Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (2 page)

Vaile stared down at the carved up
chest of a kid who couldn’t have been any older than nineteen or twenty. Black
eyeliner was smeared down his cheeks, bleeding out of tightly-drawn lines
which—in Vaile’s opinion—no man should ever have such talent in. The guy’s
black jeans were slung low; a silver chain clipped to a belt loop and running
under his body—more than likely to a wallet with a fake ID in his back pocket.
The guy’s shoes were the only thing that didn’t make sense with the ensemble:
red high tops. So he was either a free-thinking Goth (not fucking likely) or he
was only pretending to be.

The CSI team
were working around Vaile, collecting samples and documenting the scene. And
even though they were the best at what they did, Vaile would still be doing his
own CSI work after they left because his wolf could pick up more than humans
could when it came down to it.

‘What’s in his
back pocket?’ Vaile asked one of the investigators looking over the body.

Carefully, the
guy lifted the body and pulled on the silver chain. A wallet fell from his
pocket into the hand of the investigator. The guy handed it to Vaile. Opening
it, Vaile found a couple of small bills and a condom along with a fake ID.
According to the information, the kid’s name was Sam Sanchez, born in 1986.
Vaile looked down at the kid again. There was no fucking way he was
twenty-five. He handed it back to the investigator who bagged it.

Vaile glanced up
when raised voices drifted through the door to the open men’s bathroom; his
partner’s voice firm yet still feminine. And even though his head didn’t want
to acknowledge her presence, his cock certainly did. Standing from his crouch,
he held his latex-clad hands out carefully in front of him and marched out of
the bathroom.

The Uniformed
standing by the door flinched when he saw Vaile, looking away nervously a
second later. Vaile’s lip pulled into a sneer before storming down the short
hallway of the club. 

Grey spoke
again, her hands held in front of her trying to force the blood-thirsty
rubberneckers away. ‘Please. This is a police investigation.’ One of the club’s
bouncers was just standing there, not doing a damn thing to help her.

‘I thought I
told you to close the fucking club!’ Vaile barked at the guy from halfway down
the hallway, pulling off his bloody gloves angrily.

‘We’re trying to
get people out now,’ the bouncer replied, crossing his arms over his chest and
puffing it out a little.

‘Do a fucking
better job of it then!’ snarled Vaile.

A young woman
surged forward in the crowd, clutching at the police line slung lazily between
two propped-up mops at the start of the dark hallway. Her eyes were filled with
the terror of someone who had never tasted death before, and Vaile suddenly
felt jaded.

‘Please,’ the
girl whimpered. ‘He’s my … he’s my …’

‘He’s your
what?’ Vaile demanded, stalking towards the petite female. She was only a few
inches shorter than Grey which had her flirting with the five-foot-two mark.
Her black hair was as dull and lifeless as the stiff laying on the men’s room
floor. Her eyes were painted in the same way—dark and smoky—but the look of
horror on her face really added to the look she was trying to pull off. Her
honey-brown eyes widened as he approached her; her throat trying to work down a
lump.

‘He’s your
what?’ Vaile demanded again, stopped only inches away from her body.
Intentionally, he crowded her, getting up into her personal space until he
could smell the fear coming from her. His wolf pushed its head against his
ribs, a growl vibrating through its chest.

‘He’s my …
classmate. From university.’

Vaile’s eyes
narrowed and she took a step back. ‘You brought him here tonight?’ he demanded.

She swallowed
the lump and nodded.

‘What’s his
name?’

‘Aaron. He’s in
my philosophy class. He said he wanted to come when he heard me talking about
it with a friend earlier this week.’

‘Aaron what?’

‘I don’t know.
I’d only spoken to him a few times. Honestly, I didn’t even think this was his
kind of place,’ she desperately tried to explain. Vaile put a hand up to stop
the verbal diarrhoea. He fucking
hated
whining humans.

Vaile glanced at
Grey and she nodded. He could see in her eyes that she understood what he
wanted from her. She glanced back at the girl and pulled the yellow police tape
up, ushering her through quickly before lowering it again. While Grey was
pulling info from the girl, Vaile walked back into the bathroom again, kicking
a “Wet Floor” sign out of the way; hating how strong the sting of urine and
stale sex hit his nostrils. His wolf shifted beneath his skin once more before
settling down to wait it out. It knew the drill.

While waiting
for the ME to turn up, Vaile began looking for an obvious cause of death. His
eyes travelled down until the kid’s chest was front and centre. There was too
much blood to see the pattern that had obviously been carved into his skin.
Vaile’s gaze inched higher, looking for bite marks. The fucking club was full
of fucktards who thought they were vamps, and the scary thing was there were
actually some vamps that slunk in the corners and fed on them. He couldn’t see
fang marks, but it didn’t mean they weren’t there. It looked as if the kid’s
throat had been slashed as well as the majority of his upper body. The slashed
throat could have been nothing, but there was a niggling feeling of familiarity
to it.

Before he could
analyse the detail anymore, the smell of roses wafted into the room and Vaile
looked up.

‘ME is here,’
Grey said, avoiding looking down at the mess.

‘Thank fucking
Christ,’ he drawled, standing up. Stalking out into the hall, he saw Doctor Lee
ducking under the police tape.

‘So, Detective,
what have we got tonight?’ Lee asked. The doc was in his mid-thirties with a
crew cut and adult acne.

Vaile’s reply
was gruff. ‘It’s nothing I’ve seen before.’ And he’d seen a hell of a lot in
his lifetime. ‘Take a look for yourself.’ He nodded the doc into the bathroom,
following him in. The photographer was taking shots of the scene while Lee set
his kit down on the basin of the men’s bathroom. He pulled out a pair of
gloves, handing a fresh pair to Vaile.

‘Well, this
looks new,’ Lee said, looking over at the body. ‘Have you ever seen anything
like this before?’ Vaile shook his head. ‘It never ceases to amaze me how badly
human beings can hurt each other,’ Lee murmured, crouching down and probing the
slices in the stiff’s chest. ‘Who found him?’

‘A staff member
stumbled across him when he came in for the routine clean around twenty minutes
ago. Have you got a preliminary cause of death for me?’

Lee carefully
checked over the body, muttering under his breath as he worked. ‘My guess would
be massive blood loss due to his carotid being slashed, but when we get him
back to the lab, I’ll wash the body down, examine him, and then we’ll have a
better idea.’ Vaile nodded. ‘Were there any witnesses?’

‘We haven’t had
the chance to speak to anyone properly yet. There is a woman out there who
seemed to know him though, so we’ll start there. Got an estimated time of
death?’

Lee probed the
kid’s jaw. ‘Rigor mortis has just set in, so maybe no longer than half an
hour.’

‘It’s hard to
believe no one else came in here to take a piss and
not
notice the stiff
on the floor,’ Vaile commented.

Lee shrugged. ‘I
just deal with what the body can tell me. It’s your job to figure out the why.’

‘Are you ready
for me doctor?’ a voice asked from the doorway. The doc’s assistant—guiding a
gurney—paused just outside the bathroom. Lee glanced up.

‘Yes Briggs,’ he
answered absently. ‘Have you collected all the evidence you need?’ Lee asked a
CSI hovering around nearby.

‘Yep. He’s all
yours.’

Lee turned to
Vaile. ‘I’ll take his prints at the lab and get you the results by the time you
get into the office,’ he glanced at his cheap-ass Casio, ‘later on today.’

‘Thanks,’ Vaile
rumbled.

Lee jerked his
head a little at his assistant. Briggs came in, unfolding a body bag, and laid
it out on a clean patch of black tile. The doctor and his assistant lifted the
body—struggling with the dead weight—and placed him carefully inside the
plastic. When the zipper came up over the guy’s face, they hauled him out and
onto the stretcher. The crime scene investigators filed out after them, leaving
Vaile alone in the bathroom. He closed the door and looked around.

There wasn’t
enough blood on the floor considering the kid had had his throat slashed. He
looked at the pattern of the blood, noticing an irregularity in the spatter.
Vaile crouched down to investigate the strange looking mark on the tiles where
the kid’s head had been. It looked as if something had been placed on the
ground just as the bleeding had begun. He looked around the bathroom trying to
find something roughly the same size; his eyes finally settling on the soap
dispensers above the trough sink. One was missing.

Vaile stood up
to get a better look at them, measuring them visually. They were the right
size. So the killer had collected the blood from the Vic. But why? A vampire would
have just drunk from the source. A fucking wannabe vamp wouldn’t have though.

‘Fuck,’ he
cursed harshly under his breath. This was just what they needed—a fucking human
pretending to be a vampire. But that still didn’t explain the mutilation. He
looked around the rest of the bathroom, allowing his wolf a little more free
rein.

The human scents
around him overwhelmed his senses. He’d thought the smell was bad before—it was
fucking unbearable now. His wolf growled as the scent of blood overwhelmed it. After
refocusing, Vaile walked around the bathroom, checking each stall and around
the urinals until he could find something that could be connected with the
crime that the investigating team missed. He came up with nothing.

‘Did you find
anything more?’ Grey asked behind him suddenly. Goose bumps broke out on his
skin and he had to swallow the warning growl that was trickling out from his
wolf’s throat. Nobody snuck up on him, but she had managed it somehow. Fuck, he
was getting rusty. He blinked a few times to make sure his wolf’s ice-blue eyes
were gone before turning around.

‘Nothing,’ he
grunted. ‘Did you get a sketch of the scene?’ She nodded. ‘Well then there’s
nothing more we can do. Let’s get out of here.’ He turned to leave.

‘Did you maybe
want to go grab a cup of coffee?’ she asked quickly—suddenly—clearly grimacing
after like she hadn’t meant to ask him. Vaile stopped mid-step.

‘Why?’ he
demanded.

She looked
stunned, sweeping her eyes across the floor in thought before answering him. ‘I
just thought you’d want a cup of coffee. I’m not going to be able to get to
sleep again after seeing that,’ she said, gesturing to the black tiles. ‘I
thought you’d like to come … unless you have to get back to your wife, or
something,’ she tacked on.

‘I’m not married,’
he grunted.

‘A girlfriend
then?’

He pinned her
with a hard look before answering. ‘No girlfriend.’ Something flashed in her
green eyes that he couldn’t interpret before she looked away.

‘Well, okay
then. I’ll meet you at the twenty-four hour diner down by the river in ten.’
Grey sauntered out of the room without waiting for his reply, wholly convinced
that he would just show up because she’d said so. He stood there for a full
minute before he realised what had happened, and with a curse he left “The Imp
and Impaler”, driving his unmarked down to the diner by the river.

*

Larissa’s heart was pounding
violently against her ribs. She’d barely managed to get her car keys out of her
bag without dropping them into the icy mush that pooled in the car park behind
the club. Starting the engine, she turned up the heating and held her hands in
front of the vents. She could hardly believe she’d just asked Vaile out to
coffee like that. But she had and he hadn’t said no. He actually hadn’t said
anything, but she took his silence as a
yes
.

Larissa watched
the ME’s van roll out of the car park while some last minute gawkers watched
on—pointing and taking photos with their camera phones.

Shifting the car
into gear, she backed out of her space and drove towards the river. It would
only take five minutes to get there, but she wanted to make sure she looked her
best.

She pulled into
a space and locked her car, the small fob on her keychain blinking in time to
her headlights. The diner was an old railway car that had been refitted to
accommodate half a dozen booths along one side and a long counter in the
middle. The kitchen was small, but the cook made amazing pancakes.

Pushing through
the glass door, she glanced around to make sure there was a booth that would
provide them with enough privacy. The place was empty at this time of the
morning, so there was no problem there.

Walking into the
small, single-stalled bathroom at the back of the diner, she locked the door
behind her and placed her bag onto the small countertop. She glanced at her
reflection, horrified by how washed-out she looked. Her hair was just as
disastrous. The two A.M. phone call hadn’t been pleasant and she’d barely had
enough time to throw on yesterday’s uniform before getting down to the club.
Vaile had already been there, and she hated having to walk in late.

Pulling a
compact from her bag, she started applying powder to her face, trying to
conceal the dark circles that had developed there from the lack of sleep. She
really should have stopped there, but something inside her drove her to get her
mascara and lipstick out too. She applied a little mascara, pulling the clumps
off when they formed with a square of toilet paper. Glancing at her watch, she
put on some lipstick quickly before pulling her blonde—usually immaculately
styled—hair into a high ponytail with a hair elastic she found at the bottom of
her bag.