My skin ran in goose bumps, and I lowered my face toward the piece of technology. The first smell was death. The wolf growled, and it trickled out my lips.
Memphis said, “Are you all right, Marshal?”
“I’m all right; please don’t talk to me while I do this.”
The smell of plastic was sharp, almost bitter. The wolf didn’t like it. Underneath that was sweat, fear, and she did like that. Fear and sweat meant food. I pushed the thought back and concentrated. I needed more. I smelled Sherman, the scent of a man, and that he still smelled of the soap and shampoo he’d used that day. It was like peeling the layers off an onion. I think if I’d been a wolf I could have smelled all of it, and interpreted it, but my human brain was slow.
I felt my nose touch the felt piece, and thought, What animal did this? I smelled saliva, and it wasn’t the same scent as Sherman. Though my mind couldn’t interpret how it was different, it just was. I needed the scent of the animal, not the person. I gave myself over to the wolf, to the feel of fur and pads, and… there. The faintest whiff of something not human.
I followed that faint scent the way you’d follow a path that you found in the woods. A path that was barely there, lost in weeds and small trees. I pushed my way through that narrow opening, and suddenly the world was full of… tiger.
The tigers inside me rushed up, roaring. I stumbled back from the evidence, the scent, Memphis. I fell on my ass on the floor, with the wolf running for cover and the tigers snarling inside my head. Once this would have meant the tigers trying to take over my body, tearing me apart from the inside out, but now I could keep it lower key.
Someone grabbed my arm, and I looked up. What was this plastic man? I looked past the faceplate and found him human, and soft, and knew that all that education, all that determination, was nothing before claw and fang. I had to try twice to speak, “Room, give me room.”
He let me go, but just knelt back. I looked at him and the other two. Patricia was afraid, and that made the tigers roil inside me, happy kitties. Fear means food.
I pushed to my feet and stumbled for the door. I had to get away from them. I should never have tried this without Edward here to make sure… make sure it didn’t get out of hand.
“I need air, that’s all. Don’t touch me.” I made the door and stumbled outside. I ended up on my knees on the floor, leaning against the wall, trying to shove the tigers back into the safety zone. They didn’t want to go. They’d smelled another tiger, and it excited them.
Edward spoke from a little distance. “Anita, you all right?”
I shook my head, but held a hand palm out, to say Stay away. He did. “Talk to me,” he said.
My voice came breathy, but it came. “I called on a little furry energy to try and get a clue.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know what killed the others, but we’re looking for a weretiger that’s probably under six feet in human form, or has abnormally small hands. This one is powerful enough to be able to do claws and teeth only, with no fur and no other outward change.”
I felt Olaf and Bernardo close, before I looked up and saw them. Edward kept them back, which was probably just as well.
“Only the most powerful can do that,” Edward said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You learned all that from smelling?” Bernardo said.
I looked up, and was pretty sure it wasn’t a friendly look by his reaction. “No, I learned most of that from the body, but tiger was smell.” I looked past him to Olaf now in his black assassin gear, stripped of the hazmat suit. I pointed a finger at him. “I couldn’t think with you in there with me. I didn’t know how useless you make me until you weren’t there.”
“I did not mean to make you work less efficiently.”
“You know, I believe that. But from now on you work with someone besides me. No more alone time on the case.”
“Why is being alone with me so distracting?” he asked, and his face was neutral enough.
“Because you scare me,” I said.
He smiled then, a little curl of lips, but his caveman eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
I stood up then, and Edward was smart enough not to help me. “You know, big guy, most men who really want to date a woman don’t want her afraid of them.”
His smile faltered a little, but not much. He looked puzzled for a moment, then the smile returned larger and more satisfied. “I am not most men.”
I gave a sound that might have been a laugh, if it hadn’t been so harsh. “Well, that is the fucking truth.” I started stripping off the protective gear.
“Where to?” Edward said.
“We visit the weretigers.”
“Aren’t they the animal to call of the Master Vampire of Vegas?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“So we go visit the Master of the City and his wife.”
I nodded. “Yep, Max and his wife, the queen tiger of Las Vegas. Though the actual title is Chang and her name. Chang-Bibiana, in this case.”
“Wait,” Bernardo said. “Are we walking in there and accusing one of their tigers of killing a police officer and helping massacre three more?”
I looked at Edward; he looked at me. “Something like that,” I said.
Bernardo looked unhappy. “Can you please not get me killed until after I’ve had a date with Deputy Lorenzo?”
I smiled at him. “I will do my best.”
“To get us all killed,” he said.
“Not true,” I said. “I always do my best to keep us alive.”
“After you endanger us all,” he muttered.
“You whine like a baby,” Olaf said.
“I’ll whine any way I damn well please.”
Memphis came out and asked, “Marshal, are you well?”
I nodded. “I’m fine.”
“What animal did you sense?”
Did I lie, or tell the truth? “Tiger.”
“Our Master of the City will not like that.”
“No, but truth is truth.”
“You will need a warrant to enter their home.”
“We had this talk already, Memphis. We’ll call up and have one faxed to us, but I think I’ll try just asking for a visit first.”
“You think he’ll just let you waltz in and accuse his people of murder?”
“I think Max told Sheriff Shaw to invite me to come play and that I’d sort things out.”
Memphis’s eyes went wide. “Did he now?”
“So I’m told.”
“It doesn’t sound like our master.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, “but if he invited me, why wouldn’t he want to help me sort things out?”
“You won’t get in without a warrant. The Master of Vegas is old-time mob; it makes him cautious,” Memphis said.
“We’ll apply for several,” Edward said.
Memphis looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“We have a lycanthrope kill confirmed. Nevada still has varmint laws on the books. We’ll be able to get a warrant of execution on the lycanthrope that did this.”
“But you don’t have a name for the lycanthrope,” Memphis said.
Edward smiled, I smiled, even Bernardo smiled. Olaf just looked sinister. “You know we don’t need a name. The warrant will read a little vague. I keep forgetting about the varmint laws in the western states; it makes it actually easier to get a vague warrant for a shapeshifter than for a vampire,” I said.
“I still believe it’s a legal excuse for murder,” Memphis said.
I stepped close to the doctor, and he held his ground. “Randall Sherman was your friend, not mine. Don’t you want his murderer caught?”
“Yes, but I want to make sure it’s the right weretiger, not just the one that pisses you all off.”
I grinned at him, but could feel it was more a snarling flash of teeth. The tigers were still a little close. “If you don’t like the way I do my job, then file a complaint. But in the dark when the big bad monsters come to get you, you always want us. You see us standing here. You know what we are, what we do, and it makes you feel uncivilized. Even with your friends on gurneys in the morgue, you flinch. Well, we don’t flinch, doctor. We do what the rest of you are afraid to do”-I leaned in close and whispered-“we’ll be your vengeance, doc, so you can keep your lily-white hands clean.”