Teeth of Beasts (Skinners) (34 page)

“Could it have been anyone other than Lancroft?”

“Nobody else knows about this temple. My sisters could sense Elsie and me well enough to get you to this house, but if they knew more, they would have sent you straight to this room.”

“Did Elsie get out safely?”

Jordan closed her eyes and thought about it. “I suppose I could contact her to find out.”

“Do you need to meditate or something?”

“No,” the Dryad replied. “I need a phone.”

As Paige tossed her cell to the Dryad, a trembling voice came from the workshop.

“Umm, guys?”

It seemed like so long ago since they’d spoken to Daniels that the Nymar’s appearance surprised everyone in the base
ment. Rico was closest to the door, so he headed into the workshop to see what Daniels wanted.

“Cole?” Stu asked breathlessly through the earpiece. “What’s the emergency?”

Pressing the earpiece so he could distinguish one conversation from all the others, Cole said, “I need to know how to get rid of a ghost.”

“You found a ghost? Sweet! Where? Let me send a team to wherever you are so we can get some recordings first. Maybe some video.”

“No time,” Cole snapped. “I just need to know how to get rid of it.”

For a change Stu didn’t need to flip through any papers or tap the keyboard in front of him. Once he’d taken a steadying breath, he slipped right into business mode. “Okay. What sort of ghost is it? Can you see it? Hear it? Does it interact with you or is it more like a recording that just repeats itself?”

“Yes it interacts with us. That’s the main problem.”

“I can’t hold on much longer,” Jordan said.

Paige looked at him impatiently, so Cole held up a hand and said, “Quick, Stu. You’re the guys who go after these things. What do you do when you need to get rid of one?”

“We don’t really run into that sort of thing too often. Mostly just finding them is the tough part. Let’s see, you could do an exorcism. I could walk you through it.”

“An exorcism?”

“Oh for crap’s sake, hang up that damn phone!” Paige growled.

“No exorcism,” Cole said. “We’re short on priests around here. What else have you got?”

“Is this thing demonic or was it human? Do you know its history?” Stu asked. “From our experience—”

“That’s it!” Jordan said as tears rolled down her reddening cheeks. “I can’t hold him back!”

Steeling himself for the imminent arrival, Cole turned up the volume of his earpiece. “—problem is that an entity is confused,” Stu continued. “The tricky part is communicating with it.”

“Just tell me what to do before I hang up and figure something out on my own,” Cole urged.

Having organized a small convention on his end of the phone, Stu grunted and wheezed as if about to blow a fuse. A series of loud bumps and cracks were followed by the voice of someone who must have wrestled the headset completely off of him. “Does this entity know it’s dead?” the new person asked.

“Abby? Is that you?”

“Yes, Cole. I’ve got more field experience. Does this entity know it’s dead?”

As Jordon fell to her knees and then drooped forward to prop herself up with one hand, a ripple of energy flickered through the beads.

“I don’t think so,” Cole said as he held onto his spear with both hands and stood between Paige and Rico.

“Then the best thing to do is educate it. After that, it’ll probably move on.”

“Probably?”

“Either that,” Abby said tensely, “or it might really spin out of control.”

Since he couldn’t think of too many new ways for Henry to lose control, Cole asked, “What do I do?”

“Find its grave, an obituary, a funeral notice, or anything else you can physically show to someone that proves they’re dead. The simpler the better. Can you find something like that?”

Shooting a quick glance toward the examination room behind him, Cole said, “Yeah. We’ve got some pretty solid proof.”

“Then try to get the entity to follow you,” Abby told him. “But the disturbance may get worse if a grave was defiled or if other changes were made to its home.”

“What if its body was dug up?”

“Oh, that wouldn’t be good. Especially if the body isn’t in very good condition.”

Cole winced. “That’ll do for now. If I need more help, I’ll call you.” He tapped his earpiece to shut it off but left it in place. Keeping his eyes on the growing wave of energy
building within the curtain, he said, “We’re just supposed to get Henry to look at his body. That’ll convince him he’s dead and banish him, or it’ll really piss him off.”

“Great girlfriend you have there,” Paige said. “Real informative.”

Jordan finally collapsed and the beads practically spit out the body she’d been forcing to stay on its side of the bridge.

The long blade at the end of Lancroft’s staff emerged first. Rico was closest to the spot where the old man stepped out and didn’t get a chance to take aim with his .45 before the blade was shoved into his chest. Rico grabbed the staff, fired a quick shot at Lancroft and fell off the blade before it had a chance to do any more damage.

Paige’s sickle cut through empty air as the old man pivoted on his heel to deflect Cole’s spear. Lancroft then used the middle portion of his staff to shove Cole into Paige. It was all she could do to keep from slicing her partner to shreds before pushing him out of the way.

“Henry mentioned you’d found this place,” Lancroft said as the staff shortened into a pike with dual sharpened ends. Dressed in tweed pants and a matching jacket over a white shirt that was now spattered with Rico’s blood, he looked like a college professor at the tail end of a real bad day. The pike whirled in front of him while Lancroft moved toward the doorway with the stark white light flowing through it. “I see you’ve found my lab. You, more than anyone, should appreciate the accomplishments therein.”

Standing near Rico, but keeping her weapons raised, Paige felt a reassuring squeeze on her ankle. The big man was down but only for the moment. “However you’re spreading Pestilence, it’s got to stop!” she demanded. “People are dying.”

“As they always do,” Lancroft replied. “Mine isn’t the first disease to thin the herd. Isn’t it a fair price to pay to rid the country of the shapeshifters and Nymar that have spread thanks to the lackadaisical nature of your generation?”

“Spare me the rants and hand over the antidote. After killing Ned, that’s the only way to get out of this in one piece.”

Lancroft’s eyebrows flicked up and he aimed the pike at
the Skinners. He reached out with his other hand to trace his fingers along some of the runes etched into the wall. “Very admirable, but it’s too late for any of that.”

Having seen enough to get a feel for what those runes could do, Cole tucked his spear under his left arm and drew the .45 he’d been given. His first shot clipped Lancroft’s arm, but Cole wasn’t prepared for the gun’s recoil and his next round sparked against the wall.

Despite the blood pouring from his arm, Lancroft showed more anger when he surveyed the damage done by the second bullet.

There you are!

The voice echoed inside Cole’s mind as well as in the workshop, and came from the same little boy Henry had possessed earlier. He’d pulled away the boards covering the window and, judging by the bloody flaps of skin hanging from his fingers, it hadn’t been easy. Hanging halfway in and halfway out of the basement like something being excreted from the wall, the boy smiled eagerly and forced his way inside.

The instant Lancroft ducked into his lab, Cole fired another shot at him. The Snapper round missed its target but dug deep enough into the stone to break apart some of the runes Lancroft had been tracing. Since Henry was having an easier time clawing his way into the house, Cole guessed those shattered runes were another part of the house’s defenses.

Paige knelt at Rico’s side. “Here,” she whispered as she handed Tristan’s flask to him. “Drink this.”

“Just send that Nymar down here with some fucking serum,” he growled.

“You were hurt too bad for serum. Plus the wound was made by a Skinner weapon. You know those don’t heal like regular ones.”

Rico grit his teeth and looked down at his bloodied shirt. Allowing his head to fall back and knock against the floor, he spat, “Damn it.”

After pulling the stopper from the flask, she jammed it into Rico’s mouth almost hard enough to chip some teeth. When she told him what he was drinking. Rico almost spat it out.

Pausing at the door to the examination room, Cole shifted his grip on his spear so he could swing it with his left hand while maintaining his hold on the .45. He fired once into the
room, stepped through the doorway, and fired again when he caught sight of Lancroft standing with his back pressed against the wall directly beside the door. He didn’t have time to fire another shot before Lancroft dropped straight down and snapped his pike up with a flick of both wrists. The end of the weapon shifted to become as long and thin as a whip, and it cinched tightly around Cole’s wrist like piano wire.

“You did a good job, Henry,” Lancroft said as he pulled his weapon sharply to send Cole’s .45 sailing over the Full Blood carcass. “But you know you shouldn’t be down here.”

Cole’s arm was snapped so violently that losing the .45 seemed more like a favorable alternative to losing his hand. He hopped to one side and swung his arm down to wedge the cord beneath the top of the examination table. “Why don’t you come take a look in here, Henry?” he shouted while unwinding himself from the whipcord. “There’s a whole secret room you need to see.”

From the workshop as well as the back of Cole’s mind, the little boy shouted, “I’m not allowed in there.”

As soon as the cord came loose, Cole bolted from the examination room so he could check on his partners. Rico was scooting into the corner farthest from the lab, where a dainty hand appeared from over his shoulder to pull him into the wall itself. Cole could only guess that Jordan was behind the cloak in the corner and helping the bigger man into her shelter.

“You three did a very good job finding me,” Lancroft said while walking out of the examination room. “I’m actually quite proud of you.” His weapon reformed into the single-bladed staff.

“High praise coming from a murdering asshole,” Paige snarled as she drew her gun and fired two shots at him. Spending so much time with a gamer had rubbed off on her. Rather than aim for his center of mass, she tried for a headshot, which sailed past Lancroft when the older man quickly hunched over and twisted around. Her next shots were lower and hit him in the upper back, turning bits of his tweed jacket into lint and exposing patches of leather reinforced with a wire mesh.

“That’s a new form of ammunition,” he said as if admiring a neighbor’s riding mower. “Nearly made it through the upper layers of my jacket.”

As Lancroft turned around, Cole saw the flaps of leather exposed in the damaged sections of the old man’s jacket. It reminded him of the material in Rico’s body armor, but was layered like sections in a compressed phone book. However Lancroft had managed that bit of craftsmanship, it might be enough to withstand all the bullets the Skinners had brought.

Cole threw himself at Paige as the whipcord extended from Lancroft’s pike. Since he wouldn’t get to her in time, he deflected the incoming snare with an upward swing of his spear. Paige dropped to a crouch, tucked the gun away and drew her other baton while running at Lancroft. She feinted with the sickle before swinging the machete, but was blocked by a move that sent a burst of sparks to the floor. Lancroft slashed her elbow, but she twisted all the way around and followed through with a swing from her machete that would have left most other opponents without a head.

Even though Lancroft seemed genuinely surprised by her last attempt, he still managed to duck under it and step away. “It’s too late to stop Pestilence,” he said while knocking Paige down with a clubbing blow from the shaft of the pike. “I’ve been infecting Nymar across the country with their portion of the disease since the early 1970s. The component festering in the leeches is derived from pollen. Very sweet, but very toxic. It’s only one of several lifetimes of work I’ve done. Work any Skinner should damn well appreciate!”

Paige rolled to get her feet under her while swinging at Lancroft’s legs. When the old man hopped over both weapons, Cole rushed straight at him. Lancroft deflected Cole’s spear and then willed his pike to curl around it so he could twist the weapon from Cole’s grasp. The thorns in the handle kept the spear in place, but also threatened to pull the skin from Cole’s hands in the process.

Paige swung at Lancroft’s neck, only to have him skillfully lean away from the sickle. After Cole forced the old man to twist away from a lunging stab with the spear, she
hit Lancroft squarely in the back with her machete. It cut through several layers of Lancroft’s jacket, exposing the fresh bullet holes. Focusing on one ragged bull’s-eye, she sank the pointed end of her sickle into a bullet hole and drove all the way through the protective garment. Beneath that were thin metal plates, layered to protect the old man’s back while allowing for complete freedom of movement.

“I want to help, Dr. Lancroft,” the little boy said from the doorway connecting the temple to the workshop.

The old man edged along the opposite wall while spinning his weapon in a flow of constant motion to keep Cole and Paige at bay. Rico fired a shot from his corner, which didn’t do anything more than turn a few beads into powder and obliterate some more etchings. After that he made certain to keep at least one of the other Skinners between him and Rico’s corner. “Of course you want to help,” Lancroft said as he poked a shallow hole into Cole’s chest with a quick jab from his pike. “Be a good boy, Henry, and bring the others down here. Remember, though, you’re not allowed in my lab.” While blocking attacks from Cole and Paige, he still had enough speed to take a few swings of his own.

Paige used her machete for defense. Although that arm was getting hit, the hardened limb prevented Lancroft’s weapon from cutting too deeply. The pike was a blur and the rest of him moved in a fluid series of unpredictable bobs and weaves.

Fixing an intent scowl on Paige, he said, “Say what you want about my methods, but I
never
would have considered handing over human territory to Nymar vermin or abominations like that pack of Mongrels running wild through Kansas City.”

“So instead, you come up with Pestilence,” Paige replied. “Real noble.”

Lancroft backed toward the examination room. “After spending decades in laboratories without sticking my nose into the sun and hunting creatures that now are only footnotes in the most obscure legends, I would think you’d want to learn from me.”

Gunshots sounded from upstairs as hurried footsteps
rushed the door and began stomping down into the workshop. The other garden-level windows were knocked in, allowing the smaller of the reawakened Mud People to squirm their way into the basement. Their strained wheezes were a foul wind that rolled out of the workshop to sully the Dryad’s makeshift temple.

Cole and Paige circled Lancroft so they could catch their breath and try to give Rico a clean shot. While they had used the respite to collect themselves and heal, Lancroft had done the same. All of his wounds were closed, including the ones that would have taken Paige a few days to shake off. As the Mud People started pushing into the temple, Lancroft said, “Wait a second, Henry.”

Stop.

All the Mud People obeyed the order.

“Maybe you just aren’t aware of what I’ve created,” Lancroft said to the other Skinners. “If you were able to study the bodies of the most recent Half Breed victims, you would have seen the nymph pheromones used to attract them. The same sort of modification will draw the Nymar to their deaths.”

“You mean like rat poison stuck inside a piece of candy?” Cole asked.

“Precisely,” Lancroft declared. “That way, the Half Breeds are killed as quickly and efficiently as possible. Your generation of Skinners have stopped learning and become nothing but soldiers. Have you even pieced together how the Half Breeds spread their curse?”

“I’ve seen it happen,” Cole said. “Anyone hurt by one of those things will become one.”

“Yes, but why do some of the wounded become Half Breeds while others can be healed as if they’d only been attacked by a dog?” Looking back and forth between Cole and Paige, he said, “How are we supposed to do any good if we don’t know the root of the problem?”

When he leaned in close to Paige, she lashed out with both weapons rather than listen to whatever he was going to say. Cole wanted to help her, but she’d sparked another blistering series of attacks that turned the space around them into a
hissing tornado of wooden blades. Trying to inject himself into that was like deciding how to stick his hand into a rattling garbage disposal, so Cole positioned himself in front of the workshop where several Mud People stood watching. Henry stood there as well. The boy he’d possessed still seemed to have his head connected to his neck.

“It’s the marrow,” Lancroft snarled. Having reshaped his staff into the oval-shaped weapon he’d used to cut Ned down, he switched his entire stance and fighting style to accommodate the new weapon. “Half Breeds carry their sickness in their saliva, but it needs to make contact with bone marrow for it to take root. Just knowing one simple bit of information like that should make Half Breeds less of a problem. Just as knowing that Pestilence is an exotic virus and not the fabled creeping death of Incan and Mayan mythology.”

Panting after the relentless attack, Paige said, “I’ll be sure to put that tidbit in my journal and credit it to the fucking asshole who killed Ned Post.” She went on the offensive using both of her weapons like a pair of scissors. Her sickle was blocked before cutting Lancroft’s throat, but the machete came in to shave large portions of flesh from both of his arms. Even with his advanced healing, a healthy dose of pain flashed across his face.

When Henry saw Lancroft recoil, the boy anxiously bared crooked teeth that were covered in a slick coat of the substance kicked up from the back of his throat.

Desperate to keep the Mud People from charging, Cole decided to give Henry something more pertinent to listen to. “Is this the same offer you gave to Misonyk when you let him infect Henry?”

For the first time since the conversation started, Lancroft appeared shaken. He glanced at Henry, but the strain of the fight made it tougher for him to put on a convincing poker face. “Misonyk was more demon than Nymar. It’s because of him that I needed to dispose of my cherished reformatory. I poured my heart and soul into every stone of that institution. There is no way you could possibly know how much good I did there.”

Moving so Lancroft was forced to edge away from her
and Cole, Paige imagined Rico’s line of fire and inched the old man toward it. She kept him talking in the hopes that he might forget Rico was even there. “I’ve been to the reformatory,” she said. “It’s a pit. A den for Half Breeds.”

Strangely enough, Lancroft smiled. With Paige standing between him and Henry, he was forced to move away from the door while defending against her incoming blades. Their weapons clacked together in a quick rattle of impacts, each one coming faster than its predecessor. “It was necessary to destroy the entire facility. Such a horrible loss. To be honest, I thought I’d lost the drive to continue my work. And then Henry found me.”

The little boy rubbed the door frame and leaned toward the temple, but stopped before crossing the threshold.

Curling his fingers around to brush the scars on his palms, Lancroft glared at Paige and asked, “Where is the Nymar you brought with you?”

Henry’s young face twisted around before Daniels separated from the pack of Mud People behind him. When the Nymar grabbed the boy by the shoulders to yank him into the workshop, both Skinners took that as a cue to lunge at Lancroft. Cole almost got close enough to hit the old man before he spotted the bladed oval lashing in a tight arc aimed at his hamstrings. Pure instinct brought his spear down to smack aside the blade that would have crippled him.

“Bring him in here, Daniels!” Paige shouted as she tore after Lancroft.

The Nymar could be seen through the doorway, struggling with the much smaller boy. Even though Daniels outweighed his opponent by a hefty margin, the kid was lean, agile, and powered by something more than the Pestilence running through his veins. “Now you’ve done it!” the boy screamed in a pitch of the same frequency as an iron glove on a chalk-board. When he shrieked again, his voice ripped through the basement and through all of the minds within it.

I’m not supposed to be here! AND NEITHER ARE YOU!

Daniels and Henry both fell into the temple as Cole raced after Lancroft. The older man may have slipped past him, but he wasn’t fast enough to avoid getting tackled by Paige.
When Lancroft was slammed face-first into the wall beside the door, Cole intended on nailing him there with his spear. The sharpened point caught Lancroft in the ribs and tore through the protective jacket to reveal metal plates attached by a series of latches spaced every eight to ten inches vertically along his back. Lancroft quickly twisted around so the spearhead skidded off his back and into the wall. As Paige tried to hit him again, he sent her into the same wall.

Cole swept low, but only scraped Lancroft’s ankle before the old man hopped up to avoid the follow-through from the spear’s forked end. When Lancroft’s foot came down again, it pinned the spear to the floor so his other foot could slam down on Cole’s hand. With Cole pinned, Paige kicked straight over his head to pound her heel against Lancroft’s hip. Not only did the kick move him away from Cole, but it set him up for a quick attack from both her weapons. The sickle ripped diagonally along Lancroft’s chest, while the machete came down toward the base of his neck. He blocked the machete and willed his weapon to close around it so he could ease it safely away as his wound was healed.