early teens locked eyes with her and snapped his neck to one side. What had started as some kind of fit quickly turned into something much worse as the kid violently twisted his head as far as it would go. Paige pulled the door open and bolted outside just in time to hear the loud crunch as the kid’s spine gave way.
The sight of the teen standing there with his head dangling from atop its severed spine was enough to freeze Paige in her tracks. His eyes still blinked and his mouth still moved as he spoke into her brain and ears at the same time.
“I can go anywhere I want now,” he said. “Dr. Lancroft showed me how.”
Without realizing it, Paige angled her head in the same direction as the kid’s. “Henry? Is that really you?”
Although he could talk, the teen couldn’t nod. He didn’t need to. “The fire ain’t in you, like it is in a lot of folks.”
“What fire?”
“Pestilence.”
“Are you doing this to all these people?” she asked.
“Let them go,” Paige said as Ned’s feet shuffled across the porch behind her. “Henry, let them go or you’ll never sit in your room again. Remember your corner at Lancroft Re—”
“Shut yer mouth, bitch! I got somethin’ to stick inityoufilthywhore!”
But Paige wasn’t about to be frightened by words, whether they were in her brain or in her ears. When the kid took a step toward her, her right hand reflexively drew the club from that boot and willed it to take the only form she could manage. Although still crude in appearance, the machete’s edge was more than sharp enough to get the job done. “You don’t like hearing about the reformatory?”
Henry’s wild, twitching eyes snapped within the boy’s sockets as the rest of the muddy neighbors swayed in the stagnant humidity of a calm St. Louis night.
“Or is it Lancroft?” Ned asked. Henry’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open a little more. “Looks that way. You don’t like hearing the proper name of that reformatory. Did you ever meet Lancroft?”
“He will heap disasters upon you,” the boy said. His mind, however, spewed the words,
“You know your scripture,” Ned replied.
“Then he should also know his history,” Paige snapped. “I gutted you once, Henry, but you were too stupid to let it end there. No other Full Bloods are here to help you this time. Is that why the big bad Mind Singer has to crawl around in other people’s heads now? You’re too afraid to face me alone?”
“I ain’t alone no more,” Henry croaked through the teen’s ravaged windpipe. “I can be anywhere I want.”
“Then come and get me,” Paige said. “Wherever that ugly Full Blood body of yours is, climb back into it and rip me to shreds.”
The teen’s face became tranquil, and one by one the muddy neighbors started to drop. “It don’t got to be so bad,” he said. “These folks ain’t got to hurt no more. They just been put out to clean up the leeches and wolves and such.”
Ned raced to the old woman who’d been clawing at his window and caught her before she hit the ground. She coughed up more of the mud but didn’t have any trouble breathing. Within seconds she and most of the other neighbors were wiping their mouths and looking around in growing confusion.
“See? Doc Lancroft is a good man,” Henry said. “He sent Pestilence to devour the wretches and kill them bloodsucking leeches.”
“Lancroft is dead,” Ned said while tending to the old woman.
Paige wanted to help the others who’d awakened from their muddy sleepwalk, but they were getting up on their own. “Jonah Lancroft made Pestilence? Was that when you were in the reformatory?”
Henry backed onto the curb as a police cruiser rounded the corner from Academy Avenue onto Kensington. Someone must have seen the strange assault on Ned’s house or gotten spooked by the swaying crowd because the cruiser hit its flashing lights as it drew closer.
“Lancroft is dead,” Paige insisted. “He was a Skinner like us. Whatever he did, it’s over now. Whatever you’re doing to these people, stop it.”
“I am the teeth of beasts,” Henry declared, “with the poison of serpents in the dust.”
And when the police cruiser rolled up to Ned’s house, the teen fell backward into the street. His eyes clouded over in the short time it took him to fall, and when his body thumped against the car, his head twisted around as the rest of him rolled across the hood like the limp, abandoned vessel it was. Standing there gripping her poorly formed machete in an aching fist, watching that kid hit the street in a heap of tangled limbs, Paige had never felt more useless.
Ned tossed his gun into the bushes in front of his house, took Paige’s weapon from her and threw it in next while the cop was examining the teen with the broken neck lying near his front tire. In the minutes another police cruiser showed up and was quickly followed by an ambulance.
Statements were taken, questions were asked, hours passed, but the only real incident to be reported was the boy who’d been pronounced dead after throwing himself in front of a moving police car. Even though the rest of the neighbors seemed fine, the paramedics had no trouble spotting the grime on their faces. Talk of delirium stemming from the Mud Flu circulated as a possible explanation for the night’s events. All of the neighbors were taken to the hospital, and Ned and Paige were encouraged to do the same.
“Can’t be too careful,” one of the paramedics told her.
“Yeah,” Paige said. “Thanks for the advice.” Her eyes remained locked on the first cop, who was still talking to a fellow officer, giving an impassioned statement while gesturing at the mangled front end of his car.
Knowing Paige well enough to read her mind without any supernatural tricks, Ned wrapped an arm around her and led her back to the house. “You can’t tell them what happened,” he whispered.
“But he didn’t kill anyone. He’ll have to live with thinking he broke that kid’s neck.”
“Then we’ll have to make sure this gets balanced out in the end. It’s what we do, Paige. Little lies need to be told and smaller sufferings need to be felt to keep the bigger ones from causing more damage.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“Tough,” Ned snapped. “It’s been a long day and that’s the best I could come up with. Answer your phone.”
“What?”
“Your phone’s ringing. Answer it.”
After digging the phone from her pocket, she jammed her finger against the glowing green button. “What is it?”
Stanley Velasco’s voice dripped with self-satisfaction as he said, “Come and get ’em.”
Chapter 16
Cole emerged from the Cahokia Police Department, turned around and then looked at the building where he’d spent the better part of the last day. It was a little structure that barely seemed large enough to hold the cell, not to mention the officers guarding it.
Rico, on the other hand, wasn’t about to look back. “Another notch on my belt,” he said as he strode toward Paige. She tossed him the keys to the nearby SUV, but that didn’t stop him from lifting her off the ground in a bear hug. “I knew you’d sniff us out, Bloodhound. That’s what you do!”
“You know what else I do? Kick the hell out of big hairy creeps who try to throw me around.”
Rico set her down and examined the keys she’d thrown him. “What’s this?”
“Your ride home. Me and Cole are taking a cab.”
“You sure?”
She nodded and then looked Cole up and down. “Anyone try to molest you, pretty boy?”
“It was just a holding cell. No biggie,” he replied with strained nonchalance while running his hands over the top of a head that was greasy on the outside and sore on the inside. With every breath of fresh air he pulled in, the
