Call of the Wolves: A Paranormal Urban Fantasy Shapeshifter Romance (Call of the Wolf Book 1) Read online

  Call of the Wolves

  Call of the Wolf | Book 1

  Adam Dark

  Matthew Thrush

  Copyright © 2020 by Adam Dark & Matthew Thrush

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For the ones who never lose their creative spark…

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Tell Us What You Thought

  Sneak Peek

  Receive a Gift

  About Adam Dark

  About Matthew Thrush

  Also by Adam Dark

  Also by Matthew Thrush

  Chapter One

  The dead body already smelled by the time I arrived at the crime scene. The cloying scent of decay mixed with the pungent, rank odor of the overflowing dumpsters that lined the alleyway between the businesses. The most prominent of these stenches was that of sour, stale beer, courtesy of the bar next door.

  I took a swig of my Americano and rolled out my neck. It was so early that even the trash collectors hadn’t swept through downtown Galena yet. This was not my prime time of the day, but I had a job to do. The station had called because I was the only one capable of handling this particular job.

  Of course, I was regretting the two hours of sleep that I missed, but, thankfully, I loved my job. That passion made the occasional early mornings easier.

  I stood at the opening of the dingy backstreet, watching my teamwork and taking in the area before I started. I knew from experience that it was best to move slowly, to use all my senses, and sometimes, to even allow things to pop out at me.

  Magic always left a mark. Sometimes, it was glaringly obvious, like a firecracker exploding in a dark night. Other times, you might miss it even if you stared right at it. As a fire witch and paranatural detective, it was my responsibility to never miss it.

  So far, I had a perfect record.

  Other law enforcers milled around, all dutifully doing their jobs. Two spoke with the hard-faced bar owner who had enormous bags under his eyes. He didn’t look at all happy about having to be present, which I understood. But seeing as the body was found nearly laid across his doorstep, it was his right, as much as his obligation, to be here.

  Another officer took photos. Seth, the only one of my co-workers who routinely gave me a run for my money where darts were concerned, had the unpleasant job of shifting the dumpsters to peer behind them. That’s what he got for hitting the gym twice daily, seven days a week. The man was a beast on the outside, but sweet as pie in the center.

  “Detective Crawford, a word?” A voice spoke from behind. I turned to find Cal, a young paranatural cop who was eager to move up in the ranks. “The bar owner, Roco Cavalli, wants to speak with a detective. He’s freaking out.”

  “Really? It’s not the first time a body has been found in this area.” This part of the city of Galena was the party hub. Booze, drugs, and other sorts of illegal activity flowed through these eight square blocks like water.

  “It’s not even the first time that someone has found a body outside his bar,” Cal agreed, shaking his head. “Actually, just last week some a-hole tossed a woman in one of these very dumpsters. She’d been dead for days when we found her.”

  My stomach tightened. I hated hearing stories like that. “Apparently, the dumpster diver that found today’s victim didn’t hear that story, or they probably wouldn’t be looking for a meal in these bins.”

  Cal nodded. “For sure. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Roco’s more worried about his reputation than the victim. Doesn’t want word to get out that his bar is the place to go if you want to be offed.”

  My lips twisted. The bar owner sounded like a POS. “Has Roco revealed anything? Motive? Knowledge of potential suspects who were in his place last night?”

  Although I hadn’t been up close and personal with the victim yet, I’d been told that the body was stiff as a board when a dumpster diver found it. Dead for hours.

  “Nothing,” Cal replied. “Roco claims that he was tending the bar last night, but that the victim wasn’t in his establishment. He says he never even laid eyes on the guy.”

  I huffed out a breath. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t, but someone killed a man two feet outside Roco’s bar door. Either way, it rankled that the bar owner was more concerned about his reputation than the crime. What a piece of work. I knew that most people didn’t obsess over justice being served, like me, but come on, have a little decency.

  “Do you want me to deal with him?” Cal asked.

  “I’ll speak with him, but he can wait until after I examine the body. I don’t know how long I’ll be. Your job is to prevent him from hovering. Tell him to wait inside his establishment.”

  “You got it, detective,” Cal replied, his tone excited. The guy loved receiving direct orders. It made him feel special. Since I didn’t want Roco breathing down my back, I was happy to oblige Cal’s desire to feel needed.

  I slugged back the rest of my coffee, done waiting around. My heels clicked against the cement as I made my way toward the body, tossing the cup in the garbage as I passed. Flies from the dumpster assaulted me. Nose wrinkling, I swatted them away. Gross, but at least there weren’t rats around.

  The first responders had found dozens of rodents scurrying around the corpse, fighting with the crows. They’d scared the animals of death away, for which I was grateful. I shivered. I didn’t have a particularly sensitive stomach, but rats made me squirm. They were so ick.

  As I walked, my gaze scanned the scene more closely, taking in anything and everything. Seth waved and squatted, preparing to shift the last dumpster a few inches from the wall to check for a discarded weapon. For his sake, I hoped Seth found the weapon back there. If he didn’t, searching inside the dumpsters was next. But my gut told me he wouldn’t discover anything, so I wasn’t holding my breath.

  My gut was rarely wrong. I could count the number of times it had happened on one hand.

  In general, fire witches were very intuitive, but I’d honed my intuition so well that when it spoke up, I knew better than to disregard its voice.

  My gut had gotten me through some of the most trying, lonely parts of my life. And right now, it was screaming that this crime wasn’t ordinary. It was magical in nature. The rest of the team scouring the alley wouldn’t find jack. They were human, it wasn’t their expertise.

  But it was my specialty. As the only fire witch on staff—heck, one of the few in a city of two hundred thousand—I was vital to discovering the origin of the magic and following the trail to the culprit.

  “Hey, Alyssa.” Titan, one of my colleagues, looked up from the victim at my approach. As his name would suggest, he was a massive guy, and often frequented the gym with Seth. Titan’s shining bald head gleamed in a sliver of sunlight that had managed to find its way into the alley. Sometimes, I thought of him as a younger Mr. Clean. “You ready?”


  “You didn’t find anything?”

  He held up the guy’s phone and wallet. “This is all he was carrying. The wallet is pristine, nothing unusual. The phone’s a cheap burner, so we’ll have someone take a look at it, but, to be honest, he just seems like a dude who was out having a fun night.”

  “Nothing on the body?”

  Titan shook his head. “Not a single scratch on the body, but judging by the look on your face, you already knew that.”

  “Yeah. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Let the forensics team know when you’re done. They’re itching to run samples.”

  “Will do.” Once I finished, it wouldn’t be necessary for them to run tests to find the killer. However, the evidence forensics supplied was excellent for sentencing in a courtroom and that made it worthwhile.

  Titan left me staring down at the body of a young thirty-something man with long brown hair, a burly build, and an insanely square jaw. His identification told us his name was Ren Jones, and that he was 250 pounds and an organ donor. Even though he stank, he hadn’t been dead long enough to bloat. And thankfully, there was no evidence that he had soiled himself. It was a natural process that happened when someone died, but still . . . off-putting.

  “Let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?” I whispered as I circled the body, taking meticulous mental notes on my superficial findings, everything from the victim’s attire to the position in which the dumpster diver found his body.

  Surprisingly, though my gut screamed that this was a magical murder, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sense a trace of power on the guy. It was unusual, to say the least. I’d never been to a crime scene where I couldn’t sense a magical influence on the victim.

  It was like my prep team said, not a scratch, or in this case a curse, on him. The intellectual part of me knew that wasn’t possible. Some supernaturals were just better at hiding their magic than others, particularly when they’d done something evil, like killing a man.

  Magic always left behind a mark—a spark—and no matter how tiny it was, I’d find it. It was what my kind did.

  The thrill that always preceded the chase of finding a more intelligent than average criminal rushed through me. I hated that someone had to die for me to do my job, but damn did I love catching the bad guys. Seeing them locked behind bars made my freaking day.

  When I was sure that I’d taken in every detail that I could without using my magic, I inhaled deeply and squatted.

  “Time to find out who came after you,” I said to Ren’s corpse as I placed my fingers softly on the skin of his wrist.

  I called my fire magic and pushed it out, searching for a signature trace of power that supes left behind when they used magic. When it didn’t reveal itself right away, I pressed harder into Ren, thinking that perhaps the murder had been playing the long game, and the magic was rooted deeper. The minutes passed as I searched and still didn’t find what I was looking for.

  Sweat had started to pour down my face when I reared back, confused. I came up completely empty? How could that be? This man had died a magical death, I was sure of it, but there wasn’t a single spark of magic.

  There was nothing.

  This had never happened to me before. My jaw tightened. I didn’t like it, not one bit.

  I tried again, and after another frustrating search that resulted in only more sweat, I swore and dropped my hand to my side. Rising, I stared down at the body with my eyes narrowed, totally stumped.

  What was happening? Had I missed something? Had my team? They were the best paranatural unit in the state, but they weren’t infallible. Had they missed something simple like a pill in his pocket that indicated that Ren had overdosed? It seemed unlikely. Shifters generally stayed away from drugs. But then again, I’d never failed to find a spark of magic. I didn’t know what to think.

  “You finished, Detective Crawford?”

  I glanced up to find a trio from the forensics team waiting at the opening to the alley. The scientists’ gloved hands practically quivered at the thought of sampling and testing evidence in the wild. They weren’t called out of the station often, only when other, trained officers were busy. And, from what I knew of the forensics team, they loved being out in the field, getting their hands dirty. I grinned. Lovable nerds were adorable.

  “Almost. I need another minute,” I replied and bent at the waist to focus on Ren again. My eyes scanned his face, willing him to give up his secrets.

  “Who are you really? And who in hell came after you?”

  I moved his limbs a little to make sure I hadn’t missed anything obvious, like a rune that would kill whoever it was drawn on. As I did so, I made sure to keep my magic on alert. Frustratingly, it didn’t find a single thing. I was about to admit defeat and let the overeager forensics team take the scene while I mulled over what to do, when I saw it.

  “Seven hells,” I muttered as I teased back Ren’s long brown locks and crossed my arms over my chest.

  The man’s hair had hidden the tattoo behind his ear. The image of a howling wolf with a star for the creature’s eye stared back at me, sinking my stomach. As soon as I’d uncovered it, I recognized the symbol and what it stood for.

  The man wasn’t human at all. He was a wolf shifter. That in itself wasn’t unusual or bad. Shifters were fine—most of them, anyway. But this guy belonged to a pack I knew well. One I’d rather not deal with.

  The Walker pack roamed the Northern California hills ten miles south of Galena. They were powerful, had lived here for generations, and had even founded the cute little town of Clover Pines. The town I’d been born and raised in. As a result of all that they’d accomplished, the pack was a prideful bunch.

  They were also my high school sweetheart’s pack. The sweet black-haired boy—no, a man now—who I hadn’t seen in years. Not since my world fell apart, and we’d broken up.

  Marcus and his pack, people who I used to believe liked me, had broken my heart. When I left the town of Clover Pines, I’d sworn that I’d never seek any of them out again. And so far, I’d kept my word.

  My heart rate sped up at the thought of coming face-to-face with him, having to revisit that old hurt that I’d worked so hard to heal.

  Damned the old gods, the new ones, and every deity in between.

  I didn’t want to go talk to the Walker pack, but I couldn’t see another way, seeing as whoever the murder was hadn’t left a speck of magic on Ren,.

  I needed to learn more about the victim. Who he was, who disliked him, and perhaps most importantly, who loved him so much that they just might kill him?

  “Detective Crawford? Are you okay?” The forensics team was still watching me, waiting, but this time they weren’t just eager. Their eyes gleamed with concern.

  I’d begun chewing on my lip and shaking my head, giving off signs of distress, without even knowing it. That was what thinking about Marcus Walker did to me. Gods, was this really happening?

  I vanquished the emotion from my face.

  “I’m fine and all done.” I dusted my hands off on my black slacks, as if I could wipe what I’d just learned off my skin. When they felt cleaner, I pulled out my phone and snapped a couple of pictures of Ren. There was little doubt in my mind that I’d need them later.

  “The first responders had the right measure of the situation,” I said. “There isn’t a magical trace on the guy, but I learned that he’s a shifter. He had a pack tat inked behind his ear. I know the pack personally, so I’ll follow that lead and go have a word with their alpha. Tell Forray that I won’t be back at the station for a few hours, will you?”

  “Sure thing. We’ll run the samples and have them waiting for you when you return,” the head forensics guy said. “Anything else?”

  “Nope, he’s all yours. Can’t wait to see what you find.”

  I strode down the alley, trying to keep my expression composed. I’d rather dive in one of those overflowing dumpsters and look for evidence than do what I needed to
do, follow the evidence to Clover Pines.

  I shook my head. That was no way to think. Not only was it pretty negative, it wasn’t professional at all. As a detective, it was my duty to serve the public, and finding the murderer was more important than my pride. It sucked for me personally, but the victim deserved justice. I’d do my best to give it to him. It was my duty, my calling.

  Get it together, Crawford. Do your job.

  “Hey! Ginger! Don’t you leave on me! I’ve been waiting to talk to you!” A booming voice cut through my thoughts.

  I looked up to find Roco, leaning against the doorway of his bar, staring at me like I owed him something. Ugh, how annoying.

  “They said you’d be the person to find the killer,” Roco announced to the world. “Who’d you find? I need to be able to tell my customers something. If I can’t tell them, this could ruin my business.”

  I’d totally forgotten that he wanted to talk. It looked like today would be chock-full of tasks that I didn’t want to do.

  At least this one didn’t involve a pretty pair of storm gray eyes that haunted my dreams. I glanced over at the bar owner. Guys like Roco, I could handle. The man in Clover Pines who ripped out my heart years ago? I wasn’t so sure about surviving him.

  I groaned, already dreading the drive to the small town outside Galena but knowing there was no way out of it.

  As much as I wanted to put the burden on someone else to inform the Walker pack one of their own was dead, most likely by a dark curse that no one could pinpoint, I couldn’t. I had a job to do, even if that job was taking me back to see the one person I vowed never to see again.