As he walked into the patrol squad room he slipped his keys into his pocket. He headed toward the smaller room where the Special Case team was housed, only to be stopped by his boss.
"MacMillan. In my office." Captain Scott beckoned him with the waggle of two fingers.
"Whatcha do this time?" one of the uniforms muttered.
Dante shrugged and changed direction. He'd worked with Captain Scott for five years now, from the time he'd made detective. When Scott had volunteered to have the newly minted Special Case squad housed under him, he'd pushed for Dante to join the team. Now, as Dante walked into the captain's office, Scott motioned for him to close the door.
"Have a seat," the older man said as he sat down in his swivel chair.
Dante dropped into one of the god-awful straight-backed chairs in front of his boss's desk and clasped his hands over his stomach. "What's up?"
"You just come from the grocery store?"
Dante nodded. "Not much to report. Vic wasn't turned, and while it looks like it was the werewolf who attacked him and not the vamp, we won't know until the hospital files its final report with the pret council."
Captain Scott leaned back, the resulting squeaking an ominous indication of the rickety chair's ability to hold up his weight. He appeared to be considering something, working it over in his mind. Dante had seen him do this countless times before, and it usually meant whatever his captain was debating on telling him was nothing good. Finally Scott asked, "You hear about the pret attacks up in District Four?"
"No." Dante frowned. "What about 'em?"
"I just got word this morning. We've got some freak changing humans into werewolves." Scott shook his head and drilled the tip of one stubby finger onto his desk. "Like it's not bad enough that in another four months the Moore-Creasy-Devon comet is going to open a rift between dimensions and we're going to be hit with another influx of these damned EDs." His eyes held poorly disguised fear that Dante had seen in the general populace. No one was immune from being taken over by a preternatural when they came through the rift in December. Human scientists had yet to find a way to keep the rift from happening to begin with. They had no clue how to stop alien beings from squatting in their fellow men and women.
It was a bit unsettling to think you could be going about your business and then-wham!-you're no longer in control of your own body, rather, you had to share it with someone else, someone whose personalitkete persoy gets melded with yours.
All the prets he knew insisted that the soul or spirit, whatever you wanted to call it, of the human remained intact. The fact that the squatter had its host's memories seemed to support that, but Dante wasn't so sure. How could there possibly be room for more than one consciousness without the brain going into overload? And since there didn't seem to be a prevalent number of schizophrenic prets running around …
And what happened if he and Tori got involved and then he got taken over by a pret who hated her kind? What then? Would he have loved her only to lose her, as he feared?
He shook himself free from the anxiety that tickled his gut. Instead of worrying about something that might never happen, he should focus on his job. "What do you want me to do?" Dante asked.
Scott leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. "Keep your eyes and ears open. Nobody on the council seems to know anything about this, but I'd wager a month's salary they have an idea who's behind it. They either don't care or … "
"Or?"
Scott's eyebrows climbed, furrowing his brow. "They support it."
Dante straightened out of his slouch. "I … No, I don't like to think they'd do that, sir."
"Well, who knows about them, right? They have their own agenda." Scott shook his head. "I'd like to think they wouldn't try to cover something up, but … "
"How many attacks have there been?" Dante asked. He'd have to remember to ask Tori what she knew about these attacks. Surely she'd been talking with the werewolf liaison of that quadrant. She might have more information than the council was releasing to its human counterparts.
"There was one each on Sunday and Monday, then again one on Thursday and one on Friday." Scott lifted a hand and scratched his head. "Four goddamned victims with just enough forensic evidence to get us nowhere. So far we've managed to keep a lid on it, but it's only a matter of time before it gets out."
"Shouldn't we warn people?"
"And tell them what? ‘Be on the lookout for a rogue werewolf'?" He shook his head. "It won't do us any good to have people panicking. We'd be right back to the days before the Preternatural Protection Act was enacted. Sons murdering their fathers, neighbors at each other's throats … " He swiveled his chair to look out the window. "Just keep your ear to the ground and let me know what you hear about these werewolf incidents."
Dante knew a dismissal when he heard one. "Will do." He pushed to his feet and left the captain's office. Once at his desk, he booted up his computer and sat back in his chair. He had his report typed up within fifteen minutes. He printed it off and added it to his folder of pending reports, intending to file it with the clerk later.
His cell buzzed. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and glanced at the display. It was one of the Special Case detectives from District Four. Dante pressed the phone icon on the touch screen and put the device to his ear. "Hey, Manny," he greeted.
"Dante," Manuel Rivera responded. "I hear you had some werewolf trouble this morning."
"Good news travels fast." Dante put one hand on the back of his neck and rubbed the tense muscles there.
"Yeah. In some ways Scottsdale's still a small town. So?" The other detective's voice held hope.
Dante felt for the guy. Four werewolf attacks in a little under a week meant he was under the gun to produce results. Having the suspect handed to him would be a godsend. "I didn't talk to the guy, Manny. Sorry." Dante heard Rivera's sigh and added, "But I can check with our werewolf liaison and see what she thinks.e what sinks.e He'd have to get over this lust thing he had going on for Tori. He had to keep things strictly professional between them so he could keep his emotional balance. For the time being, at least.
"Hey, man, I'd appreciate that. We got nothing so far. No hair. Or fur as the case may be," Manny added, his voice deeper with sarcasm that quickly turned to frustration. "No fiber, no usable DNA, no nothing."
Dante frowned. "If he's biting people, how the hell can you not have DNA from his saliva?"
"Bastard washes the wounds with bleach. Whatever DNA's still present gets degraded, and subsequent tests are inconclusive." Rivera muttered a long string of expletives in Spanish, then said, "He's a clever mutt, I'll give him that."
"How are the victims connected?" Dante remembered the case he'd first met Tori on, where a group of vampires killed other vamps. At first, there had seemed to be no affiliation other than the obvious, but then deeper connections had surfaced.
"None that we can tell. First one is a twentysomething med student, the second one is a bricklayer, third one's a stay at home mom, and this last one … " He sighed. "He's a councilman from ward six."
Dante let out a low whistle. There'd be hell to pay on that one. And a local council seat to fill. Prets weren't allowed to serve in human governments at any level. Equal but separate was the motto of the day. "Well, I can see where a wolf might have thought he could use the councilman, but, still … He had to know as well as anyone else that the man would lose his seat."
"You'd think so." Manny sighed again. "Thanks anyway, amigo. Keep the faith," he said with his usual farewell.
"You, too." Dante ended the call. He slid his phone back into his jacket pocket and pondered what Rivera had said. At first blush it seemed the attacks by the werewolf were random. Maybe it was a pret who'd snapped and couldn't keep his fangs to himself. Maybe it went deeper than that. At the very least, Tori would have an idea if their guy from this morning's attack was involved. He pulled out his phone again and speed-dialed her.
"Hello." Her dulcet tones pulsed through him all the way to his toes, pausing to dance along his cock for much longer than was appropriate at work.
"It's Dante." His throat closed up. He cleared it and tried again. "Ah, it's Dante."
"What's up?" The rhythm of her voice didn't change, so he had no idea what her mood was. She seemed glad to hear from him, but considering the schizoid way he'd acted at the crime scene, he couldn't be sure.
"I just got a call from Rivera in District Four. He asked me about our guy from this morning. He's wondering if maybe he's the same one who's attacking people up north."
"I don't think so."
Dante heard voices in the background, then some snarling. What the hell? "Where are you?" he asked.
"At council headquarters, waiting my turn to file my report." She lowered her voice. "They're not too happy with the liaison from the north quadrant. They expect instant results and it's impossible in this case without viable forensic evidence. I feel sorry for him."
"So … he's the one who's snarling?"
"No, the snarlers are a couple of werecats being fined for drunken and disorderly conduct. They're not too happy, either."