looked as if they’d been there since the wooden planks were cut from the forest. It wasn’t until he was reaching out for the edge of the door leading into the storage room that Cole noticed an illuminated sign hung up behind the bar that looked like a beer advertisement with a few glyphs worked into the background.
“You will pay for this!” Christov shouted.
Tensing his muscles in preparation for a fight, Cole stormed into the back room and asked, “What’s the problem now?”
“The bridge to Louisville,” Paige explained. “He wants us to pay for it. A hundred bucks.”
“Seems reasonable, considering how much you save in time and gas or plane ticket,” Christov said.
Seeing the scowl on both Skinners’ faces, Kate said, “It’s not too big of a jump. We’ve got the energy stored up.”
“You are
“Plus all that purple paint, huh?” Cole scoffed.
The bald man turned as if he was about to take a swing at him. “You’re damn right. I don’t care what else is going on outside, I have a business to run. I have seen wars in other countries and life must still go on. The people who aren’t fighting or dying must still struggle to pay for food and electricity just like before. Only now they must do so while waiting to hear about the next battle or get a call about the next person they know who is dead. I have to make ends meet and now it is harder than ever!”
Cole looked at Paige and asked, “What’s the problem?”
“I only have fifty bucks on me.”
He dug into his pocket and came up with a few twenties. “We’ve got ninety between us,” he said while extending a hand with the cash in it. “Can’t the rest be counted as the car?”
“I was keeping the car in mind.” Christov’s gaze drifted to the weapons strapped to Cole’s back and the ones holstered in Paige’s boots. “Why are you going to Louisville?”
“To meet up with some other Skinners who might know something about the creatures that have been tearing us all up.”
“You are soldiers,” he sighed. “Sometimes I forget. Go ahead and do what you need.”
“How’d you come up with that figure anyway?” Cole asked.
Christov shrugged. “The energy my special girls collect is used for some of the regulars who pay top dollar.”
“Yeah,” Cole said as he slapped the twenties into Christov’s hand. “I can only imagine. Hopefully this makes up for some of what you’ll lose for not being able to put on one of those shows.”
The bald man smiled and nodded. “It does, my friend. Plus, there is some purple paint to buy. Go with God.”
“Appreciate it.”
Once Christov and the bouncers were gone, Cole was finally able to appreciate the space that had been added to the makeshift temple. Before, the glyphs and beaded curtain marking the entrance to the bridge that allowed someone to instantly travel from one spot to another competed for space with piles of napkins and stacks of chairs. Now, after losing at least one wall, there was enough room for the three of them to stand comfortably with those same supplies piled up to the ceiling on either side of them.
“I’m sorry about him,” Kate said. “Christov has been impossible after buying this place from the last owner. He seriously got reamed in that deal, but he’s still fighting to rebuild this into a place half as good as the old Bunn’s Lounge.”
“Step one,” Cole said with a grin, “go back to the old name. That’s a classic.”
“I agree,” Kate replied. “I called ahead and there’s a club in Louisville waiting for you. The only catch is that you’ll need to be quiet about how you got into town. At least, you can’t mention us. We’re still trying to lay low since you guys are still technically fugitives. Don’t you know anyone that can take care of that for you?”
“Sure,” Paige grunted. “There’s just some major league strings attached with that kind of favor, and our friend isn’t ready to cut them just yet.”
“Well I can’t do anything about that request,” Kate said apologetically. “It comes from Tristan herself.”
However Dryad society was structured, Tristan was at the top. “How is she?” Cole asked. “I haven’t heard from her since the fall of Atoka.”
The touch of worry that drifted across Kate’s face was like a cloud passing across the sun. “She’s better, but still not very good. She had to channel some dark energies to do whatever she did that night and they took their toll.”
“Is she sick?”
“Not sick, but not herself either.” Kate put on a smile that was inspiring despite being shallow. “She’ll be all right soon. Are you ready to go?”
Paige looked over to Cole and saw he had a few large bags hanging from his shoulders and a case in his hand. Picking up the gear she’d been carrying, she nodded and looked at the beaded curtain in front of her as if it was the door to an airplane terminal.
Like most Dryad temples, the room was covered in flowing, curved script that no Skinner had ever come close to deciphering. It was the handwritten equivalent of a tone hummed by an angel: pleasing to the eyes, even if those eyes couldn’t tell what was being said. As an accompaniment to those glyphs, Kate arched her back and sang like a whisper drifting in from miles away. As far as Cole could tell, the songs used to activate the Dryad bridges were never the same. Without any real structure, they were simply expressions of the natural power flowing through every nymph. The symbols embedded in the walls and floor gave off a cool green glow that flowed into the archway from which the beads hung.
As soon as Cole and Paige stepped through them, it would take a lot more than digital tracking devices and satellite maps to figure out where they’d gone.
Chapter Four
According to Jonah Lancroft, the biggest difference between Skinners and the rest of humanity was vigilance. That might have been a nice term for whatever it took for someone to voluntarily hunt down creatures that could tear through a human body like it was made of tissue paper. Ever since the Breaking Moon, more Skinners had been dropping off the map. Some openly mentioned a group called the Vigilant. Others who never mentioned the Vigilant by name made a point to spout off about how Skinners had lost their way, needed to follow old leaders and resurrect more traditional methods for these desperate times. Wherever he was, Lancroft was smiling.
Cole and Paige wound up at the Lariat Saloon just off of I-65. It was a quaint little place with an Old West motif stuck inside a purple A-frame within a stone’s throw from the interstate. As soon as they stepped through the curtain, the Skinners got their bearings, accepted the greetings from the single nymph who’d opened that end of the bridge and arranged for a car they could use to make the short drive into town. Like most nymphs, Shelley had no shortage of regular customers who could provide her with a car to replace the one she loaned them in case something happened. It was Paige’s intent that their visit would be short enough to make that offer unnecessary.
“You sure this is the place?” Cole asked.
The Vigilant’s newest base of operations was a pair of buildings at the corner of South Spring and Payne streets. The largest of the two structures looked like a barn that had been cut in half and sectioned into large slices. It was three floors high, with a roof that sloped downward at a steep angle before leveling off at the back. The front windows went from large rectangles at street level and shrank down to little squares by the third floor. The building beside it was a quaint little single story house with two front windows and a door beneath a white awning. Both structures were painted the same shade of faded gray. Across the street was a small liquor store, a neighborhood
