Teeth of Beasts

Chapter 4

Cole parked in the alley next to the dirty remains of a once average restaurant on South Laramie Avenue. The windows were boarded up, the paint was peeling, and all that remained of a sign were some random letters spelling RASA HILL painted near the front door. He still hadn’t gotten around to looking up the restaurant’s full name, but at this point it didn’t matter. When he was in Chicago, Rasa Hill was home.

He popped the trunk, dug out the smelly plastic bundle, hefted it over one shoulder and carried his spear in his free hand. Standing in front of a metal door that had recently been reinforced, he kicked at it and listened to the echo roll through the building. When he didn’t get an answer, he balanced the Chupe on his shoulder so he could dig out his keys and unlock the door. Before he could take a full step inside, the metallic clack of a shotgun slide filled his ears.

“My day was great,” Cole said cheerfully as he stepped in. “How was yours?”

Even after she saw who was coming inside, Paige didn’t lower her shotgun. “What are you bringing in here?”

“The Chupe.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“I heard they were good eatin’.”

Cole used his hip to push the door shut and then walked through a large storeroom. Stopping well before reaching the kitchen, he dropped the plastic bundle and began working the kinks from his arms and legs. “I tried calling you a few times to see if you could use anything from this guy, but you never answered so I just brought the whole thing home.”

The storeroom was illuminated by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, making Paige’s hair look more like an inky mess, while giving her sweatshirt and jeans a dingy quality. Studying her carefully, Cole reached out for the other two light switches on the wall. When the rest of the bulbs came on, he said, “You look like hell.”

Paige not only kept her shotgun against her shoulder, but seemed ready to use it. “And you’re home a day early. Your date must have gone real well.”

Nodding at what seemed like a fair jab in response to his own comment, Cole said, “I scared her away, but it’s not the first time I’ve had that effect on a woman.”

“And it won’t be the last.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry I said you look like hell. We’re even.”

Paige shifted the shotgun to her left hand and let it hang at her side. Now that the bulky weapon was out of the way, Cole could see the paleness of her face. Her black hair didn’t just look like a greasy mess. It was a greasy mess. Normally, she tied it back or wore a Cubs cap to keep it in check, but now it seemed just as worn-out as the rest of her. His eyes were drawn to her right arm, which was wrapped up in bandages and held tight against her torso by a sling. Although she’d been able to grip the shotgun and put her finger on the trigger, her hand remained in that position, like a claw that slowly curled into a fist.

“How’s your arm?” he asked.

“Fucked up. Next question.”

She stormed into the kitchen and Cole followed. “Did Daniels take a look at it?”

“Yes, Cole.”

“Let me see it.”

“No.”

She’d led him through the kitchen and was on her way to her room. Before she could get there and shut her door, Cole ran ahead of her. “Let me see it,” he demanded.

Paige was easily more than a foot shorter, but glared at Cole as if she was about to squash him under her sneakered foot. Eventually she let out a terse breath and shifted so her right side was a little closer to him. Cole was genuinely surprised she’d caved in so quickly.

Reaching out tentatively, he placed one hand on the sling and slipped the other inside it. On the surface, Paige’s arm was smooth and finely toned. Her skin was on the cool side, but wasn’t as clammy as the rest of her body. Considering the heat of any given night in Chicago during the summer, clamminess wasn’t much of a shock. Since she hadn’t budged at his initial moves, he pressed his hand down a bit more.

“Does that hurt?”

“No,” she replied evenly.

Beneath the skin, her arm felt more petrified than stiff. It reminded him of the process that had turned a sapling into the lightweight, almost unbreakable spear that was his now first line of defense against anything supernatural. He gently ran his fingers along her arm, watching her face for any reaction. The source of her injury was a smeared, jagged line that looked as if it had been left by a felt-tip pen. The mass beneath it felt like a thick piece of wire embedded in her flesh.

“Can you move it?” he asked.

“You had your look, Cole. Just give it a rest.”

“You need to move it. And don’t look at me like that!” His fingers probed away from the line that had been tattooed into her skin and quickly found more grisly reminders of their time in Kansas City. The Full Blood’s claws and teeth had left scars that marred her flesh like a key would mar the paint on a car door.

“All right,” she said. “That’s enough.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No. I can barely feel anything.”

“Then move it.” When she tried to pull away, he tightened his grip on her wrist and said, “Can you just move your hand?”

She set her jaw into a firm line, pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a hiss. He could see the pain in her eyes, but didn’t bother asking her about it. Thanks to the healing serums she’d already mixed and administered, Paige could have recovered from wounds bad enough to make the toughest soldier scream in agony. But healing wasn’t enough. Skinners had to chew through regular pain and go in for seconds.

And thirds.

And possibly tenths.

The sheen on Paige’s brow grew into several trickles of sweat as she forced her arm to rise up from where it rested within its sling. Her shirt was already soaked, which told Cole she’d probably been working at this for some time before he arrived. When her arm was about an inch and a half above the bottom of the sling, she bared her teeth and extended her hand like a ponderous mechanism that had been forged from rusted steel and bent at joints dipped in cold glue. While letting out another breath, she lifted her arm some more and uncurled her middle finger.

“You flipped me off a little quicker this time,” Cole said.

After allowing her arm to drop back down, she swatted him away impatiently and headed for the fridge. “So your MEG girl didn’t pan out, huh?”

Cole sat on one of the two stools in the large room and slapped his hands on the stainless steel countertop. “Abby’s great, but I don’t think she was ready for the whole Chupacabra thing.”

“The package in the storeroom says that you handled it, though. Good job.”

Catching the can of pop she tossed to him, Cole said, “Thanks. It really tore after me too! Remember how long we had to shake the grass in Indiana before that little one came sniffing?”

“Chupes grow differently wherever they live. All it takes is one generation for them to sprout another ear to hear past loud farm equipment, or longer toes to grab onto a certain kind of tree. Did you know I saw one that literally had an eye in the back of its head? That’s what makes them so tough to track.” Opening her own can of fully caffeinated soda, Paige took a sip and sat down on the stool directly across the counter from him.

He couldn’t help noticing that they were in the same spots they’d been in during his very first visit to Rasa Hill. It was less than a year ago, but felt closer than his desk job and old apartment.

“I didn’t need to do much tracking with this one,” he told her.

“Chupes aren’t usually so aggressive. At least, not with humans. They tend to go for smaller game like dogs or something slow like a cow.”

“Or goats,” Cole pointed out. “Chupacabra means Goat Sucker.”

That got a smile from Paige that wasn’t tired and wasn’t forced. It went a long way in making her beautiful despite the run-down state she was in. “Or goats,” she conceded. “I think you just got lucky with that one and caught it when it was hungry or possibly defending something.”

“It ran me into a trap.”

Scrunching her eyebrows together, she asked, “Are you sure about that?”

Cole nodded and drank some more pop. “It dug a pit, put rocks at the bottom, and partially hid it with branches.”

“Could have just been a hole in the ground.”

“Nope. It ran right past it without a stumble like it knew it was there. If I would have fallen in without catching myself, I would have broken something or at least been too hurt to crawl right back out again. It circled back after I fell, and when I tossed it down the same hole, it knew right where to grab to keep from hitting those rocks.”

“That is strange,” she said. “Good thing you took it out. If a Chupe was getting that ballsy, it wouldn’t have been long before it started going after more people.”

“Thank you! Abby acted like I was a monster for putting that thing down.”

“There’s a reason why we only use MEG for communications,” Paige told him. “They’re watchers. They like to listen for noises and try to figure out what’s being said. Skinners listen for noises so they know which door to kick in. Every now and then someone from MEG wants to tag along and see everything we do. If this one was so squeamish, it’s good that you took the wind out of her sails. No offense.”

Cole rattled his pop can on the counter and watched the light bounce off the rounded edge. “It sucks that she had to be so nice. And cute. And fun.”

“You did great. It turned out to be a perfect training run.”

“Speaking of training, when are we going to spar again?”

She shifted her right arm within its sling and said, “I’m not in any condition to spar. I don’t even know when this will heal.”

“What if something happens and we’re not ready for it?”

“Nothing’s going to happen. The Mongrels are so entrenched in KC that they’ll chase away any shapeshifter within four hundred miles, bring them in, or tear them up. On top of that, the cops are on the lookout for anything suspicious on four legs. Did you hear about all the dog fighting rings that have been broken up recently?”

“No. Does that have anything to do with werewolves?”

“Not at all. It just shows we’re not the only ones cracking down. If another Half Breed shows itself anywhere near Kansas City, it’ll get blasted to pieces by a SWAT team.”

“So what happened to all those Half Breeds anyway?” Cole asked. “They were running wild through the streets and now they’re all gone. I know we had some help from the Mongrels, but we couldn’t have gotten all of them.”

“Officer Stanze had some things to say about that.”

Cole waggled his eyebrows and asked, “So you did spend some time with him, huh?”

“He said there’s been a lot of dead Half Breeds turning up all over the place,” she replied, while ignoring the suggestive tone in Cole’s voice. “KC seems pretty clear, but after all the stuff that’s been on the news or plastered all over HomeBrewTV.com, most of the country considers the KCPD to be the authorities on freaky looking dogs.”

“Are a lot of them turning up outside of KC?”

“Yeah. Turning up dead. Even if half of the reports are just misidentified road kill, Stanze says there are still plenty more coming in that are similar to the ones from KC. He’s been pretty helpful, but I doubt even he knows how much footage the cops are sitting on so they can try and figure it out. A Full Blood smashed one of their cruisers. Somebody had to have gotten evidence of that.” Paige rubbed her sore arm and finished her drink. Finally, she crumpled the can in her good hand, missed a three-point shot at the trash can, and stood up. “Everyone’s all worked up about this Mud Flu thing, so maybe that’ll be enough to distract the public eye from KC for a little while.”

“I heard that flu’s actually kind of bad,” Cole said. “You throw up, get this gunk in your throat, and there are even some reports of people getting some kind of dementia.”

“Has anyone died from it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then it’s just another kind of sick,” she said. “The press always has to get worked up about something, so at least they’re not yammering about us. Right now, I just want to go to bed.”

“Are we sparring tomorrow?”

“Spar on your own.”

“You can tighten that sling and go a few rounds. Come on!”

“You heard me,” she shouted while marching from the kitchen.

Cole followed her and said, “I thought you were recovering. What happened to that?”

Paige’s bedroom was messier than usual and, despite the soap she’d made to mask her scent, still carried the fragrance of her skin and the shampoo she treated herself to when she didn’t expect to go out hunting.

“I think you’re forgetting something pretty important here,” he told her.

She squared her shoulders in a way that told him he was very close to regretting having stepped foot into her room. “What did I forget?”

“Your experiment worked. Sure, it may have backfired a little, but you threw down with a Full Blood. That thing should have torn your arm off, but it didn’t. It couldn’t even bite down to the bone! You may be wounded, but you can still fight.”

“Apart from allowing myself to become a chew toy, what the hell am I supposed to do against anything anymore?”

“So that’s it, huh?” he asked. “You’re pissed because you realized you can’t walk through fire after all. Join the rest of us measly humans.”

Paige lunged to grab his shirt. Having already been grabbed, hit, punched, swept, and generally knocked around during countless sparring matches, he knew what to expect. What he didn’t expect was for the impact of her fist against his chest to hit him like an aluminum baseball bat.

“I know all too well that I’m human,” she snarled. “That’s been made perfectly clear to me in more ways than you can imagine. How about you shove your analysis up your ass right along with your goddamn pity!”

“Hey Paige. Look down.”

Her scowl deepened as if her opponent had just tried to tell her that her shoelace was untied. When Cole nodded and looked down first, she followed suit.

The hand she’d used to grab his shirt was her right one, and she’d gotten it to move faster than she’d been able to in days. Her fingers were locked around a clump of his shirt and the sling dangled from her arm as if supported by her rather than the other way around.

“Oh my God,” she breathed.

“You’re shaken up, out of your element, and not feeling too good right now,” he said while patting the dead weight of her fist. “Believe me, I know all about that sort of thing.”

No longer trying to get away from him, Paige slowly flexed her arm as if the muscles had been packed in ice, then lowered it into the sling.

“You could always just twist that arm around and slap it where it needs to go,” Cole offered. “You know, like that constable in Young Frankenstein with the wooden hand?”

The sight of her trying to keep a straight face was one of the prettiest he had seen in a long time. She let her head droop so it bumped against his chest. “God damn it,” she groaned. “I’ve messed up before, but why did I have to mess up like this?”

He wrapped Paige up in his arms and ran his fingers through the tangled, unkempt mess of her hair. “Look at the bright side,” he told her. “If we ever need a light, we can set the tip of your finger on fire. Or if there’s a door we can’t open, we can use you as a battering ram.”

“I get it. You can stop now.”

A heavy knock thumped through the room.

“That’s enough, Cole. No need for sound effects.”

“I didn’t do that,” he said. “Someone’s knocking on our door.”

Another couple of thumps rolled through the restaurant. Paige stepped away and looked down at his feet. “You weren’t stomping on the floor?” she asked.

“No.”

She whipped around so quickly that she almost knocked Cole onto his butt in her haste to get to the panel on the wall next to her door. Once there, she poked at a set of buttons with her left hand. “Someone’s at the front door,” she said while reaching around to take a little .32 caliber revolver from where it had been tucked at the small of her back. “Take this.”

“You really don’t like salesmen, do you?”

Scowling in a familiar Do what I say and be quick about it way, she hurried into the kitchen, where her shotgun was propped against a wall. Cole got a feel for the weight of the pistol and then flipped the cylinder open to double-check that the gun was loaded. He didn’t have time to check what sort of rounds they were, but they all came out of the barrel fast enough to damage human and monster alike.

The windows at the front of the restaurant were boarded up. The main door was latched, bolted, and held shut with steel posts. He stepped up to a slit in one of the windows, which allowed him to get a look outside at the solitary figure standing at the door and a cab that tore out of the parking lot as if the driver had just been tipped off about a shipment of drunk tourists arriving at O’Hare.

“We’re closed,” Cole said through the door.

The voice that came from the other side was strained to the point of cracking. “I need to talk to you.”

Cole’s scars itched, alerting him to the presence of Nymar. Even if the man outside was the only Nymar in the vicinity, he knew there should have been more of a reaction than that. Since Paige hadn’t said anything about the Nymar before, she must not have felt much of anything either. Cole found her in the shadows on the other side of the door with her shotgun aimed at the entrance.

“What do you want?” he asked the visitor.

“I have to talk to the Skinners,” the man replied. “If you’re one, then you’ve got to open this door!”

Cole glanced at Paige again and got a single nod from her. Whatever was on the other side of that door, she was ready for it.

After removing the iron bar from its bracket in the floor and pulling back the bolts, Cole twisted the knob to unlock one of the more traditional mechanisms. When he finally pulled the door open a few inches, he held it there with the side of his foot, as if that could keep out a rowdy drunk, not to mention anything farther away from the human end of the spectrum.

The man outside was dressed in dark cargo pants and boots that could have come off the shelf of any army surplus store. His tattered flannel shirt was open to reveal a bare chest covered in black markings that looked like a massive tribal tattoo. Unlike a tattoo, however, the Nymar’s markings trembled beneath his flesh as the spore attached to the vampire’s heart shifted within its shell. He had a young, slender face with a minimum of whiskers protruding from his chin, and greasy, light-colored hair that hung down to his shoulders. His cheeks were shallow, but not sunken, and his eyes were wide with barely contained panic.

Cole held the .32 out where it could be seen before having to shove it into the other man’s face. “What do you want?”

“Are you Cole?” the Nymar asked. “I need to talk to Cole or Paige. I was told they’re here. I need to talk to them.”

“Who are you?”

Although he appeared to be looking around while self-consciously pulling his shirt closed, it was obvious that his eyes were twitching as much as the tendrils beneath his skin. “Stephanie told me the Skinners were here.”

“Damn it. I’m Cole.”

Even when she wasn’t anywhere in sight, the head of Chicago’s Nymar skin trade still found ways to make things difficult. If the shaky man was sent by Stephanie, he could be anything from an annoying junkie to a suicide bomber.

When the Nymar reached out for him, Cole brought the .32 up and tightened his finger around the trigger almost enough to drop the hammer. “Stay where you are!”

The man pressed one hand against the door and the other against its frame. Leaning forward caused his shirt to fall open and his long hair to drop like a set of light brown curtains on either side of his face.

“I said stay put,” Cole warned as he extended an arm to keep him from crossing the threshold.

The man outside gripped the door and frame with enough strength to break them both. His entire body convulsed and pink foam spilled from his mouth with a gurgling heave. Tendrils pressed outward to become swollen ridges upon the Nymar’s torso. When they tore completely through the visitor’s chest, Cole pulled his trigger while jumping back to give Paige a clear shot. Even as the shotgun roared, he doubted it would be enough to do the job.