Skinners: Blood Blade

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  “You said you were at the Afton Inn, right?” she asked.

  “That’s the place. Are there guns in some of those cases?”

  “A few.”

  Cole let it drop at that.

  The sun was out in full force, but didn’t shine down with enough heat to burn through the early morning chill. Considering it was autumn in Chicago, that situation wasn’t bound to get much better. Morning rush hour was growing into a living, sprawling behemoth, so Cole let Paige drive without any more distractions. Before too long he was busy hanging onto whatever he could as she wove between other vehicles without the fear of a mortal being. Doing his best to let go of his love for life, he tried to focus on something more relaxing…like the plane ride into Canada.

  He still hadn’t drawn a full breath by the time they’d parked at the Afton Inn and headed upstairs to the second floor. Normally, the cool, sterilized air of a vaguely nice hotel was enough to soothe his nerves. Places like that smelled like vacations or, at the very least, business trips where marginal food was put on the company’s bill. This time, even the faint odor of chlorine didn’t make him smile. Instead of thinking about whirlpools and saunas, he could only think about hissing blondes with sharp claws and greasy fur.

  “Which room is yours?” Paige asked.

  Cole pulled in a breath and dug the key card from his pocket. Walking to his door, he paused and asked, “What if it’s in there?”

  “You think that thing attacked you so it could use your room?”

  “No…but…what if another one came back? I don’t have a weapon.”

  “Wait right here,” Paige said. “I think I saw a luggage rack by the elevator.”

  Plugging his key card into the reader on the door, Cole grumbled, “Smartass.”

  When the light on the card reader turned green, he turned the knob and opened the door. Before he could take a step inside, however, Paige walked past him and surveyed the room.

  “You made a real mess in here,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That thing came in through the window?”

  Cole walked into the bathroom, flicked on the light and gathered up some of the things he’d left in there. “Yep. In through the window, onto the bed, and back to the window.”

  “I’ve heard of worse ways to spend a night,” Paige said as she ran her hand along the carpet in front of the TV. She rubbed her fingers together and shook her head. The expression on her face brightened considerably when she saw the window, mostly shut against its splintered frame. “You said it came and left through here?”

  “I said it twice. Jesus, my credit card’s gonna take a hit for this damage.”

  Running her hand along the window, Paige grinned as if she’d just looked under the bed to find a wad of cash the previous guests had left behind. “Bring me a towel, Cole. There’s some good stuff here.”

  He grabbed a handful of towels from the segmented steel rack above the toilet and brought them out to her. “What sort of good stuff are you talking about?”

  “How about this?” Paige asked as she brought her hand around for him to see. At first glance it seemed there was nothing but waves of heat coming up from her sleeve. With a flip of her wrist, the back of her hand became visible. She repeated the trick by flipping her hand around a few more times. Now you see it, now you don’t.

  “Wow,” he whispered. “That’s cool.” After squinting and adjusting his eyes a bit, he could make out the vague shape of Paige’s hand when she twisted it around again.

  Grabbing one of the smaller towels Cole had brought her, she wiped off her hand and examined it to make sure all her fingers were visible and accounted for. “Now I know why Gerald was willing to go all the way to Canada to meet this Mongrel. I bet he intended on getting some of this invisible stuff after Brad was done talking to her.”

  “He never told you for certain?”

  “He mentioned her a few times when he was arranging for me to come to Chicago,” she said while holding up her hand to display a finger that had a hazy, mostly invisible tip, “but he hadn’t been able to track her too well. Gerald said she could secrete some sort of oil to coat her fur so she could…I don’t know how to explain it…”

  “Bend light?”

  Paige nodded as if Cole had guessed the number she’d been thinking of. “More or less. You got that from a movie, right?”

  “About a hundred of them, and a dozen or so video games,” Cole added. “I was going to steal that one for one of my own.”

  “Real original.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anyway,” she continued, “Gerald told me this Mongrel was a hell of a spy thanks to this trick with disappearing or bending light or whatever. She claimed to have some information, but Gerald didn’t trust her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s a hell of a spy and he couldn’t track her. Let’s just say she was lucky Brad was so new at all this or she wouldn’t have made it out of Chicago. Gerald was traditional and it’s not Skinner tradition to sit down and chat with shapeshifters. The only reason Gerald agreed to the meeting at all was because the Mongrel had escaped and it was the only way to pick up her trail again. This stuff goes a long way to recoup some of our losses. We’ll have to do a little fiddling, but there’s going to be plenty of uses for this.”

  “Fiddling. Real technical term, there. Do you think…she might have had anything to do with killing Gerald and Brad? If she can change shape, maybe she could’ve changed into that other thing.”

  Paige shook her head at that. “That’s not how it works. I don’t know any breed of shapeshifters that can change into totally different animals. Full Bloods can change a few different ways, but even their fur stays roughly the same color and you’d never mistake one for a cat. Besides, her story about almost getting killed along with you holds up. Full Bloods and Mongrels hate each other, and that’s not just colorful language. We’re talking hate. Come to think of it, her being there might have kept you alive just by distracting that Full Blood long enough. And if she had anything to do with what happened to Gerald and Brad, she wouldn’t be stupid enough to come all the way back here so I could pick up her trail again.”

  “A lot of what she said fits with what Ace and Steph told us,” Cole pointed out.

  “Yep, and since there’s no way in hell a Mongrel would work with Nymar like them just to put together a good story, it seems both sources hold up pretty well. Give me some more towels.” Once Cole handed them to her, she carefully wiped up the greasy residue Jackie had left on the walls and bedside tables.

  “So Full Bloods hate Mongrels,” he said. “That’s good to know, I guess. Now, these things are full-blooded…what?”

  Going over another patch of residue that was on the dresser, Paige said, “They’re werewolves, Cole. Nothing much can harm them, but whatever wounds they do get tend to heal up real quick unless they were put there by charmed weapons like that Blood Blade. Those things are hard to make, and only a few Gypsy families know how to make them. That’s why we’ve got to protect whatever blades we get our hands on.”

  “A werewolf?” Cole asked. “A real werewolf?” He let out a breath and ran his fingers over his head. “Does it howl at the moon?” he asked, and chuckled.

  Paige nodded. “Yep. They do like to howl. They can change whenever they like, and as far as we know, they can live for over a hundred years.”

  “Yowza.”

  “Sorry, Cole. Usually we don’t just spool it all out like this, but you’re kind of getting the crash course since you’ve already seen some of these things firsthand. To be honest, most of us don’t get to see a Full Blood for years. Living through it is even more rare.”

  “What was the first you ever saw?” he asked.

  Reluctantly, she said, “A Half Breed. It was a bad situation, so just leave it at that.”

  “And they’re not as bad as Full Bloods?”

  She winced, and after a moment replied, “They’re
different. They can’t change whenever they want and they’re wilder. They also…well…it’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “Do they live a hundred years?”

  “Oh, no,” she quickly said. “They’re mean, strong, and very fast, but they can be put down like any other big, ugly animal. When they change all the way, it takes a lot more. Big enough guns can do the trick, but there are other methods that work a whole lot better.”

  “I wouldn’t mind putting a few of those things out of their misery,” Cole said. “After seeing what happened in that cabin, it would do me some good to stand up to them.”

  Paige bundled up a towel soaked with the residue. Slipping back into her kung fu voice, she said, “Now is the time for my disciple to settle a score of another sort.” Seeing the eager look on Cole’s face, she added, “The hotel bill. Take this.” She slapped a wad of money into his hand. “Pay the bill, pay for the damages, make sure nothing’s charged to your card, and then leave.”

  After picking up his few remaining personal things, Cole headed for the door, but stopped short before opening it. “I just realized I’ve been wearing the same clothes so long that they’re sticking to me.”

  Unable to keep a straight face, Paige said, “That’s probably how that Mongrel tracked you all the way from Canada. If you need new clothes, we can get some on the way out of town.”

  At the desk, Cole spoke to a perky little man with bad skin, a worse toupee, and a surprisingly genuine smile. When he told him he was checking out, the clerk asked if everything was okay and then offered him a complimentary muffin. The clerk threw a mild fit when he got the phone call from the maid he’d sent to check on the room, but quickly calmed down after Cole handed over enough cash to settle the entire account. On his way out, Cole took his complimentary muffin, then ducked back inside to snag a second one.

  Twenty minutes later he and Paige were headed north on I–94. Paige was doing the driving while munching happily on the treat Cole had brought her. She looked so happy that, if her mouth wasn’t stuffed full at the moment, she might have been ready to sing.

  “Wha ki id di?”

  “Did you actually form words just now or was that some sort of code?” Cole asked.

  Chewing up the rest of the muffin and wiping the crumbs from her chin, she said, “What kind is this? The muffin?”

  “Oh, uh, I don’t know. One of the dark, healthy looking ones.”

  “Damn, that was good.” Reaching for the coffee she’d bought at a gas station, Paige sipped from the foam cup, blew on it, and then sipped again.

  As he watched her, Cole couldn’t help but smile. “You’re a morning person. Strike one.”

  “Not a morning person, but I do like breakfast,” she amended.

  “Now that you’re done stuffing your face, how about we pull over to get me some clothes? I think these are about to start walking on their own.”

  She shook her head while taking another pull from her coffee, which resulted in dripping enough to produce a nice, dark stain on her shirt. “Not yet. There’s an outlet mall near the state line,” she said while swiping at the spilled brew. “We’ll stop there.”

  “Like you’re so strapped for cash. What about that bundle you showed me at the hotel?”

  “Those are funds to be used when necessary,” she said, as if quoting from a manual. “And before you ask, they come from a pool made by other Skinners and any number of fine people who feel they owe it to us to keep us properly outfitted.”

  “So, you save someone’s ass from a werewolf and they chip in for the cause?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I guess that makes sense. So, what’s a Mongrel?”

  “They’re shapeshifters,” Paige explained. “But not werewolves. Werewolves turn into wolves, or something along those lines. Mongrels turn into everything else.”

  “Like what?”

  Paige shrugged, and rolled down the window to let a breeze rush through the car that felt just as capable of separating flesh from bone as the subject of the conversation. “I’ve seen some cats and foxes,” she said casually. “One or two bears. Those are very tough, by the way. Snakes, lizards…”

  Cole started laughing, and wrapped his hands around his foam coffee cup. “It was a real question, Paige. No need for the bullshit.”

  “I’m serious!” Holding up her hand to tick off her fingers, she added, “Leopards, tigers…but I haven’t seen all of these myself. Lions, coyotes…”

  “Such crap,” he muttered.

  Paige stopped, but only to take a sip of coffee. Although there was still some good humor in her eyes, there wasn’t enough there to make Cole certain she’d been kidding. Finally, she said, “All shapeshifters are tricky and dangerous. They don’t need to feed on people, which means they don’t need to expose themselves like the Nymar. They’re territorial, so they fight for turf and kill to keep it. One Skinner from way back said he found evidence that shapeshifters used to try and live away from humans so they could just do their own thing. According to him, the more humans pushed into the wilderness, the more the shapeshifters pushed back.”

  “Sounds like an environmentalist’s worse case scenario,” Cole grunted.

  “It may go a bit further back than that.”

  “The sixties?” Cole offered.

  “Eighteen sixties, maybe.”

  “Seriously?”

  Paige laughed and let her foot off the gas so she could slide past a cop while doing something close to the speed limit. “Don’t sound so impressed. They’re common legends and most are recorded in devices called books. You know, those things where words are written down on paper and not on a computer screen?” Seeing the dry look on Cole’s face, she eased up a bit. “Skinners don’t live forever,” she said. “Considering our line of work, we barely get to live as long as Gerald. We mostly pass on what we know one on one, but there’s a lot to be learned from history and folklore.”

  “Do the vam—I mean Nymar, get to live forever?”

  “I don’t think so. There are legends, but those could just be about one man living in the same castle, passing his disease down to his servants or cousins or something. The legends about the Mongrels and other shapeshifters have been proven, though. You open up a mythology book from just about anywhere in the world and you’ll find werewolves, wereleopards, weretigers, you name it. We’ve documented enough actual sightings to verify them and a lot more.”

  “Yeah,” Cole said. “So have I.”

  “There you go. Start keeping a journal. That’s not a request either. We can’t afford to open a school, so we need to make sure to pass it along before we…” The casual, easygoing smile on Paige’s face dimmed for the first time in a while. Focusing on the road and hanging one arm out the window, she said, “When we die. Everything we’ve picked up builds on what everyone else has learned. Hopefully, someday we’ll know enough to take back our spot at the top of the food chain. Until then, we’re just another bunch of sheep hoping the wolves don’t get hungry.”

  “I like the learning idea better,” Cole said.

  “So do I.”

  After a deep breath, he asked, “Are all Mongrels invisible?”

  Paige settled right back into her comfort zone. “They all have their own abilities. Some breeds don’t do much, but others can surprise you. There’s always something behind it that explains how they do their tricks. Once we figure out some of those tricks, we can use them for ourselves.”

  “That’s why you collected that grease from the hotel?” he asked.

  “Yep. With all the Skinners in the world, there’s bound to be someone who can figure out a good way to use the weird stuff we find.”

  “You don’t know how great it is to hear you say that,” he said.

  “Say what?”

  “That something’s weird.”

  Paige laughed at him and said, “You haven’t seen the worst of it yet, my friend. You’ve been real lucky to make it this far. Just stay close to m
e and do what I say. When we reach that diner, let me do the talking. When we meet Prophet, you listen and watch.”

  “Prophet,” Cole repeated. “Is he psychic?”

  “More or less. He claims to have dreams about the future that are accurate enough for him to be in the right place at the right time to catch certain people or track certain things. He mostly works as a bounty hunter, but does some tracking for us when he can. Charges an arm and a leg, but it’s usually worth it.”

  “Must be awfully nice to have a psychic on your side.”

  She groaned and slowly shook her head. “He’s a great tracker, but a lot of that’s pure talent. The dreams he has are…I don’t know. At least he’s a great tracker.”

  Cole nodded and resisted the urge to chuckle. “How’d you find this guy?”

  “Actually, he found one of us. A Skinner named Rico was doing work in St. Louis when he ran into this guy who claimed to have a psychic vision or something that told him where to find a nest of monsters. The psychic stuff sounded iffy, but he led us to a den of Half Breeds, so we put him on the payroll.”

  “And his name’s Prophet?” Cole snorted. “Maybe his mother was psychic too. Can’t wait to meet him.”

  “His name’s Walter, and I’m sure you two will get along just fine.”

  “Sure! All of us Skinners got to stick together, right?”

  “He’s not a Skinner,” Paige said with a laugh. “Although we’ve tried to recruit him more than once.”

  “Aw, come on. All you’d need to do is go in there and bat those pretty eyelashes at him and I bet he’d cave.”

  “Not every man’s as easy to work as you,” she said.

  Cole pulled in a sharp breath and hissed, “That one stung.”

  Chapter 14

  There was time to kill before the meeting at the diner Ace and Steph had mentioned. Paige wanted to get there early, which still left them with an hour or two to hit the outlet mall. Cole picked up some new clothes and they were out the door before he could try on his half-priced jeans.