Season of the Witch (Claws Clause 2)

Was it just his imagination or did Wright go a little green at his description?

As they headed toward the front of the building, he felt the desire to elaborate. Sure, Wright had apologized for his attitude in the car, and Colt had told him to forget it, but this was for all the times Wright jerked him around at the Cage, wondering about Colt’s clean-shaven face, questioning his P.I.D., making it a pain in the ass to get in to see Maddox.

Hey. He did owe the guy.

10

It was right as Colt started to tell Wright about the time he found a half-rotted deer carcass behind his house that was some timid hedgehog shifter’s idea of an offering, going into great detail about how bad it smelled after being left out in the summer sun for a few days, that the cop stopped short, holding out his hand.

At first, he thought that Wright was cutting him off because he couldn’t deal with hearing any more of his disturbing details. And that’s when the cop pointed at something in front of them and he realized that he’d walked off the path while he was torturing him with his story.

About twenty yards away from the front of the Para club, and away from the reach of the spotlight attached to the dark building, there was a pole made of steel that was painted matte black; if you weren’t paying attention, you could very easily walk right by it at this hour and never notice it.

There was a sign attached to the top of the post. It didn’t reach all that high, the bottom of the flat, black board meeting Colt’s chin. About three feet wide and two feet high, it announced that the name of the Para club was Lust. The single word was drawn in a reflective white paint, scrawled in a lovely script near the bottom of the sign.

Okay. So the place had a name now. Whoop-dee-doo. For the life of him, Colt couldn’t figure out why Wright was gazing up at the thing as if the sign seemed to hold all the answers for him.

Standing on his tiptoes, Wright tapped the empty gap above the script. “See this?”

“There’s nothing there.”

“That’s visible right now. But what if I use some of this?” he asked, reaching his hand inside of his pants pocket, pulling out a small, unmarked spray bottle.

“Whatcha got there?”

“Luminol. If I can believe any of what that vamp told me, there should be a message on this sign to prove we’re at the right place.”

The luminol wasn’t the only thing that was in his pants. Right as he grabbed the tiny spray bottle, the car keys he had stowed in there tumbled out again, landing on the frozen grass with a muffled clink. Wright never even noticed. He was too focused on the sign in front of them.

Colt swooped down, scooping the keys up and shoving them in his own pocket before watching in interest as he tried to figure out what the hell the cop was doing.

After spraying the top part of the sign liberally with the luminol, he waited. To Colt’s amazement, the luminol reacted. It began to emit an eerie blue glow forming five letters that he would’ve sworn weren’t there two seconds ago.

“Bloodlust,” he read out loud. It didn’t matter that BLOOD was written on top, with Lust swirled beneath it. The name was obvious.

Wright shook the spray bottle. “Luminol is something we use on the job. Spray it where you think there’s been blood spilled and it doesn’t matter how well you’ve cleaned up… how well you think you’ve gotten it all… it’ll light up like that every time. So, uh, I’m thinking we’re in the right place after all.”

Hard to deny that. Especially since, with the most delicate of sniffs, Colt had to agree. The scent was old, almost unnoticeable, but it was undeniable now that he was looking for it. Someone had painted those five letters onto the sign using human blood.

How fucking wonderful.

Wright tucked the luminol away again. He pointed past the corner. “Now that we know we found the right spot, let’s go check out the rest of the space first. Then we can figure out what our next move is gonna be.”

Sounded like a good plan to Colt. Narrowing his gaze on the distance, he could see there were cars stretching around the side of the massive club, too. Between the size of the place and the cars parked wherever there was space, it was clear there was a pretty big crowd inside.

He was all for marching into the Nightwalker club and asking every corpse he ran into if they knew what was going on with the dead bodies piling up. He knew it wouldn’t be as easy as that, which was why he was just the nose and the Grayson cop was the authority—

“Hey. Over there,” Wright said, keeping his voice low as he gestured with his shoulder toward the backside of the building. “Just what I was looking for. A second entrance.”

—unless he came up with an even more ridiculous plan.

He was looking for a second entrance? A back door? He didn’t honestly think he was going to be able to sneak into a Para club without leaving any sign—or a scent trail?

Wright looked so pleased with his discovery that Colt, despite being an admitted asshole who barely tolerated Ants at the best of times, found he couldn’t crush the poor guy’s enthusiasm.

“Hang on a second,” he said instead. “Real quick. Why did you tell me I’ve got to wear these threads?”

“The suit?”