or Paige.”
“Could have started off with that part,” he growled.
“I didn’t take the message. Abby did. Anyway, there’s a phone number.”
“Give it to me.”
Stu rattled off the digits, which Cole committed to memory. Suddenly feeling very nervous with continuing the call around so much military communications equipment, he was about to wrap up the call with a quick goodbye.
“Wait!” Stu pleaded.
“What is it?”
“There’s chatter all over the place about what’s happening. People are getting killed and werewolves are showing up on the news. Reporters aren’t even bothering to call them anything other than werewolves, for Christ’s sake! What the hell, man?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Stu.”
“Tell me this isn’t as bad as it seems.”
It was a simple request, but one Cole knew he couldn’t fulfill. “Just stay safe and keep your eyes open. Don’t give out any information unless you get an ID number. On second thought, we need to change the ID numbers.”
Happy to have something to do that fell within his area of expertise, Stu said, “On it.”
Cole hung up and dialed the number that was already fading from his memory. The call was answered on the first ring by a familiar scratchy rasp. “Jessup?”
“Cole, thank God. Where are you?”
“Back in New Mexico. Where the hell are you?”
“About six miles outside of Louisville, Kentucky. I’ve been driving all damn day tracking Cecile. What happened with you?”
“Never mind that. The military’s got this place and us locked down tight. Where’s Esteban?”
There was a pause, followed by the rattle of an engine winding down. Knowing the older tracker, it had to be another Ford. “I stayed as long as I could. That thing just walked out and ran away.”
“What do you mean he walked out?”
“Stepped out of that stone shell like he was a ghost. I made some calls and found out what he was doin’ at that Colorado prison where you were being held. He was after some of them Nymar Shadow Spore collected by other Skinners. There were other samples down beneath that place. Older samples.”
Cole could still feel the Nymar hand clamped around his throat while he was strapped to a hospital bed, and could still hear the hungry rasp of the vampire’s voice taunting him when his body was almost too drugged to move. Shaking off those memories like so much cold water, he asked, “The IRD has been collecting Nymar?”
“No. It’s one of us. That prison has been there since 1868, but portions of it shifted into private ownership in 1904. The deal was made as part of an experiment in corrections philosophy but basically gave one man free access to prisoners to be used for his own research.”
“God damn,” Cole sighed. “Lancroft?”
“We knew Jonah Lancroft ran more than just his reformatory. He had labs and hidden facilities like this prison all over the country. Probably all over the world.”
Although Adderson and the soldiers were keeping their distance, Paige was becoming increasingly anxious. “Did you say something about Lancroft?” she asked.
“Wait a second,” Cole said while going through the potentially painful motions of waving Paige away. “You said we knew. Who’s ‘we’?”
“It’s not as sinister as it may sound. Your friend Ned Post was a Lancroft historian. Lots of us are. We could all learn a lot from a man like that. Now that his journals are being unearthed, he’s getting an even bigger following than he had when he was alive.”
“Lancroft was a murderer. He killed Ned,” Cole said while stabbing a finger into the air as if jabbing it through Jessup’s chest.
“What’s he saying about Ned?” Paige asked.
The harsh crackle that came through Jessup’s end of the phone connection was either static or a heavy sigh. “Ned may have had a falling out with the old man, but Lancroft had plenty of supporters, and after everything that’s happened, he’s got even more. The Full Bloods aren’t dead. Now that the Breaking Moon has risen, the Army won’t be able to do a damn thing against them. The Nymar are sitting pretty. Lancroft’s ideas may have been radical, but they may also be the only ones that make any sense. If we would have listened to him before, things may not have gotten this bad. At least one saving grace is that we got the cargo Cecile was carrying.”
It took Cole a moment, but he recalled it and asked, “The Jekhibar?”
“Poor girl was more than happy to get that thing out of her arm.”
“And what happened to her then?”
“She’ll find