Blood Blade

Chapter 11

Cole still couldn’t shake Paige’s scent even after she’d left the room. He could still feel her fingers roaming over his wrists and could imagine every strand of hair as it curled around her face. Her movements ran beneath everything in his head like a current of energy. He could feel the heat from her body no matter how many rooms separated them within that old restaurant.

Not that the cot in Paige’s freezer didn’t sound appealing. In fact, he looked inside the metallic room to find a surprisingly comfortable living space. There was a television and, for a bit of irony, a mini fridge. When he had just about convinced himself that he might be able to make it through the night without ripping through his jeans, he’d seen Paige walk by with her hair dripping wet and a thick, navy blue terry-cloth robe wrapped around her. She’d been showing more skin when she was in her sweats, but the thought that she was wet and naked beneath that single garment was enough to drive him out of his skull.

Since he still had his doubts about making the leap from video-game designer to monster killer, he put temptation behind him and called for a cab. Paige had asked him to stay, but didn’t take any drastic steps to keep him there. He needed some time to consider her proposition, and he couldn’t do that when his mind was preoccupied. At least, that was the most polite term for what he was feeling.

The Afton Inn was just off I–55 and could have easily been mistaken for a thousand other hotels across this and probably many other countries. Cole wasn’t interested in ambience or uniqueness. All he wanted was a clean bed, a place to shower, and a free breakfast in the morning. No matter how many monsters were out there, it just didn’t make sense to stay in a hotel that didn’t at least serve breakfast.

The hotel’s shower was great. Water trickled out like it was being spit from the nozzle, and it took half an hour to warm up, but he was able to stand under it for as long as he wanted without anyone else vying for his attention. For the first time since he’d left Seattle, he wasn’t packed into a cab, plane, car, or room with anyone else. As he stepped out of the bathroom with a thin, overly bleached towel wrapped around his waist, he didn’t care about the fact that he didn’t have any clean clothes to replace the ones in a heap on the bathroom floor. He didn’t bother sucking in the gut that had showed up in the days following his thirtieth birthday. He just turned on the television and nodded as the screen glowed with an infomercial about college girls and all the glorious ways they could disgrace themselves for a free T-shirt.

“Oh yeah,” Cole sighed. “That’s the good stuff.”

After he’d sat through the first run of the infomercial, he heard a breeze rustling outside. He got up, walked over to the window and pulled back the cheap curtain just enough to take in a scenic view of the parking lot. He could even count the dents on the roof of a dirty RV parked there. Shaking his head, he wondered why the hell people bought RVs, only to park them at hotels. Then again, he’d never understood the whole camping mentality anyway.

When Cole looked down a bit more, he caught sight of a latch at the bottom of the window. It was rare that hotels even allowed their windows to be opened, but he tried this one anyway. The latch popped free of the window frame, allowing the window to swing open a good one or two inches before it was stopped by a bracket. There was more than enough breeze to get through the narrow opening, so he pulled in a deep breath. The air wasn’t as crisp and clean as the stuff he’d sampled in Canada, but it was cool and it put a smile on his face. As far as he was concerned, savoring cheap thrills was the key to a truly happy life. All he needed now was some of that leftover pizza. Unfortunately, he hadn’t thought far enough ahead to take the DiGuido’s box along with him.

Cole gazed out to the nearby street on the off chance that he might catch sight of a twenty-four-hour coffee shop. Just as he was about to give up and pull the curtain shut, he noticed a large cat peeking from the shadows at the edge of the parking lot. It might have been a dog, but its eyes reflected the hotel’s security light with a feline glimmer. Then the thing darted out of sight.

Someone slammed a door in the hall, and he looked reflexively in that direction. A few heavy footsteps stomped outside his room, making it seem very possible that he would be getting inconsiderate yetis as his neighbors. All he needed now was a screaming baby added to the mix, and the Afton Inn truly would be just like any other hotel in the known universe.

Cole sighed and looked out the window as if he could actually watch his peace and quiet drift away. A window rattled one floor beneath him, just as a lean, gray paw reached up to get a hold upon his windowsill. Long claws dug into the sill, allowing a creature with black and gray fur to scale the outside of the hotel and climb up to his room.

Until that moment, Cole wasn’t aware that he could cover so much distance by simply jumping backward. He cleared the floor and flew back far enough to knock his legs against the bed and land on the starched, pale gold comforter. Losing his towel somewhere along the way, he rolled over the bed until he dropped off the mattress and hit the floor on the other side.

Though he didn’t have any weapons and didn’t know what he was up against, he put his back to the wall and stood up. He was sick and tired of running.

After opening the window with just enough force to snap the bracket holding it in place, the animal took its time crawling into Cole’s room. Its body was long and lean. As it slowly crept over the windowsill and dropped onto the floor, the light in the room played off its wiry fur, shifting between hues of gray and black. Sometimes the black patches seemed to overpower the gray. At other times, the gray nearly swallowed up the black. Long front arms stretched out to bury claws into the stained carpeting near the television stand. Shorter, more muscular legs curled up behind the thing’s narrow rump like a freakish cat getting ready to pounce.

Cole met the cat’s glare but found it difficult to hold it for long. Its eyes were clouded over from the inside, but stared back at him as if they could see all the way through to the wall behind him. Thin, pointed ears twitched against the animal’s head and then flicked straight up again. Its mouth remained open just enough to show upper and lower sets of needle-thin teeth that fit perfectly between one another.

“All right, shit bag,” Cole said as he planted his feet and grabbed the lamp from the bedside table. “I’ve already seen much worse than you. Show me what you got or get out of my room.”

The animal slunk around the bed, its fur glistening in the light from the television. It was nearly as long as he was, but Cole had trouble distinguishing where the animal’s body ended and the carpet began. He chalked that up to the fact that a good portion of the room’s light had been snuffed out when he’d yanked the lamp’s cord from the wall.

Lowering its chest to the floor, the gray cat raised its head and opened its jaws wide. Its hissing exhalation and the scrape of its claws against the floor were nearly drowned by the sounds coming from the television, but Cole didn’t need to hear anything to know what was coming. He tightened his grip on the lamp and then threw it at the creature’s head before it could lunge.

The animal pushed off with its powerful rear legs and sprung forward with both front arms extended. Cole jumped away from the bed and heard the muted thump of its body hitting the wall behind him. Reaching for the first weapon he could get, he grabbed a luggage rack that was made of two bent metal bars joined by a pair of screws. It was a weapon better suited for a professional wrestler, but it would have to do. He raised the rack over his head and brought it down on the animal’s shoulder.

Now that he was closer to the thing, Cole could tell there wasn’t a lot of meat beneath that shadowy fur. He raised the rack for another swing but only caught empty air when he brought it down again. The cat hunkered low to the floor and scurried into the corner formed by the bed and the edge of the room. Now that the animal’s back was to him, he was about to make his move when it whipped around to snap at his face.

Cole backed away while bringing the rack down to block the incoming mass of needle-shaped teeth. As the cat’s mouth scraped against bent steel, he grabbed onto the other end of the rack to keep it at arm’s length. He pushed the rack away while the cat-thing chewed on the cheap metal like it was gnawing on bone.

The room was arranged like any other hotel room, with the bed against a wall shared by the bathroom. Gritting his teeth and twisting both arms, Cole knocked the animal’s head against the wall beside the bathroom’s door frame. It wasn’t an earth-shattering impact, but it was enough to rattle the gangly creature. It shook its head and spat the rack from its mouth. After backing toward the same window it had used to enter the room, it let out a barely audible growl.

“Too late to cry now,” Cole snarled as he closed both hands around one end of the rack. Not caring where he hit the thing, he lifted the rack over his head and brought it down in a vicious blow that pounded against the floor and nothing else. He hopped backward while scanning the room.

The cat was difficult to spot. Its shape could barely be picked out against the floor or wall as it paced the room, making it seem as if it had been partially erased from sight. It kept its head low until the last second, but the light from the television eventually glinted off its fur. By the time Cole spotted that, the creature was leaping straight at him with claws bared. He stumbled away from the bed as claws scraped against his shoulder. But before the creature could do any real damage, he hit it with the luggage rack.

The oversized cat let out a hissing snarl and tore up the mattress as it jumped onto the bed. The moment it had Cole in its sights, it bounded forward and bared every tooth and fang in its arsenal before catching another glancing blow from the rack.

Cole turned away from another incoming set of claws while swinging the rack to bat away a paw. That gave him enough time to trip over the chair next to the open window. As he watched, the animal faded into clarity. Black and gray fur shimmered until the cat looked more as it had when it crawled through his window. Its eyes remained on him as it hopped down from where it had been balancing between the bed and dresser. Hitting the floor with casual grace and no sound whatsoever, the creature paced toward the window and faded completely from sight.

Holding the rack in front of him, Cole circled away from the window until he wound up with his legs once more scraping against the bed. A few seconds later he picked out a blurry spot in the air that definitely wasn’t caused by the irregular light from the television. As he watched, that blur dissolved to reveal a creature roughly the same size as the big cat but without fur. In fact, its skin was smooth and flowed like milk as it contracted into a much more familiar shape.

Claws retracted and were covered up by distinctly human fingers. Paws shrank down and flattened into feet and hands. A tail flowed up into a spot at the base of a human spine and just above a very feminine backside. As hind legs became too awkward to crouch upon, the thing straightened them and stood upright. By then the front legs had become slender arms and the feline facial features smoothed out into those of a woman. She locked eyes with Cole and smiled enticingly as blond hair flowed from her scalp to unfurl until it hit her shoulders. Even though she stood naked before him without making a move to cover herself, he was too distracted by her face to notice much of anything else.

“You?” Cole gasped. “The last time I saw you…you were…”

She nodded and finished his sentence for him. “I was running away from a Full Blood in Canada.”

“I thought you—”

When the phone rang, Cole nearly jumped out of his skin. Right about then he realized he was just as naked as she was.

Every time the phone rang, the woman’s ears twitched. “Aren’t you going to answer that?” she asked.

He kept his eyes on her as he walked around the bed and gathered some sheets to hold in front of him. The only move she made was to back away, so he reached for the phone and picked up the receiver. At least he still had something in his hand that he could use as a weapon. “Hello?” he grunted.

“This is the front desk, sir. Is there a problem in your room? I’ve been getting noise complaints.”

“Uh…” As he tried to think of what he should do, Cole watched the naked shapeshifter casually cross her arms. Sure she’d been a cat a few moments ago, but he couldn’t think of anything the guy at the front desk of an Afton Inn could do about that. “Everything’s fine now,” he finally said. “Sorry about the noise.”

“Well, if there are more complaints, I’ll have to take action.”

“I know. Sorry again.” With that, he hung up and reached for the luggage rack.

“This is kind of funny,” the blonde said. “Last time I saw you, we were on the same side.”

“And the last time I saw you, you were human, not some kind of…thing!”

If the blonde still had her fur, it would have bristled. “I’m not a thing. I have a name, you know. It’s Jackie. And you don’t have to take that tone with me. After the way you attacked me, you’re damn lucky to be alive.”

“I attacked you?”

Nodding slowly, Jackie said, “From the moment I came in. I thought you’d be startled, but you really hit the ground running.”

“And you nearly ripped me into pieces.”

“You hit me in the head with a lamp,” she retorted.

Still feeling the adrenaline rushing through him, Cole tightened his grip on the phone receiver. “I’ve got a door in this room,” he snarled. “It came with the rest of the room. You could have used it instead of the freaking window.”

“If you give me a moment, I can explain.” Her features softened in a way that had nothing to do with her shifting abilities; at least, not as far as he knew. “I need to talk to you. If I got rough before, it was just because you threw the first punch.”

Cole reflexively started to say something in his own defense, but cut himself short when he took a moment to think about what had happened. “I guess you’ve got a point there. Did I hurt you?”

“No, but it looks like I hurt you.”

Cole glanced down at his shoulder. There was a long row of scratches, but only a slight trickle of blood. “I’m not worried about that. I am worried you might have just changed to look like that woman from Canada. For all I know, you can change to look like anything you want.”

“It was really me,” she replied. “Although,” she added while opening her arms, “I was wearing a bit more at the time.”

Jackie’s body was smooth and trim, but not perfect. Her breasts were pert and a bit small, while her hips were just a bit too muscular for his tastes. Even so, she was doing a hell of a job of making him rethink those tastes. “Why were you in Canada?” he asked as a way to test the identity she was claiming.

“I was at that cabin to meet with Brad,” she told him. “Do you remember him sitting and talking with me over dinner?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if that Full Blood was after me or Gerald, but you’ve got to believe I didn’t know that was going to happen the way it did.”

All he had to do was think back to the panic in her eyes the night of that attack for him to believe what she was saying.

“I did my best to make sure that other college kid got away,” she insisted. “When I came back to check on you, I caught the scent of that Full Blood nearby. I tried to lead it away long enough for you to get away. You’ve got to believe me.”

Nodding, Cole told her, “I heard growling and sounds like that the whole time I was running.”

She nodded as well, but with a lot more desperation. “That’s right! I wasn’t able to hurt it, but I could outrun it once it followed me.”

“So why go through all the trouble of coming here?” Narrowing his eyes, he added, “I still don’t think you could have followed me all the way here from Canada. Even if you had my scent or whatever, I spent a hell of a lot of time locked up in a plane over a thousand feet in the air.”

Obviously impressed with herself, Jackie replied, “You were on the phone most of the time before you got to that truck. Chicago was mentioned quite a bit.”

“And you heard all that while hopping onto that plane without anyone noticing?”

She shook her head. “I went to an airport and bought a ticket to Chicago just like anyone else. I had to have beaten you here by at least a day, and I caught your scent about an hour ago. Believe me now?”

Before admitting defeat, Cole asked, “So why the SpiderMan entrance tonight?”

“Your new friend Misonyk has a way of keeping tabs on my kind no matter what form we take. The window was the quickest way in and will be the quickest way out.”

Jackie walked to the television and turned it up. She seemed to enjoy sauntering naked in the cool breeze that drifted in from the window. Cole had definitely acquired an eye for sauntering. After making her way back to him, she spoke just loudly enough to be heard above the television. “I doubt they’ve got your room bugged, but Misonyk and his followers could be listening from the hall or somewhere close.”

“What do you know about Misonyk?” he asked.

“I contacted Brad about that maniac and the abomination that follows him around, but Gerald wouldn’t listen. He didn’t trust me or any of my kind.”

“What kind is that?” Cole asked.

“If anything, you’d know us by what the Skinners and Full Bloods call us: Mongrels.”

Cole nodded and did his best to appear as if he’d heard more than a brief mention of that word from Paige. “Why would Gerald and Brad have to meet up with you in Canada?”

Jackie blinked and lowered her head a bit. She stood close enough to him that her hair fell over one shoulder to brush against her chest as well as his. As it turned out, she was merely waiting for the infomercial to kick back into another loud cycle. It wasn’t long before the steel drums and giggling coeds were at it again.

“Before I left, Misonyk was spreading a lot of wild ideas. But he wasn’t much more than another crazy Nymar until he had Henry enforcing his word as if it was law. Henry may like feeding on Nymar, but he can easily become a threat to my kind. I’ve been holding onto the Blood Blade so it could be used against a threat like that. If not for Brad, I would have kept it even though it’s a Skinner weapon. I should have just kept it.”

She broke into her reserves of strength to keep the tears from eyes that subtly became feline before shifting back again. “If the rest of my kind found out I played a part in trying to harm a shapeshifter, I’d be considered a traitor and…I don’t even want to think about how they’ll make an example of me. I have a niece that lives up in Canada, and it was as far away as I could get from here. Brad was the only Skinner willing to trust me and come such a long way at the request of a Mongrel. I don’t know how that Full Blood knew we were there or if it just happened to catch our scent, but no Skinner will ever trust me again.”

“Gerald and Brad were the only two Skinners there,” Cole said. “At least, I think they were.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jackie said solemnly. “The others will know. Everyone always finds out everything. I’m so sick of it all.”

“Where did Henry come from?”

“Someplace called Lancroft. It’s up in Wisconsin, but I don’t know any more than that.”

Cole shook his head as the sensation of drowning once again swirled through his head. “Maybe you should tell this to Paige. She’ll know more about—”

“No,” Jackie cut in. She leaned against him so her breasts touched the front of his body. “The only reason I came all the way back here is to honor my deal with Brad. He…let’s just say I owe him a favor, and telling all I know about Henry and Misonyk was going to be my way of paying him back. After what happened to him and Gerald, I know he would’ve wanted someone else to hear this. I don’t know if you’re a Skinner or not, but I do know you can pass this along so it can do some good.”

“All right, then. What do you know about Misonyk?” Cole asked.

“He’s crazy and powerful, but that happens to a lot of the older Nymar. He talks about slaughtering humans to drink their souls and nailing Skinners to the floors of dark rooms. He’s insane. That’s why most Nymar don’t pay any attention to him. At least, they didn’t before Henry came along.

“Henry is one of them,” she continued, “but he’s also one of us. I’ve never seen one just like him, but his scent is close to a Full Blood’s. When Henry was just a rumor among the Nymar, Brad was the one who wanted to take action. The old man was content to let anything go as long as it only killed Nymar, but I knew there was more to it than that. I could hear it.”

“You could hear it?”

Jackie nodded and tapped the side of her head just above her ear. “It was a whisper at first. I thought I was hearing things or maybe…maybe going crazy. But it wasn’t just me that heard. Every Mongrel I know heard it. Maybe every shapeshifter in the state could hear it.”

“What did they hear?”

“Crazy thoughts at first,” Jackie explained, as if just the memory was enough to make her uncomfortable. “Words that were strung together without a space or a breath in between them. Conversations with God. Most of it didn’t make any sense. When I got close enough to Henry to pick up his true scent, I knew those whispers were his thoughts. He screamed them from his mind. Stuck in there amid all the babble and all Misonyk’s teachings was something else. It was one of the few coherent things in all those thoughts, and it was a gift that could only be given to us by that twisted piece of filth.”

Not knowing whether she was talking about Henry or Misonyk, Cole tried to push her through whatever had caused her eyes to wander and her voice to trail off. “I’m listening.”

Her head flinched so she could look straight at him again. The ends of her hair tickled his skin. “After spending so much time around the Nymar, Henry discovered the lie that we’ve all been told, and he shouted it into the minds of every shapeshifter for hundreds of miles in every direction. By now all of them may know.”

“What lie?”

Her eyes narrowed as if she was looking at him in a new way. “My kind should thank Henry for what he’s told us. We should all just pray that no Full Bloods were around to hear it.” Turning away from him, Jackie headed for the window. “There’s a lot of Nymar in Henry’s scent, so maybe that part of him will overpower the rest.”

Feeling his urgency growing now that Jackie had already made it to the window, Cole snapped, “What lie? You want to tell me these things, then start making sense!”

“I’ve told you plenty. Bring this to one of your partners and they’ll know what it means. Even if Misonyk was using some sort of mental link to control Henry, those thoughts are being screamed out to the rest of us. We know what Henry’s capable of. Sooner or later he’ll break free. When that happens…” She pulled the window open with a hand that had already begun to grow claws. “All I wanted to do was let the Skinners know what they’re up against. You’re the ones who do the fighting, so use the weapon I gave you. I have to go. Henry will be able to smell me long before I can smell him, and that wouldn’t be good for either of us.”

Jackie turned her back to him and lifted one leg through the open window. Cole started to follow her and said, “Maybe you should tell Paige about this. I may not remember all of it.”

“You’d better remember,” Jackie replied. “’Cause I’m done. I owed Brad a big favor, but I’ve done more than enough to see it through. Best of luck to you, Cole. Maybe I’ll look in on you again.” Lowering her line of sight below his waist, she added, “You’ve definitely got some promise.”

Cole adjusted the sheet in his hand to cover himself up. Before he could say or do anything else, Jackie had shifted into her black and gray animal form. Her body simply flowed from one shape to another as if she had smoke for flesh and water for bones. With one effortless leap, she jumped out the window and was gone.

He didn’t bother looking outside to see where she went. He started losing sight of Jackie the moment her fur had fully sprouted. He lunged for one of his phones and dialed the number for Rasa Hill. Paige picked up on the third ring, and he explained what had happened as she yawned on the other end. When he was done, Cole expected something drastic from Paige. What he got were a few simple words.

“Get some sleep,” she told him.

“Isn’t this important?”

“Yes, but we both need a few hours sleep. Besides, I’m waiting to hear from a couple different sources and we’re not going anywhere until I do. Just come back here early in the morning.”

“What about my wound?”

“It’s just a scratch?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Sleep it off.”

“These things are tracking me, Paige,” Cole snarled. “Gerald was right. At least one of ’em’s got my scent, and I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, that’s never fun,” Paige yawned.

“I won’t be able to shake them, will I?”

After a bit of a pause she told him, “There’s a few options, but nothing’s guaranteed.”

“What’s this lie Jackie mentioned? Is that something you know about?”

“All Nymar lie,” she replied simply. “We can sift through it all later. Stop talking so much and get some rest.”

Cole ran his fingers along the scratches on his shoulder and felt his stomach clench. A while ago getting back to a normal life seemed possible. He could always settle back in and try to forget about the weirdness he’d seen. Now, the weirdness hadn’t just beaten him up a few times, but had followed him across national borders and shared a fairly intimate moment with him. There was no easy way to forget about that.

“I want in, Paige,” he said. “Since this shit is just going to follow me around, I might as well do something more than wait for it to find me. It’s either become a Skinner or spend the next bunch of years looking over my shoulder waiting for the next thing to track me down.”

Paige’s voice was still tired, but it was also soft and comforting. “You really need to sleep on it, Cole. We’ll talk about it more tomorrow. Are you all right where you’re at?”

“Sure,” he replied as he looked over at the window that was still hanging from its broken bracket. “I think I can kiss my deposit good-bye, though. Do you think they’ll come after me again?”

“Sounds to me like she could’ve killed you already if she wanted. You’re welcome to stay here, you know.”

Cole looked around at the shredded mattress and messy room. “I’ll think of something. See you in the morning, Paige.”

Since Jackie had tracked him all the way from Canada, going to another hotel didn’t seem like it would do much good. He also didn’t want to head back to Rasa Hill. After all the shapely female bodies he’d seen that night, he needed some quiet time.