I suggest you to use 2 queries:
db.collection.count()
will return total number of items. This value is stored somewhere in Mongo and it is not calculated.
db.collection.find().skip(20).limit(10)
here I assume you could use a sort by some field, so do not forget to add an index on this field. This query will be fast too.
I think that you shouldn't query all items and than perform skip and take, cause later when you have big data you will have problems with data transferring and processing.