The Chupe’s heels thrashed against the earth and its hands clawed at the spear. All the while, it snarled and spat at the Skinner holding the weapon in place.
“There you go,” Cole said. “How’s that for a photo opportunity?”
Abby didn’t take a picture. She was too stunned to do much of anything but watch as the Chupacabra weakened and finally let out its final cough. “You killed it,” she said. “Did you have to kill it?”
“No, I could have let it tear us both to pieces. Would that have looked better on your website?”
“No.”
At her meek tone, he unclenched his fists, which allowed the blood to trickle from between his palm and the thorny handle of his spear.
“You’re bleeding,” she said. Shifting her eyes up, she got a better look at the bloody scratches on his neck, scalp, and shoulders. “You’re really bleeding. I’ve got a medical kit in my car. Come on.”
Wiping a hand on his shirt, Cole said, “Let’s see your camera.” She handed it to him and he took a few pictures of the Chupacabra, cropping the shots so a minimum of gore or anatomical details could be seen. That way, there was plenty of room for speculation when the pictures made it to the Internet. “Didn’t want you to leave empty-handed.”
“I’m more worried about you. We’ve got to stop that bleeding.”
The wounds on his palm were already closing, but the others were still leaking. “Why don’t you find that kit and I’ll be right there.”
Abby was more than happy to get away from that spot, and once she was out of sight, Cole squatted down beside the grimy little stick figure. He felt for a pulse, but wasn’t certain he was feeling in the right spot, so he satisfied himself by poking at the body with his spear. When it didn’t move, he figured it was dead. He got his cell phone, hoping to check if Paige had any need for some slightly used Chupe parts. There was just enough of a signal for him to dial the number and listen to it ring once before the call was dropped. He had plenty of choice words to mutter as he hefted the Chupe over his shoulder and carried it all the way back to his car. It gave off the odor of old trees and overripe fruit, which was a lot better than he’d anticipated.
Abby rooted through her backseat when Cole spread a plastic tarp on the inside of his trunk and then dropped the Chupe onto it.
“Don’t even ask,” he warned her before closing the trunk and walking over to her.
The rear seats of her car had been removed, making room for plenty of silver cases, satchels, equipment bags, and boxes of folders. He sat down with his back against the rear bumper and stretched his legs out. Soon, Abby was cross-legged in front of him and dabbing at the gashes around his ear with a towel moistened by water she’d poured from a plastic squeeze bottle.
“Those look worse than they are,” he said.
“I know. Scalp wounds bleed a lot.”
“How many staplers did you throw at Stu to learn that?”
She laughed and splashed some bottled water onto a towel. “Only about seven or eight, and they were gushers. So…that stuff in the woods was pretty weird, huh?”
“It sure was,” Cole chuckled. “But it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
“Fun?”
“Keep in mind, I’ve been driving for days and got fired by my best friend. Before that was Kansas City, so yeah, this was fun.”
Trading the wet towel for a packet of bandages, she told him, “It was amazing to see something like that Chupacabra up close. After that, I was terrified.”
“I felt the same way when I first saw a Full Blood.”
“They’re a lot worse than that thing in your trunk, right?”
Cole couldn’t answer that question right away because he was too busy laughing. When he caught a breath, he told her, “If a Full Blood was within two hundred miles of this place, that little bastard in my trunk wouldn’t have poked its head out of its hole. Come to think of it, does MEG always get a lot of calls about Chupacabra sightings?”
“Not like this one. Usually there are a few slaughtered chickens on a farm or a couple missing hound dogs, but this one was picking off small animals for weeks. I really would have liked to learn more about it. I brought a tracker and everything. We could have tagged it and followed it from here. Over the course of a few months, we might have learned its migration patterns or possibly even found a whole nest of them. I really wish you would have given me a chance to do my job.”
“Your job?” Cole asked as he climbed to his feet. “You seriously wanted to watch it move on a computer screen like just another blip?”
Abby stood up and looked at him as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “That’s why we came here. That’s what we do. MEG finds these things so we can prove they exist.”
“And then what? Clip something into its hair, go back to your office and take notes as it runs from one spot to another? And when the blip stays in one spot for a while, do you flip a coin to decide whether it’s sleeping or digging a pit trap to cripple anyone or anything that comes along?”
“You almost fell into a hole,” she said. “Let’s not blow that out of proportion. If you’d twisted your ankle, would you have blamed that on an animal too?”
“I almost fell into a trap, not just a hole. Either those rocks at the bottom were put there on purpose or they’re from the smallest cave-in I’ve ever heard of. And that creature led me straight to it! When I fell in, it circled back to get me. Weren’t you watching when this happened?”
Anger flashed across Abby’s face, quickly followed by uncertainty and nervousness. “I’ve never seen anything like this, Cole. Some pretty weird things happen on our investigations, but I’ve never had an entity crawl onto my back and try to rip off a piece of me to save for later.”
Cole placed his hands on her arms to rub them comfortingly. “I know what you mean. I haven’t been at this for long, but the Skinner training program just runs at a faster pace than MEG’s. Also, things have been kind of crazy lately.”
“I know,” Abby said. “I’ve seen the pictures. One video that was supposed to have been taken by someone’s cell phone is of a big thing on four legs running down an interstate.” Letting out a tired laugh, she added, “Just goes to show how far some people will go to ride upon such strange coattails.”
“Actually,” Cole sighed, “that one’s probably real.”
The color that had started to return to Abby’s face drained away. “It was?”
“Was it a big, dark brown, wolf-bear-looking thing with a short brunette hanging onto it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a Full Blood. He took Paige for a tour of the Kansas City metropolitan area.”
For a second, he thought Abby was going to cry. She wilted against him and then quickly pulled away. No tears streamed from her eyes but she was definitely not the same woman he’d met over a plate of beef stew.
“You did great,” he assured her. “You were right there with your pepper spray, and you followed me instead of running for the car. Just think of this thing as a big ugly possum. Would you let a possum go if it killed the neighborhood dogs and came at you like that?”
“No.”
“You’re right about it being an animal. It was hunting and meant to take us down.”
“But you drew it here. Maybe it wouldn’t have done anything if we hadn’t—”
Cole stopped her with a few shakes of his head. Holding onto her shoulders, he looked her in the eyes and said, “It was attracted to the rustling sound because it sounded like a small animal or something else moving through the grass. Now, if it didn’t come to us, it would have gone to the next thing that walked through those weeds. Could have been another dog. Could have been a kid. Harmless animals do their own thing and avoid people. Predators come at you like a whirlwind. Big difference.”