Teeth of Beasts

Epilogue

The cute news anchor with the short brown hair and pretty round face smiled comfortingly at the camera and announced, “Medical teams across the country have reported success in their most recent efforts to combat the Mud Flu. All symptoms ranging from cough and disorientation to the viscous discharge that gave the sickness its name are being cleared up thanks to a treatment developed by Dr. Angela Oehler. One of our correspondents is with Dr. Oehler now at the Pathology Department of Barnes-Jewish Hospital.”

A blond woman dressed in a white coat shifted nervously in front of all the cameras and said, “After recently isolating the cause of the flu, we’ve formulated a treatment that clears up every symptom in all but the most extreme cases. If anyone else is currently affected by the Mud Flu, please contact your physician or anyone here at Barnes to schedule an appointment.”

“Dr. Oehler claims similar results have been reported at many other hospitals across the country,” the brunette reporter said once she was back on screen. “According to the Centers for Disease Control, the Mud Flu stemmed from an exotic malaria strain brought to the U.S. from a remote region in Ecuador. Hopefully, this marks the end of an epidemic that has claimed a total of sixty-eight lives since the first reported case less than a month ago.”

“You hear that, Rico?” Cole asked as he flipped through the channels of Ned’s TV using a remote that was heavier than most people’s DVD players. “The CDC figured out the Mud Flu!”

“Great,” Rico grunted from the broken couch nearby. All that remained of the wound Lancroft had given him was a deep cut that had required just under a dozen stitches to close. “We do the legwork, our friend at the hospital puts it to use, and the feds take the credit. How much you wanna bet the insurance companies and doctors found a way to charge for immunizations of a plague that’s been wiped out already?”

“Speaking of medications, how was that Memory Water stuff?”

“Made me remember what it’s like to not have a hole punched through my chest. I only took half of what she gave me, though. Gave the rest to Paige so she could try and fix up her arm. Don’t know if she took it, though.”

“Why don’t you take some of those pain pills we found in Ned’s collection?”

“I can handle the pain just fine.”

“Actually,” Cole said, “I was hoping they’d put you to sleep for a while.”

“If I’m sleeping, I can’t work on your little present.”

The big man lay with one leg dangling off the slope-backed couch, and a pile of throw pillows under his back and neck. Rico’s grin was wide enough to display a full set of blocky teeth, and it made Cole more uncomfortable than all three sets of a Nymar’s fangs. “What present?” he asked hesitantly.

“Don’t you remember that case you threw at Daniels while we were leaving Philly?” Rico asked. When Cole furrowed his brow and started to shake his head, Rico propped himself up. Stress lines formed at the corners of his eyes, but he stubbornly refused to ease back down. “If you don’t remember, then I might as well keep it for myself!”

“I remember, I remember,” Cole said as a way to get Rico to stop straining the bandages wrapped around his torso. “Wait. I really do remember now.”

“You know what was inside?”

“No.”

Shifting within the groove he’d worn into the couch, Rico grunted, “Henry’s inside, that’s what. Pieces of him anyway.”

“Oh, hell. I don’t even know why I grabbed it, I just did.”

“Then I want you pullin’ numbers at the next bingo night, because you grabbed enough leather to make one hell of a nice piece of armor. And not just leather,” Rico added. “Full Blood hide. Do you have any idea how hard that is to come by?”

“Yeah,” Cole said while thinking back to those long strips that had been removed from Henry’s back. “I think I do.”

“Lancroft must’ve been tanning it for himself because there ain’t no way a Skinner in his right mind would part with something like that.”

Crossing the living room to the small desk where Ned’s computer was set up, Cole said, “So much for my present, huh?”

“You forgot,” the big man said with a waggle of his eyebrows. “I ain’t anywhere near my right mind. Plus, you earned it more’n I did. Give me a few weeks, maybe a month, and I’ll stitch that leather into something that’ll protect your worthless ass better than anything I ever made for anyone.”

Ned’s Internet connection was passable, so Cole was online and running various key words and phrases through his favorite search engines in no time. “Looks like Lancroft wasn’t lying about Pestilence killing off Half Breeds. The only report of any sighting in this part of the country is from some Bigfoot blog in Colorado, and the description isn’t anything like a shapeshifter I’ve ever heard about.”

“I was on earlier and saw a few pictures of a big rat thing a few miles away from the KC International Airport.”

“Was it digging?” Cole asked.

“Yeah! Only had three legs too. Weird.”

“That’s Ben. He’s supposed to be there. What about dead Nymar? I’d think those would be easy to spot.”

Rico propped his foot onto the coffee table and scratched at his bandages. “Nope. They may get hungry, but they’re not stupid. One of the bloodsuckers down in New Mexico found a way to sniff out that Pestilence shit and word’s spreading. You ask me, they’ll be our biggest helpers in making sure us humans gets nice an’ healthy in time for supper.”

While Rico talked about the coat he was making, Cole continued to search the Web. Other than a bunch of doctors congratulating themselves about wiping out the Mud Flu, the only other hit was from a fresh batch of pictures from Kansas City and Janesville. He was about to pass over one entry on HomeBrewTV.com when he realized it wasn’t more wild dog footage from KC, but from Alcova, Wyoming. It was a shaky video file filmed by the passenger of a moving car. About five seconds in, the driver hit the brakes and pointed, screaming for the cameraman to look in the opposite direction. When the camera swung that way, three large figures were crossing the highway. They ran on four legs and resembled small bears. Two of the smaller ones looked like Mongrels and bolted out of frame in a blur. The third was a larger creature with coal black fur that either had trouble walking or wanted to make sure the camera had plenty of time to get a good shot. While the people in the car chattered back and forth, the camera zoomed in close enough to the creature’s face for Cole to verify it was missing an eye.

It was definitely a Full Blood. More important, it was the Full Blood that had torn up Kansas City. Cole could almost feel the burning under his scars just by looking at Liam’s image on Ned’s screen. After a few more seconds the ebon werewolf hung its head and took a few slow steps toward the car. Tires screeched. The driver panicked and nearly ran into a tree. The video ended with a screen swearing the footage was real. Several hundred HomeBrewTV viewers posted their opinions on whether the video was real or one of the many fakes doctored by Cole himself. The prevailing opinion on the site was that the Wyoming video was “fake as hell.”

Rico sat up and grabbed his bandaged midsection. “What’s that?”

Not wanting to give him a reason to jump off the couch, Cole e-mailed the video to himself and said, “Just another Mongrel.”

The new home page for Digital Dreamers, Inc. had some flashy animations advertising new projects that Cole hadn’t even heard about yet. The only mention of the game he’d been consulting on was that it was “alive, but indefinitely postponed.”

“Yeah,” he grumbled to himself. “I know how that feels.”

“Did you hear me before?” Rico growled. “What’re your damn measurements?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he closed his browser and pushed his chair away from the desk. “Take your best guess.”

“At least tell me yer coat size.”

Standing up, Cole caught himself looking at every one of the room’s cluttered shelves and dusty surfaces. If he stared long enough, he could find clean spots that had been left behind by the fingers of its former owner.

“Get me a tape measure,” Rico said. “I think Ned kept one in the top drawer of that desk.”

Cole opened the top drawer, found the tape measure amid some old lottery tickets and brought it to Rico.

Holding both arms straight out and to the sides, Cole asked, “Where’s Paige?”

“Dogtown.”

“Is that still in St. Louis?”

After jotting down one set of measurements into his little spiral notebook, Rico grumbled, “Yeah. Just south of Forest Park, right around Clayton Avenue.”

“Can you be more specific than that?”

“Sure I can. First let’s discuss lining and pockets.”

Less than an hour after his session with the ugliest seam-stress in history, Cole parked in front of St. James the Greater Catholic Church. He double-checked the address scribbled on the piece of paper torn from Rico’s notebook as well as the screen of his GPS. Not even the Cav parked nearby with smashed windows, dented doors, missing bumper, and multiple coats of rust was enough to fully convince him he was in the right place.

St. James was beautiful in the same way that most churches were beautiful. Stained glass caught the sunlight and scattered it throughout a large room filled with rows of pews and well-cared-for statuary. There wasn’t a mass being performed, so most of the seats were empty. A small line formed near a confessional, and a priest in his late fifties or early sixties acknowledged Cole’s arrival with a curt nod. He returned the nod and spotted Paige sitting just right of center of the sixth pew from the front. As he scooted over to her, he couldn’t decide if she was praying, studying one of the leaflets stuck in the hymnal rack in front of her, or sleeping.

A few silent moments passed before he smirked uncomfortably and said, “I never know what to do in Catholic churches. There’s all the books and shelves and these folding padded things down there. I guess those are for kneeling.”

Her eyes were fixed upon the front of the chapel, assessing the notched altar and the stoic, vaguely distracted faces on the statues around it.

“Speaking of kneeling,” Cole fumbled, “I have no clue when to drop down, when to stand up, when to cross myself. Do I eat the bread? Should I pretend I’m singing if I don’t know the words or just stand there? When I go by that big water bowl, do I touch it, flick it, make a wish?”

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“Rico told me.”

“How did he know I was here?”

“Was it supposed to be a secret?”

Reaching out to run her finger along the closest hymnal, she replied, “I guess not. Shouldn’t you be at Jack in the Box or something? I think Eat Rite is open twenty-four hours.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Paige looked up at the saints and martyrs frozen in everything from plaster to colored glass. “Good thing I came here. If you’re not craving greasy food, the world must be about to end.”

Closing his eyes and flattening both hands on the uncomfortable bench, Cole savored the cool touch of the old wood upon his scars. “I had to get out of Ned’s house. I know Rico’s still not feeling very good, but he’s acting as if we just checked into that place like another hotel room. I see all of Ned’s stuff, right where he left it, and think I’m still not allowed to look in those jars. I step over his shoes when I walk past the couch. His clothes are still on the hooks by the door, and I just can’t get over the fact that I had to identify his body. Is there even going to be a funeral?”

“No. He was already cremated.” Paige didn’t have to look at Cole to know what he was thinking. The breath he let out was slow, tense, and loud enough to echo within the quiet calm of the church. “Skinner funerals aren’t a good idea,” she explained. “Having too many of us together in one spot away from a defensible location is too juicy a target for some Nymar gang looking to prove themselves or someone like Liam or Burkis, who might decide to wipe our slate clean.”

“Did you see that video from Wyoming?”

She nodded.

“So you think that’s really Liam?”

“Full Bloods don’t live so long just because they can. They fight for it tooth and nail.”

Too tired to pursue that subject, Cole shifted to the previous one. “Wouldn’t you like to say goodbye to Ned? Maybe have a send-off or something?”

“Do you really think something like a funeral matters, Cole? If Ned’s going to hear us or see us when we’re all crying in our nicest clothes, he’ll hear us or see us whenever. He’s gone and it doesn’t matter where his body is or who gets his stuff. All that does matter is that he accomplished something while he was here. Ned was a Skinner, through and through. So were Brad, Gerald, and all the others who were killed fighting our fight. They made a difference where they could and passed on what they learned. That’s all anyone can do.”

“What about us?” Cole whispered.

“We did a hell of a lot. No matter who comes after you for any of those files or anything else of Lancroft’s, we’ll stick to our guns and take each case as it comes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You weren’t contacted yet?” Paige asked.

“No. Contacted by who?”

She sighed. “There are other Skinners who want anything Lancroft touched. Journals, notes, records, experiments, you name it. They also know we’re one of the few to see his home away from the reformatory.”

“So they don’t know about the house in Philadelphia?”

“They know about a house and they know it’s somewhere in Philly, but that’s about it. Lancroft’s coming-out party hadn’t gotten rolling before we broke it up. Anyway, things may get touchy here between us and the rest of our little community.”

“I suppose it may be a bad time to bring this up, but I found some hardcore evidence on the Internet.” Reaching out to hold both of her hands, Cole stared into Paige’s eyes and told her, “There’s been a Bigfoot sighting in Colorado. It…looks like a bad one.”

After a few seconds she laughed quietly and rested her head on his shoulder.

“How’s the arm?” he asked.

“The same. A little stiff. Hurts. You know.”

“Rico told me he only drank some of the Memory Water and gave the rest to you.”

“I gave that to Daniels,” she said. “He knows he’s infected with the first component of Pestilence, and after all he did for us, I figure he deserves some peace of mind.”

“And you deserve to get your arm back. After all we did for those nymphs, I’m sure Tristan could find some more of that Memory Water for you.”

“Oh, she owes us and she’s going to pay up. Remember that deal Rico hashed out? We really have been granted access to the A-Frame Airlines. All we need to do is give them some notice and we’ll be transported in style. Well, if you can stretch your boundaries enough to call those tacky beaded curtains stylish.”

“Fun. So you’ll just keep your arm in a sling and feel sorry for yourself?”

Sitting up without leaning on him, Paige let her eyes wander about the huge room, taking in one sight at a time. “No, I’ll work through it the hard way. Learn from my mistake, figure out a way to deal with the mess, and move along. That’s how it should be.” Shrugging, she looked up at the cathedral ceiling and added, “I need a new weapon anyway.”

A large man wearing khaki pants ambled down the aisle carrying a box of hymnals and a dozen pens stuffed into the pocket protector of his gray shirt. The glasses sliding down his nose were wide enough to replace the Cav’s broken windows, and the eyes behind them showed a hint of friendly familiarity when they spotted Paige. He showed her a crooked smile and started filling the spaces on the racks behind each pew so every parishioner would know the words to their songs.

“When Rico told me you were here,” Cole said, “I thought he was kidding.”

“Why?”

Lowering his voice to reduce the risk of being struck by lightning, he said, “Because you told me more times than I can count that this religious stuff doesn’t work.”

“I told you it doesn’t work on vampires or werewolves, and it doesn’t. It also doesn’t work for magic charms. But maybe,” she added with a gentle smile, “it works on me.”