Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2)

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  Daniels straightened up and clapped his hands together. When he grinned, the fangs that had been hanging lazily from his gums snapped up to disappear completely. “It’s been coming along great! I think I’ve actually come up with a way to get your idea to work. At first I thought it was impossible, but now it looks like we’re close to really pulling it off!”

  Cole tried to mimic the other two’s excitement. “What project?”

  “Remember the Blood Blade?” Paige asked.

  Cole nodded warily. “That’s the magic knife I brought to you from Canada. The one that can cut a werewolf.”

  “Not just a werewolf,” Paige reminded him. “A Full Blood. And it cuts through them because they’re charmed, not magic. The question is, charmed with what? Why does the Blood Blade hurt a Full Blood when everything else from fire to automatic weapons leaves nary a scratch? As far as we know, those creatures may be immortal.”

  “Full Bloods,” Daniels said, “like all supernatural creatures, can be harmed by other supernatural creatures. That’s why those weapons you carry work after that varnish mixture is soaked all the way through the wood. The shapeshifter and Nymar blood—”

  “You can skip that,” Paige told him. “Get to the good part.”

  Daniels gritted his teeth and shook his head as if he was physically grinding through his gears to skip to the next section of what he wanted to say. “I took samples from the Blood Blade to try and find out how it was forged.”

  “That way,” Paige interjected, “we could make our own instead of trying to buy or steal them from the Gypsies that make the damn things.”

  “Is that slang or a racial slur?” Cole asked.

  Paige squinted and let out a short, snorting laugh. “Gypsies? They’re people. Just relax.”

  Anxious to dive back into his lecture, Daniels paced and twiddled his fingers as if operating a very intricate, very invisible, piece of machinery. “A Blood Blade is made from metal that’s bonded to shapeshifter blood so precisely that it becomes more effective than your wooden weapons. While most Skinners already knew this, they don’t know how the two were bonded. Turns out there are elements within the metal that I couldn’t identify, so I couldn’t duplicate a Blood Blade well enough for it to be put to use. I discovered that within a week or two after I got the blade.”

  Cole looked over to Paige, only to find her nodding and clapping the dust from the chips she’d just eaten off her hands.

  “I could, however, figure out how the metal was bonded to a peculiar element,” Daniels explained. “In that aspect, the Blood Blade isn’t much different than your sticks. It’s just a matter of binding the sample to metal instead of soaking it into wood. Obviously, that varnish mixture you use won’t work on metal, although I could try if I had a sample to analyze for myself.”

  Paige shook her head at Daniels and said, “Not gonna happen. We gotta keep some things secret for the ones who signed on for the full membership package.”

  Being one of those members, Cole actually felt kind of proud. The feeling was boosted when Daniels looked over at him with genuine envy. That’ll teach him for not sharing his toys, Cole thought.

  “Anyway,” Daniels sighed, “I’ve recently been able to come up with a way to bond a small sample of the blade with a viscous substance that can be thinned down to a more manageable liquid. More shapeshifter blood is required, but that’s a lot easier to come by. At least…it is for you two.”

  “You mean this stuff you made is like the varnish for our weapons?” Cole asked.

  “Almost,” Paige told him, “but not quite. Our stuff is more of a concoction, and this is a…dispersed…how did you describe it?”

  “It’s along the lines of a colloidal dispersion.” Not at all surprised by the dumbfounded expression on Cole’s face, Daniels went on to say, “Although I don’t know the specifics, I gather the mixture you use for your Skinner weapons must be replenished or at least added in so many layers before its effect becomes permanent.”

  Cole knew that well enough. Since the night he first whittled his spear down from a freshly cut sapling, he’d lost count of how many fresh coats of the rancid varnish he’d applied.

  “This particular colloidal dispersion,” Daniels explained, “is a substance that can be directly applied to other mediums. The substance becomes so potent that its qualities are transmitted to its new medium in a ratio somewhere in the vicinity of six to one.”

  Rolling her hand as if she was guiding a car into its parking spot, Paige said, “Which means?”

  “Which means, in the case of the substance I devised using the Blood Blade, traits of the biological element will be directly passed on to a biological recipient in a manner similar to when those traits are passed on to the mediums of metal or wood.”

  Paige hopped off her stool and started pacing. “Blood Blades are forged using some special Gypsy metal and shapeshifter blood just to give the metal a supernatural charge.”

  “Charge isn’t the best term,” Daniels muttered.

  Continuing as if Daniels hadn’t even spoken, Paige said, “Our weapons can change shape because they’re alive, or they used to be. They’re not as strong as the Blood Blade because we have to use wood instead of metal.”

  “Metal with the special mystery element,” Cole added sarcastically.

  Paige snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “Exactly! When raw, pure shapeshifter blood bonds to living things, it allows them to do things like grow fangs and claws, run from one end of a state to the other, throw big stuff…you know.”

  “I think so,” Cole said as some of the fog in his head started to clear.

  As she went on, Paige reminded him of a professor feeding a slow student his lines and hoping he caught on. “But if the shapeshifter blood bonds directly with the blood of a person…”

  “They become a Half Breed,” Cole said.

  “Yes.”

  “Either give me a sticker or get to the point,” he grumbled.

  Daniels stepped in. “The natural bonding process has bad side effects, as you mentioned. The bonding process used for your weapons requires so many treatments that the same side effects would be passed on to any living thing that’s more complicated than a stick. The process used on the Blood Blade, however, is different because it uses another element as a buffer. I don’t know exactly what the element is, but I did manage to separate it from the samples I’ve been given.”

  Cole’s hopes for a simple explanation were dashed, so he looked back to Paige.

  Leaning on the edge of her stool with elbows planted on her knees and the jersey hanging down low enough to show the top of her leather corset, she looked like she was calling for a very interesting huddle. “The stuff we use on our weapons is basically varnish. It would kill you if you tried to mix it with your blood. Whatever is used on the Blood Blade acts like a gateway between the shapeshifter blood and whatever it’s bonding to.”

  “How did you come up with all of this?” Cole asked.

  “I’ve been kicking it around for a few years. The details don’t matter,” Paige said dismissively. “The tricky part has been getting a Blood Blade to someone with more chemistry know-how than me to work on it. Now, after a few tests, we’ll be able to use this stuff to safely bond shapeshifter blood directly with our blood and use their power against them.”

  Cole froze for a second and leaned forward, as if being closer to Paige and Daniels would help their words sink in. “Wait. You mean you could get the powers of a shapeshifter without becoming one?”

  “Bingo!”

  Daniels was quick to step in before either Cole or Paige could get worked up. “No. Not bingo. Not yet. I said certain traits could be passed along, not all of them. It’s got to be tested, but with all that’s involved in the distillation process, I can guarantee it won’t be a perfect conversion. I believe my ratio was in the vicinity of six to one, meaning any powers that are passed along will be six times weaker than the source. Most likely, only th
e basic predominant qualities will be passed along for a short time before being weakened by that same ratio.”

  Cole felt the proverbial lightbulb start to glow over his head, but knew it was forty watts at best. “So, this stuff might make someone become just a little bit of a werewolf?”

  “Actually,” Daniels said with a wince, “a full bond would be needed for transformation. With this process, only predominant traits like strength or endurance of the specimen would be passed on in a diluted form.”

  “So if I injected this—”

  Daniels shook his head and waggled his hands as if going into convulsions. “No direct injection into the bloodstream. That would be too dangerous. Paige has suggested another means of introduction into the system that might just work.”

  When he looked over at Paige, Cole was surprised he didn’t see canary feathers dangling from her bottom lip.

  “I sure did,” she said proudly. Being in the football frame of mind, Paige motioned for a pass from the Nymar, and had to scramble to catch the brick-sized package before getting hit in the face. Even that near miss wasn’t enough to dampen her spirits. She ripped off the brown paper to reveal a cardboard box, which she also tore open. Inside, wrapped in bubble wrap and plastic bags, was a cylindrical grip, some long needles wrapped in more plastic, and a piece of machinery that looked like a strange amalgam of spooled wires, small pistons, and metal brackets.

  It wasn’t until Cole saw the heading on the receipt that he had any clue what those pieces were supposed to form. “Mustache Pete’s Tattoo Supply? Are you serious?”

  He’d never seen a smile so wide on Paige’s face. “It’s perfect,” she insisted. “The stuff can’t be injected, so it doesn’t go into a vein. This is a way to get it right where it needs to be without going too deep!”

  “You know how to use that machine?” Cole asked.

  “I’m not making a real tattoo. I’ll just be drawing lines on arms or legs. It doesn’t matter what it looks like because it won’t even last. Right, Daniels?”

  Daniels rolled his eyes and reluctantly nodded. “Every test I’ve run has resulted in the entire sample degrading over a relatively short amount of—”

  “It breaks up, burns off, fades away, whatever you want to say,” Paige cut in. “I’ve seen it!”

  “You’ve seen it on a pig,” Daniels corrected. “A dead pig! It’s not the same.”

  Winking and grinning at Cole, she said, “He also tested it on himself.”

  “I’m not exactly the same as you two,” Daniels said.

  “But he’s still got human muscle tissue…Well,” Paige groaned, “a little muscle tissue. This stuff he tapped into his arm gave him enough of a boost to move his furniture without breaking a sweat. After a few minutes the stuff just faded away. It was beautiful!”

  “Tapped in?” Cole asked.

  “Old school Polynesian method,” she said. “Real tribal. Very manly. It worked pretty well, but he wanted to refine it some more. I gave him another week and here we are.”

  “You’re two days early!” Daniels snapped. And just when it seemed he couldn’t be more annoyed, a grating buzz filled the apartment. “What the hell?” he muttered as he scurried to the front door.

  Paige flew across the room to grab him by the shoulder. “Don’t let anyone in,” she hissed.

  Matching her harsh whisper, Daniels told her, “I wasn’t. That’s the buzzer from the security door.”

  “Are you expecting anyone?”

  He shook his head.

  Cole walked over to stand next to the television, which put him between the front door and the kitchen. He’d just spotted the panel in the wall next to the door when the buzz came again. From that distance it was loud enough to rattle his back teeth. “Maybe it’s just someone downstairs hitting the wrong button.”

  “Maybe it’s those two that have been sitting in their car watching the building,” Daniels suggested.

  “Can you point the car out from here?” Paige asked.

  Daniels raced from the buzzing panel to the sliding glass door that opened onto one of the patios Cole had spotted from the parking lot. Daniels stopped there and gingerly pulled aside one of the vertical plastic strips covering the door. He peeked through the narrow opening and then eased the strip back into place. “They’re gone,” he whispered.

  “Are you sure?” Cole asked.

  Daniels nodded. “The car’s still there, but it’s empty.”

  “Someone leaving their car unattended in a parking lot isn’t what I’d call suspicious,” Paige said.

  Daniels had already caused a mild reaction within the two Skinners, but something else triggered a dull heat that ran from Cole’s scars up to his elbows. Paige met his eyes long enough to let him know that she’d felt it too.

  Whoever was downstairs tapped on the button two quick times, like the friendly beep of a car horn.

  After Paige nodded solemnly and stepped back, Daniels reached out to push the speaker button. Setting his jaw as if there was a camera attached to his door, he said, “What do you want? It’s late.”

  “My name is Burkis. I think you know why I’m here.”

  Chapter 10

  Paige’s hand locked around Daniels’s wrist to pull his finger away from the button.

  “Do you know anyone named Burkis?” she asked.

  Daniels shook his head as he replied, “Is he the one from New York?”

  “So you do know him?”

  “No, but I’ve heard someone from New York has been trying to find me.”

  “And why didn’t you say anything?”

  The fleshy pockets around Daniels’s eyes pulled back and his lips twisted into a gaping frown that displayed one and a half sets of fangs that had slipped from their sockets. “I always tell you there’s people after me! Why do you think I paid for two extra apartments and burned escape routes into them?”

  The buzzer went off with a prolonged, impatient stab of the downstairs button.

  Before Paige could answer that, Cole leaned forward and asked, “Can you see the front door from the first floor apartment?”

  “Yes,” Daniels replied. “Well…sort of.”

  Cole looked to Paige and raised his eyebrows with another unspoken proposition. She picked up on it immediately and nodded. “Good enough,” she said. “Daniels, keep this guy talking while we go down and have a look. Any trouble, you come down to us. Where’s the Blood Blade?”

  “It’s in a safe in the apartment right below us. Bedroom, under the throw rug.”

  She ran to the closet and slid down the ladder. Cole was about to join her when Daniels snapped his fingers to catch his attention.

  “The ladder to get to the first floor is in the little closet in the hall where the water heater should be,” the balding Nymar told him. When the buzzer sounded again, Daniels answered right away. “Sorry, I was checking my contact list. Who sent you?”

  Cole couldn’t hear the answer, but the voice that came through the speaker had the low pitch and stern tone of a parent dealing with a bothersome kid. Grabbing onto the sides of the ladder, Cole slid down and hit the floor on the balls of his feet. He went straight to the hallway closet and motioned for Paige to follow. Sure enough, instead of a water heater, there was another rough hole in the floor with a ladder extending down from it. Cole and Paige were a bit more careful to keep quiet as they descended, but were still quick to get to the front door of apartment 103.

  Since he was the first to arrive, Cole placed his eye to the peephole. Within seconds Paige was behind him. He expected to get pushed out of the way but instead felt her hand press firmly on his back as she whispered into his ear.

  “Do you see him?” she asked.

  Not only was the apartment door a bit to the side of the building’s main entrance, but the lens of the peephole made everything look like it was projected onto the rounded surface of a bubble. “I don’t have a good angle,” Cole grunted as he twisted and squinted to try and improve
his view, “but I can make out the front door. Looks like there’s more than one out there.”

  “How many?”

  “At least two. Maybe three.”

  “Let me see,” Paige said as she tapped him eagerly.

  Cole stepped aside and let Paige take a look. Pretty soon she was doing the same wriggling dance to see more through the little hole. Stepping back, she said, “Keep an eye on them. Hopefully Daniels keeps them talking long enough for me to get the Blood Blade.”

  “Hold on,” Cole hissed. “I can see one of them.”

  Now that he’d stared through the warped lens for a while, he could see the man at the speaker lean over to look through the tall window beside the building’s front door. He was no more than six-two or six-three and dressed in a plain, dark suit that hung loosely over broad shoulders and a thick torso. The man turned to stare directly at the peephole, making Cole reflexively jerk away from the door.

  “What’s the matter?” Paige asked. “Who’s out there?”

  Steeling himself to look outside again, Cole replied, “Just get the blade. Whoever’s out there is getting antsy.”

  Keeping his eyes fixed on the door to 103, the man outside leaned against the entrance to the building as two more figures stepped up behind him. There was no doubt the man in the suit was Burkis, because Cole recalled the other two, Mullet and Sid, from his eventful trip to White Castle. The expression on Burkis’s face didn’t change in the slightest as he pressed against the main door and broke whatever bolts had been holding it in place.

  Burkis walked into the building and glanced at 103. Shifting his eyes to the stairs, he waved toward the ground floor apartment and started to climb. Whether they’d been given silent orders or just understood Burkis’s signal, Mullet and Sid grabbed the handle of the door and started shaking it.

  “They know we’re here,” Cole announced as he backed away and drew his spear from the harness on his back. “Burkis and those two I saw in Cicero.”

  “Can you hold them off?”

  It hadn’t taken long for the Nymar thugs to stop jiggling the handle and start pounding on the door itself. Judging by the amount of plaster that cracked around the door frame, they wouldn’t have to pound for long.