Free Teeth of Beasts (Skinners) by Marcus Pelegrimas Page A

found more grisly reminders of their time in Kansas City. The Full Blood’s claws and teeth had left scars that marred her flesh like a key would mar the paint on a car door.
    “All right,” she said. “That’s enough.”
    “Does it hurt?”
    “No. I can barely feel anything.”
    “Then move it.” When she tried to pull away, he tightened his grip on her wrist and said, “Can you just move your hand?”
    She set her jaw into a firm line, pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a hiss. He could see the pain in her eyes, but didn’t bother asking her about it. Thanks to the healing serums she’d already mixed and administered, Paige could have recovered from wounds bad enough to make the toughest soldier scream in agony. But healing wasn’t enough. Skinners had to chew through regular pain and go in for seconds.
    And thirds.
    And possibly tenths.
    The sheen on Paige’s brow grew into several trickles of sweat as she forced her arm to rise up from where it rested within its sling. Her shirt was already soaked, which told Cole she’d probably been working at this for some time before he arrived. When her arm was about an inch and a half above the bottom of the sling, she bared her teeth and extended her hand like a ponderous mechanism that had been forged from rusted steel and bent at joints dipped in cold glue. While letting out another breath, she lifted her arm some more and uncurled her middle finger.
    “You flipped me off a little quicker this time,” Cole said.
    After allowing her arm to drop back down, she swatted him away impatiently and headed for the fridge. “So your MEG girl didn’t pan out, huh?”
    Cole sat on one of the two stools in the large room and slapped his hands on the stainless steel countertop. “Abby’s great, but I don’t think she was ready for the whole Chupacabra thing.”
    “The package in the storeroom says that you handled it, though. Good job.”
    Catching the can of pop she tossed to him, Cole said, “Thanks. It really tore after me too! Remember how long we had to shake the grass in Indiana before that little one came sniffing?”
    “Chupes grow differently wherever they live. All it takes is one generation for them to sprout another ear to hear past loud farm equipment, or longer toes to grab onto a certainkind of tree. Did you know I saw one that literally had an eye in the back of its head? That’s what makes them so tough to track.” Opening her own can of fully caffeinated soda, Paige took a sip and sat down on the stool directly across the counter from him.
    He couldn’t help noticing that they were in the same spots they’d been in during his very first visit to Rasa Hill. It was less than a year ago, but felt closer than his desk job and old apartment.
    “I didn’t need to do much tracking with this one,” he told her.
    “Chupes aren’t usually so aggressive. At least, not with humans. They tend to go for smaller game like dogs or something slow like a cow.”
    “Or goats,” Cole pointed out. “Chupacabra means Goat Sucker.”
    That got a smile from Paige that wasn’t tired and wasn’t forced. It went a long way in making her beautiful despite the run-down state she was in. “Or goats,” she conceded. “I think you just got lucky with that one and caught it when it was hungry or possibly defending something.”
    “It ran me into a trap.”
    Scrunching her eyebrows together, she asked, “Are you sure about that?”
    Cole nodded and drank some more pop. “It dug a pit, put rocks at the bottom, and partially hid it with branches.”
    “Could have just been a hole in the ground.”
    “Nope. It ran right past it without a stumble like it knew it was there. If I would have fallen in without catching myself, I would have broken something or at least been too hurt to crawl right back out again. It circled back after I fell, and when I tossed it down the same hole, it knew right where to grab to keep from hitting those rocks.”
    “That is