Teeth of Beasts (Skinners)

by Marcus Pelegrimas

  “Who are all those people staring at my house?”

  She went to the window, which looked out onto Kensington Avenue. It was a pleasant neighborhood that was usually quiet because the neighbors kept to themselves. But now Paige spotted three of them standing on the sidewalk in front of the house, staring at it. The more she looked, the more people she found on both sides of the street. None of them spoke or even moved. They’d simply dropped whatever they were doing so they could stare.

  Catching herself before she repeated Ned’s last question, Paige asked, “How long have they been standing there?”

  “A couple minutes now. I noticed one when I came out of the bathroom. I think it’s Joey from across the street. Then the others showed up.”

  “What about those two old ladies down by that red house?”

  “Yep, I see ’em,” Ned said. “They’re new. Maybe they like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  As Ned did his best to focus on the scene outside his window, the rattle from the air conditioner clanked like two pots banging together. “Before, they all just stared at the house,” he told her. “Now, they’re staring right at you. Aren’t they?”

  Paige stepped away from the glass, walked past the front door, and pulled aside the curtains covering the window on that side of the entrance. Apart from the blocky symbols stenciled into the frame, she revealed two thick panes separating her from nine people who stood outside with their arms hanging loosely at their sides. It only took a second or two before they all caught sight of her, shifted their gaze toward her and cocked their heads to one side.

  “What…the…hell?” she whispered.

  For the next few seconds the neighbors didn’t do anything but stare at Paige’s window, and she didn’t know what to do but stare back.

  The silence was broken by her ringing phone, snapping Paige from the bizarre connection between her and so many strangers. She dug the chirping piece of equipment from her pocket and glanced down at the screen to see the name S. Velasco printed on the illuminated surface. Looking up from there, she found herself less than four inches away from the blank, sunken face of a middle-aged woman with wet mud flowing from her mouth. Having climbed into the bushes growing around Ned’s house, the woman leaned forward and rested her forehead against the outer window.

  Steam formed on the glass in front of the woman’s dirty mouth when she said, “You cut me, Skinner. But I…found you.”

  As Paige backed away from the window, Ned approached her carrying an older model .45.

  “You cut me, Skinner,” the muddy woman repeated. “But there’s more of me now than you.” Slapping her hands against the side of the house, she shoved her face close enough to knock her teeth against the glass as she shrieked, “Moreofmethanyou! Moreofmethanyoumoreofmethanyou!”

  Paige looked through the peephole to find a young man standing on the porch. He was still watching the window where she’d been, but slowly turned toward her. Features warped by the curving glass were further obscured by streams of mud dripping from his eyes and nose to mingle with the sludge from his mouth. Taking one lunging step forward, the man scraped his fingers against the door like an animal trying to escape a fire.

  “They can’t get in here,” Ned told her confidently. “The runes won’t allow it.”

  More words came out of Ned’s mouth, but Paige couldn’t hear them. Every sound seemed to be garbled, as if she’d been dunked into a vat of water.

  I smell you, Paige, Henry whispered into her mind. Lickyoufromtheinside.

  Suddenly, she had trouble keeping her head up.

  Something filled the spaces in her chest cavity surrounding her heart. As Henry’s presence drew closer, a flood of cold swept through her body to wash him away. The healing serum in her system left her a little drained, but not enough to keep Paige from raising her weapons. By the time she collected herself, the face on the other side of the window was gone. The woman had staggered back to join the other neighbors staring at the house. As she watched, Paige noticed a heavyset man walking his little black and white dog farther down the sidewalk. Although the man nervously took in the sight of the people standing in and along Kensington Avenue, his thirteen pound canine snarled without an ounce of fear. The dog walker turned crisply around and pulled his bodyguard along with him.

  “They’re starting to disperse,” Ned announced.

  Paige looked at each of the people in turn, all of them filthy from their chins down to their necks. A kid in his early teens locked eyes with her and snapped his neck to one side. What had started as some kind of fit quickly turned into something much worse as the kid violently twisted his head as far as it would go. Paige pulled the door open and bolted outside just in time to hear the loud crunch as the kid’s spine gave way.

  The sight of the teen standing there with his head dangling from atop its severed spine was enough to freeze Paige in her tracks. His eyes still blinked and his mouth still moved as he spoke into her brain and ears at the same time.

  “I can go anywhere I want now,” he said. “Dr. Lancroft showed me how.”

  Without realizing it, Paige angled her head in the same direction as the kid’s. “Henry? Is that really you?”

  Although he could talk, the teen couldn’t nod. He didn’t need to. “The fire ain’t in you, like it is in a lot of folks.”

  “What fire?”

  “Pestilence.”

  “Are you doing this to all these people?” she asked.

  It was in ’em already.

  “Let them go,” Paige said as Ned’s feet shuffled across the porch behind her. “Henry, let them go or you’ll never sit in your room again. Remember your corner at Lancroft Re—”

  “Shut yer mouth, bitch! I got somethin’ to stick inityoufilthywhore!”

  But Paige wasn’t about to be frightened by words, whether they were in her brain or in her ears. When the kid took a step toward her, her right hand reflexively drew the club from that boot and willed it to take the only form she could manage. Although still crude in appearance, the machete’s edge was more than sharp enough to get the job done. “You don’t like hearing about the reformatory?”

  Henry’s wild, twitching eyes snapped within the boy’s sockets as the rest of the muddy neighbors swayed in the stagnant humidity of a calm St. Louis night.

  “Or is it Lancroft?” Ned asked. Henry’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open a little more. “Looks that way. You don’t like hearing the proper name of that reformatory. Did you ever meet Lancroft?”

  “He will heap disasters upon you,” the boy said. His mind, however, spewed the words, Pestilence and the teeth of beasts. Pestilenceandtheteethofbeasts!

  “You know your scripture,” Ned replied.

  “Then he should also know his history,” Paige snapped. “I gutted you once, Henry, but you were too stupid to let it end there. No other Full Bloods are here to help you this time. Is that why the big bad Mind Singer has to crawl around in other people’s heads now? You’re too afraid to face me alone?”

  “I ain’t alone no more,” Henry croaked through the teen’s ravaged windpipe. “I can be anywhere I want.” Anyone I want.

  “Then come and get me,” Paige said. “Wherever that ugly Full Blood body of yours is, climb back into it and rip me to shreds.”

  The teen’s face became tranquil, and one by one the muddy neighbors started to drop. “It don’t got to be so bad,” he said. “These folks ain’t got to hurt no more. They just been put out to clean up the leeches and wolves and such.”

  Ned raced to the old woman who’d been clawing at his window and caught her before she hit the ground. She coughed up more of the mud but didn’t have any trouble breathing. Within seconds she and most of the other neighbors were wiping their mouths and looking around in growing confusion.

  “See? Doc Lancroft is a good man,” Henry said. “He sent Pestilence to devour the wretches and kill them bloodsucking leeches.”

  “Lancroft is dead
,” Ned said while tending to the old woman.

  Paige wanted to help the others who’d awakened from their muddy sleepwalk, but they were getting up on their own. “Jonah Lancroft made Pestilence? Was that when you were in the reformatory?”

  Henry backed onto the curb as a police cruiser rounded the corner from Academy Avenue onto Kensington. Someone must have seen the strange assault on Ned’s house or gotten spooked by the swaying crowd because the cruiser hit its flashing lights as it drew closer.

  “Lancroft is dead,” Paige insisted. “He was a Skinner like us. Whatever he did, it’s over now. Whatever you’re doing to these people, stop it.”

  “I am the teeth of beasts,” Henry declared, “with the poison of serpents in the dust.”

  And when the police cruiser rolled up to Ned’s house, the teen fell backward into the street. His eyes clouded over in the short time it took him to fall, and when his body thumped against the car, his head twisted around as the rest of him rolled across the hood like the limp, abandoned vessel it was. Standing there gripping her poorly formed machete in an aching fist, watching that kid hit the street in a heap of tangled limbs, Paige had never felt more useless.

  Ned tossed his gun into the bushes in front of his house, took Paige’s weapon from her and threw it in next while the cop was examining the teen with the broken neck lying near his front tire. In the minutes another police cruiser showed up and was quickly followed by an ambulance.

  Statements were taken, questions were asked, hours passed, but the only real incident to be reported was the boy who’d been pronounced dead after throwing himself in front of a moving police car. Even though the rest of the neighbors seemed fine, the paramedics had no trouble spotting the grime on their faces. Talk of delirium stemming from the Mud Flu circulated as a possible explanation for the night’s events. All of the neighbors were taken to the hospital, and Ned and Paige were encouraged to do the same.

  “Can’t be too careful,” one of the paramedics told her.

  “Yeah,” Paige said. “Thanks for the advice.” Her eyes remained locked on the first cop, who was still talking to a fellow officer, giving an impassioned statement while gesturing at the mangled front end of his car.

  Knowing Paige well enough to read her mind without any supernatural tricks, Ned wrapped an arm around her and led her back to the house. “You can’t tell them what happened,” he whispered.

  “But he didn’t kill anyone. He’ll have to live with thinking he broke that kid’s neck.”

  “Then we’ll have to make sure this gets balanced out in the end. It’s what we do, Paige. Little lies need to be told and smaller sufferings need to be felt to keep the bigger ones from causing more damage.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Tough,” Ned snapped. “It’s been a long day and that’s the best I could come up with. Answer your phone.”

  “What?”

  “Your phone’s ringing. Answer it.”

  After digging the phone from her pocket, she jammed her finger against the glowing green button. “What is it?”

  Stanley Velasco’s voice dripped with self-satisfaction as he said, “Come and get ’em.”

  Chapter 16

  Cole emerged from the Cahokia Police Department, turned around and then looked at the building where he’d spent the better part of the last day. It was a little structure that barely seemed large enough to hold the cell, not to mention the officers guarding it.

  Rico, on the other hand, wasn’t about to look back. “Another notch on my belt,” he said as he strode toward Paige. She tossed him the keys to the nearby SUV, but that didn’t stop him from lifting her off the ground in a bear hug. “I knew you’d sniff us out, Bloodhound. That’s what you do!”

  “You know what else I do? Kick the hell out of big hairy creeps who try to throw me around.”

  Rico set her down and examined the keys she’d thrown him. “What’s this?”

  “Your ride home. Me and Cole are taking a cab.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded and then looked Cole up and down. “Anyone try to molest you, pretty boy?”

  “It was just a holding cell. No biggie,” he replied with strained nonchalance while running his hands over the top of a head that was greasy on the outside and sore on the inside. With every breath of fresh air he pulled in, the throbbing pain subsided. “Go on and leave without us, Rico. I’ll pick up the Cav from the impound lot.”

  “All right then,” he said as he hefted his jacket over one shoulder. “I’ll check up on that guy who sprung us, maybe see if there’s anything more about those bodies we saw on the news.”

  “What bodies?” Paige asked.

  “Let’s get away from here before the cops change their minds.”

  The village of Cahokia was a flat collection of squat buildings and wide streets. There didn’t seem to be much to look at under the best circumstances, and even less to catch the eye once the sun was down. A few streaks of light colored the sky’s lower edge, but it wouldn’t be long before darkness claimed Missouri. The cab arrived quickly, and when it did, Cole sat with his wallet, spare change, cell phone, and watch wrapped up in a plastic bag on his lap. His spear lay on the seat beside him, still in its harness and labeled with a tag from the police department, which he pulled off and tossed onto the floor. There was a lot to tell Paige, but he didn’t want to get too involved with the cab driver less than three feet away. When he looked over to her, she was already showing him a tired half grin.

  “I missed you,” she said.

  “Really? I thought you’d chew me out for getting locked up.”

  “I will later. Right now, I’m just glad you’re out.”

  “Some guy named Velasco arranged it. He says we owe him big-time, but the cops were glad to be rid of us after what happened while we were in there.” Again Cole looked toward the driver’s seat and cut himself off before finishing his story. “How’s your arm?”

  She shrugged. “A little better.”

  It was a short ride to the impound lot, and when they arrived, Cole was handed the keys to the Cav and a slip of paper that read PAID IN FULL. “Damn,” he grumbled. “Looks like we really do owe that Velasco guy.”

  Once they got to the spot where the Cav was parked, Paige looked the car over from front to back. Her mechanical expertise wasn’t extensive enough for her to guess how much repairs might cost, but she’d been with the old rust bucket long enough to know what damage was new and what had been written off as “charming imperfections” long ago. While she completed her inspection, Cole sifted through his plastic bag to make sure all of his stuff was accounted for. Once his phone was turned on, several missed calls and text messages blinked to his attention. Most of the calls had been from the MEG guy, Stu, and all of the voice mails, asking why he wasn’t answering his phone. Paige slid in behind the Cav’s wheel and prepared to turn the key in the ignition.

  “If it doesn’t work, can we scrap her and get a new one?” Cole asked.

  Paige gritted her teeth, turned the key, and smiled when the engine rattled to life. “No such luck.”

  After settling into the passenger seat, he pressed redial on his most recent Missed Call notice.

  “MEG Branch 40,” Stu said after one and a half rings.

  “Are you stalking me?” Cole asked.

  “Have you been on the trail of something? Is it another Chupacabra? Why did you take Abby on that hunt and not me?”

  “Didn’t your parents ever give you the Talk?”

  “Romance aside, we’re on the same team,” Stu grumbled.

  “What’s so important that you had to call me a thousand times?”

  “I got somewhere on that research you asked about. Did you open those pics I sent?”

  After sifting through the text messages, Cole found the ones with attachments. “Not yet. What are they?”

  “Etchings and paintings of various temples found all across the world that share certain structu
ral similarities.”

  “A-frames?”

  “Yep,” Stu replied. “Or the ancient equivalent. And they’re always described as colorfully painted to match local flowers, the morning sky, or flowing wine.”

  “So…purple.”

  “Right again. There were always inscriptions along the outer perimeter of the temples, but the stranger thing is that nobody seems to know who these temples were built for. Most of the texts just say they were discovered in good condition and filled with offerings. The only statuary or murals on the walls are of your generic sort of magical creatures and beautiful women. The pics I found are all over the place stylistically. Renaissance, Christian influenced, Hindu, Slavic, you name it.”

  “What about nymphs?” Cole asked.

  Stu groaned. “You can imagine what I found on a Net search for that one. We have access to more specialized libraries, but didn’t find much apart from the typical stuff. Nymphs are all very pretty. They like to dance in the forest. Big-time party girls.”

  “Have you gotten any more reports from other Skinners about them?”

  After a few taps on his keyboard, Stu told him, “There were a few recent ones, but they were mainly complaints about how you and Paige let that one go in Wisconsin.”

  “You mean Tristan.”

  The mention of that name caused Paige to tap Cole’s shoulder. “What about Tristan?” she asked.

  Rather than hold a conversation on two fronts, Cole waved impatiently toward the road just beyond the lot’s fence. She took the hint and drove for the gate amid a series of loud rattles and screeching belts. Apparently, slapping against the side of a bus didn’t do the Cav any favors.

  “Is Paige with you?” Stu asked. “Tell her hi. And yeah, it was Tristan. After that first sighting, all the others have been watching her. She’s not causing any problems, but she’s been moving around quite a bit. She was seen in Boston, Jersey, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, and several different spots in California. Huh. Our records might be a little off, because it says she was seen in L.A. and Cincinnati on the same day within a span of a few hours.”