to help you even more than I thought. I had the same dream again last night and I managed to write down a few things.”
“What kind of things?” Cole asked with genuine curiosity.
Grateful to have a more receptive ear, Walter turned to him and replied, “I saw the news report about that massacre again, but there was someone reporting on the scene this time. She was at a park in Janesville and there was some big ugly building in the background. I got a much clearer look at it this time around.”
Paige let out a short grunt of a laugh. “Real helpful.”
“Yeah,” Walter snarled. “It is. Janesville isn’t a big place. I looked it up and there are only about six parks and a few golf courses, so it shouldn’t take me long to drive around and see which one matches what I saw.”
“How long would something like that take?” Paige asked.
He shrugged. “I should have it narrowed down to a few possibles by the end of the day. By the end of tomorrow, I could have the spot all picked out.”
Even though Paige was raking her fingers through her hair with almost enough force to pull it out at the roots, Cole was nodding enthusiastically. “Fine, Walter,” she said. “Check out your hunch. Did you get the rest of those things we needed?”
“Everything that was in Gerald’s personal stash,” he replied. “He might’ve given some stuff to some other partners, but this was all he wanted me to keep in my van. I’ll leave it here for you.”
Paige nodded. “He always trusted you, Walter. Wait a second. Last night you said you had to go scrounge for that stuff.”
“I stopped back at Shimmy’s,” Walter admitted with a shrug. “I’ve still got other jobs to do, you know.”
“Go check out Janesville,” she said without the annoyed tone that had been in her voice before. “Give us a call as soon as you find anything. Even if you don’t find anything, check in tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a quick salute. He tossed a friendlier wave to Cole as he headed for his van and unloaded a few things from the back.
Paige walked toward the house with quick, purposeful steps and stopped at the front door. “Do we have this place to ourselves?” she shouted toward the van.
“Apart from the Half Breeds sleeping out back, yeah,” Walter shouted back. “The owners think the MEG guys are conducting one of their investigations over the next few days.”
Suddenly, Cole became very uncomfortable with the fact that their voices rolled through the air with the subtlety of an incoming thunderstorm. Even as he jogged to catch up to Paige, he winced with every crunch of his hiking boots against the gravel. “Didn’t you say Half Breeds are werewolves?” he asked.
“Yep,” she replied as she stepped into the cavernous foyer of the mansion. “Real nasty ones too.”
“Then shouldn’t we be quieter?”
She considered that for a moment. Leaning forward, she lowered her voice to a stage whisper and said, “I think Prophet’s losing his mind.”
“You don’t think there are any Half Breeds here?” Cole asked hopefully.
“I believe what he sees with his own eyes. What he dreams, though…that’s another story. If there is a den here, any city within miles of it is in trouble. All that massacre talk could’ve just been run of the mill extrapolating. Psychics pull that shit all the time.”
To drive the sense of foreboding even further into him, the next thing Cole heard was the spinning of tires against gravel and the howl of the old van’s motor. The van sped away quickly and noisily. Once it was gone, the only sounds within the mansion were the tapping of his and Paige’s boots against the dirty floor, and the rustling of wind through broken walls.
While it was much too late in the year for it to be warm in Wisconsin, the air seemed even cooler inside the mansion. Cole walked along a path that was fairly well marked by new boards upon the cracked floor. Sawhorses connected by plastic tape kept them from wandering too close to crumbling banisters or a dangerously weak section of ceiling. Even with all the precautions set up, however, he couldn’t help but feel he was tempting fate just by being in that place.
“How are you doing over there?” Paige asked.
“Funny you should ask.”
“Are you hearing Misonyk’s voice again?”
Cole blinked and had to struggle to pull himself off one line of thought and onto another. “No. Didn’t you already take care of that?”
She reached out to push aside the sheet of plastic that separated the kitchen from the backyard. “If you feel even the slightest twinge that Misonyk may be around, you let me know. This is important.”
After taking a few steps into the sprawling land behind the mansion, Cole saw the pile of rocks that Walter had mentioned. He also saw a spot where the rubble dipped down into what could very possibly be a hole or a pit. There wasn’t more than twenty to thirty yards between the back door and the start of that rubble, but he suddenly felt as if it was several miles away. “This is it,” he muttered.
“We don’t know that yet,” Paige replied as she curled her fingers in to scratch her palms. “But I think we’re pretty close to something.”
“No. I mean this is it for me. I’ve come so far that I won’t be able to go back. I either get hunted down by these things or I hunt them.”
Paige shrugged. “That’s how it is for all of us. Things may not have gone very smoothly here, but I couldn’t have gotten this far on my own. Just having someone watching my back has been a big help. Something’s happening and we’re going to need all the help we can get when the time comes.”
Cole didn’t have to ask if that time was drawing near. He could feel it approaching through the chill in the air, all the way down to a subtle rumbling that seemed to be coming from miles beneath his feet. It might not have been measurable by any scale, but it was there. He could feel it stirring in the back of his mind like the wind rattling the loose boards behind him.
“Okay,” he said as he walked forward to stand beside Paige. “But if I’m going up against another werewolf, I want a weapon.”
“Let’s get a look first. Then we’ll get you armed.”
Although the sky was darkened by hues of gray and blue, the sun was poking through the clouds to cast its light onto the cluttered mansion grounds. That combination gave them a dreary, washed-out hue that smeared the natural colors into a mixture that looked every bit as slippery as it felt. Morning frost had settled in beneath the loose rocks at the top of the rubble. As Paige and Cole climbed over the heap, they leaned down to support their weight with their hands as well as their feet. That way, when they were able to look into the hole on the other side of the ridge, only a few bits of dust trickled down to announce their presence.
Cole couldn’t see very much in the shadows below, but he could hear something that reminded him of a train chugging through the far end of a tunnel. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness in that hole, he could just make out a few shapes down there. The little bit of light that did make it all the way to the bottom was just enough to show a few skinny limbs with strands of wiry hair sprouting from them in irregular patches. Judging by the way the shadows moved, the chugging he’d heard was several sets of haggard breathing.
“Is that…alive?” he asked.
“Yep,” Paige told him. “Both of them are.”
“I only see one.”
She scooted in closer to him and placed her cheek against his so she could follow his line of sight. “There,” she said as she reached out with one arm. “See the other one?”
For the moment, he couldn’t help but look over at Paige’s face. Now that he was this close to her, he could make out a faint array of freckles running along the upper curve of her cheeks that had faded until they were almost invisible. She looked back at him then, surprising him. Oddly enough, considering their circumstances, she was smiling.
“Down there,” she said softly. “Look.”
If he had been pulled from his thoughts any quicker, he would have gotten the bends. By the time he shifted his gaze back into the pit, something at the bottom stirred within a messy bed of leaves. Hairless, twisted legs kicked at the dirt and jagged nails scraped against rock.
“What are they?” he asked.
“Half Breeds.”
