"I trusted you to set the tone last night, Elena."
Ouch. That hurt. More than I liked to admit, so I hid it in my usual way.
"Then that was your mistake," I snapped. "I didn't ask for your trust. Look what happened with Carter. You trusted me with that, didn't you? Once burned…"
"As far as I'm concerned, your only mistake with Carter was not contacting me before you acted. I know it has more meaning for you, but that's exactly why you're supposed to contact me, so I give the order. I take the responsibility for the decision. For the death. I know you-"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Of course not."
We walked in silence. I felt the words jammed up in my throat, desperate for release, for the chance to talk about what I'd done and what I'd felt. As I walked, a smell hit me and, with it, the words dissolved.
"Do you smell that?" I asked.
Jeremy sighed. "Elena. I wish you would-"
"There. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt, but"-my nose twitched, picking up the smell in the breeze-"that scent. Do you smell it?"
Jeremy's nostrils flared. He sniffed the breeze impatiently as if he didn't expect to find anything. Then he blinked. That smallest, most benign reaction was enough. He'd smelled it, too. Blood. Human blood.
Trespass
I tracked the scent of blood to the east fence line. As we got closer, something else overpowered the smell of blood. Something worse. Decomposing flesh.
We came to a low wooden bridge that crossed a stream. Once on the other side, I stopped. The smell was gone. I sniffed the east wind again. There were traces of rot in the air, but the overwhelming stench had vanished. I turned and looked down at the stream. Something pale protruded from under the bridge. It was a bare foot, bloated, gray toes pointing at the sky. I jogged down the incline and waded into the stream. Jeremy leaned over the bridge, saw the foot, then pulled back and waited for me to investigate.
Grabbing the side of the bridge, I knelt in the icy water of the stream, drenching my jeans from ankle to knee. The bare foot was attached to a slender calf. The stench was overwhelming. As I switched to breathing through my mouth, my stomach lurched. Now I could taste the rot as well as smell it. I went back to breathing through my nose. The calf led to a knee, then fell away into shredded skin and muscle with bone shining through, leaving the femur looking like a big ham bone gnawed by a dog with more appetite for destruction than dinner. The other thigh was a maggot-infested stump, the bone snapped by powerful jaws. When I peered under the bridge, I saw the rest of the second leg, or pieces of it, strewn around, like someone shaking the last bits of garbage from the bag. Above the thighs, the torso was an indistinguishable mass of mangled flesh. If the arms were still attached, I didn't see them. Likely they were some of the bits scattered farther back. The head was twisted backward, the neck almost bitten through. I didn't want to look at the face. It's easier if you don't see the face, if you can dismiss a rotting corpse as a prop from a B horror movie. Still, easier isn't always better. This wasn't a movie prop and she didn't deserve to be dismissed as one. I assumed it was a she because of the size and slenderness but, as I shifted the head, I realized my mistake. It was a young man, little more than a boy. His eyes were wide, crusted with dirt, as dull as scuffed marbles. Otherwise, his face was unmarred: smooth-skinned, well fed, and very, very young.
It was another werewolf kill. Even if I couldn't smell the mutt through the rot and the blood, I knew it by the rough tearing of the throat, the gaping chew marks on the torso. The mutt had brought the body here. To Stonehaven. He hadn't killed the boy here. There was no sign of blood, but the caked dirt indicated he'd been buried and dug up. Last night, while we were ransacking the mutt's apartment, he'd been taking the body to Stonehaven, where we would find it. The insult sent tremors of fury through me.
"We'll have to dispose of it," Jeremy said. "Leave it for now. We'll go back to the house-"
A crash in the bushes stopped him short. I yanked my head from under the bridge. Someone was trampling through the undergrowth like a bull rhino. Humans. I quickly bent, rinsed my hands in the stream and scrambled up the bank. I was barely at the top when two men in bright orange hunting vests burst from the forest.
"This is private property," Jeremy said, his quiet voice cutting through the silence of the clearing.
The two men jumped and spun around. Jeremy stayed on the bridge and reached one hand behind his back, pulling me to him.
"I said, this is private property," he repeated.
One man, a stout kid in his late teens, stepped forward. "Yeah, then what are you doing here, buddy?"
The older man grabbed the kid's elbow and pulled him back. "Excuse my son's manners, sir. I'm assuming you're…" He trailed off, searching for a name and coming up blank.
"I own the property, yes," Jeremy said, voice still soft.
A man and a woman came up behind the two, nearly bowling them over. They stopped short and looked at us as if seeing apparitions. The older man whispered something to them, then turned back to Jeremy and cleared his throat.
"Yes, sir. I understand you own this land, but you see, we've got ourselves a bit of a situation. I'm sure you heard about that girl that got killed a few days ago. Well, it's dogs, sir. Wild dogs. Big ones. Two of our boys from town saw them last night. Then we got a call this morning, saying something had been spotted on the far side of the woods out here around midnight."
"So you're conducting a search."
The man straightened. "Right, sir. So, if you don't mind-"
"I do mind."
The man blinked. "Yes, but you see, we've got to check things out and-"
"Did you stop at the house to ask permission?"
"No, but-"
"Did you phone the house to ask permission?"
"No, but-"
The man's voice had gone up an octave and the boy behind him was fidgeting and mumbling. Jeremy continued in the same unruffled tone.
"Then I'd suggest you go back the way you came and wait for me at the house. If you want to search these woods, you need permission. Under the circumstances, I certainly don't mind granting that permission, but I don't want to worry about running into armed men when I'm taking a walk on my own property."
"We're looking for wild dogs," the woman said. "Not people."
"In the excitement of the hunt, any mistake is possible. Since this is my land, I choose not to take that chance. I use these woods. My family and my guests use these woods. That's why I don't allow hunters up here. Now, if you'll go around to the house, I'll finish my walk and meet you there. I can provide you with maps of the property and warn my guests to stay out of the forest while you're here. Does that sound reasonable?"
The couple had joined the boy in his grumbling, but the older man seemed to be considering it, weighing inconvenience with propriety. Just as he appeared ready to relent, a voice rang out from behind them.
"What the hell is going on here?!"
Clay barreled out from the forest. I winced and thought I saw Jeremy do the same, although it might have been a trick of the sunlight through the trees. Clay stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked from the search party to us and back again.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he said, stepping up to the group of searchers.
"They're looking for wild dogs," Jeremy said softly.
Clay's hands clenched at his sides. The heat of his fury scorched all the way across the clearing. The other day when we'd heard the hunters on the property, Clay had been furious. His territory had been invaded. Yet he'd been able to control it because he hadn't seen the trespassers, had been forbidden to get close enough to them to see them and smell them and react as his instincts demanded. Even if he'd come upon them, he would have had enough advance warning to get his temper under control. This was different. He'd come looking for us and hadn't smelled them until it was too late to prepare. The trespassers were no longer unseen guns firing in the dark, but actual humans, standing right in front of him, live targets for his rage.