Vampire Uprising Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing outside the front door. “You guys are from around here, right?”
    Jory nodded.
    “So do you know those meatheads across the street?”
    Abel turned his back on him before grunting, “Do you know everyone in your territory? I’d guess probably not, since you and Paige were supposed to be watching KC when it fell.”
    Cole stepped up to the guy with the Mohawk. Since he’d never gone toe-to-toe with him, he hadn’t realized how much taller he was than Abel. “Right, but you’re the ones who had Lancroft living in your own damn city. Couldn’t you have kept a closer eye on things before they went
this
far into the shitter?”
    “This is a big city, not some stretch of prairie like you’re used to.”
    “Chicago’s a stretch of prairie? What the hell’s wrong with you? Take your hands off me, Selina!”
    The blonde had grabbed Cole by the arm and pulled him back. After letting him go, she turned to Abel and said, “This isn’t the place to talk about our business.”
    Following her line of sight, Cole saw that Madman 69 and his other buddies had plopped into lawn chairs on their porch and were cracking open a fresh round of drinks. All of the Skinners stomped inside and slammed the door shut. The house was protected and cloaked by a series of runes etched into the walls, but Cole only knew three men who could use them with any degree of accuracy. Lancroft was at the top of the list, but he was dead. Ned Post used similar runes to protect his home in St. Louis, but he was also dead. That left Rico. Unfortunately, he’d gone his own way soon after Lancroft had been dealt with. Before leaving, he’d shown several of the remaining Skinners how to activate or deactivate the runes cloaking the door to the basement. Since the rest of the angular markings were more complicated than glorified switches, everyone just left them alone.
    For the moment, the door to the basement was just asvisible as any other. Beyond it, a cement stairwell led down to a workshop filled with benches and several sets of tools. The grisly works in progress Lancroft had left behind were all gone, leaving only the scent of rotten meat and burnt leather to mark their passing. Skinners from across the country had been coming to look at Lancroft’s place over the last several days and were taking as much of the old man’s belongings as they could carry. Supplies it took months or years to find in the field could be found in neat stacks of old mason jars and tool boxes. Lancroft even had racks of handcrafted weapons, some of which still bore bloodstains from their previous owners upon the handles’ thorns. Cole didn’t even know there were so many Skinners to be found, and with a pulse of green light from the next room accented by the scent of freshly cut trees, more arrived from parts unknown.
    Stepping into the next room, he was always happy to watch the Dryads at work. Based in clubs around the country, the nymphs had been sticking to their word and allowing Skinners to use their temples as a means of transportation. They resisted parting with the knowledge of exactly how the process worked, but that was fine by him. Sometimes it was nice to just sit back and enjoy the show.
    The man who emerged from the enchanted room’s glowing beaded curtain didn’t seem at all concerned with the miracle of being teleported by mythological strippers. Somehow, even the faint whiff of expensive body spray following him through his end of the bridge wasn’t enough to brighten the man’s mood. “What the fuck is this that I hear about the Full Blood going missing?”
    He was a bulky man in shredded jeans, scuffed boots, and a simple black work shirt that looked as if it had been stolen from a mechanic. The hand he raised was so scarred that it could very well have been sewn onto his wrist after Frankenstein’s monster was through with it. “You,” he said, while aiming a callused finger at Cole. “Are you one of them from