Demetri got up at dusk, his cell phone chirping a merry alarm. He felt awful. He wasn't used to the feeling of waking up tired. Since his little crime, if he didn't share his bed with fresh earth, he'd wake as if he'd hardly slept at all. He'd slept on the couch in Angela's hotel room. Always the one to do these kind of favors, wasn't he?
      Angela whined the entire car trip to the Dragomir estate. She kept asking about Tomasz and fretting about Vitus, and Demetri had to just grind his teeth and assuage her worries. Poor Florence... She cheerfully accepted the pouting Angela at the gate and waved as Demetri drove away, and towards the next thankless task.
      Hunting for Jack through squalid streets, how many times was this now? How would he be greeted? With a sneer? With a scowl? His GPS gave him emotionless directions to that dreary motel, but he caught the scent en route. A bit old, perhaps the night before, the pathetically thin snowfall did little to disperse it. Yet, it still seemed unusually strong, as though Jack was very close by. How ridiculous, was he just wandering around alleys a few blocks from home? Did Vitus even TRY to look for him?

The alley was densely packed with snow, lumpy and misshapen by the refuse beneath. The night was quiet here, save for a distant thump of strip club techno. Demetri's boots crunched in the snow, over broken glass and slushy potholes. Jack's scent lingered here.
      "Why? Why this squalor Jack? You're like the kitten who runs from his warm home to play on the interstate!"
He followed the scent to a dim corner, the snow here a bit dark underneath. He bent to his knees and looked closer.
      "Blood? Oh..."
He patted the fresh white from the surface, revealing the dark stain. Something else too, something pale and translucent. The smell... It was a thin sheet of skin, its blood drained into the snow. Several other shreds lay in the bed of snow. Dried streaks of dark blood ran tracers up the wall behind, and pooled below. There was no trail away save for a few scattered droplets, and nothing. The night was indifferent to suffering, and tiny snowflakes began to gather again on the sad remains.
      He suddenly sat back on the cold ground. How could this happen? Why?! He strained his senses, perhaps there was another scent, but he couldn't distinguish it. The remains were the only reason he'd caught this scent at all. He covered his mouth with a gloved hand to stifle a choking sob, and found himself transformed into a wolf. He ran around the alley in a panic, trying to locate a scent, something, anything!