The Breaking
Page 24
“You mean the stuff that screwed up her arm?” Wincing almost in time with Cole, he quickly added, “No, this was just a real simple tweak that barely worked. I wouldn’t trust it on anything that actually goes inside of you or mingles with blood. What I need you to do is see if you can pick up our young one’s scent.”
“We’ve already gone a few miles,” Cole pointed out. “Are you sure it was in the right direction?”
A sly grin eased onto Jessup’s face. “This ain’t the first time she tried to bolt. She’s new to this, so she sticks to the roads. Just see if you can narrow it down for me.”
Cole raised the mask to his face again but was cautious about drawing another breath. When he did, he was once more besieged by smells from every end of the spectrum, ranging from the candy bars piled on the dashboard to a mound of animal scat somewhere in the field outside. “How the hell did you use this to find anything specific? Do you mix in something to help weed everything else out?”
“Nope. Just good old-fashioned discipline. Concentrate on what you’re after and focus. Helps to have a sample, but most of the stuff we’re after is pretty distinctive. Turn your head that way and see for yourself.”
Jessup pointed toward the road, and when Cole did as he’d been told, he was introduced to a new scent that easily superseded the others. It was a mixture of animal musk, something that might have been perfume, and another odor he couldn’t identify. He pulled in a slow, deep breath and let it roll down his throat like a sip of wine. It wasn’t perfume, but the flowery smell did have an artificial taint. The other scent was pungent and exotic, interesting and bitter, enticing and repellent.
“You smell her?” Jessup asked. “She’s either wearing some sort of girly lotion or has been using it long enough to stick with her, but the main thing I followed was that scent of fungus and ripe fruit.”
“Is that what it is?”
“That lotion or whatever smells artificial. There’s something else that I don’t really know how to describe. It’s natural, but not like any nature I ever smelled. That’s the scent of a Full Blood. From what I’ve heard, those eye drops Ned whipped up are better at close range, but this here mask can find scents that’ve been laying around for days or maybe longer.”
“And you’re sure it’s a Full Blood?” Cole asked.
“Met up with a whole mess of Shunkaws in Kansas where that little girl out there damn near ripped my head off. Her and another Full Blood jumped me, so I got their scents up close and a little too personal. Followed it all the way to where that girl was hiding, filthy, on all fours, clawin’ at the ground. And I don’t mean in the good way.”
“Lambert said she was just a kid.”
Still wearing the fraction of a smile he’d put on for the benefit of his last joke, Jessup shook his head and told him, “He’s got that right. Was a kid, but not anymore. That girl is wilder than the other Full Bloods I’ve ever seen, and lately I’ve seen a whole lot of them. Since she barely seems comfortable in her own skin, I tend to believe what I was told about her bein’ nothin’ but a pup.”
Cole tentatively placed the mask to his face and drew a breath. It took a lot of effort to sift through the scents, but the task kept him busy enough to get his mind off the gnawing pain in his stomach. He leaned out the window and then settled back into his seat. Pointing ahead and to the right, he said, “I think she’s headed that way.”
“That’s about what I thought. I made camp a few miles off-road.”
“Another camp?” Cole asked.
“What’s the matter? You’d rather take your chances in that small town after word spreads about the guy you attacked in that motel? Besides, cities ain’t safe for us no more.” He eased up on the gas and steered toward the shoulder of the dirt road. The truck clambered over the rougher terrain, causing both men to clear their seats with every other bounce. “She’s still skittish about the whole transformation thing. Either that or she’s bashful. Whichever it is, she don’t like bein’ too far away from her clothes. I think you and I might be okay with her, but I didn’t want to scare her by bringin’ much of anyone else. That’s why I sent your friend away.”
“Fine by me. I don’t mind the break.”
Ahead of the truck Cole saw a clearing that was barely the size of an overturned refrigerator and a camper parked amid some tall weeds. It was the smaller kind of camper that was towed instead of driven. A cooler and some duffel bags lay just outside the little clearing where a slender girl sat on something, her back hunched and her hands clasped between her knees. The burning in Cole’s palms confirmed she was a Full Blood. Either that or there was another werewolf lurking nearby. Once the truck came to a stop, he asked, “Where did you find her?”
“She and another Full Blood attacked me in Kansas.”
“And why is she sitting at your camp now?”
Her eyes took on a brilliant, otherworldly shine as she looked at Jessup. The older Skinner met them when he said, “The other Full Blood told me to watch out for her.”
“Was he the big bastard who killed Gerald?”
“From what I heard . . . yeah. That’s the one.”
“And why would you listen to him?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?” Smirking at the response that got from Cole, Jessup added, “I was wearing that mask when I pulled up to the motel, just to make sure you weren’t part of another Nymar trap. I can smell the Full Blood on you. Were you attacked too?”
“Sort of. He told me I needed to find the young one and hide her away.”
“Sounds familiar,” Jessup said. “Why do you believe him?”
“First of all, because he didn’t kill me. And second,” Cole added as he handed the mask back to Jessup, “because he made more sense than the last batch of Skinners I met. How screwed up is that?”
“The way things are goin’, it sounds about right. That girl’s gettin’ spooked. Let’s have a word with her before she decides to run off again.” Jessup pushed open the door and held up his hands to show them to the girl sitting in the small clearing.
She had long, thick hair that was blacker than charred coal. Watching both of the Skinners with crystalline hazel eyes, she said, “Don’t kill me. Please. Randolph said you people could help me. I don’t want it to hurt me again.”
“What’s your story?” Cole asked.
Rubbing her hands against her elbows, the girl lowered her head and pressed her arms against her chest. “It hurts.”
“What does?”
She was quiet, so Jessup explained, “She means the transformation. It still hurts when she does it.”
“Not just that,” she said. “Whatever is inside me hurts. Like, all the time. And it only stops hurting when I change and hurt other people.”
The tendrils wrapped around Cole’s guts squeezed him a little tighter, as if to remind him of some common ground he shared with this girl. Still, no matter how badly he wanted to sympathize, every Skinner part of him thing wanted to see if a shotgun blast would do any better on a Full Blood in its human form. “At least tell me your name.”
“Cecile.”
She looked to be somewhere in her early teens. Her clothes were a tattered mess, but no more so than those worn by other girls who strove for a “ghetto chic” look. The muddy stains, however, looked like they’d come from being buried in a pile of dirt. Her body was lean and muscular, but she still held herself as though she was nothing more than a child who was still afraid of the dark.
“What do you want from us, Cecile?”
“She’s in trouble and needs to be hid,” Jessup said. “Ain’t that right?”
“You’re the one driving around with an arsenal, and I’m the one in trouble?” she scoffed.
“You’re a Full Blood, girl,” Jessup replied. “You can run laps around this state in the time it takes me to scratch my ass. You can go anywhere you like and chew a hole through the side of a bank vault, but you decide to stick with a pair of Skinners. You gotta know w
hat we skin, right?”
“Yeah. Randolph told me.”
“So what’s your story, girl?”
When he got a questioning glance from Cole, Jessup shrugged and told him, “We made the drive all the way from Kansas, but I spent most of it either talking to myself or chasing her down when she decided to run away.”
“I didn’t mean to run away,” she said, fatigue weighing down every syllable. Clawing at her midsection as if she wanted to tear it out, she went on, “It’s hard for me to hold it back. I try, but sometimes I just can’t.”
Full Blood or not, Cecile was confused, shell-shocked and overwhelmed by what was going on around her. Cole knew just how she felt. “Take it easy,” he said while placing one hand on the girl’s trembling back. “Just take a few breaths and maybe you’ll feel better.”
She shook her head slowly as she said, “I’m . . . I’m a werewolf. That’s not going to get any better.”
“Is this a new thing?”
She looked at him with a fear in her eyes he frequently saw in other people, but wasn’t supposed to be pointed at him. “You’re Skinners,” she said. “You kill werewolves.”
“Sometimes,” Cole said with a smirk. “Never a Full Blood, though. I’m not good enough for that.” Before Jessup had a chance to speak for himself, he added, “Neither of us is. Besides, do you really think we want to kill you?”
“I guess not.”
“So tell me how you got pulled into all of this.”
Cecile’s eyes glazed over as if she was looking at something else instead of the tall grass and water cooler in front of her. “I changed for the first time . . . I don’t even know how long ago. He was there when I did.”
“Who was?”
“He told me his name was Randolph Standing Bear.” Cecile wrapped her arms even tighter around her legs and started rocking. “One night I was sleeping in my room. My brother was in the other bed. Dad was in his room. I woke up screaming. My whole body hurt. Then . . . I changed. I thought it was a nightmare, but he told me it wasn’t.”
“Randolph told you that?” Cole asked.
“Yeah. He was there. Watching me. He said I had to leave my home and go with him. He changed too and I went with him.” Lowering her head while steeling herself, she added, “I guess I still thought it was a dream.”
“What did he want from you?”
“He said he had to take me away before the others found me. Said I needed to figure out what I was before the others tried to teach me the wrong way. Said I needed to learn how to change, how to hunt, how to kill, how to do everything my instincts told me to do.” Looking up at Cole with eyes that had become multifaceted jewels, she told him, “When I changed for the first time on my own, I was hungry. I chased down whatever I could find and ripped it apart.” The jewels embedded in her eye sockets lost some of their luster, until they were merely the soft, wet orbs through which every human saw their world. “Or maybe that was a dream too.”
“What about your family?” Cole asked. “Do you want to get back to them?”
Her eyes narrowed, and although she didn’t change form, the beast rose close enough to the surface for aspects of it to be seen around the edges of her face and in subtle changes of musculature. “They’re dead. Randolph told me and I believe him. Even if they weren’t dead before, they wouldn’t have lasted long once the others came.”
Cecile pulled in a breath, placed her chin flat against the tops of her knees and stared straight ahead. Blinking once, she said, “When we killed those men in Billings, Randolph broke my arm and put something inside.” Looking up at the men as if she could sense the reflexive anger that had come over them, she added, “Not like that. He never touched me that way. I mean inside as in . . . inside the wounds. Inside my bones.”
“Inside your bones?” Cole asked.
“What men in Billings?” Jessup snarled.
Cecile stretched out her left arm and twisted it to display the veins running along the inside of her wrist. “He broke my arm there. Pulled it apart and . . .” She paused as if to consider if that was another of her dreams, but gave up on that right away. “It healed up right away. After I changed back again, there wasn’t even a scar.”
Jessup grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “What men in Billings?” he demanded.
“They were in the back of some bar,” she said. “They tried to kill us, but we tore them apart.”
“What did they look like?” Jessup asked.
“They weren’t like me or Randolph, but they had fangs,” she said. “They fought back more than the first ones we killed.”
“They had fangs? What else?”
“Fangs and . . . I don’t know. It all seems so hazy.” One blink was all it took for her focus to go away from him and to something else. She still faced the Skinners, but wasn’t seeing him when she said, “Randolph told me I needed to hunt and I wanted to hunt. Wanted to kill. I . . . think I ate them, and I don’t even know if they were animals or . . .” She pulled in a deep breath, gripped her arms and said, “I don’t know what I’ve become, but Randolph keeps telling me it’s important.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Cole cut in. He looked at Jessup and asked, “Isn’t that right?”
Reluctantly, Jessup nodded. Despite the bravado he’d shown earlier, it seemed the older Skinner was just as tired and ragged as Cole when he said, “Randolph told us to hide you from the other Full Bloods. You remember that part?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Walking over to the duffel bags, he rooted through them and started pulling out spare pieces of clothes. He tossed a few shirts and a pair of faded cargo pants over to Cole. “Why haven’t you talked about all of this until now?”
“Because Randolph said you might try to kill me,” she explained. “Guess you would have tried to by now.”
Cole held the clothes in his arms and asked, “What’s this?”
“Might as well strap on a set of reflectors if you wanna wear that bright blue Broncos shirt.”
“Got any more in there?”
“For that skinny friend of yers? He’ll be swimming in them, but yeah.”
Cole walked around to stand in the grass a few paces behind Cecile so he could change clothes.
Sitting down so he could stretch out his legs with a labored grunt, Jessup said, “Why don’t you get us some food, Cecile?”
“You’re sending me away?”
“No. I’m hungry. You and Cole probably are too. There’s some PBJ, chips, and some old candy bars inside.”
Cecile rolled her eyes, turned her back on the men and walked to the camper.
“All right, then,” Jessup said in a low voice that made it clear he knew all too well that a Full Blood could still hear him if he wasn’t careful. “What do you think of this?”
Cole’s eyes were continually drawn to the other man’s vest, partly because of the rattle that accompanied almost every one of his movements. The teeth braided into the fringe looked like melted wax and were sharp enough to double as bullets, which meant they’d been pulled from the mouth of a shapeshifter. “Seems like we should help her. If she’s tricking us to get information about the rest of the Skinners, she won’t find anything that the Full Bloods must not already know.”
Jessup walked back to the bed of his truck and returned with a large overstuffed backpack. While talking to Cole, he removed several see-through bags stuffed with cash consisting of wadded bills and copious amounts of change. “Did you catch what she said about the thing stuffed into her arm?”
“Yeah. What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Cecile replied while coming out of the camper. She carried two plastic grocery bags to the clearing and set them down. “If I did, I would have told you. I could hear everything you said, by the way.”
Cole and Jessup looked at each other, shrugged and sifted through the grocery bags. “Guess you’re not as much of a pup as I thought,” the older Skinner said.
“You hungry?” Jessup asked Cecile.
“Yes.”
He tossed her a sandwich, which she held up to her nose and sniffed. Not interested in whether she liked peanut butter and jelly or not, he asked, “So you don’t know what that thing is in yer arm?”
“Nope. Randolph acted like it was special, though. I think it’s something he just found.”
“Does he ever mention something called a Jekhibar?” Cole asked.
She squinted while gnawing on the Snickers bar she’d found and replied, “I think so. It was while we were changed. so . . .” Rather than say the words, she waved her hand around her head as if she was scrambling her brain.
“Jekhibar?” Jessup asked. “That’s an Amriany word.”
“Are you sure about that?”
He nodded. “Hell yes. Ever since the Blood Blades came over, I thought it best to read up on the other stuff they’ve got. The Jekhibar is a Unity Stone.”
“What’s it do?”
Jessup shrugged and stuffed a quarter of a sandwich into his mouth like a hamster stuffing wadded tissue into its cheeks. “Hell if I know. Ever since these damn Full Bloods have been making their presence felt, all kinds of shit’s been turning up. And don’t take offense to any of this, girlie. We’re talking big picture stuff here.”
“You can call me a damn Full Blood all you want,” Cecile replied. “Just knock off the girlie crap.”
He chuckled and nodded. “Sure thing. Anyways, I thought all the Chupes and Squams and Half Breeds were coming out of the woodwork because they’d been scattered from wherever they were hiding on account of the big bad wolves coming around. Then there was the Mud Flu, which just about cut the Half Breeds down to nothin’. Now, buggers I haven’t seen for years are cropping up all over the goddamn place, most likely because the whole ecosystem is out of whack.”
“You mean like the food chain?” Cecile asked.