Narrowing his eyes and shoving past Cole to get down the stairs, Rico shouted, “Someone down there?”
No voices responded, but the unmistakable shuffle of footsteps drifted up to Cole’s ears.
“Cover me,” Rico said as he drew his pistol, then pressed a shoulder against the wall and descended.
Cole aimed at a spot ahead of Rico, searched for any motion along the hallway and prayed he could differentiate between a threat and some innocent rat scurrying from one hiding spot to another. Prophet was right beside him with his own pistol held in a two-handed grip.
“Who’s down there?” Rico called out. “You need help?”
Cole could hear at least two different voices echoing from farther down the hall. Having been down there enough times to picture the layout in his head, he guessed that the speakers were somewhere between the far end of the hall and the cell containing the body of the Nymar with the strange markings.
Continuing to the bottom, Rico struck a defensive crouch as soon as he could get a clean look down the hall. “Cole, you know these guys?”
Cole’s heart thumped in his chest as he moved down the stairs. At the bottom he found a pair of figures standing in the hall. One was a man of average height with a stocky build and muscular frame. Even in the shadows his skin had a dusky hue. The other was a woman who’d sought cover in one of the many alcoves along the hallway. Her paler skin stood out against the dark blond hair that seemed to shine in the sparse light thrown off by bulbs encased in glass and wire casing. A backward baseball cap kept her hair from her eyes, allowing her to sight along the barrel of what looked to be a FAMAS assault rifle. It was an ugly weapon with an extended barrel and a structure along the top that looked like an oversized handle. The only reason Cole recognized it was because he preferred using that weapon to spray 7.5mm rounds all over any map in the Sniper Ranger death matches that had all but consumed his old life in Seattle. The man carried a small cannon in one hand, which he pointed at Rico as he thumbed back the hammer.
“Cole?” Rico said as he shifted nervously within the line of fire of the two they’d come upon.
“Never seen them before,” he replied. “But there were a lot of people coming through here. They could still be—”
“They’ll be dead unless they lower those weapons,” Prophet barked with an edge to his voice that had been put there during years of storming through fugitives’ doors and demanding full compliance with whatever warrant he was serving at the time.
Not only did his warning have an effect on Cole, but it did its job with the other two as well. Both the man and woman lowered their guns without relinquishing their grips. It might not have taken much for them to get into firing position again, but tensions had eased for the moment.
“You’re Skinners?” the woman asked.
“That’s right,” Rico replied. “And my guess is that you ain’t. You also ain’t Nymar, so who the hell are you?”
The man extended a hand toward the woman. Only then did she take her left hand off the bottom of the FAMAS so the rifle was allowed to hang down at her side by the strap that kept it attached to her shoulder. The man then peeled open the front of his sandy brown jacket to reveal a double rig holster strapped beneath his arms. “I am Tobar,” he said with a thick, vaguely Russian accent. “This is Adrina.”
The last time he’d heard someone speak in that accent, Cole recalled, he was sitting in the office of the man who owned Bunn’s Lounge. Bunn’s had been the pinnacle of Dryadcentric adult entertainment in the St. Louis area, but was now a charred shell with a Condemned sign stuck to its front door. The club owner kept in touch with Cole and Paige, but only to scream unintelligible insults into their voice mail in hopes of getting some compensation for the damage done by a rampaging pack of local Mongrels.
“Do you know Christov?” Cole asked.
The other two were a ways down the hall, but Cole could see the questioning looks they shot at each other.
“They’re not Christov’s,” Rico said as he tucked his combat model Sig Sauer .45 away. “They’re Gypsies.”
Even clearer than the confusion they’d displayed before, both of the strangers down the hall now showed angry resentment on their faces. “And you are ignorant Americans,” Adrina said.
Tobar strode forward and displayed a set of perfectly white teeth marred by a few perfectly aligned gaps. “More like cowboys, Drina. These three probably think we all are fortune-tellers and thieves. Is that it?”
Now Cole could see through Tobar’s jovial act. He was testing them and probably ready to follow up on whatever insult he’d taken from Rico’s words. Stepping forward and putting on a friendly, oblivious smirk, Cole said, “I’m just trying to match accents. The only Gypsies I’ve ever seen are in old movies. Same with cowboys, though. I don’t get out much.”
Tobar studied Cole carefully. Adrina did the same. “We’re called Amriany,” he said. “It’s no secret among you Skinners, but none of you seem to care about us unless you’re stealing the weapons made by our finest craftsmen.”
“Those Blood Blades weren’t stolen,” Rico was quick to say.
“Then you crafted them yourself?”
“No. We heard they were available and sent someone to pick them up. It’s not our fault one of your people was careless enough to lose two of the damn things.”
“One of our people,” Adrina snapped. “You talk like you know anything about our people.”
“Okay, okay,” Cole said. “You guys have some sort of grudge. We get it. How about you settle it some other time? Right now, why don’t you tell us how the hell you got here. Did you use the Skipping Temple?”
“The Dryad Bridge?” Adrina asked as if referring to a back road that led straight to the armpit of the universe. “Hardly. Unlike you Skinners, we don’t rely on the creatures we hunt to go about our business.”
“Really? Is that why you’re here sneaking around the basement of one of the Skinner elders?”
Rico chuckled and gave Cole an approving nod. “He’s got a point. What brings you two to this neck of the woods? Slumming?”
Just as Rico was hitting his stride, another man and woman stepped out from alcoves at the end of the hall. They were smaller in stature than the two who’d already made themselves known and kept their arms at their sides where they could be seen. “We came to take back what was stolen from our clans throughout the last several generations,” the man said. He walked down the hall, entering a pool of dim yellow light to reveal an athletic frame wrapped in the same sort of simple, rough clothing worn by the others. In fact, all four of the Amriany were filthy. Their clothes were covered in dirt and their faces were smeared with it, but it wasn’t a sign of neglect or even poverty. The dirt was fresh.
“Who the hell is that?” Prophet asked.
“It’s all right,” Rico told him. “Amriany travel in groups and never show their true numbers right away. You see one or two, and there’s always more lurking around somewhere. Kind of like—”
“Watch how you finish that sentence,” the man at the far end of the hall warned. “Before you call us something you regret, know our names. I am Gunari, and this,” he said while motioning to the second woman to reveal herself in that hallway, “is Nadya. Were you friends of Jonah Lancroft?”
“I was with him right until the end,” Cole said.
“Then perhaps you know how much he stole from us over the years. If not for Amriany knowledge, he would never have gotten the runes to protect this place or imprison the beasts he captured. I doubt he would have been able to hunt any of the demons he did without borrowing from us.”
“Lancroft was a hell of a Skinner,” Rico said. “You won’t convince me he was a hack. Why don’t we skip whatever else you were gonna say along those lines and get down to how you got here.”
“Our methods are our own,” Tobar replied.
“Okay. Then why the hell are you in the U.S.? Just to reclaim some property?”
It
didn’t take a master of human behavior to figure how the conversation would go from there. In a matter of a few syllables Rico had the other four screaming at him from the other end of the hallway. Accusations flew back and forth, but nobody reached for their weapons. On the contrary, everyone was more willing to set their guns down so they could use their bare hands. Cole had never been more grateful to hear his phone ring. The tone wasn’t very loud, but the acoustics in the hall did wonders.
“Who the hell is that?” Rico asked.
Cole looked at the phone’s screen and said, “It’s MEG.”
“I didn’t even think that phone would get reception down here.”
“Neither did I.”
“Go ahead and take it.” Glaring at the other four, Rico added, “I can handle these guys on my own.”
Answering the phone while moving toward the stairs, Cole hissed, “What is it?”
“Are you all right?”
He recognized the voice immediately. Abby was a field investigator for the Midwestern Ectological Group, which meant she was normally too busy measuring electromagnetic fields and setting up video cameras to bother manning the phones. He hadn’t heard from her since their awkward attempt at a date not too long ago.
“I’m kind of busy here, Abby. What’s up?”
“We’re checking in with everyone we can. Are you hurt? Is anyone with you?”
“Rico and Prophet are here, along with some …” Although Cole couldn’t hear what the others were saying, he saw that both groups had closed enough distance to stop screaming at each other. There was little comfort to be taken in that since everyone was now in a standoff straight from the calmer moments of a gladiator movie. “We got some others here with us and I kind of need to get back to them. Why do you ask?”
“Haven’t you seen the news?”
“Why does everyone think I’ve got the time to sit around watching TV?”
“Because just about everything from your mouth is a quote from a sitcom or cartoon,” she replied.
“Okay, that’s fair. No, I haven’t been watching the news.”
“There’s been stuff happening all across the country. Bad stuff. Multiple murders, bodies being found, drive-by shootings, fires.”
“Yeah, I know all about the fires.”
“They’re all Skinners, Cole.”
“What?”
“We’ve been getting calls from Skinners everywhere and they’re under attack. We even got a few calls while the attacks were happening. It’s terrible.” Abby’s voice cracked under the strain, but she took a breath and collected herself in short order. “From what we’ve heard, all of these attacks have to do with Nymar. Something’s gotten to them and they’re all moving on you guys. I don’t know what else to do but keep trying to tell everyone. If there’s anything you need from us, just say so.”
Since her speech was gaining momentum with every word, Cole didn’t wait for an opening to cut her off. “Have you heard from Paige?”
At that moment, silence was the worst thing he could hear.
“Answer me,” he demanded. “What have you heard from Paige?”
“Nothing,” she said. “We’ve tried calling her after we got a report about a shooting in Miami.”
“What shooting? Tell me!”
Cole’s voice had become sharp enough to cut through everything else in the basement. All the others stopped what they were doing to watch and listen to him.
“There was some sort of shooting at a club in Miami,” Abby said. “It was at a strip bar.”
“Jesus.”
“Three were killed, but no names were released yet. We’ve tried getting in touch with the Skinners down there but nobody’s answering. The only reports we’ve got are what we can piece together using local news and what little we heard before the trouble started. What’s going on, Cole? Is there something happening with the Nymar?”
“Looks that way.” When Rico motioned for an update, Cole waved him off impatiently. “What was the last you heard from Paige?”
“She called to tell us she was in Miami and asked what we had on the group from Toronto. They’d been sighted in Miami as well, but we didn’t hear anything directly from them. Does all of this have something to do with Toronto?”
“That’s all you heard?”
Cole could recognize the frustration in Abby’s voice when she said, “From Miami, yes. Paige found some dead Dryads outside of one of their clubs. She said she was checking on a temple and that was it. We’re hearing plenty from all over, and if you’d check your e-mail, you’d see that we sent you updates from—”
“I can’t worry about all over,” he snapped. “There’s too much right here.”
“If we get anything about Paige, I’ll forward it to you and mark it priority. The rest will still keep coming.”
“Good. Thanks.” He hung up and stuffed the phone in his pocket while marching past Prophet and Rico to look Tobar in the eyes. “Everything’s going to shit for us, and don’t try to tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. We’re getting hit across the country and now you guys show up from out of nowhere.” Cole reached under his coat, found the end of his spear that was angled toward his left hip and pulled the weapon free of its harness. “Either answer Rico’s questions or answer to me.”
Up close, Tobar’s features were like those on the subject of a grainy photograph. His eyes dipped down to take stock of the weapon in Cole’s hands. When the blood began to trickle between the Skinner’s fingers, he nodded solemnly and said, “The one thing you Americans have is passion. We cannot deny that. What is this you’ve done to your spear? Have you found a way to add metal to them?”
“We can swap recipes later. Right now, tell us what the fuck is going on.”
Upstairs, the floor rumbled in a way that Cole recognized as the Skipping Temple being brought to life. “Is that more of your buddies coming through?”
Tobar’s eyes narrowed. “We do not accept help from the Dryad whores.”
That didn’t make Cole feel any better about the steps that drifted down from upstairs on their way to the secret door in the dissection room. All he had time to do was glance at Rico before the new arrivals scrambled down the steps. They moved like a force of nature, and in the last several months, Cole had become all too familiar with just how terrible nature’s forces could be.
Chapter Sixteen
“Back up,” Rico said from behind his Sig Sauer.
The group that descended from the temple and workshop level were all Nymar. Their markings were thick and dark, proving that they’d recently fed and were reaping the benefits through increased speed and strength. They were also armed. The vampires snarled and bared their fangs in a show of primal force while raising the shotguns and submachine guns in their grasp. A slender man at the front of the group shouted, “They’re here! Clean ‘em out!”
Shotguns roared, pistols barked, and the automatics chattered as hot lead blazed through the air like a tidal wave that swept down the brick hallway.
Cole grabbed Prophet’s shirt and shoved him toward one of the alcoves as bullets chipped away at the bricks around him and impacted against his back, shoulders, and legs. By the time he got there, the battering his body had taken made it difficult for him to pull in a breath.
“Holy shit,” Prophet said as gunfire began flying in the opposite direction. Putting his back to a wall so he could see what was happening, he asked, “Are you hit?”
“Yeah,” Cole grunted. The effort of pushing that little bit of air from his lungs was enough to fill his torso with a dull pain. “Several times, but I think the coat held up.”
Prophet stared at a spot near Cole’s shoulder where the tanned leather was still smoking from an impact that landed less than an inch from a section of canvas. A surprised chuckle came out of him as he slapped Cole’s back gratefully. “Guess Rico’s one hell of a seamstress, huh?”
Another barrage of gunfire chipped at the edge of the alcove befor
e Cole could put together a response. The shotguns had been silenced but were replaced by automatic fire. He had some experience on shooting ranges with fine weaponry, but he wasn’t nearly experienced enough to recognize the make and model of what he was up against. All he knew for certain about the guns was that too many of them were going off around him.
“Cole!” Rico shouted from across the hall and several alcoves down. “Get over here!” He then fired three quick shots at the stairs.
Taking a quick look at the Nymar, Cole spotted four of them pressing their backs to the wall and firing at everyone in their path. A few more peeked out from the stairway. One Nymar had a long face that was almost covered in thick black tendrils. His eyes locked on Cole and he leapt out from cover.
Cole wasn’t anxious to wade into the gunfire no matter what kind of armor he wore. On the other hand, he also wasn’t about to stay put to provide a snack for the first Nymar to reach him. Switching his spear to his left hand, he drew his .45 and turned so his shoulder and back were facing the Nymar’s end of the hall. “Prophet, move!” he shouted while firing in the general direction of the stairs.
While the Nymar didn’t seem to be afraid of Cole’s pistol, they did take a moment to regroup when he, Rico, and most of the Amriany opened fire at the same time. Drina’s FAMAS made the most impressive chatter as it spat its rounds straight past Cole and into the Nymar that had come at him. He took advantage of the opportunity and hurried to meet with Rico. The Nymar writhed on the floor, clawing at wounds that hissed in reaction to what must have been an Amriany version of the antidote used by the Skinners. The vampire dropped to one knee, clawed at the floor, struggled to move, and finally resigned himself to lifting his gun to fire at Cole. He sent one round thumping into tanned Full Blood leather before Cole impaled him with the metallic end of his spear.
Drina moved forward while firing her FAMAS in three-shot bursts. “Move into the cell!”
“Which cell?” Rico shouted.
Drina and the other three Amriany responded by rushing toward the next-to-last cell at the end of the hall.
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