bodies yet?”
“I don’t think so. Gerald told me not to call the police, and we’re kind of out in the boonies here.”
“Good. Keep running and get to that pickup spot. I’ll arrange to have you flown straight here as soon as possible.”
“Flown?” Cole gasped. “I need to get in touch with my job or my friends.” The notion of calling his mom didn’t sound unappealing, but he wasn’t about to make that known to a complete stranger. “After all that’s happened, I may not be able to get onto a plane. I sure as hell won’t be able to get this sword thing through security.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just get to the pickup and we’ll take care of the rest. And don’t call anyone else. Understand that? Nobody.”
“We? Who’s we? Come to think of it, who are you? Why can’t I call anyone?”
“Do you really want to drag any of your friends or family into this?”
“No,” Cole said without hesitation.
Paige laughed once under her breath. “Believe me, this all may seem a bit strange, but I’m your best chance for making it out of there alive. Just do what I say and try to keep your head down.”
Cole noticed that she didn’t exactly guarantee that he was home free just yet, but he wouldn’t have believed such a claim anyway. It did him a lot of good just to hear someone admit that things were a hell of a long ways from normal. “What’s a Full Blood?” he asked.
There was no reply.
“Are you some sort of scientist?” Cole asked. “Is that why you want that thing’s blood?”
“You sound like you’re out of breath,” Paige finally said. “Just do me a favor, save whatever you’ve got left and keep moving. You’ve already come this far, so don’t mess it up now.”
Cole nodded reflexively, even though there was nobody around. As far as he could tell, there was still nothing close enough to hurt him, but he started jogging, and then broke into a run just to be safe.
“Can you still hear me?” Paige asked.
“Yeah. Just…taking your advice.”
“Good. I’ll see you when you get to Chicago.”
“Chicago? I need to go all the way to Chicago?”
The only thing he heard in response to his frantic questions was the crackle of static from his earpiece. Cole wanted to yell at someone, but didn’t have enough breath. He checked the phone and saw there was still some battery life and a bit of signal strength, but the connection had been broken. Whoever Paige was, she’d hung up on him.
He went to pull the earpiece out and winced when it didn’t come loose. It seemed to have frozen into his ear, but came free after a bit of painful coercion. Without breaking stride, he shut the phone off, wrapped the earpiece’s wire around it and stuffed the whole thing into his pocket. That left him with nothing but the wind and the snow to keep him company.
The last time he had been forced to run more than half a block, he was at the mercy of a gym teacher who had a whistle stuck between his teeth and a rod shoved up his ass. Even then, he could at least slow down when the overaged jock wasn’t looking. This time, he had to keep moving. It wasn’t a question of if he was in good enough shape or had enough breath in his lungs. It was a simple matter of survival. If he wanted to live, he had to keep moving.
Every so often Cole would stop just long enough to catch his breath and check the compass in Gerald’s knife. He thought he saw spots drifting through his line of sight, but ignored them. He thought his legs were straining to the point of ripping muscle from bone, but he ignored that as well. All in all, he was amazed at how much he could ignore when he had a real monster tracking him down.
The highway wasn’t much more than a strip of iced-over gray in the distance. If not for a few crooked light posts, Cole might have overlooked it completely. By the time he caught sight of it, the thought of getting killed by the creature didn’t seem so bad. At least that would have been quicker than slowly fading within a shell of his own frozen sweat.
It took the better part of an hour before he was close enough to actually feel cement under his boots. When he did, his aching knees were the only things preventing him from dropping down and kissing that dirty stretch of road. Cole’s joy lasted all of three minutes before he realized he was still alone. There was no truck in sight. There were no cars. There wasn’t even a nice, well-lit gas station advertising good eats and walnut bowls.
“What I wouldn’t give for some good eats right now,” he grumbled. “Hell, I’d even take a nut bowl. What the hell are those things, anyway? Am I saying this out loud? Can anyone hear me? Am I already dead? Why can’t I stop talking?”
Cole stumbled along the side of the road without knowing where he was headed. Since he might not be able to get moving again if he stopped, he just kept stumbling along as he dug into his pocket for Gerald’s phone. Before he could mash his deadened fingertips against the keypad, he heard the distinctive crunch of something heavy against the snow. He closed his eyes and prayed for the sound of an engine rather than a growl.
For the first time since he got a look up Katie Fenner’s skirt in his junior year of high school, his prayers were answered.
The truck looked like something from one of the hundred or so World War II games he’d worked on over the years. It rumbled up to him, and the window was lowered so a gnarled man wearing an orange stocking cap could lean over and ask, “You Cole?”
“Yeah. I…sure am.”
“You wanna get in?”
“Oh yeah.”
“It’s open,” the driver said. “Hop inside.”
And Cole did need to hop because the driver wasn’t about to hit the brakes. The moment his backside hit the seat, he leaned back and let out a breath he might have been holding since he’d left the cabin. At the tail end of that same breath he started laughing. Oddly enough, the driver laughed along with him.
“Feel good to be sittin’ down, eh?” the man asked in an accent that had an equal chance of being Canadian as it had of being a bad impression of a Canadian.
“It sure does.”
“Who sent ya?”
Cole had peeled his gloves off and was rubbing his hands in front of the closest vent. He was concentrating so hard on thawing out his fingers that he let that question slip right past him. He sure didn’t have any trouble hearing what came next.
The pistol was a .44 revolver, and it seemed to have materialized in the driver’s hand. When he pointed the gun at Cole’s head and thumbed back the hammer, the click seemed to echo through the entire cab.
“I asked you a question,” the driver snarled.
“Gerald,” Cole spat. “He…no wait! His name was Stu. He was on the phone and told me to come here.” When he saw that his words weren’t changing the driver’s foul mood, he added, “And Paige too. She told me to meet up with you. In fact, I think she said she might have called you about bringing me something for the ride to the airport.”
The driver lowered his pistol before Cole had his fourth nervous breakdown that day. Glancing toward an expensive radio setup bolted to his dash, the driver grunted, “Just bein’ careful. Never know who might be wandering along the road, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“I got some hot coffee and candy if you want. Paige said you might be hungry.”
“I’ll pass.”
The rest of the ride was spent in silence. By the time they reached the airport, the sun was long gone and the stars were out. Cole got some rest and was only forced back into consciousness when the truck rattled to a stop. It was the first time he’d been still the entire day.
“No need to open both eyes,” the driver said. “Once you’re in the plane, you can go right back to sleep.”
“We’re at the airport?” Cole asked as he absently wiped at his eyes.
“Yep. Sounds like she’s all ready to go.”
Cole pushed open the truck door and was greeted by the rush of icy wind that carried the louder roar of a plane’s engines. Although he couldn’t be certain about the airport, he had a sneaking suspicion he’d seen that plane
