Read Full Moonster [BUREAU 13 Book Three] for Free Online

do you know that?” Katrina asked, puzzled.
    "Machetes are manufactured from cheap steel,” Mindy answered, stooping over to inspect something on the ground. Whatever it was proved uninteresting and she tossed it away into the weeds. “They dull fast and sharpening always leaves irregularities in the blade length.” Dead bodies didn't bother our martial artist in the least. Lord knows she'd made enough of them.
    Camera clicking steadily, Jessica involuntarily gave a shiver. “But why remove the heads and hands?” she asked. “Symbolism? Demonic ceremony?"
    "Lunch?” Raul added somberly.
    Zounds, what a deviant mind the man had.
    "To hinder identification,” George mumbled around a spicy beef stick in his mouth. Hefting his heavy banjo to a more comfortable position, George suddenly seemed to realize the food was there, made a face, and threw the snack into the weeds.
    "Sure be hard as hell to tell who is who, if the fools had also taken the feet along with the wallets and rings,” he said scrubbing his mouth with a handkerchief.
    True enough. Footprints were like fingerprints, totally unique and they never change. Both the FBI and Bureau 13 identified many a weird corpse by processing prints taken off the feet to compare with hospital birth records. It was a long and tedious process, despite the recent augmentation of government computers, but it did work. Well, eventually.
    "Besides, they may be ... wearing the heads as a disguise,” I finished. It was a very strange business we were in.
    "Appears as if the victims were physically pulled out the windows of their cars,” Donaher said, brushing a tattered coat sleeve. “Note the tiny glass particles on their clothes? And here, and over there, on the road."
    Yanked out of the closed window of a moving vehicle? Wow. Our mysterious perps were seriously tough hombres. Even worse than South Philly cops. Curiously, I glanced about for any splotches of green, yellow or black fluids. “Any blood that isn't human?"
    The priest frowned. “None that I can see."
    "Damn,” I said frowning. Standing in the middle of the roadway, I tried to reconstruct the sequence of events in my mind.
    "Okay. Cars are driving along this road. Something, or things, jump onto the vehicles and pull the drivers out through the windows.” I glanced around at the trees and safety barrier. “So how come there are no automobile wrecks? What'd they do? Eat the cars?"
    A few yards away, George put two fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp whistle. “Over here!” he cried, motioning us closer. “I found skid marks!"
    Joining him, I saw long irregular streaks on the road surface that told the story of brakes applied hard and fast. Many of the tracks overlapped each other.
    "How many vehicles?” Raul asked, pulling off the shoes of a corpse to take toe prints.
    "Ten, twelve cars,” I estimated.
    Holding her wand over the pools of blood, Katrina distorted her face into an expression of disgust. “Which implies many killers."
    "Ominous,” Raul agreed, applying a sheet of shiny white paper to the soles of the headless man. The acid in the skin began to form recognizable patterns of the specially treated paper. It wasn't an invention of the Bureau's, just standard FBI issue field equipment. Ed's Rule for Easy Living: Never re-invent the wheel.
    Kneeling on the berm, Mindy prodded the laurel bushes along the edge of the road with the tip of her sword. “They came through here,” she announced, with conviction. “And hid behind this clump of evergreen trees."
    "Any details?” Donaher growled, standing again to grimly jack the pump-action on his Remington 12-gauge shotgun. Father Mike considered killing monsters a holy chore, and it was one that he performed with relish, ketchup and mustard.
    Tapping the flat of her blade in a callused palm, Mindy squinted thoughtfully at the leaves. “Fifty ... maybe sixty. Humans."
    Everybody stopped doing everything.
    "Humans?” George said with a frown.