Once Bitten

Bobby didn't answer. He just continued to glare at Nathanial.

I rounded on the vampire, driving my finger into his chest. “What did you do?"

Nathanial stopped cleaning his glasses long enough to meet Bobby's eyes. It was a quick glance, but whatever moved between them was dark. “Bobby would not listen when I told him not to chase after you.” He slipped his glasses back on and shrugged. “Searching crime scenes was leading us nowhere. I am hoping we will have more luck using technology."

I wasn't that easily distracted. “What happened to Bobby?"

He backed away and ignored my question. “We will use the computers at the library.” He strode up the sidewalk without a backward glance.

I opened my mouth to call him back, but Bobby put a hand on my shoulder and shook his head. “Don't worry about it. Okay?"

It wasn't okay, but I clenched my jaw and followed Nathanial. Bobby fell in step beside me, Gil following behind us.

The library was quiet, disturbed only by a slight hum from the computers and the occasional turn of pages by night owl studiers. Nathanial paused at the elevator, then indicated the stairwell. We traveled three flights down. The abandoned floor on which we emerged was dim and slightly claustrophobic, with towers of books surrounding us on all sides. Judging by the smell, the books were old, and I hoped the scent of mold was only from the walls.

Nathanial guided us in a weaving line through the stacks until we reached a door on the far wall. He unlocked the door and ushered us in. “We can search the periodicals here."

He turned on the screen closest to him and pulled up the program we'd be using. Nathanial gave us a basic tutorial on searching the periodicals. At first Gil hung back around the door, but by the time he finished, she was leaning forward and watching him carefully. Bobby paced the length of the room, staring at his feet more than the computers.

"Is everything clear?” Nathanial asked once he finished his demonstration.

Both Gil and I nodded then I slipped into a chair in front of a cream machine. Queuing the archives back three months, I searched forward. Bobby paced behind me.

"This will go faster if everyone helps,” Nathanial said after another failed attempt to get Bobby in front of a computer.

I glanced over my shoulder. Bobby was sweating, but Gil hadn't given any indication the room was overly warm. I frowned. Bobby hadn't had the tutors I'd had growing up.

"Can we access audio or video news feeds here?” I asked, looking at Nathanial. He shook his head. I turned back to my computer. “Let Bobby pace."

I scanned the archives as fast as I could, but Gil found the first and second relevant article. I was sifting through the local paper's archives, and the first two murders, the victims in Demur, weren't mentioned. We were searching different papers, so maybe the murders were featured in hers? Even if they weren't, she had the advantage of two hands—my right arm was painfully useless because of the dog bite, so I had to control the mouse with my left hand and hen peck commands on the keyboard. I collected my first article from the printer and glanced at the one she was printing; they weren't that different.

I passed Bobby on my way back from the printer. He was standing by the far wall with a thick, red marker in his hand. I stopped. He'd drawn a crude symbol a good five times lifesize on a dry erase board. Crude, and wrong.

"You have the lines backward."

Bobby nodded, erasing and redrawing the mark.

Gil, also returning from the printer, peered over his shoulder. Her scroll appeared in hand. “What does it mean?"

Well, at least she was enthusiastic again. She'd basically been a walking catatonic since her spell exploded. I wasn't sure the mages deserved to learn even more about shifters, but she had been helping me.

I traced the symbol Bobby had drawn. “It's the mark of the clanless. The top curving line that looks like a backward S runs from the corner of the eye to the ear. It represents water. The bottom line that looks like an upside-down V runs from the corner of the mouth to the edge of the jaw. It represents a mountain. ‘On land and sea they are known’ Or some say, ‘On land and sea, a face only a fool would trust.’”

Gil scribbled in her scroll then looked up, pursing her lips. “So the clanless are all criminals?"

I walked back to my computer. “Yes, but they are rare. The one in the alley is the only one I've ever seen in person."

"He had a necklace like yours.” Gil shivered. “Shifters are barbaric, chopping up infants to make jewelry and scarring criminals."

I looked up from the screen. “You saw a necklace on the clanless?"

She nodded. “It was like yours, with bunches of bones."

Bunches? If the stray wore more than two, he had to have been Dyre or Torin before he was branded clanless. My hand moved instinctively to my throat and traced the tiny bones. I didn't remember them being harvested, I was too young at the time, but I'd seen it happen to my brothers, and to Bobby. Before I'd lived among humans, I wouldn't have thought there was anything strange about the custom. It was a great honor for the elders to agree to make a necklace for someone who wasn't in line to be Torin. Now I had to agree it was a bit of a bloody practice, but ... “The necklaces are special. They allow us to do ... things we wouldn't otherwise be capable of."

Gil's eyebrow arched. “Such as?"

Heat gathered in my cheeks. “Mine isn't very impressive. I can—could shift with my clothing."

"Sounds useful."

"Here maybe. Clothes don't count for much in Firth. Being able control your scent—like that clanless can do—that is an impressive gift."

Gil glanced at Bobby and his necklace with only two bones on it. He didn't volunteer its use, and I was glad she didn't ask. Bobby's necklace was something most shifters considered a fluke. A natural shifter, a shifter born of non-shifter parents, with a necklace was almost unheard of. But as teenagers we'd traveled to the Elders’ mountain together. It had taken two weeks and not a little pleading, but the elders had agreed to make the necklace for him. He wouldn't have been here now if they hadn't. Bobcat was his natural form, and without the necklace he was able to shift only as far as mid-form, never reaching true human form. Only pureblood shifters fully mastered both human and animal forms.

Gil jotted a couple more notes in her scroll. “You were right. This isn't in my books. I can't wait to turn in my report! They might publish my paper. Maybe they will even teach a class about my study here.” Her smile spread across her face, her eyes going distant.

Uh, delusions of grandeur, anyone?

"The articles we're interested in?” I reminded her.

Gil's eyes snapped back in focus. We compared highlights from the articles as we found them. Most of the information was the same, but occasionally a line here or there shed extra light, though most went back to rave references.

The earliest victims in Haven, the girl at the rave and the one found in the park, were the most brutalized—the reporter's word, not mine. I had the feeling the word he'd been looking for was ‘eaten,’ but I couldn't be sure. The first few articles indicated the police were checking the local zoo to see if any large predators had escaped. Of course, that search turned up nothing, and one article suggested the police had yet to identify the species of animal used in the attack. Frighteningly enough, one or two of the ‘letters to the editor’ claimed werewolves were responsible. Luckily, those writers were regarded as crazy.

One of the letters pushing werewolf involvement referenced a recently discovered body which the writer believed was a werewolf. With trepidation, I searched for an article on the body. All I found was a brief blurb about a badly decomposed body found in the woods south of Demur. I frowned. That city just kept coming up.

Queuing up the Internet, I tapped in “Demur” and a couple keywords from the blurb into the search engine. Most of the results were unrelated, but a few proved to be about the mysterious body. Investigators reported the body to be male, but cause of death hadn't been determined. Scavengers had scattered the body, and many of the bones bore claw or tooth marks, some gnawed until barely recognizable. The links leading to cryptologist sites speculated werewolves based on fur found under the torso saturated with decomposing fat. They also stated not all of the bones found were human or identifiable as a known animal. The links to the skeptics countered that the fur might have been from a coat, and pointed out that unrecognizable bones were not good for identification purposes. Others surmised that the body might have been dumped or dragged to the same area as a dead animal, explaining both the fur and the mingled bones.

I printed the reports, though even I couldn't tell if someone had stumbled on a shifter body or not. If they had, someone in the supernatural community had probably already destroyed the physical evidence collected from the scene. I gathered my pages and then pulled the periodicals back up.

There had been eleven attacks total, increasing in frequency at an alarming rate. Some of the articles included photos of the women—alive, of course. Most looked like they'd been pulled from a high school yearbook or a Glamour Shots session, but a couple were more natural. One victim toasted the camera, the black-on-white highlights in her hair matching her powdered skin and heavy eyeliner.

Why had the rogue relocated? None of the articles gave me a clue. The paper revealed very few details—police reports would have helped more—but reading between the lines, I gathered the murders in Haven were not immediately connected to the two in Demur. Something about the level of violence.

The final article I printed was about the attack on Lorna, though they didn't mention her by name. I was up-to-date on articles and I still didn't know where to look for the rogue. Now what? I pulled up the local weather station's website to look for a lunar chart to cross-reference the attacks with moon phases. Only a tagged shifter's first shift was tied to the moon, and there were too many victims, in too short a time, to assume the rogue had simply gone crazy when the gate to Firth opened each month, but maybe I'd find some other pattern.