Free Imperium (Caulborn) by Nicholas Olivo Page A

much. After about forty-five minutes of rewinding and replaying, it was obvious we weren’t going to solve anything.
    “Up for a road trip?” she asked.
    “Where to?”
    “The Delions had a cottage in Dublin, New Hampshire.” She tapped a map printout. “From what the Caulborn files say about the Delions, Justine would take her son there when the moon was full. The last full moon coincides with the time they disappeared.”
    I glanced at my watch. It was just after nine. Traffic shouldn’t be too bad heading north. “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Let’s go.”
    During the drive, Megan peppered me with more questions about the Caulborn’s activities in the New England area. She’d done a lot of research on her own, and I was impressed with how sharp her memory was. After driving for a little over two hours, we arrived at our destination. The Delion house was a small, two bedroom cape, located just off of Route 101. The yard was heavily wooded, and the nearest neighbor’s house was over half a mile away.
    “Wow,” Megan said as she stared at the red and gold leaves on the trees. “It’s so pretty.”
    “Yeah,” I said as I looked around. “Not many people around, middle of nowhere, yep, this is a great place for a werewolf to hang out.”
    There was an aging green Hyundai in the driveway. Judging by the amount of leaves that had built up by its windshield wipers, the car hadn’t been driven in some time. We did a quick loop around the house; everything seemed normal. We went to the front door and rang the bell. I rang it again when no one answered after a minute. Another minute later, Megan looked at me.
    “I don’t think anyone’s going to answer,” she said. I glanced away for a moment, and when I looked back, Megan had a slim leather case in her hand. She removed a thin metal tool from the case and crouched down in front of the doorknob.
    “Lockpicks?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
    Megan looked up at me. “What?”
    “Nothing,” I said. “Just wasn’t expecting you to be geared for B&E.”
    “I love B&E,” she said, her dimple blooming as she turned her attention to the lock. “Seventy percent of my time was spent in negotiations. That other thirty, though, that was when we’d have to break into some delegate’s quarters and retrieve information or equipment. So B&E was practically a requirement for what I did.”
    Megan gently raked the lock and her dimple deepened when the tension key turned. The lock clicked and she swung the door open. “I’ll go first,” she said as she ducked inside. She already had her 9mm out. I hadn’t even seen her draw it, nor had I seen her put the pick set away. Dang, the girl had fast hands. We moved through the small kitchen. Everything was neat and tidy here. The kitchen gave way to a living room, and this was where all hell had broken loose. A large, recessed skylight in the ceiling was completely shattered, and fragments of glass and smears of blood were everywhere. Leaves and small tree branches were scattered among the furniture, blown in from the outside.
    “Holy cow,” Megan whispered. “What happened here?”
    “Looks like the Delions were taken by force, and they didn’t go without a fight.” There were splatters of silver liquid on the floor, as well.
    “Something attacked them with silver?” Megan asked, gesturing to the splatters.
    “I don’t think this is silver,” I said. “Molten silver would’ve burned marks onto the furniture and rug. Do you have an evidence kit in your car?” She nodded and ducked out to grab it. When she came back, I scraped up some of the silver onto a piece of paper and dropped it into a small plastic vial. We paced around the room, Megan taking pictures. I hadn’t seen her pull the camera out either. Where was she keeping all this gear?
    “What do you make of these?” Megan asked, gesturing to a strand of vines on the floor as thick as my wrist. I knelt down next to it, and as I did, my