“The tunnel continues from there,” Randolph said as he eased back into his dense, shaggy human form. “Once we’re outside we run. Can you run?”
“We’ll soon see.”
“Yes we will. Max, lead the way.”
The tunneling Mongrel had watched silently for this long, and was more than happy to dive back into the earth to leave the brick prison behind.
Randolph stared down the hall and locked eyes with the Skinners who were recovering from their fight with the canine hybrid. When one of them sounded the charge, the Full Blood followed in Kawosa’s wake.
“Come on!” Paul said. The few stray drops of shapeshifter blood that he hadn’t drank were quickly lapped up by a wildly flopping tongue. He’d never tasted the blood of a Mongrel and it flowed through him like raw volcanic energy.
Tru had drunk from the Mongrel as well and was so affected by it that she couldn’t form words. All she did was race to join her partner, since he was running to what might be another of the newly discovered delicacies.
Jory wasn’t so eager. He took a moment to fish a small syringe from a compartment stitched into the side of his weapon’s scabbard and injected a dose of serum into his arm. Even as the healing began, he jogged while the other two threw themselves into a dead run. “Hold up!” he shouted. “Did anything get loose down there?”
The chaos upstairs subsided so quickly that the ensuing silence seemed more shocking than an explosion.
“We don’t know yet,” Tru replied. “What the hell was just standing there?”
“I thought it was a Full Blood,” Paul said. “Looked like one, but then it changed into something different.”
Jory’s fingers curled in to brush against the scars on his palm. “That was a Full Blood. Just never seen it in that form before. It’s gone now. Let’s get out of here.” He led the way back upstairs and through the dissection room. Even before he made it out of the Skipping Temple, he could tell there was more trouble on its way. Without looking back, he grunted, “Cops.”
“I think those lights are just from the walls,” Tru said.
“Yeah, the green ones. Not those,” Jory replied as he pointed to one of the small windows along the top of the workshop wall. The windows were rectangular and barely large enough for a child to fit through, but the metal basins outside them caught more than dead leaves and small animals. It also reflected some of the red and blue lights from the street.
“Tell the nymph to be ready,” Jory shouted while running up the stairs that led to the kitchen.
“The nymph can hear you,” Jordan shouted back. “And it’s ready. The only bridge I could get right now was to … are you listening to me?”
“Just keep it open,” Paul said. “So long as it leads away from this place we should be fine.”
Before either of the Nymar got concerned enough to venture into the part of the house that had become a war zone, Skinners began filing into the basement. Bobby was first down the stairs, helping someone who was too wounded to move on his own. The rest came down in a stream of bloody bodies and a few limp corpses. Abel was last to step upon the top stair, and quickly traced some of the runes near the door.
“Is that going to keep the cops from seeing what’s up there?” Jessup asked from the landing at the bottom of the steps.
“Doesn’t even matter,” Abel replied in a haggard wheeze. “Half the neighborhood must’ve heard the shots, and Lord only knows what anyone saw if they looked over the back fence. Just get the hell out of here before we’re all dragged away.”
By then the first Skinners were marching through the curtain. Jessup went into the dissection room and picked up the thing that had literally been pried from Jonah Lancroft’s dying hand. It was a small box with a simple control on it that was linked to explosives set up throughout the basement.
“Everyone’s out,” he said to Jordan. “Your turn.”
“What about the Full Blood? Are you going to let the cops find it?”
“It took off and so did the Mongrel. Just move.”
She didn’t need to hear any more than that before approaching the curtain and placing one foot through. “Are you coming?”
“Hell yes,” Jessup said as he pressed the button that triggered the first muffled thump of C4 from the bottom of the stairs. “Ain’t nowhere else for me to go now.”
Chapter Eleven
Chicago, Illinois
After all that had happened, Cole was amazed to find Raza Hill so quiet. The building was a blackened husk spattered by foam and water that glistened with reflected streetlights and the glare from passing cars. The parking lot was empty, but there was plenty of evidence that it had been full not too long ago. Everything from fresh tire marks to candy wrappers marked the most activity at the old restaurant since its final dinner rush. Sections of the perimeter were cordoned off by police tape, but nobody was around to enforce the stern words written in large, blocky font upon a yellow background.
“What did you expect?” Prophet asked as he stuck his hands in his pockets and shifted on his feet to get a look down the alley. “An armed guard posted at some run-down, burned-up hole in the ground?”
“Considering all that happened? I thought we might have more trouble than this getting so close,” Cole replied. “Just keep your eyes open and let me know if anyone’s coming.”
“Sure. After the fire, the shooting, the stabbing, the dead vampires, and everything else, I’m sure folks’ll be flocking to this place.”
“Are the Nymar bodies still out there?”
“Just the clothes. I think one of the fire trucks ran them over. Looks like some poor bastard who got crushed by a steamroller in one of them cartoons. How come it’s so hard to find those good cartoons anymore?”
“Too violent,” Cole said as he fished the hard drive from the wreckage of his old computer. From there he went to the restaurant’s side entrance and pulled it open with an expectant wince. When no alarms sounded and nobody shouted through a bullhorn for him to freeze, he opened the door the rest of the way and went inside.
Prophet, on the other hand, followed along as if strolling through a store that didn’t carry anything in his size. “Violent? You know what you see on every damn channel anymore? Anime. That Japanese stuff is some violent shit.”
“You’re thinking of hentai.”
“No, that’s the sexy shit.”
“You think big-eyed girls with purple hair getting worked over by sea creatures is sexy?”
At that moment Prophet had the big eyes going but not the purple hair. “What in the name of hell are you watching? I’m talking about Dragonball Z or Pokémon. That kind of anime, you sick bastard.”
The interior of the restaurant was charred and stank from the combined odors of what had been scorched in the fire and the chemicals used to put it out. After using Raza Hill as a home base since the beginning of his days as a Skinner, it now felt as if he was creeping around inside someone else’s house after sneaking in through a carelessly unlocked door. Although the dining room and kitchen were trashed, his walk-in freezer was in fairly good shape. There just wasn’t a lot in there for him to waste his time collecting.
“You could probably go back to living here before too long, you know,” Prophet said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Nobody thought this place was anything but some condemned rat trap anyway. Hell, that’s why there wasn’t such a fuss when it went up. Those Nymar melted or ran away, so with all the other fires that were set around town tonight, I doubt most of the cops or firemen even remember responding to a call here.”
Having already moved to Paige’s room, Cole glanced around at the clothes scattered on the floor and hanging from furniture. He had a tough time figuring out what part of the mess had been made during the fire or the partially collapsed roof and what had been there before the first whiff of smoke drifted through the air. Skipping the clothes completely, Cole shifted his focus to equipment, weapons, and supplies.