In a thick cowboy drawl, she told him, “A spot to make our last stand, pardner.” Wincing, she added, “Bad choice of words, but you know what I mean. We need to bring these Half Breeds all together and take them out.”
“How do we bring them anywhere?” Cole asked. “Drop invitations into their dirt pits?”
“Bait,” Paige replied with a grin.
The first thing Paige had insisted upon when Cole signed up to work with her was that he pack a bag of clothes and supplies that would always be kept in the car. She had plenty of cases tucked away in the Cav, about half of which were hidden well enough to make it through most international border inspections. They didn’t have to pass anything along those lines to check into the Holiday Inn on Westport Road, but Paige pushed her luck by insisting that Cole help her drag the dead Half Breed up to their suite on the fifth floor. The room cost an arm and a leg, and there was barely enough space for Paige to unpack everything she needed.
“Why do hotel clerks look at you like you’re a criminal when you pay cash?” she squawked while dragging the stinking garbage bag the final couple of steps to a spot next to the luggage rack.
“Why do they insist on calling a room like this a suite?” Cole replied. “Some mysteries defy explanation.”
“No, I’m serious. I paid cash, in full. He doesn’t need to bother with a credit check. They’ve got all their money, but he looked at me like I was going to open a meth lab in here.”
“Oh no,” Cole chuckled. “Instead, you’re going to cut up a dead werewolf. What could be wrong with that guy?”
“Fine, smartass. Just for that, you get to do the mixing while I clean up.”
“What am I mixing?” he asked.
“It’s an old Skinner recipe that Half Breeds can smell for miles in any direction. We’ll need to place it around the city and near those dens, but it should bring them right to us.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t sound like a great idea.”
“Sure it is,” Paige said as she rooted around in one of the larger cases. “We get to pick our spot, draw those things away from where too many people will get hurt, and take them out. This is how Skinners have worked for so many years without everyone learning about us.”
Cole stretched his aching legs and leaned back. “What would be the harm in that? I mean, why not just tell the cops about all this crap and let them deal with them? Half Breeds can be killed by big enough guns, and there’s no shortage of those.”
“Tried that once. Actually,” Paige said as she straightened up and tapped her chin, “I think that’s been tried three or four times. Once was in England a couple hundred years ago. There was a big Half Breed growth spurt, which led to one hell of a hunt that ended with a lot of rotting bodies of all shapes, sizes, and breeds. Apart from the people killed after those Half Breeds were whipped into a frenzy, the scientists of the day had a ball dissecting the carcasses to see what made them tick. All that unnatural blood and bacteria and Lord knows what else mixed with the air and water to make a whole new problem called the Black Plague. They didn’t know that when you get that many dead werewolves in one spot, you gotta burn ’em.”
“Bullshit,” Cole said. “The Black Plague was caused by rats or fleas or something.”
She shrugged, picked out a few containers that looked more suited for holding leftover veggies, and went right on. “Then there was a few of the smaller villages in the original colonies. Those Pilgrims ran into a little shapeshifter problem when they got to the New World and they did the proper thing by telling the authorities…or whatever they had for authorities. As far as we know, some of the creatures were killed, but not before most of the villagers were killed. They didn’t do a complete enough job, got on the wrong side of a very bad thing, and got completely wiped out by whatever came by later to finish them off. The Natives only survived because they knew when to cut and run. They also knew you don’t screw with a pack of monsters unless you know how to screw every last one of them into the ground so far they won’t get up again.”
“You don’t even know what got them?” Cole asked.
“No survivors. All that’s left to record the incident is a few pieces of a journal from a Skinner who was in training when he left England. Probably just a few pieces of that Skinner left too. Then,” she said as she removed a scalpel from the case and walked over to the garbage bag, “there was the incident in New York.”
“You’re just making this up to scare me, right?”
“You can’t be scared if it’s just bullshit, right?” she asked. “Anyway, there were accounts of some kind of monster ripping through a few of the gangs that used to run New York City back in 1904 or so. As far as we can tell, it was a Full Blood. The gangs tried to protect their streets, the cops tried to rein in the gangs, and everyone got on the bad side of the Full Blood. By the time the bodies stopped dropping, they had to write the whole bloodbath off as a turf war.”
A year ago Cole wouldn’t have believed a word of any of this. But if Paige was making this stuff up, she was doing an awfully good job of selling it. “What happened?” he asked.
She stopped with her hands poised over the carcass and the scalpel ready to cut into the dead werewolf’s stomach. “We don’t really know.”
“Weren’t there any Skinners in New York back then? There had to be.”
“Sure. At least two or three, but they didn’t survive. Some letters were sent back and forth asking for help with some creature they called Standing Bear, but nobody got there in time. Those Skinners were never heard from again, a bunch of people were killed, and the survivors thought it best to cover up the whole thing and hope the Full Blood just went away.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed and he let half a grin creep onto his face. “I know there were gang wars in New York City back in the early 1900s. Those couldn’t have all been Full Bloods wreaking havoc.”
“Not all of them were,” Paige assured him. “But one of them was, and it was a doozy. That’s how all of this stuff gets lost or goes unnoticed. There’s plenty of crazy, violent shit going on every day in every part of the world. Most of it’s caused by humans, but some of it isn’t. There’s enough of the human variety for most everyone to accept a little more.”
Grabbing onto the dead Half Breed’s fur, Paige began cutting. The tone in her voice was the same as when she’d been picking barbecue from her teeth at lunch. “The simple fact is that we don’t know exactly what makes one sort of infection cause cold sores and another cause someone to turn into a Half Breed. We understand more than most, but not all the way down to the real essence. Why do some growths turn into cancer and other ones turn into Nymar?”
“Magic? Well…shitty magic.”
“Might as well be,” Paige replied. “Skinners have been trying to figure it out for years. After a lot of trial and error, we can whip up some good stuff, but we just don’t know all the specifics. We can pluck away at our research because there’s no huge organization hounding us. If a government gets involved, they’ll have bigger agendas. Eventually something gets leaked and someone else digs too deep for information, that stuff gets spread around and it causes panic. If it gets ignored, then there really wasn’t any reason to break our traditions in the first place. Too many uninformed people messing around with stuff they don’t understand causes very bad things. Until we figure out more of the bigger answers, it’s best to just put out whatever fires we can and let nature take its course.”
“Nature?” Cole laughed.
“Or magic or aliens or—There it is!” Suddenly, Paige’s face brightened. “Come over here. Take a look at this.” When Cole was close enough to see, she removed a small dark sac from the Half Breed carcass. It looked like sausage casing filled with glue. “This is what you’re looking for when you’re mixing up shapeshifter bait.”
“Aww gawd,” Cole moaned as he used one hand to squeeze his nose shut and cover his mouth. It was difficult to breathe that way, but with the stink that came up from the w
erewolf’s innards, that didn’t seem like a bad thing.
“Watch and learn, Cole. This is a time-honored tradition passed down through generations.”
“Are you really trying to make this seem like a proud moment?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“It ain’t working.”
“Watch anyway,” Paige snapped. “You need to mix up this crap while I shower and take a nap. There’s a long night ahead of us.”
In the space of twenty minutes the top spot in Cole’s mind for “most disgusting life experience” was replaced about half a dozen times. Ten minutes after that he was sitting at a desk in a corner of the room, mixing ingredients from Paige’s supplies into a bowl and kneading it into a paste with his bare hands. Every so often he had to squish some of the stuff from the sausage casing into the mix, knead some more, and then add water. The only saving grace was the distraction of Paige’s warbling singing voice as she took a shower.
Hearing her through the open door, Cole took his hands from the bowl in front of him and reached for some water to add to the mixture. “To hell with this. I’m jumping in the shower next.”
“You’ll just have to get that stuff on you again. Besides, I’m the one that’s been sweating like a pig in that damn leather for half the night.”
“Then I at least get a nap! You can’t be the only one to get some rest.” As he’d spoken, Cole twisted around to look at Paige. She stepped from the bathroom wearing a pair of faded jeans and a fresh shirt while vigorously rubbing her hair with a hotel towel.
“I was going to show you how to skin that Half Breed,” she said, “but I could just do it myself and put some body armor together. It’s not like there won’t be plenty more for you to practice on when we’re done.”
“Why even bother with armor?” Cole grunted. “You said supernatural creatures can rip each other up, so what good is that gonna do anyway?”
“Their hides can still take a lot of punishment. Even if they just stop a few claws and teeth, it’ll keep you alive longer than regular stuff. Kevlar might as well be toilet paper against a Half Breed.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
She stepped up behind him, dropped her towel and tapped his shoulder. “Go on and catch some sleep. You’ve got more than enough of this stuff mixed. I’ll get started on the rest.” When Cole looked at her freshly scrubbed face, she gave him a smile that had an apologetic curve to it. “You need to sleep,” she said. “I can’t have you trying to run on half a tank.”
“What’s the plan, exactly?” he asked.
“Well, we need to place that stuff you mixed around town so when those Half Breeds come out for the night, they come to where we want them to go instead of wherever they can take down a quick meal.”
“Will they really come to us?”
“That stuff makes them crazy. It’s a blend of pheromones that attracts Half Breeds to one another. We also need to find a spot to take them,” Paige continued. “Once we do, we’ll air out some more of that mixture and wait for our guests to arrive.”
“But you already said there are more dens around than the ones we found.”
“After all the casualties that have piled up, I’d rather take our chances in a hard fight than allow those Half Breeds to run wild another night. I’ve got some extra firepower in the car, and we’re both ready to take out a good number without firing a shot. I’ve been watching you, Cole,” she added while placing a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll do great.”
The warmth in Cole’s chest was put there by the confident smile on Paige’s face. After spending the day thinking about innocent people getting ripped to shreds and gazing into reeking pits, it was nice to have something to live for.
Cole slept for an hour or two and woke up when the sun was still shining through the window. Its light was a bit warmer and duller than it had been during lunch, which told him it wouldn’t be around much longer. Paige was busy placing strips of Half Breed skin inside of harnesses resembling bulletproof vests that had been pulled apart, gutted, and re-stuffed.
“You still asleep?” she asked.
As much as he wanted to roll over and drift off again, Cole grunted, “No.”
“I need you to find us a good spot to meet up with those Half Breeds.”
After plugging his laptop into an outlet and switching it on, he asked, “What exactly am I looking for, here?”
Paige zipped the layers of the second vest closed, encasing the werewolf hide within it. “Someplace not too far away, but outside of the city. Lots of open space. Preferably somewhere we won’t be disturbed.”
After a few minutes of getting online and searching the local map pages, he asked, “What about a nature preserve? It says here there’s one with primitive campgrounds and hiking trails.”
“It really says primitive?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Perfect. How far away is it?”
“Uhhh…about sixteen miles.”
She nodded, set the completed vest on top of the first one, and gathered a few empty baby food jars. “Very nice.”
“What if there’s people camping there?”
“We’ll tell anyone we see that there’s a storm coming. Tornadoes are good, because it’ll be dark by then. If they don’t start moving, we’ll just act crazy and get them to steer clear of us. Once the Half Breeds arrive, any dumb-shit campers that don’t get the hell out of there deserve whatever they get.”
Marveling at Paige’s infallible logic, Cole glanced at the blinking e-mail icon at the top of his screen. Clicking on the little envelope took him to a screen that listed the contents of his in box. There were twenty-six messages that had arrived over the last few days, mostly from work. Since he was almost done with his level designs and didn’t have time to do anything else, he ignored those. Some of the messages were junk that had slipped through his filters, and a few were from MEG’s e-mail server. The name of the sender of all of those was SpookyChik92.
Cole smirked and reflexively turned the laptop so the screen wasn’t visible from where Paige was sitting. The first message read, “Sorry for cutting it short on the phone last time. Stu can be such a jerk. If you ever get time to talk, that would be nice. Later, Abby.”
The second message was sent an hour after that one and read, “Not that I just assumed you wanted to talk. I know you guys want to keep to yourselves. I’ve always wanted to talk to one of you guys and you seemed pretty cool. Plus, the whole Digital Dreamers thing is beyond cool. Maybe we could play some Hammer Strike. Abby.”
The third had been sent earlier that night: “I’m not stalking you. Honestly. Stu told me you were asking about me and that’s weird because I’ve asked about you when he mentioned you. Not that he blabs about you guys or anything. He’s full of carp so nobody pays attention to him anyways. Abby.”
The last message was Cole’s favorite. It simply read: “Crap. I meant he’s full of crap. I’ll stop embarrassing myself now. A.”
In response to the last message, Cole typed, “Sorry. I’ve been busy. I’ll definitely give you a call when I get some time. I know what you mean about Stu. It may not be carp, but there’s definitely something fishy about that guy.”
Unfortunately, he sent the e-mail before he could come up with a better joke for the end.
Shattering his comfortable frame of mind, Paige said, “Take a look in those bags over there for some shotgun shells. If I’m out, we’ll need to hit a sporting goods store on our way to that campground.”
Cole set his laptop aside and rummaged through the bags lying closest to him. “Hey, uhh, what’re the odds of any Full Bloods showing up tonight? Will they smell that bait?”
“Full Bloods can smell damn near anything for miles in any direction. If there’s one anywhere near KC, they’ll already know we’re here.”
“Are we equipped for Full Bloods?”
“So glad you asked,” Paige replied. “Remember when Burkis nearly bit my arm off?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she said with a nasty grin as she screwed the lid onto one of the jars she’d filled with Half Breed blood, “I got me a few souvenirs. Check out your new weapon upgrade.”
“Speaking of weapon upgrade, did you ever find those level forty Fire Mace sketches I lost?”
“Forget that video game stuff,” Paige scolded. “This is important.”
Cole walked over to where his spear was propped against a wall. Since the forked end was at the bottom, he didn’t have any trouble spotting the bony spike that had been attached to the main spearhead by several layers of leather cording. “Is this one of those teeth you knocked out of Burkis’s mouth?”
“Oh yeah,” Paige said proudly. “Full Bloods can chew through damn near anything, so that stick of yours can now do the same. The one on my baton keeps it from fitting into its holster just right, but that’s okay. Just don’t smack it against any brick walls and your upgrade should stay put for a while.”
“And I get one of those vests, right?” Cole asked.
Paige nodded. “These babies are gonna go over real well at the party tonight.”
Chapter 17
Cole had never felt so scared and so stupid at the same time. The concoction that he’d put together at the hotel had been split into three squeeze bottles designed to hold mustard or ketchup. Each bottle contained a mixture that ranged from weak to strong on whatever scale was used to measure bait for Half Breeds. Paige drove to the werewolf dens they already knew about so he could hop out and squirt some of the gunk onto a sign or post where it could get the most air. The most diluted stuff had the consistency of jelly and hardened into a crust in a matter of seconds.
Having started at the tail end of rush hour, they managed to drive from point to point without getting snarled up in too much Kansas City traffic. Every so often Cole dashed from the car, looked around for cops or the occasional concerned citizen, then vandalized a public spot with foul-smelling pheromone paste. He got plenty of surprised looks and a few harsh words from people who saw him at work, but nothing bad enough to slow their progress.
Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) Page 18