Marcus Pelegrimas: Vampire Uprising

“What’s with that wistful tone in your voice? Don’t tell me you seriously wanna go back to designing video games!”

“And give up the glamorous life of a monster hunter?” Cole said while holding up a dirty shovel and gazing out at a deserted portion of the New Jersey landscape. “Why would I ever want to do that?”

“You ask me, the work’s been doing you some good. You’re in better shape than you were in Wisconsin.”

Patting a stomach that had been somewhere between “a little soft” and “very soft” his entire life, Cole was happy to find a more solid surface beneath his black T-shirt. The belt on his faded jeans was new, as was the noticeably slimmer waistline encircled by it. Inevitably, his hand drifted up to a jaw covered by coarse stubble that was still too scattered to form a real beard. Scars from recent fights made it even tougher to grow decent facial hair, and even though his lineage blessed him with an unwavering hairline, he didn’t have time to do much grooming. Whenever it was thick enough to be visibly flattened by a pillow, his hair was buzzed off using a set of cheap shears. At the moment, he found it to be more mossy than bristly. “Yeah,” he chuckled. “No gym membership would have whipped my sorry ass into this kind of shape. There’d be fewer things trying to tear my head off, though.”

“I don’t know about that. I had one personal trainer who threatened to break my fingers if I touched another plate of goulash. That bitch was scary.”

Cole had to take another look at the man in front of him. As always, Prophet was about an inch taller than him, had a good amount of muscle under his tattered sweatshirt, and a beard that seemed tailor-made to hide a scowl. Hearing someone like that admit to fearing a gym employee was just plain wrong. “I appreciate the help with this, Walter. And I’d appreciate it even more if you kept it between us.”

“I know a few of the Skinners on this side of the country, but not a lot. They all seem to think they know every damn thing.”

“They also think your dreams are bullshit, right?” Cole guessed.

“Yep, but they’re more than willing to cash in their tickets when I give ‘em the right lotto numbers. Arrogant pricks. You know some of them got Nymar working for them?”

“Have you ever met Daniels?” Cole asked.

“I’m not talking about a science geek consultant. I mean Nymar actually being called Skinners. Sticks and everything.”

That one hit home. In the time that had passed since Cole’s introduction to a werewolf, he’d become accustomed to the weight of his weapon either in his hands or in the harness strapped to his back. It wasn’t often he was far from the specially treated wooden spear, and the scars its thorns had made were part of him. Creating it had been his first rite of passage. Learning to use it had been his introduction to the life of hunter. Killing with it forged him into a Skinner. “They’re teaching Nymar how to fight with our weapons?”

“I seen a few vampires carrying them,” Prophet replied. “Haven’t seen them fight with ‘em yet. Never seen the sticks change shape like yours or Paige’s either.”

“Then it’s even more important we keep this to ourselves. Daniels has proven himself, and I don’t even want him to know where Henry is buried. I’ll leave it up to Paige to decide how much we tell him about everything else. There’s something else I wanted to ask.”

“You want me to keep another secret from Paige?” Prophet asked. He gritted his teeth and pulled in a hissing breath while shaking his head. “I don’t know about that, Cole. Me and her go a ways back.”

“This isn’t a secret. It’s from Paige directly.”

Cole wasn’t lying about that, which Prophet could tell after staring him down for less than three seconds. Even so, he was reluctant when he nodded and said, “All right. Let’s hear it.”

“She wants you to follow anyone that comes and goes from that house in Philly. Everyone but me and her, that is.”

“That could be rough. You guys have struck a deal with the nymphs, right? From what I heard, you’ve all been coming and going through that temple Lancroft slapped together in his basement.”

“She’s more interested in the locals for now. Can we count on you to start your surveillance soon?”

“Soon as you do that job Stanley’s been bugging you about.” When Cole started to groan in protest, Prophet added, “He’s my boss and he did bail you and Rico out of jail in St. Louis. Paige said she’d track down those fugitives in Denver that got turned into Nymar, and Stanley wants to collect before they disappear.”

“We’ll get on it.”

“How soon?” Prophet asked.

“As soon as you start that surveillance.”

“I got expenses, you know.”

“And we’ll pay them,” Cole was quick to reply. “You can take a chunk of money now or wait for a bigger chunk later.”

“I’m still not interested in becoming a Skinner.”

“And that’s the way, uh-huh uh-huh, we like it.”

Prophet’s stern exterior cracked into a friendly smile. “There’s the cornball Cole I knew from the Wisconsin days. But KC & the Sunshine Band? Ain’t that a bit before your time?”

“Not really. And Wisconsin wasn’t that long ago.”

“The hell it wasn’t,” Prophet said as he turned around to look back at the final resting place of a full-blooded werewolf. Both men gave the grave a wide berth as they headed for the truck. “I got cop friends in Wisconsin that still talk about that supposed gang fight in Janesville. You sure the local PD hasn’t figured out what’s going on down in that basement?”

Cole shrugged. “There was plenty of commotion for a week or two after the Mud Flu thing cleared up. After that, the police have had the same ol’ crimes to keep them busy. A fresh batch of witnesses stepped forward about Kansas City, which I’m sure Paige and I will have to deal with.”

“You two are silencing civilians now?”

“No, but we need to find a way to keep things from getting out of hand. If we didn’t have some friends of our own in the KC Police Department, I’m sure Paige and I would have been dragged in already. I’ve been back and forth from there and Chicago so much that the mixture of barbecue sauce and pizza grease are starting to form a new kind of toxin in my bloodstream.”

Having arrived at the truck, Cole tossed his shovel onto the pile of tarps and garbage bags they’d used to carry Henry out of the basement. Without giving it a second thought, he’d reached into his jacket pocket for a small case designed for nail files, tweezers, or other toiletries that now contained little syringes filled with Nymar antidote and a healing serum brewed from an ever-changing Skinner recipe.

“Sauce and grease,” Prophet mused. “That’s why you need that stuff?”

The syringes were about the size of a crayon, and held one dose of their prospective contents. The one Cole held over the meaty section of his upper arm went in with a quick jab. “Lancroft busted me up pretty good,” he said. “I’m still feeling it.”

“I bet you are. So what do you wanna hear from me where this job is concerned?”

“That you’ll do it.” Reaching into another pocket, Cole found a flat blue envelope that was about half the size of a comic book and tossed it over.

After snatching the envelope from the air, Prophet opened it and pulled out a greeting card with a dog’s face on it. It contained five hundred dollars and the words, Sorry I forgot, but it’s been seven of my years since your last party. Happy Belated Birthday.

Cole put everything away and climbed in through the truck’s passenger door. “They were out of the ones that said ‘Congrats on being psychic.’”