felt nothing more than a sexual buzz. He rubbed his chest, but the ache wasn't one he could touch.
The scents were rich here, away from the nose-clogging odors of the city. The green smells of growing things mingled in a pattern too complex to easily yield its separate notes, but he was aware of creosote, cypress and sumac, wild mustard and cholla. The lake, invisible from where he stood, was a rich, damp presence blending water, fish, a whiff of decay. He smelled dust and people, one or more of whom gave off the faint, sour tang of fear.
The ground was hard and dry beneath his feet. A lumpy three-quarter moon squatted near the horizon, peering at them through the dark lace of leaves in the trees to his right. He felt its pull in his blood, a song without words or notes: one long, slow pulse timed to a rhythm those around him would never hear.
He couldn't see the body. Too many people were in the way. But he smelled blood, sweet and sharp. And waste, the body's involuntary surrender to the insult of sudden death.
Lily stopped in front of him, her pretty black eyes flat and official, but the pulse in her throat throbbing. “Thank you for coming right away."
"I want the killing stopped, too."
She nodded and turned. "This way."
The smell of blood grew heavier as he followed. A couple of the people standing near the body shifted, and he saw. Shock stopped him in his tracks.
"What is it?"
His voice came out hoarse. "You didn't tell me it was a woman."
Lily's frown mixed concern with puzzlement. "Does it matter so much?"
"It matters." He wasn't over the shock yet, but the rage gathering inside would clear it away soon enough. His hands clenched.
"Why?" she asked sharply. "I know lupi are patriarchal, but use your head. Carlos Fuentes didn't have any more of a chance than this woman did. Not against a lupus."
"Forget the PC talk. You don't understand. Women... women conceive. They carry babies—our babies, human babies. We don't hurt women. Ever." The rage was rising, threatening his control. He clenched his hands tightly, throttling back the need to howl, to seek and find the one who had done this. The need to Change.
Slowly his fists relaxed, and with the release of clenched muscles some of the need drained away. Not now. This wasn't the time or the place, but that time would come. He would make sure of it. "Whoever did this is a rogue," he said, cold and certain. "And subject to our laws as well as yours."
She closed her hand around his arm as if to hold him back. "The law he'll answer to is the one I'm sworn to uphold. Not some weird trial by combat."
He shook her off and moved to kneel by the body.
It had been a clean kill, at least. The dead eyes stared up, sightless and shocked, but the woman's face itself was intact, if blood-spattered. Rule picked up one of the cold hands and cradled it gently in his, silently apologizing for what one of his kind had done, promising retribution and asking permission for what he must do. Then he bent and sniffed the gaping wound where her throat had been.
This was why Lily had asked him to come, after all. The scent would be fresh.
The first whiff told the tale, but he took his time, wanting to leave no doubt. Then, gently, he laid the dead hand back on the ground and stood.
Lily was watching. "You know. This time you could tell who it was."
He jerked his head to the left. "Walk apart with me so I can tell you."
Her eyebrows went up. After a moment, she nodded. Together they moved farther up the trail the dead woman had taken—fleeing, at the last, from one she couldn't escape.
He stopped by a scrappy little oak, its leaves whispering to each other in the breeze. They'd left the pool of light from the police spots behind. Here it was dark, and closer to the lake. That strong, clean scent cleared some of the other smells from his senses.
Lily stood close enough for her scent to fill him, too. Not close enough to touch. "What did you learn? Who was it?"
"Leidolf."
"Is that a first name or a surname?"
"It's a clan." The rage was still there, simmering beneath
the surface. Waiting. "It wasn't one of the Nokolai who did this."
"You can tell by the scent?"
"Just as you could tell an Englishman from a Hawaiian by the way he looks."
She exhaled once, sharply. "So what does this mean? I don't know how to sort one lupus from another by clan. I didn't know there were any other clans around here."
"There aren't, not officially. But lupi travel on business or for pleasure the same as everyone else. It's customary for clans to offer hospitality when asked. My clan may be hosting the one who did this right now." He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "We aren't that far from Clanhome, as the crow flies—or the wolf runs. He could easily have cut across the hills after he killed."
"That occurred to me. Rule." She gripped his arm. "You are not going to punish him yourself. If you want your people to be treated the same as everyone else, you have to be subject to the same laws. Justice from the courts, not private vengeance."
"Your courts have never given us justice. And this ..." He turned away, thrusting his hand through his hair. "I thought this was political, and so subject to your laws. Now ... it may be a clan matter."
"What do you mean?"
"Leidolf may be moving against Nokolai." There was so much he couldn't tell her. "It happens. Clans have warred in the past."
"Killing random humans is a mighty roundabout way for one lupus clan to declare war on another."
"My father supports the Species Citizenship Bill." His smile was grim. "Do you think only humans oppose full citizenship for lupi? There are those among my people, too, who hate the idea. Citizenship means Social Security numbers and all those computers keeping track of us. It means limits, changes to some of our customs. They don't want to be that visible—or that subject to human law."
"Whoever did this is going to end up very visible. I'll see to that." Anger boiled up suddenly and she paced in front of him, taking short, jerky steps. "She had two sons. I don't know their names yet, but one is in the Navy. The other has a wife
and child. Once I've learned who they are, where they live, I'll have to tell them their mother is dead because someone had a political point to make."
He put a hand on her shoulder. She was all but vibrating with anger. "Killing has always been a political tactic for some. Why do you work homicide when it hurts you this much?"
She shrugged him off. "I don't know what you mean. I'm a cop. It's what I always wanted to do."
"It hurts you to see life wasted." Again he asked, speaking softly, "Why homicide?"
"Because murder is the worst! It doesn't kill just once. It throws out waves of destruction that poison so many lives."
"This happened to you. Someone you loved was murdered."
"My friend. My best friend. Sara Chen."
He ached. It took all his control to keep from reaching for her, holding her. But she wouldn't want that, not here and now. "How old were you?"
"Seven. A man grabbed her on the way home from school one day. I saw him snatch her. They found her body a week later. They arrested him a week after that." She swallowed. "I followed it in the papers. My parents didn't like that—they thought I was hurting myself, that I was obsessed and should let it go. I couldn't."
"No. I can see that. What happened?"
"He never went to trial. The police were sloppy. They didn't secure the evidence properly. Seven months later, he killed again. That time, the cops did it right. He didn't get away with it."
She'd given him a piece of herself, something important wrenched up from deep inside where it still hurt. He lifted a hand and rubbed his knuckles along her cheek slowly, thanking her. "This woman isn't dead because you were sloppy, Lily. You know that."