Brennan had gone inside Valentino's and had asked for the waiter that had seated them earlier. Unfortunately, he went home and Brennan saw nom point in asking for his address.
"What now?" Shalimar asked.
"I don't know." Brennan replied. "If they were taken somewhere near here, there must have been a struggle. Maybe you could that feral thing you do?"
Shalimar smiled. Tuning into her feral senses, her eyes turned a menacing yellow gold. She glanced around her and into the alley around the side.
"I smell blood." Shalimar said, prowling into the alley.
"Who's?" Brennan asked.
Shalimar knelt down to the floor, dipping fingers in the blood and smelling. "Jesse's." She looked around the dusty mud floor. "Jesse and Lexa were here with someone else. There seems to be no struggle, but there's a trail of dragging bodies." Shalimar followed the prints. Before they lead too deeply into the alley, the prints simply stopped. As if three people just disappeared. "The tracks stopped." Shalimar growled, a look of confusion on her face.
"How could they have just stopped?" Brennan asked, now searching himself for what he knew only Shalimar could see.
"I don't know." Shalimar admitted. Standing upright, she looked around again, retracing her steps. Silver glinted in the moonlight, catching Shalimar's eye. "Wait a minute."
On closer inspection, she knew exactly what it was. Lexa and Jesse's comlink rings. They were lodged between leaves in a drain.
"I can see their comlink rings." Shalimar said, kneeling to open the metal drain bars. Pulling at the metal bars, Shalimar found they wouldn't budge.
"It must be reinforced, I can't move it." Shalimar said.
Brennan sparked electricity from his hand. "Sometimes it just needs one of these." He smiled and shot a bolt of electricity on the drain lid.
Shalimar waited a couple of seconds and then tugged once again on the bars, this time it came free with ease. Reaching down into the drain with a piece of cloth, she picked up the two rings. Looking closely with her feral eyesight, she noticed what she hoped to find.
"There are fingerprints on these that belong to neither Jesse not Lexa." Shalimar said. "We can find a match with the mutant database at Sanctuary."
"What makes you think this guy was a mutant?" Brennan asked.
"The day Lexa and Jesse get kidnapped by a dude with no powers is the day I give up mine." Shalimar smiled.
"Good point." Brennan smiled.
"It's good to be blonde. I constantly surprise people with my know-how." Shalimar smiled.
"And modest too, I've got quite a catch." Brennan laughed. "Come on, let's get back to Sanctuary with those rings."