Blood Blade

Chapter 20

Paige woke Cole early the next morning. Walter was already gone, but was supposed to meet them at the pit just west of Clear Lake. Cole grabbed some complimentary bagels and coffee from the lobby on his way out and then loaded up the car. Since it was early enough for the haze of dawn to still be thick in the air, he didn’t mind letting Paige drive. In fact, he felt pretty good just to be in some clean clothes. It wasn’t a long trip, but he still managed to fall asleep somewhere along the way. When they arrived, they spotted one van parked in front of a deteriorating old house. It was a large, boxy model from ten years ago that had plenty of room inside and plenty of rust on the outside.

The engine of Paige’s car was still ticking when the driver’s side door to the van’s swung open and Walter stepped out.

“You found the place,” he said. “There’s a pile of rocks and crap out back. The pit’s in the middle of it all. You can’t miss it.”

Paige stretched her arms as if about to embark on a leisurely morning stroll. “Can’t you show us where it is?”

“I’m just acting as the scout on this one, remember? You guys are the ones who’re crazy enough to poke these man-eaters with a sharp stick.”

“I thought you said you’d be able to give us more help than that,” she reminded him.

Walter cocked his head to one side in preparation to defend himself. “I know what I said, Paige, and I’ll be able to help you even more than I thought. I had the same dream again last night and I managed to write down a few things.”

“What kind of things?” Cole asked with genuine curiosity.

Grateful to have a more receptive ear, Walter turned to him and replied, “I saw the news report about that massacre again, but there was someone reporting on the scene this time. She was at a park in Janesville and there was some big ugly building in the background. I got a much clearer look at it this time around.”

Paige let out a short grunt of a laugh. “Real helpful.”

“Yeah,” Walter snarled. “It is. Janesville isn’t a big place. I looked it up and there are only about six parks and a few golf courses, so it shouldn’t take me long to drive around and see which one matches what I saw.”

“How long would something like that take?” Paige asked.

He shrugged. “I should have it narrowed down to a few possibles by the end of the day. By the end of tomorrow, I could have the spot all picked out.”

Even though Paige was raking her fingers through her hair with almost enough force to pull it out at the roots, Cole was nodding enthusiastically. “Fine, Walter,” she said. “Check out your hunch. Did you get the rest of those things we needed?”

“Everything that was in Gerald’s personal stash,” he replied. “He might’ve given some stuff to some other partners, but this was all he wanted me to keep in my van. I’ll leave it here for you.”

Paige nodded. “He always trusted you, Walter. Wait a second. Last night you said you had to go scrounge for that stuff.”

“I stopped back at Shimmy’s,” Walter admitted with a shrug. “I’ve still got other jobs to do, you know.”

“Go check out Janesville,” she said without the annoyed tone that had been in her voice before. “Give us a call as soon as you find anything. Even if you don’t find anything, check in tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a quick salute. He tossed a friendlier wave to Cole as he headed for his van and unloaded a few things from the back.

Paige walked toward the house with quick, purposeful steps and stopped at the front door. “Do we have this place to ourselves?” she shouted toward the van.

“Apart from the Half Breeds sleeping out back, yeah,” Walter shouted back. “The owners think the MEG guys are conducting one of their investigations over the next few days.”

Suddenly, Cole became very uncomfortable with the fact that their voices rolled through the air with the subtlety of an incoming thunderstorm. Even as he jogged to catch up to Paige, he winced with every crunch of his hiking boots against the gravel. “Didn’t you say Half Breeds are werewolves?” he asked.

“Yep,” she replied as she stepped into the cavernous foyer of the mansion. “Real nasty ones too.”

“Then shouldn’t we be quieter?”

She considered that for a moment. Leaning forward, she lowered her voice to a stage whisper and said, “I think Prophet’s losing his mind.”

“You don’t think there are any Half Breeds here?” Cole asked hopefully.

“I believe what he sees with his own eyes. What he dreams, though…that’s another story. If there is a den here, any city within miles of it is in trouble. All that massacre talk could’ve just been run of the mill extrapolating. Psychics pull that shit all the time.”

To drive the sense of foreboding even further into him, the next thing Cole heard was the spinning of tires against gravel and the howl of the old van’s motor. The van sped away quickly and noisily. Once it was gone, the only sounds within the mansion were the tapping of his and Paige’s boots against the dirty floor, and the rustling of wind through broken walls.

While it was much too late in the year for it to be warm in Wisconsin, the air seemed even cooler inside the mansion. Cole walked along a path that was fairly well marked by new boards upon the cracked floor. Sawhorses connected by plastic tape kept them from wandering too close to crumbling banisters or a dangerously weak section of ceiling. Even with all the precautions set up, however, he couldn’t help but feel he was tempting fate just by being in that place.

“How are you doing over there?” Paige asked.

“Funny you should ask.”

“Are you hearing Misonyk’s voice again?”

Cole blinked and had to struggle to pull himself off one line of thought and onto another. “No. Didn’t you already take care of that?”

She reached out to push aside the sheet of plastic that separated the kitchen from the backyard. “If you feel even the slightest twinge that Misonyk may be around, you let me know. This is important.”

After taking a few steps into the sprawling land behind the mansion, Cole saw the pile of rocks that Walter had mentioned. He also saw a spot where the rubble dipped down into what could very possibly be a hole or a pit. There wasn’t more than twenty to thirty yards between the back door and the start of that rubble, but he suddenly felt as if it was several miles away. “This is it,” he muttered.

“We don’t know that yet,” Paige replied as she curled her fingers in to scratch her palms. “But I think we’re pretty close to something.”

“No. I mean this is it for me. I’ve come so far that I won’t be able to go back. I either get hunted down by these things or I hunt them.”

Paige shrugged. “That’s how it is for all of us. Things may not have gone very smoothly here, but I couldn’t have gotten this far on my own. Just having someone watching my back has been a big help. Something’s happening and we’re going to need all the help we can get when the time comes.”

Cole didn’t have to ask if that time was drawing near. He could feel it approaching through the chill in the air, all the way down to a subtle rumbling that seemed to be coming from miles beneath his feet. It might not have been measurable by any scale, but it was there. He could feel it stirring in the back of his mind like the wind rattling the loose boards behind him.

“Okay,” he said as he walked forward to stand beside Paige. “But if I’m going up against another werewolf, I want a weapon.”

“Let’s get a look first. Then we’ll get you armed.”

Although the sky was darkened by hues of gray and blue, the sun was poking through the clouds to cast its light onto the cluttered mansion grounds. That combination gave them a dreary, washed-out hue that smeared the natural colors into a mixture that looked every bit as slippery as it felt. Morning frost had settled in beneath the loose rocks at the top of the rubble. As Paige and Cole climbed over the heap, they leaned down to support their weight with their hands as well as their feet. That way, when they were able to look into the hole on the other side of the ridge, only a few bits of dust trickled down to announce their presence.

Cole couldn’t see very much in the shadows below, but he could hear something that reminded him of a train chugging through the far end of a tunnel. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness in that hole, he could just make out a few shapes down there. The little bit of light that did make it all the way to the bottom was just enough to show a few skinny limbs with strands of wiry hair sprouting from them in irregular patches. Judging by the way the shadows moved, the chugging he’d heard was several sets of haggard breathing.

“Is that…alive?” he asked.

“Yep,” Paige told him. “Both of them are.”

“I only see one.”

She scooted in closer to him and placed her cheek against his so she could follow his line of sight. “There,” she said as she reached out with one arm. “See the other one?”

For the moment, he couldn’t help but look over at Paige’s face. Now that he was this close to her, he could make out a faint array of freckles running along the upper curve of her cheeks that had faded until they were almost invisible. She looked back at him then, surprising him. Oddly enough, considering their circumstances, she was smiling.

“Down there,” she said softly. “Look.”

If he had been pulled from his thoughts any quicker, he would have gotten the bends. By the time he shifted his gaze back into the pit, something at the bottom stirred within a messy bed of leaves. Hairless, twisted legs kicked at the dirt and jagged nails scraped against rock.

“What are they?” he asked.

“Half Breeds.”

“But they don’t look like werewolves. They don’t even look like they can stand up.”

“They sleep during the day,” Paige replied. “When the sun’s out, they shift back into this form. If they get worked up, they can shift into their wolf form. They almost always change at night, and full moons are the worst.”

“When do they turn back into people?”

Paige slowly shook her head. “After they change the first time, they never change back into people. I don’t like the looks of this.”

“Tell me about it,” he grunted. “They look like big rats that were shaved by a cheese grater.”

“There should be more of them. Walter was right. That den’s big enough for three or four more of those things.”

“Three or four more?”

After nodding a few times, Paige crawled away from the edge of the pit. “Half Breeds like cramped spaces and don’t pick large dens unless they’ve got the numbers to fill them. The rest must be out somewhere. If they were too far away to get back here when the sun came up, they probably dug in wherever they wound up to sleep through the day.”

“Can you find them?”

She shook her head. “Only if I got real lucky. Half Breeds can run a long ways in a short amount of time.”

“What about Lake Koshkong or whatever that place was that Walter mentioned?” Cole asked. “You think they’re there?”

“Could be. This looks like it’s probably their main den, so they’ll all wind up back here. The bad news is that they may have picked this place for another reason.”

“Like what?”

Paige shrugged as she backed away from the opening and got to her feet. “They could be sticking close to whatever is acting as the alpha for that group.”

“Is there any good news?”

“The good news is that we’ve got some time to get you your weapon.”

Cole practically jumped to his feet as he followed her down the side of the heap. “I really can use that rifle. I could also carry that Blood Blade. After all, I did carry the thing all the way from Canada.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” she said. “Pick out a stick.”

After all the walking, climbing, and crawling he’d been doing, Cole was sweating beneath the layers of discount clothing he’d bundled around himself. He scratched at a spot where wool scraped against damp skin and grunted, “Huh?”

Leading the way toward the edge of the grounds, Paige said, “You heard me. Pick out a stick. It’s going to be something you use for a weapon, so make sure it’s a good one.”

“Didn’t you bring the Tactical Rifle?”

“You need a stick.”

Cole looked around as if he expected a camera crew to jump out and start laughing at the dumbfounded expression on his face. All he saw was a lot of brown, swaying grass and a few clusters of rocks scattered throughout the fields that went on for miles before reaching the interstate to the west. The pile of rubble was still where he’d left it, and the mansion was beyond that. “I don’t get it.”

Paige pulled in a deep breath, bent at the waist and pulled out the twin clubs that she kept sheathed on the sides of her boots. “Here’s what I picked when I was in your spot. You’ve seen us fight with these. You’re going to need your own.”

The expression on his face shifted from dumbfounded to terrified. “Please don’t tell me I’m going to fight this werewolf with a stick.”

“You’ve come this far, Cole. Think about when you saw Gerald fight that Full Blood. Think about when you saw me fight that thing in the diner. You want to know how to bring these creatures down? I’m going to show you. You’ve been lucky so far, but if you don’t get trained real quick, you’re going to be real dead. I honestly don’t want that to happen. Shapeshifters and even Nymar can take a hell of a lot of damage from gunfire. Sometimes, the biggest guns out there don’t do jack. Skinners may have only developed one weapon for themselves, but it works really well. Just trust me and pick out something so we can get started.”

Cole’s eyes wandered toward the trees to the south and the pile that had already gathered at the base of those trunks. Before he could take one step in that direction, he was interrupted.

“Actually, dead wood won’t work for this,” Paige said. “The process only works on something with a bit of life left in it. It’s got to be freshly cut or uprooted for it to be any good.”

Suddenly, he felt something swell up inside of him that made him turn away from her and shout, “This is fucking crazy!” Shooting a glance toward the pit, he bit his tongue and listened for any trace of the ugly things at the bottom of that hole. All he heard was the wind. “I can’t do this,” he said in a measured, quieter tone. “I thought I could, but I guess…I’m just not…I’m just…I’m just some asshole who designs video games for a living and scratches my ass on the weekends. I don’t do anything. I don’t even know why you or anyone else thought I could be some kind of fighter.”

Paige listened and her brown eyes watched him with gentle interest. Her face seemed softer than ever before. When she reached out for him, her movements settled his uneasiness before her fingers had fully wrapped around his wrists. Once she had him, she held onto both of his arms and pulled him closer so she was certain to keep his attention.

“Listen to me, Cole,” she said. “You’re the ninth person I’ve tried to train since I’ve been accepted as a Skinner. Two of those others are out there doing their part right now. The other six ran away crying when they got a look at what they were supposed to be hunting.”

“Yeah, right,” he grumbled.

Her grip on his wrists tightened and her eyebrows shifted just enough to show the first traces of a glare. “Crying, Cole. Some screamed. Some sobbed. Some just ran. You’ve had plenty of chances to run, but you haven’t. You’ve done the best you could with what you had, and to be honest, you haven’t had much.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

Although she smiled a bit, she didn’t loose any of her intensity. “This is going to sound a little corny,” she continued, “but there is such a thing as a warrior’s spirit. It’s in legends from all over the world and it separates the people who stand and fight from the ones who run and hide or sit and watch. It’s nothing supernatural. It’s just something that some people have and some don’t.”

Cole finally did look away from her and toward the nearby patch of trees as he said, “A lot of my friends joined the military after high school. A few joined the Navy and one wound up in the Air Force, but one became a Marine. No…he was a Marine. It’s like he was always a fighter. Didn’t care about the pay or benefits. He just knew where he needed to be.”

“Warrior’s spirit,” Paige said.

“You’re right,” Cole said with a nod. “That does sound corny.”

More clouds had rolled in, making the sky look more like something that would get under his fingernails if he reached up and scratched it. Either he’d stopped thinking of his apartment and job back home, or he’d just lost the last strands of common sense that had clung to his brain for so long. Whatever it was, he felt confident enough to take Paige’s face in his hands and kiss her the way he’d been planning for far too long.

Her lips were soft and just moist enough to glide over his mouth as he settled in to a comfortable spot. Once his head was tilted just the right way and he’d pulled in another breath, he leaned in closer and slipped his hands through Paige’s hair. As the kiss wore on, she melted against him. His hands wandered down to settle on her hips, allowing him to feel the muscles tensing beneath her clothes. Standing on tiptoe, she finally allowed herself to lean back into the arms that were now wrapped around her.

“There’s a Half Breed out here, you know,” she whispered while Cole’s lips wandered from her mouth to her chin and then to her neck.

“Yeah,” he said as he nibbled a spot just beneath her ear. “Two of them.”

“They’re werewolves. Really fast and really…” She had to pause as Cole hit a spot that took away her next breath. Finally, she was able to say, “…and really mean.”

“I bet they are.”

Tightening her grip on him, she started to unbutton the front of his shirt. Once she had it open, she slipped her hands beneath the material and ran them all the way along his ribs. “They can smell us if they’re awake,” she whispered. “Maybe even hear us.”

Suddenly, the trees didn’t seem as far away as they had a few seconds ago. Before he knew what was happening, Cole had Paige backed against one of those trees and was pressing himself against her. He could feel her soft, warm lips on his chest as her hands continued roaming beneath his shirt. The cold air snuck in as well, adding another layer of sensation to those already rolling through him. As he moved closer to her, she arched her back and lowered her arms so she could grab hold of the tree beside her.

“I think you found my stick,” Cole whispered.

A relaxed smile curled Paige’s lips up at both edges. “Not yet, but give me a second.”

“No, this tree,” Cole said as he ran his hand along her arm to the tree she was gripping. “This actually reminds me of something.”

Paige’s eyes had been partly closed, as if she was dreaming. When she snapped them open, she was clearly awake. “What? Oh, you mean this?” She turned to the side and looked at what she’d been holding. The tree was actually more of a sapling compared to the others in the area. It was a bit taller than her, with a trunk as thick as a baseball bat and branches that had been picked clean by the crisp autumn winds.

Although Cole was leaning more toward the sapling, his hand was still upon Paige’s hip. He glanced at her and caught a flush in her cheeks that didn’t have anything to do with the weather. “You know something?” he asked.

“What?”

“This is the first time you’re not the one leading me around.”

Paige lowered her head and pulled in a deep breath before nodding slowly and then turning away from him completely. Before he could get too worried, she turned back around to show him an embarrassed smile. “All right. If you want to keep strictly to business, that’s fine.”

“Oh sure,” Cole chuckled. “As if you would have done anything else with those things sleeping right over there. I appreciate you not kicking my ass or anything for getting carried away like that, but I shouldn’t have started anything we wouldn’t be able to finish.”

Drawing the club from her right boot, Paige tightened her grip on its handle and held on as the wood stretched out and curled at the end to form the curved sickle blade that Cole had sworn was another weapon altogether. With one powerful swipe, she cut the sapling at its base and then lowered her arm. As she loosened her grip on the sickle, it flowed back in on itself to become the simple club it had been before.

“I may be a screamer,” Paige whispered, “but we could’ve done a whole lot out here before we’d ever wake up one of those Half Breeds.”

Cole’s eyes darted back and forth between her, the tree where she’d been pinned, and the sapling that now lay at her feet. “Don’t kid around like that, Paige. It’s cruel.”

Dragging the tree behind her, she brushed against his body just long enough for Cole to feel the curve of her hip as she passed him by. “Who’s kidding?”