As they worked their way east, he switched to the more potent mixture. That stuff took some getting used to. It started as a thicker paste, splattered against whatever he’d chosen as his target, and hardened into a brown shell. Not only did it befoul whatever property caught his eye, but it polluted the air just as badly. People gathered to look up at a lot of those spots, but were driven away by the smell before they figured out a way to clean it off. Just to be safe, he and Paige made several other stops along the path to Highway 24 over the next hour or two.
Outside the city’s limits, Cole switched to the heavy-duty mixture. The instant he removed the stopper from the last squirt bottle, the car filled with a sweaty, bitter odor that stuck to the back of his throat in the same way the jelly from the other two bottles had stuck to any available surface around the city.
“I kind of feel bad about this,” he said after hanging his head out the window. “KC seems like a pretty nice place and we’re spraying this crap all over it.”
“The Half Breeds will be coming out…” She paused to stretch her neck toward the windshield and get a look at the moon, which was just full enough to be seen through the fading sunlight. “…any time now. As far as I can tell, this is the night when things would have really gotten interesting if we weren’t here. The first batch have probably already gotten some sneaky patterns down pat, and the fresher batch will be raring to go. All of the Half Breeds are pretty young, though, so they should be a lot easier to bait.”
“You’re so smart,” Cole chided with an exaggerated twang. “And purdy too.”
She slammed on the brakes and pulled onto the side of a rough road that didn’t look to be in the best part of town. “Cut the shit and do your job.”
Cole opened his door and made a mad dash to a light pole just ahead of a convoy of pickup trucks and SUVs. For a second he was worried that the stuff in his squeeze bottle had completely solidified. After rolling the bottle between his hands and unscrewing the top, he worked enough of the gunk out to fling it up high onto the metal pole. It had the consistency of cookie dough, but smelled as far from that heavenly of all substances as another substance could get. It plopped against the steel, slid down less than an inch, and turned into a rust-colored lump.
Slamming his door shut after hopping into the car, Cole tried not to look at the old man yelling at him from the other side of the street. “I just thought of something. Are we coming back to clean this stuff off?”
“No, why?”
“First of all, it’s gross. Second, it’ll just keep attracting Half Breeds, won’t it?”
“Nah,” Paige replied. “It stops smelling in about twelve hours. By tomorrow it’ll have dried up and blown away like any other glob of snot.”
Cole held the bottle up next to his face. “Eco friendly and full of fiber. Operators standing by.”
Paige was still shaking her head when her phone rang. Digging it out of her pocket, she looked at the screen and then flipped it open. “Yeah?” After a few seconds she shook her head even harder. “I don’t need to hear this right now.” She listened and furrowed her brow. “If you don’t have anything specific, save it for later. This isn’t the time for half-assed predictions.”
“Who is it?” Cole asked.
Paige looked over and mouthed the word Prophet. Then she barked into the phone, “I don’t care what you dreamt!”
Sensing the approach of a hang-up, Cole asked, “What’s going on?”
“Here, talk to Cole. I’m driving.” With that, Paige slapped the phone against his chest.
He took it from her and was instantly bombarded by the loud thumping of dated techno music pounding through the phone’s little speaker. “Walter?” Cole shouted. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, Cole. I can hear you. Hey, after the hell we went through in Wisconsin, you can call me Prophet. What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“Some little place outside of Minneapolis.”
A chorus of whoops and hollers came through the connection after a DJ announced that someone named Candy Mounds was coming to the main stage. That gave Cole a pretty good idea what sort of place it was. Actually, he wouldn’t expect much else. “Another strip bar, huh? How’s the buffet?”
“Actually, damn good,” the bounty hunter replied. “It’s all Chinese food. I don’t know if it’s always like this or if I just lucked out.”
“Don’t try to get too lucky,” Cole warned. “You might get arrested. Are you on a job or just trying to unload a bunch of folded dollar bills?”
“Little bit of both. Remember Shimmy’s?”
That one word was enough to bring a smile to Cole’s face. “Whenever I can.”
“Little purple A-frame in the middle of nowhere, right? Guess what this place looks like?”
“Purple A-frame?”
“Yeah! You know what’s even weirder?” Walter asked.
“The fact that you care about the food they serve?”
“No, there’s a nymph working here too. Three of them, actually. I think it’s some sort of nationwide organization or something. It covers a few states at least. This is the fifth strip club I found in a purple A-frame, so I’ll be sure to call when I got more to report.”
“That’s great. Now, what did you do to piss Paige off so bad?”
“Considering how that last batch of lottery numbers hit, she shouldn’t yell at me like that.”
“What big hit? The last one I got was just over twenty bucks!”
“Ask your partner about it,” Prophet told him. “She’s the one handling the money in Chicago. While you’re at it, remind her that I know what the hell I’m talking about. The dream I had was one of the good ones, but she still doesn’t wanna hear about it.”
Candy Mounds must have done something extraordinary because the noise from the crowd became loud enough to drown out the thumping music accompanying her. Cupping his hand around the phone, Cole shouted, “What dream?”
“That stuff going on in Kansas City. Have you heard about it?”
“Yes.”
“There’s more than just some people getting killed. I think there’s something more like what we saw in Janesville. You know, like that big werewolf?”
“I know, Prophet,” Cole sighed. “You’re a little late on that prediction.”
“Well, I’ve been busy. Also, tell Paige to keep a good eye on that little bald guy.”
“You mean Daniels?”
“I don’t know his name,” Prophet said. “She needs to watch him close so he can finish. Or maybe he wants to finish something. I don’t know much more than that, but they were both in a hell of a bad spot.”
Suddenly, Cole knew why Paige had been close to hanging up. Although Walter Nash’s psychic talents were good enough to earn him his nickname, they weren’t one hundred percent. If they were, Prophet’s lottery predictions would allow the Skinners to travel in something a lot classier than a piece-of-crap Chevy. “All right, then. Anything else?”
Prophet’s voice came through, but was intended for whoever was on stage. Finally, he asked, “Did you say something?”
“No. Talk to you later.”
“Sure. ’Bye.”
Paige pulled in a deep breath and let it out with a hiss. Having just turned onto a dumpy two-lane road headed north, she pulled over next to a gas station that looked like it had nothing but dust in the cashier’s booth and rainwater in the pumps. “I don’t want to hear any more of whatever he was babbling about. Give me the phone.” After Cole handed it over, she told him, “Now slap some bait on the side of that building. Use a lot. We want the scent to carry.”
“The scent from this crap could carry this whole freaking car into Kansas.”
“Just go.”
Having already squeezed some of the disgusting paste to the top of the bottle, Cole stepped outside, flung the clump toward the roof, and heard it slap against the wall. Paige barely waited for his butt to hit the seat before pul
ling away and heading north.
“What did Prophet say?” she asked.
“Something about Daniels being in trouble and you screaming at him to finish.”
“I’ve only been screaming at him to finish that damn ink for a week, and if he’d called us about that before we’d gotten to that apartment, we might’ve had a good heads-up regarding Mr. Burkis. Instead, he wasted time at some nasty buffet in some nasty strip bar.”
“He did say there could be a group using nymphs to lure people into a trap or something.”
Rolling her eyes, Paige groaned, “The purple A-frame theory again? I swear that guy only comes up with that shit to justify hanging out at those bars. If he thinks he’s luring me to another one of those dives, he’s got another thing coming.”
“Shimmy’s wasn’t a dive,” Cole pointed out.
“Tell you what. Survive the next few nights and I’ll let you stuff your money into some g-strings with Walter. Okay?”
“I can taste the Chinese buffet already.”
“Prophet found a strip bar that serves Chinese food? Good Lord, what has this world come to?”
Paige glanced back and forth between Cole and the back road she was using. It was getting close to eight o’clock, so there wasn’t a lot of traffic to get in her way. There also weren’t a lot of cops along that route to prevent her from introducing the gas pedal to the floor of the Cav. After steering off the main road in favor of an even smaller one, she said, “We need to clear out as many of these Half Breeds as we can tonight. So far, there’s only been a dozen or so deaths. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.”
“‘Only’ a dozen or so?”
“As the rest of those things get strong enough to come out of their dens and hunt, they’ll shred through entire neighborhoods before anyone puts them down. Plus, you’ve gotta think about the panic that will cause. Enough people are already carrying guns around here. What’s going to happen once they have a reason to twitch at every strange shadow?”
Trying not to give in to his own panic, Cole said, “That’s true.”
One glance was all Paige needed to see the layer of sweat that had suddenly appeared upon his chalky skin. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve never seen Full Bloods and Half Breeds fight together. Half Breeds are too wild to follow a leader, so that should be all we get tonight.”
Cole let out some of the breath he’d been holding and looked out the window. The houses, gas stations, and fast food restaurants that had dotted the road so far gave way to open spaces and low hills stretching out for miles under a blanket of scorched grass. “So, you’ve been able to survive a night like this on your own?”
“Yep,” Paige said with a nod.
“You baited a bunch of Half Breeds and wiped them all out?”
“Sure did.”
“How many were there?”
She crinkled her forehead and twisted her mouth into a thoughtful, crooked line. “Three.”
Feeling as if someone had found the release valve in his chest, he asked, “You think that’s all that’ll be coming?”
“Oh no,” Paige laughed. “Considering all those dens we found, there’ll be a lot more than that. And with all the bait we put out, we may even attract some from the neighboring county.”
Cole’s mouth hung open, but he forced it shut before he asked another question. Any more encouragement from Paige and he might just throw up.
The nature preserve outside of Kansas City was a strip of open land about two miles long. There were a few campers set up here and there, but Paige drove until she spotted a place that suited her needs. It was flat, away from the road, and had a minimum of trees on the side facing the city.
Cole spotted two campsites that were situated a bit too close for comfort and wondered what Paige would do about them. She took the easy route by passing out enough money to pay for hotels all around plus a little more. It was a hot enough night for the campers to gladly accept the bribe and agree to eat their s’mores under the stars some other time. While they were packing up, Paige scooped out some spots in the dirt to set up a little camp of her own. She removed a few heavy packages from her trunk and buried them under a shallow layer of dirt. “Watch out for these spots here,” she told him.
Sitting hunched over a metal bowl and mixing up another batch of bait using a powdered mixture that didn’t smell quite as bad as the fresh stuff they’d spread all over town, Cole looked up and asked, “Why?”
“Bear traps,” she replied while pointing to all five mounds of dirt. “Hopefully, we can hobble a few of the Half Breeds before they get to us.”
“Can you mark the traps with little flags or sticks or something?”
“Can’t you remember where they are?”
“I’ve got a lot on my mind here,” Cole snapped. “Just put some damn sticks in the ground. It’s not like a bunch of rampaging, wild animals are going to sidestep a few suspicious twigs.”
Paige marked the buried traps with sticks, and by the time she was done a wispy cloud of putrid steam drifted up from Cole’s bowl. After that the only thing left to do was gather their ammunition, divvy out enough to fill their pockets, and scatter the rest in strategic locations they could get to in a rush. Cole took the shotgun and Paige took the revolver. Even though he wound up with his preferred weapon for most of the games he’d created, he wasn’t feeling any better. Not even the metallic clack of the shotgun’s pump could light a fire in him.
The sun lingered like an oblivious houseguest before finally dipping out of sight. He and Paige sat just outside of the campfire’s glow. Her pistol was tucked away and his shotgun was strapped across his back. The thorns of Cole’s weapon pressed against his palm without breaking the skin, feeling oddly comfortable and familiar. Paige had her knees bent and pulled in close to her chest. One baton was propped against the toe of her boot and she tossed the other casually in the air to catch it on the end without the thorns.
The fire crackled.
A slow wind blew.
Every so often a car or truck engine rumbled in the distance.
Cole craned his neck to look at the stars directly overhead. “It’s nice out here,” he said, doing his best to avoid looking at the moon.
She didn’t take her eyes off the urban glow illuminating the sky to the west. Tossing her baton into the air created a subtle whooshing sound as the weapon turned end over end. The varnished wood slapped against her palm and she tossed it up again.
“I never camped much,” Cole continued. “It seemed fun, but I didn’t want to go through all the trouble. You know…bugs. Rain.”
“No outlets,” Paige added.
“Yeah,” Cole said. “That too.” He sighed and tried to pick out a few constellations, but was inevitably drawn to the moon. That pale light steered his eyes to the yellowed electric glow being sent up by Kansas City to wash out the stars in that section of sky. His next inhalation was tainted by the bait stewing over the fire. It smelled like exhaust and garbage.
“I think we’re downwind of that stuff,” he said.
Paige slowly shook her head and caught her baton with another loud slap. “That won’t matter. Half Breeds aren’t dogs. They can smell it just fine no matter which way the wind blows.”
“And you think they’ll follow it here all the way from the middle of KC?”
Slap. “Yep.”
When he thought about the Half Breeds he’d seen, his weapon felt a lot lighter than it had a few seconds ago. He swung the front end down to draw a few shapes in the dirt near his feet using the newly modified tip. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”
“What?”
“You know. When you were growing up? I wanted to be a pilot. Then I wanted to be in the Navy. Then I wanted to be a Navy pilot. When I got to be recruiting age, I realized I’d just watched too many movies and didn’t seriously want to go through all of that stuff.”
Slap. “This is why I don’t like camping. Everyone feels like they nee
d to tell stories. They sell the trip with a lot of promises of peace and quiet, but then they either bring a freaking CD player or won’t stop talking about hopes and dreams.”
“All right, then. Let me guess.” Cole snapped his fingers and said, “You wanted to be a short order cook. That’s why you live in a restaurant.”
Slap.
“Are you even listening to me anymore?”
After another slap, Paige said, “I was in school to be a veterinarian.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. That was before, though.”
“Before,” Cole muttered. That word reminded him of days spent at a keyboard when his biggest worry was hitting deadlines for new game concepts or level ideas. His nights might not have been full of parties and wild sex, but he hadn’t spent them crouched on a patch of dirt surrounded by bear traps and spare shotgun shells. Suddenly, he started to laugh. “You know what? Maybe this isn’t too far off from how it was before. Instead of watching a guy in a game hide somewhere in the dark with boxes of bullets scattered all over the place, I’m actually living it.”
Paige tossed her baton one more time, caught it, and stood up. “Come here.”
He went to her and couldn’t help but notice how the moonlight caressed the curves of her body as she reached back with one hand to gather her hair and clip it behind her head. The pale glow coming from above worked nicely to make the lines of her neck stand out. Even the crooked shape of her broken nose looked cute when bathed in that light.
“Close your eyes,” she whispered.
Cole did as he was told.
“Hear that?”
He listened for a few seconds but couldn’t pick up on any sounds that hadn’t been there before. Finally, he asked, “Hear what?”
Just as he was losing hope, he felt her hand press firmly against his chest. Despite the roughness of her palm and the fact that her fingers felt like iron bars wrapped in a thin glove, Paige’s touch felt soothing as she slid her hand along his chest and to his side. Once there, she turned him a bit in one direction and said, “There. Just listen.”
Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) Page 19