“You told him we were coming, right?” Cole asked.
“Yeah. Why do you think he looks so pissed off?”
He was still laughing at that when the side door was opened by a shapely redhead dressed in flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt cut to show about a millimeter of her smooth, flat stomach. Since she was a nymph, she made that ensemble look better than ice cream on top of a freshly heated brownie. “Hi guys, come on in.”
“Hello, Kate,” Cole said, fondly remembering her instantly, even though it had been more than seven months since he laid eyes on her. If only for that reason, it seemed like a harsh winter. The nymph smiled and stepped aside, allowing the Skinners to enter the club as another set of stomping footsteps rushed to meet them.
“You are not welcome here!” Christov said. He was flanked by two young bouncers who looked just as disheveled as he did. Between the three of them, they probably hadn’t gotten more than twenty minutes sleep since squaring away the club after the previous night’s business.
“We’re only passing through,” Paige said.
“Then why can’t you do it during business hours, eh?” Although bloodshot, his eyes were sharp enough to gleam after waggling back and forth between Cole and Paige. “See? I don’t forget. Last time you came, it was to get information about a killer. The next night, my club is infected with the Mud Flu, my customers are tearing it to pieces, and monsters are kicking down my door.”
When Cole tried to interrupt, he was cut off by a swiftly upraised hand that moved as if to erase him from existence. “And,” Christov continued, “not long after that disaster, my beautiful club is closed down by the state health board.”
“But you got another one,” Paige said while extending her arms. “All is right with the world.”
“No! All is not right. I am still paying off debts I got while buying out former owner of this dump. Now I must try to build it up to something half as good as Bunn’s.”
“All we need is to talk with Kate here,” Paige said. “Then we’ll be gone.”
“Gone, as in . . .” Christov waggled his fingers in the same way he would to make a coin magically disappear from beneath a handkerchief.
“Right,” Paige said. “Gone like that.”
“What about your car? I’m not running some kind of garage.”
“It’s yours,” she told him. “Might want to check it over before you use it. It’s government issue but I doubt anyone will be looking for it.”
“Stolen?” Christov asked, a hint of admiration showing in his eyes.
“No, but strip it for parts, swap the plates, do whatever you like. If anyone comes around asking for it, tell them we stopped by to partake in the buffet and left it here for safekeeping.”
“There is still a buffet, right?” Cole asked.
“Of course,” Christov huffed. “What kind of a place you think I am running? Fine. Leave the car and have your talk with Kate. If you like, I can get you a drink on the house. Only one.”
“Pass on the drink,” Paige said as she stepped inside.
The wind seemed especially cold as it blew across Cole’s face. He turned his back to the outside world, walked inside and allowed the heavy door to slam shut behind him. The Emerald wasn’t a large club and it sure wasn’t a deluxe one. It was, however, much different than the last time he and Paige had been there. Apart from an additional stage, there was a longer bar, a larger section curtained off as a VIP area, and bigger speakers bolted to the ceiling. At the moment there was only a pair of smaller bouncers turning the chairs right side up in preparation for the lunch customers.
Kate and Christov had taken Paige to the storage room behind the bar. Although it was the same room that was used as a temporary Dryad temple a while ago, there had been plenty of changes since then. First of all, the walls, floor, and bar were covered with Dryad glyphs that were either painted or burned into surfaces until they looked as if they’d been there since the wooden planks were cut from the forest. It wasn’t until he was reaching out for the edge of the door leading into the storage room that Cole noticed an illuminated sign hung up behind the bar that looked like a beer advertisement with a few glyphs worked into the background.
“You will pay for this!” Christov shouted.
Tensing his muscles in preparation for a fight, Cole stormed into the back room and asked, “What’s the problem now?”
“The bridge to Louisville,” Paige explained. “He wants us to pay for it. A hundred bucks.”
“Seems reasonable, considering how much you save in time and gas or plane ticket,” Christov said.
Seeing the scowl on both Skinners’ faces, Kate said, “It’s not too big of a jump. We’ve got the energy stored up.”
“You are my employees!” Christov barked. “Times are rough and I must make a living. Do you know how much I needed to spend to get this place up and running properly? Do you have any idea how expensive it is to turn this building into an A-frame?”
“Plus all that purple paint, huh?” Cole scoffed.
The bald man turned as if he was about to take a swing at him. “You’re damn right. I don’t care what else is going on outside, I have a business to run. I have seen wars in other countries and life must still go on. The people who aren’t fighting or dying must still struggle to pay for food and electricity just like before. Only now they must do so while waiting to hear about the next battle or get a call about the next person they know who is dead. I have to make ends meet and now it is harder than ever!”
Cole looked at Paige and asked, “What’s the problem?”
“I only have fifty bucks on me.”
He dug into his pocket and came up with a few twenties. “We’ve got ninety between us,” he said while extending a hand with the cash in it. “Can’t the rest be counted as the car?”
“I was keeping the car in mind.” Christov’s gaze drifted to the weapons strapped to Cole’s back and the ones holstered in Paige’s boots. “Why are you going to Louisville?”
“To meet up with some other Skinners who might know something about the creatures that have been tearing us all up.”
“You are soldiers,” he sighed. “Sometimes I forget. Go ahead and do what you need.”
“How’d you come up with that figure anyway?” Cole asked.
Christov shrugged. “The energy my special girls collect is used for some of the regulars who pay top dollar.”
“Yeah,” Cole said as he slapped the twenties into Christov’s hand. “I can only imagine. Hopefully this makes up for some of what you’ll lose for not being able to put on one of those shows.”
The bald man smiled and nodded. “It does, my friend. Plus, there is some purple paint to buy. Go with God.”
“Appreciate it.”
Once Christov and the bouncers were gone, Cole was finally able to appreciate the space that had been added to the makeshift temple. Before, the glyphs and beaded curtain marking the entrance to the bridge that allowed someone to instantly travel from one spot to another competed for space with piles of napkins and stacks of chairs. Now, after losing at least one wall, there was enough room for the three of them to stand comfortably with those same supplies piled up to the ceiling on either side of them.
“I’m sorry about him,” Kate said. “Christov has been impossible after buying this place from the last owner. He seriously got reamed in that deal, but he’s still fighting to rebuild this into a place half as good as the old Bunn’s Lounge.”
“Step one,” Cole said with a grin, “go back to the old name. That’s a classic.”
“I agree,” Kate replied. “I called ahead and there’s a club in Louisville waiting for you. The only catch is that you’ll need to be quiet about how you got into town. At least, you can’t mention us. We’re still trying to lay low since you guys are still technically fugitives. Don’t you know anyone that can take care of that for you?”
“Sure,” Paige grunted. “There’s just some major league strings atta
ched with that kind of favor, and our friend isn’t ready to cut them just yet.”
“Well I can’t do anything about that request,” Kate said apologetically. “It comes from Tristan herself.”
However Dryad society was structured, Tristan was at the top. “How is she?” Cole asked. “I haven’t heard from her since the fall of Atoka.”
The touch of worry that drifted across Kate’s face was like a cloud passing across the sun. “She’s better, but still not very good. She had to channel some dark energies to do whatever she did that night and they took their toll.”
“Is she sick?”
“Not sick, but not herself either.” Kate put on a smile that was inspiring despite being shallow. “She’ll be all right soon. Are you ready to go?”
Paige looked over to Cole and saw he had a few large bags hanging from his shoulders and a case in his hand. Picking up the gear she’d been carrying, she nodded and looked at the beaded curtain in front of her as if it was the door to an airplane terminal.
Like most Dryad temples, the room was covered in flowing, curved script that no Skinner had ever come close to deciphering. It was the handwritten equivalent of a tone hummed by an angel: pleasing to the eyes, even if those eyes couldn’t tell what was being said. As an accompaniment to those glyphs, Kate arched her back and sang like a whisper drifting in from miles away. As far as Cole could tell, the songs used to activate the Dryad bridges were never the same. Without any real structure, they were simply expressions of the natural power flowing through every nymph. The symbols embedded in the walls and floor gave off a cool green glow that flowed into the archway from which the beads hung.
As soon as Cole and Paige stepped through them, it would take a lot more than digital tracking devices and satellite maps to figure out where they’d gone.
Chapter Four
Louisville, Kentucky
According to Jonah Lancroft, the biggest difference between Skinners and the rest of humanity was vigilance. That might have been a nice term for whatever it took for someone to voluntarily hunt down creatures that could tear through a human body like it was made of tissue paper. Ever since the Breaking Moon, more Skinners had been dropping off the map. Some openly mentioned a group called the Vigilant. Others who never mentioned the Vigilant by name made a point to spout off about how Skinners had lost their way, needed to follow old leaders and resurrect more traditional methods for these desperate times. Wherever he was, Lancroft was smiling.
Cole and Paige wound up at the Lariat Saloon just off of I-65. It was a quaint little place with an Old West motif stuck inside a purple A-frame within a stone’s throw from the interstate. As soon as they stepped through the curtain, the Skinners got their bearings, accepted the greetings from the single nymph who’d opened that end of the bridge and arranged for a car they could use to make the short drive into town. Like most nymphs, Shelley had no shortage of regular customers who could provide her with a car to replace the one she loaned them in case something happened. It was Paige’s intent that their visit would be short enough to make that offer unnecessary.
“You sure this is the place?” Cole asked.
The Vigilant’s newest base of operations was a pair of buildings at the corner of South Spring and Payne streets. The largest of the two structures looked like a barn that had been cut in half and sectioned into large slices. It was three floors high, with a roof that sloped downward at a steep angle before leveling off at the back. The front windows went from large rectangles at street level and shrank down to little squares by the third floor. The building beside it was a quaint little single story house with two front windows and a door beneath a white awning. Both structures were painted the same shade of faded gray. Across the street was a small liquor store, a neighborhood bar on the adjacent corner.
“What were you expecting for a meeting place used by a militant splinter group of Skinners?” Paige asked. “A fort?”
“No, but maybe something more strategic.”
“Bars are perfect cover,” she explained. “Noisy at night and plenty of places to post lookouts posing as regular customers. The liquor store is a good addition too. Especially if it gets robbed a lot. At the very least, there’s enough foot traffic to keep any more from being noticed. You pay the owners of either place enough and they’ll keep an eye on your front yard along with theirs.”
“You seem to know a lot for a woman who lived in an abandoned restaurant.”
“It took a lot of work to scope that place out. Now come on. Let’s meet us some heavily armed nut jobs.”
As they approached the building on the corner, Cole wasn’t exactly sure who would greet them. The fact that they weren’t welcomed with open arms, however, was no surprise. The two who showed up first looked to be no more than twenty years old. Skinning werewolves didn’t have an age restriction, but even the newest recruits usually had a little more hair on their faces than the two young men who rushed outside carrying shotguns.
“That’s close enough,” one of them said.
Paige raised her arms, so Cole followed her lead. “We’re not going to hurt anyone,” she said.
“And you’re not about to take any of our supplies neither. What the hell do you want?”
The one who’d done the talking so far was a burly kid who looked like he’d spent his time playing football and partying before the world went to hell. He looked back at his partner, a taller kid with long hair and baggy jeans riding low on bony hips. Both wore matching sweatshirts that had probably been taken from a rack at the same Salvation Army store. Either that or the randomly raggedy look had become fashionable.
“Tell Jessup we’re here,” Paige replied. “It’s not safe to stand out in the open for this long.”
The guy spoke into a radio that was slightly bigger than a cell phone. “These two say . . . yeah. Okay.” Grudgingly, he looked at them and waved them through. As he moved past them, Cole noticed that neither of the younger men had any scars on their hands that would mark them as having been trained with a Skinner’s shifting weaponry.
The main room of the largest building reeked of kerosene, burnt gunpowder, and charred wood. Although Cole couldn’t spot whatever traps had been set to turn the entrance into a kill zone, he was fairly sure they’d already been sprung several times. Although his knowledge of Skinner runes was still far from complete, he had no problem picking out the ones etched into the splintered door frame. The room was barely the size of a walk-in closet and was sealed off by a thick wall supported by steel posts. The clatter of teeth braided into leather cords announced Jessup’s arrival through a narrow gap between two of the posts on the far side of the room. He was an older man with a grizzled beard and scarred skin. Even without the tanned werewolf hide vest decorated with teeth and claws, he looked like someone who was never meant to leave a desert. He nodded toward the two shotgun-wielding Junior Varsity athletes who’d answered the door and said, “You boys can go check the perimeter. These two are all right.”
The ferocity on the younger men’s faces was obviously a tired facade, and they didn’t do much to keep it up as they turned their backs on the Skinners and headed outside.
Jessup studied Paige with a gaze that had been hardened by more than his share of nightmares. Although most of the people in the country were building a gaze like that, Skinners had been working on theirs for a whole lot longer. “We’ve tried contacting you two for some time. What brings you here?”
“We came for the Jekhibar,” she told him.
“Then you might as well turn right back and go. We went through too much to get our hands on that thing.”
“I know,” Cole said. “I was right there in New Mexico with you. In fact, I don’t think you would’ve made it out of there if I hadn’t been watching your back.”
“It’s too late in the game to start asking for credit on the battlefield.” Jessup sighed. “Too much fighting, too many losses. There ain’t hardly anything worth owning up to anymore.”
<
br /> “You told me to contact you if I wanted to learn more about the Jekhibar,” Cole said. “Here we are.”
“It’s been months since I made that offer. You lookin’ to join us?” Jessup asked.
“No.”
“Then why the hell should I show you a damned thing?”
“Because as long as we’re not sprouting fur or fangs, we’re on the same team. If you didn’t have any intention of doing that much, you never would have made contact with me after New Mexico.”
“True enough,” Jessup admitted. “You guys hungry?”
Cole and Paige followed him back through the narrow doorway and farther into the building. There were several sticks of dynamite and metal containers that reeked of flammable liquids fastened to the other side of that wall. Wires running from the homemade explosives ran to a set of switches farther inside a round room that had been gutted to make space for several shelves, storage lockers, and chairs. As he surveyed the rest of the area, Cole picked out at least a dozen lines of blocky runic symbols etched into the floor, walls, and ceiling.
Motioning toward a series of scorch marks, bullet holes, and claw marks adorning the floor and walls, Jessup said, “As you can tell, you ain’t the first ones to pay us a visit.” His long gray hair looked as if it had been scraped up from the ash coating much of the room’s surface area. It was held back by a thin leather cord. “We gotta be careful lately,” he explained. “If the Full Bloods ain’t tryin’ to sniff us out, the bloodsuckers are sending in spies to get as deep into this place as they can to plant bugs or any other kind of electronic bullshit.”
Without being told, one of the three others in the room stood up and opened a door leading deeper into the building. Until now Cole had barely noticed the other tired faces staring at him from their posts within the foyer. And, thanks to the explosives, he’d all but written off that second door as a possibility of leading anywhere but to the next life. It swung open after a few conventional locks were undone and was held open by a man with an M-16 in his hands and a wooden weapon hanging from one shoulder. The deep patchwork of scars on his hands told Cole that he knew how to put each of those weapons to use.
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