We pulled back so that by the time Al and the others arrived we weren't cuddling, just standing waiting for them. Nope, no snuggling going on here, no kissing, and then I realized I'd been wearing red lipstick. I had time to glance at Nicky and see the lipstick tracing the inside of his lips. He was wearing the go-faster stripe. We'd kissed neatly enough that I wouldn't even be smeared, but there was no time to hide the evidence. If he wiped at it now it would just smear worse. Maybe they wouldn't notice in the dark? Of course, they came with the sweep of flashlights, ruining our night vision and theirs. Did some of the lights go back to Nicky's face more than once, or was I just being paranoid?

'I've never seen anything move like you all did,' Al said, as he walked up to us.

'Sorry you had to wait so long for the rest of us mere humans to catch up,' Travers said, 'but I guess it just gave you time to make out a little bit instead of looking for the missing men.'

We couldn't explain, so the only option was a bold front. 'We could just stand here and twiddle our thumbs while you guys catch up, if that would make you happier?'

'Little Henry is a friend of mine, and the thought that you were up here kissing while he could be hurt, or worse, instead of looking for him ... yeah, that bothers me and it's damned unprofessional.'

Nicky stood up a little taller, and Nathaniel made a harsh sound low in his throat, not exactly a growl, but not a happy noise either. Ares moved a little between us and the police, hands to his side, feet placed to move, but it wasn't that kind of fight.

I took in a lot of air and let it out slow. 'You're right, it was unprofessional. It won't happen again.'

Travers didn't seem to know what to do with the apology. 'I heard you had a temper and never backed down from anything, Blake.'

I shrugged. 'I do have a temper, but when I'm wrong, I'm wrong.'

'While we're on the wrong thing,' Horton said, 'could you all stay with the group a little bit more? It's hard to coordinate our resources if they're scattered all over the woods.'

I nodded. 'Agreed.'

All the flashlights, even pointed at the ground, gave enough light for me to see Horton frown. 'Officer Travers is right; you have a reputation for being harder to get along with than this.'

'When I was younger I was grumpier,' I said.

It made him smile, and then he tried not to. He looked perplexed as he said, 'You can't be more than twenty-five now; how much younger could you have been?'

'I'm thirty,' I said.

'I saw your age on paper, but you still look younger than me.'

'It's because you're tall and I'm short; tall looks older and short looks younger, just does.'

He smiled again. 'True enough.'

'Can we actually start looking for my friend again?' Travers asked.

I looked down at the big leopard sitting at my side. He gazed up at me with the pale leopard eyes. I said, 'Find them; find the scent.'

The leopard gazed up at me. I thought, visualized what I wanted him to find. I pictured the jacket and the rag he'd smelled, just in case words weren't that important to him right now.

He got to his feet, turning in a graceful half-circle to head the way we'd been running. He didn't even put his face to the ground, or scent the wind, nothing, as if he knew where we were going.

CHAPTER 25

The body lay in a grove of aspens so that the bare white trunks rose around the dead man like ghostly sentinels. It was a pretty place to leave the body; sadly, what they'd done to the body wasn't pretty at all. It was one of those crime scenes where the eyes don't want to make sense of it at first. If you look away and don't look back, then your brain will protect you. It will keep you from seeing the true horror of it, but it was my job to look, my job not to look away, my job ... I gazed down at what was left of one of the missing men. I'd never known either of them so I had no idea which it was, only that it was one body, not two. I tried to believe that meant that one of the missing was still alive, but looking down at the remains it was really hard to be hopeful.

From the build and size of the body it was male. The clothes were disarranged as if someone had redressed him after he was dead, or because they'd only moved the clothes enough to get to his flesh. Either way, zombies didn't do that. Ghouls didn't do that. Wereanimals could do it, but why? They could just eat the evidence. Vampires could redress a corpse, but again, why? Also, hunks of flesh had been bitten off of the body. Vampires didn't eat flesh; they couldn't digest it. People could have done it, but even when you had humans who bit flesh off bodies, it would be a few bites. I counted at least ten bite marks. I couldn't be certain, but it looked like at least two distinct bite marks, so two different monsters. Was it the two that had attacked the people in the morgue? The worst was the face; it wasn't there anymore. I'd need to look closer to be sure, but it looked like they'd bitten off everything that made a face a face. Disfiguring didn't begin to cover what they'd done to him. The techs would be here with floodlights soon, so I'd been told. We'd have enough light that we wouldn't be able to unsee anything.

I'd made Nicky take Nathaniel to sit where he couldn't see it, though I wasn't willing for him to be far enough away from me for the smell not to reach him. For all I knew it told him more things than my eyes told me. I'd compare notes later when he could talk again. Right now, I just didn't want my boyfriend to see the really bad stuff I had to see on the job. Nicky had agreed only if Ares stayed beside me. I didn't argue. Ares was a combat veteran; either he'd seen as bad, or worse, or he'd take it and not bitch. Make all the jokes you want about the Marines, but they won't pussy out. I like that in a person.

He stood at my left, because Deputy Al was to my right. Ares and he were the same height, but where Al looked like he'd been stretched too thin for his body, Ares wore it well. He was thin-framed, too, but he'd put on enough muscle so that he just looked tall, lithe, and strong. His brown eyes had gone empty. I would have said he was wearing his cop face, but he'd never been a cop. Was there a Marine face?

A lot of the police and rangers had taken any job that would keep them at the periphery of the crime scene and farther from the body. There'd damn near been a stampede to go back and tell their respective branches and see if there were other duties that needed them. I didn't blame them, but I kept track of who couldn't take it, a little mental list of tough enough, or not.

'Oh, my God,' one of the younger police officers said in a breathy voice.

I glanced at him. Al put his flashlight on his face. 'You okay, Bush?'

I said, 'Go over there,' and pointed.

He looked at me, his eyes bulging a little, throat convulsing. I grabbed him and turned him the other way. 'Don't you fucking throw up on my crime scene! Go!'

He stumbled toward the dark edge of the trees but started throwing up before he made it.

'How did you know?' Al asked.

'I see a lot of bad stuff,' I said.

Someone else started throwing up on the other side of the clearing. Crap. The sharp smell of vomit joined with the smell of drying blood. The body had been fresh enough that it hadn't really smelled that bad. We had two more officers throw up in the woods.

I heard Al swallow convulsively.

'You okay?' I asked.

He nodded, but I watched him struggle. There was something about other people throwing up that can bring it on. Once I'd have been puking my guts up, too, but that had been years ago. I didn't throw up at crime scenes anymore.

Horton came up on the other side of Al. 'Your crime scene?' he said.

'You've got preternatural shit killing people and I'm from the preternatural crimes branch.'

'We didn't invite the Feds in,' Horton said.

'No,' I said, 'you didn't.' I was suddenly tired.

'I think it's our crime scene until we say otherwise.'

'Fine, knock yourself out.'

He frowned at me. 'You know, you are not the hardass that some of the other staties said.'

'I'd rather get back to Micah and see how his dad is doing than stand here and have a pissing contest over the body.'

'Yeah, sorry again about Sheriff Callahan.'