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‘Do you think he cares about that?’
‘Well, he should!’
‘You controlled him. His whole purpose as a Red Guard is to bring down necromantic witches because they can control vampyrs – then you swanned in and took away his free will just like that!’ He clicked his fingers. ‘No, Luce, he’s not going to share anything with you. Besides, I think you give Voltaire too much credit. The USB drives were encrypted to the nth degree and even Fritz had a hard job getting into the one I took.’
I grimaced. ‘Okay, so Voltaire’s probably not going to be best buds with me. Do you think he’s going to be an issue?’
‘I don’t know,’ Greg admitted slowly. ‘He vowed that no vampyr would harm you or your pack, and that includes him. But if he could get a third party to harm you without him being directly involved…’ He trailed off. ‘We’ll heighten security.’
It was my turn to snort. ‘Greg, we haven’t come down from DEFCON1 since meeting Beckett Frost in the forest.’
‘It’s been an intense few days,’ Greg agreed. ‘But we can do more.’ He frowned. ‘I’m still not happy about our skies. We have cameras on the roof now, but I’m used to a dragon guarding us from above as well.’
‘I doubt Emory has a spare dragon right now.’ A chirping noise caught my attention and sparked a thought. Krieg, the High King of the Ogres, had his murder of crows around him, so why couldn’t I have the same?
I reached out with my piping senses to find some of the larger birds but, to my chagrin, I only encountered one corvid. When my mind touched his, I felt his surprise but no alarm. Second-hand curiosity filled me. I pictured the mansion, its roof then a bird’s nest on top of it. Home, I sent.
I felt humour from the bird then it disconnected from me. Dammit. ‘Well, that was an abject failure,’ I grumbled. Greg raised an eyebrow in question. ‘I tried to pipe a bird – it was a crow or maybe a raven. They’re smart. I thought I’d do Krieg’s trick and get some of them on our side.’
He looked thoughtful. ‘That’s actually not a bad idea, but it might take a little more work since I’m guessing you’re unwilling to subsume the bird’s rights?’
‘You assume correctly,’ I said primly. ‘Enough of that for now. What are we going to do with him?’ I toed the corpse.
‘Let Ares eat him?’ Greg suggested, only half-joking. Ares whickered loudly, fully on board with that plan.
I sighed. ‘No, we’re going to have to get to the bottom of this. Even if Larsden was a Grade-A asshole, we can’t just let people kill our werewolves willy-nilly.’
‘I’m not suggesting that we do, but if Larsden’s body goes missing his murderer won’t know that we’ve found it and might not realise we’re on the case.’
Ares’ red eyes lit up hopefully as I considered Greg’s point. ‘No,’ I repeated finally. ‘Let’s take him in for the Council to deal with. Nothing says welcome to the Home Counties pack like having to deal with a human carcass.’
I took out my phone and snapped a few photographs of the scene for posterity, then peeled off my clothes and shifted onto four. Pleasure rippled over Esme and me as we donned fur.
The world drained of colour but our sense of smell strengthened. The scents on the ground were many and varied: that of Ares was strong, and the defecation from the body overwhelmed us for a second.
Esme started filing the various smells away, examining them and ignoring them. She snuffled at the ground and the perfume of the pack filled her nose. Because of all the disruption the battle had caused and the uncertainty about some of the Devon pack joining us, Liam had recently led a small hunt on our grounds so the fresh odour of our wolves was everywhere.
We persevered, trotting this way and that as we tried to ferret out a scent that didn’t belong, but we couldn’t find a thing. I noted, though, that Elena’s scent was nearby – then again, so was everybody else’s.
Defeated, we shifted back onto two. Greg passed me my clothes and I dressed quickly. ‘Anything?’ he asked, but he already knew the answer from my face.
‘Nothing but the scent of our pack.’
‘The murderer could have used a scent-masking potion,’ he suggested.
‘Maybe. Or our initial thoughts about Elena might actually have some legs,’ I said grimly.
How do thoughts have legs? Esme huffed.
It means that the idea has merit.
Then why don’t you just say that? You humans must complicate everything. What have you got against simple and straightforward?
I grinned at her. Simple and straightforward are boring.
Her tone brightened. Well, lucky for you, we have a body and those rarely lead to boring things.
My gut knotted. She was right; there were turbulent times ahead, and they couldn’t have come at a worse time.
