“Sandoval?”
Kawosa nodded and shifted his gaze back to the city.
“That Spaniard always did carry a stronger scent than most. Randolph never met him, but how’d you get him to overlook Minh?” Liam drew his legs in a little tighter and passed his tongue over a dry bottom lip when he said, “She’s not the sort any man would overlook. Even on four legs, she’s a vision. Lyin’ to humans is one thing. Lyin’ to us is another.”
“Perhaps the stench of this paved-over land had washed her from his memory. Or Randolph merely could have grown tired of our company.”
Liam drew a breath and let it out as a huff of steam from his nostrils. “I know the legends about you, Kawosa. Or Ktseena or whatever the hell the humans call you. Older than the deepest dirt and teller of the very first lie. The Trickster Coyote that’s been roaming the New World when there wasn’t nothin’ here but herds of buffalo and teepees.”
“My, my. You are very knowledgeable.”
“Why the hell do you think we busted you out of that dungeon?”
“There are more reasons than you know,” Kawosa said.
As he stood up, Liam shifted into his hulking two-legged form. His feet scraped upon the narrow path but he hung onto the rock as though his paws had been nailed in place. Stooping down so his single eye level was with Kawosa’s face, he snarled, “Randolph’s head has always been full of smoke and foolish notions. He gets sentimental and thinks too much about the past. He’s also restless. I know he wants to leave here, and I ain’t of a mind to stop him. You got a job to do here, though, Coyote. Don’t you forget that.”
Despite the fact that the Full Blood loomed over him while casually stripping away layers of rock with sicklelike claws, Kawosa regarded him with the same amount of concern he might show to a posturing eight-year-old boy. “The Half Breeds are my children. Guiding them, shaping them, giving them a purpose is no chore.”
“And the Mongrels?”
“They are a thorn in both our sides.”
Only another Full Blood could have recognized the glimmer of a smirk that flicked across Liam’s gaping, hellish mouth. “Speaking of thorns,” he said with a simple nod toward a section of the city that was alive with circling helicopters and flashing red and blue lights.
Whether he noticed Liam’s grin or not, Kawosa did nothing to hide his own. “The humans were a simple matter. I told the police their dead comrades were winning the fight against the Nymar and they believed. It has always been so. And no matter what the Skinners know, what they concoct, or what they do, they are humans as well. Playing with them has always been one of the greatest pleasures of my very long life.”
“So, sitting cooped up in Lancroft’s basement. That was a pleasure?”
When Kawosa sneered, it gave Liam a glimpse at a hatred that ran down to the bottom of a black, soulless pit. The Full Blood moved away and adjusted his grip upon the mountain accordingly.
“Lancroft was exceptional,” Kawosa admitted. “He taught me the danger of my own arrogance. Although I would have enjoyed waiting for him to choke on his own confidence and wander close enough to the bars of that cell so I could tear his head from his shoulders, it was even sweeter to see him killed by the very Skinners he cherished so dearly. Now, with everything that has been set into motion, the fruit of Lancroft’s efforts will unleash discord the likes of which I have only dreamed.”
“Ohhhh yes,” Liam sighed. “The times, they are a’changin’.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Nymar had worked out several different escape routes from the cement building, but most of them were cut off by the police or were in the process of being severed. It had only been twenty minutes since the authorities took over the area, which was more than enough time for the vampires to gather in a parking lot within spitting distance of I-70 used by semitrailers and other large transport vehicles.
The van that rolled to a stop next to the others that had just arrived was still spattered with blood it had picked up from the loading dock where it was parked half an hour ago. Its driver’s window came down so a woman bearing symmetrical black markings along both sides of her face could look out. “Where was she? You told me she was going to be there!”
Two Nymar, men in their early twenties, approached the van. Although they had markings of Shadow Spore that swelled in size as they left the pool of light cast from atop a nearby post, neither of them were anxious to get any closer to the Kintalaphi inside the van. “Hope told you she’d be there,” the bigger of the two said. “All we knew was that Skinners were coming.”
“Where’s Hope?”
“Dead. I don’t know if they were Skinners, but the ones who killed her used some kind of metal thing with chains that I ain’t ever seen before.”
“You watched her die?”
Both of the Nymar looked at each other and stepped away from the van. When the driver kicked the door open, she exploded from behind the wheel as if she’d been launched from an ejector seat. Black claws snaked out from her fingertips to sink into the bigger Nymar’s chest like a set of fishing hooks. He didn’t even have a chance to try and free himself before he was on his back.
“You watched the Skinners kill her and did nothing?” she hissed.
“That room was full of Skinners when Hope was killed. And I already told you, I don’t know what the hell was used to kill her.” He blinked, but had trouble opening his eyes again as the claws embedded in his flesh took their toll. “I didn’t even know they could kill one like you.”
“The purpose of this was to kill
When she pulled her claws out of him, the Nymar shot back with, “Then why’d you cut and run, Tara?”
Apart from longer hair, paler skin, a greater concentration of tendrils and hardened eyes, Tara looked much as she had when she’d been a student at the University of Illinois eleven years ago. “Hope told us to fall back and that’s what we did,” she replied. “Your orders were to find Paige and bring her to me.”
Seeing the clueless expression on the other Nymar’s face, Tara grabbed the front of his shirt along with several layers of skin beneath it. “The Skinner with the black hair and the wounded arm!”
“One of the chicks had a wounded leg.”
“Not her!”
“Why don’t you ask that shapeshifter? If there was anyone there that we missed, he probably would’ve smelled them.”
“Are you talking about the shapeshifter that held the cops back?” Tara asked.
The Nymar on the floor nodded. “I saw him when I was on my way out. He said he’d keep the cops busy so we could get away and that he’d be in touch. Said he had something important to talk about.”
“So Paige was never there?”
“I … I don’t …”
Another Nymar stepped forward when the one under Tara had become too flustered to talk. He was a smaller man, with a large grommet fitted into his right earlobe. “I think I know the one you mean,” he said. “There was a Skinner talking to the one that got dragged away by the cops. She came in a helicopter. Dark hair, short, wearing some kind of body armor like a bulletproof vest. Her arm looked stiff and scarred.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. The cops were spreading out, searching the whole place and sending teams after the Skinners who got away.”
“They got away?” Tara asked.
“When the cops were busy arresting the guy in the coat, I saw four or five of the Skinners run out the back door. Thought they were coming after us, but they scattered. One guy had a biker jacket on. He was picked up by some black dude in a run-down four-door. I lost track of the others when we came here.”
