I didn't fight his hold. "The local Alpha. We need to get the body out of the road-unless you want both of us disappeared into some federal laboratory for science to pick over for a few years before they decide they can learn more from us dead than alive."
"Alpha?" he asked. "What's that?"
He was new.
"Werewolves live in packs," I told him. "Each pack has an Alpha-a wolf strong enough to keep the others under control. Adam Hauptman is the local Alpha."
"What does he look like?" he asked.
"Five-ten, a hundred and eighty pounds. Dark hair, dark eyes. I don't think he has anything to do with your wolves," I said. "If Adam wanted you, he'd have you-and he'd have found you a lot sooner. He can be a jerk, but competence is his forte."
Mac stared at me, his brown eyes looking yellowish in the fluorescent lighting of my office. Truth to tell, I was surprised he was still in human form because watching one wolf change tends to encourage others. I met his gaze calmly, then dropped my eyes until I was looking at his shoulder instead.
"All right," he said, slowly removing his hand. "You saved me tonight-and that thing could have torn you apart. I've seen them kill."
I didn't ask when or whom. It was important to take action in the right order to avoid worse trouble. Call Adam. Remove body from the middle of the street where anyone could see it. Then talk. I punched Adam's number from memory.
"Hauptman," he answered, with just a touch of impatience, on the fourth ring.
"I killed a werewolf at my garage," I said, then hung up. To Mac's raised eyebrows I said, "That will get a faster reaction than spending twenty minutes explaining. Come on, you and I need to get the body off the street before someone spots it." When the phone rang, my answering machine picked it up.
I took Stefan's bus because loading something large into a bus is just easier than loading it into my little Rabbit. The bus smelled of Mac, and I realized he'd not lied to me when he said he had a place to spend the night. He'd been sleeping in it for a couple of nights at least.
The bus was without brakes until we fixed it, but I managed to get it to drift to a stop next to the body. Mac helped me get it in the bus, then dashed back to the garage while I drove. When I arrived, he had the garage open for me.
We set the dead man on the cement floor next to the lift, then I parked the bus back where it had been and pulled down the garage bay door, leaving us inside with the body.
I walked to the corner farthest from the dead werewolf and sat down on the floor next to one of my big tool chests. Mac sat down next to me, and we both stared across the garage at the corpse.
Half-changed, the body looked even more grotesque under the harsh lighting of the second bay than it had under the streetlight, like something out of a black-and-white Lon Chaney movie. From where I sat I could see the slice in his neck that had killed him.
"He was used to healing fast," I said, to break the silence. "So he didn't pay attention to his wound. But some wounds take longer to heal than others. He didn't know any more than you do. How long have you been a werewolf?"
"Two months," Mac said, leaning his head back against the tool chest and looking at the ceiling. "It killed my girlfriend, but I survived. Sort of."
He was lucky, I thought, remembering the suppositions I'd had while overhearing his phone call earlier. He hadn't killed his girlfriend after all. He probably wasn't feeling lucky though, and I wasn't going to tell him that it could be worse.
"Tell me about your life afterward. Where did those men come from? Are you from the Tri-Cities?" I hadn't heard of any suspicious deaths or disappearances in the last six months.
He shook his head. "I'm from Naperville." At my blank look, he clarified. "Illinois. Near Chicago." He glanced at the body, closed his eyes, and swallowed. "I want to eat him," he whispered.
"Perfectly natural," I told him, though I have to admit I wanted to move away from him. Heaven save me, stuck with a new werewolf in a garage with fresh meat was not anyone's idea of safe. But we