Hector
He trailed the scent along the street.
It got stronger as he went, the musky odor of a male human, mixed with the barest hints of chocolate and…and whatever was in his deodorant. It was tough to translate something that his animal side could practically taste into something his human brain, so reliant on sight over its other sense, could interpret.
One thing he did know for certain, human and beast alike, was that this was the same scent of the male who had eluded him the night of the fire. The one who had hit the woman and then managed to escape in his car. Hector hadn’t really thought much of that particular part of the night, beyond the brief time where he’d considered that perhaps the argument had been part of an extremely elaborate setup. The length someone would have had to have gone to frame him had led to him dismissing the option. But now that he had the opportunity to question him, Hector had decided to pursue it, just to eliminate any last “what if” scenarios that occasionally plagued him.
His course led him down a clean, well-maintained alley between two single-story businesses and up to a steel door set into the brick wall. It was a sliding door. Hector approached it and very gently tried to slide it aside.
Nothing happened, though he wasn’t overly surprised. So instead of trying to force his way in, he did something that didn’t come normally to him. He used his brain. Pushing his ear firmly up against the steel he formed a seal, and then plugged his other ear with a finger. Eyes closed he listened, calling upon his animal half to help amplify anything he might hear through the material.
At first there was nothing, but as he listened, noises began to make their way to him. Faint, muffled, and almost unintelligible, but Hector knew exactly what they were. Voices. There were people talking inside, one of whom had to be his mystery person.
“…the…it…but…worked…”
“he…many…gave…yes.”
“…you…need…success…”
The sentences were fragmented and of no use to him, but Hector kept listening anyway.
“What…my bonus?”
There were more loud shouts, but he couldn’t make them out. Whatever was going on inside was deteriorating fast. Hector had to make a choice. Did he go inside despite not knowing what he was up against, or did he wait and see what happened?
His animal spoke, and Hector agreed. He’d been doing enough standing around. It was time to act. He stood up, taking a step back from the door. Then, without any further hesitation, Hector kicked the door down. Or perhaps it would be rather more accurate to say he kicked the door in.
The solid steel panel didn’t crumple and fall out of the way. It ripped clean from its track and flung across the dimly lit room beyond. It impacted a steel pole, sending yellow-orange sparks into the air as it ricocheted several times before coming to an abrupt halt as it imbedded itself into the far well. The metal shivered several times as it vibrated from the impact.
Hector strode inside, his eyes immediately adjusting to the darkness. In the corner to his right he could see the outline of a human cowering under a table. There was a scuffling to his right and he spun, but there was no one there. He took a step in that direction just as farther into the building someone opened a door. Hector had just enough time to see a silhouette of a large body before they threw something on the ground and ducked back through the door, slamming it behind them. He went to pursue, but the object exploded first, sending him reeling backward.
“What the hell!” he snarled as his senses were assaulted with a vile, putrefying stench.
The aroma quickly filled the room. Hector grabbed the human by the collar as he tried to flee and dragged the two of them back out into the alley and upwind of the door.
“Enough,” he growled as the man tried to slip his grip.
Hector tightened the fingers of his right hand enough to make it clear that the situation was non-negotiable, earning a little hiss of pain from his prisoner. He couldn’t stop staring at the door to the building, now emitting some sort of brownish cloud. There was only one reason that whoever else had been in there would have used something like that, or even had it on hand.
They were covering their tracks from shifters. Which, if he followed the logical path, meant that by simply having such a device upon them, they were expecting any trouble to come from shifters. The stink bomb completely fouled up his senses and any scents he might have picked up in the area. If they hadn’t, Hector could have easily figured out who the second party had been. There were only so many shifters in Cloud Lake. If he’d gotten a whiff of this one, he could have just gone to the embassy and tested it against everyone there.
There was another troubling outcome from all of this, however, one he was still coming to grips with. Someone was up to no good, and it involved the same male who had somehow just happened to have been outside the embassy that night. Hector wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew one thing: It was about time he started asking some questions, and getting some answers.
“Time for some information,” he rumbled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man replied instantly.
Hector rolled his eyes and slammed him rather roughly into the brick wall. “No? I haven’t even asked you a question yet and you’re already denying knowing anything?”
The human didn’t reply. Probably the first wise thing he’d done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to help him today. He poked him in the chest with his left index finger, careful not to use too much force to reinjure his arm. He doubted the action would, but he wanted it to heal as fast as possible, and it hadn’t been all that long since his mysterious attacker broke it.
“So, let’s start from the top. Who was that in there?”
The man shook his head. Hector tightened his grip on the man’s throat, pulled his arm back, and smashed him into the brick again. A whimper of pain escaped his prisoner, and blood began to trickle down the back of his head.
“I’ll repeat myself, in case you’re having hearing problems from the brain trauma you’re taking right now. Who was that?”
“D-Don’t know,” the man said.
Hector hauled back, but the man lifted his hands in front of his face in a plea for him to stop.
“I need a name,” he growled, letting his animal slip into his words, the echo of his anger filling the alleyway with the low rumble of an avalanche just getting underway.
“I don’t have one, okay? He never gave me his name.”
Hector frowned. The man seemed to be telling the truth. He was an amateur as far as Hector could tell, not used to this sort of thing. That unfortunately didn’t help Hector out in the least, since he needed a name to be able to identify him.
“Tell me everything,” he snapped.
“Listen, the guy came to me one night, bribed me and this girl. Said we had to have a fake fight outside your embassy. When someone came out, I was to hit her and then run. That’s it. Okay? He gave me a thousand bucks to do it.”
“What was tonight about?”
“Collecting my money,” he said, speaking freely now. “Well, the other half of it. I got half up front.”
“And the woman?” he asked, though he figured he already knew the answer.
“No idea. Never met her before that night. Haven’t seen her since.”
“You’re not being overly useful,” he told the man, tightening his grip and looming over him threateningly.
“What more do you want me to tell you?” he yelped.
“Well, a name would be helpful.”
“I told you, I don’t know it!”
Hector idly lifted the man from his feet until he could look him in the eye. The human just sort of dangled there, both his hands around Hector’s wrist as he tried to claw himself free. “Are you positive?” he asked icily. “Someone died because of what you did, so be very, very careful about how you answer.”
“I swear it. He never gave me a name. Hell, I never even saw his face!”
Damn. There went his next question. Hector was getting mad now. Whoever this person was, they were covering their tracks thoroughly, and doing a good job of setting everyone against each other. They had framed Hector, alienated him from Gray and Andrew, set him at odds with Martin, and were threatening to rip apart all the hard work that had been done to establish a peaceful shifter presence in Cloud Lake.
Whoever they were, they were thorough.
“What can you tell me about him? Other than it was a him,” Hector rumbled, setting the man back down on the ground.
The human tried to pry Hector’s fingers loose from around his neck, but it was like trying to bend solid steel. He didn’t have a hope.
“Not much. Um, he’s big. Like you, I guess.”
“Are you saying he’s a shifter?” Hector asked, snarling angrily at the accusation that one of his own could be behind it all.
“No!” he cried out. “Just that he’s built like one of you, that’s all. Could be a human bodybuilder.”
He’d been assuming a human all along. Someone with a vendetta against shifters perhaps. He knew they existed in Cloud Lake. So far they’d all been peaceful, doing little more than protesting their human government, leaving the shifters themselves alone. It was only time before they escalated however, but this made no real sense. It wasn’t going accomplish anything. Still, that hadn’t stopped people from trying things like that before.
Except that it didn’t make sense. There was a key piece he was missing here. His mysterious attacker earlier hadn’t been human. No human could have done that to Hector. It had to be a shifter then, someone who…who…Hector couldn’t come up with a reason for it all. Why light the fire? And how did Corvin figure into all of it?
“Too many questions,” he said angrily. “Not enough answers.”
He let the human go with a warning. “Don’t ever fuck with us again. I know who you are now, got it?”
“G-G-Got it!” the man yelped and took off into the darkness, never once looking back.
Hector let him go. He wasn’t the problem, never had been. The man was just another idiot who would do anything for money without thinking it through. Wrong place, wrong time and all. It irked Hector that he couldn’t get any more answers from him, but the man had told him all he could.
One important thing had come out of it though. The covers had been torn away from everything, revealing that someone was out to get him. The argument and thus the fire weren’t just an unhappy coincidence. It also seemed more and more likely that Rachel had been right, that maybe Corvin hadn’t succumbed to the fire, but perhaps to something else entirely. It galled Hector that someone, no, that a shifter would go to such lengths to hide a murder, but he could no longer confidently say it had all been unhappy coincidence. Something was going on.
All he needed to do now was figure out what. To do that he was going to need some help. Help that he wouldn’t find on the streets of Cloud Lake. Testing his left arm, he winced at the twinge of pain that accompanied his movement of it. It was healing fast, just not fast enough for his comfort. Judging by the pain he still felt, it was going to be longer than normal for it to recover fully. It must have been a worse break than he’d thought. Hector couldn’t waste time on pain though. So he walled it off, ignoring the sensations from his arm and started walking.
It was time to head back to the embassy. He needed to tell Andrew and Gray. They would need to know all about what he’d discovered. Then maybe they could put an end to it.
Perhaps they could even figure out a way for him to stay.