C4 FOUR

Had He The Motive

DEREK

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet

WITH THE INSTINCTS of a predator, I hunted. But I wasn’t hunting to kill. I was hunting for a killer. In wolf form, the world buzzed with senses no human could experience, let alone understand and sift out. Decaying leaves from a recent summer rain. The scuttle of insects taking refuge under rocks. Trees—the trunks a musty, rich scent, the leaves sharper, more pungent.

And blood.

So much blood.

The victim hadn’t died peacefully, or neatly. They’d already removed the body, but finding the exact spot where Curtis’ cousin had died wasn’t hard. Even if there hadn’t been a dark stain seeping into the earth.

I sniffed the area, expecting an animal scent, but all I smelled was human. The body hadn’t been here long enough for scavengers, but I should have been able to smell the wolf that attacked him.

And yet, nothing.

I sifted through the subtle scents. The victim—fear, blood, sweat. Cops had been coming and going, dozens of smells, distinct but all human. No wolf, which didn’t make any sense at all, given the wounds and crime reports.

Jared had been attacked while fixing his mountain bike, but he hadn't been riding a trail; he'd been cutting his own path through the foliage. Following his scent, I found wolf tracks, big wolf tracks, but still no smell of wolf, not even from the tracks. Which was, of course, impossible. A wolf couldn’t mask its scent from another wolf.

I followed the tracks through the woods, and they changed, grew further apart like...

Like the wolf walked on two legs.

Impossible.

I reached a river and lost the track. Whatever left these prints must have crossed the river, but I didn’t see anything more on either side.

My ears perked up as voices alerted me to the presence of the police at the crime scene. They would be looking for a wolf.

A wolf just like me.

I ran, darting behind trees and keeping my distance from the hunting party, until I found my clothes stashed in a hollowed out tree. Pine needles poked at my bare feet and hands as I shifted back to human, my body stretching and bending until I was myself again.

I dressed quickly, slipping on my shoes as one of the officers spotted me from a distance and shouted at me to stop.

I ran, faster than most humans, but not as fast as a wolf, and looked down at my footprints, wolf to human. Using a branch, I covered my tracks until I reached my car, and drove back home in silence, my heart pounding hard in my chest.

What kind of beast were we dealing with? A new kind of shifter? But what kind of shifter left no scent?