into his arms and pushed him face-first into the smoky barrier.
Instead of a quick, powerful jolt, Henry was given a prolonged taste of the runes’ power. The kid kicked and fought to get away, but Cole held him in place. Although his body didn’t show the first hint of a wound, whatever was inside the boy rattled as if it was being shoved into an electric fence. A few more seconds of that and the orbs flew from the human shell. This time they sped in different directions, causing a single sigh to emerge from every one of the Mud People. The ones that had been on their feet collapsed. The boy, as well as the people who’d been crawling on all fours, merely settled on the ground as if they’d decided to take a nap.
The instant the smoky barrier dissipated, Paige grabbed Cole’s arm and pulled him into the house.
Rico stood by a newly revealed door and declared, “I bet you’ll
Looking down to the kid on the porch, Cole asked, “What about him?”
“He’s out,” Rico said. “Just like the rest of them.”
“For how long?”
“Hopefully long enough for us to see what’s in this place that’s valuable enough to be so heavily protected.” With that, Rico opened the simple wooden door he’d worked so hard to uncover.
Paige gave Cole a quick once-over. “Are you okay or do you need a minute?”
“I’ll be fine,” he replied. The serum in his blood gave him a slight chill, but nothing was broken. “How long do you think we have until the cops arrive this time?”
“I’d say we’re on our own here,” Daniels replied as he stepped forward with his cases clutched in his arms and hanging from straps off his shoulders. “Given the number of people that got here on such short notice, it seems a safe bet that this whole neighborhood is infected. Maybe the whole city.”
Nodding as he walked toward Rico’s door, Cole said, “Good. I’ve had my fill of cops for a while.”
Reaching for the tattoo machine, Daniels feebly asked, “Would you like a touch-up?”
Less than half of the Pac-Man design had faded, so Cole said, “No, but thanks.”
“I brought a bunch of healing serum. I’ll inject as many of those folks as I can.”
“You do that.”
No matter how suspicious he was of the Nymar or how angry he’d been a few minutes ago, Cole found it difficult to hang on to all of that when he watched Daniels hurry outside to tend to the sleeping Mud People. He wanted to apologize to the squirrelly Nymar, but also knew what it was like to be hunted by things several rungs higher on the food chain. Daniels didn’t need to be coddled. If anything, he needed to keep scurrying and twitching at every sound. Those were survival instincts in motion, and Cole wasn’t about to dull them by trying to make nice. Suddenly, Paige’s cruel sparring sessions made a whole lot of sense.
On the other side of the hidden door was a stairway leading down to a cramped room that felt like it had been carved from one massive block of subterranean concrete. The only things on the walls were thin cracks and cobwebs lit by a single bulb encased in a recessed metal cage. One door led out of the room, and Rico stopped before pushing it open. “These drops wouldn’t have worn off already, right?” he asked.
“They lasted a few hours before,” Paige replied as she looked around. “I just don’t think there’s anything around here to see. What about you Cole?”
“Feels like I’m in a tomb. Could we just move on?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Rico grunted as he walked into the next room.
That room was larger than the one at the bottom of the stairwell and was cut from the same cracked cement. Cole considered himself slightly taller than average, but he swore the top of his head was close to brushing against the thick wooden beams crossing the ceiling. A few small rectangular windows were boarded up along the upper portion of the wall, which he assumed opened to ground level at the base of the house. Once the smell of blood and dead meat hit him, he wished all of those windows were open.
Along both sides of the room were long workbenches where carcasses of Half Breeds, Mongrels, and a few smaller creatures in various stages of decomposition were being held by expertly fashioned wooden racks. From what he could tell, the fluids from the bodies had been drained into old baby food jars that were stacked next to a large tool chest in a corner. The chest was as tall as the workbenches, and when Cole pulled open one of its thin drawers, he found teeth organized by size in the spots where drill bits or socket wrenches should have been.
Moving along the other side of the room, Paige examined a set of wire racks bolted to the walls. Everything from tongs, saws, hammers, and drills hung above each bench. If any equipment was missing, its spot was marked by an outline traced on the wall. “Holy crap,” she said as she touched the crude shape of a claw hammer within the rack that was its home. “If hell had a version of my dad’s garage, this would be it.”
Rico lingered in front of a metal locker set up near another door at the far end of the room. The tall, narrow cabinet opened to reveal a collection of weapons including pikes, stakes, and even a small pitchfork. All were carved from similar kinds of wood and each weapon’s handle was adorned with short, bloodied thorns. “Whoever this guy is, he’s been a Skinner for a hell of a long time.”
“The only name we’ve heard is Jonah Lancroft,” Cole said. “Why can’t you believe that’s the man we’ve been after?”
“Because Lancroft was a Skinner from the 1700s. We’re lucky if we can make it through our fifties. Three hundred years is a bit of a—” Rico’s next words caught in his throat. He reached into the locker, past the pitchfork, and grabbed a cane with a sharpened end and spikes along the handle. “Son of a bitch,” he snarled.
“Is that Ned’s?” Cole asked.
Rico held the cane so he could get a closer look at the handle. “Yeah. It’s his. He put notches on here for every Half Breed den he cleared out. All forty-nine of ’em.”
There were plenty of notches on the handle, but Cole didn’t need to count them. Paige and Rico had known Ned a lot longer and they recognized the cane all too well.
Something rushed through the next room that sounded as if it had brushed all four walls along the way. A light flickered beneath the thick wooden door to reflect off the metal locker with a soft green glow. Rico set the cane down and grabbed the door handle while drawing a .45 from its holster. Cole and Paige gathered around Rico and nodded for him to open the door. He did, then stepped away so as not to obstruct either of his partners.
If there were lights in the next room, the Skinners didn’t need them. The glow given off by the Dryad temple provided more than enough illumination for them. Cole stepped into the room behind Paige. Rico brought up the rear and whispered, “I’ll be damned. This place sure looks familiar.”
The room was close to triple the size of the one at Bunn’s Lounge, but every other detail, from the engravings to the texture of the walls, was identical. Cole approached the still swaying beads and stretched a hand out to feel the crackle of residual energy against his fingertips. The symbols on the walls pulsed with a power that matched the ones Tristan had drawn, but three of the four corners were obscured by something he’d mistaken for shadow. On second glance he picked out the traces of crimson within the black grime hanging in the air. “A Skinner’s been through here.”
“Yeah,” Rico replied as he waved his fingers through the gritty mist. “And one’s been writing on the walls.” He walked toward one of the corners in the back of the room where the symbols shifted to a more angular script.
Paige made a sharp hissing sound that stopped him in his tracks just before he crossed the beads hanging from the ceiling. “They’re still crackling,” she warned. “You sure you want to go through those?”
“Good point. I’ll cross at the wall. Maybe it’s safer if the beads ain’t on both sides.” After pushing aside some of the hanging strands, Rico slid his shoulder against the wall and moved forward. Once he was past the curtain, he asked, “What have you got over there, Cole?”
“A perfect spot to hide some collectibles.”
“What?”
Before Rico could scoff, Paige said, “I know this sounds dumb now, but let him run with it.”
Cole grinned and approached the murky spot in the corner on his side of the beads. Even though he couldn’t read the Dryad script or Skinner runes, he’d seen enough of them both to tell that both were on that wall. “In games that have exploration levels, you should always look back to make sure you haven’t missed any nooks or crannies where something cool might be hidden. If you’re ever going to find a bunch of extra ammo, new weapons, or collectible items, you’ll find them in places that are meant to be overlooked.” Having traced the shape of a door framed in Skinner runes mingled within the Dryad script, Cole triumphantly added, “Like this one right here.”
Rico came over and studied the wall. With so much script flowing in so many different directions, it was easy for the eye to get lost. “Hey, you’re right,” he said while tentatively brushing his fingertips over certain symbols. “I
