Nearly Human (Marked Book 1)

  Nearly Human

  Marked Book 1

  Meredith Spies

  Copyright 2022 by Meredith Spies

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters and situations are products of the author's imagination and any resemblance to persons or situations living or dead, past or present, is purely coincidence.

  Contents

  Huge Thank You To

  Potential Triggers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  A sneak peek at Howl at the Moon

  Also by Meredith

  About the Author

  Huge Thank You To

  Editing by Cate Ryan (www.cateedits.com)

  Cover and Promotional Art by Samantha Santana (www.amaidesigns.com)

  Potential Triggers

  Mentions of assault, depictions of violence between a supernatural creature and a human, references to child abuse, drug use, nonconsensual medical procedures, mild body horror consistent with shifter fiction, descriptions of cadavers in a forensic setting, descriptions of hoarding, mentions of stalking, mentions of torture, mention but no description of past sexual assault.

  To Jinn… I… love you… Best… braintwin… ever…

  Chapter One

  There were three werewolves ahead of me at the deli. Three. It was weird, to be honest. They were the least subtle werewolves I’d ever seen, making a display of tilting their heads and sniffing the air. One of them even licked his damn lips, making it hard for me to keep from laughing aloud at their antics. They weren’t weres I recognized, none of the handful I knew were scattered throughout Hitchens County or further afield.

  That… was unsettling. To the weres who knew me here in the county, I was harmless. Annoying, but harmless. To the ones elsewhere, I was a curiosity. Close to prey but no fun to play with. These weres had a tense, studied indifference that felt dangerous in ways the others didn’t. More immediate. Closer.

  Nerves sizzled to life in my gut, and I considered, for a moment, turning and striding out of the deli. Just heading back to work and the stack of files I had waiting on my desk. The lurch of hunger-induced nausea in my belly put paid to that notion in a heartbeat, though. Working with cadavers—even on paper—was never a good idea on an empty stomach. Moving up to the counter, the weres laid in an order for more food than even three of them could eat, supernatural metabolism or no. The three of them craned their necks, peering at faces in the line behind them and in the small booths and tables all around us. The weres could smell me. The almost-wolf part of me would be a giant flashing neon light to their senses, but I wasn’t one of them, and any minute now they’d either figure it out and leave me alone or do something damned foolish.

  They huddled together at the pick-up window, murmuring in low voices that rumbled beneath the deli’s cheerful pop hits from the nineties.

  “Hey.”

  Here we go. “Yes?”

  “You look familiar.” He was the tallest of the three, and possibly a direct descendant of Paul Bunyan. He had to crane his neck to peer down at me. I fully expected a few clouds to drift by his forehead at any moment. Wildly curling coppery hair did nothing to curb his wild man image, despite the (even I could tell it was) expensive suit and Cartier watch. “You one of the Dorian clan?”

  I smiled and shook my head in my best ‘sorry, can’t help you’ gesture. “‘Fraid not.” It was my turn to order, but they weren’t moving. The other two had turned and were affecting casual poses, but they looked about ready to leap at me.

  I hadn’t been close to any weres in almost ten years. The only ones I’d been in any proximity since I left home had been far less friendly. Because of them, the tiny, feral part of my back brain that recognized apex predator behavior was pointing out the tense legs, the way their fingers were curled and ready to grab, the unwavering stares. That scared bunny brain of mine was shrieking at me to run like hell and not look back; head for the nearest hole in the ground and hide.

  I made an aborted motion toward the counter, freezing when none of them moved. The teenager taking orders was wide-eyed, half-turned toward the kitchen, unsure which way to go, what to do next. She wasn’t like them, like us, at all, had no trace of Other on her, but even normal humans knew when a predator was hunting close by.

  “Um, sorry, y’all, but I’d like to get lunch before I need to be back at work so…” My heart raced, aching in my ribs. I knew they could hear it. The soft susurrus of panic rising.

  “You sure you’re not one of the Dorians? Maybe you’re a MacIntyre.” Big Red leaned a bit closer, the spicy scent of his cologne only underscoring the earth-musk-sweat-salt scent I always associated with werewolves with their blood up. “You look like I should know you. You got the look of the Dorians on you,” he added, squinting. “Dark hair like them. Big eyes like them.” He bared his teeth in a grin. “Short little shit like them, too.”

  The other two moved slowly down the counter, eyes still on me as they eased toward the pick-up window. The short line behind me had gone quiet. They were expecting a fight, I realized. They thought these guys had a beef with me, maybe I’d popped off to them or something, and they were waiting to see me get hit.

  “I’m not kin to Dorians or MacIntyres,” I said, my tight smile making my lips ache.

  Big Red took a half-step to one side, his smile curling nastily as I eased past him. I knew what he was doing. He wanted me closer, wanted a good, deep whiff of me as I passed by. Fuck my life.

  I tried not to wince away when he inhaled, not bothering to be quiet about it when he huffed that deep breath, sucking in my scent. The girl behind the counter had gone a funny pink, her mouth working but no words coming out as Big Red pressed closer behind me, inhaling again. “That’s enough,” I said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. Now get off me or I’ll have to call someone.”

  Red eased back. “You’re talking brave for someone who sounds like they’re a few seconds away from a stroke,” he said with a low chuckle. “You still look familiar,” he pressed, though he took another step back, then another. His friends were holding bags now, huge grocery sized ones, and a to-go tray of drinks sat perched on the counter, waiting. He kept his eyes on me as he reached for the tray, only looking away when he had to turn to the door. He looked back once more as he and the other werewolves hit the sidewalk.

  Nervous as I was, it was difficult to be intimidated by a man carrying six gigantic Styrofoam cups of soda.

  I offered the girl behind the counter a friendlier smile than the one I’d had pasted to my lips moments before and placed my usual order, thankful that I was a creature of habit when it came to my meals and didn’t have to think about it. I rattled off the items, having the exact amount ready to go thanks to weeks upon weeks of Thursday lunch breaks at the same deli.

  As I edged down the counter to wait for my order, my phone buzzed in my pocket. “Shit!” My heart kicked back into high gear for a minute as I fumbled the phone free of my jacket, the sudden vibration making me have the ridiculous thought of fuck, they got me! before I could stop and use reason. “Landry Babin,” I managed, only slightly out of brea
th, catching the call before it went to voice mail.

  “Thank God,” Reba Summers groaned on the other end of the line. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! You left your work phone in the lab, you know. I could get a raft of shit from on high for calling your personal number during work hours!”

  “Shit, I’m so sorry,” I muttered. I grabbed my order as it came over the counter, tucking the cup of sweet tea carefully into the crook of my elbow so I could manage my phone, the food, and the drink all at once as I headed out the door and back toward my office. I wasn’t used to carrying two phones, and the county had a strict policy about using personal phones for official business. Reba had taken to patting me down whenever I left for lunch, but today, she was elbow deep in payroll paperwork when I took my break. “What’s the problem?”

  “An all-hands situation.” She blew out a harsh breath. “Two bodies, rush order from the sheriff down in Tuttle. They’re hoping…” Reba trailed off. “Well.”

  “They seem to forget we’re not psychics or miracle workers,” I said, crossing the street and breaking into a quick stride, mindful of my tea. “I’ll be there in five.”

  “Our guests aren’t going anywhere,” she pointed out. “I’ll tell the sheriff you’ll be here soon, though. He’s called three times since you went on break.”

  “Next time he calls, send him to my line. I’ll deal with him myself.”

  “Thanks, Doc. See you in five.”

  I shoved my phone back in my pocket and groaned. Eating on the run—literally this time—was one of my least favorite things. I loved my breaks. I cherished them. They were necessary to keep me from losing my shit.

  Working as a coroner for Hitchens County wasn’t exactly high stress—the county itself was small, and my job, for the three months I’d had it, consisted mainly of signing off on autopsy findings for elderly decedents who’d died natural deaths and the occasional accident of the auto or home variety. The last murder in Hitchens County had been in 2014, and that had technically been an accident when Flora Guerne shot her cheating husband in the head, not the knee as she’d intended.

  Allegedly intended, anyway.

  The part that drove me absolutely spare was the number of people who seemed to think I was some sort of magician and could not only determine cause of death but everything from the exact time of death down to the second, to the mood of the deceased at the time of death (honestly, if they were awake, they were probably pretty upset, but if they were asleep, I’d have to say they gave zero fucks). I juggled my lunch around until I could eat my sandwich without dropping my drink, wolfing it down in four bites before reaching the office doors and pausing only to dig my key card out of my trouser pocket.

  Belmarais, the seat of Hitchens County and where my job as coroner was located, might have been a small town, but they were dedicated to their high-tech gadgets in the government buildings. I had two cards to swipe in order to access the maze of the morgue and labs, and a third card with just my title and picture on it over the county seal. That one, Reba told me on my first day, was just for show. I tossed my paper bag and sandwich wrap into the trash bin at the curb, turning back to swipe the first of my cards. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, the irony of my hackles rising not lost on me.

  Big Red was just a few storefronts down, watching. Not even trying to hide it, either. Openly standing on the sidewalk in front of Rudy’s Treats and Eats, staring at me as I let myself in to the old building that housed the coroner’s office. His two buddies were nowhere to be seen, but they had to be close by. Werewolves rarely traveled alone.

  The bunny part of my brain was vibrating itself into a tizzy, but I forced my hands to move slowly, keeping as normal a pace as possible as I keyed myself into the building and made sure the doors were shut and locked behind me before moving on to the next set of doors. The feeling of being watched—no, hunted—was painful. Every part of me ached with the need to run. I was sweating buckets—that slick fear-sweat that smells sour and lingers—and my mouth was dry. Everything was so much; the lights were too bright, my hearing too sharp. Lucky me, my special abilities included heightened prey response. Super sexy, no? It’s just what a guy wants in a date: a short stack who gets jumpy any time there’s a loud noise and has a tendency to bolt if you look at him wrong.

  I made it down to my office in the lab area in record time, bypassing the public facing office I kept for official visits and meeting with bereaved families on the ground floor near the main entrance. Reba glanced up from a stack of files, her pierced brow arching toward her hairline. “What’d you do? Run down here from the first floor?”

  “No,” I laughed, wheezing a bit. I didn’t run, but there may have been some power walking involved. “Did you get back in touch with the sheriff?”

  “Mmhmm. He sounded damn pissed off that you hadn’t miraculously teleported here from your lunch break and Quincy’d the bodies with your coroner superpowers. By the bye: Justin still isn’t back yet.”

  “Third time this week.” I sighed, shrugging out of my light coat and heading for the small changing room just off the lab. “Are they in the fridge?”

  “Bagged, tagged, and slabbed.”

  “Reba…”

  “You know I wouldn’t say that in front of families.” She sighed. “Go on, before Sheriff Stick Up the Ass calls again.” She groaned as the office line rang. “Speak of the devil—”

  “And he shall appear,” I finished, already grabbing a fresh set of scrubs as I ducked into the changing room. When I came out, I took a deep breath and tried to brace myself for what I was going to see. Reba hadn’t given me much detail, but if there was a rush, it was likely a murder or something equally problematic for the sheriff’s department, something with a family demanding answers now.

  Tuttle was the size of a pin head, across the Red River from where I’d spent my first few years in Hubbard before moving in with my Aunt Cleverly. The sheriff had, for as long as I could remember anyway, been a fusty old man with a mustache big enough to hide a small child. I was always surprised he could stand upright with that damn thing on his face. By all rights, he should have suffocated under its weight before I graduated from medical school.

  He had always fancied himself to be above the nitty gritty his position should entail, big on delegating responsibilities to his deputies, including things that shouldn’t be delegated either by law or just by basic human decency. If he was calling my office and getting shirty with Reba, something about these deaths must have his ass on the line.

  I snapped on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves and chose the body nearest me. Both bodies were still in the black bags used by the coroner’s office down in Tuttle, and both had bright orange tags looped through the zippers, showing chain of custody and identification for the cadavers. I didn’t have to open the bag to smell the decay. New, too faint for most humans to detect, it was mingled with the stench of blood, urine, and loosened bowels as well as something sharp and animal.

  Something definitely not human.

  I blew a harsh breath out through my nose, grabbing the small tub of mentholated cream I kept on the desk in the corner. By the time I got it smeared under my nose, had my safety glasses on and voice activated recorder set, I had just about put Big Red and his friends out of my mind. They were still there but only as ghost-thoughts, barely a worry as I unclipped the orange tag and pulled the zipper on the first bag down far enough to reveal her face.

  “Jessica Raymond, age twenty-two, time of death listed as approximately 0600 hours per the coroner in Tuttle. Note: Contact Jim Blakely at Tuttle coroner’s office to ascertain how he reached this time of death. Did not indicate on intake paperwork. Coroner indicates severe trauma to chest, abdomen, and upper right thigh. Suspects mauling by dogs or possibly feral hogs.”

  I pulled the zipper the rest of the way down and nearly gagged in my mask. “This was not a pack of dogs, or a hog. Ms. Raymond’s remains indicate predation occurred.” The coroner, I knew, h
ad not taken any samples from the body. He’d just had them bagged up and sent over. She was lacking any indication of even a preliminary postmortem. “God damn it, Blakely,” I muttered, not caring that the recorder was going to pick that up. Reba would leave it out of the transcription later.

  I took pictures of the wounds for our records, not trusting that Blakely had gotten enough or even every angle that we might need. Even through my mask and the menthol cream, there was no avoiding the fear-blood-offal stench rising from Ms. Raymond’s torn body. The sharp predator scent threaded through it was a red light, flashing warning that whoever—not whatever—had done this wasn’t human, and it wasn’t an accident. The wounds were huge, not an accidental bite gone wrong, and not the wounds left by an animal in fear for its own life and lashing out against a perceived threat. She’d been torn into deliberately.

  Deep gashes then ripped further, relatively straight slices into soft flesh ending in shredded flesh where she’d been pulled apart. “Not an animal,” I muttered, a twisting certainty already lodged in my awareness. “Whatever did this did it with precision and intent. Her internal organs show evidence of predation, particularly the liver. Lower intestine has been pulled free of mesentery.” The smell clotted in my throat. I wanted to race through the rest of the exam, but I forced myself to go steady, to follow protocol. I closed her bag back up and added a tag from our office to the orange one on the loop holding the zipper closed half an hour after I started my exam.