Just to prove he wasn’t afraid, Cole took the hand Ben offered and was hefted up to a damp patch of grass. After he had cleared the dirt from his eyes, he saw Paige crouching down behind Kayla. One of her sickles was held so its blade was tight under Kayla’s chin and the tip of the other sickle pressed against the feline Mongrel’s belly.
“Anyone makes a move I don’t like,” Paige snarled, “and I’ll open her up in two very undesirable places.”
Kayla didn’t move. Her eyes darted back and forth, which seemed to be enough to keep the remaining burrowers from emerging. Cole could see several sets of limbs, shoulders, and eyes pushing up from the ground within a radius of about ten yards. One by one the burrowers sank beneath the freshly turned soil.
“I’m all right, Paige,” Cole insisted as he got up and dusted himself off. “See?”
She looked him up and down but didn’t relax her weapons. “I know there’s at least ten of you around here,” she said to Kayla. “Where are the others?”
“Ten?” Cole asked. “How do you know that?”
Jogging to catch up to Paige, Quentin held up his expensive toy and said, “This thermal camera rules! I just had to fiddle with the settings and point it in the right spot to—”
“Get back and keep everyone else away from here,” Paige snapped.
Quentin and the rest of the MEG team headed back to the nearby houses. Now that he was in the open again, Cole could see he’d emerged in someone’s backyard surrounded only by the skeletal remains of a chain-link fence. The house appeared to be either half finished or partially demolished. Either way, there wasn’t anyone home. Less than fifty yards behind Paige were the houses under investigation.
“Typical Skinner treachery,” Kayla spat. “Your partner is unharmed and you still intend on killing me.”
Retracting her arms to ease the weapons away from her captive, Paige said, “Lady, I don’t think you have the slightest idea of what I intend. How about we meet somewhere a bit more private so we can discuss it?”
“I won’t meet you anywhere you’ve probably rigged with traps.”
“And I won’t meet you somewhere just to be surrounded and ripped to shreds.”
“Okay, so we’ve got trust issues,” Cole said. “We came to make our proposition, and I already filled her in on the basics. Paige can tell you whatever else you need to know.”
Reaching up to make sure there wasn’t a blade at her throat, Kayla positioned herself so she could see both of the Skinners. Her body was athletic and slender in a way that would have made any human seem frail. The Mongrel was anything but frail, and her fur was about halfway sprouted. Depending on the way the pale light from the moon and surrounding neighborhood hit her, she either looked naked or wrapped in a form-fitting jumpsuit. Her features had flattened out as if her entire face was wrapped a bit too tightly around her skull. “He says you want us to track werewolves for you.”
“That’s right,” Paige replied. “Half Breeds and a Full Blood. As far as I know, Mongrels have always been into that sort of thing.”
As Kayla spoke, the earth around her rippled with the movement of all those burrowers. “Even if we do show up to surprise them, many of us will be killed.”
“Welcome to our world,” Paige replied as she tossed Cole his spear.
Kayla raised her chin and straightened up to her full height. A long, curved tail retracted into the small of her back until it was just a nub. Her coat slipped beneath her skin in spots, leaving only a trail of fur that wrapped around her hips, upper thighs, belly, and breasts. “We have our own concerns,” she said carefully. “Whether humans thrive or die doesn’t really affect us.”
“There are wild packs of Mongrels, but you’re not one of them,” Paige pointed out. “If you were, you wouldn’t care about speaking our language, or making yourself presentable when in plain sight. You’d also be living in a forest or swamp or a field instead of right here where you’re close enough to hear people’s voices and buy your supplies.”
Shifting on her feet, Kayla made no attempt to dispute Paige’s claims. “Why should we risk our lives fighting a Full Blood that hasn’t even threatened us?”
“If you help us find the werewolves we’re after, we’ll see to it that no Skinner comes to this town unless you force us to. On the other hand,” Paige said, obviously weighing every word, “if you step up and fight those things with us, the Skinners will let you and your pack settle in Kansas City. You can do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t involve eating people.”
“We don’t eat people,” one of the burrowers said.
Turning to what sounded like Ben’s voice, Cole said, “Then I recommend the barbecue. It’s superb.”
“What do you say?” Paige asked. “Willing to shed a little blood to live in a real city or would you prefer to keep tilling lawns?”
After glancing at the multiple sets of eyes peeking up from beneath the grass, Kayla nodded. “Our scouts will meet you in Kansas City and we’ll take it from there.”
Cole distinctly heard muffled voices coming from belowground as Ben and the other burrowers slithered away. “Meet us where?” he asked.
Kayla walked past him and turned around just in time to catch him scoping out her twitching tail. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “A Skinner’s scent is hard to miss. We’ll find you.” She dropped to all fours while transforming into a sleek mix of human and leopard. Keeping low to the ground, she bolted away with speed that neither animal could hope to attain.
Chapter 26
Mick, Val, and Quentin stayed behind to continue their investigation. Since Paige was convinced the Mongrels weren’t about to come back after being discovered, she left them to it.
As much as he wanted to hose himself off and change his clothes, Cole was only allowed a few extra minutes in the bathroom of the first gas station Paige could find on her way back to the interstate. She volunteered to drive all the way to Kansas City, which would only be a slightly longer trip thanks to the extra miles they’d gone past Omaha. Cole figured they’d get back around midnight, and he wanted to spend those hours resting. After some restless shifting in his seat, it became clear he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep.
“What’s wrong with you?” Paige asked.
He glanced over to find her face illuminated by light from the dashboard as well as the glow of the semi she was passing. “I can’t sleep. I think I’m hurt. You got any of that serum?”
“You’re not hurt,” she replied with a little shake of her head.
“Excuse me? Were you the one dragged underground and nearly suffocated?”
“No, but you’re flopping around like a fish, which means you didn’t break anything. You’re not bleeding and I didn’t see any wounds. Anything smaller than that should be cleared up by the serum that’s already in your system. Just shut up and close your eyes.”
“I guess you know best, huh?”
She looked at him again, furrowed her brow, and sighed. “How were you hurt?”
Cole reached for the lever on the side of his seat and shoved the backrest down. “Forget it,” he grunted as he stretched out and crossed his arms.
“Mind if I turn the radio on?”
“Yes.”
She gave him a few minutes to pout and then found some classic rock.
“Filling up on gas again?” Cole grumbled as he rubbed his eyes. “I must’ve been out longer than I thought.”
“Even longer than that,” Paige said. “We’re here.”
“Back at KC? No way.”
“Not KC. The hotel. If that ink isn’t ready to be used, I’ll beat Daniels until that squid attached to his heart crawls out through his ears.”
The hotel’s parking lot was more than half full of SUVs and cars with out of state plates. Paige used her room key to unlock a side door so she could walk inside without having to go past the front desk. Even though he’d just woken from at least a four-hour nap, Cole nearly collapsed onto the bed the momen
t he saw it.
Paige went to a phone situated on a table that had a TV remote bolted to it and poked out Daniels’s room number. After a few seconds she said, “We’re back…It doesn’t matter where we went. Are you done with your homework?” Somehow, Paige’s eyes had yet to droop after all the driving she’d done. Suddenly they grew a little wider. “That sounds good enough. We’ll be right over.” When she hung up, she froze with her hand still on the receiver. “You feel that?”
Cole shook his head.
“Your scars,” Paige said. “Aren’t they burning?”
“That’s kind of the problem with KC right now, isn’t it? Daniels is right down the hall and we don’t even know how many Half Breeds are around.”
Reluctantly, Paige said, “Yeah, I guess.”
“Could the Mongrels have made it here already?”
“They could have beat us here, actually. What are you doing?”
Freezing with one foot in the bathroom, Cole said, “I’m still filthy from—”
“You can shower later,” she said curtly. “If we don’t get that ink ready to use, dragging Daniels along this far would have been a huge waste.”
“But, if it’s not ready…”
Paige already had the door open. “He’s always like this toward the end of a project. He wants to work it all out before someone tests it, but you’ve gotta have someone test it before you know what needs to be worked out. He’s a smart guy and has come a long way, so we’ll just test it for ourselves. Besides, didn’t Prophet tell you I needed to yell at someone to finish?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Then that’s what I’m gonna do.” Pulling open the door, she stepped into the hallway and waited for him. “Come on. You’re the new guy, so you get the first needle.”
“Wow. I’m honored.” At that moment he couldn’t tell for certain whether or not Paige was kidding. Since it was too late to run away now, he just followed her to Daniels’s room. Along the way, he felt heat run up from his scars all the way to his elbows. It wasn’t as bad as when the Half Breeds were within eyeshot, but enough to make him feel as though he’d been injected with cayenne peppers.
After knocking a few times, Paige positioned her face directly in front of the peephole and waved. On the other side of the door, latches were flipped and knobs were turned to unlock everything. “Sorry we took so long, Daniels. You’ll never believe what we’ve been doing.”
When the door opened, Cole could only see Daniels’s bald, blackened dome over Paige’s head. Another wave of heat slithered beneath the bones of Cole’s shoulders. He turned to look for its source but could only see a man at the far end of the hall whose hair looked more like soot growing from his scalp. The man leaned forward and raced down the hall in a flurry of powerful strides.
Before Cole could react, the skinny man was upon him. He slapped a hand against the small of Cole’s back and shoved him into Daniels’s room and against another door frame, where Cole landed on the bathroom floor. When Paige spun around to face the man, he knocked her into a luggage rack. She scrambled to her feet but wasn’t quick enough to avoid being grabbed by the neck.
“All in one spot,” Liam said in his guttural brogue. “How convenient.” Holding Paige at arm’s length, he glared at Cole with the crystalline eyes of a Full Blood.
Although Cole realized what he was dealing with fairly quickly, Daniels was even quicker. The Nymar flew through the air with all three sets of fangs bared in a show of ferocity that made him seem an entirely different creature from the guy he and Paige had been dealing with so far. His jump wasn’t exactly graceful, but Daniels managed to scrape his curved venomous fangs into Liam’s upper arm before he caught a blindingly fast backhand that sent him bouncing off the top of a dresser.
Paige bared her teeth and brought her knees up close to her chest. Frustration showed in her eyes the moment she grabbed for her weapon, only to realize that she’d kicked her boots off in the other room. Grabbing onto the man’s wrists with both hands, she kicked and flailed in a continuous flow of punishing attacks. Her heels smashed against Liam’s knees and shins. She pulled her legs up to kick at his groin and landed at least a few blows that should have gotten the job done. As it was, the skinny man hardly flinched.
“She’s a real pistol,” Liam said as both of Paige’s heels landed simultaneously below his waist. “I like that.”
Having brought the .44 up from the car, Cole snatched the revolver from under his belt and pointed it at Liam. “Here’s another pistol. Let her go before I unload it in your goddamn face.”
The skinny man flicked his eyebrows up and moved Paige aside to show Cole part of the crooked smile he wore. His free arm swiped out and just managed to clip the end of the gun’s barrel to send it flying from Cole’s hand.
“I’m appearing in this form to show you that I am a man of reason,” Liam said. “I was going to offer to let her go in exchange for the location of every Skinner you know, but since it was this easy to find you two, I don’t believe I need to deal.”
Until now he had seemed amused. He examined Paige as if she was a Thanksgiving turkey while she balled up her fists and punched him as if tenderizing a slab of frozen beef. Even as she dug her nails into his wrists, Liam simply peeled his lips back to show a set of human teeth widening out and stretching down to form sharpened stakes in his mouth.
“Or maybe I won’t kill you, luv,” he said in a cockney accent that grew along with his hair and teeth. “I could turn you into one of those poor wretches. Wouldn’t that be perfect? After every brittle bone in your human body snaps, you can run with the rest of the wild dogs that are so eager to rip this city to shreds.” His lips tightened against his teeth as his hand tightened around Paige’s throat. The fight drained from her in less than a second. One second after that, Liam’s eyes snapped wide open and he let out a stifled growl.
Not only had Daniels made it back to the Full Blood, but he’d sunk his fangs deep into the meaty part of his right shoulder. Liam tossed Paige into the television just to free up that hand. She hit the TV on one side, but also twisted her body around so she slid along the edge of the bulky set rather than bounce off it. “Go get our weapons!” she shouted to Cole the instant she landed.
Cole had already been thinking along those lines, but hadn’t seen a way to run around Liam without getting knocked through a piece of furniture. Now that Daniels had made his move, Cole was able to slip past both creatures and make a break for the door.
Liam was shifting into his upright wolf form very quickly. Every movement he made was more powerful than the last as one layer of muscle piled on top of another, but no matter how much Liam struggled or swung his arm, Daniels would not come loose. In the few seconds it took for Cole to get by them, the black tendrils along Daniels’s neck and scalp had swollen into thick ridges. The Nymar’s fangs broke Liam’s skin, and the thicker bottom set were dug in deep enough to keep him in place. If Liam intended on ripping Daniels away, he stood to lose a sizable chunk of his arm in the process.
The commotion had already drawn some attention. As Cole raced to his and Paige’s room, he saw a few other doors opening just enough for some nervous guests to peek outside. Not worrying about them, he rushed into the room, took Paige’s batons from the boots she’d kicked into a corner, and then grabbed his spear. On his way back to Daniels’s room, he could only see the rush of hallway flowing around him and felt nothing but his feet pounding against the floor.
Cole wrapped one hand tightly around the grip of his weapon so the thorns could dig into his palms. Unfortunately, the door to Daniels’s room had closed and locked behind him when he left. “Someone open this door!” he shouted as he pounded on the painted metal surface. A few more doors along the hallway opened and someone asked what was going on, but Cole didn’t even acknowledge them. He kept pounding and was about to try kicking the door down, when it came open.
Cole could only get the door open an inch or two because something was blo
cking it. Leaning his shoulder into it, he looked down to find Daniels slumped against the other side. The Nymar looked up at him and then scooted forward so Cole could step inside. “I…set him up…for you,” Daniels groaned as venom dripped from one of his curved upper fangs. The rest of his teeth were either cracked or covered in blood.
Just as Cole stepped into the room, his vision was blocked by a massive wall of black fur. Thanks to the venom in his system, Liam was unsteady upon his feet. He’d also transformed to roughly double his original size. For the moment, he didn’t seem at all interested in Cole. Instead, he swatted at Daniels and snarled, “God damned leech!”
Taking the opportunity he’d been given, Cole hurried toward the back of the room where Paige was leaning over a small round table situated beneath a lamp that hung from a painted chain. “Here,” he said as he handed over the batons. “That thing’s about to kill Daniels.”
But Paige didn’t take the batons. She didn’t even turn around to look at Cole. “Our weapons aren’t enough. We need more.”
“This is all we’ve got. Just take them!”
The high-pitched grinding sound that followed was a cross between a wasp’s buzz and a dentist’s drill. Paige hunched forward with her right arm resting upon the table so she could use her left to work the tattooing machine Daniels had modified.
“What the hell are you doing?” Cole demanded as he tried to grab Paige’s wrist. “Stop that!”
She knocked him back with her shoulder, clenched her right fist, and said, “It’s either this or we all die here.”
“No! We fought it before, we can—”
The rest of his plea was drowned out by the grating whine of the machine as its needles were dragged through her right forearm. Cole wanted to pull the machine away, but it was too late. The ink was already being inserted under her skin through hundreds of motorized punctures. Moving her now would only cause more damage.
Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) Page 31