Eleri sifted her fingers through the ash and grit on the metal tray table in front of her. The blue gloves meant her hands didn’t make direct contact with anything, and for that, she was grateful. Whatever this creature was, however it had died, the corpse had been brutalized, dismembered, burned, and then pulverized beyond recognition.
“How are you doing with your reports?” Donovan asked, the underlying tone indicating that he wasn’t overly happy with the situation, and Eleri couldn’t agree more.
There had been an attempt on their part, and then a second attempt—which had also failed—to get their missing time classified as vacation. Though Eleri didn’t care if her time was paid or unpaid, she knew it would make a difference to Donovan.
He’d taken a pay cut when he first joined the FBI, though he was paid notably more than a standard young newbie agent because he had an M.D. Also, their SAC, Derek Westerfield, had worked hard to entice Donovan away and the money had helped. Later, Eleri had learned that the offer had come with good timing, as people had begun to get suspicious of Donovan’s work as a medical examiner. Taking another job was better than getting investigated—or worse, run out of town. Or as Donovan liked to put it: getting called out for doing too good a job.
Maybe that was one reason they’d become friends. Her job offer had come only after a psychiatric hospital stay. Though she’d actually been dismissed for an entirely different reason, the same applied to her too: She’d been too good at finding killers.
“Finished,” she said. “Wrote the last one, filed it last night.”
He looked at her, dark eyebrows lowered, one side of his lip curling up, exposing a slightly longer than normal canine. “I have a few more to go.”
She shrugged at him. They were on duty in the branch office for now. Though SAC Westerfield had already assigned them to the next case, it had stalled out and they were left in the lab analyzing the results. Now she was concerned they were just waiting for the next incident.
Other agents had already filed reports on a group that had labeled themselves “The Resurrection Men.” The odd instances and unexplainable pieces of the initial documentation had the cases landing on Westerfield’s desk. Westerfield, of course, immediately turfed the problem to Eleri and Donovan.
They’d flown home from their overseas trip immediately. Yet nothing had happened with the case so far. He demanded they file their reports on their trip to India, the encounter with the new creatures mandating that it not be vacation and that it all be carefully documented. At one point, there’d even been a full meeting of Westerfield’s NightShade Division of the FBI, with many of the agents popping in over internet calls as Eleri and Donovan explained the new, concerning wolves they’d encountered in India. The good news was no one else had seen the same. Maybe it was an experiment gone horribly wrong, and it would fade away, with no one ever coming up against the deadly beasts again.
“What did you report about the wolves?” she asked. “The new ones—the mega wolves.” She hated the term, but she needed to say it before Donovan corrected her that they weren’t wolves. They all knew that.
“I didn’t file it yet. I wanted to know what you said.”
She shrugged. “I said what happened.”
“You said they were dumb as rocks?”
“That too,” she replied, half of a grin all she could muster. It might be the saving grace that the creatures they’d seen—powerful as all hell—could at least be outsmarted without too much difficulty. “And the parchments?”
“I did already file that one,” he replied, his hands still moving through the burnt mess on the table. Westerfield had asked for very specific reports—specific to different topics. “I said the farm had enough to enact the spell to completion—”
Eleri nodded, agreeing.
“—and that it appears Miranda Industries does not.”
“Same thing I said.” Then she paused. “Does that mean we’re done looking for parchment pieces?”
“I would assume it’s the end of active investigations specifically to find them.” Donovan was looking down at the table, his own gloved hands moving with the skill of someone who wasn’t sifting the remains of a fire for the first time.
They each picked up a pan with a screen bottom, lifting fistfuls and sifting it. A puff of dust rose up in little clouds and even if they had known what it was, she still would have worn the mask to filter it out. No one needed to breathe this.
Most of it was ash. Some of it was dirt. Some of it larger flakes left behind, and every once in a while there would be a piece: a small chunk of bone that hadn’t burned. More than one had crumbled as Eleri tried to pick it up. Sometimes one or the other of them would have to lean down close, to get a better view, to see if it was wood, creature, rock, or who knew what else. The agents who collected this had simply dug up the entire fire pit and brought it all as evidence.
“And the kids?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
“I answered everything ‘not applicable’ or ‘unknown.’” She watched as Donovan raised his eyebrows at her, his hands finally still.
“I didn’t know we could do that.”
“I’m not sure we can,” she said, “and my non-compliance might get me docked pay.”
There was an underlying sentiment she didn’t say—she would understand if he didn’t want to follow through with that. Her family had come from money, and Donovan had come from late-nights throwing everything he owned into garbage bags, his father stuffing him in the car and fleeing. They would head to a new town, a new apartment, whatever it took to avoid getting evicted—or maybe something worse. Eleri would absolutely understand if Donovan wasn’t quite willing to file a protest right alongside hers.
But she didn’t like the idea of Westerfield having all his questions answered about the girls from the school. She didn’t want him to know more than he already did about the boys they’d met and built their little family unit with. She wasn’t confident he could be trusted.
“Smart,” Donovan said. She had to admire that his integrity meant more to him than his bank account. “Until we know what Westerfield’s involvement was in Axis, I don’t think…”
He trailed off, but Eleri understood. Maybe it was better not to say that out loud here, in a laboratory in the FBI branch office closest to Donovan’s home. Here, they were employees. They could be monitored. She accepted his silence and nodded in reply. Westerfield didn’t need to know anything more than he already did about what those kids could or couldn’t do.
Lifting another fistful of ash and dropping it into the sifter, she pulled out three big chunks this time—“big” being relative, barely half an inch across at the longest side.
“Whoever did this went to town.” She didn’t have to point at the table; she and Donovan had been working together long enough that they understood each other’s shorthand and unspoken phrases. “I don’t like this.”
“This ash in particular, or is there anything more?”
She thought for a moment. She would have said just this—the strange ash, the reflective bits she couldn’t identify, the odd placement of it that made the finding agents report it and save it all as evidence. But as he asked, she realized it wasn’t just that.
“There’s more.” Her hands stopped moving, and she tipped her head, thinking. “It’s undefined general unease.”
As she added the last two words, Donovan looked up at her, eyes making contact through the broad protective safety glasses they both wore. He didn’t ask further. Anything more wouldn’t be said in this room.
After setting aside three more pieces, she asked, “Are you heading out with Walter tonight?”
He nodded, grinning, but pointed at the table. “After a shower, of course.”
Donovan could smell it even if she couldn’t. With as many wolves as there were around here, Eleri realized she should probably shower it off too. Despite the paper suit and all the protection she wore, it was probably in her hair. Ugh.
“Since we’re off the next few days, I thought I would catch a flight up and see what GJ’s got going on,” she announced into the room.
“Keep me posted.”
There was a time when Donovan would have come with her, but his relationship with Walter Reed dictated that they carve out time wherever they could, and Eleri didn’t begrudge him the relationship.
On opposite sides of the table, they worked silently for a few moments, each sifting through their pans, setting the larger pieces aside for further analysis. But as Eleri watched the ash fall with a small poof that made her hope her face mask did its job and she wasn’t breathing it in, she looked into the pan at the big pieces that hadn’t filtered through.
Sighing, she felt her eyes fall closed. “God damn it, Donovan.”
He looked up just as she held up the new small piece. Anyone else would have passed it by, but she’d done this often enough to recognize each little dent and curve. She was holding her find between her nitrile covered fingers and wondering if she should take the glove off. If she touched it, she could learn more, even though she didn’t want to.
The expression on his face told her he highly suspected the words before she said them.
“It’s human.”
