Jessup pointed toward the road, and when Cole did as he’d been told, he was introduced to a new scent that easily superseded the others. It was a mixture of animal musk, something that might have been perfume, and another odor he couldn’t identify. He pulled in a slow, deep breath and let it roll down his throat like a sip of wine. It wasn’t perfume, but the flowery smell did have an artificial taint. The other scent was pungent and exotic, interesting and bitter, enticing and repellent.
“You smell her?” Jessup asked. “She’s either wearing some sort of girly lotion or has been using it long enough to stick with her, but the main thing I followed was that scent of fungus and ripe fruit.”
“Is that what it is?”
“That lotion or whatever smells artificial. There’s something else that I don’t really know how to describe. It’s natural, but not like any nature I ever smelled. That’s the scent of a Full Blood. From what I’ve heard, those eye drops Ned whipped up are better at close range, but this here mask can find scents that’ve been laying around for days or maybe longer.”
“And you’re sure it’s a Full Blood?” Cole asked.
“Met up with a whole mess of Shunkaws in Kansas where that little girl out there damn near ripped my head off. Her and another Full Blood jumped me, so I got their scents up close and a little too personal. Followed it all the way to where that girl was hiding, filthy, on all fours, clawin’ at the ground. And I don’t mean in the good way.”
“Lambert said she was just a kid.”
Still wearing the fraction of a smile he’d put on for the benefit of his last joke, Jessup shook his head and told him, “He’s got that right. Was a kid, but not anymore. That girl is wilder than the other Full Bloods I’ve ever seen, and lately I’ve seen a whole lot of them. Since she barely seems comfortable in her own skin, I tend to believe what I was told about her bein’ nothin’ but a pup.”
Cole tentatively placed the mask to his face and drew a breath. It took a lot of effort to sift through the scents, but the task kept him busy enough to get his mind off the gnawing pain in his stomach. He leaned out the window and then settled back into his seat. Pointing ahead and to the right, he said, “I think she’s headed that way.”
“That’s about what I thought. I made camp a few miles off-road.”
“Another camp?” Cole asked.
“What’s the matter? You’d rather take your chances in that small town after word spreads about the guy you attacked in that motel? Besides, cities ain’t safe for us no more.” He eased up on the gas and steered toward the shoulder of the dirt road. The truck clambered over the rougher terrain, causing both men to clear their seats with every other bounce. “She’s still skittish about the whole transformation thing. Either that or she’s bashful. Whichever it is, she don’t like bein’ too far away from her clothes. I think you and I might be okay with her, but I didn’t want to scare her by bringin’ much of anyone else. That’s why I sent your friend away.”
“Fine by me. I don’t mind the break.”
Ahead of the truck Cole saw a clearing that was barely the size of an overturned refrigerator and a camper parked amid some tall weeds. It was the smaller kind of camper that was towed instead of driven. A cooler and some duffel bags lay just outside the little clearing where a slender girl sat on something, her back hunched and her hands clasped between her knees. The burning in Cole’s palms confirmed she was a Full Blood. Either that or there was another werewolf lurking nearby. Once the truck came to a stop, he asked, “Where did you find her?”
“She and another Full Blood attacked me in Kansas.”
“And why is she sitting at your camp now?”
Her eyes took on a brilliant, otherworldly shine as she looked at Jessup. The older Skinner met them when he said, “The other Full Blood told me to watch out for her.”
“Was he the big bastard who killed Gerald?”
“From what I heard …yeah. That’s the one.”
“And why would you listen to him?”
“I don’t know. Why would you?” Smirking at the response that got from Cole, Jessup added, “I was wearing that mask when I pulled up to the motel, just to make sure you weren’t part of another Nymar trap. I can smell the Full Blood on you. Were you attacked too?”
“Sort of. He told me I needed to find the young one and hide her away.”
“Sounds familiar,” Jessup said. “Why do you believe him?”
“First of all, because he didn’t kill me. And second,” Cole added as he handed the mask back to Jessup, “because he made more sense than the last batch of Skinners I met. How screwed up is that?”
“The way things are goin’, it sounds about right. That girl’s gettin’ spooked. Let’s have a word with her before she decides to run off again.” Jessup pushed open the door and held up his hands to show them to the girl sitting in the small clearing.
She had long, thick hair that was blacker than charred coal. Watching both of the Skinners with crystalline hazel eyes, she said, “Don’t kill me. Please. Randolph said you people could help me. I don’t want it to hurt me again.”
“What’s your story?” Cole asked.
Rubbing her hands against her elbows, the girl lowered her head and pressed her arms against her chest. “It hurts.”
“What does?”
She was quiet, so Jessup explained, “She means the transformation. It still hurts when she does it.”
“Not just that,” she said. “Whatever is inside me hurts. Like, all the time. And it only stops hurting when I change and hurt other people.”
The tendrils wrapped around Cole’s guts squeezed him a little tighter, as if to remind him of some common ground he shared with this girl. Still, no matter how badly he wanted to sympathize, every Skinner part of him thing wanted to see if a shotgun blast would do any better on a Full Blood in its human form. “At least tell me your name.”
“Cecile.”
She looked to be somewhere in her early teens. Her clothes were a tattered mess, but no more so than those worn by other girls who strove for a “ghetto chic” look. The muddy stains, however, looked like they’d come from being buried in a pile of dirt. Her body was lean and muscular, but she still held herself as though she was nothing more than a child who was still afraid of the dark.
“What do you want from us, Cecile?”
“She’s in trouble and needs to be hid,” Jessup said. “Ain’t that right?”
“You’re the one driving around with an arsenal, and I’m the one in trouble?” she scoffed.
“You’re a Full Blood, girl,” Jessup replied. “You can run laps around this state in the time it takes me to scratch my ass. You can go anywhere you like and chew a hole through the side of a bank vault, but you decide to stick with a pair of Skinners. You gotta know what we skin, right?”
“Yeah. Randolph told me.”
“So what’s your story, girl?”
When he got a questioning glance from Cole, Jessup shrugged and told him, “We made the drive all the way from Kansas, but I spent most of it either talking to myself or chasing her down when she decided to run away.”
“I didn’t mean to run away,” she said, fatigue weighing down every syllable. Clawing at her midsection as if she wanted to tear it out, she went on, “It’s hard for me to hold it back. I try, but sometimes I just can’t.”
Full Blood or not, Cecile was confused, shell-shocked and overwhelmed by what was going on around her. Cole knew just how she felt. “Take it easy,” he said while placing one hand on the girl’s trembling back. “Just take a few breaths and maybe you’ll feel better.”
She shook her head slowly as she said, “I’m …I’m a werewolf. That’s not going to get any better.”
“Is this a new thing?”
She looked at him with a fear in her eyes he frequently saw in other people, but wasn’t supposed to be pointed at him. “You’re Skinners,” she said. “You kill werewolves.”