As Agent Archer had snapped at The waitress‘s polite question, William had felt a surge of anger lick at his insides. Werewolves were notorious for having hot  tempers, himself included, and the man‘s disrespect towards a woman pressed all of the wrong buttons. Consequently, the anger had his beast stirring, the wolf rising to his eyes in swirls of golden yellow that broke up the blue. But before the color could completely overcome his irises, Taya had run interference, smoothing things over as best she could with Lucy. Jaw tight, William focused on breathing slowly in and out through his nose as he worked to calm himself. By the time The other woman had finally left, it had mostly worked. The gold had faded from his eyes at least. And then the weight of the situation closed in on him again, snuffing out the last of the anger. That was when he had adopted his dark expression and sighed.

The news of yet another victim deepened the look of concern on William‘s face, his eyes turning slowly from Agent Turner to her partner as the latter divulged some of the finer details. As the folder was pushed across the table in his direction, he hesitated for a moment before picking it up with a look of someone who would rather be doing anything else. Running his thumb across the logo stamped on the surface, he finally opened the file.

Anthony Cormack’s information started on the top page, a photograph of the middle-aged man smiling vaguely up at William from above a list of his basic vitals. The werewolf studied the face for a few moments, The receding hairline, The wrinkles just starting to form around the eyes and mouth, before he turn the page over. Written details of the crime scene came next and he quickly skimmed over the information, searching for any clues of involvement of his kind. Unexplained animal tracks, scraps of fur... There didn’t seem too be anything that obvious, but that wasn’t to say that there weren’t other indicators elsewhere. Searching for further details, William turned the page  and froze, his stomach involuntarily clenching.

[I]’...Could have done [B]without[/B] The crime scene photos until after I ate,’[/I] he thought grimly, teeth clenching harder together unconsciously.

It wasn’t that he was unfamiliar with death, he had been through war and actively hunted and eight animals as a wolf, and everyone saw blood and violence on television and in movies these days, it was just a different experience seeing photographs of actual murder. Brutal murder, in the case of Anthony Cormack. Trying not to focus on any of the details, the torn flesh, the exposed organs, William moved on quickly to the next victim.

Next came the summary of a young man, Michael Shilling, Who had been discovered in an empty field near some warehouses on the edge of town. After him was a missing persons account for one Margaret Stone, a woman just entering her senior years by evidence of her silvering hair, last seen a week ago. Scott Marks, a teenager found torn to pieces behind a movie theater followed the summary of the attempts to locate the missing woman, But was quickly overshadowed by the file on Nadia Ortiz, whom they had only been able to identify by the examination of her dental records...

There didn’t seem to be any pattern that William could discover. The ages, races, genders, and even builds widely varied. He tried to think why he, of all people, had been sent to help with this investigation if he wasn’t even able to spot any patterns or clues. Working to keep the scowll off of his face, he flipped to the next file and almost felt like he had been sucker punched in the stomach.

Learning yet another piece of information regarding the missing hearts distracted William from the stab of pain that had suddenly lanced into his heart as he had looked into the face of a woman with soft caramel colored hair, her gentle smile knowing and familiar. Tearing his gaze away from the Dead stranger that looked so much like his wife, hoping his grief wasn’t outwardly visible on his face, he leveled his blue eyes on Eli’s impassive expression. Before he could become too disgusted by the mann‘s lack of feeling, Taya drew his attention with a comment of her own and he willingly looked towards her.

There were stories of werewolves taking hearts? That was a new one to him. Walking away with organs sounded more like the doing of a vampire then a werewolf, something of which humans didn’t know anything about. And William wasn’t going to be the one to reveal [I]their[/I] existence. Narrowing his eyes slightly against the thought, he instead used The distraction to push away the remnants of pain still lingering in his chest and readjusted his position so that he could set the open folder onto the table, carefully making sure to flip a few more pages over to Hyde the caramel haired woman‘s face.

“I’m unaware of any such stories,“ he admitted, running his thoughts over everything he had ever learned about werewolves since becoming one. Granted, they were probably a few details even he wasn’t aware of, but he thought he might’ve heard if a wolf liked keeping trophies of human victims. “It might jog my memory if you tell me some of the details of the lore in question, but I might be of better help if I had the opportunity to examine the body myself. Werewolves have a distinctive scent, if this was the work of a werewolf, I’ll be able to smell them.,” he added as The thought occurred to him. His sense of smell was definitely an advantage he had over the human investigators after all.