slow lovin’ compared to how someone is made into a Half Breed. First they’ve got to be attacked and torn up almost to the point of dying. If they survive that, they get to feel all their bones snap as they take their new form. I don’t even want to know what it feels like to have all their muscles unstrung and knotted around the bones that are left. Werewolves are more than supernatural. They’re some kind of horrible miracle.”
Thanks to the loud music blaring through the speakers inside the place, Paige’s words didn’t carry much farther than a few feet. Apart from the guy who’d taken their order and the tall woman refilling supplies behind the counter, there were only two other people eating at the far end of the room beneath a flat screen TV suspended from the ceiling. Nobody seemed to have heard anything worthy of their attention. Cole envied them.
Both of their faces brightened when the guy behind the counter called Paige’s name. Cole’s sausage was served on a huge roll, covered with peppers. Paige’s Fridge overshadowed his meal in every way.
“Good Lord,” he gasped when he got a look at the monstrosity she was about to consume.
The Fridge needed to be served on a larger roll, since the Italian sausage was covered by a thick layer of shaved Italian beef. On top of that was a mess of peppers that practically sent a wave of heat through the air. The whole thing had been dipped into an au jus sauce that dribbled from the soaked-through bread when she picked it up.
“Good Lord is right,” Paige said. She turned her head sideways, opened wide, and bit off a good chunk of the upper layer of shaved beef and peppers. She said something after that, but only a few sloppy syllables made it through her food. Having barely swallowed that, she took a bite of the lower sausage portion. If she’d looked happy before, the sip of strawberry pop she took to wash it all down nearly pushed her straight into the orgasmic range.
“You like that Fridge?” the guy behind the counter asked.
Paige turned and threw a few unintelligible words his way before she swallowed and wiped her mouth. “You’re an artist! I’ve never had one of these outside of Chicago.”
“Neither have I. That’s why I opened this place. What about you, guy? How’s that Butkus treatin’ ya?”
Cole took a bite that was equal parts fire and flavor. “Damn! That’s…” His hands worked on their own to snag a few fries and stuff them into his mouth. They were just the right kind of greasy without being obnoxiously so. “These are…
The guy behind the counter nodded and gave them a thumbs-up. “Glad to hear it.” Then he turned and started cleaning off his grill.
For the next few minutes Cole and Paige just sat and ate. He made it halfway through his meal before his stomach burned with a heat that felt warm and friendly without showing any signs of letting up. It was perfect.
“Youff neffer had one of dees before?” Paige asked through enough food to stop a weaker heart.
“No, but I’ll be getting one before we leave town. Now I see why you get so pissed off when people screw up Chicago hot dogs.”
“It’s messing wiff pure beauty,” she said, accenting those last three words with a beefy spray.
They finished their meal a bit too quickly and headed for the door.
“I want to get a few more dogs for the road,” Cole said, “but we probably won’t be on the road for a while.”
“We’re leaving right now, but we’re not getting any more to eat. You need to be able to move.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you ate enough already,” she said while cheerily patting Cole’s gut. “Any more and I’ll be able to rub your belly to make a wish.”
“No, I mean about being on the road. Rosetta still needs to make her calls.”
“So we’ll leave them alone for a few hours,” Paige said. “They need to gather the rest of their team, which gives us enough time to zip out to Valparaiso and have a look around.”
Cole knew better than to argue with her, so he piled into the car and hung on as she drove for the interstate like a winged rodent fleeing the proverbial home of the damned.
“If we can do this on our own, why did we even bother those MEG guys?” he asked.
Paige grabbed the directions he had written down when he looked up Omaha and Valparaiso on the Internet during the drive from KC. Steering onto the ramp for southbound I-680, she replied, “We’ll see if we can speed things up a bit for our new friends. That’s all.”
Cole had a few other questions, but they wound up lodged in the back of his throat after Paige slammed her foot against the gas pedal. Thanks to her maniacal disregard for road safety and the general flatness of Nebraska, she was able to spot speed traps from miles away and rip across the distances in between them. They made the trip in less time than the website had estimated, which put them in Valparaiso at about four-thirty.
Once there, she slowed down and asked, “You feel that? Mongrels are tricky little buggers. They’re shapeshifters, but not like Full Bloods or Half Breeds, so we can’t sense them like we can a real werewolf. What we can feel doesn’t change much if a Mongrel is a block away or right in front of you. It’s kind of like the heat you get from a Half Breed, but deeper down.” Flexing her hands, she added, “Sort of…arthritis with a purpose.”
That analogy didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but thinking about it that way, Cole could feel something flowing from his shoulders down to his elbows that was more focused than the ache he always got after sitting too long at his keyboard. “The houses are supposed to be down this street a little further.”
Paige found a place to park along the street and killed the engine. Reaching down to grab one of the levers near her left leg, she popped the trunk and said, “Get that trash bag from the Blood Parlor.”
“That’s still in there?”
“Yeah. Turns out the greasy invisible stuff lasts longer than I thought. It’s not as strong as it used to be, but it should be enough to do the trick.”
Rather than ask her what she had in mind, he did as he was told and waited to be surprised. Paige took the bag, pulled out the crumpled hooded sweatshirt and slipped it on. The garment smelled like sweaty glue, but the sun was just low enough in the sky to work in her favor. When bright rays hit the greasy fabric, they were bent enough to make her shimmer in a few spots.
“How do I look?” she asked.
“Like a crazy lady in an old sweatshirt.”
Pulling the hood down and stretching it to cover her face, Paige vigorously rubbed and pushed the hood back into its spot on the top of her head. “What about now?
There must have been more of the greasy stuff in the fleece lining, because Paige’s features were all but erased. “Not invisible, but kind of like those drunks who get their faces blurred out on cop shows.”
“Good enough. Get in the car and drive down to the corner. I’ll be there in a few.”
Cole watched her dash down the sidewalk toward a nearby row of houses. The street was mostly empty, with the exception of a few kids playing in a yard and a couple of cars rounding the opposite corner. Spotting Paige from a distance, he could see a few more spots where the Mongrel grease was kicking in again. She was a long way from invisible, but the sunlight curled around her just enough to make a few sections of her back and side fade away.
A lot more cars were at the next intersection, probably because of the bank and Dairy Queen located there. Braking at a stop sign, Cole idled for a full minute without anyone else pulling up behind him. When he got a curious look from a kid on a bike, he waved.
Then something tapped against the window behind him and he turned to find a blurry sweatshirt racing around the back of the car. By the time he shifted toward the passenger side, that door was pulled open and a mass of stinking cotton slapped against the side of his face.
“Keep going,” Paige said after she’d tossed the sweatshirt toward the backseat. “Don’t speed, but just get moving.”
“What happened? Is anyone chasing you?”
“Nobody’s chasing me, but I did get a look at those houses from Rico’s report. Even better, people in those houses got a look at me.”
Chapter 24
