brewin’ ever since Skinners were all hung out to dry as cop killers. We gotta pull together and turn this thing around before it buries us all. Them Mongrels that attacked the Lancroft place ain’t been seen for a while. Neither has the Full Blood that was leading them or the one that became your buddy so recently.”
“Mr. Burkis is a long way from a buddy. As for Liam, he could be anywhere. If there was more hours in the day, I could take time to hunt them down.”
“You won’t need to hunt them,” Steve reminded her. “They can find us whenever the hell they want.”
“Good,” she said as she slapped the magazine into the Beretta, then chambered the first round. “I’ve still got some of that ammo dipped in the Blood Blade fragments that should put a real crimp in their day.”
“Hopefully it’ll work better than the Nymar rounds do against Shadow Spore,” Steve said from the backseat. “Did Daniels come up with anything that works on them?”
“Not yet.”
“Then we could be walking into a whole lot of trouble by waving guns around loaded with bullets that won’t even do the job.”
“They’ll do the job,” she assured him. “Just keep firing until their hearts are turned into paste.”
“Any way I can talk you out of this? I know some guys that might be up for this job. They’re workin’ on some angles of their own right now, organizing the Skinners that can make a difference in this fight, but they still might be able to pitch in here.”
“I’m not interested in working with more strangers,” Paige snapped as she turned toward Steve. “You said I needed to put this right and that’s what I want to do. I found you. Prophet is already back chasing fugitives. Those Amriany disappeared on their own. That leaves Cole, and he’s the only one that I owe a goddamn thing to anymore. We didn’t cause these problems. We didn’t create these monsters and we sure as hell didn’t set them loose. We’re doing our best, but if people can’t defend themselves every now and then, something’s bound to pick them off.”
Rico’s features were like folds in an elephant’s hide. When they shifted, it was just to another version of ugly. Paige had known him long enough to recognize the hint of a grin hidden under all of those unattractive layers, but she wasn’t about to answer back with one of her own. Reaching around to grab the Mossberg Model 535 Tactical 12-gauge shotgun he’d stowed on the floor of the seat behind him, he said, “You might get along with these friends of mine better than you think.”
Every other house on Kenilworth Avenue seemed to be a duplex. For each little single family home on the clean, tree-lined street, there was another that looked as if it had been built with one wall butting against a mirror. Paige’s destination was one of the duplexes just north of the intersection at Kenilworth and Norway Avenue. It was a tan run-down structure with two sets of screen doors that had taken equal amounts of abuse from owners and elements alike. By the time she, Steve, and Rico had made their way up the street to get a look at the place, the sky had dimmed to a mix of dark purples and blues. Cars rolled through the residential neighborhood, but the drivers were more concerned with getting home than taking notice of anyone ambling along the sidewalk.
Paige had her hands stuffed into the pockets of a dark green jacket made of heavy canvas. It was baggy enough to allow her to move freely without getting snagged on the underlying layers consisting of a tactical vest over a dark gray T-shirt. The storerooms beneath Jonah Lancroft’s home in Philadelphia had provided her with plenty of Half Breed skins to use as lining for the vest that took a lot of punishment from almost anything, even if it wasn’t treated using Rico’s tanning techniques. The harness zipped around the skins, providing her with more protection than any conventional body armor.
Striding beside her, Rico kept his arms hanging at his sides as if he was walking down an Old West boardwalk with the intention of facing his doom at sundown. His jacket was the sort of battered garment that would have been worn with pride by any self-respecting biker. Several dozen Half Breeds had died to either create or patch up that jacket over the years and it still wasn’t complete. Strips of canvas were stitched in to fill the remaining gaps, and leather cords were laced up both sides so he could expand or tighten the jacket as the occasion demanded. For the moment, it was loose enough to accommodate his shoulder holster and the bulk of extra shotgun shells stuffed into his pocket. It wasn’t long enough, however, to do much to hide the Mossberg.
Steve carried three guns, all .45s, holstered beneath a baggy raincoat. Although he didn’t seem to handle the weapons with much expertise, he assured both Skinners that he knew how to make them sing. That was good enough for Paige, especially since he’d survived the last few weeks, when so many Skinners had been picked off by Nymar who blended into the darkness and moved faster than the now outdated variety of vampire. “How many are inside?” he asked.
“Don’t know.”
Looking at the front of the house, Rico glanced back and forth between both front doors at the top of a single, narrow set of stairs leading up from the sidewalk. “Do you even know which side it’s on?”
“I figured we’d each take one,” she replied. “Shouldn’t be long before we figure out which is which.”
“Good plan,” Rico grunted.
“Thanks.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“I know.” Facing the corner where she’d parked the car, Paige casually reached for the Beretta holstered at her hip. “If you’ve got a preference, tell me now.”
The house wasn’t much to look at, but was well-maintained. Despite the fact that the outside was weather- beaten and battered, the simple curtains in the windows were clean and drawn shut tightly enough to keep the inside tucked away and out of sight. There wasn’t a single feature to differentiate one half from the other. Even the windows on both sides were dark in the exact same way. “I’ll take the right,” he said with a shrug.
“You’ll also take the new guy.” After glancing back and forth to make certain the sidewalk in front of the house and its closest neighbors was empty, Paige held her pistol in a two-handed grip with the barrel pointed at the ground and added, “Either of you needs help, just yell. Remember, we’re looking for any Nymar and a computer setup.”
“I was listening during the ride over,” Steve whined. “I know what you’re looking for.”
“Good. Then let’s find it.”
Chapter Two
Paige approached the door on the left, placed her shoulder against the wall and leaned to try and look through the window. There was a small gap between the frame and the edge of the curtain, which wasn’t enough for her to see much of anything inside other than a few lights deeper within the place. Once Rico approached his door, she stepped over and opened hers with a straight kick that slammed her heel a few inches below the knob. It gave way with the crackle of splintering wood and the creak of an old dead bolt being dislodged from its housing.
The room was almost pitch-black, illuminated only by the scant bit of light spilling out from a short hallway that led to the back rooms. Her eyes had adjusted quickly enough to make out the blocky shapes of furniture in her path and a television set on a stand to her left. Bundles lay on the floor in a way that let her picture the homeowner casually dropping them while heading deeper into the house. Raising her Beretta to sight along the top of its barrel, she stepped over the bundles and waited for someone to answer the simultaneous break-ins. The response came in the form of one of those bundles reaching up to grab her.
“Son of a bitch!” she snapped.
Rather than fight the thick fingers wrapped around her ankle, Paige moved her free leg out to the side and planted it to steady her balance. She maintained a grip on the Beretta while staring down at the face of a Nymar that almost completely blended in with the shadows filling the living room. Even when the vampire opened its mouth to hiss at her, she could see only the faint reflection of dim light off fangs.
In the months since they’d put the Skinners in the sights of every law enforcement agency in America, the Nymar had been learning to use the gifts given to them by the Shadow Spore. These included claws that could draw blood through hollow feeding tubes and tendrils directly beneath their skin that could expand in darkness and contract in light to give them natural camouflage both in the shadows and among humans. Because the Shadow
