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“Ward, I appreciate that you want to spare these people more trauma, but if we can’t get them to focus, we can’t fucking help,” I pointed out, impressed with my ability to minimize the cursing to just one word and no yelling.
He nodded, his face setting into what I recognized as concentration.
“Okay. I’m going to try to get this across. I’ve got an adult male, Black, tall, broad-shouldered. He’s telling me that the coyote? Maybe the wolf? Somebody who I think is some sort of dog, anyway. They smell wrong. Like… something… metal? No, that’s not it. He keeps saying ‘not organic,’ but I really don’t think he means like Whole Foods.”
“Artificial? Like something chemical?” I asked.
A moment of relief flashed over Ward’s face. “Yes. He likes that. They smell wrong and they’re scared, but not scared.”
Understanding ripped through me. “They smell like fear, but they don’t smell enough like adrenaline.”
Ward’s expression was blank.
“The fuck does that mean, Hart?” Dan asked.
In for a fucking penny, I guess. I’d ask Raj’s forgiveness later.
“The feds figured out that this group is implanting drugs into shifters’ systems that keep them from shifting. The drugs are beta blockers, which inhibit adrenaline. That means—”
“That they’re scared, but they can’t make enough adrenaline to shift,” Ward finished for me. “So they wouldn’t be producing enough adrenaline for another shifter to smell it at the right levels.”
“Exactly,” I confirmed.
Dan ran a hand through his thick hair. “So you’re fucking telling me that those three might not have beenableto shift back into human form?”
I swallowed. “Check them for abdominal incisions. Probably fresh.” They were all furry—normally, one would shave the area for an incision, but I had the feeling that whoever put these implants in probably didn’t give much of a fuck about surgical sterilization.
“Quincy?” Dan said.
The CSI was crouched beside the body of the lynx, which she turned over. “Affirmative, detective. Looks a few weeks old, maybe? I think I can see the ends of some of those dissolving stitches.”
“Fuck,” Dan muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “Fuck.”
“It’s the same case,” I told him.
“As Chisolm?”
“And the four dead shifters down in the Bottom,” I replied.
Dan looked up at me, his dark eyes sharp. “You’re taking it for the feebies, aren’t you?”
I shook my head “I’m going to be your fucking shadow, but I’m not a fed so I can’t make that call. I will have to tell Raj Parikh when he calls, though.”
Dan nodded once. “Okay. So it’s the same fucking case. Those shifters have scars, too? How’s that giving them drugs?”
“Mark Roberts had a scar,” I confirmed, “although the ME couldn’t figure out why. But the poor bastard was gutted after the vampire tore his throat out—we assumed it was part of the same attack but…” I made a quick decision. “There’s another shifter. FBI need-to-know-only. They pulled a device out of him that was dispensing beta blockers—custom ones—directly into his kidneys.” It was so much more real now that I was officially entering it into evidence.
“Fuck,” Dan said again. “What else do we know?”
I sighed. “I gave it to Mays,” I confessed. “He can tell you what you need once we’re done with our dead victim.” I nodded to Ward, whose pained expression suggested that his ghosts hadn’t stopped talking despite the fact that Dan and I were having a whole conversation.
“Does all this match with what your dead man is telling us, Mr. Campion?” Dan asked.
“Maybe?” Ward answered. “It’s a little hard to tell?”
“Can you tell us what he is?” I asked.
“Mmhmm.” A pause. “Hyena shifter. I’m pretty sure they did to him what happened to the others because now he’s talking about howhedidn’t smell right. They kept him in a cage… here, I think.”
