“Who would know that there would only be two wolves here?” Anna asked.

“Anyone who read the sign-up sheets-which are on our semiprivate site on the Internet. That means all of my pack and any of the wolves who came to the conference and took time to check out the welcome materials we provided.”

“Assuming our vampires are working for one of us,” mused Charles, “they would have known.”

“If it’s the vampires, they’re moving awfully fast,” Anna observed. She realized that they were all trying to avoid moving forward, into the house, closer to the smell of blood. “Tom, Moira, and I were attacked the day before yesterday, Sunny yesterday, and Chastel later last night.” She didn’t want to see it, to go near the evidence of all that pain and death. She thought that maybe the others were fighting exactly the opposite battle.

“Assassins with multiple targets taking them out as fast as they can,” suggested Angus. “Strike before the enemy has a chance to pull their pants up and fire back. Busy as little bees.”

“The question is, what are they doing? And why?” Charles sounded thoughtful, as if he were talking about a game of chess instead of discussing murder in a pleasant little sitting room that reeked of death. “And is Dana a part of this? Or is she a separate matter altogether?”

He looked at Anna. “You can stay here.”

“But you want me to come.” She knew she was right, and it surprised her.

“You bring different eyes,” he said. “Angus and I-we can decipher the battle. You tell us about the person. Who we are hunting for and what that person is trying to accomplish.” He gave her a tight smile. “You see things, why people do things. Vampires who act like wolves. I want you to stay here, but I’m afraid we might need you in there.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay. But if I throw up, I’ll blame you.”

“Granted.”

She bent to retie her tennis shoe and caught a glimpse of Angus’s face. “He is very protective,” she told him. “In a very Nietzschean ‘that which does not kill us makes us stronger’ sort of way. At least there won’t be twenty feet of snow here.”

Charles laughed.

No one was smiling when they walked into the room.

Blood soaked the carpet, and the walls were sprayed with it. It was getting old; in a few hours it would start to smell rotten. The walls looked brown rather than red. She didn’t look at the two piles of meat and bone and body parts yet. One small step at a time. What did all the blood tell her?

“ ‘Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him,’ ” murmured Anna.

“I thought you did Latin quotes,” said Charles.

“I can’t do Shakespeare in Latin.” She thought about it a little because that meant she didn’t have to look more closely at what was in the room yet. “Cui bono, then. Who benefits from this?”

“I can’t see how it could possibly be money,” said Angus. “Or not only money. Or love, either. Sunny, maybe-but Chastel?”

Anna stepped all the way into the room, and the carpet squished just the way the carpet in her friends’ apartment did after a keg of beer had broken open (some bright person tried to open it with a screwdriver and a hammer when the tap quit working).

She could tell where Michel had been because there was a person-shaped place where the blood hadn’t saturated the tan carpet.

And there was the body… or pieces thereof. She made herself look. Charles’s life might ride on their finding who had done this. She didn’t have the luxury of being squeamish.

Hands, feet, head (one that looked much more like some wax sculpture for a horror film than something that had perched on shoulders and talked) sat on top of the pile. The head faced the doorway they’d come through, one hand on each side, feet on the outside of that. The rest of that pile was entrails and bones.

A square of cloth-no telling what it had originally looked like, but she was pretty sure it had been a tablecloth from the shape-was spread out on the floor next to the pile of body parts. On the square of cloth were stacks of meat cut into steaks and two racks of ribs, as if someone were planning a barbecue.

Why was the blood bothering her?

“I don’t know vampires,” she said, talking fast so her jaw didn’t vibrate. “But I read Dracula when I was in high school. Would they waste all the blood like this? Or is this meant to horrify? Who do they want to frighten, and why?”

“No,” said Charles suddenly. “They wouldn’t waste the blood. Not without a good reason. You’re right, this was deliberate. Meant to look like serial-killer stuff. That’s all wrong for vampires. A vampire who left victims like this would have been killed before he-or she-did it a second time. They can afford human attention a lot less than we can.”

“This is planned for effect. A lot of effort.” He stared at the body parts-and smiled with satisfaction. “Too much effort, apparently.”

He waved his arm at what was left of Chastel. “They cheated. We have one dead body-and there is just too much mass there, by about twenty pounds. I bet we find some commercially prepared cow in amidst the meat and that there is more of the Frenchman under the offal. Meat on bones. They didn’t really have time to make a thorough job of it. It just had to look good for the audience.”

“Who is the audience?” Angus asked.

“Not us,” said Anna. “Me aside… this is bad-but to wolves who go out every full moon and hunt? There’s just not a lot of horror left in blood and meat.” She wouldn’t point out that Angus was having a hard time pulling his eyes from the steak pile. “Especially when the victim is someone like Jean Chastel. I bet the French wolves felt bad about Michel, but said, ‘good riddance’ when they saw Chastel. Do you think this is for the public? To force the Marrok to not come out? Or is it for the fae, who have no idea what a butcher Chastel was? To add to the horror of the death so that the hunt for Charles has that righteous feel?”

“You sound like a psychologist,” said Angus.

Anna shook her head. “No. Wrong Omega-Ric’s the psychologist. I just watch TV and read a lot of forensic mysteries. I would feel a lot worse about this scene if it were Sunny. If this is the vampires-and I don’t smell anyone except Charles, Michel, and Chastel, so it sounds like it has to be them-then there’s a reason they did this to Chastel… and the other to Sunny.”

“Sunny was personal,” Charles said. “You didn’t get close to see her body, smell it. They scared her and bled her out slowly. She hurt and suffered. Any werewolf who got near her body would know that. They wanted us to know that she suffered. This is… just gruesome. But it is not heartfelt. It is staged.” He looked at Anna and gave her a solemn nod. “And for someone who isn’t us-who, we hope, hasn’t seen it yet.”

“Then we need to get this cleaned up, now,” said Angus and he pulled out a phone and hit speed dial. “You tell your father he’s bankrolling this one: our witch is expensive. Tom?”

“Yes?” His second’s voice was hushed, as if he was being quiet so as not to disturb whoever he was with.

“Get a cleanup crew-thorough and fast-and your witch. Yes, we pay her for this one, or the Marrok does, and you tell her to charge him up the nose. Get them to Chastel’s place, and I’ll tell you more when you get here. Yes, someone finally killed the bastard.” He hung up the phone and Anna realized, with a touch of amusement, that Tom hadn’t said a single word after that first acknowledgment. Angus was an Alpha who knew his word would be obeyed.

“Butcher,” said Charles, thoughtfully. “Maybe this wasn’t all for show. The vampires didn’t mean it-but they are under orders.” He looked at Anna. “I think you’re right, mind you. But I also think this was symbolic. A butcher’s end for the Beast. Not rage-because then the person behind this would have done it himself. But there is some connection between Chastel and the man who arranged to have this done.”