Baying For Blood: Indigo Skies, #2

By Rebecca Clare Smith

Book two of the Indigo Skies series...

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"I would never kill anyone! First you try to send me off to rehab & now this?! Accusing me of murder?! I didn't kill her!"

My tongue unstuck from the roof of my mouth, gasping in an unsteady breath. The sirens were getting louder.  They were going to take him away. "I had to. It's my job–"

"I hate your job! & I hate you! I wish you were dead!"

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Is her brother the werewolf serial killer or are his black outs just a coincidence?

When he wakes naked & covered in blood, it's up to Violet to defend him. But if even she isn't sure Logan's innocent, how is he supposed to convince the cops?

Once Violet goes undercover to discover the truth her life ends up in danger, but is it her doubt in Logan that puts her in the murderer's crosshairs or is she simply getting too close to the real big, bad wolf…?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katarr Kanticles Press
• Release date: Dec 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311339249

Rebecca Clare Smith

Primarily a fantasy hound, Rebecca is an animal lover with a writing style that meanders between dystopian and urban. She lives with her pragmatic other half & their cats in the lovely UK county of Yorkshire (where tea drinking is expected & dunking biscuits is mandatory). A big fan of social media, chances are you’ll catch her online at some point during the day where she is more than happy to add readers & writers as friends. Her day job is friendlier than her plot lines might have you expect & her house is far less cluttered than her head, surprisingly. Occasionally she attempts to garden or clean, but is more often found with her face buried in new writing or the writing of others.

Book preview

Baying For Blood

Prologue: Midnight Hunt

Logan

Running. Running.

Faster. Chase.

Kill.

The world tumbled over and over in a mishmash of grey, green, and brown. Noise flared and dipped, raucous and buzzing. The confusing stream of images blossomed into a dull ache that permeated my head. My body seemed to be travelling fast and spinning.

Or was I laid still?

I squeezed my eyes even tighter closed. The tumbling, turning sensation remained. I could have fallen asleep on a children’s roundabout and wouldn’t have felt less disorientated than I did right now.

Fingers dragged up to cradle my head as I groaned.

Worst. Hangover. Ever.

The normal after-drink feeling was bad enough, but it was the vague memory of teeth, feathers, and adrenalin that made everything worse. It was hard to piece it all together as the now too familiar ruckus of stirring senses poured in. Sound and light were always the first to arrive in this new, morning carnival of misery.

Blood. Everywhere the smell of blood.

I squeezed my eyes shut; the pulse in my forehead about ready to explode as I was battered by this most recently attuned sense. Nausea tumbled my belly.

I couldn’t remember drinking. I couldn’t remember why I’d be bleeding, either. The heady scent filled my nostrils again. My feral stomach growled, recognising the raw life essence as a source of food.

And that recognition was all it took to complete the horrible jigsaw.

My eyelids snapped open, pupils thinning as they adjusted to the sudden light of the room. The duvet clung to me, sticky with scarlet residue. I closed my lashes again and remained deathly still on the mattress as if hoping the world would melt away.

Violet was going to be pissed.

And who’d really blame her?

She wasn’t quite embracing this whole ‘my brother has superhuman strength and wants to eat the face off small fluffy creatures’ thing that I had going on right now.

To be honest, I wasn’t really embracing it either. The eating living beings was just something that seemed to happen without my control.

Bravely, I squeezed open a lid and took stock of my surroundings.

On a positive note, at least I was in my bedroom. On a less positive note, it was soaked in blood and what I could only assume were chicken feathers judging by my ‘dream’ and the strange scrawny foot that lay between me and the door.

Violet was still going to kill me, even if it was only my room that I’d trashed.

More for the chicken massacre than anything else.

Red liquid was slathered everywhere. Clumps of feathers stuck in pools of violence. Had I really eaten the thing or just mauled it to death? Fingers explored my lips where yet more plumes clung helplessly in the sticky surrender of life’s essence.

I swallowed.

The doctor had said my body was still adjusting and, even though I craved it, digesting raw meat would properly take longer than my wolfish appetite appreciated. My stomach churned unhappily.

The cacophony of noise, like several televisions turned on together at full volume, finally faded into separate distinguishable streams; a luxury I could have done without. Clattering struck up at the front door forcing me to slam my hands over my ears. The entrance was at the opposite side of the house to my room, but with these new powers it made no difference.

Without even getting up, I could tell it was the neighbour. Her wailing felt like cocktail sticks being thrust into my eardrums. She was screaming about a dog and some chickens and I didn’t know what else, but I was trying to block it out.

Not that it mattered.

Hearing her or not hearing her, the outcome would prove the same. Violet would know exactly who deserved to be in the dog house for this...

1. Picking Up The Pieces

Violet

My pen hovered over my tablet where it had been for about ten minutes now. I was still thinking about the neighbour screaming at me. Thankfully she’d thought it was a new pet dog. I’d lied, persuading her that it might have belonged to a neighbour on the row of houses backing onto ours. I rubbed the silvery mark on the back of my neck.

Explaining to her that the sweet kid she used to babysit was older now and could transform into a bloodthirsty wolf...

Well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

Especially when newly bitten wolves rarely had a handle on their hunger, as Logan was proving.

I stared harder at the collection of pixels on my screen, seeing nothing. The television burbled in the background. Simon was sitting beside me, his mind numbing with the larger display. The reflection danced in the glass of his spectacles.

He was coping pretty well with what he still referred to as ‘the future’, even though it was his present now. In fact, he was coping better than Logan was with all the changes.

I shook myself and completed another question on the form in front of me. There were so many questions. No wonder such a lot of new werewolves refused to register that they’d been bitten and turned.

It wasn’t as if they weren’t sent the information straight home with them after their hospital visit. It was just...

Overwhelming.

A little bit like Logan’s condition.

He’d only been home for a couple of months, now. The two months spent in hospital had been hard on him, but with the sudden changes from human to wolf and his morphing DNA there was no way he could have come straight home after his wounds had healed.

And I still wasn’t sure that he should be home at all.

This morning had proved that.

He was my brother and I loved him dearly, but I wanted him safe. Home didn’t seem like it was going to be that place any more. I couldn’t get up every morning to blood and feathers. I had to work to support us and that meant not running around after wolf boy. What was I supposed to do?

At the hospital they’d talked about other places that could help him. They’d given me leaflets and, until now, I’d refused to even consider them, but it could be what he needed. They would be the people who could help him.

There was nothing I could do. I wasn’t equipped.

I was just thinking, Simon’s voice cut through my reverie with his usual disregard for my peace, you can see dead things. Can you see dead pets?

I frowned, twirling the pen in my fingers, his attention on me. Sometimes...

He sucked in a breath, like he was already predicting a snappy reply. Well, what about that lady’s chickens? Can’t you summon them or something and ask them if it was really Logan?

I blinked at him and reminded myself for the thousandth time that it wasn’t his fault he was ignorant of my powers – anybody’s powers – and that it was simply because he was not from our time. The pen dropped down onto the coffee table and I moved the tablet to join it, sliding one leg out from beneath the other so I was no longer scrunched into one corner of the sofa. This was going to be one of those long conversations I’d started to dread.

I was a PI, not a primary school teacher.

I suppose it was the scientist in him that caused all the questions, some kind of need to understand everything about the world around him. It would be easier to buy him an encyclopaedia.

If I ‘summoned’ a dead soul, I started, trying not to sound snarky but failing spectacularly judging by Simon’s wince, it wouldn’t bring back the ghost of a dead chicken to talk to. It would force its soul into its corpse, which, we currently have to assume, is in my brother’s stomach. I imagine that experience would be unpleasant for all involved.

Oh...

I stayed my hand from my paperwork, hearing Simon’s brain whirr as the silence progressed between us. He didn’t disappoint.

But what about Ouija boards?

I really did try to keep the condescension out of my tone, but I guess it didn’t work. Firstly, Ouija boards are a load of rubbish. It’s always a human that moves it, not a dead soul. Secondly, I can see ghosts with my second eyelids down.

He gulped.

They can hear and speak to me perfectly well without a useless Ouija board. If you were getting at attracting a specific ghost’s attention, then that’s ‘calling’ not ‘summoning’. And it’s done slightly differently.

Simon’s brow had drawn into a frown with a slight tilt to the side of his mouth as if he was regretting ever asking, but I couldn’t help myself.

And finally, I don’t think chickens can understand English anyway. I certainly can’t speak chicken, so I don’t really see how any of this is relevant.

My lip caught between my teeth. It was cruel to be so hard on him. He didn’t know any better. And now he was doing that face like an injured puppy. Damn it.

Listen, I know you’re trying to help, Simon, but talking to a dead chicken? It’s kind of ludicrous. Even if a ghost pet does stay around afterwards, they can’t really communicate. The most they do is hang around their owners.

He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

Maybe I should get one of those books you usually bought for children to explain different supernaturals’ abilities. It would save me a lot of time. I turned to my tablet again and had a few more moments of silently staring at empty pixels before Simon continued.

"What about when you die?"

My stylus hovered above the tablet, frozen in mid air.

There had been a moment, a few months back, when I’d been very close to finding out the answer to that question first hand, courtesy of the same werewolf that had turned my brother. And I probably would have died, too, if it hadn’t been for Simon.

He’d been face to face with a time vortex that could have taken him back home, but he’d turned his back on it. Seeing me crushed under the bulk of the werewolf, the supernaturally powerless man had fired a bullet and saved my life, letting the worm hole close forever.

I hadn’t known whether to scream at him or thank him.

I wasn’t used to being in anybody’s debt. But, by now, I was just grateful. Helping him discover a new life in our future was the only way I could repay him.

There was no way to return him home any more. And, if he was unhappy with that, he kept it to himself.

What are you talking about?

He pointed at the television, readjusting his glasses. Like these girls that are getting murdered. They’re necromancers, I think. So, can you see them or is it different for your kind after death?

Quiet a minute, I warned, picking up the remote and sliding up the volume dial.

The picture flickered with images of police tape and camera flashes, the screen’s darkness speaking of early morning light. It flipped to an aerial view of the scene as the voiceover continued. My fingers tightened around the remote.

...Fears that local girl was the victim of the serial killer that the police are dubbing the Necro Slayer have been confirmed this morning. Terra Healey was found close to her route home in the early hours. It’s thought that her body had lain undiscovered for some time, the television burbled.

Lies. It’s not one person. It’s a werewolf pack. It has to be.

How do you know? Simon pressed, his keen interest in my work as a detective unyielding. The picture danced in the reflection of his glasses. It was like having an apprentice.

I pointed at the edge of the scene as the camera panned. There. That’s at least two sets of tracks. The only way it couldn’t have been a pack is if there’s a brand new werewolf out there with no sense of what’s going on.

I paused, my voice faltering slightly.

They’re like that when they’re new. Almost rabid.

Really?

I saw Simon stop himself from checking for Logan.

I almost did the same.

My heart assured me that it wasn’t him committing these atrocities, but I’d seen so many cases of newly turned werewolves who couldn’t control their hunger that it turned my stomach. They were always the worst deaths to attend, bloody and pulsing with an ice cold wall of fatality that only necromancers can feel. It permeates my bones like nothing else. I just hoped that the only things Logan was interested in were chickens.

A cacophony of plastic bouncing and glass chinking hit us from behind. Simon sprang up and I wheeled, only to find Logan in the doorway, teeth clenched and eyes tight shut as window cleaner leaked from the fallen cleaning box in the kitchenette. I scowled, sensing he’d tried to levitate it towards himself and evade me.

Well, now he was for it.

Nice of you to join us.

Logan opened his eyes and nodded sheepishly, rubbing his elbow as his eyes tracked the long stretch of blue cleaning fluid that was racing towards him. Cold anger froze my veins. I could still feel the gentle wash of death lapping my ankles from the chicken’s earlier demise. The sensation grew minutely stronger with the step up of my emotions.

Have a nice sleep, did we? I bet. Do you know what I found when I got up this morning?

Err... He shifted from foot to foot, scratching his sandy hair. No idea. A videomail message about a new case?

No. Nice try, I shot down, glaring as he looked yet more uncomfortable and trapped. He rocked on his feet as if ready to run. He was going nowhere. "I found the door wide open. Again!"

My hands balled into fists, death vibes creeping up my legs like the hands of cold toddlers.

Anyone could have gotten in. But that’s not even the half of it.

I saw his teeth bare. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it, reacting to the fury I couldn’t seem to keep a hold of. Didn’t he know that I was trying to protect him? Didn’t he know that this would just make things worse?

He was a brand new werewolf! Things were going to be hard enough without him slaughtering the neighbours’ chickens all over the house. Especially when I could sense the deaths as they happened!

I stabbed a finger in the direction of the cleaning supplies he’d spilled all over the floor, rising to my feet. Levitating them had been a stupid idea with his magi powers on the blink from the genetic mutation. They might come back properly, eventually, but it was going to take time.

I’m guessing you need those for all the blood and feathers I found everywhere.

I didn’t mean to! he snapped, jaws clacking with the flash of white teeth. Anger etched his brow, furrowing into lines that could have been a wolf’s glower. I don’t remember half of this stuff! But I’ll get a handle on it-

You’ll ‘get a handle on it’? I took a step towards him and saw the defences surge in his shoulders like a dog raising its hackles. I wet my lips, assessing him disappointedly. It shouldn’t have come to this. I think we took you out of the hospital too early. You’re not ready.

No! he snarled.

The pulse in his throat clattered against the ferocity in his voice, his frame filling up the doorway as he took a step towards me. The muscles in his limbs clenched, flexing, nostrils flaring like an animal. Ice cold death quailed around my ankles, losing its hopeful grip on my chinos.

He fought to gain control of his voice, the thread wavering. No, I’m fine. Honest. They couldn’t help me any more in the hospital. They said that.

You’ve eaten the neighbour’s chickens. What’s next? Somebody’s pet cat? A dog? I’d barely even finished my rhetoric when he growled in reply.

No!

The bags under my eyes felt suddenly heavier, as if the world was pressing in on me. My brother looked like some angry feral creature. What was I supposed to do with him?

I think you need to go to rehab, Logan.

What?!

Metal crunched. His fingers relinquished the hallway doorknob he’d reached for only a moment ago, the silver bent and twisted. His expression tore between fear and attack, hiding the little brother I loved in its anguish. I don’t need rehab!

It’s not what you think. I’ve done a lot of research. I stepped closer and death quailed some more, hiding behind me and depleting into puddles by my shoes.

I’m not going to one of those places, Vi. I’m not a delinquent! I just don’t have full control over my powers, yet. His hands shook in fists of rage. His eyes burned into me. Give me a break.

This place would help you cope, I persisted, calmly. That’s what they do. And I’d be sending you–

"I am not going there!" he snarled and leapt for me, hands clenching around my shoulders. There was a slight tug as if he meant to drag me towards him, but he pushed away, launching me sideways into the wall as his teeth mashed together.

My shoulder hit and then my head, jarring as I watched him flee.

I’m going out! Don’t expect me home!

Even as I stumbled to the floor, I yelled after him, Logan, you have a curfew! Don’t forget!

I have no idea if he heard me. It wasn’t something I was imposing; it was the law for new werewolves in their first year.

Simon dived out of the way as Logan, now an angry blur, roared out through the front door. I reached for my head, shakily moving to my feet as Simon stepped over to help me. A cold breeze washed my face, the door