Nearly Human (Marked Book 1) Read online

  The rasp of the zipper triggered the recorder, the tiny light flickering and waiting for more input. I closed my eyes and swallowed against the rising panic in my throat, trying to force down the nausea and knowing it was a losing battle. I had never lied on a report in my entire career, but it was as good a time as any to start. “Correction,” I said, voice shaking only a little, “animal attack, not of human origin. Without further evidence, it is impossible to tell what animal attacked Ms. Raymond, though if I had to make an educated guess, I’d suggest dogs; coyotes are not known for approaching humans in this area.”

  After a few seconds of silence, the recorder shut off with a soft click. Nausea filled my mouth with saliva and made my throat burn as I turned to the next victim, tagged as Thomas Raymond. His remains were much the same as his… wife? Sister? Torn abdomen, predated organs, torn upper thigh, ripping beyond the initial slice into the soft meat of the stomach. I made my observations quickly, failing to note for the recorder the animal-sharp-panic stink clinging to the bodies. This wasn’t a pack of feral dogs.

  My body was tight with fear, metallic tang of blood on the back of my tongue like a promise of what was to come if I didn’t flee nownownownownow. I was shaking, my stomach cramping. The urge to give in to those damned heightened senses had me perched on a knife’s edge, on the ledge of a skyscraper, clinging to a bridge, but I knew if I gave in once, that would be it. I’d never stop running.

  Reba found me an hour later, face down on the work desk tucked into the corner of the exam room. Both bodies were very similar in their destruction, down to the sharp-sweet-bitter animal smell that lingered on the edges of the wounds, a very faint miasma rising from the remains. “You up for company?” she asked softly. “I can stall him for a bit if you need to regroup, doc.” When I raised my head, she was looking over her shoulder into the exam room where both bodies had been carefully placed in refrigerated drawers for the time being. “No shame in needing a minute or two… or ten.” She went on, voice low and quiet. “You’re only human.”

  I smiled, tight and thin. “Rumor has it.” Blowing out a breath that made my lungs ache, I pushed myself to my feet. “Give me a few minutes to clean up. I’ll meet the sheriff in my upstairs office first.” Reba’s face underwent a weird little twisting shift of expressions and ended up stuck somewhere between nervous and polite. “He’s already down here?”

  “Mmhmm. New guy wants to be all proactive and shit.” Her eyes were wide, pointedly glancing toward the exam room door. “Don’t worry,” she added when I groaned. “He showed up after you got done puking in the changing room.”

  “Ah.” I smoothed down my scrub top and considered changing, but even if he wasn’t already waiting, the sheriff would no doubt want to see the bodies and I would only have to change back again in a few minutes. “Okay. It was just so much,” I said, my face hot. Let her think it was the carnage, not the knowledge. But something she said suddenly pinged for me. “Wait, new guy?”

  “Yeah, Sheriff Michaels retired last year. Quite the scandal, apparently. Involved one of the church deacons and a gallon of bacon grease. They have an interim guy right now until the next election.”

  “Bacon grease?”

  “Not what you think.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “It’s the same thing everyone thinks when the words scandal and bacon grease are in the same sentence.”

  “I’m gonna need to go poke out my mind’s eye just to stop seeing that mental image.”

  “Mmm. Hey, do you remember someone named Ethan Stone?”

  Yikes. Emotional whiplash hurt like a broken bone. “Why?” Reba’s eyes narrowed just enough to let me know she knew I was about to lie to her. “I think I went to high school with him.” Werewolf. Werewolf, werewolf, werewolf… My lungs tried to stop working, my heart tried to explode. He was the reason I knew, the reason I believed.

  “Huh. Yeah, he said something like that.”

  “What? Why was Ethan Stone talking to you about me?” Oh my God, could I sound more fourteen?

  “Because he’s here to see you.”

  “Oh, Christ. Ethan Stone and the sheriff? Christ.”

  Why the hell would Ethan Stone be all the way out here? Last I heard, he’d moved to Dallas for college, and that was eons ago. Not that I’d checked back in with my Aunt Cleverly in Tuttle on the regular and asked or anything. Nope.

  Reba’s snort was somewhere between amused and pitying. “No, Doc. Ethan Stone is the sheriff.”

  Fuck. I sat back down behind the desk, my face going from tomato to chalk in just a few heartbeats. “Oh. Um. Hey, Reba? I’m gonna need another minute after all.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’ll tell him.”

  Get your shit together, Landry! “What the fuck is today, Werewolf Wednesday?” Between Big Red and his buddies, the victims in my exam room, and now Sheriff Ethan fucking Stone showing up, I was starting to wonder if there were any normal humans left in the world. All I needed was for Reba to come in and announce she’d been Changed, and she’d need three days around the full moon off every month for the foreseeable future.

  That’s bullshit, the thing about full moons and about being Changed by a bite or scratch or something. And I only know that because of Ethan, who’d found it hilarious that it was such a thing in their lore and wished sometimes he could be openly were just so he could claim to need a few days off a month for personal reasons.

  Fucking Ethan fucking Stone and his quick smile, strong hands, and golden tan skin that never seemed to burn. The constellation of freckles across his nose. The rough-soft way he’d kissed me all that summer, and how he loved to press me against that shit-brown car of his. And fucking hell, he was in my waiting room and would be in my office and fuck. Of all the fantasies I’d had since the summer I turned seventeen and Ethan fucking Stone decided I was worth his notice finally, meeting over two werewolf victims was never involved.

  You’re a grown-ass man, a doctor for crying out loud, and this is about the two poor victims in the exam room, not your wet dreams when you were a teenager. Get. It. Together.

  Two deep breaths, smoothing my hands down my scrub top, and I was ready.

  Ish.

  Kind of.

  The best thing to do, I decided on the extremely short walk from the exam room to the waiting area, was lean heavily on professionalism. It’d been over ten years, I reminded myself with each step. He moved on long ago. Probably before I even cleared the city limits.

  Professional Polite Face firmly affixed, I stepped into the small, cold waiting area and held out my hand toward Sheriff Ethan fucking Stone. His back was to me when I entered (ha, don’t think it, Landry, don’t think it… too late), but he was still gorgeous. I didn’t have to see his face to know that.

  It had been over a decade, but he hadn’t gone soft around the edges like a lot of guys in our age ranged tended to do. Ethan was still built like a brick shithouse. He had always towered over me even as teenagers, being easily six foot two by the time I left Tuttle. It looked like he’d grown a few more inches on top of that. I found myself standing straighter, an entire ballet corps of butterflies staging avant-garde productions in my stomach as he turned around. God damn it, still the most beautiful boy—no, man—I’d ever seen.

  His green eyes went wide at the sight of me, and I had a niggle of satisfaction that he still found me somewhat attractive, even after so long. Ethan stared, lips parted, and that little satisfied feeling bloomed into a full-grown rosebush of smugness. He wasn’t looking. He was looking. “Landry.” He sounded warm and pleased. “Love the Hopper print,” he said, gesturing at the picture hung over one of the sofas. “Reba here tells me you decorated the waiting area yourself. I like it. This shade of blue is really calming. Goes well with the green sofas.”

  The flutter in my belly called me a liar when I tried to remind myself that I didn’t give two good damns about Ethan Stone anymore. So that left me with my one g
ood option: lie my ass off by acting like I didn’t know who he was, and hope he got in and out of my office before I made a fool of myself. “Sheriff. I understand you’re here regarding the two bodies I have in my exam room. Come on through, and I’ll—”

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t remember me,” Ethan said, a familiar (oh God, so familiar) smile curling the corners of his lips. “This how you’re gonna talk to me after everything in high school?”

  Shit. “Um.”

  “I thought you were being cagey,” Reba sing-songed. She edged closer to me, nudging me with her elbow. “He said he didn’t remember you, Sheriff, but Doctor Babin can’t lie for shit.” She laughed her trilling, sharp laugh and elbowed me again.

  Ethan’s smile was as slow and sweet as ever. I felt dirty—and not in a fun way—even noticing. He had his hands folded behind his back, parade rest, and was grinning down at me like we’d just seen one another yesterday and not years ago. Not after a shouting match that woke up his mama and brother and sent me crying back to my house.

  “Well,” I said, my voice a bit too high, too breathy, “you’re here about the Raymonds. If you’ll follow me, I can get the chain of custody handed over to you, and I’ll give you my findings. Oh, Reba—”

  “Already on it!” she said, her transcription equipment plugged in and ready to go. “I’ll have it ready within the half hour.”

  Ethan was still smiling at me, but his brows were ever so slightly lower now. He was thinking hard. I knew that face. Oh Lord.

  “Follow me, Sheriff,” I said, plastering a pleasant, albeit businesslike, smile on my face. At least I was hoping it was pleasant and businesslike. Judging by the expression on Reba’s face, I may have overshot and landed squarely in ‘digestive problems forthcoming’ territory.

  I didn’t look back, just barreled on ahead back into the lab and exam area, not stopping until I was past the tables and behind my small working desk. I grabbed my freshly printed findings from my desk. “Here are the hard copies,” I said, trying to breathe. My chest was tight, like being in a wave pool and just on the edge of drowning, that weird little moment of panic where your brain tells you you’re about to die. It wasn’t just because Ethan fucking Stone was less than five feet away from me and certain parts of my body wanted to reduce that distance to eight inches or so (ahem). That stupid annoying bunny brain problem was back in full force.

  Nausea nibbled around the edges of my awareness, my body exhausted and sick from spending a good part of the afternoon on high alert thanks to Big Red and the gang and now, Ethan fucking Stone—sorry, I mean Sheriff Ethan fucking Stone—was there and smelled good. Yeah, his aftershave was great and all, but I mean on a damn near molecular level. In a way Reba wouldn’t be able to detect even if she climbed him like a tree and shoved her face in his neck (yeah, I saw the looks she was giving him, and she wasn’t the only one who had a hard time hiding shit). It was imprinted on me, a part of me, weaving around inside me for years now. I’d be able to find him if I were blindfolded in a cavern under the earth just by smell alone.

  I couldn’t hear his pulse like he could mine (damn it), but I knew his was faster than average. Not because he was nervous. Because of what he was.

  He sniffed, drawing in a deep breath through his nose that he had to know I’d notice, a small frown twisting his lips.

  “And I’ll email the digital copies to your office shortly,” I added, suddenly aware that we’d been quiet for too long.

  Ethan took the file folder from my hand (thank God it wasn’t shaking yet) and tucked it under his arm. “Landry Babin,” he murmured. “It’s Thursday.”

  “Um…”

  “Earlier. I heard you.” He made a halfhearted gesture toward his right ear. “You know. The whole… senses thing.” His brows were even lower now. I was surprised he could keep his eyes open under that glower. “Werewolf Wednesday. Who else has been around? I thought… well. Who else? Was Jessup by?”

  “Jessup?” I jerked back, bumping into the edge of my desk. All pretense at businesslike behavior forgotten for the moment, I crossed my arms across my belly and didn’t quite meet his eyes but managed to stare at a spot somewhere near his chin. “I haven’t heard from Jessup since I left home.”

  “Hm. So, who was it then?”

  A lie tickled my chin. He doesn’t know about Big Red out there. Maybe he gave up on trying to scare me, figured he marked his territory well enough and went on back to wherever he was going all dressed up. Maybe Ethan does know about him and is testing me, seeing if I’m gonna keep secrets still.

  I tipped my chin up to meet his verdigris gaze and gave him a flat lipped smile. “You’re not the only werewolf I know, Ethan.” His eyes flared for just a brief second, something like interest or maybe possessiveness bright and clear. I didn’t dwell on it, just filed it away for later so I could obsess instead of trying to sleep (because who was I kidding, thinking I’d just toddle off to bed tonight and not freak out about Ethan freaking Stone being in my lab?).

  I grabbed a pair of gloves off my desk and snapped them on as I headed for the drawer holding Jessica Raymond. “I’m not going to pussyfoot around,” I said, wincing inwardly because ‘pussyfoot’ totally negated the gruff, devil may care vibe I’d been trying to affect. “The Raymonds were definitely attacked, but you and I both know it wasn’t a pack of feral dogs or even a wild hog.” I unzipped the bag and a flicker of triumph shot through me when he winced and withdrew, turning his face toward my desk and breathing hard through his nose. Then guilt crept back in; I was using the demise of this poor woman to get one over on my ex… um. Whatever he was. “They both smell,” I said. “They smell like werewolf, Ethan. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  Why hadn’t he picked up on that himself before now, I wondered. Was he not involved in the original case? But he was the sheriff in a very small town. He’d have to have been there, at least to see the crime scene in situ—

  “Shit.” He sighed, closing his eyes. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  I closed her bag back up and reached for the other occupied drawer, only to have him wave me off. “The Raymonds, their folks, are screaming murder. The coroner is calling it a dog attack. We got a feral band running around down near the Thompson place.” Glancing up at me, he added, “You remember that place, right?” His tone was noticeably different, softer but heavy.

  The crap on my desk suddenly needed rearranging, and it was absolutely impossible for me to meet his gaze just then. Ethan wasn’t asking if I remembered the creepy ass old farmhouse on Randall Road with the burned-out mattress in the yard and the overgrown acres that had once been a truck farm. He wanted to know if I remembered sneaking off in the middle of the night, being stupid with him, running across the narrow band of nut trees that made the southern border on the Thompson property, meeting him near the sluggish creek that was more mud than water. Hot, greedy hands and mouths, the damn near animal sounds as we’d pulled at clothes and nipped at skin, no words at all. His stare felt like fingers over my jaw, trying to turn my head. I dropped a box of paperclips, breaking whatever spell that was as they scattered down the desk and floor. “Fuck.”

  He rocked back on his heels; the intensity gone by the time I finally glanced back at him. “So, the thing is.” Ethan sighed, raking his fingers (good God, stop staring!) through his thick, dark (oh my God, why doesn’t he ever get it cut? Doesn’t he know what I think about when I see it’s long enough to grab?) hair. “The thing is the family’s insisting on a full investigation. They want us to bring you out to see the crime scene.”

  “That’s not my job. I’m not a CSI. Hell, I don’t think Hitchens County has a CSI unit. Besides,” I said, “there’s literally nothing I could do, even if I came out and saw where the bodies were found. My job is here. I just verify findings, perform autopsies. That’s it.”

  “That’s simplifying things,” he grumbled. He flipped open the file folder, but I knew he wasn’t reading a damn thing. He was just staring down a
t the pages, thinking hard again. “Look, I know this is weird but—”

  “Stop. Just… stop.” God, it hurt to do this, but I had to. I didn’t want to, but I knew it was the only way. “Being cool for the summer once years ago doesn’t mean we have to, I don’t know, act sweet now. We’re both grown men with real life jobs, and duties and responsibilities, none of which involve making nice with one another because of a few mutual hand jobs when we were teenagers!”

  Ethan didn’t slam the folder down. He set it carefully on the edge of my desk and took two steps toward me. He wasn’t crowding me yet, but he was close. I heard the faintest growling rumble low in his throat and smell the wolf on him, the sweet-sharp-musky-wild smell of earth, and green, and animal that no one else ever seemed to notice. How could they not know about him? How? It’s so obvious.

  “You’re lying to yourself if you think that’s all it was,” he said in a soft, calm voice. “Now, I know for a fact you don’t have a huge case load to deal with right now, and I know you’re damn well aware how important it is we keep this”—he jerked his chin in the direction of the Raymonds— “quiet as possible. Come out to Tuttle tonight. See the scene. Shut the parents up, let them bury their children, and let us deal with tracking down who did this after the dust settles.”

  “It’s a bad idea. Like, beyond bad. If I get caught out there—”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  It was tempting, for all the wrong reasons. The biggest one being the word us. I knew he didn’t mean us, as in me and him, but us as in the small clan of werewolves in Tuttle. Ethan and his family, the Dorians, the MacIntyres, and… maybe Big Red? Maybe that’s why he and his sidekicks were lurking around? Had they come to see what they could find out? The idea seized hold of me, and for a few seconds, I didn’t feel the fluttering in my belly, the way my heart seemed to go liquid and hot under Ethan’s sharp gaze. “Did you come alone?”

  Ethan jerked back, his face going through so many expressions so fast, it was almost funny. “Why?” he asked cautiously.