Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) (16 page)

She nodded. “There are other spots as well, but none of them are as close as they should be to another one. Just the fact that so many popped up so close to all these people is strange. Usually, when Half Breeds get together and hunt, they’re spotted and are either killed by us or taken down by regular people.”

“People who take down Half Breeds don’t sound too regular to me.”

“Half Breeds are fast and mean, but they can be shot. It takes a whole mess of bullets or possibly getting run down by a car, but it can be done. Full Bloods…not so much. Since the cops don’t know they’re dealing with a fast moving creature that likes to burrow and hide underground, there’s probably other dens that nobody’s even found yet.”

“Maybe the Half Breeds want to hit a spot with the most people.”

Paige studied the map carefully. “All Half Breeds do is eat and run. Full Bloods are the ones who think and plan.”

“And they can create Half Breeds whenever they want. This reminds me of a game that my boss was working on a couple years ago.”

“Everything reminds you of some game,” Paige snapped as she closed up the atlas. “Get moving.”

Cole pulled back into the stream of traffic and resumed his course. “It was an RTS. That’s real-time strategy, for those who don’t know.”

“I know what it is. I played
Dueling Warlords
through most of high school.”

“Really? That’s kind of sexy. I just picture you in a school uniform allocating resources, managing an army, and sending out attack forces—”

“Was there a point to this?” Paige asked.

It took a second for Cole to shake the imagery from his head, and it would have been a lot easier to do if a bit more time had passed since he’d actually seen Paige in pigtails. Finally, he said, “If you want to take over a fortified spot on the map, you set up your units wherever you can all around that spot. If you can sneak some bombs into the middle of enemy territory, that’s even better. Could this be something like that? I mean, planting a Half Breed den in the middle of so many people could cause more deaths than a bomb. And considering a portion of the victims will turn into more Half Breeds…”

“That could make things a lot worse for a long time,” Paige said with a nod. “Take Rockhill to Sixty-eighth Street and go left. So if that Full Blood from the pictures wanted to do a whole lot of damage, planting Half Breeds is a hell of a way to do it. If we don’t clean out every last den, Half Breeds will roll through this city like an army.”

Cole raised his eyebrows and said, “The last time we saw that Full Blood in Wisconsin, it said it was going to reclaim its territory. Maybe it meant KC.”

“Or maybe this is just the first spot it’s marking as its own.” Shaking her head, she added, “It won’t do us any good to try and think the way those things do. You’d have better luck figuring out what motivates a tornado. Let’s just stick to what we know. The parks seem like a natural choice for dens, but Rob told me this cemetery is where the first sighting came from.”

“Plenty of holes get dug around there.”

“Yep. There are also caretakers who would pick up on something like a hole that doesn’t belong or strange animals coming and going from it. If I don’t find something on my own, at least I’ll have someone to ask.”

“While we’re there, why don’t we just clean them out?” Cole asked. “We’ve got guns and some better ammo. Let’s hit them while they’re sleeping.”

“I think Officer Stanze liked me, but not enough to give me a pass if we get hauled in for shooting up his city. Even if we forget about the guns, the last thing we need to do is get a bunch of those things worked up and have one get away.”

“Then what the hell are we here for?” Cole snapped while tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “People are already dead! I thought we came to help.”

Paige didn’t get angry and she didn’t lose her patience. She simply placed a hand on his shoulder and replied, “We are here to help. Just ask yourself something. How long would a game last if you went charging into a fight before you knew what you were up against?”

Gritting his teeth, he replied, “Not very long.”

“Right. We’re scoping things out and taking a head count right now. Please tell me you’d do the same thing if you would have thought it over for a few more seconds.”

“Yeah,” Cole sighed. “I guess I would’ve gotten there eventually.”

“Good. We’ve got weapons and tactics that have been working for a couple hundred years or so. I can immunize you against werewolf bites, treat Nymar infections, and even heal some ugly wounds, but we’re not invincible. We need to think. That way, when it’s time to fight, we stand a better chance of winning. Trust me, that time’s coming soon enough.”

Forest Hill Cemetery was a large, sprawling property surrounded by a low stone fence. Paige and Cole stopped at a short section of broken sidewalk where one of the cement squares had been torn up to reveal what looked like a manhole. A larger portion of the ground behind that section had been pulled up as well, and the whole stretch was marked off with bright orange plastic fencing held up by a couple of iron bars.

Paige huddled down next to one of the bars at a spot where the temporary barrier had come loose. “Smell that?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Cole replied as he pulled in a lungful of air tainted by the stench of Half Breed. “Makes me long for stuff like hot tar or dead skunk.”

“Listen.”

Cole stood on a square of sidewalk that was still intact and watched the few people in the cemetery along with the cars driving by on Troost Avenue. “I can’t hear anything.”

“Come closer to me.”

Reluctantly, he took a few steps closer, but at her tug on his pants leg, dropped down to one knee beside her. Paige’s hair had an almost imperceptible hint of strawberry scent from her regular shampoo. Whenever she got around to cleaning up after this long day, it would smell good enough to drive him crazy.

“Hear that?” she asked.

Fortunately, he heard something before he had to admit
he was either deaf or sniffing her hair.
Un
fortunately, what he heard was quick, heavy panting echoing from somewhere under the sidewalk. He nodded and promptly eased away from the opening.

“That’s a big one,” she whispered.

“Sounds like there could be a lot of them.”

Paige led the way back to the car and jumped in. Once the door was closed, she spoke in an excited rush. “There’s enough room down there for more Half Breeds than we can clean out right now, and the only thing keeping them in that pit is the sunlight. They’re ready to run, which means there’s not enough time for us to go all the way back to where Daniels is staying. We’d only distract him. Let’s get a room somewhere around here and we can get to work. I’ve got mixing to do and you need to find us a good wide-open spot.”

“What kind of spot?”

In a thick cowboy drawl, she told him, “A spot to make our last stand, pardner.” Wincing, she added, “Bad choice of words, but you know what I mean. We need to bring these Half Breeds all together and take them out.”

“How do we bring them anywhere?” Cole asked. “Drop invitations into their dirt pits?”

“Bait,” Paige replied with a grin.

The first thing Paige had insisted upon when Cole signed up to work with her was that he pack a bag of clothes and supplies that would always be kept in the car. She had plenty of cases tucked away in the Cav, about half of which were hidden well enough to make it through most international border inspections. They didn’t have to pass anything along those lines to check into the Holiday Inn on Westport Road, but Paige pushed her luck by insisting that Cole help her drag the dead Half Breed up to their suite on the fifth floor. The room cost an arm and a leg, and there was barely enough space for Paige to unpack everything she needed.

“Why do hotel clerks look at you like you’re a criminal when you pay cash?” she squawked while dragging the stinking garbage bag the final couple of steps to a spot next to the luggage rack.

“Why do they insist on calling a room like this a suite?” Cole replied. “Some mysteries defy explanation.”

“No, I’m serious. I paid cash, in full. He doesn’t need to bother with a credit check. They’ve got all their money, but he looked at me like I was going to open a meth lab in here.”

“Oh no,” Cole chuckled. “Instead, you’re going to cut up a dead werewolf. What could be wrong with that guy?”

“Fine, smartass. Just for that, you get to do the mixing while I clean up.”

“What am I mixing?” he asked.

“It’s an old Skinner recipe that Half Breeds can smell for miles in any direction. We’ll need to place it around the city and near those dens, but it should bring them right to us.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t sound like a great idea.”

“Sure it is,” Paige said as she rooted around in one of the larger cases. “We get to pick our spot, draw those things away from where too many people will get hurt, and take them out. This is how Skinners have worked for so many years without everyone learning about us.”

Cole stretched his aching legs and leaned back. “What would be the harm in that? I mean, why not just tell the cops about all this crap and let them deal with them? Half Breeds can be killed by big enough guns, and there’s no shortage of those.”

“Tried that once. Actually,” Paige said as she straightened up and tapped her chin, “I think that’s been tried three or four times. Once was in England a couple hundred years ago. There was a big Half Breed growth spurt, which led to one hell of a hunt that ended with a lot of rotting bodies of all shapes, sizes, and breeds. Apart from the people killed after those Half Breeds were whipped into a frenzy, the scientists of the day had a ball dissecting the carcasses to see what made them tick. All that unnatural blood and bacteria and Lord knows what else mixed with the air and water to make a whole new problem called the Black Plague. They didn’t know that when you get that many dead werewolves in one spot, you gotta burn ’em.”

“Bullshit,” Cole said. “The Black Plague was caused by rats or fleas or something.”

She shrugged, picked out a few containers that looked more suited for holding leftover veggies, and went right on. “Then there was a few of the smaller villages in the original colonies. Those Pilgrims ran into a little shapeshifter problem when they got to the New World and they did the proper thing by telling the authorities…or whatever they had for authorities. As far as we know, some of the creatures were killed, but not before most of the villagers were killed. They didn’t do a complete enough job, got on the wrong side of a very bad thing, and got completely wiped out by whatever came by later to finish them off. The Natives only survived because they knew when to cut and run. They also knew you don’t screw with a pack of monsters unless you know how to screw every last one of them into the ground so far they won’t get up again.”

“You don’t even know what got them?” Cole asked.

“No survivors. All that’s left to record the incident is a few pieces of a journal from a Skinner who was in training when he left England. Probably just a few pieces of that Skinner left too. Then,” she said as she removed a scalpel from the case and walked over to the garbage bag, “there was the incident in New York.”

“You’re just making this up to scare me, right?”

“You can’t be scared if it’s just bullshit, right?” she asked. “Anyway, there were accounts of some kind of monster ripping through a few of the gangs that used to run New York City back in 1904 or so. As far as we can tell, it was a Full Blood. The gangs tried to protect their streets, the cops tried to rein in the gangs, and everyone got on the bad side of the Full Blood. By the time the bodies stopped dropping, they had to write the whole bloodbath off as a turf war.”

A year ago Cole wouldn’t have believed a word of any of this. But if Paige was making this stuff up, she was doing an awfully good job of selling it. “What happened?” he asked.

She stopped with her hands poised over the carcass and the scalpel ready to cut into the dead werewolf’s stomach. “We don’t really know.”

“Weren’t there any Skinners in New York back then? There had to be.”

“Sure. At least two or three, but they didn’t survive. Some letters were sent back and forth asking for help with some creature they called Standing Bear, but nobody got there in time. Those Skinners were never heard from again, a bunch of people were killed, and the survivors thought it best to cover up the whole thing and hope the Full Blood just went away.”

Cole’s eyes narrowed and he let half a grin creep onto his face. “I know there were gang wars in New York City back in the early 1900s. Those couldn’t have all been Full Bloods wreaking havoc.”

“Not
all
of them were,” Paige assured him. “But
one
of them was, and it was a doozy. That’s how all of this stuff gets lost or goes unnoticed. There’s plenty of crazy, violent shit going on every day in every part of the world. Most of it’s caused by humans, but some of it isn’t. There’s enough of the human variety for most everyone to accept a little more.”

Grabbing onto the dead Half Breed’s fur, Paige began cutting. The tone in her voice was the same as when she’d been picking barbecue from her teeth at lunch. “The simple fact is that we don’t know exactly what makes one sort of infection cause cold sores and another cause someone to turn into a Half Breed. We understand more than most, but not all the way down to the real essence. Why do some growths turn into cancer and other ones turn into Nymar?”

“Magic? Well…shitty magic.”

“Might as well be,” Paige replied. “Skinners have been trying to figure it out for years. After a lot of trial and error, we can whip up some good stuff, but we just don’t know all the specifics. We can pluck away at our research because there’s no huge organization hounding us. If a government gets involved, they’ll have bigger agendas. Eventually something gets leaked and someone else digs too deep for information, that stuff gets spread around and it causes panic. If it gets ignored, then there really wasn’t any reason to break our traditions in the first place. Too many uninformed people messing around with stuff they don’t understand causes very bad things. Until we figure out more of the bigger answers,
it’s best to just put out whatever fires we can and let nature take its course.”

“Nature?” Cole laughed.

“Or magic or aliens or—There it is!” Suddenly, Paige’s face brightened. “Come over here. Take a look at this.” When Cole was close enough to see, she removed a small dark sac from the Half Breed carcass. It looked like sausage casing filled with glue. “This is what you’re looking for when you’re mixing up shapeshifter bait.”

“Aww gawd,” Cole moaned as he used one hand to squeeze his nose shut and cover his mouth. It was difficult to breathe that way, but with the stink that came up from the werewolf’s innards, that didn’t seem like a bad thing.

“Watch and learn, Cole. This is a time-honored tradition passed down through generations.”

“Are you really trying to make this seem like a proud moment?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

“It ain’t working.”

“Watch anyway,” Paige snapped. “You need to mix up this crap while I shower and take a nap. There’s a long night ahead of us.”

In the space of twenty minutes the top spot in Cole’s mind for “most disgusting life experience” was replaced about half a dozen times. Ten minutes after that he was sitting at a desk in a corner of the room, mixing ingredients from Paige’s supplies into a bowl and kneading it into a paste with his bare hands. Every so often he had to squish some of the stuff from the sausage casing into the mix, knead some more, and then add water. The only saving grace was the distraction of Paige’s warbling singing voice as she took a shower.

Hearing her through the open door, Cole took his hands from the bowl in front of him and reached for some water to add to the mixture. “To hell with this. I’m jumping in the shower next.”

“You’ll just have to get that stuff on you again. Besides, I’m the one that’s been sweating like a pig in that damn leather for half the night.”

“Then I at least get a nap! You can’t be the only one to
get some rest.” As he’d spoken, Cole twisted around to look at Paige. She stepped from the bathroom wearing a pair of faded jeans and a fresh shirt while vigorously rubbing her hair with a hotel towel.

“I was going to show you how to skin that Half Breed,” she said, “but I could just do it myself and put some body armor together. It’s not like there won’t be plenty more for you to practice on when we’re done.”

“Why even bother with armor?” Cole grunted. “You said supernatural creatures can rip each other up, so what good is that gonna do anyway?”

“Their hides can still take a lot of punishment. Even if they just stop a few claws and teeth, it’ll keep you alive longer than regular stuff. Kevlar might as well be toilet paper against a Half Breed.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

She stepped up behind him, dropped her towel and tapped his shoulder. “Go on and catch some sleep. You’ve got more than enough of this stuff mixed. I’ll get started on the rest.” When Cole looked at her freshly scrubbed face, she gave him a smile that had an apologetic curve to it. “You need to sleep,” she said. “I can’t have you trying to run on half a tank.”

“What’s the plan, exactly?” he asked.

“Well, we need to place that stuff you mixed around town so when those Half Breeds come out for the night, they come to where we want them to go instead of wherever they can take down a quick meal.”

“Will they really come to us?”

“That stuff makes them crazy. It’s a blend of pheromones that attracts Half Breeds to one another. We also need to find a spot to take them,” Paige continued. “Once we do, we’ll air out some more of that mixture and wait for our guests to arrive.”

“But you already said there are more dens around than the ones we found.”

“After all the casualties that have piled up, I’d rather take our chances in a hard fight than allow those Half Breeds to run wild another night. I’ve got some extra firepower in the
car, and we’re both ready to take out a good number without firing a shot. I’ve been watching you, Cole,” she added while placing a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll do great.”

The warmth in Cole’s chest was put there by the confident smile on Paige’s face. After spending the day thinking about innocent people getting ripped to shreds and gazing into reeking pits, it was nice to have something to live for.

Cole slept for an hour or two and woke up when the sun was still shining through the window. Its light was a bit warmer and duller than it had been during lunch, which told him it wouldn’t be around much longer. Paige was busy placing strips of Half Breed skin inside of harnesses resembling bulletproof vests that had been pulled apart, gutted, and re-stuffed.