Teeth of Beasts

table. “Internet rumors are like little bits of leaves and dirt on top of a pool,” he said. “They clump together and look really bad, but then they all drift apart and become nothing. Are those the potato chips you talked about?” The basket on the table was filled with thin, darkened slices of potato that still glistened with hot grease. He snagged one, popped it into his mouth and said, “Damn, those are good.”

“New guy’s right,” Rico said as he took a handful of chips and washed them down with some Guinness. “I’ve seen stuff about KC and Janesville on the Net, pictures on websites, even spots on the news, but it’s all just the same half-assed explanations. Diseased dogs, exotic pets, that kind of thing.”

“Policemen were killed. You think they’ll let this just go away?”

“We were there, Ned,” Paige assured him. “We covered our tracks as best we could, and the carcasses that were left behind won’t be any help to anyone. Whatever tests are done on them will just cause a whole lot of heads to be scratched.”

“You did what you could?” Ned groused. He took some chips, ate them, and clumsily poured some beer into his glass. “Does that include handing an entire city over to the Mongrels? Or perhaps you wanted to hand it over to the Nymar just like you did with Chicago?”

“Screw you, Ned,” Paige said.

“Hey now,” Rico warned. “Let’s keep this friendly.”

Ned waved off everyone else at the table and drank his beer. He couldn’t seem to get enough down to blunt his senses, so he grabbed the pitcher to refill his glass. “City’s been quiet for years but now we got Mongrels in the Central West End and Nymar just across the river. What’s next, huh?”

Rico put an elbow on the table, leaned forward and dropped the tip of his finger between the beer pitcher and the chips to punctuate his next statement. “Those Mongrels were testing us. That’s all that was.”

“How do you know?” Ned asked.

“We can have all the technology we want, but humans are still part of nature’s system,” Rico explained. “Things may have been fucked up between us, the Nymar, and the shapeshifters, but that’s pretty much the way it’s been for a real long time. All the shit that’s been happening lately has fucked things up a whole different way. Janesville and KC threw the whole system out of whack. Bloodhound knows what I’m talkin’ about.”

Having made an island of ketchup on the edge of a potato chip continent, Paige occupied herself by dipping, eating, and subsequently cleaning off her chin. “You go on ahead,” she said while spraying some chewed bits into the air. “Very eloquent.”

Rico nodded in appreciation of the backhanded compliment. “The Full Bloods have been around for centuries. We may not feel it all the time,” he said while holding up a palm to show enough scar tissue to divvy up between a dozen cage fighters, “but you can bet that everything else out there has a real good idea the big boys are out and about.”

“We’ve got a pretty good idea where the Full Bloods are,” Ned said.

“Yeah, but there’s a big difference between being pretty sure I got a gun under my jacket.” Grabbing hold of his jacket as if he meant to open it and flash his goods to the entire bar, Rico raised an eyebrow and added, “And then there’s being really sure.”

Rico’s jacket was a mix of some sort of heavy canvas stitched to large strips of leather that were tanned and treated to the point of being nearly black. A few grommets were positioned on his shoulders and under his arms, and thin leather cords laced up both sides. When he’d first seen the garment, Cole wrote it off as a biker’s jacket. Up close and in better light, however, the leather strips had a texture that reminded him of the Half Breed skins Paige used as protective lining for her body armor rigs.

When the heavy material rustled against the .45, Ned looked at him and hissed, “Don’t create another scene!”

“Throttle back, Ned,” Rico said as he let his jacket fall back into place. “Just makin’ a point.” He snatched some more chips, shoved them into his mouth, smearing grease into the gray stubble on his chin, and washed it all down with half a mug of Guinness. “What I’m sayin’ is that these Mongrels and whatever else is out there can probably feel the Full Bloods the same way a buncha deer know the wolves are roaming the woods. Now, according to Paige, we’re down a few Full Bloods.”

When Ned glanced over to her, Paige nodded. “One was taken down in KC and we don’t know where Henry is.”

“Liam,” Cole said as a way to interject something useful into the mix. “The Full Blood from KC was named Liam.”

“And Henry is the Full Blood that was tainted by the Nymar?” Ned asked.

“That’s right,” Paige replied. “We haven’t heard from him since Wisconsin.”

“You mean the Janesville Massacre?” the old man sneered.

“That’s just what some of the tabloids were calling it,” Cole said. “Some news channels did a bunch of stories about it for a while, but the case has been closed. The cops saw enough Nymar waving their guns around for the whole thing to be written off as some sort of gang fight or drug deal gone wrong.”

“And I haven’t heard about it for months,” Rico said. “That’s because people like to sweep their garbage where they can’t see it and go about their day like there ain’t nothin’ wrong. Animals ain’t like that. They know when something’s wrong with the natural order, and right now there’s a big vacancy at the top of the food chain. When that happens, all the residents of the lower rungs climb up to fill it. Ain’t that right, Bloodhound?”

Now fully absorbed in her chips, Paige only nodded.

“All the Mongrels are sniffing around across the country, poking their heads out to make sure there’s not a Full Blood around to bite it off,” Rico continued as he ticked his points off on his fingers. “I’ve heard from a bunch of places that Nymar are getting braver too. Even little rodents that are only spotted every now and then when they pick off a dog or slaughter some cattle are overstepping their bounds.”

“I was nearly killed by a Chupacabra,” Cole offered.

Rico pointed at him and said, “I wouldn’t exactly brag about that, but it proves my point.” Then he shifted his focus back to Ned. “One Full Blood can stake out a territory that may cover a third of this country. They’re powerful enough to enforce their claim and fast enough to patrol it. Take even one out of the mix and it throws things off, just like when too many wolves are killed in a patch of forest. All the other animals spread out and make themselves comfortable. In our case, you get Mongrels challenging us in the open. I know you’ve been content to sit back and keep the peace ever since we took St. Louis for ourselves, but we can’t do that anymore. If anything comes sniffing around looking for a new territory to claim, we gotta kick its teeth in.”

“Law of the jungle,” Cole said as he carefully selected the burnt chips from the basket.

“Damn right,” Rico said while leaning back into his seat. “Law of the jungle.”

Ned pulled in a deep breath and let it seep out through his nostrils. He drank some beer, ate some chips, and then looked over at Paige.

“And before you come down too hard on us for stirring up those Mongrels,” she said, “you should know that their problem wasn’t with us. It’s with you.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah!” Cole said. “They told us…what was it?”

Paige seemed only too happy to reply. “The Mongrels told us to tell the old man that they know what he’s doing and that your tricks will only get more humans killed.”

“Tricks?” Ned snapped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Not me,” Paige said. “Them. That’s the message the Mongrels gave us.”

“And was the leader a tall woman who looked like a panther?”

“I thought she was more of a leopard,” Cole replied, “but yeah. She had some guy with her who changed into something that had been eating out of garbage cans most of its life.”

“The woman’s name is Malia,” Ned said. “And the mangy one is Allen. Those two have stayed mostly out of sight and haven’t been a problem.”

“Until now,” Rico said. “When I showed up, things were about to get pretty damn problematic.”

“Because you provoked them!”

“What could they be talking about?” Paige asked in a softer tone. “Could it have anything to do with something called Pestilence?”

She laid out the details of Peter Walsh’s visit to Rasa Hill and didn’t pause until the waitress came by to refill their drinks. By the time she relayed everything Daniels had said, the waitress was returning with the rest of their