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  Vee pulled over a few yards away from the last police vehicle, its lights flashing red and blue and casting a macabre glow on the wet blacktop.

  The body had been found in a shallow ditch along Route 510 heading through the middle of the park. The ditch, being lower than ground level, was invisible from the road, and wouldn’t have drawn any attention had it not been for a chance discovery.

  Vee got out of the car, leaving it open long enough for Syama to alight in her hellhound form. She’d remain invisible, scenting her way through the scene to report later what she’d picked up.

  Vee shut the door, and walked along the shallow grass-covered bank, taking care where she stepped. The ground, soft from the rain, would hold footprints all too well, both a good and a bad thing--especially with half the force running around the place.

  The best thing about Monroe was she was a stickler for procedure.

  Vee reached the narrow pathway that led to the scene, demarcated by the bobbing heads of a half-dozen cops around twenty yards away.

  The ground had been covered with plastic tiles which sat a few inches from the ground, allowing for access to the site while still ensuring the evidence remained untainted—as much as was possible.

  Vee was tempted to scan the pathway now before reaching the scene but decided against any delay. If she was taking the lead, then she’d need to waste as little time as possible.

  Besides, Monroe would have expected her to be there before she made the call to Rossi. Vee followed the covered pathway over and down the bank and into the long narrow ditch.

  The plastic tiles paved her way along the base of the gully and led her to Monroe, where the detective stood, directing her team.

  Vee came to a stop beside the redhead and gave her a cool nod. She would have shaken the woman’s hand, but instead Monroe handed her a pair of white latex gloves.

  Though Vee had a pair of her own inside her jacket pocket she took the ones Monroe offered and snapped them on. “What do we have?” Vee had found that using the words we and us on a semi-joint case made the local LEOs a little less resentful.

  Monroe nodded, a slight twist of her lips acknowledging Vee’s attempt. “Motorist stopped to take a piss. Got an eyeful instead. Tossed his cookies over there by the tree.” She pointed her pen back in the direction of the road. “He called it in as soon as he stopped puking his guts. I got here within ten. Called you before I left the station.”

  “How did you know it was ours?”

  Monroe tipped her head in the direction of the road. “Motorist took a picture for the cops. Texted it over to the station. We knew before we left.” She jerked her chin at Vee’s phone. “You should have a copy by now.”

  Vee nodded. “I’d rather not see it in a photograph. I prefer to study the scene fresh.” She glanced around, seeing no body, and stiffening.

  Just as her blood pressure began to rise, Monroe snorted. “Don’t go getting your panties in a bunch. He’s around the bend up ahead. I figured we’d be better off working a few feet away from the scene instead of messing around on top of it.”

  Vee nodded. “I like the plastic floor tiles. Smart.”

  Monroe nodded but didn’t say anything more. Vee walked off down the gulley, listening to the clacking of Syama’s claws on the plastic tiles as they rounded the bend. Two cops stood on either side of the tented scene, both occupying positions on higher ground, one on each of the banks on either side of the ditch.

  A large tent had been erected, covering a ten-by-ten foot space and protecting the scene from rain and debris.

  Lights were on, focused on the body, and Vee stepped beneath the tent, inhaling the copper-laden air in one breath. She sniffed and glanced at Syama who whuffed, giving Vee a dark glare.

  Two people occupied the tent, one snapping photos, the other standing and scribbling notes on a clipboard. Jo and Max greeted Vee with lukewarm smiles and nods, then continued with their tasks.

  Vee stepped closer and stared at the body.

  A young man, late teens to early twenties. Jogger—running shoes, smartwatch hanging loosely from his wrist, empty phone-strap wrapped around one bicep, water bottle at his hip. He wasn’t small, either. Bulked up, well-muscled, thighs twice the size of Vee’s.

  The attacker had done a number on him. He looked like he’d been mauled by a bear. Or worse.

  Vee made a circuit around the body, studying it from every angle, the empty space where the heart should have been, the guts hanging out of the abdomen, filling the air with its acrid sour stench, the blood staining the body and pooling at its sides.

  Vee returned to where she’d started and took the scene in using her aural senses.

  A mere blink later, the tent took on an entirely different look, drab grays and blacks overlaid with a bright amalgam of color that were the auras left behind by people who’d passed this way.

  Syama trotted away, following a scent Vee could see. She watched as the hellhound sniffed and loped along, disappearing around the bend in the ditch.

  Vee inhaled slowly and focused. It was always a little complicated filtering through the auras of the CSI techs and the attending cops, but soon Vee had dismissed their feedbacks and was now focused on the people who’d come by before the policemen had arrived.

  She identified the imprints of the motorist—who hadn’t taken a look from afar, as he’d reported. He’d come the same way Vee had, peering at the body, curious, concerned, or nosy, Vee couldn’t tell.

  He’d lifted a branch from the floor of the ditch—stupid, considering it was evidence and now had his DNA all over it—and stepped closer to lift something away, clothing perhaps, or a covering of some sort. He swiped a few times and then straightened.

  Had the victim been hidden by something? Vee couldn’t tell. Though solid objects left an imprint, the elements hadn’t helped to retain them, the rain would have deteriorated the residual images faster for anything inanimate.

  It was the existence of life, coupled with emotion that allowed for a longer lasting aura.

  Though the victim was technically without life, which would thereby imply there shouldn’t be an aura, he had in fact died under terrible circumstances, the murder having elicited intense emotional reactions—shock, terror, regret.

  Intense emotions amplified the residual imprints of the auras, helping the victim’s already fading aura remain strong for days, and sometimes even months. The claim that the dead haunted the place of their passing was true, but more in the sense of their aural imprints. Often trauma can cause an aural imprint to remain powerful enough for susceptible people to see it clearly. Et voila: ghosts.

  Now, Vee studied the witness, whose horror was evident in the dark tones of his aura. Whatever he’d seen had shocked him so badly that he’d dropped the branch, his arms wind-milling back as he fell onto the incline on his ass and slid down to the floor of the gully.

  After that, he’d scrambled to his feet, teetered as if about to faint, then hightailed it back to the road where Vee knew he’d lost the battle with the contents of his stomach.

  She shook her head. Bumbling idiot. He’d likely compromised some of the evidence with both his nosiness and his lies.

  Vee looked beyond him, focusing on earlier in the day, before the motorist arrived on scene.

  The residual aura of a deer appeared. Gray and gold lines emanating from the animal. She was following along the base of the gully, her head down, her aura curious and light. Her imprints shifted darker when she saw the body, her emotions increasing in intensity. She hesitated, sniffed, eyes wide as she watched, as still as a statue.

  Then she moved back a few feet, turned around and trotted off. Had she sensed that something else was going on here beyond just the natural predator-prey scenario? Or had she decided to leave while she was still safe?

  Filtering down to the remaining auras that were still fresh enough to have passed by after the murder, Vee watched a vagrant slide down the bank into the ditch and rifle through the
victim’s pockets, making off with a wallet and whatever money was inside.

  Before he’d left he’d paused to consider the shoes. He’d gone so far as to lean over and untie the laces, but then he’d paused again and changed his mind.

  Vee suspected the running shoes were too small, as the vagrant had left, shaking his head in annoyance, his aura intense.

  As he fled her eyes skimmed the scene again and she frowned. Earlier, when she’d first seen him, the jogger had worn a phone in the now-empty armband strapped to his left bicep.

  Vee felt a wave of pity for the man. Although her instinct was to judge him for stealing clothing from the dead, she understood. What she didn’t understand was that he’d taken the victim’s phone but hadn’t called for help at all.

  Perhaps he had, though.

  Vee acknowledged that she could still be wrong about him and perhaps he had logged a call.

  And, seeing as the victim had a smartwatch, chances were his phone was smart too, so it wouldn’t be too hard for Agent Brent Cadiz back at HQ to run a trace on the serial number and ID the owner.

  Vee paused for a moment to study the watch which dangled from the jogger’s wrist. Had the band been broken in the struggle?

  Then she rolled her shoulders and continued her search.

  Before the vagrant, the gully had remained silent for a while; nothing had happened until three figures approached along the gully. Two men, their body language standoffish as they waited for the jogger who approached from the other end of the gully. He paused to run in place waiting, probably expecting them to walk past him in single file.

  His aura reflected shock as the shorter man lashed out, catching the jogger in the middle of his abdomen. The second man waited, a small cooler in his grasp, his body language expectant.

  The attacker’s aura shimmered, the outline of his form pulsing until it began to spread like an amorphous cloud, tendrils dancing around him, intertwining and encasing him.

  And then Vee saw it clearly, even heard herself gasp at the sight. High brows, wide catlike eyes, sharp jutting cheekbones and a wide chin. But the nose made Vee hold her breath as if the sight of it, the recognition of it, would swipe the image away like a hand through smoke.

  Vee focused on the nose, more a snout with wide dark nostrils, on the hair framing his face like a mane, and the ears, tufted and pointed. Each aspect on its own was neither frightening nor garish. But put together, it was the face of a monster.

  The face of the lion-headed man would haunt her for days to come. The clawed hand rising into the air, the grimace, canines flashing as he slammed his claws into the innocent man’s stomach.

  Heat flared at the victim’s abdomen and Vee understood it to mean an injury which had shed a significant amount of blood instantly.

  The attack was unexpected, but quick. And Vee was unable to look away.

  The image of the killer was seared into Vee’s brain.

  A lion-shifter.

  Chapter 20

  Vee blinked away her shock, and concentrated on the aura trails.

  After he’d taken the man’s heart, the lion-shifter’s companion had then gutted him, leaving him to bleed out.

  Then he’d opened the small cooler box he’d been carrying and waited as the shifter placed the heart inside it. The attacker’s blood-drenched fingerprints had covered the handle and the lid of the cooler but he hadn’t seemed to care.

  The two had left while the victim’s body had cooled. That had been almost six hours ago. Long enough for their trail to have died, but not long enough that Vee wouldn’t be able to follow them.

  The fresh blood would have been enough to track them but given their location, she’d only be able to go as far as the road. Had that been their intention?

  Frustrated, Vee relaxed and closed her eyes, taking a deep calming breath and focusing on her physical senses. It was actually possible to go cross-eyed with both aural and natural vision overlapping each other, and confusing the hell out of her.

  When she opened her eyes she found Max watching her.

  Vee gave him a small guilty smile.

  “What can you tell us?” His tone was calm, and matter-of-fact, as if a woman standing in the middle of a crime scene scanning the details with her eyes closed was the most normal thing in the world.

  Vee sighed and began to walk him through what she’d seen that would be relevant to his investigations.

  “There’s contamination of the body by soil,” she said as she pointed at the branch, tagged with a little red flag, “and that broken branch. The branch was introduced to the scene post-mortem, so it will have no impact on your autopsy.”

  Max flashed her a frown, but nodded and made a few notes on his clipboard.

  Vee’s attention had drifted to the jogger, her eyes falling on the lopsided watch. “You should find some form of DNA within the wound that doesn’t belong to the victim.”

  Vee sighed. She’d never needed to explain to Max how she knew these things, and she was glad she didn’t have to field questions either from him or Jo. She knew she’d find it hard to lie to them.

  The coroner glanced up at Vee. “You want to attend this autopsy as well?”

  Vee shook her head. “I might not have the time. You go on without me. Just let me know what you find.”

  He nodded absently, his mind already on the case.

  Vee thanked him though she was sure he’d heard the impatience in her tone. Results from biological testing took far too long. She supposed she should be glad they used tech from Shankar R&D that was—unknown to them—enhanced just enough to speed through the blood, saliva, and semen screening and identification process.

  Now that Vee had obtained a good idea of the species of her killer, she’d be far more able to track him down. The supernatural community was small enough that she’d be able to find someone to question soon enough.

  She left the coroner and his assistant under the tent, then tracked the auras to complete her understanding of the killer’s movements. She followed them along the gully prior to, and after, the killing.

  Then, Vee headed back to Monroe who was talking in measured tones on her phone, most likely to the chief who liked to be kept informed.

  She slowed to a stop at the detective’s side. Monroe rang off and slid her phone into her jacket pocket. She glanced back in the direction of the tent, then studied Vee’s face. “What do you think?”

  Vee took a breath and shifted her gaze from the woman’s piercing eyes to the now whittled down number of policemen covering the scene.

  “Your witness lied.” Monroe didn’t even blink in response. “He didn’t just see, vomit, and call it in like he said. He would have noticed the body from the rise up ahead. Whatever he saw drew his attention enough that he approached the crime scene. He went up to the body, found a branch, and used it to lift something off the victim. Hard to say what.”

  Monroe nodded, though her eyes had widened at the mention of the wooden branch. “We flagged the branch as a possible murder weapon.”

  “I saw,” Vee murmured, “but it isn’t. The branch was introduced to the scene by the good Samaritan.” Vee used air quotes when she said the phrase “good Samaritan.”

  “Stupid bastard.”

  Vee didn’t disagree. “Was the victim covered in anything?” she asked. “Like a rug or a tarp?”

  Monroe nodded, paused then shook her head, “Yes, covered. But not a rug or tarp.” She waved Vee over and pointed at a bag filled with blood-stained leaves. “They were all over the body, covering his face and even the wounds. Possible the killer tried to conceal?”

  Vee studied the overhanging trees and shook her head. “I don’t believe so. These trees are filled with dry leaves. A good breeze would shake them loose. I think there’s no conspiracy when it comes to the leaves.” She pursed her lips.

  Monroe looked at Vee, then studied the bagged leaves. Then she looked back, gave a nod and set the bag back into the evidence box at her feet. “
One less thing to worry about. But I won’t be disregarding it until we know for sure.”

  Vee was staring off into the distance already thinking about the rest of the evidence she’d noticed. “There’s a bunch of handprints and gouges in the sand along the edge of the gully…”

  “Yeah. We’ve had them casted and bagged. The gouges were ass-impressions.”

  Vee nodded. “They’re from our motorist. He fell when he saw the state of the victim’s guts.”

  Monroe’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just shooting all my . . . our evidence outta the water.”

  Her words spoke of irritation, but her tone said something else. Admiration? Respect? Maybe a little envy.

  If she only knew how Vee got her “hunches,” she would so not be impressed.

  Monroe grunted and rocked back and forth on her heels. “We need all the help we can get here. The ground is wet, the rain’s been intermittent. And the area is prone to flooding. Probably something the killer had counted on.”

  “Guess we should be thankful for the leaves. By covering the body they would have protected the evidence.”

  Monroe nodded, giving the overcast sky a wary glance. “We’re going to get everything bagged and tagged, and get right outta here. Got about an hour before the skies open on us. Don’t want to get washed away along with all the evidence.”

  Was that meant to be a joke?

  Vee gave the woman a second glance, but decided not to get too familiar. Monroe was usually edgy, prone to shift the blame for anything that went wrong onto the FBI, and had historically been critical of Vee herself.

  For now, Vee wasn’t ready to progress to BFF stage just yet.

  Vee said her goodbyes and asked to be kept in the loop. Then she headed back to the car where she paused and studied the grass verge and the road.

  The clacking of claws on the blacktop confirmed Syama’s return, and Vee hoped that she’d at least have uncovered something important.