Hunting Ground (Alpha & Omega 2)

Angus tilted his head. "Term of respect," he told Anna. "That's all. Anna."

"If you please." Charles didn't dwell on it, he just went on to the next thing. "The vampires have some way of masking their scent from us. Keeps us out of their daytime sleeping places."

Angus froze. "You think this is a vampire kill? Four vampires against Chastel and Michel?"

"The Beast was hurt." Charles avoided saying the names of the dead, usually. Referring to them by a nickname was apparently okay. "Michel... is much less dominant than your Tom. His heart is in the right place, but he is no warrior. Otherwise, the Beast would have killed him long since. Where were the rest of the French wolves?"

"At an all-night LAN party."

"A LAN party?" Anna sort of knew what that was. "Isn't that where geeks meet up and play the same game together on a lot of computers?"

Angus nodded. "Alan thought it might be interesting-let them get their aggression out without actually killing anyone." He paused. "And no one actually did-not there, anyway. Anyway, he and a few members of his family, several of my pack, and... I think one of the Spaniards took it upon themselves to arrange a LAN party with some first-person shooter game."

"Who would know that there would only be two wolves here?" Anna asked.

"Anyone who read the sign-up sheets-which are on our semiprivate site on the Internet. That means all of my pack and any of the wolves who came to the conference and took time to check out the welcome materials we provided."

"Assuming our vampires are working for one of us," mused Charles, "they would have known."

"If it's the vampires, they're moving awfully fast," Anna observed. She realized that they were all trying to avoid moving forward, into the house, closer to the smell of blood. "Tom, Moira, and I were attacked the day before yesterday, Sunny yesterday, and Chastel later last night." She didn't want to see it, to go near the evidence of all that pain and death. She thought that maybe the others were fighting exactly the opposite battle.

"Assassins with multiple targets taking them out as fast as they can," suggested Angus. "Strike before the enemy has a chance to pull their pants up and fire back. Busy as little bees."

"The question is, what are they doing? And why?" Charles sounded thoughtful, as if he were talking about a game of chess instead of discussing murder in a pleasant little sitting room that reeked of death. "And is Dana a part of this? Or is she a separate matter altogether?"

He looked at Anna. "You can stay here."

"But you want me to come." She knew she was right, and it surprised her.

"You bring different eyes," he said. "Angus and I-we can decipher the battle. You tell us about the person. Who we are hunting for and what that person is trying to accomplish." He gave her a tight smile. "You see things, why people do things. Vampires who act like wolves. I want you to stay here, but I'm afraid we might need you in there."

She took a deep breath. "Okay. But if I throw up, I'll blame you."

"Granted."

She bent to retie her tennis shoe and caught a glimpse of Angus's face. "He is very protective," she told him. "In a very Nietzschean 'that which does not kill us makes us stronger' sort of way. At least there won't be twenty feet of snow here."

Charles laughed.

No one was smiling when they walked into the room.

Blood soaked the carpet, and the walls were sprayed with it. It was getting old; in a few hours it would start to smell rotten. The walls looked brown rather than red. She didn't look at the two piles of meat and bone and body parts yet. One small step at a time. What did all the blood tell her?

" 'Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him,' " murmured Anna.

"I thought you did Latin quotes," said Charles.

"I can't do Shakespeare in Latin." She thought about it a little because that meant she didn't have to look more closely at what was in the room yet. "Cui bono, then. Who benefits from this?"

"I can't see how it could possibly be money," said Angus. "Or not only money. Or love, either. Sunny, maybe-but Chastel?"

Anna stepped all the way into the room, and the carpet squished just the way the carpet in her friends' apartment did after a keg of beer had broken open (some bright person tried to open it with a screwdriver and a hammer when the tap quit working).

She could tell where Michel had been because there was a person-shaped place where the blood hadn't saturated the tan carpet.

And there was the body... or pieces thereof. She made herself look. Charles's life might ride on their finding who had done this. She didn't have the luxury of being squeamish.

Hands, feet, head (one that looked much more like some wax sculpture for a horror film than something that had perched on shoulders and talked) sat on top of the pile. The head faced the doorway they'd come through, one hand on each side, feet on the outside of that. The rest of that pile was entrails and bones.

A square of cloth-no telling what it had originally looked like, but she was pretty sure it had been a tablecloth from the shape-was spread out on the floor next to the pile of body parts. On the square of cloth were stacks of meat cut into steaks and two racks of ribs, as if someone were planning a barbecue.

Why was the blood bothering her?

"I don't know vampires," she said, talking fast so her jaw didn't vibrate. "But I read Dracula when I was in high school. Would they waste all the blood like this? Or is this meant to horrify? Who do they want to frighten, and why?"

"No," said Charles suddenly. "They wouldn't waste the blood. Not without a good reason. You're right, this was deliberate. Meant to look like serial-killer stuff. That's all wrong for vampires. A vampire who left victims like this would have been killed before he-or she-did it a second time. They can afford human attention a lot less than we can."

"This is planned for effect. A lot of effort." He stared at the body parts-and smiled with satisfaction. "Too much effort, apparently."

He waved his arm at what was left of Chastel. "They cheated. We have one dead body-and there is just too much mass there, by about twenty pounds. I bet we find some commercially prepared cow in amidst the meat and that there is more of the Frenchman under the offal. Meat on bones. They didn't really have time to make a thorough job of it. It just had to look good for the audience."

"Who is the audience?" Angus asked.