“Don’t make me guess,” Cole said.
“In case you don’t remember Henry, he’s the Full Blood that happened to disappear on your watch, and don’t tell me you don’t know where that body’s buried.”
“Let’s not get into that right now.”
After taking a moment to steer around a pothole resembling a crack in the earth’s crust, Jessup let the matter drop. “So I found a box Lancroft had in cold storage, locked away in that secret lab of his where he did all his cuttin’.”
Just mentioning that room flooded Cole’s mind with memories of stark white lighting, dissection tables, and a carcass that was pulled apart and held open by metal studs screwed into a chrome tabletop.
“Everyone already helped themselves to all the Full Blood spit, blood, fur, and what-have-you,” Jessup continued, “but left some of the more interesting bits for me. At first I thought I’d found some kind of paste smeared onto a plastic sheet. Then I saw it was a membrane Lancroft had removed and preserved. Removed,” he added with a wink, “from Henry’s nasal cavity.”
Cole held up the mask. “This is the inside of a werewolf’s nose?”
“I don’t know if that’s exactly where it’s from or if it’s from deeper inside his misshapen dome, but yeah. Lancroft didn’t know what to do with it, but I did. It took some tricky work with preservatives and a lot of playing around with the mixture that we use to bond our weapons to us, but I got the damn thing to do something besides make my nose burn when I breathed through it. Long story short, I dumbed down our bonding agent to bridge the gap between humans and Full Bloods, sewed what was left of the membrane into that mask, and voila! Portable Wolf Nose! Patent pending.”
Turning the mask over a few times, Cole said, “This could be huge! You bridged the gap between humans and Full Bloods? Do you know what that could mean for the ink Paige came up with?”
“You mean the stuff that screwed up her arm?” Wincing almost in time with Cole, he quickly added, “No, this was just a real simple tweak that barely worked. I wouldn’t trust it on anything that actually goes inside of you or mingles with blood. What I need you to do is see if you can pick up our young one’s scent.”
“We’ve already gone a few miles,” Cole pointed out. “Are you sure it was in the right direction?”
A sly grin eased onto Jessup’s face. “This ain’t the first time she tried to bolt. She’s new to this, so she sticks to the roads. Just see if you can narrow it down for me.”
Cole raised the mask to his face again but was cautious about drawing another breath. When he did, he was once more besieged by smells from every end of the spectrum, ranging from the candy bars piled on the dashboard to a mound of animal scat somewhere in the field outside. “How the hell did you use this to find anything specific? Do you mix in something to help weed everything else out?”
“Nope. Just good old-fashioned discipline. Concentrate on what you’re after and focus. Helps to have a sample, but most of the stuff we’re after is pretty distinctive. Turn your head that way and see for yourself.”
Jessup pointed toward the road, and when Cole did as he’d been told, he was introduced to a new scent that easily superseded the others. It was a mixture of animal musk, something that might have been perfume, and another odor he couldn’t identify. He pulled in a slow, deep breath and let it roll down his throat like a sip of wine. It wasn’t perfume, but the flowery smell did have an artificial taint. The other scent was pungent and exotic, interesting and bitter, enticing and repellent.
“You smell her?” Jessup asked. “She’s either wearing some sort of girly lotion or has been using it long enough to stick with her, but the main thing I followed was that scent of fungus and ripe fruit.”
“Is that what it is?”
“That lotion or whatever smells artificial. There’s something else that I don’t really know how to describe. It’s natural, but not like any nature I ever smelled. That’s the scent of a Full Blood. From what I’ve heard, those eye drops Ned whipped up are better at close range, but this here mask can find scents that’ve been laying around for days or maybe longer.”
“And you’re sure it’s a Full Blood?” Cole asked.
“Met up with a whole mess of Shunkaws in Kansas where that little girl out there damn near ripped my head off. Her and another Full Blood jumped me, so I got their scents up close and a little too personal. Followed it all the way to where that girl was hiding, filthy, on all fours, clawin’ at the ground. And I don’t mean in the good way.”
“Lambert said she was just a kid.”
Still wearing the fraction of a smile he’d put on for the benefit of his last joke, Jessup shook his head and told him, “He’s got that right.
Cole tentatively placed the mask to his face and drew a breath. It took a lot of effort to sift through the scents, but the task kept him busy enough to get his mind off the gnawing pain in his stomach. He leaned out the window and then settled back into his seat. Pointing ahead and to the right, he said, “I think she’s headed that way.”
“That’s about what I thought. I made camp a few miles off-road.”
“Another camp?” Cole asked.
“What’s the matter? You’d rather take your chances in that small town after word spreads about the guy you attacked in that motel? Besides, cities ain’t safe for us no more.” He eased up on the gas and steered toward the shoulder of the dirt road. The truck clambered over the rougher terrain, causing both men to clear their seats with every other bounce. “She’s still skittish about the whole transformation thing. Either that or she’s bashful. Whichever it is, she don’t like bein’ too far away from her clothes. I think you and I might be okay with her, but I didn’t want to scare her by bringin’ much of anyone else. That’s why I sent your friend away.”
“Fine by me. I don’t mind the break.”
Ahead of the truck Cole saw a clearing that was barely the size of an overturned refrigerator and a camper parked amid some tall weeds. It was the smaller kind of camper that was towed instead of driven. A cooler and some duffel bags lay just outside the little clearing where a slender girl sat on something, her back hunched and her hands clasped between her knees. The burning in Cole’s palms confirmed she was a Full Blood. Either that or there was another werewolf lurking nearby. Once the truck came to a stop, he asked, “Where did you find her?”
“She and another Full Blood attacked me in Kansas.”
“And why is she sitting at your camp now?”
Her eyes took on a brilliant, otherworldly shine as she looked at Jessup. The older Skinner met them when he said, “The other Full Blood told me to watch out for her.”
“Was he the big bastard who killed Gerald?”
“From what I heard …yeah. That’s the one.”
“And why would you listen to him?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?” Smirking at the response that got from Cole, Jessup added, “I was wearing that mask when I pulled up to the motel, just to make sure you weren’t part of another Nymar trap. I can smell the Full Blood on you. Were you attacked too?”
“Sort of. He told me I needed to find the young one and hide her away.”
“Sounds familiar,” Jessup said. “Why do you believe him?”
“First of all, because he didn’t kill me. And second,” Cole added as he handed the mask back to Jessup, “because he made more sense than the last batch of Skinners I met. How screwed up is that?”
“The way things are goin’, it sounds about right. That girl’s gettin’ spooked. Let’s have a word with her before she decides to run off again.” Jessup pushed open the door and held up his hands to show them to the girl sitting in the small clearing.
She had long, thick hair that was blacker than charred coal. Watching both of the Skinners with crystalline hazel eyes, she said, “Don’t kill me. Please. Randolph said you people could help me. I don’t want it to hurt me again.”
“What’s your story?” Cole asked.
Rubbing her hands against her elbows, the girl lowered her head and pressed her arms against her chest. “It hurts.”
“What does?”
She was quiet, so Jessup explained, “She means the transformation. It still hurts when she does it.”
“Not just that,” she said. “Whatever is inside me hurts. Like, all the time. And it only stops hurting when I
