Skinners: Blood Blade Read online

  Skinners

  Book 1

  Blood Blade

  Marcus Pelegrimas

  This one’s for Megan, who kept me going.

  For Mom & Bob, who always believed.

  And for Cherry, who put me on the right track.

  Contents

  Prologue

  A steely wind howled. Like a colony of orange-vested ants…

  Chapter 1

  “What the hell is that thing supposed to be?”

  Chapter 2

  The twin engine prop plane rattled around Cole’s body as…

  Chapter 3

  “We’re here,” Sam said cheerily. “Get your stuff and head…

  Chapter 4

  Cole woke up, but wished he hadn’t.

  Chapter 5

  Cole ran until his legs could no longer carry him.

  Chapter 6

  It was a cold day. Rain threatened to fall from…

  Chapter 7

  Cole was no stranger to flying. In the first few…

  Chapter 8

  Cole knew he should have followed his first instinct and…

  Chapter 9

  The place was called DiGuido’s, and it was a little…

  Chapter 10

  The drive back to Rasa Hill went by fairly quickly.

  Chapter 11

  Cole still couldn’t shake Paige’s scent even after she’d left…

  Chapter 12

  The sun was making its first appearance for the day…

  Chapter 13

  It took a few trips back and forth from the…

  Chapter 14

  There was time to kill before the meeting at the…

  Chapter 15

  The survivor was a woman with rounded features and wire-framed…

  Chapter 16

  By late afternoon Cole and Paige were driving on a…

  Chapter 17

  Cole hadn’t intended on agreeing to a private dance. In…

  Chapter 18

  The bastard had gotten lucky.

  Chapter 19

  Cole staggered back and bounced off a wall. The back…

  Chapter 20

  Paige woke Cole early the next morning. Walter was already…

  Chapter 21

  When Cole saw the way Paige handled a hunting knife,…

  Chapter 22

  Cole’s feet smacked against the dirt with a jarring impact.

  Chapter 23

  The phone in Cole’s pocket chirped in its familiar way.

  Chapter 24

  Upon driving into Janesville, Cole followed Walter’s directions and stopped…

  Chapter 25

  The parking garage looked like something that had been built…

  Chapter 26

  “A Full Blood?” Cole said. “I thought those things stuck…

  Epilogue

  The bar was a bright, popular place on Michigan Avenue…

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Marcus Pelegrimas

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  A steely wind howled. Like a colony of orange-vested ants swarming a freshly stomped hill, workers navigated the mess behind the mansion. The old house sagged and was collapsing in places that were cordoned off by bright yellow tape and sheets of clear plastic. At the back of the mansion, floodlights illuminated a massive heap of rubble separated from the dilapidated structure by no more than twenty yards.

  As night had fallen, the land beneath the workers’ feet had grown hard and cold. Clouds filled the sky, smearing away whatever light might have been cast by the stars and the milky half-moon peering down upon the site. Scattered among different spots on the property, workers took measurements or huddled around small heaters that chugged next to portable generators connected to the mansion by thick cables. Beyond the reach of those lights, the workers farthest from the house walked on the fringes of shadow. One such worker stood motionless at the top of the heap, with one hand wrapped around a thin metal post and the other shoved deep into the pocket of his dirty coat.

  The worker shifted from one foot to the other, doing his best to keep his balance on top of what was essentially a giant pile of dirt, bricks, and cracked wooden beams. Removing the hand from his coat pocket, he brought a walkie-talkie to his mouth and asked, “Did you hear that?”

  A colleague near the western corner of the mansion pressed his eye against a small telescope mounted onto a tripod. When the walkie-talkie on his belt crackled to life, he lifted it to his ear and replied, “You say something, Brian?”

  “Yeah,” the worker on the pile replied. “I asked if you heard that.”

  “Heard what?”

  “Some kind of rumbling.”

  The man at the telescope chuckled. “The owner of this place said he heard screams a few times. You didn’t hear screams, did you?”

  Picking up on the sarcasm coming through the radio, Brian said, “No. It was rumbling. Like…under my feet.”

  “Just hold still so I can get these measurements.” Squinting through the telescope, he struggled to take advantage of the pathetic light and scribble his notations into a notebook strapped to his wrist.

  “Can you even see me out here?” Brian asked.

  “Barely, but I want to get this done so we can get the hell out of here. It’s bad enough we’ve got to do a topographical study of an old pile of garbage, but the deadline they gave us is complete—”

  The view through the man’s telescope turned black, making him think his eyes had finally been strained past their limit. When the man looked up, he saw that someone had stepped directly in front of him to gaze out at the heap of rubble.

  “Hey,” the worker said from behind his tripod. “Are you supposed to be here?”

  The figure blocking the telescope wore a black coat that hung well past his waist. It might have been leather, but it had a slicker, shinier quality, as if it had been dipped in oil. He was a tall, bald man with black marks on his neck that stretched all the way up the back of his head. Before the worker behind the tripod could get a better look at the meandering tattoo, the stranger turned around and stared intently at him.

  “Scott?” Brian asked through the radio. “Who is that guy?”

  Stepping out from behind his instrument, Scott replied, “I’m about to find out.” He lowered the radio and raised his voice to the level that usually caused his subordinates to rethink whatever they’d been about to mess up. “What the hell are you doing out here? Don’t you know this is private property?”

  The tone wasn’t working on the bald man. His eyes remained fixed and he whispered, “Stay,” as if commanding an overanxious dog.

  “What?” Scott grunted. “All right. Whatever you’re doing, I don’t got time for it.”

  Just then the ground rumbled and shook beneath Brian’s feet. He tightened his grip upon the post he’d been holding for Scott to see but was unable to keep from falling as the heap beneath him caved in.

  Unable to hear the rumbling, Scott couldn’t miss the screams that followed.

  The other ten workers, too busy to notice the man in the black jacket, now all looked to the heap where Brian had been. Those who hadn’t seen him fall were drawn to his pained cries. Scott tried to rush past the stranger in the black jacket to see what had happened to his partner but was knocked off his feet by what felt like a cement post slamming against his chest.

  The bald man stood with his arm effortlessly outstretched after hitting Scott, as if working a kink out of his shoulder. As the other workers hurried to the top of the heap, the stranger crouched over Scott’s crumpled body and grabbed him by the hair. The surveyor wheezed and fought to r
efill his lungs as his head was yanked upward and pointed toward the heap. When he tried to pull away from the bald man’s grasp, Scott was driven to the ground by an elbow that pounded directly between his shoulder blades. There was a sharp, burning pain at the small of his back, followed by something sharp that ripped away the side of Scott’s neck.

  “I told you to stay,” the bald man hissed.

  The screams from the collapsed heap became louder as more and more workers added their voices to the mix. Some of the workers disappeared as if swallowed up by the heap itself. Others ran panicked from the mound, wanting only to get away. Just…away.

  Scott could hear long, controlled gasps coming from the man pinning him down. Fighting back proved to be useless. All he could do was watch helplessly as part of the heap rose up, stretched out, and swung at one of the fleeing workers.

  Come.

  Scott couldn’t tell if the word was a statement or a question. He didn’t know if it was meant for him or someone else. He couldn’t even tell if he’d heard it or thought it.

  The figure emerging from the heap was just a lump at first. It moved and swayed and flailed its arms, but it didn’t seem able to lift its own head. As it kept moving, more of the dirt was shaken off. Once enough of it fell away, the rough outline of shoulders and arms could be seen. Long legs, thick with muscle, held the figure upright. Its arms were uneven, yet powerful enough to knock one worker off his feet and send another to the ground amid the crunch of breaking bone. And still its head swayed back and forth like a disconnected pendulum.

  Some of the workers managed to get away from the thing, but they didn’t make it far before the beast leapt up high enough to close the distance between them. It clipped one worker’s head as it landed, and rolled for a few feet before scrambling back to its feet to slam a fist into another worker’s chest and tear away a chunk of flesh.

  “Get them all, Henry,” the man in the black jacket whispered. “Gather every last one.”

  Scott knew he had to get away from there or end up like Brian and the others. He had to move and call for help, but the crazy bald asshole was pinning him down. As much as he wanted to run, as badly as he wanted to fight, his body would not comply. When he realized he couldn’t feel his legs or arms, Scott knew he was done. The ground was warm and wet with blood that had come from his own veins, explaining the cold dizziness filling his mind.

  The crazy man knelt beside him. Blood dripped from the man’s mouth and coated his hands in a slick crimson paste. Every so often he glanced down at Scott, but most of his attention was fixed upon the filthy thing that recklessly jumped from one worker to another, snapping legs and clubbing heads with thick, flailing limbs.

  “Leave some alive,” the crazy man whispered.

  Then Scott heard a groaning wail that was too powerful to have come from any of the workers. The sound aspired to be human, but fell noticeably short of the mark. As the cry drifted through the air, the monstrous shape near the heap of rubble turned toward Scott and rocked back and forth. Despite his condition, Scott could still see that figure standing there, looking back at him. It held onto Brian’s face with one gnarled hand, leaving the rest of the worker’s body to dangle limply like a broken doll. The thing was almost twice as big as Brian, but cowered as if afraid of something.

  “I know you’re hungry,” the bald man whispered. “Gather them up and then you can feed.”

  “Wh-Why…?” Scott moaned.

  The bald man quickly glanced down, as if he’d forgotten Scott was there. Scowling in a way that revealed the bloody fangs extending over his human teeth, he grabbed a handful of Scott’s hair, lifted his head off the ground and then slammed it upon a partially buried rock.

  As Scott drifted away, he heard the bald man softly whisper, “Of course you know me, Henry. I am God, and I have come to show you the new world.”

  Chapter 1

  Seattle, Washington

  “What the hell is that thing supposed to be?”

  Cole Warnecki squinted and leaned forward as he tried to come up with words to describe what he was seeing on the monitor. Drawing a complete blank, he shook his head and replied, “I don’t know. Some sort of monster?”

  The man next to Cole didn’t take his eyes from the thing that had caught his attention. He shook his head, but not in the vaguely bewildered way that Cole had a second ago. “A monster or maybe some kind of alien?”

  Cole snapped his fingers. “A demon! That’s what it is.”

  “What kind of demon?”

  “The kind that…wait a second…maybe it’s some sort of guardian spirit.”

  Jason Sorrenson shifted his eyes away from the thirty-two-inch screen, swiveled in his chair so he could face Cole, then reached for a pair of glasses. He slid the dated wire frames into the grooves they’d worn over both ears and onto the bridge of his nose before asking, “Isn’t this your game, Cole? Shouldn’t you know exactly what every one of these things are?”

  Cole kept looking at the monitor and the image frozen on it. In his hands he held a controller that was connected to a black video-game console on a table beside Jason’s desk. Finally, Cole set the controller down and pressed his fingertips against his closed eyes. “Shit, you’re right. You know how crazy things get when we’re this close to going gold.”

  “Going gold? We’re barely through play testing and you think we’re ready to start manufacturing disks?”

  Letting out a breath, Cole flinched as if someone had just blown pepper up his nose. “A Cerberus! That’s what it is!”

  “What?”

  “You know, like one of those demon dogs from Greek mythology. But it’s different than those other ones that showed up in—”

  “Save it, Cole.” Jason was in his mid-forties, but carried himself as if he had sixty years of grief on his back. Leaning back, he sunk into the expensive padding of his chair, clasped his hands behind his balding head and stared at Cole through the dated wire frame glasses. His office matched the chair in comfort and had enough windows to fill it with whatever light the gray Seattle skies could offer. In comparison, the rest of the offices in the building seemed like dungeons. Outside, a stiff breeze blew in from Puget Sound; all the bare branches in the nearby park swayed in a slow rhythm. Winter hadn’t arrived quite yet, but the city looked plenty cold already. “What’s going on with you lately?” Jason asked with more concern than might be expected from someone so high on the corporate ladder.

  Cole was about ten years younger than his boss, but he let out a sigh as if he was the older of the two. Working his way through the ranks of Digital Dreamers Inc. had been a labor of love, but times like this didn’t feel so romantic. “I don’t know,” he said before his pause became uncomfortable.

  “Do you want to abandon Hammer Strike?”

  Glancing back to the monitor, Cole looked at the pause screen displaying the game’s title and options. “I’ve been working on Hammer for over two years. Giving it up now would just be…”

  “Lazy?”

  “I was going to say stupid, but I guess both are pretty close.”

  Jason got up and sat on the edge of his marble desktop. “I’d hate to lose you, Cole,” he said while picking up his own controller and hitting a button to put the game back into motion. “You’re anything but lazy, but you do seem sort of distracted.”

  “That’s putting it nicely. It feels more like I’ve had my head jammed up my ass.”

  Chuckling under his breath like a preteen boy too nervous to follow up his friend’s swearing with a bad word of his own, Jason let his fingers drift effortlessly over the game controller. He moved his muscle-bound, onscreen avatar to one of the Cerberus-type creatures and used the titular hammer to pound it into a mess of pixilated gore.

  Cole pinched his chin between a thumb and forefinger while watching Jason maneuver through the game. “Do that combo I showed you.”

  “The killing move?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jason’s fingers f
lew through the prescribed set of motions, causing the digitized character to perform a jerky dance. “It’s not working,” he said while shaking his head.

  Cole took the controller from Jason’s hands and went through the same motions, only a bit faster. After a few more attempts, he bounced the controller off the floor and turned his back to the screen. “God dammit!”

  “Maybe you need to take a vacation. You know…relax a little?”

  “I can’t take a vacation this close to the release date.”

  “So we’ll push the date back. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Letting out a breath, Cole straightened up and turned around to face his boss again. He knew he might not have been in the best shape of his life, but with his natural athleticism, he held up better than most guys his age. Considering how much time he spent in front of a computer screen, his lack of a gut was even more impressive. He chuckled at his own expense and dropped back into his chair. “I don’t think a vacation is what I need, Jason.”

  “I’m not letting you quit.” Lighting up like the power button on his game console, Jason said, “I know! What about Nora?”

  “I haven’t seen her for a while.”

  “She works one door away from the programmers’ lounge. You must see her every day.”

  “I mean I haven’t seen her…like that. Not for a while.”

  Jason nodded slowly. “Why not?”

  “Not just a boss, but a relationship counselor too? I think you should prescribe me some painkillers. You know, the good ones that put you to sleep for a while?”

  “I just thought it would do you some good to get your mind off of work, and Nora seems a lot more qualified than me to do that trick.”