After spending some time in the cell without incident, Cole was starting to relax. In fact, the cage was bigger than his first apartment, and its television had better reception. On the other hand, that television was bolted to the upper corner of an open room that contained three short, steel benches, a pair of miniature toilets, and seven other inmates. Three of the inmates were asleep against the cement walls. Two occupied one of the benches. One paced along the iron bars, and the last one waged a losing war against his most recent meal upon one of the toilets. Since that toilet wasn’t far from the TV or the benches, he didn’t have much choice but to watch.
“Why don’t you take a load off?” Rico asked from his bench.
“I think those two want the benches.”
Rico twisted around to look at the pair of inmates sitting nearby. They were so dirty that it was tough to determine what they might look like beneath the grime. Rico greeted them with a curt nod and they scowled back at him just as they’d scowled at Cole.
“They’re fine,” Rico said with an off-handed wave. “Sit down.”
Lowering himself onto the bench, Cole took a position that allowed him to keep his eye on as many of the inmates as possible. The pacer was impossible to watch all the time, and the guy on the crapper was impossible to miss. Leaning over to Rico, he whispered, “This is my first time in prison.”
“No shit.”
“What about you?”
“First off, this ain’t prison. It ain’t even jail. It’s a holding cell. Three very different animals. I actually got fond memories of jail. There was a place up in North Dakota where I spent a few nights with some friends of mine. Served the best franks and beans you ever had. And no, that ain’t slang for a hot date.”
Cole laughed uneasily and said, “Beat me to the punch.”
“After eight weeks there, I got transferred to a real joint in Illinois.”
“What did you do to earn all that?”
“It was a bullshit RICO case that’s been following me around for too long.”
“Did you just start referring to yourself in the third person or did they name the case after you?” Cole asked.
“More like I was named after the case. It’s the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. When Ned introduced me to Paige, she only knew me as the RICO guy. Name stuck and so did that goddamn case. Pulled my ass out of a cushy jail cell like this one and tossed it into a goddamn hole that served slop for every meal on every day but Thursday.” Before Cole could ask, Rico added fondly, “Taco day.”
“So you’re some big-time mob guy?” one of the two bench warmers asked.
Rico straddled his seat and locked eyes with the inmate who’d just spoken up. “You conducting interviews now?” he snarled. “So what’s that make you? Barbara fucking Walters?” Shifting his gaze to the darker-skinned of the two, he added, “That’d make you Star fucking Jones?”
“You’d best chill,” Star said. “I’m just sittin’ here.”
“All right then,” Rico said with a nod. “What about you, Barbara? If you want The View, I can give you a good one of the inside of a shit bowl when I pull your face off and flush it down that toilet.”
Barbara did his best to keep his chin up, but had to maintain a delicate balance between not wanting to back down and not wanting Rico to make good on his offer. Since there didn’t seem to be a third, more desirable choice, he backed down.
Rico turned around and said, “I served some time in Pekin, but that was only medium security. Before I got transferred to a max security hole, someone convinced a judge that I wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“Who?” Cole asked.
Rico leaned over and told him, “Some connected guys were having trouble with a bunch of Nymar encroaching on their drug routes. I put the bloodsuckers down before getting arrested and was mistaken for a professional contractor. When I turned up in the system again, one of my new connected buddies stepped in to make it right. Even after all that, they still owe me a few favors.” Straightening up and allowing his voice to go back to its normal volume, he said, “Sometimes it’s good to do right by the wrong people. Remember that.”
“So should I get used to this sort of thing?” Cole asked.
“Being locked up? Probably not if you’re with Paige. She can sniff out cops pretty good.”
“Is that why you call her Bloodhound?”
Rico gazed up at the television and smirked. “Not exactly.”
When Cole looked up to see what might have caught Rico’s attention, he found a rerun of the nightly news from St. Louis. An attractive brunette with short hair and a cute, round face was speaking next to a picture of a sidewalk labeled as North Skinker Boulevard. Several cops and an ambulance were gathered around what looked like a pile of charred garbage partially propped against a building. The moment he spotted the gnarled, leathery tentacles extending from the pile, Cole jumped up and approached the television.
“Sit the fuck down!” Star said. “I’m watching that!”
Cole reached up to the corner where the television was bolted, causing a guard from down the hall to shout, “You break that and you’re paying for it!”
Looking along the top of the cell, Cole quickly found the pair of surveillance cameras protected by little steel boxes mounted on the ceiling. He looked at one of the cameras and said, “I just want to turn it up! I need to hear it.”
“Then shut up and listen!” the guard shouted.
Since the guard wasn’t about to hand him a remote, Cole looked up and watched the rest of the broadcast.
“As of this time, there is no indication of whose remains these are, but this death is presumed to be linked to the triple homicide earlier this evening,” the cute brunette said. “Police found evidence of a forceful entry at that earlier scene along with signs of a brutal struggle that left all three victims completely drained of blood. Authorities are not releasing an official statement about this newest gruesome discovery. Please be warned that the images you are about to see are graphic and may be unsettling.” After that disclaimer was given, the picture was enlarged to fill the entire screen, with police officers forming a ring around a mess of arms, legs, and thick leathery tentacles.
“Pestilence,” Cole said. “That’s what Peter looked like after he…popped.”
Barbara chuckled from his bench, muttering about something of Cole’s he’d want to pop.
“Things may be going crazy, but this isn’t like anything I’ve seen or heard about from Kansas City or anywhere,” said a man identified by a strip of text along the bottom of the television screen as Patrolman Nick Hencke. “Some of it looks human enough, but the rest…well…” The uniformed police officer turned away from the camera to where a group of people were wrapping the corpse up so it could be lifted into the back of the ambulance. “For all we know,” Nick continued, “this could just be some sort of joke.”
The picture shrank down to fill a quarter of the screen so the cute brunette reporter could conclude with: “While there have been reports of several dog attacks possibly stemming from the disease that affected so many animals in Kansas City last month, police sources have declined to say if this could be a new strain that has mutated to affect people. If the situation changes, this station will update you immediately.”
“Thank you, Katherine,” the brunette’s partner said while shifting in his seat to properly address the camera.
“That’s what Peter came to warn me and Paige about,” Cole said as he spun around to look at Rico. “It’s Pestilence. What if it starts affecting people instead of just Nymar? Aw hell! I got it on me! What if I get sick?”
Rico stood up. With his patchwork jacket seized and nothing but a gray thermal shirt covering his thick chest, he looked like a cement wall separating Cole from the rest of the cell. He squared his shoulders, hung his head like an oversized vulture and said, “Paige is getting us out of here, so you need to calm down.”
“What if Pestilence is spreading?”
“Then we tell Paige and Ned, not every goddamn drunk in this tank.”
Barbara and Star were on their bench, enthralled by the weather report. Pacer was still pacing. Crapper was still crapping. Two of the guys were still sleeping against the wall, but one was watching him intently from his corner directly beneath the television. Although Cole had noticed the lanky guy before, he’d been so quiet that he’d practically blended in with the drab, sour-milk-colored walls.
“I don’t think these guys are our big concern,” he said. “Maybe I can get another phone call.”
“You were lucky to get your first one,” Rico pointed out. “It ain’t as much of a requirement as you might think.”
“But it’s been hours since I called her!”
“And we’ll probably be in here for hours more before she scrapes together enough money to spring us both. Maybe she won’t scrape the money together at all.” Seeing the strained expression on Cole’s face, Rico shrugged and sat back down. “Just bein’ realistic. Let’s think this through before we waste a call.”
As Cole turned away from the TV, he noticed the guy in the corner was still staring at him. The inmate may have had some muscle under his faded Rams T-shirt and cutoff sweatpants, but not enough to make him imposing. His arms were covered in wiry hair and greasy sweat, but the legs protruding from his shorts were encased in a muddy crust. Plain white canvas shoes were held together with dozens of rubber bands that had probably been stolen from an entire neighborhood’s supply of rolled-up newspapers.
Watching Cole with bloodshot eyes that were pinched at the corners, the man squatted down to claw at the floor while mouthing random syllables with cracked lips. He cocked his head to one side and let out a slow, grating breath.
“You need something?” Cole asked in his best attempt at a threatening tone.
“Pestilence?” the man asked.
“Yeah?”
“Pestilence is the Lord’s way of cleaning His house.”
Cole took a step back and then shot a glance back to Rico.
“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Rico said.
Since the only other sound within the cell was a teaser for the sports report and the strained grunting from the man on the toilet, Cole walked away from the filthy guy in the shorts. He didn’t get far before hearing the shuffle of wet rubber soles and the scraping of fingernails on the floor.
The Rams fan scrambled out of his corner on all fours and then jumped to his feet so he could grab Cole’s shirt. “Pestilence is the Lord’s way of cleaning His house! Pestilence is the Lord’s way of cleaningHishouse. PestilenceistheLord’s wayofcleaning Hishouse!”
Rico got back to his feet and stood behind Cole. “You wanna do something about this or should I?”
But Cole wasn’t interested in his place within the cell’s pecking order. There was something all too familiar about the pattern of the rambling man’s voice.
I remember you too, Skinner.
Although he heard the voice of the filthy man in front of him, Cole didn’t see the guy’s lips move. He couldn’t even be sure if the voice was coming from his ears or inside his head. “Did you hear that, Rico?”
“He’s just repeating the same bullshit,” Rico said.
“Not that.”
You took the worms out of me. You and the pretty one cut me.
“That! Did you hear that?”
Now Rico looked at Cole as if the crazy population within the cell had just increased by one.
I smell you but can’t see you.
Suddenly, the filthy man snapped his head to the side as if he’d been cracked across the face with an invisible club. His mouth gaped open but no sound came out. Cole pushed him away and stepped back as the man flexed his dirty fingers and doubled over as if to mimic the prisoner who continued to empty his guts into the toilet. He snapped his head to the side again and again. Each time, the crackle of bones became sharper and more pronounced. When the loudest, juiciest crunch filled the air, the man’s head drooped to one side and dangled loosely against his shoulder. In stark contrast to that, the rest of his body straightened up.
“I remember you, Skinner,” he said out loud.
As Cole backed up, the picture on the television screen flickered, became distorted, and then faded into a dull glow. The lights set into the wall closest to the man’s head went black. Cole looked up to the surveillance cameras, but the little red lights on them had already been extinguished.
When the filthy man peeled his eyes open, he shifted to get a good look at Cole from the peculiar angle of his head. Nothing should have worked in that face. The eyes were clouded and clear at the same time, almost like a crystal ball before the witch got her vision of the future.
“Henry?” Cole asked.
Every muscle in the man’s neck strained to pull his head up, but he couldn’t get enough height to nod. “I remember you too. You and the pretty one. The pretty one cut me. Shecutmeeeee.”
The two inmates who had been dozing against other sections of the wall lifted their heads and slowly stood up. Star and Barbara hopped off their bench and rushed to the bars. “Hey!” Barbara shouted. “The lights are goin’ off! Something’s wrong in here!”
“Settle down,” the cop shouted from his station at the far end of the hall. “It’s just something with the power.”
Rico pulled Cole back and asked, “Is he the Henry from Paige’s journal? The one that tore through Chicago and Wisconsin with that Nymar Misonyk?”
“I think so,” Cole replied.
“Why didn’t you spot him before?”
“Because he was never human before! After Paige cut the Nymar spore out of him, he turned into a pure Full Blood and ran away.”
Staring at Henry’s wide eyes and dangling head, Rico said, “I don’t think he’s exactly human, and he can’t be a Full Blood. We’d have felt it. No matter what he is, we may need something more than what we got to put him down.”
Although he seemed to have been mesmerized by Cole’s face, Henry snapped his eyes toward Rico and said, “You won’t hurt me again! Won’thurtmeagain! Dr. Lancroft promised me.”
“Dr. Lancroft?” Cole asked. “You mean Misonyk?”
Henry shook his head, which looked more like a tether ball being nudged by a strong breeze. “Misonyk is dead. The Nymar are all dead. He promised that too. He promised and it is so. Hepromised and it is so. Hepromisedanditisso!”
“Shut up in there!” the cop yelled. Cole couldn’t see anyone past his bars, but he could recognize the sound of someone frantically trying to tear apart electronics when he heard it. Since the cell doors worked on an electronic system, that was probably the cop’s first priority.
Now there are more of me than you. The Skinners are everywhere and they dragged me down and cut me up but now there will ALWAYS be more of me than you! MOREofMEthanYOU! MoreofmeTHANYOU!
Henry’s lips were moving but were out of sync with the words that tore through Cole’s brain. “Pestilence will cleanse us,” he said with a trembling mouth and tears welling up in his eyes. “I’m a foul, sinning creature and need to be cleansed. I don’t deserve to run free. Idon’tdeservetorunfree! I’ve tried looking into the eye of the Lord, but He doesn’t see foul sinners like me. Not unless we repent.”
“What the fuck is he saying?” Star shrieked.
Cole positioned himself between Henry and the rest of the cell. “Keep everyone back, Rico. I think I can talk to Henry. We know each other. Isn’t that right, Henry?”
When Henry took half a step forward, the remaining lights in the cell began to flicker.
One of the other two who’d been slouched against the wall jumped up and ran to the toilet in a flurry of skinny legs and flailing arms. His hand slapped against the face of the man upon that throne and knocked the back of his head against the wall. Rico tried to help the guy on the crapper, but the first attack had been too fast to prevent. When Rico took a swing at him, the attacker hissed and crouched over the in-continent prisoner as if he was guarding a prize. The hissing man glistened in what little light made it through the bars from the hallway. The moisture on his face could have been sweat mixing with dirt, but now it looked a lot like mud. Despite being in one of the most uncompromising positions known to man, the guy on the toilet did a fair job of fighting back. He kicked with both legs tangled in his pants and swung with one hand while using the other to hike them up.
“What the hell’s wrong with this guy?” Rico snarled as he tried to get a grip on the mud-faced prisoner.
Cole went to help him but was quickly wrapped up in Henry’s bony arms. “The Lord brought you to me and there’s nothing you can do. Nothingyoucando!”
“All right, that’s enough!” the cop from down the hall shouted. Judging by the rumble of stomping feet, he wasn’t approaching the cell alone.
Barbara and Star had their hands full with the third man, who’d been slouched against the wall. That one opened his mouth to let out a wail that came from the depths of his throat and sent a spray of muddy bile along with it.
Grabbing onto Henry’s wrist, Cole twisted down and around in a forward throw that he’d learned through countless sparring sessions with Paige. Henry was lifted up off his feet, swung over Cole’s shoulder, and dropped onto the floor. His hands became tangled in Cole’s shirt and his fingers crackled as a few of them popped out of joint, but he still hung on.
“You can’t kill me, Skinner!” Henry declared. “I destroyed your Blood Blade!” A shaky smile flickered across Henry’s face, and his eyes widened into orbs that looked as if they were filled with water from the bottom of a septic tank.
Caught between Rico and the guy on the toilet, the first muddy figure was quickly brought down. He didn’t give up the fight, however. Instead, he clawed at whatever he could reach and even sunk his teeth into Rico’s ankle.
“Son of a bitch!” Rico growled as he knocked his other foot into the mud man’s jaw.
The cell door came open amid a series of creaks and metallic rattles, allowing a small group of cops to wade into the brawl. A few more stood outside the cell, which meant they could only watch as Henry sprang up from the floor to charge at the first officer he saw.
“You won’t cover me with the bag again!” Henry cried. The moment he got a hold of the officer’s neck, he sank his jagged fingernails in and pounded his head against the cop’s face. “I did what you told me!”
The cop on the receiving end of the assault struggled to pull him off while his partners slammed their nightsticks against Henry’s ribs without making a dent. Bones cracked and blood flew, but Henry didn’t seem to feel any of it. Cole managed to snake an arm around Henry’s throat from behind and pull him away, but the cop in front of him saw something that shook him right down to the core.
Henry’s mouth opened wide and his eyes bulged from their sockets. What came out of him wasn’t so much a scream as it was a hungry, bleating howl. Filthy hands clawed at the cop while several other officers fired their Tasers into the wild man’s chest. Electricity pulsed through Henry’s body, forcing Cole to let go and trip backward over one of the benches.
The sickening thump of skull against steel rattled through the cell as Rico slammed the first muddy man’s forehead into the toilet.
Star and Barbara weren’t doing too well against their opponent, but a pair of cops tipped that balance. Nightsticks pounded against another mud man’s torso, tearing flesh away to reveal a surface that glistened wetly in the dim light. More electrodes were fired into the exposed areas, causing the man’s back to arch and his arms to stretch out to either side.
Several uniforms filed into the hallway, aiming guns into the cell and screaming for everyone to hold up their hands and lay on the floor. Cole barely heard those commands through the raging tirade streaming through his mind. The officers in the cell did their best to force Henry down, but only received more punishment as their reward.
“I didn’t plan on hurting them!” Henry shouted as clubs, fists, and boots pummeled his body. “Those children tried to hide from me! I just want to sit in my corner!”
The Lord has no forgiveness for those who don’t know their place. TheLordhasnoforgiveness but now they will do what I say and allwillbeforgiven.
“Go to your corner, Henry,” Cole said as he inched toward the man who refused to sit still no matter how much of a beating he was given. When he heard those words, Henry dropped the officer whose face he’d been chewing and knelt amid some other cops that were hurt too badly to get up. Even as he was warned to stay back, Cole approached Henry and said, “Misonyk is dead. Remember?”
Henry looked at Cole and then back to the cops. His head swung at the end of his neck like a pendulum and his eyes struggled to compensate for the peculiar motion. With his shoulders slumped forward and his hands pressed flat against the floor, he reminded Cole of the Henry that had been a twisted beast at the end of Misonyk’s leash, writing nightmares into the heads of other monsters.
“You were quiet before,” Cole said. “Just go back to your corner and be quiet again. Nobody has to hurt anyone.”
Henry turned his head, which seemed impossible considering his circumstances. Catching sight of the encroaching cops, he reared up and bowed his chest out as the muscle tissue began to swell inside of him.
Cole knew all too well what kind of damage a Full Blood could do. They were the most dangerous werewolves in existence, but only if they were allowed to transform all the way out of their human skin. Praying his hypothesis was correct, he threw himself at Henry, wrapped both arms around him and grounded the wailing creature before it could launch itself at the police officers.
Everyone else in the cell responded instinctively to the escalation of the fight. Cops swarmed in to fill the cage, swinging their nightsticks, firing their Tasers and aiming their guns at anything that moved. One of them grabbed Cole by the wrist and dragged him down so his arms could be cuffed behind his back, and the prisoners swung at anyone they could reach, whether the other man was in a police uniform or not.
“I can help you!” Cole said. “You don’t know what he is!”
Henry’s skin stretched to its limit as his scream was cut short by a clubbing blow delivered straight to his temple. His head snapped to the side as the broken ends of his backbone scraped against each other, but at least he dropped. After that, the police officers were able to sort out the mess.
Cole and Rico’s hands were stuck through different sections of the front wall of the cell and cuffed in place. Barbara and Star were similarly restrained, and all of them were placed so none of the prisoners could get to one another. Cole watched as wounded prisoners were escorted away and others were scraped up off the floor.
All of the mud men were covered in sweat and gave off a putrid, pungent stench that must have come from the viscous fluid coating their skin. The one who’d gotten his head cracked against the toilet lay splayed upon the floor. Underneath the flap of torn scalp was a slick surface that looked like the side of a wet tree stump.
Henry lay on the floor, gazing at the bars with clearer eyes. The murkiness was gone and there was no trace of blood within the white surrounding his dilated pupils. When the paramedics arrived, one of them checked Henry’s pulse and examined his waggling head before announcing, “This one’s dead. His neck’s broken clean through. Looks like he also sustained some massive trauma to the face.”
“He sure did,” one of the cops said. “Bastard tried to kill us with his bare hands.”
The paramedic motioned for gurneys to be brought in so Henry, toilet guy, and the more seriously wounded men could be taken away.
Rico turned to Cole and made himself comfortable against the bars. “Since it seems like we’ll be here for a while, how about you tell me about this Pestilence crap again.”