sharp look and the other man met his stare head on.
“Three innocents mauled to death in their own home. I’m not taking any chances with my officers.”
It was all he could do not to sigh, feeling the weight of responsibility press on him.
“Any idea where Daniel might have run to?”
“With a car and a full tank of gas, he’s probably across state lines by now.”
Chris shook his head. “If he’s running, he’s probably panicking. When people panic, they tend to cover familiar ground. Is there anywhere he’d be familiar with? Family or friends he might go to for help?”
“I don’t know the family well enough. Let me call Jameson back to talk to you.”
The sheriff got on his phone and made a call to his deputy while Chris and Will went into the house.
“We won’t get anything by way of scent with all this smoke,” Will said, grabbing a mask and coverall from the table outside the door. Chris did likewise, donning the rustling disposable plastic. They stepped into the house, eyes and noses alert for what little information they might gather.
It took about thirty minutes to go through the house. He was glad to get back outside, drawing in a few deep breaths trying to clear the smell of smoke from his nose.
“Care to shed any light?” the sheriff asked them.
“The smoke has obliterated any scent trail. Definitely a shifter that you’re dealing with. And the pattern of injuries would concur with your belief that this was a personal attack. The wounds are all defensive, like they were trying to shield themselves. There’s nothing to suggest a break-in or a robbery being interrupted.”
The sheriff nodded grimly before gesturing to the deputy next to him. “This is Jameson, he knew the family.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Chris said, holding out a hand. Jameson shook it firmly. “Never seen anything like it. Cindy and the kids were always really nice. Good neighbors, you know?”
“And Daniel?”
“She loved him like he was her own son, didn’t treat him any different.”
“But things took a turn?”
“Nothing major that I know of. He works at the local bookstore, started missing shifts here and there, which wasn’t like him. Cindy mentioned he was having some health problems but I don’t know, sometimes that’s what folks around here say when they mean drugs.”
“Is there anywhere Daniel might go? Any extended family?”
“There’s a great-aunt, but she’s in a nursing home just outside of Eden. I doubt he’d go there. No other family that I know of.”
“Have they always lived here?” He was starting to feel they were grasping at straws. They didn’t have the manpower to take over a state-wide search. Unless they knew where Daniel was going, their role was limited.
“Yeah, Cindy grew up here, raised the kids here.”
He looked at Will, his friend’s face impassive, before turning back to the sheriff.
“I’m afraid there’s not much more we can do right now. If you have concrete sightings or you locate him, I’d recommend calling it in and hanging back. We’ll send whoever is closest to deal with it.”
The sheriff looked disgruntled. “I heard you boys weren’t much use.”
“We don’t have the manpower to aid in your search, Sheriff. If you narrow down his location, we can and will track him by scent.”
A call through the sheriff’s radio headed off the argument before it had even begun. Someone had called in a sighting of the vehicle parked on a roadside.
“Evergreen? That’s just off the A55,” the Sheriff remarked. “Only about two hours’ drive from here. He hasn’t gone far. We’ll have a hell of a time finding him though. That’s right by Moorlake forest.”
“Wait,” Jameson interrupted. “Cindy’s father had a cabin up that way.”
He and Will shared another glance and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
“Any idea where the cabin’s located?”
“A good distance into the woods, as far as I know. By the lake. The place became a national park over a decade ago but they grandfathered in the cabins already there. Cindy used to take the kids up there during the summer. Sorry, I didn’t think—”
“It’s fine.” The sheriff waved him off, turning back to Chris. “Now we know where.”
“Then we’ll take it from here.”
The sheriff gave him a confused smile. “That’s it then? The two of you will handle it?”
“That’s right. Tell your people not to touch the vehicle. We’ll use it to get his scent and track him into the woods.”
“My men—”
“Your men are far too vulnerable wandering around the forest. You need to leave this to us, sheriff.”
“You’ll kill him?”
That was the rule. Shifters were too dangerous for humans to incarcerate.
“We’ll take care of it,” Chris assured him.
“Good. I’ll have Jameson escort you up there. He knows the roads, and the lights and sirens will speed things up.”