“And you’ve got to hang back when you find them,” Cole said. “If you need backup, call and let me know.”
“So you’re keeping tabs on me?”
“No, I’m your partner. Even when you decide to shoot your mouth off to the wrong people.”
“Fair enough.”
He couldn’t hear Jordan’s voice, but he could feel the energy building within the beads like a static charge that rippled ahead of a thunderstorm. As Paige backed up, she nodded at something behind him. He turned and saw Abel standing in the doorway leading to the workshop. There was more crackling before Jordan let out a string of ethereal notes and Paige was gone. Paige didn’t emerge on the other side of the curtain. All that was left was the scent of the Dryad energy and the clatter of the beads knocking against each other like any other outdated decorative room divider. Jordan sat back down, crossed her legs and resumed texting.
The Dryads assured him that walking through the beads when they weren’t active was perfectly safe. Even so, Cole maneuvered around them cautiously, placing one shoulder against the wall and stepping past as quickly as possible. He went to Jordan and asked, “What did the people look like?”
“The ones who were in such a hurry to leave?”
“Yeah.”
“There were four of them. Two were Nymar. I thought that was strange and tried telling someone about it, but they said it was okay.”
“Was one of the Nymar a woman and the other some bald guy with a long beard?” Jordan nodded immediately. “You got it. One of the guys was tall with red hair.”
“And the other one carried a bunch of knives.”
Relaxing into her corner again, Jordan shifted her attention back to the little keyboard on her phone. “That’s them.”
“Where’d they go once they got here?”
“They split up. The woman and the redhead went into …” Rather than acknowledge the dissection room by name, she waved as if the room where Henry’s remains had been kept was a festering sore growing in one corner. “The other two headed that way with the rest,” she explained while pointing toward the workroom.
“That’s great, Jordan,” Cole said. “Thanks.”
“Anytime, sweetie.”
“What’s going on here?” Abel asked him. “Who broke the transport schedule?”
“Oh, now you notice, huh?”
“What do you mean? I can smell the pine, so I know someone went through. Was it Paige? Where is she?”
“Why don’t you ask your cop buddies outside?”
Abel smirked and started picking something from between his teeth. “We told you we had some friends on the force.”
“But there’s plenty more you didn’t tell us, right?”
When Cole walked to the smaller doorway in the other corner, his path was quickly blocked by the lankier Skinner. “What’s up your ass?” Abel asked. “If you got some kinda problem, just spill it.”
“Those cops were expecting something to happen,” he said. “The Nymar inside that house across the street were expecting something too. For that matter, how is it that you didn’t know there were Nymar camped out across the street?”
“In case you haven’t had a look around, there’s mason jars full of Nymar blood, venom, spit, and probably a few goddamn stool samples in the next room. My palms haven’t itched this bad since I hit puberty. How the hell are we supposed to feel when a few more Nymar sneak in across the street?”
“This is your town, Abel. None of you guys have let anyone forget it since you got here. And, I might add, you got here way after me and Paige arrived.”
“If you must know, Jory needed all of us to deal with a bunch of Half Breeds tearing through Lima, Ohio. We don’t need to check in with you, those geeks at MEG, or any other goddamn body before we make a move to defend our territory. You got something to say about that?”
“Not really. I’ve got more important things to do.” Cole shoved past him and walked into the starkly lit room that was dominated by a large table and several racks of equipment suited for jobs ranging from surgery to welding. There was a computer set up along the far wall, which was his first stop.
“You gotta understand where I’m coming from, man,” Abel said while tagging along behind him. “I’m tight with my partners. Skinners gotta be that way since we don’t exactly work well in big teams. Plus, you gotta expect to catch some flak from the rest of us.”
Cole’s fingers flew over the computer’s keyboard to access a set of hidden files that he’d placed after the house was turned into Grand Central Station. “Really? Why’s that?”
“You, Paige, and Rico all got first dibs on this stuff. While we all appreciate what you’ve done, we should’ve all gotten a chance to carve off a piece of that freak before Rico came in to take him away.”
Cole’s fingers paused momentarily. He’d known that Paige must have said something to the others about the empty space on the examination table where Lancroft’s prize catch had been. Since Rico hadn’t wanted to participate in what he knew was going to be a mess, he went back to his own business and left the infighting to the rest of what he called the “more sociable” Skinners. Pinning the disappearance of Henry’s body on him seemed the best way to shut the others up about it. Even when he was in another state, Rico wasn’t someone people wanted to question.
“Be honest,” Abel said once Cole resumed typing, “Rico split some of that Full Blood meat up with you and Paige, right? If you got some of it stashed, it’s only fair to at least let us know. I mean, coming in and taking that carcass away when the rest of us were followin’ the rules laid down from you Chicago folks just ain’t sporting.”
“Well, that’s Rico for ya.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
The computer’s display was split into two sections. One of them was a small window in the corner where Cole’s interface was located and an image of the examination room as seen from the top of the computer’s table filled the rest of the screen. A time stamp at the bottom rolled backward as Cole held down a button. “This computer’s got a camera attached to it.”
“It does?”
“Yes,” he said, since he’d been the one to attach it. “That way, we can see who comes and goes through here to get to the valuable stuff.”
“You didn’t go back far enough. That freak was dragged out of here at least—”
“I’m not looking for that.”
“So what are you looking for?”
Rolling backward through the video until he found the image of someone walking directly past the computer, Cole played it at normal speed. “That’d be it.”
Abel leaned in to see. “That’s the dude from Toronto. Bobby.”
“Right, but that’s not the same Nymar he had with him the last time.”
“Sure it is.”
The image on the screen wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for him to pick out the differences between Tru and the Nymar who was with Bobby in the video. The one captured by the webcam had similar hair to Trudy’s, but was definitely shorter and skinnier. Even the way she walked was different, in that the one on the video had a definite stride while Tru walked more like someone waiting to step out of someone else’s way. Aside from that, the tendril markings were all wrong.
“You seriously think that’s Tru?” Cole asked.
“Sure. As far as I can tell, or at least as far I can see on this piece of shit monitor.”
“When all else fails, blame the equipment.” Before taking one step away from the computer, Cole put that section of video into a separate file and e-mailed it to himself. After that he secured the computer and headed for a narrow trapdoor in the corner. Although the entrance to the dissection room had been hidden by Skinner runes placed by Lancroft, the smaller door was hidden by every means possible. Apart from more runes, there were subtle techniques to hide the markings, which ranged from painting over them to arranging the equipment racks to make it seem like a door didn’t even belong
in that corner. All of those techniques would have been enough to keep the door a secret if Lancroft himself weren’t forced into revealing it during the battle that ended his life. When Cole walked toward it, he was grabbed by Abel.
“Where are you going?”
Cole shook loose of the grip, walked through the door and down the stairs to a brick hallway that looked to have been charred by a flamethrower. “Checking to see what those other two were after.”
Tagging along like an anxious puppy, Abel said, “I’m surprised you and Paige didn’t already comb through all of this good enough to know what’s here.”
“We’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, I just bet you have.”
The snide tone in Abel’s voice was easier to pick up than the markings on the mysterious Nymar woman’s face. Cole let it slide, however, since he’d already spotted something out of place farther down the hall. He jogged past bulbs fit into sockets every fifteen to twenty feet along the wall. Alcoves on either side widened into anything from storage spaces to small cells sealed off by thick, rune-encrusted bars. Some of the cells had doors built in that forced anything bigger than a child to crawl on all fours to pass through, while others were simply one-way storage units. The things imprisoned there had died there. As of yet, the Skinners that claimed the Lancroft house hadn’t figured out how to cut through to those remains.
Cole’s sights were set on one of the smaller cages. Its little square gate was open, so he reached over his shoulder and grabbed his spear to prepare himself for what might be loose. He tried to remember what was in that cell but couldn’t pick it out amid all the other things he’d discovered underneath that single, empty shell of a house.
“Shit, is one of those cages open?” Abel asked.
“Looks like it.”
Gripping the spear in both hands, Cole felt the familiar pinch of its thorns piercing his flesh as he extended the weapon to its full length. The main spearhead had been treated with one of the innovations recently created by Daniels, which used melted fragments of the Blood Blade to form a new type of metallic coating. Apart from making the spearhead nice and shiny, it gave it more of a bite, to do serious damage to any shapeshifter. He only hoped that extra punch would be enough to put down whatever was in that cage.
When he arrived at the bars, Cole angled the spear down to point at the little door. Abel stepped up beside him, holding a wooden version of a short scimitar at the ready. Blood welled between his fingers, showing that his thorns cut just as deep as anyone else’s. “Is it still in there?” Abel asked.
“Can’t tell.”
Digging into his pocket, Abel removed a small flashlight attached to a keychain. With a click of a button, a pale blue light filled the brick alcove. The cramped interior of the cage had feces crusted on the walls, dozens of small animal carcasses on the floor, and the body of what looked to be a short man laid out on his back. One leg was propped up and the other was skewed to one side. Both arms were splayed out in a cruciform position, and his head was angled in such a way that his wide, clouded eyes caught the light being shone into the cage. Despite having all the basic parts, the thing wasn’t human. Black, uneven claws extended from his fingers. His musculature was swollen well out of proportion to his stature, and thick black veins ran beneath almost every inch of his skin.
“This thing was cut open recently,” Cole said. “I would have remembered seeing this before.”
“Looks like a Nymar. See the markings?”
“Yeah, but there’s something different about it.”
“You sure?”
It was a simple question, but sparked a whole lot of uneasiness in Cole’s gut. He was rarely sure about anything anymore. All he could rely on was a motivational tool that had taken him from a desk job at a mid-range video game company to the basement of a monster hunter who might have been alive since before the nineteenth century. He’d come this far, he told himself, so he might as well keep going.
“Give me that light,” Cole said as he reached back to Abel.
The other Skinner slapped the key chain into Cole’s hand without taking his eyes from the body lying in the squalid little cell.
Cole crouched down and shone the beam on the Nymar carcass. Its chest was pulled open, but not in the same way as Henry’s victims back when the crazed Full Blood still had his taste for vampire spores. Before he crawled in there with the dead thing, Cole used the spear to reach between the bars and jab the carcass. Having been coated with the new varnish, the spearhead was sharp enough to puncture its flesh with little effort.
“Is that the new Blood Blade treatment for the weapons?” Abel asked.
“Yes.”
“When the hell do we get some of that stuff?”
“Just shut up, okay?”
While Abel grumbled about having last year’s weapon model in his hand, Cole dropped to all fours and crawled into the cell. He scraped through the opening, thinking about how much he didn’t like Abel and how little he trusted him. Then he thought about how stupid he’d been to turn his back on that guy while entering a cell designed to keep things trapped for extremely long stretches of time.
Once inside, Cole was instantly struck with how much smaller the room felt. Its floors were rough and soggy due to layers upon layers of filth and decay left behind by its inhabitants, wandering rodents, or whatever slop might have been tossed in for food. Considering the looks of the thing on the floor, however, the rodents could very well have been the food.
“What is it?” Abel asked.
Holding the light closer to the thing’s exposed arms, Cole picked out gray tendrils beneath the flesh. Thinking back to some of the lessons Paige had taught him, he eased the flap of skin on its chest open using the tip of his collapsed spear. It came open with a wet sucking sound. He was no surgeon, but the heart was easy enough to spot. It was at the center of the hole dug into the thing’s chest, like a Valentine’s gift dropped there for safekeeping. He leaned in as close as his nose would allow. The smells rising up from the exposed cavity were like a living entity that reached down to tug at the back of his throat. “Looks like a Nymar, all right,” he said. After finding the telltale puncture marks on the sides of the heart as well as the scratches put there when the spore hung on during the removal process, he added, “Yeah. Nymar.”
“Wait a second. Do that again.”
“What?”
“The light. Move it again.”
Cole had only turned his head so he could give two of his senses a break at the same time. To appease the other Skinner, he waved the light back and forth across the dead Nymar’s upper body.
“That’s it!” Abel said. “Did you see it?”
Although his movements gave the corpse’s exposed, ravaged heart a cool strobe effect, Cole found one major difference with the tendrils shooting through the vampire’s arms and legs. At first glance they just seemed thinner than normal. What differentiated them from tendrils on any other Nymar he’d seen was the way they reacted to the light. When the flashlight’s beam was shining directly on them, they shriveled into crooked, almost imperceptible lines. When the beam moved away, the tendrils fattened and spread out until they were almost touching one another.
Cole moved the beam back and forth a few more times, but the effect was less noticeable with every pass.
“I wonder if it could do that when it was alive,” Abel said.
“The tendrils only become gray when they’re drying out. If all the plumbing was still connected, it may cover this thing in some sort of black … cloak?”
Abel pressed his head against the bars to get as close a look as possible without crawling through the muck. “Pretty smart. I see why Paige kept you around. Well, apart from the obvious reasons. A living Nymar may even be able to control when those tendrils spread out like that. He could damn near go invisible if he was in the shadows.”
“That’s pushing it, but it might help him stay hidden. There’s something else that’s strange. This
thing isn’t tripping much of anything in my scars. What about you?”
“It’s dead, Cole. Just like damn near everything else down here. That’s why everyone’s upstairs. I bet Lancroft just set this place aside as a dumping ground.”
Something at the far end of the hall growled at them. More than a simple animal’s snarl, it directed itself at Cole and Abel as surely as if it had known their names.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” Abel grunted.
Cole dug his phone from his pocket and took a few pictures of the dead Nymar. The tendrils still had some flex to them as he passed the light back and forth, so he got some shots of that as well. “Check the rest of the hall, Abel.”
“You check it.”
“Just go!”
Cole didn’t care if Abel did the job or not. All he really wanted was to get the other Skinner to move away from that little door when he crawled through. There wasn’t a way for him to exit without making himself vulnerable to a quick downward stab, and more than likely, Lancroft had constructed the doors with that very purpose in mind. Either that, he thought, or he was getting too paranoid for his own good.
Once he was outside, Cole checked on Abel. Nothing else struck him as more peculiar than it had been the last time he was down there. Whatever was caged at the farthest end kept its back against the wall and stared at the Skinners with glittering eyes. It was a shapeshifter. He could tell that much from the way it swelled or contracted, as if its entire skeletal structure was an illusion. Finding out any more than that would have required getting much too close to the thing, and despite their differences, all the Skinners agreed that the creature at the end of the hall was best left alone where it was.
On their way back up the stairs, Cole asked, “What’s the word with the cops? Is there going to be a problem?”
“Nah. Selina straightened it out. A few of the officers know about Nymar, and they’re glad to let us take care of ‘em. Since there were two feeding on someone in that house, we got a pass. Still, tell Paige to rein it in when she gets back.”
Vampire Uprising s-4 Page 8