Page 6 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

M y display of exceptional restraint (exceptional because it came from me at all, restraint because I neither blew anyone up or set anyone on fire) reduced the tension in the room from a boil to a simmer, and Becks pointed to a big monitor on the bar with four crime scene photos displayed on it.

I don’t know where it came from, but it seems like any time a government agency is part of a meeting, there has to be a big-ass monitor.

I was just hoping she hadn’t had time to make a PowerPoint.

You don’t know suffering until you’ve sat through eight hours of mandatory federal sexual harassment training, led by the person you are actually having sex with on a regular basis.

“These four men were found naked and dead at different locations across Charlotte over the past six weeks. All the bodies were found on a Sunday morning, and they all seemed to be in perfect health. From the two bodies we were able to examine, we know that they were lycanthropes. We are working under the assumption that the other victims were shifters as well. The autopsy reports showed enlarged hearts typical of high-performance athletes, no trace of injury, and completely clean toxicology reports. Their stomach contents consisted of large quantities of meat and other high-protein foods, and very few vegetables.”

“Yeah, we ain’t known for our love of spinach,” Saint said from across the room, getting a chuckle from the assembled shifters.

“Speak for yourself, fang-boy,” a slight lycan with buck teeth shot back. A were-rabbit, if I had to hazard a guess. This got an even bigger laugh.

Becks continued. “All four bodies were found naked, and no clothes or belongings were anywhere in the vicinity. Saint has already identified the most recent victim as a hanger-on named Willy, but we would like your help in identifying the others.”

She clicked a remote, and the screen switched to close-ups of the three unidentified victims. A low rumble passed through the crowd as they got their first good look at the dead men, all young, all seemingly in the prime of health, and all very obviously dead on a morgue table.

“The one on the far left is José Marquand,” the college were woman said. “He vanished from campus almost two months ago. I didn’t even know he was a para, much less a were. I guess he was still closeted.”

A lot of nods around the table at that. Many young shifters don’t know how to find a local pack when they move to a new area, so it wasn’t a big surprise that José hadn’t reached out to anyone.

It’s not like Miss Nose Ring was plastering flyers around campus telling people to meet on the quad naked every full moon to romp through the woods.

At least, I assumed she didn’t. College in the new millennium might be more open-minded than I thought.

“I think the one in the middle might be Jerry Cans.” This was the buck-toothed shifter, pulling out a pair of glasses and slipping them on over his short nose. I swear, everything the guy did made him look more rabbit-like. If he was a were-aardvark, it was proof God had a fucked-up sense of humor.

“Yeah, that’s Jerry,” said a thick-necked bald white guy sitting with Dex. “I wondered why he ain’t been out back of the bar lately.”

“Who’s Jerry?” I asked.

The big guy glared at me until Dex elbowed him, then said, “Jerry’s a bum.

I mean, unhoused dude, that squats in a few places around town.

One of them is the yard across from our club.

” “Our club” was Tempt, a strip club on the north side of town where Dex’s pack spent a lot of time.

It sat across a narrow street from a junkyard, an unfortunate location for a topless bar, but a pretty good one for a front for a coke and meth outfit, which is where most of the club’s revenue came from.

“When was the last time you saw Jerry?” Flynn asked.

“What, like I keep track of the guy picking up half-smoked butts off the ground? Come on, lady.”

“Behave, Orville,” Dex said, his voice low. “She’s a fed.”

“That’s right, Orville ,” Becks said, stepping forward and putting her hands on a table.

“And a former CMPD detective. I know all about you guys running drugs out of Tempt, and if you fuck with me on this, I’ll make sure there’s a cop car parked across the street from your front door every night for the next year.

How’s that going to affect your business? ”

Orville held up both hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. I ain’t seen Jerry in at least a month. Maybe two. He don’t keep a regular schedule, ya know?”

“Yes, he does,” Rabbit Guy disagreed. “He has a route he works, like a delivery guy, or the pallet man. He spends a couple weeks at the junkyard, then a couple weeks in Marshall Park if it’s warm, then a couple weeks under the bridge over by J.C.

Smith, then a couple weeks down by the John Belk overpass on 77.

Then he goes back to the junkyard and starts his lap all over again. ”

“How would you know, Bunny?” Orville asked, his lip curled up in a snarl. Most lycanthropes are predators, so the ones who shift into typical prey animals are considered second- or even third-class citizens.

“I know because I talked to him, you muscle-bound asshat,” Bunny said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You just threw rocks at him, but he was a good guy. He was smart, and a talented artist. He painted the mural on the side of our shop when we moved onto Central.”

“Your shop?” I asked.

“I’m part owner of The White Rabbit,” Bunny said, a hint of pride in his voice.

The White Rabbit is Charlotte’s oldest LGBTQ+ bookstore, and a gathering point for the community for decades.

It’s entirely possible that Bunny was the store’s namesake.

I never knew there was a paranormal component to its ownership, though.

“We all save our aluminum cans for Jerry, and he’d pick them up about once a month when he was heading from his spot under John Belk back to the industrial park where the junkyard is.

He…he was a good person. He didn’t deserve to be thrown away like garbage. ”

“Nobody does,” I said, getting nods from everyone around the table.

If there’s one thing shifters understand, it’s rejection and solitude.

That’s why the bonds of a pack are so strong.

For a lot of them, it’s the only family they can ever have after being rejected by the humans in their lives.

I get that. It’s why the bonds I’ve formed with my people are so important to me.

I turned back to the screen. “Anybody know the last unidentified victim?” My only response was silence. “Are there any other packs, or loosely affiliated groups of weres, that aren’t here?” Maybe the last victim would be a member there.

“There’s that bunch down by the Arboretum,” a woman who had been silent until now said.

She was a normal-looking woman, white, in her forties, with a little gray at her temples.

Which meant she might have been forty or eighty.

She looked to be in good shape and had a slightly feline air about her movements.

Maybe a were-cat of some sort. “There’s not really an Alpha, or even a membership.

I think it’s more like a social club. They meet up most Wednesday nights at the Barnes & Noble down there. ”

“Would you be willing to make an introduction?” Becks asked.

The woman looked at Flynn like she’d grown another head.

“You want me to introduce a fed and the Reaper to a bunch of shifters? Hell, no. I barely know them, and I like the ones I know, so if you show up and start doing fed stuff, I don’t want to be associated with that.

And I definitely don’t want anybody thinking I sicced the Reaper on them. ”

You have got to do something about that nickname, Becks said.

If only I hadn’t spent so many decades earning it, I replied. I held up my hands. “Okay, that makes sense. But look…” I let my words trail off and gave the woman a “this is where you tell me your name” look.

“Theresa,” she said, her voice curt, like even giving me her first name was a struggle.

“Look, Theresa, I really don’t want to hurt anyone—” I had to pause to let the snickering die down. “I don’t want to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it. I just want to find out who these dead men are, and what’s happening to them, before it happens to more people.”

“How do you know these are the only victims?” Luke asked.

I whirled around to stare at him, partly for interrupting me when I was at my most diplomatic, but mostly because he’d raised a point we hadn’t even considered. I made an effort to keep my shock under wraps and asked, “What do you mean, Luke?”

He rose and walked over to the monitor, gesturing at the four faces there.

“You have the photographs of four lycanthropes who have apparently been murdered in Charlotte recently, but what of other paranormal or supernatural beings that don’t leave bodies in mysteriously perfect health?

How do we know that this is only a problem of the lycanthrope population?

What if someone is once again hunting cryptids and supernatural beings of all stripes? ”

Fuck me , I said to Becks through our link.

We hadn’t even considered that, but it was definitely possible.

It wasn’t too long ago that DEMON, the government agency that used to be responsible for protecting humanity against paranormal and supernatural threats decided that the best defense was a good offense and went full genocide on every non-human being they could find.

We blew DEMON up, in some cases literally, but there was nothing to say that this wasn’t another broad-spectrum assault.

“We…don’t know that,” I said, sitting down on a barstool and holding out a hand. Mort, a great bartender no matter what body he’s borrowing, slapped a bottle of Jameson’s into my palm.

“How would we even know that?” Saint asked. “If somebody left a dead vamp on a golf course, you’d burn to ash in the sunlight before anybody came along to find you. A dead demon would melt into disgusting demon goop, and I don’t even know what dead fairies turn into. Glitter?”

“The bodies of most deceased fae return to their home dimension upon their expiration,” Luke replied. “And yes, most supernatural beings leave very little in the way of evidence behind. It is one of our natural protections against humanity’s prying eyes.”

“So how do we find out if there are other types of dead paras in town?” Becks asked.

“We ask,” I said. “We identified three of our four known victims by asking the weres. Now we talk to the witches, the demons, the faeries, the vampires, and any other supernatural types we can get to meet with us. If Luke’s theory is right and this isn’t limited to just shifters, we might have a much bigger problem on our hands. ”

I looked across the bar at Mort. “Sorry, pal. I think we’re gonna need to have a few more moots at Mort’s.”

“Long as your uncle is picking up the bar tab, you can have as many moots as you need.”