Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) (11 page)

“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.”

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.

“I’ll try,” Cole said, “but you’d better get in here!”

“‘I’ll try!’” Sid shouted in a squealing mockery of Cole’s last statement. The door came loose and was flung open. It slammed against the wall of the entryway as Sid rushed inside. All three sets of fangs were on display as he opened his mouth and let out a breathy snarl.

Cole reflexively brought his spear across his chest as Sid
charged into him. Since he couldn’t keep from being driven backward, he bent at the knees, rolled onto his back, and straightened his arms. Sid’s teeth clamped together loudly as he was tossed over his prey and into a tall stack of narrow white boxes.

The move went pretty well, but Cole didn’t have time to be impressed with himself. He scrambled to his feet and whipped around to find Mullet standing in the doorway. Compared to Sid, the guy with the bad hair looked tired and pale. He spat a quick obscenity into the apartment and then dashed down the hall that led to the neighbor’s door.

“Paige! He ran next door. I think he wants to feed!”

Nymar were strong enough already, but they had a nasty habit of grabbing a quick meal when faced with a fight. Apparently, Mullet hadn’t expected to face anyone stronger than Daniels and needed a quick shot of energy.

Paige bolted from the bedroom, weaving between small stacks of boxes and dodging Cole while plucking the baton from her right boot. As she raced from the apartment, her batons creaked into full combat mode: sickle blade on one end, with the handle sharpened down to a stake.

Like most animals desperate for its next meal, Mullet moved quickly and tore through anything that got in his way. One of those things had been the door to apartment 102, which Mullet knocked completely off its hinges. Paige stalked over the door laying flat upon the floor and cautiously moved inside. The apartment was dark, except for a trickle of light coming in from the newly busted front doorway. Paige didn’t need night vision to know where Mullet had gone. She could hear screams coming from the bedroom and the sound of something heavy slamming against the walls. She jogged as quickly as she dared while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. By the time she reached the bedroom, she could see one shadow pouncing upon another.

She reached out with her right hand to swat the wall beside the doorway. Finding the switch, she flipped it and bathed the room in the soft glow of a single lamp. It was a woman’s bedroom, filled with mirrors, a couple small dressers, and a queen-sized bed. The woman in the bed was middle-aged
and wore an oversized T-shirt that had twisted around her as she squirmed and tried to crawl to the other side of the mattress.

Mullet had one foot on the floor and the other propped upon the edge of the bed. He reached out with both hands, clawing at the blankets and mattress in his frenzy to get at the woman. One hand slapped against her shin and thick fingers closed around her ankle in a grip that brought a pained yelp to the woman’s lips.

With Mullet reeling the woman in, Paige only had enough time to land one blow. She drove the end of her sickle’s blade into Mullet’s hip, leaned back and pulled. The Nymar snarled loudly and hung on. Even as he was dragged toward Paige’s side of the bed, he brought the woman along with him. She stretched out and managed to grab hold of her nightstand. It wasn’t heavy enough to keep her from moving but worked nicely as an anchor once it became wedged against the side of the bed. Now that she had something to hold onto, the woman pulled herself away from Mullet and kicked his head with her loose foot.

Paige dug her other weapon’s blade into Mullet’s side. “Come on now,” she growled. “Wouldn’t you rather have a girl who’s ready and willing?”

Once the frightened woman scrambled out of his reach, Mullet slid off the bed and twisted around to face the Skinner. Paige’s weapons tore through his flesh, which brought an angry snarl from the back of his throat. Hungry, desperate, and now wounded, the Nymar let out a sound that wasn’t even close to human. The black markings on his neck and wrists stood out as though the tendrils inside of him were about to emerge from his flesh and wrap around the first warm body they could find.

After a few wild swings with his fists and some jerky twists from his upper body, Mullet ripped free of Paige’s weapons. The soft light from the lamp made the foamy drool dangling from his lips seem more like something that had been excreted from an insect and hardened onto his face. Now that his full attention was on her, the Nymar alternated between trying to grab her and knock her out. The look in
his eyes made it clear that he would feed upon whatever pieces he could tear off.

Paige was only human, so she couldn’t move her arms at Mullet’s speed. She stood her ground, kept her eyes focused upon the Nymar’s center of mass and whipped her weapons around to block as many incoming swipes as she could. After batting one of Mullet’s arms away, she prepared to block the next. Paige shifted her weight, bobbed her head, and leaned to dodge whatever she couldn’t block.

The Nymar’s hands and forearms met Paige’s weapons with a steady stream of thumps that echoed through the bedroom. After clubbing Paige’s shoulder with a two-armed swing, he knocked her back half a step and attempted to pull the weapons from her hands. Paige was able to twist both sickles away before they were taken, but not before Mullet snuck a punch through her guard.

His fist felt like a chunk of cement pounding against her stomach, and Paige folded around it while letting out a pained grunt. A second shot came right after that one and landed heavily on Paige’s back. Because she’d hunkered down and braced for it rather than trying to get away, she caught most of the impact on muscle and bone instead of her neck or face. If she’d been dressed for a fight instead of an orgy, she would have been wearing something heavier than a football jersey over a corset. As it was, Mullet’s fingernails cut straight through the layer of nylon to rake through the skin of her shoulder and start a flow of blood running down her back.

The instant she felt the warm trickle on her skin, Paige pulled away and snapped her left weapon up. The Nymar had been coming in to feed and wasn’t even trying to block her strike, allowing the top of her weapon to crack solidly against his jaw. Mullet reared back and sent a spray of blackened fluid through the air to spatter upon the ceiling. Rather than come at Paige again, he sent a wild kick into her midsection that bounced her off a dresser. Mullet rolled off the bottom of the bed and landed on all fours. From there, the Nymar whipped around, lunged over the top of the mattress, and grabbed the woman who’d been trying to hide in the corner farthest from the door.

“Get over here, bitch,” he snarled as he pulled the woman by her hair.

His eyes were glassy and clouded. His grip nearly crushed her arm. When she kicked and beat her fists against him, the woman only bruised herself. As her hair began to rip from her scalp, she seemed ready to tear it all out just to get away. A hand closed around her throat just under her chin. She grabbed and scratched at it but only managed to peel away a few layers of dead skin to reveal something dark, solid, and uncompromising beneath it.

The woman screamed and scraped her feet against the floor. She pulled and strained with every muscle in her body. No matter what she did or how hard she fought, she was unable to get away from the hungry Nymar that now came at her with venom dripping from the one curved fang that hadn’t been cracked during the brawl.

Suddenly, there was movement at Mullet’s neck. Something slipped around his throat and dug into the thick mass of muscles and tendons. The blade didn’t do any damage, but it pulled his head back before he could sink his teeth in.

Paige appeared over Mullet’s shoulder and growled with the strain of pulling the Nymar another inch or so from his intended meal. Just as he was about to lift the woman up to his fangs, Paige pulled back one more time. Muffled gunshots thumped from next door, but that didn’t keep Paige from using her sickle to force his head back a little more. Her left hand was wrapped around a syringe, and she dropped it like a hammer onto the black marking that ran down the side of Mullet’s neck. The moment the needle broke his skin, Paige sent the antidote through the tendril and directly to the spore attached to his heart. His grip on the woman was weaker than a baby’s before the needle could be removed. Just to be safe, Paige dragged Mullet across the bed and dumped him onto the floor.

The trembling apartment owner stood with her hand pressed against her sweat-soaked nightshirt and watched as Paige bolted from the room. The monster who’d nearly ripped both women apart lay convulsing near the bedroom door. His limbs seized up and his pale gray skin settled upon
his bones while something within his chest shuddered one last time.

Paige had just gone after Mullet when Cole attacked Sid with his spear. Unlike the times he’d sparred with Paige or swung the weapon at empty air, he wasn’t just practicing a set of motions or concentrating on his stance. He was tearing through skin, scraping against bone, and the target was fighting back.

After getting stabbed three or four times in a row, Sid trapped the spear against his side and dropped his other arm straight down on the middle of the weapon. Any other stick would have snapped under the impact of the Nymar’s fist. Cole’s spear not only stayed in one piece, but tore open a long gash as it was pulled away. The Nymar howled in pain, flung himself back and tripped over a pile of boxes.