Vampire Uprising Read Online Free PDF

Chicago?”
    “Yeah,” Paige said as she stepped out of a small, brightly lit room where Lancroft had cut Henry into the chunks Coleso recently buried. “And I’m the other one.”
    Paige hadn’t stepped foot out of the basement for more than an hour or two over the last several days, and it showed. Her skin was pale. Dark circles ringed her eyes and her newly sheared hair hung limply around her face. “What are you doing here, Jessup? Didn’t I just tell you there’s nothing to see that your little trainees hadn’t already seen?”
    The phone still clutched in Jessup’s other fist looked like a toy that was about to be broken into pieces. Stuffing it into his pocket, he stepped away from the curtain of shimmering beads and glanced over both of his shoulders. What he saw was a large room with walls covered in flowing Dryad script. Behind him were the women whose song had created the bridge connecting one temple to another. Now that they were done singing, the ridiculously beautiful nymphs strutted out of the basement for some fresh air. Having already encountered the loudmouth neighbors, they knew well enough to head to the poorly tended backyard.
    “Where the hell are those broads going?” Jessup asked.
    All of the people in the temple were riveted by the sight of the Dryads. Even though they normally wore something much more provocative than the sweats and baby doll shirts these two had on, they exuded raw femininity that reached down through every human sensory organ to caress the recipient from the inside out. Paige and Cole weren’t immune to the effect, but they’d felt it enough to know how to brace themselves.
    Closing the distance between herself and Jessup with a few powerful strides, she reminded him, “The deal was for them to help us with transport when we needed it. Not act as a subway system with flights leaving every hour. They’re pushing it as it is to run everyone through their temples for as long as they have.”
    “I had to go to some shithole club an hour’s drive from Helena.”
    “And you won’t be able to return for another three hours.”
    “Maybe I’ll stay. Looks like this place could use some real leadership.” Gritting his teeth, Jessup stalked toward Cole and growled, “What’s so goddamn funny?”
    “You’ve had quite a day,” Cole said. “To Helena and back.”
    Jessup gazed at him like Roosevelt looking down from Mount Rushmore.
    In too deep to back out now, Cole asked, “You got any flying rodents in Montana or did they all fly away like bats out of—”
    “Am I supposed to believe
the
Jonah Lancroft was taken down by you two?”
    Paige nodded confidently to Jessup as she replied, “Yep. You can also believe that Boise was one of the cities hit hardest by Lancroft’s Mud Flu. According to his records, he was there to plant the virus himself.” She scratched her head, feeling one of the spots that had recently gotten a major trim. “Isn’t Idaho your territory?”
    “And what about Wyoming?” Cole asked. “I’ve seen some videos on the net of some pretty bad Mongrel activity.”
    Jessup stomped past Cole and Paige, waving them off like a cranky old fart dismissing the bells and whistles of modern technology. “Stuff that Web garbage up your asses where it came from. Let me get a look at this place.”
    After he passed her, Paige was all smiles. She was still smiling when she wrapped an arm around Cole and led him to the far side of the room where there was a better chance of speaking in what would have to pass for privacy.
    Cole ran his hand along the back of her head, feeling the hair cut drastically short to match the clump she’d been forced to hack off during her fight with Lancroft. From the back of her neck and up to the bump on the back of her skull, her black hair had been clipped to a soft bristle. The front and sides were still long, but in a long bob that swooped down to frame her cheeks like a set of wispy, inverted horns. Keeping his