change and hurt other people.”
The tendrils wrapped around Cole’s guts squeezed him a little tighter, as if to remind him of some common ground he shared with this girl. Still, no matter how badly he wanted to sympathize, every Skinner part of him thing wanted to see if a shotgun blast would do any better on a Full Blood in its human form. “At least tell me your name.”
“Cecile.”
She looked to be somewhere in her early teens. Her clothes were a tattered mess, but no more so than those worn by other girls who strove for a “ghetto chic” look. The muddy stains, however, looked like they’d come from being buried in a pile of dirt. Her body was lean and muscular, but she still held herself as though she was nothing more than a child who was still afraid of the dark.
“What do you want from us, Cecile?”
“She’s in trouble and needs to be hid,” Jessup said. “Ain’t that right?”
“You’re the one driving around with an arsenal, and
“You’re a Full Blood, girl,” Jessup replied. “You can run laps around this state in the time it takes me to scratch my ass. You can go anywhere you like and chew a hole through the side of a bank vault, but you decide to stick with a pair of Skinners. You gotta know what we skin, right?”
“Yeah. Randolph told me.”
“So what’s your story, girl?”
When he got a questioning glance from Cole, Jessup shrugged and told him, “We made the drive all the way from Kansas, but I spent most of it either talking to myself or chasing her down when she decided to run away.”
“I didn’t mean to run away,” she said, fatigue weighing down every syllable. Clawing at her midsection as if she wanted to tear it out, she went on, “It’s hard for me to hold it back. I try, but sometimes I just can’t.”
Full Blood or not, Cecile was confused, shell-shocked and overwhelmed by what was going on around her. Cole knew just how she felt. “Take it easy,” he said while placing one hand on the girl’s trembling back. “Just take a few breaths and maybe you’ll feel better.”
She shook her head slowly as she said, “I’m …I’m a werewolf. That’s not going to get any better.”
“Is this a new thing?”
She looked at him with a fear in her eyes he frequently saw in other people, but wasn’t supposed to be pointed at him. “You’re Skinners,” she said. “You kill werewolves.”
“Sometimes,” Cole said with a smirk. “Never a Full Blood, though. I’m not good enough for that.” Before Jessup had a chance to speak for himself, he added, “Neither of us is. Besides, do you really think we want to kill you?”
“I guess not.”
“So tell me how you got pulled into all of this.”
Cecile’s eyes glazed over as if she was looking at something else instead of the tall grass and water cooler in front of her. “I changed for the first time …I don’t even know how long ago. He was there when I did.”
“Who was?”
“He told me his name was Randolph Standing Bear.” Cecile wrapped her arms even tighter around her legs and started rocking. “One night I was sleeping in my room. My brother was in the other bed. Dad was in his room. I woke up screaming. My whole body hurt. Then …I changed. I thought it was a nightmare, but he told me it wasn’t.”
“Randolph told you that?” Cole asked.
“Yeah. He was there. Watching me. He said I had to leave my home and go with him. He changed too and I went with him.” Lowering her head while steeling herself, she added, “I guess I still thought it was a dream.”
“What did he want from you?”
“He said he had to take me away before the others found me. Said I needed to figure out what I was before the others tried to teach me the wrong way. Said I needed to learn how to change, how to hunt, how to kill, how to do everything my instincts told me to do.” Looking up at Cole with eyes that had become multifaceted jewels, she told him, “When I changed for the first time on my own, I was hungry. I chased down whatever I could find and ripped it apart.” The jewels embedded in her eye sockets lost some of their luster, until they were merely the soft, wet orbs through which every human saw their world. “Or maybe that was a dream too.”
“What about your family?” Cole asked. “Do you want to get back to them?”
Her eyes narrowed, and although she didn’t change form, the beast rose close enough to the surface for aspects of it to be seen around the edges of her face and in subtle changes of musculature. “They’re dead. Randolph told me and I believe him. Even if they weren’t dead before, they wouldn’t have lasted long once the others came.”
Cecile pulled in a breath, placed her chin flat against the tops of her knees and stared straight ahead. Blinking once, she said, “When we killed those men in Billings, Randolph broke my arm and put something inside.” Looking up at the men as if she could sense the reflexive anger that had come over them, she added, “Not like that. He never touched me that way. I mean inside as in …inside the wounds. Inside my bones.”
“Inside your bones?” Cole asked.
“What men in Billings?” Jessup snarled.
Cecile stretched out her left arm and twisted it to display the veins running along the inside of her wrist. “He broke my arm there. Pulled it apart and …” She paused as if to consider if that was another of her dreams, but gave up on that right away. “It healed up right away. After I changed back again, there wasn’t even a scar.”
Jessup grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “What men in Billings?” he demanded.
“They were in the back of some bar,” she said. “They tried to kill us, but we tore them apart.”
“What did they look like?” Jessup asked.
“They weren’t like me or Randolph, but they had fangs,” she said. “They fought back more than the first ones we killed.”
“They had fangs? What else?”
“Fangs and …I don’t know. It all seems so hazy.” One blink was all it took for her focus to go away from him and to something else. She still faced the Skinners, but wasn’t seeing him when she said, “Randolph told me I needed to hunt and I wanted to hunt. Wanted to kill. I …think I ate them, and I don’t even know if they were animals or …” She pulled in a deep breath, gripped her arms and said, “I don’t know what I’ve become, but Randolph keeps telling me it’s important.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Cole cut in. He looked at Jessup and asked, “Isn’t that right?”
Reluctantly, Jessup nodded. Despite the bravado he’d shown earlier, it seemed the older Skinner was just as tired and ragged as Cole when he said, “Randolph told us to hide you from the other Full Bloods. You remember that part?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Walking over to the duffel bags, he rooted through them and started pulling out spare pieces of clothes. He tossed a few shirts and a pair of faded cargo pants over to Cole. “Why haven’t you talked about all of this until now?”
“Because Randolph said you might try to kill me,” she explained. “Guess you would have tried to by now.”
Cole held the clothes in his arms and asked, “What’s this?”
“Might as well strap on a set of reflectors if you wanna wear that bright blue Broncos shirt.”
“Got any more in there?”
“For that skinny friend of yers? He’ll be swimming in them, but yeah.”
Cole walked around to stand in the grass a few paces behind Cecile so he could change clothes.
Sitting down so he could stretch out his legs with a labored grunt, Jessup said, “Why don’t you get us some food, Cecile?”
“You’re sending me away?”
“No. I’m hungry. You and Cole probably are too. There’s some PBJ, chips, and some old candy bars inside.”
Cecile rolled her eyes, turned her back on the men and walked to the camper.
“All right, then,” Jessup said in a low voice that made it clear he knew all too well that a Full Blood could still
