nearby campsite. When he looked back at her, Paige had already rolled up her window and was driving away.
Cole twisted around to look behind the Cavalier at the park ranger gawking at the fires they’d set and fumbling with his radio. There weren’t many carcasses in one piece, but they were all ablaze thanks to the lighter fluid that had sprayed on them. “He might have taken down our license plate.”
“Let him. We’ll change them when we pick up Daniels. Give him a call to let him know we’re coming. Also, tell him to have everything ready to go. We need to find somewhere else to stay.”
“You think the fire will get too bad?” Cole asked.
“That ranger will get to it before any of it spreads too far. Werewolves are too damn greasy to burn for very long.”
“So that’s it, huh? I guess we just wait a few days and bait the rest of those things to some other field? Do we at least get a few days off?”
She glanced over at him and grumbled, “Sometimes I don’t know when you’re kidding.”
“What if I’m not kidding?”
“Then you’re just an idiot. Here, take this and get to work.”
Cole nearly cleared his seat when he felt the knife fall onto his lap.
“Now let’s see how well you skin that Half Breed,” she said. “Get at least two good-sized pieces of hide from its body and pull as many teeth as you can. I’ll take all the claws too.” She grinned and looked over at him. “Dumping that bait on them was a hell of an idea.”
“It didn’t work as well as I thought it would. I was kind of hoping for a lot more ripping and tearing and not so much bowing and whining from those Half Breeds.”
“It was enough that you got us out of there,” she said. “Right now, we’ve got other stuff to do. Make that call and get to skinning.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cole phoned Daniels to let him know they were on their way and then climbed into the backseat to take his first crack at cutting apart a dead monster. Normally, something like that wouldn’t have set too well with him. The smell alone was enough to bring the bottom layer of his stomach contents up to the back of his throat. At that moment, however, with the campsite behind them and getting farther away with every second, he didn’t mind a little dirty work. It meant he was still alive.
A few hours later Cole was still in the car staring out the front passenger side window. Daniels was packed into the backseat, along with most of his and Paige’s gear. The Nymar had one shoulder wedged against the window behind the driver’s seat, due to the fact that his left leg was draped over a flat case. His feet were resting on top of more cases, which practically forced him to eat his own knees. Judging by the expression on Daniels’s face, he wasn’t at all happy with the arrangement.
“Why don’t you just throw me in the trunk?” he griped. “I’d be able to stretch out more.”
“Do you mind sharing space with a pile of dead Half Breeds?”
Daniels winced. “You Skinners truly are disgusting ghouls.”
“Hey, for a guy who stank up his motel room as badly as you did, I’m surprised to hear any complaints.”
“For your information, I had a breakthrough in my research.”
“Yeah?” Cole asked. “It smelled like burnt hair. Didn’t I see a cleaning lady leaving your room right when we got there?”
“She took an unfortunate fall and lost some blood,” Daniels muttered. “As for the smell, I needed to use the heating element in order to—”
“You knocked out the cleaning lady so you could feed?” he interrupted.
Daniels pondered that for a second and then flashed him a smug grin via the rearview mirror. “Oh, no. That would be wrong.”
Since the cleaning woman had been able to walk and wasn’t screaming at the time, Cole let it slide. The wound running along the side of his leg was still tender. Paige had helped him wrap it up as Daniels was collecting his things. She’d patched her own wounds as well, but in a way that seemed like the medical equivalent of fixing an oil leak by slapping some tape onto the wet spots.
“You both look pretty torn up,” Daniels said. “Shouldn’t you go to a doctor or something?”
“We’ll rest up as soon as we’re done making these rounds.”
“What rounds might those be?”
They were parked along Cliff Drive, which bordered North Terrace Park. It was late, which meant the street was relatively quiet and the nearby University of Medicine was mostly dark. This was the fourth stop they’d made since racing back into Kansas City, and Cole was beginning to feel as though he’d made the entire trip on foot. “We found a bunch of Half Breed dens scattered around the city,” he explained. “She’s checking them now to see if we cleaned them out or not.”
“What if the things are out hunting?” Daniels asked. “It’s that time of night.”
Absently brushing his palm with his fingertips, Cole felt nothing more than the rawness that came from having the thorns rip through his skin and the minor irritation caused by Daniels. “They’re not around the city. At least, there’s not as many as there were before.”
“The moon’s out. They run real fast.”
“Yeah, Dan. I know.”
“It’s not Dan.”
“What?”
Leaning forward from the backseat caused a shift in the delicate balance of all the crap piled around the Nymar passenger. “My name is Daniels.”
“Oh, and I suppose that big bald spot is just a temporary hair migration?”
Daniels leaned over and looked in the mirror. He started to run his hand over the top of his head but stopped as if his skull was an eggshell that had already been cracked. “That was mean.”
“Sorry.”
The driver’s door was pulled open then and Paige dropped in behind the wheel. She landed with a strained huff, which became a wince when she turned the key in the ignition. “What are you sorry for this time, Cole?”
“Nothing. You find anything?”
“There was one Half Breed way in the back,” she replied. “Just a day or two old by the looks of it. I put it down and knocked in enough dirt to bury it. Considering that’s the only Half Breed we found in any of those dens, this was a pretty good night.”
“I’ll say it was!” Daniels chimed in as he grabbed the backs of both seats and pulled himself forward.
“Watch it!” Paige snapped. She started to turn around but flinched and settled back into her seat. “Just don’t knock those cases around so much, okay?” She put the car in gear and drove away. “I want to stay somewhere outside the city. If any authorities saw anything, they’ll be looking for those werewolves, but I don’t want them to get lucky and stumble upon us.”
Daniels slumped back and allowed the piles of cases and other supplies to slide over him like a slow motion avalanche. “We were set up just fine before.”
“And if anyone was following us before, they’d head straight for that place,” Paige said. “I’ll bet there’s at least one cleaning lady at that hotel that’s got some interesting stories to tell.” Taking a deep, obviously strained breath, she headed for I-35.
“Tell us about the breakthrough,” Cole said.
For a few seconds Daniels sulked by pushing around as many of the cases as he could reach. When he was done with that, he leaned forward again. “This,” he announced while extending his hand to display a heavy square attachment that had been soldered onto the tattooing machine, “is one of them.”
Paige looked at the machine and then shifted her attention back to the road. “Isn’t that the same thing I unwrapped at your apartment?”
“Yes, but the device you ordered requires a separate power supply. This battery pack not only allows you to use the machine wherever you like, but it even makes the necessary adjustments in speed and has a life of several hours.”
“So that’s what you were burning in your room?” Cole asked.
Daniels slumped back and grumbled, “I also needed to use my heating element to melt down shavings from the Blood Blade. After that, I was able to further isolate the medium that bonded the shapeshifter blood to the specially
