Teeth of Beasts

Chapter 26

The only thing Cole could think to do was kick Henry back out through the door. Henry skidded onto the porch, but immediately scrambled toward the house on all fours like a wolf in man’s clothing. No matter what face he wore, he was still there, leering at the world through bloodshot eyes and screaming through a diseased mouth.

“Got it!” Rico announced.

Half a second after his front end crossed the threshold, Henry was pinned down by a force that Cole saw as a murky wall of black smoke seeping from the Skinner runes. Henry’s chest and chin hit first, forcing the air from his lungs along with the very essence that had been controlling him. Orbs scattered from his back, leaving the man behind.

Outside, the Mud People stopped.

They were close enough for Cole to hear their strained breathing.

“That did it, huh?” Rico said proudly.

All of the Mud People set their sights on the front door and jogged toward the house. The fastest among them was a young woman with short blond hair and a slender frame that absorbed a flurry of orbs like water soaking into porous desert rock. Her mouth twisted into a feral snarl and her head snapped to one side. Before her spine gave way, Cole charged outside, pushed through the first wave of Mud People and cracked the side of his spear against her chin. Despite the monster possessing her, the woman’s body was still human, and the blow dropped her to the sidewalk before Henry had a chance to break her.

“If that hidden door is what we’re after, then get it open!” Paige shouted.

Rico struggled between flipping through his notebook and tracing the runes. “I don’t know how to get it open without shutting the rest of them off, and the runes are the only things keeping Henry out of here!”

When he looked up, all Cole could see was a wave of mud-smeared faces and clawing, desperate hands. They swarmed him from all sides, grabbing and punching and slapping in a wild mess of frenzied attacks. None of them did any real damage, but it was enough to push him down and keep him there. If he lowered his head to protect his face, one of the Mud People clawed the back of his neck. If he pushed some of them away, others would crawl under his guard. The moment they started digging their teeth into him, Cole gave up on defense and focused everything he had on offense.

I remember the golden haired one. She was so soft, but I didn’t have enough money for them both.

Cole checked the woman he’d knocked out. She’d gone limp and was bleeding from the mouth, but at least her head was properly attached. He swung an elbow to catch one of the Mud People in the temple, drove his knee into the ribs of another, and then spotted Henry’s essence soaking into a small figure walking toward the house.

Several of the Mud People grabbed any piece of Cole they could reach. Willing his spear to blunt on both ends, he backed toward the house while knocking aside as many of them as he could. The figure approaching the door was a small boy whose head was already cocked to one side.

“We can only lower the defenses for a few seconds!” Paige shouted at him. “Run for it!”

Cole shoved through the growing crowd and said, “No. Keep them up.” Seeing the hesitation on Paige’s face, he shouted, “Do it!”

She turned and said something before a wave of dark smoke formed in front of her. Judging by the way she wheeled around to tear into Rico, she’d wanted to be on the other side of that barrier when it went up.

The sheer number of Mud People was enough to weigh Cole down. Just keeping his head up and feet moving pushed him to his limit. He pushed just a little bit harder and hoped the ink didn’t turn his arm into a useless piece of meat. The patch of skin pinched as if the needle was once again biting into him, but it gave him enough strength to shove past the hands that clutched at his clothes and limbs. After breaking free of the crowd, he scooped the boy into his arms and pushed him face-first into the smoky barrier.

Instead of a quick, powerful jolt, Henry was given a prolonged taste of the runes’ power. The kid kicked and fought to get away, but Cole held him in place. Although his body didn’t show the first hint of a wound, whatever was inside the boy rattled as if it was being shoved into an electric fence. A few more seconds of that and the orbs flew from the human shell. This time they sped in different directions, causing a single sigh to emerge from every one of the Mud People. The ones that had been on their feet collapsed. The boy, as well as the people who’d been crawling on all fours, merely settled on the ground as if they’d decided to take a nap.

The instant the smoky barrier dissipated, Paige grabbed Cole’s arm and pulled him into the house.

Rico stood by a newly revealed door and declared, “I bet you’ll both study those runes now!”

Looking down to the kid on the porch, Cole asked, “What about him?”

“He’s out,” Rico said. “Just like the rest of them.”

“For how long?”

“Hopefully long enough for us to see what’s in this place that’s valuable enough to be so heavily protected.” With that, Rico opened the simple wooden door he’d worked so hard to uncover.

Paige gave Cole a quick once-over. “Are you okay or do you need a minute?”

“I’ll be fine,” he replied. The serum in his blood gave him a slight chill, but nothing was broken. “How long do you think we have until the cops arrive this time?”

“I’d say we’re on our own here,” Daniels replied as he stepped forward with his cases clutched in his arms and hanging from straps off his shoulders. “Given the number of people that got here on such short notice, it seems a safe bet that this whole neighborhood is infected. Maybe the whole city.”

Nodding as he walked toward Rico’s door, Cole said, “Good. I’ve had my fill of cops for a while.”

Reaching for the tattoo machine, Daniels feebly asked, “Would you like a touch-up?”

Less than half of the Pac-Man design had faded, so Cole said, “No, but thanks.”

“I brought a bunch of healing serum. I’ll inject as many of those folks as I can.”

“You do that.”

No matter how suspicious he was of the Nymar or how angry he’d been a few minutes ago, Cole found it difficult to hang on to all of that when he watched Daniels hurry outside to tend to the sleeping Mud People. He wanted to apologize to the squirrelly Nymar, but also knew what it was like to be hunted by things several rungs higher on the food chain. Daniels didn’t need to be coddled. If anything, he needed to keep scurrying and twitching at every sound. Those were survival instincts in motion, and Cole wasn’t about to dull them by trying to make nice. Suddenly, Paige’s cruel sparring sessions made a whole lot of sense.

On the other side of the hidden door was a stairway leading down to a cramped room that felt like it had been carved from one massive block of subterranean concrete. The only things on the walls were thin cracks and cobwebs lit by a single bulb encased in a recessed metal cage. One door led out of the room, and Rico stopped before pushing it open. “These drops wouldn’t have worn off already, right?” he asked.

“They lasted a few hours before,” Paige replied as she looked around. “I just don’t think there’s anything around here to see. What about you Cole?”

“Feels like I’m in a tomb. Could we just move on?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Rico grunted as he walked into the next room.

That room was larger than the one at the bottom of the stairwell and was cut from the same cracked cement. Cole considered himself slightly taller than average, but he swore the top of his head was close to brushing against the thick wooden beams crossing the ceiling. A few small rectangular windows were boarded up along the upper portion of the wall, which he assumed opened to ground level at the base of the house. Once the smell of blood and dead meat hit him, he wished all of those windows were open.

Along both sides of the room were long workbenches where carcasses of Half Breeds, Mongrels, and a few smaller creatures in various stages of decomposition were being held by expertly fashioned wooden racks. From what he could tell, the fluids from the bodies had been drained into old baby food jars that were stacked next to a large tool chest in a corner. The chest was as tall as the workbenches, and when Cole pulled open one of its thin drawers, he found teeth organized by size in the spots where drill bits or socket wrenches should have been.

Moving along the other side of the room, Paige examined a set of wire racks bolted to the walls. Everything from tongs, saws, hammers, and drills hung above each bench. If any equipment was missing, its spot was marked by an outline traced on the wall. “Holy crap,” she said as she touched the crude shape of a claw hammer within the rack that was its home. “If hell had a version of my dad’s garage, this would be it.”

Rico lingered in front of a metal locker set up near another door at the far end of the room. The tall, narrow cabinet opened to reveal a collection of weapons including pikes, stakes, and even a small pitchfork. All were carved from similar kinds of wood and each weapon’s handle was adorned with short, bloodied thorns. “Whoever this guy is, he’s been a Skinner for a hell of a long time.”

“The only name we’ve heard is Jonah Lancroft,” Cole said. “Why can’t you believe that’s the man we’ve been after?”

“Because Lancroft was a Skinner from the 1700s. We’re lucky if we can make it through our fifties. Three hundred years is a bit of a—” Rico’s next words caught in his throat. He reached into the locker, past the pitchfork, and grabbed a cane with a sharpened end and spikes along the handle. “Son of a bitch,” he snarled.

“Is that Ned’s?” Cole asked.

Rico held the cane so he could get a closer look at the handle. “Yeah. It’s his. He put notches on here for every Half Breed den he cleared out. All forty-nine of ’em.”

There were plenty of notches on the handle, but Cole didn’t need to count them. Paige and Rico had known Ned a lot longer and they recognized the cane all too well.

Something rushed through the next room that sounded as if it had brushed all four walls along the way. A light flickered beneath the thick wooden door to reflect off the metal locker with a soft green glow. Rico set the cane down and grabbed the door handle while drawing a .45 from its holster. Cole and Paige gathered around Rico and nodded for him to open the door. He did, then stepped away so as not to obstruct either of his partners.

If there were lights in the next room, the Skinners didn’t need them. The glow given off by the Dryad temple provided more than enough illumination for them. Cole stepped into the room behind Paige. Rico brought up the rear and whispered, “I’ll be damned. This place sure looks familiar.”

The room was close to triple the size of the one at Bunn’s Lounge, but every other detail, from the engravings to the texture of the walls, was identical. Cole approached the still swaying beads and stretched a hand out to feel the crackle of residual energy against his fingertips. The symbols on the walls pulsed with a power that matched the ones Tristan had drawn, but three of the four corners were obscured by something he’d mistaken for shadow. On second glance he picked out the traces of crimson within the black grime hanging in the air. “A Skinner’s been through here.”

“Yeah,” Rico replied as he waved his fingers through the gritty mist. “And one’s been writing on the walls.” He walked toward one of the corners in the back of the room where the symbols shifted to a more angular script.

Paige made a sharp hissing sound that stopped him in his tracks just before he crossed the beads hanging from the ceiling. “They’re still crackling,” she warned. “You sure you want to go through those?”

“Good point. I’ll cross at the wall. Maybe it’s safer if the beads ain’t on both sides.” After pushing aside some of the hanging strands, Rico slid his shoulder against the wall and moved forward. Once he was past the curtain, he asked, “What have you got over there, Cole?”

“A perfect spot to hide some collectibles.”

“What?”

Before Rico could scoff, Paige said, “I know this sounds dumb now, but let him run with it.”

Cole grinned and approached the murky spot in the corner on his side of the beads. Even though he couldn’t read the Dryad script or Skinner runes, he’d seen enough of them both to tell that both were on that wall. “In games that have exploration levels, you should always look back to make sure you haven’t missed any nooks or crannies where something cool might be hidden. If you’re ever going to find a bunch of extra ammo, new weapons, or collectible items, you’ll find them in places that are meant to be overlooked.” Having traced the shape of a door framed in Skinner runes mingled within the Dryad script, Cole triumphantly added, “Like this one right here.”

Rico came over and studied the wall. With so much script flowing in so many different directions, it was easy for the eye to get lost. “Hey, you’re right,” he said while tentatively brushing his fingertips over certain symbols. “I think that’s a cloak and alarm combo.”

“Can you get us past it?”

“It’s not as complicated as the one upstairs. Give me a sec.”

Rather than hang over Rico’s shoulder, Paige walked to the side wall and shimmied past the beads. Her first cautious step was quickly followed by a hop that took her past the curtain and to the other half of the room. Walking toward the corner that Rico had originally spotted, she asked, “What’s over here? I can see where the symbols change again.”

Rico continued to work while referencing his notebook. “Looked like a larger cloak. Not like the others, though, so it’s probably not a door. Could just be hiding something else that isn’t supposed to be seen.” Glancing back at Cole, he added, “Maybe it’s an extra life?”

Squaring her shoulders to that corner, Paige rubbed her hands together anxiously. “Can I just reach in there?”

“As long as our homeowner wasn’t trying to hide a guard dog, poisonous plant, or open flame, you should be fine.”

She stood there for a few seconds before taking one of her batons from where she’d tucked it under an arm. Holding it in her right hand, she shrugged and muttered, “Why turn my arm into a lump if I can’t get some use out of it?” Before Cole could offer an opposing opinion on how a wounded arm would still be better than a bloody stump, she reached toward the corner until the baton, her hand, and even her arm up to her elbow disappeared.

Cole nearly walked straight through the hanging beads in his rush to get over to her. Stopping when his nose brushed against the curtain, he hurried around to the side wall and stepped through. “Are you all right?”

Scrunching her face and shifting her weight, Paige grunted, “Yeah. I feel something in here. It’s…moving.”

“Is it furry?” Rico asked.

Under any other circumstances, that may have seemed like an odd question. In a basement filled with mystical runes and a Dryad transporter, it didn’t raise an eyebrow.

“No,” Paige replied, “and it’s not biting me. Wait. It’s moving.” She pulled her hand back so it was once again visible. After holstering her baton, she reached out with both hands. A few inches from the wall, her arms disappeared.

“Got it!” Rico declared.

“Me too!”

Cole nearly threw his back out trying to look at both ends of the room in such quick succession. Rico stepped away from the wall as the runes re-formed into a single shape. The blocky markings sank in to create a solid arch the size and shape of a door. A second later the hinges, wooden slats, and brass knob could be seen.

Paige dug in with both feet and struggled as if something wasn’t letting her go. Before she was dragged into the hidden section of the room, Cole grabbed her by the waist and pulled. With a little effort, he and Paige hauled a naked woman tied to a chair through the field that had obscured her.

“Whoa,” Cole sighed.

The woman had been talking as she was dragged into sight, but her voice couldn’t be heard until she was clear of the runes. Her bare skin had a soft, Asian hue and was covered in dewy beads of sweat. Short, lustrous black hair framed a perfectly angled face. Cole couldn’t help but admire the smooth slope of her breasts or just how perfectly her inner thighs led up to—

“Hey!” Paige barked as she smacked him on the back of the head. “She’s another nymph. Walk it off.” Once Cole shook the haze from his skull, he nodded and gave her a tentative thumbs-up. Paige took a folding knife from her pocket and used it to cut the ropes binding the naked brunette. “Are you Jordan?”

“No,” she replied as she shook her head in a way that made her bobbed hairstyle waggle attractively. “I’m Elsie. Jordan’s in that corner over there.”

Cole found the cluster of runes in the adjacent corner and reached into them. He felt a crackle of energy at the plane where his hands disappeared, but otherwise it wasn’t much different than stretching out to grab a bottle of ketchup from across the table. His hands brushed against something soft and curvy, so he widened his grasp until he felt shoulders and arms. A bit lower and he felt coils of rope encircling a petite figure. He grabbed the rope, pulled, and produced another naked woman out of thin air. “If only it was that easy when I was in high school,” he mused.

This woman was slightly taller than the brunette, had darker skin and light brown hair streaked with chestnut highlights. Before he got too distracted by the rest of her, he turned to Paige and said, “Why don’t you untie this one and I’ll see what Rico’s doing.”

She rolled her eyes and flipped the knife in her hand as she walked passed him.

Rico’s door was ajar and the room beyond emanated a harsh, white light. Blocking most of the opening with his bulky frame, the big man said, “Let me guess. Both of them ladies in the chairs are nymphs and you ain’t seen either one of ’em before.”

“You got it. How’d you know the second part?”

“Each nymph hits you between the eyes like that the first time. It wears off the more you see ’em. Come take a look at what we got in here,” he added as he motioned for Cole to follow him into the next room. “It’ll sober you up better than a cold shower.”

The glare of fluorescent lights came from a set of buzzing overhead tubes encased in plastic. There were symbols etched into the institutional green walls, but no beaded curtains or naked damsels tied to furniture. The room was a little more than a quarter of the size of the temple, but felt much smaller because of everything stuffed into it. A long counter, sink, and several metal cabinets were set up along one side, and the other side was lined by trays of medical equipment stored in towers of racks. A narrow computer desk was set up at the back of the room, but there was no room for a chair due to the large operating table taking up most of the floor space. Even without the panels that extended from each side of the table, it would have been large enough for a professional wrestler to lay flat on his back. The panels extended the width of the table by a foot or so, which still didn’t seem like enough to hold the massive body of the creature sprawled on top of it.

The werewolf was in its upright form, so its legs were long enough to hang off the edge of the table. Both arms were draped over the sides, but the table’s extensions kept the hands dangling about an inch off the floor. Claws still coated in old, crusted blood sprouted from its fingers, and a thick tail drooped over one side like a length of knotted rags. As he approached the table, Cole could barely make out the runes engraved into the metal surface of the tabletop.

Its chest was cut down the middle in a Y incision and held open by shiny metal pins as thick as Cole’s fingers. The skin and several layers of muscle were peeled away to reveal a set of ribs that had been neatly sawed apart, allowing him to gaze down into the yawning cavity. Half of the innards were in the carcass and the rest was divided up among several containers kept within the cabinets Rico was examining.

Tugging at a flap of skin so he could twist it around and show him a patch of tan fur, Rico asked, “You recognize this one?”

Cole tried to steady himself with a deep breath, but only managed to pull in a lungful of air that stank equally of dead meat and industrial strength sanitizers. “Looks like a Full Blood,” he choked. “I didn’t think anyone could kill one of these.”

“This Lancroft guy may be an asshole, but he’s one hell of a Skinner.”

As horrible as the sight was, Cole couldn’t take his eyes away from it. Despite looking as if it had been blown apart by a hand grenade, everything around the carcass was pristine. Not one drop of blood had been spilled onto the dry concrete floor, which Cole now saw bore runes that were mostly filled with dust. Not one stray bit of fur could be found on the table or any of the cabinets. If the sink was used recently, it had been vigorously cleaned. He kept moving along the edge of the table, surveying the body of one of the most fearsome animals ever created. After seeing one Full Blood shake off fully automatic rifle fire and another tear his way through an entire city on a whim, it hardly seemed fair for any human to get close enough to poke one in the face without consequence. “How fresh is this thing?”

“I can smell formaldehyde,” Rico grunted as he knelt to get a better look at some of the machinery lined up against the wall. “And most of these units down here could chill this whole room down plenty low enough to keep meat fresh. Could be this Lancroft guy found it in a forest somewhere after it died of old age. As for how long it’s been here, I couldn’t tell ya. You’re good with computers, right? How about you hack into that one and see if there are any records. If this guy is any kind of Skinner at all, he’s keeping a journal.” Snapping his eyes toward Cole as if he’d suddenly thought of something more important than what they’d discovered, he asked, “You’re keeping a journal, right?”

The question didn’t even register in Cole’s brain. He stood near the top of the table, staring down at the massive gaping maw of the Full Blood’s mouth. Most of the teeth in its upper jaw had been pulled and the entire lower jaw had been removed. Its tongue had been whittled down to a nub, both of its eyes were gone, the sockets were hollowed out, and a good portion of its skull were emptied. All that remained even vaguely resembling a canine face was a snout and the ridges of its brow.

“This can’t be,” Cole sighed.

Rico stood up and circled the table to get to the next set of cabinets. Outside, Paige was doing her best to calm down the Dryads. “I know,” he said. “When we take ’em down, they at least die fighting. Half Breeds ain’t nothin’ more than sick, wild animals, and sometimes I still feel bad killin’ those in their sleep. This is a whole other story.”

Cole looked away from the creature’s face and stared down at the spot where the flesh had been pulled away from its arm to reveal bones that were snapped off and scorched at the tips. An acetylene torch rested against the table near his feet, confirming just how tough a Full Blood was even after it was dead. Something registered in his mind that made him reach into the gaping chest cavity and slide his fingers along the top of the rib cage.

“There’s plenty for us to use in these jars, Cole,” Rico said. “No need to go fishin’.”

Now that his hands couldn’t get any dirtier, Cole reached all the way in and started feeling for a spinal column. Considering how much had already been removed from the carcass, the task wasn’t too difficult. With a little nudge here and a gentle push there, the innards gave way like pieces stuck to a model with glue that hadn’t been given a chance to dry.

Finally, Paige appeared at the door. “Elsie and Jordan are the only two Dryads here and they can take us anywhere we want to go. They also say someone’s trying to get back here through the curtain, so we need to—Holy shit on a shingle,” she gasped when she took in the sight on the table. “What the hell is that?”

Cole’s voice was a shaky whisper when he told her, “This is Henry.”