Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) (4 page)

Before the bass line up the street could shift into another song, another figure emerged from the alley. Unlike the ones that had caught Cole’s attention in the first place, this figure wasn’t sporting any black marks on its neck or wrists. It also wasn’t wearing any pants.

“I don’t want any trouble,” the guy said. “I was just waiting for her to…” He was somewhere in his forties, with a full head of hair and a gut that would have hung over a belt if one had been around his waist. Grabbing at the rolls on his hips, he suddenly realized what was already painfully obvious to everyone else. “I…don’t have my pants. Can I just—”

“Get out of here,” Cole snapped. “And whatever you were doing before, don’t do it again.”

The guy looked around quickly and then scampered off in the direction with the fewest people to gawk at him.

“Another happy customer,” the girl said with a grin.

“Take your business where it belongs,” Cole warned. “Right now.”

“Or what?” Mullet challenged.

The Nymar with the eighties hairstyle might have been posturing, but his buddy meant business. Sid crouched down and bared all three sets of fangs in the supernatural equiva
lent of taking a gun from its holster and thumbing back the hammer.

One of those Nymar was going to pounce at any second. After that, the others would follow. Since turning his back on them wasn’t a smart idea, Cole knew he only had one alternative. He filled his lungs with warm night air, catching a whiff of the hamburgers waiting for him on his front seat, then grabbed the closest Nymar by the front of his shirt. Mullet seemed surprised to be targeted, but twisted to get away while also attempting to swipe at him with his right fist.

One of the first lessons Paige had taught Cole about fighting was to use movement and momentum to his advantage. She’d tested him relentlessly, landing punch after punch until he had learned to anticipate and adjust to every swing. Now that it really mattered, he did exactly what he was supposed to do.

When Mullet pivoted to swing his right fist, Cole tightened his grip on the Nymar’s shirt and turned in that same direction. That way, it took a minimum of effort for Cole to spin his opponent around and slam him against the car. Mullet hit the Cavalier hard enough to dent the door, which wasn’t nearly enough damage to stand out from all the other ugly spots on the vehicle. While Mullet tried to figure out what had just happened, Cole hit him in the face. Other than being very satisfying, the punch only resulted in Cole ripping open his own fist against the Nymar’s upper fangs. Fortunately for him, they weren’t the slender, snakelike fangs. The venom from those would have knocked him out faster than a kick to the head. Thanks to Paige’s sparring sessions, he was all too familiar with being kicked in the head.

Sid let out a snarling hiss as he jumped toward Cole’s back. Having expected that from the start, Cole hopped aside to catch only a glancing blow as the bearded Nymar slammed against the dented Cavalier.

Cole staggered back a few steps, slow to make another move simply because he was surprised to be doing so well in the fight. He wanted to get to his spear, but there were two Nymar pressed up against the door. As much as he would
have loved to run around to the driver’s side, he didn’t want to give the others a chance to catch their breath. Putting every bit of muscle behind his left arm, he twisted his body around and drove that elbow into Mullet’s face.

The Nymar’s head snapped back and his knees started to give. Sid had wound up closer to the hood of the car after inadvertently body-slamming his partner, so he wasn’t close enough to get to Cole just yet. Before that situation changed, Cole fumbled for the pistol wedged under his belt. It was a sloppy draw and, if the .44 was anything but a clunky revolver, could very well have turned him into a eunuch. The gods were smiling on him and his goods because he managed to take out the .44 and drive the barrel straight into Mullet’s chest.

“You guys may not be afraid of guns, but we all know how much damage a shot at this range can do to the little buddy stuck to your heart,” Cole said.

“You’d better be real sure about that!” Mullet replied.

Cole thumbed back the pistol’s hammer. “What do you think my odds are? Fifty-fifty?”

Inching his way around the front of the car, Sid hissed, “Do it and we tear you apart!”

“Shut up, asshole!” Mullet barked.

Although Sid was still baring his fangs, his beard covered all but the pointed tips.

Nodding slowly, Cole looked around to find several small groups of people scattered farther down the street. He looked over to the Nymar in pigtails and said, “You stayed put through all of this, so you must not want things to get worse. Wanna tell your boys to back off, or would you rather wait for the cops to get here?”

The girl had her arms crossed and her lips parted just enough to show the top two sets of fangs extending from her gums. The thicker canine teeth slid against the thinner venomous ones in a way that somehow managed to look sexy. The calm expression on her face and the commanding tone in her voice made it clear she was well past the age she projected.

“You two,” she said. “Heel.”

Mullet and Sid weren’t happy about it, but they obeyed.

Uncrossing her arms to hold them out as if she was expecting a hug, she asked, “Is that good enough for you?”

“All of you know better than to be in this part of town unless you’re looking for us,” Cole pointed out. As an afterthought, he asked, “Were you looking for us?”

“We sure as hell found you, didn’t we?” the girl mused. “But we’ll find somewhere else to play. How’s that?”

“As long as it’s away from here, suits me just fine.”

“Good. Are you Cole?”

Upon hearing his name, Cole felt a twitch in the corner of one eye. Fortunately, he was twitching in too many other places at the moment for that one to stand out. “Just get the hell off of my street.”

He had been waiting a good portion of his life to say something like that. Rather than soak up the moment while imagining tough background music, he tried to keep his glare from cracking and prayed the other three would just go away.

They did.

Once the trio of Nymar disappeared down the alley, Cole kept his head down and walked around to the driver’s side of Paige’s car. The seat was still warm from when he’d last sat in it, but it felt like a week and a half had gone by since he was driving along fantasizing about eating his little hamburgers. Although technically trivial when compared to possibly getting his throat shredded, those burgers brought a smile back to his face.

The taste of victory in a little cardboard box.

Cole hadn’t felt comfortable anywhere since he’d seen his first werewolf, but the gutted old restaurant off of South Laramie Avenue was a spot where he could sometimes let his guard down. At one point the restaurant had customers, employees, and a real name. Now, all that remained of the place’s former glory was a sign painted onto the front wall that had been partially worn away by the elements and who knows what else. The letters that could still be seen were: RAZA HILL. He parked along the side of the place, collected his bags of food, and hurried in.

“You’ll never guess what happened,” he sputtered the moment he caught sight of Paige sitting on a stool in the kitchen.

She glanced over to him and asked, “Where are my cheese fries?”

“Remember those Nymar I called about? There were three of them, and I chased them away without any help. Hey, wait a second. You seriously weren’t planning on coming to help me?”

“What makes you say that?”

“You’re planted on that stool like nothing happened! What if I got hurt?”

Shrugging, Paige replied, “If you can’t chase off three Nymar, then you’ll never be any help to me. Where’s your weapon?”

“Oh, I left it in the car.”

“But you brought in the food? At least you’ve got your priorities straight.”

“Don’t you want to hear about the Nymar?” Cole asked.

Paige swiveled around on her stool, placed her hands on her knees, and gave him one crisp nod. “Yes, Cole. I want to hear all about the Nymar. After that do I get my cheese fries?”

He dumped the fast food bags onto the counter. “Here you go. The fries and everything else is in there. I’ll go get the rest of my stuff and we can eat.”

“Do you know how cute you are when you pout?”

“Save it.”

After taking his weapon from the front seat, Cole stomped back into the restaurant. He slapped the spear down, grabbed a double cheeseburger from the pile, and tore into the steamed little miracle.

“There,” Paige said. “Feel better now?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Now I’m ready to hear about the Nymar.”

Cole looked over to find her holding a handful of gooey cheese fries that had all been bitten off in the middle. That same cheese was smeared over a good portion of her mouth, and a few drops had fallen onto the front of her nightshirt. With her hair pulled back into a messy tail, she was anything but glamorous. Somehow, she still managed to get that twitch she’d been after.

Launching into his story while stuffing his face, Cole went through the whole account. By the time he was finished, most of the cardboard burger boxes were empty. Most of the food that hadn’t been eaten was soaked into the front of Paige’s clothes.

“So they weren’t feeding in public?” she asked.

“The guy in the alley was paying for it, but he was out of sight.”

“That’s not a killing offense, but the Nymar are supposed to stay around the Levee or near the Loop. There must be more of them coming back into town after that business with Misonyk was cleared up.”

It had been a while since that name was mentioned. The Nymar were worried about dredging up old demons, and the Skinners were simply glad to be rid of the lunatic who’d used an infected werewolf to try and make a name for himself in Chicago and the adjacent states.

“Things have been quieter than usual since Misonyk was killed,” Paige continued, “but it’s stupid to think that would last too long. Most of the Nymar that left town will be coming back to pick up where they left off.” She picked up one of the onion rings from the two remaining boxes on the counter and then dipped it into some partially hardened cheese from the second container. “Others might come here thinking we’re still soft from what happened before,” she said amidst a pungent, greasy spray. “You said that girl had her hair in pigtails. Were they tied back with bands that had little cats on them?”

“Huh?”

Waving her hand impatiently, Paige said, “Never mind. She was one of Steph’s girls, all right. They all have the same attitude and like to push their luck.”

“What did you mean about those cat bands?” Cole asked.

Paige hopped down from her stool and tapped his forehead. “Know your enemy, young one. Steph and Ace’s working girls all wear their hair in pigtails tied back with bands that have cats on them. Haven’t you ever noticed that?”

“They’re scantily dressed vampire hookers that flash their goods every chance they get and you think I’m looking at the bands in their hair?”

“Did you at least notice the pigtails?” she asked hopefully.

Cole perked up as he replied, “Oh yeah. I noticed the pigtails.”

“We need to pay Steph and Ace a visit. They know better than to cross the border we laid down, so that means they’re either testing us or they’ve got reinforcements to back them up. We’ll go to that new Blood Parlor tonight after the crowds die down.”

Cole watched Paige hop off her stool and walk out of the kitchen. He’d been around her enough to know just how long
he could study her from behind before getting caught. When the timer in his head went off, he pretended to look at something else. Paige shot a quick glance over her shoulder but had no reason to break her stride.

“Too slow, dragon lady,” he whispered in his own kung-fu impression. “Time for young one to polish his stick.”

Cole’s spear leaned in the corner of his walk-in refrigerator, gleaming with a fresh coat of the varnish that was mixed using an old Skinner recipe. Although Skinners tended to hand down their teachings through word of mouth, Cole desperately wished Paige would just give him a damn list of ingredients. Instead, she’d forced him to mix up dozens of batches until he finally got it right. Since he actually had some time for himself, he abandoned the Skinner stuff in favor of something from his own century.

The laptop was his own little tricked-out piece of home, which had recently been upgraded so it could handle Sniper Ranger multiplayer without locking up every ten minutes. Running a connection into the sealed metal box hadn’t been easy, but it was worth it. That and the signal booster he’d rigged for his cell phone turned the freezer into a work space that was slightly better than the first cubicle he’d ever been assigned in the real world. As soon as he logged in to play a few rounds of
Sniper Deathmatch,
an instant message popped onto his screen: CALL JASON.

Jason Sorrenson was a friend, which meant his messages were usually a bit more colorful. Rising to the upper echelons of a prosperous game designing company hadn’t turned Jason into a corporate jerk, so whenever he even slightly sounded like one of those jerks, something was wrong. Cole flipped open his cell phone, pushed the button to dial his old work number, and sifted through his mental list of all the reasons Jason could be pissed at him this time.

“Digital Dreamers.”

“Why the formalities?” Cole chuckled.

“Who is this?”

“Aw Christ, I haven’t been gone that long. Besides, dumb shit, you just IM’d me to call you.”

“Pardon me?”

For Jason to be this serious, something was definitely wrong.

“This is Cole.”

“I’ll patch you through to Mr. Sorrenson.”

Then again, another good explanation was that the person who’d answered the phone wasn’t the head of Digital Dreamers. As if to make Cole feel even more out of place, the person on the other end of the phone asked, “Cole who?”

“Cole Warnecki. I work there. Jason’s expecting me, so just patch me through!”

Having tapped into his mean streak already that night, Cole was able to repeat the trick well enough to get the lines of communication unclogged. There were a few clicks, followed by a ring tone and then another voice that sounded a whole lot like the previous one.

“Jason?” Cole asked cautiously.

“Yeah, Cole. I’m surprised you responded to the message so quickly. I’ve had a hard time getting in touch with you.”

“Maybe your new assistant has been handling all your business. Nobody’d know the difference.”

“I know. I’ve been trying to talk differently to avoid confusion.”

“You really need to learn how to throw your weight around more,” Cole chuckled. “What’s up?”

“How’s that downloadable content for
Hammer Strike
coming along?”

“I’ve put a few more things together. The game’s only been released for a couple months.”

“People on the forums have been clamoring for it,” Jason replied.

Cole let out a haggard sigh that he hoped translated fully through the cellular connection. “People on the forums are always clamoring for something. When we announced there would be downloadable content for
Hammer Strike,
they wanted to know what it was and when it was coming. When we released that first batch of stuff, they all bitched that it wasn’t enough. When we announced that the new mul
tiplayer maps were coming, they bitched about the release dates or the price.”

After a slight pause, Jason said, “That first batch was just a bunch of different clothes for the characters and new designs for the weapons.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“The new designs didn’t even change weapon performance, and we charged three dollars for each download.”

“I know!” When Cole sighed again, it was less for dramatic effect and more to get some actual air into his lungs. “That first batch was rushed. I know it was crap. I made the crap. I check the forums, so I realize everyone else out there thought it was crap too. Still, it sold pretty well.”

Jason didn’t voice his impatience, but Cole could feel it as if he could see his boss rolling his eyes to examine the underside of the Mariners cap that was always stuck on his head. “We’ve got some loyal fans. They buy our games because they know they’ll be good, and they download the extra content because they think it’ll be just as good. I let that first batch slide to test the waters, but it didn’t go over well. Not well at all.”

As always, Jason was being kind. Cole had worked on
Hammer Strike
since the game was nothing more than an excited conversation over some hastily drawn sketches. Since then both of them had been hip-deep in creating the characters, enemies, fighting mechanics, level design, background rendering, and anything else it took to turn ideas into a functioning video game. When Cole took off for his vacation to Canada,
Hammer Strike
had been almost ready to be pressed onto disks. That was before he knew what a Skinner was or that monsters were real. After
Hammer Strike
had been released, it was all he could do to keep up with the project he’d started.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be on this team anymore,” Cole grumbled.

“That’s what I was calling about.”

“What? You really think I should be off the team?”

“No,” Jason said. “I could tell you’ve been having your doubts. Before you left Seattle, you ate and breathed
Hammer
Strike
. You were supposed to come back to fix the remaining bugs, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“You never came back and just threw together a patch on your laptop. What the hell happened?”

Rather than try to lie to his longtime friend, Cole simply replied, “I told you what happened.”

“First you told me there was family trouble you needed to work through. Then you said you had to stay in Chicago for personal reasons. The only way those excuses could get more generic would be for you to send them to me written in black ballpoint on a brown paper sack.”

“I know.”

“And I’m not trying to get into your personal business. If you need time away, you can have it. If you want to keep working for Digital Dreamers, you can, but I don’t usually allow someone at your level to work remotely. I don’t care what kind of a laptop you’ve got, you need to be here with the rest of the team to hash out new ideas and put together a functioning build for the next
Hammer Strike.
We need something to show at the next Electronic Gaming Conference.”

“So there really is gonna be a
Hammer Strike 2?”
Cole asked.

“Not if we keep churning out garbage like that first batch of downloadable content. Come on, Cole. Did you really think a few new color sets for the weapons would make fans happy?”

Suddenly, Cole felt like a kid being scolded by the principal. What made it worse was that he knew he had it coming. “No, Jason,” he sighed. “I didn’t.”

“Have you heard the new slang floating around the review sites?”

“Yeah,” Cole laughed. “When this year’s NFL game came out, they tried to make people pay a few bucks more to unlock the bonus stadiums and a few different touchdown dances for their characters. Someone called the patch ‘Hammer Paint.’ To be honest, though, that first content I submitted was more than just different colors.”

“There were a few new shapes for the weapon handles too. Whoopie. The point is that whenever anyone online thinks they’re getting ripped off by some shoddy crap pushed out by a game company, they call it ‘Hammer Paint.’ That does us no favors, buddy.”

Cole winced at that. It was one thing to catch grief from fans. Hearing it from a friend and his boss was bad. Since both of those people were wrapped up into one normally soft-spoken guy, it was doubly bad.

“What are you working on now?” Jason asked.

“You haven’t gotten my latest?”

“No. That’s why I called.”

Frantically, Cole tapped on his laptop to see when he’d sent his last e-mail to Digital Dreamers. “Aw hell, Jason. I thought I sent it to you a week ago.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll love this,” Cole said as he leaned forward in his chair. “Not only have I worked out some new multiplayer arenas, but I’ve incorporated shifting day and night patterns that affect which monsters are out at what times. And get this—after they download the patch, if snipers camp in the same old spots for too long, those monsters will sniff them out. Some of the urban areas will have collapsing buildings or new areas attached to the perimeter of the play area. It’ll breathe new life into all the popular maps!”

“Okay,” Jason said in a favorable tone that probably came along with a nod. “What else have you got?”

Relieved by the reaction he’d gotten, Cole said, “I’ve designed some new enemies as well.”