Daniels nodded meekly, but pushed himself farther back into the dark. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”
Paige lowered herself to one knee and watched him carefully. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why are you sorry?”
“Back in Kansas City…I destroyed the Blood Blade.”
“That’s done,” she said with strained patience and a hint of resentment. “You were trying to work on the ink, I was rushing you and—”
“No! I didn’t want to break the blade apart like that! I only wanted to take some more samples, but he made me do it! He made me do it and then he made me think I wanted to do it. I sort of knew what was going on, but then I didn’t. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.”
Paige dropped her weapons, grabbed the Nymar by the front of the shirt and pulled him sharply to his feet. “Who made you do it?”
“Henry,” Daniels squeaked. “The Mind Singer. It’s what he does. He spoke to me, whispered into my brain while you were in Kansas City and told me to destroy the Blood Blade. When I was chipping off samples of the blade I just…kept going.”
“And he didn’t tell you to get rid of the pieces?” Cole asked.
Daniels looked over to him, back at Paige, and back again until his movements became an insistent shake of his head. “Once it was done, Henry was happy. I wanted to tell you, but I just couldn’t get myself to say the words until now. I wanted to say that he was in my head, but I just couldn’t and I don’t know why! I’m so sorry! Henry wanted the blade destroyed and then he made me forget about it. I’m so sorry.”
“Why haven’t you said this before?” Cole asked. “Surely there had to be times when Henry had his guard down.”
“I didn’t even remember what I did until now!” Daniels insisted.
“And how do we know you’re not still talking for him?” Paige added. “We’re probably closer to Henry now than we’ve ever been. It makes sense that he would want to throw us off track.”
“It’s the runes,” Rico said from the doorway of the next room, where he’d been standing in case his partners needed backup. He tucked the Sig Sauer into the holster under his arm and said, “The runes are keeping Henry out of this place. Working with a Mind Singer may come in handy, but Lancroft ain’t stupid. If he didn’t keep someplace safe from the freak, he wouldn’t be the one in charge. Is there a way you can test to see if Henry can hear you or not?”
“Already did,” Daniels replied. “If I usually even think about destroying the Blood Blade, I’d forget why I brought it up. I didn’t this time, so you must be right.”
Wheeling around to return to the room and the wall he’d been studying, Rico said, “Man, I got to find out what’s in this house.”
Daniels shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “There’s always been something I wanted to tell you, but I could never put my finger on it.”
When Cole charged across the room, it wasn’t because of anything he saw or sensed. It was plain, gut-level rage. Leaning into the closet, grabbing hold of Daniels and pulling him out, he slammed the balding little man against the nearest solid surface so there was no escape when he asked, “Did you intentionally screw up the ink Paige used on her arm?”
“Cole, he—”
“I’m not asking you, Paige! I’m asking him!”
She refrained from saying another word. It was one of the few times he’d ever seen her back down so easily.
Daniels tried to clear his windpipe by stretching his neck and craning his chin above Cole’s arm before he was choked into unconsciousness. When he tried to speak, his fangs drooped from their sockets and his tongue flicked out to wet his lips. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that! Paige…she saved my life. More than once, she—”
“Maybe you didn’t do it on purpose,” Cole interrupted while thumping Daniels solidly against the wall. “Maybe Henry told you to do it. Maybe you remember it now.”
“But Henry didn’t know details like that. All he asked was basic things like—”
“Like what? Hurt the Skinners? Hurt Paige? Is that basic enough for Henry?”
No longer struggling to breathe, Daniels hung from Cole’s arm like a dirty shirt on a clothesline. “I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
From behind him, Paige said, “That’s enough, Cole. He told me the ink wasn’t ready. I was the one who pushed for it. I was the one who used it, so I’m the one who messed up my arm.”
“I already heard that from you, Paige. I want to hear it from him.” Narrowing his eyes, Cole glared at Daniels in a way that he’d never looked at another living thing. He didn’t see a man who’d helped them out of life and death situations. He didn’t see a fellow geek who had the best collection of action figures outside of a museum. He didn’t even see a guy in a tough spot who had a girlfriend waiting at home for him. All he saw was someone who wouldn’t draw another breath if he didn’t choose his next words very, very carefully.
Slowly, Daniels shook his head. “I tried to tell her not to use that stuff. I worked on it day and night.”
“Except when you were chipping the Blood Blade into pieces.”
Daniels didn’t have anything to say to that. He clenched his eyes shut, almost as if he welcomed the pressure of Cole’s forearm against his throat.
Touching Cole’s shoulder, Paige said, “It’s okay. If Daniels wanted to hurt me, he would have given me that stuff way before I took it. Lord knows I would have been stupid enough to inject it.”
That didn’t make things easier, but it made sense. Plus, the touch Cole felt was from her right hand brushing against the side of his neck. Paige’s skin was soft, and the muscles were moving like something other than a clunky prosthetic. Finally, he eased back and allowed Daniels to breathe.
Even after he’d been freed, Daniels didn’t move away. “I’m sorry,” he said while rubbing his throat. “I don’t blame you for not believing me, but if there’s anything I can do to—”
“Forget it,” Cole said. “I just…I had to make sure.” He turned away to look out a small window set up high in the wall, as if to overlook something as tall as a dresser. Other than the cheap shades on the window, there were only more runes scrawled in an orderly set of rows along the middle of the wall. Outside, a little woman walked a big dog on one side of a deserted street. The night sky hung over it all like a black canopy faded by the city’s glow, and the black scent from the wall hung in front of it.
“Hey!” Rico shouted from the front room. “Let me know if this does anything.”
The black trails drifting from the runes tapered into wisps before cutting off completely.
Paige jogged out of the bedroom, anxious for any bit of progress she could get. “I think those runes are weakened. Is that what you meant to do?”
Rico studied a cluster of runes on the wall between the front room and the kitchen. Even though it was at the other end of the house, it was still within spitting distance of the bedroom. Cole emerged from the bedroom and asked, “What’s going on?”
“There’s a door being covered up by these runes,” Rico told him with a scowl. “Whatever Lancroft is protecting has gotta be through there.”
When Cole looked at the wall, he could only see more runes. “What door?” he asked.
Screwing his face into a confused grimace, Rico grunted, “Damn! It was just there a second ago.”
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Paige said as she stomped toward the wall. “Just start wiping these symbols off and let’s see what’s here.”
“You can’t just wipe them off,” Rico insisted. When Paige tried using the sleeve of her jacket to do just that, she was hit by a jolt comparable to sticking her finger in a socket. “Told ya,” he sighed.
Cole watched the street through the front window, saw the little lady with the dog stationed at a patch of grass on the nearby corner. Before he could get too suspicious, the dog squatted.
“What if we break the wall?” Paige asked.
“Tried that while you we
re in the other room,” Rico told her as he turned to show both her and Cole the left side of his jacket. “It didn’t work out so well.” The heavy canvas had been burnt to ash, and the leather patch on his shoulder was scorched black. “Melted a few layers of skin on my arm, but that’s all right,” he added with a tired smirk. “Chicks dig the scars. I weakened ’em a little, but you can’t just go around busting walls down. Whoever put them there will know if that happens.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, Paige! I’m not sure. I’ve been tryin’ to figure these things out through books and old letters since before you came along, but it’s like learning how to fix an engine without ever gettin’ your hands on one. Just give me a minute to think before you start kicking anything down.”
“The runes we saw at Lancroft Reformatory were mostly intact,” she said. “But Henry came and went as he pleased. Half Breeds made a den there, and I sure as hell didn’t feel any magical barrier.”
Squatting down to follow a line of blocky script that turned vertically toward the floor, Rico said, “That whole reformatory was a heap of rubble. You think maybe those runes were deactivated on purpose once Lancroft moved along? Or is it possible they’re why the reformatory was a rock pile?”
Paige pursed her lips as she thought about that. Unable to come up with an answer that would further her cause, she left Rico alone and joined Cole at the window.
Across the street and two houses down, a door opened and a man with a gut big enough to hang over his boxers stepped onto his stoop. A compact car parked in the middle of the street, and its driver stepped out to join the woman and her dog. All of them turned toward the man in boxers to watch as he repeatedly snapped his head violently to one side.
“Uh, you may want to turn those protection runes back on,” Cole announced. “Either this place has a Neighborhood Watch or someone knows we’re here.”
The first one to come to Cole’s side was Daniels. He looked nervously out the window as more people stepped outside. “He’s right. These people are displaying some troubling symptoms.”
Paige took in the scene with a simple, “Huh. That’s strange. Looks like our Rune Master wasn’t as careful as he thought.”
“How bad is it?” Rico asked.
Boxer Guy’s head straightened to a proper angle before twisting viciously to one side. Cole couldn’t hear the crunch of breaking bones, but recognized the way the man’s body swelled to another shirt size. “It’s about to get a whole lot worse.”
Henry’s thick head swung at the end of his broken neck, but his lips flickered as he spoke in a string of unending syllables. Although Cole couldn’t hear the words, a few choppy sounds drifted through the back of his mind like snippets of a song from a poorly received radio station.
Rico looked back and forth from his notepad and frantically examined one symbol after another. “I don’t feel a Full Blood anywhere near here!”
“He’s in another body,” Cole said, “I’m looking right at him.”
Rico’s hand trembled as he reached out to touch the wall. Finally, he used the tip of his first two fingers to trace the runes in front of him while making a few lines that hadn’t been predrawn.
Outside, Henry screamed at the other neighbors who’d gathered around him. When they screamed back, dark viscous fluid poured from their mouths. The only one who wasn’t infected was the dog, and it ran away as fast as its four legs could carry it. As the underdressed man in boxers got closer the house, the broken transmissions in Cole’s brain became a bit clearer.
…s, Skinners…see you. I see…ou. IseeyouIseeyou-Iseeeeeyoouuu.
At least a couple dozen people had stepped out of their houses or cars to gather in the street. Pestilence must have flowed through Philadelphia a lot worse than it had in St. Louis because there were no clean faces to be seen. They looked at the little house with eyes that oozed black tears. As Henry loped toward the house’s front porch, all of the Mud People followed.
Both of Paige’s batons flowed into their bladed forms. “Can you get those runes to work or not?” she asked Rico.
“Probably.”
“You’ve got five seconds.”
Henry threw himself at the door.
“Make that three seconds!” Paige shouted while she and Cole jumped away from the front of the house.
Henry and the Mud People thumped against the door without budging it. The panes in the windows didn’t rattle in their frames and not even a speck of dust was dislodged. Outside, Henry backed away from the porch. The Mud People stared at the house and hacked up mouthfuls of thick paste.
Henry charged the door at full steam. As soon as his feet hit the porch, something flowed from his back like a gust of wind that ruffled his shirt and appeared amid a brief flicker of illuminated dots behind him. When the man’s face punched through the door like a bloody battering ram, there was no consciousness in his eyes.
Cole followed the barely noticeable trail of orbs as they flowed back into the broken body that lay halfway across the threshold. Lifting a freshly split head on a cracked neck, Henry moaned, “Dr. Lancroft don’t want you here.”
Chapter 26
The only thing Cole could think to do was kick Henry back out through the door. Henry skidded onto the porch, but immediately scrambled toward the house on all fours like a wolf in man’s clothing. No matter what face he wore, he was still there, leering at the world through bloodshot eyes and screaming through a diseased mouth.
“Got it!” Rico announced.
Half a second after his front end crossed the threshold, Henry was pinned down by a force that Cole saw as a murky wall of black smoke seeping from the Skinner runes. Henry’s chest and chin hit first, forcing the air from his lungs along with the very essence that had been controlling him. Orbs scattered from his back, leaving the man behind.
Outside, the Mud People stopped.
They were close enough for Cole to hear their strained breathing.
“That did it, huh?” Rico said proudly.
All of the Mud People set their sights on the front door and jogged toward the house. The fastest among them was a young woman with short blond hair and a slender frame that absorbed a flurry of orbs like water soaking into porous desert rock. Her mouth twisted into a feral snarl and her head snapped to one side. Before her spine gave way, Cole charged outside, pushed through the first wave of Mud People and cracked the side of his spear against her chin. Despite the monster possessing her, the woman’s body was still human, and the blow dropped her to the sidewalk before Henry had a chance to break her.
“If that hidden door is what we’re after, then get it open!” Paige shouted.
Rico struggled between flipping through his notebook and tracing the runes. “I don’t know how to get it open without shutting the rest of them off, and the runes are the only things keeping Henry out of here!”
When he looked up, all Cole could see was a wave of mud-smeared faces and clawing, desperate hands. They swarmed him from all sides, grabbing and punching and slapping in a wild mess of frenzied attacks. None of them did any real damage, but it was enough to push him down and keep him there. If he lowered his head to protect his face, one of the Mud People clawed the back of his neck. If he pushed some of them away, others would crawl under his guard. The moment they started digging their teeth into him, Cole gave up on defense and focused everything he had on offense.
I remember the golden haired one. She was so soft, but I didn’t have enough money for them both.
Cole checked the woman he’d knocked out. She’d gone limp and was bleeding from the mouth, but at least her head was properly attached. He swung an elbow to catch one of the Mud People in the temple, drove his knee into the ribs of another, and then spotted Henry’s essence soaking into a small figure walking toward the house.
Several of the Mud People grabbed any piece of Cole they could reach. Willing his spear to blunt on both ends, he backed toward the house while knocking aside as many of t
hem as he could. The figure approaching the door was a small boy whose head was already cocked to one side.
“We can only lower the defenses for a few seconds!” Paige shouted at him. “Run for it!”
Cole shoved through the growing crowd and said, “No. Keep them up.” Seeing the hesitation on Paige’s face, he shouted, “Do it!”
She turned and said something before a wave of dark smoke formed in front of her. Judging by the way she wheeled around to tear into Rico, she’d wanted to be on the other side of that barrier when it went up.
The sheer number of Mud People was enough to weigh Cole down. Just keeping his head up and feet moving pushed him to his limit. He pushed just a little bit harder and hoped the ink didn’t turn his arm into a useless piece of meat. The patch of skin pinched as if the needle was once again biting into him, but it gave him enough strength to shove past the hands that clutched at his clothes and limbs. After breaking free of the crowd, he scooped the boy into his arms and pushed him face-first into the smoky barrier.
Instead of a quick, powerful jolt, Henry was given a prolonged taste of the runes’ power. The kid kicked and fought to get away, but Cole held him in place. Although his body didn’t show the first hint of a wound, whatever was inside the boy rattled as if it was being shoved into an electric fence. A few more seconds of that and the orbs flew from the human shell. This time they sped in different directions, causing a single sigh to emerge from every one of the Mud People. The ones that had been on their feet collapsed. The boy, as well as the people who’d been crawling on all fours, merely settled on the ground as if they’d decided to take a nap.
The instant the smoky barrier dissipated, Paige grabbed Cole’s arm and pulled him into the house.
Rico stood by a newly revealed door and declared, “I bet you’ll both study those runes now!”
Looking down to the kid on the porch, Cole asked, “What about him?”
“He’s out,” Rico said. “Just like the rest of them.”
“For how long?”
“Hopefully long enough for us to see what’s in this place that’s valuable enough to be so heavily protected.” With that, Rico opened the simple wooden door he’d worked so hard to uncover.
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