Jace chuckled, and David belly-laughed right along with him.
David rested his head in his hand as he continued to laugh. “Shane, how many times do we have to tell you that a book is not a weapon? The scanner won’t even pick it up.”
“I beg to differ. It’s actually a very powerful tool. This book contains mounds of information about the rituals of pagan religion. It comes in quite handy when...”
He continued rambling while Jace stubbed out his cigarette. Dr. Shane Gray specialized in all things occult and studied the nastier ends of human society. But while his multiple Ph.D.s proved he had a lot of brains, he’d acquired jack shit in terms of street smarts.
“If you look at this page here, it shows you the diagram of the—”
Jace plucked his flask from his pocket and unscrewed the cap. “Come on already. If the kid thinks the damn book is a weapon, let him check it. He’s gotta have something other than a gun. It proves he’s got brains. That’s one hell of a weapon in my opinion.” He took a swig of the whiskey and felt the burn slip down his throat. With the way the evening was going, he would need a lot more alcohol to drown out the nightmares. Damn things had plagued him nearly every night since his dad left, and on the nights when his inner beast surfaced, it was nearly impossible to find any peace. That, combined with his thoughts continuing to wander to the divine woman in the backseat of his car, who happened to be a werewolf...well, best to start drowning the beast now if he had any hope of sleeping tonight.
Damon banged his fist on the table. “Would you all quit chatting like schoolgirls and get a move on?”
Jace dropped his boots off the table. “Why’re you in such a hurry?”
“Efficiency,” Damon said. He slapped a stake, a crucifix, two daggers and a handgun on the table, before he unsheathed a short but sharp steel-bladed sword from a holster on his spine.
Jace raised a brow. “Overkill much?”
Damon shot Jace a look of annoyance. He quickly placed all the weapons into the bin, taking special care with the sword, the knives and the glass vials. Everyone stood from the table and walked, with Damon leading the way, to the far side of the room, where David moved aside several large wooden crates, revealing a small switch in the wall.
When Damon flipped the switch, a small section of the metal-panel wall slid open. A small keyboard popped out, and Damon punched in the code. There was a swish as a compartment opened, and then Damon lowered the bin inside. Once the weapons were secured, the hidden entrance on the warehouse wall folded open. Damon stepped inside, then stood stock-still as the laser scanner ran over his body.
“Cleared,” an artificial voice said.
Damon moved past the portal, and the other men took turns following him through the scanner. When they finished, all four of them descended the basement staircase into the control room at the heart of their operation. Multicolors flashed across the array of screens connected to the computer database. The Execution Underground bosses never skimped on their tech budget.
Damon’s expression was all business as he took his regular seat. “We need to focus our efforts on the case of these mutilated women.”
Damon’s voice droned on, and Jace fought to pay attention. What if she got loose? He would be screwed. She would tell the local packmaster that he had moved into the area, and then all the damn monsters would be on the lookout for him.
“Jace, get your head out of your ass and focus,” Damon barked. “This concerns you more than anyone.”
Jace looked up and frowned, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. Someone needed to teach Damon a lesson in manners.
After several long seconds of glaring, Damon turned back to the group. “As I was saying, the deaths started nearly three weeks ago, and that’s just here. It could’ve been going on in other cities around the state or even the country for months, even years. The frequency is escalating, which means we’ve got to end this, and soon. Not only for the sake of the victims, but to save our own asses, as well. We can’t have HQ breathing down our necks and finding out how infested this city is with supernatural scum. Four young women, mutilated and dead, means—”
Jace sighed. “Five.”
Damon closed his mouth and the room fell completely still. Jace stood and leaned against the nearest wall.
“Right after David called me about the meeting, I found her in an alley. Same M.O.—ripped to shreds and then raped while she bled out.”
Damon’s hands clenched into fists. “You’ve had three weeks. Three weeks to find this son of a bitch, and yet innocent girls are still being murdered on your watch.”
The anger Jace directed toward himself and his rage at the killer combined with his current frustration and bubbled beneath his skin. Had the Mateba been clipped at his side, a bullet would already have zoomed straight through Damon’s smug face.
David and Shane glanced away from the argument in progress, uncomfortable with the skyrocketing level of anger on display. They busied themselves pretending to multi-task. Shane started scribbling notes on his paperwork, and David fiddled with the items surrounding his computer as if counting paperclips was an extremely important task.
Jace pointed straight at Damon. “You can’t pin this on me. You aren’t out there every night trying to track this monster down. I’m the only one working this damn assignment.”
“Because it’s your area of expertise,” Damon said.
Jace pushed away from the wall and straightened to his full height. “Just because the guy’s a werewolf, that doesn’t make it solely my problem.”
“What if he isn’t a werewolf?” Shane interjected.
Jace’s head whipped in his direction. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Shane ignored his pissed-off tone and continued. Sometimes the kid had more guts than Jace gave him credit for.
“I mean, have we really considered the possibility that this could be something else? Maybe that’s why you’ve had such difficulty catching him?”
“Shane has a point,” David said. “Have we really thought about it? We need to keep our minds open. For all we know, it could be some bastard who likes to pretend he’s the new and improved Ted Bundy. He could be human.”
Jace slammed his fist against the wall. “I know this is a werewolf, all right?”
Shane piped in again. “But how can you be certain if—”
“I’ve never been so certain in my damn life. The way this shithead rips open his victims isn’t possible with human hands or human weapons—or human teeth. So unless he’s siccing a pack of rabid dogs on these girls after he rapes them, then there is no damn way this is anything other than a werewolf attack. Everybody got that?”
David moved to stand at Jace’s side and slapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Why don’t you call Trent tonight and see if he’ll check it out? Maybe it’s some other kind of shifter. He’d know. We can talk to him and Ash when they get back from helping the Brooklyn division catch that ghost shifter. They’ll be at the meeting tomorrow morning.”
Jace gritted his teeth together and kept his jaw clamped shut. He thought of the female wolf out in his car. What the hell was he going to do with her? He pulled at his sleeve and hoped to hell that the blood from his wound wasn’t seeping through his trench coat. At least the wound was starting to knit itself back together. He could feel it.
“While we’re at it, why not have Shane take a look, too? Maybe this has to do with the voodoo stuff he likes so much,” David said. “I’ll go with you, Shane.”
Shane smiled from ear to ear. He didn’t get to do much out in the field, and Jace could tell he was stoked. “I can examine the scene for