“He doesn’t eat until I tell him or until I’m done,” Curran said. “Doesn’t matter whose house it is.”

I set my chicken on the table and crossed my arms. I could argue the point with them until I turned purple in the face and neither would relent. The low-ranking wolves didn’t feed before their Pack King. It was the way of the Code. They lived by its rules or they lost their humanity.

Curran put another spoonful into his mouth. Time stretched as he chewed the food. Derek sat still. The urge to slap Curran was almost too much for me.

The Beast Lord scraped the bottom of his container, licked the spoon, reached over the table and took away Derek’s rice, replacing it with the brown paper sack he had brought. Derek glanced into the sack and retrieved a bundle of waxed paper tied with a cord. He snapped the cord and unwrapped the bundle. A five-pound shoulder roast looked back at him.

Curran jerked his head toward the hallway. “Don’t make a spectacle of yourself.”

Derek rose, gathering the roast, and disappeared into the depths of the apartment. I glared at Curran.

“I like fried rice,” he said with a shrug. He slid the spoon under the paper flaps of the other small paper box, forced them open, and proceeded to pick out the peas.

The low rumble of a predator feeding came from within the apartment.

“Keep it down,” Curran said without raising his voice.

The snarling died.

“So what do you have?”

I sketched it out for him, concluding with the vamp’s head. The undead flesh had liquefied over night, turning into putrid black goo. The stench of rot was so strong that by the time I opened the second trash-bag both the Beast Lord and I were gagging in the most undignified manner. Curran took one look at the distorted skull and tied the bag shut.

“Should’ve done it before we ate,” he observed when we managed to secure the head.

“Yeah.” I opened the window, letting a gust of cold wind into the kitchen.

“So you’re planning on taking this on by yourself? No backup?”

“No.”

“Going to notify the cops?”

I grimaced. It had nagged at me since I awoke. To go to the cops would mean bringing in the Paranormal Activity Division, and as soon as the Division gave the MSDU their mandatory notification, the military would try to step in and eat the whole pie by themselves. The Division would cry jurisdiction and the whole thing could stretch for several days. By then my friendly nemesis could be gone or worse, he could have gained leadership of the People. The fact that I had a lot of assumptions and a strange skull wouldn’t exactly make the authorities abandon the departmental rivalry and hurry on my account.