town, so I’d better tell you what I got in mind for when we get there. You do much hunting lately?”
“Do werewolves count?”
“You think I let that Full Blood girl run out on her own so we could get enough privacy to talk about hunting squirrel? Of course werewolves count! Have you been out hunting since the Mud Flu cleared up or not?”
“Actually, no,” Cole admitted. “We’ve been busy with the Lancroft business, the Nymar, and then I was locked up. The whole prison thing happened when I was hoping for some time to rest.”
“Typical Monkey’s Paw scenario.” Seeing the blank look on Cole’s face, Jessup scolded, “Don’t you ever read? ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ is a short story about making wishes. It’s this charm that grants ’em but turns them around to bite you in the ass through some loophole. You wish for a million dollars, it gives you a million that was stolen from some bank. You want time away from hunting, you wind up in prison.”
“Now I see why Cecile was so quick to get the hell away from you.”
“The reason I brought up hunting,” Jessup said without trying to disguise the sharpness in his voice, “is because it’s been getting mighty crazy out here. A lot of Skinners, me included, have been stumbling onto plenty of things that even
“Tons of little caves to use for dens?”
Jessup raised his eyebrows. “Very good. Most of the critters out here hid because they didn’t have what it took to survive a pack of Half Breeds. What’s so funny?”
“Did you just say critters?” Cole said through a persistent chuckle. “Why not just call them varmints, Yosemite Sam?”
“I can see why Paige likes you. Smartasses travel in packs. Anyway, after the Mud Flu cut the Half Breed population, the things that were hiding from them didn’t have to hide no more. What we’re after in Raton is something you ain’t gonna find in any Skinner journal. At least, not one from this century. I checked.”
When they passed a green sign on the side of the interstate that told them they were within ten miles of Raton, Jessup eased his foot off the gas and leaned forward to scan the horizon. “Cecile wants to hide and Randolph wants us to guard her, but we’re not playing this by any Full Blood’s rules. I sent her ahead to sniff out some Half Breeds in the desert. When she finds ’em, she’ll have to bring me a few of their hides in one piece so I can get a few of their sweat glands and mix up something that will make her smell like one of them and not a Full Blood.”
“Can we really make that?”
Jessup let out an exasperated sigh. “What the hell did Paige teach you, boy? Anyway, that won’t keep her busy for too long. She should find some Half Breeds, but bringing back pieces large enough to use will be tricky.”
“What if those things kill her?” Cole asked.
Stabbing a finger at Cole, Jessup said, “Just because that girl is scared and young, don’t forget what she is. She’s a Full Blood, so she can handle any Half Breeds. We also need to watch her to see if she’s setting us up for another fall. Understand me?”
Cole nodded, but hesitantly.
“When we get to town, you’ll follow my lead,” Jessup said. “You’ll just have to trust me on the rest because there ain’t time to tell you every little thing.”
“The hell there isn’t,” Cole said while opening the glove compartment and digging beneath the receipts, napkins, tire pressure gauges, and Handi Wipes to find a snub-nosed .38 revolver.
“How’d you know that was in there?”
“Skinners are more likely to have one of these in the glove compartment than they are a pink slip.”
“So you know all about us, huh?” Jessup asked. “If you know so damn much, you should know there aren’t a lot of us left out here and that we have to stick together no matter how badly we got along before. Oh yeah,” he added when he saw the expression that drifted across Cole’s face. “I remember what a dick you were to me in Philly.”
“Actually, I remember you as the dick.”
“We need to put that aside. More importantly, you need to put that gun aside.”
Cole tossed the revolver back into the glove compartment and slapped the little folding door shut. “There. Now since I’m willing to go along with you, the least you can do is show me the same respect and tell me what the hell you’re dragging me into. If you can’t trust me that far, then I might as well get out of this truck right now.”
“All right. But first I need you to tell me somethin’.” Placing his hands on the steering wheel at ten and two, Jessup turned to point a cockeyed stare at Cole when he asked, “Ever seen a gargoyle?”
The road circling around Mt. Calvary Cemetery ran straight along the eastern border of a burial ground surrounded on all sides by a cement wall that angled steeply up or down to accommodate the natural flow of the terrain. Naked trees scattered among dry scrub, making the barren stretch of land look as if it had been scooped straight from the desert. Unlike the lonely outside of town, this one’s graves were marked.
Jessup parked on the northern edge of the cemetery on Hillside Road. From there he led Cole around the perimeter of the cemetery like a Scout leader taking his troop on a tour of the Grand Canyon. “See there?” he said while waving his hand to a chipped stone statue erected on the cement barrier.
As he had with all the other statues he was shown, Cole nodded. “Yeah. I see it. It’s a statue of a dog.”
“What about that one?”
A few yards away from the knee-high statue of Man’s Best Friend, there was another, much larger, statue. Those two were part of a collection were set up around the cemetery that included a few wolves and one old man whose features had been worn away by the elements. Examining the next one Jessup pointed out, Cole could only find a few hastily spray-painted words on the side of the sculpture. “It’s a horse. So what?”
“So what? Take a look at those up there. Don’t they strike you as peculiar?”
He looked at the row of statues scattered unevenly near the wall. The cement barrier was barely as tall as he was and seemed to be there not so much for decoration as to keep drunk drivers from interrupting the peaceful slumber of residents interred on the other side. While they weren’t exactly works of art, the statues on the wall itself were of birds, and one winged creatures that had enough detail for Cole to make out ridges of skin above the claws it used to grip its perch. One wing was outstretched and the other was partially folded against its back. Its eyes were blank. A stumpy beak was partially open to reveal poorly chiseled teeth.
“It does seem kinda weird that these would be here at all,” he said. “There aren’t any other decorations that I can see.”
“Very good. Always trust your instinct. You’re a Skinner. If something feels off-kilter to you, it probably is.”
“You’ve never been to Chicago, have you? The off-kilter alarm has to be shut off sometimes.”
“Don’t let the twang in my voice fool you, son. I’ve been to plenty of places, and when it comes to hunting the things we do, chasing them in the cities is easy. Never gets too dark. Out here,” Jessup said as he placed a hand on the wall and let his eyes wander upward, “once the sun goes down, it’s just you and the stars.”
“I’ve been in the dark too,” Cole said. “Are you going to tell me what I should be looking for or do we wait until Frank and Lambert get here?”
Ignoring that, the older Skinner approached the horse statue, looked it over for less than a second and slapped its flank. “See this here? No artistic value. I’m not going to say that every gargoyle on every rooftop is somethin’ special, but take a look at this one. First of all, the placement. Gargoyles on buildings mean all sorts of things, from good luck to keeping bad spirits away. Those are usually up high and made to look nice or scary or whatnot. Like, for example, that one there,” he added, waving at the stone creature on the wall with the birds. Turning his attention back to the spray-painted horse, he said, “These others aren’t anywhere near a roof. There aren’t any other decorative type things about. Even the wall looks like it took all of two minutes to build. Second, the way it’s standing. Decorations are made to look nice. See how the muscles on this one’s back are all swollen and straining?”
“Look at the eyes. It looks scared.”
“Very good! Now touch it.”
Cole looked closer and reached out to tap a finger against the spot on the statue’s back that Jessup was staring at. It felt like rock.
Since Cole wasn’t impressed yet, Jessup led him to the next statue. “See the way that dog is cringing? And that crow’s obviously squawking at something.”
