Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) (24 page)

“Don’t forget Jackie. She’s another little present you brought back from Canada.”

Cole would never forget Jackie. In fact, there’d been many a tired and frustrated night in his walk-in freezer when he’d thought about her. Jackie was a shapeshifter known as a Mongrel. Where werewolves typically turned into something vaguely canine, Mongrels could look like any one of a motley assortment of representatives from the animal kingdom. According to Paige, there were were-leopards, tigers, snakes, and plenty more. Jackie was a cat of some sort. Her lithe body produced the substance that Paige had used to make herself invisible when sneaking into Stephanie’s Blood Parlor. Apart from that substance and her fur, Jackie hadn’t been wearing anything else when she introduced herself to him.

That was the part that kept his thoughts warm when he was feeling restless. The term “Mongrel” just didn’t fit a creature like Jackie. In human form, her body was tight enough to make a professional dancer jealous. They had wrestled when they first met, but not in the good way. Now, as his thoughts pointed him in that direction, Cole slapped his hands down on the table and stared at Paige with wide eyes.

“I think I’ve got it,” he said.

She smiled and angled her head toward a family of four that had wandered into the room to raid the cereal bar. Every other table was empty, but the middle-aged parents and their two eleven-year-olds just had to cluster around the one directly beside the Skinners.

Cole was too excited to worry about disturbing the new arrivals. “The Mongrels! They could track me, so maybe they can track a Full Blood!”

Paige got up, marched to the door and impatiently motioned for Cole to follow. He caught up with her at the elevator.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked while jabbing the Call button.

“Jackie tracked me from Canada. You told me she did at least some of that through scent, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Half Breeds smell like ass, so they should be easier to track. And didn’t you tell me Full Bloods and Mongrels fight like…well…cats and dogs? Those two must have a good way of keeping tabs on each other!”

The elevator doors opened and a couple in their early thirties stepped out. One was a guy with a shaved head and a long goatee dragging a black travel case. The other was a brunette with rosy cheeks and generous curves. As soon as they stepped out of the elevator, Paige and Cole stepped in.

“Mongrels are the only thing we don’t have to worry about around here,” Paige said. “Let’s deal with what’s already on our plate before we start thinking about the next course.”

“Good Lord, you really don’t play any sort of games do you?” Before she could answer that, Cole said, “It’d help you with your tactical thinking, you know. For instance, in all the games I’ve played or designed, there’s always something that sets apart the grunts from the bosses. Bosses aren’t bosses just because they’re tougher. You’ve got to figure something out. They’ve got a weakness. It’s either a soft spot or a pattern or something, but it’s there.”

“Why does everything come down to video games with you?”

He shrugged and considered that for a moment. “Would Star Wars analogies work better for you?”

“Forget I asked. I already know Full Bloods have weaknesses. That doesn’t help us track them.”

“We know that most supernatural things can be hurt by other supernatural things. Our problem is that we’ve just been using
dead
supernatural things.”

The elevator’s panel dinged and the doors opened to the second floor. Paige stepped out and said, “The live ones usually aren’t very cooperative.”

Cole tagged along with her, smiling and nodding like an idiot. Rather than say what was racing through his mind, he gave her a second to figure it out for herself. It was a good thing she was quick on the draw, because he couldn’t have held out much longer before the vein in his forehead popped.

“They’re not cooperative,” she said slowly, “unless there’s something in it for them.”

“You just found the secret cheat code.”

“Mongrels know how to find Full Bloods,” she continued. “That’s how they survive. If you find a Mongrel’s home, you know it’s a spot far away from Full Bloods.”

“Are there any Mongrel homes within driving distance of here?” Cole asked.

“I’m not sure, but if another one of us found one, they would have let MEG know about it.”

“You want to make the call or should I?”

Cole sat in the car and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel while watching the sidewalk that ran along Forest Hill Cemetery. Paige had told him to hold off on calling MEG so they could focus on finding stray Half Breeds in the dens they knew about. Even though she was the one searching the section of broken sidewalk, he knew she wouldn’t find anything. He could feel there were some shapeshifters about, but not anywhere close. Even with all the news regarding wild dogs and the charred remains that had been discovered at the nature preserve, the city just felt calmer than it had the night before.

His leg was bandaged, but the wound was sealed as if it had been healing for weeks. All the smaller cuts had faded, but the serum didn’t do much for the bruises. Despite the ache that claimed nearly every inch of his body, he’d actually started to relax while watching Paige search the perimeter of the cemetery grounds. When his cell phone rang, he cleared his seat.

He plucked the phone from his pocket and was surprised to find Digital Dreamers, Inc. on his caller ID. “Hello?”

The voice that came through was familiar but distorted. His new phone might have had a nice, bright touch screen, but sometimes the reception was worse than a pair of cans connected by a string. “I just got finished with a meeting where you were supposed to be fired,” Jason Sorrenson announced.

“Really?” Cole asked as a way to test the waters. “Maybe I should have showed up to that one.”

“That might have helped when I went in to try and defend you to the other two directors. Fortunately,
Hammer Strike
is doing well enough that we want to get things rolling for a sequel, and those designs you e-mailed got here just before the meeting. Between that and the ideas you pitched to me earlier, you’ve still got a job. Thought you might like to know. When can you come back to Seattle?”

“I don’t know, Jason. I really don’t.”

“Then I don’t know if I can have you on the design team for
Hammer 2.”

Cole straightened up so quickly he nearly broke a rib on the steering wheel. “Hammer Strike is all me! You can’t do the next one without my input. The players will know the difference, and it may just flop hard enough to squelch the whole series.”

“Sending in tweaks and downloadable content from your laptop is one thing, but you can’t truly expect to be a part of a real design team without even being in the same city as everyone else. At best, you could have a say on some of the creative aspects, but none of the technical stuff. It’s too organic a process for any pivotal member to be so far out of reach. You know that, Cole.”

Settling back into his seat, Cole glanced up and down the sidewalk and then spotted Paige strolling along the low rock fence. His services as a getaway driver weren’t needed just yet, so he grudgingly said, “I know that, Jason. It doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Hey, I don’t like it either. I don’t want to start another Hammer without you. Whatever you’re doing…wherever you are…it’s gotta be good to keep you from refusing all the offers I’ve been making.”

“Not refusing. Just taking time to think them over.”

“Whatever you call it, it’s getting old. Did I mention that we love those monster renders you sent?”

“Huh?”

“The shading renders for those werewolf things,” Jason explained. “They’re a little too close to the stuff that’s floating around connected to those crazy stories coming out of Kansas City, but tweak those models a little bit more and
we’ve got something. In fact, I’ll bet we could build a whole new game around it.”

Jason kept talking about the ideas that were sparked by what he’d seen, but Cole wasn’t listening. He was too busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Then it hit him. He must have accidentally sent Jason some of the in-between renders he’d worked on while touching up those Half Breed pictures.

Out of pure force of habit, he had treated those pictures as he would any others he might use for his game designs. He’d turned the pictures into crude models, repositioned them and then reworked the models so they wouldn’t hold up under close scrutiny. For video game character designs that weren’t supposed to pass for real creatures, those rough sketches must have looked damn good. When he thought about it a little more, he realized he’d labeled the Half Breed sketches “HBtestpics,” while his sketches for
Hammer Strike
were labeled “HStestpics.”

“I’m a goddamn idiot,” he grumbled.

“Not at all,” Jason said. “You can fix that stuff next time.”

“What stuff?”

“Weren’t you listening to me?”

Since the truth wouldn’t earn him any points with his boss, regardless of how long he and Jason had known each other, Cole deflected that question with another one. “You really think we could get a whole new series going?”

“Hell yes!” Jason replied. “There’s tons of crap about zombies out there, plenty about vampires, and a few about werewolves, but we could do a hell of a game about whatever these things are.”

Cole’s brain swelled within his skull. Now, in addition to everything else that had been going on, he had a new project to worry about. He closed his eyes and rubbed them, struggling to come up with something to say. Before he could put any words together, he reminded himself to check the sidewalk for any suspicious people or rampaging monsters.

“Cole? You still there? Did that damn phone drop the call?”

“No, Jason. I’m still here.”

“Good. So will you think about coming back to Seattle to work on this?”

Letting out a relieved breath, he took the lifeline Jason had thrown him. “Yeah. I’ll think about it. Can I get back to you in a few days?”

“Take the week. This is a big decision.”

“A week would be great. Thanks so much.”

Shifting out of his executive voice and into friend mode, Jason said, “We’ve got a great thing going with this. It’s what we’ve been working for all these years and it wouldn’t be the same without you, Cole.”

“I know.”

Those two words seemed to be enough for Jason, because he accepted them and ended the call with a minimum of small talk. Cole didn’t have any intention of letting his friend down or trashing his career, but there were any number of things that could prevent him from getting his work done. One of those things was on her way back to the car. Judging by the look on her face, the only animal Paige had found was the little dog taking a leak on the stone fence surrounding the cemetery. She opened the door, dropped into the passenger seat and ran her fingers through her hair.

“Did you call MEG?” she asked.

“Not just yet.” As Cole drove away from the cemetery, he told her about his conversation with Jason. He steered away from the specifics, but the rest of the story was enough to hold her attention. That was pretty good, considering how she usually zoned out whenever the subject of programming was brought up.

“I thought you decided to stay with me,” she said. “Now you want to head back to Seattle?”

“What if you came with?”

She reacted to that question as if it had been posed by a talking pizza box. After a few confused blinks, she shook her head and asked, “Are you kidding me?”

“Why? There’s got to be Skinner stuff going on in Seattle!”

“We’re all set up in Chicago! Look, just forget about that. We’ve got real work to do. You wanna call MEG now to see about that idea of yours?”

Gripping his phone tightly, Cole grunted, “Sure. Right now, I’d rather talk to anyone but you.”

“Fine. Make the call, but don’t talk for too long or Stu might just convince you to move to Idaho or wherever the hell Branch 40 is!”

Cole hit the speed dial as if trying to crack the screen. When his call dropped three times in a row, he nearly chucked the damn phone into traffic. Finally, he drove into a reception sweet spot and managed to stay there long enough for Abby’s full greeting to be heard.

“Midwestern Ectological Group Branch 40, how may I help you?” she said.

“Hey, this is Cole Warnecki. You want my ID number?”

“No, that’s okay. What’s up?”

“Has anyone called in about Mongrel sightings? I’m looking for something as close to Kansas City as you can get, and I don’t just mean one Mongrel. I have to find a den or a burrow or whatever you call the places they live.”

Paige rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Ummmm…just give me a moment,” Abby said. From there, she launched into a whole lot of typing. The pecking of her fingers against the keys didn’t let up when she started talking again. “To be honest, I’ve never really dug into the files like this before. Usually we just log in names and locations, file a few accounts and that’s that. We’re real good at connecting calls, though,” she said.

“Is there anyone else I can speak to who might help?”

The tapping on the other end of the call stopped. “Actually, no. Is something wrong?”

Suddenly, Cole felt like an asshole for using such an annoyed tone with her when he was upset with Paige. What made him feel worse was the realization that neither of the women had done anything to deserve it. “Sorry, Abby. This is just really important.”

“I know,” she replied. “Whether it’s gangs, dogs, or a cult, it’s gotta be crazy out there.” When her typing resumed, her voice brightened. “Here we go! The last report we got about Mongrels is from someone named Rico. Do you know him?”

Cole covered the phone and asked Paige, “You know someone named Rico, don’t you?”

“Yeah, why?”

“He checked in about some Mongrels.”

“Great. Where?”

“Where?” Cole asked once he’d uncovered the phone.

Abby hummed a few off-key bars to herself and tapped on her keyboard some more. “Somewhere in the middle of Nebraska.”

Cole laughed and steered around some construction cones that had been set up to close off the left lane. “Out in the boonies, huh? Think you could be a little more specific?”

“I was. The report was about a town in the middle of Nebraska.”

“Oh, I thought that was just a saying, like Hicksville, USA.”

There was a pause and then Abby said, “My grandma lives in Hicksville. It’s a nice place.”

“Aw hell.”

Before Cole could kick himself too hard, he heard a cute little snorting laugh come through the phone. “Sorry,” Abby said. “Just kidding. The town’s called Valparaiso, but it really is in the middle of Nebraska. More or less.”

“Is that the home of the Mongrels or your grandma?” As he asked that, Cole felt an impatient tap on his arm. Paige raised her eyebrows just enough to get her point across, but he didn’t break stride to explain himself to her. He did, however, switch over to speaker so Paige could listen in.

“The Mongrels were in Valparaiso,” Abby said. “There’s not a lot in the report other than someone named Rico was looking into some big cat sightings. There are some pictures of a cougar-looking thing attached to the file. Looks more like a panther to me, but there’s not supposed to be anything like that living in Nebraska, that’s for sure. Anyway, this big cat was also supposed to be able to disappear whenever it wanted.” She snorted again, but not in the cute laughing way. “That’s real convenient, huh?”

“Rico loves chasing down urban legends,” Paige scoffed. “He’s a sucker for that crap.”

“Is that you, Paige?” Abby asked. “How’s the newbie training coming along?”

“It has its moments.”

Suddenly, Cole felt like he was twelve years old and listening to a conversation about how cute it was that his voice was cracking and how he’d be a real lady killer once hair started sprouting from all sorts of funny places. “How about we save that for later,” he said. “What about those Mongrels?”

Abby shifted back into her more official voice. It wasn’t a whole lot different than the other one, but there was less snorting involved. “Rico said he tracked a few of the Mongrels down to a row of houses and they disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Paige asked.

“Yep. That’s what they do, remember?” Abby tapped out a few more things and then went on to say, “He stuck around for a few days, but they must have really dug in because he lost them. He told us he couldn’t find any rat holes—whatever that’s supposed to mean—and he left. Since there weren’t any more reports of injuries caused by anything that looked like a Mongrel, he moved on.”

“Is that the closest Mongrel sighting to KC?”

“The only other reports over the last six months were in California, North Dakota, and Texas. Lots in Texas. There are a few others that could be Mongrels, but they’re not specifically listed that way.”

“When was Rico’s last check-in?” Paige asked.

“Little over two months ago. Want me to e-mail it to you?”

Cole jumped in before Paige could utter another syllable. “Yeah, why don’t you e-mail it to me? Got the address?”

“Yep.”

“All right, then. I’ll call you later if we need anything or…just to say hi. Whatever.” After Abby said a quick goodbye, Cole hung up. Looking over to Paige, he recognized the half smirk that had taken residence upon her upper lip. “What?”

“Just to say hi? Real smooth. For a sixteen-year-old.”

“I’m not exactly at my best here. What was that about rat holes?”

Paige chewed on her bottom lip and turned to look out her window. “That’s what Rico calls Mongrel dens. Those things tunnel under buildings and floors to make their homes. Sometimes they just connect one basement to another so they can live wherever there’s less chance of getting caught.”

“Sounds like a fun time hunting them down.”

“Try impossible,” she grumbled. “Or damn close to it. Not only do Mongrels keep to themselves, but they can bolt when they need to.”

“How quick are they?” Cole asked.

“We don’t even know for sure. We do know they can be nasty when they’re cornered, but they seem more content to go after other shapeshifters. It’s not surprising Rico let them go. He’s started to focus more on hunting for profit than tracking whatever he can find.”

“Maybe he struck a deal with them. If Mongrels are so fast and so good at sneaking around, they’d make some mighty fine criminals.”

Paige grinned and nodded as she glanced over at Cole. “I’ve taught you well, young one,” she said in her kung-fu master voice. “Now you see past what you are shown.”