Feet scrambled and bodies moved. That was all Cole could make out, since he wasn’t about to stop what he was doing. Chop struggled beneath him and pounded his fists against his ribs and shoulders. When he hit the side of Cole’s head, he only forced him to twist his face and rip off a sizable portion of skin. Chop screamed and grabbed hold of Cole’s hair, pulling him up and away from the coaster-sized hole within inches of his throat.
If he had fangs, the job would have been so much easier. The fact that he even thought that made Cole realize just how far he’d fallen. He was a Skinner. He had the scars and nightmares to prove it. Although the skills he’d been taught had served him well so far, it was the cinching pain inside that spurred him into drinking another human’s blood. What sickened him even more was the fact that allowing that blood to flow down his throat brought him more relief than he’d felt in recent memory. The tendrils wrapped around his innards relaxed. The pain subsided. The healing serum kicked in. He started to get dizzy with the joy of no longer feeling like all of his organs were being pinched between the coils of a spring. Even with the coppery taste of Chop’s blood coating the back of his throat, he couldn’t help but smile as the cell door was opened and the guards crawled inside. The wound on Chop’s neck glistened like a freshly cut piece of raw meat that had been plastered to his skin.
“Is he dead?” Waylon asked.
The guards grabbed Cole, shoved the sparking end of a stun gun into his side and cuffed him. “Could be. Want me to check?”
“No. Take him to Medical ASAP.”
Waylon stood just outside the cell as Cole was slammed up against the bars. He jotted on his clipboard and asked, “What made you do that?”
“Didn’t have a choice,” Cole wheezed. “He wouldn’t stop swinging at me when I asked him nicely to stop.”
“Hold him steady,” Waylon said to the other two guards. Once Cole was straightened up and both arms were secured behind his back, Waylon reached into a pocket to remove a bundle of cotton swabs wrapped in a plastic baggie. “I saw you drink his blood. What made you do that?”
When the swab was rubbed against his chin, Cole squirmed away but wasn’t quick enough to prevent the sample from being taken. Now that the pain had subsided, he felt like he could withstand whatever punishment was about to be heaped upon him. He stared defiantly at the guards and kept his mouth shut.
“You’re not a host to the vampire growth,” Waylon said. “Do those tendril fragments somehow give you an innate need to feed or was this just to make your discomfort subside? Do those tendrils help you in some way like they do for the Nymar? Your scars and blood samples mark you as a Skinner. Are you truly being turned or is this possibly a by-product of the Mud Flu?”
Rather than say anything that could possibly be of any help to anyone, Cole asked, “Who the hell are you ?”
“Answer me first and things can go a lot smoother for you. Otherwise, you’ll be quarantined and I’ll just deduce the answers myself. If you fill in some of the blanks of my research, you’ll spare someone else the time and discomfort of being imprisoned.”
“Spare who?”
“Whoever is brought to us next,” Waylon replied. “Perhaps someone you know. Perhaps a stranger. Either way, you would have kept that person from going through the same ordeal you now face.” Squinting as if he was trying to get a closer look at whatever lay behind Cole’s eyes, Waylon added, “I can make it worth your while. You’re in a great deal of trouble with the law.”
“Isn’t that why I’m here? Aren’t you guys connected to the goddamn law?”
Once Chop was dragged from the cell and lifted to his feet, Cole was tossed back inside so his face skidded along the floor.
Waylon watched with the same amount of interest he might give to an ant farm. He handed a small digital recorder to the closest guard. “If he starts talking, record it with this.”
“What about him?” the guard asked as he nodded toward the cell across from Cole’s.
Fixing Lambert with a cold stare, Waylon replied, “He’s still under observation. Observe him. As for you,” he said to Cole, “you’re in our custody on a temporary basis. Whether you’re handed back to the authorities as a cop killer or allowed to slip through the cracks after you’re reported as having killed yourself while in custody is up to you.”
“That motherfucker tore my fucking throat out!” Chop roared.
Waylon, as well as the rest of the guards, locked everything back up to how it was supposed to be and left Cole with the cuffs around his wrists. The sound of the elevator doors opening mixed with the crackle of a stun gun. After that, Chop didn’t have anything else to say.
“Jesus,” Cole groaned once the hallway was clear. “This is the strangest life I’ve ever known.”
“The great James Morrison of the even greater Doors,” Lambert said. “Great music. Genius lyrics.”
“You listen to the Doors?”
“What? You think I’m just some token Mexican who only digs Santana?”
“Didn’t even know you were Mexican.”
“I’ve got true soul, man. All music flows through me.”
After Cole lowered himself onto his bunk and curled into an aching ball, he was serenaded by an off-key rendition of “L.A. Woman.” Without Chop in his cell to terrorize him, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the concert.
Chapter Six
After renting a cheap room in Toronto and resting there overnight with her Beretta grafted into her hand, Paige was more nervous about crossing the border than she was about stealing the car she’d used to do it. In that time, she’d cleaned up her arm well enough to find less damage than she’d been expecting. The muscle tissue was scraped and gouged, but was still solid enough to function. A few injections of healing serum from the kit strapped around her ankle did a good enough job to get her on the right track. She wasn’t one hundred percent, but could barely remember what that felt like anymore.
The vehicle she’d stolen was a little blue Toyota Tercel missing a taillight, several loops of electrical cord holding the rear bumper in place. The shabby exterior matched an engine that rattled noisily under the hood in what could very well be its last hurrah. Whoever the previous owner was, they were probably glad to be rid of the heap and collect the insurance. When she pulled up to the border crossing station, Paige was concerned that she might not be able to get the car moving again. An even bigger concern was that her friend in uniform had already met with the same lying little prick who had turned Rico against her.
“Hey, Mike, it’s me again,” she said with a tired smile.
Wearing his fifty-plus years on a face that was weather-beaten and scarred by three jagged grooves running all the way down his left cheekbone, Mike smiled and waved away the other Border Patrol officer who started to approach the car. “Back so soon? Usually you guys spend a little more time to get to know a place.”
“Things went better than normal,” Paige told him. “Just headed home.”
“Where’s Rico?”
Mike wouldn’t have made a great spy. That much was certain. On the few occasions she’d needed to get into Canada, he’d been extremely helpful in either waving her through or arranging for one of his friends to let another Skinner pass somewhere else along the border. He’d made several calls to help Gerald into the Great White North, and was the one to grease the wheels for Cole to reenter the States after Gerald and Brad were killed. None of those things made it any easier for her to tighten her grip around the Beretta hidden beneath the flap of her jacket.
“He had to stay behind,” she told him, while praying that he didn’t know anything more than a retired trucker and ex-Marine who’d been jumped by a Yeti in the Adirondacks should know. “Cleanup stuff. You know the drill.”