I sat up and Jodi’s gaze followed me intently. I was ravenous when I shifted. If he was shifting several times a night, or if his shifting wasn’t voluntary, but at the whim of his own body, he’d need huge amounts of protein, massive amounts of food. And humans were the biggest, most available, easiest-to-catch-and-kill food supply on the planet. That made perfect sense. But I couldn’t say that to Jodi. I said, “I think maybe he’s not just rogue, but sick. I think the meat he’s eating is helping him to control his condition.”

“I didn’t think vamps could get sick. I thought that was the purpose of drinking blood for eternity—immortality and all that crap.” Her tone was derisive. Jodi might be Katie’s liaison at NOPD, but Jodi didn’t like vamps. Not at all.

“Maybe it’s rare.” I watched her take that in and mull it over. I waited another beat and said, “I need to see the crime scene.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Then I’ll call Leo Pellissier. I figure he can pull strings and get me in.”

“No.” She shook her head and blushed slightly, startled. “I need you to wait on that.”

I had just pushed a button. Leo and Jodi? Nah, not with her antipathy to vamps. Something else. So I pushed. “Yes. You can make it happen. It’s the crime scene on your say-so or Leo.” When she hesitated, I said, “I’ve hunted rogues before. I need to see the scene so I can tell if it looks like anything from past kill sites.”

Beast rumbled deep inside, Never hunted liver-eater. Which was true, but not something I was ready to contribute to the conversation. More gently, I added to Jodi, “Leo can make it happen if you won’t. But I’d rather work with you, not him.”

“You’re pretty chummy with Leo. He makes sure I call him Mr. Pellissier.”

“I’m sure he’d like me to be polite too.”

Suddenly Jodi smiled, a wry pull of lips. “You yank his chain like you yank ours?”

I didn’t like being transparent, but I did like the smile, so I answered honestly. “More.”

Jodi chuckled under her breath and stood. “My ass’ll be in the grinder if it gets out you were on a crime scene. Try not to screw with the evidence or bring trace in. And you step where I say and not one step farther.”

“Thanks,” I said, standing slowly, trying for humble and appreciative. I was pretty sure it worked because Jodi led me to the crime-scene van and handed me paper and plastic PPEs. It turned out I needed all the personal protective equipment. The house was a bloodbath. Another trite term. But the only one that fit.

CHAPTER 21

The Lord of the Manor

I stood just inside the front door, the window where the rogue entered to my left. A trail of blood splatters marked the wall from the window for six feet, evidence that he’d wounded himself badly on the glass. It was the kind of splatter arterial blood makes, pulsing sprays, arcs that dribbled down the wall. Ten feet inside the door was a blood-drenched leather recliner where a man had once sat. His body had molded the chair to his form; now blood pooled in the depression. It still looked damp, tacky to the touch. There were two slippers on the floor under the foot-rest, which was up, the back of the chair pushed nearly flat, facing the TV.

The man, or what was left of him, was in several pieces. His torso, the largest chunk, was beside the chair, as if he had been pulled to the floor after the kill and feasted upon. The abdomen was gone, all the way to the spine, the pelvic bones exposed. The chest cavity was nearly as clean, ribs ripped up and out of the way, internal organs missing.I felt gorge rise, a sick reaction to the butchery. I had slaughtered rogue vamps. I had taken down prey with Beast, so blood and butchery weren’t foreign. However, even with that experience, this level of wanton carnage was hard to take.

Beast rose to the surface, taking me over with shocking swiftness. Holding me down, seeing through my eyes, she studied the kill from a predator’s viewpoint. She focused intently on the scene. She parted my lips slightly, so she could pull in the scents, memorizing, breaking them down into their individual protein structures. Learning. Blood, feces, urine, all human. Blood from the liver-eater, rank and foul, old death and rot. And blood from something else. From what the rogue became in the process of taking on the form of the male victim. Some other scent, nearly familiar, tantalizing. Totally free from rot.

It looked like the liver-eater had taken the body apart by brute force, not the way hungry predators ate in the wild. In nature, a predator ate the soft tissue first: internal organs, fat, large muscle mass of buttocks and thighs. Later, feasting down to connective tissue. Finally, tearing at tendons and cartilage, separating limbs one by one.

Hard to tear ribs loose. Usually eat upward from abdomen, then tear ribs apart to gnaw later, or give to cubs to train to eat meat.

We stared. The head was against the wall to the hallway. He still had a thatch of short red hair on his scalp. His face had been eaten away, along with tongue and eyes. The empty cavity of the brain was visible through the sockets, yet the jaw was still attached. I understood from Beast that big cats got at the brain later too. After the soft tissue and jaw were long gone.

I spotted a leg and an arm under the kitchen table, well gnawed. The left leg was in the hallway. Well, two left legs were in the hallway, along with other parts of victim number two. I remembered the thumps I had heard from the house while in raptor form. The sounds made when a body was being pulled apart, tossed around, and consumed?

I became aware of Jodi watching me. I blinked Beast back down and closed my mouth, hoping I hadn’t slurped air across the roof of my mouth like Beast did. I schooled my face into disgust. “This is the . . .” I let my words trail off as if shocked. Beast found that amusing. “This looks like a bunch of animals got to them.”

“Yeah,” Jodi said shortly. “That’s what we thought.”

“Are you bringing in dogs?” I asked. I was curious how trained scent-tracking dogs might react to the smells.

“Tomorrow. I wanted them today but they’re on a bank robbery with shooting victims.”

I nodded. “What did the psy-meter show?”

Jodi unclipped the device from her belt and switched it on, holding it to the room. The dial went wild, the needle flipping up and down, unable to settle. The clicking of the meter, so like a Geiger counter, was staccato and fast. Jodi swept the meter to me, and though it slowed, it was still a much higher psy reading than any human would give. I looked at the readout, amused. I had known it was only a matter of time before she measured me against the background psy levels of the room. “Wanting to make sure I’m not the rogue?”

“Something like that,” she said, clicking off the meter. “This place reeks of leftover magic.”

Yeah, it did. I had seen enough. I backed out of the house to the front porch, took off my PPEs and shoved them into the biohazard container. It and its bloody contents would go to the crime lab to be checked for trace, especially the paper shoes, which could have picked up important hairs or fibers. Then they would be destroyed. I hadn’t stepped in blood, but I could smell it on me, in my hair, in my clothes, and beneath it all, the rot-stink of the liver-eater. The stench roiled around in me like oily sludge.

True dark had fallen. Security lights attracted swarms of insects, neighborhood windows bathed the night with light. The neighbors were inside, behind their closed, locked doors and windows. Lot of good that does a family if a liver-eater wants in.

Bike roaring, I let my hair blow in the wind, trying to clear the stench out of my nostrils, out of my clothes. I was halfway home when I passed a grocery store just off of 90 and pulled over. I bought a stack of steaks and two six-packs of beer, ignoring the stares of the other customers. I had seen my reflection in the dark windows upon entering. I looked pretty rough, a biker chick, attitude on steroids. Outside, the groceries stored in the saddlebags, I finally strapped on my helmet and kick-started the bike. It spluttered and coughed but eventually turned over. I really had to find time to do a little bike maintenance.

Inside Katie’s freebie house, I dropped my clothes where I stood, still smelling the blood. To get it off of me, I took a long shower, standing under the hot water, letting it scald me. I was spending a lot of time in the shower. Too much. There was something almost religious about that, about the need to be cleansed. Afterward, I ate two steaks. Very very rare. With a couple of locally brewed beers. Louisiana beer was really good. I’d miss it when I left.

Near ten p.m., I dressed, tucked a few crosses into my clothes, twisted my hair into a sloppy bun, and secured it with three stakes. Not expecting trouble. But just in case. Suitably dressed, I slid my feet into the new sandals and jumped the fence to Katie’s. Jumping fences in sandals is fine, but the landings can be less than graceful. I was glad the camera was gone.

I stalked around Katie’s, checking windows and doors for security. Like most old houses in the South, it had been built for airflow, not safety. A system had been retrofitted, not that it had done much good. Last time, the rogue had come through the back door. Next time, he might pick a window on the second story. But why did the alarm not go off? Was it because the security system was switched off during business hours? Or did the liver-eater have a key? Or know how to disarm the system? Access. Like Leo had to my house. Could the liver-eater be Leo . . . ? No. Leo was at Katie’s gathering.

Knocking on the back door, holding the doorbell down, I waited for Troll. I remembered my promise to tell Jodi if I ever saw a troll. I had a feeling that nicknames didn’t count, and that she wouldn’t be amused at my whimsy. I let the buzzer go when he opened the door.

Troll looked better, had more color in his face. Someone had given him some vamp blood to help him heal this fast, and Katie wasn’t in shape to offer it. I stepped inside, drawing in the air. I detected Leo. He was here, along with Bruiser and another vamp. They had been here long enough to saturate the place with their scents.

“What’s Leo doing here?” Not that I had to ask. He had been feeding. I could smell fresh blood on the air too.