Paige’s eyes were focused upon the gruesome sculpture of carnage displayed upon the engraved silver table. The Dryads gathered behind her, peeking into the room before quickly looking away.
“That can’t be Henry,” Rico said. “There ain’t no way this much work was done so quickly. I found a goddamn hacksaw and something that looked like a miniature Jaws of Life in here. It must’ve taken weeks to do that kind of work. We’ve just been talking to him, for Christ’s sake!”
“We have been talking to Henry,” Cole whispered. “But he’s right here.”
“Are you sure about that?” Paige asked.
Cole looked at the dead creature’s face from another angle to imagine if the thing on the table truly could have been the same Full Blood that ran away from him after Misonyk was killed in Janesville. His hand remained buried inside its chest cavity, resting upon a section of broken spinal column that had been rubbed smooth after years upon years of Henry’s head swinging like a pendulum.
“It’s him, Paige. I can feel where the neck was broken.”
“That don’t prove jack,” Rico grunted. “Damn near everything on this poor bastard is broke.”
Paige approached the table and ran her hands over the shaggy fur of the werewolf’s leg as though she was comforting a pet that had just been put down. At the midsection, she pulled one of the pins free and examined the flap of skin on the creature’s side.
“Coloring of the fur is right,” she announced coldly. “According to Gerald’s journal, Full Blood fur gets coarse and wiry after they die, so this one couldn’t have been dead for any more than a month. Probably less. Here we go,” she said while folding the flap of skin over to show Cole and then Rico. “These scars were made by a Blood Blade. They look like the ones on Burkis’s face. Same color around the edges, and this is the spot where I cut Henry open in Janesville.” Nodding while pointing to spots on the inside of the chest, she said, “Those are bites from a Nymar spore. You and I have seen plenty of those, Rico.” Looking to Cole, she added, “Usually, you only see bite marks like this on a Nymar’s heart.”
Cole wanted to ask how she’d seen a Nymar’s heart before it dried up, but quickly decided he didn’t want to hear about it until his stomach had settled.
Placing the flap so it covered its section of the werewolf’s chest cavity, Paige announced, “This is Henry. What the hell could have done this to a Full Blood?”
“Jonah Lancroft did this,” Jordan said from just outside the room. “We were hidden and silenced, but we could hear him in here working…sawing.”
“Where are the others?” Rico asked.
Jordan locked eyes with him, grateful to have a point of focus away from the table. “What others?”
“The other Dryads. We were told that you two were only the most recent ones that were kidnapped. There’s supposed to be more.”
“They could be at other places like this,” Paige offered. “If Lancroft is able to teleport anywhere there’s a temple, he would need other nymphs to keep them working, right?”
“We’re the only ones left,” Jordan said.
Cole walked over to her and offered her the shirt he wore over his T-shirt. She allowed him to drape it over her shoulders, but wasn’t modest enough to close it. “Can you sense your sisters? Are they at another temple?” he asked, hoping that term might spark something in the woman.
Whatever he may have sparked in her wasn’t good.
She backed away from the door and then opened the shirt so Elsie could huddle in there with her. Once together, both Dryads put their backs to a wall and lowered their heads. “This is a Skipping Temple,” Jordan said. “Lancroft doesn’t need another one. It’s named that because it can work as a hub like the other temples or it can skip a traveler along to somewhere else like a stone across the top of a pond.”
Paige left the examination room and stood beside Cole. “I’ve already been talking to them about the others, Cole. They’re gone.”
“Gone where?”
Tightening her grip on his arm, she pulled him all the way back to the workshop. Even then she kept her voice low. “The other nymphs are dead. Lancroft used most of them up for a healing tonic called Memory Water. According to Jordan, enough of that stuff in a properly distilled form could keep a human alive for a long time.”
“Like…hundreds of years?”
“Longer. He tore some of them up pretty badly and buried them when he was done.”
Surrounded by all those carcasses on the benches or the hides that were stretched out to dry, Cole didn’t have any problem believing Lancroft could do such a thing to something as naturally beautiful as a Dryad.
“He’s been going back and forth using this temple,” she continued, “and Elsie said the Dryads that weren’t killed to make that memory stuff were kept as an unwilling power source.”
“But Tristan and Shae had to sing to get the beads to work,” Cole said. “Even Lancroft had to make them sing before he could go through.”
“That was in a proper temple, but Lancroft doesn’t give a shit about that here. He forces them to transport him however it best suits him. Everything with those purple A-frames—from the architecture to the script on the walls—is to draw and store whatever energy these women produce. Without all of that, this place must be like letting your laptop run on its battery instead of plugging it into the wall. If you’re never able to recharge the right way, you need to keep replacing the battery. That’s all these women were to this guy, Cole. He used them up and tossed them out after they died from exhaustion.”
Cole pulled in a few breaths, looked toward the temple and then studied the workshop. “So Lancroft traps creatures, strips them for parts, uses them up and dumps them. I guess that really does make him a Skinner, huh?”
Paige knocked his shoulder so he was facing her directly. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh come on, Paige. The only reason we don’t have a setup like this in Rasa Hill is because we haven’t killed a Full Blood yet. The closest we got was watching one get dragged underground by Mongrels in Kansas City, and if you knew where they took him, are you telling me you wouldn’t like to dig him up and see how many different uses you could think of for all those teeth and bones?”
“I’ve never seen anything like what’s in that room.”
“Yeah? Well I might have believed you were all broken up about it if I hadn’t seen you gut a Half Breed in the backseat of your car.”
“Half Breeds are different. They’re mobile wood chippers with a taste for our blood. Toss in a risk of becoming a wood chipper yourself and I don’t see a downside to killing them.”
“Killing them is one thing. That,” Cole added while waving toward the room with the table, “is something else. I don’t even know what that is.”
“Hunters hunt,” Paige stated. “Werewolves hunt us, and our choices are to hide, die, or hunt them. The Native Americans were Skinners long before us, and I mean that literally. They skinned werewolves the way they skinned buffalo and it worked out pretty well.” In a softer tone, she added, “This is the first time we may have spoken to something after it’s been laid out, pulled into a thousand separate pieces, and put into jars. Personally, that’s freaking me out too.”
“He’s trying to get here again,” Jordan said from the doorway to the temple. “We can delay him long enough for you to leave, but it won’t be long before he forces one of our sisters to get here without our help.”
“Let him come,” Cole said.
Jordan blinked and was moved aside when Elsie poked her head into the workshop. “We haven’t heard the Mind Singer for a while, but there can’t be much time for us to get away.”
“Let him come,” he repeated with more conviction. “We came here to get Lancroft, and we’re as ready now as we’re going to be, right?”
Paige drew her left baton and formed it into a sickle. “If he wants to save us the trouble of tracking him down, I’m all for it. Where’s Rico?”
“He’s still in the…the green room,” Jordan replied, obviously making an effort to mention the examination area without actually thinking about what it contained.
Cole walked past the two women, but Paige gathered them under her arms like a mother hen with two nervous hatch-lings. “Do both of you need to be here for this temple to work?” she asked.
“No,” Elsie replied. “He kept two of us so he always had at least one in case the other passed out or couldn’t form the bridge.”
“All right, then. I want one of you to get out of here.” Both of the Dryads started to protest, but Paige had no trouble in overriding them. “We came here to help as many of you as possible, and we won’t risk you both getting hurt now. One goes back now and the other will leave as soon as you can after Lancroft gets here.”
“No,” Jordan said sternly. “We’ll stay to help and that’s final.”
“You two may fluster the guys, but I’m not as easily swayed as the ones in the next room. Do what I say and don’t make me say it again. I need you to tell your sisters what happened here. More importantly, once you’re gone, he’ll be stuck here. Am I right?”
Both of them nodded. “If he has no sisters here and no sway over the others,” Jordan said, “then the temples are useless to him. But you’ll all be stuck here. Elsie can leave now, I’ll stay to help.”
“Fine. Just get moving.”
The Dryads huddled together and spoke in a series of words that were either too quick to understand or in some language that Paige had never encountered before. Rather than try to figure it out, she headed for the examination room where Rico was busy pulling open the last set of cabinets and Cole tapped furiously at the computer.
“Hurry up,” she warned. “One of our girls is going to leave and then the other will bring Lancroft here. After that, hopefully the word will be spread and there’ll be no more magic beads for Jonah Lancroft.” There was a crackle of static followed by a flash from the temple behind her, prompting Paige to say, “Did I mention hurry?”
Rico dumped the contents of the cabinet onto the floor. “I’m just tryin’ to get a handle on what we may be up against. Like if this guy was building weapons or if he might have worked something out to—”
“To what?” she snapped. “Live for three hundred years?”
“Yeah, or drop a Full Blood. Tricks like that would be good to know.”
“What have you found?”
Reluctantly, Rico let a metal tray fall from his grasp and said, “A whole lotta nothin’.”
“What about you, Cole?”
“I’m trying to get a copy of everything on this computer and send it to my laptop.”
“How long will that take?”
“Too damn long,” he replied. “I’ll get as much as I can, but he may be able to trace it to where I mailed it, so we need to let it run as long as possible and then destroy this computer. I mean really destroy it. No pieces intact.”
“That’s some tech talk I can get behind,” Rico said through a wide grin.
“I just found the Pestilence files!” Cole said. “At least it sure looks like them.”
“Can you send ’em somewhere else besides your own e-mail?” Rico asked. “Just in case somethin’ happens to us?”
Trying not to think about what that implied, Cole nodded. “Yeah. Like where?”
“One of Ned’s hospital contacts back in St. Louis, Dr. Oehler.”
Once he’d been given the doctor’s e-mail address, Cole made the necessary adjustments and paused before making them final. “You sure about this? There’s a lot of stuff in here that we wouldn’t want in the wrong hands.”
“We can trust the doc,” Rico said. “She’s one of ours.”
After a few more frenzied taps on the keyboard, Cole switched the monitor off and backed away from the computer. The processor was still blinking and whirring, but at least the terminal looked idle from a distance. He then skirted the table without touching the limbs hanging off its edge and dug into his pocket for his cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Paige asked as she checked the temple. Jordan swayed to a song only she could hear, and Elsie locked eyes with her sister as she stepped back through the glowing beads.
Having already speed-dialed, Cole put the phone to his ear and said, “I’m calling MEG.”
“Hang that damn thing up and get ready for whatever comes through this freaking curtain!” Paige said with a fury that was equal parts impatience and frustration.
“Henry’s body may be dead on that table, but he’s still out there!” Cole said over the growing thrum filling the next room. “That means he’s a ghost, and ghosts are MEG’s territory.”
“How much time until our guest arrives, Jordan?”
When the Dryad stopped singing so she could respond, all of the glowing symbols dimmed. “He’s trying right now, and if I hold off much longer, he’ll know something is wrong.”
“Hang up the phone,” Paige ordered.
Cole slid his thumb along the side of his phone’s case to pop the earpiece from its resting place. “Am I the only Skinner who uses technology from this century?” he grumbled while putting the headset in his ear and the phone into his pocket. The next dial tone was washed out by a rush of sound that originated from one side of the basement, charged through the room, and rumbled several yards beyond the opposite wall. The beads were left crackling and swaying, but Elsie was gone.
“—ranch 40, can anyone hear me?” someone shouted through Cole’s earpiece.
“Yeah, is Stu there?”
“I can help you. Do you have a disturbance to report?”
“I don’t have time for this. Put Stu on the phone. Tell him it’s Cole.”
“Cole? Damn it, I told you—” Although Paige stopped scolding him when Cole waved at her to shut up, she most definitely wasn’t happy about it.
“Oh,” the person answering MEG’s phones said. “I’ve heard him mention you before. Don’t you have a verification number or something?”
Cole recited the number from memory while Paige and Rico took defensive positions in front of the beaded curtain. Another wave of energy rushed through the room, this time in the opposite direction than the previous one.
“What happened?” Paige asked.
Jordan was no longer swaying or making any noise. At the end of a long inhalation, she snapped her eyes open and said, “It was a skip. Lancroft used this temple to propel him to another one.”
“Could it have been anyone other than Lancroft?”
“Nobody else knows about this temple. My sisters could sense Elsie and me well enough to get you to this house, but if they knew more, they would have sent you straight to this room.”
“Did Elsie get out safely?”
Jordan closed her eyes and thought about it. “I suppose I could contact her to find out.”
“Do you need to meditate or something?”
“No,” the Dryad replied. “I need a phone.”
As Paige tossed her cell to the Dryad, a trembling voice came from the workshop.
“Umm, guys?”
It seemed like so long ago since they’d spoken to Daniels that the Nymar’s appearance surprised everyone in the basement. Rico was closest to the door, so he headed into the workshop to see what Daniels wanted.
“Cole?” Stu asked breathlessly through the earpiece. “What’s the emergency?”
Pressing the earpiece so he could distinguish one conversation from all the others, Cole said, “I need to know how to get rid of a ghost.”
“You found a ghost? Sweet! Where? Let me send a team to wherever you are so we can get some recordings first. Maybe some video.”
“No time,” Cole snapped. “I just need to know how to get rid of it.”
For a change Stu didn’t need to flip through any papers or tap the keyboard in front of him. Once he’d taken a steadying breath, he slipped right into business mode. “Okay. What sort of ghost is it? Can you see it? Hear it? Does it interact with you or is it more like a recording that just repeats itself?”
“Yes it interacts with us. That’s the main problem.”
“I can’t hold on much longer,” Jordan said.
Paige looked at him impatiently, so Cole held up a hand and said, “Quick, Stu. You’re the guys who go after these things. What do you do when you need to get rid of one?”
“We don’t really run into that sort of thing too often. Mostly just finding them is the tough part. Let’s see, you could do an exorcism. I could walk you through it.”
“An exorcism?”
“Oh for crap’s sake, hang up that damn phone!” Paige growled.
“No exorcism,” Cole said. “We’re short on priests around here. What else have you got?”
“Is this thing demonic or was it human? Do you know its history?” Stu asked. “From our experience—”
“That’s it!” Jordan said as tears rolled down her reddening cheeks. “I can’t hold him back!”
Steeling himself for the imminent arrival, Cole turned up the volume of his earpiece. “—problem is that an entity is confused,” Stu continued. “The tricky part is communicating with it.”
“Just tell me what to do before I hang up and figure something out on my own,” Cole urged.
Having organized a small convention on his end of the phone, Stu grunted and wheezed as if about to blow a fuse. A series of loud bumps and cracks were followed by the voice of someone who must have wrestled the headset completely off of him. “Does this entity know it’s dead?” the new person asked.
“Abby? Is that you?”
“Yes, Cole. I’ve got more field experience. Does this entity know it’s dead?”
As Jordon fell to her knees and then drooped forward to prop herself up with one hand, a ripple of energy flickered through the beads.
“I don’t think so,” Cole said as he held onto his spear with both hands and stood between Paige and Rico.
“Then the best thing to do is educate it. After that, it’ll probably move on.”
“Probably?”
“Either that,” Abby said tensely, “or it might really spin out of control.”
Since he couldn’t think of too many new ways for Henry to lose control, Cole asked, “What do I do?”
“Find its grave, an obituary, a funeral notice, or anything else you can physically show to someone that proves they’re dead. The simpler the better. Can you find something like that?”
Shooting a quick glance toward the examination room behind him, Cole said, “Yeah. We’ve got some pretty solid proof.”
“Then try to get the entity to follow you,” Abby told him. “But the disturbance may get worse if a grave was defiled or if other changes were made to its home.”
“What if its body was dug up?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t be good. Especially if the body isn’t in very good condition.”
Cole winced. “That’ll do for now. If I need more help, I’ll call you.” He tapped his earpiece to shut it off but left it in place. Keeping his eyes on the growing wave of energy building within the curtain, he said, “We’re just supposed to get Henry to look at his body. That’ll convince him he’s dead and banish him, or it’ll really piss him off.”
“Great girlfriend you have there,” Paige said. “Real informative.”
Jordan finally collapsed and the beads practically spit out the body she’d been forcing to stay on its side of the bridge.
The long blade at the end of Lancroft’s staff emerged first. Rico was closest to the spot where the old man stepped out and didn’t get a chance to take aim with his .45 before the blade was shoved into his chest. Rico grabbed the staff, fired a quick shot at Lancroft and fell off the blade before it had a chance to do any more damage.
Paige’s sickle cut through empty air as the old man pivoted on his heel to deflect Cole’s spear. Lancroft then used the middle portion of his staff to shove Cole into Paige. It was all she could do to keep from slicing her partner to shreds before pushing him out of the way.
“Henry mentioned you’d found this place,” Lancroft said as the staff shortened into a pike with dual sharpened ends. Dressed in tweed pants and a matching jacket over a white shirt that was now spattered with Rico’s blood, he looked like a college professor at the tail end of a real bad day. The pike whirled in front of him while Lancroft moved toward the doorway with the stark white light flowing through it. “I see you’ve found my lab. You, more than anyone, should appreciate the accomplishments therein.”
Standing near Rico, but keeping her weapons raised, Paige felt a reassuring squeeze on her ankle. The big man was down but only for the moment. “However you’re spreading Pestilence, it’s got to stop!” she demanded. “People are dying.”
“As they always do,” Lancroft replied. “Mine isn’t the first disease to thin the herd. Isn’t it a fair price to pay to rid the country of the shapeshifters and Nymar that have spread thanks to the lackadaisical nature of your generation?”
“Spare me the rants and hand over the antidote. After killing Ned, that’s the only way to get out of this in one piece.”
Lancroft’s eyebrows flicked up and he aimed the pike at the Skinners. He reached out with his other hand to trace his fingers along some of the runes etched into the wall. “Very admirable, but it’s too late for any of that.”
Having seen enough to get a feel for what those runes could do, Cole tucked his spear under his left arm and drew the .45 he’d been given. His first shot clipped Lancroft’s arm, but Cole wasn’t prepared for the gun’s recoil and his next round sparked against the wall.
Despite the blood pouring from his arm, Lancroft showed more anger when he surveyed the damage done by the second bullet.
There you are!
The voice echoed inside Cole’s mind as well as in the workshop, and came from the same little boy Henry had possessed earlier. He’d pulled away the boards covering the window and, judging by the bloody flaps of skin hanging from his fingers, it hadn’t been easy. Hanging halfway in and halfway out of the basement like something being excreted from the wall, the boy smiled eagerly and forced his way inside.