CHAPTER THREE || REED #2
Daniel nodded and spoke an incantation under his breath, weaving his hands together in a flourish.
A pinpoint of light appeared over our heads, then expanded into a sphere of golden-white the size of a grapefruit, illuminating the scene like a miniature sun.
Thankfully, we were far enough from the hiking trails and even further from anything resembling a campsite or road.
Lacey, Hunter, and Lee moved around the site, snapping photos with their cell phones, while Dr. Langley examined the body, muttering her observations into a small silver tape recorder.
“Well, I’m just about finished here,” she said at last. “The cuts are almost surgical. You’re definitely looking for a creature with very sharp claws. Or the ability to use a scalpel.” She paused. “Some of the wounds show signs of infection.”
“Wait a second. If the cuts got infected…” Daniel grimaced down at the body.
Dr. Langley’s expression went darker. “He wasn’t killed immediately. Some of the wounds look like they’re days old.” She paused. “There are no bite marks anywhere on the body.”
I frowned at her. “Which means this creature doesn’t consume its victims.”
She nodded.
“Wait, but this—” Daniel gestured to the body. “I mean, it looks like he was eaten.”
“He was taken apart,” Dr. Langley corrected. “But as far as I can tell, whatever did this didn’t consume any of his flesh or bones.”
“That’s helpful to know. I’ll have Emma consult our lore to see if we know of a creature that does this sort of thing without eating its victims.” I paused. “Can you tell us anything else?”
“Well, the back left molars are shattered. I found fragments of them still in his mouth. But no bruising or marks on his face consistent with blunt force trauma.”
“Meaning he was grinding his teeth hard enough to shatter them?” I said, when her meaning sank in. A wave of revulsion swept through me. “He was in a lot of pain, then. Right up until the end.”
She nodded grimly. “I took tissue samples around the wounds, so if there’s some sort of known toxin or paralytic, I’ll be able to test for it.
” She looked paler than before. “Whatever does this doesn’t kill right away.
It makes its victims suffer first. You need to stop this creature, Reed.
You and the rest of your pack. You can’t let it do this to anyone else. ”
A chill settled over me. I nodded at her.
“The only other odd thing is that there’s a lack of blood on the ground, but not on the body. It’s possible he was killed elsewhere and left here.”
“His gear is on the ground,” Lee said, pointing to a black hiking backpack lying five feet away. “And no footprints or track marks on the ground. Except ours. How would a mindless monster have done that?”
“Maybe it’s not mindless.”
“But why would it kill a hiker somewhere else and then move his body?” I asked.
Dr. Langley considered it. “Maybe the creature is intelligent enough to know that leaving a body too close to its lair is a bad idea. That, or it knows a mutilated hiker found in the woods means more people will come looking for whatever was responsible.” She paused.
“It could be attempting to attract prey.”
I didn’t want to believe it. Most monsters weren’t that intelligent—and even those that were tended toward opportunistic ambush hunting.
But if I looked at it rationally, that didn’t line up with how the hiker was killed.
This creature was obviously patient, not impulsive.
If Dr. Langley was right and it was capable of that level of cunning, that meant it was a special kind of dangerous.
“Alright,” I said brusquely, hating what had to happen next. “Now we need to create the narrative so that the search and rescue teams find what they’re looking for and walk away with a plausible story. We need to make this look like this death happened due to natural causes.”
Lee and Hunter exchanged troubled looks. Daniel seemed vaguely shocked. Lacey just looked grim and unsurprised.
“Hunter, I need you to carry his body to the base of the Palisades. Lacey, help him with that. It needs to look like he fell off the cliff in the dark, and his body was eaten by scavengers.”
The Palisades were steep basalt cliffs a few miles away that plunged straight down, with rocky scree at their base.
The hiking trail running along them was known for being both beautiful and highly dangerous.
With Lacey and Hunter working together, they’d be able to carry the body there no problem, long before the sun rose. Plenty of time.
“But the wounds are so clean. Hattie said—” Hunter protested, shooting a helpless look at Dr. Langley, who gazed back at him impassively.
“We’ll still have enough moonlight to shift,” Lacey said tonelessly. “We need to make sure they don’t look clean at all.”
My stomach went queasy at the prospect, but it was better than this happening again to innocent folks searching the forest.
“You’re going to need to break his bones, too. The fall needs to look convincing.”
I didn’t look Hunter in the eye, but I didn’t miss the way he went paler at my words.
“Lee, go with them and clear the trail of footprints. We can’t have anyone discovering multiple sets of human prints leading to the body.
Take his backpack—” I pointed at the hiker’s gear.
“—to the top of the cliff and leave it there. Create a trail of footprints leading to the cliff edge. Make sure to clean up your own afterward.”
I turned to Daniel. “I need this site spotless, especially of scent—they’ll probably have dogs with them. We can’t have anyone discovering any evidence. Can you cast a spell to make that happen?”
Daniel nodded, his expression somber. “Yeah, I think so.”
“I need to get back,” Dr. Langley said. “Once they find the body, they’ll bring it to me for a death certificate.
” She paused, fixing Hunter and Lacey with a dark look.
“Unless you two don’t do a good enough job making it look natural.
If there’s even a hint that anything’s odd about the body, they’re going to send him to Seattle for examination and then we’ll have investigators here for months. ”
I hated it, but she wasn’t wrong. I met their gazes in turn. “She’s right. It needs to look convincing.”
Hunter nodded slowly. “Yeah. It’s for the greater good.”
“What will you be doing?” Lee asked pointedly.
“I’ll take Dr. Langley back to her car. After that, we’re going to need a breadcrumb trail.
That means getting Topher to send the deputy and the search party out that way in the morning.
It’ll be better if the request comes from the pack alpha directly.
” I paused. “With any luck, they’ll have found the body by noon.
And then we can focus our efforts on figuring out how to stop this thing. ”
Vampires had the ability to influence the minds of humans, even to the point of planting false memories, post-hypnotic suggestions, and making them think or feel things they never would have otherwise. I didn’t like it, but I had no choice.
After all, that’s why Nathaniel Bailey, the vampire king of Seattle, had sent Topher in the first place—to help out the pack in exactly these kinds of situations. It was better than calling in an anonymous tip and leaving investigators with lingering questions.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”
* * *
After Daniel performed his spells on the clearing, I walked him and Dr. Langley back to the commune, where her car was parked in the gravel lot beyond the fire pit. The trees loomed overhead, dark and thick. Anything could have been out there. And something monstrous was.
After Dr. Langley drove away, I called Topher.
“Hiya, Reed,” he answered, sounding deceptively human. “It’s early. Is everything alright?”
“I need a favor.”
Then, in as few words as I could manage, I told him what was going on. I was eager to get off the phone with him. Vampires might not have been all bad, but I still felt uneasy around them.
“I can make sure the deputy sends out a search party to the base of The Palisades,” Topher said, when I was done. “Anything else?”
“Keep an ear out, I guess. If anyone is suspicious—”
“I can handle them as well,” Topher said. “The important thing is keeping innocent people out of the forest, as much as we’re able to.”
It sounded almost as though he cared. I wondered if he actually did or if it was only because his king had told him to.
After that, it was almost daybreak. I called and checked in with Lacey, Hunter, and Lee.
Lacey assured me they’d arranged the site convincingly enough to fool the mundanes.
Guilt twisted in my gut, but at least the hiker would get a burial and his family would get closure.
And no one else would be put in harm’s way searching for him.
I had made the right call, the responsible one.
Even if it felt like I’d needed to sacrifice a portion of my soul to do it.
Though I was exhausted, I went to the pack-owned bar I was now co-owner of—The Crescent Moon—and busied myself with the familiar routine of getting everything ready for that day’s influx of people.
Since the hiker had gone missing, we’d been opening early to give out free coffee to the folks looking for him.
It was an excellent way to keep abreast of what they’d uncovered and what areas they’d already searched.
The next several hours passed in a blur.
There were dozens of volunteers from all over, even as far as Seattle and Tacoma.
Way more innocent people than I would’ve guessed, traipsing through a forest with a literal monster on the loose.
Over the course of the morning, I learned that the hiker’s name was Scott Vogler.
He’d been from Seattle. His photo had been splashed all over the evening news the night before, which explained why there were so many people looking for him.
“After everything that happened, he came out here to clear his head,” a brown-haired woman in her thirties was saying to a group of people as they approached me. I was standing behind the long wooden bar top, pouring coffee for another volunteer, but listening to everything.
I monitored her from my peripheral vision, trying not to be obvious about it.
Though her eyes were glassy and red-rimmed, she seemed determined to put on a brave face. “My brother knows better than to go too far off the beaten path and to stay put if he gets lost. We’re going to find him.”
My stomach knotted with guilt as I handed the cup of coffee across the bar.
The woman—Scott Vogler’s sister, apparently—ordered hot drinks for her and the other volunteers. Given the easy, familiar way she spoke to them, I guessed they were her friends, who had come out to help with the search. I couldn’t look any of them in the eye.
But still. The faster they found Scott, the less danger they’d all be in. No matter how I felt about it, I’d made the correct decision.
Lee joined me an hour into the breakfast rush, freshly showered.
He locked eyes with me and gave me a sharp nod. Which meant the body was taken care of. There would be no questions. Then he went to the back, without a word, and began manning the grill.
It was early during the lunch rush that I got word they’d found Scott’s remains. I tried to block out the volunteers with shell-shocked expressions or tears in their eyes at the news. They were likely the ones who had known him, or maybe even members of his family.
I wasn’t successful. Somehow, seeing it made it more real. Conviction settled deep in the pit of my stomach. We’d find the thing that did this. And we’d stop it.
After that, the volunteers started thinning out and going home.
And by three in the afternoon, they were all gone. The bar settled into that quiet two-hour stretch between the end of lunch and the start of dinner.
I was busy wiping down the bar—still gleaming even after years of use—when the front door swung open behind me and a familiar voice stopped me dead.
“Reed.”
My stomach lurched and I looked up to find Harris standing in the doorway. His expression was cold, his eyes filled with accusation.
“Harris?” I said, dismay and desire mingling with stunned disbelief at the sight of him.
His scent—reminding me of home and belonging—rolled over me.
And for an instant, it washed everything else away.
The wolf in my chest whimpered plaintively, desperate for us to move closer to him, to take him in our arms and feel him pressed against our bodies.
But he was in Crescent Springs and there was a monster on the loose. He was in terrible danger. “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “Why aren’t you in Los Angeles?”
“Because I know you’ve been lying to me for months,” Harris said, glaring me down. “I know everything, Reed.” Then he paused and said the words that caused the floor to drop out from beneath me. “I know you’re my mate.”
My jaw dropping in a way that would have probably looked comical to anyone watching.
Harris’s eyes narrowed. “Huh. I figured you weren’t going to deny it. It’s true, isn’t it?”
I was unable to lie to him—unable even to wrench my gaze from his. “Yeah.”