AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Great. Er.” That probably sounded callous, since his friend was probably dead. If he’d actually known the guy long enough to become friends. Still, they’d been facing the same fate, so…God, I’m so fucking awkward.I sighed. “Thanks.”
Another soft chuff.
I got a reaction on the fourth photo. It belonged to a twenty-nine-year-old Black man named Leon Jones. “This is him?”
Chuff.
I updated the BOLO to be Leon Jones, and I really hoped we’d find him alive. But I wasn’t holding my breath.
I picked up my phone.
“Who do you need back, Hart?” Ward asked me. It sounded like he was chewing.
“Can you do a quick look for our missing shifter?” I asked him.
He sighed. “You got a name?”
“Leon Jones.”
“Picture?”
I texted it to him, then waited, listening to his breathing over the phone as it deepened in concentration.
Another sigh. “Shiplock Park.”
“Bloody fucking monkeys,” I swore. Beside me, the dog whined a little, settling his head on his paws, his eyes big and sad. “Vampire?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck.” I sighed again. “Thanks, Ward.”
“I’d say ‘anytime,’ but I’d rather you not have to call.”
“I fucking hear that.”
“Bye, Hart.”
I hung up again, then leaned my elbows on my desk and put my face in my hands.
I had just one survivor, and he didn’t seem at all inclined to break out of his doggy form. Which meant there was a lot of information in his fuzz-topped head that I didn’t have access to.
I looked down at him. “You’re not going to shift for me, are you?”
A long, drawn-out whine.
I sighed. “I don’t know what your deal is, bud, since you’re not telling me ‘no,’ but you also clearly aren’t shifting. Are you scared?”
A soft growl, mixed with a whine.
“The fuck does that mean?” I muttered.
He didn’t—of course—offer any sort of additional explanation. Just stared at me with those mis-matched puppy eyes that broke my fucking heart.
4
They pulledthe body of a large wolf out of the canal the next morning, and DNA confirmed that it was, in fact, Mark Roberts. It wasn’t a good ending, but it was at least a bit of closure for his family. The dredging team went from there out to Shiplock Park at the end of the canal, and Leon Jones’s body, still in human form and chained to a block of cement, was pulled from the river just before dusk.
Both shifters’ bodies were currently in the ME’s office, alongside Tatiana Zhirov’s and Daria Chester’s. Five shifters had been in the van, and four of them were dead, each with their throat ripped out, probably—according to the preliminary ME’s report—by a vampire. The wounds had been too ragged and messy for teeth imprints.
