Since it was obvious that Burkis wasn’t trying to lose them, Paige drove the rest of the way without risking life, limb, or any more police involvement. She remained with the rest of the cars, which put her well above the posted speed limit. The werewolf attracted plenty of attention, but moved too quickly for anyone to get more than a fleeting glimpse. After crossing Watson Road and passing under I-44, they headed north. The large, bounding creature darted from one side of the street to another, sought periodic refuge in the shadows, and finally hunkered down to leap effortlessly into the inky sky. This time, however, Cole couldn’t see where Burkis landed.
“Shit,” he said as he reflexively looked down at the GPS screen. He looked up twice as fast, hoping he wouldn’t catch any more grief from Paige for trying to use the device to spot a landmark that obviously wasn’t in the system. “I think he’s gone.”
Paige settled into her seat. “I don’t think so. He could have left us behind at any time, but made sure we were headed this way.”
They kept driving, but the heat in Cole’s scars cooled at an alarming rate. As they continued north, traffic snarled up thanks to construction that blocked off two of the lanes. Just when he thought he might hop out of the car and try running ahead a few blocks, he felt a jolt of unnatural fire.
“I see him,” Paige said as she flicked on her turn signal and veered to the right.
Burkis was in his human form, but his clothes were ripped and barely hanging on his sinewy frame. There were a few other people near him on the sidewalk, but they were too wrapped up in yelling at each other or into their phones to notice the man who watched the street with icy, predator’s eyes. Once the car had pulled to a stop along the curb between two others, Cole climbed out and slipped his harness over both shoulders. Thanks to the smaller size of the spear, it didn’t make much of a bump under the baggy flannel shirt he tossed on over it.
There was a set of railroad tracks nearby, complete with a station that looked like something from a quaint little toy train set. Most of the other buildings were cast from a similar mold. Cozy houses had been turned into homey shops, giving the area a cute, almost delicate feel. “What should we do if he tries to kill us?” Cole asked.
Paige walked alongside him and flexed her right hand to somewhere near its normal range of motion. “Kill him back.”
After crossing the street, they still needed to walk for another half block before finally catching up with Burkis. “All right,” she snapped. “Why drag us all the way to Kirkwood?”
Burkis turned away from the train tracks to go down a narrow side street. All of the friendly looking shops were closed for the night, but Cole could hear music and raucous voices coming from what he guessed were a few local bars. Uninterested in two-for-one drafts or Jell-O shots, Burkis headed straight to a gazebo built next to a garden supply store on East Argonne Drive. Between the store and the gazebo were bags of soil stacked near a selection of cement lawn statues that were either not valuable enough to be locked up or too heavy to steal. Behind those things were the bodies of three of the Mongrels that had welcomed Cole and Paige to town outside of Dressel’s pub. A fourth lay buried at the bottom of the pile. Unlike the felines that Cole had seen before, the bottom Mongrel had a ratlike tail, two sets of wings evenly spaced along its back, and was covered in a slick layer of mud.
Burkis crouched to grab the base of the Mongrel’s right forewing and flipped it over to reveal yet another carcass. This one was a Half Breed. Its lean body and gnarled snout were almost as distinctive as the knotted muscle holding together the skewed, broken bones beneath its pasty flesh.
“This wretch had just fed,” Burkis said as he gazed down at the Half Breed. “It’s one of the few to make it out of Kansas City, and I’ve been tracking it to see if it might lead me to any more. Once I was certain there were no dens in this city, I was going to put it down myself. That’s when these three descended upon it.”
“Didn’t anyone else see all of this?” Cole asked as he looked around. Cars drove along the street, but were more concerned with finding a parking space than what was going on behind a garden supply store. Pedestrians stayed on the main walkways and were barely paying enough attention to keep from tripping over cracks in the sidewalk.
“There wasn’t much to see,” Burkis replied. “The wretch was barely able to keep its head up, and the Mongrels fell over the moment they drew its blood.”
“So the Half Breed was dying and the others followed soon after,” Paige said. “Sounds like they could have been poisoned.”
“Spoken by someone who knows such cowardly tactics all too well,” Burkis sneered. “Now look closer.” He grabbed the Half Breed’s throat with a hand that had suddenly sprouted thick, talonlike claws. Hooking a couple of the claws into a flap of skin on the Half Breed’s neck, he pulled it aside to reveal the underlying muscle.
Half Breeds always stank, but the inside of a dead one redefined the term. While Cole turned his head and willed himself not to puke, Paige used a baton to hold its neck open. The specially treated wood creaked in her right hand to form a flat-bladed machete that was a distinct improvement over her last few attempts.
“This looks like wet tree bark,” she said as she scraped the tip of the blade against the hardened, leathery surface. “Feels like it too. And there’s hardly any blood.”
The Half Breed had the mass of a small man, but Burkis lifted it as if it was just another sack of manure from a nearby pile. “Its blood is there.”
Cole took his spear from its harness and used it to scrape the muddy sludge caked upon the ground. “This is the same kind of gunk that came out of Peter Walsh,” he said. “There were some men in jail across the river who were leaking it from their eyes. So was Henry.”
“I doubt that,” Burkis huffed. “Henry is a Full Blood, and we are not affected by Pestilence…or War or Famine or even Death. You’re too ignorant to have caused such a plague, but there’s one Skinner whose hands are particularly muddy.”
Gritting her teeth, she said, “Let me guess. Jonah Lancroft?”
“I’ve heard that name whispered by Mongrels and Henry alike, but neither of those are very reliable sources. Lancroft was a brilliant man, and my guess is that some of his journals have been discovered by an element that would be considered undesirable even by Skinner standards.” Dropping the Half Breed onto the pile, he nudged the Mongrels with his toe. “These came from Malia’s pack. With Pestilence known to be linked to a Skinner, these deaths may just convince her to even the score at your expense.”
“And why would you be so kind as to warn us about that?” Cole asked.
“Because now that Henry has been made aware of his full capabilities, it won’t be long before humans, Nymar, and shapeshifters alike will experience death on an epic scale.”
Paige lowered her weapons an inch or so but remained on her guard. “So this stuff is activated by Henry?”
“Or any Mind Singer, I would assume. Since there has only been three in the past two hundred and sixty years, Henry should be the only one you need to worry about. But that brings me back to the problem at hand. I have heard the Mind Singer repeatedly since I have come to this city. His voice is strongest here, but his scent is not.”
“Maybe he’s somewhere else,” Cole offered. “What’s the range on psychic transmissions anyway?”
“Henry’s talent is unfocused,” Burkis continued. “He reaches out to all of us with thoughts that are nothing but wild screams. Now, he whispers to unleash this poison among our kind while turning yours into plague-infested rats.”
“Full Bloods don’t give a shit about Half Breeds,” Paige said, “and I seriously doubt you’ve made a truce with Mongrels. Pestilence has changed from the Mud Flu into Half Breed poison, so you’re just worried that you’ll be the next one to feel the sting.”
Burkis lowered himself to one knee as his entire body shifted into a taller, bulkier form. His face stretched into a long, tapered snout filled with teeth
that were angled back like barbs on an arrow. By the time he’d backed into the shadows beneath the gazebo, he was something close to the beast that had almost separated Cole from his head on more than one occasion. He pulled in a deep breath and rolled it around the back of his throat. “The plague is changing. Once it becomes deadly to us, we will have no choice but to kill every carrier we can find. The Mind Singer is the spark, the deliverer and the answer. Since Liam is missing, the responsibility of maintaining this territory falls solely to me.”
“Awww,” Cole chided. “Poor little werewolf is all alone. Cursed to live through the ages with nobody to play with.”
“Wait a second,” Paige snapped. “You said Liam, as in the Full Blood from KC?”
Burkis’s intense glare was more than enough to confirm that.
“So he’s missing. Not dead.”
A barely perceptible nod came from the Full Blood.
“I saw him die in Kansas City,” Paige insisted. “I punched holes in him myself. Cole knocked him out with a car and the Mongrels ripped him to shreds while they…” Her eyes narrowed and she wheeled around to swing her machete straight through one of the support beams of the gazebo. “Son of a bitch!” she shouted, drawing more attention from the pedestrians on the street than the werewolf standing a few paces away. “Why the hell wouldn’t those Mongrels finish him off?”
“Perhaps they have taken him somewhere else to feast on him slowly, just as you Skinners would have loved to tear him apart and use the pieces for yourselves.” When he said that, Burkis displayed fangs that had thickened into ivory stalagmites. The ones that Paige had knocked out before heading to KC were only slightly shorter than the rest.
“They said they would bury him,” Cole reminded them. “They were supposed to suffocate him in the ground or stuff him somewhere he couldn’t be found. Is that why you can’t find him?”
In a flat tone, Burkis said, “I will find him and that’s all any Skinner needs to know. The only reason I’m speaking to you now instead of pulling your bones out through your mouths is because, without your Blood Blade, you are no threat to me. Maintain your territory on your own or I’ll be forced to do it for you.” The more he spoke, the larger Burkis became. While other animals might raise their hackles or puff their chests to assert their dominance, a Full Blood simply became larger than their opponent like a wall of heavy clouds filling a darkened sky.
Paige stepped forward to declare, “We don’t do chores for Full Bloods. You want Henry so bad? You find him. Why would we give a shit if this disease grows strong enough to kill you?”
“Henry’s Pestilence has only started taking root,” Burkis said. “His voice needs to be silenced before this entire continent is infected. I have already been to both coasts and can tell you the stench of this plague has spread well beyond the cities you protect.”
“It’s already gotten as far as Chicago?” she asked.
“And farther.”
“Henry’s a Full Blood too,” Paige said. “You don’t mind us going after him?”
“He is a Mind Singer,” Burkis said. “They have always been trouble. He must be dealt with as quickly as possible. You are given this chance to resolve this situation because I do not wish to see so many humans destroyed.”
“No,” Cole grunted. “Just the ones who get in your way.”
Shifting his gaze toward him, the Full Blood snarled, “Just the ones who don’t know their place.”
“And what if we find him?” Cole asked. “Should we give you a call or just squeeze a squeak toy a bunch of times?”
Burkis dropped to all fours and shifted into his barrel-chested running form. His eyes narrowed into slits and his teeth grew long enough to pierce through his cheeks. It was the first time during this meeting that he truly seemed ready to kill either of the Skinners.
One leap carried the werewolf to the top of the gardening supply store. Several people on the street pointed at the large shape on the roof, but they lost sight of Burkis after his next bounding step. With nothing left to see, the pointers continued along their way.
“You really shouldn’t make doggie jokes when referring to Full Bloods,” Paige sighed as her weapons shrank back down so she could holster them in her boots. “They hate that.”
Chapter 18
They drove through the city, waiting for a twitch to let them know they’d found Burkis again, but didn’t have any luck. Considering that Full Bloods held portions of entire continents as their territories and had the speed to patrol them, trying to chase after one was even more pathetic than a dog running after a speeding car. The Skinners made the effort anyway before heading to Ned’s house to regroup.
Daniels had a batch of the new weapon varnish cooking, but it wouldn’t be ready for a few hours.
Ned was gone and Rico wasn’t about to wait for him to return before setting Cole and Paige both up with .45s. They weren’t as nice as his Sig Sauer, but he insisted on trading them for the smaller revolvers Paige carried in her glove compartment.
“I wanna try to make these standard issue,” Rico told her. “Since most of us make our own ammunition, it’s easier to swap shells if we all pack the same caliber.”
“Where’s Ned?” Paige asked.
“Checking on something or other downtown. It’s just as well because I woulda told him to sit this one out anyways. Last thing we need is a blind man dragging us down at that strip club. Last time I was there, me and Cole got knocked into a bus.” Seeing the glare from Paige, Rico quickly amended his statement with, “Sorry. Half blind man.”
It was too late to mount a search for the house’s owner, so they stuffed some extra clips into their pockets and drove out to Bunn’s Lounge.
Before the three of them entered the club, Cole examined the outside of the structure at its base for any markings that Stu had mentioned when talking about the A-frame temples. All he had to do was kick away a few tufts of grass to find a chain of strange, curving marks half covered in topsoil.
“Check,” he said. “Now let’s go in to check for any unusual statuary or depictions of naked women.”
“Yeah,” Rico grunted. “What’re the odds of us finding that kinda stuff in there?”
Tristan was good as her word, leaving instructions with the front door security to let them in through an unmarked entrance with no metal detector. Striding into the club wearing a baggy flannel shirt over his harness and a pistol tucked into a new holster at his hip, Cole couldn’t help but grin. If he heard tinny piano music instead of Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” blasting through an expensive sound system, he would have felt like a real gunslinger.
In contrast to the fully lit place with the spotless floors Paige visited earlier that day, the strip club had come alive with pulsing music, obnoxious DJs, strobe lights and the frequent catcall. It was a quarter past one in the morning, which was barely prime time for Bunn’s. The dancers on-stage were pretty, but didn’t quite know how to fully utilize their groove thangs. A crowd was shaping up, however, and almost all the tables were full.
“So you really think this other Skinner will be here?” Cole asked.
“If he isn’t, there’ll be a certain nymph getting her pretty ass kicked.”
Rico strode through the club wearing his patchwork jacket over his firearms and a wide, ugly smile on his face. “I bet we could charge a hell of a lot for that show,” he said. “Besides, it’s not like we’ve got a bunch of other leads to follow.”
Either she wasn’t about to bite her trainer’s head off or she agreed with the statement, because Paige let it slide. Two of the stages were being used, which meant there were several tables and a whole lot of horny guys between her and the other side of the club. One of the tables was occupied by three dudes wearing University of Missouri shirts who barely looked old enough to drink the beers piled in front of them. The closer Paige got to them, the more obnoxious their attempts at charm became.
One of the dudes reached out to snag her, but was shoved st
raight back down into his seat by Rico. “You don’t want none of this, boy,” he snarled as another of the Mizzou boys sprang up to face him.
Apparently, that held true for all three of the dudes, and they quickly got back to divvying up their singles.
Pulling a chair up to the table Cole had chosen, Rico dropped into it and declared, “If I don’t get something to drink real quick, there’s gonna be some trouble.”
“The drinks are on me,” Paige said, “if you talked to Stanley Velasco like you said you would.”
“Oh, I did. We got a nice deal all worked out.”
“How bad are we stuck?”
Rico leaned back to tell a waitress what he wanted and then waved off Paige’s question. “Don’t worry about it. The bill’s been paid and we may not live long enough to worry about settling up. Life is good.”
The waitress made a good first impression by returning quickly with an oversized mug of beer and tussled his bristly hair when she took his money.
“All right you horn dogs!” the DJ announced. “Point your eyes center stage and keep them there for our lovely Shae!”
“Ooooh,” Rico mused.
Shae strutted onto the stage wearing a miniskirt that was more of a silk sweatband around her waist and a matching camisole that had been cut just short enough for the bottoms of her breasts to hang below the thin material. She waved at the Skinners’ table and then climbed the brass pole like a cat ascending a carpeted post.
Rico started to say something else, but closed his eyes and let out a breath. Before Cole could brace himself, he was reminded of why the nymphs demanded and received such outrageously high pay for lap dances. As Shae ground her body against the pole, Cole could feel the friction from his chest all the way down to his groin. She leaned back, pumped her hips against the pole and sent that sensation through him as well. And when she playfully pinched her nipple, everyone seated at stage side cleared their chairs.
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