“Did the fight continue for a while?” He nodded. I took a slow breath. “Did anyone die in the fight?” Brute shook his head and I let the breath out. “Do you recognize the attacker or attackers’ scent?” He nodded again. “Was it Peregrinus?” Brute’s big head dropped and rose slowly.
“Was anyone injured?” The skin and hair over Brute’s eyes wrinkled, and I recognized his inability to answer the question. “Did you smell fresh blood?” Brute stared hard at me and dipped his head. I said the names, pausing between each for an answer. “Leo’s? Katie’s? Derek’s? Peregrinus’? The Devil’s?” I got a solemn nod with each name.
Soul said, “Peregrinus has the hatchling, Leo, and Katie. There is nothing he cannot do once he controls them.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking that over. “We have a limited time period to fix it all. First question is, how did they get out of the yard?”
Eli knelt and rolled towels to form a square on the plastic. “Here’s the fence at our back courtyard. Here’s Katie’s back door. There’s a long alley from Katie’s backyard to the street down this side, but it’s locked and a camera records everything there. There’s no side yard here.” He pointed to the other side, where Katie’s and the house being remodeled next door were so close that you’d have a difficult time getting an old-fashioned phone book between the walls. “So we have a fight that took place in a rain-and thunderstorm, in a locked garden area. Brute? How did they get out?”
Brute whined softly, looking at the towels and up to Soul.
“Brute is having some difficulty thinking in human terms,” Soul said, her tone gentle. “We think his brain has been too long in wolf form. It’s okay, Brute. Can you show us if we go outside, in the yard?” Brute whined and thumped his tail before nodding. He turned and put a paw on the door, which left a muddy smear before Troll opened it. I followed the werewolf stuck in wolf form into the dark.
Outside, the rain had stopped and there was only the gurgle of water running off the roofs and through gutters, and the heavy fall of collected rainwater dripping from plant leaves and house eaves. Distantly, I heard cars splashing through the rain and jazz from uptown, R & B from downtown. The wind was still moving downstream, carrying the ever-changing scent pattern.
Nose to the ground, Brute trotted around the yard, circumscribing an area about twenty feet round. Most of the yard. Several times he put his paw down as if indicating something important on the grass or on a plant. “Soul, what’s that mean, when he puts his paw down?”
“He smells blood.”
“A lot of blood, then,” I said, counting back to eight different places just in the circumference.
Brute trotted to the side yard and put his paws up on the building next door to Katie’s, the building where I had heard hammers and skill saws earlier in the week, where the construction was taking place. I looked up and saw that a window on the attic floor was broken. “Crap,” I said to Eli. The breeze had carried all scent from the window away from us, so I hadn’t noticed it. I was too wedded to the nose and not enough to the eyes. “We suck as investigators,” I continued. “You found the sniper out front. But I’m betting we had someone watching the back from the attic of that house.”
“I’ll take the front, through Katie’s and out to the street,” he said into my ears. He looked at Troll, taking in the broad shoulders and huge chest. “Think you can boost Janie up to the window when I give the word?”
“Piece of cake.” To me, Troll said, “You find who took my Katie and you put a hole in him for me.”
I nodded and sheathed my weapons. I’d need hands free to climb through a high window. I just hoped they weren’t still there waiting in ambush. At that thought, I said, “Eli, take Brute with you. See if he smells them leaving through another door.”
Brute woofed and raced to the house, Eli hot on his tail. Literally. Which made me smile as much as I could, knowing that the Master of the City and his heir had disappeared on my watch and under my nose.
Troll stood bent-kneed, about five feet away from the wall of the neighboring house, and linked his meaty fingers together to made a basket of his hands. I gauged the distance from his hands to the window and backed up fifteen feet. Drawing on Beast’s strength, I raced toward Troll and leaped, landing with my right foot in his hands. I pushed off and up as Troll straightened his knees and simultaneously raised his arms, pushing, shoving, lifting, throwing me high, like a gymnast. I shot up and over at the window, meeting the window sash at waist level, my hands thrusting down, using the momentum to lift my legs up. I caught my balance and paused on the sash, hands and feet all together, the way a cat might stand on a narrow ledge or tree limb.
“Janie,” I heard softly below me.
Before answering, I inspected the room inside, dark and shadowed. There was no one there, but the smell of fresh vamp and human blood hung thick on the air, mixing with the scents of glue, putty, wallboard, wood, and human sweat. If there was an intruder inside, one who had a better-than-human sense of smell, he or she would know I was coming.