“Hey Stu, it’s not about that. Wait…couldn’t you possibly consider—”
“No! What do you want?”
“I need to know if you guys have heard anything about someone named Burkis.”
“First or last name?” Stu sighed.
“Probably last,” Cole told him. “He’s supposed to be from New York. At least, that’s what my sources told me.”
“How reliable is the source?”
“Just look it up.”
The MEG guys were known as a lot of things. A small group of rabid fans called them brilliant scientists, but closed-minded folks used some more colorful and less favorable terms. Everyone else along the middle of the spectrum either didn’t know about them at all or found them mildly interesting. Their videos of grainy footage taken from inside supposedly haunted locations sold well enough to keep them stocked in batteries for their meters and cameras, but their real funding came from several private investors who didn’t bother hassling the Midwestern Ectological Group about unproven techniques or making up words to fit an anagram. Most of those patrons were Skinners.
Skinners were generally a very low-tech crowd. People who lived and died hunting monsters also tended to be a little paranoid. To that end, they weren’t quite on board with the notion of taking their communications online with the rest of the planet. That’s where MEG came in. The branches of paranormal investigation teams had their communication network well in place before they’d ever crossed paths with a Skinner. Cole often wondered how funny it was when that first ghost chaser tried to get a hardened warrior to pose for a picture in front of a freshly killed werewolf.
Stu’s fingers rattled over his keyboard and he muttered incoherently into his headset. Then again, Stu did seem the type who might also wear one of those obnoxious little wireless earpieces. “There’s a couple Burkises mentioned, but those were in Ontario,” he finally said. “Oh, that was one of our cases.”
“You guys are doing investigations in Canada now? Congratulations.”
“Yeah. After all the commotion when Gerald and Brad’s bodies were found, it’s been a real hotbed up there. Uh, no offense.”
“None taken. What happened with those bodies?”
“They were buried in a private ceremony. Apparently someone claimed them and arranged for it all. No pictures, but it was probably real nice.”
“Yeah,” Cole said as he looked over to a certain brunette who used to work with Gerald before the old man was killed. “I’m sure it was.”
“You got your own number issued, huh? Congratulations right back at ya. Let’s see…Burkis in New York. There are a few listed in phone directories and stuff, but nothing connected to any notes from you guys. I’ll keep checking. Honestly, I thought you called about whatever killed those people in Kansas City.”
“What people?”
“Don’t you watch the news?”
“Between sparring and sleeping, when the hell am I supposed to read or watch anything?” Cole snapped.
“Bring it in a notch, killer. I thought you might have seen it online. Four people were killed in Kansas City and plenty more have gone missing.”
“Wouldn’t that be the cops’ problem?”
“They were torn apart. The news started off by saying there was a pack of pit bulls running lose, but that was before the pictures started coming in.”
“What pictures?”
“You really have been out of touch,” Stu grumbled. “We’ve been putting them up on our site. Lately, the news and police statements have latched onto the idea of some sort of rottweiler-bullmastiff mix, but we’ve got eyewitness accounts and some cell phone pics that point to a bunch of those skinny werewolves you guys like so much.”
“Half Breeds,” Cole muttered, as if afraid of saying the words too loudly.
“Right. There’s also a few blurry shots of the other kind. One of those big ones.”
That didn’t set well. “Can you send those pics to me?”
“Not on that fossil of a phone you’re using.”
“That one’s history,” Cole beamed. “I’ve got one of the new touch screen models.”
“The new ones from four months ago or the new ones from last month?”
“The new new one.”
“Man, you’re lucky,” Stu gasped. “I waited in line for hours and still didn’t land one. Tell me how these pics look.”
Within seconds an icon started flashing on Cole’s phone. He tapped it and brought up a set of three pictures sent by Stu. The quality was okay, but the lighting was terrible. Even so, he could make out the hulking form of a full-blooded werewolf with black fur stalking through a park. The other two pictures were of leaner creatures racing along nearly deserted streets. They’d been moving so fast when the pictures were taken that they weren’t much more than blurs. Even so, he would have bet they were Half Breeds.
“How do those look?” Stu asked.
“Not good,” Cole sighed. “Not good at all.”
“Well, they were probably taken on one of those—”
“Keep looking into that Burkis guy,” Cole interrupted. “And e-mail me whatever you’ve got on what’s going on in Kansas City.”
“Yeah. Okay. Is everything all right over there?”
“As good as it ever is.”
“Oh,” Stu said gravely. “I’ll let you get back to it, then.”
Cole ended the call and tapped his phone to enlarge the picture Stu had sent him. A few seconds later Paige snapped her phone shut and said, “Daniels is home, but he’s hiding. He says some Nymar are waiting for him outside his place.”
“We need to get to KC,” Cole told her.
“I’m not about to run away just because Ace and Stephanie got their prissy little noses out of joint.”
“Not that.” Showing her the picture on his phone, Cole said, “Because of this.”
Paige studied the blurred picture for about a second before nodding and shifting her attention to the interstate. “Looks like a Full Blood. Could be the one that found us in Wisconsin, but I’m not certain.”
Cole turned his phone around and studied it so closely that he nearly pressed his face against the smooth touch screen. “What if it’s Henry?”
“Even if Henry is recovered from all the crap he was put through, he was too crazy to hit and run like that. When he resurfaces, there won’t be any doubt it’s him. And look at the color of the fur. Full Bloods change shape, but they can’t change their fur. If anything, that’s the one that came to take Henry away from us. Yep,” she added after another quick glance at the picture. “See the white patch on the nose?”
“You can’t possibly see all that from this picture!”
Nodding as if she was accepting an award, Paige said, “It’s a gift. Once you see a few more of these bad boys, you’ll pick up on the details too.”
“So what if these other things are Half Breeds?”
“Oh, those are Half Breeds,” Paige replied.
“How could this get by us?”
“I’ve seen some stuff on the news about dog attacks in KC, but that was a few days ago. Since then all the attention was shifted over to the people who went missing.”
Already sifting through different screens on his phone, Cole shook his head and said, “I’m looking at news reports online right now. This isn’t good at all. Two cars were found alongside a highway last week. One of the drivers was busted up beyond recognition and the other was never found. More people have turned up dead or gone missing. Some college girl was dragged away by…well, this says it was a rottweiler, but come on! Aren’t we supposed to be on top of this crap?”
“We’ll look into it.”
“It’s all right here, Paige! I did a search for Kansas City dog attacks and ten pages came up.”
“Those are Internet search pages,” she reminded him. “How much of that is porn?”