Still feeling the adrenaline rushing through him, Cole tightened his grip on the phone receiver. “I’ve got a door in this room,” he snarled. “It came with the rest of the room. You could have used it instead of the freaking window.”
“If you give me a moment, I can explain.” Her features softened in a way that had nothing to do with her shifting abilities; at least, not as far as he knew. “I need to talk to you. If I got rough before, it was just because you threw the first punch.”
Cole reflexively started to say something in his own defense, but cut himself short when he took a moment to think about what had happened. “I guess you’ve got a point there. Did I hurt you?”
“No, but it looks like I hurt you.”
Cole glanced down at his shoulder. There was a long row of scratches, but only a slight trickle of blood. “I’m not worried about that. I am worried you might have just changed to look like that woman from Canada. For all I know, you can change to look like anything you want.”
“It was really me,” she replied. “Although,” she added while opening her arms, “I was wearing a bit more at the time.”
Jackie’s body was smooth and trim, but not perfect. Her breasts were pert and a bit small, while her hips were just a bit too muscular for his tastes. Even so, she was doing a hell of a job of making him rethink those tastes. “Why were you in Canada?” he asked as a way to test the identity she was claiming.
“I was at that cabin to meet with Brad,” she told him. “Do you remember him sitting and talking with me over dinner?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if that Full Blood was after me or Gerald, but you’ve got to believe I didn’t know that was going to happen the way it did.”
All he had to do was think back to the panic in her eyes the night of that attack for him to believe what she was saying.
“I did my best to make sure that other college kid got away,” she insisted. “When I came back to check on you, I caught the scent of that Full Blood nearby. I tried to lead it away long enough for you to get away. You’ve got to believe me.”
Nodding, Cole told her, “I heard growling and sounds like that the whole time I was running.”
She nodded as well, but with a lot more desperation. “That’s right! I wasn’t able to hurt it, but I could outrun it once it followed me.”
“So why go through all the trouble of coming here?” Narrowing his eyes, he added, “I still don’t think you could have followed me all the way here from Canada. Even if you had my scent or whatever, I spent a hell of a lot of time locked up in a plane over a thousand feet in the air.”
Obviously impressed with herself, Jackie replied, “You were on the phone most of the time before you got to that truck. Chicago was mentioned quite a bit.”
“And you heard all that while hopping onto that plane without anyone noticing?”
She shook her head. “I went to an airport and bought a ticket to Chicago just like anyone else. I had to have beaten you here by at least a day, and I caught your scent about an hour ago. Believe me now?”
Before admitting defeat, Cole asked, “So why the SpiderMan entrance tonight?”
“Your new friend Misonyk has a way of keeping tabs on my kind no matter what form we take. The window was the quickest way in and will be the quickest way out.”
Jackie walked to the television and turned it up. She seemed to enjoy sauntering naked in the cool breeze that drifted in from the window. Cole had definitely acquired an eye for sauntering. After making her way back to him, she spoke just loudly enough to be heard above the television. “I doubt they’ve got your room bugged, but Misonyk and his followers could be listening from the hall or somewhere close.”
“What do you know about Misonyk?” he asked.
“I contacted Brad about that maniac and the abomination that follows him around, but Gerald wouldn’t listen. He didn’t trust me or any of my kind.”
“What kind is that?” Cole asked.
“If anything, you’d know us by what the Skinners and Full Bloods call us: Mongrels.”
Cole nodded and did his best to appear as if he’d heard more than a brief mention of that word from Paige. “Why would Gerald and Brad have to meet up with you in Canada?”
Jackie blinked and lowered her head a bit. She stood close enough to him that her hair fell over one shoulder to brush against her chest as well as his. As it turned out, she was merely waiting for the infomercial to kick back into another loud cycle. It wasn’t long before the steel drums and giggling coeds were at it again.
“Before I left, Misonyk was spreading a lot of wild ideas. But he wasn’t much more than another crazy Nymar until he had Henry enforcing his word as if it was law. Henry may like feeding on Nymar, but he can easily become a threat to my kind. I’ve been holding onto the Blood Blade so it could be used against a threat like that. If not for Brad, I would have kept it even though it’s a Skinner weapon. I should have just kept it.”
She broke into her reserves of strength to keep the tears from eyes that subtly became feline before shifting back again. “If the rest of my kind found out I played a part in trying to harm a shapeshifter, I’d be considered a traitor and…I don’t even want to think about how they’ll make an example of me. I have a niece that lives up in Canada, and it was as far away as I could get from here. Brad was the only Skinner willing to trust me and come such a long way at the request of a Mongrel. I don’t know how that Full Blood knew we were there or if it just happened to catch our scent, but no Skinner will ever trust me again.”
“Gerald and Brad were the only two Skinners there,” Cole said. “At least, I think they were.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jackie said solemnly. “The others will know. Everyone always finds out everything. I’m so sick of it all.”
“Where did Henry come from?”
“Someplace called Lancroft. It’s up in Wisconsin, but I don’t know any more than that.”
Cole shook his head as the sensation of drowning once again swirled through his head. “Maybe you should tell this to Paige. She’ll know more about—”
“No,” Jackie cut in. She leaned against him so her breasts touched the front of his body. “The only reason I came all the way back here is to honor my deal with Brad. He…let’s just say I owe him a favor, and telling all I know about Henry and Misonyk was going to be my way of paying him back. After what happened to him and Gerald, I know he would’ve wanted someone else to hear this. I don’t know if you’re a Skinner or not, but I do know you can pass this along so it can do some good.”
“All right, then. What do you know about Misonyk?” Cole asked.
“He’s crazy and powerful, but that happens to a lot of the older Nymar. He talks about slaughtering humans to drink their souls and nailing Skinners to the floors of dark rooms. He’s insane. That’s why most Nymar don’t pay any attention to him. At least, they didn’t before Henry came along.
“Henry is one of them,” she continued, “but he’s also one of us. I’ve never seen one just like him, but his scent is close to a Full Blood’s. When Henry was just a rumor among the Nymar, Brad was the one who wanted to take action. The old man was content to let anything go as long as it only killed Nymar, but I knew there was more to it than that. I could hear it.”
“You could hear it?”
Jackie nodded and tapped the side of her head just above her ear. “It was a whisper at first. I thought I was hearing things or maybe…maybe going crazy. But it wasn’t just me that heard. Every Mongrel I know heard it. Maybe every shapeshifter in the state could hear it.”
“What did they hear?”
“Crazy thoughts at first,” Jackie explained, as if just the memory was enough to make her uncomfortable. “Words that were strung together without a space or a breath in between them. Conversations with God. Most of it didn’t make any sense. When I got close enough to Henry to pick up his true scent, I knew those whispers were his thoughts. He screamed them from his mind. Stuck in there amid all the babble and all Misonyk’s teachings was something else. It was one of the few coherent things in all those thoughts, and it was a gift that could only be given to us by that twisted piece of filth.”
Not knowing whether she was talking about Henry or Misonyk, Cole tried to push her through whatever had caused her eyes to wander and her voice to trail off. “I’m listening.”
Her head flinched so she could look straight at him again. The ends of her hair tickled his skin. “After spending
