Free The Frenzy Way by Gregory Lamberson

wrinkled his brow, he heard what sounded like a footstep behind him. With Aishe standing before him, he knew that was impossible.
    Lowering the paper, he saw the upside-down reflection of a man in the polished surface of the silver fruit bowl on the table. He turned to identify the intruder, but a wire garotte ensnared his throat and he gasped for air. Clawing at the wire as the garotte crushed his windpipe, he stared at the reflection.
    Djordje
, his brother-in-law! With his face turning scarlet, he kicked at the edge of the table, knocking over the fruit bowl to catch Aishe’s attention.
    Turning off the stove, his wife opened the silverware drawer. Then she faced him with a silver carving knife clutched in her right hand. What in God’s name was happening? Aishe approached him with the knife poised to strike.
    “You think I didn’t know?” Aishe said. “I knew. So did my brother. We always suspected. You just couldn’t control yourself, could you?”
    Peter’s head felt ready to explode. If he could just loosen the garotte …
    “You monster!”
    Aishe drove the knife straight into his heart, and he stared down at her hand with disbelieving eyes. Raising them once more, he gaped at her snarling features as she twisted the blade.
    “Loup-garou!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    “The Custer Wolf, Phantom, Rags the Digger, Three Toes, Bigfoot, Digger—these were the true legends of the Old West. Collectively, these rogue wolves destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of livestock owned by settlers, and it took as long as ten years for bounty hunters to kill some of them. They were known on the plains as ‘outlaws,’ ‘monsters,’ and ‘criminals.’”
    —Transmogrification in Native American Mythology
, Terrence Glenzer

    Mace stood in the center of the squad room, with Patty on his right and Landry on his left. Willy stood leaning on the water cooler, nibbling on a Pop-Tart, and detectives crowded the bull pen. Mace had skipped his morning run again, but at least he’d caught a few hours of sleep. He held up a copy of
The News
for everyone to see. “As hard as it may be to swallow, we have reason to believe that Glenzer and Harper were each murdered by a single perp.”
    This generated skeptical whispers.
    “And as this morning’s headlines suggest, this nut thinks he’s a werewolf, or he wants us to think he is.”
    A sea of heads shook in unison.
    “Don, would you mind telling us all what ‘nahual’ means?”
    Don Gibbons stepped forward. The sergeant, who had already stayed well beyond the end of his shift, had removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Large sweat stains spread from his underarms.
    “‘Nahual’ is a South American term,” he said before focusing on the printout in his hand. “According to Aztec and Mayan mythology, it means a ‘spirit being,’ like the animal totem of North American Indians. Everyone has a nahual watching over them and protecting them, like a guardian angel. In Mexico, shamans, mystics, and healers are sometimes called
nahuales.
The Aztecs believed that a nahual had the power to turn into a were-creature, like a wolf, a jaguar, or a coyote. Aztec hunters claimed that when they sometimes killed an animal during the night, it turned into a human corpse the next day. The nahual can only transform at night. The Santa Inquisition hunted nahuales for many years.”
    As Gibbons spoke, Mace saw Carl Stokes enter the squad room and stand at the back, unnoticed by the detectives. As CPI—Commissioner of Public Information—Stokes cut a sharp figure: tall and well dressed, the former TV crime reporter knew how to project a commanding image. He had been appointed CPI, a civilian position, by Deputy Commissioner Patrick Dunegan, and he served his master well.
    Scanning the dumbfounded expressions of the murder police, Mace said, “Questions?”
    Dana Weeds, detective second grade, who was bucking for first grade before retirement, raised his hand. His hair