“There’s some blood and some markings.” Chuckling, Cole added, “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“That’s perfect. Keep the knife the way it is, blood and all.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes,” Paige said. “Wrap it up and bring it with you. It’s very important. Have the police or anyone found the bodies yet?”
“I don’t think so. Gerald told me not to call the police, and we’re kind of out in the boonies here.”
“Good. Keep running and get to that pickup spot. I’ll arrange to have you flown straight here as soon as possible.”
“Flown?” Cole gasped. “I need to get in touch with my job or my friends.” The notion of calling his mom didn’t sound unappealing, but he wasn’t about to make that known to a complete stranger. “After all that’s happened, I may not be able to get onto a plane. I sure as hell won’t be able to get this sword thing through security.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just get to the pickup and we’ll take care of the rest. And don’t call anyone else. Understand that? Nobody.”
“We? Who’s we? Come to think of it, who are you? Why can’t I call anyone?”
“Do you really want to drag any of your friends or family into this?”
“No,” Cole said without hesitation.
Paige laughed once under her breath. “Believe me, this all may seem a bit strange, but I’m your best chance for making it out of there alive. Just do what I say and try to keep your head down.”
Cole noticed that she didn’t exactly guarantee that he was home free just yet, but he wouldn’t have believed such a claim anyway. It did him a lot of good just to hear someone admit that things were a hell of a long ways from normal. “What’s a Full Blood?” he asked.
There was no reply.
“Are you some sort of scientist?” Cole asked. “Is that why you want that thing’s blood?”
“You sound like you’re out of breath,” Paige finally said. “Just do me a favor, save whatever you’ve got left and keep moving. You’ve already come this far, so don’t mess it up now.”
Cole nodded reflexively, even though there was nobody around. As far as he could tell, there was still nothing close enough to hurt him, but he started jogging, and then broke into a run just to be safe.
“Can you still hear me?” Paige asked.
“Yeah. Just…taking your advice.”
“Good. I’ll see you when you get to Chicago.”
“Chicago? I need to go all the way to Chicago?”
The only thing he heard in response to his frantic questions was the crackle of static from his earpiece. Cole wanted to yell at someone, but didn’t have enough breath. He checked the phone and saw there was still some battery life and a bit of signal strength, but the connection had been broken. Whoever Paige was, she’d hung up on him.
He went to pull the earpiece out and winced when it didn’t come loose. It seemed to have frozen into his ear, but came free after a bit of painful coercion. Without breaking stride, he shut the phone off, wrapped the earpiece’s wire around it and stuffed the whole thing into his pocket. That left him with nothing but the wind and the snow to keep him company.
The last time he had been forced to run more than half a block, he was at the mercy of a gym teacher who had a whistle stuck between his teeth and a rod shoved up his ass. Even then, he could at least slow down when the overaged jock wasn’t looking. This time, he had to keep moving. It wasn’t a question of if he was in good enough shape or had enough breath in his lungs. It was a simple matter of survival. If he wanted to live, he had to keep moving.
Every so often Cole would stop just long enough to catch his breath and check the compass in Gerald’s knife. He thought he saw spots drifting through his line of sight, but ignored them. He thought his legs were straining to the point of ripping muscle from bone, but he ignored that as well. All in all, he was amazed at how much he could ignore when he had a real monster tracking him down.
The highway wasn’t much more than a strip of iced-over gray in the distance. If not for a few crooked light posts, Cole might have overlooked it completely. By the time he caught sight of it, the thought of getting killed by the creature didn’t seem so bad. At least that would have been quicker than slowly fading within a shell of his own frozen sweat.
It took the better part of an hour before he was close enough to actually feel cement under his boots. When he did, his aching knees were the only things preventing him from dropping down and kissing that dirty stretch of road. Cole’s joy lasted all of three minutes before he realized he was still alone. There was no truck in sight. There were no cars. There wasn’t even a nice, well-lit gas station advertising good eats and walnut bowls.
“What I wouldn’t give for some good eats right now,” he grumbled. “Hell, I’d even take a nut bowl. What the hell are those things, anyway? Am I saying this out loud? Can anyone hear me? Am I already dead? Why can’t I stop talking?”
Cole stumbled along the side of the road without knowing where he was headed. Since he might not be able to get moving again if he stopped, he just kept stumbling along as he dug into his pocket for Gerald’s phone. Before he could mash his deadened fingertips against the keypad, he heard the distinctive crunch of something heavy against the snow. He closed his eyes and prayed for the sound of an engine rather than a growl.
For the first time since he got a look up Katie Fenner’s skirt in his junior year of high school, his prayers were answered.
The truck looked like something from one of the hundred or so World War II games he’d worked on over the years. It rumbled up to him, and the window was lowered so a gnarled man wearing an orange stocking cap could lean over and ask, “You Cole?”
“Yeah. I…sure am.”
“You wanna get in?”
“Oh yeah.”
“It’s open,” the driver said. “Hop inside.”
And Cole did need to hop because the driver wasn’t about to hit the brakes. The moment his backside hit the seat, he leaned back and let out a breath he might have been holding since he’d left the cabin. At the tail end of that same breath he started laughing. Oddly enough, the driver laughed along with him.
“Feel good to be sittin’ down, eh?” the man asked in an accent that had an equal chance of being Canadian as it had of being a bad impression of a Canadian.
“It sure does.”
“Who sent ya?”
Cole had peeled his gloves off and was rubbing his hands in front of the closest vent. He was concentrating so hard on thawing out his fingers that he let that question slip right past him. He sure didn’t have any trouble hearing what came next.
The pistol was a .44 revolver, and it seemed to have materialized in the driver’s hand. When he pointed the gun at Cole’s head and thumbed back the hammer, the click seemed to echo through the entire cab.
“I asked you a question,” the driver snarled.
“Gerald,” Cole spat. “He…no wait! His name was Stu. He was on the phone and told me to come here.” When he saw that his words weren’t changing the driver’s foul mood, he added, “And Paige too. She told me to meet up with you. In fact, I think she said she might have called you about bringing me something for the ride to the airport.”
The driver lowered his pistol before Cole had his fourth nervous breakdown that day. Glancing toward an expensive radio setup bolted to his dash, the driver grunted, “Just bein’ careful. Never know who might be wandering along the road, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“I got some hot coffee and candy if you want. Paige said you might be hungry.”
“I’ll pass.”
The rest of the ride was spent in silence. By the time they reached the airport, the sun was long gone and the stars were out. Cole got some rest and was only forced back into consciousness when the truck rattled to a stop. It was the first time he’d been still the entire day.
“No need to open both eyes,” the driver said. “On
ce you’re in the plane, you can go right back to sleep.”
“We’re at the airport?” Cole asked as he absently wiped at his eyes.
“Yep. Sounds like she’s all ready to go.”
Cole pushed open the truck door and was greeted by the rush of icy wind that carried the louder roar of a plane’s engines. Although he couldn’t be certain about the airport, he had a sneaking suspicion he’d seen that plane before. As if on cue, a man wearing the same three flannel shirts layered on top of each other waddled around the plane and waved toward the truck.
“That’s Andy,” the driver said. “He’ll be takin’ you all the way into Chicago.”
“I know who he is. He’s the same guy that flew me here.”
“Really? Then you should feel right at home.”
While he might not have felt right at home, he was already feeling the plummets and barrel rolls that had brought up everything in his stomach on the way into Canada. “Can’t we just fly on a jet?” he asked. “It’d be faster. And…uh…wouldn’t kill me.”
“Oh sure,” the driver replied as he pulled Gerald’s bag from behind the seat. “You got anything in there that you’d like to check through customs?”
“Point taken. I suppose that pilot knows how to fly into the States without hitting customs? Does he have smuggling compartments under the seats?”
Chuckling, the driver replied, “You watch a lot of movies, don’t you? We ain’t terrorists. Andy goes through customs like anyone else. Private planes get a little more slack on personal property, is all. You ain’t carrying any drugs or nothin’, are you?”
“No.”
“All right then. Wouldn’t want you making me look bad.”
Cole managed to catch the bag that was tossed at him before it knocked him in the teeth. After checking to make sure he had everything, he asked, “Does the pilot need a password to refrain from shoving a gun in my face?”
“Keep up that smart mouth and I’m sure he’ll think of something you’ll like even more. You have a good flight, now.”
Even though the driver settled behind his wheel and gunned his engine, Cole didn’t close his door right away. Instead, he extended a hand across the passenger seat and said, “I don’t think I thanked you for picking me up.”
“No. You didn’t.”
“Well…thanks. It’s been kind of a rough day.”
Smirking, the driver shook his hand with almost enough strength to snap it off. “Comes with the territory.”
Releasing his grip on Cole’s hand, the driver eased up on his brake just enough for the truck to roll slowly forward. Once the door had cleared Cole’s shoulder, it was pulled shut and locked with a few quick swats of the driver’s hand. Even after the truck picked up some speed and rumbled away from the airport, Cole was still standing in the spot where he’d been left. Slowly, he allowed some steam to drift from his mouth and straightened himself up. Since there was nowhere else to go, he hauled his things toward the plane.
“This extreme enough for you, dumbass?” he asked himself. As he got close to the plane and started tossing his things on board, he put on a smile and shouted to be heard over the propellers. “Any chance I could get you to swing past Seattle?”
The pilot grinned and replied, “Nope. But do me a favor and look around for some parachutes. The safety inspectors have really been busting my ass about that.”
Chapter 6
Approximately 30 miles southeast of
Madison, Wisconsin
It was a cold day. Rain threatened to fall from gray clouds that rolled across a harsh autumn sky. A single, navy blue van moved along a dirt road and pulled off onto a trail that wasn’t much more than a set of crooked ruts in rocky soil. As soon as the van was far enough along the road for the driver to spot the collapsed remains of the old mansion, he sped up, the wheels spinning faster, kicking up a gritty mix of dust, gravel, and dead leaves. On the back of the van was the lettering MEG BRANCH 25.
Steve sat in the passenger seat and was tall enough for the top of his balding head to scrape the roof. His rounded face had yet to display anything less than a smile as he told more than enough jokes to fill the drive from Madison. “That’s the place,” he said. “Park anywhere you like.”
The driver was in his mid-thirties, but had enough youthful energy in his eyes to make him look at least five years younger. His dark brown hair was buzzed close to the scalp and his face was clean-shaven. Finding a parking spot wasn’t difficult, and the driver pulled to a stop just off the faded old road that led the rest of the way to the mansion. “You say this place is haunted?” he asked.
Steve nodded. “I sure do, Jarvis,” he replied, using the driver’s name in a way that seemed well-intentioned but obviously didn’t set well with the driver. “I could tell you plenty of stories from several other people, or I could tell you a few of my own.”
Jarvis leaned over the steering wheel to get a better look at the rubble in front of him. No matter how much squinting or straining he did, he could still only see the sagging remains of a three-story mansion. The roof was full of gaping holes. One half of the building had fallen down altogether. Even the fence surrounding the place was rusted and broken in several spots. “What’s anyone even doing out here?” Jarvis asked. “The place looks pretty run-down.”
“Oh, it is. The property is still held by the original family, and they’ve been thinking about restoring the entire mansion. It’s a big undertaking, so a lot of consultants have been coming and going to get a look for themselves. Some members of the family just want the land cleared off and sold, so it’s become sort of a tug-of-war.”
Nodding as he removed the keys from the ignition and pushed his door open, Jarvis said, “Okay, let’s have a look around.”
“Don’t you want to take any equipment with you?”
“This is just a walk-through,” Jarvis said. “Our closest tech crew is in Minneapolis. I’m going out to Milwaukee on other business, so I thought I’d take a look at the place rather than stick you at the back of a six month waiting period.”
“Oh. All right. Do you still want to hear the stories?”
“Just tell me about your own personal experiences,” Jarvis replied.
That was enough to get Steve going. He excitedly recounted stories ranging from feeling like he was being watched when poking around in dirty old rooms to sightings of glowing orbs in hallways. He capped it off by describing a shadowy figure lurking in a particular section of the house. When he tried to get a closer look, he heard screams coming from the basement.
For a seasoned member of the Midwestern Ectological Group, it was all pretty standard stuff. Jarvis nodded and reacted accordingly when Steve got worked up about something, but he didn’t share the other man’s enthusiasm. All too often, old run-down houses were thought to be haunted when they were simply old and run-down. Rotting beams creaked. Animals nested in basements and attics. Old pipes moaned under proper weather conditions. For those reasons, all MEG branches sent scouts to potential sites rather than waste the time and money it took to dispatch an entire team and its equipment for a full investigation. In fact, Jarvis had some business in Milwaukee, so he was forced to take the job that would normally be handed off to one of the MEG rookies. So far, he was confident that he wouldn’t be there too long.
“All right,” he said as he got to the front of the mansion, “show me the spots with the most activity.”
That brightened Steve’s face and he immediately launched into another story about screams and other sounds that came from under the floor. By the time he was through with the basics of that story, both men had their hard hats on and were walking through the sturdy, imposing front doorway.
As he listened, Jarvis examined the old mansion with the help of a flashlight that could have easily doubled for a nightstick. It looked as if a few cleaning crews had been there recently to gather up the rubble that had fallen when the main staircase collapsed. Dirt was thick upon the tiled floor, and
broken furniture lay strewn along almost every wall. The upper portion of the staircase was propped up by wooden supports that were too squared and clean to be anything more than a month or two old. Most of the flooring at the top of the staircase was gone, leaving a wide balcony overhead instead of a proper second level.
“You said a family lived here?” Jarvis asked. “Did anyone die here?”
“Plenty of people died here,” Steve replied with a quick nod. “Sometime in the late 1880s this whole property was turned into an asylum by a man named Jonah Lancroft. Depending on which of Lancroft’s decedents you ask, he was anything from a misguided, poorly trained doctor to an overpaid prison warden. Other members of the family say he was a philanthropist who tried to run a reformatory for the surrounding communities. You can guess which sides want the place knocked down and which want it restored.”
“Which side of the fence do you land on?”
“Oh, I’d love to see this place restored! I’m the one who thought about getting it officially declared as haunted, so there’d be some reason to keep it from being demolished. There’s already been plenty of interest from some of the Lancroft family in coming back here to see if they might recognize something of Jonah Lancroft himself.”
Jarvis nodded and immediately regretted asking the question. From this point on he couldn’t allow himself to believe any of Steve’s stories. “So you heard scraping sounds?”
“Yep. They came from the floor.”
“You’re sure there’s not just some animals scraping under the floor?”
“The sounds come from the places where workers have heard the screaming.”
“And you’re sure there’s no animals? I mean, there were a lot of farmhouses and woods around here,” Jarvis explained. “It could be damn near anything.”
Rather than put any more of his own claims to the test, Steve nodded and said, “That’s why we called MEG. There are plenty of animals around here, but they don’t seem to come too close to the place. In fact, we haven’t seen so much as a squirrel for weeks. We called you guys because nobody else will check up on all the other claims.”
Skinners: Blood Blade Page 7