might take a little finagling,” Fia warned Arlan. They approached a strip of crime scene tape stretched between two peach trees and the three Virginia State Police troopers guarding it. “I’m not authorized to be here.”
“Never stopped you before,” Arlan pointed out under his breath.
“You either,” she murmured. Her hand brushed his sleeve. “Be careful.”
It wasn’t necessary for either of them to telepath the other. Fia knew what he was going to do. At times like this, their relationship seemed to go deeper even than those they held with their friends and relatives in the sept. Which was precisely why Arlan thought they were perfect for each other.
He walked away from her, hands in his jean pockets. It wasn’t hard to blend in among so many people: uniformed police, detectives in suits, emergency medical technicians, media personnel, neighbors, relatives, probably extended family members.
The parking area next to the white farmhouse was utter chaos. The Buried Alive Killer, as the news media was calling him, had struck again. Everyone was talking. There were tears. Sobs of disbelief. The emergency responders were taking care to keep their voices low and unemotional, but not always accomplishing their goal. A young male EMT stood on the far side of the yellow tape, hands pressed to his knees, head hanging, as an older woman in an identical uniform leaned over him, talking quietly. Coaxing him.
News teams with cameras and microphones had set up camp in the driveway between a red minivan and a Chevy pickup. A police officer was trying to move them away from the vehicles, which Arlan guessed might have belonged to the family. Who knew what kind of evidence could have been left behind?
Arlan’s gaze strayed to the soccer ball decal in the rear of the van window. It read “Go Shore Cats.” A kids’ local soccer team.
He walked away, a lump rising in his throat. He could hear Fia talking to one of the state troopers, although he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying. FBI agents out of Baltimore would be here soon, if they weren’t already on the scene. This was really out of Fia’s jurisdiction and it wasn’t her case, but unlike in TV dramas, in real life, officers of the law often found common ground, overlooking the rules at times like these.
Arlan heard a soft mew and looked up at the back porch. A tabby cat wearing a blue collar with a bell hanging from it sat on the edge, observing the commotion of the backyard. A living witness to the murders?
Arlan walked over and sat down on the top step of the stairs leading to the porch. Someone had recently added a new coat of white paint. He could smell its freshness.
Arlan reached out to the cat and it curled under his hand. He stroked its back. Scratched its ears. Can you tell me what happened here, little buddy? Arlan crooned telepathically. You know anything about this mess?
The cat looked up with big green eyes. Blinked. He seemed to know Arlan was trying to communicate with him, but the message was coming through scrambled. It was difficult for Arlan to telepath to animals from a human state.
See anything? Arlan pressed. Anything you want to tell me?
Arlan sensed a heavy sadness.
“Poor boy,” Arlan soothed, stroking the cat’s back.
The cat arched beneath his hand, tail stiff in the air, and then leaped from the porch and took off across the grass. He went through a flower bed of purple impatiens, around a kid’s red plastic wheelbarrow, and past a peach tree. He flew unhindered under the line of yellow tape. On the far side of the tape, he stopped and turned back.
Arlan glanced around. No one was paying attention to the cat, of course. Not the police, not the blonde with the microphone from WBOC, not even Fia.
The cat waited.
Arlan knew an invitation when he saw one.
He glanced in the direction of the crowd being herded to the end of the driveway away from the family vehicles, then at Fia and the state troopers still in dialogue. He doubted anyone would notice him disappear around the rear of the house. Even less attention was given to the second cat that appeared a moment later.
Arlan walked lightly over the freshly mowed grass, lifting his kitty paws high. He preferred big cat morphs over the common house cat variety, but a panther would have appeared out of place here, even in this uproar.
Helicopter blades cut through the air as Arlan ran, tail in the air like a flagpole, under the police tape barricade. One of Fia’s newfound friends backed into an open area in the grass and waved away the helicopter.
Arlan glanced ahead. The tabby was waiting for him, keeping one eye suspiciously on the helicopter. He didn’t seem as surprised by Arlan’s morph as he was by the news cam in the sky. The cat took off and Arlan trotted after him.
The tabby was barely more than a teenager. Arlan sensed that he was scared. The cat didn’t know what was going on, but he knew it was bad. The bell on his collar tinkled as he ran through the grass.
They circumnavigated two ambulances and a white van marked “COUNTY CORONER” in big block letters. The tabby couldn’t read, didn’t know what the van was, but Arlan did. Seeing those vehicles always bothered him. He couldn’t imagine how a person could do that job day in day out—investigating deaths, performing autopsies.
Of course, the coroner probably wouldn’t have understood Arlan’s job any better. Vampires righting the wrongs of the world by selective execution were highly misunderstood. Pretty weird in its own way.
Where are we going? Arlan conveyed to the cat as they ran through the legs of several uniformed police officers.
Bad, the tabby said. Bad.
They raced across a patch of grass toward a huddle of men and women under a picturesque silver maple tree that was so perfectly shaped that it appeared as if it had been drawn by a kid’s crayon.
Arlan noticed at once that the humans standing under the tree, speaking in hushed voices, were all wearing latex gloves. He felt the hair rise along his spine. His tail bristled. The air was suddenly thick with the smell of dead flesh.
Human flesh.
A part of Arlan wanted to turn around and run back to the freshly painted white porch. That part of him wanted to sniff around the outbuildings behind the farmhouse and look for a tasty mole or mouse. He wanted to morph into an ostrich and stick his head in the sand…metaphorically speaking. He didn’t do ostriches.
But Fia needed his opinion. Fia needed him and he could never tell her no. Not ever. So he followed his tabby friend, who had slowed to a trot. They went around the men and women in gloves talking in hushed tones.
Fia had tried to warn him to prepare himself before seeing the victims. Ambulances had arrived to take the bodies away, but the dead had not yet been moved. Photos and evidence were still being taken by the crime scene investigative team.
Arlan thought he was prepared as he walked under the tree, a step behind his feline friend. He had seen plenty of dead people before. Made quite a few of his own.
He was not prepared.
For a moment, Arlan just stood there, blinking his slanted kitty eyes. The scene that stretched out before him under the pictorial tree appeared to be something out of a bad slasher
