eyes were locked on Cole when he asked, “Are you strung out?”
Even with the world going to hell and what sounded like a war encroaching on the outskirts of town, Cole was surprised by the question. “I’m not on drugs!” he said.
“I don’t mean drugs. I mean the healing serum. How much have you been taking?”
“A lot lately, but I’ve been wounded.”
“What about before you were wounded? Did you take it any time you got hurt even if you didn’t absolutely need it?” Jessup’s eyes narrowed and he moved toward him and a distant howling gave way to a shriek that became louder and more intense. “Have you reached for a needle even before you knew how badly you were hurt? When you get cut or scraped or knocked around, do you look forward to that light-headed rush that comes with—”
“I’m not a fucking junkie!” Cole snapped.
“You didn’t answer my questions.”
“I’ve got a question for you,” he said while moving the club as if trying to pass it off as something other than a weapon. “What’s that screeching? It’s coming from everywhere.”
“No it isn’t,” Jessup replied while closing his eyes. “That noise is today’s biggest lesson. You wanna know another lesson I learned a long time ago? Don’t work with someone who’s strung out on anything, even if it’s something we cooked up ourselves.”
“I haven’t even had any of that stuff for a while.”
“Which is probably why you were about to stab me a few seconds ago. Now close your eyes and listen for that screech. We need to know what direction it’s coming from.”
The sky was growing darker by the second. When Cole looked to the east, he saw a blur of clouds and dark purple. Looking to the west forced him to squint before catching a jabbing ray of sunlight in his eyes. “It’s getting closer, whatever it is. Do you know what it is?”
“Shush up and listen,” Jessup scolded. “And close yer eyes. It’ll help you focus.”
Cole did as he was told. The stench of rotting meat and blood was still thick in his nose, and the frantic beats of his heart showed up as pulsing blobs of light behind his eyelids. Before that became too much for him, he heard something else with his newly focused ears. The shriek started off as just one of the many that crossed back and forth above him. When something screamed directly toward him, there was no way in hell he could keep his eyes closed.
A large flap of skin sliced through the air, attached to a frame of narrow bone. It was thin enough to glide and light enough to be steered by what looked like fluttering ribbons trailing behind it. Long talons stretched from the skin flap’s two front corners as it extended even more to ride a wind that rippled over its back and through its body, which produced the shriek Cole had been hearing.
As the thing in the sky angled sharply downward toward Jessup’s back, several more of the narrow fliers descended like pencil lines that suddenly decided to leap off a page. They were right behind the first one, filling Cole’s eyes with sunlight reflecting off smooth undulating backs and filling his ears with a shriek that now sounded more like a whistle blown with the power of a concentrated hurricane.
The closest one opened its body into a tattered flag with four talons at either end. Without opening his eyes, Jessup drew the hunting knife from its scabbard to snap it up and around toward the incoming mass of skin. Between his confident swing and the creature’s own momentum, the blade cut through the upper framework of bone and shredded the flying thing’s body all the way down to the tattered pieces hanging from its lower end. Its shriek turned into an agonized cry as pieces of its body fell to the ground. The others still in the air veered off before getting close enough to fall victim to the Skinner’s blade.
Opening his eyes, Jessup flicked the knife down to spatter a clear, viscous fluid onto the ground and said, “It’s all in the wrist.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Once he’d sheathed his knife, Jessup asked Cole to help him pick up the dead flier and run for cover. Although he was more anxious to do the latter, Cole helped with the former as well. The shredded pieces of the thing that had come screaming from the sky now looked more like a broken kite made of moist skin