dealt with anymore. Just as he was about to get dragged down by that particular revelation, something else sprang to mind. “What about the MEG guys? Stu’s more normal than you by a mile.”
“Okay,” Prophet said. “Call them up and tell them about the possibility of Henry’s spirit tearing the hell out of whoever might disturb this spot. Wait for their happy squealing to die down and then tell me how normal they are.”
“Check and mate.”
Chapter Two
When Cole was dropped off at the house formerly owned by Jonah Lancroft, he was greeted by a small party of neighbors and a few vaguely familiar faces. He only recognized the neighbors because the large men wearing football jerseys and polo shirts under denim jackets and flannel shirts had been camped out on their porch across the street and halfway down the block for the last several days. It was a cool night, but not enough to warrant the amount of layers they were sporting. So far the neighbors had been content to watch the Lancroft house with what they surely thought were intimidating scowls etched onto their faces. Now they strutted across the street and climbed the curb as if storming the beaches at Normandy.
When he’d been a video game designer, those men might have put a fright into him. After what he’d seen in the last several months, however, it would take a lot more than that. Judging by the impatient expressions on the faces of the Skinners gathered on Lancroft’s front step, they were equally unimpressed.
“What’s going on here?” Cole asked the neighbors as he climbed down from Prophet’s truck. “Block party?”
The man at the front of the group had a shaved head, clean face, and a gut that marked him as the source of a good portion of the empty beer bottles scattered along his side of the street. He wore an Eagles jersey. It was a custom order, unless the NFL had drafted someone named Madman and given him the number 69. “Yeah,” he said as he shifted a cocky eye toward Cole. “Welcome to the fucking neighborhood. Maybe you should have a word with your bitches over there. They’re not too friendly.”
If Paige was within earshot, there was about to be one hell of a block party indeed. Fortunately for everyone involved, she wasn’t. The Skinners in attendance were some of the local crew. Jory was a big guy who looked to be somewhere in his fifties. He was solidly built and hadn’t spoken more than half a dozen words to Cole since introducing himself. His face looked as if it had been molded from too much clay behind a curtain of gray whiskers sprouting from his chin.
Abel was a skinny kid in his mid-twenties with a Mohawk long enough to cover half his scalp.
At the head of the Skinner group was a short blond woman whose face was too tanned for its own good. Her eyes were always bright, but were practically flaring after hearing herself referred to as one of the “bitches.” Before she could say anything about it, though, she was shoved aside by another woman.
If the blonde’s eyes were flaring, Maddy’s were about to explode in their sockets. “What did you call us?” she demanded. Her dark brown hair formed a single braid that hung down past her shoulder blades. The structure of her face struck Cole as Asian, but her accent and complexion could have been Cuban or maybe Puerto Rican. When she was through laying into Madman 69, her hand was drifting toward the leather harness wrapped around her waist that kept her weapon pressed against the small of her back.
One of the other neighbors wore a sweatshirt with the collar and sleeves torn off in a fashion that might have been trying to fool people into thinking he was a beast. All it really did was put him at the top of the list of suspects who’d thrown all the little skinny cans of energy drink next to the empty beer bottles on the lawn. “Just chill, bro,” he said while ambling over to pull Madman back, as if he was sparing the Skinners a grisly fate. “Let ‘em think it over.”
And just when it seemed the storm was about to pass, the dude in the sweatshirt looked over to the dark- haired woman and said, “These ladies know where to find us when they get lonely.”
The blonde knew better than to get in Maddy’s way, so she stepped aside. Cole was barely fast enough to put himself between her and the neighbors. “Come on, now,” he said. “We don’t really want to make a big deal out of this, do we?”
Maddy glared at him as if she still had every intention of drawing her weapon. Her dark green eyes narrowed and she grit her teeth when she told him, “Step aside before you get the same thing I’m about to give them.”
“Ooooh,” Madman sighed. “Sounds great. Come on. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” With that, he led the rest of his boys across the street and down the block.
Once the neighbors’ laughing had sufficiently faded, Cole asked, “What the hell was this about?”
Maddy moved her hand from behind her back and shoved Cole back with it. “Those pricks came by to see what’s going on in our house.”
“Hey, Cole!” Prophet shouted from the curb. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. You can take off.”
Like any other man with a functioning brain and any experience with the opposite sex, Prophet knew when to clear out of a bad situation. If that meant abandoning a friend, so be it. He pulled away and drove down the street.
When she leaned to look past Cole, Maddy’s braid swung behind her. If not for the fact that she seemed ready to strangle him with it, he would have found it very appealing. She and the rest of the Skinners were covered in several layers of sweat that had soaked through dirty clothes. Maddy wore a dark gray wife beater that clung to her gritty skin like a coat of paint. Even though Cole was able to keep his eyes from wandering, she looked disgusted with him all the same. “You take that Full Blood meat out of here?” she asked.
“Did you see me take anything out of here?”
Without any proof to use as ammunition, Maddy stormed into the house.
Cole shifted his focus to the remaining three Skinners standing outside the front door. “You guys are from around here, right?”
Jory nodded.
“So do you know those meatheads across the street?”
Abel turned his back on him before grunting, “Do you know everyone in your territory? I’d guess probably not, since you and Paige were supposed to be watching KC when it fell.”
Cole stepped up to the guy with the Mohawk. Since he’d never gone toe-to-toe with him, he hadn’t realized how much taller he was than Abel. “Right, but you’re the ones who had Lancroft living in your own damn city. Couldn’t you have kept a closer eye on things before they went
“This is a big city, not some stretch of prairie like you’re used to.”
“Chicago’s a stretch of prairie? What the hell’s wrong with you? Take your hands off me, Selina!”
The blonde had grabbed Cole by the arm and pulled him back. After letting him go, she turned to Abel and said, “This isn’t the place to talk about our business.”
Following her line of sight, Cole saw that Madman 69 and his other buddies had plopped into lawn chairs on their porch and were cracking open a fresh round of drinks. All of the Skinners stomped inside and slammed the door shut. The house was protected and cloaked by a series of runes etched into the walls, but Cole only knew three men who could use them with any degree of accuracy. Lancroft was at the top of the list, but he was dead. Ned Post used similar runes to protect his home in St. Louis, but he was also dead. That left Rico. Unfortunately, he’d gone his own way soon after Lancroft had been dealt with. Before leaving, he’d shown several of the remaining Skinners how to activate or deactivate the runes cloaking the door to the basement. Since the rest of the angular markings were more complicated than glorified switches, everyone just left them alone.
For the moment, the door to the basement was just as visible as any other. Beyond it, a cement stairwell led down to a workshop filled with benches and several sets of tools. The grisly works in progress Lancroft had left behind were all gone, leaving only the scent of rotten meat and burnt leather to mark their passing. Skinners from across the country had been coming to look at Lancroft’s place over the last several days and were taking as much of the old man’s belongings as they could carry. Supplies it took months or years to find in the field could be found in
