It was after eight a.m. when I arrived at the location shown on early morning TV. If this new attack site had been a media zoo so early, it was a circus now. There were seven vans with satellite dishes on top: national broadcast news, local cable, and national cable. A dozen cop cars from different agencies were parked haphazardly among them: Asheville PD, Buncombe County Rescue Squad, a truck with the logo RRT, which was the interagency Regional Response Team, as well as sheriff deputy vehicles. There were maybe forty privately owned vehicles, mostly trucks, and most with stickers on the windows proving them to be owned by trained rescue volunteers. I saw two rescue support trucks, emitting strong odors of burnt coffee and greasy fast food. There was one ambulance, the paramedics sitting in the shade of a tree, chatting. Three trucks had cages in back for canine search units. Which meant that the cops were having trouble finding either the camping/attack site, or had found it and were hunting whatever scent the dogs had discovered. People milled everywhere.
I exited the SUV away from the cameras, tossed my prepacked backpack over a shoulder, and melted into the trees to find the sheriff standing in the shade, shielded by heavy foliage from the view of the cameras. He stood with three other men and a woman at a makeshift portable table, a series of aerial maps in front of him, a laptop open to the side. Sheriff Grizzard had been in office for several years, surviving into his second term, and was already running for a third. He was a hale-fellow-well-met politician, a savvy back-slapping elected official. He didn’t exactly hate me and all I stood for, but at one time he had blamed me for Paul Braxton’s death, and had done everything in his power to put me in jail. There was no evidence against me, but Grizzard’s detective, and Molly’s friend, had been killed on my watch. I had survived. I could understand his animosity.
I stood, half-hidden behind a tree, drawing on Beast’s better hearing, listening to the murmured conversation. From it, I gathered that the search area had been divided into grids early on, the campsite discovered just after dawn. The injured had been hauled up the mountain in rescue baskets and medevaced out. The dead were still in place. Crime scene investigators were working the site, which was widely scattered. And the dogs were tracking the things that had attacked the campers. Things. Multiples.
“I say it’s fangheads, maybe with some sorta spell to hide their footprints, or maybe like that weird thing that killed those people in Louisiana.” The speaker was a short fellow with a full brown beard. He spat to the side, a spew of tobacco, and patted the wad of leaves deeper into his jaw with an index finger. He wiped it on his jeans and kept talking. “Part fanghead, part something else.” He was talking about a liver-eater, and I’d only ever seen or heard of one, but it was a good guess. The damage made by meat-eating predators was often similar. “Vamp and magic and shit.” He added, “Maybe it’s that woman who come back from there.”
“I don’t think Jane Yellowrock mauled three people and left them to die, then killed three more and ate them,” Grizzard said.
“Okay, then—that leaves fangheads,” the shorter man said firmly. “Never trust something that wants to eat you or drink you dry.” Which sounded like good advice to me.
“Put in a call to Yellowrock,” Grizzard said. “Let’s get her take on this. If it’s the same kind of creature she killed in New Orleans, that makes her the resident expert.” He didn’t sound happy. And Deputy Sam Orson didn’t look happy when he pulled a cell phone from his pocket.
I sighed. This was not gonna be fun. Before my phone could ring, I stepped from behind the tree and walked closer, deliberately stepping on branch when I was halfway there. Grizzard looked up. My cell rang. I answered as I entered the area. “Yellowrock.”
The deputy looked at me, looked at his phone, and disconnected. I lifted a hand. Closed my phone. “Sheriff. Sam.” I nodded to the woman, “Betty.” I didn’t know the others but included them in my general greeting, “Morning.”
“And you’re here why?” Grizzard said. Trust Grizzard to go for bad-cop attitude first thing. Maybe he did it with everyone. Maybe he saved it just for me.
“I saw the tracks yesterday in Hartford,” I said, dropping into the short simple sentences of cops on a crime scene or soldiers on an Op. “I was wondering if the same things attacked here. Wondered if I could help. You were just calling me, right, Sam? Sheriff?” I lifted the cell, which showed a dropped call from this area code.
Sam gave a half smile. We had lifted a few beers the night of Brax’s funeral. More than a few, actually. He had gotten totally wasted. My skinwalker metabolism hadn’t let me find that kind of release, but I had done my best to keep up with him. Then I drove him home in his own car and helped his girlfriend get him into bed. I hadn’t seen him since. He was now wearing a wedding ring and ten extra pounds. “Yeah,” Sam said. “Good to see you, Yellowrock.”
“You got pics of tracks?” I asked.
Grizzard jerked his head to the side, a command for me to come on over. With that simple gesture, I was accepted into the search group. My breathing settled and my shoulders relaxed. It was good to be home. I tucked my thumbs in my jeans pockets, leaving my fingers dangling while Grizzard punched some keys on the laptop. A photo covered the screen, a close-up shot of a paw print. I set my spread hand on the table top. “About that wide?” I asked.