winter gear. Looking to the spot where he’d landed, he noticed he’d missed hitting a wooden beam by about a foot and a half, and had slammed against a relatively smooth section of wall. Compared to the others laying nearby, his landing had been more than lucky.
He recognized the jacket Sam had been wearing on a bloody torso that lay upside down in a corner. Brad was still nearby, but had been torn into unrecognizable pulp. He knew the mess against the wall next to the bedroom door had once been the gun nut. Cole picked up the rifle laying within a few feet of the body and started to clean it off. Then, remembering how much good the rifle had done for its owner, he let it slide out of his hands. The cook was laying against the stove. His eyes were wide open and clouded over, but Cole knew dead when he saw it. Nothing with any life in it would have been as still as the cook or any of the others inside that cabin.
As he worked his way to the front of the cabin, he felt like a passenger inside his own body. His thoughts weren’t exactly incomprehensible, but they came quickly enough to overwhelm him. He took a few breaths, accidentally filled his lungs with the stench of death and ran outside.
The contents of his stomach hit the snow, where they were almost immediately buried. Cole pulled in some of the crisp morning air and felt a little better. As his pulse slowed to a pace just shy of frantic, he spotted movement a few yards away. His hands balled into fists and he suddenly wished he hadn’t left the rifle behind. Squinting through the brilliant daylight, he spotted something shifting beneath a layer of freshly fallen, freshly bloodied, snow. Taking a few tentative steps forward, he asked, “Who’s there?”
No response came.
“Hey. You all right over there?”
“Is…it…is it gone?” the shape asked.
Recognizing the strained voice, Cole rushed over and knelt down beside the shape. “Gerald?” After dusting off some of the snow, he spotted the older man’s face beneath a mask of frozen, crusted blood. “Jesus, it is you! I thought you were dead.”
Gerald was regaining consciousness quickly, and he sat up as if to take a swing at him. When his fist bounced off of Cole’s shoulder, the older man let out a pained grunt. “I…was dead,” he said through clenched teeth as he opened his fist to let several pieces of broken glass fall out.
“Almost,” Cole said. “So was I.”
Although some smaller shards of glass were wedged into Gerald’s fingers, only one large rounded piece had managed to puncture his palm. Now that Cole could look at the older man’s hands up close, he noticed the thick tangle of scar tissue coating most of Gerald’s palms. Although they looked like burns, there were several rounded patches smaller than the size of a dime that stuck out from the rest. Compared to the condition of Gerald’s face, neck, and chest, however, the glass wedged into his palm looked like a paper cut.
Cole’s hands hovered above the older man uselessly. As much as he wanted to stop the bleeding, close up the wounds, or do anything at all to help, he simply didn’t know how to do any of those things. “Try to relax,” he said in the most comforting voice he could manage. “I’ll…uhh…I’ll get some help.”
Lurching toward Cole, Gerald grabbed hold of him with enough strength to knock him off balance. “No,” he snarled. “Listen to me!” Somehow, the older man managed to sit up and collect himself; more wounds revealed themselves as freshly fallen snow fell away from his body. Gashes in his torso and legs seemed to go all the way down to the bone.
“Holy shit,” Cole said. “You need to lay back down!”
“Shut the hell up and listen to me! Brad had two knives. That thing got one of ’em. Do you think you can find the other?”
“Yeah,” he said as he held up the machete for Gerald to see. “I grabbed one of them before I was knocked out.”
“Good. There’s a card in the lining of my coat…near the collar. Call the number on the card and tell them what happened. Tell them you need to talk to Paige in Chicago. They’ll arrange for you to see her.”
“What? We’re going to freeze to death or bleed out before—”
Suddenly, the nightmare from the previous night rushed back to clamp its jaws around Cole’s mind. “I thought I could help,” he said. “I wanted to do more.”
Oddly enough, Gerald’s voice became steadier as Cole’s broke up. “You did a hell of a lot more than most anyone else,” he said. “When you talk to Paige, she’ll know you did plenty. Be sure to tell her that it took a goddamn Full Blood to put Brad down.”
“A what?”
“Just tell her that. Can you remember?”
Cole nodded, knowing it would take a hell of a lot more than time or even another knock on the head before he’d ever forget those words.
“That blade…the one Brad carried,” Gerald said. “You need to bring it to her. Make sure Paige gets it. Do you understand me?”
“I think so, but—”
Gerald seized the front of Cole’s jacket with almost enough force to pull Cole down on top of him. “You’ll take that blade to her! You got to. After what you saw…after what you did…you ain’t got another choice! She’ll know what to do!”
Cole could think of plenty of other choices. He could push that crazy old man away and do his best to get back to civilization before he froze to death. He could lie to Gerald and tell him he’d do whatever he wanted just to shut him up. Actually, he didn’t think that would work on the old man. Gerald’s eyes were too clear for him to be fooled by such a pathetic smoke screen. Finally, Cole settled upon his only real choice, the responsibility of carrying out a man’s dying wish settling upon his shoulders.
Patting the scarred hand gripping his jacket, Cole said, “All right. But I don’t know who Paige is, and we need to get to some police or a medical team or something before anything else.”
Gerald was starting to fade. “If you drag the cops into this, it’ll just get them killed when that thing comes back. You know just as well as I do that Mounties will be scouring this area for a good long while trying to figure out what happened. That Full Blood’s got your scent as well as the scents of everyone else in that cabin. It’s hurt now, but—”
“That thing can smell me?” Cole snapped. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Gerald nodded. “It knew we were here. It came here for a reason. It’ll be coming back even if the only thing left here is bodies. When the Mounties show up, they’ll just bring their popguns like that asshole who got ripped apart in there.” In a cool, level voice, Gerald asked, “When it does come back, whether there are cops here or not, do you think there’s a damn thing you or anyone else can do to keep that monster from finishing what it started?”
Cole didn’t have to think very long before replying, “No.”
“Then do what I ask, Cole. Brad got himself killed pulling that Full Blood away from you before it could finish you off, and I don’t have enough in me to keep convincing you that you need to get the hell away from this place and leave me behind.”
“All right,” Cole said with a single determined nod. “But you can come with me.”
Shaking his head, Gerald replied, “Take the card from my collar. It has a number for you to reach someone, and they can get you in touch with Paige.” The words were spilling out of Gerald like the blood that had reddened the snow around him. “Just mention me and Brad and tell her what happened here. She’ll help you get to where you need to go. You’ll have to travel, but you need to get that Blood Blade to her.”
Cole nodded and reached for Gerald’s collar. “Where’s the card?”
Rather than explain, Gerald knocked Cole’s hand away and tore open his jacket collar as if it was made out of tissue paper. His fingers fumbled through the stuffing and emerged with a laminated business card. “It’s right here,” he snarled as he slapped the card into Cole’s hand. “I got a phone in my bag that works damn near anywhere. Get it and call the damn number. That Full Blood could come back any time. Once it’s close enough to smell two more living souls here, it’ll all be over.”
Cole examined the card. It had two numbers on it, one of which was an 888 number, the other a bit shorter than a Social Security number. Other than that, the only other thing printed there was the name: MEG BR 40. Cole guessed that it was a business name or e-mail address, but didn’t take the time to think it through more than
