Cole sat on the edge of the bed, turned on the television and flipped through some reruns. He dug the phone from his pocket and thought about giving Jason a call just to let him know he was still alive. There was still the matter of fixing those bugs for Hammer Strike, but the phone’s battery died before he could scroll through his stored numbers.
“Cole?” Paige said, while sticking her head out from the bathroom. “Could you bring me my bag?”
“It’s right there,” he groused as he shook his phone in the misguided belief that he could somehow frighten the battery into charging up again.
“I know, but…oh never mind.” Stomping out of the bathroom, she clutched a towel to her chest and walked over to the bags that had been piled beneath a colorful sketch of oversized leaves. Her hair was wet and pulled behind her head, showing off her high cheekbones and the crooked line of her nose. Even though her expression was on the perturbed side, it somehow worked when combined with the quickness of her movements and the water that had beaded upon her skin.
Cole watched her discreetly while playing with his phone, but realized his subtlety wasn’t quite up to par when he saw the annoyed roll of her eyes. Shaking her head, she clutched her bag so it held her towel against her stomach as she turned on the balls of her feet and stomped back toward the bathroom. The damp towel spun with her and kept her front covered pretty well. Fortunately for him, the towel wasn’t wrapped all the way around and he was given a quick, glorious peek at her back. Paige’s wet hair hung down to a spot just below her shoulder blades. The smooth curve of her spine was surrounded on both sides by taut muscle that led his eyes to the perfectly rounded curves of her buttocks.
After she’d disappeared into the bathroom, Cole tossed his phone onto a nearby table and walked over to the plastic bag from the outlet clothing store they’d hit earlier that day. Before he could pull the tags off his new shirts, the bathroom door swung open and Paige stepped out wearing a baggy T-shirt and a clean pair of cutoff sweatpants. “No Walter yet?” she asked.
“Not unless he’s got some of that invisible crap on him. By the way, I’ve got an idea for that.”
“Save it,” Paige snapped as she plopped down on the bed and searched for the TV remote. “I’m too tired.” While she flipped through the channels, someone knocked on the door. “Could you get that?” she asked.
“Is this some sort of initiation thing? The rookie gets to do all the grunt work?”
With a cute grin, Paige replied, “Yep.”
He stepped up to the door and put one eye to the peephole. All he could see through the cracked fish-eye lens was a tall figure in a long dark coat. The man had a large suitcase in each hand and what looked like an overstuffed gym bag under one arm. Without setting any of the bags down, the figure tapped his foot against the door and waited.
“That you, Walter?” Cole asked.
Behind Cole, Paige reached for another one of her own bags and found a .45 pistol.
“Yeah it’s me,” the man outside grunted as he lifted his chin to show his face to the door. “And you’re about to get a real good look at my ass through that peephole if you don’t open the damn door.”
Cole opened the door, but Paige didn’t lower her gun until she could see Walter’s face. At the moment, that face wasn’t happy.
“Sorry about that,” Cole said. “Just being safe. Need any help with those bags?”
“No, I’ve got ’em. Thanks for ruining Shimmy’s for me, by the way. I’m probably banned from there now. Got a place for me to set these down?”
“Anywhere you like, Walter. You want some coffee?”
“Already had plenty. How do you think I scrounged up all that gear Gerald left behind and made it here so quickly?” He kept talking as he set up his cases so they were all evenly spaced on the bed that Paige wasn’t on.
“You did follow Misonyk, right?” she asked.
Walter nodded. “Long as I could. That car was headed west when I lost it, but that means they were headed toward Janesville.”
“So they lost you?” Paige groaned.
“They sure did. Oh, and they also had a running head start and could see damn near anyone pulling away from that parking lot in their rearview mirror. You want to hold that against me too?”
Reluctantly, Paige shook her head. “Sorry. Thanks for trying, Prophet.”
“Wish I could’ve done more, but I should be able to pick up on them later.” Tapping his temple, he added, “I know where they’re going, remember?”
“Oh,” Paige grumbled skeptically. “That’s right.”
Motioning toward the second large case, Walter added, “The Brown rifle is in there. It’s not the .50 cal, but it should do all right.”
“Oooh,” Cole purred as he reached out to touch the rifle. “I’ve been using these since Sniper Ranger 2! Can I have a look?”
“You were a Ranger?” Walter asked.
“Oh, no. Sniper Ranger. It’s a video game. I…uh…” The more he spoke, the more he wanted to go stand in a corner. “I design games. Never mind.”
“If you designed Sniper Ranger 1, you’ve got some answering to do. The specs for most of those weapons were ridiculous.”
“I know!” Cole replied. “I researched them all for Two and tried to make it more realistic.”
“I’ll have to give that one a try,” Walter said. “Go on and see how she feels, since you may just have to use it.”
“I don’t want to brag, but I have fired one of these before and I was pretty good,” Cole bragged.
Looking over to Paige, Walter said, “The rounds are all coated in the antidote, so it really doesn’t matter where they hit. If it’s a Nymar, it’ll feel it.”
“I said I was a good shot,” Cole repeated.
“Then hit them in the heart and you may kill one,” Walter explained. “I won’t guarantee it, though. If you do have to go up against a human, that thing’ll drop ’em just fine. A shapeshifter, though…”
“Speaking of shapeshifters,” Paige said as she handed over one of the bundled towels she’d collected from the last hotel room Cole had rented. “Think you can get this to Daniels?”
Walter carefully unfolded the towels, dipped his fingers into the greasy residue and whistled. By this time, the towel looked as if it had a shimmering void in its center. “Oh, he’ll have some real fun with this. It’ll take me a little while to find out where he went, though.”
“Take your time, but I’ve got first dibs when he does come up with something,” Paige insisted.
“Of course.” While folding up the towels as if swaddling a baby, Walter nodded toward the gym bag and said, “There’s more antidote in there, but use it sparingly. It’s just what was left behind by those guys heading out to Philadelphia. They mentioned something about Nymar being able to ingest more and more of the stuff. Could be an immunity or possibly some sort of vaccine.”
Rolling onto her side, Paige furrowed her brow and asked, “Any reason you didn’t mention a Nymar vaccine before?”
“I pass on what I hear to MEG. Don’t you check in with those guys?”
“Yeah,” she said with a dismissive wave, “but they’re kind of…creepy.”
“They know their tech, Paige,” Walter scolded. “They also do a damn good job of putting up with the likes of you. You shouldn’t give ’em such a hard time.”
“Wait until you get hit on by every geek that answers the phone over there and see how you like it.”
Walter smirked and said, “Well, maybe if you use your sexy voice, those creepy guys will help you circulate these,” he said as he handed her a piece of paper that had obviously been torn from a small, spiral notepad.
“Are these the new lottery numbers?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah. Real winners too. I can feel it.”
Cole set the rifle down and lovingly patted the stock. “Lottery numbers? Did you get those from another dream?” When he didn’t get a joking response, he snapped his eyes back and fort
h between Walter and Paige. “Did he? Seriously?”
Walter nodded.
“Don’t get so excited,” Paige said. “He’s only right less than half the time. As long as we spread the numbers to different people around the country, the big hits barely even make the news and we’re all set up for a while.”
Cole’s skeptical grin slowly faded as he thought about all the times over the years when he’d seen reports of a bunch of people hitting the lottery and dividing the jackpot to something much less impressive than the whole amount. “I always wondered how that happened,” he muttered.
“What’s gonna happen,” Paige chided, “is that you got to make a whole lot of calls to a whole lot of people to spread a whole lot of numbers. Consider it another one of those initiation things.”
“I thought MEG was going to do that!” he said.
Paige shook her head and waggled the paper at him. “MEG does a lot for us, but those guys love their websites. If these numbers found their way onto one of those, they’d be worthless even if every single one of them hit. By the way, you won’t be e-mailing them either. Phone calls only. I’ll give you the numbers.”
Once Cole had taken the paper from her, Paige began sifting through one of Walter’s cases. When she reached the bottom, she looked up and asked, “Didn’t Gerald leave an armor kit with you?”
“I only have one pair of hands,” Walter replied patiently. “See why I meet her at the strip bars, Cole? She’s always willing to get in and get out real quick. Meeting in the real world only leads to me mixing up another batch of something or bugging one of my suppliers for something else. Makes me wish for the old days before you folks knew I could get my hands on this stuff.”
“You could always just join up with us,” Paige said as she picked up the TV remote and flipped through a few channels. “I could sure use the help, with the massacre we’re trying to avert. I still need to check up on that Half Breed den and then try to make it to Janesville with time to spare.”
“Fine,” Walter said as he motioned for Cole to follow him out of the room.
Paige nearly shot up from where she’d been resting. “You’re going to help us full-time?” she asked hopefully.
“I’ll cruise into Janesville, find that Nymar who left you in the dust tonight, see what I can see about a massacre, and then point you in the right direction when you’re through cleaning out that den. You’ll owe me, and I still want a cut of that money being offered by those pale kids in Chicago. Now, I’ve got some more cases to haul up from my van and I don’t intend on doing all the lifting myself.” With that, Walter turned and left the room.
“I’ll give him a hand,” Cole said. When he reached the door, he stopped and turned to look at Paige. She was laying on her side, propping up her head with one arm while using her free hand to work the remote. “Walter seems like a big help.”
“He is.”
“So what’s the difference between what he’s doing and what he’d do if he was an actual Skinner?”
Slipping back into her kung fu master voice, Paige replied, “Bringing sword to battleground and wielding it are two very different things, young one.”
Chapter 20
Paige woke Cole early the next morning. Walter was already gone, but was supposed to meet them at the pit just west of Clear Lake. Cole grabbed some complimentary bagels and coffee from the lobby on his way out and then loaded up the car. Since it was early enough for the haze of dawn to still be thick in the air, he didn’t mind letting Paige drive. In fact, he felt pretty good just to be in some clean clothes. It wasn’t a long trip, but he still managed to fall asleep somewhere along the way. When they arrived, they spotted one van parked in front of a deteriorating old house. It was a large, boxy model from ten years ago that had plenty of room inside and plenty of rust on the outside.
The engine of Paige’s car was still ticking when the driver’s side door to the van’s swung open and Walter stepped out.
“You found the place,” he said. “There’s a pile of rocks and crap out back. The pit’s in the middle of it all. You can’t miss it.”
Paige stretched her arms as if about to embark on a leisurely morning stroll. “Can’t you show us where it is?”
“I’m just acting as the scout on this one, remember? You guys are the ones who’re crazy enough to poke these man-eaters with a sharp stick.”
“I thought you said you’d be able to give us more help than that,” she reminded him.
Walter cocked his head to one side in preparation to defend himself. “I know what I said, Paige, and I’ll be able to help you even more than I thought. I had the same dream again last night and I managed to write down a few things.”
“What kind of things?” Cole asked with genuine curiosity.
Grateful to have a more receptive ear, Walter turned to him and replied, “I saw the news report about that massacre again, but there was someone reporting on the scene this time. She was at a park in Janesville and there was some big ugly building in the background. I got a much clearer look at it this time around.”
Paige let out a short grunt of a laugh. “Real helpful.”
“Yeah,” Walter snarled. “It is. Janesville isn’t a big place. I looked it up and there are only about six parks and a few golf courses, so it shouldn’t take me long to drive around and see which one matches what I saw.”
“How long would something like that take?” Paige asked.
He shrugged. “I should have it narrowed down to a few possibles by the end of the day. By the end of tomorrow, I could have the spot all picked out.”
Even though Paige was raking her fingers through her hair with almost enough force to pull it out at the roots, Cole was nodding enthusiastically. “Fine, Walter,” she said. “Check out your hunch. Did you get the rest of those things we needed?”
“Everything that was in Gerald’s personal stash,” he replied. “He might’ve given some stuff to some other partners, but this was all he wanted me to keep in my van. I’ll leave it here for you.”
Paige nodded. “He always trusted you, Walter. Wait a second. Last night you said you had to go scrounge for that stuff.”
“I stopped back at Shimmy’s,” Walter admitted with a shrug. “I’ve still got other jobs to do, you know.”
“Go check out Janesville,” she said without the annoyed tone that had been in her voice before. “Give us a call as soon as you find anything. Even if you don’t find anything, check in tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a quick salute. He tossed a friendlier wave to Cole as he headed for his van and unloaded a few things from the back.
Paige walked toward the house with quick, purposeful steps and stopped at the front door. “Do we have this place to ourselves?” she shouted toward the van.
“Apart from the Half Breeds sleeping out back, yeah,” Walter shouted back. “The owners think the MEG guys are conducting one of their investigations over the next few days.”
Suddenly, Cole became very uncomfortable with the fact that their voices rolled through the air with the subtlety of an incoming thunderstorm. Even as he jogged to catch up to Paige, he winced with every crunch of his hiking boots against the gravel. “Didn’t you say Half Breeds are werewolves?” he asked.
“Yep,” she replied as she stepped into the cavernous foyer of the mansion. “Real nasty ones too.”
“Then shouldn’t we be quieter?”
She considered that for a moment. Leaning forward, she lowered her voice to a stage whisper and said, “I think Prophet’s losing his mind.”
“You don’t think there are any Half Breeds here?” Cole asked hopefully.
“I believe what he sees with his own eyes. What he dreams, though…that’s another story. If there is a den here, any city within miles of it is in trouble. All that massacre talk could’ve just been run of the mill extrapolating. Psychics pull that shit all the time.”
To drive the sense of foreboding even further into him, the
next thing Cole heard was the spinning of tires against gravel and the howl of the old van’s motor. The van sped away quickly and noisily. Once it was gone, the only sounds within the mansion were the tapping of his and Paige’s boots against the dirty floor, and the rustling of wind through broken walls.
While it was much too late in the year for it to be warm in Wisconsin, the air seemed even cooler inside the mansion. Cole walked along a path that was fairly well marked by new boards upon the cracked floor. Sawhorses connected by plastic tape kept them from wandering too close to crumbling banisters or a dangerously weak section of ceiling. Even with all the precautions set up, however, he couldn’t help but feel he was tempting fate just by being in that place.
“How are you doing over there?” Paige asked.
“Funny you should ask.”
“Are you hearing Misonyk’s voice again?”
Cole blinked and had to struggle to pull himself off one line of thought and onto another. “No. Didn’t you already take care of that?”
She reached out to push aside the sheet of plastic that separated the kitchen from the backyard. “If you feel even the slightest twinge that Misonyk may be around, you let me know. This is important.”
After taking a few steps into the sprawling land behind the mansion, Cole saw the pile of rocks that Walter had mentioned. He also saw a spot where the rubble dipped down into what could very possibly be a hole or a pit. There wasn’t more than twenty to thirty yards between the back door and the start of that rubble, but he suddenly felt as if it was several miles away. “This is it,” he muttered.
“We don’t know that yet,” Paige replied as she curled her fingers in to scratch her palms. “But I think we’re pretty close to something.”
“No. I mean this is it for me. I’ve come so far that I won’t be able to go back. I either get hunted down by these things or I hunt them.”
Paige shrugged. “That’s how it is for all of us. Things may not have gone very smoothly here, but I couldn’t have gotten this far on my own. Just having someone watching my back has been a big help. Something’s happening and we’re going to need all the help we can get when the time comes.”
Skinners: Blood Blade Page 24