Vampire Uprising Read Online Free PDF Page B

fingertips on the clipped portion in back, Cole said, “I like the new look. Feels goo—
Ow
!”
    Interrupted by a lock applied to his hand that turned it against his wrist in a very uncomfortable way, Cole was quickly reminded of one thing: the hair might have been different, but the woman beneath it was very much the same.
    “Where’s that frickin’ body?” she snapped. Before Colecould give so much as a peep in his defense, she tightened the lock and added, “And you should think verrrry carefully before you ask me ‘What body?’”
    “Do we really want to discuss this now?” he whispered.
    “Yes.” Paige let him go and marched back to the room with the workbenches. Jessup and several others shouted for her, but she ignored those tersely worded requests and went all the way up to the main floor of the house.
    Cole followed behind her, doing his best not to return the stern glares coming from any number of Skinners sifting through the creations and unfinished projects that Lancroft had left behind. Upstairs, only one of the locals remained. As soon as they saw Paige and Cole emerge from the basement, Abel promptly turned his back on them and joined the rest of his crew outside.
    Apart from the runes etched into the walls, there wasn’t much of anything to see on the main floor of the house. Furnishings were limited to a few folding chairs that had only recently been brought in and several coolers strewn around the kitchen.
    “Told you we should’ve kept this place a secret,” Cole grumbled.
    “We did for the first few days,” Paige replied. “After that, it was only a matter of time before Jory and those other two showed up.”
    “Where the hell were they when Lancroft was here? If they’re supposed to be locals, how come we didn’t know about them until they came to grab this stuff?”
    “Abel, Selina, and Jory broke contact with MEG about the same time that Gerald and Brad took their trip into Canada.”
    No matter what Cole was thinking about, it was always wiped away when those names were mentioned. Gerald and Brad were the first Skinners he’d ever met, and they were ripped to shreds in front of him by a Full Blood he’d come to know as Mr. Burkis. Nothing had been the same after that.
    Nothing.
    “A lot of things could have happened between these Philly guys and MEG,” she continued. “Not all of us are as fond of the ghost guys as you are.” When she saw the look in Cole’seyes, Paige sighed and admitted, “Fine. As
we
are. The point is, this bunch isn’t the first to go off the grid. Selina says they were forced to go into hiding when some cops were getting close to putting them away.”
    “What’d they do to get in trouble with the cops?”
    “Their job, Cole. See, that’s the problem with being the only ones who know about things like Nymar. We see vampires while everyone else sees a bunch of strutting dickheads with smooth skin and black tattoos. Knocking around assholes like that isn’t exactly legal. Shooting them or injecting poison into their veins is most definitely frowned upon. The good news is that Selina claims to have made some friends in the Philadelphia PD after resolving their little problem. And speaking of a little problem, where’s that frickin’ body?”
    Over the past few months, Cole had been acquiring many new skills. He was getting better with his weapon. He’d picked up on methods used to track creatures of the night. He could even fix mac and cheese in five exotic ways. Lying to Paige, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly a skill. It was a risk to life and limb.
    “I buried it,” he said.
    “You what?”
    “Buried it.”
    As one question piled on top of another, Paige’s face went through a series of contortions. The expression he’d least expected for her to settle on was calmness. As a surprise bonus, she actually smirked. “How the hell did you manage to get that thing out of here when everyone else was rummaging around?”
    “I asked