Grimshaw stood where he was, scanning the edge between human lights and wild-country dark and listening for movement, whispers. Anything. Everything. He hadn’t heard any screams from the teenage boys, no sound of a car crashing as they tried to escape. Then again, the Elders were fast when they attacked.
Smoke drifted toward him. He braced, hoping it was Ilya and knowing he had no way to counter an attack from anything in that form.
Ilya shifted to his human form and stepped into the light. “Do you have any evidence bags in your vehicle?”
“Sure,” Grimshaw said, turning toward his cruiser. “I keep a few for—”
“Something that can hold wet evidence?”
He stopped. Turned back to study the vampire. “How wet?”
Ilya didn’t answer.
Crap. “I keep a body bag with my crime scene kit. We can use that, but I’ll have to help you carry it.”
Ilya hesitated. Then he nodded. “Very well. You should bring that big flashlight you usually keep in your car.”
“For illumination or protection?”
Ilya didn’t answer.
The evening was going pear-shaped in a hurry.
Grimshaw retrieved the flashlight and body bag. After a moment’s thought, he grabbed the small camera he also kept in the car. It wasn’t as good as the cameras used by the Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol, but whatever photos he could get of the evidence in situ tonight would have to do. He didn’t need Ilya to tell him that if he waited for CIU, there wouldn’t be anything for any of them to photograph in the morning.
He slipped the camera strap over his head, tucked the body bag under one arm, gave Ilya the flashlight, and said, “Lead the way.”
They were close to the trees but still on clear ground. In daylight, they would be in sight of anyone looking out a window on that side of the main house. Grimshaw gave thanks that all the children who had come to The Jumble tonight had been spared whatever he was about to face.
He smelled blood.
Ilya’s hand was steady, but Grimshaw still took in the scene in flashes.
A bottle of bleach on the ground. A decorative hollow gourd lying next to an arm that had been severed at the elbow. And a lump of something black and feathered.
“I need to take some pictures,” Grimshaw said quietly, setting the body bag near his feet. He pointed to the bleach and then aimed the camera. “Lighting isn’t the best, but I doubt we’ll have another chance.”
He took several shots of each piece of the tableau. Even with the light shining on it, he couldn’t make sense of the lump of feathers—and he wasn’t eager to find out what might be underneath it.
Tucking the camera between his shirt and jacket, Grimshaw opened the body bag to transport the evidence.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
A sound like a rattlesnake’s tail, but worse. Somehow worse. And nearby.
Grimshaw looked at Ilya and tipped his head toward the building. The Sanguinati had a chance of getting away from whatever was out there, and all of Sproing’s residents needed a terra indigene leader who had a tolerance for humans.
“Chief Grimshaw,” Ilya said in a normal tone of voice, “now that we have photographed the items, the next step in investigating is to transport the evidence to the police station for analysis. Is that not true?”
“That is true,” Grimshaw agreed, understanding that he was explaining their actions to whatever watched them. “We will use these items to identify the person who played a cruel trick on the Crowgard tonight. Then the person can be properly charged and arrested for a crime.”
“Just like in the cop and crime shows that Victoria, Aggie, Jozi, and Eddie enjoy watching.”
“Yeah, like that.”
Ilya picked up the unopened bottle of bleach and placed it at one end of the body bag. The severed arm and gourd were placed in the middle. Wishing he’d brought gloves and accepting that his clothes were going to get soiled with something, Grimshaw lifted the bundle of soggy feathers.
Something inside the bundle of feathers. Something hard and round, but this wasn’t the time or place to investigate.
Stuffing the bundle into the bottom end, he zipped up the bag. Keeping tension on the ends of the bag, he and Ilya lifted it, trying to prevent everything from sliding into the middle and destroying any evidence he might be able to glean once he got back to the station.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Just his imagination, or was there anger in that sound?
Every step was taken with the expectation of an attack. Even after they reached his cruiser and placed the evidence in the trunk, Grimshaw felt his skin crawl. The attack on this prankster had been so fierce and so fast—and so silent. Except for that rattling sound coming out of the dark.
“You can’t go inside like that,” Ilya said, looking at Grimshaw’s bloody hands and the cuffs of his shirt and jacket. “Natasha is bringing out some towels and water.”
He looked at his bloody hands. Gods above and below, what was in that bundle? “Thanks. Can you talk to Aggie and Jozi?”
Ilya nodded. “With Victoria. Do you want Julian Farrow to accompany you to the station?”
He did, but Julian wasn’t a cop anymore, and he needed someone at The Jumble who would sound the alarm if there was more trouble. “No need. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
When Natasha stepped outside, they walked up to meet her. Grimshaw cleaned up as best he could.
“I’ll escort Victoria’s guests to their cabins,” Ilya said.
“We will escort Victoria’s guests.” Natasha smiled, showing a hint of fang that no man could mistake for anything but a spousal warning.
Ilya didn’t look happy, but he said, “Yes. We will escort the guests.”
“Will you be okay returning to Silence Lodge?” Grimshaw asked. “You don’t know what’s out there.”
“I’ll find out what I can from the Crows before we leave,” Ilya replied.
Meaning the Sanguinati really didn’t know what was out there, and that wasn’t good. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
He drove slowly, scanning the land on either side of the gravel access road. He didn’t expect to see any of the terra indigene, but he breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t find a car that had been flipped or crushed or bent around a tree. He didn’t see any debris or body parts. Maybe those idiot teenage boys had gotten away.
As he turned onto Lake Street and headed north toward Sproing, he also didn’t see Aiden. Apparently Fire had completed his stint of directing traffic.
Grimshaw pulled into his parking space in front of the station. A month ago, there hadn’t been any officially reserved parking spaces on Main Street. People took any available spot. But after he’d returned from answering a call one afternoon and had trouble finding a parking space near the station, someone who wasn’t him or the Sanguinati had decided that the three spaces in front of the station were now reserved for police vehicles and Ilya’s black luxury sedan and had painted
It had taken only a couple of cars having BAD HUMAN! clawed into the hoods to teach the residents of Sproing the value of letting the police have those spaces.
“Assess, then decide,” he said quietly. It wasn’t that late in the evening, and he couldn’t leave the evidence in his trunk overnight. Best get on with it, then, as long as things had stayed quiet in the village.
He went into the station and nodded to Osgood, who was on the phone.