Marcy was a wendigo.

Lord strike him down on the spot but after months without a sign, after watching nine times what she did to that man, feeling echoes of what she'd done to his body in wounds long healed, his heart thumped and beat hard at the sight of her. If he'd been wearing his tail at this time, it would've given a very stiff, still waggle at its tip.

Jorge paused the video as Marcy was crouched over the dead man, her claws in his rib cage, pulling through shattered bone and torn camouflage with the enthusiasm of a child opening the last, best Christmas present. In a few more seconds she'd find what she was after, and twelve seconds after that the meaty organ would be devoured and she would run her bloody claws through her silver mane and lick her lips, her droopy fawn's ears flicking back toward the patient eyra as if seeking approval.

Her face was entirely inhuman, gaunt as a skull with the teeth of a tiger and the delicate taper of something equine or deerlike. She was thicker since last she'd stuffed those claws into Caelan's chest, more muscular, a healthy gleam to her coat. Feeding well, he noted, rubbing at a pain deeper than muscle and bone. Feeding often no doubt, with the devil whispering in her ear.

At the end of the footage, she'd lope off into the woods, this half-human, half-animal hybrid that was wholly monstrous.

"She's really something," Caelan said under his breath, instinctively knocking Igor off the table to keep her from launching herself at Jorge's open mouth.

Jorge looked at him as if he had three heads. "Um, what kinda something exactly are we talking here?"

"Wendigo," he said in such a dismissively casual tone Jorge leaned back in his seat with a satisfied, 'Oh, okay' as if he'd said she was a devout Christian.

What he was really thinking was how he was dying to sink his fangs into that bull-headed young art conservator and thrash her for all the times she'd thrashed him. They'd always been great together, in good times and in bad.

The wolf brain bristled underneath his skin. Especially the bad.

It had been a terrible idea to let love get in the way of a good fuck. Wasn't that always what his brother had said? Fight and fuck and stop being curious about the damn sheep and make the kill and move on. But Marcy could never be just a sheep to him because Marcy had never been a sheep at all. Granted, she'd been human back then, but she was a liar just like him.

There was a knock at the door.

"Door's unlocked," Caelan called with a curt nod for Jorge to excuse himself.

Whoever it was knocked again. Likely a stranger then, as any of his staff would've waltzed in with their grievances or discoveries by now.

Jorge rose to see himself out, pulled the door open for the next person, and took a fist to the face. He staggered against a file cabinet, eyes watering. Blood welled on an already fattening lip, where an engagement ring had socked out a piece of skin.

With a dulcet exclamation in Spanish, translated roughly into, "My god! What've I done? You poor sweet babe that was meant for him," Evita Vilkas snatched a tissue from her desk, wiped her diamond carefully, then folded the tissue in half and pressed it against Jorge's lip.

Caelan was halfway to the door when he'd recognized the particularly sharp setting Stephen Vilkas had bought for his bride-to-be. That didn't stop him from tearing her ring hand away from Jorge and with his free hand ushering the younger man outside with a jovial clap on his back and a, "Yes, yes, what poor unfortunate soul." When the door swung shut he locked it and released her arm.

The woman took it back with a defiant shoulder roll.

"Evie," he said after a deep breath. The snarl in his skull abated. Meat never gets a first name. "I may not be like the other sheriffs, but I am still one of them. You pull that stunt again, you injure one of my people in any way, I'll lay you out."

The angry flush drained from her cheeks. Her mouth moved. The expression on her face was changing, screwing and unscrewing. She took a deep breath. Her mascara was smudged, and though her eyes were dry now, they were pink and growing moist.

"We're your people, too," she said, and in one deft motion feigned brushing her bangs out of her eyes to wipe a thumb across the gathering tears.

He stood beside her in a moment where silence offered more apology than anything his tongue managed, but when he was certain she wouldn't try anything worse than tossing a balled tissue at him, he handed her the Kleenex box and returned to his chair. He minimized the trail cam footage and let Igor battle with his foot for space underneath the desk. During this time, Evita found her composure.

"You haven't answered my calls."

"The letter wasn't for you." He consulted his phone. "And you never left a voicemail. I'm quite sorry, Evie, but I've been swamped. Haven't caught so much a wink since Friday. If you don't tell me something's wrong, you join the other low priority items at the bottom of the pond."

She tilted her head to one side, dark hair a pretty curtain against the confusion parading through her eyes. "What letter?"

"Irrelevant," he said with a concerned look at her face. "What's happened?"

"It's Cal."

He sighed.

It was always Cal and it was always her family causing trouble in the state; that's what always happened when a pack of wolves elected a spider to lead them.

"What about her?"

"She was talking a bath before her birthday hunt. With her son missing, a little peace and quiet is the best present we could give her. About twenty minutes later, we hear her screaming, splashing around and making just the most horrific noises. The door was unlocked. Al was hanging by the stairs waiting for his sister to arrive. He got there first. I was maybe half a minute behind him."

He thought about stopping her to sort out the details at a pace a little slower than a cattle auctioneer racing to break a world record chant, but it was easier to let the dam break and rebuild than to have his words flung back at him in her rush to speak.

"Tub's full of blood and shredded skin and fur."

It was just around the gory details that Igor had apparently grown bored fending off his foot and sank her teeth into his calf.

"Pardon," he said, ducking his head underneath the desk and reemerging when he had the cat by the scruff of her neck. "She's a monster."

"Fierce like her mama," Evita lamented with a little sigh of whimsical ignorance werewolves often got when speaking of pack members. "Any word on Marcy?"

"No," he said, his eyes very carefully directed on the cat.

The spiteful little creature hissed at the pair and leaped onto the third shelf of his bookcase, ambling behind all the knicknacks and awards, sending more than one flat to the ground or at just enough of an angle that he knew she was going to knock them off with one malicious paw the moment he paid her any mind.

"Hey, boss," Jorge said a few minutes later, jogging at their heels as Caelan lead Evita out a back exit. A tiny scrap of tissue bobbed on his lip. "Where you going? We have a meeting with Mr. Belzer in forty minutes. Was kinda hoping you'd go over my presentation."

"I'm sure you picked a beautiful font no one's going to care about," he said. "Another time."

Evita tugged his arm. Jorge, maybe sensing that he was going to get a good hollering for letting his boss wriggle free from a meeting already rescheduled three times, grabbed the other one.

Thomas Belzer was a man as low in stature as he was intelligent, but about as fat as he was vicious. He'd been responsible for sheriff assignments and retirements. Things being what they were these days, Belzer had been loosed in the PR department with the intention of reshaping werewolves into good old boy doggos in the public eye. He was Caelan's direct superior. For now, Caelan always found himself adding in the back of his mind. For now.

"What's wrong?" Jorge asked, more hopefully than was polite. "Should the department be put on high alert? I can text Jali."

"You do that," he decided, wrenching his arm free and to run his hand over his face. Too many problems. Not enough solutions. He hated babysitting Jorge, but he wasn't about to let the pup get his ass chewed off because the sheriff skipped town again. "Meet me at Miss Finn's address. You remember?"

"Be there in two shakes!" Relief etched into his features, Jorge ran back down the hall, moving so fast his sneakers squealed.

"He's so green," Evita was saying as they headed to the car. "How did he even earn a place here?"

"He's loyal," Caelan said, thinking he might need a coffee if he was going to make it through another night. "And he can repair just about any computer I'm fixin' to throw across the room."

When they arrived at the house Evita snatched her purse from the back seat and headed for the front steps. The pack had filled the street with parked cars and bikes. A headache for the neighbors, if there were any normal ones left, and he did doubt that after the dead had swept through after Marcy.

With a sigh not meant for anyone's ears but his own, Caelan glanced up the dark street, past the For Sale signs stuck neatly into the cul-de-sac like a line of political campaign ads, and up toward one of the few lawns without one. Marcy's house was silent as the grave he imagined digging for her one day soon.

It could've been instinct, but it was probably longing, that had him facing her house at just the right moment to glimpse a cat limp up the walkway to the porch steps. It padded to the door, bumped its skull against the corner, leaving behind a ruddy smear in the flickering light. The door opened. The cat turned its head down street as if it could sense the his unwavering gaze. Its rotted lips peeled back over a skeletal grin as the sheriff spat a human tooth on the driveway and rang his tongue over the budding curve of a fang.

Hellhound-Shawn James