Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) (6 page)

BOOK: Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2)
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Chapter 5

Chicago

It was well past two in the morning, but there were plenty of night owls riding the Eisenhower Expressway. Paige was behind the wheel of the Cav and he sat beside her. With the amount of fidgeting he’d been doing, he probably could have jogged across town in less time than it took to drive.

“What’s that smell?” he asked.

Paige took a quick sniff, which turned into a grimace. “About four weeks’ worth of greasy little hamburgers.”

“Not that.”

“Then those fried tacos you insist on buying by the dozen.”

“Not those either. It smells like vinegar and…sweat?”

Chuckling while weaving between a few slow cars with Iowa plates, she said, “That brings us back to those tacos.”

Cole unbuckled his seat belt so he could twist all the way around and reach into the backseat. “No, seriously! It’s stronger back here.” After digging through all the garbage, newspapers, and supply kits in back, he found a cheap black plastic trash bag that gave off the offending odor in waves. “Good Lord, Paige, what’s in this bag?”

“Some critter I scraped off the road. Since you like those fried tacos so much, I thought you might be able to make your own if you just had the right meat.”

“Leave those tacos alone! You never even tried any! This isn’t really…?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. Remember the Mongrel that tracked you down when you first got here?”

“Jackie, the cat lady. I remember her.”

Looking over to him, Paige asked, “What’s with the sloppy grin? Do you already know where I’m going with this?”

“No, I’m just remembering what she looked like under all that fur. I mean, when she was visible.”

Paige shook her head and let her eyes settle back onto the expressway. “Yeah, well you remember how she could bend light or something to turn almost invisible?”

Cole nodded. “She had some sort of grease or oil in her fur. That stuff came in real useful once we got some of it for ourselves. You still have that crap? Good Lord, it’s been months since you wiped that stuff up!”

“This isn’t the exact same stuff. I sent some of it to a friend of mine and he was able to make more. Apparently, it’s not too hard to reproduce. The only thing is, the artificial stuff doesn’t last very long unless it’s soaked into something. Once it gets on your skin or out in the open air, it evaporates real quick.”

“When did you do all this?” Cole asked.

“While you were typing and hunched over that laptop for the last couple of weeks.”

He plopped back into his seat and placed the bag on the floor between his feet. “So what’s in here?”

“A little something that should help me get inside the Blood Parlor to back you up. I’ve been told the security there is pretty tight.”

“By the way, are you going to tell me what a Blood Parlor is?”

“It’s a place where the Nymar can feed on humans so it’s not out in the open.”

“And…we encourage this?”

“Not exactly, but we can’t stop it.” Veering off to the exit that led to the Kennedy Expressway, Paige said, “Nymar like to talk about being these big vampire kingpins, but they don’t run much of anything, apart from their mouths. There’s a lot of them and they can be dangerous, so Skinners have been
keeping them in check. Part of that is making a few deals that work out for the greater good. One of those deals is us allowing them to feed on willing participants and make a living doing it. Well, I guess you could call it an un-living.”

Paige laughed at her own joke, but cut it off once she saw Cole dryly looking back at her.

“Stephanie and Ace run a good chunk of these places,” she continued. “It’s basically a prostitution ring with teeth.”

“What kind of people pay to get bitten?”

“Normal folks pay to have a lot kinkier things done to them. You should know that. Aren’t you the one who spends so much time on the Internet?”

Without a good answer to that, Cole just shrugged.

“Blood Parlors started off as fancy names for blocks of hotel rooms that Nymar rented so their paying customers could have some privacy,” Paige continued. “The hotel rooms were traded up for suites and the suites for blocks of rooms at the fancier places downtown. A month or so ago Ace and Stephanie bought the upper floor of a building on North Rush Street.”

“Lots of good bars up there.” When he saw Paige glance over at him, Cole said, “What? I get out every now and then.”

“You’re right about the bars,” she said. “There are also some clubs and plenty of other places to attract the sort of creeps who might want to pay to get bitten on the neck by sluts wearing black lace and garter belts.”

“That does sound kind of intriguing.”

“There’s an ATM along the way. I’m sure Steph would offer a nice discount so you could lay back, close your eyes, and let some parasite tear into your arteries. Who knows? A friend of one of the Nymar we’ve had to put down might be the one drinking from you. I’m sure they’ll pull out before you run dry.”

“All right. Scratch that idea. How many Blood Parlors are there?”

“This is the only one I know about in this part of town, but there’s got to be more. It’s been getting a whole lot of rave reviews.”

“Nymar brothels get reviewed?”

“Once again, thank you, Internet,” she grumbled. “That reminds me, since you’re so big into computers, I want you to take over our local research. It involves a lot of trolling through fetish websites and those kinky ‘meet someone local for a quickie’ matchmaking services. Lots of willing food sources on those sites.”

“Yowza.”

“Yeah,” Paige grunted. “Anyway, I’ve been wanting to visit this new Blood Parlor for a while, but I’ve been busy training my backup. Between setting up shop out in the open like that and sending her little pigtail girls nosing around our part of town, Ace and Stephanie are getting cocky, and I don’t like it. Plus, we need to introduce ourselves to any new arrivals. Everyone needs to be reminded of why it’s a good idea to work with us rather than against us.”

Paige parked the Cavalier on Superior Street not far from where it intersected with Rush. Some of the bars had closed, but there were still plenty of pedestrians milling from one spot to another. Although Cole got a few puzzled glances when he walked toward the corner with a curved spear strapped to his back by a harness that was slung over one shoulder and hooked to the back of his belt, the reaction wasn’t quite as big as he’d been expecting.

“You really think I should wear this in plain sight?” he asked.

“Yep. We’re flying the flag here, so wear that harness so it can be seen. If any cops ever ask you about it, just say it’s firewood or a prop for something. Nymar will know what it is, and to everyone else you’re just some weirdo carrying a big stick.”

“Can I at least bring the .44?”

Paige shook her head before he’d finished the question. “Tight security, remember? The last thing we need is to set off a bunch of metal detectors.”

“So I’ll walk in to threaten a bunch of Nymar with a stick. Could be worse,” Cole said as he looked Paige up and down. “I could be dressed for leather night at the gym.”

She stopped and looked down at herself. She wore a black leather top that was a cross between a corset and a cami
sole: Too durable to be lingerie and too intimate to be body armor. It didn’t even come close to matching the gray sweatpants that were cinched tightly around her waist and ankles by elastic bands. “The sweats are just what I’m wearing to get in. Once I’m inside, I want to blend in.”

“Good luck with that.”

Before they got to the corner of Superior and Rush, Paige stopped and pushed Cole against the flat brick section of a parking garage with a deli on the bottom floor. Before he could get a word out, he felt her lips press against his. It wasn’t the most original ruse, but he topped it off by placing his hands on her rounded hips. A small group of club hoppers walked past them without taking notice of the spear scraping against the cement wall of the building.

When she came up for air, Paige whispered, “That building on the corner is the Blood Parlor.”

Now, Cole could see a slick-looking man in front of the parlor looking in his direction. Since Cole’s back was to a wall and both he and Paige were obviously preoccupied, the man turned and walked back inside.

“You go in through the front,” Paige said. “Ask for Ace or Stephanie and flash that weapon. One of those should catch a Nymar’s attention. While you lay down the law about those three that were on the wrong side of town, I’ll sneak around back.”

“By yourself?”

“Some high-tech security would be the perfect test for this invisibility gunk. I’ll get a look around to see what’s in this place and then jump in if you need help.”

“If
I need help?” Cole asked.

She patted his arm and nodded confidently. “You can handle yourself.”

“This may sound stupid, but that place looks like it might be closing. Will I be able to get in through the front door?”

“Brothels don’t keep bankers’ hours,” Paige replied while giving his cheek a gentle tap. Her fleeting smile displayed an equal mix of affection and pride. That last part caught him by surprise.

Slipping away from him, Paige jogged into the alley that led from Superior Street to cut between the Blood Parlor and the parking garage. Now that he took a closer look, Cole was stricken by the contrast between those two buildings. While the closest one was a gray, multilevel block, the Blood Parlor was a mix of urban elegance and medieval architecture. Dark brick flowed up into a steeply angled roof and several pointed gables. Sharp rectangular windows looked down over an entrance that looked more like an old sandstone cottage. To complete the ornate mix, several of the lower windows had neon beer signs hanging in them, while one of the upper panes was covered by the stencil of a rose dripping what was probably supposed to be blood onto the sill.

Once she was in the shadows of the alley, Paige opened the garbage bag that Cole had found in the car a few minutes ago. She pulled out a hooded sweatshirt that matched her sweatpants. At least, it probably matched the pants before it had been covered in a dark, greasy substance. “Anyone out there?” she whispered.

Since there were only a few people wandering along the street, and none of them were taking any interest in him, Cole replied, “Nope.”

Paige stuck her hands into the hoodie and pulled it inside out. When she slipped it on over her head, it looked as if a torrent of water flowed from nowhere to wash over her entire torso. Even though Cole had seen the stuff put to use by the shapeshifter who’d used it to bend light around herself, it was even more impressive to see Paige recreate the trick. The stuff shimmered for a few seconds before rendering her all but invisible, leaving a pair of gray sweatpants below a blank spot with a head above it.

“Watch the upper windows,” she said.

Cole nodded, but couldn’t help watching her as she pulled the hood up and lowered her head so everything from her waist up was now a mirage. With the speed and agility of someone used to changing in dirty sheds at public pools, she whipped her sweats down, flipped them inside out, and hopped back into them. Seconds later her legs, along with a good portion
of her feet, began to fade. The effect wasn’t perfect, but if he hadn’t known she was there, he could easily have mistaken Paige for a ripple of heat coming off the sidewalk.

Before he became completely entranced by watching the blur in the alley, Cole did what he was supposed to do and checked the upper windows. Most of them were covered by bars on the outside and frilly curtains on the inside. A flickering light from within the place cast just enough light to project a few shadow figures, but none of them stayed still long enough to be of any concern.

An older man wearing an expensive suit pushed open the door to the Blood Parlor and stepped outside. His arm was draped around a girl dressed in a dark red top with thin straps and tight jeans that rode dangerously low on her hips. The scars on Cole’s hands had started itching like crazy since they’d gotten within sight of the Blood Parlor, so he couldn’t rely on that as his only warning system. Since the woman wasn’t wearing pigtails, and neither one of them had any black markings on display, he let them pass.

Still nobody at the upper windows.

About halfway down the alley, near an alcove that must have been one of the parlor’s side doors, pinpoint laser beams emanated from a security device somewhere in the alcove. The lasers looked as if they’d been shot through dirty water, and when they hit the substance in Paige’s clothes, formed a dim bubble around her. No alarm sounded and nobody rushed out to check on the alley, so none of those beams registered as having been broken.

He watched those lights for a second and then glanced around to make sure nobody else had noticed them. A car had pulled up to the curb in front of the parlor, thumping a bass line from a cheap set of speakers, so most of the attention inside the building was probably focused upon it.

Once Paige was through, the flickering stopped. There was a creak followed by the brief glow of interior light spilling into the alley before she stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

“Well,” he muttered, “time to fly the flag.”

The entrance to the Blood Parlor was just what anyone would expect after looking at the outside of the place. There was a bar covered in coasters representing different brands of beer, foreign and domestic. A couple dart boards hung on the far wall, music from some college band Cole had never heard of drifted from a large jukebox, and a couple televisions hung from brackets on either side of the room. He wasn’t allowed to take more than two steps inside before he was blocked by the slick guy he’d spotted earlier. Up close, Slick was a little taller and a lot beefier than Cole had expected.

Extending one arm to put his hand flat against Cole’s chest, Slick said, “If you’re with those jackasses, you might as well go home with them right now.”

The man had a dark, East Indian complexion and spoke with a cultured British accent. His straight black hair was primped to the far edge of masculinity without quite crossing over to the fairer side, and hung just over his ears. When Cole tried to push forward another step, he didn’t even move the man a fraction of an inch.

The jackasses in question were being herded from a staircase at the back of the room to the front door. A bunch of young guys and even younger girls were escorted outside by bouncers in suits that looked to be cheap knockoffs of Slick’s. After a whole lot of grunting and swearing, the jackasses piled into the car with the thumping bass and rolled down Rush Street.

“I’m not with them,” Cole said. “I’m here to see Stephanie.”

“No one here by that name. Come to think of it, we’re closing.”

“Closing?”

“Yeah,” Slick said. “So hit the bricks.”

Cole turned at the shoulders as he scoped the inside of the bar to make sure the doorman or one of the others could see the flag that was being flown.

The doorman with the borderline hair was on his game. “What’s on your back?”

“Ask Stephanie. She should know all about it.”

“Let me see your hands.”

Although Cole took half a step back, he wasn’t retreating. He just wanted some extra room in case things got interesting. He held both palms up and out so the doorman could have a look.

When Slick saw the scars on his palms, he took a full step back. “Where’s the other one?” he asked.

“Who should I say is asking?”

Just then, descending the back stairs as if she’d been waiting for the perfect moment to make her entrance, Stephanie announced, “His name’s Astin. Forgive him if he’s being rude, but he’s new in town.”

Stephanie wore a black dress with red polka dots that cut straight across the top of her breasts and was held up by a single strap that looped around her neck. The strap was the same red as the polka dots, which was the same color as the ribbon that went around the middle of the dress and the narrow strip of lace along the hem. Her shoes were shiny, black, high-heeled numbers that brought her up to within an inch or two of Cole’s height. She walked through the bar with her chin held high and her dark red hair pulled into ponytails that dangled on either side of her head. She eased her shoulders back as if to display her chest every bit as much as the thick black markings that snaked up along her neck. Thinner black tendrils ran through her arms, and only a few reached down to one ankle.

“Hello, Cole,” Stephanie said as she grinned and extended an arm to him. “Last time I saw you, you were swinging a
piece of wood at me. Ahh,” she purred as she glanced over his shoulder. “I see you’ve still got wood. Must be my new heels.”

Cole glanced down at the hand she offered and said, “If you’re waiting for me to kiss that, you’re going to be standing there a long time.”

“Maybe you can kiss something else,” Stephanie snapped as she turned on the balls of her feet and then clacked across the hardwood floor. “I suppose you came here to see my Blood Parlor?”

“That and to have a word with you.” When he tried to follow her to the stairs, he was stopped once more by Astin’s thickly muscled yet tendril-free arm. “Do you know what she is, Astin?”

“She’s the one that pays my salary,” the doorman replied.

Hanging onto the railing of the staircase, Stephanie turned to show thin, curved fangs extending from her upper gum line just enough to scrape against her bottom lip. “I’m also the one that hands out freebies to my employees when they do good. You did real good, Astin. Let the nice Skinner through.”

Astin lowered his arm and took a step back. Judging by the way he ordered the others in the bar around with a few clipped words and some hasty pointing, he was more than just a doorman. Cole fell into step behind Stephanie and swore he could feel more eyes upon him than there were faces in the room.

The farther up the stairs she got, the bouncier Steph’s movements became. “I didn’t think you’d ever get here. We were all ready for you and that little partner of yours to show up on opening day and you never did. Don’t tell me you two are losing touch with this town.”

“Not at all. We just thought we’d give you a chance to get things rolling before we paid a visit.”

“That’s cute. If you or that little bitch—”

“Watch your mouth,” Cole snapped in the most convincing growl he’d done all night. “She’s my partner.”

Stephanie arrived at the top of the stairs, kept her fingertips on the banister, and did a slow turn to clear a path while
coming around to face him. “Sorry,” she said with an unconvincing pout. “Maybe I’m just jealous that she gets to spend so much time with you.”

Cole stepped away from the stairs and positioned himself so his back was to a wall. “Yeah. I’m sure that’s it.”

At first the upper floor seemed bigger than the one downstairs. That was mostly because the lower level was sectioned off into the bar and other rooms used for storage or office space. The top of the stairs opened to a room that was about the size of the bar and stretched from one side of the building to the other. Several windows were built into the walls of what looked like a newer addition that extended the main room out over the sidewalk. A hallway stretched all the way down the length of the second floor, with doors to private rooms on either side. At the far end of the hall was what looked like another, narrower staircase.

Stephanie strutted through the room as if she expected an entourage to appear and kiss her feet. The burgundy carpeting was thick enough to silence every step. Two sofas and several chairs were set up at the front of the room, each padded in colors that were only slightly different from the carpet. Lace curtains hung over the windows and candles were set upon little tables that also held magazines and several binders.

“This is the waiting room,” she said as she bent down to rub her hand along the cushion of the nearest sofa. A well-dressed man in his late forties sat there watching her as if silently praying her hand would come his way. “Our customers make their selections, settle their bills, and get all revved up for their sessions out here. It’s all very civil.”

“Looks that way so far.”

Stephanie answered the waiting guy’s prayers by lowering herself onto his lap. Kicking out one leg and smiling without showing any fang, she said, “Doesn’t this whole place just make you want to curl up with someone?”

“Oh yeah, the decor is great. It does feel like it’s missing something, though.” Cole snapped his fingers and added, “Maybe a big pipe organ and some dude in a cape hanging from the ceiling! You’re not going to make this poor guy dress in some frilly shirt before he gets fed upon, are you?”

Stephanie hopped off her living prop’s lap and walked over to Cole. The man on the couch made the best of her sudden departure by gluing his eyes to her naked shoulders. When she got close enough, Stephanie took hold of Cole’s wrist and tried dragging him down the hall. Since she was obviously used to men following her like puppies, he held his ground.

Letting go as if Cole’s arm had turned into a decaying tentacle, she lowered her voice to a hissing whisper that could barely be heard over the soft piano music piped in through hidden speakers. “Look, this is a business. You want a tour? Fine. You want to talk? I guess that’s fine too. Just don’t come in here and try to drive off my customers.”

“You gotta admit,” Cole replied in a voice just as low as hers, “you do seem to be laying it on kinda thick in here.”

“Well, we can either hunt the way we’re supposed to hunt or play it up a bit to have them come to us. There are Nymar clubs in plenty of other places that do the same thing. Some are bondage dungeons, some are spas, some give customers a private booth where they can get bitten and feel someone drink from them. Since you came all the way down here to single us out, maybe you should try it for yourself.” With a smile that showed the lower quarter of her feeding fangs, she added, “I’d do you for free.”

“Why don’t we start with a tour?”

She wrapped her arm around his and led him down the hall. “Do you really think you need that stick?”

“Yes.”

“Then will you at least cut the smartass comments when we’re around my customers?”

“I suppose that’s fair.”

“These,” Stephanie announced in a normal tone of voice, “are the rooms where our customers have their experience.” The first three doors had red ribbons tied around the handles, so she passed them up. Upon reaching a door with a bare handle, she opened it and stepped inside. “As you can see, there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

For the most part, she was right. It was a fairly plain bedroom that had been decorated as though large doses of lace
and velvet were legal requirements to appease the Cook County fire inspectors. A full-sized bed in the middle of the room was covered with velvet blankets. A small table, chair, and nightstand were all trimmed in lace. The air, which smelled like incense mingling with the subtle remnants of pot smoke, made Cole think back to his college days.

The moment Stephanie sat upon the edge of the bed, he shut the door and scooped up a chair to wedge under the handle.

“Big mistake, bruiser,” she said. “There’s a camera in every room and any one of us could punch through that door.”

“And scare away the customers?”

As if to prove him right, there was a quick series of taps on the door instead of a Nymar fist exploding through it. He grinned at Stephanie, who shot him a tight-lipped scowl in return.

“There a problem?” someone asked from the hallway.

Stephanie began to speak, but cut herself off when she saw Cole reach over his shoulder to pull his spear halfway from its harness. Locking eyes with him, she said, “I’m fine. Just go back to the security room.”

With every inch of the second level floor covered in such thick carpeting, it was impossible for Cole to hear if the people in the hall walked away or not. He looked up and couldn’t find the camera, but did pick out a few cheap little sculptures along the edge of the ceiling that could easily hide an eye in the sky.

“The last time we met, I probably didn’t make a very good impression,” he said.

She smirked and replied, “You tried to hit me with a trash can lid and then pushed me into the sunlight. Hah. And you’re the one calling me cliché?”

“What was your girl doing in our part of town?”

“My who was where?”

Cole narrowed his eyes and stepped closer to the bed. “You know goddamn well what I’m talking about. All of your girls are marked with pigtails tied back with the little cat bands. One of them, some asshole with a mullet, and
a guy named Sid were caught sucking businessmen in an alley.”

“Did they tell you who they worked for?”

“The one with the mullet did some talking, especially after I cracked his skull against the side of my car.”

“Yeah,” Stephanie said as she stood up and took the single step required to put her within a foot of Cole, “but did they tell you they worked for
me?”

When she was that close, he could smell the fruity scent of whatever she used in her hair. He could see the subtle texture of the tendrils that slowly writhed beneath her skin, and felt the heat emanating from her body. Apparently, that stuff about vampires being cold was as big a myth as the one about them burning up in the daylight.

Her eyes looked brown or possibly dark green from a distance. From where she stood now, Cole thought they had a slight purple hue to them. Those eyes silently assured him that they could pick up any lie he tried to float past her. Of course, there was one surefire way to test that theory.

“Yeah,” he lied. “Mullet boy brought your name up once or twice.”

Without skipping a beat, Stephanie raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess you got me. Seems like Paige really has whipped you into shape. Tell me something. Have you fucked her yet?”

“There’s the Stephanie I remember.”

“You haven’t, have you? I can feel that much just like I can feel, well, this much.”

Before Cole could do anything about it, Stephanie slipped her hand between his legs. She squeezed a bit too hard, as if to remind him who was in control, but eased up quickly and started rubbing him back and forth. “You’ve been with her all this time and no action? What’s the matter? Oooh, I can tell it’s nothing to do with your plumbing. Must be her. Is she freezing you out?”

Cole shook his head, intending on saying something but not quite getting there.

“I may have been a little rough on you when we first met, but you’ve shaped up since then.” Placing her hands upon his
arms, she squeezed them and smiled. “You’ve been working out.”

Trying to distract her as well as himself, he asked, “Do your customers even know what you are?”

“I doubt it.”

“What about those?” he asked while tapping the thickest black line on the side of her neck. “Don’t they notice anything strange about those? I mean, sometimes they move.”

“They move a lot of the times, but we keep the normals too busy to notice. We tell them they’re tattoos, and that’s good enough. I told one of my customers something of the whole story when he put some of the pieces together about what’s actually going on. You know what he said? He said it was weird. Can you believe that? A guy who paid me to make him bleed and lick the wounds actually called me weird!”

Pulling the strap of her dress over her head, Stephanie wriggled just enough for the garment to slide off her body. A few more well-practiced shimmies and the dress was bunched around her high heels. “I mean, see for yourself. Do I look so weird to you?”

BOOK: Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2)
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