“Yeah. It really does.”
Cole awoke suddenly as memories of blood, fangs, and claws assaulted his brain. The quick flashes were like a slap on the inside of his face and brought his head straight up. Beside him, Paige shifted and rolled onto her back, and he saw that she’d gotten dressed while he was asleep. The room was still lit by the cheap fixture hanging near the bed, and her eyes clenched shut reflexively against the glare. The prospect of drifting back to sleep was an inviting one, but his system was already moving too fast for that to happen.
Of course, there was some help nearby.
The little syringe was on the bedside table near the clunky old phone. Cole reached for it and justified its use with ease. Paige knew best, and she’d said he could have one more dose. Then again, there wasn’t much call for it any longer. He was stiff and sore, but those sensations had soaked into his body like a coat of black and blue paint. When he flexed his leg, he resented feeling nothing more than the first aid glue tugging at his skin. The serum had already done its job. There was no good reason to have any more.
Still, if he closed his eyes, he could vividly remember the cool flow of the injection as the serum dimmed his lights while the healing took place. He imagined his senses would be dulled even more if he took the serum now. Without allotting too much of it to a wound, he could just lay back and drift away.
“Jesus,” he sighed as he set the syringe down.
The thought that he’d almost injected a serum mixed with an extract from Nymar blood just to get some sleep made him sick. Rather than dwell on it, he put the syringe back into Paige’s kit and rubbed his face. Not only was he covered in a crust of dirt, grime, sweat, and blood, but his senses were sharp enough to feel every last bit of it. Since he knew that getting back to sleep right away was an impossibility, he grabbed some spare clothes from his bag and took a shower.
Water flowed over his body in an uneven stream. The pressure was marginal, the massager setting didn’t work, and the temperature never strayed far from the lukewarm range, but just getting rid of all that filth made him feel like a new man. He toweled off, threw on some clothes that were somewhat cleaner than the ones he’d left behind, and walked back to the bed. Paige had curled into a ball and looked too comfortable to be disturbed.
He went to his phone and found a text message waiting for him. It was from MEG, and all it said was: CALL WHEN YOU GET A CHANCE. He went to the window to get a stronger signal, tapped the icon to dial the callback number, and waited through a few rings.
“Yeah?” Stu grunted.
“Is that how you answer the official MEG Branch 40 line?” Cole asked.
“It is when it’s just past four in the morning.”
“I got your message. What’s up?”
He couldn’t be sure, but Cole swore he heard a keyboard get kicked around just before an empty soda can rattled against the floor. “Have you checked any news sites?” Stu breathlessly asked. “Or watched TV? Turned on a radio?”
Cole answered, “No,” and was amazed by it. After spending so many years with a computer monitor in front of him, he’d always been connected to current events. Thanks to the little notes that popped up in the corner of his screen, he’d also known when a celebrity had a baby or which annoying asshole got voted off of which reality show.
“For being media stars, you guys are so out of touch,” Stu mused.
“Hold on, I’ll switch you to speaker.” With that, Cole tapped a few buttons and opened the Internet browser on his phone. He scrolled down a little to find the local headlines and saw no fewer than three different stories ranging from LOCALS KILLED BY ROAMING PIT BULLS to FIREFIGHTERS MAKE GRISLY DISCOVERY AT CAMPGROUND.
“Did you see the one about the suspected ritualistic slayings?” Stu asked. “That’s my favorite. What the hell did you stir up over there?”
“It’s been a busy night,” Cole said. When Paige rolled onto her side, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Isn’t there some sort of damage control for something like this?”
“There’s never been anything like this. At least, not when I’ve been around to see it. A lot of pictures are making the rounds online, but so far there’s just as many people saying they’re fakes as there are who think the world’s coming to an end.”
Cole had just tapped to that section of the article. It took a few seconds to receive the pictures, but there were plenty to be found. Frame upon frame, collected from cell phones to pocket cameras, showed very blurry creatures moving like a swarm across streets and over open fields. For once, he was grateful the Half Breeds could run so fast. “I just washed the stink off and there’s already pictures on the Internet,” he muttered.
“I know. One time I posted a request for strategy on a
“I knew you cheated on our death matches.”
“Not cheating. Strategy.”
“Have you posted any of these pics on the MEG site?” Cole asked.
“I’m…uhhh…not in control of everything that goes up on the site,” Stu fumbled.
“What about debunking?”
His laughter sounded almost as hesitant as his reply to the last question. “I suppose we could try to shoot a few holes in this stuff, but that might only draw more attention to it. Maybe we should just leave it alone. Do you know how many pictures of the Loch Ness monster were proven to be genuine? We’ve posted plenty of disembodied voices and footage of genuine spiritual activity. You’d think that would be considered pretty important, huh? Life after death and all that? Other planes of existence. Nah. Most folks just go on with what they know and ol’ Nessie drifts back down to the bottom of the lake.”
Cole had stopped listening. While flipping through the pictures from Kansas City, he picked out a few favorites. “How much longer will you be there?”
“Just another hour. I can barely stay awake as is. Abby will be here soon, though.”
“Does she like debunking?”
“Almost a little too much.”
“Good,” Cole said. “Then she’ll love what I’ll be sending your way.”
Chapter 20
It was a nice house built on a quiet block in Overland Park, which was a pretty nice suburb of Kansas City. The neighborhood slept as the sun crested the horizon and paperboys made their deliveries. When one copy of the
A man in a cheap suit walked down the sidewalk with his hands stuffed into his pockets. His eyes slowly absorbed everything around him and his nostrils flared as he got closer to the house with the door that was ajar. Upon reaching the porch, he sniffed the air, shook his head, scooped up the paper, and walked inside.
The entry was very tidy, apart from a shattered coffee mug on the floor of the entry way and streaks of blood smeared on the tile. More blood led up a carpeted staircase to the second floor, where the coppery smell was even worse. A television was on up there, but played the music from a DVD menu that hit the end of its loop and began again. Mr. Burkis tightened his grip on the newspaper he’d brought in from the front step and scowled at the upper end of the staircase. The corner of one nostril twitched and his eyes snapped toward the source of the new scent he’d picked up beneath the odor of not-so-fresh kills. Someone had just opened a fresh can of coffee.
“’Morning, Randolph,” chimed a voice from the kitchen.
Burkis seemed mildly uncomfortable to hear that name, but didn’t refute it. He stepped over a hutch that had been knocked over, crushing some of the fine china that had spilled from it as he walked into a rustic dining room. A mess of splintered chairs and broken glass lay scattered near an upended, solid oak table. A chunk of the kitchen counter had been broken off, leaving the rest of the adjoining room mostly intact. A skinny man dressed in a baggy
