Sarah scrambled out of the gutter, scrabbling against the cold pavement with her gloved hands and the heels of her winter boots, backing madly away from the thing in the intersection. She clambered backward until she slammed into the unforgiving stone wall of the building behind her. The monster in the street hunched its shoulders and took a single step toward her, and Sarah screamed, throwing her hands up to cover her eyes.

When she worked up the courage to splay her fingers and peek through them, the beast was gone. Breathing a sigh of relief, Sarah covered her mouth with a gloved hand and shuddered for a moment. She climbed to her feet, still watching the intersection like a cat watching a dog, and then bent to retrieve her purchases.

She re-bagged what had survived the fall, kicking the broken or destroyed items into the gutter. At least I only have two bags to carry now.

Sarah gathered her packages in her arms and stepped back onto the sidewalk. As she did so, she glanced into the alley from which her antagonist had bolted. The evening grew darker with each breath, but not so dark she couldn’t see the mess near the dumpster.

She took a single step into the mouth of the muck-strewn alley, then dropped her groceries for the second time, turned and bolted for her apartment, screaming like a tea kettle at full boil.

She no longer noticed the cold wind.

2

Leery Oriscoe held his cup of coffee carefully as he idled the unmarked car forward until it tapped the bumper of the Prius at the end of the block. He gunned the accelerator and pushed the little car forward with a shriek of protesting tires. He didn’t stop until the Prius sat in the intersection, and then he put the Crown Vic in reverse and backed into the recently vacated last spot.

Dru shook her head. “Just going to leave that poor car out there in the street?”

“Poor car? That’s a Prius, Nogan.” He sipped his coffee and popped his door open. “Come on. The scene’s right down the block.”

Shaking her head at the small car standing alone in the intersection like a forlorn lover on a train station platform, she got out and belted her coat around her middle. “One day, Oriscoe, you’re going to catch hell for something like this.”

“Yeah? That’s okay. I know someone related to one of the Four Queens of Hell. I’m sure she can help me out.”

“What makes you think I’d speak to my mother on your behalf?”

“Oh, you thought I meant you?” Leery flashed her a saucy smile, then turned and walked down the sidewalk. “Come on, Princess,” he called over his shoulder.

Muttering curses to hide her grin, Dru followed him.

Ahead, Leery ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, then stopped for a big swig of coffee. As she crossed under the tape herself, Dru wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”

“Hear that, Sergeant Briggs? That is an example of the keen senses you have to cultivate to make it into SIS.”

The officer keeping the log looked at him and arched her eyebrow. “Aren’t you dead yet, Oriscoe? You’ve got to be, what, ninety?”

“Oh, Patricia, that stings!” Leery downed the rest of the coffee and held the empty cup out to her. “Here, I wouldn’t want to dirty up the scene.”

Patricia Briggs tilted her head to the side and glared at him for a moment, then turned to Dru. “Can’t you house-break him?”

Dru scoffed and shrugged. “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Ouch! Two age jokes in such proximity! A guy could get a complex.” Leery stood there staring at Briggs, holding out his empty cup until the officer shook her head and took it. He grinned at her. “I’ll take another, thanks. As big as you can get around here.”

“I’m the officer of the log, Oriscoe. I can’t just‍—‍”

“No, I drink it black, but thanks anyway,” he said, talking over her. “Hey, I really appreciate you running down to that bodega in this weather. That’s really going the extra mile.” He turned away from her, ignoring her outraged expression, and stepped to the mouth of the alley. “Over here, Nogan. Come see what your nose already found.”

“You can shoot him if you like,” said Dru.

“I would, but I don’t want the paperwork. You want a cup?”

“You don’t have to do‍—‍”

“Yeah, but I’m already going for your flea-bitten partner.”

Dru shrugged. “Yes, please. A small, with seven sugars.”

Sergeant Briggs arched an eyebrow at her, then shook her head, mumbling something about diabetes. Then she turned and walked over to a patrolman and sent him for the coffees, adding a cup for herself.

Dru turned and followed Leery into the alley, trying not to breathe through her nose. The alley smelled like a slaughterhouse—the unmistakable coppery odor of blood, the scent of a ruptured bowel, the reek of raw meat. “What do we have, Oriscoe?”

“Oh, not much for a Thursday night.” He turned back to her and stepped closer. “Looks like something went a little nuts on this poor woman.”

Dru pulled out her flashlight and painted the scene with blue-white light. Something had shredded the poor woman’s abdomen and chest and ripped out her throat, festooning the bricks with her blood. “Hellfire,” Dru muttered.

Leery grimaced. “You can say that again.”

“Any ideas what did this?” she whispered.

Oriscoe grunted and darted a glance over his shoulder at the mouth of the alley. “Yeah, unfortunately. These wounds…the throat, they spell one thing to this old wolf.”

Dru glanced at him.

“Yeah,” he said in a tone she could only just hear. “One of my kind.”