Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6
The cook, Kate, didn’t have much to say, only what Galbraith had already explained. She’d stepped out for a few minutes to vape, seen a figure in the gloom and headed over to investigate. By the time she’d arrived, the killer had fled, and Cameron was very deceased.
Asking around the bar, however, to find out who wasn’t accounted for, did turn up a name.
“Zander Pullman?” Galbraith echoed my question, after meeting up with me again in the motel parking lot. Zee and Victor had gone on ahead to our motel room.
“I doubt it’s him,” the pack alpha said. Drizzle clung to his unkempt hair, and when he ran a hand over it, the thick locks stayed slicked, making his face leaner and harsher.
“He wasn’t in the bar, and he lives close by according to your packmates,” I said. Packmates who’d gotten shifty any time Zander’s name had been mentioned.
“If close is a three-mile hike, then sure.” Galbraith eyed the gloomy woods behind the motel.
“Still, we thought we’d take a look, and it’s better to do it now, just in case he thinks about leaving the area.”
“Think you’re barking up the wrong tree, but if you wanna go, d’yah need an escort? It’s a long hike. Easy to get lost in this weather.”
“We’ll be alright.” I figured we might get more truth from Zander without his alpha looming like a judgmental parent. Especially if he was someone who the others in the bar didn’t seem to like.
Galbraith looked me over, and I recognized that doubting expression. “Be careful,” he warned. “Zander is an odd one.”
That sounded ominous. “How so?”
“You’ll see. While you’re gone, I’ll make sure Cameron’s body is kept safe for your examination when you return.”
“Thank you. And uh... we’ll do everything we can to help you with this. I know I vowed it already, but I mean it. We don’t walk away from people who need help.”
His skeptical expression eased. “You know, I wasn’t sure about you when you offered to help, but keep this up and I could be persuaded you’re as useful as you claim.”
“Then you don’t think we’re killers anymore?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“Right.” Not friends yet, then.
Galbraith stalked across the lot, turning once to check that I still stood out in the open. I gave him a small wave, which he didn’t return. Werewolves seemed like a cagey bunch. Maybe Victor was right and they had more to hide than they were letting on. As long as they did genuinely want our help, though, I was happy to give it, especially as it distracted Zee and Victor from my other huge problem.
The fact remained that someone had killed Cameron.
A shame, really. After speaking with the pack, Cameron had sounded like an all-round nice guy.
He’d been well liked, and generally didn’t ruffle any fur, but nice didn’t mean good—I was proof of that. Someone had disliked Cameron enough to kill him. Maybe this Zander person? He was definitely not well liked, and as far as I could tell from the brief conversations I’d had, he’d been shunned by the pack a few months ago. Was that reason enough to kill someone?
We were about to find out.
I returned to our room to find Zee dressed in a camo-patterned vest, with his arms bare and tight black pants tucked into glossy black-heeled boots. Not the most appropriate footwear for hiking, but he did have wings if the terrain got rough. Where had he even gotten that camo vest? It didn’t seem all that practical while missing its sleeves, and the fit was pretty tight. It did show off his arms, though, with their defined muscles and innate strength.
“What do you think?” He struck a pose, one hand on his hip, tail flicking. “Found it in the lost and found. Probably from someone’s kinky role-playing kit.”
I threw on the only jacket I’d packed. “It suits you, but won’t you get cold?”
“Kitten, pretty trumps warm.”
Victor opened the adjoining door and entered the room.
“What in the fucking Indiana Jones are you wearing?” Zee flicked a wrist. “Did an outdoor store throw up on you?”
Victor wore baggy brown cargo pants, which might have been weird enough, but he’d also found some kind of camo utility jacket with pockets in every conceivable place a pocket could be. With his hair bunched back in a messy tail, he looked like some kind of outdoor guru—a taller, stricter Bear Grylls, but with better hair, an intense no-nonsense expression, and silvery eyes that could see in the dark. So... not really like Bear Grylls at all.
“Why are there so many pockets?” I asked.
“Adam, I am glad you asked.” Victor flicked a wrist, and began a tour of his jacket. “Allow me to demonstrate.”
“Look what you’ve done. You’ve triggered him,” Zee groaned and folded his arms. “Kill me now.”
“This pocket, situated on my left hip for easy access, holds a multi-tool pocketknife.” He removed the knife and showed us. I also had no idea where he’d gotten that from—probably the same place as Zee got his camo vest. After slotting it neatly back, he went on. “In this pocket, there is a convenient second pocket within a pocket for items of importance.”
“Condoms,” Zee said.
Victor hesitated for only a few seconds. “I suppose some may choose to use it for storing copulatory protection.”
“What was I thinking?” Zee snorted. “Nobody wearing that jacket is having sex.”
“I’m guessing you don’t have condoms in there,” I said, trying not to smile.
“No. I do in fact have a...” He pulled out an Oreo. “Snack.”
I laughed. Zee did not.
“Is that my Oreo?” Zee asked. Unamused, he stomped over to join Victor in the adjoining doorway. “Do you have my Oreo?”
Oh dear. “Zee, c’mon, you have a hundred of them.”
“Thousands, actually.” He gestured at the stacks of boxes still in the middle of the room. “But I was looking for that particular one. I left it on the side earlier, and then it was gone. I figured gremlins, but no, it was you! Neck-sucking thief!”
Victor’s rare smile made a brilliant appearance as he held up the Oreo. “I will return it into your possession for the price of a single kiss.”
“Fuck you, vampire.” Zee grabbed him by the back of the neck and plundered Victor’s mouth with his own as though he were a Viking raiding the first village after a long hard winter. Or you know, something equally desperate and crazy hot.
I loved these two idiots. Like chalk and cheese, they shouldn’t work together, but somehow they did. And when they got together like this, fireworks exploded—sometimes literal purple ones from Zee’s wings.
Zee pulled away from a breathless Victor, plucked the Oreo from Victor’s fingers, and tossed it into his own smirking mouth. In two bites, it was gone. “Let’s saddle up, pardners.” He lassoed a finger in the air. “And get this crazy rodeo on the fuckin’ road.”
“In the woods.”
“Yeah, that.”
As prepared as we could be, we left the motel via a back trail, with Zee up front using his phone’s GPS and details from the folks at the bar for rough guidance. The mist hadn’t lifted all day, and deeper in the trees the air was even heavier with damp. Every tree we passed resembled its neighbor. Galbraith had been right, it would be easy to get lost out here.
“Ugh, the damp is frizzing my hair,” Zee said, checking his phone every few paces.
“I’m sure the squirrels are horrified,” Victor replied, following behind us.
“You see any woodland critters?” Zee fired back. “Or anything dumb enough to be out here besides us?”
“I do not, which in itself is rather strange. These woods should be teeming with wildlife.”
“Yup, not spooky at all. So here we are, marching through the woods to a murder cabin in the middle of fuck knows where to speak with a maybe murderer. I’m sure it’ll be just fine and nothin’ is gonna jump us, right Adam?”
“It will be fine. You’ve got me, remember?”
Zee grinned over his shoulder. “I forgot, you’re a badass murder machine.”
“Less of the murder until we’re out of werewolf territory, please,” Victor warned. “They’re already nervous, and we do not want to rile them up even more or it’ll be our corpses on the bar floor.”
“Ha! A werewolf can’t bring down a dragon,” Zee dismissed.
“One cannot. A pack most certainly can.”
He sounded grim, as though speaking from experience. “Have you seen it?” I asked.
“During the wars, vampires employed mercenaries to perform tasks they did not wish to dirty their hands with. One such task was removing a rather stubborn dragon who had no interest in the war or either side’s argument but was in the way of our forces. The dragon was extracted rather brutally.”
Zee pulled up short and turned toward a bank of thick brush, eyeing a hole the local animals had used to track through. “This way.” He plowed on, shoving his way into the bushes. Several bendy wet branches smacked me in the face, and then we emerged into the deepest, darkest patch of woods I’d ever seen—although I didn’t really get out much.
With a shiver, Zee pointed his phone. “Onwards, into the gloom.” A few paces further in, he said to Victor, “That was you, then? You hired the werewolf mercenaries?”
“Indeed.” Victor didn’t sound proud of it.
“Fuckin’ vampires.”
I glanced back and caught Victor’s lifting gaze. “I regret a great many actions of mine.”
“We’ve all done things we maybe wished we hadn’t, and probably wouldn’t do again given a second chance.” I tried to reassure him, but Victor was the very definition of still waters running deep, and he kept his heart so far hidden that sometimes only he knew how to reach it.
As for me, I’d often wondered whether I’d really needed to kill my entire family. It did seem a bit extreme, looking back, but if I hadn’t, they’d have killed me. I had tried talking to them, at least in the beginning. Maybe with Syros I could have tried harder?
“Oh my fuck.” Zee halted. “Sweet baby Gareth.”
“What—” I grabbed his shoulder and peeked around his arm, expecting something hideous, like another murder scene or a vicious frog. “What is it?”
Victor gasped. “What is that monstrosity ?”
“What?!” I couldn’t see whatever had them spooked—they both had better low-light vision than me—but I scanned the trees and the deep shadows between their vertical trunks. Did I need to shift? Was it going to eat us? Then I saw a flash in the corner of my vision, and there, as the bank of murky fog briefly rolled away, stood a pink timber cabin.
Pink.
Every single plank, every board. The porch, the shingles, all of it... was a brilliant pink.
“I fuckin’ love it.” Zee rushed ahead, thrashing through the brush.
“Zee, wait!”
A gunshot boomed.
Zee ducked behind a bush, I dropped behind a second one, and Victor took shelter beside me.
“Ugh, you’d think someone with a pink house would be friendlier!” Zee made sure to speak loud enough for half the forest to hear.
“Is this Zander’s place?” I whispered to Victor.
“It seems likely.”
The werewolves hadn’t mentioned anything about his house being pink. “Maybe he doesn’t like strangers.” It probably wasn’t every day a dashingly handsome Scout-leader vampire, a seven-foot-tall demon in glossy heels, and an average human wandered into his yard.
“Uhm, hello?” I called.
“Get back!” a man’s muffled voice sounded from inside. “Or the next one goes in the demon!”
“Rude,” Zee huffed.
“I see the gun,” Victor said. “It’s propped on the leftmost window sill. Adam, I can make it to the cabin and take the gun before he can fire again.”
Victor could probably eliminate the threat in under three seconds, but that didn’t seem like a nice way to get to know someone. “No, we need him to talk to us.”
“Bro!” Zee called. “Your cabin is pink. You don’t seem like the sort to kill us.”
“I am passive aggressive!”
“This seems mostly active aggressive,” I mumbled, then shot to my feet and raised my hands. “Hi, uh ... my name is Adam. Please don’t shoot.”
“Adam!” Victor growled, warning me to drop back by his side.
A gunshot would hurt, but it wouldn’t kill me. I’d take the risk that this guy wasn’t going to follow through on his threat.
“Are you Zander?” I called.
“Maybe.”
“We just want to talk.” I took a step forward, and when no shot came, took another.
“Stay back!”
“Just so you know, if you shoot Adam,” Zee called out. “You’ll have about two seconds to regret it before me and the vampire come in there and turn your pink walls red. You feel me?!”
“Zee, c’mon...” I whined. “I’m trying to be nice.”
He shrugged. “I have anxiety . You’re giving me anxiety.”
“I’ve got this,” I told him. He muttered something indecipherable which I took to mean go right ahead then. “So uhm... I don’t know if you know, but there’s been some trouble at the bar? You know the bar? With the werewolves... uh the uhm, Whiteacre Riders.”
“Those assholes can bite my furry ass!”
“Oh, well, uhm, we’re not technically with them, I guess. We’re kind of... uhm... consultants?”
Zee circled his hand in the air, signaling I should get to the point.
“So uh, somebody has died,” I went on. “And a few folks said we should talk to you?”
“What?”
“Uhm . . . somebody has died?—”
The cabin door creaked open and a short guy, not much taller than me, stepped onto the pink porch with a shotgun slung low at his side. I’d been expecting someone who maybe looked like a werewolf outcast—scruffy, grouchy, big and mean— but Zander looked like any other guy I’d pass in the grocery aisle without a second glance. Brown hair that hung half over his eyes and curled at the jawline, jeans, and a T-shirt with some kind of faded message on the front. Kinda boring, like me, except for the pink cabin... and the sandals.
“I like the color choice,” I said.
“Huh?” He jogged down the steps, sandals slapping the boards, and stopped a few feet from his porch, then looked back, as though forgetting his entire home was pink. “Oh, you do?”
“Very uhm . . . bold.”
“Thank you,” he said with some flamboyance and relief. “Pink is a calming color. Nobody gets it!” He waved the gun, making Zee hiss. “They all think I’m nuts.”
Keeping my eyes on the gun, I smiled and tried to make myself look smaller... more helpful, less harmful. “Ugh, not me. I get it.”
Zander’s face screwed up in doubt. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Adam. And this is Zee.” Zee popped up from behind his bush and gave a wary wave. “And Victor.”
Victor stood and bowed his head, but his narrowed silvery eyes suggested Zander may want to put the gun down soon. “Greetings.”
“You said someone died?” Zander called, as there was still some distance between us.
“Yeah...” I lowered my hands and started slowly forward again. “Can we talk?”
“Without the gun?” Zee suggested.
“Oh, right. Oops.” Zander cracked the gun barrel and popped the rounds free. “Let’s go inside. You guys like lemonade?”
“Sure.”
Zander waved us after him, but Zee held me back with a hand on my arm. “What if this is some kinda gingerbread-house trap and he’s luring us into his murder cabin with his super-pink vibes and lemonade where we’ll be seduced into a huge group orgy only to be shoved into an oven and roasted?”
“Wha—” My heart dropped. “Is that a thing?”
“Haven’t you seen my movie, Hansel Gets Handled ?”
“Uhm . . . no?”
Victor sidled up to us with a growing, predatory smile. “Then he’ll soon discover we’re not as dumb as you look, demon.”
Zee’s right eyebrow lifted. He began to nod, then frowned. “Wait, excuse you. You did not just call me dumb. Hullo. You don’t think my flouncy himbo performance is real, do you? Oh Victor, you sad dinosaur. Do not let my pretty fool you. I let y’all think I’m the comedy sidekick because, Lord Fucks-Hard—” Zee draped an arm over Victor’s shoulders. “This little dumb act allows me to walk the fuck all over you and get away with everything and anything I like. Or had you not figured me out yet?”
“Hm.” Victor had definitely figured that out.
With a laugh, I told them to follow, and we headed inside where the pink theme continued. Only now it became pink and white and fluffy all over.
“I’m so torn,” Zee whispered. “I should hate it, but I fuckin’ love it.”
“Grab a beanbag,” Zander offered, setting the gun down by the door. “There’s some cushions over there.”
“Oh yes, I almost missed the rainbow cushions among all the vibrant décor.” Victor snarled the word vibrant like most people say vomit.
“You hush, Fancy Fangs, and grab us each a beanbag,” Zee ordered. “Apologies, our vampire is boring and only sees the world in shades of gray.”
“Oh, that’s sad,” Zander said, meaning it.
Zee’s gaze snagged on something across the large open-plan room. The pupils in his eyes swelled. “Oh, that’s... that’s a classic.” He poofed to the fireplace and picked up a rubber... dick? Because having dicks lined up on your fireplace mantle was a totally normal thing to have in your entirely pink timber cabin filled with multi-colored décor three-miles deep in the woods.
I glanced at Victor. Yup, there was his raised eyebrow of puzzled judgement.
“May I?” Zee asked.
“Sure,” Zander said. “It’s pretty much indestructible. Believe me,” he chuckled. “I’ve tried.”
Uhm. Okay.
Victor brought the three brightly colored beanbags into a circle around the fireplace. “It is as though we have entered one of Zodiac’s fever dreams.”
“This is a late-seventies Wiggly Wizard,” Zee said, gaping at the dick in awe. “There aren’t many of these left.”
I had no idea how to respond. “That’s... nice.”
He gingerly set the precious dick back down and moved on to the next. “Gasp! Look! A personal favorite of mine, the Plunder Pole.” He demonstrated by making a circle with his finger and thumb and highlighting what the plunder pole was for, then moved on to a smaller example. “The Teeny Bop. And this beauty...” He sighed, and ran his fingers down a huge, veined rubber dick. The biggest on display. “We are in the presence of greatness. If I’m not mistaken, and I know my dicks, this is a Vibranator, named as such because it does not stop.” He pressed his hands to his heart. “You, Zander... sir, are a man of exquisite taste.”
“Oh, thank you. You’re too kind. It’s so nice to have people visit who appreciate dicks.”
So . . . uhm . . . I guess he wasn’t wrong.
Zander gave a small excited giggle and placed both hands on his crossed knees. “Well, my new friends, who died?”
I blinked, still getting over the sight of Zee stroking another man’s collection of dildos. “Uh...” A quick cough, and I was mostly back in the room. “A pack member. Cameron.”
“That vicious asshole?” Zander shivered. “Good.”
“You didn’t get along?”
“He was the main reason they exiled me out here, although I don’t mind... much. I like it here. They don’t mess with me and I don’t mess with them. Did they tell you what they said to me? They said I was too different, too... flouncy to be in the pack. Cameron spearheaded the whole petition to remove me.”
“Bastards,” Zee growled, waving the antique dildo with feeling. “Did anyone wonder if maybe Cameron deserved it?”
“Almost everyone we spoke to said he was a good person,” Victor replied, sinking deeper into the beanbag. “Except you, Zander.”
“Of course they did.” Zander tossed his head. “They’re all the same. Wait... you don’t think I killed him? With these nails?” He showed Zee his perfectly manicured nail art. “It takes hours to get them just right.”
“Oof. Those tiny rainbows are a work of fucking art. I am so jealous right now. Can I come live with you? These guys suck.”
“Zee’s joking,” I added, after Zander’s eyes widened.
“ He sucks.” Zee grabbed and pointed the Wiggly Wizard at Victor.
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Zander purred.
Victor sank another inch into the beanbag. “This is unsettling.”
“That proves it. There’s no way Zander could murder Cameron then hotfoot it back here and paint his fabulous nails in the limited time he had. And had they already been painted at the time of the murdering, they’d be chipped and ruined.”
It did seem unlikely that Zander was the murderer. It was more likely the pack pointed the finger because he was different. We all knew how that felt.
“I’m sorry we suspected you, Zander. We have to follow up on what we’re told. But if you ever travel south and need somewhere to stay, you should come visit the SOS Hotel,” I offered. “I think you’d like it.”
Zee slammed the dildo back down among its sentinel friends. “Oh my Gareth, yes.”
“You have a hotel?” Zander asked.
“For Lost Ones like us, yes, and it’s rated five stars on Hotels4U.”
Because Zee had rated it five stars... multiple times.
Zander grabbed the pitcher of lemonade on the coffee table and poured us all glasses. “Maybe I should get out more? Sometimes it’s just me and the dicks, you know? And they don’t really talk back.”
“I’d be more alarmed if they did,” Victor muttered.
“You’d love San Francisco,” Zee gushed. “Parts of it. Eh, maybe not Demontown? We’d have to ease you in slow to that experience.”
“Aright, let us refrain from getting ahead of ourselves,” Victor’s voice of reason interrupted. He’d sunk so far down in the beanbag it had molded to his body. “We still have a murder to solve.”
“You should look at Duke.” Zander lowered himself into his beanbag. “He’s the beta, but he’s got anger issues. You hear any woodland creatures on your way over? No, because he eats ’em. The little guys... rabbits, squirrels, you know?”
Zee grimaced. “So that’s why it’s so quiet outside.”
“Yeah, Duke?” Zander pulled a face and tapped his head. “Not right up here if you ask me. He probably wants Galbraith’s top spot. I bet he’s doin’ all this to make the alpha look bad.”
Duke had been frosty with us, but no more so than the others. Perhaps a closer chat with Galbraith about the beta might prove useful, but doing so without the pack thinking we were about to accuse a high-ranking member would be tricky. In fact, all of this was proving more difficult than merely finding tracks in the woods and following them to the killer’s pink cabin.
“What do we do now?” Zee asked. “Look at Duke?”
“Not yet. Now...” Victor began. “Or rather, after I’ve extracted myself from this remarkably comfortable bag filled with polystyrene beads, we return to the motel and examine the victim’s body.”
“Don’t you guys think it’s weird they asked you to figure this all out?” Zander asked. “No offense, but why you three?”
“I volunteered us.”
“You volunteered to intervene in a werewolf pack’s murder mystery?” Zander coughed a laugh. “You guys must be crazy.”
Smiling as I sipped my lemonade, I said, “Not crazy, just tougher than we look.”
A rumbling growl—like distant thunder—sounded outside the cabin. I glanced at Zander but he didn’t seem concerned, just carried on pouring lemonade. “Ignore it. They come over and sniff around sometimes.”
Zee and Victor shared a glance. Victor somehow gracefully extracted himself from the beanbag’s clutches. Unlike me. I had to tip myself out of the bag, onto my knees, and accept Zee’s hand to get back to my feet.
The growls rumbled on, gradually circling the outside the cabin. When whoever it was reached the porch, claws clicked on timber and the growls bubbled louder. Were Zander’s visitors usually this aggressive sounding?
Again, Zander didn’t seem concerned. He lowered himself into his beanbag with his glass of lemonade. “So, are there many werewolves in the city?”
More growls boiled.
Zee’s tail twitched. “That pupper does not sound friendly.”
Victor tilted his head, his sharp gaze narrowing. “Something is wrong. Zander, are you certain this visitor is normal?”
“It’s fine.” Zander flapped a hand. “Don’t let them intimidate you or they’ll just keep at it. Whoever it is will get bored and wander off.”
The sound of plodding footfalls and clicking claws stopped.
“Did they leave?” I whispered. Zee frowned, but Victor had zeroed in on a spot against the far wall. His predator senses had locked on. The werewolf had definitely not gone.
Only the sound of the crackling fire filled the cabin. That and my thudding heart.
A heavy thump sounded on the roof.
“Huh.” Zander slowly set his lemonade to one side. “They don’t usually climb up there.” Shoving out of his beanbag, he strode to the door and picked up the shotgun. “Don’t worry, ol’ Betsy usually frightens ’em off.”
I assumed Betsy was the gun.
“Wait—” Victor warned, but Zander had already yanked open the door. He stood on the porch and loaded the shotgun with a dramatic cha-chunk pump action. Suddenly an enormous furry blur shot from one side, and in a blink, Zander was gone. He didn’t even have a chance to pull the trigger.
“Stay inside!” Victor vanished next, dashing out the open door.
A growl rumbled so deep it shook the cabin. The shotgun blasted.
“Wait here? What are we, demon bait?” Zee’s wings popped out, his tail lashed, claws glinting. He grinned and made his eyebrows jump. “Wanna go housebreak this puppy?”
I fluttered my lashes, interlaced my fingers, and cracked my knuckles. The sweet taste of rising violence roused the beast within. “It’s been a while, but sure.”
Sparks danced in Zee’s purple eyes. “This bad dog is about to realize he fucked with the top of the foodchain.”