stamps or graffiti left behind by a prisoner. They were carved very carefully into the iron with too much precision to have been put there by tools that could be smuggled into a cell. Cole’s suspicions were confirmed when he noticed the same markings etched into every bar he passed. They were runes. He’d seen enough of the blocky, arcane shapes on Lancroft’s walls and above the doorways in Ned’s house to recognize the Skinner symbols anywhere. He didn’t know what they said, but it meant there was a lot more going on here than he’d suspected.
One guard hurried to get to one of the cells farther along the line. Although Cole didn’t hear the rattle of keys or the movement of machinery, he could hear the creak of metal hinges grating against each other. After several more paces he was pulled to a stop, turned to the right and shown a set of bars set directly into the floor. An opening three bars wide had been created when a door, only slightly bigger than one built for a dog, was unlocked.
“Get in,” the guard said.
Cole planted his feet and told him, “No.”
“Get in.”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on. Are you guys Skinners or not?”
The silence was thick enough to let him know they weren’t strangers to that term.
He forced his head up, turned around and was taken aback by the presence of four guards instead of the two who had brought him to the third floor. “I’ve seen cells like this before. They were in Jonah Lancroft’s basement. You know who he is, don’t you?”
Slapping the end of a baton against Cole’s chest, the guard shoved him toward the cell. “Shut up and get moving.”
Cole grabbed the stick and moved it aside. “You do know who he is. What about the guy in the suit? I bet he knows plenty.”
“Get into that cell. This is your last warning.” Now that the other guards were closing ranks around him, the man with the baton was rediscovering his courage. His partners brandished weapons ranging from bats to shotguns.
Cole clenched his fists and tried to draw on whatever strength he could pull from the tendrils inside him. Without a spore at their base, and now blood to replenish what they’d burned up earlier, however, the tendrils were nothing more than remnants that constricted or relaxed out of hunger-driven reflex. “This is a mistake. I know what these runes are. I don’t belong in this cage.”
“That’s what they all say.” Placing the end of the baton once more against Cole’s upper body, the guard said, “Now get in.”
“I want to see the warden. I want to see someone in charge! At least bring me the suit guy! Anyone who can tell me why I’m being moved to this place.”
Before Cole could hit his stride, he was jabbed by something sharp that poked through the front of his jumpsuit to dig into his flesh. The point had emerged from the end of the guard’s baton with a creaking sound that he knew all too well. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw the trickle of blood dripping from between the guard’s fingers.
“You are Skinners,” he said.
The guard held the pointed end of the baton in place. It had barely pierced Cole’s skin, but wouldn’t need much of a push to dig deeper. “You need to stop throwing that word around. Especially after all the damage you’ve caused.”
“I didn’t kill any of those cops.”
“I’m not talking about that. You and the bitch from Chicago practically gave the Nymar the keys to the kingdom. You let them set up shop in one city, allowed a pack of Mongrels to dig into another, and then you killed the one man who had a chance of changing things for the better. If it was up to me, you would’ve been dead about two minutes after we snuck you out of the state pen.”
“Why didn’t you do it, then?”
“Because we follow rules. We respect the chain of command. You won’t be going anywhere. It may even do me some good to see what happens to you after you’ve been locked in here for a year or two.”
“Sounds like a shorter sentence than I would’ve gotten at a real trial.”
“We’ll see how happy you are about it once the testing starts. On your knees.”
Cole had seen a similar little door leading into a cell beneath the Lancroft house in Philadelphia. His guess had been that the small entrance