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“When you first learned about these deaths, you believed they were committed by the creature in question, right?” Mandenauer inclined his head. “Then why didn’t you, or one of your agents, go there with plans to blast a monster to smithereens and either do that or snatch the imposter?”
He sent her another of those withering looks that made Kris feel as if she were too stupid to live. In his world, she probably was. “I sent an agent to each place. By the time he or she arrived, the perpe
trator was gone.”
“Gone,” Kris echoed. “Isn’t a cannibalistic giant kind of hard to lose?”
“One would think,” Edward said without missing a beat. “Which again makes me favor human and not monster.”
“Because?”
“Monsters remain near their lair. Depending on the myth, some can’t leave. That the killer does says a lot about his humanity.”
“Maybe your agents just couldn’t find him.”
A glare followed this statement. Obviously, if a Jäger-Sucher was dispatched and did not find a monster, there was no monster to be found.
“In each incident,” he continued, “there were clues that led us to believe someone is mimicking the supernatural rather than truly being a supernatural.”
“Like what?” Kris asked, fascinated. She loved taking apart a legend, piece by piece, discovering the truth, then proving it a hoax.
“The actual legend of the Ikuutayuuq involves brothers who hunt together, stalking whatever is in their territory and eliminating it. In the cases reported, only one set of tracks was found and the victims were restrained, hand and foot, indicating a single killer.”
“Maybe this Ikuutayuuq doesn’t have a brother.”
“If the inconsistencies existed in one place only, I might agree. However, as I said, there are inconsistencies in every case. For instance, in Crete the donkey tracks were the size of donkey tracks. They did not grow to the size of a mountainous donkey. The same in Australia. The giant’s tracks…” He flipped his chicken bone fingers outward.
“Not so gigantic,” Kris finished. “So in your opinion we have a traveling serial killer, making use of local supernatural legends to dictate his modus operandi.”
The old man nodded, his gaze distant. “At first I considered the likelihood of a superior shape-shifter with the ability to become each one of these legendary beings. But I concluded that was too far-fetched.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Kris muttered. The idea of a super-duper shape-shifter roaming from country to country, leaving a trail of dead and mutilated bodies in its wake, before parking itself in Drumnadrochit made her very nervous.
“These monsters are rooted in the histories of their cultures,” he continued. “It is very rare for a shape-shifter to be able to assume the form of a being with which he does not share an ancestry. Only a Scot could become a kelpie. Only a Cherokee can become a Raven Mocker. Only a Norseman could become a Berserker. Although…” He frowned. “In America you have that infernal melting pot.”
“So someone could become each one of these shape-shifters if they possess an ancestor from the country of legend.”
“Theoretically,” Mandenauer agreed. “Regardless, what you need to do now is find the culprit and kill it.”
“I’m not so good with the killing.”
“Everyone thinks that, until they are faced with the option of death or pulling the trigger.” He straightened his stack of papers. “I will e-mail you an inventory of the deaths, their legends and locations.”
“I can remember three.”
“Those are only the tales I chose to tell. The list is much longer—Iceland, South Africa, Brazil.” He made a “and so forth” motion with one hand. “We are still searching our databases, speaking to agents about unsolved cases. I will no doubt have updates daily.”
The idea that the murderer in their midst had killed so many times they needed a catalog, and that more instances could crop up daily, scared Kris more than anything ever had. And it should. She was a reporter dabbling in things she had no business dabbling in.
But was she going to stop?
Hell, no.
This was the story of a lifetime.
CHAPTER 20
Alan Mac found Liam lolling in the sunshine. After the thick, chill mist of dawn, the warmth was too welcome to ignore.
