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here, and here. But look closer,” he said, pointing to a slash on the victim’s abdomen.
    Cody stepped forward, catching sight of her face. His hand splayed on the table to keep his knees from buckling at the sight of champagne-colored hair and startled green eyes trained lifelessly on the ceiling.
    “What’s the matter, Officer Hawthorne,” Kyle goaded, “seen a ghost?”
    Now that the first shock was past, Cody could see it wasn’t Heather. But the resemblance was close. Too close. He shot a mental roar off to Kyle to put him in his place and took grim satisfaction in watching the man wobble at the unexpected force of it. Didn’t hurt to remind the man who held rank here.
    “This is the unusual part,” the coroner explained, oblivious to his audience. “A puncture wound, underneath.”
    Cody froze. It was a worst-case scenario, if it was what he suspected. He forced a neutral expression over his face as he listened to the coroner go on.
    “Most of the wounds are too deep and rough to ascertain if there are more puncture marks. But this one bears a trace.”
    Cody followed Kyle’s eyes to the victim’s neck. “Nowhere else?” Kyle asked, voice a forced calm. His fingers scraped through his short, spiky hair.
    “Nowhere,” the coroner said and continued with his report. “Evidence of rape…” His flat monotone only made the word uglier.
    Cody slipped behind Kyle to lean in over the woman’s neck. He sniffed, close. Nothing but the last traces of a cheap perfume mixed with the acrid smell of fear. No trace of what he was looking for. He shook his head at Kyle.
    “Whoever bled her, he was a thorough son of a bitch,” the coroner added. “Bled her completely dry. Not a drop left.”
    Kyle shot Cody a meaningful look.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
    Cody wished he didn’t. But he nodded.
Vampire
.
    # # #
    An examination of the crime scene, out on a remote stretch of highway, affirmed their fears. The ashy scent of vampire was all over the victim’s car. To Cody, they all smelled the same. Like death. Like evil. Something that was there, but not there, like the last trace of ammonia overpowering the stink of something unclean. But even keen wolf noses couldn’t track them. Vampires only left a scent when they fed. As far as a trail was concerned, the killers had vanished into thin air.
    “Vampires,” Kyle muttered on the long drive east. They were headed over the state border to confer with investigators working on the previous murders. “From New Mexico? Texas?”
    Cody didn’t care where they came from. He wanted them dead.
    “Must have been a couple of them, feeding on her at once,” Kyle speculated.
    Cody sucked in a breath to fight the bitter taste in his mouth. A lone vampire could be a handful, even for a wolf. His father still bore the scars from a fight with a vampire he’d only barely overcome, long before Cody’s birth. Vampires were quick and very, very hard to kill. A fight with more than one vampire promised a high body count on both sides.
    “Then they covered up by slashing her,” Kyle finished.
    A long pause filled the car while their imaginations filled in the rest.
    “Think Zack and Rae could track them?” Kyle asked.
    Cody immediately shook his head. Zack was the pack’s best tracker and Rae, a master hunter, but even they wouldn’t be of any help with this kind of trail. “Like Zack would let his mate get anywhere near vampires,” he added with a snort. As if any good mate would allow that.
    The thought cued an image of Heather, and his pulse jumped with the urge to protect. He checked his watch, calculating the hours since he’d last seen her. Already much too long. If this threat of vampires hadn’t pushed everything else aside, he could be with her now.
    “When I get my claws on those blood suckers…” He left the threat hanging.
    The investigators in New Mexico were just as baffled by the crimes, but hours of poring over maps and police records