where the petrifying substance had been administered. “This is the real thing,” he said, placing his palm against the stone.
“Well you’re the expert,” she said in a low, insistent voice. “How did he get out? Is that even possible?”
Cole dug out his phone and tapped a few icons on the screen. “I don’t know, but Jessup may know.” He didn’t get an answer, so he called the next number on his list.
“MEG Branch 40, this is—”
Cutting him off with a hastily whispered identification number, Cole asked, “Where’s Jessup? Have you heard from him?”
“Are you kidding?” Stu replied. “I’m surprised to hear from you! Every other Skinner has dropped off the grid. Nobody’s answering our calls, but a few have left messages.”
“Is Jessup one of them?”
After some tapping on a keyboard, Stu said, “Yes, but he didn’t give a location. The message he left is for you or Paige.”
“Could have started off with that part,” he growled.
“I didn’t take the message. Abby did. Anyway, there’s a phone number.”
“Give it to me.”
Stu rattled off the digits, which Cole committed to memory. Suddenly feeling very nervous with continuing the call around so much military communications equipment, he was about to wrap up the call with a quick goodbye.
“Wait!” Stu pleaded.
“What is it?”
“There’s chatter all over the place about what’s happening. People are getting killed and werewolves are showing up on the news. Reporters aren’t even bothering to call them anything other than werewolves, for Christ’s sake! What the hell, man?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Stu.”
“Tell me this isn’t as bad as it seems.”
It was a simple request, but one Cole knew he couldn’t fulfill. “Just stay safe and keep your eyes open. Don’t give out any information unless you get an ID number. On second thought, we need to change the ID numbers.”
Happy to have something to do that fell within his area of expertise, Stu said, “On it.”
Cole hung up and dialed the number that was already fading from his memory. The call was answered on the first ring by a familiar scratchy rasp. “Jessup?”
“Cole, thank God. Where are you?”
“Back in New Mexico. Where the hell are you?”
“About six miles outside of Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve been driving all damn day tracking Cecile. What happened with you?”
“Never mind that. The military’s got this place and us locked down tight. Where’s Esteban?”
There was a pause, followed by the rattle of an engine winding down. Knowing the older tracker, it had to be another Ford. “I stayed as long as I could. That thing just walked out and ran away.”
“What do you mean he walked out?”
“Stepped out of that stone shell like he was a ghost. I made some calls and found out what he was doin’ at that Colorado prison where you were being held. He was after some of them Nymar Shadow Spore collected by other Skinners. There were other samples down beneath that place. Older samples.”
Cole could still feel the Nymar hand clamped around his throat while he was strapped to a hospital bed, and could still hear the hungry rasp of the vampire’s voice taunting him when his body was almost too drugged to move. Shaking off those memories like so much cold water, he asked, “The IRD has been collecting Nymar?”
“No. It’s one of us. That prison has been there since 1868, but portions of it shifted into private ownership in 1904. The deal was made as part of an experiment in corrections philosophy but basically gave one man free access to prisoners to be used for his own research.”
“God damn,” Cole sighed. “Lancroft?”
“We knew Jonah Lancroft ran more than just his reformatory. He had labs and hidden facilities like this prison all over the country. Probably all over the world.”
Although Adderson and the soldiers were keeping their distance, Paige was becoming increasingly anxious. “Did you say something about Lancroft?” she asked.
“Wait a second,” Cole said while going through the potentially painful motions of waving Paige away. “You said we knew. Who’s ‘we’?”
“It’s not as sinister as it may sound. Your friend Ned Post was a Lancroft historian. Lots of us are. We could all learn a lot from a man like that. Now that his journals are being unearthed, he’s getting an even bigger following than he had when he was alive.”
“Lancroft was a murderer. He
“What’s he saying about Ned?” Paige asked.
The harsh crackle that came through Jessup’s end of the phone connection was either static or a heavy sigh. “Ned may have had a falling out with the old man, but Lancroft had plenty of supporters, and after everything that’s happened, he’s got even more. The Full Bloods aren’t dead. Now that the Breaking Moon has risen, the Army won’t be able to do a damn thing against them. The Nymar are sitting pretty. Lancroft’s ideas may have been radical, but they may also be the only ones that make any sense. If we would have listened to him before, things may not have gotten this bad. At least one saving grace is that we got the cargo Cecile was carrying.”
It took Cole a moment, but he recalled it and asked, “The Jekhibar?”
“Poor girl was more than happy to get that thing out of her arm.”
“And what happened to her then?”
“She’ll find somewhere to hide, and stay there if she knows what’s good for her. You want to hear more, then come find me when you’ve learned some damned respect. I’ve got to go. There’s work to be done.”
With that, the connection was cut. Cole jammed the phone into his pocket and stormed over to the entrance of the tent where Rico stood sipping from a steaming paper cup. Paige tried to follow but veered away in order to keep Adderson busy before he joined the party.
Stepping up close enough to Rico to smell the vanilla almond cream in his coffee, he said, “I just talked to Jessup.”
“Really?” Rico replied as he grinned widely. “How’s that old cowboy doin’?”
“He says Ned was tight with Jonah Lancroft and that the prison I was in was one of Lancroft’s facilities. Since you’re the one who was close enough to Ned to inherit his house, I’d like to know what you think of that.”
“I gotta be honest with you, Cole. The man may have been a cocksucker, but Lancroft made a lot of sense back before the cheese fell off his cracker.”
“So he’s still alive?”
“Not unless you believe in all that ghost shit or the philosophical ‘He’s with us right here’ garbage,” Rico chided while tapping his chest. “I’m talkin’ about his ideas. Lancroft knew this shit was brewin’. All you gotta do is read his journals.”
“I have.”
“Really? I know some Skinners who’d love to have a look at those things.”
Cole nodded and glanced toward Paige. It was obvious he wouldn’t have much more time to himself, so he asked, “Have you been setting us up? Is that the real reason you tried to kill Paige?”
“You think I’d cover my tracks by making me look like a punk bitch who got his brain twisted around by shapeshifter? I would’ve come up with somethin’ better than that.” He sipped his coffee and then tapped the rim of the cup against Cole as he said, “You need to get your priorities straight. All the tiptoeing bullshit is over. Lancroft used to track Half Breeds down, poison them, and set ’em loose. Did some innocent townsfolk get killed? Maybe, but the whole den was destroyed with a minimum amount of fuss. There ain’t many of us left, Cole, so we gotta do things like that. You wanna hear about effective tactics? In some of the earliest journals—and I’m talkin’ books that date back to the 1700s—Lancroft’s followers talk about how the old man used to take Nymar that stepped out of line and stake them to the ground outside of the spot where all their buddies hung out. He’d wait for dawn so
