been lodged and crushed it as if it had been whittled out of balsa wood. Blood sprayed from his severed artery, but was quickly stanched by the healing serum flowing through his body. “You’ll never be true Skinners,” he croaked as he tore his jacket open to fumble for a pendant that hung around his neck and under his shirt, “but perhaps you’ll be remembered as such when you’re found here with me.”
The little box in Lancroft’s hand looked like a remote car door lock. Cole felt the bottom fall out of his stomach as he thought about the collapsed pile of rubble that had once been Lancroft Reformatory. Before this place might be buried in a similar manner, Cole drove his spear straight through the old man’s wrist and into his chest. Between the debilitating effects of the ink, the loss of blood, and two such grievous wounds, Lancroft crumpled. His hand was pinned and not functioning well enough to push either of the buttons on the black box. Cole leaned on the spear, twisted it, and pulled it out. With his last spark of life, Lancroft reached for the remote hanging around his neck.
Paige bent down and calmly took it from him.
“Uh…guys?” Daniels called from the top of the stairs. “Are you all right?”
When she saw Cole looking at her with that same question written across his dirty face, she rushed to press her body and lips against his. He was surprised at first, but quickly wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet.
“My friend,” she whispered, “you won’t be able to walk straight for a month after I get through with you.”
“Yeah, Daniels!” Cole shouted. “We’re fine. Just give us a minute!”
“You don’t have a minute,” the Nymar replied. “Cops are pulling up to the house, but there’s a bridge ready for us.”
Paige tensed and bumped her forehead against Cole’s chest. “Shit.” After taking a moment, she marched down the hall, up the stairs, and straight through the examination room. “How’s Rico?”
“Already through. He didn’t want to leave you, but I pushed him.”
“Damn,” Cole chuckled. “I wish I could’ve seen that.”
The beaded curtain was alive with crackling energy. “You guys go ahead,” Paige told them. “I’ll be right there.”
Instead of heroically refusing the offer to leave her behind, Daniels scurried past them both and disappeared through the beads. Cole didn’t go anywhere.
Paige jogged through the workshop and ran up to the first floor, and her partner followed. Even before they got to the upper door, he could hear sirens outside the house. “We’re not gonna make it,” he warned.
“Doesn’t matter if we do or don’t.” Upon stepping through the doorway, Paige jabbed a finger at him and said, “Stay right here and don’t make a sound.” She then went to a cluster of runes on the wall near the stairway and moved her hand slowly over the blocky symbols.
The street outside was illuminated by headlights and filled with dozens of dirty, confused people. From what he could see, the former Mud People were barely aware of where they were. “Might want to hurry it up,” he urged.
Once she picked out the symbols Rico had toiled over upon their arrival, Paige traced some of them with her fingertips. Cole could see through the little house to the front window, which was enough to spot a pair of police officers approaching the front door. The cops looked through the window and knocked as if they meant to shake the entire house. Paige stepped through the doorway where Cole waited at the top of the stairs. When he tried to shut the door, she whispered, “Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”
The cops entered the house with their hands on the holsters at their hips and swept flashlight beams back and forth along the walls. “Hello?” one of them said. “Anyone here?”
Even as the cops looked directly at the door, Cole could tell they weren’t really seeing it. Their eyes continued to wander along the walls, not even following the lines of symbols etched there.
Slowly, he and Paige went down the stairs as the cops stomped around, and they eventually found their way outside again.
“Next time Rico says I never pay attention to his precious teachings, he can stuff it,” Paige said proudly after reaching the temple.
“What just happened?”
“I restored the runes intended to hide that doorway and everything else in the house. All those cops or anyone else will see is what we saw when we first got here, which is a fat load of nothin’.”
After the night he’d had, that was all the explanation Cole needed. Before taking the last step that would carry him through the beads, he stopped and nodded toward the lab. “What about this place?” he asked. “The stuff in there? The things down in that hallway?”
Paige took the remote that had been hanging from Lancroft’s neck and let her thumb glide over the cover. “I still don’t know if I believe he was hundreds of years old, but he came up with some stuff I’ve never seen before.” The remote disappeared in her fist and then into her pocket. “He wanted it destroyed, so I want to keep it around for a while. Hopefully he knows we’re sifting through all of his crap. If he’s anything like Daniels, that’d be his own personal hell.”
“I’m definitely coming back,” Cole vowed as he looked toward the stark light cast from the examination room. “I’ve still got some things to do here.”
The front door was pushed open, but the footsteps only stomped around for a minute or two before going back outside, which meant Lancroft’s defenses had held up against another set of unknowing eyes. They could hold out a little longer.
Cole stepped through the curtain and emerged in a smaller temple, where he was greeted by an excessively attractive, scantly clad woman with curly pink hair. After a sharp crack of her gum the pink-haired Dryad said, “Hiya. I’m Annie. There’s food in the main room.”
Paige emerged next and kept walking as if crossing hundreds of miles in a flicker of light had already become second nature. She and Cole followed Annie into a cavernous room filled with five large stages. Reading the confusion on Paige’s face, he told her, “This isn’t The Emerald. It’s Steve’s.”
“Do you know all of these places by heart?”
“No,” he replied as he pointed behind the largest stage to where STEVE’S was written in glowing neon.
Turning to Annie, Paige sighed, “Okay. Where’s Steve’s?”
“Dallas. Tristan didn’t have the juice to bring anyone else into St. Louis. We’re running two-for-the-price-of-one lap dances and have enough juice to power the state, so,” she added while holding her arms up and out as if posing for the first step in the YMCA dance, “here you are!”
“Are Rico and Daniels here?” Paige asked.
Annie shook her head in a way that made her pink curls wiggle. “They made it to St. Lou.”
“Both alive?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Perfect. Point me to the buffet.”
Epilogue
The cute news anchor with the short brown hair and pretty round face smiled comfortingly at the camera and announced, “Medical teams across the country have reported success in their most recent efforts to combat the Mud Flu. All symptoms ranging from cough and disorientation to the viscous discharge that gave the sickness its name are being cleared up thanks to a treatment developed by Dr. Angela Oehler. One of our correspondents is with Dr. Oehler now at the Pathology Department of Barnes-Jewish Hospital.”
A blond woman dressed in a white coat shifted nervously in front of all the cameras and said, “After recently isolating the cause of the flu, we’ve formulated a treatment that clears up every symptom in all but the most extreme cases. If anyone else is currently affected by the Mud Flu, please contact your physician or anyone here at Barnes to schedule an appointment.”
