Teeth of Beasts (Skinners) (5 page)

He hadn’t heard the Chupacabra approach him, but the little thing squatted down less than a foot away to scratch at his flesh. Its mouth hung open and its wedge-shaped head rattled with hacking laughter. Before he lost a hand, Cole grabbed the Chupe’s wrist, shifted his weight and dragged the little creep into the hole.

Dangling less than a foot above the rocks, the Chupe stretched all four limbs to grab onto the pit’s textured sides. After scrambling up and onto solid ground, Cole plucked his spear from the dirt and drove the largest point straight into the hole. The Chupe was quick enough to turn so the spearhead only glanced along its ribs.

“Don’t kill it, Cole!” Abby said as she rushed up behind him.

“What?”

“It’s just an animal. You don’t have to kill it, do you? Just let me take some pictures.”

“It almost ripped my face off!”

“Just let me—” Before she could say another word, Abby was knocked backward by the flailing Chupe as it jumped out of the hole and wrapped all four limbs around her.

Before it could sink its toes into her shirt or its fingers into her jugular, Cole pulled the Chupe off and threw it away. It hit the ground and rolled for less than a second before Cole could make another move. Crab-walking toward a pair of old stumps, it squeezed in between them while grunting its foul language at the humans.

“Perfect,” Abby said as she approached the stumps with a camera in one hand and the pepper spray in the other. “I can get a picture while it’s stuck.”

The Chupe shifted and squirmed between the thick
wooden barriers, glaring out at her with eyes that looked like wet spots smeared onto the bark.

“Abby, don’t,” Cole warned.

“I’m not getting close enough to threaten it. This picture will be perfect!”

Before he could say anything else, the Chupe’s arms emerged from between the stumps like a pair of five-headed snakes. Since they were misaligned on its torso, the skinny limbs had plenty of room to maneuver while their owner stayed in where it was safe.

Cole lunged forward to bring his spear straight down in front of Abby. She let out a surprised scream and jumped back while the Chupe reeled its arms in. Unwilling to sit still any longer, it grabbed the edges of the stumps and launched itself out to grab Cole’s head and belt.

“Hold still, Cole!” Abby said as she rushed around him. “I’ve got it!”

Abruptly, the Chupe shifted its hands so it could rake Cole’s eyes. When he twisted away from the spiky, probing nails, the Chupe twisted its head to look straight down the nozzle of Abby’s spray can while squawking in a way that sounded awfully close to laughter. Before she could douse him with the pepper spray, Cole slapped the can from her hand and pushed her away. Now that she was clear, he reached over his shoulder to grab the Chupe by its hair.

The wiry creature kicked and slashed at Cole as he swung it in a short arc that ended by heavily slamming its back against the ground. It tried to tear at Cole’s wrists, but wasn’t quick enough to make him let go before it was lifted up and slammed against the closest stump. For the first time since the tussle started, the creature seemed to be truly dazed. Cole pinned it to the ground with one boot and drove the business end of his weapon straight through its chest.

The Chupe’s heels thrashed against the earth and its hands clawed at the spear. All the while, it snarled and spat at the Skinner holding the weapon in place.

“There you go,” Cole said. “How’s that for a photo opportunity?”

Abby didn’t take a picture. She was too stunned to do much of anything but watch as the Chupacabra weakened and finally let out its final cough. “You killed it,” she said. “Did you have to kill it?”

“No, I could have let it tear us both to pieces. Would that have looked better on your website?”

“No.”

At her meek tone, he unclenched his fists, which allowed the blood to trickle from between his palm and the thorny handle of his spear.

“You’re bleeding,” she said. Shifting her eyes up, she got a better look at the bloody scratches on his neck, scalp, and shoulders. “You’re really bleeding. I’ve got a medical kit in my car. Come on.”

Wiping a hand on his shirt, Cole said, “Let’s see your camera.” She handed it to him and he took a few pictures of the Chupacabra, cropping the shots so a minimum of gore or anatomical details could be seen. That way, there was plenty of room for speculation when the pictures made it to the Internet. “Didn’t want you to leave empty-handed.”

“I’m more worried about you. We’ve got to stop that bleeding.”

The wounds on his palm were already closing, but the others were still leaking. “Why don’t you find that kit and I’ll be right there.”

Abby was more than happy to get away from that spot, and once she was out of sight, Cole squatted down beside the grimy little stick figure. He felt for a pulse, but wasn’t certain he was feeling in the right spot, so he satisfied himself by poking at the body with his spear. When it didn’t move, he figured it was dead. He got his cell phone, hoping to check if Paige had any need for some slightly used Chupe parts. There was just enough of a signal for him to dial the number and listen to it ring once before the call was dropped. He had plenty of choice words to mutter as he hefted the Chupe over his shoulder and carried it all the way back to his car. It gave off the odor of old trees and overripe fruit, which was a lot better than he’d anticipated.

Abby rooted through her backseat when Cole spread a
plastic tarp on the inside of his trunk and then dropped the Chupe onto it.

“Don’t even ask,” he warned her before closing the trunk and walking over to her.

The rear seats of her car had been removed, making room for plenty of silver cases, satchels, equipment bags, and boxes of folders. He sat down with his back against the rear bumper and stretched his legs out. Soon, Abby was cross-legged in front of him and dabbing at the gashes around his ear with a towel moistened by water she’d poured from a plastic squeeze bottle.

“Those look worse than they are,” he said.

“I know. Scalp wounds bleed a lot.”

“How many staplers did you throw at Stu to learn that?”

She laughed and splashed some bottled water onto a towel. “Only about seven or eight, and they were gushers. So…that stuff in the woods was pretty weird, huh?”

“It sure was,” Cole chuckled. “But it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

“Fun?”

“Keep in mind, I’ve been driving for days and got fired by my best friend. Before that was Kansas City, so yeah, this was fun.”

Trading the wet towel for a packet of bandages, she told him, “It was amazing to see something like that Chupacabra up close. After that, I was terrified.”

“I felt the same way when I first saw a Full Blood.”

“They’re a lot worse than that thing in your trunk, right?”

Cole couldn’t answer that question right away because he was too busy laughing. When he caught a breath, he told her, “If a Full Blood was within two hundred miles of this place, that little bastard in my trunk wouldn’t have poked its head out of its hole. Come to think of it, does MEG always get a lot of calls about Chupacabra sightings?”

“Not like this one. Usually there are a few slaughtered chickens on a farm or a couple missing hound dogs, but this one was picking off small animals for weeks. I really would have liked to learn more about it. I brought a tracker and ev
erything. We could have tagged it and followed it from here. Over the course of a few months, we might have learned its migration patterns or possibly even found a whole nest of them. I really wish you would have given me a chance to do my job.”

“Your job?” Cole asked as he climbed to his feet. “You seriously wanted to watch it move on a computer screen like just another blip?”

Abby stood up and looked at him as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “That’s why we came here. That’s what we do. MEG finds these things so we can prove they exist.”

“And then what? Clip something into its hair, go back to your office and take notes as it runs from one spot to another? And when the blip stays in one spot for a while, do you flip a coin to decide whether it’s sleeping or digging a pit trap to cripple anyone or anything that comes along?”

“You almost fell into a hole,” she said. “Let’s not blow that out of proportion. If you’d twisted your ankle, would you have blamed that on an animal too?”

“I almost fell into a trap, not just a hole. Either those rocks at the bottom were put there on purpose or they’re from the smallest cave-in I’ve ever heard of. And that creature led me straight to it! When I fell in, it circled back to get me. Weren’t you watching when this happened?”

Anger flashed across Abby’s face, quickly followed by uncertainty and nervousness. “I’ve never seen anything like this, Cole. Some pretty weird things happen on our investigations, but I’ve never had an entity crawl onto my back and try to rip off a piece of me to save for later.”

Cole placed his hands on her arms to rub them comfortingly. “I know what you mean. I haven’t been at this for long, but the Skinner training program just runs at a faster pace than MEG’s. Also, things have been kind of crazy lately.”

“I know,” Abby said. “I’ve seen the pictures. One video that was supposed to have been taken by someone’s cell phone is of a big thing on four legs running down an interstate.” Letting out a tired laugh, she added, “Just goes to show how far some people will go to ride upon such strange coattails.”

“Actually,” Cole sighed, “that one’s probably real.”

The color that had started to return to Abby’s face drained away. “It was?”

“Was it a big, dark brown, wolf-bear-looking thing with a short brunette hanging onto it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a Full Blood. He took Paige for a tour of the Kansas City metropolitan area.”

For a second, he thought Abby was going to cry. She wilted against him and then quickly pulled away. No tears streamed from her eyes but she was definitely not the same woman he’d met over a plate of beef stew.

“You did great,” he assured her. “You were right there with your pepper spray, and you followed me instead of running for the car. Just think of this thing as a big ugly possum. Would you let a possum go if it killed the neighborhood dogs and came at you like that?”

“No.”

“You’re right about it being an animal. It was hunting and meant to take us down.”

“But you drew it here. Maybe it wouldn’t have done anything if we hadn’t—”

Cole stopped her with a few shakes of his head. Holding onto her shoulders, he looked her in the eyes and said, “It was attracted to the rustling sound because it sounded like a small animal or something else moving through the grass. Now, if it didn’t come to us, it would have gone to the next thing that walked through those weeds. Could have been another dog. Could have been a kid. Harmless animals do their own thing and avoid people. Predators come at you like a whirlwind. Big difference.”

Abby nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Big difference.”

“Do you want to take any more pictures for the MEG site?”

She nodded again.

“How about some Chupacabra hair? I bet Stu would be jealous.” When he caught the first hint of a grin, Cole added, “I could pose by that pit for you. It’d make a nice commemorative collage to go along with the other pictures.”

Her full smile arrived after that bit of coaxing, but it was tired. “Maybe just a few more pictures.”

Cole held his trunk open so she could get a clear shot. He considered posing for one of them anyway, but decided against it. There were already enough grainy photos of him in KC. Shooting the old finger pistols next to a dead Chupacabra for the MEG site was pushing it.

“So,” he said while closing the trunk, “we should get together again sometime. And no more running. I’m thinking of a nice, regular dinner somewhere with actual waiters and food that isn’t ladled over white bread.”

She smiled sweetly at him and replied, “I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“I had fun, Cole, don’t get me wrong,” she assured him, albeit unconvincingly. “Next time we’re both available we can get together and see what happens, but as friends, you know?” In response to his slow nod, she added, “I hope you don’t think I asked you to come out here just so I could get these pictures.”

“No, I don’t think that at all.”

She smiled almost to the point of beaming. “Cool.” With that, Abby did the worst thing possible and kissed him on the lips with just enough passion to let him know what he was missing. Some women thought this was a good way to let a man down easy.

Those women were wrong.

Chicago, Illinois
Six and a half hours later

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 tight
ened 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 communica
tions,” 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.