Feral Dust Bunnies (Offbeat Crimes Book 4) Read online

  “Maybe, but I’m not asking her.”

  “Fine. I’ll ask.” Kyle grumbled coward under his breath as he typed his next email.

  Wolf waited for Vance to spout some mean and spiteful comment about two males getting married. Nothing. He sat with his fists clenched, staring at his computer screen as if he could set it on fire that way. Of all the officers in the squad room, he might have been able to, but Wolf had never seen him produce fire from anywhere but his fingertips.

  Something’s not right there. Is a friend supposed to ask? Am I a friend? Or is this a ‘none of my business, don’t ask’ thing?

  Audacity pounced on his drumming fingers so he drummed them some more until she caught one between her paws and began gnawing on it. He let her capture a second finger, watching her with a smile until Krisk reached over and tapped a claw on his side of the desk.

  “Right. The man on the path.” Wolf took up where he’d left off telling Krisk about the previous evening. “He was too far away for me to see him smiling. I know he was too far. I know how much I can see in dim light and I couldn’t even tell you if he had hair or not. But I saw that creepy smile like he was standing next to me. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “And he vanished, I heard you say?”

  Wolf snatched Audacity off the desk in alarm at the voice suddenly beside his ear. “Damn, Carr. Don’t do that.”

  “Sorry. I thought you could sense me coming.”

  “You don’t make any sound when you move like that and your scent’s all over the squad room. No, I’m not gonna sense you sneaking up in here.”

  Carrington gave one of his offended sniffs. “I wasn’t sneaking. This sounded important. Vanishing.”

  “Yeah, he just…” Wolf closed the fingers on his non-kittened hand and opened them in a poof motion. “Gone. Maybe he was a vamp like you and moved extra fast, I dunno.”

  “If you’re watching me and I go into vampire acceleration, you still see a blur, yes?”

  Wolf nodded. “What’re you thinking, Carr?”

  “It’s just an uneasy feeling.” Carrington stared across the room for a long moment before asking, “Do you remember Kyle telling us about a man he followed down into one of the big drain pipes? An old man in black?”

  “I remember.” Wolf shivered hard enough that Audacity squeak-meowed at him. “Kyle said he melted into the river.”

  “Yes. And the man who sold the attack books to that idiot, Armstrong. The man whose features he said he couldn’t focus on during a transaction in which he had no idea if money exchanged hands.”

  Krisk held up three fingers, then one.

  “You think they’re all the same person?”

  “All speculation. We have nothing to go on.” Carrington heaved a slow breath. “I’m saying be careful. I don’t like the thought that someone malicious and powerful might be stalking some of us.”

  Wolf nodded. Stalking. That’s how it had felt. He scooped up the now-drowsing Audacity and placed her in her box where she transferred her death grip from his fingers to her octopus. She growled as she gnawed on the purple cloth arm, then sank into angelic kitten sleep. Wolf fought the unreasonable urge to take her with him but Lieutenant Dunfee was right—a patrol car was no place for a kitten.

  “It’ll be okay, big guy.” Amanda clapped him on the shoulder as she went by. “Me and Carr, we’ll make sure your baby wolf keeps out of trouble.”

  “She’s not a baby wolf.”

  Amanda laughed at his snarl. “Dude. Haven’t you heard her growling when she plays? She’s trying to sound like you.”

  “She…is?”

  “Told you so! Asscrack!” Edgar cawed from his perch. “Fucking baby wolf!”

  “Shh, Edgar,” Wolf admonished. “She’s finally sleeping.”

  Jeff peered over the edge of the box and smiled. “You know you’re too cute with her. Who would’ve thought you’d be such a good dad?”

  “I am a wolf.” At least he assumed all wolves were naturally good dads. He’d only known his own family and that thought twisted in his stomach. He’d known more human dads than wolf dads, which brought him back to what had been bothering him earlier. “Is Vance okay?”

  “Not really,” Jeff murmured so only Wolf could hear. “His ex is trying to take the kids. They had joint custody all this time. She’s remarrying and now she decides to go to court to paint Vance as unfit to be around them.”

  “Oh. That sounds…wrong. Will she win?”

  Jeff shrugged, mouth puckered as if he’d eaten something unpleasantly sour. “He’s a firestarter with anger issues and PTSD after the pill bug disaster. For some judges, just being a paranormal weirdo’s enough to rule against. I know he’d never hurt those kids. The court might not see it that way.”

  “Poor cubs, um, kids.”

  “Yeah.” Jeff straightened, dusting off his hands. “Poor cubs.”

  He wandered back to his desk where he spent some time in low-voiced conversation with Vance before they went back out on afternoon assignments. Wolf had always been wary of Vance. He was loyal to a fault, the first to come to another officer’s aid, but he often bullied Kyle, and sometimes even Carrington. To Wolf, this was inconsistent behavior and humans who behaved one way and then another weren’t to be trusted.

  Now he had to wonder. Was Vance the way he was because he was so miserable? Wolf spent so much energy trying to understand humans that he rarely thought about why they did things. Why did they use their children to hurt each other? Why did they so often live as isolated pair bonds? Why didn’t Jason want to talk about it? Why did humans get married at all?

  He posed that last question to Krisk in the car later. His partner sat still for such a long time that Wolf assumed he didn’t want to or couldn’t answer the question. Finally, Krisk pulled out his phone and starting typing.

  Research indicates human marriage began as a pooling labor and resources.

  “Okay. I guess I get that. But why not a bunch of people? Why just two? You could have all sorts of resources and stuff if you had five or six bonded humans.”

  Krisk thought a bit more, then typed again.

  Many mammals engage in ensuring genetic self-perpetuation. Lion males will destroy the young of other males.

  “Oh.” This disturbed Wolf more than he wanted to admit. “Guys used to kill other guys’ babies?”

  Unable to confirm. Pair bonding ensures genetic content of infant. In theory.

  “I guess I get that. Sort of. But Kyle and Vikash can’t have kids.” Wolf shot his partner a sideways glance. “That’s still right, isn’t it?”

  Single-sex reproduction. Perhaps someday. Humans marry now for complex socio-economic purposes. Other bonding matrices and variants occur. Pair bonded marriage still most prevalent.

  Wolf nodded, absorbing. A human partner would’ve been disturbed by the holes in his knowledge or disgusted that he was stupid and uninformed. Krisk struggled with many of the same concepts Wolf did, though, and he was forever grateful the department thought they would make a good team.

  “Mating makes sense, I guess. I just—” Wolf broke off as a burnt ozone scent yanked hard at his nostrils. “Krisk?”

  His partner nodded, pointing to the right at the next cross street. Wolf sped up when he spotted the ACC trucks in front of a row home, sudden dread wrapping hard coils around his spine. Jason.

  He screeched to a stop at the curb, lights flashing and called in their location. Two AC officers were loading dogs into the back of one truck. Jason and Julie emerged from the house, each with an animal carrier.

  “Alex! Come to help?” Jason’s heated smile at any other time would have turned Wolf into a stammering mess but the ozone scent intensified. Panic clawed at the corners of Wolf’s brain.

  He gripped Jason’s arm. “Are any animals dead in there?”

  “No. All alive. The owner’s doing a voluntary surrender.”

  “You have to get everyone out of there. Now!” Wolf barked out as he rele
ased Jason and rushed into the house with Krisk on his heels.

  Behind him, Jason bellowed to his people to stay out of the house, he would retrieve the owner. Of course. He wouldn’t let anyone else do it if he thought something was off. Damn it, Jason.

  The overlapping stench of dog feces and cat pee tried to overwhelm and mislead him. Wolf stood at the bottom of the stairs, head pounding as he tried to sort through scent trails. No. It wasn’t upstairs…

  “Jason!” Wolf nearly mowed Krisk down as he barreled down the tight hallway to the back of the house.

  The scent grew strong enough there to override even the biting smell of cat pee. Jason was speaking urgently to an ancient tiny woman who was moving far too slowly for Wolf’s comfort. He scooped her up and handed her back to Krisk, ignoring the tiny woman’s shrieking. Krisk held her perched on one arm as he hurried out of the house.

  Jason’s brows drew together in an angry line. “Alex, what the hell?”

  “Please, Jason. Run.” Wolf turned and turned, head snapping around as he searched for whatever this thing was that turned living creatures into instant mummies.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “There’s something here. Something…”

  A strange, hollow hiss came from beneath the stove.

  Wolf turned his head to speak into the radio on his shoulder, never taking his eyes from the stove. “Unit three requesting backup. Possible dangerous entity current location.”

  A gray limb reached out, not a proper arm or leg but a shifting thing that changed thickness and shape as if it were smoke. The dried husk of a mouse lay trapped in that disturbing arm until it cleared the stove. The arm dropped it with a dry click in its blind reaching. The uneasy certainty crept over Wolf that this thing was hunting.

  With a bone-rattling snarl, Wolf snatched a heavy skillet from the stove and swung at it at the arm with enough force to take him off balance. The iron pan whooshed straight through, scattering whatever made up the arm into gray blobs. Wolf allowed himself a savage grin that quickly faded when the blobs skittered across the floor and swiftly reformed.

  Jason’s hand closed around his biceps, an urgent plea in his eyes. “Let’s go. Wait for your backup.”

  “Out,” Wolf growled. “This is my job. I told you to go.”

  “Holy hell, Alex.” Jason let go of him but instead of leaving like a sensible person, he squared off facing the entity. “I’m not leaving you alone with that thing.”

  “You can’t—”

  Wolf was about to tell him not to interfere with police work when the reforming gray arm lunged. It was made of nothing. It shouldn’t have been able to. Wolf hurled himself at Jason and hit him sideways, knocking him out of the way and slamming them into the cabinets under the sink. Jason swore, struggling to free himself from the protective circle of Wolf’s arms.

  “Not the time, Officer,” he huffed as he squirmed free.

  “Jason…” Wolf got out in a stricken whisper. The thing had his boot. He tugged and yanked, trying to claw his way backward across the floor, but the arm had wrapped tight around his ankle and wouldn’t let go. How could something not solid be so strong?

  “Crap.” Jason scooted around to take Wolf under the arms and heave. He panted from the effort, but Wolf wasn’t any closer to being free. “Can you get your foot out?”

  Wolf shook his head. “It’s got the laces. Don’t…think I should touch it.”

  Letting out an impressive roar, Jason grabbed a kitchen chair and started beating the part of the arm between Wolf and the stove. Instead of breaking apart, it bent under the blows in a fibrous way while its grip remained alarmingly tight.

  “Damn it, Alex! What do I do? I can’t let it eat you or whatever the hell it does!”

  “I don’t—” Wolf broke off as pain lanced up his leg. The thing had extended its hold and latched on above his boot top. He tried to keep the scream in but it escaped in a whimper.

  “No, no, no, you can’t have him, you stupid monster,” Jason cried out as he wrestled a pocketknife out and held it above Wolf’s ankle, looking like he was unsure whether to cut the thing’s arm or Wolf’s boot.

  Heavy thuds sounded in the doorway. Krisk filled it, fire extinguisher under one arm, tail thudding against the old vinyl floor. With one clawed hand, he seized Jason’s belt and lifted him out of the way, a clumsy maneuver since Jason flailed and fought him. As soon as he had a clear shot, Krisk hit the gray arm with the flame retardant, smothering its entire length from where it held Wolf, to where it vanished under the stove.

  Good guess on Krisk’s part since the monster withdrew rapidly in a continual hiss. A moment later, something gray and orb-shaped shot out from under the stove, flattened itself to an impossibly thin wafer and slid out of the house under the back door. Krisk pursued but was back within moments, shaking his head.

  “Yeah. The smell’s fading,” Wolf grated out, fighting a pain that felt like being burned and scraped raw at the same time. “It’s gone.”

  “Are you all right?” Jason wrapped an arm around Wolf’s shoulders, letting him lean against his tank of a chest. “Stupid question. Sorry.”

  “Mostly. Not dead, right?”

  Jason tugged the pant leg above Wolf’s boot, a slight hitch in his breath the only betrayal of how bad it was. Wolf risked a glance down to find not the third degree burn he’d expected but a strange wrinkling and cracking of the skin where the gray arm had held him. His leg hair even broke off in brittle bits when he moved.

  “That doesn’t look good. What if it spreads?” Jason muttered.

  “What if what spreads? What in all that’s unholy is going on in here?” Carrington was suddenly there, as Carrington sometimes was.

  “We had an EE, Carr,” Wolf got out. “The thing leaving mummies. Kinda got hold of me. A little.”

  “An EE?” Jason choked out.

  “Entity encounter.” Carrington spoke into his radio without further comment, “Unit one, Seventy-Seventh. Officer down. Request medical. I repeat, officer down.” Amanda arrived at a run as he was giving the address to dispatch. He waved her over. “Manda, call Dr. Moreau. See if she can be at the hospital when Wolf comes in. If there’s anything we can prevent, we need to do so.”

  “Damn it, Alex.” Jason wrapped both arms hard around Wolf and buried his face against Wolf’s shoulder.

  “Alex?” Carrington mouthed, his patrician eyebrows creeping up toward his hairline.

  “Shut up,” Wolf mouthed back.

  His vampire colleague held out both hands in an obvious didn’t say a thing gesture. “Do you think we can get you outside to give the paramedics room to work?”

  “Probably?”

  “Good. It reeks like the aftermath of Lucifer’s chili in here.” Carrington turned his head and sneezed several times into his sleeve. “Or a dozen times worse.”

  Krisk on one side, Jason on the other, they got him up but putting weight on the leg was more than Wolf could manage. Krisk took over and carried him out, making it look like he was carrying a big couch cushion. If humans knew how strong Krisk was he’d really freak them out.

  Outside, Krisk set him down on the stoop and loomed beside him while Jason went to talk to his ACC colleagues. There was a lot of gesturing and shaking of heads, but the other three Animal Control officers got into the trucks and drove away while Jason stayed. He sank onto the step beside Wolf with his head in his hands.

  “You stubborn, pigheaded jackass.”

  “Me?” The sudden scolding shocked Wolf out of his pain. “You’re the one who wouldn’t leave the room.”

  “Because you wouldn’t.”

  Wolf opened his mouth to argue, then blinked as a thought hit. It was obvious and still he hadn’t seen it. “You, um… You stayed for me.”

  “Of course I did, you jerk.”

  “I mean…” Wolf swallowed hard, not knowing how best to say it. “For me.”

  Jason lifted his head, his mouth still turned down, but
he must have seen something in Wolf’s face. His angry eyebrows went back to their own corners. “For you. Yes. The more time we spend together, the more I like you. Really don’t want to end the getting to know you part before we really started.”

  “Oh.” Wolf tried to stretch his leg out and yanked it back with a sub-audible yelp. “Me too. I mean, I don’t want anything to happen to you, too.”

  “Okay. Sorry I snarled at you and managed to put us back to dating level one, subsection incredibly awkward.” Jason scratched both hands back through his short-cropped hair. “You holding up all right? Not one of those guys who’s too macho for pain, are you?”

  “No. It hurts. A lot. I’ve never felt anything like this. I’m just trying not to whimper too loud.”

  Out of the several things Wolf might have anticipated next, it wasn’t Jason pulling a piece of string out of his pocket, tying the ends together and threading the loop onto his fingers.

  “What…um?”

  “You’ve never played?” Jason pointed with his nose and his less occupied fingers. “Look, you put your thumb there, your forefinger there. Good. Same on the other side. Now hold those X’s and loop them around the outside…that’s it.”

  The game took some concentration, especially for someone who’d never played before and distracted Wolf from the pain. He was so engrossed in it that it didn’t even occur to him, ten minutes later when the paramedics pulled up, how odd it might have been for the ambulance crew to arrive at a scene with two officers of the law playing Cat’s Cradle.

  More importantly, Jason sat beside him smiling encouragingly, his voice gentle and soothing as he gave instructions, so Wolf really didn’t care.

  * * * *

  “Your department certainly brings me interesting cases, Officer Wolf,” Dr. Moreau said as she bent over his leg, gently prodding with gloved hands. “Are there any theories about what attacked you?”

  “No, ma’am.” Wolf sat propped up in the ER bed, uncomfortable in an entirely new way with an IV in his arm, his leg numb from a local anesthetic and Jason standing beside the bed watching everything like a mother hawk.