Marcus Pelegrimas: Vampire Uprising

“Did you see me take anything out of here?”

Without any proof to use as ammunition, Maddy stormed into the house.

Cole shifted his focus to the remaining three Skinners standing outside the front door. “You guys are from around here, right?”

Jory nodded.

“So do you know those meatheads across the street?”

Abel turned his back on him before grunting, “Do you know everyone in your territory? I’d guess probably not, since you and Paige were supposed to be watching KC when it fell.”

Cole stepped up to the guy with the Mohawk. Since he’d never gone toe-to-toe with him, he hadn’t realized how much taller he was than Abel. “Right, but you’re the ones who had Lancroft living in your own damn city. Couldn’t you have kept a closer eye on things before they went this far into the shitter?”

“This is a big city, not some stretch of prairie like you’re used to.”

“Chicago’s a stretch of prairie? What the hell’s wrong with you? Take your hands off me, Selina!”

The blonde had grabbed Cole by the arm and pulled him back. After letting him go, she turned to Abel and said, “This isn’t the place to talk about our business.”

Following her line of sight, Cole saw that Madman 69 and his other buddies had plopped into lawn chairs on their porch and were cracking open a fresh round of drinks. All of the Skinners stomped inside and slammed the door shut. The house was protected and cloaked by a series of runes etched into the walls, but Cole only knew three men who could use them with any degree of accuracy. Lancroft was at the top of the list, but he was dead. Ned Post used similar runes to protect his home in St. Louis, but he was also dead. That left Rico. Unfortunately, he’d gone his own way soon after Lancroft had been dealt with. Before leaving, he’d shown several of the remaining Skinners how to activate or deactivate the runes cloaking the door to the basement. Since the rest of the angular markings were more complicated than glorified switches, everyone just left them alone.

For the moment, the door to the basement was just as visible as any other. Beyond it, a cement stairwell led down to a workshop filled with benches and several sets of tools. The grisly works in progress Lancroft had left behind were all gone, leaving only the scent of rotten meat and burnt leather to mark their passing. Skinners from across the country had been coming to look at Lancroft’s place over the last several days and were taking as much of the old man’s belongings as they could carry. Supplies it took months or years to find in the field could be found in neat stacks of old mason jars and tool boxes. Lancroft even had racks of handcrafted weapons, some of which still bore bloodstains from their previous owners upon the handles’ thorns. Cole didn’t even know there were so many Skinners to be found, and with a pulse of green light from the next room accented by the scent of freshly cut trees, more arrived from parts unknown.

Stepping into the next room, he was always happy to watch the Dryads at work. Based in clubs around the country, the nymphs had been sticking to their word and allowing Skinners to use their temples as a means of transportation. They resisted parting with the knowledge of exactly how the process worked, but that was fine by him. Sometimes it was nice to just sit back and enjoy the show.

The man who emerged from the enchanted room’s glowing beaded curtain didn’t seem at all concerned with the miracle of being teleported by mythological strippers. Somehow, even the faint whiff of expensive body spray following him through his end of the bridge wasn’t enough to brighten the man’s mood. “What the fuck is this that I hear about the Full Blood going missing?”

He was a bulky man in shredded jeans, scuffed boots, and a simple black work shirt that looked as if it had been stolen from a mechanic. The hand he raised was so scarred that it could very well have been sewn onto his wrist after Frankenstein’s monster was through with it. “You,” he said, while aiming a callused finger at Cole. “Are you one of them from Chicago?”

“Yeah,” Paige said as she stepped out of a small, brightly lit room where Lancroft had cut Henry into the chunks Cole so recently buried. “And I’m the other one.”

Paige hadn’t stepped foot out of the basement for more than an hour or two over the last several days, and it showed. Her skin was pale. Dark circles ringed her eyes and her newly sheared hair hung limply around her face. “What are you doing here, Jessup? Didn’t I just tell you there’s nothing to see that your little trainees hadn’t already seen?”

The phone still clutched in Jessup’s other fist looked like a toy that was about to be broken into pieces. Stuffing it into his pocket, he stepped away from the curtain of shimmering beads and glanced over both of his shoulders. What he saw was a large room with walls covered in flowing Dryad script. Behind him were the women whose song had created the bridge connecting one temple to another. Now that they were done singing, the ridiculously beautiful nymphs strutted out of the basement for some fresh air. Having already encountered the loudmouth neighbors, they knew well enough to head to the poorly tended backyard.

“Where the hell are those broads going?” Jessup asked.

All of the people in the temple were riveted by the sight of the Dryads. Even though they normally wore something much more provocative than the sweats and baby doll shirts these two had on, they exuded raw femininity that reached down through every human sensory organ to caress the recipient from the inside out. Paige and Cole weren’t immune to the effect, but they’d felt it enough to know how to brace themselves.

Closing the distance between herself and Jessup with a few powerful strides, she reminded him, “The deal was for them to help us with transport when we needed it. Not act as a subway system with flights leaving every hour. They’re pushing it as it is to run everyone through their temples for as long as they have.”

“I had to go to some shithole club an hour’s drive from Helena.”

“And you won’t be able to return for another three hours.”

“Maybe I’ll stay. Looks like this place could use some real leadership.” Gritting his teeth, Jessup stalked toward Cole and growled, “What’s so goddamn funny?”

“You’ve had quite a day,” Cole said. “To Helena and back.”

Jessup gazed at him like Roosevelt looking down from Mount Rushmore.

In too deep to back out now, Cole asked, “You got any flying rodents in Montana or did they all fly away like bats out of—”

“Am I supposed to believe the Jonah Lancroft was taken down by you two?”

Paige nodded confidently to Jessup as she replied, “Yep. You can also believe that Boise was one of the cities hit hardest by Lancroft’s Mud Flu. According to his records, he was there to plant the virus himself.” She scratched her head, feeling one of the spots that had recently gotten a major trim. “Isn’t Idaho your territory?”

“And what about Wyoming?” Cole asked. “I’ve seen some videos on the net of some pretty bad Mongrel activity.”

Jessup stomped past Cole and Paige, waving them off like a cranky old fart dismissing the bells and whistles of modern technology. “Stuff that Web garbage up your asses where it came from. Let me get a look at this place.”

After he passed her, Paige was all smiles. She was still smiling when she wrapped an arm around Cole and led him to the far side of the room where there was a better chance of speaking in what would have to pass for privacy.

Cole ran his hand along the back of her head, feeling the hair cut drastically short to match the clump she’d been forced to hack off during her fight with Lancroft. From the back of her neck and up to the bump on the back of her skull, her black hair had been clipped to a soft bristle. The front and sides were still long, but in a long bob that swooped down to frame her cheeks like a set of wispy, inverted horns. Keeping his fingertips on the clipped portion in back, Cole said, “I like the new look. Feels goo— Ow !”