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“They weren’t shapeshifters, I swear. I swear they weren’t.”
“You put two shots into Randall in the hallway and left him to bleed out. You killed Melissa in the kitchen, three shots, two to the head, one to the chest.”
The man’s eyes bulged.
“Then you went upstairs and shot ten-year-old Lucy Ives and her seven-year-old brother Michael. You annihilated the whole family. The question is why?”
“They weren’t shapeshifters!”
“No, they were human beings. They were also smiths.” Derek reached over and took the knife from the table. “Melissa Ives made this knife.”
He thrust the knife into the man’s stomach and cut a long shallow line from one hip to the other. Blood gushed from the cut. The air smelled sour as the blade slashed the intestines. The man let out a ragged yowl of pain and choked on his own terror.
“Why?” Derek asked.
“They had a rock.” The man squeezed the words between sharp gasps. “Some kind of metal rock. Caleb wanted it.”
“Caleb Adams?”
The man nodded, trembling. “Yes. Him.”
Caleb Adams had started out as a witch, but his coven had cast him out. He’d proclaimed himself a warlock, and now he ran a gang on the edge of the Warren. Bordered by South-View Cemetery and Lakewood Park, the Warren had begun as part of the urban renewal project, but magic had hit it hard. It was poor, treacherous, and vicious, a war zone where gangs battled with each other. Caleb Adams felt right at home. He was violent and power-hungry, and according to the latest street talk, he was defending his new turf against two other gangs and losing.
“Where is the rock now?”
“We couldn’t find it.”
Time for a more detailed conversation. He raised his knife.
“We couldn’t find it!” the man cried out. “I swear! We trashed the house looking for it. Rick and Coli
n shot the guy and his wife, and they both died before we could ask.”
“Why did you shoot the children?”
“That was Colin. He shot the woman and then ran straight upstairs. He just went nuts.”
He wished he knew which one was Colin. Sadly, he couldn’t kill him again.
“What does this rock look like?”
“About the size of a big orange. Shiny metal rock. It glows if you take it outside in the moonlight.”
The man’s breathing slowed. The bleeding was taking its effect. “Three . . . ,” he whispered.
“Three what?”
“Three pieces of a rock. Rick said the rock had broken . . . into three chunks. Rick said Caleb already had one and wanted all three. He sent . . . two crews out. I don’t know where the other crew went. I told you . . . everything. Don’t kill me.”
Derek’s lips stretched into a smile on their own, driven not by humor but by the instinctual need to bare his teeth as the wild inside glared through his eyes. “There is gunpowder stench on your hand and blood spatter on your shirt. It smells like Michael Ives.”
The man froze.
Derek smiled wider. “I don’t make deals with child murderers.”
THE NIGHT WAS BLUE.
The deep sky breathed, as if alive, the small glowing dots of distant stars winking at him as he ran along the night streets. The moon had rolled out and soared, huge and round, spilling a cascade of liquid silver onto the half-ruined city. It called to him the way it called to all wolves. If he didn’t have a job to do, he would’ve run right out of Atlanta into the magic-fed forest beyond, abandoned his human skin for fur and four paws, and sang to it. His human vocal cords had sustained too much damage in the same fight that had altered his face, but his wolf voice was as good as always. He would soak in that silver glow until it shone from his eyes and sing a long song about hunting and running through the dark wood in the middle of the night. On nights like these he remembered that he was only twenty. But he had someplace to be.
