Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) by Marcus Pelegrimas Page A

a tight-lipped scowl in return.
    “There a problem?” someone asked from the hallway.
    Stephanie began to speak, but cut herself off when she saw Cole reach over his shoulder to pull his spear halfway from its harness. Locking eyes with him, she said, “I’m fine. Just go back to the security room.”
    With every inch of the second level floor covered in such thick carpeting, it was impossible for Cole to hear if the people in the hall walked away or not. He looked up and couldn’t find the camera, but did pick out a few cheap little sculptures along the edge of the ceiling that could easily hide an eye in the sky.
    “The last time we met, I probably didn’t make a very good impression,” he said.
    She smirked and replied, “You tried to hit me with a trash can lid and then pushed me into the sunlight. Hah. And you’re the one calling me cliché?”
    “What was your girl doing in our part of town?”
    “My who was where?”
    Cole narrowed his eyes and stepped closer to the bed. “You know goddamn well what I’m talking about. All of your girls are marked with pigtails tied back with the little cat bands. One of them, some asshole with a mullet, anda guy named Sid were caught sucking businessmen in an alley.”
    “Did they tell you who they worked for?”
    “The one with the mullet did some talking, especially after I cracked his skull against the side of my car.”
    “Yeah,” Stephanie said as she stood up and took the single step required to put her within a foot of Cole, “but did they tell you they worked for me?”
    When she was that close, he could smell the fruity scent of whatever she used in her hair. He could see the subtle texture of the tendrils that slowly writhed beneath her skin, and felt the heat emanating from her body. Apparently, that stuff about vampires being cold was as big a myth as the one about them burning up in the daylight.
    Her eyes looked brown or possibly dark green from a distance. From where she stood now, Cole thought they had a slight purple hue to them. Those eyes silently assured him that they could pick up any lie he tried to float past her. Of course, there was one surefire way to test that theory.
    “Yeah,” he lied. “Mullet boy brought your name up once or twice.”
    Without skipping a beat, Stephanie raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess you got me. Seems like Paige really has whipped you into shape. Tell me something. Have you fucked her yet?”
    “There’s the Stephanie I remember.”
    “You haven’t, have you? I can feel that much just like I can feel, well, this much.”
    Before Cole could do anything about it, Stephanie slipped her hand between his legs. She squeezed a bit too hard, as if to remind him who was in control, but eased up quickly and started rubbing him back and forth. “You’ve been with her all this time and no action? What’s the matter? Oooh, I can tell it’s nothing to do with your plumbing. Must be her. Is she freezing you out?”
    Cole shook his head, intending on saying something but not quite getting there.
    “I may have been a little rough on you when we first met, but you’ve shaped up since then.” Placing her hands upon hisarms, she squeezed them and smiled. “You’ve been working out.”
    Trying to distract her as well as himself, he asked, “Do your customers even know what you are?”
    “I doubt it.”
    “What about those?” he asked while tapping the thickest black line on the side of her neck. “Don’t they notice anything strange about those? I mean, sometimes they move.”
    “They move a lot of the times, but we keep the normals too busy to notice. We tell them they’re tattoos, and that’s good enough. I told one of my customers something of the whole story when he put some of the pieces together about what’s actually going on. You know what he said? He said it was weird. Can you believe that? A guy who paid me to make him bleed and lick the wounds actually called me