Page 8 of Reaper
“Speak for yourself, fang-boy,” a slight lycan with buck teeth shot back.A were-rabbit, if I had to hazard a guess.This got an even bigger laugh.
Becks continued.“All four bodies were found naked, and no clothes or belongings were anywhere in the vicinity.Saint has already identified the most recent victim as a hanger-on named Willy, but we would like your help in identifying the others.”
She clicked a remote, and the screen switched to close-ups of the three unidentified victims.A low rumble passed through the crowd as they got their first good look at the dead men, all young, all seemingly in the prime of health, and all very obviously dead on a morgue table.
“The one on the far left is José Marquand,” the college were woman said.“He vanished from campus almost two months ago.I didn’t even know he was a para, much less a were.I guess he was still closeted.”
A lot of nods around the table at that.Many young shifters don’t know how to find a local pack when they move to a new area, so it wasn’t a big surprise that José hadn’t reached out to anyone.It’s not like Miss Nose Ring was plastering flyers around campus telling people to meet on the quad naked every full moon to romp through the woods.At least, I assumed she didn’t.College in the new millennium might be more open-minded than I thought.
“I think the one in the middle might be Jerry Cans.”This was the buck-toothed shifter, pulling out a pair of glasses and slipping them on over his short nose.I swear, everything the guy did made him look more rabbit-like.If he was a were-aardvark, it was proof God had a fucked-up sense of humor.
“Yeah, that’s Jerry,” said a thick-necked bald white guy sitting with Dex.“I wondered why he ain’t been out back of the bar lately.”
“Who’s Jerry?”I asked.
The big guy glared at me until Dex elbowed him, then said, “Jerry’s a bum.I mean, unhoused dude, that squats in a few places around town.One of them is the yard across from our club.”“Our club” was Tempt, a strip club on the north side of town where Dex’s pack spent a lot of time.It sat across a narrow street from a junkyard, an unfortunate location for a topless bar, but a pretty good one for a front for a coke and meth outfit, which is where most of the club’s revenue came from.
“When was the last time you saw Jerry?”Flynn asked.
“What, like I keep track of the guy picking up half-smoked butts off the ground?Come on, lady.”
“Behave, Orville,” Dex said, his voice low.“She’s a fed.”
“That’s right,Orville,” Becks said, stepping forward and putting her hands on a table.“And a former CMPD detective.I know all about you guys running drugs out of Tempt, and if you fuck with me on this, I’ll make sure there’s a cop car parked across the street from your front door every night for the next year.How’s that going to affect your business?”
Orville held up both hands in surrender.“Fine, fine.I ain’t seen Jerry in at least a month.Maybe two.He don’t keep a regular schedule, ya know?”
“Yes, he does,” Rabbit Guy disagreed.“He has a route he works, like a delivery guy, or the pallet man.He spends a couple weeks at the junkyard, then a couple weeks in Marshall Park if it’s warm, then a couple weeks under the bridge over by J.C.Smith, then a couple weeks down by the John Belk overpass on 77.Then he goes back to the junkyard and starts his lap all over again.”
“How would you know, Bunny?”Orville asked, his lip curled up in a snarl.Most lycanthropes are predators, so the ones who shift into typical prey animals are considered second- or even third-class citizens.
“I know because I talked to him, you muscle-bound asshat,” Bunny said, pushing his glasses up his nose.“You just threw rocks at him, but he was a good guy.He was smart, and a talented artist.He painted the mural on the side of our shop when we moved onto Central.”
“Your shop?”I asked.
“I’m part owner of The White Rabbit,” Bunny said, a hint of pride in his voice.The White Rabbit is Charlotte’s oldest LGBTQ+ bookstore, and a gathering point for the community for decades.It’s entirely possible that Bunny was the store’s namesake.I never knew there was a paranormal component to its ownership, though.“We all save our aluminum cans for Jerry, and he’d pick them up about once a month when he was heading from his spot under John Belk back to the industrial park where the junkyard is.He…he was a good person.He didn’t deserve to be thrown away like garbage.”
“Nobody does,” I said, getting nods from everyone around the table.If there’s one thing shifters understand, it’s rejection and solitude.That’s why the bonds of a pack are so strong.For a lot of them, it’s the only family they can ever have after being rejected by the humans in their lives.I get that.It’s why the bonds I’ve formed with my people are so important to me.
I turned back to the screen.“Anybody know the last unidentified victim?”My only response was silence.“Are there any other packs, or loosely affiliated groups of weres, that aren’t here?”Maybe the last victim would be a member there.
“There’s that bunch down by the Arboretum,” a woman who had been silent until now said.She was a normal-looking woman, white, in her forties, with a little gray at her temples.Which meant she might have been forty or eighty.She looked to be in good shape and had a slightly feline air about her movements.Maybe a were-cat of some sort.“There’s not really an Alpha, or even a membership.I think it’s more like a social club.They meet up most Wednesday nights at the Barnes & Noble down there.”
“Would you be willing to make an introduction?”Becks asked.
The woman looked at Flynn like she’d grown another head.“You want me to introduce a fed and the Reaper to a bunch of shifters?Hell, no.I barely know them, and I like the ones I know, so if you show up and start doing fed stuff, I don’t want to be associated with that.And I definitely don’t want anybody thinking I sicced the Reaper on them.”
You havegotto do something about that nickname,Becks said.
If only I hadn’t spent so many decades earning it,I replied.I held up my hands.“Okay, that makes sense.But look…” I let my words trail off and gave the woman a “this is where you tell me your name” look.
“Theresa,” she said, her voice curt, like even giving me her first name was a struggle.
“Look, Theresa, I really don’t want to hurt anyone—” I had to pause to let the snickering die down.“I don’t want to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it.I just want to find out who these dead men are, and what’s happening to them, before it happens to more people.”
“How do you know these are the only victims?”Luke asked.
I whirled around to stare at him, partly for interrupting me when I was at my most diplomatic, but mostly because he’d raised a point we hadn’t even considered.I made an effort to keep my shock under wraps and asked, “What do you mean, Luke?”
