Near dawn, the first something-unexpected happened. I was checking out the men’s rooms off the lobby when I was alerted over my com headgear. “Legs, something’s up. The blood-servants are going ape-shit,” Derek said.
Wrassler, my number two guy, and one of Leo’s blood-servant security goons talked over the chatter. All I made out was, “—in here now . . . Leo . . .”
I hotfooted it out of the john, Beast-fast. “What?” I asked as I entered the Black Bear Grill. They were all watching a TV monitor, local cable news showing a scene of flashing emergency lights: police, ambulance, even an antiquated fire truck with COCKE COUNTY RESCUE SQUAD painted on the side. In the background I could make out a bridge and the reflection of red and blue flashing lights on still water. On-screen was a wild-haired, heavily bearded man, maybe mid-twenties, with multiple piercings and lots of body art. “Dude, it was bad. I mean blood and guts and stuff. The deputy was saying it had to be fangheads, what with the injuries. Like one a’ them rogues that goes psycho and eats people and shi—uh, stuff. Like, sorry, dude. I cuss a lot.”
“Oh crap,” I murmured. My cell phone rang. It was Leo. “Yellowrock.”
“You will take any necessary personnel and deal with this. If it is a rogue, dispatch it. If it is something else, you will make this situation go away.”
“Sure, Leo. But—” The line clicked off. I was just an underling, the paid help. Unlike the vamps, I didn’t deserve good manners.
Chapter Two
Vamp-fang and Werewolf-bite Scars
Eyes gritty from lack of sleep, I knelt on the bank, jeans absorbing the wet from the river-slick rock. Just upstream from me, two commercial rafts slid under the bridge where a couple had been attacked before dawn. The screaming voices of laughing children tore the air. Someone slapped a paddle onto the water, the sound echoing. My Beast flinched deep inside, but I didn’t react. I was too busy studying the scratches on the rock in the early morning lig [y mchoing. ht.
There were three parallel lines, the one in the center longer than the ones to either side. I put my fingers into the grooves, feeling the rough edges of the slashes. Using the excuse of a better view, I bent lower, getting my nose to the rock. I sniffed. The water smelled of iron and fish, sunscreen, treated sewage, chemicals, and age. The grooves smelled different. Still fishy, but with a particular sour dead-fish stench I recognized.
Grindylow, Beast thought at me. Water smells of grindylow, not vampire, not pigeons.
It took me a moment to understand. Beast was a literal creature, and the river was named the Pigeon. To her, it should smell either of the vampires who had been accused of attacking the boating couple just upstream of where I knelt or of pigeons. Not of a grindylow, a creature once thought to be mythical, from the U.K. by way of Africa and New Orleans. A grindylow brought unexpected, puzzling possibilities into the equation. I stared up at Mount Sterling, wondering just how much responsibility for this attack rested on me.
I rose to my feet and dusted the wet grit off my hands, watching rafts float toward me. They were filled with families, church teens out on a field trip, college kids lazing away a September Saturday, the river guides looking young and carefree. The water of the Upper Pigeon River rippled and frothed at the end of the run, spilling out into a wide, placid pool beneath the bridge where the attack took place, dividing around islands and curling into smooth eddy pools where commercial rafts could launch or be pulled up the banks. Just downstream the river dropped again, becoming the Lower Pigeon, a slower, easy-paced river.
I scuffed a boot heel over the three cuts in the rock. I had an idea what supernat had mauled the two people last night, and it wasn’t a rogue-vamp. Proving that would make the local vamps and the parley safer. Despite the territory-marking sign and the grindy scent, the grindylow wasn’t the assailant either. Leo had made this my problem, and it was, but not solely for the reason he thought. Crap. This was gonna be a booger. And if I could prove what had really happened, the incident would clearly be my fault. A sense of dread settled in my gut.