“I don’t know what it was,” he said. “At first I thought it was a bear, then I thought it was a wolf. But it wasn’t any of those things. It was huge. I’ve never even heard of anything like it. One guy shot it, but that didn’t do anything. Gerald and Brad tried to kill it. They lasted longer than most anyone, but I guess that thing finally got to them too.”
“You guess?”
“I was knocked around pretty good,” he sighed. “I woke up the next morning. There was blood everywhere. Brad was dead, but Gerald was outside. He was hurt really bad.”
He paused to see if he needed to give her a moment before continuing. Paige was listening intently, so he went on.
“Gerald told me to call you. He said that I should come to see you in person to tell you what happened. He also told me to tell you that Brad was killed fighting a Full Blood. Does that mean anything to you?”
Paige kept staring straight at him, then finally looked away and nodded.
“He gave me a card and I called the number using his phone. You must know the rest.”
“How was he in the end?” she asked.
Cole felt as if his words were anchored down so heavily that it took extra effort to pull them up. “I don’t think he was in much pain. It was so cold—”
“That’s not what I mean,” she snapped. “Did he seem strange? Did he look strange?”
“Strange?”
Paige scraped at the base of her throat and said, “Black marks here. Maybe they looked like ink?”
“Yes,” Cole replied as the image was suddenly brought into sharp focus. “Yes, he did have marks like that!”
“Was he holding anything that looked like this?” With a quick flourish of her hand, Paige removed a small vial from her pocket. It was the size of a stick of lip balm, but was actually one glass tube inside another. The inner capsule was filled with dark liquid and there was a layer of cloudy water separating it from the outer tube. Two small bumps extended from one side that tapered down to a pair of small, clear pins connecting the outside of the vial to the inner capsule.
“He had something in his hand, but it was broken,” Cole said without taking his eyes from the peculiar object resting in Paige’s grasp. Just then, he noticed the scarring on her palm. It wasn’t quite as bad as what had been on Gerald’s hands, but was very similar. “I guess it could have been something like that. Some of the broken glass stuck in his hand did look like those two things on the side of that tube.”
“And he got better,” Paige said more to herself than to him.
“Yeah. He did.”
“What happened after that?”
“Gerald died before I left. I don’t know for sure, but it looked like he injected himself with something.” This time, Cole didn’t need to watch closely to see a reaction.
“Thank God,” she said while letting out a breath and lowering her head.
“I mentioned he was dead, right?” Cole asked. “He looked better, but he was dead by the time I left.”
“I know.” Looking up, Paige showed him a relieved if somewhat tired smile. “At least he’ll stay that way. This,” she said, showing him the glass tube in her hand, “is called a Resurrection Vial. It’s used to give someone a bit more time if they think that…well…if things get bad. The only problem is that the stuff in this vial may cause some pretty bad side effects. Once someone’s done what they needed to do with their extra time, they inject themselves with the antidote and nature takes its course.”
“You mean they kill themselves?”
Paige shook her head. Although she seemed a bit frustrated, there was plenty of relief to dull the edge that had been in her voice before. “If they’re using the vial, they’re already going to die. If they don’t use the antidote, they’ll be turned into something else that will kill them off and turn them into something else.”
Cole stayed still for a moment as he tried to think about what he should do next. Although he’d come to Chicago to put what had happened in Canada to rest, the whole thing just kept growing into something more. Talking to Paige hadn’t helped. In fact, meeting her had only presented even more information that he couldn’t sort out. Instead of trying to make sense of anything else, he decided to stay confused. “All right,” he said. “That’s it. I’m leaving. Thanks for the plane tickets and whatever you shot me up with, but I’ll just find my own way home.”
Paige got to her feet and moved around the counter to stand between him and the front door. “Don’t leave, Cole. Please.”
“I’ve seen more than enough to keep me up at night, and I did what I promised to do for Gerald. I’ll leave your bloody knife here and then I’m through. So long. Have a nice life.”
“A Full Blood can track a scent for thousands of miles,” she said abruptly. “And you wouldn’t have agreed to come this far if you weren’t just a little curious about what attacked you.”
Cole let out a tired breath. “Curiosity is one thing. The stuff that’s going on here…I may not understand it, but I know when I’m over my head.”
“Taking what’s in the Resurrection Vial wasn’t easy. There was a lot more risk involved for Gerald than if he’d just let himself fade away. He did that for a reason, and only part of it was the job he asked you to do. Considering how much trouble you’ve already gone through, the least I can do is keep you alive until we can figure out what attacked that cabin. If it wasn’t a Full Blood, it still might be able to hunt you down. Wouldn’t you like to do something to keep that thing or others like it from running around and tearing people apart whenever they damn well feel like it?”
“Sure, but…if I’m doing all of that, I want to know everything else you haven’t told me.”
Paige smiled like a poker player who’d gotten someone to go all in when there wasn’t a card in the deck that could save them. “Better yet, why don’t we take a field trip? Bring that knife.”
Chapter 8
Cole knew he should have followed his first instinct and gone home.
He also should have been feeling pain in his battered body, but that wasn’t acting like it was supposed to either. Sitting in the passenger seat of Paige’s used two-door Chevy Cavalier, he poked and prodded his sides and actually hoped to feel a sting. He felt something that shook him more than pain. He felt his fingers pressing against his ribs, and that meant he wasn’t just numbed by whatever Paige had given him. His ribs were better. In fact, they felt stronger than before.
“You said there was a danger of some kind of infection,” he reminded her. “What was that about?”
Paige nodded but kept her eyes on the road. “It’ll all go down a lot easier once you see some things firsthand. Besides, the man I’m taking you to see can explain it a lot better than I can.”
Looking out the window, Cole asked, “All right, then. Where are you taking me?”
“We’re headed to The Levee.”
Cole thought for a moment and asked, “You mean like in that Led Zeppelin song? The Levee that breaks?”
“Sort of.”
“Isn’t that the old Red Light District?”
“That’s the original Levee. This is sort of an homage,” Paige said, while letting the last word roll off her tongue in a way that put a little grin on her face. “It’s a nice little stretch of road just south of the Loop. If you’re looking for some exercise for your lower back now that you’re in better shape, I’m sure we can rent you a partner for the night.”
Cole studied her for a second. Judging by the grin on Paige’s face, her mind was in the same gutter as his. “You’re talking about hookers.”
“Pretty much.”
He let out a sigh and shook his head. Even though the streets outside the car’s windows still looked vaguely familiar, they weren’t nearly as comforting as the ones he’d seen from the cab. “I must be crazy to go along with this.”