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“Shh,” I whispered.
“But I—”
“Shh.”
He stopped moving. I was pretty sure he was holding his breath now. All the better.
I rubbed the asphalt with my palm. Tar and liquor and a few other unsavory things wafted up, and then there, at last, was the blood. It had the same scent as the man who’d been lying here the day before, the one my pack was meant to have killed.
I crawled forward, inch by inch, pausing before I went headlong into the side of a dumpster, then sniffed the metal, guiding myself up by feel and scent alone. This, obviously, wasn’t the greatest plan, because the dumpster was full of garbage.
Now I had lost the blood trail thanks to the intense reek of warm trash. I coughed, gagged, and my eyes watered. I straightened up and coughed a bit more into the crook of my elbow, then wiped my eyes on the back of my wrists.
The smell of his blood on my hands refocused me, and I sniffed the air cautiously.
“What are you doing?” Perry had apparently already forgotten my request for silence.
This must have looked pretty weird.
“I…” Opening my eyes again, I glanced over at the befuddled detective. He was still standing as motionless as possible, but the expression on his face told me he was sure I was completely insane.
How best to explain this to a normie?
“Bryce.” It felt weird to use his first name, but he’d also just watched me sniff the sidewalk, so I figured we were past the formality stage at this point. “How long have you been working supernatural cases?”
“About a year.”
“How many werewolf assaults have you worked on?”
“Four.”
I chose to rephrase, because we both knew he’d taken my question too literally. “How many of those were situations where the werewolf was the aggressor and not the victim?”
“One.”
I knew all about that one too because it was my job to know. When you’re responsible for the protection and wellbeing of a pack, you make it your business to know all the terrible shit that’s happened to them before. In the case Perry was referring to, the wolf had been at fault. It was an open-and-shut assault with deadly intent.
It was al
so the night before a full moon, and the perpetrator was a lone wolf from somewhere in Florida. He hadn’t belonged to the pack, but his actions had become the pack’s problem.
Just like this had become my problem.
“Here’s the thing about werewolf attacks.” I moved across the alley quietly, my steps noiseless and light. Perry seemed surprised when I was suddenly right in front of him. “When we try to hurt someone, we don’t think with the human part of our brains. We have an animal inside us, quite literally.” I touched my stomach. “There is a wolf within us, and when our hunter brain activates, the wolf is in control, not the man. Or woman.”
He nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t quite getting it.
“When you worked that werewolf assault, what did the crime scene look like?”
His cheeks blanched, and his color went from typical pale to a shade of white normally reserved for the dead. “It was bad.”
“It would be. Because even if I don’t have my teeth or my claws, I know how to kill.” I wasn’t sure why I said I instead of he. Making it personal was only going to remind him I was capable of the same kind of violence.
But maybe that was the point. If I could show him the potential for harm wasn’t the same thing as guilt, I might be able to convince him someone else had done this.
“There are a half-dozen ways I could make you bleed to death without ripping out your throat.” I took a step closer, could smell his fear mingling with the coffee and donut he’d had for breakfast.
Fear, I’m afraid to admit, was one of the single most glorious smells in the world. It meant I was in control, that I had the upper hand.
