"Now what?" Sand grumbled. He rolled over, trying to find the phone on the nightstand. His hand closed over it and he answered while he mentally cursed whatever idiot was calling him at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to damnation.

"Your brother is dead, Sandalio. Murdered."

Sand shot upright, the phone pressed tightly to his ear. "Murdered?"

"Yes. On his way back to the pack after visiting the city. Because it was the full moon, he was in his werewolf form."

"Weren't we all, last night," Sand said under his breath before he asked, "Who killed him, Dimas?"

"We don't know. When he hadn't returned by the time the moon went down we went searching for him. He was found on a path through the woods, dead and, obviously, in his human form at that point. There was one puncture wound in his back going directly into his heart, but whoever did it took the weapon with them."

"A knife?" Sand frowned. He didn't see how anyone could have approached his brother while he was a werewolf and stabbed him.

Dimas implied as much when he replied, "My guess would be some sort of projectile, but not a silver bullet. A bullet would still be in the body."

"You're certain he wasn't killed by a hunter?"

"Damn, Sand, you should know better than to even suggest that. He would have sensed a human anywhere close enough to shoot him, and made certain to get out of range."

"Or kill him," Sand said under his breath. He didn't know how he felt about his brother's death. They had never been close, to put it mildly. In fact, they hated each other. On the other hand, Raúl was family, for what that was worth. Not much in his opinion. Sand had been kicked out of the pack because he wasn't willing to mate with any of the females. Something that was mandatory as far as their father, who had been the pack's Alpha, was concerned. When their father had died, Raúl had fought and beaten all the contenders to become the new Alpha. Soon after, he had made it a point to find out where Sand was living. He visited, only once, to tell him in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome back into the pack unless he changed his ways. My profligate ways, to hear him tell it. Not as if I had a choice. I'm gay, I knew that long before I turned twenty-one. It's in my genes, or DNA, or something.

"Is there any clue to who murdered him?" Sand asked Dimas.

"Nothing. By the time his body was discovered any scents of his killer were long gone, if there had been any to begin with."

Sand knew what that meant and said, "If there weren't, and since Raúl apparently wasn't aware anyone was in the vicinity, it had to have been a vampire."

"That's our feeling," Dimas agreed.

"Why him?"

"If we knew, and we might, it would go a long way to determining which vampire it was."

Sand read something into what Dimas hadn't said. "Did Raúl have plans to attack one of them? If so, and they found out, they might have dealt with him accordingly."

"Oh, he had a plan all right," Dimas said grimly. "One that was so insane he wasn't able to get anyone in the pack to go along with it, no matter how much he threatened. All right, I take that back. A couple of his extremely loyal Betas were on his side, but that was it."

Which you weren't, but then you're one of the smart ones. "Knowing him, he did do his best to threaten all of the Betas, if not the rest of the males, to agree to his plan."

Dimas's laugh was sour as he replied, "You know it."

"What was this insane idea?"

"You've heard of The Crimson Cathedral?"

"Yeah. It's a fancy club owned by a vampire, and a feeding ground used by his cronies to cull human customers to feed from -- or so rumor has it."

"Yes. Raúl wanted to attack it, targeting the vampires. He thought if it looked like a mass shooting, and the cops and the humans who were there saw that the people who were shot didn't die, and healed rapidly, it would prove that vampires do exist. Then the humans would hunt them down and eliminate them."

"Was he out of his fucking mind?" Sand spat out.

"We are talking about Raúl," Dimas replied. Sand could visualize him rolling his eyes in disgust.