Winter Howl (Sanctuary) (34 page)

She was not as shocked as she thought she should be when she saw a police car on the screen next to her computer. A plainclothes policeman was ringing the bell at the gate, and she could see that there was another person in the passenger seat. The man’s stance was too casual for Renee to be too concerned over the safety of the shapeshifters in the sanctuary, but there should not have been policemen at her gate at all.

Struggling to breathe slowly, she pressed the button to let them in, then pressed the button on the compound intercom.

“Roll call. Repeat, roll call.” It was one of the codes that she had developed, and it was one that she had never had to use before. She hoped they remembered what it meant. They had heard the gate bell, so they knew someone was coming, but ‘roll call’ meant that there was an outsider emergency, and they needed to act quickly to hide the presence of as many shapeshifters as she had in the sanctuary. Enough to qualify as workers and volunteers, nothing more. She had encouraged the shapeshifters who did not have identification to go canine so that they would not draw suspicion.

It was something that she wished she had never had to plan for, but even now she realised that they had not planned enough. There was the whole second barn set up for human comforts, and if they locked it up, it would look suspicious in the case of a search. As it was, she knew that the shapeshifters still in human form were hurriedly folding beds down and stacking them against the wall to look as though they were only brought out when necessary. But that wouldn’t hide the fact that there were that many beds in the first place, or that there was a kitchen in that barn, or that there were people out of their dog skin who no one knew were there in the first place. For someone already suspicious, the circumstances were a bit shady. Renee was not doing anything wrong, but she did not know whether a suspicious person would see it that way.

Renee pulled on her coat and went outside to meet the policemen. The dogs ran to greet her. Her heightened emotional state made them anxiously excited. Britt ran with the rest of the dogs as the malamute. Jake, Leslie and Malcolm came out of the cabin as their human selves, though, as they sometimes interacted or used to interact with the world. Jake’s and Malcolm’s faces looked grim, and Renee suspected that the thing they were not telling her might be what the policemen were coming up to investigate.

All Renee could hope was that Grant was hiding somewhere. The last thing she needed was Grant ringing alarm bells. Of course, this entire thing could just be routine, or maybe one of the policemen wanted a dog.

Renee snorted.
Dare to dream
, she thought. She gripped the edges of her coat. Britt bumped her cold nose against one of her hands, showing her canine support.

The police car drove up the steep incline. The snow was wet and the weather had gone uncommonly above freezing. Only by a few degrees, according to the porch thermometer, and it kept drifting under now and then, but at least it made getting to the compound a little easier for strangers. Renee wished it had been icier, but then they might have only tried harder.

The plainclothes cop got out of the car. He looked a bit like George C. Scott, in affect if not fully in appearance. The other policemen got out in full uniform, and Renee amended her initial assumption that she was a man. The woman looked young for her occupation—about Renee’s age. Renee did not recognise her, so she assumed that the woman had either not been raised in Antoine or that she was older than she looked. Their demeanours were not accusatory, and Renee’s panic about possible criminal activities from the sanctuary lessened, leaving only a marginal social anxiety.

“You’d be Ms Chambers, then,” the plainclothes cop said, holding out his hand. After some measure—and the encouragement of a cold dog nose—Renee took it and shook. “I’m Detective Ebon, and this is Detective Benoit.”

“Renee Chambers,” Renee said. “Jake, Leslie, Malcolm.”

Detective Ebon pointed at Leslie and said, “Leslie Cannon? I’ve read your book. Not bad at all. Good to meet you.”

He turned back to Renee, and while he put on a fairly affable expression, Renee was not sure what to make of the dark beadiness of his eyes. This was a man who could be on two levels at once, and that might mean that things could be worse than she thought, and she would not even know from looking at him.

“And of course, we know who you are and what you do,” he said. “We don’t want to make you more uncomfortable than you already are, so we’ll make this quick. The National Park Service has noticed some animal deaths that are, as they say, atypical in nature. They say that the animals are ripped apart, among other things. While they didn’t find any sign of rabies, they are worried about a wild animal that could be diseased. They hoped it would be taken care of in its own time, but no such luck. Since this is, after all, a dog sanctuary, we wanted to know whether you’ve had any similar experiences with strange animal deaths, or if one of your dogs has escaped.”

“You think it’s one of my dogs?” Renee asked.

The detective shrugged. “It’s unlikely, but we have to cover all the bases.” His words said one thing, but underneath, Renee swore she heard, “
It’s a possibility, and that’s why we’re here and not calling you on the telephone
.”

“I have over seventy dogs in the sanctuary, and we let them mostly run free,” Renee said, bristling. “But they can’t leave. The fences that run the circumference of our compound are specially built so that they can’t break through or jump over it. Even our Great Dane couldn’t make it out.”

But a shapeshifter could. Or a werewolf
. The thought surfaced like a dead body, and Renee shuddered. She looked at Jake. What exactly were they not telling her because they thought she would be too sensitive about Grant?

“We each patrol part of the perimeter every week,” Jake said. Detective Ebon took a good look at him, as if taking in his size and the strength evident underneath his clothing. “We’ve had some strange deaths, but none of us have seen any broken fence. You can check it yourself if you would like, but we’re secure.”

“If you’re secure,” Ebon said, the mild expression belying the shrewdness in his eyes, “then why have you had a few animals torn apart on your property?”

“He means that our dogs are secure inside the sanctuary. They can’t get out,” Renee said. “We sometimes get deer stuck in the fences, and I’ve seen wolves right outside the perimeter, but we built the fences with even the biggest dogs we have in mind. Sometimes small animals get in, and anything that flies or climbs is a given. But whatever is killing those animals is either big enough or smart enough to scale the fence.”

“Yes, that’s what we thought, too,” Ebon replied. “All the same, if we checked your fences and brought in a tooth mould to compare to your bigger dogs, you wouldn’t mind, right?”

“Not at all,” Renee said. She knew they wouldn’t find anything wrong with the fences, and if they could indeed make a workable tooth mould from ravaged animals, they would not match any of her bigger dogs. But while she did not get the impression that Ebon suspected her of any wrongdoing—he was sharp, but not aggressive—she thought that he suspected
something
.

“Very good.” Detective Ebon drew his coat closer around him. “And quite unrelated to this messy business, Ms Chambers, I do have a complaint from a few citizens in the city regarding poor animal treatment and threats directed at them.”

“Excuse me?” Renee was a little surprised by the iciness of her own voice, and if she was not mistaken, so was Detective Ebon. But
no one
accused her of being cruel to her dogs. She could be accused of a lot of things—some of them could even be illegal—but not of hurting her dogs. There were only a few people who would say something like that to spite her. “Josh and Marcus?”

“I do believe those are the concerned citizens, Ms Chambers.”

“They harassed me at my gate on my land, and yes, I threatened them. I threatened to protect my property and to protect my animals from them. I would never let them in this sanctuary for any reason.” Renee found the scruff of Britt’s neck and massaged it, feeling the fur between her fingers to calm herself down. “If they saw anything, which they didn’t, they would have been trespassing.”

“So people can get in and out,” Ebon said.

“They might have a few scratches and scrapes, but yes, people can climb over the fence if they know what they’re doing and put in enough effort. The fence is there to protect the dogs—it was not built to keep people out, although common courtesy should do that. We have had a few trespassers over the last few years, maybe one or two. They’ve all had a bite out of their ass for their troubles. I’ve had to put down two dogs because of two trespassers, and I don’t want to have to lose any dogs because of those inbred bastards.”

“Well,” Detective Ebon said, giving a hearty sniff from the cold weather. “We didn’t hold much stock to the claim, since you’ve got a better reputation here than those two boys. But we had to check anyway. Two birds, one stone. Or maybe it’s two in the bush.”

“Well, if you want to patrol the perimeter, go ahead. I’ll have my people look over it as well. I’m sure they’ll tell me if something’s wrong,” Renee said, closing her expression off.

Detective Ebon noticed it and immediately stepped back. If he knew of her reputation, then he probably knew that she was not very good with people. Especially, Renee thought, when they were antagonising her sanctuary. And that was exactly what Ebon was doing, even if he was doing it under the guise of simple enquiry. She had no doubt that he would have people patrol the entire circumference of the perimeter, and if he had to use that complaint against her in order to get in without her permission, he would. All the more reason why she would be having a talk with Jake and Malcolm after the police left.

“If you discover anything or have any information for me, here’s my card.” He slipped it out of his coat pocket and handed it to Renee, who put it in her own coat pocket. “Hope you have a good holiday season,” Detective Ebon said, nodding at no one in particular. He beckoned to his partner, who had not said a word, but who had been looking around more actively than Ebon. The dogs who had come up to greet them had probably distracted her a little. None of them had gone near Ebon—they had not barked or growled at him, but they just kept their distance. Renee could not blame them. He might pretend to be pleasant, but he was decidedly unapproachable. Dogs did not always have to be told.

Renee waited until she could not hear the police car anymore before she turned to Jake and Malcolm. She did not have to say anything. Whatever they had been keeping from her was out in the open now, like frozen breath.

Jake touched her shoulder. “This will probably be easier for you if you take one of the four-wheelers.” They had a few stored in a small, makeshift garage outside the shapeshifter barn. At least a quarter of the shapeshifters were too small in their dog forms to move quickly at greater distances, the way Jake, Britt, Malcolm or Leslie could as large dogs, and Renee herself could not get her truck everywhere in the sanctuary.

Renee followed Jake, Malcolm, and Britt to the four-wheelers, turned one on, and backed out of the space. Jake and Malcolm had already shrugged out of their clothes and transformed.

Renee could barely hear anything over the roar of the four-wheeler. She followed the shapeshifters as they led her into the western part of the forest. She did not drive very quickly. The forest did not have many paths cleared for it, so she had to improvise her way through. There were some places where it seemed the dogs liked to run, which opened up a few spaces for her, but other times she had to do some careful manoeuvring so as not to flip the vehicle over. The shapeshifters were patient.

She was so focused on the uneven forest floor in front of her that she almost did not notice when she arrived. The burst of red halted her right on the edge of the clearing. The colour was first. The smell was next. She had never smelt so much rot all at once.

The clearing was about twenty feet in a rough circle, with a few smaller trees in the centre. Some of the trees from there had been removed completely by the roots and thrown to the edge of the clearing. Bodies were strewn in the sunlight in a rough spiral from the centre. That could have been dismissed as pure coincidence, a rare, unusual act of nature. But other bodies were hung on branches, the skin attached and spread in such a way that suggested macabre artistry. No animal could have done that—hung the animal corpses a little higher than her head. Only something with hands and fingers, something large enough, could have positioned the gutted animals, which looked like sacrifices or strange ornamentation. Renee might have thought it was ritual, except there was nothing in the clearing but the light, blood, maggots, cockroaches, ravens, and the bodies.

Renee turned off the four-wheeler, and the silence made the massacre even worse. Her stomach twisted, clenched, then heaved. By simple reflex, she managed to turn her head and let it out in a bush. She didn’t get anything on herself except a drip down her chin. She rubbed it off and swallowed, wincing at the sharp acid in her throat and the bitterness on her tongue.

“How long?” Renee asked. Her throat clicked as she swallowed again. She wished she had some water or something to wash it down and take the taste out of her mouth. When she looked at Jake and Malcolm, who had transformed back into human form, she saw how taut their skin looked, pebbled against the cold. But they suffered through it, wrapping their arms around their chests and rubbing.