Rogue Wolf by Paige Tyler

Chapter 8

“You sure you’ve never seen this guy in here before?” Trey asked the bartender, leaning over so the woman behind the wide granite counter could get a better look at the photo of Alden Cox. “It would have been last weekend. His social media accounts suggested he was in here and we’re hoping you might have seen him. Maybe with someone?”

There were a boatload of bars and clubs along this stretch of Pacific Avenue, but this particular place seemed even more crowded than the others, especially for a Sunday night. But the dark-haired woman mixing the drinks at least paused long enough to look at the photo. “Yeah, I recognize him,” she said after squinting in the bar’s dim light before looking back up at Trey and Connor. “He’s in here pretty regularly. I don’t know his name though, and I don’t think I’ve seen him this weekend. But he’s a player. What he’d do, assault some woman who wouldn’t pay attention to him?”

The bartender had pegged him and Connor as police officers the moment they’d walked in, even though they were both dressed in civilian clothes. She’d eyed them up and down and informed them that no one had called the cops, then visibly relaxed when she heard they were there looking for someone.

“No, nothing like that,” Connor said. “But he might have left with a woman—or a couple.”

The bartender shook her head. “I think I saw him last Friday, though it might have been Saturday. Didn’t see him with anyone that I can remember. Sorry.”

Trey thanked the woman, then he and Connor walked around and asked a few of the servers to see if maybe they’d seen anything the bartender had missed. They hadn’t.

“That’s another one off the list,” Trey said, pulling the aforementioned list out of his back pocket and drawing a line through the name of the bar with a pen.

Connor groaned as they walked out of the place and started down the sidewalk lining Pacific Avenue. “So that only leaves what, twenty more places or so?”

“About that,” Trey replied.

It had taken them over two hours to work through the first four clubs Alden Cox had been to. At this rate, it would take them days to get through the rest. Unfortunately, by then there’d almost certainly be another dead body showing up in one of the local landfills. If it wasn’t there already.

Following Trey’s suggestion, STAT had built a list of clubs, bars, and restaurants that Alden Cox and Demario Harris had visited in the days right around their supposed times of death. Then they’d compared those locations with the routes taken by the garbage trucks that could have picked up the bodies. Since they’d known exactly which truck had picked up Demario Harris’s body, that list—which Hale and Trevor had—was much shorter than the one Trey and Connor had been stuck with. But both were longer than they’d hoped. Demario and Alden had covered a lot of ground on the weekends of their deaths. As if they’d both been looking for one last shot at life before it was all over.

Trey and Connor didn’t talk about how hopeless this exercise probably was as they walked. Instead, they moved from bar to club to restaurant, flashing Alden’s picture to anyone they thought might remember him. Lots of people did. He was a regular at almost every place in the Pacific Avenue district. On the downside, no one could remember seeing him with anyone specific.

“How’d your date with Sam go last night?” Connor asked as they left a large nightclub that had taken them over an hour to work their way through. “Do you still think she’s going out with you simply to get information about us?”

That was a loaded question if there ever was one. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure how to answer it.

So, instead, he checked his list, then his watch, before motioning down the block toward the bar on the corner. “It’s getting close to last call for most of the places in this part of town. We’ll probably have time for one more, then we’ll have to call it a night.”

Connor fell into step beside him. The sidewalk was still crowded. “So, what about Samantha? Since you don’t want to talk about the date, does that mean you were right about her?”

Trey’s mouth edged up. “The date was fantastic. Even better than the first one, if that’s possible. We went out to the art district and walked around the shops, then grabbed pizza. We didn’t even talk about SWAT or you guys or anything.”

“But?” Connor prompted.

“I still don’t know if she’s playing me.” Trey sighed. “Even though I’m sure she’s definitely The One.”

The crazy emotions she admitted feeling were more than enough to convince him that she was the woman he was meant to be with. Not to mention make his inner wolf sigh in contentment. And yet, his human side still urged him to be cautious.

“I don’t want to be the one to say I told you so, but I told you so.” Connor grinned.

Trey slanted him a glance. “Did you miss the part where I said I’m not sure if I can trust her?”

Even now, the gauze Samantha had used to clean the cut on his hand nagged at the back of his mind. Why hadn’t he cleaned up the mess and tossed everything in the trash before he left? Did his inner wolf somehow instinctively already know she wasn’t a threat to the Pack?

Dammit, why couldn’t things be simple? But finding The One hadn’t been easy for any of his teammates, so why should it be different for him?

“I still think you should tell her that she’s your soul mate,” Connor insisted.

“Yeah right.” Trey snorted. “We’ve been on two whole dates and you think it would be a good idea to throw her in the deep end of the pool. I can see it now. Hey, Samantha, you know those weird feelings you’ve been experiencing? Well, you’re getting them because I’m a werewolf and you’re my soul mate. But don’t worry, I promise not to bite.”

Connor scowled. “Okay, I guess I see your point. But you know you’ll have to tell her at some point, so maybe you should come up with a plan now on how you’re going to do that. Unless you want it to all blow up in your face.”

Maybe Connor was right. Maybe if he sat Samantha down and explained everything in a very straightforward, scientific way, she’d realize what they had was too important for her to ever expose that he and his pack mates were werewolves. He needed to stop overcomplicating things and put his faith in the bond developing between them.

When he and Connor came to a rather unassuming bar illuminated by a series of soft orange and red neon signs in the windows, Trey had to admit it didn’t look like the kind of place Alden would have hung out. It seemed a little too low-key for the guy’s taste.

“We’re on last call,” an older man behind the bar announced as he and Connor stepped inside. “I’ll pour you two some drinks, but you’ll have to down ’em fast.”

“Thanks for the offer, but we’re not here for a drink,” Trey said, flashing his badge. “We’re looking for information on someone.” Taking the photo out, he placed it on the wooden bar. “Have you ever seen this guy around?”

The man behind the bar barely looked at the photo for more than a second before nodding. “Yeah, I know Alden. All the regulars do.” He motioned to several other people sitting at the bar. “Comes in every weekend like clockwork. Sometimes during the week, too. I haven’t seen him in a while, though.”

“That’s because he was murdered two weeks ago,” Trey said.

“Murdered?” The older man looked devastated at the news. “Damn.”

“We’re trying to pin down the last place he was seen that weekend. Do you remember if he came in here?”

The bartender nodded sadly. “Yeah, he was in here both Saturday and Sunday night. He came in around this time both nights.”

“Did you see if he left with anyone?” Connor asked.

“I saw him with a woman Sunday night,” a man at the end of the bar said. “She was tall with shoulder-length dark hair. I remember thinking she was definitely Alden’s type.”

Trey opened his mouth to ask the guy if he’d be able to describe her to a sketch artist when a woman’s voice interrupted him. “I know the person you’re talking about.”

Trey turned to see a petite redhead standing there holding a drink tray full of empty glasses and beer bottles. “She was in here earlier tonight. She left a little while ago with some guy.”

Trey exchanged looks with Connor.

“Do you remember what she was wearing?” his pack mate asked.

The waitress nodded. “A short skirt and red silk blouse.”

“When did they leave?” Trey asked.

She shrugged. “Fifteen minutes ago, maybe.”

Thirty seconds later, Trey was running south on Saint Paul Street, his nose going at a hundred miles an hour as he tried to pick up a scent that might lead him to the woman and the man she’d left the bar with. Unfortunately, the waitress hadn’t seen which direction the couple had gone. He and Connor concluded she wouldn’t have taken her prey toward the crowds of people still hanging around outside the other clubs in the area, so they’d headed farther down Pacific, praying for a little luck.

A hundred yards later, they split up, Connor continuing along Pacific, while Trey turned down Saint Paul. It was a desperate gamble. There were a hundred different places the woman could have taken her victim if she were planning to kill him—or lure him into someone else’s trap. Trey only hoped their theory was right and that she’d try to murder the guy somewhere close to the bar where she’d picked him up. If the guy had gotten into a car with her, there’d be no chance of ever finding them. At least not while the man was still alive.

When Trey reached the green spaces of Main Street Garden Park, his instincts had him slowing down and turning that way. He had no idea why, but it felt right.

The park filled a whole block between Main and Commerce, most of that being wide-open grassy areas with a few walking paths here and there and a big fountain in the front. The trees and light shrubs growing along the north side—along with the large construction dumpster near the far northeast corner—caught his attention.

He’d barely taken more than a step in that direction when he heard a sound halfway between a groan of agonizing pain and a gasp of pleasure that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Pulling his off-duty SIG, he sprinted in that direction.

Trey picked up an overly sweet odor mixed with a hint of something old and dried out underneath it. The smell made his nose tingle, like dust in the air. He was still trying to imagine what kind of creature could possibly possess such a scent when he rounded the corner of the dumpster.

Despite the glow coming from the streetlamps and nearby buildings, it was still dark behind the dumpster thanks to the shadows cast by the trees. Trey’s night vision was near perfect even without having to partially shift. But when he saw the tall, slender woman in a red silk blouse and miniskirt holding the large, struggling man against the side of the dumpster with one hand, he couldn’t comprehend how someone her size was able to manage it. The man’s shirt had been ripped open and his pants were undone and hanging loose. That strange groan of pleasure and pain came again, and Trey realized the woman had her lips planted firmly against the guy’s chest.

Thinking he was on the verge of stepping into the middle of a kinky sex scene, Trey started to back out of the situation as fast as he’d arrived, but then he saw the man’s face twist in torment, his skin shriveling right before his eyes. Like every ounce of youth and vitality was being sucked out of him.

Nope, so not a kinky sex scene.

“Drop him!” Trey shouted.

As Trey moved toward them, the woman immediately released her victim, the man’s body falling limply to the ground. She spun around, taking a half dozen steps toward Trey in a blur.

Shit, she is fast.

Her strides put her directly in a halo of light coming from a nearby streetlamp, giving Trey his first clear look at the woman.

Who…maybe…probably…wasn’t a woman at all.

Lidless eyes the size of baseballs, solid black and glossy as glass, dominated a pale face framed in dark hair that seemed to flutter in a nonexistent breeze with an energy of its own. The creature’s nose was little more than two slits above a pair of colorless lips, and when it opened its mouth to hiss at him, Trey saw dozens of short, ragged teeth.

But even with the huge eyes and manic hair, possibly the most disconcerting part of the creature’s appearance was the fact that it was wearing clothes. There was something unsettling about a creature this scary-looking wearing a miniskirt, silk blouse, and high heels. It was just wrong.

Another groan from the guy on the ground distracted Trey for a fraction of a second. That’s when the creature attacked. One second, she was hissing at him, the next she was on him, both hands slamming into his chest hard enough to crack ribs and send him flying fifteen feet through the air. He vaguely felt his SIG tumbling into the darkness and decided he might be in a little bit of trouble.

Something in his back broke on impact, a spike of pain ripping down both legs to leave them throbbing and partially numb. But Trey didn’t have much time to worry about how bad the damage might be as the creature came at him again. Apparently, the thing didn’t like Trey interrupting whatever it had been doing to the guy on the ground.

Trey scrambled painfully to his feet, claws and fangs extending with a low growl, ready to face the thing this time. Unfortunately, he still wasn’t ready for how fast the creature was. He barely got his hands up before she was hitting him with a combination of punches and shoves that had him stumbling back step by step.

Pissed, Trey let out a snarl and slashed at the creature’s face, hoping to at least back her off. Amazingly, his claws connected somehow, ripping four deep gouges across the left side of the thing’s face and down its neck. The thing shrieked and stumbled back, falling to the ground, clear, watery liquid that Trey assumed was blood gushing out. The wound was gruesome, and Trey wondered if he’d somehow managed to kill the creature.

He wasn’t that lucky.

The creature slowly got to its feet, a bizarre sound coming from its throat. Crap, was the thing laughing? Freaky beyond description, the sound made his skin want to crawl away and hide in the nearby dumpster.

The slashes on the creature’s face healed within seconds, disappearing without a trace. Even the clear liquid that had been running down its neck was reabsorbed until there was no sign he’d injured the thing at all. Werewolves healed fast, but not that fast.

Damn, he might very well be fucked.

Trey tried to slash the creature’s face again when it charged at him a second later, but it blocked the blow, both hands clamping down on his arm and yanking hard. He panicked, thinking she was going to rip the damn thing off, but then he was flying through the air again. He had about half a second to contemplate how much this was going to hurt, then he was slamming into the side of the big construction dumpster. The metal gave under the impact. Unfortunately, he felt parts of him give, too.

He hit the ground a few feet from the woman’s victim. The guy looked like shit, eyes closed, his face haggard and exhausted. Trey could hear the man’s heartbeat, so he knew he was alive, but it was a lot slower and weaker than it should have been. Whatever the creature had been doing to the man, it had nearly killed him.

A blur of movement out of the corner of his eye made Trey realize he should have been a little more concerned about the creature killing him. Then the thing was on him, long, narrow fingers wrapping around his throat to crush the life out of him at the same time she picked him up and slammed him against the side of the dented dumpster.

Trey punched, slashed, and shoved at the creature, air running out as he was once more stunned she could be so strong. The creature ripped open his shirt, its cold lips pressing against the bare skin of his chest right where his wolf head tattoo was. Pain ripped through him, as if the creature was pulling his soul out right through his chest.

The pain shoved Trey’s shift further than it already was, fangs and claws fully extending, muscles across his back and shoulders twisting and contracting, bones beginning to crack and lengthen as his body fought to assume a shape more conducive to this fight. The pain in his chest lessened and Trey threw every ounce of his strength into breaking free, slashing and ripping at the creature’s throat and chest in rapid succession.

He knew he was hurting the creature because it was shrieking and hissing like mad, but he was weakening at the same time. It was a toss-up as to which one of them would collapse first.

In the distance, he heard the rapid thud of approaching boots, too fast to be a regular human. Connor’s scent reached him just as Trey finally succeeded in shoving the creature away. It stared at him for a moment before its head snapped around in the direction of those footsteps. With one more quick hiss at Trey, the creature was off, running as fast as hell across the park toward Main Street. A second later Connor was hauling ass after it, his handgun out—along with his fangs and claws.

Trey stayed on his feet for all of five more seconds before he slowly slid down the side of the dumpster and onto the ground, more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life. He knew he should get up and help his pack mate chase the thing, but he was too damn tired.

A glance at his chest showed no real wound beyond some redness, as if the creature had been trying to give him a hickey. That thought was actually more repulsive than the idea of the thing biting him.

Giving up on the idea of going after Connor, Trey instead crawled over to the guy on the ground, getting him flipped over and hopefully in a position that would make breathing easier. The guy’s heart rate wasn’t any better than it had been before, but at least it wasn’t any worse. Looking closer at the man’s skin, Trey realized it looked severely dehydrated. Not nearly as bad as the body they’d found at the landfill, but obviously well on the way to that condition. Trey wondered how much longer the guy could have survived whatever the creature had been doing to him.

The sound of heavy footsteps in the grass drew his attention away from the man and he turned his head to see Connor racing across the park toward him. A few seconds later, his friend was at his side, asking if he was okay. Trey couldn’t do much except nod.

“What the hell was that thing?” Connor whispered, moving over to check the other guy on the ground. “I heard you yelling from a couple blocks away and came running, but she was already on the move by the time I got here. I tried to chase her…it…whatever the hell we’re supposed to call the thing, but it was too damn fast. I almost caught up to it until it ducked into an alley and ran right up the side of a frigging wall.”

“I’m not sure what that thing was, but it’s definitely the same thing that’s responsible for the bodies in the landfills,” Trey said weakly. “She was well on the way to draining this poor guy when I arrived.”

“Draining?” Connor prompted, curious.

Trey questioned why he’d used that particular word but decided it actually fit. He described what he’d seen upon first getting on the scene and what it had felt like when the creature latched onto his chest.

“I think it was feeding on me,” he added. “It felt like she was sucking the life out of me. Hurt like a son of a bitch, too. I’m exhausted and she was only on me a couple seconds. I have no idea how long she’d been going at this guy.”

Connor looked over at the man on the ground. “What are we going to do with him? If we call an ambulance, the hospital won’t have a clue what to do with him.”

Trey agreed. “I say we call STAT and get them out here to help, then send a sketch artist back to that bar we just left and have them work on a drawing of our suspect. We need to tell Gage and the deputy chief that we definitely have a supernatural creature hunting people in our city. One that’s stronger and faster than we are and damn near immune to injuries.”

Connor reached for his phone, shaking his head. “When the hell is the weird crap in this town going to end? If it’s not serial killers that steal body parts, it’s supernatural soul suckers with big, freaky eyes.”

Trey sighed and leaned back against the dumpster. As his mom always liked saying, when it rained, it poured.