Teeth of Beasts (Skinners)

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  “Sure, Rico. It’s in the bottom of my purse next to the gum and mascara.”

  “Okay, then. Cole! Gimme that GPS thing.”

  Reluctantly, he handed Romana over.

  Rather than marvel at the improved touch technology or any of the optional extras in the programming package, Rico switched it off and held the device up to the wall so the symbols were reflected on the black screen.

  “Hey! Those are exactly like the symbols at the reformatory!”

  “The ones in Henry’s cell would have been to keep something in,” Rico explained. “These are to keep something out. One’s written forward and the other one’s backward. Nice and easy. If I knew exactly what each of these markings here meant, I could even tell you who this was written for.”

  “So those runes you taught Paige really work?” Cole asked.

  Rico ground his teeth together as if every fiber of his being wanted to say something but he just couldn’t get the words out.

  “No,” Paige said. “They don’t.”

  “She’s right,” Rico sighed. “The runes I know work okay sometimes, but not like these. It’s a lost art. There used to be something else, some other element that really put the zip in these things. It may be something from back in the day when Skinners were friendlier with the Gypsy clans, or it could just be something that got lost in translation over the years. I learned a good chunk of the runic language from books and old journals, but not how to give them that old pep. I’m sure the MEG guys have read every book on ghosts and demons front to back, but that don’t mean they can summon or even communicate with ’em.”

  “Maybe we can call someone who does know,” Cole offered. “Like someone from back in the old days?”

  “Don’t think so,” Rico chuckled. “The old days I’m talkin’ about are somewhere back in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. But one thing’s for sure,” he added as he dug a little spiral notepad from his jacket, “these were put here by a Skinner who knows his shit. They’re keeping this place sealed off from certain things comin’ in, and since we got here without too much trouble, I’d say we ain’t the target. Those symbols along that other wall over there are what’s screwin’ with our perception.” Rico removed a pen from the spiral rings of the notebook and tapped it against his chin. “All this stuff is protecting and hiding something, though. Give me a few minutes and I should be able to get us in.”

  “In where?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t know, but I bet it’s good.”

  Cole and Paige patrolled the house with their weapons drawn, waiting for someone or something to find them. After searching the cramped, empty house for thirty long minutes, they longed for the distraction of finding someone, even Henry kicking down the front door. But they were still taken by surprise when they found a lumpy figure sitting with his back pressed against the back wall of a closet in the house’s only bedroom.

  Extending her sickle in one hand while keeping the machete closer to her body, Paige whispered, “Is that you, Daniels?”

  “Y-Yes.”

  When he heard the muffled voice, Cole rushed into the room behind Paige, with his spear at the ready. Sure enough, Daniels sat in the closet with all of his equipment piled around him. “I searched this room when we got here,” he said. “I looked in that closet. Where the hell were you?”

  “I…was hesitant to step through the curtain when you three disappeared,” the Nymar told him. “I needed a minute to…collect myself.”

  “Didn’t you hear us in the other room?”

  Daniels nodded meekly, but pushed himself farther back into the dark. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

  Paige lowered herself to one knee and watched him carefully. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why are you sorry?”

  “Back in Kansas City…I destroyed the Blood Blade.”

  “That’s done,” she said with strained patience and a hint of resentment. “You were trying to work on the ink, I was rushing you and—”

  “No! I didn’t want to break the blade apart like that! I only wanted to take some more samples, but he made me do it! He made me do it and then he made me think I wanted to do it. I sort of knew what was going on, but then I didn’t. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.”

  Paige dropped her weapons, grabbed the Nymar by the front of the shirt and pulled him sharply to his feet. “Who made you do it?”

  “Henry,” Daniels squeaked. “The Mind Singer. It’s what he does. He spoke to me, whispered into my brain while you were in Kansas City and told me to destroy the Blood Blade. When I was chipping off samples of the blade I just…kept going.”

  “And he didn’t tell you to get rid of the pieces?” Cole asked.

  Daniels looked over to him, back at Paige, and back again until his movements became an insistent shake of his head. “Once it was done, Henry was happy. I wanted to tell you, but I just couldn’t get myself to say the words until now. I wanted to say that he was in my head, but I just couldn’t and I don’t know why! I’m so sorry! Henry wanted the blade destroyed and then he made me forget about it. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why haven’t you said this before?” Cole asked. “Surely there had to be times when Henry had his guard down.”

  “I didn’t even remember what I did until now!” Daniels insisted.

  “And how do we know you’re not still talking for him?” Paige added. “We’re probably closer to Henry now than we’ve ever been. It makes sense that he would want to throw us off track.”

  “It’s the runes,” Rico said from the doorway of the next room, where he’d been standing in case his partners needed backup. He tucked the Sig Sauer into the holster under his arm and said, “The runes are keeping Henry out of this place. Working with a Mind Singer may come in handy, but Lancroft ain’t stupid. If he didn’t keep someplace safe from the freak, he wouldn’t be the one in charge. Is there a way you can test to see if Henry can hear you or not?”

  “Already did,” Daniels replied. “If I usually even think about destroying the Blood Blade, I’d forget why I brought it up. I didn’t this time, so you must be right.”

  Wheeling around to return to the room and the wall he’d been studying, Rico said, “Man, I got to find out what’s in this house.”

  Daniels shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “There’s always been something I wanted to tell you, but I could never put my finger on it.”

  When Cole charged across the room, it wasn’t because of anything he saw or sensed. It was plain, gut-level rage. Leaning into the closet, grabbing hold of Daniels and pulling him out, he slammed the balding little man against the nearest solid surface so there was no escape when he asked, “Did you intentionally screw up the ink Paige used on her arm?”

  “Cole, he—”

  “I’m not asking you, Paige! I’m asking him!”

  She refrained from saying another word. It was one of the few times he’d ever seen her back down so easily.

  Daniels tried to clear his windpipe by stretching his neck and craning his chin above Cole’s arm before he was choked into unconsciousness. When he tried to speak, his fangs drooped from their sockets and his tongue flicked out to wet his lips. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that! Paige…she saved my life. More than once, she—”

  “Maybe you didn’t do it on purpose,” Cole interrupted while thumping Daniels solidly against the wall. “Maybe Henry told you to do it. Maybe you remember it now.”

  “But Henry didn’t know details like that. All he asked was basic things like—”

  “Like what? Hurt the Skinners? Hurt Paige? Is that basic enough for Henry?”

  No longer struggling to breathe, Daniels hung from Cole’s arm like a dirty shirt on a clothesline. “I don’t remember.”

  “Try.”

  From behind him, Paige said, “That’s enough, Cole. He told me the ink wasn’t ready. I was the one who pushed for it. I was the one who used it, so I’m the one who messed up my arm.”

  “I already heard tha
t from you, Paige. I want to hear it from him.” Narrowing his eyes, Cole glared at Daniels in a way that he’d never looked at another living thing. He didn’t see a man who’d helped them out of life and death situations. He didn’t see a fellow geek who had the best collection of action figures outside of a museum. He didn’t even see a guy in a tough spot who had a girlfriend waiting at home for him. All he saw was someone who wouldn’t draw another breath if he didn’t choose his next words very, very carefully.

  Slowly, Daniels shook his head. “I tried to tell her not to use that stuff. I worked on it day and night.”

  “Except when you were chipping the Blood Blade into pieces.”

  Daniels didn’t have anything to say to that. He clenched his eyes shut, almost as if he welcomed the pressure of Cole’s forearm against his throat.

  Touching Cole’s shoulder, Paige said, “It’s okay. If Daniels wanted to hurt me, he would have given me that stuff way before I took it. Lord knows I would have been stupid enough to inject it.”

  That didn’t make things easier, but it made sense. Plus, the touch Cole felt was from her right hand brushing against the side of his neck. Paige’s skin was soft, and the muscles were moving like something other than a clunky prosthetic. Finally, he eased back and allowed Daniels to breathe.

  Even after he’d been freed, Daniels didn’t move away. “I’m sorry,” he said while rubbing his throat. “I don’t blame you for not believing me, but if there’s anything I can do to—”

  “Forget it,” Cole said. “I just…I had to make sure.” He turned away to look out a small window set up high in the wall, as if to overlook something as tall as a dresser. Other than the cheap shades on the window, there were only more runes scrawled in an orderly set of rows along the middle of the wall. Outside, a little woman walked a big dog on one side of a deserted street. The night sky hung over it all like a black canopy faded by the city’s glow, and the black scent from the wall hung in front of it.

  “Hey!” Rico shouted from the front room. “Let me know if this does anything.”

  The black trails drifting from the runes tapered into wisps before cutting off completely.

  Paige jogged out of the bedroom, anxious for any bit of progress she could get. “I think those runes are weakened. Is that what you meant to do?”

  Rico studied a cluster of runes on the wall between the front room and the kitchen. Even though it was at the other end of the house, it was still within spitting distance of the bedroom. Cole emerged from the bedroom and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a door being covered up by these runes,” Rico told him with a scowl. “Whatever Lancroft is protecting has gotta be through there.”

  When Cole looked at the wall, he could only see more runes. “What door?” he asked.

  Screwing his face into a confused grimace, Rico grunted, “Damn! It was just there a second ago.”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake,” Paige said as she stomped toward the wall. “Just start wiping these symbols off and let’s see what’s here.”

  “You can’t just wipe them off,” Rico insisted. When Paige tried using the sleeve of her jacket to do just that, she was hit by a jolt comparable to sticking her finger in a socket. “Told ya,” he sighed.

  Cole watched the street through the front window, saw the little lady with the dog stationed at a patch of grass on the nearby corner. Before he could get too suspicious, the dog squatted.

  “What if we break the wall?” Paige asked.

  “Tried that while you were in the other room,” Rico told her as he turned to show both her and Cole the left side of his jacket. “It didn’t work out so well.” The heavy canvas had been burnt to ash, and the leather patch on his shoulder was scorched black. “Melted a few layers of skin on my arm, but that’s all right,” he added with a tired smirk. “Chicks dig the scars. I weakened ’em a little, but you can’t just go around busting walls down. Whoever put them there will know if that happens.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, Paige! I’m not sure. I’ve been tryin’ to figure these things out through books and old letters since before you came along, but it’s like learning how to fix an engine without ever gettin’ your hands on one. Just give me a minute to think before you start kicking anything down.”

  “The runes we saw at Lancroft Reformatory were mostly intact,” she said. “But Henry came and went as he pleased. Half Breeds made a den there, and I sure as hell didn’t feel any magical barrier.”

  Squatting down to follow a line of blocky script that turned vertically toward the floor, Rico said, “That whole reformatory was a heap of rubble. You think maybe those runes were deactivated on purpose once Lancroft moved along? Or is it possible they’re why the reformatory was a rock pile?”

  Paige pursed her lips as she thought about that. Unable to come up with an answer that would further her cause, she left Rico alone and joined Cole at the window.

  Across the street and two houses down, a door opened and a man with a gut big enough to hang over his boxers stepped onto his stoop. A compact car parked in the middle of the street, and its driver stepped out to join the woman and her dog. All of them turned toward the man in boxers to watch as he repeatedly snapped his head violently to one side.

  “Uh, you may want to turn those protection runes back on,” Cole announced. “Either this place has a Neighborhood Watch or someone knows we’re here.”

  The first one to come to Cole’s side was Daniels. He looked nervously out the window as more people stepped outside. “He’s right. These people are displaying some troubling symptoms.”

  Paige took in the scene with a simple, “Huh. That’s strange. Looks like our Rune Master wasn’t as careful as he thought.”

  “How bad is it?” Rico asked.

  Boxer Guy’s head straightened to a proper angle before twisting viciously to one side. Cole couldn’t hear the crunch of breaking bones, but recognized the way the man’s body swelled to another shirt size. “It’s about to get a whole lot worse.”

  Henry’s thick head swung at the end of his broken neck, but his lips flickered as he spoke in a string of unending syllables. Although Cole couldn’t hear the words, a few choppy sounds drifted through the back of his mind like snippets of a song from a poorly received radio station.

  Rico looked back and forth from his notepad and frantically examined one symbol after another. “I don’t feel a Full Blood anywhere near here!”

  “He’s in another body,” Cole said, “I’m looking right at him.”

  Rico’s hand trembled as he reached out to touch the wall. Finally, he used the tip of his first two fingers to trace the runes in front of him while making a few lines that hadn’t been predrawn.

  Outside, Henry screamed at the other neighbors who’d gathered around him. When they screamed back, dark viscous fluid poured from their mouths. The only one who wasn’t infected was the dog, and it ran away as fast as its four legs could carry it. As the underdressed man in boxers got closer the house, the broken transmissions in Cole’s brain became a bit clearer.

  …s, Skinners…see you. I see…ou. IseeyouIseeyou-Iseeeeeyoouuu.

  At least a couple dozen people had stepped out of their houses or cars to gather in the street. Pestilence must have flowed through Philadelphia a lot worse than it had in St. Louis because there were no clean faces to be seen. They looked at the little house with eyes that oozed black tears. As Henry loped toward the house’s front porch, all of the Mud People followed.

  Both of Paige’s batons flowed into their bladed forms. “Can you get those runes to work or not?” she asked Rico.

  “Probably.”

  “You’ve got five seconds.”

  Henry threw himself at the door.

  “Make that three seconds!” Paige shouted while she and Cole jumped away from the front of the house.

  Henry and the Mud People thumped against the door without budging it. The panes in the windows didn’t rattle in their frames a
nd not even a speck of dust was dislodged. Outside, Henry backed away from the porch. The Mud People stared at the house and hacked up mouthfuls of thick paste.

  Henry charged the door at full steam. As soon as his feet hit the porch, something flowed from his back like a gust of wind that ruffled his shirt and appeared amid a brief flicker of illuminated dots behind him. When the man’s face punched through the door like a bloody battering ram, there was no consciousness in his eyes.

  Cole followed the barely noticeable trail of orbs as they flowed back into the broken body that lay halfway across the threshold. Lifting a freshly split head on a cracked neck, Henry moaned, “Dr. Lancroft don’t want you here.”

  Chapter 26

  The only thing Cole could think to do was kick Henry back out through the door. Henry skidded onto the porch, but immediately scrambled toward the house on all fours like a wolf in man’s clothing. No matter what face he wore, he was still there, leering at the world through bloodshot eyes and screaming through a diseased mouth.

  “Got it!” Rico announced.

  Half a second after his front end crossed the threshold, Henry was pinned down by a force that Cole saw as a murky wall of black smoke seeping from the Skinner runes. Henry’s chest and chin hit first, forcing the air from his lungs along with the very essence that had been controlling him. Orbs scattered from his back, leaving the man behind.

  Outside, the Mud People stopped.

  They were close enough for Cole to hear their strained breathing.

  “That did it, huh?” Rico said proudly.

  All of the Mud People set their sights on the front door and jogged toward the house. The fastest among them was a young woman with short blond hair and a slender frame that absorbed a flurry of orbs like water soaking into porous desert rock. Her mouth twisted into a feral snarl and her head snapped to one side. Before her spine gave way, Cole charged outside, pushed through the first wave of Mud People and cracked the side of his spear against her chin. Despite the monster possessing her, the woman’s body was still human, and the blow dropped her to the sidewalk before Henry had a chance to break her.