Chương 39: Chapter 38 - The Elusive Scent

"Keep your nose out of my case!" I mimicked in the most nasally and mocking voice I could manage. I let out an angry pfffft, then grumbled, "If that man knew half of what I knew, he might actually have a case." Conrad paused his sniffing and turned to give me a look.

"What!" I cried.

"He told me to keep my nose out of the case. He never said anything about your nose." Conrad chuffed and put his nose back to the sidewalk at the end of Gladwyn's driveway. After Sheriff Grump-and-Shine had left me on the sidewalk that afternoon, I'd gone back to the motel to tell Conrad what had happened. I could've told him over the phone, but I had a feeling my call history would become a matter of police interest, and I didn't want to draw attention to him. As I drove the four-wheeler, I had some time to think.

Probably too much time. Enough to come up with a plan. Conrad had rubbed his eyebrow ridge several times while I filled him in about Gladwyn's murder, and he listened to me without saying a word as I told him my plan. When I was done, he stared at me. I squeezed my first two fingers with my other hand and waited. I knew I was asking a lot of him.

We'd only brought his rune wrap so that we could get him from where the Torr had dropped us off, to the motel without it being obvious to anyone who saw us that he was a supernatural creature. There was a clause in one of the millions of documents that he'd signed that acknowledged that he could also use it in an emergency, but I was pretty sure that "Emerra felt antsy" wouldn't impress a Torr judge as an emergency. It was a huge risk, and if anything went wrong, Conrad would be the one who'd pay for it.

I hated myself for asking and hated how scared I felt that he might say no.

"You think it's important?" Conrad asked. I pressed my lips together and nodded. I'd been too embarrassed to tell him about the "hundreds will die" line that I'd unleashed on Ayla, but her reaction had stuck in my mind. All kinds of nonsense came out of my mouth, but people didn't normally fall over themselves to get away from me. My eyes must have changed. The only other time that had happened, my black irises and my pupils had turned gold. That meant this was seer stuff.

Conrad sighed through his nose, then said, "Yup. I'll go."

"You mean it?" I squeaked.

"I'm sure as hell not letting you go back to Fort Rive alone!" Later that evening, we'd showed up at Vance's shack unannounced and asked if he'd be willing to do some bog-monster-sitting for us. He gave me an extra-long look that was eerily reminiscent of Conrad's stare. Then he opened the door wide.

"Come in, Blue Boy." Kappa, who was blissfully ignorant of what was going on, scampered inside without bothering to say goodbye. Next, we'd stopped in the woods off Vance's property so Conrad could change into his wolf form. He'd elected to take the route of least embarrassment by having me put his wrap around his neck while he was fully clothed. Then I could help him take his clothes off.

He glared at me the whole time I was doing it, as if daring me to mention how adorable he looked as a wolf in an oversized flannel shirt. It was rough, but I managed to shove his clothes into my backpack without saying a word. Then we started walking. Every once in a while, I would pause and look back at the faint white mist rising over the swamp. We timed our arrival in Fort Rive so that it'd be dark, that way anyone who happened to be glancing out their window might mistake Conrad for a really big dog.

The soft sounds of the insects created a rich kind of quiet, and the navy-blue night was broken up by the streetlights. The fading edge of each light barely met the fading edge of the next, creating a visual rhythm—light, dim, light, dim. Beyond that, everything was in shadow. We walked along the edge of the darkness and kept to the back streets. By the time we reached Gladwyn's house, I was already tired and tense—which helps explain all the grumbling.

Conrad bounced on his front paws, let out a quiet woof, then stuck his nose back to the cement. He turned to me and repeated the woof. I walked over and squatted down.

"You've found something?" He nodded.

"Is it the murderer?" Another nod.

"How can you tell? Is there blood?" He bounced on his paws again, nodding with the whole front of his body. I kept my eyes on his face.

"But that's not all, is it?" Conrad stopped moving and looked in my eyes. He knew it helped when I was trying to understand him.

"You're excited?" I said.

"Upset?" I could usually figure out what he was feeling—at least when he was a wolf—but I was no telepath. All I knew was that something about the scent bothered him. If it was a stranger's scent, there'd be no reason for him to react that way. He'd follow the trail and find out who it was. That meant the scent was probably familiar to him. Brodie? No. He'd been at the restaurant with me.

"Ayla?" I asked. It seemed unlikely, but she might have left Gladwyn's house later than I thought. Conrad gave me a reproachful look.

"You're right. You're right," I said.

"I already have her for breaking her contract. She doesn't have to be a murderer." I didn't like the idea that it might've been Vance—especially considering I'd trusted him to watch over my bog-buddy—but Conrad hadn't come across many scents… As the thoughts rolled through my head, I realized that they felt familiar. I'd tried to play connect-the-dots with them before. Recently. It was in the motel room. I'd come back in, and Conrad was sitting at the desk. I was miffed because he'd opened the black box without me.

Oh!

"Is it the scent from the black box?" I asked. Conrad bounced on all four feet this time.

"Ah-ha!" I narrowed my eyes and lowered my voice to a dramatic whisper.

"So the shadowy figure with the black box emerges once more." Conrad tilted his head and raised an eyebrow, but I was too busy thinking to notice. That meant that the person who'd been searching the swamp in the ghillie suit had murdered Gladwyn and taken the lamp—or had probably taken the lamp. But it was a good, solid "probably." A near certainty, really. Did that mean that they'd been looking for the lamp the entire time? Considering that no one seemed to know about it, that seemed odd.

But if they hadn't been looking for the lamp, what had they been looking for? I dislodged all the questions with a quick headshake. There was a scent trail in front of me and a wolfman beside me to help me follow it. The questions could wait until I was standing in front of them. With any luck, I would only have to wait a few minutes.

"Let's find them," I said. Nose to the ground, Conrad walked down the sidewalk for ten feet, turned toward the road, then stopped and sat on his haunches on the grass between the sidewalk and the street. For a moment I stood there, trying to understand why he'd stopped. Then I groaned and sat beside him with my feet in the empty gutter.

"They got in a car, didn't they?" Conrad nodded. I rubbed my forehead, then let my hand fall back to my lap.

"My black eye hurts." It did hurt. It ached. It felt sore and bleary. But I'd mumbled the thoughtless complaint not so much as a "cry," but as a meep in the night. As my excitement and anticipation bled away, everything felt worse—my injuries, my sore feet, even the pressure of the gauze pushing on my swollen ear. I wanted to rip it all off and throw it a million miles away. Conrad scooted closer so I could lean on him.

"I mean, what did I think would happen!" I said.

"Did I think that someone could walk down the street with an eighteen-inch stone bowl under their arm without being noticed? I'm such a moron." There was a quiet growl from deep in Conrad's throat. I looked over. He was glowering at me. Despite my exhaustion and whiny mood, I felt a small smile pull my cheeks back.

"What? Was some jerk insulting your packmate?" He play snapped at me to show his disapproval. I put my arm over the back of his head, ruffled his ears, and sighed.

"At least we didn't sit at home doing nothing. And now you know their scent. Maybe that's enough for one night." I tried to keep my meager smile on as I spoke, but my sinking stomach dragged the corners of my mouth down. This case was getting beyond me. Acting as Kappa's handler for a few days had turned into a murder investigation. The Torr courts were already in motion, and a Torr team was on its way. People who were far more experienced than I was would be taking over. I should have felt relieved! —but I didn't.

None of them would have that nebulous, frustrating urgency zipping through their guts like a hummingbird. And there was nothing I could do or say that could make them understand. I dragged myself to my feet.

"Let's head back." We hadn't seen a car all night, no one was around, and my caring level had plummeted, so I led Conrad down the main roads to cut a few minutes off our walk. When we reached the road that ran past the library and the graveyard, Conrad tensed and dropped his nose to the ground. He sniffed around, then gazed up at me, his eyes wide and his ears quivering with alertness. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. My heart sped up.

"You've found them?" Conrad turned and trotted toward a nearby house. I ran after him, feeling wary about my mounting excitement. The house was a modest, well-kept, one-story building. I didn't know the place, and I wouldn't have given it more than a glance under normal circumstances. It blended into the neighborhood and the land around it. Small. Unassuming. Unseen. The whole place was dark despite the fact it was only nine-thirty.

I snuck toward the front of the house, but the blinds were closed in every window I checked. There was no name on the mailbox and nothing else I could use to figure out who lived there. I turned when I heard a quiet bark. Conrad had returned to the sidewalk. He tossed his head toward the street and set off. I ran until I reached his side, then I had to jog every few feet to keep up. The houses fell away. The dark blue sky, dotted with stars, looked over a black field of geometric shadows.

The distant stain glass windows cast faint, elongated patches of colored light. By them I could make out a few of the stone monuments. Conrad had led me to the old graveyard. The lights in the church were on, and he was threading his way through the graves toward the front doors. All my excitement vanished. I stumbled to a halt and stood there, staring at the oldest building in Fort Rive. Why would Conrad know the scent of a person he'd never met? Because Lily Carver had dropped off our groceries.

She would have left her scent on the bags and the ground outside our room. Conrad stopped and turned to check on me. When he saw I'd fallen behind, he trotted back to me.

"I don't know what kind of crazy she is," I whispered. Conrad whined. The pitch rose at the end, making it sound like a question. I looked down at him.

"If she's the person with the black box, then she's been going into the swamp without a charm to protect her—but I don't know what kind of crazy she is! She isn't angry. She didn't… seem paranoid. Is it sadness? Can you be crazy with grief?" Conrad tilted his head. I set my jaw.

"I'm going inside. You don't have to come." The wolfman gave me a look. It communicated two things; one, he was coming, and two, I was stupid to think, even for a sliver of a second, that he might not. We finished crossing the graveyard. As we came up to the front doors of the old church, Conrad started making quiet chuffing and whining sounds. I shushed him. After a final growl, he went silent. I reached for the right door. It was hanging a half inch further forward than the left.

I could get a fingerhold on the whole edge without having to grab the busted knob. I eased the door open until the gap was wide enough to let me slip inside, and I held it there while Conrad followed me through. As he passed, I noticed that his neck fur was standing on end. Sure, I was uneasy—but I was dramatic and prone to overreaction. Conrad was the calm, sensible one. What did it mean if he was uneasy? The foyer was dark, as was the balcony and second-floor rooms.

The lights I'd seen outside must have come from the interior wall sconces. As I snuck toward the door that divided the foyer from the main room, I heard muffled voices coming from inside. Voices. Plural. There was more than one person in the church, and judging by the tone and pace of the murmurs, they were arguing.

"Conrad," I hissed, "why didn't you tell me there was more than one person here?" He rolled his eyes. I had assumed that Mrs. Carver would be alone. If other people were involved, I needed to figure out what was going on before I rushed into anything. Depending on the situation, my best choice might be to collect information, get the heck out of there, and give all that information to the Torr team who was, as far as I was concerned, late.

I couldn't sneak into the main room without being seen, but the balcony had a short solid wooden wall in front of the pews to keep people from falling over the edge. Not many people looked up while they were arguing. I could spy on them from there.

"Come on," I muttered under my breath. I snuck over to the staircase on my right and crawled up the steep, shallow steps while keeping my hands and feet on the outside edges of each step to minimize any creaking. Conrad's nails clicked softly on the wood behind me. When I reached the top of the stairs, I stayed on my hands and knees and crawled to the front of the pews.

I moved along the guard wall until I was roughly in the middle of the main room, then I slowly raised myself up on my knees to peer over the guard wall. My eyes widened. There were at least seventeen people down there! Most of them were wearing hooded indigo capes similar to the one I'd seen Bourdin wearing in my vision.

Given the cut and thinness of the material, they weren't going to keep anyone warm, so the only possible purpose they could serve was to warn me of the full and stupefying extent of the craziness that I was dealing with. I dropped back down. Conrad was looking at me with concern.

"It's a cult," I informed him.

"We're dealing with a cult." My resignation and dismay were so deep they came out the other side of a black hole into amusement. I had to choke back a hysterical laugh. Well, why not? This place was insane. By all rights, they should've been chanting in some ancient language that drove listeners mad while, nearby, the sacrificial goat bleated in terror. This was tame by comparison. They didn't even have their hoods up! It looked like they were only wearing them for ceremony.

Crazy cultists—and they weren't even doing it right. I felt robbed. When I knew I wouldn't laugh, I pulled myself back up to watch. Beside me, Conrad carefully put his front paws on the top of the wall and raised his head. The only person who wasn't wearing a hood was Sheriff Mark Shine. He was still in uniform, and he was arguing with Lily Carver. Her cape was the only one with a white trim. Around her neck, laying on top of the cape, was Bourdin's stone pendant.

She was holding a cloth-covered bundle tight to her chest with both arms. Everyone else was watching them and frowning.

"I think I deserve some answers!" Shine said. He kept his voice low, but there was an edge to it that betrayed how angry he was.

"I think we all do." He motioned to the rest of the silent, caped crowd, but they might as well have been a set of statues—some looking disdainful, some zealous, some stern. Their ungiving eyes never left him. His arm wavered, then dropped.

"I thought that you were one of us," Carver said. Her face was calm, but I'd never seen her look so hard before. It was the serenity of granite. Shine scowled and looked away, then looked back.

"You know I'm one of you. You wouldn't have called me today otherwise. But there are limits to what you can ask of belief—""Then you never really believed." Three or four of the others nodded. Among the crowd, frowns deepened. Shine took a step toward Carver.

"So I don't have faith like yours. I have to live and work in the real world. I have to get my hands dirty. And I'll thank you for helping me get this job, but tonight my hands are dirtier than they've ever been, and I don't want to 'have faith'—I want to know."

"What is it you want to know, Mark?"

"I want to know what happened, and what it has to do with us." A smile that never reached her eyes broke through Carver's stony calm.

"Cole and Davids didn't tell you? No. Of course they wouldn't."

"Tell me what?"

"Gladwyn called me over to his house today. He had something from the swamp—one of the holy relics. He was going to use it to try to force the Torr to get rid of the lost children. He wanted to know if I would support him—""Since you bashed his head in," Shine said over her, "I assume the answer was no." Carver raised her voice.

"Gladwyn was too ignorant and self-absorbed to understand what he was doing. When I tried to reason with him, he said he was going to do it his way, whether I was willing to help him or not." Her arms tightened around the bundle.

"If the Torr ever got their hands on a relic, they'd never let it go again. They have no right to take it. It belongs to us. We need it." The sudden venom in Carver's voice made all the hairs on my arm stand up. She finished with, "None of the rituals will work without them." I closed my eyes and felt a silent groan fill my body. I wondered if Gilles Bourdin—wherever his bones were moldering—would be proud to know he still had followers.

He must have left a hint in one of his journals that he'd hidden his collection of tools in the swamp, and Carver had searched for them without knowing what she was looking for. But the lamp wasn't one of Bourdin's tools. And even if I handed her the entire contents of the cabin's attic, gift wrapped, the rituals still wouldn't work. Bourdin had been a magician. None of them were.

Lily Carver didn't know that, and if that fevered color in her normally pale cheeks was any sign, she wouldn't believe me if I tried to tell her. Shine said, "How did Benjamin Gladwyn get his hands on a holy relic? He never went into the swamp if he could help it."

"Ayla Davids brought it out," Carver said.

"Why are you so sure that thing is what we've been looking for?" Carver was motionless for a moment, then she uncrossed her arms, pulled the bundle away from her chest, and began unwrapping it. My hands tightened on the top of the guard wall.

"The weapon, Sheriff—" I couldn't believe how composed Carver sounded. You'd never think she was confessing to murder in a room full of people.

"—I already cleaned it. I doubt you'll mind." She swept off the cloth and held up the bowl. The rest of the world faded into a washed-out background. All I could see was the gray stone bowl with its white quartz runes. The texture of the wood beneath my fingers disappeared. The floor under my feet seemed to vanish. Seeing the lamp in a vision had pried my heart open; seeing it in person cracked it wide. The shock made me gasp. The unveiling had a similar effect on everyone in the room—but to a lesser degree.

They all managed to marvel at the lamp in silence. My gasp could be heard across the entire church. The cultists looked up. Conrad and I ducked. My knees hit the guard wall with a resounding thump that drowned out the sound of his nails scratching over the wood. We stared at each other in mute horror. There are some sounds that you recognize because of the movies—like the sound of a revolver being cocked.

There are other sounds that you only have to hear once in real life, and you never forget them because something in your brain knows that sound means danger. Someone pulled a gun from a leather holster. My bet was on Sheriff Shine. I heard his voice over the guard wall.

"Mike. Brandon." Footsteps. They were coming for the stairs.

"Get the lamp," I whispered. Conrad growled at me.

"I know you can jump that wall. Get the lamp!" He barked right in my face.

"Okay!" I cried.

"Geez! You don't have to yell!" Since subterfuge had clearly been abandoned, I got to my feet and ran toward the stairs. It was useless. The men below had a head start, a clear path, and what little light there was. I was stumbling around in the dark. The beam of Shine's flashlight reached the top stairs before I did. I dropped to the floor and threw myself under a pew. There was a horrible moment when the backpack I was wearing caught on the bottom of the pew, but I torqued myself around, jerking it free.

Conrad flattened himself and slid under the pew behind me. Shine reached the top of the stairs. At first, all I could see was the light from his flashlight, glaring in the formless darkness, but as he turned to scan the balcony, I saw his silhouette. He had both arms up. His flashlight was in his left hand. His right hand was braced on top of his left wrist, holding his gun. It looked almost as big as the mini-cannon that Vance used to scare the alligators. Somewhere in all the action, I had stopped breathing.

My chest was whining for air. I slowly drew in a breath. The moment I did, I started trembling. Shine made his way down the balcony, running his light along every pew and aisle. He passed me, his huge boots only inches from my face. I had to close my eyes and clamp down on my lips to keep from whimpering. The light moved on. Lines of thought, burning like parallel fuses, sizzled through my brain all at once. Could we hide from him? No. He knew we were there.

If he didn't find us on his first pass, he would search under the pews during the second. We had to run. I waited as long as I felt I could, then crept out from under the pew. A voice in front of me shouted, "They're back here!" Shine had left someone to cover the stairs. The man was already moving toward me. If my choice was between one large man with a gun, and one without, I would take the one without. I rushed him. He wasn't expecting it. When he flinched, I tried to dodge around him to get to the stairs.

He grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me back. Then he was hit by nearly two hundred pounds of angry wolf. The man screamed as Conrad sank his teeth into his arm. The man released my wrist, but the momentum of the fight sent me spinning into the wall. Everything was confusion. There were loud footsteps on the stairs, getting louder. The flashlight's beam swayed over us as Shine ran back.

I could only make out snapshots of action as my eyes struggled, and failed, to adjust between the shifting light and the darkness. Conrad's fangs, bright red. His front paws ripping down the man's chest. The man's face, a grotesque mask of terror and fury. Shine shouting, "Get down! Back off!" I braced my quivering legs against the floor to launch myself at Shine. There was a flash more blinding than the flashlight and a crack so loud it broke my ears. Conrad lurched to the side and hit the floor.

My ankle twisted as I tried to pivot my launch toward my packmate. Hands grabbed my arms from behind, holding me back. The smell of gunpowder seared my nasal cavity. I heard jumbled words—all yelled. Cussing.

"Wolf!"

"Kill it!" The flashlight was shaking, but it wasn't waving any more. It was fixed on the furry heap on the floor. My sneaker skidded over the old wood as I struggled to get to Conrad. The hands on my arms tightened. Eight more flashes. Eight more earth-shattering cracks that I couldn't hear properly. Something was wrong with my ears. The only reason I knew I was screaming was because of how bad my throat hurt. And the voices in my head, like remote drops of rain, convened in the muffled silence.

That's why you've been so easy to upset. That's why you were so jealous of Ayla. You got too close— Never get too close, Emerra. You know that. Everyone leaves. Everyone goes away. You didn't want to lose him. You've lost him now. He's a lycanthrope. He can heal. Nine rounds to the chest. It tore up the floor. He can't heal when he's dead. As distant as the voices were, the word "dead" still reached me. I sagged. My weight dragged on my restrained arms, setting my shoulders on fire.

Shine crossed over to me with two long steps, raised his gun, and slammed it across my head, cutting off the tail end of my sobbing scream. It didn't knock me unconscious, but a white wave of dizziness swept over me. My black eye flared with agony, and my world tilted again and again. The hands holding me let go. I hit the floor like a sack of rocks. The sheriff triple zip-tied my hands behind my back while the other man gagged me.

I lay there, unresisting, my head and stomach spinning, grief pressing me down, wishing the blow to the head had killed me.