I waited, but I didn’t feel any homicidal or suicidal urges and my breathing was unhindered. But my head felt pressurized, there was a faint ringing in my ears—and the scent of the magic was powerful.
Deciding that scaring myself was unproductive, I dropped my hand off my neck (because that wasn’t making it hurt any less) and started for the tunnel bridge again. I gave a sharp whistle before I got close enough for the officer directing traffic to send me on my way. George looked up and I met his gaze. He said something to the uniformed officer he was standing next to and jogged over.
“It’s okay,” he told the traffic officer, with a hand on his shoulder. “She’s with me.”
The officer took a second look at my face and his eyes widened. Being the wife of the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack made me something of a celebrity.
“Of course,” he said. Then he turned his attention back to his job.
“Did anyone catch you up on the meeting this morning?” I asked him as we walked past the police line.
“Werewolves and a demonic jackrabbit,” he said. “And you banged happy back into our Alpha—for which not only the pack but everyone who works for him is very grateful. That last I have from both Carlos and Elliot.”
I rolled my eyes and ignored my blush. I was getting better at that—better at ignoring the blush. “Well, the scent of that jackrabbit’s magic is all over this place.”
“Yeah, color me not surprised,” George said, “because what we have here is an abnormal incident. I just got through texting Adam some photos.”
“Lots of police,” I commented, looking around.
“Yep, people are safe to speed anywhere in Pasco at the moment,” George said. “I’m off duty—and I’m not the only off-duty cop here, either. When the sheriff’s department and the fire department hear about this, we’ll be drowning in them, too.”
The burning sensation in my neck was growing.
“Hey, George,” I said casually.
“Yes?”
“If I suddenly quit breathing or”—heaven help me—“start to act really weird, throw me in the river, would you?”
“Sure thing,” he said without hesitation. “I heard you got bitten.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I am working under the assumption that this magic is one of those that have bounced up against my coyote weirdness and failed. But still, if I try to hurt someone who doesn’t obviously deserve it—”
“The river,” George finished for me. “I’ve got it.”
“Okay.”
We rounded the trailer portion, which looked pretty normal, and I got my first good look at the tractor, which had climbed up the decoratively functional concrete barrier. It hung, tilted awkwardly, the front four feet of the rig over the open roadway below. But the tractor wasn’t in any danger of falling—the bottom half of the big rig had literally melted into the concrete barrier.
I touched the top part of the tire, which was level with my chin and somehow still holding air. I ran my fingers down the rubber and paused over the transition between rubber and concrete.
“Huh,” I said.
“‘Huh’ is right,” agreed George. “The accident probably happened because the guy driving the rig is high as a kite. He claims he hit the barrier to avoid killing a bunch of kids. Says his girlfriend grabbed the wheel and aimed at the kids. After the truck wrecked, she said, ‘Good luck with your beloved truck.’ Expletives deleted. Then she took off.”
“Witnesses?” I asked.
“Yes. We’ve got two ladies who were heading into the bakery to order a wedding cake who saw the whole thing. Truck looked like it was going to go down the tunnel—suddenly swerved to the right—and there was a group of maybe six kids walking across the street. Ladies thought for sure that truck was going to hit them, when it jerked suddenly and impacted the barricade where so many other vehicles have met their doom. They did not see the girlfriend.”
“So do we believe the girlfriend exists?” I asked.
“And did she have a bite mark?” He paused dramatically. “Yes, yes, she did. Our driver, who did not know his own girlfriend’s name on account of him picking her up at a gas station in Finley, said she had a—and I quote—‘weird-ass mark on her arm, man—like she’d been bitten by a vampire’—unquote.”
It fit. Everything except the way the truck had melded with the barricade, anyway. It didn’t seem like the mind-control stuff went together with changing the bottom of a semi tractor into concrete. But my nose didn’t lie—the smoke beast had been here.
“Is the driver still here?” I asked.
“Nope, they took him in for questioning.”
I’d been casually looking around. Funny how easy it was to tell the cops, in uniform and out, from everyone else—and there were a few onlookers now. It was a subtle thing—an in-crowd, out-crowd. Pasco wasn’t that big—all of the police officers knew each other and their body language gave it away.
My eyes caught on one of the onlookers. A dark-complexioned girl wearing shorts and a pink tank top—and her expression was wrong. She was looking at the wrecked vehicle and she didn’t look amazed or worried or excited like everyone else. She looked smug.
“George,” I asked, not taking my eyes off the girl. “Do you have a description for the missing girlfriend?”
She looked up at me at just that moment. There were probably a dozen yards and twenty people between us—and she looked at me as if she had known exactly where I was standing.
She smiled at me and the bite on my neck flared in a bone-shivering spike of pain that made me stagger before it died completely, like something had short-circuited. As it did, her face twisted with pain—and then malevolent anger.
“That’s her,” said George, coming to alert as he saw who I was looking at. “Hispanic female, pink top.”
He didn’t speak loudly, but I think, from her change of expression, she heard him, so her hearing was at least as good as ours. As we started toward her, she looked around at all the police surrounding her. Briefly she looked frustrated—and then she looked at us again. Her shoulders relaxed and she smiled—right before she ran.
George bolted after her—and I bolted after him.
“George,” I called out, because—wouldn’t you know it—George was one of the very few werewolves who were faster than I was. “Let her go—if she bites you, you belong to her! Then you die! George, wait!”
I couldn’t tell if he was paying attention or not. The call of a hunt is pretty strong, and I wasn’t Adam.
The woman fled down a side street that was edged with automotive boneyards, warehouses, and empty lots. She reeked of that distinctive magic and she was moving as fast as a werewolf. I was pretty sure we’d found our jackrabbit. George was hot on her heels, gaining a few inches with every stride.
I was twenty or thirty feet behind them and losing ground rapidly. Neither of them seemed to be having trouble with the rough and uneven sidewalk, but it tripped me up once and I almost tumbled head over heels. I kept my feet but it slowed me down.
The woman dropped out of sight down a narrow dirt track between a pair of industrial-looking buildings that wore an air of abandonment. When George disappeared around the corner, too, I found an extra burst of speed from somewhere.