think that’s a cloak and alarm combo.”
“Can you get us past it?”
“It’s not as complicated as the one upstairs. Give me a sec.”
Rather than hang over Rico’s shoulder, Paige walked to the side wall and shimmied past the beads. Her first cautious step was quickly followed by a hop that took her past the curtain and to the other half of the room. Walking toward the corner that Rico had originally spotted, she asked, “What’s over here? I can see where the symbols change again.”
Rico continued to work while referencing his notebook. “Looked like a larger cloak. Not like the others, though, so it’s probably not a door. Could just be hiding something else that isn’t supposed to be seen.” Glancing back at Cole, he added, “Maybe it’s an extra life?”
Squaring her shoulders to that corner, Paige rubbed her hands together anxiously. “Can I just reach in there?”
“As long as our homeowner wasn’t trying to hide a guard dog, poisonous plant, or open flame, you should be fine.”
She stood there for a few seconds before taking one of her batons from where she’d tucked it under an arm. Holding it in her right hand, she shrugged and muttered, “Why turn my arm into a lump if I can’t get some use out of it?” Before Cole could offer an opposing opinion on how a wounded arm would still be better than a bloody stump, she reached toward the corner until the baton, her hand, and even her arm up to her elbow disappeared.
Cole nearly walked straight through the hanging beads in his rush to get over to her. Stopping when his nose brushed against the curtain, he hurried around to the side wall and stepped through. “Are you all right?”
Scrunching her face and shifting her weight, Paige grunted, “Yeah. I feel something in here. It’s…moving.”
“Is it furry?” Rico asked.
Under any other circumstances, that may have seemed like an odd question. In a basement filled with mystical runes and a Dryad transporter, it didn’t raise an eyebrow.
“No,” Paige replied, “and it’s not biting me. Wait. It’s moving.” She pulled her hand back so it was once again visible. After holstering her baton, she reached out with both hands. A few inches from the wall, her arms disappeared.
“Got it!” Rico declared.
“Me too!”
Cole nearly threw his back out trying to look at both ends of the room in such quick succession. Rico stepped away from the wall as the runes re-formed into a single shape. The blocky markings sank in to create a solid arch the size and shape of a door. A second later the hinges, wooden slats, and brass knob could be seen.
Paige dug in with both feet and struggled as if something wasn’t letting her go. Before she was dragged into the hidden section of the room, Cole grabbed her by the waist and pulled. With a little effort, he and Paige hauled a naked woman tied to a chair through the field that had obscured her.
“Whoa,” Cole sighed.
The woman had been talking as she was dragged into sight, but her voice couldn’t be heard until she was clear of the runes. Her bare skin had a soft, Asian hue and was covered in dewy beads of sweat. Short, lustrous black hair framed a perfectly angled face. Cole couldn’t help but admire the smooth slope of her breasts or just how perfectly her inner thighs led up to—
“Hey!” Paige barked as she smacked him on the back of the head. “She’s another nymph. Walk it off.” Once Cole shook the haze from his skull, he nodded and gave her a tentative thumbs-up. Paige took a folding knife from her pocket and used it to cut the ropes binding the naked brunette. “Are you Jordan?”
“No,” she replied as she shook her head in a way that made her bobbed hairstyle waggle attractively. “I’m Elsie. Jordan’s in that corner over there.”
Cole found the cluster of runes in the adjacent corner and reached into them. He felt a crackle of energy at the plane where his hands disappeared, but otherwise it wasn’t much different than stretching out to grab a bottle of ketchup from across the table. His hands brushed against something soft and curvy, so he widened his grasp until he felt shoulders and arms. A bit lower and he felt coils of rope encircling a petite figure. He grabbed the rope, pulled, and produced another naked woman out of thin air. “If only it was that easy when I was in high school,” he mused.
This woman was slightly taller than the brunette, had darker skin and light brown hair streaked with chestnut highlights. Before he got too distracted by the rest of her, he turned to Paige and said, “Why don’t you untie this one and I’ll see what Rico’s doing.”
She rolled her eyes and flipped the knife in her hand as she walked passed him.
Rico’s door was ajar and the room beyond emanated a harsh, white light. Blocking most of the opening with his bulky frame, the big man said, “Let me guess. Both of them ladies in the chairs are nymphs and you ain’t seen either one of ’em before.”
“You got it. How’d you know the second part?”
“Each nymph hits you between the eyes like that the first time. It wears off the more you see ’em. Come take a look at what we got in here,” he added as he motioned for Cole to follow him into the next room. “It’ll sober you up better than a cold shower.”
The glare of fluorescent lights came from a set of buzzing overhead tubes encased in plastic. There were symbols etched into the institutional green walls, but no beaded curtains or naked damsels tied to furniture. The room was a little more than a quarter of the size of the temple, but felt much smaller because of everything stuffed into it. A long counter, sink, and several metal cabinets were set up along one side, and the other side was lined by trays of medical equipment stored in towers of racks. A narrow computer desk was set up at the back of the room, but there was no room for a chair due to the large operating table taking up most of the floor space. Even without the panels that extended from each side of the table, it would have been large enough for a professional wrestler to lay flat on his back. The panels extended the width of the table by a foot or so, which still didn’t seem like enough to hold the massive body of the creature sprawled on top of it.
The werewolf was in its upright form, so its legs were long enough to hang off the edge of the table. Both arms were draped over the sides, but the table’s extensions kept the hands dangling about an inch off the floor. Claws still coated in old, crusted blood sprouted from its fingers, and a thick tail drooped over one side like a length of knotted rags. As he approached the table, Cole could barely make out the runes engraved into the metal surface of the tabletop.
Its chest was cut down the middle in a Y incision and held open by shiny metal pins as thick as Cole’s fingers. The skin and several layers of muscle were peeled away to reveal a set of ribs that had been neatly sawed apart, allowing him to gaze down into the yawning cavity. Half of the innards were in the carcass and the rest was divided up among several containers kept within the cabinets Rico was examining.
Tugging at a flap of skin so he could twist it around and show him a patch of tan fur, Rico asked, “You recognize this one?”
Cole tried to steady himself with a deep breath, but only managed to pull in a lungful of air that stank equally of dead meat and industrial strength sanitizers. “Looks like a Full Blood,” he choked. “I didn’t think anyone could kill one of these.”
“This Lancroft guy may be an asshole, but he’s one hell of a Skinner.”
As horrible as the sight was, Cole couldn’t take his eyes away from it. Despite looking as if it had been blown apart by a hand grenade, everything around the carcass was pristine. Not one drop of blood had been spilled onto the dry concrete floor, which Cole now saw bore runes that were mostly filled with dust. Not one stray bit of fur could be found on the table or any of the cabinets. If the sink was used recently, it had been vigorously cleaned. He kept moving along the edge of the table, surveying the body of one of the most fearsome animals ever created. After seeing one Full Blood shake off fully automatic rifle fire and another tear his way through an entire city on a whim, it hardly seemed fair for any human to get close enough to poke one in the face without consequence. “How fresh is this thing?”
“I can smell formaldehyde,” Rico grunted as he knelt to get a better look at some of the machinery lined up against the wall. “And most of these units down here could chill this whole room down plenty low enough to keep meat fresh. Could be this Lancroft guy found it in a forest somewhere after it died of old age. As for how long it’s been here, I couldn’t tell ya. You’re good with computers, right? How about you hack into that one and see if there are any records. If this guy is any kind of Skinner at all, he’s keeping a journal.” Snapping his eyes toward Cole as if
