Marcus Pelegrimas - Vampire Uprising

Interrupted by a lock applied to his hand that turned it against his wrist in a very uncomfortable way, Cole was quickly reminded of one thing: the hair might have been different, but the woman beneath it was very much the same.

“Where’s that frickin’ body?” she snapped. Before Cole could give so much as a peep in his defense, she tightened the lock and added, “And you should think verrrry carefully before you ask me ‘What body?’”

“Do we really want to discuss this now?” he whispered.

“Yes.” Paige let him go and marched back to the room with the workbenches. Jessup and several others shouted for her, but she ignored those tersely worded requests and went all the way up to the main floor of the house.

Cole followed behind her, doing his best not to return the stern glares coming from any number of Skinners sifting through the creations and unfinished projects that Lancroft had left behind. Upstairs, only one of the locals remained. As soon as they saw Paige and Cole emerge from the basement, Abel promptly turned his back on them and joined the rest of his crew outside.

Apart from the runes etched into the walls, there wasn’t much of anything to see on the main floor of the house. Furnishings were limited to a few folding chairs that had only recently been brought in and several coolers strewn around the kitchen.

“Told you we should’ve kept this place a secret,” Cole grumbled.

“We did for the first few days,” Paige replied. “After that, it was only a matter of time before Jory and those other two showed up.”

“Where the hell were they when Lancroft was here? If they’re supposed to be locals, how come we didn’t know about them until they came to grab this stuff?”

“Abel, Selina, and Jory broke contact with MEG about the same time that Gerald and Brad took their trip into Canada.”

No matter what Cole was thinking about, it was always wiped away when those names were mentioned. Gerald and Brad were the first Skinners he’d ever met, and they were ripped to shreds in front of him by a Full Blood he’d come to know as Mr. Burkis. Nothing had been the same after that.

Nothing.

“A lot of things could have happened between these Philly guys and MEG,” she continued. “Not all of us are as fond of the ghost guys as you are.” When she saw the look in Cole’s eyes, Paige sighed and admitted, “Fine. As we are. The point is, this bunch isn’t the first to go off the grid. Selina says they were forced to go into hiding when some cops were getting close to putting them away.”

“What’d they do to get in trouble with the cops?”

“Their job, Cole. See, that’s the problem with being the only ones who know about things like Nymar. We see vampires while everyone else sees a bunch of strutting dickheads with smooth skin and black tattoos. Knocking around assholes like that isn’t exactly legal. Shooting them or injecting poison into their veins is most definitely frowned upon. The good news is that Selina claims to have made some friends in the Philadelphia PD after resolving their little problem. And speaking of a little problem, where’s that frickin’ body?”

Over the past few months, Cole had been acquiring many new skills. He was getting better with his weapon. He’d picked up on methods used to track creatures of the night. He could even fix mac and cheese in five exotic ways. Lying to Paige, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly a skill. It was a risk to life and limb.

“I buried it,” he said.

“You what?”

“Buried it.”

As one question piled on top of another, Paige’s face went through a series of contortions. The expression he’d least expected for her to settle on was calmness. As a surprise bonus, she actually smirked. “How the hell did you manage to get that thing out of here when everyone else was rummaging around?”

“I asked Prophet to help me wrap it up and carry it out after the last batch of looters were teleported out of here,” he admitted. “The nymphs only zap us around twice a day, so I waited for one of those times when most of the house was cleared out. Even the Philly crew drove away to get something to eat. When all the planets aligned, Prophet and I carried Henry out of here and drove him somewhere to be buried.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’ve had enough on your mind.” When he said that, Cole glanced down at her right arm. After a particularly unsuccessful field test of the tattoo ink that still itched under his skin, Paige’s arm had been rendered close to useless. Her skin was still soft, but several discolorations that might have been internalized scars had begun appearing on the surface. Through a lot of hard work and base-level stubbornness, she’d moved beyond the need for a sling. Her arm was still stiff and gave her the occasional twitch of pain, which meant a lot if someone as hard-headed as Paige was doing the twitching.

Balling her right hand into a fist, she said, “Don’t give me that bullshit. You knew I’d tell you what a stupid fucking idea that was.”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“So where did you take him?”

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I took him?”

“No,” she snapped. “First tell me where.”

After a few seconds of deliberation Cole replied, “Nah. Everyone else seems to be able to do whatever they feel like no matter what, so now’s my turn. Some get to come in here and demand or just steal anything we fought and bled for. Fine. Others spend their time looking through every last bit of work that Lancroft did without so much as a thank-you to the ones who kept the old man from killing more people to spread his plague. I guess that’s supposed to be fine too. Those assholes across the street decide to come over and start their shit? Whatever. They might as well, right?”

“Cole, things are just crazy right now.”

“They haven’t been any other way since I can remember!” Lowering his voice and stepping closer to her, he placed a hand on Paige’s arm and rubbed the smooth lines of muscle beneath her skin. “When can we get some time for just … you and me?”

“Seriously?” she asked. “With everything happening, all these people driving in, some of them teleporting in from all over the place, and all you can think about is getting quality time with me?”

“Is that so bad? Seems like we could both use something to loosen the tension.”

Once again Paige’s expression took a turn that Cole hadn’t been expecting. “You’re right. We could use a stress reliever.”

“Really?” Cole gasped. “I bet nobody would even miss us if we—”

“No, not that,” she said, casually dashing his highest hope.

“What, then?”

Instead of answering his question, she walked out the front door and toward the street. Cole stayed close to her, noticing how the group of local Skinners halted their conversation and glared defiantly at them.

“What are you doing, Paige?”

“Tell me what we’ve been doing since the whole Lancroft thing,” she replied.

“It hasn’t been that long, but seems like a bunch of cataloguing and—”

“Nothing,” she snapped. “Just going through a dead man’s house and squabbling over his leftovers. Meanwhile, Jory and those other two waltz back in from wherever the hell they’ve been and all these other jackoffs come here after finding out from Lord knows who that there’s a shitload of buried treasure here. And how do they get here?”

“Through a magical teleportation system that we opened up,” Cole said.

Stopping at the curb on the opposite side of the street, Paige spun around fast enough for the bobbed ends of her hair to whip against her cheek. “It’s not magic. There is no magic. You know I hate it when you write something off like that.”