She heard the rustling of a thick coat and felt a claw scrape against her face. Although the thick bony finger didn’t move, the claw twisted to curl delicately along her chin. Too weak to protest, she allowed her head to be moved again, and whimpered at the pain sent through her torso, to die in her numbed legs.
The creature looked down at her. As it drew closer, the black fur covering its face was sucked back into its pores to reveal distorted human features. A white patch sprouted from a deep scar that ran along the bridge of his nose and straight down to his left cheek. “Be quiet now,” he said. The words came quickly and were sharpened by a leering cockney accent. “I can make it hurt worse, you know.”
“Please don’t,” Lisa gasped. “Whatever you want to…just…please don’t.”
“Your mates seemed to like you. If they got the salt to come this far, maybe you’ll have some more comp’ny down there.”
Cars raced along a nearby street. Sirens drifted through the air like pets that started barking after a burglar had already cleaned out the house. The beast lifted his scarred nose to the fragrant air, pulled it in and mused, “Maybe they’ll find you. Maybe they won’t. It don’t matter now, luv. If I was you, I’d get comfy down there with your new friends. Always nice to have an ear to bend, eh?”
As he began to cover the pit’s opening with chunks of solid earth, he sighed and grumbled, “Good an’ quiet in there. I envy you, luv. Damn humans can’t go anywhere or do anything without makin’ noise. As for the lights, there’s no escaping them.”
“Please stop,” Lisa sobbed. “I want to…go home. I won’t tell.”
Something twitched inside Lisa’s body. It writhed, flailed, wrapped around her innards and squeezed a pained grunt out of her.
As dirt was heaped over the pit’s opening to blot out the distant sirens, different sounds skittered into her ears. One of the other bodies stuffed into that hole grunted a few unintelligible syllables. Muscles tore loose and became wet mulch, only to be stuck together again. Bones strained to the breaking point, held, and then snapped within their quivering, tortured shells.
Sickness poured in from where she’d been bitten and seeped into her bones, tugging at the very frame of her body to shape her into something else.
One of the others choked on a pained cry.
When Lisa Wilson realized she was too broken to stick her hand out through the dirt wall piled in front of her, she cried too.
Chapter 5
Chicago
It was well past two in the morning, but there were plenty of night owls riding the Eisenhower Expressway. Paige was behind the wheel of the Cav and he sat beside her. With the amount of fidgeting he’d been doing, he probably could have jogged across town in less time than it took to drive.
“What’s that smell?” he asked.
Paige took a quick sniff, which turned into a grimace. “About four weeks’ worth of greasy little hamburgers.”
“Not that.”
“Then those fried tacos you insist on buying by the dozen.”
“Not those either. It smells like vinegar and…sweat?”
Chuckling while weaving between a few slow cars with Iowa plates, she said, “That brings us back to those tacos.”
Cole unbuckled his seat belt so he could twist all the way around and reach into the backseat. “No, seriously! It’s stronger back here.” After digging through all the garbage, newspapers, and supply kits in back, he found a cheap black plastic trash bag that gave off the offending odor in waves. “Good Lord, Paige, what’s in this bag?”
“Some critter I scraped off the road. Since you like those fried tacos so much, I thought you might be able to make your own if you just had the right meat.”
“Leave those tacos alone! You never even tried any! This isn’t really…?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. Remember the Mongrel that tracked you down when you first got here?”
“Jackie, the cat lady. I remember her.”
Looking over to him, Paige asked, “What’s with the sloppy grin? Do you already know where I’m going with this?”
“No, I’m just remembering what she looked like under all that fur. I mean, when she was visible.”
Paige shook her head and let her eyes settle back onto the expressway. “Yeah, well you remember how she could bend light or something to turn almost invisible?”
Cole nodded. “She had some sort of grease or oil in her fur. That stuff came in real useful once we got some of it for ourselves. You still have that crap? Good Lord, it’s been months since you wiped that stuff up!”
“This isn’t the exact same stuff. I sent some of it to a friend of mine and he was able to make more. Apparently, it’s not too hard to reproduce. The only thing is, the artificial stuff doesn’t last very long unless it’s soaked into something. Once it gets on your skin or out in the open air, it evaporates real quick.”
“When did you do all this?” Cole asked.
“While you were typing and hunched over that laptop for the last couple of weeks.”
He plopped back into his seat and placed the bag on the floor between his feet. “So what’s in here?”
“A little something that should help me get inside the Blood Parlor to back you up. I’ve been told the security there is pretty tight.”
“By the way, are you going to tell me what a Blood Parlor is?”
“It’s a place where the Nymar can feed on humans so it’s not out in the open.”
“And…we encourage this?”
“Not exactly, but we can’t stop it.” Veering off to the exit that led to the Kennedy Expressway, Paige said, “Nymar like to talk about being these big vampire kingpins, but they don’t run much of anything, apart from their mouths. There’s a lot of them and they can be dangerous, so Skinners have been keeping them in check. Part of that is making a few deals that work out for the greater good. One of those deals is us allowing them to feed on willing participants and make a living doing it. Well, I guess you could call it an un-living.”
Paige laughed at her own joke, but cut it off once she saw Cole dryly looking back at her.
“Stephanie and Ace run a good chunk of these places,” she continued. “It’s basically a prostitution ring with teeth.”
“What kind of people pay to get bitten?”
“Normal folks pay to have a lot kinkier things done to them. You should know that. Aren’t you the one who spends so much time on the Internet?”
Without a good answer to that, Cole just shrugged.
“Blood Parlors started off as fancy names for blocks of hotel rooms that Nymar rented so their paying customers could have some privacy,” Paige continued. “The hotel rooms were traded up for suites and the suites for blocks of rooms at the fancier places downtown. A month or so ago Ace and Stephanie bought the upper floor of a building on North Rush Street.”
“Lots of good bars up there.” When he saw Paige glance over at him, Cole said, “What? I get out every now and then.”
“You’re right about the bars,” she said. “There are also some clubs and plenty of other places to attract the sort of creeps who might want to pay to get bitten on the neck by sluts wearing black lace and garter belts.”
“That does sound kind of intriguing.”
“There’s an ATM along the way. I’m sure Steph would offer a nice discount so you could lay back, close your eyes, and let some parasite tear into your arteries. Who knows? A friend of one of the Nymar we’ve had to put down might be the one drinking from you. I’m sure they’ll pull out before you run dry.”
“All right. Scratch that idea. How many Blood Parlors are there?”
“This is the only one I know about in this part of town, but there’s got to be more. It’s been getting a whole lot of rave reviews.”
“Nymar brothels get reviewed?”
“Once again, thank you, Internet,” she grumbled. “That reminds me, since you’re so big into computers, I want you to take over our local research.
It involves a lot of trolling through fetish websites and those kinky ‘meet someone local for a quickie’ matchmaking services. Lots of willing food sources on those sites.”
“Yowza.”
“Yeah,” Paige grunted. “Anyway, I’ve been wanting to visit this new Blood Parlor for a while, but I’ve been busy training my backup. Between setting up shop out in the open like that and sending her little pigtail girls nosing around our part of town, Ace and Stephanie are getting cocky, and I don’t like it. Plus, we need to introduce ourselves to any new arrivals. Everyone needs to be reminded of why it’s a good idea to work with us rather than against us.”
Paige parked the Cavalier on Superior Street not far from where it intersected with Rush. Some of the bars had closed, but there were still plenty of pedestrians milling from one spot to another. Although Cole got a few puzzled glances when he walked toward the corner with a curved spear strapped to his back by a harness that was slung over one shoulder and hooked to the back of his belt, the reaction wasn’t quite as big as he’d been expecting.
“You really think I should wear this in plain sight?” he asked.
“Yep. We’re flying the flag here, so wear that harness so it can be seen. If any cops ever ask you about it, just say it’s firewood or a prop for something. Nymar will know what it is, and to everyone else you’re just some weirdo carrying a big stick.”
“Can I at least bring the .44?”
Paige shook her head before he’d finished the question. “Tight security, remember? The last thing we need is to set off a bunch of metal detectors.”
“So I’ll walk in to threaten a bunch of Nymar with a stick. Could be worse,” Cole said as he looked Paige up and down. “I could be dressed for leather night at the gym.”
She stopped and looked down at herself. She wore a black leather top that was a cross between a corset and a camisole: Too durable to be lingerie and too intimate to be body armor. It didn’t even come close to matching the gray sweatpants that were cinched tightly around her waist and ankles by elastic bands. “The sweats are just what I’m wearing to get in. Once I’m inside, I want to blend in.”
“Good luck with that.”
Before they got to the corner of Superior and Rush, Paige stopped and pushed Cole against the flat brick section of a parking garage with a deli on the bottom floor. Before he could get a word out, he felt her lips press against his. It wasn’t the most original ruse, but he topped it off by placing his hands on her rounded hips. A small group of club hoppers walked past them without taking notice of the spear scraping against the cement wall of the building.
When she came up for air, Paige whispered, “That building on the corner is the Blood Parlor.”
Now, Cole could see a slick-looking man in front of the parlor looking in his direction. Since Cole’s back was to a wall and both he and Paige were obviously preoccupied, the man turned and walked back inside.
“You go in through the front,” Paige said. “Ask for Ace or Stephanie and flash that weapon. One of those should catch a Nymar’s attention. While you lay down the law about those three that were on the wrong side of town, I’ll sneak around back.”
“By yourself?”
“Some high-tech security would be the perfect test for this invisibility gunk. I’ll get a look around to see what’s in this place and then jump in if you need help.”
“If I need help?” Cole asked.
She patted his arm and nodded confidently. “You can handle yourself.”
“This may sound stupid, but that place looks like it might be closing. Will I be able to get in through the front door?”
“Brothels don’t keep bankers’ hours,” Paige replied while giving his cheek a gentle tap. Her fleeting smile displayed an equal mix of affection and pride. That last part caught him by surprise.
Slipping away from him, Paige jogged into the alley that led from Superior Street to cut between the Blood Parlor and the parking garage. Now that he took a closer look, Cole was stricken by the contrast between those two buildings. While the closest one was a gray, multilevel block, the Blood Parlor was a mix of urban elegance and medieval architecture. Dark brick flowed up into a steeply angled roof and several pointed gables. Sharp rectangular windows looked down over an entrance that looked more like an old sandstone cottage. To complete the ornate mix, several of the lower windows had neon beer signs hanging in them, while one of the upper panes was covered by the stencil of a rose dripping what was probably supposed to be blood onto the sill.
Once she was in the shadows of the alley, Paige opened the garbage bag that Cole had found in the car a few minutes ago. She pulled out a hooded sweatshirt that matched her sweatpants. At least, it probably matched the pants before it had been covered in a dark, greasy substance. “Anyone out there?” she whispered.
Since there were only a few people wandering along the street, and none of them were taking any interest in him, Cole replied, “Nope.”
Paige stuck her hands into the hoodie and pulled it inside out. When she slipped it on over her head, it looked as if a torrent of water flowed from nowhere to wash over her entire torso. Even though Cole had seen the stuff put to use by the shapeshifter who’d used it to bend light around herself, it was even more impressive to see Paige recreate the trick. The stuff shimmered for a few seconds before rendering her all but invisible, leaving a pair of gray sweatpants below a blank spot with a head above it.
“Watch the upper windows,” she said.
Cole nodded, but couldn’t help watching her as she pulled the hood up and lowered her head so everything from her waist up was now a mirage. With the speed and agility of someone used to changing in dirty sheds at public pools, she whipped her sweats down, flipped them inside out, and hopped back into them. Seconds later her legs, along with a good portion of her feet, began to fade. The effect wasn’t perfect, but if he hadn’t known she was there, he could easily have mistaken Paige for a ripple of heat coming off the sidewalk.
Before he became completely entranced by watching the blur in the alley, Cole did what he was supposed to do and checked the upper windows. Most of them were covered by bars on the outside and frilly curtains on the inside. A flickering light from within the place cast just enough light to project a few shadow figures, but none of them stayed still long enough to be of any concern.
An older man wearing an expensive suit pushed open the door to the Blood Parlor and stepped outside. His arm was draped around a girl dressed in a dark red top with thin straps and tight jeans that rode dangerously low on her hips. The scars on Cole’s hands had started itching like crazy since they’d gotten within sight of the Blood Parlor, so he couldn’t rely on that as his only warning system. Since the woman wasn’t wearing pigtails, and neither one of them had any black markings on display, he let them pass.
Still nobody at the upper windows.
About halfway down the alley, near an alcove that must have been one of the parlor’s side doors, pinpoint laser beams emanated from a security device somewhere in the alcove. The lasers looked as if they’d been shot through dirty water, and when they hit the substance in Paige’s clothes, formed a dim bubble around her. No alarm sounded and nobody rushed out to check on the alley, so none of those beams registered as having been broken.
He watched those lights for a second and then glanced around to make sure nobody else had noticed them. A car had pulled up to the curb in front of the parlor, thumping a bass line from a cheap set of speakers, so most of the attention inside the building was probably focused upon it.
Once Paige was through, the flickering stopped. There was a creak followed by the brief glow of interior light spilling into the alley before she stepped inside and shut the door behind her.
“Well,” he muttered, “time to fly the flag.”
Chapter 6
The entrance to the Blood Parlor was just what anyone would expect after looking at the outside of the place. There was a bar covered in coasters representing differen
t brands of beer, foreign and domestic. A couple dart boards hung on the far wall, music from some college band Cole had never heard of drifted from a large jukebox, and a couple televisions hung from brackets on either side of the room. He wasn’t allowed to take more than two steps inside before he was blocked by the slick guy he’d spotted earlier. Up close, Slick was a little taller and a lot beefier than Cole had expected.
Extending one arm to put his hand flat against Cole’s chest, Slick said, “If you’re with those jackasses, you might as well go home with them right now.”
The man had a dark, East Indian complexion and spoke with a cultured British accent. His straight black hair was primped to the far edge of masculinity without quite crossing over to the fairer side, and hung just over his ears. When Cole tried to push forward another step, he didn’t even move the man a fraction of an inch.
The jackasses in question were being herded from a staircase at the back of the room to the front door. A bunch of young guys and even younger girls were escorted outside by bouncers in suits that looked to be cheap knockoffs of Slick’s. After a whole lot of grunting and swearing, the jackasses piled into the car with the thumping bass and rolled down Rush Street.
“I’m not with them,” Cole said. “I’m here to see Stephanie.”
“No one here by that name. Come to think of it, we’re closing.”
“Closing?”
“Yeah,” Slick said. “So hit the bricks.”
Cole turned at the shoulders as he scoped the inside of the bar to make sure the doorman or one of the others could see the flag that was being flown.
The doorman with the borderline hair was on his game. “What’s on your back?”
“Ask Stephanie. She should know all about it.”
“Let me see your hands.”
Although Cole took half a step back, he wasn’t retreating. He just wanted some extra room in case things got interesting. He held both palms up and out so the doorman could have a look.
Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) Page 6