Blood Trail - By Tanya Huff Page 0,49

was worse than arguing with Celluci.

"We will guard... "

"You haven't been guarding!"

"He has not been on our territory before!"

Vicki took a deep breath. This was getting nowhere fast. "At least send the children away."

"NO!"

Stuart's response was explosive and Vicki turned to Nadine for help. Surely she'd understand the necessity of sending the children to safety.

"The children must stay within the safety of the pack." Nadine held a solemn looking Daniel very tightly, one hand stroking his hair. Daniel, in turn, held tight to his mother.

"This coward with a gun does not run this pack." Stuart yanked his chair out from the table and threw himself down on it. "And his actions will not rule this pack. We will live as we live." He jabbed his finger at Vicki. "You will find him!"

He wasn't angry at her, Vicki realized, but at himself, at his perceived failure to protect his family. Even so, the heat of his gaze forced her to look away. "I will find him," she said, trying not to resent the strength of his rage. Let's just hope I find him in time.

Lunch began as an assault; meat ripped and torn between gleaming teeth, an obvious surrogate for an enemy's throat. Fortunately for Vicki's piece of mind, things calmed down fairly quickly, the wer - especially the younger wer - being incapable of sustaining a mood for any length of time when distracted by the more immediate concerns of who forgot to take the butter out of the fridge and just where exactly was the salt.

The entire family ate in human form, more or less in human style.

"It makes it easier on the kids when they go back to school," Nadine explained, putting Daniel's fork into his hand and suggesting that he use it.

The cold mutton accompanying the salad was greasy and not particularly palatable, but Vicki was so relieved it was cooked that she ate it gladly.

"Ms. Nelson went to see Carl Biehn this morning," Peter announced suddenly.

"Carl Biehn?" Donald glanced over at Stuart, whose ears had gone back again, then at Vicki. "Why?"

"It's important I talk to the neighbors," Vicki explained, shooting a look of her own at the dominant male. "I need to know what they might have seen."

"He hasn't been around here for years," Nadine said emphatically. "Not since Stuart ran him off for frightening the girls. Jennifer had nightmares about his God for months."

Stuart snorted. "God. He wouldn't know a real God if it bit him on the butt. Old fool's a grasseater."

Vicki blinked. "What?"

"Vegetarian," Rose translated.

"Did he tell you that?"

"Didn't have to." Stuart cracked a bone and sucked out the marrow. "He smells like a grasseater."

Donald tossed a heel of bread onto the table and dusted his hands off against his bare thighs. "He stopped me in town once and pointed out the evils of giving life to animals only to kill them."

"He did it to me once too but I pointed out that killing animals was easier than eating them alive." Peter tossed a radish up into the air, caught it between his teeth, and crunched down with the maximum possible noise.

"Like majorly gross, Peter!" Jennifer made a disgusted face at her cousin, who only grinned and continued devouring his lunch.

"You don't think it's old man Biehn, do you, Vicki?" Rose asked quietly, pitching her voice under the general noise level around the table.

Did she? Living so close, Carl Biehn had opportunity to both accidentally discover the wers' secret and access the tree the shots had come from. He was in good physical condition for a man his age and deeply held religious beliefs were historically a tried and true motive for murder. He had, however, expressed an abhorrence for killing that Vicki believed and, besides a sneaker tread he shared with all and sundry, no evidence linked him to the crimes. The fact that she'd liked him, as subjective as that was, had to be considered. Good cops develop a sensitivity to certain personality types that, no matter how carefully hidden, set off subconscious alarms. Carl Biehn seemed like a decent human being and they were rare.

On the other hand, the next likeliest suspect was a police officer and Vicki didn't want to believe that Barry Wu was responsible. She glanced down the table at Colin who, while larger than his uncle and father, was still a small, wiry man and probably wouldn't have made the force under the old size requirements. He looked like someone had a knife in his